Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff chair Admiral Mike Mullen are already shrieking like neurotic lapdogs confronted with a nail-clipping… I mean, “warn[ing] of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the next decade… “
“We’re already taking our share of the discretionary cuts as part of this debt-ceiling agreement, and those are going to be tough enough,” Panetta told reporters in his first news conference as defense secretary. “I think anything beyond that would damage our national defense.” […] __
Defense spending represents about half of the federal government’s discretionary spending, and the military’s budget has increased by more than 70 percent since 2001. Although the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the Pentagon upward of $1 trillion, nearly half of the growth in defense spending in the past decade has been unrelated to the wars. […] __
Mullen, who just returned from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, said the partisan fight over debt reduction had fueled worries among the troops that they might not be paid on time.
__
“Our men and women down range have enough to worry about just getting their job done,” Mullen said. “They shouldn’t also be concerned about whether or not they will be paid to do that job or whether or not their families will continue to get the support they need during long absences. We can do better than that, as a military and as a nation.”
Emphasis mine. Hey, if hostage-taking works for Republicans, why shouldn’t the valiant REMFs of the world’s most expensive military make it another weapon in its arsenal?
Doghouse Riley talks about “The Battle Elephant in the Room“:
Medicare–it provides less than half the medical expenses of its beneficiaries, the elderly and the disabled–is 13% of the Federal budget. Total Medicare spending in 2009 was $484 billion. In 2009 the total interest on the National Debt attributable to military spending was $390 billion. That’s the interest we pay on all things military (including VA costs and military pensions) for having acted, since 1946, as though it were perpetually 1944.
__
Our ten Nimitz-class supercarriers represent a $450 billion collection of holes in the ocean in construction costs alone; they’re scheduled to be replaced by 2040 by an equal number of Gerald Ford-class hulks at twice the cost, assuming you believe 2005 estimates, which you shouldn’t. That’s construction costs. Not development, nor maintenance, nor upgrades, attendant fleet, staffing, planes, aviation fuel, or the cost someone will eventually bear to do something with the twin reactors when we don’t need ’em anymore. That’s our supercarrier Navy. No one else in the world has any. Their role is to intimidate tenth-rate military powers, since we haven’t figured out how to invade any on the ground…
__
No Money for Butter, But Always Money for More Bigger GunsPost + Comments (72)