An unholy alliance has been formed in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n
Libertarian Republicans and liberal Democrats are moving to both destroy the military and cut off at the knees the families who have given the most this past decade. The first person to sound the alram in the mass media was former President George W. Bush’s Ambassador to the UN John Bolton in July of 2011:<\/a><\/p>\n Every indication is that the debt-ceiling negotiations are leaving the defense budget in grave jeopardy. By exposing critical defense programs to disproportionate cuts as part of the \u201ctrigger mechanism,\u201d there is a clear risk that key defense programs will be hollowed out.<\/p>\n While the trigger mechanism comes into play only if the Congressional negotiators fail to reach agreement on the second phase of spending cuts, it verges on catastrophe to take such a national security risk.<\/p>\n Defense has already taken hugely disproportionate cuts under President Obama, and there is simply no basis for expanding those cuts further. Republican negotiators must hold the line, since the Obama Administration plainly will not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He spoke out again<\/a> making it clear that if (when) the so called Super-Committee failed the DoD and its membership would be left devastated.<\/p>\n In the deal’s second stage, the yet-to-be-named Congressional Joint Commission will have wide discretion on what to agree on, but if no agreement or only partial agreement is reached, the deal’s sequestration mechanism will be triggered. Broadly speaking, if that happens, defense spending will bear fifty percent of the total cuts, with non-defense spending bearing the remaining fifty percent, up to the amount necessary to raise the debt ceiling by the minimum $2.4 trillion required by the deal. This approach risks grave damage to our national security. It’s at this point in which I know I don’t actually need to remind this readership of this blog where the true burden of our tax dollars rest<\/a>. I’d hope we all know where the rest of this is heading…<\/p>\n I’ll sound the alarm now for the 6.1 million of you<\/a> whose jobs are tied into defense. Your time is coming in what is referred to by insiders as the coming train wreck<\/a>. Entire US companies are looking to get out of the business of defending the United States and taking their people elsewhere. I could point out that for what we spend on Medicare\/Medicaid in this country in less than four days we could buy a brand new Gerald R. Ford class<\/a> aircraft carrier. I could point out that once we incorporate the entirety of our tax dollars we spend more than both healthcare and education. I could also say that even with our defense spending covering millions of Americans educations, healthcare and paychecks it’s still approximate to total non-military education spending.<\/p>\n
\nThere is no strategic rationale whatsoever for cuts of this magnitude. There is, in fact, every strategic rationale to the contrary. While the appropriations process may still be able to decide which specific programs will be cut, this is no consolation. Cuts of this size are effectively indiscriminate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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