Posted on 02/24/2014 3:27:21 PM PST by rightwingerpatriot
Liberals love spending money, especially when that spending is done by big government using taxpayer dollars. However, there is one area where liberals, who throw out gobs of cash for every breath they seem to take, always find themselves cost-conscious and frugal: the military. Yep, government can spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave, but once the military comes into the equation, liberals act like coupon-cutting housewives.
It was announced earlier today that Chuck Hagel has plans to shrink the size of the Army down to pre-World War II levels. It's not just the Army getting whacked as the Navy and Air Force take hits too. The usual platitudes of having a leaner army that will use technology to maintain its edge was given out, but any sane person knows that boots on the ground or the projection of power through carrier fleets are what win wars. The current plan allows the Navy to keep its 11 carriers, but that may change in the future. The awesome A-10 plane will be entirely eliminated despite its exemplary tour of duty over time. The Army is very hard hit with troop strength getting cut back to 440,000 to 450,000 troops after a high of 570,000 after 9/11.
Obama must be grinning ear to ear as his Secretary of Defense guts our military. The common soldier looks to bear the brunt of it. While generals and flag officers get a pay freeze and other soldiers get a one percent increase, there are plenty of other rising costs that will impact those who sacrifice to serve our country. Housing allowances are going to be reduced and prices for goods in military commissaries are going to rise. Medical costs will go much higher as health insurance deductibles and co-pays are increased for both active and retired military. One would think of how this budget is laid out that the normal soldier is just rolling in wealth. The truth is that they do not and their families live under a tremendous burden, all of which is foreign to liberals like Obama. In fact, food stamp use has doubled in the military since Obama took office.
I do think that wasteful military spending should be shut down, but liberals always act like military spending is stealing food out of the mouths of babies. The truth is that we need a powerful military as we're the only nation that acts as a force for good on a global scale. Russia and China are ramping up their aggression, and we'll be hard pressed to deal with them, much less Islamic terrorism that has swept the world. More money is spent on social security and medicare/medicaid than on the military. $625 billion was spent on the military in 2013, while social security got $808 billion and medicare/medicaid received $851 billion. Also remember that spending on those entitlement programs don't include unfunded liabilities, with Medicare's total reaching $43 trillion with a capital T.
I have long stopped trying to figure out what goes through a liberal's head. My dad once told me that a liberal is incapable of abstract thought or reason, and every year he is proven right. Obama and Hagel must believe in a world where if we're just nice to everybody and scrap our military for friendship drums and harmony flowers, then the entire world will love us and all violence will just magically disappear. These are the people (I can't call them "men" as they're anything but) who hold the fate of our military in their hands. God help us.
Is anyone surprised?
Military?
Better to spend military money on takers
more of the bastards and they ALL vote dem.
Not me, I’m just surprised it took them so long.
Maybe their “Re-org” wasn’t working out the way it was supposed to? Not enough LBGT????? Whatever else they come up with were willing to put themselves under military discipline and the UCMJ?
Hi. My name is anyone.
Nope.
More money to spend on their “Just as well funded national security force”......
You know shift some of the millitary budget over until they are equal comrade...
This president is GIVING the USA to our enemies...he is a traitor to the Constitution and should be impeached immediately.
I think he means pre-World War III levels.
Now is NOT the time to be gutting military spending. Alter the composition, ok but that would also require a change in mission.
I could see greater reliance on a reserve military. I can see a need for 8 to 10 Active combat brigades and twice that number for Reserve brigades. This would be to ease the rotation and refit necessary to sustain the fighting force. I would also like to see at least one combat or support brigade per 3 to 10 million population centers in the US as part of the National Guard. That would then mean a total of about 30 combat and or support brigade sized NG units throughout the US.
This would be a substantial increase over current force structure and would require changes to the way the US conducts a number of activities. One example would be how the nations pays for Pell grants and student loans. I would like to see that some type of service be connected to such grants / loans.
The military always staffs / trains to the last war.
We will end up about as unprepared for any worldwide conflagration as the FDR regime was in December 7, 1941.
We had war thrust upon us, and we were woefully unready, with the “peacetime” armed services underfunded, and unequipped for much more than horse-mounted cavalry charges with drawn sabers.
The only thing we had going for us that made half-way sense was the ramping up of the industrial base to supply England, beleaguered and going through its darkest days, as the Battle for Britain was raging, and after they had fled Europe at Dunkirk. The US was shipping war material and foodstuffs to England as fast as we could organize the convoys in 1939, 1940, and 1941.
But FDR was also demanding payment in silver from the Bank of England, and shipping it back on the return convoy. England really felt that austerity during and after the war, and when it was over, England was very nearly as bad off as Germany.
We need to maintain our strategic defenses, naval and air to keep foreign dangers at arm's length. And we need to pay the military people what they earned and we promised. But a permanent large army and its missions are totally against our founding principles that conservatives should want to maintain. I hope one day to see our army back to the small size our Founders envisioned.
"The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people." -James Madison
Nope!!!
If the Congress agrees it’s on them.
They stuff defense spending all the time
Obama Regime wants to roll back our military troops levels to what they were prior to the outbreak of WWll, even though our military has been targeted for all manner of cuts for the past 5 years and our national Security has been repeated compromised.
I have a much better idea and one that will show support for the 10th Amendment to our Constitution.
Let us scale back the size and scope of the Federal Government to the same levels that Obama wants for our military.
I think our entire nation would be much better off.
Aside from the fact it won’t happen because Congress won’t allow it (for now), we are seeing the classic guns versus butter battle that great powers face when they are in decline. The welfare state (butter) demands more and more resources and the politicians will eventually cave by reducing defense spending because butter has more constituents.
So what are you going to do about it. It’s all about more free stuff and those politicians handing out more free stuff to those who do no work are going to win - at least until someone stands up to them and sends them packing.
This president is GIVING the USA to our enemies...he is a traitor to the Constitution and should be impeached immediately.
The penalty for treason includes hanging....which in this
case would still be an inadequate penalty for all the crimes
and abuses he and his administration have perpetrated.
All while DHS grows in size. Priorities of a police state.
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