Republican Warmongers Demand Higher Military Budget Than Pentagon Requested

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins the Freedom Report podcast today to discuss his biting essay on military spending which was recently featured on FoxNews.com. Shaffer argues that Republican senators John McCain and Mac Thornberry aren't helping national security by demanding billions more in the military budget than was requested by the Pentagon. 

From Shaffer: 

Last week, the chairs of the both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the Pentagon’s base budget should be restored to its pre-Budget Control Act (BCA) level of around $577 billion for FY 2016. This is not only $78 billion more than the law says it should be, but billions more ($15 billion, to be exact) than the president requested in his fairy-tale budget request. More unnecessary spending that is unfocused and unnecessary.

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Because there is no national security strategy – no basic benchmark to measure progress of strategic effort – there is no ‘point of reference’ from which to judge the Pentagon’s capacity to defend the U.S. or our interests. 

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And, on top of all this nonsense, according to a recent Government Accountability Office assessment more than half of the Pentagon’s top weapons programs increased in cost last year to the tune of $27 billion., That’s about what the entire Department of Energy spends in one year and about half of the Department of Homeland Security’s annual budget. Wow…do you feel safer?

The lack of global strategy and strategic thinking has left the Pentagon with no way to gauge whether it is spending its money in an effective manner. The Defense Department is the only federal agency that has not completed an audit.

Also, in this episode, Colonel Shaffer and editor Austin Petersen discuss libertarians vs neocons in the GOP. Would Shaffer trust American national security to the libertarian insurgency currently trying to wrest power away from the hawks in the Republican Party? Can a coalition of Ronald Reagan-style conservatives and libertarians build enough strength to win the nomination for a less hawkish candidate? 

All that and more on this episode of the Freedom Report podcast!