Congress
Is This Any Way to Run a Country?
Super Committee Failure Hits Military Hard
Politicians can shrug off the congressional Super Committee’s failure to agree on meaningful deficit reduction. To them, it’s just another budget gimmick that didn’t pan out. But for the U.S. military, the Super Committee …
The Return of the Keening Violins
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F36Q6loCdEQ]
The Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee have rolled out another video predicting doom for the nation if defense spending is cut back to 2007 levels (check out the prequel). And, under the sequestration provisions contained in the super-committee legislation, the cuts …
Sequestration. So Far…
The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction’s failure to come up with a dime – never mind $1.2 trillion – in deficit reduction over the coming decade has set the stage for both tragedy – if you’re a defense secretary given to supersonic flights of rhetoric – and farce, if you’re an American taxpayer.
That failure …
Missile Defense: The Sky Continues To Fall…
Many mornings you can hear Boeing boasting over the Washington airwaves about how its ground-based missile system is protecting the United States. From what? There is no nation primed to attack the U.S. with I.C.B.M.s — or even close to it — in any military significant way. Yet we’re spending billions of dollars annually against …
An Army Apart: The Widening Military-Civilian Gap
The U.S. military and American society are drifting apart. It’s tough inside the civilian world to discern the drift. But troops in all the military services sense it, smell it — and talk about it. So do their superiors. We have a professional military of volunteers that has been stoically at war for more than a decade. But as the …
Turning Off Doomsday
A flurry of speculation in recent days that the dreaded doomsday cuts that would hit the Pentagon if the so-called super committee fails to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings are unlikely to happen. Says Saturday’s New York Times, echoing similar reports in Politico and the Washington Post:
Several members of Congress, especially
…
What’s Going On? The Joint Chiefs Should Be Partying Like It’s 2007…
The spectacle now infecting the Pentagon would be humorous, if it weren’t so serious. The notion that the military can cut $450 billion out of its next-decade budget of something like $7 trillion – but not a penny more – suggests an (artillery) shell game’s afoot.
The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – the …
Britain Left Defenceless
Here’s a surprising story from Wednesday’s London Independent:
No Warships Left Defending Britain After Defence Cutbacks
Former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord Alan West said: “I would hardly say it is a luxury…It’s a big problem…It’s a very unsatisfactory position to be in.”
As the congressional super-committee struggles in …
Panetta Tells Super Committee to “Do the Right Thing”
Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee today, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta directly challenged the Congressional “Super Committee” to “do the right thing.” In Panetta’s view, the “right thing” is to solve the debt crisis by going after the drivers of America’s bulging debt. That would be the Big 3 …
Accompanied by Apocalyptic Arpeggios, House GOP Warns Against Defense Cuts
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHpqWdyE5vY]
Even if you accept the arguments being put forward by the Republican majority on the House Armed Services Committee in this just-released video, can we agree that the ominous music percolating throughout really doesn’t belong in a serious debate on such a fundamental topic? Then …
“Can We Cut Pentagon Spending Enough by Eliminating Waste, Fraud and Abuse?”
They’re three of the Pentagon’s perpetual enemies: waste, fraud and abuse. It’s so common it sometimes morphs an acronym – WFA. If it’s such a big part of military spending, can the Defense Department make its needed cuts simply by ridding itself of the trio? John Nagl, of the Center for a New American Security, and I chat …