Earlier quoted context omitted.
That 200 Million is chump change only to people who think like chumps. In reality it is total waste, unproductive taxation that doubles as a counter balance to inflation, so doubly wasteful. Chump together all the 100s of millions in waste year over year; the change to your chumping is not good change, its inflation and general impoverishment. Every penny of that 200 is a note in the bank of inflation and degradation…
I believe this is implied in the parent's post. We fund the military industrial complex to such a ludicrous degree that $200m can just disappear on bullshit contracts to cronies that go nowhere, and politicians don't bat an eye. Nobody with power cares about the debt. They just keep borrowing money and handing it to the defense industry. This is one of only a handful of issues on which there is bipartisan agreement.
But I doubt the politicians "don't bat an eye" at 200M, for they know that money is going straight out of the economy and into private coffers.
The government budgeters are not naive to the economics of military spending. The cope about pennies on the tax dollar is naive about both economics and what the government is really doing.
This idea that government is incapable, dumb, and prone to mismanagement is a harmful rationalization, and simply not true. If anything, this thinking excuses the government to act that way, and then there is no way of knowing if they are purposefully mismanaging or doing so because incapable.