Obama doesn’t know Bo, Jack, Diddley, or Bubkiss. Not only is he the driving force in the destruction of our economic system, he is doing everything he can to destroy our military capability and ensure our removal from the world stage as a superpower. The one and only thing the constitution provides the authority to tax for is national defense. Yet defense is being sacrificed for vote-buying give away programs funded involuntarily with our money. But we the sheeple have allowed our morals and ethics to be eroded, and our government to take so much of our freedom, that there may be no turning back. America, it’s time to take back our country.
Obama’s Pentagon Cuts
Updated 04/08/2009 ET
“I am appalled at the decisions just made by the secretary, as are other very senior Air Force general officers,” retired Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney (U.S. Air Force), told HUMAN EVENTS following U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ press conference yesterday.
Gates proposed delays and terminations of current and next-generation platforms and weapons systems programs, which included, among other particulars:
- cutting aircraft carriers from 11 to 10 and decreasing production of other surface combatants
- delaying amphibious ship programs
- halting the planned increase of ground-based interceptors in Alaska
- cancelling a second airborne laser (antimissile) aircraft
- terminating the ground-vehicle element of the Army’s Future Combat Systems (essentially killing the program)
- delaying production of a new presidential helicopter
- ending development of a new Air Force search and rescue helicopter
- canceling the development of a new bomber
- ending the C-17 transport aircraft, and
- stopping production of the F-22 at 187 fighters
Additionally, the secretary of defense vowed to “maximize the production” of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and up the purchase of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps’ F-35 Joint Strike Fighter from 14 to 30 in Fiscal Year 2010.
“But the F-35 cannot survive a Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile, and the F-22 can,” says McInerney, a former assistant vice chief of staff of the Air Force. “The question should be, why don’t we have a fly-off between the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter?”
McInerney adds, “He [Gates] is trying to make the Air Force a supporting service. He does not understand airpower.”
Among the concerns expressed — in the wake of yesterday’s proposed cuts before the QDR — is that the current crop of defense planners and policymakers may be suffering from shortsightedness. They may be dismissing potential strategic military threats to the U.S. as overblown. They may be capitulating to the “change” crowd in Washington. Or all of the above.
Asked if he was “walking into a buzzsaw,” Gates responded: “There’s no question a lot of these decisions will be controversial. My hope is that — as we have tried to do here in this building [the Pentagon] — the members of Congress will rise above parochial interests and consider what is in the best interest of the nation as a whole.”
But Gates’ remarks in 2008 in which he said, “I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called ‘next war-it is,’” have fueled fears among many retired generals. And the QDR gag order (a non-disclosure agreement reportedly signed by defense officials stating they will not discuss the QDR) is certainly not alleviating any concerns.
“It’s the first time it [the agreement] has ever been done in history,” says McInerney. “If I was one of the chiefs, I would have said there is no way I’m signing anything.”
A general who spoke on condition of anonymity added, “[A] serious naiveté has begun to fester [in the Beltway],” and the White House and senior defense officials “want to shape the military the way they think it should be without debate. They don’t see Russia or China as a threat. And the idea that we should not focus on future potential conflicts — from guerrilla operations to even air or sea battles — is troubling.”
Retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely (U.S. Army), former deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Pacific, tells HUMAN EVENTS, “There is no overriding strategy, not only for the war against radical Islam — the planners don’t even know what to call it anymore — but no broad strategy for the Middle East and beyond. We do not seem to have senior people — particularly among the political appointees — who understand the threats against us, much less how to develop a strategy to meet those threats.”
McInerney says — based on information he and other retired general and flag officers are gleaning — whatever strategy is being planned seems to be too narrowly focused on ground-centric, irregular warfare operations and forces. Though, he adds, those forces are critically important in the 21st century, so are sea, air, and space forces which must never be neglected in the face of emerging and yet-unseen threats to national defense.
“Ground forces will not deter China from going into Taiwan,” says McInerney. “The Air Force and the Navy’s carrier strike groups have been fighting for 19 years. They are worn out. They need money.” The money, he argues, is desperately needed for recapitalization (also known as resetting — essentially putting a new engine in an old F-15) and modernization (replacing an F-15 with a brand-new F-22).
Retired Brig. Gen. Jim Cash (U.S. Air Force), former vice commander of the 7th Air Force, agrees.
“I think there is some shortsightedness,” Cash tells HUMAN EVENTS. “The Sec. Def. does not seem to realize that the major long term threat to this country may well come from Russia and China. The only way to negate that threat is through development and maintenance of a continuing strong deterrent. The F-22 will provide that deterrent by insuring command of the skies over the battlefield for the next 50 years. UAVs will not.”
Cash says U.S. Army and Marine forces have enjoyed air-superiority above their battlespaces “almost continually since the inception of air warfare” without which those ground forces could not survive.
Therein may lie one of the problems: America’s air and sea forces are indeed so dominant — the equipment and technology so superior to anything fielded by other nations, and the training of American airmen and sailors so effective — that much of America has grown to take that dominance for granted. “Our equipment and people are simply so good, they make warfighting look easy. But there is nothing easy about what we do,” Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, commanding general of U.S. Central Command’s Air Forces, told me back in 2007.
Peter Brookes, a former CIA operations officer who also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs, tells HUMAN EVENTS, “The QDR needs to show a balanced force capable of dealing with a range of contingencies because the next war is not necessarily going to be like an Iraq or Afghanistan. It could be with Russia, China, even a conventional war with Iran or North Korea. And because of the lag time [from drawing board to fielding] of these weapons systems, we must be moving out smartly on next generation systems.”
As Brookes says, “You can build a second lieutenant in six weeks, but you can’t build a ship or a tank in that same time.” And the longer we postpone production of a new weapons system, the more expensive that system becomes.
But it’s not simply development lag time and increasing costs: America’s Defense-Industrial base cannot afford to atrophy. If production of ships, planes, and tanks is halted, it will be difficult — perhaps impossible — to reengineer and retool from “cold iron” quickly enough to defend the country in a 21st-century environment. “The world is far different today than it was in World War II,” says Brookes. Time is critical.
Maj. Gen. George B. Patrick III, former special assistant to the director of Air National Guard and chief of staff U.S. Air Force, believes that much of what we will see in the forthcoming QDR will reflect Gates’ belief that the focus should be on the near-term threat. “But some of our high-tech weaponry that has been broadly listed under this ‘next-war-it is’ heading, is very effective in the global war on terror,” Patrick tells HUMAN EVENTS. “And if we do not continue to leverage the technology that’s available to us, and if we don’t pursue the fifth-generation fighters and other systems, potential peer competitors will.”
Patrick adds, “In my opinion, the QDR over the years has become something of a budget drill, making the threat and the resources needed to address the threat match the reality of the projected budget. It should, however, be a true empirical analysis of what our threats are regardless of budget.”
Barack Obama’s 2010 baseline defense budget is $534 billion: Still, “$26 billion below four percent of GDP, according to the Senate analysis,” writes Rowan Scarborough. Four percent is what many analysts and experts believe we should be spending as a minimum on defense.
For perspective, the U.S. was spending a whopping 34.5 percent of GDP for Defense in World War II. We spent 11.7 at the height of the Korean War, nearly 10 percent at the height of the Vietnam War, six percent under President Reagan in 1986, and 4.6 percent in 1991, the year of Gulf War I.
“Four percent for baseline Defense budget is certainly not too much to ask,” says McInerney. “After all, we spent $787-billion on a stimulus package that gives $3-billion to ACORN.”
Mr. Smith is a contributor to Human Events. A former U.S. Marine rifle-squad leader and counterterrorism instructor, he writes about military/defense issues and has covered conflict in the Balkans, on the West Bank, in Iraq and Lebanon. He is the author of six books, and his articles appear in a variety of publications. E-mail him at marine1@uswriter.com.
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Obama Raising Taxes $26,000 per year on Tax Paying Families Over Next Decade
Don’t look behind the curtain. These are not the tax cuts you’re looking for. What we’ve got here is failure to realize your failed communist policies have failed every time in history they have been tried. Our wannabe-communist liberals believe that the only reason communism failed is that not enough freedom was taken, not enough taxes were confiscated, and not enough money was spent. Well, now they have their chance to prove their point and have ALREADY demonstrated the historic truth that communism and socialism are simply and demonstrably failed ideologies. Over spending and borrowing what you can’t afford to pay back are what got America into its current mess. So why is it suddenly a good idea to borrow TRILLIONS of dollars we can’t afford to pay back just so we can spend most of it on pork projects designed to get politicians re-elected? These lying, power-hungry scumbags are taxing and spending us into oblivion. We can’t afford any more of Obama’s lies or broken promises. We can’t even afford for Uh-Bama to tell the truth. The few times he’s honest, we get a glimpse into the “1984” Big-Brother future he has planned for us. He promises to raise a civilian security force as well funded as the military (Brown Shirts). He promises to destroy the coal mining industry in this country. He promises to make other countries like us again (by destroying us so we are no longer the lone super power). America can not afford Obama.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. TERM LIMITS. The liberals are shredding the constitution as fast as they can feed it into the shredder. What is it going to take to MAKE THEM STOP?
Obama’s $163,000 Tax Bomb
Families well below the president’s ‘no-tax’ threshold will get a six-figure bill.
By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
The House and Senate are preparing to pass President Barack Obama’s radical budget blueprint, with only minor modifications, by using (abusing would be more accurate) the budget “reconciliation” process. This process circumvents the Senate’s normal rules requiring 60 votes to prevent a filibuster. Reconciliation was created by Congress in the mid-1970s to enforce deficit reduction, the opposite of what the president and his party are aiming for.
The immense increase in nondefense spending and taxes, and the tripling of the national debt in Mr. Obama’s budget, have been the subject of considerable scrutiny since it was announced. Mr. Obama and his economic officials respond, not without justification, that he inherited an enormous economic and financial crisis and a large deficit. All presidents present the best possible case for their budgets, but a mind-numbing array of numbers offers innumerable opportunities to conjure up misleading comparisons.
Mr. Obama’s characterizations of his budget unfortunately fall into this pattern. He claims to reduce the deficit by half, to shave $2 trillion off the debt (the cumulative deficit over his 10-year budget horizon), and not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. While in a Clintonian sense correct (depends on what the definition of “is” is), it is far more accurate to describe Mr. Obama’s budget as almost tripling the deficit. It adds $6.5 trillion to the national debt, and leaves future U.S. taxpayers (many of whom will make far less than $250,000) with the tab. And all this before dealing with the looming Medicare and Social Security cost explosion.
Some have laid the total estimated deficits and debt projections (as more realistically tallied by the Congressional Budget Office) on Mr. Obama’s doorstep. But on this score the president is correct. He cannot rightly be blamed for what he inherited. A more accurate comparison calculates what he has already added and proposes to add by his policies, compared to a “do-nothing” baseline (see nearby chart).
The CBO baseline cumulative deficit for the Obama 2010-2019 budget is $9.3 trillion. How much additional deficit and debt does Mr. Obama add relative to a do-nothing budget with none of his programs? Mr. Obama’s “debt difference” is $4.829 trillion — i.e., his tax and spending proposals add $4.829 trillion to the CBO do-nothing baseline deficit. The Obama budget also adds $177 billion to the fiscal year 2009 budget. To this must be added the $195 billion of 2009 legislated add-ons (e.g., the stimulus bill) since Mr. Obama’s election that were already incorporated in the CBO baseline and the corresponding $1.267 trillion in add-ons for 2010-2019. This brings Mr. Obama’s total additional debt to $6.5 trillion, not his claimed $2 trillion reduction. That was mostly a phantom cut from an imagined 10-year continuation of peak Iraq war spending.
The claim to reduce the deficit by half compares this year’s immense (mostly inherited) deficit to the projected fiscal year 2013 deficit, the last of his current term. While it is technically correct that the deficit would be less than half this year’s engorged level, a do-nothing budget would reduce it by 84%. Compared to do-nothing, Mr. Obama’s deficit is more than two and a half times larger in fiscal year 2013. Just his addition to the budget deficit, $459 billion, is bigger than any deficit in the nation’s history. And the 2013 deficit is supposed to be after several years of economic recovery, funds are being returned from the financial bailouts, and we are out of Iraq.
Finally, what of the claim not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year? Even ignoring his large energy taxes, Mr. Obama must reconcile his arithmetic. Every dollar of debt he runs up means that future taxes must be $1 higher in present-value terms. Mr. Obama is going to leave a discounted present-value legacy of $6.5 trillion of additional future taxes, unless he dramatically cuts spending. (With interest the future tax hikes would be much larger later on.) Call it a stealth tax increase or ticking tax time-bomb.
What does $6.5 trillion of additional debt imply for the typical family? If spread evenly over all those paying income taxes (which under Mr. Obama’s plan would shrink to a little over 50% of the population), every income-tax paying family would get a tax bill for $163,000. (In ten years, interest would bring the total to well over $200,000, if paid all at once. If paid annually over the succeeding ten years, the tax hike per year would average almost $26,000.) That’s in addition to his explicit tax hikes. While the future tax time-bomb is pushed beyond Mr. Obama’s budget horizon, and future presidents and Congresses will decide how it will be paid, it is likely to be paid by future income tax hikes as these are general fund deficits.
We can get a rough idea of who is likely to pay them by distributing this $6.5 trillion of future taxes according to the most recent distribution of income-tax burdens. We know the top 1% or 5% of income-taxpayers pay vastly disproportionate shares of taxes, and much larger shares than their shares of income. But it also turns out that Mr. Obama’s massive additional debt implies a tax hike, if paid today, of well over $100,000 for people with incomes of $150,000, far below Mr. Obama’s tax-hike cut-off of $250,000 (over $130,000 in ten years and over $16,000 a year if paid annually over the following ten years). In other words, a middle-aged two-career couple in New York or California could get a future tax bill as big as their mortgage.
While Mr. Obama’s higher tax rates are economically harmful, some of his tax policies deserve wide support, e.g., permanently indexing the alternative minimum tax. Ditto some of the spending increases, including the extension of unemployment benefits, given the severe recession.
Neither a large deficit in a recession nor a small increase from the current modest level in the debt to GDP ratio is worrisome. And at a 50% debt-to-GDP ratio, with nominal GDP growing 4% (the CBO out-year forecast), deficits of 2% of GDP would not be increasing the debt burden relative to income.
But what is not just worrisome but dangerous are the growing trillion dollar deficits in the latter years of the Obama budget. These deficits are so large for a prosperous nation in peacetime — three times safe levels — that they would cause the debt burden to soar toward banana republic levels. That’s a recipe for a permanent drag on growth and serious pressure on the Federal Reserve to inflate, not the new era of rising prosperity that Mr. Obama and his advisers foresee.
Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
This story has been corrected. An earlier version included in two parenthetical statements calculations of additional taxes derived from the debt occurring over the period, rather than present discounted values.
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