President Obama’s call for a leaner U.S. military with a more focused mission is receiving plaudits from local congressman Jim Moran (D).
Moran’s Northern Virginia district, which includes the Pentagon and the headquarters of numerous defense contractors, has much to lose from cuts in defense spending. But Moran said in a statement that the proposed cuts (which will actually just trim hundreds of billions of expected increases in the Pentagon budget over the next decade) will keep the military strong and agile.
The President’s new defense strategy both preserves the world’s strongest military while recognizing that our country faces difficult budgetary challenges in a security environment much different from the Cold War era our current defense posture was designed to combat.
As the President and Congress move to implement savings mandated by the Budget Control Act, I was pleased to see that the President’s military strategy will continue to make critical investments in cyberspace, Special Operations forces, counter-measures for weapons of mass destruction, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies. These investments will make the U.S. military more agile and flexible while maintaining its superior edge.
I am confident that when the President’s budget is released next month, it will ensure that our men and women in uniform, and their families, have the equipment and support they need to protect our national security interests around the world – including when they return home from battle.
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There’s no way Moran wrote that statement. It says nothing bad about Bush.
No true Scotsman wrote it either.
Sounds like any one in the GOP who can’t breath a word without saying the President is the anti-Christ
Tow the company line Jimbo. Tow the line.
What a courageous statement by Moran to support necessary cuts to federal spending even though they could hurt his own district.
LOL
You must have him confused with the GOP…..talk about towing the company line! God help you if you don’t do & say EXACTLY what the GOP tells you. Just look at the jokers trying to get the GOP nomination? All of them, except Ron Paul, say EXACTLY the same thing.
It’s “toe.”
Let’s hope so Jimbo. What the cuts may do, to this area, is take some of the economic buffer away.
Gosh, thanks Jim for that insightful, unique perspective. Why not just release a statement saying, “What Obama said.”
“But Moran said in a statement that the proposed cuts (which will actually just trim hundreds of billions of expected increases in the Pentagon budget over the next decade) will keep the military strong and agile.”
This may be the first article on the internet that actually makes the point that these tragic, kitten-killing, catastrophic budget cuts are merely reductions in anticipated increases. (ok, maybe not in constant dollars, but still)
Missing from the larger “discussion”:
What missions do the American people want their military to perform?
For each mission, what force number, with what skills, equipment, supplies, facilities and support are required — and what is the cost for maintaining the capability to perform the mission?
Add the above for each of the missions to obtain a total budget. Then we will have the basis for an informed, productive discussion about the military budget.
But then whose names will be on all the buildings in Rosslyn??!!!
Here you go.
Er, here you go:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/raw-doc-the-pentagons-unveils-new-strategy/2012/01/05/gIQACPwqcP_blog.html
Defense spending is set to increase every year for the next decade. Just a little more slowly than previously planned. Please stop calling spending increases cuts. It just ain’t so.
Jim Moran is suddenly a military expert. That’s impressive. How could he possibly know on the day they are announced that the cuts to Army and Marine troop units “will make the U.S. military more agile and flexible while maintaining its superior edge”?
There have been no hearings for Congress to evaluate the proposal. Moran does not sit on the House Armed Services Committee, which conducts hearings on DoD issues and budget. That’s despite representing a district among the greatest number of Defense-related employees, in private industry, active duty military, and civil service .
This is the Congressman who has repeatedly made the incredible assertion that high-level military staffs in unsecured 1960s-70s office buildings in Crystal City are not at risk. Throughout the Mark Center fiasco, he’s made no effort to take into consideration the concerns of DoD employees in his district.
I’m not a Moran fan, but the fact is he sits and has sat for years on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee which writes the annual bill which funds the entire DoD. You may not like him but to say he knows nothing about defense is wrong and undermines the credibility of your comment. But hey. I dont vote for him either.
We spend a trillion dollars a year on the pork-barrel extravaganza we laughingly call “defense”.
Our military budget is as big as the combined military spending of the entire rest of the world.
We’re pretending that all of this contractor-enriching, campaign-donation-driven spending is “keeping us safe” from some hypothetical future bogeymen, when in fact it is ruining our economy and bankrupting our country right now.
So yeah, good on Moran for supporting a piddly 5% cut. Wake me up when we start talking about a 90% cut in this worthless sacred cow spending, and we instead start investing the money into our worst-in-the-First-World K-12 education, our worst-in-the-First-World access to health care, and our worst-in-the-First-World infrastructure.