Army’s Plans to Cut 60,000 Could Be a Major Blow to the Economy

ROTFL. Republicans cut back on the military budget, now they are complaining about planned cuts because of how it will affect the economy, esp. of Republican states, including Georgia.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/10/Army-s-Plans-Cut-60000-Could-Be-Major-Blow-Economy

By Eric Pianin
July 10, 2015

The U.S. Army’s plan to cut nearly 60,000 military and civilian employees in the next few years has sent shockwaves through Congress and sparked fears about the adverse effect it could have on a still-struggling economy and scores of military communities across the county.

The proposals revealed by the military over the past couple of days – calling for the elimination of 40,000 military personnel and 17,000 civilian workers – is also raising concerns about the impact it might have on military readiness and morale as the threats from ISIS, Russia and North Korea continue to build.

The cuts have been in the works for years and so cannot come as a huge surprise to lawmakers and state officials. Moreover, after years of bloat and unfathomable waste in the Pentagon, the White House and military officials are beginning to deliver on the more nimble and better focused military that President Obama spoke of on Monday after being briefed on the status of the U.S.-allied war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Yet the plan to slash the Army’s current military force of 490,000 by 40,000 active duty soldiers, or nine percent, while reducing the number of brigade combat teams from roughly 42 to 35 are viewed as harrowing to many. The military is also concerned that there could be additional cuts of 30,000 or more soldiers in the coming years unless Congress decides to lift spending caps under the 2011 Budget Control Act, according to some experts.

During a time of economic uncertainty, even as the national unemployment average dipped to 5.3 percent last month, the announced Army personnel cuts will be felt hardest in the South, with its major concentration of military and naval bases, parts of the Midwest and Southwest, and Alaska. In many of these places, Army installations are the driving engine of the local economies.

“Where you have military installations – typically larger bases – you have towns that grow up around them over the years or decades,” Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation said in an interview on Thursday. “And it’s the service members and their families who make up a huge chunk of the economic activity of whatever that town is.”

That means that car dealerships, barbershops, grocery stores, movie theaters, dry cleaners and a plethora of other businesses all depend on military family’s salaries to make ends meet. And the salaries and expenditures of service men and their families help to prop up the local tax base, Wood said. ”

“So roads and school systems and public officials – just all the things that would normally happen in a town – depend on military family spending,” he said. “When you take a large cut to a [military] unit . . . that’s a lot of salaries that go away.”

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Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) told Reuters that he learned from McHugh that the Army intended to cut 4,350 soldiers in Georgia including 950 at Fort Stewart and 3,400 at Fort Benning – cuts that would take place by the end of 2017.

"I am demanding answers from the Department of Defense on how they are justifying these troop cuts in Georgia," Isakson said in a statement.

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Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska called the cuts in her state "devastating" and "short-sighted.”

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http://www.businessinsider.com/the-chart-public-sector-vs-private-sector-employment-2012-6




tags: military