Sequestion Time

It’s called Question Time in Britain, where members of Parliament ask questions of government ministers.

Here at Battleland, we’re launching Sequestion Time. It’s going to be a series of periodic posts – lasting as long as sequestration itself – that is based on a very simple question:

Is spending money on the item or service described more important than spending money to dispatch the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman to the Persian Gulf to deter Iranian hanky-panky?

The Navy, you may recall, postponed the carrier’s deployment last month to save $300 million because of the budget cuts mandated by sequestration.

Battleland has been a reporter for close to 40 years, and has spent the last third or so doing more with less. He is finding it fascinating to watch the U.S. defense establishment try to do the same. His military pals chortle at some of the spending decisions now being made, despite the sequester’s vise. Under existing law, absent a deficit-reduction deal between the Congress and the White House, some $500 billion will have to be cut from Pentagon spending over the next decade, about 10%.

There’s one other difference between the Brits’ Question Time and Battleland’s Sequestion Time: in the U.K., the government ministers are obliged to answer the questions.

Here at Battleland, we’re simply planning on posing them. But we’ll be all ears if someone wants to enlighten us on why the items cited are more important to national security than dispatching the Truman into harm’s way.