Book of the Month

How Mr. Romney Would Force-Feed the Pentagon

by artappraiser 8/26/2012 - 8:42 pm

Op-ed by Carol Giacomo, New York Times, August 25/26, 2012

[....] The centerpiece of Mr. Romney’s proposal is a promise to spend at least 4 percent of gross domestic product on military personnel, procurement, operations and maintenance, and research and development. That would add as much as $2.3 trillion to the defense budget over 10 years from projected 2013 spending levels, according to Mr. Sharp’s analysis.

And yet for all these extra trillions, there’s no sense that this money would produce a more effective security strategy. Linking a budget to the G.D.P. is a bizarre way of addressing defense needs [....]

Mr. Romney is showing no restraint. Even though American forces are out of Iraq and withdrawing from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, his campaign Web site states that he would reverse President Obama’s plan to cut the Army and Marine Corps by 100,000 troops. Doing that, according to Mr. Sharp, would cost at least $41 billion over five years. Just what mission the extra troops would perform is unspecified.

Mr. Romney wants the Navy to increase shipbuilding from 9 ships per year to 15, at a cost of billions more [....]

Mr. Romney also promises a “robust, multilayered national ballistic-missile defense system” [....]

 

Read the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/how-mr-romney-would-force-feed-the-pentagon.html
It would be helpful if Ms. Giacomo, if she noticed it, would point out the fuzzy math demonstrated in her reporting.

The centerpiece of Mr. Romney’s proposal is a promise to spend at least 4 percent of gross domestic product on military personnel, procurement, operations and maintenance, and research and development.

Later:

And how would he [Romney] pay for his huge new defense budgets? In an interview with Fortune, Mr. Romney spoke of “enormous opportunities for finding efficiency and cost savings in the military.”

Four-percent of gross domestic product is a set arbitrary number. Romney says he will spend that much, which by all assumptions means spending more, but he will pay for the resultant net increase in spending by spending that amount more efficiently.

Maybe he will be asked to explain his magical financing. Or, maybe not.

 

by A Guy Called LULU 8/27/2012 - 12:27 am

Q.E.D. ipso facto hand-wave hand-wave. The press are suckers for this stuff - math is tuff, and it'll turn into a luke warm "though some disagree" rather than what could be in a different universe a cold numerical analysis and a scream of "bullshit!"

by PeraclesPlease 8/27/2012 - 2:09 am (re: A Guy Called LULU)

The 'mission the troops will perform' will be the invasion and occupation of Iran, most likely sometime in late 2013, after bombing doesn't work to either stop the nuclear program, or secure the shores of the Persian Gulf. Starting wars, it's what Republicans do to look tough.

by NCD 8/27/2012 - 11:57 am

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