Oh, noes! We can’t cut the military spending! It would be disastrous! (I wish I could have done that in the wiggly “scary” comic font.)
Okay — common f$%^ing sense time: a 26% budget cut is still higher than we were making do with in the early 2000s. o why the panic? Plain and simple, the military doesn’t want to lose their big budget and the contracts don’t want the money train to stop rolling. Want to cut 26% without touching the size of the force or the pay/benefits of the servicepeople? Cut the crappy programs that aren’t working — like Lockheed Martin’s awful F-35 fighter, with went into production before flight testing was complete. (Anyone remember Dick Jones from Robocop? “Parts for a decade! Who cared if it worked!?!”) How about the execrable Littoral Combat Ship? — a minesweeper that can’t withstand a mine hit. Or heavy seas. Which has its electrical systems fail if you sneeze near a junction box and leaks like a sieve. But the navy loves this turd and wants another 55 of the floating disasters.
How about changing our bidding to allow for other defense contractors other than the big 5: General Electric, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon? Or cutting the massive waste in the DARPA, IARPA, and AFRL channels? Or taking the generals and defense undersecretaries in charge of the horrifically corrupt procurements mechanisms by the scruff and cutting the fraud? 26% would be quickly recovered.
There are plenty of ways to cut defense, green energy, Medicare/caid, and Social Security fraud and waste without hitting the meat of the programs. But the folks making money (and who pay off your elected officials) can’t abide that.
