Pentagon Must Cut Costs

According to this Boston Globe article by Bryan Bender, the Pentagon is now being affected by the financial crisis and must cut costs. Read on for more!

“A senior Pentagon advisory group, in a series of bluntly worded briefings, is warning President-elect Barack Obama that the Defense Department’s current budget is ‘not sustainable,’ and he must scale back or eliminate some of the military’s most prized weapons programs.”

In this passage, they do mention that the military must cut back on it’s weapons programs. However, in the same piece there are several passing mentions of what they refer to as “people costs”. According to the Defense Business Board:

“Exacerbating the problem, according to the advisory group, are the rising costs of military personnel, their healthcare, and overhead. The documents estimate that more than half the annual defense budget now goes to “people costs,” including $60 billion a year for the healthcare of service members and retirees.”

And Steven Kosiak, vice president of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment says:

“The areas most likely to get cut are acquisition and procurement… As long as the administration is committed to increasing troop strength you have to pay those people costs, and there is not a lot of flexibility when it comes to benefits.”

To me, it seems like they are lamenting the fact that they actually have to pay their people and give them benefits. While the overall point of the article is that the military needs to cut back on some specific weapons programs, it seems as though they are giving us an ultimatum: allow us to not provide benefits and good wages to our service people, or we will not be able to develop these weapons that we so desperately need. Personally, I think we have enough weapons as it is.

There also seems to be a slightly omenous tone to the specific comments about “people costs” – I remember that when outsourcing became common, many companies defended their actions by saying that it was too expensive the pay for the benefits and salaries their American employees demanded. Perhaps some military outsourcing is in the near future?

To read the rest of this article visit The Boston Globe.

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