Robert Gates and economic reality

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates speaks to students at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, May 7. Gates said on May 8 that said that all Pentagon spending and operations need to be reviewed.


Gates sounds alarm on budget priorities
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday May 8, 2010 15:41:36 EDT

The nation’s top civilian defense official has sounded his loudest alarm yet on military spending, calling for an across-the-board review of all Pentagon spending and operations.

In a Saturday speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan., Defense Secretary Robert Gates put the defense establishment and Congress on notice that the military must cut overhead, find a way to rein in explosive growth in medical spending and other personnel costs, and curb the exponentially rising costs of modern weapons systems.

Gates said that given current tough economic conditions, and given the typical annual spending increase of 2 percent to 3 percent above inflation needed to sustain readiness, “it is highly unlikely that we will achieve the real growth rates necessary to sustain the current force structure.”

Specifically and in the short term, Gates said he has directed every military service, command and staff and Pentagon department to take “a hard, unsparing look at how they operate — in substance and style alike” in preparing for the 2012 budget submission to Congress.

“The goal is to cut our overhead costs and transfer those savings to force structure and modernization within the programmed budget,” he said. “In other words, to convert sufficient ‘tail’ to ‘tooth’ to provide the equivalent of roughly 2 to 3 percent real growth — resources needed to sustain America’s combat power at a time of war and make investments to prepare for an uncertain future.


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Gates says urgent need to cut defense bureaucracy
By ROBERT BURNS
AP National Security Writer
May 8, 5:06 PM EDT

ABILENE, Kan. (AP) -- Warring against waste, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday he is ordering a top-to-bottom paring of the military bureaucracy in search of at least $10 billion in annual savings needed to prevent an erosion of U.S. combat power.

He took aim what he called a bloated bureaucracy, wasteful business practices and too many generals and admirals, and outlined an ambitious plan for reform that's almost certain to stir opposition in the corridors of Congress and Pentagon.

"The Defense Department must take a hard look at every aspect of how it is organized, staffed and operated - indeed, every aspect of how it does business," he said in a speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in the former command in chief's home town. Gates was the keynote speaker at a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender in World War II.

The library was a fitting setting for Gates to caution against unrestrained military spending. In his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office in January 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the "grave implications" of having built during that war an enormous military establishment and a huge arms industry that could wield undue influence in American society.

"Eisenhower was wary of seeing his beloved republic turn into a muscle-bound, garrison state - militarily strong but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent," Gates said. He recalled Eisenhower's impatience with a mindset within the military that often sought to add new weaponry without regard for cost or efficiency - "pile program on program," as he once put it.

Gates said he had recently come to the conclusion about the urgent need for big cuts in light of the recession and the likelihood that Congress no longer will give the Pentagon the sizable budget increases it has enjoyed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.



unhappycamper comment: The DoD budget was $302 billion when idiot son took over; it's now around a trillion dollars a fucking year. Web site http://www.costofwar.com/ sums it up nicely. BOHICA!

that will be recommended by the commission stacked with anti-social security hacks.

Gates is a tool and lying sack of shit. My memory isn't short enough to forget iran contra and his role in the cia.
What we will see in the next few months is the PR run up to the commission report. Lots of noise about defense cuts, just like we get noise about reigning in health care costs and noise about regulating the banks and energy industries. In the end very little substantive will be accomplished except the manufactured go ahead for the cutting of entitlements.

We are being played once again.

soldier's pay and healthcare.