Understanding Government

This comes from a good article by the Wall Street Journal’s Johnathan Weisman and Deborah Solomon on the Obama administration’s efforts to manage the national debt:

The White House is in the early stages of considering what bigger moves it might make for next year’s budget. The Office of Management and Budget has asked all cabinet agencies, except defense and veterans affairs, to prepare two budget proposals for fiscal 2011, which begins Oct 1, 2010. One would freeze spending at current levels. The other would cut spending by 5%.

It was in Ronald Reagan campaign’s for president that the Republican Party made pendants that read “End All Non-Defense Spending Now.” The Obama White House doesn’t want to do that (nor did Reagan), but the Democratic Obama seems to share the same view here as the Republican Reagan: money for military and wars is essential, everything else isn’t. (That everything else, by the way, doesn’t include entitlement spending — medicare, social security — which is not subject to annual budget deliberations).

It would make sense that money for the Labor Dept. would also be protected given that the labor market crisis is more dire than any national security crisis. Also, what about protecting funding for agencies like the Food and Drug Administration that are just now back on their feet after being gutted by the George W. Bush administration? The Obama administration’s budget blueprint is a testament to the influence of Reagan, and the whole small government/big military movement of the past 30 years.

General Eric Shinseki gained a reputation as a straight shooter way back in 2003, when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that controlling Iraq after an invasion would require hundreds of thousands of troops.  Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had a different view on the subject, and before long, Shinseki was gone from the upper reaches of the U.S. military.

Barack Obama brought Shinseki back to official Washington as secretary of veterans affairs.  According to this overview by Ed O’Keefe and Garance Frank-Ruta of the Washington Post, Shinseki is taking a no-nonsense approach to a major problem for post-combat veterans: homelessness.   It’s estimated that more than 130,000 veterans are homeless, and with higher rates of foreclosures around military bases than the rest of the country, the problem may be accelerating.  The VA is planning to

expand partnerships with the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other federal, state, and community veterans programs.

Shinseki’s words to veterans and vet organizations at a meeting in Washington this week were encouraging.  He told “thousands of government, nonprofit, and faith-based homelessness experts and advocates” that “this is not a summit on homeless veterans, it’s a summit to end homelessness among veterans.”

It’s, unfortunately, not surprising, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had a huge mental health toll on U.S. troops.The New York Times’ James Dao looks at a study that 37 percent of all Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers that entered the Dept. of Veterans Affairs health system suffer from a mental health condition. According to the Dept. of Veterans Affairs medical center in San Francisco and the University of California San Francisco, the most commonly diagnosed conditions are post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

The study’s authors say that key reasons so many of the 290,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have mental health problems are repeat deployments and the non-traditional nature of both wars. These causes for mental health problems may exacerbate as the U.S. brings in at least 21,000 more troops to fight insurgents in the hilly terrain of Afghanistan. If and when these troops return, they will be treated by a VA system that’s already under-staffed and over capacity.-MB

Analysis of Defense Sec. Robert Gates’ proposed Pentagon budget has tended to focus on what Cold War-era weapons will and won’t live on. But as Kimberly Hefling of the Associated Press reminds us, another budget change is money for veteran’s health care: Gates wants $47 billion more to care for the 33,000 soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. In remarks yesterday, Gates and Barack Obama stressed how the new money would be used to keep patient records on a computer network. This is designed to ease bureaucratic obstacles between the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs.

It’s hard to argue against more money toward veteran’s health care. But I don’t understand why this isn’t strictly a Dept. of Veterans Affairs issue. Part of the Pentagon’s problem might just be that it’s too big. Why should Gates lead the effort to reform the military-industry complex and salvage health care for veterans, when there is an entire federal agency that deals with veterans issues? -MB

The Washington Post’s Carol D. Leonnig reports that federal agencies have combined to give about $5 billion in government contracts set aside for small businesses to actually very, very big businesses. Corporate giants like Lockheed Martin and SAIC are getting million in contracts from agencies like the Dept. of Homeland Security (the worst offender) and the Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs. The meaning of "small business" is not clear, but the Small Business Administration defines it as either below a certain number of employees (like 500) or annual revenue ($17 million).

The Small Business Administration, the agency in charge of deciding whether a business is small, disputes the Post’s figures and promises to release their own report today. According to the Post, companies like Lockheed are successfully listing subsidaries as stand-alone companies.-MB