This time, it’s significant declines in state lottery revenues.
Any state with a balanced budget amendment will see things get much worse, and the handful of states without that need to act like it. (Washington State comes to mind)
Category: Budget
Bad Choice on Stimulus Package
It looks like much of the stimulus package will be going to roads, as opposed to mass transit and rail.
If you are going to be spending the money, do something to fix our unsustainable SUV lifestyle too.
Because His Friends Need Bigger Bonuses
So Hank Paulson wants Congress to releasing the remaining $350 billion in TARP bailout funds for banks, but the White House is simultaneously saying that they may not formally request this until Bush is out of office.
I’m not sure what is going on, but until Hank Paulson and His Evil Minions™ are out of the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, Congress should not release another dollar.
Murtha Calls for Cuts in DoD Budget
This is no surprise. Anyone with eyes can see that the defense budget is wasteful, bloated, and not serving the current security needs of the country.
It’s also refreshing that he wants to bring the “emergency wartime supplementals” back into the regular budget process, as well as noting that the defense procurement process is broken.
Of course, he also gets on his high horse about reinstating the draft, where I have mixed emotions.
January, 20 bitches.
Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is looking at a $500-700 billion package, and he wants it on Obama’s desk for inaugeration day.
IDF Shocked by JSF Price Spike
Well, the numbers that the Israelis are seeing :
“Defense News” reports that Ministry of Defense and Israel Air Force officials are “stunned by projected program costs for their Israel-unique version of the F-35” Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT). IAF and Ministry of Defense officials are struggling to pare a hefty list of customized subsystems and add-ons that threaten to ground the aircraft as unaffordable.
“Defense News” states that, in September, US F-35 program officials gave rough price and availability data to their Israeli counterparts, who reacted with sticker shock to the price tag of $200 million per plane. Since then, both sides have been seeking a new configuration that can meet IAF performance and budget requirements. The IDF had expected to pay about $2 billion – $80 million per plane – for the first 25 aircraft.
My money is on the Israeli numbers being closer to the truth than the Norwegian ones.
Doubtless, there costs with integrating Israeli systems into the airframe, but it’s increasingly clear that the high end estimates for cost are accurate, and largely unaffordable.
George W. Bush Broke Our Army
That’s, or at the least the conclusion that the US Army is broken, is the conclusion of well respected army analyst Andrew Krepinevich in a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments report.
His basic points:
- The quality of enlisted men and officers is decreasing despite significant pay hikes.
- Physical, educational, and “moral” (i.e. criminal conviction) standards have been lowered for recruits.
- NCO quality is suffering, because enlisted men ill suited to leadership are being promoted to NCO status.
- Falling reenlistment numbers.
- Increased use of stop loss to maintain staffing levels.
- The Army is attempting to create units that are simultaneously configured for both conventional and counterinsurgency warfare, and thus under performing at both.
He does not explicitly finger Bush, but Iraq is clearly mentioned as a part of the problem.
His recommendations:
- Make 15 Army BCTs dediucated to counter-insurgency/peacekeeping.
- Delay expanding the army until personnel quality issues are resolved.
- Cancel the FCS, which has dubious utility in a counter-insurgency scenario, and is sucking up too much budget.
It is likely that the ill effects of Iraq will weigh on the army for more than a decade.
And Now the Existing F-22 Fleet is Becoming Unaffordable
That is the unintended message from Pentagon acquisition executive John Young, who is asking for $8 Billion to upgrade the first 100 or so jets.
And it’s not just upgrades, the operational costs are spiking too:
But that’s not all the next Pentagon leaders will have to debate about the super-secret Raptor, he said. He said operational tests have showed the plane is “proving very expensive to operate.”
Those tests have shown what he called a negative trend, meaning the “maintenance man-hours per flying hour has increased through those tests. The last one was a substantial increase.”
Young also expressed concerns about the plane’s mission-capable rates, saying recent marks in the “62 percent kind of range” are “troubling.” He also said data shows the plane “meets some but not all” of its key performance parameters.”
Seriously, the Airforce won’t take budgeting and maintenance issues seriously until we take an entire generation of the Air Force’s latest and greatest to the Boneyard, Davis-Monthan AFB and chop them to bits while the UASF Chief of Staff is forced to watch.
This crap is absolutely out of control.
I Believe That This is Called Insubordination
Well, we now have this report that the Pentagon is doing its level best to subvert the decision making capabilities of the incoming administration:
The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.
While it is the right of conservatives to weigh in on the defense budget, the actions of the, “Uniformed Services” appears to be a direct challenge to the idea of civilian control of the military.
Douglas MacArthur was fired for simply saying in a letter to a Congressman that he disagreed with the President’s policy, and these folks are trying to gaslight Obama.
Paulson Won’t Ask For the Second $350B
There is only 10 weeks left in the (mis)rule of Bush and Paulson and their Evil Minions™, and now they are saying that they do not want the 2nd half of the bailout package.
So Obama, and whoever is his SecTreas will get to make the decision on that chunk of change.
I can’t figure this one out. They are passing up an opportunity to reward friends, and to fiscally constrain the incoming administration.
My guess is that given the incompetence, opacity, and general corruption of Paulson, he realizes that the Congress will attach strings to the second half that will get his ass thrown in jail over what he did with the first $350 billion.
NASA Fracks Up Again
Yep, NASA’s Ares crew vehicle, and Orion launcher are looking at a 2½ year delay and a $7 billion cost overrun.
Maybe we should bring in a management team from the private sector that would do better at managing their program, someone like Bear Stearns, Lehman, or AIG.
F-22 Production Part Purchase Memo Signed
It will keep the line open into the beginning of the year, but the interesting thing is that they had budget authorization to purchase 20 plane sets, but only signed a memo for 4.
But only parts for 4 aircraft, not the 20 that they could have.
This is an interesting because it recognizes the reality that the line is likely to be shut down.
DBB Calls for Massive Pentagon Cuts
It’s nice to know that the Pentagon’s Defense Business Board is calling for real and deep cuts in weapons procurement spending.
I don’t think that it will amount to much though. I think that Obama will largely be rolled by the Pentagon, just like Clinton was.
Your Defense Dollars at Work
As the sole sponsor of the series, Air Force will create custom intro billboards that will run with each pilot and interactive media placements that will live across the Xbox LIVE online entertainment network and the Xbox.com website. Users can click on these custom units and engage directly with the Air Force Brand Destination which offers users the opportunity to learn more about the Air Force through video downloads, gamer pictures and theme packages. GSD&M Idea City, the Air Force’s advertising agency orchestrated the sponsorship.
Barney Frank is right, we are spending way too much money on defense.
USAF Playing Budget Make-Believe on JSF
The USAF is trying to boost JSF funding to move forward development and production.
This is not achievable:
The JSF program has set itself some lofty goals. Even with the new mid-2014 date for the completion of operational testing (OT) the flight-test team has to average 70-plus sorties per month, starting yesterday, to get there. (This is based on the 5100 total sorties mentioned in a GAO report early this year.)
That’s as many flights as the program has notched up in the past two years.
So,what is going on?
I think that they art either looking at a larger buy, or they want to make sure that they have spent so much money that cutbacks are simply not viable.
When you consider that military spending is the highest that it has been since the end of WWII, with fewer troops, ships, and planes than at any time since WWII, this is an indicator of profound dysfunction/
Boeing Blinks on C-17
Remember how Boeing said that it needed to build 15 C-17s/year to keep the line open?
Well, now that the credit crisis has hit, and a Democrat has been elected president, they are walking away from that demand, saying that they might be able to take production to 8 planes/year.
They realized that lying about required orders might have the whole thing shut down/
Our Broken Defense Budgets
A paper by the Center for Defense Information, “The Other Meltdown: Little to Show for Huge Defense Budgets.”
Money quote:
Perhaps you need a short review. America’s defense budget is now larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II. However, our Army has fewer combat divisions than at any point in that period, our Navy has fewer combat ships and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft.
Go read.
$206 Billion Cost Growth: 5 Weapons Systems
Yep, just five weapons gave us $206 billion in cost overruns:
- Lockheed Martin Corp.: F-35 Lightning II, $66.8 billion
- Boeing: Future Combat Systems, $69.7 billion
- Lockheed and Boeing’s: Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, $18.5 billion
- General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman: Virginia-class SSN, $27.3
- Various: Chemical Demilitarization program, $23.4 billion
The last one covers a number of contractors, and is for destroying US Chemical warfare stockpiles.
How the hell do you go that far over budget incinerating nerve gas? Just how much of this stuff is lying around in arsenals?
Seriously DoD procurement is completely out of control, and it’s going to take us down the way it took down the USSR.
Delusional DoD Plans to Sandbag Next Pres, Barney Frank Fires Back
Well, it looks like the DoD is ready for their next war, this one against the American tax payer:
As President George W. Bush prepares to leave office in three months, his budget writers at the Pentagon are planning to dump a giant budget increase on the team that replaces them.
Bradley Berkson, the Pentagon’s director of program analysis and evaluation, confirmed that defense budget officials are preparing spending plans for the next six years that add about $60 billion a year to the “base” military budget.
That would push the planned 2010 “base” defense budget to $587 billion, up from the previously proposed $527 billion. It would add $360 billion to Pentagon spending over six years.
In addition to the base budget for 2010, the Defense Department will need “supplemental” funding to keep fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Berkson said during an interview on the television show “This Week in Defense News.” The interview is slated to air on Oct. 22
….
I guess that this is because with the US responsible for over hall of the world’s defense spending, they need more money.
Here is the money quote:
By adding $60 billion a year to the long-range defense spending plan, the outgoing administration could put pressure on the new administration to boost military spending that was scheduled to level off after a decade of substantial increases. Any defense spending proposal that is lower than Bush’s 11th-hour bulked-up budget could be assailed as a defense spending cut.
This at a time when we are spending more on defense as a percentage of GDP than at any time since the end of WWII. More than Korea, more than Viet Nam, and more than during the invasion of Grenada.
Luckily, the tax payers have Dem. Barney Frank on thier side, and he’s proposing a 25% cut in military spending, which would be a good start.
We need boots on the ground, and M4/M16s. We don’t need the JSF, DDG-1000, EFV, FCS, etc.
I would also add that there are currently 5 enlisted men per 1 officer….For most of the existence of the military, it has been 10:1. It is a good place to save money, though some of that should go back into retaining the senior NCO corps who are leaving in droves.
Pantagon Slow Walking Directed Energy Weapons
Not just lasers, but also things like electronics frying high power microwaves, etc.
This appears to be driven by cost and obsolescence issues(paid subscription required):
….
“Cross-domain synergies [result] when a [cyber or electronic] nonkinetic and [an explosive] kinetic weapon of any kind can be used in concert,” says Maj. Gen. William Lord, chief of Cyber Command (Provisional). “This can potentially be a weapon of mass disruption [that unlike a bomb, you can] ratchet back. It’s about changing enemy behavior [without] total destruction. What cyber– [and electronic attack] weapons bring is something between a letter and a 2,000-lb. bomb.”
“We’re trying to bring [cyber– and electronic weapons] all together as a total investment for the benefit of the warfighter,” says Jay Kistler, technology adviser for the Pentagon’s Office of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L). “We’re working with all the players who are trying to get their arms around what we mean by cyber-operations and how we control them. And there is the recognition that electronic warfare overlaps cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”
….
“It can’t take 10-15 years to develop [a cyber– or electronic weapon],” says Lord. “We need things that get created and then [thrown] away in months, weeks or days. There also is a group looking at how to do more rapid acquisition.
So in addition to the inevitable draw down on Pentagon budgets (more on that later), the fact that they are dealing with civilian, and civilian derived, devices that have a total life cycle of less than 5 years from beginning of development to withdrawal from the market, mean that they don’t know how to make all their whiz bang work.
Of course the fact that they are using the term, “synergies,” strongly implies that the people in this field are bullsh#% artists too.