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How Did This Tank Get Cut From The Defense Bill??

By Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy on December 21, 2009 at 5:00 PM in Afghanistan, Congress (House & Senate), Current Affairs, Defense, Health Care, Humor, Iraq, President Barack Obama, Satire

One major bit of news that went largely unnoticed this weekend was the passage of this rather significant bill,Defense Appropriations Bill Passes Senate 88-10, Clears Way For Health Bill. Yes, this pesky little bill needed to be take care of before the Democrats could begin to ram the Health “Care” bill (and its attendant expenses) up our, well, you know. Hence, it received very little in the way of discussion.

So, just what was in this bill:

The Senate passed a defense appropriations bill Saturday as the chamber’s Democrats cleared the decks for its healthcare reform legislation.

The $636 billion Pentagon budget and added unrelated amendments including extension of unemployment benefits for fiscal year 2010 passed the Senate overwhelmingly with a vote of 88-10. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) was joined by nine Republican senators in opposing the bill.

The vote came after a contentious cloture motion on the defense spending bill passed early Friday as Democrats accused Republicans of slowing the defense bill’s progress in order to impede their healthcare reform package.

Only three Republicans voted to move forward with the defense bill then, which helped beat back a GOP-engineered filibuster.

Despite the legislation funding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the tune of $128 billion, much of the debate on the defense bill has centered around the Democrats’ reform push for the healthcare reform legislation instead. In an effort to finish the healthcare bill before the end of the year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has been keeping the Senate in session late at night and through the weekend. GOP senators, in turn, have said that Democrats are pushing the bill too quickly before it can be properly considered.

Well, yeah – I don’t think one has to be a Republican to speculate as to WHY the Democrats are in such a hurry that they cannot take more time for, I dunno, READING THE DAMN THING first, or forming committees to study the long range impact, particularly cost, etc. But hey, that may just be too reasonable for them:

“The majority knows that the more time the public has with the bill, the more they know about it, the less they will like it,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) on the Senate floor Saturday before the defense vote. “This is a rush.”

Democrats countered by saying their colleagues across the aisle have concentrated on delaying their bill and have not come up with their own plan to change the healthcare system for the better.

“That is what they have to offer to the American people. Not ideas, not solutions, but delay,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) in response. He then went through a variety of reforms the Senate healthcare bill would achieve.

The successful passage of the defense bill in the Senate now clears the way for Democrats to finish their work on the healthcare reform bill. The House had already easily passed the defense bill on Wednesday with a 395-34 vote.

Oh, Dick (Durbin, that is), why play the blame game in an attempt to not be held accountable for your role in this unwanted, short-sighted, payout to insurance companies and Big Pharma?

Well, I imagine we’ll be debating this for some time to come, this whole Health Care issue, and how it will REALLY affect us. Once they have it all written down, that is.

But even an article on the Defense Appropriations bill is more about the so-called Health “care” bill than Defense. There is a reason for that I think (UPCOMING SATIRE ALERT).

Believe it or not, there is one thing Obama WON’T sign in the Defense Appropriations Bill. Frankly, I don’t understand it one bit. This, to me, looks like one of the all-time coolest, most awesomest, niftiest defensive creations EVER. Oh, if only the following was from a real news organization as opposed to The Onion:

Am I right, or am I right? Totally wicked awesome, isn’t it? Too bad they had to take out the pool, though. Ah, but it is not to be, sadly. One damn thing Obama won’t spend our money on. Oh, he’ll fly back and forth to Copenhagen for a CLIMATE summit after just having flown to Europe a week or so before – talk about your carbon footprint (remember, it isn’t just Air Force One that goes on these trips), but will e allow the Dragon Tank? Noooooooo. Sheesh!

Hopefully, this attempt at levity has brought a bit of a smile to your face, and given you a break, if just for a moment, from the other bullshit which, sadly, is all too real. There will be time enough to discuss it again, but I, for one, on this Solstice Eve, could use a bit of humor. Hope you enjoyed the respite, too!

  • Gianni

    Thanks for the laugh. As wrongheaded as Obama and his cronies are and have been, it would not be surprising at all if they provided defense appropriations for something like this. They are so out of step with the American public, nothing they do is surprising anymore.

    • http://www.rabblerouserruminations.blogspot.com/ Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy

      Gianni, you know, you’re probably right!

      But ya gotta admit, that tank IS pretty cool! :-)

      • Ferd Berfle

        Well you know That One is holding out for a 50-foot armored unicorn.

        Beware of creeps bearing gifts.

        • http://www.rabblerouserruminations.blogspot.com/ Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy

          Ahahahahaha!! Good one, Ferd!

          And excellent advice, too!

  • NomNomNom

    it was scaled back to the cyborg beetle drone:
    http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/01/pentagons-cybor/

    • http://www.rabblerouserruminations.blogspot.com/ Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy

      Oh, my – unbelievable!

  • donjo

    How it really works:

    “Dec. 18 2009 – 10:19 am

    Defense Bill Raids Personnel Funds to Pay For Weapons

    -snip-

    In the defense bill, it usually works like this: Congress sticks in a few extra airplanes or ships as a handout to this or that member, usually in exchange for his vote somewhere else on some other issue. To pay for those earmarks, the favored targets for cutting are usually two parts of the defense bill: Personnel (i.e. military pay) and Operations and Maintenance (which includes such things as body armor, equipment, food, training, and fuel). Those of you who wondered over the years how it could be that soldiers in Iraq could somehow be left without body armor, well, here’s your explanation. They usually took the armor off those kids in order to pay off some congressman with an extra helicopter or two.

    My old friend Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate aide who is now a well-known watchdog on defense spending, points out that this year is no different. There are over 1,700 earmarks in the defense bill that just passed, worth $4.2 billion, but those are

    … just the earmarks they will admit to. Not counted in that tally are the 10 C-17s for $2.5 billion, nine F-18s for a half a billion dollars (in the war funding part of the bill), plus the added $465 million for the GE engine…

    And where did the money to pay for all that come from? This is another annual trick. Usually if you add up all the earmarks, the total amount spent will roughly mirror the amount of the cuts in personnel and O&M. Wheeler found the following:

    $1.9 billion in gross reductions to the Military Personnel (pay) account based on the arbitrary justification that there was need for an “undistributed adjustment,” or in some cases “reimbursables.”
    $2.1 billion in net reductions from the O&M account in the base bill; $1.4 billion of that reduction was based on phony justifications (indirectly based on some flimsy GAO analysis never made public), such as “historic underexecution.” (If you want to review my analysis of this flimsy GAO analysis , see it at http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=4535.)
    The House and Senate Appropriations Committees also raided the direct war fighting O&M account in Title IX of the bill by $1.5 billion.
    Total O&M raids, thus, amount to $3.6 billion.
    So, $3.6 billion in O&M cuts added to $1.9 billion in personnel cuts = $5.5 billion.

    And $4.2 billion in earmarks added to $3 billion for the F-18s and the C-17s, plus $465 million for the Joint Strike engines (which the administration claims it doesn’t want) = $7.66 billion.

    It’s always amazed me that this stuff isn’t more of an issue with the right. We’re talking about robbing soldiers to pay defense executives. They pull this scam like clockwork every year and nobody ever says a word — weird stuff.

    http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/12/….ay-for-weapons/ “