Budget hawks question Pentagon’s sequester doomsday scenarios
Meanwhile, with a budget higher than it was even at the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Pentagon is resisting attempts to force it to audit its own finances. Congress passed a law back in 1990 requiring such an audit, to no avail. Last year, Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., introduced the Audit the Pentagon Act, which would try again to force a look inside the maze of Pentagon spending.
Now, with the Defense Department sounding the alarm about sequestration, some budget hawks on Capitol Hill are doubtful. “It’s difficult to take these doomsday scenarios seriously when the Pentagon can’t even audit its own books,” says a spokesman for Coburn. “We would argue that the Defense Department has the authority to reprioritize funding toward vital needs and away from less vital spending. As Sen. Coburn has detailed, the department spends nearly $70 billion each year on ‘nondefense’ defense spending that has nothing to do with our national security.”
If the sequestration cuts go into effect, many members of Congress will be watching the Pentagon closely. Hunter, for example, will monitor the Navy’s “Green Fleet” biofuel initiative that cost $170 million in 2012-2013, as well as a troubled battlefield software system that has cost $28 billion. Others will be watching for conventional waste. When sequestration came, what did Pentagon leaders cut?
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The people at the Pentagon are starting to sound just like the global warming alarmists in the scientific community who want to scare people into keeping the research money flowing.
Mark1971 on February 22, 2013 at 1:57 PM
Who are they kidding anyway? The sequester is a frigging rounding error for most departments budgets.
800K will get furlowed. So what? 20 times that amount have totally lost their jobs in the past 5 years. Contractors can eat Rice-a-roni as well as anybody else.
Rocks on February 22, 2013 at 2:10 PM
No, its True!
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The Pentagon will half to rent out space, just to pay the light bill!
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F-16s will be sold for scrap!
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New recruits will have to star in porn movies in order to get paid!
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Leon Panetta may have to pay for his own toupee!
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Death and destruction for everyone if we cut 1/3 of 1% of the budget!
LincolntheHun on February 22, 2013 at 2:12 PM
Here is the facts that the media wont say. The sequester reduces the increase of the federal budget from an increase of $1.4 trillion over to 10 years to $1.3 trillion over ten years.
MoreLiberty on February 22, 2013 at 2:14 PM
The Pentagon needs to be cut and so does the military as a whole. More important the military, like the rest of government, needs a complete overhaul.
For example has anyone noticed what a debacle the F-35 has become? If you don’t know just google it now. This is not surprising at all either. It was sold as a replacement for the Harrier, the F-16, the Warthog, the F-18 and more. I super airplane that could do everything for everyone and all of our allies as well. Maybe I should sale some magic beans to the military…I am sure I can at least get millions…if not billions.
You don’t have to have the best everything, just the best things that actually matter on a modern battlefield against someone like China, and produce lot of them. We are turning our military into what the German military was in WWII. The Germans built super gliders that were useless…massive tanks that ate fuel, did not work in mud, plus broke down a lot…super duper aircraft that were so super duper they made less then ten of because they were too dam complex to build in mass production, BUT they did build a fighter jet that Hitler kept trying to turn into a bomber, and oh yes never figured out how to build a four engine bomber. The Germans seemed to turn all their projects in giant expensive science experiments.
Right now we have the F-22 (which has its own problems) as our prime air superiority fighter which is in limited amounts (because Obama cut it) and a bunch of cold war designs. That is because the F-35, that was supposed to be cheaper then the F-22 and fill out the numbers like the F-16 did for the F-15, is now an expensive mess!
You can have all the expensive super Marine landing craft and super heavy Bradley replacement (in fact it so heavy it weighs more than the Abrams tank itself!) you want, but if you don’t have air superiority it means nothing. We need to focus on what we spend our money on and make sure we get that right.
William Eaton on February 22, 2013 at 2:50 PM
Collapse.
DarkCurrent on February 22, 2013 at 3:00 PM
With that said the Chinese just managed to land some aircraft on their one and only Russian relic of an aircraft carrier. That is only what, 70-80 years since the U.S. did it.
So I guess they are catching up. I mean the best the Chinese can do is equality because they have to steal U.S. and Russian designs. Here is hoping the Chinese steal plans for the Littoral Combat Ship and build lots of them.
William Eaton on February 22, 2013 at 3:09 PM