The U.S.Navy is scrambling to spend the billions of dollars in extra spending that the Trump administration and Congress lavished on it as part of the Pentagon's 2018 budget. For many of the roughly 5,000 workers at a major aircraft-repair facility in San Diego, that means overtime -- lots of it. In a mandatory effort to spend the entire 2018 budget and justify equal or higher spending in 2019, some workers at the North Island naval air facility are browsing the Internet, socializing with co-workers, and even sleeping on the job. Many workers have little choice but to kill time while on the clock. Even before the new overtime requirement -- supervisors had warned employees that not working at least 15 percent overtime could face "an appropriate penalty... for an act of employee misconduct" -- some North Island employees were only working at half-capacity due to bottle necks in other parts of the Navy's aircraft-maintenance process.
So-called budgetary burn-offs are not confined to the military, because it is general knowledge in government agencies that it's important to "use it or lose it." Not only does the federal government require agencies to return any unsent money at the end of the fiscal year, administration officials and congressional appropriators tend to adjust budgets upward or downward depending upon how fully a given agency spent its previous allocations.
The mandatory overtime at North Island, which began on March 11, could continue until the facility spends every dollar the administration requested and Congress appropriated for 2018. This year the Navy asked for $1.4 billion for aircraft maintenance at depot facilities including North Island -- a $200 million increase over 2017. Congress appropriated $640 billion for the Defense Department for 2018, a nearly $40 billion boost compared to 2017.
When President Trump began to speak about a "hollowed-out" military and many Republican lawmakers joined in that out-of-tune chorus, the major priorities were identified as training for military personnel to meet their mission, and replacing military hardware used up in the many military conflicts the U.S. has been engaged in after 9/11. Trump revealed how false were these justifications when he asked for $25 billion to be taken from the Pentagon budget and used to help finance a border wall. Then, when Trump was schooled on the proposition that money appropriated for one purpose cannot be expended for another purpose, he decided to have the military help guard the border between Mexico and the United States. With his usual lack of precision and detail, Trump wants 2,000 to 4,000 National Guard troops to perform largely undefined functions. And, of course, the money to pay for the National Guard will come from the Pentagon's apparently starved budget.
The U.S., with about five percent of the world's population, now accounts for almost 40 percent of the world's military spending, and with the very large additions to Pentagon spending over this year and the next, that percentage will undoubtedly climb well into the 40s. We spend more on the military than the next nine nations combined, which include China and Russia. Military spending now accounts for 55 percent of discretionary spending, and will undoubtedly climb into the 60s with the two-year spending increases.
When House Speaker Paul Ryan announced his retirement, he mentioned as his two most important accomplishments, the passage of the tax plan and building up the U.S. military. The money that has been shoveled to the Pentagon has been a major cause of the huge budgetary deficit and the subsequent starving of the domestic economy.
ADDENDUMS:
* Kellyanne Conway's tweet of October 29, 2016: "Astonished by the all-out assault on Comey by Team Clinton. Suggesting he is a partisan interfering with the election is dangerous & and unfair."
*After Nikki Haley promised that new sanctions on-Russia would be imposed the next day, President Trump put on the brakes.
*Number of Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S.: 2016 - 15,479; 2017 - 3,024; and 2018 - 11.
* Andrew Wheeler, former coal mining lobbyist, was confirmed by the Senate as deputy administrator of the EPA. He served as an adviser to Sen. James M. Inhofe (R- Okla.), a high-profile critic of climate science.
*More than 70 meetings between Trump staffers and Russian operatives have taken place, many of them initially denied.
* Trump signed an executive order strengthening work requirements or low-income Americans who receive government assistance through programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and welfare.
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