Budget Fiasco

“A budget on cruise control won’t cut spending” – Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell R-K.Y

Hello all,

The budget fiasco has begun. President Obama unveiled his $3.7 trillion dollar fiscal budget for 2012 this past week. As expected, the next day, the House GOP unveiled their version of the budget with much greater cuts. Senate Democrats were also supposed to release their version of a budget but instead, they are expected to embrace a deficit reduction component of the President’s budget plan. For us lowly citizens, this means our message has thus far gone unheard. As to not bore the crap out of you with numbers, charts, diagrams or power points presentations, let’s take a quick look at the two budgets.


Senate Democrats will endorse the Presidents five year domestic discretionary spending freeze that the White House estimates will save $400 billion over 10 years. Now, this spending freeze only accounts for about one-sixth of the federal budget. Defense spending, Foreign Aid and Homeland Security would be exempt. Also, entlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid would be exempt. This proposal however, is just a drop in the bucket. Considering that this year alone, emergency spending to combat the recession, combined with a drop in tax revenues, will produce a budget deficit of $1.35 trillion dollars, according to Congressional Budget Office numbers. Hence, Mitch McConnell’s quote at the beginning of the newsletter. A spending freeze will NOT cut the budget deficit.

The GOP bill covers spending for the fiscal year that end Sept.30. It would cut $61 billion dollars from 2010 levels and about $100 billion dollars from the amount President Obama requested for this year. This legislation would affect domestic programs ranging from education and science to agriculture and parks. And it marks the first significant attacks on federal deficit by Republicans elected last fall with the support of Tea Party activists. Congressional Democrats slammed the GOP proposal as too drastic. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) House Democratic Leader says, “this legislation will destroy American jobs while harming middle-class families, young adults, seniors and yes, Veterans”.

I say, all programs must be on the table to possibly be cut in some percentage, including Defense spending. The following is an example of wasteful spending within the Defense Dept. This story is about the U.S Navy’s landing craft air cushion (LCAC). At $ 50 million dollars a copy. This air cushion vehicle is barely a decimal point in the Pentagon’s budget. The LCAC is used to transport Marines and equipment from ship to shore. The LCAC has been around for over 25 years and when it came down to buy new ones, the Chief of Naval Operations set out to cut away some of the red tape that ensnarls almost every new program. There is an incomprehensible chart of the pentagon’s outline of all the steps any new program must go through before it begins production. What this translates to is that it guarantees that any new weapon or vehicle will take longer and cost more than it should. In the case of the LCAC, the red tape would require an additional 3 years and $100 million dollars. Now this is the kicker, the new LCAC is basically the same one the Navy has been using for 25 years. Yet, the rules say it has to go through testing as if it were the first of it’s kind. The only thing that has changed is some of the components such as one-piece component to the deflector on the rear propellers or a single curtain on the bottom of the craft. This is an example of the red tape B.S. that needs to be either streamlined or cut.


Folks, I don’t have all the answers to solve this budget crap. I do feel that unfortunately, we must also look at cutting some of these entitlement programs (i.e. Medicare, Medicaid) I do know that this is a tough situation and that there may be some of you who are strongly against this. I don’t think that we can begin to seriously cut the deficit without taking a hard look at cutting some of Medicare & Medicaid. Congress must put everything on the table and go through it with a fine tooth comb to find the cuts, not spending freezes, necessary to start trimming the budget. This is my opinion, what’s yours?


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Until next time,



Rodney.