After months of meetings, huddles, posturing, and partisanship, the end came with a four-paragraph statement. The congressional supercommittee finally confirmed Monday afternoon what most Americans expected all alongâthat the bipartisan panel empowered to find at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts could not come up with a proposal to vote on, let alone one that Congress could actually pass. Instead, some lawmakers are already trying to wiggle out of the threatened consequences. The $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts would slash both defense and nondefense programs for the next 10 years by about 9 percent. Although a single-digit decrease hardly sounds like a catastrophe, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned last week that the military reductions would âdevastateâ the Pentagon and would result in the smallest ground force since 1940, the smallest number of ships since 1915, and the smallest Air Force in history. Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, announced Monday that he would introduce legislation as soon as possible to stop the defense cuts and make Congress get the money from somewhere else in the budget. âI will not let these sequestration cuts stand,â McKeon said. In short, both sides are still vowing to get their way, despite having promised to go along with the automatic cuts if a deal couldnât be reached so the pressure would force a compromise. Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/supercommittee-fallout-094500110.html
Smallest airforce in history? talk about creative accounting. The jets of today can each cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the days of thousand aircraft forces are over. I guess the rhetoric is shaping up to stop the automatic cuts, a pity. Someone should remind these bozos why they are doing the cuts, because if they don't a catastrophy will happen.
Those military contracts are about to hit the unemployment line. Defense contacts are halted for the most part. Or I should say "Bidding" on defense contracts has slowed to a grind right now.
Another big bag of gold just dropped in the lobbyists' laps. All those retired Generals now working on K street are partying big time.