Today, President Barack Obama will visit the Pentagon where Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will introduce Obama to all the key players in formulating strategies for Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday, Secretary Gates testified before the House Armed Services committees on budgetary pressures facing the Pentagon.
Commenting on Gates’ testimony at Politico, Heritage Senior Fellow James Carafano writes:
In his draft testimony, Gates wailed he’ll have to make “hard choices” on weapons spending. Since he rightly points out five Pentagon programs “account for half of total cost growth in weapons spending,” we can guess where the axe will fall. This, however, is a bad “hard choice”…short cut defense to pay for seeding the Mall in DC and subsidizing Hollywood films (yes…both in stimulus package)…and yes…the defense jobs that will be cut will be here in the US….so yes you got that right…we are going to layoff high-skilled engineers to spend hundred-of-thousands of dollars to hire gardeners. There is a better way…slash back the spending and social engineering in the bill and add the kinds of tax cuts that will really boost economic growth, the best recommendation I’ve heard is to reduce the corporate taxes by 10 percent…and by the way—don’t cut the defense budget. The world may or may not get richer in the next few years….it is not likely to get less dangerous.
