WRONG WAY TO SAVE – AT 8:48 A.M. ET:  The Defense Department should not be immune to funding cuts, where appropriate, but cutting into the bone is foolish and irresponsible.   The Hill reports that the Navy may have to do just that:

The Navy could be forced to slash its annual budget by $10 billion as the Pentagon pares its spending, defense insiders tell The Hill.

White House officials have ordered the Pentagon to begin slashing its budget starting in 2013 to meet President Obama’s goal of $400 billion in national security cuts.

Amazing how efficient the White House is in pushing for defense cuts.

With the service facing a possible cut approaching $12 billion, weapons program cuts are on the table.

“One option under active consideration for most of the year has been to delay construction of the second aircraft carrier in the Ford class from 2013 to 2015,” Thompson said.

House Armed Services Readiness subcommittee Chairman Randy Forbes (R-Va.) said the Navy also is considering removing another aircraft carrier from its long-term shipbuilding plan.

Real smart, at a time when the Chinese navy is being built up and our own fleet is aging.  Many of the ships built during the Reagan buildup of the 1980s will be approaching the end of their useful life sometime in this decade.  Cutting shipbuilding is exactly the wrong way to go.

The carrier moves, if enacted, would “severely impact” defense firms that build the big warships and their many subcontractors and parts suppliers...

Not a brilliant move for the economy either.  Defense procurement, when done wisely, is a great benefit to the economy and to job creation.  It gets American assembly lines going.  Obama was advised, when he came to office, to turn to defense spending as an economic stimulus.  The military needed, and still needs, a great deal of equipment to replace that lost or worn out in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Obama, probably for ideological reasons, ignored the advice.

July 14, 2011