It's a Stretch

This morning's paper brings three updates to this link, offered two posts below. The bottom line is, if you're not willing to touch Medicare growth, corporate welfare, tax increases and (not and/or!) the Pentagon budget, you're not serious about the deficit. Both Obama and the GOP are dancing around these plain truths in their budget proposals. Given the incentives in our political system, they can hardly behave otherwise, but both sides have bases that were expecting something different.

Meanwhile, as I expected in my previous, the Pentagon will only stand for so much when it comes to trimming their fat. Good thing we're not dominated by a powerful, entrenched military establishment like those poor Egyptians!

Finally, the odious George Will takes a break from his elite version of Michael Savage's schtick to make some sense for a change: The Pentagon can't even produce auditable budgets in compliance with the law (not to mention the good old Constitution). His conclusion is, so how can we even know what to cut? Well, aside from bloated, outdated weapons systems and a broken contracting process, let me offer two words: imperial overstretch.