Read the article and you will find very disturbing things related to Defense Budget.
A couple of examples;
"The Committee is disappointed that the Navy has planned to decommission two ships, the USS Detroit and the USS Little Rock, that are five and four years old, respectively,” the panel’s report read.
The Navy’s budget director said during the service’s budget rollout in February that the cost of upgrading and repairing the first four littoral combat ships is too high and that it’s better to decommission them."
Ships that are less than 5 years old are too expensive to upgrade??? What the fuck?!
"The Biden administration’s omission of the second destroyer was controversial on Capitol Hill because without it the Navy cannot meet its obligation under multiyear contracts with both Ingalls Shipbuilding and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works. Those contracts call for each of the companies to build one ship in fiscal 2022.
Not only does such a move harm “the already fragile domestic shipbuilding industrial base,” the report read, but the Navy had already delayed the detail design and construction schedule of the planned follow-on program to FY26 at the earliest."
We don’t need the ships, but we need to prop up the shipbuilding industry? HOLY HELL!
Its just the tip of the iceberg. Baseline budgeting must go for massive spending reform to ever happen.
One of my corporate offices shared building space with a federal agency. Outside in the parking lot you could see about 100 vehicles that never moved and a small handful of them that sometimes moved. They disappeared and got a new fleet. It is just unbelievable how inefficient the feds spend our money.
On the flip side my local town, by the time they decide to sell off surplus vehicles and equipment, you don’t want them. They literally drive them into the ground because of limited funds and maximum accountability. Similar thing happens at my corporate employer. By they time they unload surplus it is basically scrap. I am part of the budget team, when people put in for new capex, it better be needed and fully vetted if another department has surplus sitting around. The senior executives get down into the weeds and will question every nickel.
That’s exactly what Ike was talking about with his “military industrial complex” speech. They put weapons manufacturing in districts all across the country and we buy things they have no need for. Same with other supplies. The companies hire former military and it becomes a revolving door. Military readiness has little to do with any of it. They could be as ready as today with half the budget.
Same thing years ago when people at the college where I work thought we could get rid of the car the president was given to use because they considered it a perk. The mileage would have cost much more.
Now imagine how this occurs across all industries dominated or heavily interfered with by the federal government. Agriculture, transportation, finance, etc. Sickening. Theft from the lowest earners to make already-filthy-rich people even filthy-richer.