WASHINGTON (AP) – Weary after a year of partisan bickering, lawmakers tried Monday to wrap up a sprawling $1 trillion-plus spending bill that chips away at military and environmental spending but denies conservatives many of the policy changes they wanted on social issues, government regulations and health care.

The measure implements this summer’s hard-fought budget pact between President Barack Obama and Republican leaders. That deal essentially freezes agency budgets, on average, at levels for the recently-completed budget year that were approved back in April.

Drafted behind closed doors, the proposed bill would pay for the war in Afghanistan but give the Pentagon just a 1 percent boost in annual spending, while the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget would be cut by 3.5 percent.

The bill also covers everything from money to combat AIDS and famine in Africa, patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border, operations of national parks, and budget increases for veterans’ health care.

Negotiators on the appropriations committees hope to get a final agreement from top leaders like House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.—and the White House—and officially unveil the measure by late tonight in preparation for House and Senate votes before a midnight deadline on Friday, when a stopgap funding measure expires.

The measure is likely to go over like a lead balloon among tea party conservatives, many of whom believe the August budget and debt compromise didn’t cut enough. Last month, 101 House Republicans opposed a smaller bundle of spending bills.

Conservative ire is likely to be magnified once the negotiating outcome regarding dozens of GOP policy “riders” is finalized. Republicans larded the measures with provisions aimed at rolling back Environmental Protection Agency rules, such as regulations on coal ash, large-scale discharges of hot water and greenhouse gases from electric power plants, and emissions from cement plants and oil refineries.

The most controversial riders are sure to be dumped overboard due to opposition from Obama and Democrats controlling the Senate. But Democrats realize that they have to show some flexibility to win GOP votes in the House. That means Democrats are likely to accept, reluctantly, a rider that blocks the city of Washington, D.C., from funding abortions for poor women.

Read more here. One would have hoped that the tea party revolution launched in 2010 would have resulted in slightly more than changing abortion funding policies in one American city.

9/11…We all remember what it is and what happened, and we vowed to never forget it. But the true meaning of NEVER FORGET is not to forget what 9/11 means, to our nation and to free people around the world and to never forget our mission. I have never actually tried to put together “what it means” in its totality and scope because the far reaching impact it had on my life and where I was in my life at the time.  I liken it to being asked “What was BUDS like?” or “What’s it like to be a Navy SEAL?”

These questions are just unanswerable in a sitting.  They will usually elicit a response of “Really?” or “You will have to come up with some better questions than that.”  My quick and ready answer is the first line of a Dickens book “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  Then I just walk away.

9/11…It ripped me to the core — being that I grew up not forty miles away in — Upstate New Jersey and had some people that I knew in there as most of us in the area did.  Plus, growing up in New Jersey, you were used to seeing New York City on the horizon when we would climb to the top of the Mountain behind my house.  I used to visit my grandparents and cousins that lived out on Remsen and we would see the towers as we would go by on the GWB past Yankee Stadium.  We would sometimes go into the city and go to the towers to ride in the elevators and jump when it got to the top and you would almost slam into the ceiling or to feel almost weightless as you would plummet so fast.  Those buildings were HUGE!!! You may have seen them on TV but until you have seen them up close and personal you don’t get the full scope of what happened there.

About 4 days before 9/11, in 2001, I was a young Navy SEAL and had just graduated from SQT, which is the last hurdle to get through before reporting to your assigned Team or Platoon.  I was happy and excited to be a Frogman and there wasn’t a care in the world for me. Like firemen, you don’t wish for people to get into accidents or for their houses to get burnt down but you want to get out there and play in the big game being that you are finally in the Big Leagues.  I wanted to test my skills somewhere in the world and there really wasn’t much going on in the world.  I wanted something to happen in the world so the SEALs can go save somebody or kill some bad guys….. I remember thinking that my generation had nothing to show other than for the advent of the computer and video games, and this was about two before 9/11.  Little did I know the Horror that awaited a nation……. MY NATION!

While some are saying that the super committee will be able to reach a deal and cut the additional $1.5 trillion (half from defense), others are not so confident there will be any agreement, resulting in automatic caps for the next nine years.  Either way, defense spending will make or break a super committee budget deal.

Truthfully, Congress has a better chance of willfully trimming the budget at the super committee stage because they have more tools to orchestrate a reduction. Even if they deadlock, they’ll push through artificial savings mechanisms, anything to merit a Mission Accomplished banner. Medicare doc fixes are an example of such “solutions”. Though Congress’s intention was to curb Medicare spending, they came up with an unworkable formula that has now resulted in temporary increases and extensions of existing physician reimbursement rates, all in an attempt to circumvent a long-term solution. Applying this to what Congress may do with defense spending, a successful deal may be nothing more than a tacit convention of today’s culture on Capitol Hill, do anything to avoid Armageddon. And some do consider the trigger provision of the bill to be deadly. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta even called it the “doomsday mechanism.”

Under sequestration, or the trigger, defense cuts are still a variable certainty. We simply do not know how bad it is. It all boils down to the language of the bill. Here’s why:

1.The bill does not organize any of its spending requirements against any baseline.

2.Positive numbers (discretionary spending caps) without context forces you to make arbitrary assumptions.

3.No analyst can come up with a number that is reasonable/unreasonable.

The question on everyone’s mind: What on earth do we base these numbers against?

The president’s request in February? The president’s April modification? CBO’s baseline? The DoD’s “Green Book” estimates? Using any of these assumptions, an analyst can show a range of reductions in the base defense budget. Over a 10-year period, the difference can be up to $150 billion, depending on what baseline you use.  With a range like that, no one knows what to believe.  Congress was smart.

The bill is also legally provocative in that, if the committee fails, it changes its basic definitions for the categories of spending that must be cut. At the committee stage, defense cuts are represented under the “security category.”  Under sequestration, the now “revised security category” is defined as “discretionary appropriations in budget 050.” Granted that function 050 represents national defense spending, it excludes a particular area of spending that, previously on the table, is now off limits: veterans’ benefits and services.  Bravo, Congress.

While function 050 covers the pay and benefits of active, Guard, and reserve military personnel, it does not appropriate money towards programs of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), including veterans’ medical care, compensation and pensions, education and rehabilitation benefits, and housing programs. This is all covered by function 700, out of which 90 percent of spending pays for veterans’ health care. Golden rule in Washington: cutting pay/benefits for veterans is politically lethal.

The super committee could have been designed to fail. With veterans’ benefits off the table and immeasurable caps on national defense, Congress would ultimately have to (gasp) raise taxes.  Or maybe they do succeed and the Committee schedules a series of cuts that will or will never happen.

In either case, the after effects of the Budget Control Act of 2011 are unknown. However, if we look to Mother Nature, we do know that earthquakes can have large aftershocks, and in some cases, they can last for years.

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by New York Times’ best selling author Brad Thor to discuss his newest thriller Full Black, how he develops material for his books, the importance of highlighting the work of the fearless patriots in America’s Special Forces, and the upcoming Warner Bros. film adaptations of his blockbuster novels.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Ironically, earlier that day, NATCA, the air traffic controllers’ union, had started its annual safety conference.  Their reaction was predictable:  what is needed in the tower are more (presumably unionized) employees—someone whose job would be, one supposes, to keep the other person awake for the half-dozen flights that land at DCA between midnight and 6am.

If keeping tower staff awake is our primary concern, a $10 alarm clock, set to go off at regular intervals, would suffice just fine in this regard, and we can forego the tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary and benefits for the second man.  We could also co-locate other non-tower flight operations to the tower for the overnight shift.  But to focus on the number of overnight controllers or why people are falling asleep on the job ignores the bigger, and more important, picture.  This event underscores a deeper problem—one of security, and not safety.

In the days following this incident, a recording surfaced of a fellow air traffic controller operating in Warrenton, VA and in regular communication with the flights into DCA.  In that recording, Warrenton blithely tells the pilots of the plane that he has tried calling the tower at DCA to no avail.  And that’s it.

Considering that the airspace surrounding DCA is considered to have the highest security priority in the nation, encompassing as it does the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, the CIA, and just about every other essential federal agency.  This is the reason DCA was shut down immediately following the September 11^th attacks, and why the airspace remains among the tightest restrictions in the nation.

With the Pentagon just miles away, one wonders why Warrenton failed to notify anyone in law enforcement, homeland security, or national defense of the silence at DCA tower.  At the very least, why didn’t someone notify Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s own police force? They could have sent someone up into the tower to check up on the napping air traffic controller within minutes!

This is not idle nitpicking, either.  Given the importance of DC airspace, and the proximity of DCA to a host of targets, it is not inconceivable for a “tower taking” to be the opening move in a terrorist attack on DC.  That the tower was allowed to go silent and nobody in the security realm even made a cursory check is galling to say the least.

If this is not standard operating procedure, then it should be made so immediately.  The FAA ought to require that when a tower goes silent in the DC area, those who recognize the potential security breach ought to notify that airport’s law enforcement personnel immediately, who ought to, in turn, notify the appropriate homeland security and Department of Defense agencies.

Moreover, from a proximity standpoint, instead of putting another controller in the tower (which makes little sense from either a budgetary, safety, or security standpoint), MWAA ought to add tower checks to its normal, nighttime security operations.  They ought to visit the tower to ensure that all is well, and they can make regular contact with the control tower via radio.  They have the manpower on staff, airport security is within their purview, and ensuring that that the tower remains secure certainly comes under their rubric.  There is no reason while regular tower checks shouldn’t immediately become a part of that.

It is easy to look at a situation and say, “let’s throw money and manpower at it and see what happens.”  But manpower isn’t the central issue—and neither is safety.  The planes landed safely and because safety is ultimately the responsibility of the pilots we have two on commercial airliners.  From a safety standpoint the various systems worked in this case.

The breakdown here is one of appropriate procedures and we create a system in which there are checks, balances, and, ultimately, accountability.  Congress, the NTSB, and the FAA ought to keep that in mind as they review what happened at Reagan National on March 22^nd.

American aerospace giant Boeing and European mega-corporation Airbus are locked in a war over who gets to deliver $35 billion worth of refueling planes to the Defense Department to replace about 80% of the Air Force’s refueling fleet – planes that average almost 50 years old, according to the Lexington Institute.

Just a few short weeks ago, Boeing and Airbus officially submitted bids to manufacture the tanker, and now both will compete to see who can create 179 tankers for less cash, who’s plane will be ready in time and who hits closer to the mark on meeting the Pentagon’s needs. Right now the momentum seems to be in Boeing’s favor, but the stakes are high.

From the Wall Street Journal:

For Boeing, the fight is to defend its home market and an area of expertise—tanker planes—that it once dominated. Boeing in 2001 beat Airbus to supply Japan with four 767 tankers. They are now in operation but differ substantially from what Boeing has offered the Pentagon…

For EADS, a U.S. win would cement its position as the new world leader in tankers. Since 2004, it has won orders for 28 tankers from Australia, the U.K., Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The Airbus design has also faced some delays in development.

Airbus has a version of the needed tanker that they will deliver to Australian forces this week, which they say will be about 90% identical to the version they want to deliver to the Pentagon. Boeing doesn’t have a version of the tanker in production, but they say they’re more willing to wait to develop the tanker so that it could be better in line with the Pentagon’s immediate needs, though it will be based on Boeing 767 plane.

Boeing claims that it’s design will be more custom, more effective and less costly than Airbus’ plane, which has a larger wingspan, burn more fuel per hour, and according to Boeing, has a higher maintenance cost. And worse, as Jed Babbin pointed out right here on Big Government not long ago, Airbus’s design categorically fails in meeting the Air Force’s needs being unable to complete mission critical maneuvers. Airbus says, however, that it’s plane will be cheaper, though, and has submitted a bit that reflects that.

But there’s a catch to Airbus’ bid that might have disastrous effects on American trade interests.

As the Lexington Institute points out, none of the planes Airbus markets have been built without massive subsidies from the European Union. These subsidies, which the WTO recently ruled were an illegal advantage in international trade, were given to European companies to help make their products cheaper on the global market, undercutting American manufacturers and, ultimately, costing American interests.

When the decade began, America accounted for roughly a third of global economic output and a third of global military spending. Today, it accounts for a quarter of global economic output and half of global military spending. Obviously, the growing disparity between America’s economic and military power cannot be sustained indefinitely.

Pentagon policymakers apparently do not grasp what America’s economic decline means for the future of its defense posture. They are planning on the assumption that military spending will be stable in the years ahead, even though the nation is growing poorer every day. In fact, the policymakers are contributing to the economic trends that spell doom for their defense plans by sponsoring a tanker competition that may send billions of dollars to one of the key culprits b behind America’s trade deficit.

Two American companies have already had to give up on competing with European companies. Boeing is the only company left in the race and even they have seen their market share drop by half. Congressman Dave Loebsack, who last week helped pass the Bipartisan Bill to Boost American Workforce and Industry, claims that awarding Boeing the tanker contract would bring an estimated 800 jobs to Iowa alone, perhaps among the first steps in reversing the exodus of industry from American shores.

The House of Representatives, in May, voted 410 – 8 to force the Pentagon to take the WTO’s decision into consideration when deciding on which company got the contract for the new tanker, but the Defense Department hasn’t seemed willing, yet, to admit that they need to consider that they might be rewarding years of unfair competition and contributing to America’s trade decline.

This politically correct virus has now spread dangerously into the U.S. military.  The armed forces exist for this reason: if called upon, to kill the enemy.  The military also exists to deter the enemy so that lethal force is not needed.  But if necessary, our troops are trained and ready to wipe out our enemies before they can wipe us out.

Now, thanks to same Pentagon social engineers who brought us the ideas of gays serving openly in the military and women on submarines, the military is considering a “courageous restraint” award.  What on God’s green earth is THAT, you ask?  Good question.  Apparently, you will now be able to win a medal for “holding your fire” and avoiding civilian casualties.  Implicit in this utter ridiculousness is that our troops do not NOW show “courageous restraint,” do not NOW “hold their fire” until absolutely necessary, and do not NOW avoid civilian casualties.  This is an insult to the fine and selfless men and women in uniform who give up their lives—in some cases,
literally—to prosecute a war and defend the American people.

Military awards are bestowed for uncommon valor in combat.  They should not be given for doing what the good and decent American armed forces are trained to do anyway: use force judiciously.

This is the worst and most dangerous example of political correctness that I’ve seen in a long time.  It could work to get our troops—and ultimately us—killed.  Consider that most of our current enemies ARE civilians: terrorists who do not wear the uniform of any nation.  Holding out an award to our troops for “holding their fire” could get them slaughtered.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’d like our military to stand ready to fight on our behalf, and yes, use lethal force when necessary.  God bless them for doing it so the rest of us can live in freedom and relative security.  But there should only be outrage for the crusaders of political correctness who
have infiltrated our fighting forces with a lollipop award for abiding by the liberal platitude that “violence is never the answer.”

Sometimes the violence comes to you, and you have no choice but to use violence to stop it.

The battleground is a life-and-death, hell-on-earth, kill-or-be-killed, no-room-for-error place.  Leave the playground awards at the playground.