Jobs Program

Pork is what the other guy spends your money on.

...Congressional and industry leaders say they recognize that defense spending is peaking, and the time has come — given the many financial strains on the federal government — to overhaul an acquisition system that has resulted in smaller, but more expensive, fleets of combat planes and ships.

There is also broad political support for the Pentagon’s plans to shift some of the more than $650 billion in defense spending from futuristic weapons programs to simpler arms that the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan can use now.

But with a labor report on Friday showing that the economy has lost 4.4 million jobs since the recession began, “if you’re talking about canceling major weapons systems, that becomes hard,” said William S. Cohen, a former senator from Maine who served as defense secretary under President Bill Clinton.

“Given the economic climate we’re operating in now, any congressman or senator is going to say, ‘I’ve got to protect the jobs in my district or state,’ and that’s understandable,” Mr. Cohen said. “The difficulty now is how do you get a majority to vote against their own interests, even if you could persuade them that the changes would be best for the national defense?”

Doubtless we should continue to use hundreds of billions of dollars a year on futuristic weapons we can only use to fight Skynet, which we are also using hundreds of billions of dollars a year to create.