Barney Frank to Obama: Cut Military Spending

[babylonsister]

Barney Frank to Obama: Cut Military Spending
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2009-02-26 00:14.

By Nick Baumann, Mother Jones


Representative Barney Frank is one of the most powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives. As chairman of the Financial Services Committee, he's overseeing the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars to bailout Wall Street and stave off the mortgage crisis. The White House needs him, and he's been a dependable ally so far. Now he's leaning on President Barack Obama to cut the Pentagon budget.

On Tuesday, two days before Obama presents a proposed budget to Congress, Frank (D-Mass.) and other House Democrats called on the Obama administration to reduce military spending, setting up a potential clash between House liberals and the White House. At a White House summit on fiscal responsibility the day before, Obama had cast doubt on the future of an $11.2 billion project to upgrade the fleet of presidential helicopters. But Obama has shown no indication that he plans to reduce, or even freeze, overall defense spending, which will be around $650 billion this fiscal year.

Frank says that's a mistake. "To accomplish his goals of expanding health care and other important quality of life services without ballooning the deficit," Frank noted, Obama has no choice but to decrease military spending. He said that spending excessive amounts of money on the defense budget "precludes" the Obama administration from addressing other priorities: "If we do not get military spending under control, we will not be able to respond to important domestic needs."

Acknowledging that Obama does plan to save hundreds of billions of dollars by withdrawing from Iraq, Frank said the President must go further and take big whacks at big-ticket military projects. He pointed to programs like the Air Force's F-22 fighter, the Osprey troop transport, and missile defense as expensive, unnecessary Cold War-era boondoggles. He singled out missile defense in Eastern Europe as a particularly wasteful use of American taxpayers' money. "I will confess that I am not a regular reader of Iranian-issued fatwahs," Frank quipped. "And probably one of the ones I missed was the one where they threatened devastation against Prague. We plan to spend several billion dollars to protect the Czech Republic against Iran. That's either a great waste of money or a very belated way to make up for Munich."

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http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/40230

[rurallib]

1. And this is why the Pentagon haas one major defense installation

or manufacturer in every congressional district in the country. Take it out of his district but not mine!

[NNN0LHI]

2. Lets get all the mercenaries off the payroll first that would be a great start

That alone would make me sleep better. These people would kill anyone for money. No questions asked.. Thats dangerous to all of us.

Don

[waiting for hope]

3. Here's a little graph on spending ...

A little small, I know, but the big part of the pie is the Pentagon.

[MarjorieG]

4. Obama did say reduce cold war era stuff.