Blog Stage 3

The article that I read was "army-to-congress-thanks-but-no-tanks" The author Drew Griffin has been an experienced reporter for more than 20 years and in 2007 was the recipient of the prestigious Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting. The Drew’s main point is that congress is bullying the taxpayers into wasting our money while congresses pockets increase. The Author is speaking to conservatives saying that we need less government involvement. It urges congress to stop buying and repairing tanks that we don't need and get out of our tax dollars. He especially addresses the general population of taxpayers, by starting off the story saying that the “Army's chief of staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told Congress earlier this year to hold off with these repairs, so congress can save taxpayers as much as $3 billion. “Odierno explained to the committee that it would be cheaper to shut down the tank plant and then restart it in 2017.” But his plea was ignored and Congress set aside $181 million dollars to refurbish and make new tanks even though our Army's chief of staff Gen says that our tanks are fine.” The reason these tanks have been in production non-stop since World War 2 is that the tanks provide 16,000 jobs and involve 882 suppliers. But the Army says that they have enough tanks to keep our country safe. The real argument is that congress says if we stop the tank production it will hurt the country’s economy. If the economy is the problem why can’t we relocate the tank employees to another reform that would help our country instead of making tanks that we don’t need. It’s because General Dynamics is the main manufacturing of the tanks and has a lot to lose if we stop the production of tanks and they are making sure their investments are protected. General Dynamics contributed $120,000 to congress in campaign contributions since 2001 to vote for tank production. It’s pretty apparent that until congress starts thinking about someone besides themselves we are going to be in an expensive and sticky situation.