Cornyn: Defense Cuts Would Be 'Arbitrary And Reckless'
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 3:58PMBy Adrianna McGinley
At the Hudson Institute Wednesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned that sequestration following a possible supercommittee failure would have a disastrous impact on national security.
“I worry that our strategic thinking is being driven by dollars and cents more than common sense,” Cornyn said. “If this process fails, and I hope and pray it does not, then … the base defense budget would be cut 14 percent in real terms over just three years.”
Cornyn cited that the sequestration cuts would be in addition to $489 billion in defense cuts under the Budget Control Act and roughly $180 billion of efficiency cuts recommended by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
“This should really be a time for rebuilding and retraining and not retreating,” Cornyn advised. “But retreat is the only way to describe what would happen if our military forces are required to live under this sequestration process.”
Cornyn said military leadership is trained not to panic, but “you can hear their frustration and you can hear grave concern in their voices that America’s strategic commitments are being defined not by the requirements but by budgets. They’re frustrated that under the sequestration process the cuts would be arbitrary and reckless.”
The Senator said however that concerns over how the Pentagon spends money should not be disregarded. Rather waste, fraud, and abuse should be aggressively fought. He specifically alluded to financial mismanagement at the Department of Defense citing that it has not been able to produce an “auditable financial statement,” and although the department is not required to do so until 2017, he said it was “shocking” that it could not do so now.
Cornyn joked that the twelve members of the “Super Committee” have more power than any group of Americans since those who wrote the constitution and said they must make use of that power.
“Failure really should not be an option,” Cornyn said. “What would it say to not only the American people…what would it say to the markets, what would it say to the world about America’s seriousness of dealing with these problems?”
Soldiers Silencing the Critics
Since World War II, the success of American soldiers in actions abroad has preserved freedom for millions of people, according to former Republican Massachussetts Governor Mitt Romney. At a Heritage Foundation event Monday, Romney noted the upcoming 65th anniversary of D-Day and said American soldiers have shouldered the burden of defending freedom since World War II. The event was meant to commemorate those who served and to criticize the Obama administration for cutting funding from the Defense Department budget.
“Because of what America did in the 20th century, there are hundreds of millions of people around the world who now live in freedom-who, but for the price paid by the United States, would have lived in despair. I know of no other such example of national selfishness in the history of mankind. That is why America is the hope of the earth.”
The broad military plans of the Obama administration are also troubling to Romney, who was a 2008 presidential candidate. He is concerned that Obama will look to the military budget for the largest cuts in the process of reforming the financial system.
“ The right way to scale America’s defense budget is to add up the requirements for each of our missions, beginning with strategic defense,” he said.
He laid out other defense missions that he felt the U.S. should be focusing on such as: fighting and winning land wars and counter-insurgencies and providing counter-insurgency support for nations under threat from Jihadists.
“We cannot allow the economic crisis to conceal the very real threats to our nation’s security. We cannot ignore the intentions of competitors who would replace America’s leadership with their own, and set back the cause of freedom,” Romney said.
The demands of all U.S. defense missions involving U.S. soldiers are not covered in Obama’s planned cuts for the department, Romney said, do not equal budget cuts. He believes a $50 billion increase in the modernization budget is needed. He noted that Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also repeatedly said that is a necessary increase.
He concluded by saying, “Providence has blessed us and trusted us to safeguard liberty; in a time of confusion at home and challenge abroad, let ours be the voice of clarity and good sense-confident in our cause, and faithful in the care of freedom.”