{"id":3059,"date":"2014-05-05T12:49:04","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T18:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=3059"},"modified":"2014-05-05T12:49:04","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T18:49:04","slug":"defense-hawks-no-cuts-in-my-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/defense-hawks-no-cuts-in-my-backyard\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense hawks: No cuts in my backyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Philip Ewing<\/a>,\u00a0Jeremy Herb<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Austin Wright<\/a>, Politico
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

The message of congressional defense advocates used to boil down to a simple question: \u201cWhere\u2019s mine?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, the shorthand pitch has become an equally simple declaration: \u201cNot it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Defense Department wants to close a base? Not the one in my district. The Air Force wants to decommission a squadron? Not my guys. The Navy wants to get rid of some warships? Not ones built by the folks who vote for me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a new twist on an old story. Bone-deep partisan divisions over taxes and spending mean Congress cannot act collectively to reverse the trend of a flat or falling defense budget. That means lawmakers can\u2019t increase the size of the pie and serve each other a bigger slice, the way they did for many years after 2001. Instead, unable to stop the shrinking, each member wants somebody else to be the one who gets less.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be in the past when you do this, it was fairly easy,\u201d said Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), who chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. \u201cYou just move the top line and then you fit everything in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere,\u201d he explained, \u201cwhat we\u2019re doing is saying, \u2018The top line is fixed,\u2019 and there\u2019s going to be some very spirited discussion about how do we make those priority discussions. And I don\u2019t expect everybody\u2019s going to leave satisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Jersey and California members want Congress to require the Air Force to buy a minimum of 22 new KC-46A Pegasus tankers before it can begin divesting its existing KC-10 Extenders. North Carolina members say the Air Force cannot deactivate the 440th Airlift Wing, based at Fort Bragg. Arizona and Georgia members say the Air Force must keep the fleet of A-10 Warthog attack jets it wants to retire.<\/p>\n

The list goes on: Virginia members \u2014 including Wittman \u2014 say the Navy must proceed with the refueling of an aircraft carrier it says it might not be able to afford. Alaska\u2019s delegation says the Army must maintain its two brigade combat teams in the state, having already fought off an earlier Air Force proposal to relocate a squadron of F-16 fighters.<\/p>\n

Senior members aren\u2019t pleased.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the way that intelligent, responsible people should be acting. I guess it\u2019s no surprise, but it is a disappointment,\u201d said Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a longtime defense appropriator who is leaving the House at the end of this term.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe criticize CEOs for making decisions that are based solely upon improving their performance for the next quarter at the expense of long-term economic viability,\u201d he told POLITICO. \u201cHere, we do the same damn thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican defense supporters argue there\u2019s a simple way out of the crunch \u2014 spend more money. House Armed Services Committee Vice Chairman Mac Thornberry (R- Texas) told reporters that U.S. defense spending should be commensurate with the level of danger in the world. Which, he and others argue, is high.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to make it worse,\u201d said Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), who also plans to leave the House when this term is over. He argued the solution was to \u201cput more money in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats also say the answer is simple: Support President Barack Obama\u2019s budget proposal, which would raise some taxes and make some cuts, but also do away with sequestration and give the Pentagon more control over its own fate.<\/p>\n

The parties have not budged from these basic positions for years.<\/p>\n

Some lawmakers say Congress is being shortsighted by trying to protect so many things. Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, blasted his colleagues for preferring quick fixes and ignoring the long-term implications for the defense budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst thing we can do is basically what we\u2019re doing, to protect program after program after program and reject those cuts,\u201d said Smith, of Washington state. \u201cWe are still stuck in the notion \u2014 if you look at how we\u2019re trying to deal with 2015 authorization and appropriations bills \u2014 of trying to move deck chairs around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defense officials lament that Congress\u2019 unwillingness to go along with base closures, proposed program cuts and reforms to personnel costs means the Pentagon is effectively throwing money away at a time when it can least afford to. They acknowledge, however, the Defense Department isn\u2019t blameless either.<\/p>\n

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said she regrets both Congress and the Pentagon\u2019s single-minded focus on each year\u2019s budget as a short-term, one-year game \u2014 but conceded it isn\u2019t going to change anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my lessons learned in life was to be optimistic, but I will now turn pessimistic \u2014 I wish I could say that we\u2019d ever be able to convince the Congress to do a two-year budget cycle. But that\u2019s been talked about for years, so I really don\u2019t see that on our horizon,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n

The services\u2019 proposals aren\u2019t just questions of dollars and cents, Pentagon officials say, and the A-10 issue is a good example. Last year, Congress barred the Air Force from taking any action to retire the attack jets, and the stage appears to be set for a repeat of that prohibition. But Air Force officials say mothballing the aircraft is the best of their bad options to free up about $4.2 billion, which would help restore flying hours for a service deeply frustrated by having to idle its aircraft during sequestration last year.<\/p>\n

James said not retiring the A-10s means the Air Force can\u2019t go ahead with plans for replacements and changes in the units that operate them, creating a \u201cdomino effect\u201d that would cause disruptions across the force. Fighting short-term battles also uses time and energy that could be better applied to tackling the military\u2019s bigger questions, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe as leaders, the people within the Air Force, and ditto the Army, Navy and so forth, we have to religiously protect our thinking time, and the way we utilize our time that we are not so consumed exclusively by what\u2019s going on next year \u2026 [so] that we reserve enough of our own brainpower and our own time to devote to thinking about the years down the pike. So much of the story of tomorrow does relate 10, 20 years down the pike, and we have to make those choices and investments for 10, 20 years down the pike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moran, who spent his career representing a Northern Virginia district rich with defense contractors as well as the Pentagon, said he would end it with no prescription for how to persuade Congress to change its ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what to do,\u201d he laughed. \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Philip Ewing,\u00a0Jeremy Herb\u00a0and\u00a0Austin Wright, Politico click here for original article The message of congressional defense advocates used to boil down to a simple question: \u201cWhere\u2019s mine?\u201d Now, the shorthand pitch has become an equally simple declaration: \u201cNot it.\u201d The Defense Department wants to close a base? Not the one in my district. The Air Force […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3060,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_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":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/department-of-defense-getty-328.jpg?fit=284%2C328&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3061,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions\/3061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}