Obama budget contains unprecedented defense cuts
Re: “Obama’s new budget will put America in the poor house,” Editorial, Feb 14
Pointing out that President Obama lacks courage by failing to take on tough issues like entitlement spending only tells half the story. His budget also ignores $600 billion in automatic defense cuts triggered by the congressional super committee that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says could set our military back to the 1930s.
Starting next year, defense experts say these cuts could decrease in investments in new equipment and technological research as much as 40 percent. That would effectively cancel every new program for fighter aircraft, combat ships, intelligence drones, tanks and more.
It would shrink our Navy to its smallest size prior to World War II and our Air Force to its smallest size in history. It would force our troops to continue using equipment that was designed three decades ago and has been pushed to the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it would dry up the military innovations, such as roadside bomb scanners, that protect our troops and also create powerful commercial spin-offs like computers, GPS and the Internet.
These unprecedented defense cuts could also lead to 1.5 million job losses, according to one estimate. If Congress opposes President Obama’s proposed defense cuts, stopping these additional cuts should be a bipartisan no-brainer.
Adm. James A. Lyons, Jr. (U.S. Navy-Retired)
Former commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet
Warrenton
Most of our taxes spent on government hand-outs
Writing about President Obama’s budget, The Washington Examiner cited the Census Bureau’s finding that almost half of U.S. households receive some form of government benefit. Close to 66 cents of every state and federal revenue dollar goes to funding these benefits, and new ones are being rolled out almost daily.
Some are funded directly by government borrowing, while others are funded indirectly by government mandates on private companies, such as insurers that are required to provide free contraceptive services and banks that are required to fund mortgage relief programs.
Maybe it’s time to change the Latin motto on the Great Seal of America from “E Pluribus Unum” (From Many, One) to the much more appropriate “Ubi Meus Est” (Where’s Mine?)
Bob Foys
Chicago, Ill.
Response to lawsuit contradicts administration’s claims
Re: “War on Obama birth control mandate grows,” Feb. 13
President Obama’s response to The Becket Fund’s first lawsuit to overturn his contraception mandate left a lot to be desired. As Becket’s executive director Kristina Arriaga noted, this was the government’s “first opportunity to explain … why the mandate is not illegal and unconstitutional. Instead, they asked the court to duck the key issues” because President Obama “indicated that they will … ‘finalize changes to the regulations’ in the future.”
Arriaga added that by doing so, the Obama administration “is taking the remarkable position that announcing future plans … means the courts should ignore what the law … actually says. Since when does ‘Trust me, I’m from the government’ suspend the laws of the land?”
Obama’s untrustworthy statement in court contradicts his chief of staff and secretary of Health and Human Services, who both said there would be no changes.
Carolyn Naughton
Silver Spring
