Defense budget cuts - what should Congress do?

[Fuchs]

Here's an overview over the budget:
http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

For starters, I consider most of the Navy big ticket programs a bad idea or at least partial failures.
It shouldn't be too hard to find waste in the DoD budget - it's certainly much harder to cut it. An old rule of thumb is that entering budget wars in Pentagon creates many enemies (either way), and that's just not good for those who want to develop their career further.

[MattJ]

Unfortunately it often starts at the lowest level - the old end of fiscal year scramble to spend every last penny so that you can justify the budget request for next year - starting way down at the company level. I was always intrigued by the logic of that process, but will admit that I was always guilty of playing along. While I liked to think that I budgeted wisely for the year, I wasn't too proud to try and get a few extra pieces of equipment for my Soldiers - especially if it was going to be spent by someone else (faulty logic, but justification enough at the time to do it). I am cognizant of the faults of this process and am still guilty; the compounding effort all the way up the chain is obviously much worse. A million here, a million there - soon you're talking about real money...

As for big Army - I am hopeful (probably more than I should be) about the new effort to 'buy less, more often', as opposed to investing fully in the next greatest thing that is going to be able to do everything for every conflict (i.e. FCS). Spreading your eggs around to different baskets seems more logical during a time that you can't quite come to a consensus on what future conflicts will look like. Hopefully that will incentivize industry and the Pentagon to keep coming up with good ideas since there will be multiple chances to win contracts instead of having to put everything into the one huge program. I also hope that will reduce the amount of GAO protests that industry files. Small contracts awarded more often will incentivize industry to play nice and move on to the next chance to win some of the taxpayers' hard earned money.