Jackass master
Old and worn out
Obama’s Useless Budget Data…and Improbable Budget Strategy
Budgets are important documents: they are the ultimate expression of policy by a President or Congress.
Budgets are also a useful revelation of the character and competence of those who put them together.
President Obama’s budget presentation for the Department of Defense and national security-related activities outside of the Defense Department is useless for understanding what he and Congress have enacted for the current 2013 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The budget material for 2014 also shows there is no new thinking in the Obama Administration for putting U.S. national security spending on a constructive path. Given the dysfunctional Congress that’s getting the new budget, we should expect the worst: delay, chaos and decisions to increase, not control, costs.
Thanks to lawmakers’ six-month delay in enacting the 2013 defense budget, the Obama Administration took an extra two months—beyond the usual early February deadline—to put together the new Pentagon budget. And yet, the budget displays the Office of Management and Budget released April 10 did not accurately show what Congress passed and President Obama signed into law on March 26.
The 2013 numbers OMB released for the Defense Department, for example, were off by $42.8 billion, and the numbers for other national security-related agencies, such as the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, were off by billions of dollars as well.
As OMB and Pentagon officials privately explained, it wasn’t that there was too little time to publish the accurate numbers. It was that no one in the Obama Administration wanted to acknowledge what the numbers really were, because that might mean that they might not be changed to something higher.
Ignoring the sequestration of $42.8 billion specifically enacted by Public Law 113-006 in March, OMB’s budget display did not show what the numbers actually are.
It showed instead what OMB and DOD wish them to be.
That’s an interesting approach for a budget that has already been set in concrete by law for a fiscal year that is more than half over.
The strategy seems to be: ignore reality, hope for the best.
Surely all those statesmen and -women in Congress will fix it.
It doesn’t get any better for the new 2014 budget request. It too ignores the statutory requirement for a sequester of $52 billion, but that’s okay; the new request is prospective, and they are seeking a future modification. It’s other portions that ignore reality.
To save money, the new defense budget seeks a congressional green light to close surplus bases—of which there are many. Last year, Congress summarily rejected this idea. It was an election year, and no one on Capitol Hill wanted to be found failing to protect pork.
This year is not an election year, but already members of Congress are saying this request for a Base Re-Alignment and Closure (BRAC) is dead on arrival. In the new age politics, every year is an election year, and nothing in the new request for a BRAC gives anyone on Capitol Hill a good reason to think differently. Nothing has been done to divert Congress from its now-perpetual resistance to base closures.
Read more: http://nation.time.com/2013/04/12/ob...#ixzz2QG3COROl
Budgets are important documents: they are the ultimate expression of policy by a President or Congress.
Budgets are also a useful revelation of the character and competence of those who put them together.
President Obama’s budget presentation for the Department of Defense and national security-related activities outside of the Defense Department is useless for understanding what he and Congress have enacted for the current 2013 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The budget material for 2014 also shows there is no new thinking in the Obama Administration for putting U.S. national security spending on a constructive path. Given the dysfunctional Congress that’s getting the new budget, we should expect the worst: delay, chaos and decisions to increase, not control, costs.
Thanks to lawmakers’ six-month delay in enacting the 2013 defense budget, the Obama Administration took an extra two months—beyond the usual early February deadline—to put together the new Pentagon budget. And yet, the budget displays the Office of Management and Budget released April 10 did not accurately show what Congress passed and President Obama signed into law on March 26.
The 2013 numbers OMB released for the Defense Department, for example, were off by $42.8 billion, and the numbers for other national security-related agencies, such as the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, were off by billions of dollars as well.
As OMB and Pentagon officials privately explained, it wasn’t that there was too little time to publish the accurate numbers. It was that no one in the Obama Administration wanted to acknowledge what the numbers really were, because that might mean that they might not be changed to something higher.
Ignoring the sequestration of $42.8 billion specifically enacted by Public Law 113-006 in March, OMB’s budget display did not show what the numbers actually are.
It showed instead what OMB and DOD wish them to be.
That’s an interesting approach for a budget that has already been set in concrete by law for a fiscal year that is more than half over.
The strategy seems to be: ignore reality, hope for the best.
Surely all those statesmen and -women in Congress will fix it.
It doesn’t get any better for the new 2014 budget request. It too ignores the statutory requirement for a sequester of $52 billion, but that’s okay; the new request is prospective, and they are seeking a future modification. It’s other portions that ignore reality.
To save money, the new defense budget seeks a congressional green light to close surplus bases—of which there are many. Last year, Congress summarily rejected this idea. It was an election year, and no one on Capitol Hill wanted to be found failing to protect pork.
This year is not an election year, but already members of Congress are saying this request for a Base Re-Alignment and Closure (BRAC) is dead on arrival. In the new age politics, every year is an election year, and nothing in the new request for a BRAC gives anyone on Capitol Hill a good reason to think differently. Nothing has been done to divert Congress from its now-perpetual resistance to base closures.
Read more: http://nation.time.com/2013/04/12/ob...#ixzz2QG3COROl
