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and more than $60,000 for recliners from high-end furniture maker Herman Miller.
The rest of those big purchases are fucked up but c'mon 60k on HM chairs is like 60 chairs. That's probably enough to fill a hallway at the Pentagon and maybe 1 meeting room.
You mean 30 chairs
30 chairs is quite generous.
That could buy you about 10 of this one, for example. (Edit: We can rest safe, though, knowing Pete "Cirrhosis" Hegseth didn't spring for the vegan leather option.)
Yeah, they're expensive as hell, but damn do they make a fine chair. May he never get to sit in it
I think I got mine for like 1500, and I didn't get a bulk discount. And there were cheaper models.
Yeah, all that excess budget could be cut and put in other areas of government COUGH healthcare COUGH education COUGH goodness, excuse me. Sorry about that.. I must've inhaled some bullshit.
That isn't how budgeting works under basically any system.
You are allocated N dollars per year. If you don't use it then you have demonstrated you didn't need N dollars and your budget for the next year is "reconsidered".
As for sharing between orgs? That gets into the idea of Power Of The Purse. Because in a utopia? Yeah. We didn't need as many missiles this year so let's pay for a few new MRIs. But under the world we live in? Extreme pressure to take away medical funding and give it to the military because 9-11.
And... one can argue that most of that even serves The Military. Less so the piano. But rewarding the military with food before you ask them to go pillage a country in a new war (and try to not record themselves doing the rapes) is a tale as old as time itself. Just like how buying everyone in a division a new computer is the reward for coming in under budget.
No. Like almost everything, the issue is that we, as a country, only want to fund the military and never anything that actually benefits the people.
I know how budgeting works. I'm basically saying now that some light has been shed by watchdogs on how frivolous the defense budget used their excess for nothing related to defense [arguably] that the discretionary funds can be allocated to other areas which can absolutely be done in a sane government. But nah, they might need that excess later on to kill more brown people so let's just blow it all on lobster tails and ribeyes right now, sure!
So what you are saying is that spending the surplus is like spending 1 dollar from your lemonade stand so your parents give you $10 next year instead of $9?
Pretty much. You don't say "Oh, lemons were cheap this year so here is your money back". Because they might cost more next year.
Optimally you invest that money back into the business. Buy office supplies and equipment that will cross fiscal years. And... morale does matter when you are convincing people to die and commit crimes for you.
But, again, big pianos for political appointees don't really fall into that category.
I found folding chairs for $30 each just now without even trying, there is absolutely no justifying $1000 on a damn chair
I feel sad for the spine of anyone who thinks a folding chair is an appropriate workstation.
There absolutely is. Those folding chairs are fine for an afternoon on a Saturday or something, but if you work a desk job in them you're gonna find yourself hurting before too long. A decent office chair should resolve most of that, but a great one will help minimize the ergonomic issues associated with an office job and help you maintain focus.
Some of the really expensive chairs like Herman Miller are not only really good chairs, they're also designed to be beautiful pieces of furniture (which is a price I feel we shouldn't bother spending on the military). Using budget overflow on really good chairs is one of the classic uses of budget overflow. That said, this is clearly just financial irresponsibility given who's doing it
Some of the really expensive chairs like Herman Miller are not only really good chairs, they’re also designed to be beautiful pieces of furniture
Plus they last a while and are pretty repairable/refurbishable due to how widespread they are. Meanwhile most random folding chairs or generic office chairs will have some random part break and then you'll have to face the unfortunate reality that nobody sells that one random part you need, so now it's junk.
Yeah, make no mistake, I'm not buying one of their lounge chairs thats like $7k, but if I was making enough money that it's not super out of budget for a long term investment in my comfort, I'd consider it. I'm more likely to drop that kind of cash on a couch personally, and I am willing to spend extra to ensure it looks good, feels great, and lasts long. The older I get the more I want to ensure that my furniture is very comfortable and long lasting.
Can confirm. I'm sitting on an Aeron chair I bought used (probably dot-com era surplus) a decade and a half ago, and although I've replaced a torn armrest, the mesh on the seat and back is still in perfect shape. If I'd spent the same amount of money buying something new, it probably would've worn out two or three times over by now.
Sure, but did you think about the fact that food stamp recepiants could legally buy frozen lobster tail if they hoose to use all of their food stamps on it?, there's at least one documented case of someone actually doing it too so, it's a serious problem and justified cutting off half the country from food stamps to keep the epstien files from releasing.
Right, and lobster used to be considered peasant food back in colonial times. Funny how times change.
I never understood how Faux was allowed to run wall-to-wall coverage on the horrors of allowing people to buy steak-n-lobster on food stamps (! gasp! clutch pearls!) and most people didn't shut them the fuck off. I also didn't understand the propensity of so many people to police the fuck out of what is in someone's grocery cart if they are on assistance, while they seem to have very little interest in putting any checks at all on the parasitic class/the idle rich.
Then I learned about last place aversion and it makes a lot more sense. Whole lot of people would rather see the Epstein class get even richer than to have someone they think is beneath them jump one rung higher.
Where's that little chipmunk Kevin Hassett that loves to pop up in front of the camera and gaslight about fighting "waste, fraud and abuse"?
To put that number in perspective, there are 1.3 million active personnel with in the DOD right now, and a 1.5 pound live lobster costs about 34$. So, that’s enough for 1 in 5 active duty personnel to have a lobster with in the given time frame.
I’d say that 9 million dollars on an expensive food category over several months isn’t that much when we’re talking a population of 1.3 million (active duty personnel with in the DOD). But then again, that money probably wasn’t evenly distributed, I doubt they’re serving lobster dinners to all the privates at fort polk. So, some officers are getting some big lobsters once or twice a month. That’s probably a bit much, lobster is a treat, not something to be on the regular rotation.
Ultimately though, all these luxury expenses are just a drop in the bucket of over all spending. Everything when described as a line item will be massive. We could force every officer to live on dog food and it would barely make a dent in the expenditure. Ultimately, the budget is the result of the shear scale of the organization. The only really way to reduce the spending is to decrease the scale of the organization, and that requires reducing what it is expected to do. That means closing some bases, reducing overseas commitments, and giving up capabilities.
The discussion that needs to be had is around what the organization should be focusing on, what the people of the US want it to be doing. Like, maybe, we don’t want it bombing random countries at the whim of a president. The ability to do that off the cuff is quite expensive.
Sounds like someone is trying to buy themselves into the popular crowd.
This is why the pentagon has never passed an audit.
All those U.S. Navy ships and you can't go fishing for free?