The Foundry

Posts Tagged ‘Defense Spending’

• Making Sense of China’s Defense Budget Slowdown

  Posted March 9th, 2010 at 1:26pm in American Leadership with 0 comments

  The PRC announced this past week that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) budget would increase by about 7.5% in 2010. This marks the first time that the PLA budget has had an increase of less than 10% in nearly a decade. But don’t jump the gun. It is far from clear that it represents [...] More

• Protect Defense with Spending Limits

  Posted March 4th, 2010 at 6:00pm in Protect America with 2 comments

  Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Mike Pence (R-ID), and John Campbell (R-CA) recently unveiled a proposal to impose a limit on federal spending of 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  This proposal serves as a necessary reminder that current federal spending is out of control and certain to grow further if nothing is done. The sponsors [...] More

• Stop the Spending Now

  Posted March 4th, 2010 at 12:00pm in Entitlements with 5 comments

  Federal spending is out of control. Even President Obama knows it.  To really stop the madness, Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Mike Pence (R-IN), and John Campbell (R-CA) have proposed a simple solution – a constitutional amendment capping federal spending at 20 percent of the economy. Their proposal puts the debate squarely where it should be: [...] More

• S.O.S.: Americans Foresee U.S. Military Decline Ahead

  Posted March 2nd, 2010 at 3:00pm in Protect America with 5 comments

  A recent Gallup poll shows that Americans see the U.S. as the world’s top military power now but doubt whether this will be true in 20 years. Only about a third of Americans believe the U.S. will still be ranked first militarily in 2029. Americans are intuitively smart, and they have taken note of a disturbing [...] More

• Aging Air Force Tankers: Flying in the Face of Danger

  Posted February 25th, 2010 at 3:00pm in Protect America with 6 comments

  This week, the U.S. Air Force presented its revised request for proposals for the new KC-X tanker aircraft.  Industry now has 60 days to submit bids, and the contract for the new tankers should be awarded sometime this summer. A new tanker is long overdue after a much-delayed and mismanaged process. An AOL [...] More

• Is Global Warming Really A Bigger Threat than Iran?

  Posted February 16th, 2010 at 1:35pm in Protect America with 7 comments

  Over the past year, Iran has declared itself a nuclear state and continues to expand their ballistic missile program, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has testified to Congress that Al Qaeda and its affiliates are planning a large-scale attack on American soil within the next six months, and failed Flight 253 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab [...] More

• The NYT: Talk Softly and Ditch that Anachronistic, Unproven, Cold War-Era Stick

  Posted February 4th, 2010 at 2:45pm in Protect America with 3 comments

  The Pentagon’s major strategy known as the Quadrennial Defense Review was released this week. It immediately drew praise from the New York Times’ editorial titled “The Defense Budget” for cutting weapons programs—although not nearly enough—and for acknowledging a decline by choice regarding the role of the United States in the world. The editorial [...] More

• Budget 2011: The Obama Five-Year Defense Budget Plan Is Worse Than a Freeze

  Posted February 1st, 2010 at 3:30pm in Protect America with 1 comments

  The Obama Administration has been quick to point out that it has exempted the defense budget from its proposed freeze on other elements of discretionary spending in its budget. While the Administration has announced in the budget that it is requesting a $33 billion supplemental appropriation for defense in the current fiscal year and [...] More

• Oldest Air Force in History Asked to Do More than Ever Before

  Posted February 1st, 2010 at 11:43am in Protect America with 1 comments

  We’ve all heard the statistics that many of the U.S. Air Force’s young pilots fly the same planes their fathers and grandfathers flew in Vietnam. They were once cutting edge but now are old, worn out, and technologically dated. Now it’s time to for Congress to do something about the problem of declining air power capabilities. The [...] More

• Pelosi Wrong On Defense Spending

  Posted January 28th, 2010 at 1:14pm in Protect America with 4 comments

  POLITCO reported yesterday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to freeze defense spending too. “Everybody has to make a sacrifice,” the San Francisco Democrat said in an interview conducted as part of POLITICO’s “Inside Obama’s Washington” video series. “If you’re asking everybody else in the country who has an interaction with the federal government – and [...] More