Cut Defense Spending

A message from CREDO Action:

Just about the only good thing to come out of last year's debt ceiling debacle was that the law Congress passed to raise the debt ceiling has the potential to reduce defense spending by $492 billion over the next ten years.¹

It would normally be a very heavy lift to get Congress to pass any kind of reductions to defense spending. But the legislation that raised the debt ceiling was designed in the case of a deadlock on the Super Committee to mandate across-the-board cuts starting in 2013, including cuts to defense, that would be unattractive to both Democrats and Republicans alike.

The Super Committee did deadlock. And now that they are faced with the prospect of mandatory reductions in defense spending, we can count on members in both chambers of Congress and in both parties to try to shield the American war machine from any sort of funding reductions.

Tell Congress: Don't roll back cuts to defense spending. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

It's undeniable that we have a grotesquely bloated military budget. Even with the reductions, the United States will be on track to spend more on defense than the next ten countries combined.²

Yet Republican Rep. Buck McKeon has just introduced a bill that will substitute a reduction of the federal government workforce by 10% in place of the first year of mandatory cuts.³ And this will likely be the first of many attempts to change the law to shield military spending.

Republicans and some Democrats are now saying that the sky will fall if we do not exempt the Department of Defense from mandatory spending cuts — even as they insist that our deficit is such a problem that we must make brutal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

In the midst of an economic crisis like the one we're in, fixating on reducing the national deficit is deeply counter-productive. In the short term, it would be better for the government to spend money to help grow the economy than cut programs to reduce government outlays.

But if here's one thing we can cut in our federal budget, it's defense.

Yet in a demonstration of massively misplaced priorities, we're being told that on one hand we can't afford necessary programs for the poor, the disabled, the sick and seniors, but on the other hand we must continually spend more and more money on defense.

It's got to stop.

Tell Congress: Don't roll back cuts to defense spending.

Click below to automatically sign the petition:
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=2028741&id=34110-2593817-PdOcKbx&t=10

Thank you for speaking out to rein in defense spending.

Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

1. "Admin Would Have Flexibility In Applying DoD Sequestration Cuts," Emelie Rutherford, Defense Daily, 01-18-12.
2. "The Right Cutst," Lawrence J. Korb, The National Interest, 01-25-12
3. "House Republicans make video plea to Obama to avoid automatic defense cuts," Jeremy Herb, The Hill, 01-24-12