Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Members of the House of Representatives are attempting to micro-manage DoD spending. I am truthfully inchoherent at their complete stupidity and pork barrel politics while trying to hide behind their 'concern for the deficit.'

The stupidity:

1. Cutting $570 million from the $2billion in aid President Bush wants to help with the reconstruction of Afganistan. We helped break the country, we need to help fix it; and to be parsimonious about the cost now is merely kicking sand into the face of Kharzi and everyone over there who has stood with the United States. It's rude and narrow-minded.
2. Organization&Maintenance Funds are to be cut. These funds are what the military uses to fix all the things that have been worn out, broke, or blown-up that can be repaired. Right now the US Army is still playing catch up on reconditioning all the M-1 Abrams currently in use in Iraq. Anniston, AL has one of the US Army's Depots, it is running three shifts to tackle all the worn out/broke machine guns. Lets not forget the Humvees that still need to be up-armored, that usually falls under O&M. And these mouth breathing goofballs want to CUT funds.
3. $150 million going to Darfur, Sudan is supposed to be cut. Well so much for standing against genocide.

The pork barrel:

1. Add $2.2billion to the $16.1 billion President Bush wants earmarked for weapons procurement; including: night vision goggles, body armor, and more armored trucks. Okay, already got $16.1 billion earmakred for this and they want to throw more money at it. Typical pork barrel let me get votes mentality. Buying new shiny stuff is way more telegenic than saying 'I voted to spend $2billion to fix the Abrams tanks used in OIF.'

The worse thing about this, the members of the House who are trying to push this are Republicans. These people are treacherous allies and I have no doubt they can be 'persuaded' to see things President Bush's way if something is 'worked' out, like pork barrel stuff of a different nature.

This just disgusts me since they are treating national defense and foreign policy as something they, in their 435 little offices, think they can make President Bush dance to their selfish whims. Even 911 can not change some peoples narrow world views.

Source of ire: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050303/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_spending