Pentagon talks layoffs, while private defense executives rake in millions

Have you heard? The Pentagon is really strapped for cash. And if the Super Congress doesn't find a way to stick it to low-income folks and the elderly, and triggers cuts to defense spending, the Pentagon will be forced to stick it to the troops and civilian personnel:

Automatic cuts to defense spending could leave the Pentagon with its lowest share of the federal budget since before World War II, shrinking the Army and Marine Corps by some 150,000 troops and leaving fewer warships and combat aircraft to project U.S. power around the world, according to an analysis prepared for House Armed Services Committee Republicans. [...]

Aside from the troop cuts, there would also be massive layoffs of Pentagon civilian employees, and the elimination of many jobs in the defense industry, according to the analysis.

In fact, the Pentagon is so strapped for cash, it's ditching millions of dollars worth of equipment, and bases, in Iraq. As Dan Froomkin reports:

With just over three months until the last U.S. troops are currently due to leave Iraq, the Department of Defense is engaged in a mad dash to give away things that cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars to buy and build.

The giveaways include enormous, elaborate military bases and vast amounts of military equipment that will be turned over to the Iraqis, mostly just to save the expense of bringing it home.

Those bases, by the way, cost more than $2.4 billion to construct. And then there's the equipment we're leaving behind?more than $100 million in "such things as older versions of weapons, vehicles, and body armor." Not to mention air conditioners, beds, temporary housing?things we somehow haven't been able to afford for American citizens who were hit by, say, Katrina, but which we simply had to have in order to fight our endless wars on the other side of the planet.

And yet, while this is going on, while we're ditching all that multi-million dollar equipment, and while the Pentagon is fretting about all the cuts it will have to make to personnel if forced to survive on a shoe-string budget, there's this:

Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors won?t be able to bill the government for more than $693,951 a year in total salary and compensation for any executives under a proposal headed for congressional approval.

The Senate is mulling an expansion to all executives from current rules limiting the cap to contractors? top five executives. The House has approved a cap on all employees of defense vendors. While the full Senate has yet to vote on its committee-approved version, and the two chambers must still reconcile their differences, the expanded executive pay limit has a good chance to survive.

Wait a minute. Executives at Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors have been billing the government for their salary and compensation packages? Exactly how much have the taxpayers been shelling out to compensate these executives?

For the top five federal contractors by prime contract value in 2010 ? Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon ? the average reported annual compensation was $8 million per executive, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

These are the same defense contractors who've seen higher-than-expected profits, thanks to our endless wars? And we're paying their $8 million-a-year salaries?

I guess we're supposed to see this as a good thing, the House and Senate in basic agreement that taxpayers shouldn't be footing the bill for multi-million-dollar compensation packages for private defense contractors.

But when Republicans are warning that cuts to defense spending will mean the end of the world, and our national security, as we know it, perhaps the problem isn't too many civilian employees earning five figures a year. Perhaps the problem isn't, as Republicans have said, all those greedy school teachers who refuse to do their share of sacrificing by taking cuts to their salaries and benefits. Maybe the problem isn't the Americans who aren't paying their "fair share" in taxes because they live in poverty.

Maybe the real problem is that our lawmakers apparently think it's perfectly reasonable for American taxpayers to pay ridiculous six-figure salaries to corporate executives who've already raked in millions, while Republicans hold disaster relief hostage and demand that struggling Americans sacrifice even more.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/7gDelHp9KLQ/-Pentagon-talks-layoffs,-while-private-defense-executives-rake-in-millions

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