Comments on: Pentagon Weighs Guard and Reserve Cuts

By: anjin-san

anjin-san — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:11:36 +0000

Hmmm are tax cuts for billionaires still a good idea?

By: RA

RA — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:04:31 +0000

We do not have unlimited military budgets. Hardware breaks, gets blown up and wears out. Especially when you use it daily.

In the real world you go to war with the army you have and there is only so much money to go around. As any business owner knows budgetary decisions are not always easy.

Remember the flap over up armored humvees? Hardware matters too.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 15:09:35 +0000

Weird. You inadvertantly posted it on the Beltway Traffic Jam instead of this post, so I moved it but I typed in your name. Somehow, it posted wrong.

By: ken

ken — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 14:59:26 +0000

Whoa, how did that happen?

The above post was made by me, not by James. I have no clue how it ended up being posted with James name as author.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 11:39:59 +0000

The official said much of the Army's budget -- 40 cents of each dollar -- goes for personnel costs, compared with 16 cents of each dollar for hardware...

That is only a part of the overall personnel cost us taxpayers have to handle. We pay retirement benefits, disability and medical costs to ex service people in far greater proportion than does the private sector. Just as these benefits are being cut in the private sector I'm afraid they will have to be even more drastically cut in the military sector. Otherwise the cost will destroy our ability to fund a military at all.