Gates Announces Major Cuts, May Close Joint Force Command

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a series of steps Monday that the Department will consider in an attempt to combat excessive spending, including the elimination of Joint Forces Command and  a 10 percent reduction in funding for service support contractors.

“These initiatives vary in size and levels of savings achieved,” Gates said during a briefing at the Pentagon. “They represent an initial step of a comprehensive, department-wide efficiency and savings campaign.”

According to Gates, the continuation of Joint Force Command, which currently is tasked with ensuring cohesiveness in the theater, is unnecessary.

“Training joint forces … creating joint doctrine and experimenting with that doctrine all are valuable tasks,” Gates said. “However, they do not necessarily require a separate four-star combatant command.”

The command, which currently employs several thousand and holds an operating rate of $240 million per year, will have its primary responsibilities delegated to Joint Staff and other entities. 

As for the other major move to rein in costs, Gates characterized the current dependency on contractors as an “over-reliance” and pointed to the 13 percent rise in non-theater based contractors that took place over the last decade. The Secretary also explained that contractors who leave will no longer be replaced by new full-time personnel.

The Secretary’s announcements are the latest in steps taken by Gates to create a more fiscally sound Defense Department. In drafting the budget last year, Gates scaled down the funding for programs related to conventional warfare, including the elimination of the F-22 fighter jet.

Gates, who initially indicated that he would leave his position before the completion of Obama’s first term, said that the will exists within the military and its civilian leadership to continue to cut overhead after he steps down. When asked when that would be however, Gates commented, “I’m going to be here longer than either I or others thought.”

Final Well Kill May Begin This Week

by Miles Wolf Tamboli - Talk Radio News Service

In his daily operational update Monday, National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen told reporters that “the job before us now is to finish the relief well… and then seal the well with cement from the bottom up. That will, in our view, at that point, permanently kill the well.”

“We expect that some time towards the end of the week we’ll be in a position to intercept the annulus and commence the kill,” he said.

In the meantime, the response team is moving forward, focusing their attention on cleaning the beaches and wetlands impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Over the next week, Allen will be meeting with local leaders and parish presidents along the coast to coordinate a stronger local response.

Waters Charged With Three Ethics Violations

The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is facing three counts of ethics violations.

The charges stem from accusations that the Congresswoman played a role in soliciting TARP funds for OneUnited, a bank that her husband had a combined total of 3,976 shares in. 

“If OneUnited had not received this funding, [Waters’] husband’s financial interested in OneUnited would have been worthless,” a statement released by the committee reads.

The committee found that Waters behaved in a manner that did not reflect creditably on the House, and that she breached standards barring the exertion of influence for individual financial gain and the use of special favors.

In July, Waters motioned to have the charges dropped, citing the ethics committee’s decision last year to dismiss allegations that Republican  Sam Graves (Mo.) benefited from failing to disclose his financial ties with witnesses he invited to testify before Congress. The committee denied Waters’ request.

The ethics committee’s response to Waters coincides with the upcoming trial for Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who faces 13 alleged violations.

Medicare May Be Better Off Despite Cuts, Claims Actuary

By Sarah Mamula - Talk Radio News Service

Although the recently passed health care reform law made $485 billion in cuts to the Medicare program, the social-security safety net may last longer than some have expected.

“We have a far better financial outlook for Medicare than we did a year ago, and that’s a direct result of the patient protection and affordable care act” said Richard Foster, chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, during a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute Friday in Washington, D.C.

Foster said that due to improvements in the healthcare system, the trust fund for Medicare hospitals is projected to run out in 2029 contrasting last year’s 2017 projection.

He stressed, however, that projections are unreliable. The success of the Affordable Care Act will depend on how it is implemented. 

“Nobody knows exactly how these things will work,” said Foster.

As Chief Actuary, Foster works to “provide objective technical information on behalf of policy makers” on the annual Medicare Trustees Report. 

Allen: Static Kill Completed, Moving On To Finish Relief Wells

by Miles Wolf Tamboli - Talk Radio News Service

National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen provided an update via teleconference, Friday, on BP and the Coast Guard’s newest developments in finishing up the highly praised “static kill,” which has now successfully filled a large portion of the casing pipe of the deepwater Macondo oil well, responsible for the deaths of 11 rig workers and nearly 5 million barrels of sweet Louisiana crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, with heavy drilling mud, and now cement. 

Ret. Admiral Allen told the press that BP has now injected a layer of fluid on top of the cement, and a layer of drilling mud on top of that. The static kill has essentially ensured that no more oil will leak from the Macondo well, said Allen on Thursday.  The team will now begin pressure testing to keep track of the curing of the cement.

“We are unequivocally committed to completing the relief wells, drilling into the annulus, and cementing the annulus as the bottom portion of this kill, and there is no indication at all … that we completed this with the static kill from the top,” reminded Allen.

Rigs will begin to drill August 8; “we expect to be somewhere around the annulus around the 13th of August, and the drilling portion into the annulus is expected to occur somewhere between the 14th and the 15th of August.”

The annulus is the open space between the casing pipe that leads from the reservoir to the ocean floor, and the surrounding rock.

“We do not believe that a second try will be needed to go into the casing pipe because the indications are from the cement that was put in from the top is that the casing has been filled with cement down at that level,” said Allen; “If the pressure checks hold and we have indication the casing has been sealed off with cement, then the killing of the well would require only going into the annulus”