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October 29, 2009

Obama Makes MORE Cut Backs in Defense Spending

Barack Obama attends a briefing on Afghanistan in the Situation Room of the White House

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Barack Obama attends a briefing on Afghanistan in the Situation Room of the White House

Victory for Obama Over Military Lobby

New York Times

When the Obama administration proposed canceling a host of expensive weapons systems last spring, some of the military industry’s allies in Congress assumed, as they had in the past, that they would have the final say.

But as the president signed a $680 billion military policy bill on Wednesday, it was clear that he had succeeded in paring back nearly all of the programs and setting a tone of greater restraint than the Pentagon had seen in many years.

Now the question is whether Mr. Obama can sustain that push next year, when the midterm elections are likely to make Congress more resistant to further cuts and job losses.

White House officials say Mr. Obama took advantage of a rare political moment to break through one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies and trim more weapons systems than any president had in decades.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said Wednesday that the plan was to threaten a veto over a prominent program — in this case, the F-22 fighter jet — “to show we were willing to expend political capital and could win on something that people thought we could not.”

Once the Senate voted in July to stop buying F-22s, Mr. Emanuel said in an interview, that success “reverberated down” to help sustain billions of dollars of cuts in Army modernization, missile defense and other programs.

Mr. Emanuel said the strategy emerged when the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, told Mr. Obama they needed to “shake up sacred cows and be seen as taking on fights.”

And Senator John McCain of Arizona, the former Republican presidential candidate, who has criticized the Pentagon’s cost overruns, provided Mr. Obama with political cover to make the cuts without being seen as soft on the military.

Still, Mr. Obama said at Wednesday’s signing ceremony, there is “more waste we need to cut.”

The act authorizes $550 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget in fiscal 2010 and $130 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That compares to a total of $654 billion for both accounts in fiscal 2009.

The measure also includes a ban on hate crimes that Democratic leaders attached to the bill.

Mr. Obama had wanted to cancel an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a new plane that is expected to be a mainstay for the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines. He had also threatened to veto the military bills if they took money from plane purchases to keep developing that engine.

But Congressional leaders say the believe that the second engine will provide crucial insurance for the $300 billion fighter program. And they say they will take money from other parts of the military budget to save it.

Wild Thing's comment........

All part of the plan. Destroy the military so we’re helpless against the invading muslims.

So how many jobs is this alone going to cost America? He's weakening America militarily and economically in one fell swoop.

And yet Obama is the guy who runs up the largest yearly deficit in the history of the country. So basically he’s reducing spending on things that are constitutional to spend money on unconstitutional.

And Senator John McCain of Arizona, the former Republican presidential candidate, who has criticized the Pentagon’s cost overruns, provided Mr. Obama with political cover to make the cuts without being seen as soft on the military.

Now wasnt that nice of Mr. McCain.... NOT! Notice how McCain's name always pops up when something bad happens.

Only one department of government is being cut. The hated miliatary, for 50 years a target of the lunatic left Democrats. And yes, that dim wit McCain and his butt boy Lindsey Graham helped provide cover. Emperor Obama has not the slightest interest in saving money as shown in his other programs, but he has great interest in neutering the military and playing golf and traveling the globe while Americans die waiting on his new policy for Afghanistan.

The kicker is that the Bush Administration paid for Defense out of the Defense budget and had War Supplemental bills to cover a lot of the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan. The supplementals are getting few and far between and the real amounts to the military are going down.

If you are a fighter pilot and you aren't deployed you are riding the pine. In the Navy they are calling 11 hours a month the "tactical hard deck." In reality it means a U.S. strike fighter pilot that is going to drop bombs in Afghanistan next year is flying less than a Chinese Su-27 pilot in a peace time setting.

And then added in is the post yestersday about US military in Afghanistan is to be allowed to pay Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul.

That is also included in this defence bill which President Obama has signed.

AUGH!

Posted by Wild Thing at October 29, 2009 05:50 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Lynn at October 29, 2009 08:22 AM

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Posted by: Jack at October 29, 2009 10:55 AM

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Posted by: TomR at October 29, 2009 12:12 PM

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Posted by: BobF at October 29, 2009 12:39 PM

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Posted by: Wild Thing at October 29, 2009 11:05 PM

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