Posted on 09/22/2011 10:28:31 AM PDT by opentalk
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vowed Thursday that he will not preside over deep Pentagon budget cuts that "hollow out" the military's combat power.
If the special congressional deficit panel fails to agree on $1.2 trillion in federal spending cuts by Thanksgiving, the Pentagon and other security agencies would face around $600 billion in automatic cuts.
Officials say the Defense Department would take about half that cut, on top of the bulk of another $350 billion funding reduction over a decade mandated in the August debt deal.
If the $600 billion trigger is enacted by a supercommittee failure, it "guarantees that we will hollow out the force," Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. "I don't want to hollow out the force," Panetta said. "I am not going to do that."
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Great.....when the world is getting ready to explode, hollow out our military. Brilliant.
Someone needs to slap the crap out of bonehead boner for even agreeing to this POS scheme. You compromise with democrats, you endanger the Constitution and the country.
It was hard to understand why the GOP agreed to this debt deal and super committee.
wasn’t this Obama’s et al, plan from the beginning. They knew the super committee whould never work just as FR did!
This is nothing but scare tactics to pressure Republicans into accept tax increases as part of a debt deal when they are included by the so called "super committee". These triggers are toothless anyway, they don't go into effect until 2013 and all the money can be added right back with a simple majority vote.
are we out of iraq and afghanistan yet?
do the Palis’ and everyone else love us yet?
are we fundamentally transformed yet?
have we had enough yet?
They will demand massive tax increases, no one will agree to. It seemed fixed from the beginning. They would not get military cuts through normal channels without the gimmicks.
I agree with getting away with waste but to cut our military is one of the worst things they can do. After our people have put their lives on the line for our government and they are going to lay them off? It’s a slap in the face for these people.
Unless and until the Fed transitions (at our demand) to zero-based budgeting, all the numbers being bantered about are just so much smoke and mirrors garbage. The notion of budgeting forward based on some pie-in-the-sky projection of revenues based on flawed premises is just so much crap.
They doll it up with fancy words and then convince the masses that it’s too complicated for the average person to comprehend, so we should just leave it to the experts.
I call BS on this!
Zero based budgeting is the only way out of this maze of sophistry and fiscal skullduggery.
Obama has already thrown the wrench into the cogs of the machine essentially neutering the Committee by stating he will veto any results that don’t include tax increases. The Committee might just as well disband.
I just don’t get Boehner, why he went along. He also helped stop the momentum to get out of Libya.
One thing I have noticed is that many are confused on this because of POOR reporting and the convoluted way the bill schedules things.
The super committee has to come up with recommendations this year, and congress must pass them this year, or the trigger cuts are executed. Except the trigger cuts don't go into effect until 2013 with a new Congress and possibly new POTUS.. And they can pass any spending bill they want over-riding the trigger cuts assuming a bill makes it past the POTUS desk. This is another phony jinned up crisis.
The cuts are delayed to protect those running for re-election, and rationalized because of the dying economy.
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