Noah Schachtman discovers DC budgeting sucks and decides to blame Don Rumsfeld in a very nasty way. The budget game hasn't worked right since the beginning of the Republic. Frankly, the only reason to put things in supplementals instead of in the regular budget is that you're sure that they wouldn't pass in the regular budget. Working up supplementals is an energy drain and if the only way to make sure your vehicles have enough gas to actually get the job done is to pair them with body armor requests, that's how you structure the request.
A lot of things can get soldiers killed. Not having enough fuel on hand to mount a rescue mission is one way for soldiers to get killed but that isn't sexy. Pairing that vital request with the "politically impossible to vote against" body armor means fewer soldiers die on balance if you've got a Congress that is looking to underfund the military. The real question is whether the Congress we elected in 2002 is that kind of Congress. That doesn't seem to be the kind of question that Noah Schachtman is as interested in as in Rumsfeld bashing.
Posted by TMLutas at November 2, 2004 10:57 AM