Defense spending

It's refreshing to see an article from the Washington Post regarding the Defense Department's cost overruns. Refreshing in the fact that hardly a word is printed or spoken on this subject anymore. Whatever the opposite of refreshing is (sour) is what I'm feeling about this defense "machine,"

While virtually every other government Department is being cut because of a lack of funds, Defense just goes along getting fatter and wallowing in money. The 2007 defense budget was 1.7 trillion dollars and nobody even blinked, except the GAO. They make reports and nobody apparently reads them. Is it because the defense lobbiests have every executive department, senitor, represenitive, and any other elected official financially handcuffed and beholding? Yes, they do.

It would be a shock to our system but an overhaul of the Defense Department is due. Because there are so many subcontractors building this and machine shops making that, it is difficult to break the system. But it has to be done, and soon. The size and weight of this problem is going to financially crush our government. However all these subcontractors and the prime ones too can redirect their efforts into rebuilding this great nation.

Cut defense by 50%. Don't allow a single project a contract for production if it has unprooven technology. We don't need to fund anything that hasen't passed through an experimental phase. In other words, we need to have a research department that works on ideas and, when they are made capable, then they are available to go into a new or existing program. Right now this is backwards, and there are too many "idea guys" getting free run to add something that must sound good but wasn't intended in the first place. Defense needs to be completely reorganized, with the GAO as the prime administrator over all. We have to resign ourselves as world cop, it isn't working. We must cut our foreign bases down to only five or ten, tops. We have to curb spending on things like $900 million radios... A two way radio is already working, don't mess with it.

Now, with over 3/4ths of a trillion dollars to play with, we as a nation, can address all the other departments, especially health, and get onto the road of rebuilding our country and regain the respect of the rest of the world. Oh yes, and with all this extra money, we can begin paying down our obscene debt.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future