Posted 09/12/2011 06:40 PM ET
Spending: One lone senator stands up against the budget "supercommittee" doing what no enemy has ever accomplished — rendering the arsenal of democracy impotent and defenseless. Why is defense being singled out?
On the Thursday before the nation mourned its dead from the largest terrorist attack on the United States, the specially selected "supercommittee" of six senators and six congressmen met for the first time to do the job for which 535 of them had been elected but had failed to do — make the budget cuts that were part of the debt ceiling deal.
Failure by this 12-member Joint Committee of Congress to come up with $1.5 trillion in cuts would trigger an automatic across-the-board sequestration process that would make half the cuts at the expense of the defense of this nation. Either way, defense gets hit hard, since these cuts come on top of $350 billion in defense cuts already announced.
Firing a shot across the committee's bow was Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who announced to a conservative group Thursday, "I'm off the committee if we're going to talk about further defense cuts."
Whether agreed on by the committee or triggered by a failure to reach a deal, further cuts coming at a time of increasing threats from rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, the rearming of traditional foes like Russia and an increasingly belligerent China make no sense. Throw in Afghanistan and the war on terror, and they get outright dangerous.
Kyl knows the Democrats will not agree to cut the obscene growth rate of entitlement programs such as Medicare or Social Security, an area where the real problem resides. They will not agree to a GOP proposal to return across-the-board nonsecurity spending to 2008 levels, but are quite willing to gut defense by returning spending there to 2007 levels.
This nonsense is opposed by defense secretaries past and present.>>>
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment