We will not tolerate this slander of such a Good Girl!!

Every Chief and Combatant Commander that wasn’t fired probably needs to be asked this series of questions as well.

Agree that this is shaping up to be the real test, but now that they’ve signaled a willingness to go along with impoundment at the domestic agencies, it’ll be that much harder to keep DOD exempted.

(This was foreseeable to anyone who spent more than 5 seconds thinking about it.)

Anyway, Impoundment Fairy coming home to roost soon enough it appears.

How do Roger Wicker and Susan Collins feel about major cuts to non-submarine shipbuilding? (They no like.)

So they’ll want to keep buying LPDs and DDGs, but they can’t force the admin to keep writing those MYPs either.

Rinse and repeat across 48 other states and 435 Congressional districts.

BUT… Now that they’ve signaled their willingness to go along with impoundment at the domestic agencies like NIH and Dept of Ed, who’s going to force the Admin to spend all the money Congress will still probably give DOD?

So my guess, and it’s just a guess because I have no idea what Congressional Republicans are thinking, is that defense spending is one of a tiny category of things that Congress will continue to do what’s in their interest, and that means appropriating what they want (not what the Admin wants).

Congress has been willing to go along with the real and announced cuts to many other agencies and insodoing are ceding their Article I power of the purse.

What are they going to do now that the cuts are coming for defense?

Keep in mind that by exempting many categories of things (such as missile defense, nukes, etc.) that the cuts will be much steeper than 8% on the remaining categories. Is end strength protected? What about training/readiness? 5th gen aircraft? R&D? The list goes on.

Trying to imagine what would happen if a Democratic Administration did this and my brain is melting.