{"id":29854,"date":"2012-05-07T12:30:44","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T16:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29854"},"modified":"2012-05-07T12:30:44","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T16:30:44","slug":"washington-times-defense-budget-casualties-light-on-civilian-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29854","title":{"rendered":"Washington Times: Defense budget casualties light on civilian side"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Times<\/a> reports that after an increase of about 61,000 DoD civilians during the Obama Administration, only about 1% are facing cuts in an age of slashing the number trigger-pullers and their armaments.<\/p>\n

Some defense analysts say this was not supposed to happen.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2010, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced a series of cost-saving initiatives that included keeping civilian employees to that year\u2019s number of 778,000. The services started issuing press releases on the number of civilian jobs they had erased.<\/p>\n

Two years later, civilian employment has risen by 23,000 personnel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhile the fighting force is coming down, the overhead continues to grow,\u201d [Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine Corps Reserve major general ] said. \u201cIt was an adverse ratio to start with, and it\u2019s getting worse. You want to put your money in the tip of the spear, not in the rear with the gear.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, I guess the only thing the Defense Department is tasked with defending is the unemployment rate. In the article, the Defense Department defends the increases because they’re improving acquisition and health care with civilians, they call it “InSource” – converting contractor jobs to civilian employees. But if there’s nothing to acquire and they’re slashing healthcare for veterans, why the increases in manpower to service those areas?<\/p>\n

Looked at another way, the Pentagon\u2019s 801,000 civilians exceed the combined size of the active-duty Navy and Air Force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Congressional Republicans are proposing that the civilian workforce at DoD be cut by 10%, still a smaller cut than total force will suffer, but a much more realistic reduction. But, Leon Pannetta who makes $32,000 trips to his California home every weekend at the taxpayers’ expense is fighting to keep the civvies on the payroll;<\/p>\n

The issue came to a head as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta appeared, with Mr. Hale, before the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t think you should de-trigger sequester on the backs of our civilian workforce,\u201d Mr. Panetta testified. \u201cI mean, I realize that savings could be achieved there, but the civilian workforce does perform a very important role for us in terms of support.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, it’s fine to balance the budget on the backs of the veterans and on the back of our national security. Yeah, Panetta was a brilliant choice for the guy we need in charge of defending our country. I’m sure that the unions love him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Times reports that after an increase of about 61,000 DoD civilians during the Obama … Washington Times: Defense budget casualties light on civilian side<\/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":[46,84,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-military-issues","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29854","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=29854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}