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$500 billion.
Not millions… but b-b-billions. With a capital b.
That’s $500 billion of cuts to the Defense Department over the next 10 years. Not budget cuts, but real and tangible defense spending.
Obama has in just three short years in the White House has done more damage to American prestige and power than Jimmy Carter could have dreamed of accomplishing. Obama has bent over and kowtowed to every anti-American regime in the world, instigated an “Arab Spring” that put Islamists in power over the moderate voices in Islam, emboldened parallel voices in China and Europe to allow them to challenge the Pax Americana…
This list could go on.
Of course, there are liberals cheering across America as our nations men and women in uniform were just told to go to hell. Here’s Senator Mark Warner’s thoughts on the matter:
Addressing our $15 trillion national debt will require a balanced approach that includes entitlement reform, tax reforms that generate additional revenues, and spending cuts across all of our federal spending. No area of government spending should be exempt, but before we authorize another round of base closings and realignments we should first determine if there is excess capacity not just here but also at our overseas installations, especially in Europe.
Translation to America’s troops — jump into a fire and die.
Rep. Randy Forbes (VA-04) didn’t take kindly to the emasculation of American military prestige and power:
The President’s defense strategy embraces weakness by a thousand cuts. PLA Admirals will welcome the news that the President has no plans to catch up to China’s sixty attack submarines nor to invest in a missile defense system that can rival China’s mounting arsenal of missiles. North Koreans will feel more secure as America prepares to dismiss almost 1 in 6 soldiers. Tehran will be pleased that one-third less American cruisers are slated to patrol the world’s sea lanes. Foreign shipyards will embrace a shift toward outsourcing defense manufacturing jobs.
This Administration is not building a military that is lean, agile, and flexible. It is dismantling our nation’s greatest strategic asset and accepting grave risk in the process. Virginians will undoubtedly suffer as a result of this Administration’s budget proposal – so too will our allies – but it is our men and women in uniform who will suffer the most. They are the ones who will face America’s unforeseen enemies under-prepared, under-resourced, overworked and late to the battle. America is a superpower on a dangerous and rapid course towards mediocrity.
Rep. Scott Rigell (VA-02) fires back:
As a strong advocate and voice for Hampton Roads and as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, a BRAC Commission potentially focused on domestic bases is completely unacceptable. With respect to the Secretary’s comments on TRICARE, I firmly oppose to any increase in fees and will fight back against that.
Oh you didn’t know this foolishness involved cuts to military health care? By the way… is anyone wondering aloud why Obama is screwing with private health care when he can’t even fix the military health care system?!
Rep. Rob Wittman (VA-01) nails it:
Our nation’s debt and deficit pose serious challenges, and there’s no doubt that our federal government must be more efficient with taxpayer dollars. That said, providing “for the common defense” as stated in our Constitution must be a top priority. Congress and the House Armed Services Committee have a lot of work ahead of us to assess the risks built into this budget to ensure that the priority is on our strategic needs rather than simply allowing the budget to drive our military strategy. (emphasis added)
…and that right there is what burns Democrats and the progressive left so much. The United States military is in our Constitution.
[2]Massive entitlement systems aren’t. Neither is the massive web of socialist policies that our American military protects so that they can drive electric cars and soak of future generations of Americans with pension plans and other enormities backed by the other half of America working for the luxury of camping in a tent and “occupying” something.
Worse still… the progressive left simply hates America. George Soros would love nothing more than to see the United States demote itself to a first among equals (or something worse). They hate the Pax Americana, because that power prevents the 1% that the left rails against — yet still funds their every protest… ever wonder why that is? — from taking advantage of every Third World nation out there.
The American military is the wall of iron that protects the Jeffersonian “empire of liberty” from the likes of communist China, imperial Russia, or the socialist European left. Under the Pax Americana and in the wake of the fall of Soviet Communism, more of the world lives under democracies than at any time in the history of the world. American power extends across the globe. Free trade has never been better. The world economy, hobbled only by the very socialism we sought to defeat in the 1980s, has enabled more human beings to live free and be prosperous. Americans have never before enjoyed a standard of living higher than what we have experienced in the first decade of the 21st century. Large scale war has devolved into small scale terrorism. Democracy — not totalitarianism — is the order of the world.
Who makes this possible? The American military.
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Why would Obama want to dismantle this? Power, plain and simple. Democracies diffuse such power; Soros and his ilk would rather it collected and controlled.
They’ve used all sorts of tactics thus far: the environment, a bad economy, terrorism, population scares, bad news, anything to play on the fears and concerns of an American people too good-natured not to care.
Obama and his masters are hoping — praying to whatever gods they recognize — that the American people will not stand by the American soldier.
Time to prove them wrong.