Today I attended the East Hampton Memorial Day parade and ceremony.
One of the veterans spoke about how Congress has money to allow illegal aliens to become citizens, but doesn't have money that could equip our soldiers with the latest equipment to help keep them safe while in Iraq.
I will be the first to admit I don't follow politics and these issues as much as I should. My days are loaded with Internet advertising issues.
This veteran's speech struck a cord with me.
In the business world if you want to end a project or division, you cut the budget, you redeploy the people or lay them off. You don't take away their safety goggles and tell them to keep using dangerous machinery. You don't close the plant and leave the workers in the plant.
What is Congress doing? If we want the troops out take them out. If you want them to stay, let them stay. Either way make sure they have the tools they need. Winding it down safely requires the right equipment, continuing to fight requires the right equipment.
Why can't they make the bills simple, they should cover a specific topic or issue.
Instead they layer on special interest projects. All of that money could be used to give the troops the right equipment. They could derail or delay the bill. Delaying critical support for the troops.
You can either support our efforts in Iraq or you may not.
Either way shouldn't we make sure our troops are properly prepared to face the enemy?
From my viewpoint the choice to be there vs the choice to properly fund our soldiers are separate issues.
Congress and the public should keep them separate.
3 comments:
Rob,
Great post, and one I wholeheartedly agree with.
Good post Rob.
Andy
OK Rob - I'll bite: while I agree, I do think there's some posturing going on by the Pentagon (just the other day the National Guard was complaining that "all the money was going to Iraq vs. training people Stateside.") Well, if I had to chose I'd chose to better arm those in the field vs those on the farm. And while there are basic supply issues at stake, the other basic issue is one of support: meaning, nobody wants to put more money into Iraq; late last year some within the Democratic party were talking about 0 funding the war in hopes it force the President to withdraw from Iraq. The choice from this angle is whether it's feasible to present the taxpayers an additional $2B (or whatever) to meet Pentagon expectations of "fully funding the war". All this while, keep in mind that the Pentagon is like any other government organization and will spend what you give them at the risk of "giving money back" to the General Fund. So while I agree that the war is underfunded and that Congress and the American taxpayers should contribute more to support troops in combat, I think the idea of "fully funding" a war (muchless this war) is an impossibility.
Rich -
Makes sense, it's a tough situation. They need some business people in there running the budgets.
Rob
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