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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (12811)	11/4/1998 4:15:00 PM
From: dougjn	Respond to of 67261

I think it is getting harder, actually, to find lots of really big money government programs which are real waste, and good candidates for slashing. Certainly there are some. Most members of the House, for instance, of either party, work pretty hard to bring some pork back to their districts. Probably the best big money candidate are military bases, and a few big money military programs. Although overall, the military has been cut quite a bit. And to cut further on staffing levels, for example, will definitely cut into the reach of our capabilities, seems to me. The types of programs that could be easily cut are the Sea Wolf. The Russians are having a hard enough time keeping any of their sub fleet still working. They weren't able to effectively counter our existing fleet of attack subs (which among other things shadow their nuclear launch subs, as I assume you know). Basically be cause we're so quite and stealthy and good at electronics, and they're so big and noisy and bad at electronics. And anyway they aren't doing anything new these days. So why do we need Sea Wolf generation of attack subs at a price per sub of $2 billion (= 1/3 nuclear aircraft carrier)? Sea Wolf's are being kept in (slow) production for the benefit of Groton, Connecticut, pure and simple. Similarly, even the military wants to close lots of bases. But the Congress balks, for pure pork reasons. This is as much (or more) the result of Republican pressure these days as Democratic. Then there are those Boeing transport planes which the military doesn't say it much wants or need…it would rather have a beefed up personnel budget, for purposes of morale and trained personnel retention (the key readiness component which Reagan so much reversed and built back up). But Congress still shoved the transports down the military's throats. Who? Speaker Gingrich and Bob Barr (in whose district the transport planes are built.) So slashing spending these days is not nearly so simple as it used to be. People want spending on most of what Congress is spending it on these days. The balance tends to be stuff favored by Congressmen in key positions of power, in a ready position to extract more than limited amounts of pork. As far as doing away with social security, medicare, medicaid, unemployment insurance, at least some level of temporary welfare safety net, federal support for education and highways, and most of the rest of the 30's New Deal, there is really a very small part of the population that would really support rolling back all that. Even Reagan didn't really try, except in very general and largely rhetorical ways. Doug