Photo courtesy Northrop Grumman Newport News (Photo from How Stuff Works)The USS Ronald Reagan, under construction in the Northrop Grumman Newport News dry dock
From this blog, almost four months ago...
"..there's another element of the Clinton legacy (and the 1990s) that often goes ignored. We refer to the so-called "procurement holiday" that gripped the Pentagon during that decade. Critical decisions on major weapons programs were postponed or shelved, forcing the Pentagon to extend the service lives of existing systems.
Investor's Business Daily aptly described the problem--and its consequences--in an editorial published earlier this year: In the first six years of the Clinton administration, Bush 41's budget projections for weapons procurement were slashed by $160 billion. For fiscal 2000, the Congressional Budget Office said $90 billion a year was needed to hold procurement steady. The Clinton procurement budget was a mere $55 billion. During the Reagan buildup (fiscal 1981-87), we spent an average of $131 billion on procurement.
And the effects of Mr. Clinton's procurement holiday are still being felt today, almost a decade after he left office.
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My Comment: A good post that is unfortunately very true.