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Defense Chief Urges Big Cuts In Military Spending
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says the Pentagon is wasting money it will no longer get, and focused on targets as diverse as the large number of generals and admirals, the layers of bureaucracy in the Pentagon, and the cost of military health care. 'The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, opened a gusher of defense spending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade,' Gates says. 'Military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny. The gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.' Gates, a Republican who was carried over as Defense Secretary from the Bush administration, has already canceled or trimmed 30 weapons programs with long-term savings predicted at $330 billion, but is now seeking to convert as much as 3% of spending from 'tail' to 'tooth' — military slang for converting spending from support services to combat forces. While this may not seem like a significant savings in the Pentagon's base budget, cuts of any size are certain to run hard against entrenched constituencies. Gates's critique of top-heavy headquarters overseas was underscored by the location of the speech — the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. President Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, warned the nation of the menacing influence of an emerging 'military-industrial complex' in his farewell address as president in 1960. 'Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals,' said Eisenhower, 'so that security and liberty may prosper together.'"
This will be spun as a Democratic administration not "supporting the troops", despite it being proposed by Gates, a holdover from a Republican administration. Much like how only Nixon could go to China, only a Republican can advocate cutting the defense budget (even if only a mere 2-3%) without being pilloried as near-treason.
Indeed.
If there really is going to be some "tail-to-tooth" transfer of spending, it'll be a very welcome change.
However, I am a bit peeved at the mention of "military healthcare". Given the atrocious cuts in services for veterans who've been injured in combat, I think that is the one area where the government needs to do more.
After all, if we ask people to lose limbs for us, it's only fair if we at least take care of them, when they come back from the battlefield with life-altering disabilities. It doesn't really matter what wars they were fighting. They are OUR soldiers, and it's our duty as a nation to support them, regardless of whether we support the politics that brought them to the battlefield.
Does this mean major cutbacks on corporate welfare and job security clearances for US Persons?
I'd love to get an engineering job outside of the defense/military industrial complex, maybe this will finally make the other jobs on the market relatively more competitive! And maybe I could get to apply some of the mechanical/aerospace skills I learned in college finally?
Corporate welfare through defense spending has been an awfully good way of keeping the educated middle class too busy doing busywork to try to enact any kind of social change. But maybe mass entertainment has finally caught up with keeping those minds preoccupied with inane things.
Because it didn't turn out to be relevant?
I read the internet for the articles.
I remember reading somewhere that Eisenhower was the president to most significantly cut the military budget in the past 60 years.
Anyone else who tried to do it was labeled as "making America weaker" or a giant wuss. But it was much harder to call the man who lead the largest amphibious invasion in history a pussy.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Military spending has been increasing at an unsustainable rate for at least the last 30 years. If it continues to increase at this rate it will surely bankrupt us. Our heavy investment in the military (over other important things such as education) also suggests that our priorities are badly skewed and need to be realigned.
Facts have a liberal bias.
Because it has never come close to happening?
Or are you making the case that any of the previous administrations *cough*George W Bush*cough* could be considered a scientific-technological elite? Hell, President Obama just admitted to not knowing how to use an iPod or iPad. Yes, he has his Crackberry, but still...
Scientists routinely have to beg for funding, and NASA always seems to be on death's door for lack of funding.
Wake me when it is the other way around, and the military budget is round-off error for the scientific research one.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The man is awesome. He cares for America. Basically, another Eisenhower. Obama has a group working on figuring out how to cut the deficit and balance the budget. That group needs to have EVERY head of each dept. tell them how to cut waste for each. Finally, that group needs to push for a balanced budget amendmendment that will block the running of deficits during good times. Right now, the majority of our unneeded debt is from 1982-1990, and from 2002-2007. That accounts for about 8 trillion dollars of a time when we had a decent economy and had ZERO reason to run a deficit.
Personally, If Robert Gates was to run for president (or even replace Biden) , I would vote for him.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you study the events leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the size and rampant spending of their military-industrial complex as it slowly bankrupted them for thirty years comes out on top. Everyone knew it existed, and everyone knew it would suck the nation dry before they could "win" the Cold War against the United States, but it was so entrenched in their economy that the means to measure and control it simply did not exist. It's interesting to see that Eisenhower noticed this disturbing trend fifty years ago. If the Soviet Union was bled dry in thirty years, how much longer can the United States survive the siphoning of hundreds of billions of dollars from their economy? Or is it already too late?
American citizens really must ask themselves what this spending has done for them. Access to foreign oil? Protection from terrorists? For a fraction of the trillions of dollars spent in the past decade on "defense", those issues could have been resolved virtually overnight. Instead, you have made a select group of people very rich and very powerful. Was it worth it?
"t does not even mean the military need become weaker as a result."
So what if it does? The US already has the most powerful military in the world by an order of magnitude. What do we need all of this "power" for, anyway? We haven't had a real threat to the US since WWII.
I don't respond to AC's.
http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1467
I found a lot of the media coverage to be selective, and the headline on this /. posting to be somewhat misleading
No. Healthcare is considered a right in most of Europe. One of the big pushes has been to provide healthcare for everyone.
The military healthcare system for veterans and their families is an absolute necessity. Soldiers get payed crap, they deal with a job that curtails their constitutional freedoms, a job where they have to deal with the trauma of violence, death, killing and risk being killed/maimed themselves.
You want to cut the military pay roll? Fine. Reduce recruiting, let old soldiers retire. But each and every one of them needs what little help and compensation they do get and deserves more.
While I agree that we're spending too much on some weapons systems... there's absolutely no excuse to pay 7 billion dollars for a DDG-1000 destroyer...Gates is fiercely protective of the biggest, most expensive military boondoggle of all time, the Joint Strike Fighter. He will absolutely tolerate no talk of canceling it.
It was supposed to be the "cheap" supplement to the F-22, much the same way the F-16 was the cheap supplement to the F-15. But now the F-35 costs as much, or possibly even more than the F-22 (CBO estimate: $122 million a copy and climbing), while being a substantially less capable airplane. And this has happened under Gates' watch.
And yet, he balks at buying more Super Hornets for the Navy instead, at what is a bargain price in the fighter world... $45 million apiece. There's no logic here.
I'm as big a hawk as you'll find, but I think the primary problem is with two parties here... defense contractors, and Congress. Congress sees defense as a jobs program, and defense contractors are ripping off the taxpayer. I've come to the reluctant conclusion perhaps we should abandon private suppliers for the military, and go back to in-house supply solutions. For instance, the Navy used to build their own ships in their own shipyards. It was seen as a way to not be too reliant on private yards, and to keep them honest. God knows we need that again. I'm a big capitalist, and all for competition in truly free, private markets. But defense contracting isn't really a free market. You're serving one customer... the government. Maybe it's time to open up our own shipyards again, and revive the old Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia. Maybe that's the only way to put firms like Lockheed on notice that the gravy train is over.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Military spending has been increasing at an unsustainable rate for at least the last 30 years.
No, the cost of individual weapons systems has been rising at an unsustainable rate. Military spending is a fraction of what it was during it's peacetime highs, when it dominated federal spending in the 50's and 60's. Bush the Elder made big cuts to the military budget, and Bill Clinton made even bigger cuts. Even at the height of our military force structure during the Reagan years, the military was a fraction of what it was under Ike, Kennedy, and Johnson.
What we're getting isn't more military spending, but less bang for our military buck, by buying fewer weapons. We're spending about the same, GDP-wise. It's just that individual ships, planes, etc, cost more, so we're buying less of them. We bought 800 F-15's. We replaced them with 187 F-22's. Same buck. Less bang, even though the individual weapons are more capable. There's simply no way one F-22 can replace 4 F-15's in the real world, no matter what Lockheed's marketing department says.
By far the largest and most bloated parts of the federal budget are the entitlements... Social Security, Medicare, etc. They'll bankrupt us long before military spending would. And while you can cut military spending, by law, you can't cut SS and Medicare, only their rates of growth.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel