The Cat Food Commission* is At It Again

Well, we already know that the Republicans on Obama's "Deficit Reduction Commission" are marching lock-step against any meaningful tax increases, and now we know that when push comes to shove, they will cut military pay and benefits over any sort of sanity in weapons systems procurement:

A source familiar with the proceedings of the working group on discretionary spending tells TPM that some commissioners, including one military contractor, would prefer to save money by freezing military pay and scaling back benefits, rather than by eliminating waste in defense contracting.

……

According to the source, [Honeywell CEO David] Cote and other members, including the commission's co-chair Alan Simpson, are focusing instead on "freezing military pay, making military people pay for their health care."

Because that waste is what this "military contractor" calls his "annual bonus."

It's all about someone else taking the hit on this.

On the brighter side, this makes any adoption of any proposals from Cat Food Commission^* that much less likely to be adopted, because this is a completely clueless move.

I would also note that the uniformed military personnel levels are near a post WWII low, so the reason that the budget is exploding is not that we have 8 million active duty servicemen.

One wonders though, who is leaking all of this to Brian Beutler, and why are they doing so?

^*In the interest of health, I would suggest that people eat dog food, and not cat food. Cats because they are one of the few true carnivores, do not need the complex carbohydrates and fats that people, and dogs do. As such, dog food is better for you than cat food because it provides carbs and essential fatty acids. A dog can go blind if it is fed on cat food, but a cat lives just fine on dog food. The phenomenon is known as rabbit starvation.