This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Defense cuts

  • Sequestration News

    Let’s take a brief look at how sequestration is being implemented:

    • Sequestration cuts to Executive Office of the President Budget:  $24,000,000 ($24 million)
    • Number of civilian employees:  approx 2,000
    • Average cut per employee:  $12,000
    • Announced impact so far:  cancellation of White House tours (will save approx $2,000,000 in overtime)

    According to this article, the estimated travel cost for the recent POTUS trip to play golf with Tiger Woods would have covered the costs of White House tours for the rest of the year.   But that’s OK – playing golf with a famous celebrity like Woods is obviously more important than letting the public see the taxpayer-owned White House where the POTUS lives rent-free.

    In contrast:

    • Sequestration cuts to Department of Defense Budget:  $46,000,000,000 ($46 billion)
    • Number of civilian employees:  approx 800,000
    • Average cut per employee:  $57,500  (Military personnel were exempted from sequestration pay cuts by the POTUS.)
    • Announced impact:  up to 22 unpaid workdays off between now and 30 Sep for most DoD civilian employees

    Yeah, that seems fair.   It certainly looks like everyone’s doing their part, doesn’t it?

  • Sequester lies

    Yesterday, the president surrounded himself with first responders while he lectured the American people on the impending spending cuts in the government known as “sequester”. from the Washington Examiner;

    “Emergency responders like the ones who are here today — their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded,” he said. “Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.”

    Since when are teachers, child care providers, doctors and nurses, police and fire fighters federal employees? Those services are paid for with local taxes, not federal funds. Of course, that’s the kind of scare tactics to which we’ve become accustomed over the last few decades. I noticed that the President didn’t bother to mention that the whole sequester thing was one of those bright ideas which came out of his White House, yet somehow it’s Congress’ fault.

    The Defense Department is staring down the barrel of 700,000 job losses 495,000 of those jobs are in the DC area, which might be uncomfortable for the White House. The Washington Post says that the sequester might result in a quarter-point jump in the unemployment rate.

    Of course, it’s all because the Administration is holding out for higher taxes instead of meaningful spending cuts. And, oh, yeah, they think that they can depend on savings from withdrawal from Afghanistan for spending reductions. You know like that savings we were supposed to have from the withdrawal from Iraq – no one is talking about that magical surplus which never materialized.

    Congress isn’t ready to raise taxes again, so Obama is stuck playing the blame game. From the Washington Times;

    GOP House Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday the House has twice passed a plan to replace the so-called sequester with “common sense cuts,” but Mr. Obama has so far been unwilling to find enough savings from overhauling Medicare and Social Security. The president, he said, is relying too heavily on plans to increase taxes again.

    “Just last month, the president got his higher taxes on the wealthy, and he’s already back for more,” Ohio’s Mr. Boehner said in a statement. The Democrats’ “new-found concern about the president’s sequester is appreciated, but words alone won’t avert it.”

    Also from the Times, sequester is forcing defense contractor to send jobs overseas;

    First Line Technologies of Chantilly, Va., makes cooling vests for troops to wear underneath their body armor and employs about a dozen people. Having experienced rapid growth last year, it was readying to hire about a dozen more workers before the uncertainty over sequestration developed, company President Amit Kapoor said.

    Now, First Line Technologies is looking to market its products overseas and will hire employees abroad. Its strategy is to move quickly into overseas markets to avoid layoffs or having to close.

    We still have 47 months of this shit ahead.

  • Federal Fiscal Follies, Part III – Social Security Disability Insurance

    Yesterday, I wrote about Social Security’s impact on wage earners.  But as I said yesterday:  that’s not all that’s problematic about Social Security.  It gets even “better”.  Fair warning:  unless you’re a bleeding-heart libidiot who believes the primary function of government is to create a cradle-to-grave welfare state through income redistribution, what follows will probably piss you off.

    Of those receiving Social Security benefits, a record number – nearly 8.8 million, around 15.6% of the total and approaching 1 in 6 Social Security recipients – are currently receiving Social Security disability benefit payments.  Since there are about 142.1 million people in the US working, that’s one person receiving disability benefits for each 16.2 persons gainfully employed.  In 1967, that ratio was about 65 to 1.

    By law (42 USC 423) Social Security disability benefits may only be awarded to those who can hold no gainful employment of any type (and in some cases, to their dependents).  I simply do not believe that nearly 9 million people of working age in the US – or the equivalent of about 1 out of every 17.5 persons in the US civilian labor force – are so medically or mentally “Bravo Delta” that they cannot perform any type of gainful work whatsoever under any circumstances.  (You’ve really got to be in bad shape to be physically/mentally unable to sit at a reception desk or work as a janitor.) And information recently made public confirms that belief

    What’s caused this?  Well, there has recently been a huge expansion in the number of persons receiving Social Security disability benefits.  And at the same time, the Social Security disability program also appears to have become “Easy Money Street” when it comes to awarding disability benefits.  According to a recent Senate report, about 1/4 of recent Social Security disability benefits appear to have been awarded improperly.

    Here are the specifics:  since January 2009, roughly 5.7 million have been awarded Social Security disability benefits.  I’ll let you do the math yourself to figure out how many of those were likely awarded improperly.

    Now, for the bottom line:  as of July 2012, the average Social Security disability check was a bit over $1100 a month – or around $13,300 a year.  Multiply that by 8.8 million recipients, and that’s somewhere around $117 billion a year – or about 18% of Social Security costs today.  And based on what’s been made public, it looks like around 1/4 of those disability benefits – or about $29.3 billion this year – were very likely awarded improperly and should not be paid.

    “Not pretty”?  Hell, that’s absolutely butt-ugly!

    Like the rest of Social Security, I doubt this part of Social Security will shrink much any time soon – frankly, I personally doubt it will shrink at all.  But it certainly looks like the DoD budget will.  I guess continuing to pay improperly-awarded disability benefits is more important than defending the country.

    That’s all for today.  But yes – there’s more to come.  In a future article, I’ll next discuss another problematic Federal income transfer program:  the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as “foodstamps”.

    Oh, and if this article pissed you off – I think you’re gonna love the next one.

  • Federal Fiscal Follies – Part II

    I wrote the other day about the ridiculous economic cost of Federal regulation – which is estimated by two different credible sources to exceed 10% of the US GDP by 2014 if it hasn’t already done so.  Well, today I’ll be continuing that theme.

    I’ve written previously about Federal entitlement programs – Social Security in particular.  We now have more hard data showing exactly how such programs are slowly bankrupting the US.  Figures for this year’s Social Security payments through the end of August 2012 are now available.

    They’re not pretty.

    For those who didn’t know or who’d forgotten:  the Federal government’s financial (fiscal) year runs from 1 October to 30 September.  That means we’re nearing the end of the current Federal fiscal year.

    August data showed that the Federal government has already paid more than $594.64 billion to Social Security beneficiaries – with one month remaining in the current Federal fiscal year.  Assuming Social Security payments for September are the average of the previous 11 months, that means the Federal government will transfer nearly $650 billion from wage earners to Social Security beneficiaries this fiscal year.  That will be close to a 10% increase from last year’s nearly $591.5 billion in Social Security payments – which was the previous record high.

    To put this in perspective:   the DoD Base Budget request for fiscal 2012 was about $553 billion.  Another $118 billion was requested by DoD to support overseas contingency operations.  Yes, you read that right – this year, the Federal government will spend nearly as much on Social Security alone as it did on  DoD.   Given upcoming near-certain cuts to DoD’s budget next year and demographics, I’d guess we’ll probably see “crossover” next year.

    August 2012 also  marks the all-time high for the number of people receiving Social Security benefits – 56,291,797.  Based on the current US population estimate of a bit under 317.5  million, this means close to 18% of the US population – or approaching 1 out of every 5 US residents – is currently receiving income transfer payments from Social Security alone. And remember:  that percentage does not include those receiving income transfers from other Federal entitlement programs like AFDC, Medicare, Medicaid,  subsidized housing, or other welfare programs.

    And today I’m not even going to discuss all of the issues with Social Security.  More to follow on that score – tomorrow.

    But let’s take a moment to recap what we have so far.  Government regulation costs the US economy around $1.8 trillion annually.  Let’s assume 2/3 of that regulatory cost is unnecessary.  Social Security takes roughly another $650 billion out of wage earner’s pockets.  So that means between waste due to compliance with unnecessary Federal regulation and Social Security, the Federal government has is responsible for taking close to $2 trillion from those who earned it.

    And that nearly $2 trillion total doesn’t include income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, employer payroll taxes besides Social Security OASDI – or any other taxes.  That’s only the income lost to wage earners due to Social Security plus the waste caused by unnecessary governmental regulation.

    H. Ross Perot was wrong.  That “giant sucking sound” you hear isn’t jobs going South.  It’s the sound of the Federal government siphoning off 12.3% of the GDP between government-mandated waste and support for Social Security.

    And the truly scary part?  That’ nowhere near all that’s being siphoned away from those who earn it.

  • On Patrol in the Gulf

    No, this isn’t “Navy week” here at TAH.  Well, not unless Jonn forgot to send me a copy of the memo.  (smile)  But this is indeed another nautically-themed article.

    Today our Navy rules the sea.  But lest we forget:  we’re not the only country with competent and capable naval forces.  Our Navy is damned good – but it’s not omnipotent, nor is it omniscient.  Any Navy has its limitations.  And sometimes the other guy is, well, just plain good.

    Recently, the Russian Navy apparently decided to remind us they exist.  They sent naval forces into the Gulf.

    As in, “the Gulf of Mexico”.

    No, I didn’t hear about it at the time.  That was by design on the part of the Russians.  The force they sent to the Gulf reportedly consisted of an Akula-class submarine.

    The Akula apparently was not detected while on patrol in the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s reputed to have operated there, without detection, for about a month.

    An Akula can reportedly carry cruise missiles – the SS-N-21 and the SS-N-27 – with the former having a range of just under 1,900 miles.  Though currently barred from a nuclear role by START-2, that missile is also capable of delivering a 200kT nuclear warhead.

    All of CONUS except for the extreme Pacific Northwest is less than 1,900 miles away from Galveston, TX.

    I have to say I find this a bit disconcerting.  Because history has repeatedly demonstrated – and sometimes taught us the hard way, like in 1941, 1950, 1968, and 2001 – the high cost of being complacent and ignoring potential threats.

    And I can’t see how defense cuts proposed for the next few years will improve the situation, either.

  • Armed Services Chair calls on Governors’ help

    Howard “Buck” McKeon (R) is calling on the Presidentially appointed, bipartisan Council of Governors to support his efforts at heading off the arbitrary sequestration cuts set to literally decimate the defense budget. McKeon has been a frequent and vocal advocate for vets, active and reserve service members and a robust, healthy defense apparatus in general. Previously the Council of Governors made a successful push to trim back cuts to the Air Force National Guard in their states. NIMBY politics, maybe, but effective and prudent. Now McKeon hopes that this organization of ten governors can act as a relief force for the rest of the military.

    Normally I’d say that outside of their local needs most of these politicans would happily throw the military to the wolves. After all, just as Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.” The good news? These politics are local. Of the ten Governors on the Council all five of the Democrats, a group normally ambivalent to defense spending as it doesn’t yield demographic patronage for their party, are the Governors of states with large military communities and/or facilities. That means jobs and money.

    These states are Washington (PSNS/Naval Base Kitsap/JBLM/Naval Base Everett), Maryland (NSA/Aberdeen/Andrews/contractors galore), North Carolina (Bragg/Pope/Lejeune/Cherry Point), Oklahoma (Tinker/Sill), Hawai’i (MCB Hawaii/Pearl Harbor) and Missouri (Whitman/Leonard Wood). This may be the best chance yet for a bipartisan commission of the President’s own choosing to rebuke the pending cuts. If you live in any of these states you should be looking up the contact info of both your Governor and your State Rep and demanding they back Rep McKeon. With the election looming Obama must scramble to preserve jobs, even if they come from the “evil” military-industrial complex. This is exactly where we should be hitting him.

  • Your healthcare costs are rising to pay for Panetta’s trips home

    Two articles in the Stars & Stripes today that kind of tell you how much the Pentagon thinks of your service. In one article, they highlight how your share of healthcare costs are rising;

    “It’s just a slap in the face,” said [Air Force Master Sgt. Floyd Sears, 81] who retired in 1971 and receives $1789 a month in military retirement. “It’s an insult, a real insult, that we would get pushed around like that.”

    The TLF fee, if Congress were to agree to it, would be “tiered” based on level of retired pay. Retirees who draw less than $22,590 a year in military retired pay would pay $35 to enroll in [Tricare for Life (TFL)] for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The fee would climb annually to reach $150 by 2016. Thereafter it would be adjusted yearly to keep pace with the percentage rise in nationwide health care costs.

    But, the kicker is in the second article, about how Leon Panetta takes his private Secretary of Defense plane back to California every Friday and returns every Sunday night to DC.

    So while retirees are facing unprecedented healthcare cost increases, Panetta can’t spend a few weekends every year in DC and save the taxpayers a few $32,000 trips to California so he can spend the weekend watching his DVR’d primetime shows.

  • Corps’ initial cuts foreshadow diminished core capabilities

    The Marine Corps announced today that it will be forced to cut four infantry battalions and a staggering twelve flying squadrons, along with three associated Headquarters units. This is in order to slim down by 20,000 service members as necessitated by the first half trillion dollar cut in defense spending. In 2007 the Marines began to reform the storied battalions of the 9th Marine Regiment. The Marines reconstituted the Regiment’s three battalions and put them into the command structure of other Regiments, avoiding the need to stand up a new HQ unit. My guess is that they’ll again decommission these battalions.

    At the same time this news was hitting the wires came the announcement that the Army will be dipping into traditional Marine Corps territory by joining in on Pacific theater oriented “forced entry” training as the Marines resume focus on that, long neglected and traditional, modus operandi. From the Army Times:

    The two services are planning a series of exercises likely to take place in North Carolina, where tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines are based at Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune, which are located just 90 miles apart. With the future security environment uncertain, and an end in sight to combat operations in Afghanistan, the services are discussing ways to leverage complimentary capabilities, said Lt. Gen. Richard Mills, the Corps’ deputy commandant for combat development and integration who serves also as commander of Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va.

    “As we look at new strategies, as we look at potential areas of operations in the Pacific, I think it’s very natural that the Marines and the Army discuss it … should we have to go somewhere where people don’t want us to go,” Mills said.

    The article goes on to talk about how the Marines and Army have conducted many joint operations and training exercises in the past (duh) but the reality is that this is an alignment in the strategic relationship between the two services, not seen since the Second World War.

    With baseline, not war, funding cuts already causing the cancellation of the Marine Corps’ only viable amphibious vehicle, the EFV, and a toxic combination of contractor bloat, politics and defense cuts imperiling the F-35B the Marines may be soon left in a situation where their MEUs have no ship to shore combat vehicle and no organic fixed wing support, nor enough bodies to go around even if they did.

    It’s also worth bearing in mind that this is only the first round of cuts for this coming decade. Should the efforts of hard charging, military friendly, Congressmen like Buck McKeon fail and looming sequestration come to pass you can expect twice these cuts. Because of the anti-military Progressive Democrats and anti-spending libertarian Republicans even if sequestration is averted you can expect more cuts on the margins, and soon.

    If that does happen we might find that Obama has fulfilled his promise not to create a “hollowed out force”. True to his word we’ll have a “no show force”.