Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave one of the most sweeping speeches of the Post-Cold War era on American national security. Building off themes established in the 2008 National Defense Strategy written under President Bush, Secretary Gates presented what he described as “a budget crafted to reshape the priorities of America’s defense establishment. … a holistic assessment of capabilities, requirements, risks, and needs for the purpose of shifting this department in a different strategic direction.” The key assumption running through the Gates/Bush 2008 National Defense Strategy, is that “Although …
President Obama’s trip to Europe has been revealing. Many people had high hopes that Obama may turn out to be a closet moderate. After all, his position on Afghanistan wasn’t all that bad, some said. Unfortunately, the picture is now clearer; his statements and actions in Europe show just how unrealistic those hopes were. Consider what Obama did in Europe: 1. The day after North Korea launched a missile that someday may be capable of delivering a nuclear weapon against the United States, who did he put in the nuclear …
Major 2010 defense budget cuts expected to be announced by Secretary Gates today are part of a broader theme laid out in last year’s National Defense Strategy and his Foreign Affairs article seeking more “balance” in the military’s equipment portfolio away from high-end systems to fight conventional wars and more toward counterinsurgency capabilities. In the Post-Cold War world, however, the United States has chosen through numerous defense strategies to embrace a global vision of the world consistent with broad interpretations of its national interests and international priorities. In short, America …
Last week President Obama took another opportunity to discuss his budget plans with the American people. As part of selling his $3.2 billion dollar budget, he has set his sights on defense acquisition reform and the time-honored tradition of promising greater cost savings by rooting out the fraud, waste, and abuse within the system. While reforming the acquisition system is a noble task, buried within the President’s language is the subtle message that he sees acquisition reform not just as an effort towards reforming the acquisition process, but also as …
In his February 24, Address to Joint Session of Congress, President Barack Obama promised to “reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use.” In the DC Examiner, Heritage senior fellow James Carafano wonders that means: All the “Cold War” weapons still in the Pentagon’s inventory—tanks, planes, ships—are already bought and paid for. And they are still in use—from aircraft carriers to cruise missiles. Scrap them, and you’ll have to replace them. Every system that we are buying now or plan to …
A core principle of the political left in this country is that our current levels of defense spending have harmed, and will continue to harm, our economic prosperity. So last month while he was defending the $700 billion Wall Street bailout program, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) said: “The biggest ongoing threat to fiscal sanity in this country, I believe, is an open-ended, ever expanding military budget that goes far beyond what is necessary.” Frank’s assertions about the scope of defense spending in the United States are just flat out wrong. At …
During yesterday’s press conference on government contracting reform, President Obama took aim at the defense industry, declaring that “We are spending money on things that we don’t need, and we are paying more than we need to pay, and that’s completely unacceptable.” Fair enough. We more than agree that it is time to assess the capacity of the federal acquisition workforce to do its job and to clarify where and when “outsourcing” to government contractors is necessary. But then things went astray. President Obama pointed to a GAO report last …
Yesterday, President Obama declared that in addition to solving all of the country’s other ills that he was going to eliminate government waste. His target—defense spending. “I want to focus on one particular example, and that is the situation in defense contracting.” This was a speech I long expected. Our government should, of course, take every responsible measure to ensure it is a good steward of our tax dollars and provide the best support for our men and women in uniform. But, I suspect that is not what is going …
This morning, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum that aims to reform government contracting and, he claims, an effort that could potentially save taxpayers up to $40 billion. President Obama is right to ensure that “the American people’s money is spent to advance their priorities, not to line the pockets of contractors who have figured out how to work the system, or to maintain projects that don’t work.” He is also correct to “reject the false choice between securing this nation and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars.” Although the new …
We just finished watching President Barack Obama’s press conference on his plan to save taxpayers $40 billion a year by reforming government contracting. And with apologies to the Wendy’s franchise, “Where’s the beef?” There was zero substance in that speech. Not one specific idea for exactly how he will achieve this alleged $40 Billion in savings by removing blank checks for defense contractors. If he were serious about reforming business as usual, he could have started with all the defense earmarks in the latest omnibus bill. But it looks like …
