Deficit cutters look to Defense Dept. budget
Source: Military Times, Associated Press
WASHINGTON One war is done, another is winding down and the calls to cut the deficit are deafening. The military, a beneficiary of robust budgets for more than a decade, is coming to grips with a new reality fewer dollars.
The election accelerated an already shifting political dynamic that next year will pair a second-term Democratic president searching for spending cuts with tea partyers and conservatives intent on preserving lower tax rates above all else, even if it means once unheard of reductions in defense.
President Obama and Congress have just a few weeks to figure out how to avert the automatic cuts to defense and domestic programs totaling $110 billion next year. Those reductions are part of the so-called fiscal cliff of expiring Bush-era tax cuts and the across-the-board cuts that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned would be devastating to the military.
All sides are trying to come up with a deficit-cutting plan of $1.2 trillion over 10 years. Any solution that might emerge from the high-stakes negotiations before the Jan. 2 deadline likely would include some reductions in the military budget, which has nearly doubled in the last decade to half a trillion dollars. That amount doesnt include the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read more: http://militarytimes.com/news/2012/11/ap-deficit-cutters-look-to-pentagon-budget-111212/
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)Well...DUH!
Put that Pig on a Diet.
and, I'm now thinking...let the cliff happen.
Start working backwards, with somewhat of a cleaner slate.
Panetta is really bugg'n me.
Fresh_Start
(11,330 posts)spend in total? Sounds like the place to start!
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)Both of those need to be cut.
LP2K12
(885 posts)It's what kept me employed for years both in the defense and private sector. Working in military intel my job was to use those to be the eye in the sky. They have their uses besides military factors.
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)We would get more benefit hiring translators to read foreign newspapers written in Arabic for about 1% of that budget. Welcome to DU.
LP2K12
(885 posts)on countless other occassions.
The translators were paid the same amount I was. However, they had a higher drop out rate.
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)The "intelligence agencies" have a ghastly-huge budget. The reason that the spy satellites get built is so that the MIC kicks money back to congress members. It is not because they are that vital.
LP2K12
(885 posts)of "spy" satellites has slowed majorly. Even during the Bush admin. We piggy back off of satellites and tech launches by public companies that image such as Google. The difference being we have to pay those companies each time we want an image. Building our satellites is a one fee.
Most of those satellites are also multi-use. Weather, space exploration, GPS, communication. We've learned it's better to consolidate than launch one-purpose monsters.
adieu
(1,009 posts)I don't like to know that you're employed because of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Take your knowledge and skills and make something that is brought to the open market and see if it can compete with other products and services.
LP2K12
(885 posts)However, you'll find that most individual creators of this technology or absorbed by or hired by bigger names in the deferense industry. However, during the later part of my career we began using satellites owned by Google and other public companies as well as our own.
Third Doctor
(1,574 posts)But I think we have to be careful. This could effect a lot of people's jobs.
Because republicans never want to cut the garbage, they cut government workers. Not the expensive useless weapons, etc. They cut jobs that have been pretty helpful to veterans like my dad. It's nice to retire after 23 years of service to find employment working for the government.
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)I think the new "binders" may be of the political-sexual dossier nature.