The Real Washington Budget Crisis

The single biggest budget problem the US government faces is the bloated, unaccountable, wasteful Pentagon budget and it has been for at least the last thirty years.  Assessments vary, but it is pretty well agreed that since George got done spraying  middle and lower-class tax dollars all over it in the first decade this century (in the name of the "war on terror" -- which by the way the Pentagon still doesn't have a clue how to fight) we wound up with a total "defense" expenditure level that by some reckonings is greater than all the rest of the world's militaries put together.  Interestingly enough, this gold and platinum-plated military has not won a single major conflict since WW II.  

Republicans like to lump Social Security and Medicare together so they have a combination that is bigger than defense.  But, this is invalid...these two programs have completely separate and independent funding mechanisms, administration, and financial challenges.  However, this is the only possible way to come up with a budget target that outsizes defense (but just barely) -- it is that big...so they will continue to do so.

Now the Republicans are digging in to protect this indefensible level of "defense" spending...even to the point of telling some real whoppers in public, and occasionally getting taken to task by the few thinkers in the audience.

Now this week we find out that Senator John McCain, whom I definitely have mixed feelings about...is taking his duties as the "Senator from Lockheed Martin" much more seriously than his oath of office.  His appointment of a former staff member as Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee....after she stopped by Lockheed Martin for a lucrative little payday of $1,662,856 does not impress me at all as the actions of a real Senator...one who remembers the oath he took:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter...."

But then I fear that as long as their are political parties...there will be no "real" Senators, except perhaps among the Independents and some of the old guard, both of which are rapidly disappearing.