White House Threatens to Veto Defense Bill

Concerned in OH:”How many jobs will be lost if Obama cuts those programs?”
So now you want to waste a billion dollars building planes the Pentagon does not want as a jobs program? Why not build something the military ACTUALLY NEEDS?
Yeah, a few hundred million dollars worth of extra ultra high performance stealth fighters are just what we need to deal with the military battles our boys are actually facing today…

Is the Congress FINALLY getting some backbone? We can only hope.

So we have a president who is not afraid to go against Congress. Good for you Mr. President. This is where wasted money comes in….Congress just spends and spends and it’s about time we have a president who will speak up and not worry about Congress not liking him. Some of the senators should not be voted in again, esp. those in Albany, and I don’t care what party they are in. The should be ashamed of themselves.

Barb So we have a president who is not afraid to go against Congress. Good for you Mr. President. This is where wasted money comes in….+++Have you noticed how much BO has spent in the past 5 months?

I did not vote for Mr. Obama and I disagree with much of his agenda but I hope he has the guts to make this stick. We hire the Pentagon to decide what is best for our military not these self seeking people in Congress. The Pentagon feels the F-22 and Strike Fighter will have an adverse effect on our military budget, they do not want them. These people in Congress both Republicans and Democrats have already stuffed the Stimulus Program with billions of dollars in earmarks in an attempt to buy their reelection. Why do we elect people like Murtha and Stevens

Let’s talk about wasteful spending…
Is this the same bill that contains the ridiculous $1 billion “cash for clunkers” auto trade-in program and the equally ridiculous $5 billion to help the International Monetary Fund?
Is this the same bill that contains 13 earmarks, or local projects inserted by members of Congress, a practice that Obama (and congressional leaders) have spoken out about?
I was hoping Obama saw the light but now I see it is about cutting actual defense funding. Too bad.

Gee, didn’t John McCain praise the president and Secretary Gates for recommending these cuts?
We will soon find out how much influence the president has with his own party in Congress. If his honeymoon isn’t over yet, it soon may be.

Boxcar:”Anyway you look at it, they have enough votes as of now to easily override his veto”
That does not mean that a veto is meaningless.

jhw539 That does not mean that a veto is meaningless. ++++I’m not a diehard repub at all and I think the hypocrisy on both sides borders on hilarious. Did you feel the same way about the teabag protests?

talmag:”President Bush threatened to veto many times and did. ”
The last President Bush had fewer vetos than any president in generations. He didn’t veto one, single bill until July 2006, when he tried to kill stem cell research.

It makes sense, Concerned in OH, when you understand the interconnected relationship of the global economy. One should not confuse stimulus spending with defense spending as every dollar government spends ends up being in somebody’s paycheck somewhere. It doesn’t matter whether its money for infrastructure, education, or F22s. The issue is not how big the defense budget is, but what it’ll buy for our troops. Let’s all hope that Congress will yield to what the SecDef says is needed and not spend our tax dollars for systems that don’t support the mission at hand… defeating terrorism.

Good, the for profit industrial military machine is loaded with waste. It doesn’t make us one bit safer, just the contrary…all the money spent on it makes us weak and vulnerable. Stop handing taxpayer money over to defense contractors like Xe (Blackwater), Lockheed and Haliburton and letting them cash in from fear. No more blank checks, no bid contracts and no oversight.

LOL,…lots of good intelligence floating around.
Spend TRILLIONS….to “create&save jobs”
Cut Millions and put MORE people on the unemployment line! Hey its ok, im sure that the great “Stimulator” must have had provisions for workers who build the best high tech defense systems in the world!
Then listen to the left jump for joy…

This spending is not about Dems or Repubs. It’s about wasteful spending everywhere. The Defense budget IS government spending just as much as talk of national healthcare. It’s ALL taxpayer money. I understand the need of protecting ourselves (I am former military) but the cost of our Defense budget compared to other things we spend money on is ridicously unbalanced.

Bush was a veto madman once Democrats came into the majority in 2006. So, of course, that is when the Moron-in-Chief started vetoing right and left and made it for his lack of a need to veto anything prior. Why you ask? Republicans were taking there marching orders from the Bush administration and that was that.

I am not saying there is not waste in defense spending. I have witnessed it first hand in my career.
What I AM saying is right now given the our current econmic situation PLUS the incredible amount of money being spent to “create/save” jobs, it is totally INSANE to cut Millions and put more people out of work!
Even Obama is saying his “energy” bill is about jobs!
For crying outloud, we WASTED, completely WASTED how many BILLIONS on auto companies? In the end the final results were the same as they would have been if we had given them ZERO dollars! So, by all means spend, spend, spend & spend….heck…lets even SPEND more….but when it comes to literally & actually SAVING good paying AMerican JOBS….you idiots want to “tighten our belts”….by cutting pennies with one hand while your handing out hundred dollar bills as fast as can with the other…..

Good for him. The defense budget has long been characterized by corruption. Because so much of the spending happens under the shroud of “national security,” it has sort of set the pace and standard for what we call “pork,” with reps in districts taking “gifts” from contractors in exchange for enormously expensive experiments with a total lack of accountability.

the cost of our Defense budget compared to other things we spend money on is ridicously unbalanced. Posted by: Baja | Jun 26, 2009 12:24:56 PM
2008:
Defense: 21%
Social Security: 21%
Medicare/Medicaid: 23%
Interest: 8%
Other: 27%
- Mandatory: 10%
- Discretionary: 17%
Looks pretty balanced to me.

It was a Republican President and former 5-star general, Dwight Eisenhower who said, “Beware of the military-industrial complex.” It has become so adept at legally bribing Congressmen through campaign contributions that it is hard to disrail. Good for Obama for trying.

Right on, The_Mick. Well said. Being a retired Army officer myself who worked in defense acquisition/test and evaluation jobs for the last 8 years of my career and for 10 years afterward as an engineering services contractor, I can attest to this truth: Well structured weapons systems programs are nearly impossible to kill. Consider the B-1 bomber for instance. Three presidents, as I recall, tried to terminate that program. And the airplane has turned-out to be the most expensive hangar queen of all times.

I agree, Roland. Let’s start a grassroots movement to ammend the Constitution imposing term limits for lawmakers. Failing that, we need to have election reform disallowing campaign contributions from all but private citizens.

Good for Obama! Stimulus is good, but PLEASE spend it on something that is actually USEFUL! If the military no longer wants M-1 rifles and Sherman Tanks (just kidding) then don’t make them keep taking them!

I wonder if a handful of Stryker brigades and other light-in-the-rear end formations tailored for the fighting in Southwest Asia would be much good against the Russians or the Red Chinese?
As long as Dear Leader and his Politburo are convinced they have the muscle to quell a domestic disturbance, they could care less about fellow Communists increasing their power overseas.

Kent wrote: “…we need to have election reform disallowing campaign contributions from all but private citizens.”
I agree! Only individuals should be allowed to make political contributions. No organizations, whether a corporation, a union or a non-profit organization should be allowed to contribute money to any politician or political group.
But I would go one step further. I also believe we should limit political contributions from individuals to ONLY those candidates and issues (political groups set up either as proponents or opponents of a proposition or initiative) for which THAT individual is able to vote. In otherwords, you can only contribute to candidates or issues that will be on your ballot.

why is nobody…especially the article…mentioning the fact that the bill passed 389-22. That is more than enough to over-ride the Presidents veto…so you can say “good for him” all you want. They can over-ride it and pass the bill, the only question is if the house democrats have the backbone to go against a popular president from there own party.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But by ending production in – down the road, of the F-22 Raptor, I’m already reading that shutting it down is going to mean the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. Was that something that weighed on you as you made that decision?
ROBERT GATES: Well, we can’t be oblivious to the impact that these decisions have on people, but the information that’s available to us shows that the direct employment of the F-22 will go from about 32,000 in – I’m sorry, from about 24,000 this year to about 11,000 in 2011. But Joint Strike Fighter will go from 38,000 people working this year to 82,000 people that work on that plane in direct support in 2011. So there are puts and takes. I think we’ve done a good job of taking care of the industrial base in the shipyards and the workers there in the decisions on the shipbuilding.

I don’t know if the Raptor is worth it or not, what I find hilarious though is that the Dems had been planning on going after those Republican who voted against this bill as not supporting the troops. So is Obama not supporting the troops? National Security is not a game to be played with. It one of the few jobs of a national government and one of the few jobs they do very well.

Obama’s position IS based on placing priority on our national security over corporate interests ($ contracts):
“Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended to the president to end production of the F-22 at the conclusion of its current funding program in fiscal 2009, as part of his overhaul defense budget reform.
Instead, Gates recommended in his 2010 budget bill to produce more newest manned aircraft, the stealth F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which can carry a larger suite of weapons and is better suited for air-to-ground missions such as destroying sophisticated enemy air defenses.
An F-35 also costs half as much as an F-22 and has potential to become the “backbone of America’s tactical aviation fleet for decades to come,” Gates said.”