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As noted here earlier, the original impetus for the particular framework of the latest iteration of the Ryan Budget was the need to get House Tea Folk to back off threats to blow up the global economy via another debt limit hostage-taking effort. Showing them an actually balanced budget that enshrined all over again such right-wing totems as further tax rate cuts for the wealthy and businesses, a repeal of Obamacare, and a decimation of programs benefitting those people, provided some symbolic relief for conservatives angry about the “fiscal cliff” betrayal and the general inability of party leaders to understand they were losing elections because of excessive moderation.
But there was another aggrieved constituency (overlapping with the Tea Folk in many instances, or at least more than you’d guess from media stereotypes) that was given a magic salve by Ryan: defense hawks. He exempts the Pentagon from future cuts even as he savages domestic spending, and retains some of the Romney/Ryan campaign’s rhetoric about Obama starving the military.
He’s a tricky one, though: the actual level of spending his budget endorses is based on Pentagon requests that during the campaign he denounced as politically driven. So while it projects defense spending at higher levels than are provided for in the recently implemented appropriations sequester, it’s also significantly below the big increases proposed by Romney/Ryan during the campaign.
It’s unclear whether GOP hawks will buy this blueprint as better than nothing; criticize it for its contradictions with what its author was saying just months ago; or dismiss it as the symbolic exercise it ultimately represents. But Ryan’s unacknowledged wavering on defense spending deserves more attention that it’s getting.
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c u n d gulag on March 13, 2013 11:00 AM:
May I humbly propose that the reason Ryan did that, was because at the last few dinners he went to with defense contractors, they refused to buy him the most expensive wines in the restaurant.
And Paulie hates settling for 2nd bes...
Wait - THAT'S not true!
2nd best would be just fine, for Lyin' Ryan.
After all, he seems to have settled for 4th best, just last November.
dweb on March 13, 2013 11:04 AM:
We can't POSSIBLY cut defense spending or we'll be vulnerable to terrorists and marauding hordes of Muslims promoting Sharia law.
(from Mother Jones via Digby)
Lockheed was in trouble. A few years earlier, the Air Force had started looking into replacing the (C-130) Hercules with a new medium-sized transport plane that could handle really short runways, and Lockheed wasn't selected as one of the finalists. Facing bankruptcy due to cost overruns and cancellations of programs, the company squeezed Uncle Sam for a bailout of around $1 billion in loan guarantees and other relief (which was unusual back then, as William Hartung points out his magisterial Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex).
Then a scandal exploded when it was revealed that Lockheed had proceeded to spend some $22 million of those funds in bribes to foreign officials to persuade them to buy its aircraft. This helped prompt Congress to pass the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
So what did Lockheed do about the fate of the C-130? It bypassed the Pentagon and went straight to Congress. Using a procedure known as a congressional "add-on"—that is, an earmark—Lockheed was able to sell the military another fleet of C-130s that it didn't want.
To be fair, the Air Force did request some C-130s. Thanks to Senator John McCain, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) did a study of how many more C-130s the Air Force requested between 1978 and 1998. The answer: Five.
How many did Congress add on? Two hundred and fifty-six.
Josef K on March 13, 2013 11:16 AM:
To be fair, Speaker Boehner managed to slip in a good chunk of change recently to expand the M-1 tank factory in his home state. This would be the same gas-guzzling, over-engineered, marginally-performing M-1 the Army is trying to phase out.
Ole Tip was right in saying "all politics is local".
boatboy_srq on March 13, 2013 11:22 AM:
@dweb & Josef K;
Given the behavior of the Teahadists, one wonders why they're not screaming that the DoD budget is inadequate because we don't have enough muskets and ironclads provided.