Las Vegas
In response to a question at tonight’s presidential primary debate from CNN moderator Anderson Cooper about whether the candidates would cut military spending, Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum strongly defended defense.
“[T]he fact is, to say I’m going to put the security of the United States up against some arbitrary budget number is suicidally stupid,” Gingrich said of the budget deal brokered over the summer, which automatically cuts military spending if a supercommittee of six Republicans and six Democrats can’t find over a trillion dollars of savings from the federal budget.
“I mean, if you want to understand how totally broken Washington is, look at this entire model of the supercommittee, which has now got a magic number to achieve,” Gingrich said. “And if it doesn’t achieve the magic number, then we’ll all have to shoot ourselves in the head so that when they come back with a really dumb idea to merely cut off our right leg, we’ll all be grateful that they’re only semi-stupid instead of being totally stupid.”
Santorum’s answer focused mainly on the president’s primary duty to America. “The first order of the federal government, the only thing the federal government can do that no other level of government can do is protect us,” Santorum said. “It is the first duty of the president of the United States is to protect us.”
Gingrich, however, indicated that he is not in favor of offering a blank check to the military. “I’m a hawk, but I’m a cheap hawk,” the former speaker of the House said.
