Source:The Hill– The Pentagon, which is obviously home of the U.S. Department of Defense, but also the home of hundreds of billions in deficit spending the last 10 years.

“Defense insiders on and off Capitol Hill increasingly acknowledge more cuts are ahead for the Pentagon as lawmakers and the administration intensify their efforts to reduce the nation’s deficit.

They say the political battle will focus on the size and nature of spending reductions and that major weapons programs could be spared from the cuts.

President Obama has set a marker of reducing defense spending by $400 billion through 2023.
This promises new cuts to his 2012 budget request, made just a few months ago, of $553 billion for the Pentagon.”

From The Hill

Anyone who says and believes that there’s no waste in the Defense Department, even though the Secretary of Defense (a Republican, by the way) and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs believes there is, is out to lunch and never came back. Perhaps they went to a marijuana festival and never came back down. Left the real world to get a break from reality or is simply lying.

Secretary Gates would like to eliminate 50B$ a year in defense waste. Even Representative Paul Ryan Chairman, of the Budget Committee (no one’s hippie, pacifist, dove) acknowledges that there’s waste in the Defense Department with his budget plan. Members of the Tea Party have acknowledge this and have said that everything should be on the table when it comes to deficit reduction. The Speaker of the House John Boehner (no one’s hippie, Marxist-Communist) has acknowledged that defense spending should be on the table when it comes to deficit reduction. It’s only Neoconservatives and deficit Hawks (the John Bolton’s of the world) who believe otherwise.

President Obama and Senate Leader Reid will never get a clean debt ceiling bill from House Speaker Boehner who has made that clear. Any debt ceiling bill will have additional budget cuts in it. Especially with Standards and Poor’s downgrading American debt on Monday. That just makes this more clear. Which I think this is a good thing, because if you are going to request to borrow even more money, then you should show some ability to pay it back, especially when your debt equals your net worth. In this case the American economy of 14T$, but with a national debt of over 90% of that.

I say great, let’s make more budget cuts, even though the Federal Government just agreed to a record one year budget cut two weeks ago. I say great, let’s put in the defense cuts that Secretary Gates wants as well as eliminate subsidy’s for big oil and gas. And let these people play their role in “Shared Sacrifice” as well.

The House GOP as much as they might want will never be able to balance the Federal budget by just by cutting 13% of the Federal budget. Defense, entitlements, corporate welfare represent most of the budget. And there’s plenty of waste that taxpayers finance to go around. In other words: everything should be on the table to either cut or at least reform.