Is the sequester a threat to national security?

[emptystep]

If we can't be safe with as much military spending as we do,

what about the rest of the world's industrialized nations that spend mere fractions of what we do on defense?

They must be on the brink of total annihiliation!!!!!!!!!

I am not saying the entire system is not screwed up, I'm not saying it is. What I am saying is if you have been stirring you coffee clockwise for a while and then you start stirring your coffee counterclockwise there is that time in the middle there when the coffee is all in chaos. I don't like chaos coffee. I like a nice smooth breakfast blend.

So let's just keep making the same mistakes over and over again because we are too afraid of changing?

Sorry, count me out.

We're afraid of change so we are going to close our eyes and jump off a cliff?

 

[nodoginnafight]

I am not saying the entire system is not screwed up, I'm not saying it is. What I am saying is if you have been stirring you coffee clockwise for a while and then you start stirring your coffee counterclockwise there is that time in the middle there when the coffee is all in chaos. I don't like chaos coffee. I like a nice smooth breakfast blend.

So let's just keep making the same mistakes over and over again because we are too afraid of changing?

Sorry, count me out.

We're afraid of change so we are going to close our eyes and jump off a cliff?

You wanna call it a cliff?
I call it cutting defense spending by 12%
(among other cuts)

I'm ready.

Otherwise, we are just going to keep getting business as usual (which is spending our grandchildren's money)

 

[nodoginnafight]

If cutting 12% from our bloated defense budget can't be accomplished without jeopardizing the security of American citizens, then we have the wrong people in charge.

 

[g5000]

Everyone in Washington DC is trying to protect their purse stuffed with money borrowed from China. The military is not exempt from this reflex. And they get to play the "national security" card and make all the nervous nellies...well, nervous.

Our debt is a threat to national security. China and Japan hold a lot of our debt. And if they suspect we are going to be unable to pay our debts fair and square, the interest those foreign governments charge us to borrow more is going to go up, and they will have us over a barrel.

We are currently spending way above what we spent during the greatest threat to our country's existence (the Cold War). Way above.

It's time we shed a few hundred extraneous generals and their swank houses and large staffs.

Look, every time a new piece of defense hardware is proposed and built, the contracts for all the little pieces of that hardware are spread around umpteen congressional districts for political reasons, not for reasons of "national security". We have an incredibly inefficient procurement process, and this is done deliberately. And this causes delays and actual hazards to our military personnel.

I really don't want to hear any more bullshit about "cutting to the bone". There are miles and miles of layers of fat on our defense budget.

 

[emptystep]

I started out just looking for some numbers on defense cuts but found this article. This sequestration is a thousand cuts. The big, bad DoD might be the whipping boy for this but the pain is going to be felt by millions. This is one really, really bad idea.

Stephen Fuller likens the pending budget cuts from sequestration to crash dieting. "There's a couple of ways to lose 40 pounds," he said. "Going on a starvation diet is one of them. That's sequestration. (Then there's) working out and cutting out dessert and not eating so much bread and reducing the portion size—you're actually stronger and healthier when you get done and you've accomplished the same thing."

In fact, the graduation rate of North Carolina students who were involved in career- technical education was 90 percent last year. Cuts would affect from 53,000 to 56,000 stu- dents, based on various projections, Atkinson said. And, she said, with the unemployment rate above 9 percent, more students in North Carolina are living in poverty, making the need for Title 1 funding even greater. Federal Title 1 funds target schools with high numbers of students living in poverty.

"We would like, at the state level, to have the flexibilityof determining where we would take cuts based on what our data show as far as what programs are yielding positive results for students," she said.

The 228.000 federal jobs lost in nondefense cuts and 48,000 federal jobs lost in defense cuts are just the beginning. Fuller estimated in a July study that a total of 2.1 million jobs would be lost, with about 1.59 million of them coming from small business.

"The federal deficit is just so large that at some point, I think they're going to start to have to do something, so we are going to see cuts over the long term whether they do it through sequester or not," said Pattison. How cuts will be made is the big question that remains as Congress is in recess until after the election. "There's numerous ways to do this and sequestration is the most severe and (will) have enormous negative impacts on the economy," said Fuller. "The economy is very fragile and this is enough to put it flat on its back."

Branham, Mary "THE BITTER PILL OF SEQUESTRATION." Capitol Ideas (Nov/Dec2012), Vol. 55 Issue 6; p14-16

In New York State, where public and private colleges estimated the damage a sequester would do before Friday's report was released, the cuts would mean 6,500 students might lose assistance from work-study programs, and 7,000 could lose the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, according to the City University of New York, State University of New York, and Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities of New York.

Read more: Sequester would hit higher education programs hard | Inside Higher Ed
Inside Higher Ed

 

[RoadVirus]

Cut the military and use the savings as stimulus to build infrastructure.

Like that will happen. The last time we had a "stimulus" for infrastucture, the money either went missing or went to pork. $800 billion down the toilet.

 

[emptystep]

Rand Paul: Republicans Have President Obama "Where We Want Him" on Sequester

Rand Paul: Republicans Have President Obama "Where We Want Him" on Sequester | WKU Public Radio

Here are some excerpts from our interview:

President Obama and Senate Democrats have said the sequester will have dire consequences for the country. They have said air-traffic control, military preparedness and emergency response would be degraded. Will the country be hurt if these spending cuts go through?

"I would call that histrionics. This is what comes forward every time we talk about reducing or slowing down the rate of growth of government. Everyone should realize that the sequester should not cut any money. So all the departments will have what they had last year."