VIDEO – PAUL RYAN AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION – SAVING THE AMERICAN IDEA PLAN
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
Archive for the ‘Budget for 2012’ Category
WASHINGTON’S NEW SPENDING SPREE
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
- OCTOBER 19, 2011
A New Spending Record
Washington had its best year ever in fiscal 2011.
- Maybe it’s a sign of the tumultuous times, but the federal government recently wrapped up its biggest spending year, and its second biggest annual budget deficit, and almost nobody noticed. Is it rude to mention this?
The Congressional Budget Office recently finished tallying the revenue and spending figures for fiscal 2011, which ended September 30, and no wonder no one in Washington is crowing. The political class might have its political pretense blown. This is said to be a new age of fiscal austerity, yet the government had its best year ever, spending a cool $3.6 trillion. That beat the $3.52 trillion posted in 2009, when the feds famously began their attempt to spend America back to prosperity.
What happened to all of those horrifying spending cuts? Good question. CBO says that overall outlays rose 4.2% from 2010 (1.8% adjusted for timing shifts), when spending fell slightly from 2009. Defense spending rose only 1.2% on a calendar-adjusted basis, and Medicaid only 0.9%, but Medicare spending rose 3.9% and interest payments by 16.7%.
The bigger point: Government austerity is a myth.
In somewhat better news, federal receipts grew by 6.5% in fiscal 2011, including a 21.6% gain in individual income tax revenues. The overall revenue gain would have been even larger without the cost of the temporary payroll tax cut, which contributed to a 5.3% decline in social insurance revenues but didn’t reduce the jobless rate.
The nearby table shows the budget trend over the last five years, and it underscores the dramatic negative turn since the Obama Presidency began. The budget deficit increased slightly in fiscal 2011 from a year earlier, to $1.298 trillion. That was down slightly as a share of GDP to 8.6%, but as CBO deadpans, this was still “greater than in any other year since 1945.” (more…)
VIDEO – PAUL RYAN – 900 DAYS SINCE THE SENATE PASSED A BUDGET
Thursday, October 20th, 2011WHY DEFENSE CUTS DON’T MAKE SENSE
Saturday, October 15th, 2011
- OCTOBER 14, 2011
The U.S. military is the principal guardian of our global economy’s avenues of commerce. We protect the skies, cyberspace and the world’s oceans.
- By BUCK MCKEON Mr. McKeon, a California Republican, is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee
What principles should guide the congressional super committee as it prepares to cut over $1 trillion from the federal budget by Thanksgiving? Priority No. 1 should be: not a penny more out of defense. A staggering level of defense spending is already on the butcher’s block.
Since then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates launched an “efficiency” campaign in 2009, we have cut over half a trillion dollars from our armed forces. Although defense spending accounts for less than 20% of our federal budget, it has absorbed approximately half of our deficit-reduction efforts since 2009.
Now the super committee is operating under a mandate that holds our military hostage. If the 12 members don’t agree on $1 trillion in cuts from the vast federal budget, an automatic “trigger” will cut $500 billion from defense along with $500 billion from elsewhere.
Such a drastic cut would force the Navy to mothball over 60 ships, including two of our precious 11 carrier battle groups, according to analysis by the Republican staff of the House Armed Services Committee. It would also force us to shed one-third of our Army maneuver battalions and Air Force fighter jets.
THE THREAT TO OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE
Monday, October 10th, 2011
Published on The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com)
No More Cuts
Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly
October 10, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 04
Among the many shortcomings of the Budget Control Act and its spawn, the “Super Committee,” is that the threat of a sequestration “nuclear option”—in which some $600 billion would be cut automatically from national security accounts if congressmen do not find savings elsewhere—diverts attention from the damage the law has done already to America’s military.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey have been quick off the mark in pointing out that sequestration would be “unacceptable” and “very high risk.” Various military service leaders have said that, if sequestration does come to pass, the country would have to “rethink” its entire military strategy. But the corollary to such criticism has been that the cuts already in law, though painful, can be “managed.” The Air Force’s second-ranking general told the House Armed Services Committee that “we will not go hollow” despite the $400 billion cut provided in the Budget Control Act.
But there’s good reason to wonder whether this is right. To begin with, the size of the current cut has grown. Last week Reuters reported that the level of defense reductions has increased to $489 billion, after the Obama administration decided to exempt veterans’ benefits from any cuts whatsoever. The White House is making a rather predictable political judgment that cutting Veterans budgets would cause them more pain than gutting defense budgets. (more…)
THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY BY THE NUMBERS
Friday, September 9th, 2011
- SEPTEMBER 8, 2011
The president constantly reminds us that he was dealt a difficult hand. But the evidence is overwhelming that he played it poorly.
When it comes to the economy, presidents, like quarterbacks, often get more credit or blame than they deserve. They inherit problems and policies that affect the economy well into their presidencies and beyond. Reagan inherited Carter’s stagflation, George H.W. Bush twin financial crises (savings & loan and Third World debt), and their fixes certainly benefitted the Clinton economy.
President Obama inherited a deep recession and financial crisis resulting from problems that had been building for years. Those responsible include borrowers and lenders on Wall Street and Main Street, the Federal Reserve, regulatory agencies, ratings agencies, presidents and Congress.
Mr. Obama’s successor will inherit his deficits and debt (i.e., pressure for higher taxes), inflation and dollar decline. But fairly or not, historians document what occurred on your watch and how you dealt with your in-box. Nearly three years since his election and more than two years since the economic recovery began, Mr. Obama has enacted myriad policies at great expense to American taxpayers and amid political rancor. An interim evaluation is in order.
And there’s plenty to evaluate:
an $825 billion stimulus package; the Public-Private Investment Partnership to buy toxic assets from the banks; “cash for clunkers”; the home-buyers credit; record spending and budget deficits and exploding debt; the auto bailouts; five versions of foreclosure relief; numerous lifelines to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; financial regulation and health-care reform; energy subsidies, mandates and moratoria; and constant demands for higher tax rates on “the rich” and businesses.
VIDEO – WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Saturday, August 27th, 2011
THE GROWING THREAT FROM CHINA’S AIR FORCE
Thursday, August 25th, 2011
- AUGUST 24, 2011
Two advanced Su-27 fighters recently chased an American reconnaissance plane over the Taiwan Strait.
China watchers have been fixated on the maiden voyage of Beijing’s first aircraft carrier this month. However, U.S. and Asian defense planners should take care not to ignore another aspect of China’s growing military might. The Chinese Air Force may one day play the most significant role in challenging America’s military presence in the Asia-Pacific. At the same time, looming cuts to the U.S. Air Force may wind up reducing its ability to protect American interests.
As the U.S. Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center put it in a report last year, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, or Plaaf, has been “transforming itself from a poorly equipped and trained organization into an increasingly capable fighting force. Dramatic changes have occurred, and continue to occur, in the areas of mission, organizational structure, personnel, education, training, and equipment.”
Today, the Plaaf remains years behind the U.S. Air Force in experience, training and operational planning. But it is emphasizing those areas in an attempt to catch up.
Analysts of China’s Air Force warn against focusing solely on the planes it has, or “tail counting.” An appreciation of its capabilities instead begins with what it can fly. The leading edge of its air power is the advanced Russian Su-27/30 fighter, of which it has 150 planes, followed by more than 100 indigenously produced J-11s, based on the Su-27 model, and nearly 200 multirole J-10s, which have both air-combat and ground-attack capabilities.
The Su-27/30 compares with any U.S. fighter, save the stealthy F-22, and China plans on adding nearly 100 more related J-11s. Overall, the Plaaf has more than 1,600 combat aircraft, which does not count the nearly 300 combat aircraft of the separate PLA Navy air forces. China’s Navy, with its own combat air arm, is also flying advanced fighters and has been training its pilots to get ready for carrier operations.
The Plaaf is also looking to the next generation of weapons. Earlier this year, it flew the first prototype of a fifth-generation stealth fighter, the J-20, ostentatiously doing so while then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on a visit to China to repair military relations.
A Chinese Su-27 puts on a show.
THE PERILS OF CUTTING OUR DEFENSES
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011Published on The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com)
Defining Defense Down
Gary Schmitt & Tom Donnelly
August 15 – August 22, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 45
In a classic case of closing the barn door after the horses have bolted, the newly appointed secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, and retiring Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Mike Mullen held a joint press -conference this past Thursday in which they decried the impending cuts to the defense budget made likely by the debt ceiling deal. In particular, they complained that, if the still-to-be-appointed joint committee of House and Senate members is unable to reach an agreement on how to trim $1.5 trillion more over the next decade from the federal budget, or Congress as a whole refuses to pass the committee’s recommendations, the automatic $500 to $600 billion in defense cuts that could be mandated by the debt -agreement would be “disastrous” and “unacceptable.” Indeed, for just FY 2013 alone, the automatic cuts could result in defense spending being slashed by approximately $100 billion from the administration’s own projected figure in last winter’s budget submission—a cut of nearly 20 percent.
Of course, one reason these additional cuts would be disastrous is that the administration—along with members of Congress—has already accepted as a done deal the agreement’s initial cut to “security” spending that will likely reduce defense accounts by some $25 to $30 billion for next year and $330 to $350 billion over the next ten.
Coming on the heels of $400 billion already cut from defense by the administration in its first two years, the Pentagon is looking at the prospect of trying to maintain a defense capability second to none, with global responsibilities and new threats on the horizon (Iran, China), shorn of $1.3 trillion over the next decade it expected to have just three years ago. It is simply not the case that defense has not been “on the table” when it comes to deficit reduction efforts. Indeed, military budgets have been on the table since the 1990s’ “peace dividend.” One only wishes that were also true for entitlements. (more…)
THE REVOLT OF THE GENERALS (AND ADMIRALS)
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011LexingtonInstitute.org
July 27, 2011
July 27, 2011
Early Warning Blog
The Revolt Of The Generals (And Admirals)
Author: Daniel Goure, Ph.D.
The senior leaders of the U.S. military have finally said enough is enough. You cannot wear out the military by requiring that it fights two, even three wars over a decade, conduct countless out-of-area deployments, maintain forward presence around the world, provide humanitarian assistance in dozens of disasters and conduct training missions with nearly one hundred countries and then tell it to suck up $1 trillion in budget cuts. For the first time in decades, the leaders of the nation’s armed forces are standing up and standing together to warn that massive cuts in defense spending will break the force.
The revolt was led from the top. In an appearance yesterday on Capitol Hill, Army General Martin Dempsey, the Obama Administration’s nominee to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, broke with previous Chairmen by publicly challenging the policy line being put forward by political leaders. General Dempsey directly contradicted the view of his predecessor, Admiral Michael Mullen, who had opined that the national debt was the greatest threat to national security. In his written remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Dempsey said “I would not describe our economic condition as the single biggest threat to our national security. National security did not cause the debt crisis nor will it solve it.” He went on to warn that deep budget cuts would undermine defense policy, resulting in additional risk to U.S. interests overseas and American’s security at home.
General Dempsey’s remarks were echoed in the same hearing by the nominee to be Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral James Winnefeld. The Admiral warned that proposed budget reductions could readily lead to a hollow force. “ … as we get to a higher and higher number, we’re going to find that the strategies that we currently have are going to reach inflection points where we’re just going to have to stop doing some of the things that we currently are able to do because what we can’t afford is to have any kind of a cut result in a hollow force. We can’t afford to have a cut result in irreversible damage to our industrial base.” (more…)