no. they refuse to cut even parts of the defense budget that gates wants to cut. Republican who now leads the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Howard P. McKeon, fought back against proposed cuts in the Pentagon budget even as fledgling committee members supported by the Tea Party said that the nationâs debts amounted to a national security risk. âI cannot say it strongly enough: I will not support any measures that stress our forces and jeopardize the lives of our men and women in uniform,â Mr. McKeon said in an opening statement that followed up on a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urging him not to stop work on the Marinesâ $14.4. billion Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, a combined landing craft and tank for amphibious assaults that Mr. Gates canceled this month. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/us/politics/27pentagon.html?_r=1
They do want to cut spending, on the middle class and poor. Not on the rich, though, since that's them.
I would say this whole web site is devoted to people wanting to become "them". Some people refer to "them" as the American dream. the dream that brings millions of immigrants from all over the world. Conservatives believe one of the few roles of Federal Government is protection of the people, national defense. It makes sense to want to keep funding that. Conservatives believe federal welfare, on a longer term basis, tends to hurt people and destroy families.
It certainly makes sense to keep funding the military. However, hunger in the streets (if it ever reaches that point) will put pressure on "all" aspects of the budget. I notice China is over in Africa and other areas buying up and developing resources while the West fiddles like ancient Rome. US leadership is appalling.
I yield to no one on this site in defending conservative principles. That is why I agree with Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan that our current defense posture is idiotic and unsustainable. Of course we can cut enormous amounts from defense. We already spend more than the rest of the world combined. The key to cutting spending is (1), get out of the money pit that is Afghanistan, (2) close the hundreds of bases we still have left over from WW II all over the world, (3) start focusing on what we actually need in terms of hardware, not what will send a lot of money to some congressman's state. Taking up point (3), I am quite sure it would be nice for the Marines to have this new amphib assault vehicle. Two questions though, can we afford it and do we really need it? Answers are clearly no. Do we really see a lot of beach landings in our future? And like a lot of pentagon gold-plated hardware, this boat will be so unbelievably expensive, losing one would be a disaster. Amphid assaults are a WW II tactic, and they were dubious even then. You didn't see the generals hitting the beach first, did you? Watch the opening scenes from Saving Private Ryan if you wonder why. We face a radically different threat now than we did even in the Cold War years. The idea that we can project sea power into the South China Sea is dubious at best. Most likely we would lose all our carriers within the first hour of war. Japan and South Korea are big, rich countries with large populations. If they face threats, they are perfectly capable of dealing with them. We also have proven rather conclusively that we are ill-equipped both in terms of strategy and in being hamstrung by political correctness from actually invading and taking over countries. As a modern country guided by world opinion, we simply are not prepared to do what is necessary. We will have to leave those tasks to local surrogates.