From Chuck Spinney's most recent blog post, "Flush
With Cash, Running on Empty"
(I've editor for length and clarity; feel free to read
the full article via the link provided.)
* * *
* *
The Pentagon just won another small skirmish in its long
war with Social Security and Medicare. That is the unstated message of the
budget deal just announced gleefully by congressional leaders and the
President.
To understand [how and] why, let’s take a quick trip down
memory lane.
Last January, President Obama submitted Fiscal Year (FY)
2016 budget to Congress, and he proposed to break the spending limits on both
defense and domestic programs.
These limits [were] set by the long-term sequester
provisions of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), which, for better or worse,
[was] the law of the land, and Obama [asked] Congress to change the law.
* WHICH THEY DID. THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS. THE REPUBLICAN
HOUSE AND THE REPUBLICAN SENATE. (COLLECTIVELY KNOW AS: "THE SCUMBAGS.")
[President] Obama wanted to finance his ramped up
spending proposals by increasing taxes. Of course, he knew that the Republican-controlled
Congress lusted for defense increases but hated domestic spending, particularly
entitlements. Moreover, he knew increasing taxes was like waving the red cape
in front of the Republican budget bulls. So, he knew [such a] budget would be
dead on arrival.
Obama’s [approach] nevertheless had one virtue: it was
up front about the intractable nature of the budget problem. In effect, whether
deliberately or not, Obama laid a trap that the Republicans merrily walked into
during the ensuing spring and summer.
Obama's gambit set into motion a tortured kabuki dance in
the Republican-controlled Congress. The Republicans, as Obama well knew, wanted
to keep up the appearances of adhering to the BCA; but at the same time, they
wanted desperately to shovel money into the Pentagon’s coffers.
The net result was that Obama’s proposal triggered a
series of increasingly irrational Congressional negotiations, bizarre back-room
deals and weird budget resolutions.
These machinations came to a head with the passage of a
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that proposed to 1) keep the
Pentagon’s base budget at the BCA level of about $499 billion, but 2) pack the
accounts in the Pentagon’s Overseas Contingencies Operations fund (OCO) with programs
and pork that should have been in its base budget.
* SCUMBAGS. TOTAL SCUMBAGS.
The reason for the dodgy OCO slush fund rested in the
politically irresistible fact that the OCO is a separate war-fighting fund for
the Pentagon that is exempt from the spending limits set by the BCA’s sequester
provisions.
(*SMIRK*)
The net result of the smoke and mirrors by the Budget and
Armed Services Committees of Congress was a total defense budget that was
almost identical to Obama’s original submission, but one that was not
accompanied by his domestic funding increases or his tax increases. And this
monstrosity was all wrapped up in a ridiculous pretense of adhering to the BCA
limits.
Last week, President Obama seemed to close the trap by
vetoing the 2016 NDAA. But this too was smoke and mirrors. The veto put in
motion yet another kabuki dance, this time behind closed doors between the
White House and the leaders of Congress. The goal was to reach an overall
budget deal that would avoid a government shutdown, which the majority
Republicans were terrified of being blamed for on the eve of an election year. At
the same time, they wanted to dodge the BCA’s sequester bullet while they
shoveled more money into the Pentagon.
(*NOD*)
That deal has now been joined...
The first financing gimmick cuts back Medicare and Social
Security disability benefits. But if past is prologue, the cut to Medicare is
likely to be reversed again next year, which is an election year — because
everyone in Congress wants the endorsement of the American Medical Association
(AMA). The cut to Medicare providers was first made permanent law by the
Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and since then Congress has reversed the scheduled
provider cut 17 times.
The second financing gimmick is to sell crude oil from
the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Ironically, this rather bizarre provision is peculiarly
fitting to the culture of Versailles on the Potomac.
(*NOD*)
Few remember that the reserve was justified to the
American people in 1975 as an insurance “cushion" to reduce the adverse
effects of future rises in oil prices or supply disruptions engineered by OPEC,
which is controlled by our supposed “ally” Saudi Arabia.
So why sell the reserve's oil when prices are near record
lows (adjusted for inflation) compared to those of the last fifteen to twenty
years, particularly since the Saudis are flooding the market to take out the U.S.
frackers? Who benefits is a fascinating question with all sorts of twists and
turns and is as yet unanswered. But it is worth recalling the 1997 Balanced
Budget Act had a provision to sell the Naval Petroleum Reserve at Elk Hills
(sold in 1998) – at that time, the largest privatization of government assets
in history - precisely when oil prices were at their lowest level (adjusted for
inflation) since the 1960s. They sold it to Occidental Petroleum which made a
killing.
There is one thing the deal makes clear, however. The
Pentagon's share of the spending increases would be $33 billion in FY16, made
up of a $25B increase in the Pentagon’s base budget and an $8B increase in the
OCO.
As for how the Pentagon’s $15 billion increase in FY17
will be allocated, the report in Defense News is silent.
So, there is good reason why champagne corks are popping
in halls of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) and its
lobbying affiliates on K Street.
Indeed, to celebrate the triumph, the Airforce
immediately announced it awarded Northrop-Grumman a huge concurrent engineering
contract (Milestone B) to design and build the first 21 of 100 new long range
strike bombers, which heretofore had been shrouded in heavy secrecy.
* THE B-3.
No one knows what this bomber will even look like, let
alone what the program will cost, but two years ago, there were reports of a
“pre-cost-growth” total program cost estimate (R&D and production) reaching
$81 billion. At least one of the MICC’s euphoric wholly-owned subsidiaries in
the Fourth Estate has already written that 100 bomber is not enough, given the
threats we face and the number of aging bombers that need to be replaced.
(See: Here.)
This new bomber program is by far the largest weapon
acquisition program yet started in the 21st Century. Yet there has been no
oversight, except by its advocates in the smoke-filled, super-secret secure
compartmented information facilities (SCIFs) spread around Versailles.
* MEANING WASHINGTON...
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Moreover, the bomber's heavy concurrency means that the
production-related money will quickly start flowing to hundreds of
congressional districts, well before it is designed. So, before you can say "sequester"
next year, the Bomber, like the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, will be
unstoppable. And, like the F-35, it will acquire a life of its own to live on,
no matter how badly it fails to meet its cost goals, its capability
specifications, or its production quotas.
The simple but powerful reason [is] that a majority in
Congress are being bought off today in a way that will ensure they vote for it
tomorrow.
* ANOTHER "BIPARTISAN" AGREEMENT.
(*SIGH*)
But there is more!
The new Bomber is just the beginning of the new defense
boom that Mr. Obama and Congress are launching beneath the smoke and mirrors of
their budget practices. The Pentagon already has a bow wave of increased spending for new
weapons in its R&D pipeline. In that sense, it is no accident that, a year
ago, as he was departing the Pentagon, the Pentagon’s ineffectual comptroller
Robert Hale characterized the new bomber as the “canary in the coal mine.” He
was wringing his hands over the rapidly growing requirements for larger defense
budgets in the future — requirements he helped to create.
Bow waves are a perennial feature in Pentagon planning. I
first heard the term in 1973. The current bow wave, like its predecessors, will
lead inexorably to more budget crises and more dodgy budget deals made by the
best [and brightest] government money can buy.
(*NOD*)
So, once again, [President] Obama had a shot at leading
from the moral high ground, and once again, he blew it. He had the Republicans
on the ropes, with all their warts on full display, but then he squandered an
opportunity to effect even a pretense of challenging a thoroughly corrupt
system.
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