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I vote other. We need to make cuts where our military spending that is the most wasteful, and that is not in the pay and benefits of our troops.
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What should military members be willing to sacrifice first?
- Thread starter MarineTpartier
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I vote other. We need to make cuts where our military spending that is the most wasteful, and that is not in the pay and benefits of our troops.
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I like how you tried to take that out of context to make it look like solely a DOD issue:
SO that estimated $125.4 Billion are spread across at least 19 Major Agencies, and apparently includes tax fraud. Nice.
That is correct - you will not. The "let's just pull back from everywhere else" idea A) actually costs alot of money and B) dependent on where it is done, risks undercutting world trade which spins us back into a global recession. 2013 DOD Budget Request.
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Ah yes. This must be the magical waste that is going to save us, just like the magical savings that the IPAB is going to find to make Medicare sustainable. :roll:
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The only benefit I reap, and expect are my educational benefits since they're in my contract. If they take that away there's going to be a legal battle.
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Cute, but there is nothing magical about cutting waste in our excessive military spending. Did you miss Tessa's very concrete examples, all of which should come before making cuts to our troops who are already underpaid.
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There's definitely waste. I doubt that we can live without some of the crazier gadgets in testing, such as rail guns, particle beams, robots with M-2 machine guns affixed to them, etc. We spent 14 billion to get the Bradley, which is a giant piece late Cold War crap.
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My son is nearing his 20 mark in the Air Force and he sees beaucoup wastes everywhere in the military.
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I saw waste every day in the Army too. We were supposed to have gone electronic to save paper, but we (as one company) must have wasted at least a ton of paper every fiscal year. We wasted fuel, energy, resources, all of it. I'm not even counting training, just the stupid ****. Hundreds of thousands down the ****ter every year, and that's just one company.
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I am all for cutting out waste, in the DOD and across the federal government. I just don't buy the argument that attempts to do so are going to get us much. The best way to do this (as MarineTpartier has pointed out) is to start grading commanders and staff on fiscal measures; and let them come up with ways to save money. Once each LtCol is competing against each other LtCol for Regimental Command based partially on whether they managed to come in consistently 10% under budget.... that's when you have incentivized the people in charge to reduce waste. Unfortunately, that can't be scored ahead of time because you can't predict human ingenuity.
Well, let's look at Tessy's list:
Moving installations and units actually costs alot of money. That's why the plans to move US military off of Okinawa and phase us over to Guam keep getting pushed out, despite the fact that the Japanese are willing to foot half the bill. SO, we move the installation and troops and then.... (drumroll please) we still have the exact same installations and troops which still cost money. You would basically save what you are paying for COLA, but at the cost of picking up and moving massive bases. Penny Wise, Pound Foolish.
You COULD save money with:
except that cutting troops is cutting personnel. Instead of reforming their pension you're just going to fire them? Yeah, that's much better for the troops :roll:
Agreed. Congratulations on saving.... 0.1% of the DOD budget? Besides the secondary engine for the F-35 is anyone aware of a major-ticket item that fits this description?
1. The largest recpient of military aid is Israel. Take away our military support to Israel, and Israel will (rightly, as she points out) feel that she is now on her own. That means Israel will have to become more aggressive. Chew that over and decide whether or not we gain or lose from having a more stable Middle East.
2. Generally, most of our "military aid" goes to foriegn nations in the form of credits for military gear which they can only cash in by purchasing from US Companies. That money? It comes right back to the United States in the form of weapons purchases.
3. In return for enabling the standing up of effective allied militaries, we are actually able to reduce our global presence. Think about which is more expensive (for example) in Afghanistan: A battlaion of Marines each costing DOD $1 million apiece holding an area of operations with dedicated tank and artillery support? Or a platoon of military advisors running a local national battalion each of whom we are paying $3,600 a year holding the same AO? Our military presence around the world is smaller than it was during the Cold War, not least because we have stood up the forces of many allies.
Everyone in favor of this but against the Arizona law please raise your hands. Why should the border states have to subsidize the rest of the states for security? That's the federal government's job. That is, in fact, their most important job. Furthermore, it's not as if we currently incur massive costs from a couple of National Guard units doing nothing on the border.
I can only really speak immediately to the IC, but within it, salaries from the DOD are well below what you can make private side. This is agreeably an outlier in public service, but the fact is that you don't want the smartest intelligence analysts working for IBM; you want them working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the PDB staff, and the NSC. However, certainly we could replace many functions with military personnel, again, however, the savings realized from this will not be impressive.
Funny thing - these contracts often save DOD money. It costs roughly $1,000,000 per deployed solder per year to deploy a military member; contractors for a year cost about $150,000-300,000, depending on the job. Furthermore, when a military member dies, that's $500,000 more right off the bat, with additional costs later on. When a contractor dies, it's the cost of the plane ticket for his replacement. Assuming there isn't a Space-R seat that week.
There aren't easy solutions. Accepting this is the first step, and a necessary one.
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That sounds like a much better starting place than cutting pay or benefits to the troops.
It doesn't cost as much as it does to keeping them running and staffed.
What part of, giving them jobs in the civilian work force didn't you understand?
Without our starting optional wars, less troops are needed.
"Stars And Stripes reports that as of May 2011, U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq totaled $9.7 billion a month, or roughly the entire annual budget of The Environmental Protection Agency.
While the total amount spent on the two wars could range anywhere from $3.7 up to $5.2 trillion, depending how much the Pentagon pulled from its base budget, even small chunks could power many efforts at home.
The amount the U.S. spends in Afghanistan and Iraq each month could run the entire State Department for four months.
For the cost of one month in Iraq and Afghanistan, NASA could have launched the space shuttle five more times.
Medicare's 2003 expanded drug benefits for seniors that will cost $385 billion over 10 years could be paid for with 40 months of Pentagon spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Two years of air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan at $38 billion could provide 40 years of federal Amtrak funding.
Five years of fuel for vehicles, generators and aircraft in Afghanistan at $10.3 billion could have paid for the 2010 EPA budget.
Even the most basic estimates can be deceiving. From October 2010 to May 2011 the U.S. military bought 329.8 million gallons of fuel in Afghanistan at $1.5 billion or $4.55 a gallon. Reasonable at a glance, but that number doesn't reflect transportation costs to and around combat zones, injuries, deaths, medical treatment, and rehabilitation -- all of which drive the cost to hundreds of dollars per gallon."
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com...air-conditioning-defense-budget#ixzz1zXc65GZV
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:shrug: sure you do that too. But you are one of the ones calling for deep DOD cuts, and the savings from this kind of thing aren't going to get you anywhere close. This is the equivalent of balancing the budget by cutting foreign aid and NPR.
if you move an installation... you still have to keep it running and staffed. And in fact, for the time period in which you are performing the move (a handful of years), it costs signficantly more due to all the necessary replication and beefed up staff.
:lol: i hate it when that happens
the DP server has stolen my best works...
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It all adds up and and why would you not cut waste first before cutting the pay or benefits of the troops?
Why, if it is not needed?
Also, you missed this above, the waste from our wars on Afghanistan and Iraq:
"Stars And Stripes reports that as of May 2011, U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq totaled $9.7 billion a month, or roughly the entire annual budget of The Environmental Protection Agency.
While the total amount spent on the two wars could range anywhere from $3.7 up to $5.2 trillion, depending how much the Pentagon pulled from its base budget, even small chunks could power many efforts at home.
The amount the U.S. spends in Afghanistan and Iraq each month could run the entire State Department for four months.
For the cost of one month in Iraq and Afghanistan, NASA could have launched the space shuttle five more times.
Medicare's 2003 expanded drug benefits for seniors that will cost $385 billion over 10 years could be paid for with 40 months of Pentagon spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Two years of air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan at $38 billion could provide 40 years of federal Amtrak funding.
Five years of fuel for vehicles, generators and aircraft in Afghanistan at $10.3 billion could have paid for the 2010 EPA budget.
Even the most basic estimates can be deceiving. From October 2010 to May 2011 the U.S. military bought 329.8 million gallons of fuel in Afghanistan at $1.5 billion or $4.55 a gallon. Reasonable at a glance, but that number doesn't reflect transportation costs to and around combat zones, injuries, deaths, medical treatment, and rehabilitation -- all of which drive the cost to hundreds of dollars per gallon."
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/...#ixzz1zXc65GZV
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because we are talking about serious DOD cuts. Which means that DOD get's given a number. "Your budget is.... $596 Billion. For next year we need you to cut it down to $500 Billion". "Aye-Aye, Mr President".
...So we put in place all these issues designed to reward good stewardship. But those are impossible to predict, and unlikely to generate $96 Billion. So let's be really optimistic and say that in the first year they generate... $5 Bn in savings. Hooray! Now where are we going to do for the next $91 Bn?
I'm all in favor of these things. But cutting small stuff does not remove the need to also cut big stuff.
You have two options:
1. Move the installation and house the unit elsewhere (Costs More Money).
2. Get rid of the unit and fire the personnel. Destroy the classified, and sell off whatever isn't worth shipping elsewhere (Costs Less Money).
You can do #2 and reduce the DOD budget. But let's not pretend that we are doing it "to keep from having to make cuts to the troops". You aren't just cutting their pension there - you are cutting their jobs.
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Incidentally, since we are looking to cut waste, that $26 a gallon green fuel that the Navy is being made to buy that you are defending in the other thread should definitely be on the chopping block.
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Link to the source for your numbers?
You keep pretending troops do not have the capacity to work in the civilian workforce.
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Look at what we wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq alone? That is hardly chump change.
"Stars And Stripes reports that as of May 2011, U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq totaled $9.7 billion a month, or roughly the entire annual budget of The Environmental Protection Agency.
While the total amount spent on the two wars could range anywhere from $3.7 up to $5.2 trillion, depending how much the Pentagon pulled from its base budget, even small chunks could power many efforts at home.
The amount the U.S. spends in Afghanistan and Iraq each month could run the entire State Department for four months.
For the cost of one month in Iraq and Afghanistan, NASA could have launched the space shuttle five more times.
Medicare's 2003 expanded drug benefits for seniors that will cost $385 billion over 10 years could be paid for with 40 months of Pentagon spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Two years of air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan at $38 billion could provide 40 years of federal Amtrak funding.
Five years of fuel for vehicles, generators and aircraft in Afghanistan at $10.3 billion could have paid for the 2010 EPA budget.
Even the most basic estimates can be deceiving. From October 2010 to May 2011 the U.S. military bought 329.8 million gallons of fuel in Afghanistan at $1.5 billion or $4.55 a gallon. Reasonable at a glance, but that number doesn't reflect transportation costs to and around combat zones, injuries, deaths, medical treatment, and rehabilitation -- all of which drive the cost to hundreds of dollars per gallon."
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/...#ixzz1zXc65GZV
"Stars And Stripes reports that as of May 2011, U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq totaled $9.7 billion a month, or roughly the entire annual budget of The Environmental Protection Agency.
While the total amount spent on the two wars could range anywhere from $3.7 up to $5.2 trillion, depending how much the Pentagon pulled from its base budget, even small chunks could power many efforts at home.
The amount the U.S. spends in Afghanistan and Iraq each month could run the entire State Department for four months.
For the cost of one month in Iraq and Afghanistan, NASA could have launched the space shuttle five more times.
Medicare's 2003 expanded drug benefits for seniors that will cost $385 billion over 10 years could be paid for with 40 months of Pentagon spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Two years of air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan at $38 billion could provide 40 years of federal Amtrak funding.
Five years of fuel for vehicles, generators and aircraft in Afghanistan at $10.3 billion could have paid for the 2010 EPA budget.
Even the most basic estimates can be deceiving. From October 2010 to May 2011 the U.S. military bought 329.8 million gallons of fuel in Afghanistan at $1.5 billion or $4.55 a gallon. Reasonable at a glance, but that number doesn't reflect transportation costs to and around combat zones, injuries, deaths, medical treatment, and rehabilitation -- all of which drive the cost to hundreds of dollars per gallon."
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/...#ixzz1zXc65GZV
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Why do people always ask this? This should be an infraction!
Have some ****ing patience! The poll doesn't get posted when the thread is made. The thread has to be made *first* and then you get to add a poll to it. Give OP some time to think about what he's typing. The forum gives him 25 minutes, so STFU until then. Damn people WTF!
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I'm 100% on board with you here.
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I disagree and I was not a career man...Men and Women who serve our country and all of us, during the prime years of their lives. Who live through the hardship of leaving their loved ones time and again, who are under the threat of supreme physical harm on tour after tour to chith oles and whos children have to go through the heartbreak of being uprooted from school and friends many times....DESERVE WHAT THEY GET.
and in most cases deserve more....
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A good idea, but not just for the military, as that is insane, IMHO. Many state/local gov'ts use the "80" rule, for the combination of age and years of service to determine retirement; allowing retirement as early as age 50 with 30 years of service. ALL (non-disability) public service retirement PAY, should be awarded at the same age as SS retirement 65 to 69 (including the option to take a lower amount at age 62).
Other military retirement benefits, such as medical, dental, MAC flights and PX/commissary should be kept as they are, available in full after 20 (or so) years of service. 55 is NOT only 10 years younger than SS, for many that SS age is now 69 and may get older soon. I am sick of laws that allow (non-disabled) public service employees to retire at age 50 to 55, while private IRA, 401K and Keogh accounts may not be used (without severe tax penalties) until age 59 1/2. There is NO reason that the SS elegibility age can not be the universal retirement age for ALL born in that year, EXCEPT for the truely disabled, regardless of the carreer path (public/private) chosen.
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Never have I done such a thing. They do, although the workforce is pretty tough out there for the dominant age group in the military. But let's not pretend that firing them is somehow "treating them better" than telling them they can't draw a pension until they are 55. You're the one talking about how we should look for all these other things before we ask them to sacrifice - but then you demand they sacrifice their jobs? How the hell does that make sense?
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Gotta love this new american mindset....take from the working class they have too much....take from the military they have too much....take from public employees they have to much and GIVE TAX CUTS TO THE RICH SO THEY CAN CREATE more friggin jobs in china....unreal...you young people have been thoroughly brainwashed and your cutting your own throats...and when you realize it...its going to be too late...you are being BSd...they are creating this entire atmosphere of gloom and doom and keeping you unemployed for political gain....and PERSONAL gain.
Leave the goddman military alone...if you cant do anything else leave those kids the hell alone...im getting pissed im gonna slide out awhile
Leave the goddman military alone...if you cant do anything else leave those kids the hell alone...im getting pissed im gonna slide out awhile
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It's not a question of "deserve". I don't deserve ankles that require me to crab-walk for the first ten minutes of every morning and hurt sitting in a chair. I don't deserve knees that go clicketyclick and throb every where I go. I don't deserve periodic bouts of depression and survivors' guilt. But nobody made me stand on the yellow foot prints - I chose this, knowing I would have to give. So I have to give? :shrug: it's what I signed up to do. At this point, it's not a matter of what "we deserve", it's a question of utility. We have to give up, so, we should figure out what is best to give up.
Frankly, switching the pension to the TSP-match, over time, would be a better option for the younger first-term guys. They get to get out and get on with their lives with their retirement savings already started.
You know what else I don't deserve? I don't deserve to retire at the age of 44 with a nice monthly check and medical coverage from all my friends who will be working to age 67 in order to send it to me. That'd be a dick move on my part to say that I deserve that from them because I agreed to stand on the footprints. It's nice, I'll admit. In fact, it's a pretty sweet deal - which is why you see alot of guys double-dip and pull two retirements. :roll: But let's not pretend that we deserve that at the expense of other, more important stuff.
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Who said anything about "let's just pull back from everywhere"? Not me certainly. I have simply been pointing out your complete lack of understanding of military spending and reality. You point to two things which make up about half of military spending and say that since they are the two biggest, you can't cut military spending without cutting those, which is patently stupid. Not only can you do just that, it is in fact a good idea to do that.
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:lol: this is funny coming from the person who didn't even understand her own cited source.
You know how you can tell when you're losing? You get ruder
.No, in fact, it is a remarkably dumb idea to do that. Because that means that you have fully functional ships full of willing sailors floating around wherever the tides take them because you don't have the money for any friggin fuel. Or you get satellites falling out of the sky and we can't replace them. Our F-15's are as old as the pilots flying them.
But there is a reason you refuse to get specific other than to reference vague "savings" from "efficiency". Because anything you hack into is going to hurt combat efficiency and global security. Which ultimately means more dead people. Main exception being unless you reform spending on the soft squishy people running all this equipment. Then you don't hurt combat efficiency / security so much.
Here's how we're spending:
SO in fact those two items are not "half", but rather just shy of "two thirds".
But hey, you keep on trying to solve the deficit without touching Social Security or Medicare. Maybe you can get some real good efficiencies out of squeezing foreign aid :roll:.
Seriously, you haven't picked up on the fact that we're looking at cutting 30,000 Marines, 100,000 Soldiers, and enough Naval Vessels to put our fleet back at pre-WWI size? We're not doing that for the kicks and giggles.
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