Possible Budget Cuts

GAO has issued its 2012 Annual Report. Here is their summary of areas that should be cleaned up.

Duplication, Overlap, or Fragmentation Areas

Missions	Areas Identified
Agriculture	1. Protection of Food and Agriculture Centrally coordinated oversight is needed to ensure nine federal agencies effectively and efficiently implement the nation’s fragmented policy to defend the food and agriculture systems against potential terrorist attacks and major disasters.
Defense	2. Electronic Warfare Identifying opportunities to consolidate Department of Defense airborne electronic attack programs could reduce overlap in the department’s multiple efforts to develop new capabilities and improve the department’s return on its multibillion-dollar acquisition investments.
Defense	3. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Ineffective acquisition practices and collaboration efforts in the Department of Defense unmanned aircraft systems portfolio creates overlap and the potential for duplication among a number of current programs and systems.
Defense	4. Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Efforts The Department of Defense continues to risk duplication in its multibillion-dollar counter Improvised Explosive Device efforts because it does not have a comprehensive database of its projects and initiatives.
Defense	5. Defense Language and Culture Training The Department of Defense needs a more integrated approach to reduce fragmentation in training approaches and overlap in the content of training products acquired by the military services and other organizations.
Defense	6. Stabilization, Reconstruction, and Humanitarian Assistance Efforts Improving the Department of Defense’s evaluations of stabilization, reconstruction, and humanitarian assistance efforts, and addressing coordination challenges with the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, could reduce overlapping efforts and result in the more efficient use of taxpayer dollars.
Economic development	7. Support for Entrepreneurs Overlap and fragmentation among the economic development programs that support entrepreneurial efforts require the Office of Management and Budget and other agencies to better evaluate the programs and explore opportunities for program restructuring, which may include consolidation, within and across agencies.
Economic development	8. Surface Freight Transportation Fragmented federal programs and funding structures are not maximizing the efficient movement of freight.
Energy	9. Department of Energy Contractor Support Costs The Department of Energy should assess whether further opportunities could be taken to streamline support functions, estimated to cost over $5 billion, at its contractor-managed laboratory and nuclear production and testing sites, in light of contractors’ historically fragmented approach to providing these functions.
Energy	10. Nuclear Nonproliferation Comprehensive review needed to address strategic planning limitations and potential fragmentation and overlap concerns among programs combating nuclear smuggling overseas.
General government	11. Personnel Background Investigations The Office of Management and Budget should take action to prevent agencies from making potentially duplicative investments in electronic case management and adjudication systems.
General government	12. Cybersecurity Human Capital Governmentwide initiatives to enhance cybersecurity workforce in the federal government need better structure, planning, guidance, and coordination to reduce duplication.
General government	13. Spectrum Management Enhanced coordination of federal agencies' efforts to manage radio frequency spectrum and an examination of incentive mechanisms to foster more efficient spectrum use may aid regulators' attempts to jointly respond to competing demands for spectrum while identifying valuable spectrum that could be auctioned for commercial use, thereby generating revenues for the U.S. Treasury.
Health	14. Health Research Funding The National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and Department of Veterans Affairs can improve sharing of information to help avoid the potential for unnecessary duplication.
Health	15. Military and Veterans Health Care The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs need to improve integration across care coordination and case management programs to reduce duplication and better assist servicemembers, veterans, and their families.
Homeland security/Law enforcement	16. Department of Justice Grants The Department of Justice could improve how it targets nearly $3.9 billion to reduce the risk of potential, unnecessary duplication across the more than 11,000 grant awards it makes annually.
Homeland security/Law enforcement	17. Homeland Security Grants The Department of Homeland Security needs better project information and coordination among four overlapping grant programs.
Homeland security/Law enforcement	18. Federal Facility Risk Assessments Agencies are making duplicate payments for facility risk assessments by completing their own assessments, while also paying the Department of Homeland Security for assessments that the department is not performing.
Information technology	19. Information Technology Investment Management The Office of Management and Budget, and the Departments of Defense and Energy need to address potentially duplicative information technology investments to avoid investing in unnecessary systems.
International affairs	20. Overseas Administrative Services U.S. government agencies could lower the administrative cost of their operations overseas by increasing participation in the International Cooperative Administrative Support Services system and by reducing reliance on American officials overseas to provide these services.
International affairs	21. Training to Identify Fraudulent Travel Documents Establishing a formal coordination mechanism could help reduce duplicative activities among seven different entities that are involved in training foreign officials to identify fraudulent travel documents.
Science and the environment	22. Coordination of Space System Organizations Fragmented leadership has led to program challenges and potential duplication in developing multibillion-dollar space systems.
Science and the environment	23. Space Launch Contract Costs Increased collaboration between the Department of Defense and National Aeronautics and Space Administration could reduce launch contracting duplication.
Science and the environment	24. Diesel Emissions Fourteen grant and loan programs at the Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency and three tax expenditures fund activities that have the effect of reducing mobile source diesel emissions; enhanced collaboration and performance measurement could improve these fragmented and overlapping programs.
Science and the environment	25. Environmental Laboratories The Environmental Protection Agency needs to revise its overall approach to managing its 37 laboratories to address potential overlap and fragmentation and more fully leverage its limited resources.
Science and the environment	26. Green Building To evaluate the potential for overlap or fragmentation among federal green building initiatives, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency should lead other federal agencies in collaborating on assessing their investments in more than 90 initiatives to foster green building in the nonfederal sector.
Social services	27. Social Security Benefit Coordination Benefit offsets for related programs help reduce the potential for overlapping payments but pose administrative challenges.
Social services	28. Housing Assistance Examining the benefits and costs of housing programs and tax expenditures that address the same or similar populations or areas, and potentially consolidating them, could help mitigate overlap and fragmentation and decrease costs.
Training, employment, and education	29. Early Learning and Child Care The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services should extend their coordination efforts to other federal agencies with early learning and child care programs to mitigate the effects of program fragmentation, simplify children’s access to these services, collect the data necessary to coordinate operation of these programs, and identify and minimize any unwarranted overlap and potential duplication.
Training, employment, and education	30. Employment for People with Disabilities Better coordination among 50 programs in nine federal agencies that support employment for people with disabilities could help mitigate program fragmentation and overlap, and reduce the potential for duplication or other inefficiencies.
Training, employment, and education	31. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Strategic planning is needed to better manage overlapping programs across multiple agencies.
Training, employment, and education	32. Financial Literacy Overlap among financial literacy activities makes coordination and clarification of roles and responsibilities essential, and suggests potential benefits of consolidation.

Talking Points re Defense Budget

With all the recent hullabaloo about what sequestration will do to people's jobs, POGO has produced a briefing paper which counters the arguments McCain, Graham and company are making for the defense contractors.  Here are POGO's major points, details are available here.

• Pentagon contractors are making record earnings.
• Even under the deepest cuts—the unlikely budget sequestration—Pentagon contractors have huge revenue streams for years to come.
• If Pentagon contractors need to tighten their belts, they should start at the top. Contractor executive pay is out of sight, on par with Wall Street execs. 
• There is plenty of fat to cut in mismanagement and waste by big defense contractors.
• Defense contractors should cut their massive spending on lobbying and campaign contributions before layoffs.
• Even if the deepest proposed cuts to the Pentagon budget—under sequestration—were to happen, there would still be record Pentagon spending.
• Job loss threats are overblown political scare tactics.

Where is Judd Gregg's Head?

Judd Gregg is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Whether he knows anything about budgets, economics or accounting is unknown to me. His filing of the "Stop Over-Spending Act of 2006", or as he likes to say S.O.S., leads me to believe he knows jack about any of those subjects.

I know that the federal government is not a business, but in virtually all economic endeavors of man there are costs and, hopefully, revenues. Gregg's bill totally removes revenues from the economic equation. He is quite happy to remove any consideration of repealing the tax cuts when considering the nation's budget, despite the fact that, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the cuts to just the wealthiest 1% will total nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.

While our current deficit is largely due to the inability of our leaders to say no and the wars, usually deficits occur when the economy is weak. Yet, Gregg's bill calls for the largest budget cuts to occur when the economy is weakest.

Gregg stands up for our troops. No cuts will be made in our defense. His S.O.S. affects only entitlement programs. Cuts will only be made in such frills as Medicare, Medicaid, veteran's benefits (oh, veterans don't fight our wars, do they?), military retirements (those nasty soldiers, again), Head Start, WIC, NIH, clean water programs - you know, all those things that are vital to our neediest citizens, as well as we average Joes.

Gregg believes in presidential power. His bill calls for a line item veto which allows the president to stop the spending of funds for up to 90 days, which 90 days could occur near the end of a fiscal year thus preventing appropriated funds being spent even if the Congress has overridden the president's veto.

I know where Gregg's head is. The name of one of his fellow sponsors, Crapo, reminds me.

A better use for the defense budget cuts

Lawrence Korb etal have proposed that the defense budget cuts proposed be used to help our veterans return to what was once thought of as an American middle class. Here is their proposal as to how specific cuts can be used to help veterans.

Cutting the Defense Budget

One government area that would seem to be ripe for budget cuts would be DOD. However, Steven Walt tells us how hard this will be.

Here's why it won't happen any time soon. As Cindy Williams, former director of the National Security division of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior research scientist at MIT, points out in an as-yet unpublished paper for the Tobin Project, DOD is insulated from serious cuts by an array of impressive political advantages. First, its budget is more than 50 percent of all federal discretionary spending, and its sheer size gives it a lot of bureaucratic clout. Second, the Pentagon has a large domestic constituency: there are 1.4 million men and women in uniform, 850,000 paid members of the National Guard and Reserve, and 650,000 civilian employees. Forget GM, Ford and Chrysler: the Department of Defense is the largest single employer in the whole country. Now add the companies that provide goods and services for the military. Their employees amount to about 5.2 million jobs, which is a pretty impressive domestic constituency. And don’t forget those 25 million veterans, who are hardly shrinking violets when defense spending is concerned. Finally, a well-financed group of Beltway bandits and Washington think tanks stand ready to question the patriotism of any politician (and especially any Democrat) who tries to put the Pentagon on a diet.

And this guy is running for President

Over the weekend, Senator Lindsey Graham said, “I would literally use the military to keep them in if I had to. We’re not leaving town until we restore these defense cuts. We are not leaving town until we restore the intel cuts.” The "them" he is referring to is the United States Congress.

Sadly, we'll hear many more similar statements from Democrats and Republicans over the next 20 months. When did we let idiots become hold government positions.

Barney's Doing Something?

I was surprised to learn that Barney Frank was instrumental in the formation of the Sustainable Defense Task Force, which has proposed a number of cuts in the defense budget, which Obama and company seem to consider a sacred cow. I was even more surprised that there are other Congressmen behind the movement and that the others include people such as Ron Paul, who is diametrically opposed to Barney in many areas. Barney is involved with the task force even though he has said he would vote for keeping GE working on the F-35 which the Pentagon does not want. The question, of course, is whether these guys will follow through.
The report lists a number of places where the defense budget could be cut without damaging us. It's rationale is to ask rather obvious questions:

• Is the weapons system based on proven and/or reliable technology?
• What is the cost-benefit of a particular program?
• Does the program mesh with the changing challenges faced by the military?
• Are the cost-saving opportunities that are not being investigated?

But these rather basic questions yield areas where we can save a bundle without damaging our military capabilities. Here is their list of areas of potential savings:

Strategic Capabilities

1. Reduce the US nuclear arsenal; adopt dyad; cancel Trident II

• 1000 deployed warheads

• 7 Ohio-class SSBNs

• 160 Minuteman missiles                                                                           $113.5 b.

2. Limit modernization of nuclear weapons infrastructure and research              $26 b.

3. Selectively curtail missile defense & space spending                              $55 b.

Conventional Forces

4. Reduce troops in Europe and Asia, cut end strength by 50,000                     $80 b.

5. Roll back Army & USMC growth as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end $147 b.

6. Reduce US Navy fleet to 230 ships                                                          $126.6 b.

7. Only retire two Navy aircraft carriers and naval air wings                                $50 b.

8. Retire two Air Force fighter wings, reduce F-35 buy                                    $40.3 b.

Procurement and R&D

9. Cancel USAF F-35, buy replacement                                                          $47.9 b.

10. Cancel USN & USMC F-35, buy replacement                                   $9.85 b.

11. Cancel MV-22 Osprey, field alternatives                                            10 b. – $12 b.

12. Delay KC-X Tanker, interim upgrade of some KC-135s                               $9.9 b

13. Cancel Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, field alternatives                         $8 b. – $9 b.

14. Reduce spending on research & development                                           $50 b.

Personnel Costs
15. Military compensation reform                                                                            $55 b.
16. Reform DoD’s health care system                                                                      $60 b.
17. Reduce military recruiting expenditures as wars recede                                        $5 b.
Maintenance and Supply Systems
18. Improve the efficiency of military depots, commissaries, and exchanges               $13 b.
Command, Support, and Infrastructure
19. Require commensurate savings in command, support, and infrastructure             $100 b.


It's a big number, a very big number.

Advice for the Defense Department

Lawrence Korb and others have advice for President-Elect Obama with regard to our military forces. As readers will know, I've quoted Korb often as, despite his being Reagan's Assistant Secretary of Defense, he makes a lot of sense to me.

Looking at the Defense Department alone, why Obama wants this job is beyond me - two wars going on, real difficulties maintaining a volunteer army, unbelievable cost overruns, accusations of torture, etc. But Korb etal have great faith in the second level command and assert that the major problem may be the retention of these officers.

Korb argues that, despite the fact that we are spending more money on defense than at any time since WWII, we do not have a better military. Moreover, this largesse has enabled DOD to avoid having to make choices; they can have it all. "Sound strategy and military policy requires choices about organizational structure, resources, training, and other important issues."

Somewhat surprisingly, Korb is not recommending cuts in the budget overall. He does think that we have to spend our money on 21st century issues and, by cutting back on weapons designed for 20th century warfare, we can save enough money to pay for new capabilities.

Korb really pushes the idea of 'people, not hardware' being the sine qua non of the 21st century military. He wants to increase the size of the force but without the lowering of standards we have seen over the past few years. And, of course, we need people who can actually manage DOD.

Looking Backwards and Forwards

Lawrence Korb etal have tried a somewhat different tack in arguing for cuts in our defense spending. They look at how previous presidents have managed to trim the defense budget despite being in as difficult circumstances as Obama is now in.

First, they remind us that the defense budget is now at the same level (in inflation-adjusted dollars) as it was in WWII when we had an army of 12,000,000 and were fighting on three continents. It is now more than our budgets during the Cold War, about $250 billion more annually.

Korb & Co.'s proposal is modest in that it seeks to bring the proposed budget down by $100 billion so that it is at the same level as under Reagan, the Cold Warrior. It would require $250 - $300 billion to bring the budget to the level under Eisenhower.

Here is their proposal to cut the budget by $133 billion through 2015:

•  Roll back post-September 11 efforts to grow the ground forces and reduce the number of civilian DOD personnel concomitant with the reduction in military end strength ($39.16 billion through 2015).
•  Reduce active-duty troops in Europe and Asia by one-third ($42.5 billion through 2015).
•  Cancel the V-22 Osprey program ($9.15 billion through 2015).
•  Reform military health care ($42 billion through 2015).
•  Limit procurement of the Virginia-class submarine and DDG-51 destroyer to one per year, and limit procurement of the littoral combat ship to two vessels per year ($20.04 billion through 2015).
•  Cut procurement of the Navy and Marine F-35 Joint Strike Fighter variants ($16.43 billion through 2015).
•  Institute an across-the-board reduction in research, development, test, and evaluation funding ($40 billion through 2015).
•  Reform the military pay system as the 10th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation recommends ($13.75 billion through 2015).
•  Cancel procurement of the CVN-80 aircraft carrier and retire two existing carrier battle groups and associated air wings ($7.74 billion).
•  Cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal to 311 operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons ($33.72 billion).

 We are spending too much on defense. We must smarten up.

A Military Man Says "Cut the Defense Budget"

That's what Colin Powell said on Sunday. Why don't our leaders see that significant cuts (more than the $78 billion Gates is talking about) in defense will very quickly reduce the deficit? Here's a quote from Powell "When the Cold War ended 20 years ago, when I was chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] and Mr. Cheney was secretary of Defense, we cut the defense budget by 25 percent. And we reduced the force by 500,000 active duty soldiers, so it can be done."

It makes a lot of sense to me.

Can Congressmen Think Clearly?

Image via WikipediaI really doubt it. But 57 of them have said that the defense budget should be cut, which is a very rational statement. However, there is an election in a couple of weeks and deficit reduction is a hot topic. What will these esteemed leaders say when the cuts involve a defense facility in their states? I'll bet they will argue that the closing of the endangered facility will harm our national defense. Will we ever have some true patriots as members of Congress?

Today is DOD day

Maybe I shouldn't have gone to the Sensible Priorities web site because I have another DOD post. Their latest publication is by Lawrence Korb and it's about the defense budget. I'd never read anything by Korb prior to my recent post. I knew he was part of Reagan's Cabinet; he was Assistant Secretary of Defense. So, I thought he'd be an ultra-conservative. I was wrong; he's a fiscal conservative who makes a sound argument for cutting the defense budget.

Korb claims that we could cut DOD's budget by $60 billion a year and still be very well protected. He uses data and conclusions from analyses done by CBO, GAO and the Unified Security Budget Task Force. As you know, I'm not a military man, but his arguments make sense to me.

He reviews six areas where significant cuts can be made:

• Nuclear Forces - we have 6000 operational nuclear weapons, far more than we need as a deterrent. Cutting back to 1000 would save $14 billion.
• Ballistic Missile Defense - it has yet to be shown to work. Cutting it back to basic research would save $8 billion.
• New Weapons - most of them are designed for the Cold War (which ended in 1990) and are of no use in today's wars. All have seen escalating costs on the order of two to three times original estimates. Possible savings: $28 billion.
• Space-based Offensive Weapons - have no advantage. Possible savings: $5 billion.
• R&D and Test and Evaluation - this is largely being spent on new weapons which are irrelevant today. Another $5 billion saved if cut back.
• Poor Management - running things right would save at least $5 billion a year.

Making Spending Cuts? Not for the Pentagon

The House, which has been more vehement than the Senate with regards to spending cuts, apparently feels that we need to be more secure and the way that happens is to increase the Pentagon's budget.

The House has approved a $649 billion budget for the Pentagon for FY2012. The wars are 'only' $119 billion of the total, so $530 billion will be spent on such vital necessities as housing our garrisons in more than forty countries around the globe, keeping obsolete and very costly planes (such as the Osprey) in the air, supporting the bevy of private contractors doing military work, missile defense, etc. 

These cost-cutters approved the budget by almost 4 - 1 (336 - 87). There was not a word spoken about deficit reduction or spending cuts.

Cutting the Defense Budget

Foreign Policy has an article by Col. Douglas MacGregor who proposes the following steps to reduce the Pentagon budget:

Estimated annualized savings resulting from withdrawals from overseas garrisons and restructuring the United States' forward military presence: $239 billion
Estimated annualized savings from reorganizing the Army and Marine Corps: $18 billion
Estimated annualized savings from reductions in naval surface forces and Marine fixed-wing aviation: $10 billion
Estimated annualized savings from eliminating the F-35B: $2.5 billion
Estimated annualized savings from reducing the number of unified commands and single service headquarters: $1 billion
Estimated annualized savings from eliminating the Department of Homeland Security and restructuring national intelligence and the Army National Guard: $7 billion

I am far from really knowledgeable about the details of the defense budget, but it makes a heck of a lot of sense for us to really scale back our presence in the rest of the world. It probably also makes sense to do something about DHS. And MacGregor makes a good case for his other projected cuts. All in all it seemed to make sense for me to post my reaction to this article. However as is my wont, before doing so, I thought I should learn something about the colonel.

Google showed that he is truly an iconoclast; he was shunted off the promotion track because of his unconventional ideas. But many have experienced the same reaction for being unconventional. Google also led me to the colonel's web site, which is clearly unconventional. Being a military man, he has a mission statement, which is really a brief resume. Being a marketer, he provides a sample of his speaker's letter, which is a direct mail pitch to hire him as a speaker for $4,000 - $10,000 a speech. Being a 21st century guy, he has a YouTube Video Channel; I was especially struck by "Lunch-on-Libya" a video which advertised an upcoming speech to the Northern Virgina Tea Party. You'll find other interesting videos on his channel.

Does the fact that he is on the opposite political spectrum from me invalidate his argument re the defense budget? I think not.

When will we accept reality

William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel, has an excellent article on our military, The American Military Uncontained: Out Everywhere and Winning Nowhere, which describes what I feel is our inability to see our military for what it is - a loser. We have not won a war since WWII.  Here are some non-contiguous excerpts:

When it comes to the “world’s greatest military,” the news has been shocking. Two fast U.S. Navy ships colliding with slow-moving commercial vessels with tragic loss of life. An Air Force that has been in the air continuously for years and yet doesn’t have enough pilots to fly its combat jets. Ground troops who find themselves fighting “rebels” in Syria previously armed and trained by the CIA. Already overstretched Special Operations forces facing growing demands as their rates of mental distress and suicide rise. Proxy armies in Iraq and Afghanistan that are unreliable, often delivering American-provided weaponry to black markets and into the hands of various enemies. All of this and more coming at a time when defense spending is once again soaring and the national security state is awash in funds to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars a year.

Too few ships are being deployed for too long. Too few pilots are being worn out by incessant patrols and mushrooming drone and bombing missions. Special Operations forces (the “commandos of everywhere,” as Nick Turse calls them) are being deployed to far too many countries -- more than two-thirds of the nations on the planet already this year -- and are involved in conflicts that hold little promise of ending on terms favorable to Washington. Meanwhile, insiders like retired General David Petraeus speak calmly about “generational struggles” that will essentially never end. To paraphrase an old slogan from ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” as the U.S. military spans the globe, it’s regularly experiencing the agony of defeat rather than the thrill of victory.

One option -- the most logical -- is never seriously considered in Washington: to make deep cuts in the military’s operational tempo by decreasing defense spending and downsizing the global mission, by bringing troops home and keeping them there. This is not an isolationist plea. The United States certainly faces challenges, notably from Russia (still a major nuclear power) and China (a global economic power bolstering its regional militarily strength). North Korea is, as ever, posturing with missile and nuclear tests in provocative ways. Terrorist organizations strive to destabilize American allies and cause trouble even in “the homeland.”

Such challenges require vigilance. What they don’t require is more ships in the sea-lanes, pilots in the air, and boots on the ground. Indeed, 16 years after the 9/11 attacks it should be obvious that more of the same is likely to produce yet more of what we’ve grown all too accustomed to: increasing instability across significant swaths of the planet, as well as the rise of new terror groups or new iterations of older ones, which means yet more opportunities for failed U.S. military interventions.

Since the early 1990s, largely unconstrained by peer rivals, America’s leaders have acted as if there were nothing to stop them from doing as they pleased on the planet, which, as it turned out, meant there was nothing to stop them from their own folly. We witness the results today. Prolonged and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interventions throughout the Greater Middle East (Libya, Syria, Yemen, and beyond) that spread chaos and destruction. Attacks against terrorism that have given new impetus to jihadists everywhere. And recently calls to arm Ukraine against Russia. All of this is consistent with a hubristic strategic vision that, in these years, has spoken in an all-encompassing fashion and without irony of global reach, global power, and full-spectrum dominance.

In short, America’s troops are out everywhere and winning nowhere

Incessant warfare represents the end of democracy. I didn’t say that, James Madison did. I firmly believe, though, in words borrowed from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that “only Americans can hurt America." So how can we lessen the hurt? By beginning to rein in the military. A standing military exists -- or rather should exist -- to support and defend the Constitution and our country against immediate threats to our survival. Endless attacks against inchoate foes in the backlands of the planet hardly promote that mission. Indeed, the more such attacks wear on the military, the more they imperil national security.

Planning for war, not people

So, the chances of Trump's proposed budget being implemented are supposedly non-existent. But it does give some insight into his preferences. 

He's a big fan of the military. Ergo, a $777 billion boost to defense spending over 10 years.
He doesn't think much of science as a way to better our lives. Ergo, a 33.7 percent cut to the EPA, a 29.5 percent cut to the National Science Foundation and cuts to NIH and EPA.
He isn't worried about medical treatment. Ergo, a 7.1 percent cut to Medicare, 22.5 percent cut to Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies by 2028.
He thinks all the kids are okay. Ergo, cutting Head Start, food stamps and Section 8 housing assistance by 2028.
He thinks diplomacy is useless. Ergo, cuts to the State Department.

Everybody has cuts to the defense budget

Bloomberg's are:

• "Ground the glitch-ridden F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program." This is the trillion dollar plane.
• "Park the Ground Combat Vehicle."   It's not suitable for 21st century wars against terrorists.
• Stop building the M1 tank.  "Even the generals admit that they don’t want or need an updated version." 
• "Dock the Littoral Combat Ship."   "It might not survive in combat."  

 What are yours?

How do you define budget cuts?

The Defense Department says it is cutting its budget. First of all, one has to ask what is meant by the budget. Is it the so-called base budget? Or, does it include the costs of our wars?

The base budget for FY2012 is $531 billion. It will go down to $525 in FY2013, but then goes up in FY2014 to $534 and eventually reaches $567 in FY2017, five years hence. That looks like a 2% annual growth to me.

The war budget will go down from $115 billion to $88.4 billion next year. Of course, the war budget costs assume a reasonable transition in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. Does anyone believe that either transition will be as smooth and as quick as projected?

A Pinprick

That's what David Stockman, former Budget Director for Reagan, calls Gates' proposed budget cuts. He says, 

"It amounts to a failed opportunity to recognize that we are now at a historical inflection point at which the time has arrived for a classic post-war demobilization of the entire military establishment. The Cold War is long over. The wars of occupation are almost over and were complete failures -- Afghanistan and Iraq. The American empire is done. There are no real seriously armed enemies left in the world that can possibly justify an $800 billion national defense and security establishment, including Homeland Security."

Leadership in the 21st Century

Another example of Congress' inability to solve just about any significant problem is the payment to doctors serving Medicare patients. At the end of this month, the payments made to these doctors will be cut by 21%. This makes absolutely no sense and will eventually result in a growing number of doctors being unwilling to treat Medicare patients.

Congress is unwilling or unable to modify the legislation demanding this cut because it will increase the budget deficit. Cancelling the cuts will cost $276 billion over the next ten years. Gee, if we cut the defense budget by a few percent a year it would amount to a heck of a lot more than $276 billion over ten years. Wouldn't that be the smart thing to do?