The FY2009 DoD budget proposal calls for increases ranging from 100% to 400% in TRICARE (the military medical program for active duty and retirees) pharmacy fees, moving TRICARE in a single step from one of the best drug benefit programs to one that is decidedly second rate.
That’s how former OMB official Gordon Adams described congressional proposals to mandate annual spending of 4% of GDP on the DoD baseline (i.e., not including Iraq, Afghanistan, and certain programs related to national defense but funded in other departments). This would raise the baseline from the $515 BN in the FY 2009 budget request to something like $560 BN.
Download a a short PowerPoint presentation (444 KB) highlighting some of the themes from my new book, If We Can Keep It: A National Security Manifesto for the Next Administration. [The book is now available on Amazon.]
Fabius Maximus has an interesting post on the Navy’s death spiral, but it raises the question of whether such a fate is inevitable. That is, are there so many uses for military forces in the world that we will always need more than we can afford? The answer is that if you start with what you can do with military forces and then add up the costs for doing all these things, you will always run out of money long before you satisfy all your requirements.
 |
If We Can Keep It: A National Security Manifesto for the Next Administration, by DNI Editor Chet Richards.Chapter III, “Is It War?” is now available [63 KB PDF]. This is a marketing teaser, to implant a subliminal impulse to buy the book and then tell all your friends about it.It should be on Amazon within the next couple of weeks. |
We are experiencing a change in the fundamental structure of the global economic regime.
If you’re starting to become concerned about what’s going on in the financial world, check out Fabius Maximus’s frame of reference.