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The Military-Industrial Complex's Latest Best Friend - Barack Obama
Submitted by Chuck Spinney via The Blaster blog,
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 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 are set by the long-term sequester provisions of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), which, for better or worse, is the law of the land, and Obama was asking Congress to change the law. Mr. 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 his budget would be dead on arrival. Obama’s budget, 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 a programs and pork that should have been in its base budget. 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. 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.
That deal has now been joined, and the Republic has been saved, albeit at an unknown price. Nevertheless, some of the sordid details of that price are now beginning to seep through the chinks in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac.
According to this report in Defense News, the elements of the budget deal include:
The deal raises the BCA spending caps (again) by $80 billion over next two years; including $50 billion in FY2016 and $30 billion in FY2017. It also increases the Federal Government’s debt limit.
These spending increases would be split equally between defense and domestic programs, and they would be financed by two squirrelly provisions, to wit:
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 US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Ironically, this rather bizarre provision is peculiarly fitting to the culture of Versailles on the Potomac. 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 US frackers? Who benefits is a fascinating question with all sorts of twists and turns and is not yet answered. 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 AF 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. 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.
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. 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 — for the simple but powerful reason that a majority in Congress are being bought off today in a way that will ensure they vote for it tomorrow.
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 government money can buy.
So, once again, Mr. 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. Obama’s most recent performance is yet more proof that he is no change agent. A better characterization would be that he is merely another Manchurian Candidate, whose role is to protect the interests of the factions making up the shadow government that is now running the show - what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren calls the US Deep State.***
* * *
* This essay is the second in a series of occasional essays on the nature of defense spending. The first can be found here.
** The OCO is a George W. Bush gimmick, created in 2001 after 9-11 to capitalize on the national hysteria to pay for the Global War on Terror by taking its costs off the books. All our previous wars — e.g., WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Kosovo — were funded out of the “base” defense budget and there was no need set up a special war fighting account.
*** Lofgren a former Republican congressional staffer on the House and Senate Budget Committees has written an important new book, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. It will hit the stands next January.
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sorry ike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JleGqB4X13k
"sorry ike."
I warned ya....but most still miss the reason...the "obvious" it the tip of the black ops iceberg (an not special forces crap)...
Look behind the curtain, folks...the Great Oz will floor you...
"latest"? I thought he's always been, no?
Or, do you mean, "late", forward looking?
The entitlements will not happen anyway, but might be serviced fractionally, IF there is still a USA. For there to be a USA, the USA must "provide for the common defense" You know, the basic fundamentals stuff the states entered into the union for originally. To hell with this redistributionist vote buying shit.
NO SHIT!
Ike's speech originally called it the "Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex" but he changed the wording to Military Industrial Complex at the last minute.
An unfortunate piece of editing on his part, but given that it should really be called the "Military-Industrial-Congressional-Presidential Complex" I guess he would not have been entirely accurate either way.
This is what i/we come to ZH for.
Where else would you get this type of analysys? Right or wrong, so valuable, intellectually.
The scarey thought is, that when I think of who I'd like to share such an interesting piece with, there is not much happenning.
As a "financial professional", working in the economy of a key US ally, no one seems that interested, yet!!
Too much information and generally not a direct connection to the Kardashians.
Obama will not finish his second term! Current Events Linked to Ancient Biblical Prophecy!
http://motivationdose.com/is-america-babylon/
And everyone was so concerned about "budget cuts" and "austerity"..."I can't promise Granny is going to get her check!"...lmao!!!
What a farce.
A guy's got to make a living, scraping by, after he has given his all being POTUS for eight years.
The ignorant obtuse cock sucking little queer shit you ignorant mother fuckers voted for might not be survivable.
Sometime you have to look at things from a different perspective:
US deficit 2011/2015: About $4 trillion dollars
US private debt 2011/2015: About $9 trillion dollars
What were you saying?
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TCMDO
"US private debt 2011/2015: About $9 trillion dollars"
Iambic Silvermann's total debt?
$0
and Romney or McCain would have been better? HAHAHAHAHAHA
Because those were the only options? Really?
How about "None of the Above" as an option?
Romney was a foul imposter, but he certainly wouldn't have been worse than Obama. Nevertheless, fuck the Republicans for nominating him.
Both parties are a shame. Still, you'll make no headway whatsoever with the strident Republifucks on this site who gladly drop to their knees and pop their jaws at the sight of a (R) beside someone's name.
the brain can't shed red/blue stuff. ha
"Both parties are a shame".
Well, Bernie Sanders is an INDEPENDENT. (yeah, I know, running as a Democrat).
I guess you could call him the closest thing to an true outsider currently in office.
The best of the worst?
The bombers will be about a Billion each. (remind me why ICBM's were invented)
"The bombers will be about a Billion each."
The bombers will be about 400 million each, with $600 million each skimmed off and funneled to "black ops" space programs.
what is the c ia budget? whatever they can take, like local police...
The CIA gets their money from running heroin from Afghanistan to the US, EU, etc. Hence the hugh uptick in Heroin addiction/deaths in the US.
M-12 is on the money, the skim goes to the secret space program.
Big story on 60 minutes last night about the huge heroin problem. Not one mention of Afghanistan's 3500% increase in opium production since US took over.
Self-censorship for sure. Even those cocksucking presstitutes must be well aware of it and would have no trouble whatsoever making the connection . . . or at least recognizing it as a relevant component of the story.
there are no secret black space programs get over it .
Why do otherwise intelligent people insist that the immoral hand puppets in DC lead from a moral high ground.....?
They don't want to believe they're monsters themselves.
How much was allocated to black ops like Area 51 and things like that? Oh yeah......not in the 'budget'......
Don't forget the D.U.M.Bs. They were not cheap.
Tulsi Gabbard for Vice President!
And Secretary of Defense.
If you ever voted for that stupid idiot Obama , your desendants, if there are any that survive, will all take shits on you grave.
Obama................fukker never saw a wedding he didn't want to drone.
Yes, and the media sold him as the "most liberal president we have had", all the while giving him cover to continue GW's work for the Zionists. Open the borders, destroy our society, spend our money on war after destructive war...all for nothing!
They are going to have to lift that debt ceiling a lot higher after a nice "Tonkin" style provocation takes us from "Advisors" pretense, to the "Positive Reply" phase.
WTF?
I liked the Rupublican Gambit, part of it Tyler.
FUCKING BEAUTIFUL MON , W/ RASTA accent
that's the perfect halloween pumkinface...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z9Hvo7p8Dw&html5=1
Thanks, missed that one!
Stop the "Leader" thinking; exert energy and focus attention on the 535 (known as "Congress"), before there is a rearrangement of such things.
' Stop the "Leader" thinking; '
Spot on Cabreado. Even those who intellectually oppose centralized controls are still playing the game by "their" rules.
We act as if the President is the problem or the cure. We have (inadvertentlyl perhaps) bought into the myth of a government of one. A personality cult that pits Republican nominees against Democrat. Unless we The People opt out of a two party system rife with corruption and unConstitutional goals, then we will continue to be ignored and abused by the tyranny that is behind our bureaucracy.
Real change starts on local, municipal levels, then state levels, then congressional delegates.
And real change is a lifetime commitment of time and energy, not a one shot deal. Our enemies are tireless because they are motivated by an idealism that borders on religious fanaticism.
George W Obama!!
The Osama Slayer can slob on my knob. May his legacy burn.
Obama: Nobel War Price FTW!!
A platitude for a moron would be an appropriate title for this piece. POTUS doesn't have a brain. He merely is led by the nose by Islam loving slime that make up his regime. Giving this asshole credit for anything but destroying a great nation is a joke.
What is the color of the sun your planet revolves around, because here on earth, Obama is surrounded by zionist Jews, certainly NOT Mulsim loving, blablabla. perhaps you could give us a list of these "Islam loving slime", just a few names, because just a glance at who runs the major think tanks, special interest groups that run Washington's foreign affairs, one could gleen numerious zionists who push Obama/Congress, to put Israel first, even if, or especially if, it harms the US.
Let's examine what you just wrote. Yes, he is "surrounded" by AIPAC and PNAC et al, but I would argue that CAIR and other fronts are just as effective in propagandizing. After all, unless you have your head up your ass you would say that "clock boy" was an almost effective bit of intentional stagecraft (to the point that Obama walked back recognition of him at his Washington visit). The zionist rag Salon had the headline "is Ahmed Mohammed the Muslim hero we've been waiting for?".
But you wanted names, so here is a biggie...who actually feeds him his intel?
BRENNAN (aka "The Wolf", if anything about Zero Dark Thirty is to be believed)
I would also argue that Israel did not want Mubarek out, certainly not in favor of Morsi, so who pushed that button, hmm?
From the beginning, the zionist media called Obama a "liberal", and both the right and left ate it up, like the sheep they are. If you align with either idiology or its polical counter part, you are a fool and worthy of being garden fertilizer. The parties are a contrivance, a distraction, one that worls to divide and conquer.
Look at the "World's Smallest Political Quiz" that Libertarians hand out. Ultimately, Reds and Blues are two flavors of control freak, with minor differences. As one politician put it to me: "80% of the time we unanimously approve everything, and the other 20% is split on party lines."
' Ultimately, Reds and Blues are two flavors of control freak, with minor differences. '
I agree; either way we lose.
One of the great underlying problems is the absorption by the federal government of all sorts of social responsibilities. The more the federals take on, the easier it is to divide and conquer The People. Issues which should be state or local issues suddenly divide the national scene, and the longer we aquiesce to federal ownership of states rights, the more difficult it becomes to throw off the yoke.
We won't have freedom from manipulation and coercion until the states, and The People take back the powers reserved to them by the Constitution.
Long Range Bombers are pretty silly in an age of cruise missiles. We are not going to carpet bomb anything any more. And air defenses can easily hit something that big. There are better platforms to launch missiles from than expensive bombers -- especially since we have such a troubled 'new' fighter that cannot provide support.
Your first sentence covers it all. This bomber gives new meaning to "when pigs can fly." Only this case, it is such succulent pork that will fly and not much else.
tptb dont care what flavor of koolaid you drink. Just so long as you do drink some.
Its a pick your poison thing. Once the people put their faith in a thing they become sorta blind to its flaws.
If I were a democrat I would be 10x as pissed at Obama as I was at Jr. That they are not is telling. Same goes for this batch of players.
Tribalism.
I turned libertarian when Bush "betrayed" me and broke so many promises during his presidency, esp. the PATRIOT Act. Most, however, clung to the "But the Dems will be worse!" line. Right now I see only a few Dems doing what I did, because they also are convinced that "The Repubs would be worse!"
The Farce is strong in them.
Yeah, two strikes in Major League Baseball did the same to me, despite the justifications.
They broke my young and vulnerable heart, never to be mended.
I don't think the future is what they think the future is.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/10/27/ignoring-the-absolutely-in...
Good read.
Real debt of the US is 220 TRILLION>
Prof . Kotlikoff
Yup, quit bringing up the future when the electric bill was due yesterday.
220 T - doesn't matter what the number is - it will NEVER be paid.
that kind of stuff doesn't even bother me anymore
The Nobel piece prize was an entry point for MIC stock, now we double down. O will be the first billionair former POTUS. He plays the game well.
Speaking as an old person this just plain creeps me out, not to mention I hope crock knocker Obama roasts slowly on a spit in hell! Baste him with scalding shit! It was bad enough to have our most conservative efforts to provide for ourselves bleed away as the Fed dropped interest rates to zero. "The Market" was a slaughter house. Lehmans didn't help. We tried, we really tried. All we live on now is Social Security and two small and spooky pensions. Not a good feeling when you've worked your asses off to not be a burden to anyone. My husband is a Korean vet, just try to make claims there! But gas prices were low...and our lives are cheap. So are yours... So are all ordinary Americans. I for one have had enough. It's time to take from these sleezeballs before we all see a horrible hot flash and know we've been nuked and that probably it was some jacked asshole on this side that pulled the trigger first to see if his toy would work...neuter the f'ers.
Somehow we've got to starve this Beast before it kills all of us.
The fundamental problem we have today Kyd, is that we remove one sleaseball, there are two more ready to step into the position.ald
I have always wondered what would have happened if in 2009 Obama had co-opted MIC into being pro stimulus by tossing a 100 billion are so in one time increased procurment spending into the stimules bill? Would that have moderated his socialist image enough to avoid the 2010 midterm disaster that hit the democrats?
He is now following the grand tradition of democratic presidents who increase defense spending in there final years in office Carter, Clinton, and now Obama have all done this.
How do you think Clinton pocketed 100 million the past 10 years or so? Because folks really thought he was worth 300K for a 30 min speach? This is the payoff for directing billions into the MIC.
Don't you think all military equipment should be build out of precious metals? You know, just for the psychological effect. Because the US taxpayer has hereby been declared the infinite producer for anything the government wants, even if half those producers don't work. What a f-cked up country the US has become.
"** The OCO is a George W. Bush gimmick, created in 2001 after 9-11 to capitalize on the national hysteria to pay for the Global War on Terror by taking its costs off the books. All our previous wars — e.g., WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Kosovo — were funded out of the “base” defense budget and there was no need set up a special war fighting account."
Just FYI, there was no national hysteria supporting a global war on terror. The global war on terror was and still is a complete lie by the fascists in power, whoever they may be. There was no referendum, no pole, no mobs in the streets calling for a war against middle east countries, innocent muslims and people in caves.
People say all this wild government spending doesn’t bother them anymore. I think not…Because government spending and debt stares us in the face each day as it takes more and more dollars to buy the necessities to maintain a decent standard of living.
It is easier to see the effect of political ineptitude over longer periods of time. In 1970 when I was in my prime a gallon of gas was 36 cents and an average car was $3900. Then Nixon took us off the gold standard. By 1979 gas cost was 86 cents a gallon and new cars cost $5800.
Pick you favorite politician to blame since then but in 2015 the average car cost is about $32,000. With the recent headline of 51% of American workers make less than $30,000 dollars a year it puts our standard of life into perspective.
I look at it this way. When I got out of the military at the end of ‘nam (college prior that) and took a teaching job a car was about a third of a year’s salary. Today a car cost is 100% of an initial salary. The bottom line is these political “skirmishes” are degrading American’s standard of living faster and faster. We are sliding down the degradation curve at an accelerating rate…
RabbitOne:
Political ineptitude is part of the problem, along with deliberate sabotage.
On the other hand, one of the driving forces behind price increases is easy debt.
Imagine the cost of a new car or house if you couldn't finance it.
The business of making trillions in profits from the death and destruction of innocent people and their countries is alive and well today. Where there is no conflict, one will be created, and both sides will be funded by the oligarch class. Same as it ever was.
Some of us knew immediately that the veto of the NDAA was the gimmick agreed upon by Obama and Congress (both Ds and Rs; let's not kid ourselves) to pave the way for increased spending and obliterating the sequester. It was only a matter of time before limits on Federal government spending would be done away with.