Talent, Brown warn of possible defense cuts under Obama
Former Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., and state Rep. Jason Brown, R-Platte City, headlined a conference call Wednesday aimed at bolstering GOP assertions that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama might dangerously slash defense spending.
In the call, set up by Republican John McCain’s campaign, Talent and Brown echoed some of the concerns raised earlier by Gov. Matt Blunt, in response to recent published statements by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Frank was quoted as saying that he’d like to see defense spending reduced by 25 percent, and linked that to the withdrawal from Iraq.
Talent, who used to be on the Senate Armed Services Committee, contended that military cuts of such magnitude would hurt the nation and the St. Louis area. In the latter’s case, he said that the region could face job cuts if defense spending is reduced.
Missouri, said Talent, is “a defense manufacturing state..a defense dependent state.”
Talent called on Obama to disavow Frank’s remarks.
Brown went much further, asserting that Obama likely shares Frank’s views, unless Obama makes clear otherwise.
”The liberal elite has always seen the military as something not to be proud of,” Brown said. “The liberally elite…don’t want us to be successful militarily overseas.”
Talent, Blunt, and Brown are fools. They all know that Barney Frank is not a foreign policy advisor to Obama and they are just grasping for anything that might get a few votes back now that it looks like a major loss is in the cards for the GOP. The following link provides a list of Obama’s foreign policy advisors:
http://www.connectusfund.org/obama/about
On the other hand, maybe Frank is on to something. I don’t know off the top of my head what percentage of the Pentagon’s budget is being spent on an unproven missile defense system being deployed in parts of eastern Europe or on the expansion of NATO in the same region that has us on the brink of a second Cold War, or how much they spend on building and buying “dirty” bombs with depeted uranium tips, or how much is being it costs to outsource to mercenary forces like Blackwater, or how much it costs to operate and maintain a prison where habeus corpus doesn’t exist, or how much they are spending on their efforts to dominate the realm of outer space, or whatever else nobody likes to admit to or talk about.
Perhaps putting an end to policies and programs that antagonize other nations and create more enemies is a step in the right direction.