By Lamar Cheatham
The current battle for a successful continued resolution has presented the Tea Party with a wonderful opportunity to exercise its mandate to create major reductions in our Federal Budget. A strong point has been made and it has everyone’s attention. I am a firm believer in elimination and then streamlining of the extraordinary and superfluous spending. With continued resolutions this contentious there are created problems.
I am conflicted with my desire to continue the Tea Party battle and problems created by the lack of a budget. There are the political and the practical.
In the practical, depts. of the Govt. can’t project their budgets, hence
future. An example of this harm is the military. The Navy has had to cancel important projects, particularly in ship refitting. Most of our ships are, or near, worn out. New ships are much fewer and replacements are not really being considered. Some that are, such as the Littoral ships are nice but ancillary and don’t replace our deep water Navy.
Examples of canceled projects include the approved $135,000,000 ±
rebuilding of the Pelilu at a ship yard on the west coast. The yard has now had to fire the 350 workers for that project due to indecision.
At Mayport, Fla. enough programs have been stopped to eliminate active duty of 25% of that bases fighting ships.
These projects affect bases, shipyards, jobs, etc.. The effect on our
economy and preparedness is enormous. The hoops that will have to be
re-jumped through are enormous and a great deal of these projects will not be revived.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has, for the most part, quit buying weapons and canceled development orders of future ones. Existing DoD contract deliveries have been slowed down, shortened and payments lengthened putting a lot of stress on many companies. Companies are being forced out of business. To add insult to injury, some orders that are ripe for US companies are going to Taiwan.
These are typical problems for all branches of the military.
We are in three wars and who knows what preventative assignments.
From a political standpoint I am conflicted with when to stop fighting the
budget extension battle. Republicans are the ones being tarred with the
possibility of a ‘Govt. shutdown’. Fortunately, through Paul Ryan, we have presented our own budget for next year. Now an ENORMOUS battle will ensue and we can really show our wares. I think we need most of our powder to fight a battle that has immeasurably more cost cutting that the current resolution.
A large part of this battle revolves around the coming election. The
President is already running and will use this to extract, extort, large
donations if we give him the chance. It only takes so many of these
uninformed, uninformable and died in the wool voters to put him back in. WE CAN”T BE PIOUS !
On another dangerous note; we are almost out of Cruise Missiles. New ones are long since out of production. One of the main plants in Florida was sold several years ago. For a long time ships coming off of deployment have been transferring their missiles to ships on their way to a new deployment. Full loads, much less reloads, are all but non existent. This president has wasted a lot of the ones we had left on minor targets. I have been told that the war fighting officers (much different from the Pentagon fraternity) are livid.
With the obviously suspect Middle East policy of Obama, Israel can’t be
defended by us with missiles if an all out attack occurs. A strong
possibility. Our fleet is vulnerable. Iran can shut down the Strait of Hormuz trapping us as well as oil freighters in the gulf. It would make you sick to learn what ship Captains have told me they have been confronted with from Iran coming through those straits. The Straits are in Iranian water.
I hope my concerns are well understood.