NYT: WH Tries to Trim Military Cost (awareness that nation cannot afford)

[DeepModem Mom]

White House Tries to Trim Military Cost
By LESLIE WAYNE
Published: December 6, 2005


For the first time since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Pentagon is feeling pressure from the White House to rein in rapidly rising spending and, with its budget reaching record levels, it is now looking to cut billions of dollars in labor and equipment costs.

Pentagon officials are in the midst of working out the final details of $32 billion in cuts that are to begin with the 2007 budget. They are also meeting with military contractors and members of Congress to prepare them for a slowdown in the double-digit growth of Pentagon spending.

Pressure for the cuts comes from the Bush administration's growing awareness that the nation cannot afford to pay for new weapons systems costing hundreds of billions of dollars, fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and cover major domestic demands - whether rebuilding Gulf Coast areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina, financing the new Medicare prescription benefit or reducing the federal budget deficit.

At the Pentagon, planners are facing hard choices between the staffing they want to sustain and the types of weapon systems they want to have. While there have been periodic attempts recently to hold the line on some costly weapons, this is the first serious threat to the next-generation weapons that military contractors have been developing for years.

This would be the first reversal in the Pentagon budget since 2001, when a steady climb brought it to levels not seen since the Reagan era. Spending for the current year, not including the supplemental appropriations to cover the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, has reached $444 billion, a growth of 41 percent since 2001, according to the Pentagon....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/business/06military.html

[Up2Late]

1. First thing to cut, that stupid, will never work, anti-ICBM system...

...and fire all those "Private Military contractors," they would save lots of money that way.

[UpInArms]

2. I wonder where the $3.3 TRILLION mission Pentagon $$$$$$ are!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

The War On Waste

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 29, 2002

(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

<snip>

Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

...more...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/18/MN251738.DTL

Military waste under fire
$1 trillion missing -- Bush plan targets Pentagon accounting

Sunday, May 18, 2003

The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

The Pentagon's unenviable reputation for waste will top the congressional agenda this week, when the House and Senate are expected to begin floor debate on a Bush administration proposal to make sweeping changes in how the Pentagon spends money, manages contracts and treats civilian employees.

The Bush proposal, called the Defense Transformation for the 21st Century Act, arrives at a time when the nonpartisan General Accounting Office has raised the volume of its perennial complaints about the financial woes at Defense, which recently failed its seventh audit in as many years.

<snip>

WHAT HAPPENED TO $1 TRILLION?

Though Defense has long been notorious for waste, recent government reports suggest the Pentagon's money management woes have reached astronomical proportions. A study by the Defense Department's inspector general found that the Pentagon couldn't properly account for more than a trillion dollars in monies spent. A GAO report found Defense inventory systems so lax that the U.S.

Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units.

...more...

Then think about this:

Cunningham Stripped $700 Million from U.S. Defense

'Dukester's' Epic Boo-Hoo Hiding Massive Pentagon Rip-Off

http://madcowprod.com/

The MadCowMorningNews has learned that California Republican Congressman Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham steered $500 million in defense contracts in less than a decade, according to the company’s own website, to a start-up San Diego software firm which—and here’s the beauty part—doubled as a lobbying firm.

The lobbying firm then gratefully kicked back—at a bare minimum—hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to a Jack Abramoff-directed Washington D.C. lobbying and consulting firm run by two former senior staffers of Texas Republican Tom DeLay.

It offered, in other words, one-stop shopping.
While the focus was on the $2 million in bribes paid to Cunningham after his guilty plea, the question of just what the Congressman had done for all that long green received scant media attention.

...more...

:idea:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. I don't.

(wonder)

[Earth_First]

3. Yet somehow they'll attempt to roll out "fiscally conservative"

in the next round of reporting.

Here it comes folks, The GOP Mid-Term Media Blitz...

Troop reductions abroad...
Immigration policy...
Pentagon budget cuts...

JUST in time for 2006...

[Solly Mack]

5. Oh, I'm sure they'll further screw the troops out of benefits and

equipment like better armor first - before they start in on defense contractors

[UpInArms]

6. kicking for the morning news readers

:kick:

[wellst0nev0ter]

7. OMG, They've Become ANTI-TROOP!!11!

Isn't this what they tried to tar John Kerry with in the last election?

[Javaman]

8. So much for the body and vehicle armor...n/t