Did you believe Dick Cheney when he said deficits didn't matter?
Looking back, most people did while the Bush/Cheney administration passed tax cuts totaling nearly $2 trillion over the last 10 years.
America is now in hot water due to its citizens' desire to overspend, allow politicians to borrow from Social Security, and government officials to play world policemen. Ever since a few smart terrorists carried out a daring attack on 9/11/01, rational political leadership logic has been pushed aside as politicians, federal government and military leaders decided to "name an enemy" (who was sure to have weapons of mass destruction aimed at America) and then waged war....for the perceived purpose of protecting U.S. citizens from future terrorist attacks.
Now, that it has been demonstrated in December that a sole "terrorist" can easily pass through our expensive homeland security surveillance net, many Americans still want to believe that spending billions of dollars and losing thousands of lives in endless foreign wars will allow the government to protect us against terrorism.
Since the Vietnam conflict, most veterans and Pentagon strategists recognize that small-scale hit-and-run "guerrilla" warfare is the best warfare method. That calls for light-weight and mobile fighting machines (like unmanned drones and helicopters not large battleships, aircraft carriers, bombers and fighter aircraft) while curtailing some of the military's most costly and complex weapons programs....including the Air Force's and Marine's most advanced and expensive fighters.
Yes, this shift to guerrilla warfare strategy sets up potential conflicts with defense contractors and powerful lawmakers. To illustrate, here is a portion of an article from the March 12, 2009 posting at www.Bloomberg.com:
Dave Abbett is wrestling with a problem at a mile-long Lockheed Martin Corp. factory in Texas: how to raise output of F-35 fighter jets 20-fold in seven years. For Lockheed, success means a chance to increase sales at about twice the estimated growth rate of the Pentagon budget.
The F-35 is designed for missions including bombing and air- to-air combat, and it will be used by the Air Force, the Navy and the Marine Corps. It will replace aircraft including F-16s and A- 10s, as well as Harrier aircraft used by the U.K.
The F-35 is “the single most important program” Lockheed has, said James McIlree, a New York-based analyst with Collins Stewart LLC who rates the shares “buy” and doesn’t own any. He estimates the F-35 contributed about $3.8 billion to Lockheed’s total sales of $42.7 billion in 2008. The contribution will increase about $900 million this year and then $1.7 billion a year for the next five years, McIlree predicts.
Many analysts expect the White House to seek more than $700 billion for the military and wartime operations. Chris Hellman, a defense analyst at the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan think tank focused on budget issues, expects a request from the White House of about $745 billion, which would include war costs, $25 billion for Energy Department nuclear and other security spending and the Pentagon's base budget of about $555 billion.
With this amount of military spending coupled with the increased costs of a reserveless Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid entitlements and proposed universal health care, America is setting itself up for a downward deflationary spiral of rising interest rates, a plunging dollar and a sinking economy.
Isn't it time we plugged the holes in this widening deficit and growing federal debt, greatly reduced our international military commitments and began to find productive jobs for our unemployed citizens?
Source: The Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2010.
