WASHINGTON: Randy Forbes pretty much looks like a hawk. The House seapower subcommittee chairman has fought for a bigger battle fleet with long-range drone bombers, called for China to be kicked out of the international RIMPAC wargames and blasted the Obama administration for its lack of a tough Pacific strategy.
WASHINGTON: In what looks very much like an opening shot in a fundamental fiscal battle between the four armed services and the Office of Secretary of Defense, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus came right out today and said we should preserve fighting forces by cutting Defense Department agencies that are “pure overhead,” His prime candidates? Thetesters who make sure the services’ weapons actually… Keep reading →
Last week, the Republican Congress is expected to unveil its fiscal year 2016 budget resolution just as House defense authorizers start marking up their annual bill. What will that mean for the US military? Bottom line, the Pentagon should realistically expectno more than $569 billion from Congress in the final, enacted 2016 budget between base and… Keep reading →
This article, from American Enterprise Institute scholar and frequent AOL contributor MacKenzie Eaglen, looks at the increasingly likely consequences of the fiscal cliff. It originally appeared as part of an Breaking Defense series of 2013 forecasts. Keep reading →
Hope springs eternal, even here in the nation’s capital. After the election, both President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner made nice noises. And many pundits hailed this, believing either that sequestration would get kicked down the road a fur piece or a Simpson-Bowles’ grand bargain was in the works.
The big sticking point — at least rhetorically — had been that the Democrats want higher taxes on those earning more than a quarter of a million dollars each year and the GOP does not. Then came the electorate’s rejection of Mitt Romney and the Democrat’s better than expected performance in the Senate. Add to that the defeat of several high profile Tea Party candidates and some argued that the stage was set for compromise. Keep reading →
The nation needs cyber-security legislation to authorize sharing of threat data between industry and government in real time, said Gen. Keith Alexander, chief of both the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command, and it can be done without any danger to individual privacy.
“This cyber legislation that’s coming up is going to be absolutely vital to the future of our country,” said Gen. Alexander. Keep reading →
A recent story tried to answer this question as follows: If the committee process fails to produce a debt reduction plan, as much as $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts would kick in — evenly divided between defense and non-defense spending.
Almost all men — they are the 12-member panel charged with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in debt savings over a ten-year period.
It will be tough work and will likely require political sacrifice on issues like taxes and entitlements if meaningful progress is to be made toward stabilizing the national debt
The members have a range of political experience — from novice to veteran. They are experts in taxes and the budget process. They hail from states as disparate as Texas, Michigan and Arizona. Keep reading →