Panetta to propose military pay cut after Obama raised federal officials pay | WashingtonExaminer.com

Thanks for all the rides to and from the west coast...****!

Nice

 

How long has the "officials" pay been frozen? How recently has the military pay been increased? Are we comparing two things that can be compared, or two things that are totally different? As a government employee, I may get a 1% raise in a field where pay rates have been frozen for years, on the other hand, I've heard if we get sequestration, it goes away.

 

We get less, people that don't work get more.....story of the last few years.

 

We need a holistic approach to defense cuts, not singling out any individual line item for whatever reason. Personnel and pay cuts should be made with an understanding and expectation of what the resulting consequences will be, and how that will impact defense readiness...and how that fits with the grand strategic plan. Is the JSCP aligned with intended cuts? I haven't looked at lately, but I kind of doubt it...

The tail's gonna be wagging the dog...

 

Pentagon to cut aircraft carrier presence in Persian Gulf to 1 due to budget strains | Fox News

 

This is all part of the(ir) plan. Could see it coming from a mile away, and most have. It's a lot like the "Arab Spring" that has quickly turned to winter. Anyone surprised by it hasn't been using their brain.

 

The two-carrier presence in the gulf was clearly a temporary measure, most certainly not the historical norm, and it was known all along that it was unsustainable in the long run given CVN yard schedules.

The only way to sustain that without pulling a boat out of some other part of the world would be to buy a twelfth carrier. You'd probably need 13 if you wanted to get deployments back down to anything like 6 months.

 

There are plenty of areas to cut and save within the military. The biggest problem is the local congressman who says "not in my district." I remember years ago when there was a plan to consolidate a lot of activities at Eglin AFB that involved moving some functions out of New Mexico. Huge potential savings. Staffer from New Mexico Senator's office called and said this would be a bad idea. I am sure this goes on every day throughout the military.
One thing that used to chap my butt was the drive to zero out your flying time at the end of the year. Never mind if you didn't need it. Just go burn holes in the sky and make the boss look good. Also, spend all of your money or you may not get it next year. Buy whatever you don't need just so you can spend that money.
A good management team could do wonders for the military if they had the authority.

 

Hey guys... C'mon. Drop in th bucket all of this. Here is an idea. Don't cut anything from the military. Find it from all the other crap the gov spends that is unneeded. I'm sick of doing less with less and hearing about how we waste money when we are one of the few places the Gov gets a bang for its buck and not taken to the wood shed.

 

I think that military cuts are unavoidable. Regardless of your politics, this is something that we have to deal with in the here and now. We waste untold billions every year propping up useless bases in certain congressional districts, meanwhile we're cutting flight hours and hollowing out the force because there's not enough funds to go around.

This pork barrel defense spending is corruption, plain and simple. Politicians are using the presence of military installations to buy votes (rather than focusing on a unified, efficient national strategy), no different than how a politician doles out welfare spending to buy votes. This is the kind of thing you expected from the Soviet Union, not the U.S. Sad state of affairs.