Today, the Republicans take control of the Congress after four years of Democratic control, but what does all this mean for the Pentagon? If the mid-term elections are any gauge, the public wants Washington to focus on the economy and the national debt.
By focusing on the national debt, Washington has to make tough decisions, and that also means facing the reality that to reduce the national debt one has to look at entitlement and defense spending.
This doesn't mean that the new incoming Congress should just start reducing the Pentagon budget without any serious thought to the long term repercussions it would inflict. One only has to look to history as a model of where Defense reductions had a serious impact on the nations security; post World War II comes to mind. The whole scale dismantling of the armed forces after World War II greatly hampered the U.S. in Korea only five years after the end of the war.
The time has come for the Pentagon to overhaul its aging and antiquated procurement and acquisition programs. Far too long the Pentagon has had no idea of how much it spends or where it spends its money, some would argue this is by design. Too much of the Pentagon budget spending has been wasted in years without any real oversight or updated procedures being developed regarding the private sector.
Either we get serious or the nation's security will fall deeper in jeopardy.
http://militarybriefingbook.com/topic.cfm?topic=U.S.%20Politics
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