GOP blasts Obama defense cuts

The Hill ^ | 2 March 14 | Kristina Wong

[SkyPilot]

GOP lawmakers say the Obama administration is ignoring history in planning a defense budget that bets there won't be another protracted ground war in the near future.

The White House is expected to unveil the 2015 defense budget on Tuesday that would cut the active duty Army by more than 20 percent over the next five years.

“After Iraq and Afghanistan, we are no longer sizing the military to conduct long and large stability operations,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last Monday as he previewed the president’s 2015 defense budget.

Republicans say this move is foolish, given the effects of previous post-war drawdowns.

"You look at what happened at the end of World War II. We took the largest, strongest Army, Navy and Air Force that had ever been on the earth, and we destroyed it, totally eliminated it for the next year,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) on Thursday.

“So when Korea started, they pushed us almost right into the ocean. They were basically fodder trying to hold things back,” he said.

Republicans also criticized the Obama administration’s continued departure from a “two-war strategy,” where the Pentagon would be able to fight two major wars at once.

The upcoming defense budget request would allow for the U.S. military to fight only one major war in one theater, while defending the homeland and deterring aggression in another theater — a strategy the Obama administration first unveiled in 2010.

“It's easy to say, well, I just don't see us having another conflict again. Well, I heard that in 1980. I heard that in 1990. And I heard that in 2000. And yet we are constantly engaged,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno earlier this month.

[VRWC For Truth]

The oompah-loompah is not for any other cuts. He’s the problem.

[SkyPilot]

Bless you Texan5. I am sure many of us will be working until we drop, that is, if we can find work in the Obama Economy. Hang in there.

[Texan5]

Bless you, too-the bright side is that working your whole life keeps you healthy and you live longer-mid-90’s and older is common in my family-no one retires, either from their small business or from ranch work.

I believe having enough work will happen again-but we need to do a massive trashout in DC to make it so-as long as our reps don’t get voted out when they let us down, the status quo will be the same.