Our adversaries smell weakness - today's edition

Russia has post-America's number:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is deploying nuclear-armed submarines "dangerously close" to the United States and European allies, a Senate Democrat said following a trip to the Arctic Circle.

"No one is suggesting that Putin is contemplating a nuclear launch against a NATO country, but it's not clear how tethered to reality Putin is," Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Monday. "And it should make us nervous that many of his submarines are starting to get dangerously close to the U.S. and our allies."

Murphy made the comments while arguing that the U.S. Navy needs to pursue an aggressive plan to replace aging submarines, which can thwart rival countries from gathering intelligence and maintain the security of global shipping lanes.

The Navy says the reason it's not aggressively replacing the aging subs is a matter of finances:

Pentagon officials plan to scale back production of modern attack submarines if the Navy can't get funding to replace Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines. "You're going have to look at this program with a national lens because if you drop this into the middle of a Navy shipbuilding budget it will just gut Navy shipbuilding for decades to come," Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told a House panel last week.

Murphy wants the Navy to build those Ohio-class replacements without cutting production of Virginia-class attack submarines. "We've got to find a way to do both," he said. "If you look at the pace of Russian and Chinese building programs, we can't afford to drop Virginia-class production back to one for more than a year." 

 The rejoinder to the question of where the money will come from is "Get going on Ted's Five For Freedom and attendant 25 ABCs:

1. Five for Freedom – abolish 4 unnecessary cabinet agencies and the IRS.
2. 25 Federal “ABCs” – eliminate 25 Agencies, Bureaus, Commissions, and other programs.
3. Grace Commission 2.0 – reinstitute President Reagan’s Panel on Cost Control (“The Grace Commission”) to identify waste and inefficiency.
4. Congressional accountability – amend the Constitution to require Congress and the President to balance the budget, and enact the REINS Act.
5. Federal hiring freeze and reform– institute a freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees across the executive branch, and reform automatic worker raises.

Estimated Savings of Over $500,000,000,000 in 10 years

1. FIVE FOR FREEDOM:

During my first year, I will fight to abolish the IRS, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. To do that, I will press Congress relentlessly. And I will appoint heads of each of those agencies whose central charge will be to lead the effort to wind them down and determine whether any programs need to be preserved elsewhere because they fall within the proper purview of the federal government. I do not anticipate lists to be long.

That would pay for some subs.