Pay Up or Shut Up Posted by Michael Cohen

I have a small request to make of every Congressional Republican and Democrat who is charging the Obama Administration with cutting defense spending: identify the exact tax that you are going to raise or the specific domestic program that you are going to eliminate in order to pay for your defense spending priority.

Political leaders from both sides of the aisle have spent 30 years telling the American people that we can have a gold-plated military and a global reach to our military power; yet at the same time enjoy some of the lowest tax rates in the industrialized world.  Of course no decision better personified this generation-long irresponsibility than the decision to cut taxes at the same time we were going to war in Iraq.

The simple reality is that if politicians want to continue expanding our military while refusing to make the touch choices that fiscal responsibility demands then they need to be upfront about how they are going to pay for it. If Saxby Chambliss thinks those F-22s are so important and Jim Inhofe believes that the Future Combat Systems program is key to American security in the 21st century then challenge the American people to pay higher taxes in order to sustain those purchases. Something tells me this isn't going to happen; but I am a dreamer!

(I know after both men joined almost the entire Republican caucus in decrying and voting against the deficit spending of President Obama's stimulus package that they are of course dead set against borrowing money to pay for these programs).

It's about time those people who think $600 + billion a year in defense spending is too little put their money where their mouth is.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

You're correct in asking but you know what their answer would be -- cut all those medical, education and social security programs that actually help the people in favor of the corporate welfare military programs that they love so much. And they have free medical and wonderful pensions, so it's no loss to them. This is where representative democracy breaks down, isn't it.

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[Lorelei Kelly]

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[infant]

Inhofe believes that the Future Combat Systems program is key to American security in the 21st century then challenge the American people to pay