TheAgitator.com
House Pushes Pork-Packed Defense Bill
Thursday, July 30th, 2009Unbelievable. Well, okay. Totally believable.
The Democratic-controlled House is poised to give the Pentagon dozens of new ships, planes, helicopters and armored vehicles that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says the military does not need to fund next year, acting in many cases in response to defense industry pressures and campaign contributions under an approach he has decried as “business as usual” and vowed to help end.
The unwanted equipment in a military spending bill expected to come to a vote on the House floor Thursday or Friday has a price tag of at least $6.9 billion…
Roughly $2.75 billion of the extra funds — all of which were unanimously approved in an 18-minute markup Monday by the House Appropriations Committee — would finance “earmarks,” or projects demanded by individual lawmakers that the Pentagon did not request. About half of that amount reflects spending requested by private firms, including 95 companies or related political action committees that donated a total of $789,190 in the past 2 1/2 years to members of the appropriations subcommittee on defense, according to an analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit watchdog group.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a government-spending critic who has long campaigned against such earmarks, has said he will try again Thursday to strike all such spending. But his prior earmark-stripping efforts have succeeded only once in dozens of attempts, and never on defense spending.
“Simply put, Members of Congress should not have the ability to award no-bid contracts” to private firms, Flake said in a statement explaining the 540 proposed amendments he plans to bring up. “The practice has created an ethical cloud over Congress, and it needs to end.” He noted that at least 70 of the earmarks are for former clients of the PMA Group, a lobbying firm close to appropriations subcommittee head John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) that is now being probed by the Justice Department and the House ethics committee.
Every Democrat who ever muttered a word of criticism (justified criticism, in my opinion) about the Bush administration’s no-bid contracts to Haliburton ought to be condemned if they vote to allow this crap to pass. And yes, Republcians did the same thing when they controlled Congress. Trent Lott especially was famous for funding massive military projects in Mississippi that the military didn’t want.
It was evil when THEY did it. Its different when WE do it.
I’m sure it will be vetoed. After all, this is change we can believe in!
“The practice has created an ethical cloud over Congress…
There’s an ethical cloud over Congress? I’m stunned.
Wait a sec. Isn’t that corruption?
Oops. Never mind. I forgot. It’s only corruption when it happens in other countries.
Whoa whoa whoa! Do you guys hate America and our brave fighting men and women!? When our military and the corporations who provide for it want to fleece the American tax payer for billions of dollars, it is totally acceptable! It’s not like they are welfare recipients like poor pe…they aren’t looking for a hand out…unnecessary spending…hey, wait a minute here!
I’m glad that there is at least one Republican in Arizona that has the balls to call out the defense contractors for being a bunch of unpatriotic thieves.
Faced with the biggest decline in the economy since tGD…faced with associated declining tax revenues…faced with massive unemployment…faced with massive debt and substantial losses in American business competitiveness…Congress/Exec embark on the largest spending spree in the history of the known universe.
Clearly (no more proof is needed) there is only madness now.
Flake’s been consistently good about these sorts of things. Kudos.
Appropriations don’t necessarily mean actual spending, though. I know the executive can’t spend money that’s not appropriated by Congress, but is it Constitutional for the executive branch to not spend money that has been appropriated? In other words, is Gates required by law to spend this money if he doesn’t want to?
When we are outspending every likely opponent combined on defense, I find it hard to get to worked up about a few billion in pork- we’re wasting hundreds of billions even in the “legitimate” budget! Do we really need troops in 100+ countries? Do we really need the latest stealth fighters? Do we really need so many nuclear missile submarines? I’m not a pacifist, but I think if we had just enough of a military for pure defense, that would do a lot to dissuade our politicians from these wars of choice.
One more reason to chuckle at the “Freedom Isn’t Free” bumper stickers.
True dat Chance. Maybe this distracts from the real waste that is the War on Terrorism in Afghanastan and Iraq. And the stimulous package. And farm subsidies. And auto bailouts. I could keep going, but I think it’s pretty evident that this pork barrel spending is another symptom an already diagnosed disease.
Meet the new boss…
Same as the old boss…
Even though I oppose a defense spending bill that the Defense Minister disapproves of, it’s a sad day when I look at a figure like $6.9 Billion and think “chump change.”
I hate to go against the grain, but need this funding…
Who’s gonna be there we we get invaded by
Canada, Mexico, Panama, or Guatemala?
Belize? Or the Royal Bahama Navy?!
I can see them assembling across the border already.
YG # 13
The Red Serge Peril is at the gates. (Or the Peace Arch, take your pick.)
You’re emboldening the terrorists!
is anyone surprised? I was only surprised at Gates’ comment.
Has Flake been consistently against this since the beginning of Bush, or just Obama?
Eisenhower was right. What I wouldn’t give for a GOPer in his mold to emerge from the pack…
The last act of a dying nation is for the politicians to empty the coffers.
Dave Krueger “Wait a sec. Isn’t that corruption?
Oops. Never mind. I forgot. It’s only corruption when it happens in other countries.”
Exactly! That’s why we have to go and spread freedom to them.
No one has gotten “all government spending is stimulus” yet? Guess I’ll step up then. I for one thank God that these congressmen have shown the loyalty to their sponsors and the courage to completely disregard their
subjectsconstituents and provide this one last little bit of Stimulus to push our economy back over the top. This $7 billion is gonna be that mythical Straw that…something about a camel? I forget how that one ends, it saves the camel’s life somehow, right?lol this is turning out to be a really funny thread
this is the military industrial complex taking over. I was thinking the same thing, Ira #17.
“The last act of a dying nation is for the politicians to empty the coffers.” — BamBam
From Blazing Saddles:
Bart: “Well, can’t you see that’s the last act of a desperate man?”
Howard Johnson: “We don’t care if it’s the first act of ‘Henry V,’ we’re leaving!”
That one gets me every time!
this is the military industrial complex taking over.
Shit man. The military industrial complex took over before I was born and I have been around the sun 51 times.
Damn right. Eisenhower’s farewell address was downright prophetic.
A couple things here.
One, I’d just like to point out that Obama spent a significant amount of time, energy and political capital to kill further expansion of the F-22 Raptor White Elephant program. In fact, one of the main reason Obama kept Gates on as SecDef was that he needed him to help try and rein in the out-of-control defense appropriations process.
Second, it’s more than a little unfair to compare these kinds of appropriations to Halliburton no-bid contracts. The legislators are — by and large — trying to save jobs for their constituents, the people who they are supposed to represent. It’s wrongheaded and dumb, but it’s not corrupt.
You mean, like his VP?
I was with ya right up until the last line. It is wrong headed and corrupt, because it isn’t to save jobs for their constituents. It’s to pay back campaign contributions.
That Congress does things to benefit constituents is a fallacy. Laws are encapsulated in rhetoric and titles designed to give that impression, but it’s really just a disguise for the real purpose of the legislation which is always to reimburse special interests. Selling the country down the river is the one completely unregulated free market left in the country.
The constituency gets no real benefits from Congress because they’ve shown that they will reelect the incumbent no matter what he does as long as no sex is involved. It’s one thing when Congress pisses away the wealth of future generations and acquiesces as an ego-tripping President feeds thousands of young people into the ovens of war, but getting caught having sex goes too far.
“One, I’d just like to point out that Obama spent a significant amount of time, energy and political capital to kill further expansion of the F-22 Raptor White Elephant program. In fact, one of the main reason Obama kept Gates on as SecDef was that he needed him to help try and rein in the out-of-control defense appropriations process.”
Don’t get me wrong, I thought that was great, just like I thought it was great when Rummy killed the Paladin Artillery system the Army was hot and bothered for. The problem is that killing one, two, or even a few dozen large weapons programs isn’t going to change anything in the long run so long as current strategy and structure demand a huge logistics tail.
Everyone talks about fighter jets and tanks and Aircraft Carriers and UAVs, but how many forklifts does the military buy every few years? How many cargo ships do we own or contract out? How many cargo planes, refueling planes, specialized cranes, 18 wheelers, and a thousand other service support equipment types and activities? How much is air fare for the tens of thousands of troops shifted from base to base overseas each year? How much to lease overseas bases (we don’t “own” that land in most cases)?
The dirty little secret of military spending is that the tooth to tail ratio isn’t fixed. Cutting “tooth” (weapons, combat equipment & personnel) by X amount does not mean that the “tail” (logistics and services) will cut by an equal percentage. It takes a comparable amount of logistical support to service one squad overseas as it does a company, a platoon takes a comparable amount as a battalion, and so on. An expeditionary, deployment ready force will always be outrageously expensive, even if we just gave the troops pointy sticks to fight with.
Sorry for the rant, you can probably tell I was a logistician for a while.
[...] Each of those six links had to be embedded by hand. Then he wrote this post: House Pushes Pork-Packed Defense Bill [...]