Thank you for the invitation to comment on subject memo, “Better Buying Power: Mandate for Restoring Affordability and Productivity in Defense Spending.” Except for a less-than-ambitious 2-3% expectation for reducing funding for unneeded or low priority overhead (read fraud, waste, abuse, corruption) in the way the Pentagon does business, I couldn’t agree more with your latest initiative to “support our forces at war on an urgent basis” and advance Secretary Gate’s mandate to be “respectful of the American taxpayer at a time of economic and fiscal distress.” Right or wrong, the U.S. has committed its citizens to finance an expensive interventionist foreign policy which cannot be sustained without (1) bankrupting the U.S. economy or (2) drastically reducing wasteful, unneeded, and at times corrupt defense spending.
