Editorials Obama Pushed Sequestration And Defense Spending Cuts 10/23/2012
Defense Spending: Despite debate assertions, our commander in chief has in fact presided over a shrinking Navy and an Air Force with planes older than their pilots. And what's worse, he planned it that way.
When Mitt Romney accurately said that under President Obama the U.S. Navy had fewer ships than in 1917, our commander-in-chief petulantly and contemptuously responded, "Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed."
As a Marine tweeted Fox News after the debate, they still use bayonets and, yes, we'll have fewer of them under the combined impact of budget cuts already under way and the mandated sequestration under the Budget Control Act.
The president also seemed unaware that the U.S. special operations teams that launched the American invasion in Afghanistan were led by three commando teams who rode in on, er, horseback.
"If we wanted to move, horses were the only way," said Master Sgt. Chris Spence, the team's communication sergeant, who serves with 5th Special Forces Group.
Yes, Mr. President, we now "have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines."
And, as Romney correctly stated, we will have fewer of them.
We can have the most capable ships in the world, but they can't be everywhere at once with all of them constantly at sea. Some need to be in port, getting refueled and refitted, their crews resting.
The rest have multiple commitments, such as defending the Taiwan Strait, keeping open the Strait of Hormuz, contesting Beijing in the South China Sea or helping defend Europe against ballistic missile attack after Obama scuttled missile defense based in Poland.
In a new "America at Risk" video from the Heritage Foundation, David A. Deptula, a retired three-star general, tells of how he flew an F-15 for the first time in 1977 and, 30 years later, his son, Lt. David A. Deptula II, flew the same F-15 in Japan.
As Heritage notes, since Obama took office, more than 50 major weapons programs valued at more than $300 billion have been cut or delayed.
A 14-page analysis by the Republican majority staff of the House Armed Services Committee says the cumulative cuts will result in the Army and Marine Corps losing 200,000 troops.
The Navy would shrink to 238 vessels and lose two carrier battle groups needed to project American power and influence.
Strategic bombers will fall from 153 to 101. Air force fighters would drop by more than half, from 3,602 aircraft to 1,512.
Heritage also exposes the Obama lie that Romney will increase defense spending by $2 trillion for things the Pentagon does not want. Obama assumes all the cuts have already occurred and uses that as his baseline. What Romney proposes is to keep the Obama cuts from happening.
As Heritage states, "In fiscal year 2010, defense spending was $721.3 billion in budget authority. Under the president's proposal, defense spending will fall to $566.3 billion in fiscal year 2014. This is a 21% reduction in just four years."
It is also a call for a return to the Jimmy Carter era, where we had planes that couldn't fly and ships that couldn't sail for lack of crews and spare parts.
Obama's defense budgets and policies are the fulfillment of a campaign promise made to the far left group Caucus for Priorities a month before the January 2008 Iowa caucuses. Caucus for Priorities is an offshoot of a bigger group, the Priorities Action Fund, created by Ben Cohen, the peace activist and co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
In a video made for the group, Obama called for a further deterioration in our military strength.
"I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems," he pledged.
So far, he has kept his word.
Obama's defense cuts are real, deep and dangerous.
After saying in the debate that sequestration "will not happen," Team Obama member David Plouffe walked it back saying, "everyone in Washington agrees, the sequester should not happen."
When the president said the "sequester is not something that I proposed," he lied again.
His then-OMB Director Jack Lew, now the White House chief of staff, and White House Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors pitched the idea to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who accepted and pushed it, according to Bob Woodward in his book, "The Price of Politics."
The devastating cuts are exactly what Obama promised he would do, and his policies are damning testimony to his gutting of defense.
Clearly we need a new commander-in-chief. We've tried change. It's time to try competence.