Dick Cheney: Obama would rather spend money on food stamps than a strong military

Washington Examiner, BY CHARLIE SPIERING | FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Former Vice President Dick Cheney sharply criticized President Obama for reducing the size of the American military including plans to reduce the Army to the smallest force since before World War II.

Cheney pointed out that Obama's plans to cut the military were "over the top," citing "enormous long-term damage" to the military.

Cheney said Obama's decision was made for budget reasons, not any strategic goal.

"He would much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would a strong military or support for our troops," he said.

CONTINUED. 

Surprise! Obama Ignores A Law to Aid His Reelection!

In case you missed it over the weekend, the Obama administration’s Friday afternoon document drop was a memo from the Department of Labor telling defense contractors not to provide legally-required notice to thousands of employees that they are about to be laid off, if automatic spending cuts agreed to by the President and the Congress take effect.


Translation: President Obama wants to prevent thousands of employees, especially in swing-state Virginia, from being told that they are going to be laid off due to Department of Defense funding cuts. Because of the timing of the cuts, those notices would have been sent to employees just prior to the election in November. The man who signed those funding cuts into law would like to avoid that.

When the administration first proposed this idea back in June, defense contractors patiently explained to the reelection-obsessed President that there is a law, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification ("WARN") Act of 1988, that requires federal contractors to tell employees 60 days in advance of expected layoffs. There are quite a few layoffs expected for the end of the year as a result of a genius agreement between President Obama and Congress to cut astonishing amounts of funding for the Department of Defense. Companies that fail to meet their obligations under the WARN Act can be sued by their former employees. Defense contractors indicated that they would not be ignoring their legal duty under the WARN Act.

CONTINUED:  http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/the_rumble/2012/10/surprise-obama-ignores-a-law-to-aid-his-reelection

BREAKING: Obama Proposes $129M Cut From 'Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance

WONDERFUL!! JUST GREAT!!! BREAKING: Obama Proposes $129M

 Cut From 'Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance

Today, President Obama released the long-awaited “sequestration report,” detailing the cuts the White House would make to the budget under last year’s Budget Control Act if no deal is reached in Congress. And there, buried on page 136, is the White House’s proposed cuts to “Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance.” $129 million. That’s a full 8.2 percent of the possible sequestrable amount. It’s a massive slash of the budget for our embassies, consulates, and security abroad. That’s just part of the White House’s ridiculously destructive sequester proposal, which takes a chainsaw to the defense budget. Most defense programs would get a 9.4 percent cut, and a 10 percent cut to other Pentagon accounts.


Medicare, by contrast, would take only a 2 percent hit. “No amount of planning can mitigate the effect of these cuts,” wrote the Office of Management and Budget. “It is not the responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction. The report leaves no question that the sequestration would be deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government function.”

President Obama brought about this sequestration himself when he refused to cut the budget, and his Democratic allies in Congress did the same. Republicans didn’t want to tie cuts to tax increases; Obama did. Democrats’ default position was that cuts had to come from defense. And thus we ended up with the Budget Control Act, which left Congress in the position of watching President Obama slash the military budget if they couldn’t reach some sort of arrangement.

In the aftermath of worldwide attacks and assaults on our embassies and consulates, it certainly looks incredible for the President to insist on deep slashes to our embassy security budget, let alone our overall defense budget. But that’s what this administration is all about: cutting defense, and leaving America and her emissaries more vulnerable.


CONTINUED:  http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/14/Obama-releases-sequester-report-cuts-defense-embassy-budget

Obama's Devastating Defense Cuts Detailed

“President Obama’s report on sequestration confirmed what we’ve known for months – his defense cuts will devastate our national security and jeopardize jobs across the country. Americans deserve real leadership from their president and an honest plan to spare the country from these catastrophic cuts. As president, Mitt Romney will never play politics with our defense budget.” – Ryan Williams, Romney Campaign Spokesman


Today, The Obama White House Released A New Report Detailing Their Devastating Defense Cuts:

The Obama White House Released A Detailed Report On The Defense Cuts Set To Take Place In 2013. “President Barack Obama on Friday detailed how roughly $120 billion in cuts to the Pentagon and domestic programs will be applied if Congress doesn’t shut off a planned “sequester” before the end of the year, casting blame on Congress for failing to bring spending and taxes into line and address the nation’s $16 trillion debt.” (Austin Wright and Jonathan Allen, “White House Releases Sequester Details,” Politico, 9/14/12)


The Report – Which Tried To Blame Republicans For The Cuts – Noted That Most Defense Programs Will Receive An Approximately 10% Cut. “The overview: There would be a 9.4 percent cut to most defense programs — except those exempted in the sequestration law — and a 10 percent cut to a handful of other Pentagon accounts that are not subject to annual congressional appropriations. … The president and his Democratic allies say that Republicans have put at risk the nation’s defenses…” (Austin Wright and Jonathan Allen, “White House Releases Sequester Details,” Politico, 9/14/12)

CONTINUED:  http://www.mittromney.com/news/press/2012/09/obamas-devastating-defense-cuts-detailed

Liberal Dems say Pentagon spending cuts should be doubled

The White House should cut nearly twice the $487 billion it has committed to reducing the Pentagon's budget, according to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and other liberal Democrats.


The liberals say the planned cuts, announced Thursday by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, don't go nearly far enough to reduce the defense budget.

“The Cold War is long over and no remotely comparable adversary has emerged or is likely to emerge,” the Democrats wrote in a letter to Obama. “We believe that savings of around $900 billion over the next 10 ears can be realized. We ask you to take even bolder leadership on this issue as you finalize your budget.”

Besides Frank, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Rush Holt (D-N.J.) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) signed on to the letter calling for deep spending cuts and the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this year.

CONTINUED:http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/budget-approriations/207047-pentagon-cuts-arent-deep-enough-for-some-democrats

The Bill: H.R. 3638, Act for the 99%

Annualized Cost: $81.7 billion ($408.6 billion over five years)


Number of Cosponsors: 19 Congressmen

The goal of the 264-page Act for the 99% is to help American workers keep their jobs or find new jobs if they are currently unemployed. The bill would increase domestic spending on a number of new jobs programs while making cuts in defense spending. Sponsored by Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), H.R. 3638 also increases tax rates for some taxpayers, extends tax credits for certain individuals, and eliminates tax incentives for certain corporations.

The provisions of the Act for the 99% are outlined below.

Defense

• Budget Cuts: Department of Defense spending would be reduced to and frozen at 2008 levels.
• European Deployments: Troop levels in Europe would be capped at 30,000, down from the 80,000 active duty personnel currently stationed there.
• Afghanistan Withdrawal: Spending would be limited to providing a safe and orderly withdrawal of all troops and Department of Defense personnel from Afghanistan.
• Weapons Program Cut: Procurement of the Marines’ V-22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft would be stopped immediately.

Direct Job Creation

• Public Works: The Public Land Corps and Civilian Conservation Corps would be charged with hiring new workers to improve and construct new public works on government lands.
• Public Safety: Grants would be awarded to local governments to hire, rehire, and retain firefighters and police officers.
• Local Jobs: A new Community Corps would work to improve local infrastructure and rehabilitate abandoned or foreclosed homes. Communities would also be given federal funds to address local employment problems, including educating individuals whose skill sets are linked to industries that are in decline and expanding apprenticeship programs. The Department of Labor would receive targeted funding to sponsor special on-the-job training for people living in high poverty and unemployment areas.
• National Infrastructure: Spending would be increased in the form of traditional transportation grants and a new infrastructure bank.
• Unemployment Compensation: The bill extends unemployment benefits for an additional year to Americans unable to find jobs.

Education

• Teaching Jobs: A Teachers Corps would be established to ensure the jobs of currently serving instructors and education-related personnel. It would also hire new teachers as needed.
• School Maintenance: Federal funds would be allocated to repair, improve, and modernize school facilities.
• Student Jobs: Work-study programs would receive new funding for students.

Entitlements

• Social Security: The bill would raise the cap on wages and incomes subject to Social Security taxes from $110,000 to $250,000.
• Medicare: The program would be given new authority to negotiate for lower pharmaceutical drug prices.
• Medicaid: The 2009 "stimulus" bill changed the formula -- known as the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or, FMAP -- that determines the federal share of a state's Medicaid expenditures to increase the portion paid by the federal government. H.R. 3638 would extend those changes for an additional year.
• Health Care Sector: More broadly, the bill would create a Health Care Corps to protect and increase the number of general health care and long-term care professionals. The bill would also institute a public health care option, which would allow taxpayer-subsidized health care plans to directly compete with private-sector insurers.

Taxation

In order to pay for the bill’s provisions and to possibly reduce the deficit, H.R. 3638 would modify the Tax Code in the following ways (revenue measures are not counted under BillTally methodology):

• Impose a higher tax rate on Americans making more than $1 million.
• Create a new transaction tax on stock market security transactions.
• Require corporations to pay a surtax on dividends not distributed to shareholders.
• Impose stricter regulations on employers who hire independent contractors. The sponsors argue that many employers misclassify workers as "independent contractors" so that they can avoid payroll and unemployment insurance taxes.
• Reauthorize the Making Work Pay tax credit for low and middle class workers.
• Cancel certain tax credits awarded to oil companies.
• Reinstate the Superfund excise tax and corporate environmental income tax to pay for environmental cleanup projects.
• Apply a duty to goods imported from countries accused of manipulating the value of their currencies.

NTUF estimates the Act for the 99% would result in $408.6 billion in new spending over the next five years -- a net of $456.3 billion in proposed spending and $47.7 billion in savings. Sources for scoring the bill include the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Sustainable Defense Task Force, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Of the 19 cosponsors, all are Democratic members of the House and 16 are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

To learn more or discuss this bill visit WashingtonWatch.com.