Defense Bill Raids Personnel Funds to Pay For Weapons

[girl gone mad]

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/12/18/defense-bill-raids-personnel-funds-to-pay-for-weapons/">Defense Bill Raids Personnel Funds to Pay For Weapons
Matt Taibbi

" The measure also trims personnel and maintenance accounts from previous versions of the measure to pump up weapons procurement for Afghanistan and Iraq by almost $2 billion."

via http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iWvi0T-8pyaFcpBhcYVNq8Dk6KVQD9CLOKUO0">The Associated Press: Wrap-up bill clears Senate hurdle.

Every year about this time a tiny trickle of little-noticed news stories weeds its way into the papers, usually in the back sections. It’s the same narrative every year: Congress lumps all the unpassed appropriations bills together, slaps them full of pork, and quietly passes them (often in the dead of night) while everyone is already thinking about Christmas.

The defense bill is always the worst and most morally reprehensible, and this year is no exception. It should be noted that defense pork is one of America’s great bipartisan traditions. The scheme is the same every year, regardless of who is in the majority: Congress quietly shoves in earmarks for unnecessary and ridiculously expensive weapons programs, and pays for them by gutting the existing budgets for actual soldiers.

What most people don’t understand about earmarks is that they are not achieved by simply adding to the top number for the whole federal budget. Earmarks have to come out of the approved number for that particular appropriations bill. So if you want a highway earmark, the money has to come out of some other highway program.

In the defense bill, it usually works like this: Congress sticks in a few extra airplanes or ships as a handout to this or that member, usually in exchange for his vote somewhere else on some other issue. To pay for those earmarks, the favored targets for cutting are usually two parts of the defense bill: Personnel (i.e. military pay) and Operations and Maintenance (which includes such things as body armor, equipment, food, training, and fuel). Those of you who wondered over the years how it could be that soldiers in Iraq could somehow be left without body armor, well, here’s your explanation. They usually took the armor off those kids in order to pay off some congressman with an extra helicopter or two.

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/12/18/defense-bill-raids-personnel-funds-to-pay-for-weapons/">Continued..

[unhappycamper]

1. Off to the Greatest Page!

That is a pretty good article on the ways these guys 'massage' the bucks.

[defendandprotect]

2. kick

[Solly Mack]

3. which trickles down even more and slashes to the post budgets

can leave critical services gutted or cut out entirely.