{"id":15079,"date":"2009-10-15T17:31:19","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T22:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=15079"},"modified":"2009-10-15T17:34:12","modified_gmt":"2009-10-15T22:34:12","slug":"who-needs-bullets-during-a-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=15079","title":{"rendered":"Who needs bullets during a war"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article at the Washington Times<\/a> reports that Congress stripped out $2.6 billion from the Defense budget to fund 778 pet projects (read that: earmarks). Money that should have gone to buying ammunition, fuel and training instead found it’s way into more critical areas;<\/p>\n

$25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.<\/p>\n

While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, “in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So while the Obama Administration diddles on whether to supply our toops engaged with an enemy in a far away land, the Congress is busy wrestling their money away from them to buy patronage here at home for their political aspirations next year.<\/p>\n

The Kennedy museum thingie – that was from John “who wants to be the last to die for a lie” Kerry. <\/p>\n

“Sen. Kennedy served on the Armed Services Committee for 27 years, where he fought to deliver top-of-the-line body armor and armored Humvees to protect our troops and save lives. Educating Americans about these battles is a core mission for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, which showcases one senator’s ability to make a difference,” Mr. Smith wrote in an e-mail. “This funding will help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute become one the nation’s pre-eminent civic educational institutions, and Sen. Kerry is proud to have worked with Chairman Inouye to make it possible.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, and let’s make the military buy stuff thay don’t need;<\/p>\n

In addition to the $2.6 billion in earmarks, the bill includes $2.5 billion for 10 Boeing C-17 cargo planes that the military says it does not need, and $1.7 billion for an extra DDG-51 destroyer not requested in the Pentagon’s budget proposal. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s it costing the military to pay for politicians’ patronage?<\/p>\n

“Air Force and Navy combat pilots training to deploy are getting about half of the flying hours they got at the end of the Vietnam War,” he wrote in his analysis. “Army tank crews get less in tank training today than they did during the low-readiness Clinton years.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, Republicans did the same thing while they ran Congress – and they lost public and political support because of it. I haven’t given a penny to Republicans since 2004. Will Democrats do the same to their politicians? Fat chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article at the Washington Times reports that Congress stripped out $2.6 billion from the Defense … Who needs bullets during a war<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,89,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-congress-sucks","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}