We may quibble on whether it was idiot-speak, mendacity, or simple ignorance. I'm agreeable that in Pete's case, it could be all three.

First we have the sheer inability to identify the problem. Pete says, "The $961.6 billion budget put forward by the President reverses four years of mismanagement and underinvestment." I'm not sure Pete has looked at Pentagon budget trends since WWII, but that budget has a long established pattern. Robert Higgs' "ratchet effect" is clearly shown in this chart:

As Charles Hugh Smith explains, ratchet-systems produce bloat that is easy to expand and hard to reduce. "Four years of mismanagement" tells us that the DoD has no idea what is happening, what to do, and will proceed accordingly. Smith writes that over time, only the "delusionally incompetent" remain inside these systems "...[leading] to the substitution of PR and artifice for actually reducing the organization to a sustainable level, for what's required is not just a revised spreadsheet but an entirely new culture and value system."

Point for Pete – he is good at substituting PR and artifice for the real change that is required.