Posted on 08/14/2011 6:39:15 AM PDT by blam
'Doomsday' Defense Cuts Loom Large For Select 12
By DONNA CASSATA - Associated Press
August 14, 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the dozen lawmakers given the task of producing a deficit-cutting plan, the threatened "doomsday" defense cuts hit close to home.
The six Republicans and six Democrats represent states where the biggest military contractors — Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Co. and Boeing Co. — build missiles, aircraft, jet fighters and tanks while employing tens of thousands of workers.
The potential for $500 billion more in defense cuts could force the Pentagon to cancel or scale back multibillion-dollar weapons programs. That could translate into significant layoffs in a fragile economy, generate millions less in tax revenues for local governments and upend lucrative company contracts with foreign nations.
The cuts could hammer Everett, Wash., where some of the 30,000 Boeing employees are working on giant airborne refueling tankers for the Air Force, or Amarillo, Texas, where 1,100 Bell Helicopter Textron workers assemble the fuselage, wings, engines and transmissions for the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
Billions in defense cuts would be a blow to the hundreds working on upgrades to the Abrams tank for General Dynamics in Lima, Ohio, or the employees of BAE Systems in Pennsylvania.
For committee members such as Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., the threat of Pentagon cuts is an incentive to come up with $1.5 trillion in savings over a decade. Failure would have brutal implications for hundreds of thousands workers back home and raise the potential of political peril for the committee's 12.
"I think we all have very good reasons to try to prevent" the automatic cuts,
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
LLS
We’ve increased defense spending by 44% since the democrats got congress in 2006.
What will be the political fallout for Democrats if defense gets slashed?
What will the political fallout be for Republicans if Medicare gets slashed?
The answer to those two questions will tell you who is holding the cards, and it appears to me the Democrats are sitting on pocket rockets!
According to AR Rep Tim Griffin at a Tea Party meeting last week both sides want the same thing, just have different “strategies” on how to get there.
After listening for 2 hrs what became clear was
these Boehner/McConnel Repubs
1) truly value “Compimise” and have mistaken cutting a deal with true principled leadership
2) both parties are only concerned with increasing tax “revenue” for increased spending - Dems by robbing the rich and giving to the poor (their constituency) Reps by “lowering tax rates” to stimulate growth thereby increasing “revenues” for their constituency (Defense, big business)
3)Neither party has a problem with confiscating wealth from working Americans to feed their spending “jones”,
4)both parties seek re-election, they see re-election by granting favors as an honorable goal
5)This is why they caved, the only way both sides could keep passing out the graft was to raise the debt ceiling and move cuts out ten years - Dems wouldn’t cut, Reps wouldn’t raise tax rates, had to feed their habit.
6) Neither party has any desire to cap spending, stop borrowing, pay off the national debt, lower taxes (there is a difference between lower tax rates -affects me individually, and lower total taxes - letting Americans keep their hard earned wealth).
We are helping fund his Muslim focused agenda.
What exactly do medicare cuts mean? What gets cut - payments to providers or the availability of care for people currently on medicare? Will there be means testing for medicare? Will doctors and hospitals refuse to see medicare patients because of low reimbursement rates? Or are these so-called cuts future projection reductions? I haven’t heard any details.
Dept. of Interior, NLRB come to mind.
"The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood condemned Bin Laden’s death this month. The Muslim Brotherhood wants to end the peace accord with Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood is also expected to win a majority of seats in the Egyptian Parliament later this year."
Pal? His Libya action is unfounded in American logic, however if you want to shore up gains for a caliphate it makes sense.
Again at America’s expense.
Absolutely criminal. This is a direct assault on Israel, western culture and America. All that is needed is time for it to mature.
I think there are limits to what most Union members will do. Unlike the Trash who rioted in London, the vast majority of Union members are not fringe members of society. They have families (children), cars, houses, etc. In short, they have a lot to lose if they get too out of line. Will they cause trouble? Yes, but it will be more like what you saw in Wisconin vs. London.
No DOUBT about it.
By the way... (just thought about something)... that sneeky DOWNGRADE PRESIDENT who made the artificial deadline Aug 2nd... remember what was starting to brew before the DEBT TALKS?
The President's Libya and his relationship with Congress regarding Libya.
How much is that costing us each day? Who controls the funding to that?
No if defense cuts happen under this scenario medicare gets slashed automatically. This is a two-edged sword.
Jeeze...didn’t think I’d have to explain this to YOU, Darth!
Slashing Defense has almost ZERO downside for the Dems—the vast majority of Defense workers & Military are Conservative and won’t vote for them anyway.
Republicans have much more downside if Medicare gets cut—that pi$$es everybody off.
VFW lists the cuts and Freezes to active duty Military
http://www.vfw.org/News-and-Events/Articles/STOP-CONGRESS-FROM-PASSING-AMERICA-S-DEBT-ONTO-VETERANS/
Those with 30-40 years in could retire, and let the lower ranks move up, there fore eliminating the need to cut 3,000 Chief Petty Officers. Don’t know about the other branches, but that is the plan for the Navy, so said the headlines of the Navy Times a few weeks ago.
Your link doesn’t work.
Interesting John McCain sprung into action to help stop it and continue funding.
This debt bill really stinks, they caved.
After Project Gunrunner and the many other blunders by this President it's hard to trust anything he does will turn out to benefit the USA.
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