Posts: 2,788
Threads: 313
Joined: Aug 2013
Reputation:
0
Heard a report on NPR today telling of the Navy plan to relocated the USS Comfort from its current home port of Baltimore to Norfolk, VA by next March. Evidently the government will save $1.7 million per year.
Couldn't help but notice the irony of the government talking about saving money while my friends' (who runs a division of a large govt agency) biggest worry for this fiscal year is how to spend the $1.5 million surplus in his budget. He's not allowed to give it back. He has to spend it all. He cannot "save" it. If he doesn't actually spend it, he could be fired.
Posts: 46,542
Threads: 2,629
Joined: May 2025
Reputation:
0
This has been my constant complaint for ages now. "Use it or lose it" is probably one of the biggest problems in government -- and corporate, and educational, and whatever -- spending. The assumption that if one didn't need all one's money this year, one will also not need it next year, is downright stupid. And we end up with nonsense like what your friend is experiencing. I once had to print 250,000 letterheads and envelopes "on the most expensive paper they have" just to burn through a state agency's budget. It's sickening. Why don't they put an end to this stupid, stupid idea?
Posts: 8,407
Threads: 230
Joined: Apr 2025
It is ironic. We go through it all the time. Like an overage one fiscal year implies you don't need the same funding the next year. So we're forced to spend it.
Posts: 7,265
Threads: 745
Joined: Dec 2014
Reputation:
0
I live about a mile and a half from the Comfort's berth in Baltimore and I have to say that it makes more sense in Norfolk. It's too big and cumbersome to perform its original mission, which was to be a floating hospital for wounded troops and sailors, so it runs humanitarian missions. In Baltimore it's at least a half-day from the ocean--a full day is more likely. It's berthed in Baltimore so that docs from Bethesda Naval Hospital can jump aboard and go, but Bethesda's mission has changed--it's now the central hospital for wounded soldiers and sailors from the East Coast. Norfolk has Portsmouth Naval Hospital and it can pull docs and nurses from there. It's a better idea for these times.
I will miss the Comfort--when the ship heads out we gather on the pier to wave and encourage. But these days it makes better sense in Norfolk.
Posts: 57,781
Threads: 5,856
Joined: May 2025
Reputation:
2
And yet they're retiring Cobra Judy.. USS Observation Island... the ship with the largest damn radars on sea.
At least they're keeping Cobra Ball up and running.. worked on that project. And no, I can't talk about it... 'cause I'm too beat up and out of shape to kill ya.
Posts: 50,838
Threads: 670
Joined: Mar 2024
USNS Comfort
USS Comfort was scrapped.
Posts: 31,030
Threads: 2,688
Joined: May 2025
Mac-A-Matic wrote:
Heard a report on NPR today telling of the Navy plan to relocated the USS Comfort from its current home port of Baltimore to Norfolk, VA by next March. Evidently the government will save $1.7 million per year.
Couldn't help but notice the irony of the government talking about saving money while my friends' (who runs a division of a large govt agency) biggest worry for this fiscal year is how to spend the $1.5 million surplus in his budget. He's not allowed to give it back. He has to spend it all. He cannot "save" it. If he doesn't actually spend it, he could be fired.
if it's ARRA funds (stimulus), then he IS supposed to spend it to create jobs. if it is not ARRA, then I can't offer an explanation, but gov't agencies usually take the funds back and put it into the big pot, so this must be some kind of strange agency.
