Little so clearly illuminates the distance between the administration and Congress over the war in Iraq as does the confrontation between Defense Secretary Roberty Gates and House leadership in response to Congress’ failure to pass a war spending bill. As David Freddosso points out, House leadership wrote a bill that they knew could not pass and then went on recess, clapping themselves on the back for having made the usual consequence-free political point.
Or so they thought. SecDef raised the bet and then called:
(After) futile meetings with Democrats on Capitol Hill, Gates announced Nov. 15 that there is only about $4 billion in the regular defense budget that can be easily shifted to the wars — enough to maintain operations for something like one week after the current supplemental runs out. Therefore, he said, if Democrats fail to provide a viable funding bill, and quickly, he would draw up plans to fund the war by freezing defense contracts and initiating massive layoffs in the Department of Defense. He said that for starters, he would take $3.7 billion from the Navy and Air Force payroll budgets, then $800 million more from elsewhere.
This all has rather a fin-de-siecle feel about it, the sense of last cards being played: As an institution, DoD cannot long afford to stoke the enmity of the department’s paymasters in Congress, regardless of standing political differences. Since the defense budget is a significant portion of the discretionary spending account, subject to annual authorization (unlike the vastly greater proportion of the federal fisc apportioned towards mandatory entitlement spending) many congressmen and senators depend on Defense Department pork to purchase the loyalty of their constituents. John Murtha alone has $135 million in non-defense related earmark spending for his district in the defense authorization bill.
It’s one thing for politicians and political appointees to fulminate one against one another in order to provide pleasing soundbites as red meat for their agitated partisans – that’s politics as theater. Lamentable perhaps when extended beyond the nation’s shores, but it’s just business.
But when you come between a congressman and his pork, well. That’s different. That’s personal.
That’s another thing entirely.
“John Murtha alone has $135 million in non-defense related earmark spending for his district in the defense authorization bill.”
That explains the Pennsylvania retreatist’s remarkable recent turnaround on progress on the surge!
Nice posting!
The way I see it Defense Secretary Roberty Gates is calling it as he sees it. Everybody knows someone serving os has family serving (or both) Cut that paycheck because the Dems can’t stop the politics (it is an illegal war I voted approval for) and they will be revealed as a somewhat deep water mud dwelling bottom feader. Now, who’s husband has defense contracts still out? I forget!
You mean, people still think they are operating in the best interests of their constituents? /snark
It’s sad to say, but perhaps this will be the final straw for the Democratically controlled Congress. Maybe this will finally make their constituents see them for what they are – not just “mud dwelling bottom feeders” – but truly cold hearted, narcissistic bastards who only care about their own political future and less about the people of this country.
Looks to me like SECDEF is taking care of the mission and his people – consequences to himself be damned. There is a word for that, it’s not usually associated with political appointees and certainly inappropriate when you talk about the legislative branch:
Leadership.
Cap’n,
While I am not really excited about the Navy payroll cuts, I support Secretary Gate’s action. Ever since the current Congress took office, the focus has been getting the President and his advisors. The monumental amount of pork contained in the few bills that have actually escaped for Presidential signature only shows what the ‘poli-tic(k)s’ in Washington prefer. Their amoebic, gerrymandered Congressional Districts ensure re-election shows a level of dishonesty second only to their personal greed.
I don’t think 2% of Congress could spell HONOR if Vanna spotted them the first four letters and told them the last letter is the same one used to start and end spelling ROAR.
Shipmates,
One can only hope that good secretary Gates will begin sending those pink slips to DoD workers in Murtha’s district, then to those in Sestak’s.
That would be poetic justice…..
Personally I’m betting that San Francisco gets the Axe first. The city really worked hard for it.
I’m hoping that this gets those defense lobbyists calling “people” to tell them to get their sh|t together so the lobbyist’s backers don’t lose out on big money… If that’s what it takes right now to get the funding passed, so be it…
WA, OR, No Cal, MA and NY… Let the pink slips flow at Christmas and sit back and watch the fireworks!
Kris #3,
Couldn’t a said it better ‘me own self’. In that this is a family oriented blog, I hesitate to say how I really feel about Congress’ actions. Even though I, to a large degree, know how the game is played, I still am apalled at the miserable antics of those gutless wonders who dare to call themselves public servants.
This whole thing has personal ramifications for me as I job hunting right now. Putting a hiring freeze does not help my program at all.
That said, I think that’s Gates is handling this situation very well-far better than his predecessor. Who was a world class loser.
See you on the unemployment line-pay your taxes so I can get my welfare check!
You got it Skip! I’ve been paying into unemployment for 30+ years.
Someone I like should reap the benefits…
I’m pretty sure that if you become unemployed you won’t be so for long… I think I can afford it.
Since the Speaker of the House is from San Francisco, there probably won’t be many ramifications for her. The military has largely abandoned the Bay Area ever since Russia and its sphere of influence have supposedly become our friends. Let’s see (cursory):
Alameda NAS, Presidio, Moffett Field, MINSY, the Oakland depots, Mather AFB, Treasure Island, all the SOSUS stations.
Skippy-San– are you really one to go on the dole? You’ve never seemed that way to me. And Gates’ predecessor (let’s say his name: SECDEF Rumsfeld) was a great man dedicated to the wellbeing of this country. You may not have liked his methods and policies and hard choices, but with “world class loser” you become pret’ near ignorable.
Believe it or not Skippy unemployment and welfare are sorta different. We all pay for unemployment and when a layoff happens you can get it to tide you over until you get another job.
Welfare is something you get if you are unemployable or meet certain criterion.
You will get neither. Even if you’re only getting 1/2 your retirement check (ex-wife gets the other 1/2, right?) you don’t qualify and retiring from AD voluntarily disqualifies you for unemployment!
Unless of course you were let go for Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, or some such! LOL.
b2
With only ONE of THIRTEEN appropriations bills finished some 65 days into this FY, it is treasonous malfeasance in office for ANY Congressman or Senator to declare a Christmas recess to flee home to suck up to their constituents some more.
Throw them ALL out!
Lying crapweasels, the whole lot of them!
Maybe a few decent ones (always think positive!) will remain behind and hold a rump session daily to at least shame the worthless SOBs who don’t do their job.
45 days restriction, 45 days extra duty, and a reduction in rank would be in order for any sailor who failed so miserably to carry out his assigned duties, yet they reap adoration from the news media for not doing theirs.
Incredible!
Lying crapweasels
Love that term. If ever I start a University, we will be the “Lying Crapweasels”
As in “Go Lying Crapweasels, beat Air Force!”
Thanks for starting my day with a laugh.
Nose
Know the feeling quite well Skippy. Just got tossed myself for answering a question with the truth.
Who is pulling this string? Over the summer there were reports that MoveOn was meeting daily with the Democrat leadership to coordinate on legislative priorities. Recently, though, there’s been no focus on that relationship.
What would it take to make you deny troops in a fighting war supplies and reinforcement, besides sociopathic hate?
Everyone is four square behind Gates on this. He’s trying to manage this beast of a dept. while funding a war, and doing it in as apolitical a manner as is possible. God have mercy on the souls of Reid and Pelosi, if they have one.
Let the DoD facilities in their districts go dark. For a long time.
Reese:
Mather AFB was NOT in the “bay area”. Sacramento never has been that close to San Fransicko. To imply otherwise is an insult.
Looks to me like what’s going on is SecDef is raising pretty close to “all in”.
Rumsfeld was not a good Secretary of Defense and the fact that Gates is even having to deal with this mess is one example. The whole system of using supplementals to fund the war is bad for a host of reasons. Rumsfled wanted to use the supplmental approach because it hides the real cost of the war on the Department of Defense and it creates bad spending habits within DOD. I bet if I parsed the supplemental closly I could prove my point by finding more than a few items not related to the war at all.
That said Gates is playing the hand he was dealt and doing so in far better manner than his predecessor. He’s made some good decisions and I think Congress will fold in the next 4 weeks. Gates has recognized early that Rumsfeld failed in his primary responsibility which was to resource the armed forces for the effort it faced. Rummy wanted to continue to shrink the Armed Forces in a middle of a war.
Or phrased another way, everyone says Iraq is working now because of a new strategy because the old one was not working. Rumsfeld is a full square owner of that strategy-so yes he deserves scorn IMHO.
The fact that Rumsfeld was not a popular Sec Def does not mean he was a bad one. For the most part, he got the big things right. You have to make adjustments in war, and Rumsfeld did. He should bear credit for both the victories and shortcomings of his watch. As of now, it is still the team he put on the field that is winning.
Like Bush, he was better at dealing with reality than communicating with the ruffled constituencies. Better that than the opposite.
Mike47: Sorry about that. No insult intended for any of the host cities of those installations, their geography out of their controls.
Skippy-San, thanks for elaboration on your opinion. Wrong, in the big picture in mine, considering the great successes in winning the multiple battles in the GWOT “with the army you have.” This is not to mention his multi-decade work– a Cold War hero, starting with his Navy service.
One battle you glom onto is the “peace” after the fall of the Hussein clan, an insurgency that’s (cautiously saying here) being quelled by General Petraeus’ tactics.
I think you and yours aimed so much poison at Rumsfeld and others as proxy targets for President Bush that you succeeded in instigating what you call his failure– retiring at the age of 74. Congrats on winning your little battle.
It’s easy to blame Rumsfeld for fighting a war on the cheap, until one realizes that it’s Congress that funds the war and the President who directs it. Essentially we’re blaming Rumsfeld for the inaction of others, doing his job without the support of those above.
I seem to recall SecDef MacNamara had a similar problem, fight a war using the DoD budget. His approach was to cut expenses to the minimum. For that he was widely reviled, but is it his fault? After all, you spend the budget you’re given and go to war with the army you have.
If anything, all we can say about SecDef is he wasn’t able to sell the people upstairs.
– Max
Max,
I would encourage you to go back and look hard at the first 3 years of Rumsfeld’s tenure. A detailed examination of his approach to several things shows the flaw in the thinking that he somehow got “the big things right”.
Look at his postions on personnel policy issues as fronted by his attack dog Dr Chu and you will see that from 2001 to 2004 they were hardly military friendly. Congress had to apply pressure to get him to do the right thing-both Republicans and Democrats.
2) In the year following 9-11, Congress was practically falling over itself to increase appropriations for the military. It was DOD that wanted to stay the course-more than a few Republican lawmakers kept pressing the man for an explanation why-especially when it came to hardware equipment, end strength and shipbuilding. Politics? Sure, but if Rummy had given into that temptation, the strain of the surge would have been a lot less than it had to be after 4 straight years of downsizing all the services INCLUDING the Army.
There is pretty good evidence that Rummy meddled in the detail war planning-which is usually never a good thing. Tommy Franks says other wise but there is plenty of documentary evidence that the invisible hand was there.
Rummy was the CEO and he set the tone that the heads of the various military services followed. As a result the Navy endured 5 years of Vern Clark and that’s part of the reason it does not have enough people to fill all of its requirements AND the requirements of the Army that have been levied upon it. Its also why it can’t buy enough ships or aircraft. Ultimately Rumsfeld created a world where better business, drawdown bots could roam. He’s responsible for that and a lot more.
Imagine if, when it became obvious that the US would be fighting a four or five front war, he went to Congress and demanded a Reaganesque, Leyhman style build up. Every one would have been better off.
Rummy could have sold the people upstairs anything he wanted-he chose not to.