Pentagon Wants $450 Billion Increase Over Next Five Years
Pentagon officials have prepared a new estimate for defense spending that is $450 billion more over the next five years than previously announced figures.
The new estimate, which the Pentagon plans to release shortly before President Bush leaves office, would serve as a marker for the new president and is meant to place pressure on him to either drastically increase the size of the defense budget or defend any reluctance to do so, according to several former senior budget officials who are close to the discussions.
“This is a political document,” said one former senior budget official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It sets up the new administration immediately to have to make a decision of how to deal with the perception that they are either cutting defense or adding to it.”
Pretty clever, huh? The Pentagon pushes a vulnerable new president into a corner with an ultimatum right from the start: support our inflated budgets or risk looking soft on national defense. I guess that's the way the protection racket's played on the national stage. It should be doubly effective against a President Obama, who will be under pressure to look 'tough' and 'pro-American', i.e., pro-Pentagon. Don't think the Dons at the Defense Department aren't aware of this. They're not much good at winning wars lately, but when it comes to politics they know how to play hardball. Isn't it comforting to know that our defense establishment plays these game at such an economically perilous moment in our history as this? That's what I call putting country first.
And it just gets better:
The new budget numbers reflect the Defense Department’s acknowledgement that the coming bow wave of ever-rising procurement costs, combined with the nonstop growth of defense entitlement spending, will render its already record- high budgets grossly insufficient in the years ahead.
The next time you want a raise, just tell your boss that the coming bow wave of ever-rising procurement costs render your current wages grossly insufficient. See how far that gets you. Before we proceed, let's have an assessment of the Pentagon's performance over the last sixty odd years to see if they deserve more money. We won't count all the little show bizz bombings, like Libya. Nor will we count all of the dirty little covert proxy wars, like Nicaragua during the eighties. We'll just look at the biggies, without regard to their morality or necessity, and judge them by the Pentagon's own simple standard of win or loss: Korea, tie. Vietnam, loss. Panama, win. Iraq War One, win. Somalia, loss. Serbia, win. Afghanistan, probably loss. Gulf War Two, loss. By my reckoning, that makes the Pentagon 3-4-1. Would you feel optimistic about your team's chances of making the play-offs with a record like that? Would their coaches deserve a raise? In light of America's looming bankruptcy, I'd be inclined to hold back on the bonuses this year. Nevertheless, we'll probably keep shoveling more money at them under the rubric of national defense. Then we can continue beating our chests, waving the flag and chanting we're number one! as we patriotically march over Insolvency Cliff and tumble into a pile of mouldering headstones marked Athenian Empire, Persian Empire, Roman Empire, Spanish Empire, Hapsburg Empire, Ottoman Empire, French Empire, German Empire, Russian Empire, British Empire . . . We already spend more money on defense than every other country on earth combined. But it's not enough. The Pentagon needs more. It's national defense, you see. To accommodate their needs, we've even taken the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan off the budget. The costs of those wars aren't included in the Pentagon's annual outlays. They're funded through extra monies called "supplemental appropriations." So the most astronomical military budget in human history doesn't even include the cost of two wars that the U.S is currently fighting and that have no end in sight. It's as if a car wash didn't have to account for the price of soap and water in it's monthly expenses. I guess the standard 'baseline' defense budget is the frosting and the "supplemental appropriations" are the candy colored sprinkles we scatter on top. But don't worry. The folks at the Department of War -- er, Defense -- are trying to overcome the problem: Supplemental appropriations have been used to fund procurement and personnel costs that are predictable and therefore should be placed into the regular budget, said Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Eureka! Just add the supplemental appropriations into the normal budget, and then raise the overall budget. Bingo! What do you wanna bet that the Pentagon and the next president will then go around touting this gimmick as a way they "cut supplemental expenditures"? Yesterday in the New York Times there was a little article about how there's been a dramatic rise in cheating among high school kids. That's right, out of 25,000 students surveyed between 2001 and 2008, 90 percent admitted having cheated "in one way or another." I can't imagine where these misguided young students keep getting the idea that cheating is okay.
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