After a week of debate and negotiations, we have a Speaker of the House. As of yesterday, we now have an approved rules package, and now the ‘work’ of our elected Representatives begins – or at least is supposed to.
Making headlines, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio ran the Fox News circuit, hinting that one of the priorities of the new Republican House majority is to cut bloated spending.
What could be on the chopping block?
None other than the Department of Defense, which naturally has the usual Republican war hawks and bizarrely pro-military spending Democrats up in arms clutching their pearls, wondering how on Earth we will ever protect the homeland if we dare to make cuts to the incredibly bloated defense machine.
As a former CIA case officer, I’m keenly aware of the national security threats to our country.
That’s why I’m opposed to the potential $75 billion cut to defense funding that Speaker McCarthy promised in order to garner Speaker votes.
More with @mitchellreports: pic.twitter.com/kWxByR90qQ
— Rep. Abigail Spanberger (@RepSpanberger) January 9, 2023
They won’t tell you that the bulk of defense spending doesn’t even go to the military branches in the first place, let alone all the trash programs that get added in the NDAA year after year that require funding for various consultants and new civilian bureaucracy to the system.
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But luckily, dear reader, you have me, so let’s dive into what Congressman Jordan had to say this week and what it might mean.
Including The Kitchen Sink
Congressman Jim Jordan dropped his hints at cutting defense spending on both Larry Kudlow’s show on Fox Business and “Fox News Sunday.”
He rightly told Mr. Kudlow that:
“Everything has to be on the table when you’ve got a 30 some trillion dollars in debt and the interest payments are what they’re going to be this fiscal year.”
On Fox News Sunday, he touched on these debt payments with Shannon Bream, explaining:
“We’re on pace to spend $500, $600 billion in debt payments just to deal with interest payments.”
That’s a lot of cheddar the American taxpayer and future generations are saddled with, thanks to our leader’s inability to balance a budget. It’s fascinating that regular taxpayers would get thrown in jail and lose everything if they managed their household finances like the United States government manages our tax dollars.
RELATED: Trump Calls for Ouster of GOP Senators Who Voted for $1.7 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill
So what does that mean? It means that, as Congressman Jordan says, we must examine everything, including the Pentagon budget.
Northrup Grumman not a fan of the plan to cut defense spending pic.twitter.com/BQlLAYLrte
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 6, 2023
Woke Programs And Bloated Generals
Jordan pre-butted the usual, robotic reaction to any hint of cutting the whopping $800 billion Pentagon budget, saying:
“You got to look at everything and you do it in a way that doesn’t hurt our troops. Make sure our men and women in uniform get the pay raise they deserve.”
No doubt nobody is in favor of cutting the pay of service members, especially given that so many were forced to go on food stamps this past year due to President Biden’s inflation.
What Congressman Jordan does point out is two areas that are worthy of cutting:
“But we do have to look at General, officer ratio to enlisted individuals.”
Now that is fascinating. I had a boss tell me once that he hoped I wouldn’t get promoted because in the unit he was in charge of, he had “too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. ”
Not an idiom you could say in today’s military, but you get the point.
Speaking of canceled colloquialisms in the name of social justice warriors, Congressman Jordan continued to touch on the second area:
“…we do have to look at all the woke nonsense that we see now in our military and the money that goes for things like that.”
So let’s look at what he’s touching on one at a time.
I discuss #PENTAGON waste w/ @TPInsidr‘s @BrettRSmith76 & @drewberquist on our #rumble
below 👇https://t.co/1aqJBJutar— Kat ✍️ (@mohawkmoderate) December 20, 2022
You Get A Star, And You Get A Star!
It’s about damn time somebody mentioned that we have far too many Generals in the military.
Mr. Jordan told Ms. Bream:
“Frankly, maybe if we would focus our military spending on the soldiers and not having so many Generals – the ratio of General officers to enlisted individuals, now is so out of whack.”
In 2017 there were some 900 Active Duty Generals for approximately 1.3 million troops. That’s one General for every 1,400 servicemembers.
To put that into perspective, at the height of World War II, there were 2,000 Generals for 12 million troops, quick math, that’s about one General for every 6,000 soldiers. For the record, finding the current number of Generals takes work.
Still, for last year there were 653 Generals in the four branches of service, 963 if you add in the Generals assigned to external commands like joint special commands.
With 1.4 million Active Duty military members, roughly one General for every 1,500 troops. That’s what we call ‘rank creep.’ It leads to bulky bureaucratic layers that bog down decision-making and increase costs to taxpayers.
Should retired military be allowed to work for foreign governments? Take our poll! https://t.co/53spoGMxRL
— ThePoliticalInsider (@TPInsidr) October 19, 2022
Go Woke To Go Broke
Last year’s Reagan Foundation survey shows that half of Americans feel woke practices have undermined military effectiveness.
So let’s see, what woke practices could they be referring to?
Hires like the one in this article I wrote for @TPInsidr are part of why our #Military recruitment is so low https://t.co/WVIJlwBPqi
— Kat ✍️ (@mohawkmoderate) October 6, 2022
Last year we learned that the Department of Defense spent six million man-hours on “developing, preparing, delivering, attending or assessing” plans to address climate change, diversity, and extremism.
Time is money, and a quick breakdown of these costs includes but is not limited to the following:
- $535,000 on extremism training
- $476,874 on diversity training
- $5,000 climate change training
And suppose you believe those were the only actual costs. In that case, I’ll remind you that this same department failed its fifth consecutive audit showing that it cannot account for 60% of its assets.
How much is that? $2 trillion. To put that into perspective, that’s more than the entire GDP of all but 8 countries on the planet.
So yes, there is obviously room to cut.
RELATED: Pentagon Admits It Can’t Account for $2 Trillion – AGAIN
Rules And Reality
The new rules package in the House caps the Defense spending at the 2022 level for the next ten years. According to the hysteric defense cheerleaders, it would “cut” 10% of the budget at about $75 billion.
Remember that the latest defense bill added $45 billion over what the Department of Defense even asked for, and a whopping $85 billion more than what the President himself asked for, so everyone should be on board.
Rep. Roy & his colleagues secured a commitment from Speaker McCarthy to enact the biggest discretionary spending cut EVER in FY 2024.
And like clockwork big spending neocons & the military industrial complex have claimed this means cutting defense spending
THAT’S A LIE.
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) January 9, 2023
The Data for Progress Poll found that 55% of Americans are concerned about bloated defense bills, particularly those over $800 billion. This year’s defense bill was $858 billion.
Additionally, most of this bloated money doesn’t even go to the Pentagon in the first place. According to the Security Policy Reform Institute, 55% of defense funding went to private-sector military contractors between 2002 and 2021.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that cutting military funding would destroy our military lethality. But, unfortunately, our military isn’t as lethal as the war hawks want you to believe.
The stranglehold the defense contractor lobbying machine has on Congress gives me little hope that any real change will happen regarding waste in defense. The same bloated Generals who escape accountability repeatedly will retire and sit on the same defense contractor boards that lobby these same legislators for more money.
And so the world continues to turn, the taxpayers continue to suffer, and the elite continues to prosper.
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