(Apologize in advance for the length Mr. Ben…)
Oh, you mean the “TrueTeaKoch™” Party?
Well, here’s something for you “TrueBeliever’s™ / “TrueDeceiver’s™” Yell/Holler/BlahBlahBlahTalkover’s to ponder:
Food Stamps are destroying America, …in “other” news, …“TruePurrrityyy™”! Persian Cat fights with a “TrueAnger™” Sphynx kitten!
Meeeeooow, hissssssssssssssss, Meeeeooow, hissssssssssssssss, Meeeeooow, hissssssssssssssss, Meeeeooow, hissssssssssssssss,
(Fur Flying: #$@!^####!!!#$@!^####!!!#$@!^####!!!#$@!^####!!!)
Give back the 2010 party dress, we only “loaned” it to you, peon Pee Party “TrueReducetheDeficitNOW!™” troubled child.
Hands off the zipper “TrueHypocrite’s™”!, we’re wearing it until “WE” decide to give it back! States Rights! = Loaners Rights! States Rights! = Loaners Rights! States Rights! = Loaners Rights!
Republicans Split Over Plans to Cut Defense Budget:
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and THOM SHANKER / Robert Pear contributed reporting
Published: January 26, 2011
(“TruePurrrityyy™”! Persian Cat): 
The cacophony of Republican voices on military spending has bred confusion on Capitol Hill, among military contractors and within the military itself, where no one is exactly sure what the members backed by the Tea Party will do. It also shows why taking on the military budget will be so hard, even though a widening deficit has led the president and the leaders of both parties to say this time they are serious.
But Representative Chris Gibson, a Tea Party-endorsed freshman Republican and retired Army colonel from New York’s Hudson River Valley, made clear that no part of the Pentagon’s $550 billion budget — some $700 billion including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — was immune.
Those differences were on display Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where the traditional Republican who now leads the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Howard P. McKeon, fought back against proposed cuts in the Pentagon budget even as fledgling committee members supported by the Tea Party said that the nation’s debts amounted to a national security risk.
WASHINGTON — To hear the Republican leadership tell it, the once-sacred Pentagon budget, protected by the party for generations, is suddenly on the table. But a closer look shows that even as Speaker John A. Boehner and Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, insist on the need for military cuts, divisions have opened among Republicans about whether, and how much, to chop Pentagon spending that comes to more than a half trillion dollars a year.
“TrueAnger™” Sphynx kitten!:
In an interview, Representative Vicky Hartzler, a freshman Missouri Republican backed by former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, said that her priorities were jobs and “reining in runaway spending.” But when asked about the Pentagon budget, Ms. Hartzler, who defeated former Representative Ike Skelton, the longtime Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that “now is not the time to talk about defense cuts while we are engaged in two theaters with men and women in harm’s way.”
Ms. Hartzler said she questioned the $78 billion in cuts to the military budget over the next five years, and added, “I will be a staunch defender of military installations in my district and across the country.” Ms. Hartzler’s district has two large military bases, Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman Air Force Base, home to the B-2 stealth bomber and a new ground-control station for unmanned Predator drones.
Representative Scott Rigell, a Republican newcomer from Virginia who at first sparred with the Tea Party but then signed a pledge supporting many of its positions, said that he, too, was committed to strong military spending. In an interview after the hearing, he said that “as a very first priority, it is our Constitutional duty to stand an army.”
Mr. Rigell said he supported in the Pentagon budget “any responsible, wise reduction that can clearly be identified as waste,” but needed more specific information before he could judge where to cut. His son, he said, is a member of the Marine reserve and drives an amphibious assault vehicle, an earlier version of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. On Mr. Gates’s decision to eliminate the EFV, Mr. Rigell said, “The abruptness of the decision is concerning me because we went down a long, long path. We went from it being a good decision and people defending it to ‘it must be cut.’ ”
Mr. Rigell, who represents a district around Virginia Beach that is economically dependent on the military installations, spoke at the hearing against Pentagon plans to move one of five nuclear aircraft carriers based in Norfolk to Mayport, Fla., taking with it 10,000 jobs.
Now, now we start to add the special secret ingredient: Fear! Fear! Fear!
Analysis: China prism focuses Pentagon budget on new weapons:
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
WASHINGTON | Tue Jan 25, 2011
Funding for a new generation of long-range nuclear bombers, new electronic jammers and radar, and rockets to launch satellites would help the U.S. military maintain its competitive edge even as China flexes its growing military muscle, Gates told reporters during his recent trip to Asia.
Revival of those projects — which Gates largely halted in April 2009 — would be good news for big U.S. defense companies like Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp, which are scrambling for new work now that defense spending is beginning to taper off.
William Hartung, author of “The Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex,” said China’s military buildup would be used to justify continued U.S. investment in big-ticket weapons.
“A lot of it is just institutions within the military and the contracting community trying to keep money flowing in the style to which they’ve become accustomed,” he said.
GOP Questions Pentagon ‘Efficiencies’
By Nathan Hodge
In a letter sent today to Mr. Gates, the Republican leadership of the House Armed Services Committee expressed “serious reservations” about plans to chop items like the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the Marine Corps’ next-generation amphibious tank, from the Defense Department’s shopping list. And they asked that the Pentagon put on hold any “stop work” orders on those items that are in line to be cut.
“Our immediate concern is that the Defense Department will take precipitous action in the near term that would undercut Congress’ ability to pass judgment on the recommendations,” states the letter, which is signed by Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R., Calif.), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R., Md.), Rep. Mac Thornberry (R., Texas), and several others.
The letter is part of an ongoing campaign by legislators to spare the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, but the members also questioned proposals to halt the Surface Launched Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile, a surface-to-air weapon with the rather marvelous acronym SLAMRAAM.
Republicans will hold defense spending bill until another tax cut for the rich is passed.
Well, there you have it, over 500 billion a year. To all you people who say that that is not the single biggest expense we have, you have just been proven wrong.
If we are to get serious about reducing our deficit it is clear that the military industrial complex should be looked at first. If they don’t cut there, then they don’t really care about our deficit.
While the ramifications for defense spending—described accurately as “a disaster,” “a gigantic problem,” and “the worst of all possible worlds”—seem not to be resonating on Capitol Hill, the consequences are real.
Freezing Defense Spending Actually Costs More Taxpayer Money
Congress may ultimately end up wasting taxpayer money and spending more to restore programs upended by funding uncertainty and stringent rules about new starts and expansions. As a senior Pentagon official recently explained, a yearlong CR “would certainly be inconsistent with what we’re trying to do in terms of smart management of the department.
Impact on the U.S. Military
The short-term CR has already created a number of unnecessary problems for the military. Sean Stackley, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Acquisition, Research and Development, outlined some of the practical effects of uncertainty on DoD spending plans:
Since we don’t have a 2011 spending bill in hand, we have to make certain assumptions regarding what will ultimately be appropriated, and that amount of uncertainty drives conservatism in terms of how you obligate the dollars that you do receive.
Part two, is that the dollars you receive, you’re not receiving a full year’s dollars. You’re receiving periodic updates, if you will, to your funding tables, and so you have major contract actions that are held in abeyance.
Stackley told reporters that a CR would hinder plans to grow the size of the U.S. Navy fleet. The President’s budget requested an additional $2 billion for shipbuilding over 2010 levels, and that funding is needed now to buy additional major surface combatants and increase production of Virginia-class submarines.
The men and women in uniform are also impacted when there are inadequate funds for defense in 2011. James McCarthy, Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Integration of Capabilities and Resources, said last week, “Manpower accounts are short about $500 million under the continuing resolution, while operations and maintenance is light by about $4.6 billion.” If Congress forces a yearlong CR on the services, money will have to be moved from urgent priorities to make up for these shortfalls in personnel funding and current operations.
Cost-Creating in the Name of Cost-Cutting:
By bringing the defense budget back up to the President’s requested and legitimately needed level, Congress would be saving itself from creating unnecessary longer-term costs. By forcing the military to postpone plans to buy needed items for those in uniform, Congress will not end up saving any money. When schedules slip, costs grow. When costs grow, the overall buy is cut. This destructive cycle costs more in the long run and will only be perpetuated by a Congress demanding savings, efficiency, and the smart use of taxpayer dollars.
Delaying defense programs virtually guarantees their cost growth not just this year and next but every year thereafter. Congress should consider these two options in order to pass a defense spending bill that fully funds the President’s budget request for FY 2011.
Mackenzie Eaglen is Research Fellow for National Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.
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