Friday, December 12, 2014

Obama Losing Grip on Pentagon Spending

Politico reports:
President Barack Obama is losing some of the control over the defense budget that his administration clawed away from top military commanders early in his presidency, with the service chiefs and Congress once again openly conspiring to undo tough spending decisions made by the White House and the Pentagon. 
The result: an omnibus spending package for this fiscal year that includes money to buy lots of weapons the Pentagon didn’t request but top commanders signaled they wanted anyway. 
It all amounts to a more than $3 billion boost in procurement funding above the Pentagon’s fiscal 2015 budget request — and a bill packed with goodies for the military’s top defense contractors, including aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing...“This shows that when the services can make a compelling case to Congress, they still do have the power to effectively go around the administration,” said defense budget expert Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “They’ve done that in several cases here.”

3 comments:

  1. did he ever really have a grip on it? or did it have more of a grip on him?

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  2. Cuts to the rate of spending increases are."tough spending decisions". Ha!

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  3. Again, why the country will go over the cliff. Neither side will make the tough decisions until it is too late.

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