Proposed Pentagon Budget Cuts
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-08-11/proposed-pentagon-budget-cuts
Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to reduce the number of generals and admirals in the armed forces and restrict the use of outside contractors: Reaction to his cost-cutting proposals for the Pentagon and implications for military preparedness.
Guests
Andrew Krepinevich
executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
Loren Thompson
chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute
Jamie McIntyre
military and media analyst who blogs at Line of Departure.com,
adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Maryland,
and former senior Pentagon correspondent, CNN
Linda Bilmes
Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy,
Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University
Comments
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Secretary Gates wants to close the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk and Suffolk, Virginia. Over 6,300 jobs are at stake, mostly high-tech professionals. He also stated, somewhat glibly, that perhaps he could throw some more shipyard work to Virginia as compensation for the lost high-tech jobs. Does he not understand the different skill sets involved, and that job numbers alone would not compensate Virginia for such a tremendous economic hit?
Since he clearly wants to cut the Defense budget, why wouldn't he start with weapons systems no one wants, but are protected by Congressional pork-barrel politics?
Tough times call for tough choices. I believe there should be a strategic review of American troop and base presence abroad, especially in the context of a world that is very different from 60 years ago.
The Pentagon is leading by example, other departments should follow.
I hope politics do not get in the way of needed change.
missm: You answered yourself: because they're protected by pork-barrel politics! It's up to us to change the politics. New, very useful website is dealing with how pork affects energy decisions. http://dirtyenergymoney.org/index.php
Now we need one showing "dirtymilitarymoney"!
Just to reiterate the statistics on global defense spending... Is it true that the US spends more on defense that the rest of the world combined???
I believe that is the issue that needs to be discussed, who are we defending against? The rest of the world?
Thanks
Do any of Secretary Gates' recommendations affect the acquisition function?
Do any of Secretary Gates' recommendations affect the acquisition function?
Do any of Secretary Gates' recommendations affect the acquisition function?
Love your show.
I'm amazed at how we are currently being out-maneuvered in Pakistan by the Taliban as they simply provide relief services to the flood victims. How is that we can spend billions on war-making and overlook the fact that winning the hearts and minds of the people can be done much more efficiently by helping them
Does Secretary Gates proposal offer an opportunity to re-assess the entire military strategy with a view toward winning the peace. We're clearly able to win the shooting wars.
Thanks again for keeping us so well informed.
Roy from Attleboro, MA
I have an issue with basing Pentagon's budget as a percentage of GDP. If, for some reason, we get twice richer does that mean we're twice less secure and need to double our military spending? Or, if we loose half of our GDP does that mean we're twice more secure and can cut the spending in half?
Our GDP doesn't correlate with security.
All,
As a serving Army Officer, of course I never want to hear the word cut when associated with the Pentagon Budget. However, this latest announcement only gives me more reason to admire Secretary Gates. It shows that he is a realistic leader who recognizes that we don't have an unlimited budget. Furthermore, it shows that he has the right priorities, meaning the frontline units angaged in the current fight not hypothetical threats that keep many defense contractors employed.
CPT Jonah Martin
Fort Hood Texas
The Pentagon has not been able to do a verifiable accounting of of the flood of tax dollars that have been thrown at it not only since the beginning of the so-called war on terror, but for literally decades before that. At over $700 billion dollars, it is more than half of the Federal discretionary budget--more than education, health care, domestic infrastructure investment etc combined. If anything, Gates does not go far enough.The decades of gross over spending on the unaccountable bureaucracy that is the Pentagon must end and those funds need to be reinvested here at home and used to pay down our debt.
We refer to the "military" budget as being in the $700 billion range. But, when we discuss expenditures involving national "defense", then surely the number is much much higher. If we take into account the budgets of CIA, DIA, NSA, NASA, FBI, Homeland Security, private security corporations, budgets of agencies we don't even know of, and all of the other public and private budgets outside of the pentagon, it is easy to realize that this nation spends well in excess of $1 trillion dollars on national defense and defense related items. This is unsustainable. No one argues for the need of national defense, but if we intend to build roads, schools and hospitals, we need a fundamental redirection of our resources. Secretary Gates has made it clear that he is not cutting the Pentagon's budget, he is merely redirecting funds for troops and weapons.
I can't believe your guest derides cuts in the military budget because they would address ONLY half of our deficit! That is huge amount. Letting the Bush tax cuts, at least on the wealthy, expire would lower it significantly. Smart policies, including stimulus spending and investment in new technologies, would lead us back to healthy growth which will generate a lot of revenues to reduce the deficit. Everyone forgets we just did this in the 90's abd quickly generated a surplus, in contradiction of the predictions of most economists and pundits.
Taking care of our the ridiculous waste in our health care system would take care of most of the rest of the problems we are facing. Social Security is facing a TEMPORARY bump which will be easy to address if we get our economy back on track and have reasonable taxes and cuts. Eliminating half the deficit is a great way to start.
We seem to have national amnesia here. We saw conservative hijacking of the military in the Reagan years to use as a political tool. We ran relatively tame national debts until Reagan. Once the hijack was completed, our national debt skyrocketed (really! Look it up.) Our military has been running on borrowed money since the Reagan years to fight a decrepit Soviet military which would eventually crumble under the the weight of its own debt. By making the military budget sacrosanct, the conservatives have created a political patronage which have become predominantly republican. We, as a nation, are paying for maintaining a republican base through borrowed money. Seems perverse doesn't it? In fact, the only president to submit a balanced budget since Reagan took office was a Democrat. What does this say about where our money is going?
At over $700 billion dollars a years, isn't this Pentagon spending a kind of defacto government economic planning? This kind of government resource allocation warps our economy favoring military spending and research over Federal spending on things such as renewable energy, basic science, medical research, global warming etc. Isn't this antithetical in a capitalist system such as ours?
The improvements in weapons acquisition during the Reagan administration were not Reagan initiatives. They were initiated by Carter. Reagan left us with Star Wars!
All DOD prime contractors should be required to only sub contract the organization that is going to actually do the work and stop passing work down through numerous layers of sub contractors that drives costs to outrages levels. This process creates a trail that is almost impossible to audit.
The hardest part in this whole conversation for me is the fact that we keep referring to Secretary Gates proposing "cuts," and this is apparently untrue. He's proposing MOVING the money to other functions.
According to the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, taking $1 billion from Defense spending and putting it toward clean energy, health care and education creates MORE and BETTER PAYING jobs. (see http://wand.org/jobs2010.pdf)
A comprehensive approach to actually CUTTING and IMPROVING security has been proposed by the bipartisan independent Sustainable Defense Task Force in their "Debts, Deficits and Defense" report, which addresses a much broader range of issues, including spiraling military health care costs. Its proposals could save up to $960 billion between 2011 and 2020, and "cover the full range of Pentagon expenditures – procurement, research and development, personnel, operations and maintenance, and infrastructure." (see http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/media/Debt_Deficits_and_Defense.pdf)
We've got to get real, and as others have said, start making the tough choices.
A useful resource to get a handle on Pentagon spending:
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/
The discussion brings to mind the many ways to look at this issue. Our Military is ten times larger than the closest developed country. It is said that that alone is an intimidation factor. Couldnt we actually make the hard cuts necessary and drop to say five time bigger and save a bundle.
The misappropriation of funding and military spending is the single largest economic problem in this country. Yes we have to look at entitlements as well. But the Fox is guarding the hen house across the board. We can have a strong efficient technical military and still take care or our folks at home.
Learned nothing new from this show. The host is apparently ignorant of the topic, so the guests were free to spin off the usual ideological talking points. One guest even had the gall to suggest that Gates focus is in the wrong place when looking for cuts. This Defense Secretary has cut and proposed cuts in more big budget defense programs than I can remember in recent memory, but ultimately Congress and the President have control over military spending- not Gates.
Moreover, I doubt the President has the guts to carry through on his veto threat to kill the F136 engine funding that Gates wanted. Gates also wants to kill EVF. Watch Congress reject that as well.
One of the greatest of the greatest generation perhaps said it best:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953
34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)
Frank Sezno (sp?) -- what are you talking about when you keep repeating "the threats that the nation is facing"? You too got brainwashed by those who benefit from keeping the American people scared? Maybe you just want to be holier than the pope (i.e. fit with the Washington establishment)?
NO OTHER country in the world presents a real threat to the US (and terrorism cannot be eliminated by military means).
Our enemy is within -- it's the Military-Industrial Complex.