Obama to cut wasteful defense spending.

[kentuck]

Now he is on the right track! If he can muster the same courage with the greedy bankers, then we may recover from this mess yet? I was surprised to see John McCain by his side. (Keep your enemies closer, I suppose?) I would think that McCain, with all his yelling about earmarks, has had more than his share of defense wasteful spending?

[zipplewrath]

1. Boeing

McCain is the one that exposed the Boeing refueling tanker fiasco.

For some, wasteful defense spending is redundant.

I'm not amongst that crowd. The flip side is I'm pretty sure that my definition of wasteful would be vastly different than others. The amount of pure research that used to occur in defense spending (DARPA) used to be much higher. Pure research has applicability outside of defense systems. It is economically stimulative in that sense. (Also socially but that's another article). I could write a huge article on what is "wasteful" about defense spending, but it would start more arguments than settle. The B-52 is 50+ years old and should be replaced (if we're going to have one at all). However, the plane they would demand be engineered would be "wasteful" in the sense that they would pay absurd amounts for capabilities of dubious utility. If I could do one thing to reduce the waste in military contracting, it would be some variation of the OMB for defense contracts. i.e. an independent auditor to review the cost and utility of the capabilities that the services demand.