Federal Budget Update

No time for much talking, just a quick note that fiscal conservatives won a very good (but not great) victory in the big budget battle that just was resolved. From the Washington Examiner via Hot Air

A new analysis by a group of federal-spending watchdogs shows a striking imbalance between the parties when it comes to earmark requests. Democrats remain raging spenders, while Republicans have made enormous strides in cleaning up their act. In the Senate, the GOP made only one-third as many earmark requests as Democrats for 2011, and in the House, Republicans have nearly given up earmarking altogether — while Democrats roll on.
The watchdog groups — Taxpayers for Common Sense, WashingtonWatch.com, and Taxpayers Against Earmarks — counted total earmark requests in the 2011 budget. Those requests were made by lawmakers earlier this year, but Democratic leaders, afraid that their party’s spending priorities might cost them at the polls, decided not to pass a budget before the Nov. 2 elections. This week, they distilled those earmark requests — threw some out, combined others — into the omnibus bill that was under consideration in the Senate until Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled it Thursday night. While that bill was loaded with spending, looking back at the original earmark requests tells us a lot about the spending inclinations of both parties.
In the 2011 House budget, the groups found that House Democrats requested 18,189 earmarks, which would cost the taxpayers a total of $51.7 billion, while House Republicans requested just 241 earmarks, for a total of $1 billion.
Where did those GOP earmark requests come from? Just four Republican lawmakers: South Carolina Rep. Henry Brown, who did not run for re-election this year; Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, who lost his bid for re-election; maverick Texas Rep. Ron Paul; and spending king Rep. Don Young of Alaska. The other Republican members of the House — 174 of them — requested a total of zero earmarks.

Republican Senators didn't behave so honorably, but, still the overall result is very good. Another win for the Tea Party: though out of power in the White House and both Houses of Congress, fiscal conservatives were able to impose their will on the ultra liberals (as in liberal with taxpayer money) that currently theoretically control our government. Let's hope Republicans can step it up to the next level in the next Congress.  They better, or else!

The Buck Flies On By

Has America ever had more of a spineless punk for president? One thing you expect out of a president, regardless of party or political outlook is responsibility for his actions and decisions. That is entirely lacking in President Present, who apparently doesn't remember which party he was in, which party was in the majority, and which party developed the budgets that President Bush signed into law which resulted in the deficits that Obama inherited. He pushed for those big budgets and big deficits when he was in Congress and he pushed for, and received the much bigger ones we have now. He is entirely responsible for that debt, and in addition the debt from reduced tax generation due to the recession, which in turn was caused almost entirely by the subprime loan crisis. While in Congress, he helped Democrats fight President Bush and Senator McCain when they attemped to rein in the subprime loan policy of Fannie Mae. This should be a surprise to no American. He certainly had/has good intentions for what he is doing. He should man up and say "yes, I am doing this, it needs to be done, and here's why..." rather than pointing at others, as he seems to do with every single issue that comes up and saying, "not me, he did". Contrast this with President Reagan, a real leader, who said "yes, we're going to raise the Prime Lending rate, this will contract the economy, and cause job losses, but it needs to be done to break inflation."

Here's a good time to link the Cake video "Building A Religion"

Security Topic: Defense Spending

So Obama was clever in retaining Gates as his Secretary of Defense.  Gate's new budget for the military shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone.  He start talking Democrat in the waning years of the Bush administration to keep his post (more spending for the State Dept, more operation responsibilities for non-military actors abroad), Obama has talked repeatedly about cutting "wasteful" programs, and now we have a new plan from Gates that is going to hurt the future effectiveness of the military for years to come.  I think this plan is going to sail through despite the severe lobbying that's bound to come from defense firms attached to the Schinseki's Future Combat Systems (FCS) because of the "bi-partisan" nature of a joint Gates/Obama plan to slim down defense spending.  If a democrat was sitting in this position, it would be a different story.

The real question then becomes: is the plan necessarily bad?  To get the obvious out of the way, there will be no impact on funding for the war, if anything we'll be sinking more into the abyss that most call Afghanistan and there are no signs of a 14 month withdrawal in Iraq.  So in the short term no one can say that Gates/Obama (Gaoma) plan will hurt our current operational committments.  What I'm worried about are long term implications.  

What's important to note about Gaoma's plan is that it shifts the operational focus of the military to COIN ops and low scale conflict operations.  The programs that might get axed are not only those that Gates says are bloated or inefficient but those that are centered around large scale conventional war.  Gaoma have staked their bets that the age of nation-state wars passed with last century and that the low intensity conflict is going to be the problem of the future.  

A lesser analyst would focus on raising a political battle cry that this is the problem, "we're losing against China/Russia, China is the lurking enemy."  These concerns are certainly true and valid, but what I'm more worried about is what this President and future Presidents will do with a military that becomes increasingly built on low scale conflicts/operations.  If they think they have a military that is built to handle these problems than I feel like they'll be more willing to use it and deploy us into more conflicts.  The real concern than becomes whether or not the Military will be used for our security, or the moral maxims of whatever teleprompter chained dupe the short sighted masses elect next (even worse....whatever problems the UN drags us into).  

In addition, we've already seen the costs of COIN focused militaries in their confrontation with large well armed conventional forces; they get obliterated (see the latest Georgian conflict).  If the conventional force has the political will to disregard concern for civilian safety than no low-intensity military can stand up to it.  Sure, the age of Western Nation States using their militaries in such a fashion is over, but we've seen no sign this is true from Russia or China (thinking of the brutal repression over the last year of Tibet).  With a long term change in direction we are subordinating our military initiative to them while simultaneously potentially dragging ourselves into numerous humanitarian messes across the globe.  

This will be the eclipse of the American Epoch.