Officials continue to play up the national security “risks” of the government shutdown, claiming it risks their efforts to shore up security at embassies and closing key training facilities.
But they got their robot submarines.
On Monday evening, just hours ahead of the shutdown, the Pentagon went shopping for real, dumping some $5 billion in cash into the bank accounts of various military contractors to buy up everything imaginable before the shutdown took effect.
Cameras, Reaper drones, robotic submarines, even a television studio and $19 million worth of cots, the military saw the writing on the wall: spending was going to be curbed, and they were getting their money’s worth beforehand.
The Pentagon’s splurge reflects the ample time departments had to anticipate the shutdown, and take advantage of everything they could beforehand.
The US Militarry Industrial Complex is the most bloated and wasteful spending entity on the face of the planet. 5 billion bucks on robot submarines that it will probably never use, while nearly a million Americans are being furloughed while the GOPs and Dems play politics is ridiculous. We already know about the MIC's wastful spending in Afghanistan. 7 billion bucks in new military hardware is slated to be auctioned off at a quarter of its value, and even shredded and sold as scrap metal.
Not to say that there might have been some extra spending before the shutdown, but, this is basically SOP. Many organizations must spend what they have prior to the new fiscal year beginning or they lose it. That's where we in military units used to see a lot of "last minute" spending, such as sporting equipment and the like in the last week of September. But it makes for good headlines…
I did the same thing on a much smaller scale at the lab. All job order # that expire at the end of FY must be spent down. It was worse this year too, because the money came in so late that it was impossible to plan efficiently. Normally, I would have bought major equipment with funds in excess of salary, but this year that was impossible. So a massive small purchase spree took place in late August and early September before the deadlines.
The government's profligate spending through defense and national security channels would be somewhat tolerable if the money ended up widely distributed amongst individual Americans. Yes, it would be better spent on infrastructure, education and other areas that generate returns in later years – but there seems little chance of that.
The fact that their profits, already fattened by wage stagnation and borrowing, ends up in the coffers of those who have already vastly more than they could possibly need means it is more or less dormant and adds little to the overall economy. Trickle down? Don't rub salt in the wounds.
Contrast what would be the case if the $5b went in equal shares to everyone in the country under 20 y.o. It would have flowed through the economy at a turbo rate creating at a minimum $50b of new business revenue.
The MIC – now expanded to include the "keep-you-safe" sector is a drag anchor on this country. It is the polar opposite of "keeping us safe" – beggaring most of us instead.
As a taxpayer, I am disgusted by this.