Time To Rebuild; The Department of Defense Must be Restructured

Since the attacks a number of civil defense programs have been initiated, which leads to more departments asking for an allowance within the national budget. This ultimately is leading to a larger and larger deficit that is quickly encompassing full percentage points of our GDP. There is a debate on how much defense

Zakheim and Kadish explain two decades ago, there were more than twenty prime contractors competing for defense contracts while today the government relies on just six contractors to build its defense systems. Zakheim and Kadish state, “The system largely forgoes competition on price, delivery and performance and replaces it with a kind of “design bureau” competition”. The report explains that firms such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin have operated in collaboration on several projects such as the Air Force’s next generation bomber (Zakheim & Kadish, 2008). Collaboration of this nature suggests cooperative equilibrium between the firms to enhance their mutual payoff of outbidding competitors. With the defense market on the downturn pending major budget cuts over the next several years, more collaboration strategies are possible for firms to remain competitive. The existing procurement system encourages bargaining among the government and bidding firms. When budgets are allocated generously, demand is high and firms can set their prices higher. Budget cuts decrease demand and increase bargaining between buyer and seller. Security Industry reports budget deficits subject contracts to greater

Overspending is a pertinent problem facing the lawmakers in Congress. In 2012 discretionary spending reached $1.3 trillion and mandatory spending $2 trillion, while only bringing in $2.5 trillion in revenue. Since the turn of the century back in 2000, non-mandatory spending by the government has topped out a whopping $16.1 trillion just in the past 13 years (Boccia, Frasser & Goff 2013). This persistent overspending on programs and services that are not necessary to the functionality of the country is what is causing the deficit to rise year after year. To remedy this issue the government must either increase the revenue it brings in through taxes and trade or reduce the amount of money it spend or perhaps even both. In 2012 thirty-one cents of every dollar that Washington spent was borrowed (Boccia, Frasser & Goff 2013). Most of which went to large programs such as Social Security and Medicare and if these large, growing programs, or just the budget in general, do not undergo financial reform it could spell disaster for the economy and fiscal state of the nation.

Since the inception of the United States of America 250 years ago, our government has enacted a practice of lies and deceit that keep its citizens in the dark. Matters such as false allegations that result in long standing wars, financial misuse and abuse, secret alliances that serve the government agenda's, and the altering of history affect not only the US citizens, it affects the global population as a whole. This deception has resulted in mistrust of the US Government as people question what our government is up to and what they are seeking to gain. In order to earn the public's trust, the United States Government needs to be transparent with its citizens, giving us the information whether it's positive or negative instead of allowing

The Big Five, otherwise known as the five places to which a majority of the U.S. budget is allocated, must undergo drastic changes in order to suit the needs of our modern society. Together, organizations such as Medicare and Medicaid, along with defense, account for 39% of the national budget, adding up to 1 trillion, 494 billion

The federal government has attempted to slice into the Department of Education’s budget since it was established in 1979. The department was originally founded in 1867, but soon became demoted since the government was afraid it would have too much power. “In the 1860s, a budget of $15,000 and four employees handled education fact-finding. By 1965, the Office of Education had more than 2,100 employees and a budget of $1.5 billion. As of mid-2010, the Department has nearly 4,300 employees and a budget of about $60 billion” (An overview of the U.S. Department of Education, 2010). To provide some comparable insight, in 2013 the Department of Defense’s budget of $663.8 billion (U.S. Department of Defense, 2009).

To begin with , budgeting in the public setting clearly have political implications ,as Rubin discussed in her writings “ The politics of public budgeting”. In the government’s effort to build an audacious spy satellite , the government surpassed it’s budget limit for a failed attempt on the creation of “F.I.A.” During this time the C.I.A and the government was in a rush to build this brand new spy program in order to spy on the soviet union. Although , after a while congress realized there were no progress in building the spy program and wanted to shut it down others in the political setting continuously paid for the project to keep it going. According to Phillip Taubman “ It took two more years, several more review panels , and billions more dollars before the government finally killed this project.”

“To budget is to fight over money and the things money buys” (Document A). The federal budget is adjusted every year and has to follow certain criteria set forward by the Preamble to the Constitution. The Preamble sets five goals that the budget must fulfill, these goals are: to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defence, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our prosperity. Furthermore, it is difficult to decide what clusters of the federal budget to allocate money to in order to meet the five goals of the Preamble which are “The Big Five”, “The Middle Five”, and “The Little Guys.” In each of the three budget clusters,

Consequently, the Obama Administration has silenced defense leader for a long time, so he could keep his Budget Control Act or (BCA). For example “8 years under the Obama Administration, top defense officials were largely silenced and prevented from articulating their concerns about budget cuts and decreased readiness”(Cooper pg1). The Obama Administration neglected top defense officials, which has resulted in “Army has lost more than 205,000 soldiers, or 30 percent of its staff”(Spencer). Nevertheless, this has also resulted in “3 of 58 Army brigade combat teams are considered ready for combat”(Cooper). Conversely, Obama cut down the military so far that America has 150,000-225,000 troops ready in the Army when all of our combat teams should be ready for combat, so that the armed forces can protect America’s interests at home and abroad. Moreover, the Army is not the only who has experienced decreased readiness, for example, there have been budget cuts across the board which have resulted in “The Air Force is the smallest and oldest it has ever been”(Cooper). “80 percent of the United States Marine Corps or (USMC) do not have the minimum number of aircraft they need for training and basic operations”(Cooper). “The Navy’s fleet is the smallest it has been in nearly 100 years”(Cooper). “Maintenance period will increase costs 2.6 times”(Pickup). Accordingly, all parts of the Armed forces have experienced budget cuts

The federal budget is an annual plan created by the president of the United States that sets a certain amount of money to fund different federal expenses such as national defense, transportation, and income security, in fact; the federal expenses are divided into two categories, mandatory and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending is any expenditure that is required by legislation in which Medicare and Social Security are the main funded programs. In addition, discretionary spending is spending not mandatory but decided by congress based on appropriations in which it funds education, agriculture,and administration of justice, just to name a few. The federal budget is created using the constitution’s preamble as a guideline in order for

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down and that will help lower the defense spending by almost $1 trillion over the next decade. The congress is realizing that they need to do some restructuring and have already begun rearranging the military budget in response to austerity. Congress conjured up a $630 billion defense appropriations bill that made plans to reduce civilian and contractor personnel by 5 percent over the next five years and in return ramp up advanced weapons programs, including drones, bombers and missiles says The Washington Post. The American Conservative

The Obama Administration alone has added billions in new federal spending and though their aim was to improve the economy, their recessionary spending has done nothing but add to the deficit. In addition to cutting administration spending and enacting spending caps, programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which are responsible for a large dent in the deficit, need to be reformed. While still offering all of these programs, the government needs to find new ways to offer them without putting the country into even more debt on an annual basis; controlling entitlement programs would have a positive effect on the national deficit. Lastly, cutting military expenses and getting troops out of other countries.

While this appears to be a good datapoint in that it is a direct correlation to “butter” related activities. Training is relative to education and compensation is relative to pay and benefits. A number of questions which arise: If 80% of the military budget is relative to “butter” related activities, and 20% is being spent for direct defense related efforts, then why are these costs included in the defense budget? Would shifting the costs for military training be better suited at the Department of Labor (current budget of $11.8 billion)? Would shifting the costs for compensation related healthcare be better situated at the Department of Health and Human Services (current budget s $77.1 billion) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (current budget s $65.3 billion)?

The financial cost of everything is so massive, every agency. This is thousands of times bigger, the United States, than the biggest company in the world. The second-largest company in the world is the Defense Department. The third-largest company in the world is Social Security. The fourth-largest — you know, you go down the

The Department of Defense (DOD) was recently approved a budget of $582.7 billion for 2017. $112.1 billion of this budget was specifically to “develop and procure equipment, technology, and capabilities…” [1].