Budget Cuts Could Force Army and Marines to Cut 200,000 Troops !!!!

[green73]

Many conservatives and Republicans are greeting the looming sequestration spending cuts with a collective yawn. "The much-ballyhooed 'sequester' is a cut of $85 billion in a nearly $4 trillion federal budget. Good, let’s do it," writes one contributor to National Review Online's symposium on sequestration.

It's true that sequestration is a tiny cut to total federal spending. But it is also true that sequestration is a major cut to defense spending.

According to the House Armed Services Committee, the 2011 Budget Control Act (the law that imposed both spending caps and sequestration) will force the Marine Corps to shrink by 25 percent--from 202,000 Marines to 145,000. What's more, "by the end of calendar year 2013, less than half of our ground units will be trained to the minimum readiness level required for deployment," Marine Corps commandant James Amos testified to Congress this month.

The Army will lose 143,000 soldiers, dropping from an end strength of 569,000 troops to 426,000. According to Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno's congressional testimony, 78 percent of Army units will "significantly curtail training" because of sequestration. The Navy will delay the deployment of an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. And 800,000 civilian employees working for the Department of Defense will face a 20 percent pay cut. These are just a few of the ways the military will cope with sequestration.

cont
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/budget-cuts-force-army-and-marines-cut-more-200000-troops_704798.html


http://www.economicnoise.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/scared-to-death.png

[green73]

OMG it only gets worse:

Holder: Sequester Will Make Americans Less Safe (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/eric-holder-sounds-sequester-alarm/story?id=18610419)

[Dr.3D]

Then maybe they can close a large number of those bases they have all over the world and bring home the people who are at them. Bet that would save a ton of money.

[Dr.3D]

OMG it only gets worse:

Holder: Sequester Will Make Americans Less Safe (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/eric-holder-sounds-sequester-alarm/story?id=18610419)
Maybe it will make the brown people on the other side of the earth just a little safer though.

[GunnyFreedom]

truthless propaganda trying to frighten conservatives into supporting POTUSs spending increases.

[GunnyFreedom]

LOL @ a single year of failing to increase the budget will somehow force the Marine Corps to RIF by 25%...

does anybody actually believe this claptrap?

[GunnyFreedom]

All that's happening here is they are using the SAME PROPAGANDA on Conservatives that they used on Liberals when Paul Ryan produced his microscopic entitlement reform plan.

[lx43]

I wish they'd stop teasing me about how much is being cut. When you look it these aren't actual cuts its just a decrease in the increase in the rate of spending.

[GunnyFreedom]

I'm still unable to see how failing to produce a projected 2.5% increase leads to a 25% RIF, unless the maroons on the House Armed Services Committee are intentionally drawing even MORE of those monies away from the Service Branches to fund even bigger defense contracts...like pointlessly re-designing a whole new (4th now?) JTF for several billion dollars.

The only way the sequester does what they are claiming is if the people on the House Armed Services Committee are doing it intentionally to 'punish' those rascally conservative grassroots for insisting on spending cuts. And that would be criminal.

[angelatc]

Remember the documentary about the Iraq war, where the troops complained that the jobs they were trained to do were being subbed out to Halliburton? So the cooks were civilians, the mechanics were civilians, everybody who wasn't in a combat role was a civilian.

Maybe it's just me, but maybe the military could start doing some of the potato peeling themselves again.

[Danan]

Remember the documentary about the Iraq war, where the troops complained that the jobs they were trained to do were being subbed out to Halliburton? So the cooks were civilians, the mechanics were civilians, everybody who wasn't in a combat role was a civilian.

Maybe it's just me, but maybe the military could start doing some of the potato peeling themselves again.

Why would that be any better?

[lx43]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/16-ways-to-cut-defense-spending-7/

1) The military is top-heavy with officers and generals compared to enlisted men, with far more proportionately today than during World War II. The military is still trained and designed mostly for mass mobilization to refight World War II: tanks, aircraft-carrier strike groups, and fighter planes for dogfights and to shoot down bombers only Russia has. Yet Russia’s military is a shadow of its former self, plagued and demoralized by Putin-era corruption. China is dynamic, defensive, and prospers with peace.

Basing one’s military on past wars’ lessons is nothing new. British generals entered World War I with horse cavalry and the strategy of Napoleon. It’s common to start wars with the strategy of 75 years before.

2) If every missile and bomb hits its target—unlike in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam—why do we need so many planes, tanks, and warships? Drones now can replace many pilots. In the Korean War it took 4 months of trying to bomb the Yalu River bridge by which most Chinese supplies arrived. Now a single missile from hundreds of miles away can do it. No aircraft carrier was used during the recent war in Libya because of fear of medium-range anti-ship missiles. Carriers today are very vulnerable against modern nations, although useful for attacking mostly helpless Third World ones. Do we need as many as the 12 strike groups we have? The whole way we fight wars needs to be re-examined. We can’t go on like in Iraq, shooting a quarter million bullets for each dead insurgent. The waste in our war-fighting is beyond comprehension. Rep. Mike Coffman details 15 ways some $50 billion per year could be saved—for example, some $100 billion over 10 years by adopting “sea swap” policies for cruisers, destroyers, and amphibious ships by flying crews out to ships instead of changing crews at home ports. Think of all the waste in fuel and wear-and-tear sailing thousands of miles each way back home to port.

3) Combine military medical services. Each of the armed forces has its own medical corps. An excessive number of Army colonels are doctors. The Navy and Air Force presumably have similar overstaffing, usually based on World War II models. Yet it’s the infantry and Marines who suffer nearly all the casualties. Other services face fewer risks to their lives and health.

4) Former Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England urged cutting 100,000 civilian employees from the Defense Department when it had 700,000 employees, the same number as during World War 2. Now the number has grown to 800,000.

5) Tricare costs the Pentagon budget over $50 billion per year to provide almost free healthcare to all military retirees and their families for life, even if they are working in other jobs with health insurance. Former Secretary of Defense Gates tried in vain to establish reasonable co-pays and reforms.

6) Senator Coburn complained that the military schools were costing $50,000 per student. He urged reforms such as using more local civilian schools near military bases.

7) The military maintains some 4,000 bases inside the U.S. and 1,000 overseas with personnel in 140 nations; many installations have fewer than 100 troops. Many are simply tripwires filled with potential hostages so as to get America involved in new conflicts and wars. Vast cutbacks are possible. We need a new base closing commission to take the matter out of the hands of our corrupted Congress (see The Hidden Cost of Empire).

8) The military is paid vastly more than civilians. Officers and enlisted men earn an average cash income some 80 percent higher than civilians with similar skills and education. Their pension and medical benefits put them far beyond what any worker in the private sector earns. For details see the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation.

9) Retirement ages were set well over a hundred years ago when life spans were under 60 years. Surely noncombat personnel could retire with pensions after, say, 25 years instead of 20. The risk to their lives and health is marginal in most military occupations; Northern Virginia is not a combat zone, even if personnel wear combat uniforms and boots to work. Civilians now often must work well into their seventies.

10) Retired generals and admirals should be prohibited for five years from working for the military-industrial complex so that they will use their skills elsewhere to help the civilian economy. Remember the CNN and Fox News generals promoting more war who were outed by the New York Times for profiting from Pentagon suppliers.

11) It’s not just Pentagon waste. The CIA and other intelligence agencies have virtual blank checks without oversight. The Washington Post ran a series about their infighting and duplication of efforts with 50,000 yearly reports, many unread and unnecessary. When Leon Paneta went to the Pentagon, it was reported that he flew back to California at government expense every weekend. When he did the same while running the CIA, the information was classified secret.

12) It cost half a million in Iraq and nearly a million dollars in Afghanistan to maintain each soldier per year. Obviously fewer foreign interventions would save hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars.

13) Weaponry is the greatest money sink of all. Weapons are designed to be built in key congressional districts, not to be the most efficient or cost effective, as during the Second World War. The F-22 had 1,000 suppliers in 44 states. The F-35 has 1,300 suppliers in 45 states in key congressional districts and is now estimated to cost up to $300 million per plane. Weapons manufacturing is started before finalized testing so as to build a constituency for programs’ continuation. Military contractors then get cost-plus contracts to modify the weapons, which won’t work properly because insufficient initial testing was done before manufacturing them. Congressmen stick the Pentagon with suppliers at extra-high cost (see this report on oil pans for $17,000 each) from their congressional districts and then (often) get donations from the same companies for their campaign funds. Other Congressmen put in spending for projects the Pentagon does not even want. The whole process contributes vastly to corruption in Washington and undermining America. The Wall Street Journal ran an article pondering what fighter planes would cost if Apple manufactured them like it makes iPhones.

14) Half of defense manufacturing workers are unionized, many with outdated work rules and few of the efficiencies instituted by competitive private industry, e.g., cutting out much middle management and using labor to maximum efficiency.

15) America maintains duplicate forces: two armies (i.e., Army and Marine Corps.) and four air forces (the Air Force, Marine Corps aviation, Naval Air Forces, and the CIA’s fleet of aircraft and drones). The Marines should be maintained for their special skills as an elite, smaller force, not as an auxiliary army. The air forces should cut out duplication. We still maintain some 50 nuclear submarines. Do we really need so many when a single one can bottle up a whole Third World navy, as England did with Argentina in the Falklands War?

16) Rand Paul has demanded that the Pentagon be audited, something Congress has so far been unable to do. The Defense Department does not even know all the cash, supplies, foreign bases, and inventory it has. Much more vast and incredible waste remains to be discovered.

These are some of the possible savings in military costs. They don’t include the largest benefit of all: the value many of the highly skilled and motivated men and women in the military could bring to the civilian workforce. The mostly wasted talent pool is incredible. All American strategy should be re-examined. Indeed, Washington now violates most of the precepts of the greatest military strategist in history.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative.

[lx43]

Here are some other ideas

dpost_logoSignificant threats to our national security loom on the horizon, including the nuclear menace from North Korea and the threats posed by global terrorism. But one particular threat is of our own making.

Our government has failed to reach an agreement on managing the national debt, and as a result America's military faces more than $500 billion in new defense spending reductions over the next 10 years. The Pentagon faces the first round of cuts next month: "sequestration," an across-the-board cut of $43 billion.

These cuts were written into law as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, and are on top of $487 billion in cuts already being implemented. They are an approach to reducing the national budget that was designed to force responsible action, not to be implemented as policy. I believe we must reduce waste and inappropriate spending in the Pentagon's budget, but we can do better than the dangerous sequestration.

My first priority is to ensure we do not look for savings from the pockets of military personnel, their families, and retirees. We must keep the faith with those who have sacrificed for our nation. Congress already made changes to benefits last year, and I don't believe we need to go any further.

My second priority is to avoid cuts that harm our strategic posture. We are transitioning from a long period of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan toward an uncertain future; I don't want to commit our armed forces to a stance that in five or 10 years might not match global realities. Looking at defense budgets and consulting with like-minded experts, I believe we can save hundreds of billions of dollars without harming our national security or our servicemen and women and their dependents.

The problem with sequester is that the same weight is given to vital programs as to ones that are unnecessary. My alternative plan cancels the haphazard cuts scheduled to begin next month and reduces spending in a smarter and safer way by more than $500 billion during the next decade:

1. $150 billion. Require annual reductions in defense spending by the Department of Defense through reducing programs and activities which do not contribute significantly to military capability, allowing leaders of Defense to use their expertise to combat wasteful earmarks and respond to changing environments.

2. $100 billion. Adopt "sea swap" policies for cruisers, destroyers, and amphibious ships by flying crews out to ships instead of changing crews at home ports.

3. $53 billion. Use local civilian contractors instead of military personnel to perform commercial-type activities at military bases.

4. $52.5 billion. Shift Army and Marine Corps troops to Reserves, preserving ground combat strength but returning active duty forces to pre-9/11 levels.

5. $52 billion. Reduce spending for the Pentagon's "Other Procurement," which covers non-major equipment replacement. Our overseas deployments are ramping down, and everyday equipment will last longer now than in wartime.

6. $36.7 billion. Cut the number of Department of Defense civilian bureaucrat positions through attrition.

7. $20 billion. Cut U.S. troops stationed in Europe.

8. $15 billion. Cut the number of consultants and contractors at headquarters.

9. $9 billion. Cap experimental fuel procurement.

10. $7.1 billion. Consolidate the management of retail stores on military bases.

11. $7 billion. Postpone procurement of the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle.

12. $4.6 billion. Unify the military medical system.

13. $3 billion. Delay refurbishment of the Abrams tank.

14. $1.8 billion. Spend less on military bands.

15. $800 million. Reduce the top-heavy number of Pentagon generals and admirals.

All that would make for $512.5 billion saved over 10 years.

Accepting $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade means we must be wise about how America employs our Armed Forces. While these targeted proposals are not painless, they provide a reasonable road map for avoiding the national security and fiscal disaster that would follow from not responsibly reducing our debt.

By Rep. Mike Coffman
The Denver Post
Published: February 19, 2013

[angelatc]

Why would that be any better?

They wouldn't have to pay the subcontractors, and they wouldn't need to pay the troops any extra, so the costs would be less. It's like laying off your mechanic and fixing your own car.

[Koz]

sounds like a good start to me. Of course if we just brought all of our troops from our 900 bases across the globe home, how much would that save?

[lx43]

sounds like a good start to me. Of course if we just brought all of our troops from our 900 bases across the globe home, how much would that save?

Hundred of billions. I think this should be priority of the so called small govt party--Republicans.

[Lucille]

Woot!

[mport1]

Man, that would be sweet. I'd hope it was even more... It will never happen though.

[speciallyblend]

might be better if they just go off the fiscal cliff!

[SilenceDewgooder]

I know the article is false. Much like the last time the govt faced sequestration, military personnel are excluded from cuts.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/dotmil/2012/08/03/obama-exempts-military-personnel-from-cuts-civilian-workers-weapons-at-bigger-risk

[Danan]

They wouldn't have to pay the subcontractors, and they wouldn't need to pay the troops any extra, so the costs would be less. It's like laying off your mechanic and fixing your own car.

Ok, getting rid of subcontractors and not replacing them would obviously be better. But then again, why not keep the contractors and get rid of some troops?

[FrancisMarion]

Scare tactics. Seems to me that Big Gov't is scared of the people not being scared. Afterall, if the sun does rise after the sequestration, it would be a major loss for them. It could set precedent in the public mind for support of more reduction in the future.

Down here on the South Carolina coast the local paper is pretty much saying that the sky is falling. However, SPAWAR will take a hit.

I'm cancelling the paper tomorrow.