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Defense? Or Obamacare?
The most significant threat to our national security is the debt-limit deal Congress approved last week. The all-cuts, no tax increases deal was a significant victory for fiscal conservatives. Now it has become clear what the price of that victory was -- deep, destructive cuts in national defense.The first cuts will reduce defense spending by about $350 billion over the next 10 years. If enacted, these cuts would come on top of the more than $400 billion already cut from defense during Obama's first two years in office -- bringing the total reduction in defense spending to more than $750 billion. This is not cutting defense, it is gutting defense. Shared sacrifice. It gets worse. If the "super committee" established under the bill does not reach agreement on a second tranche of spending cuts, the Pentagon will get hit with another $600 billion in automatic cuts. This means the Pentagon could see its budget contract by more than $1.3 trillion.  On paper, the automatic cuts are nearly equally divided between defense and domestic spending. The problem is Democrats succeeded in exempting many of their most cherished programs from the threatened sequester -- everything from refundable tax credits to education, federal highway programs and even airport grants. If Republicans won't accept tax increases when the special committee meets, Democrats can simply walk away and pocket deep defense cuts while protecting most entitlements and many of the discretionary programs they care about. Indeed, some have suggested that the Democrats' default position will be to let the special committee fail and allow the automatic defense cuts to kick in.But Republicans have a secret weapon: The Democrats failed to exempt Obamacare. Indeed, with cuts to Obamacare scheduled to automatically take place, the real challenge may be persuading some Republicans not to simply walk away and let the trigger kick in. A sizable number could decide that $600 billion in defense cuts is a price worth paying to defund Obamacare. Therein lies the deeper problem: The fact that Republicans agreed to put $1.36 trillion in defense cuts on the chopping block shows just how much the GOP consensus behind a strong national defense has eroded. Washington is once again prematurely claiming a "peace dividend" -- except this time without the peace. Posted by: Bobby 2011-08-09 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=327735 |