"As Congress and President Barack Obama's administration confront difficult decisions this spring about slashing federal spending -- and Americans face possible cuts to popular programs such as Medicare and Social Security -- a growing number of lawmakers is focusing on potential savings in the Pentagon budget.
At $550 billion, that Defense Department budget is now about 50 percent higher than it was a decade ago. (That sum doesn't count the additional $118 billion requested this year to pay for the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.) In 1998, defense expenditures amounted to about $1,500 per American; now it is $2,700 a person. That's more than 50 cents for every dollar of discretionary federal spending. The nation now spends about as much on the U.S. military as do the world's other 194 countries combined, according to Time magazine.
While other lawmakers tend to focus on weapons programs for the biggest Pentagon budget cuts, McCaskill has been targeting the growth in the Defense Department's outside contracting, the quality of the auditing of those contracts, as well as on questionable military construction projects.
As the chair of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on readiness and management, theMissouri senator vowed at a recent hearing to expose "gold-plated" military construction projects. Her initial targets: a proposed $50 million gym in San Diego, a $5 million "working dog" center, and a $1.2 billion military hospital in Germany.
"At a time when our nation is facing a fiscal crisis, I have trouble seeing how we can justify spending $50 million on a single fitness center," McCaskill lectured a Navy budget expert at the hearding. That expert, Jackalune Pfannenstiel, defended the planned center as an important recreational facility for thousands of Navy and Marine personnel in San Diego"..........read it here
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