Steven Kosiak
Steven Kosiak
address chunk consensus effort money problem rhetoric serious spending
It's just not that big a chunk of the budget. You've got to go where the money is. There's a lot of rhetoric about spending restraint, but there's been no serious effort to actually address the deficit. Part of the problem is there's no consensus on how to do it.
left rhetoric
Interesting rhetoric ... but the really big (weapons) modernization were left untouched.
call emergency incentives strong
I think the incentives there are pretty strong to use the supplemental. It doesn't play the same way when you call it emergency funding.
estimate overly proven
This estimate has, unfortunately, proven to be overly optimistic.
army army-and-navy projected pushing time tough
The Army may have a tough time pushing these projected reductions through Congress.
beginning reducing restraint spending talk
At the beginning of the year, there's a lot of talk about spending restraint and reducing the deficit. At the end of the year, that's all kind of forgotten.
budget defense department estimated office reason surprised
There is some reason to be surprised that it's this much. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated the defense department would need $85bn and that was with no drawdown in troops.
although guess means outside people react till time waiting
Waiting till the end of the day means you don't have time to get people to react outside of the briefing, although so much of this has leaked. So I guess it does give them some advantage.
dipping past point
We're long past the point where you can just look at the DoD budget. Now we're dipping so much into war-related funding.