The Pentagon, facing smaller budgets and looking towards a new global strategy, has decided it wants to save as much as $3 billion by freezing refurbishment of the M1 from 2014 to 2017, so it can redesign the hulking, clanking vehicle from top to bottom.
This is the bad news…
The tank’s supporters on Capitol Hill say they are desperate to save jobs in their districts and concerned about undermining America’s military capability.
So far, the contractor is winning the battle, after a well-organized campaign of lobbying and political donations involving the lawmakers on four key committees that will decide the tanks’ fate, according to an analysis of spending and lobbying records by the Center for Public Integrity.
This is not about partisanship as both Democrats and Republicans are supporting the spending. This has nothing to do with Citizen’s United since it is good old fashioned bribery. This is a great example of how our country wastes so much freaking money not hints we don’t even need! The Pentagon doesn’t want the tanks so don’t spend the money building/fixing the tanks. I said the same thing last week concerning the F-35 fighter which is a huge budget buster that we don’t need.
When will we pull our heads out of our butts and realize how many bridges/overpasses could have been repaired instead of building tanks we don’t need or want? How many residents could have received tax breaks for solar panels or hybrid vehicles instead of outdated military equipment the Pentagon didn’t ask for?
Call your Senator and Congressman and say NO to this spending! And call the POTUS and tell him to veto this thing if it gets to his desk.
I’ve thought for a while that Pentagon requests should be the ceiling rather than the floor. Unfortunately, POTUS, unlike several Governors including ours, does not have line item veto authority, nor is there a requirement that budget requests originate in the executive branch as I believe the Confederate Constitution required.
I think that the risk of unintended consequences associated with introducing the line-item veto greatly outweigh the contemplated benefits.
While I agree that congress is totally dysfunctional today, in my view that problem is readily addressed at the ballot box. A line-item veto would give an already too-powerful Oval Office even more power.
Meanwhile, I heartily applaud JohnD’s call for sanity in defense spending.
Even though it may suck to be on the wrong side of it, but at least it makes the Legislature really want something to override that veto. We see this in Gov Patrick’s recent veto/threats and while I disagree with his choices I do like the process.
No other kind of spending creates jobs, apparently.
right johnd?
The cost to get a gallon of fuel for a Humvee in Afghanstan works out to be $400/gallon.
We need troops on the ground in a lot of places and they need a range of support services. They also have dependants.
If given a choice the military will cut things like maintenance. The Navy apparently stretched out a lot of maintenance schedules and this resulted in more ships out of service and higher repair costs.
There are so many built in costs it’s crazy. When you reduce the number of units of a weapon systems bought, it raises the per unit costs as the fixed costs are spread around.
We really need a new overall mission assessment that takes into account economics. We can be deployed everywhere, we can’t have everything (ballastic missle subs?).
Ulitmately what will happen I believe is that they’ll make the troops suffer first, then maintenance.
This M-1 stuff is crap. It’s made (and refurbished) in Lima, OH so I suppose it will be a campaign issue.
but I also believe that this is nothing but politics. The Pentagon should be the place where the “plan” is devised to “defend” the country. These Congressmen/Senators picking programs to benefit their states is sinful.
The question is not how beneficial is this type of spending but how much more beneficial would another method of spending be to benefit the country.
Maintenance always goes first which is a terrible decision in any case and typical of short term thinkers.
Are we really on the front lines fighting terrorism in Afghanistan?
Do we really need to be in Europe?
Is China really a threat?
What is the role of nuclear deterrence? How extensive a nuclear force do we need?
The people need to be behind any change (like we accept that we can’t afford to have a military larger than the rest of the world combined) and I don’t think the Pentagon will come at from that direction. If you said cut the military by 10%, I bet every service would take the same haircut without an appropriate match to the mission.
I agree 100% JohnD but any Congressmen or Senator who doesn’t save bases gets shown the door. Frankly Otis was obsolete decades ago but Senator Kennedy and Kerry kept it alive, and were widely praised for it here and in other outlets. Its dubious that the Maine body works are still alive and kicking, particularly considering the capacity of centralizing operations at Newport News and the need for more construction on the West Coast where the blue water Navy is far more strategically useful. But the Maine twins and SoD Cohen kept it alive. There are hundreds of examples of this, every Defense secretary in modern times has used the BRAC thoughtfully and without care to politics just what the military needs yet its always ‘controversial’ locally. When it comes to pork barrel projects its the opposite of NIMBY, more like OIMBY (only in my back yard).
but that’s part of the problem. Listen to BMGers talking trash about the Tea Party Congress we have, well… who put them there. The people they represent elected them and now they are doing what their constituents elected them to do. We may all be suffering from the do-nothing Congress but I think you are right that they are no different than Kennedy/Kerry OR Kerry/Brown voting for what voters in MA want (high defense spending for jobs at Raytheon…). No wonder we are so screwed!
The Senate Armed Forces Committee was not that interested in saving lives or dollars just six week ago (that includes our junior senator)
Boston Globe June 7, 2012
“Despite the fact that the Pentagon is the single biggest consumer of fossil fuels in the entire world, the Senate Armed Services Committee recently voted to prohibit the military from spending money “for the production or sole purchase of an alternative fuel.
Oil and water are the two commodities we import the most to the battlefield; the long line of a supply chain is a welcome mat for every IED and enemy. The biggest cost driver in the Pentagon’s shrinking budget is oil; fuel increases in 2011 and 2012 cost the government an extra $3 billion.
The entire green initiative requires a $170 million annual investment, a fraction of the average cost of a Navy ship.”
Renewable fuels help with supply chains and also we can make sure its all domestically produced so our military is not held hostage by Middle Eastern oil or supply line issues like in Pakistan.