Barry "Almighty" has now thrown his support behind the proposal by the latest Senate gang, this time it's the "Gang of Six" senators, saying it was broadly consistent with his approach on reducing debt and deficits. And you gotta know that if Barry likes it can't be good for either the country of for the American people in general. He has urged Senate Majority Leader "Dingy" Harry Reid, a fellow Democrat, and Senate Republican leader Mitch "Spineless" McConnell to get started "talking turkey" about it. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, another scumbag Democrat and one of the six Democratic and Republican senators who have been working since December on a deficit-reduction plan, said the proposed $3.75 trillion in savings over 10 years contains $1.2 trillion in new revenues. I'm just wondering if the "savings" this moron is talking about are actual "cuts." Somehow I just don't think so. And don't you just love how these political scumbags think we're so stupid? Like we're not going to know that when they refer to new revenues what they're really talking about is new tax hikes.
The group briefed about half of the 100-member Senate and "the response was very favorable," Conrad told reporters. Hopefully he's talking about just the Democrat half. Because if the Republican half were favorable to this they're doing themselves, or the country, no favors. He said the group asked that fellow senators take 24 hours to look over the proposal and "report back to us." According to an executive summary of the plan, it would immediately impose $500 billion in deficit cuts, cut security and non-security spending over 10 years with spending caps, make the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs operate more efficiently and abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax. In short, it comes nowhere near to addressing the problem on the level that it presently needs to be addressed. Asked whether the plan could become part of urgent negotiations that link deficit reduction to raising the U.S. government's borrowing authority by August 2, Conrad said: "Could the two get married? Could they get combined at some point? I'm sure that's possible." It had better not be possible, on any level!
Conrad was quick to say that while there are $1.2 trillion in new revenues, the overall plan envisions a $1.5 trillion tax cut that would be achieved through broad tax reforms. Empty rhetoric designed to nothing more than to pacify. Most Republicans, especially Tea Party members in the House of Representatives, have already vowed to block any revenue increases, and if they're smart they'll stick to that. The Senate group's hope has been that if the three conservative Republican members embrace revenue increases, the idea could catch fire among other Republicans in the Senate and House, especially if popular but expensive entitlement programs such as Medicare also shoulder some cuts. If any Republican members chooses to "embrace" this thing, then we'll know one thing for certain, he or she is not a conservative. In what is portrayed as being another politically risky move, the Gang of Six plan would achieve significant savings in healthcare programs, Conrad said. The specific spending cuts would be decided later by congressional committees.
Conrad said a separate measure would reform the Social Security retirement program to stabilize its finances for the next 75 years. The effort got a boost as conservative Republican Senator Tom Coburn rejoined the group after taking a "sabbatical" in mid-May amid heavy disagreement over Medicare spending cuts. It was not yet clear how Coburn's concerns have since been addressed. And if Coburn signs on to this things he's no conservative either. On Monday, Coburn unveiled his own plan to cut $9 trillion in deficits over a decade, including nearly $1 trillion in revenue increases. Revenue proposals are not likely to include income tax rate increases. Instead, they could center on repealing or rolling back special tax favors such as those for ethanol blenders and companies that operate corporate jets, as well as preferential tax treatment for fund managers. On the face of it, Coburn's own plan sound more palatable than what the "Gang of Six" has concocted.
Also those on the political left have been pressing both the White House and Congress pretty hard to inflict a wave of very substantial budget cuts for the Pentagon on a scale not seen since the post-Cold War 1990s. Liberals are now enthusiastically using the excuse of the debt crisis and present troop drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan to argue that now is the perfect time for the Defense Department to shed people, missions and weapons after a decade of doubling arms spending after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The proposals, including one from the ultra-Liberal Center for America Progress, go well beyond Barry "Almighty's" call in April for $400 billion in defense cuts over 12 years. The center, run by leftist loon John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to "BJ" Clinton, wants that much in reductions over the next three years and $1 trillion more from what had been projected increases over the next decade.
Some House Democrats, led by that kook and well-known "Gay Caballero," Rep. Bawney Fwank of Massachusetts, also have called for $1 trillion in cuts. “I think this is the time because of a combination of the deficit and the changing way in which we’re going to deal with threats from groups like al Qaeda,” said American Progress’ Lawrence Korb, a longtime defense analyst in Washington. Mr. Korb said the Obama administration has dumped President George W. Bush’s overall war strategy of preemptive attacks against terrorist states, and he cited just-retired Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’ warning against any future land wars in the Middle East. The bottom line is that the center wants projected increases ended and the overall arms budget reduced to $500 billion by 2016, which would be $111 billion below the Pentagon’s already pared-down projection. “Gates said we don’t have to go back to Cold War levels,” Mr. Korb said. “Well, we’re above Cold War levels. And that’s part of the problem."
Gordon Adams, a defense budget official in the "Slick Willie" White House, told the House Budget Committee this month that Barry’s $400 billion number “is a very small step.” He endorsed, and is very much in favor of, the more than doubling of that figure. The Pentagon has not heard such outlandish "peace dividend" rhetoric since the Berlin Wall fell and Presidents "BJ" Clinton and George H.W. Bush squeezed as much as 35 percent out of intelligence and defense spending. And it readily apparent where that landed us. Anybody still remember 9/11. Not many I'm afraid! But it was after al Qaeda’s attack on the United States, that defense proponents said that such a deep downturn had been a serious mistake, leaving intelligence agencies and some aspects of the military not ready to fight a global war against terrorists. Now, they say, America is about to repeat the mistake, as China and Iran flex their muscles and radical Islam remains a global threat. So is this really the time to be quite literally slashing out defense capabilities? Apparently Bawney thinks so.
Daniel Goure, an analyst at the pro-business Lexington Institute, said the left has it entirely all wrong. The Pentagon needs more money, unless it abandons or curtails its presence in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, he said. “You’d better change our military approach to the world,” said Mr. Goure. “If you do what we did the last time, which is to essentially salami slice, take bits and pieces from everything and everybody, then you are essentially going to back where you were after Vietnam and at the end of the Cold War drawdown. Too many missions. Too many deployments. Not enough stuff. Not enough people.” But you see. All of this is of very little concern to Liberal Democrats. Democrat like Bawney and Barry could not care less if America is left very much exposed to our growing number of potential, and very real, adversaries. They view us as being deserving of whatever harm may befall us. They are a most demented group of people and what they are proposing is essentially nothing short of suicide.
That stalwart group and ardent defender of our democracy, The Center for American Progress, also proposes a list of weapons terminations and troop cutbacks. The number of V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft would be stopped at about 150. The next-generation workhorse jet fighter, the F-35 — which is mired in big cost overruns, would be bought only for the Air Force, not the Navy or Marine Corps. The Navy’s 11 carriers, a key way America projects immediate air power overseas, would be trimmed to nine, and with it other surface ships. A full third of 150,000 troops in Europe and Asia would be ordered home. “You may not be able to keep as many carriers forward-deployed,” said Mr. Korb. “You would have to surge them, but I don’t see any missions you could not do.” This is nothing short of pure, unadulterated insanity. And what really scary, at least for me, is the fact that the only thing that stand between this plan becoming a reality and it being stopped dead in it's tracks, is the Republican Party. And frankly, I'm not sure it's members in Congress are up to the task!
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, released a detailed budget plan that calls for modest defense drawdowns over five years. He argued that the Defense Department’s total budget share already has decreased from 25 percent to 20 percent. A smattering of faux conservatives are advocating more shrinkage. Some Republicans on Barry's deficit commission supported cuts above $400 million. With all troops due to be pulled out of Iraq this year and Afghanistan by 2014, the Pentagon could save $100 billion annually on those two accounts alone. Mr. Gates instituted more than $100 billion in savings, although some of that money was redirected into other arms programs. I'm a not a strong proponent of anything but the most minimal cuts in defense. And I am counting on the Republicans in Congress to prevent some of these more blatantly irresponsible cuts from taking place.
The next phase is likely to be revealed in Mr. Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget in February or in some grand deficit-reduction agreement between him and Congress. Adm. Mike "Yes Man" Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this year: “We can’t hold ourselves exempt from the belt-tightening. Neither can we allow ourselves to contribute to the very debt that puts our long-term security at risk.” Defense Secretary and "BJ" Clinton retread, Leon E. Panetta, who proved a hawkish director of the CIA, vowed to Congress that he would not let the military go hollow as it did in the late 1970s. Sure there Leon, as my dad used to say, "Talk is cheap, it takes money to buy whiskey." On July 8, he urged the White House and Congress to base cuts on a strategy. He expressed his concern about negotiators who would “just pick a number and throw it at the Defense Department without really looking at policy, without looking at what makes sense." I just don't see him as standing up to either Barry or the Democrats in Congress when it come to making what are sure to be some very excessive cuts in our national defense.
So anyway, I think the ball is going to be very firmly in the Republican's court, and the question remains, will they be up to the challenge. Past history would tell us probably not, which does not bode well for our being able to survive as that beacon of freedom for very much longer. Barry has decided that he is the one to preside over the American stature and reduce the prominent role that it had to play in world events. And that is something that does not bode well for the entire planet. The stability that had as its foundation the United States of America will be no more. The resulting chaos will cause the world to descend into what Ronald Reagan described as being "1000 years of darkness." I pity what may lie ahead for our children and our children's children. And we will have brought this all on ourselves through the election of one man and the weakness of the Republican Party to stand up to him. They remain our last line of defense against what is the obvious insanity of this man and his party. Our president and the political party of which he is a member hate our country and are determined to destroy it. GOD HELP US.
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