Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolfpack
We should do what the Pentagon itself recommends we do. I have no problem with cutting military spending in accordance with what the Pentagon recommends
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Yes. The single largest discretionary spending program in the known universe should be asked to write its own ticket.
They will naturally cut their own budget by billions.
That is how we can scale down big government... we can just ask each cabinet level department how much they need... and then when they say, we should say
"really?" like really skeptically. Then if they still say yes, well, they must really need that much.
The way you do it is you say, give me your budget submission, and make your total $X, or I'll tell you to do it again. The time for that approach was when the '13 budget submissions went up. The '12 submissions are way past a year old now. And as we all know, they're all exercises in futility because congress is offline.
The Pentagon's budget doubled in the last decade. They're also being asked to do a lot more.
So two things, ask them to do less (check, in terms of Iraq winding down,) and begin reversing the explosion in military budget growth of the last decade.
Politically, it'll be interesting. Doing the right thing might involve vetoing a military spending bill - that's where the rubber hits the road. It's where you're hitting much of the nation's knee cap with the tap hammer, to see whether the reflex has changed.
Watching & seeing.
PFnV