{"id":132174,"date":"2016-12-07T09:47:48","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T16:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/07\/maybe-we-can-start-by-cutting-military-waste-to-pay-for-increasing-military-spending.html"},"modified":"2016-12-11T14:06:01","modified_gmt":"2016-12-11T21:06:01","slug":"maybe-we-can-start-by-cutting-military-waste-to-pay-for-increasing-military-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/07\/maybe-we-can-start-by-cutting-military-waste-to-pay-for-increasing-military-spending.html","title":{"rendered":"Maybe we can start by cutting military waste to pay for increasing military spending"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump ran on a platform of cutting government waste and, at the same time, increasing military spending. Here's how he could get $125B over the next five years, per a report that the Defense Business Board produced in 2015, and the Pentagon quashed so as not to admit that they were wasting so much money.<\/p>\n

'That would be enough to fully fund operations for 50 Army brigades, 10 Navy carrier strike group deployments, or 83 wings of F-35 fighter aircraft (one wing being about 36 aircraft—purchase price not included) for each of those five years.'<\/i><\/p>\n

Some of the savings were estimated from modest productivity increases in the biggest groups — "human resources management, health management, financial management, logistics, acquisition and procurement programs, and managing the Defense Department's vast real estate holdings" — as well as contract renegotiations and pushing for early retirement.<\/p>\n

Getting the DoD's IT services under control contributes a significant share, too.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon justified shelving the report (once it became public) by noting that … well, these things aren't simple to do, and savings that might impact jobs in individual Congresscritters' districts are politically untenable. They say that some of the easy things are now in their plans (maybe) and will save money (if enforced) in the future.<\/p>\n

All of which sound like excuses before there's an attempt to try things, and accountability when they do, in fact, turn out to be too difficult to do.<\/p>\n

I should think that a businessman like our President-Elect, with an eye on the bottom line, should be able to get the Defense Department under control and save some serious wastage (or get clear reasons as to why not) before he starts talking about throwing more money at them. That's the kind of government efficiency that we expect from a man of Mr Trump's acumen, right?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/a>
\nDOD covered up report that said it could save $125 billion in overhead<\/a><\/span>
\nBrass were afraid findings were “unrealistic”—and would lead to bigger budget cuts.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump ran on a platform of cutting government waste and, at the same time, increasing military spending. Here's how he could get $125B over the next five years, per a report that the Defense Business Board produced in 2015, and the Pentagon quashed so as not to admit that they were wasting so much money. … Continue reading “Maybe we can start by cutting military waste to pay for increasing military spending”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,17,349,376],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts","category-homeland-security","category-military","category-taxing-spending"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":42142,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/23\/the-ongoing-and-increasing-f-35-debacle.html","url_meta":{"origin":132174,"position":0},"title":"The ongoing (and increasing) F-35 debacle","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 23-May-14 11:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"Combine warring service branches, poor project management, a deadly design combination of compromise and complexity, institutional and legislative commitment to bad decisions, an increasing monopoly on defense aircraft manufacture, a seemingly bottomless Pentagon budget, and the steadily rising terror of admitting the whole idea was a mistake -- and you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":134801,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/20\/federal-government-plenty-money-things-apparently.html","url_meta":{"origin":132174,"position":1},"title":"The federal government has plenty of money for some things, apparently","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 20-Sep-17 9:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Congressional GOP is crying and wailing and gnashing its teeth that the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid are bankrupting the US government. But apparently there is more than enough money to not only boost US defense spending the additional $54 billion that Donald Trump asked for, but raising the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/congress-capitol.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":137335,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/10\/17\/a-vote-for-the-gop-is-a-vote-for-cutting-social-security-medicare-and-medicaid.html","url_meta":{"origin":132174,"position":2},"title":"A vote for the GOP is a vote for cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-Oct-18 10:25am","format":false,"excerpt":"Having massively ratcheted up the federal budget deficit by passing a tax cut with $1 trillion in revenue reductions over the next decade, and then jacking up military spending by a significant amount at the same time, Senate Majority Leader McConnell makes it clear that, nope, the real cause of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131006,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/07\/we-must-cut-spending-except-on-military-stuff-built-in-my-district.html","url_meta":{"origin":132174,"position":3},"title":"We must cut spending! Except on military stuff built in my district!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 7-Jul-16 12:06am","format":false,"excerpt":"When naval officers who are vested in a new program combine with defense contractors who are vested in their bottom line and congresscritters who are vested in campaign donations and bringing home the pork, the Pentagon and the Secretary of Defense are apparently helpless to stop them.'The extra ship, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133222,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/06\/the-fiscally-conservative-except-for-military-spending-president.html","url_meta":{"origin":132174,"position":4},"title":"The "Fiscally Conservative Except For Military Spending" President","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Apr-17 10:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The attached article says about 70 Tomahawk missiles were lobbed at Syria. The reports I saw said more like 50 [2]. Charitably attributing the lower number, that was an expense of between $25 million and $75 million.I'll note that the EPA programs around preventing lead paint exposure to children and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1278,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/02\/02\/the_war_that_ti.html","url_meta":{"origin":132174,"position":5},"title":"The War that Time Forgot","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 2-Feb-02 8:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"On 10 September 2001, the Secretary of Defense declared war ... on Pentagon waste. Responding to internal audits that indicated the Pentagon couldn't account for up to 25% of its...","rel":"","context":"In "Fourth Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Fourth Estate","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/fourth-estate"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132243,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132174\/revisions\/132243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}