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Anti Federalist
01-07-2011, 03:54 PM
The last paragraph of this story says it all:


"I'm not happy," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon told reporters. He said the cuts were greater than defence companies had been expecting.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50704000/gif/_50704426_01_11_us_defence_budget464_2.gif

Gates cutting Pentagon budget by $78bn over five years

Robert Gates said it was imperative to make "every defence dollar count"

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has announced a $78bn (£50.3bn) military budget cut, to be achieved in part by scrapping a $14bn amphibious vehicle.

The cuts over the next five years come in addition to $100bn in internal savings already announced.

The cuts are the largest since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The defence budget was more than $700bn last year - representing the largest portion of the US federal government's discretionary budget.

While troop levels will shrink by 6% and some of the most expensive military hardware will be cancelled, funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - at a price tag of one trillion dollars and rising - will not be cut.

Cuts to weapons programmes are certain to encounter fierce opposition from members of Congress.

Senior positions cut

Much of the roughly $178bn in defence cuts will come through reduced administrative costs, new organisational efficiencies, and slashed personnel costs, which the defence department called a "vigorous scrub of bureaucratic structures".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12130628

Elwar
01-07-2011, 03:58 PM
http://www.dreamstime.com/a-drop-in-the-bucket-vector-thumb14352278.jpg

Kregisen
01-07-2011, 03:59 PM
^agreed, add another 0 and it might actually be something noticable.

fisharmor
01-07-2011, 04:01 PM
I'm not even sure that covers the next five years' inflation cost for the existing infrastructure.

Anti Federalist
01-07-2011, 04:20 PM
Can't cut defense spending...

http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae206/pointonetech/us-collapse-18-11.gif

oyarde
01-07-2011, 04:49 PM
I am glad to see it is looked at . They could get much more by doing smething with procurement costs .

sailingaway
01-07-2011, 04:51 PM
I understand he is cutting increases and letting those divisions use the money for upgrades in weapons systems etc so it isn't really a cut;

Slutter McGee
01-07-2011, 04:52 PM
http://www.dreamstime.com/a-drop-in-the-bucket-vector-thumb14352278.jpg

Agreed. But at least taking a drop out of one bucket is better than filling up three more. Its a start. I expect all kinds of tiny cuts to show people they are serious, until they think the issue is over. Then it will be back to the same.

But this is still a good thing.
Lets see if the American People hold their feet to the fire this time.

Slutter McGee

Brett85
01-07-2011, 05:29 PM
"I'm not happy," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon told reporters. He said the cuts were greater than defence companies had been expecting."

Is there a liberty candidate in this guy's district who would run against him the next time around?

Zatch
01-07-2011, 05:40 PM
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/gatess-cuts-that-arent/

Gates’s Cuts that Aren’t

Posted by Christopher Preble

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is poised to axe or significantly restructure a number of high-profile weapons platforms, and otherwise rein in the Pentagon’s budget. The reports present these initiatives as intended to preempt greater scrutiny of the military’s budget by Congress.

The cuts will be announced later today, but it seems pretty clear that Gates will call for terminating the unnecessary Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), a Marine Corps program that is more than 176 percent over its original per-vehicle cost. Unhappily for taxpayers, the Pentagon has already spent $3 billion on the program, which has managed to deliver only prototypes. The Marine Corps’s version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will also be delayed, according to news reports. And the secretary will continue his search for efficiencies in defense, an initiative that even the reliably conservative Washington Examiner finds worthy.

But amidst all the focus on “cuts”, two facts stand out:

1) Gates intends for the efficiencies, if they materialize, to be plowed back into the military’s coffers — not returned to taxpayers or used for reducing the deficit. Pentagon spokesman Jeff Morell told Politico’s Jen DiMascio ”any story which purports that he is going to announce that the services don’t get to keep and invest the savings they’ve made are flat out wrong.”

2) The Pentagon’s base budget, excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is expected to grow in 2012. The FY 2011 base budget calls for spending $549 billion; the Obama administration is expected to request $554 billion for the Pentagon in its FY 2012 budget, which will be released next month. In real, inflation-adjusted dollars, that is a 42 percent increase over the base budget in 2001. When the costs of the wars are factored in, total Pentagon spending has grown 72 percent — again, in real terms — since 2001.

Keep those essential points in mind when you hear the predictable cries from the Defending Defense crowd that Gates is shortchanging the military as it fights two wars. He is doing nothing of the sort.

Indeed, although Gates’s moves are aimed at preempting Congress, members and their staffs aren’t fooled. One Senate aide told DiMascio that despite Gates’s prior cuts, there are still a number of troubled programs drawing billions of taxpayer dollars. “So we can cut,” he said. “We can cut and we can cut big.”

To make “big” cuts in the military’s budget without rethinking its missions would be a mistake. Instead, the Obama administration should be actively soliciting input on ways to reduce the military’s global posture; terminate the open-ended nation-building mission in Afghanistan, and stop planning similar missions in other failed states; and compel wealthy, stable allies to bear the costs and risks of their own defense. Such steps would allow the White House and Congress to responsibly restructure our military based on a realistic assessment of available means and achievable ends, with the savings being returned to U.S. taxpayers.