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Thread: Obama is about to ask for the largest Pentagon budget in history

  1. #1

    Obama is about to ask for the largest Pentagon budget in history

    On Tuesday, news broke that the President is planning to request the largest Pentagon budget in history.

    You read that right. President Obama will likely ask for a $534 billion base budget, in a move that’s being sold as part of a strategy to beef up responsiveness to emerging worldwide threats and fund efforts against ISIS and others.

    This plan will blow past budget caps to the tune of $34 billion in 2016 and $150 billion over the next five years.

    Many in the new Congress, it’s sad to say, are eager to both hike overseas spending and ignore budget controls, with some Republican leaders saying they’ll do anything they can to “fix” sequestration.

    The argument that more money – and fast! – is what’s needed to keep us safe is dishonest at best.

    For one, when it comes to wars, the money’s already there. It’s in the Overseas Contingency Operations budget. This money is immune to budget caps, and is often used as a slush fund to spend beyond them. OCO got an additional $64 billion in the latest “CRomnibus” budget deal, and now President Obama is set to request about $60 billion more.

    It’s hard to imagine that the fund has dried up, or that it needs the extra billions the President wants. Meanwhile, the suggestion that even more base funds are needed to keep us safe is dubious and should be questioned.

    This assumption misses a key part of keeping America truly safe: Reforms, streamlining, and a real modernization strategy. Simply piling on more money allows the Pentagon bureaucracy to avoid any tough choices.

    As retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer said in 2013, “We need an effective defense, not an expensive defense. There are tons of cuts we can still make.”

    He’s right. Any honest assessment of the Pentagon reveals that it, like any other government agency, is absolutely loaded with waste, fraud, and abuse. Whether we’re talking about over $1 trillion for a jet that barely works or hundreds of millions in excess military-grade equipment controversially gifted to local police forces, it’s clear that there’s no reason to treat this particular bureaucracy with kid gloves.

    That’s exactly what the President and likely many Republicans in Congress want to continue doing, though.

    Few would argue against giving our military the funding it needs; not many would say the sequester is anything close to perfect.

    It’s obvious that arbitrary and tiny discretionary spending cuts will never solve our long-term budget shortfalls.

    But when both parties run screaming from the mere suggestion of spending reform, while dishonestly pretending our national security depends continuing to pile money into a bloated bureaucracy with almost no oversight, “fiscal responsibility” becomes nothing more than a campaign slogan.

    When you hear politicians inevitably use such rhetoric in 2016, remember that very few, if any, really mean it.
    Read more at http://rare.us/story/obama-is-about-...5blVO2hEjal.99



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  3. #2
    Keep in mind though that spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were usually in addition to the Pentagon budget requests. Actual spending could be higher.



    http://time.com/3686551/pentagon-budget-largest/

    A different chart:


    http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/l...budget-history
    Last edited by Zippyjuan; 01-28-2015 at 07:50 PM.

  4. #3

  5. #4
    Gotta bury those QE trillions somewhere. DOD, Black ops, etc., etc..

    "Everything is a rich mans trick."

    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...84.cumHTEcAcC8

  6. #5
    How the Pentagon Bombs Budget Estimates to $mithereens
    And why skepticism should accompany Monday's proposed 2016 defense budget

    President Obama is sending his proposed $585 billion 2016 Pentagon budget to Capitol Hill on Monday. It consists of reams of documents, charts and tables that make it difficult for normal folks to understand. So let’s take a look at a single line item—the Air Force’s new bomber, for which the service is expected to seek about $1.5 billion next year—for insight into why Pentagon numbers don’t always add up.

    The new bomber—designed to augment, and ultimately replace, the nation’s aging fleets of B-52, B-1 and B-2 aircraft—is so new that it doesn’t even have a name yet, beyond the generic title Long Range Strike Bomber.

    The cost, the Pentagon has been saying since 2011, is $550 million per bomber. It’s the only price tag attached to the new bomber and, and a result, it’s the one cited when the new plane is discussed.

    “It’s like $550 million per copy,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said earlier this month. “It’s an estimate based upon multiple reviews of the program and not a single source.”

    “Five hundred million dollars per copy sounds like a lot of money, but for the capability that we will be achieving, it actually is considered to be affordable,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told Bloomberg last summer.

    A team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin is competing against Northrop Grumman to build the Air Force’s next crown jewel. Northrop produced the nation’s newest bomber, the B-2, and hinted at its desire to build the Long Range Strike Bomber during Sunday’s Super Bowl, when it aired a 30-second spot in Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio, home of the Air Force’s acquisition corps.

    The $550 million figure has been cited so often that those not playing close attention could be forgiven for thinking that it’s the actual cost of the airplane. Kind of like the bottom line on the sticker you see on the window of a new car. But it’s not. Like any bureaucracy dedicated to expansion, the $550 million sum is the lowest figure the Air Force number can say with a straight face.

    After repeatedly planting that $550 million flag in the minds of lawmakers and taxpayers, Pentagon officials have sometimes acknowledged that the $550 million represents what is known inside the military as the “APUC,” or average procurement unit cost. What’s important about that figure isn’t what it includes, but what it leaves out.

    First of all, the $550 million price tag is based on buying between 80 and 100 of the bombers. Driving the price per plane down to $550 million requires economies of scale that only come over such long production runs. Early aircraft off the assembly line are very expensive, as the radar-eluding B-2 “stealth” bomber made clear. “Cost of Stealth Bombers Soars to $450 Million Each,” the Washington Post reported breathlessly on its front page nearly 30 years ago, in May 1988. Few believed at the time that a bomber could cost so much. But that was for a planned buy of 132 planes. The Air Force ended up buying only 21. The B-2’s ultimate price: $2.1 billion each.

    ....

    http://time.com/3691337/pentagon-budget/

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Actual spending could be higher.
    Actual spending is higher.

    We're spending nearly as much as the rest of the world combined that we know of and the 'black ops' budget isn't included.

    And all in the name of defense. Unfortunate that's a lie. If we were actually interested in defense, rather than kicking the world's asses in our imperialism, we'd be immeasurably safer.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  8. #7
    And Lindsey Graham will say that it's not large enough.
    Stop believing stupid things

  9. #8
    Let's give that guy another Nobel Peace Prize. What do you say?



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  11. #9
    I think liberals have issues. On one hand, they are probably anti war... but on the other hand they have the humanitarian side where they want to help brown people on the other side of the world by bombing them...

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by alucard13mm View Post
    I think liberals have issues. On one hand, they are probably anti war... but on the other hand they have the humanitarian side where they want to help brown people on the other side of the world by bombing them...

    They're only anti-war when it's not their team running it. WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, etc.

    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...33.ofYjbbM68HI



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