Posted on 03/05/2012 12:01:26 AM PST by Innovative
It turns out that "budget sequestration," portrayed as an evenhanded way to spur bipartisan negotiations over budget deficits, is actually a dagger aimed at defense spending.
So: the sequestration now scheduled for next January means about another $500 billion in military cuts over the decade. These are in addition to the $487 billion in defense reductions already in the BCA and billions of earlier cuts ordered by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who ended some major programs including the F-22 stealth fighter. Nor do these cuts count the automatic reductions occurring from withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Even without sequester, defense spending is estimated to fall to 13 percent of the budget in 2017.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has repeatedly denounced the sequester. In a letter last November to Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, he called the prospective cuts "devastating." After a decade, they would result in "the smallest ground force since 1940, the smallest number of ships since 1915, and the smallest Air Force in its history." Testifying Feb. 16 before Congress, he said sequestration "would ... inflict severe damage on our national defense."
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Obama is about to achieve one of his major goals: disarm and weaken the US to make it unable to stay a world power.
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