Cutting Military Spending

In an article dealing with Donald Rumsfeld's recent opposition to ANY defense cuts at all, it is pointed out that several Republican Senators are open to or even pushing for cuts in military spending.

Additionally, Rumsfeld is placing himself in opposition to a growing movement of both Tea Party-backed conservatives and progressives who are coming together to call for cuts in the defense budget. Numerous U.S. Senators, including several Tea Party-backed Republicans, have demanded that defense cuts be on the table:

– Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA): Isakson, who has been a featured speaker at Capitol Hill Tea Party rallies, told a local news station last month that deficit reduction “begins with the Department of Defense.”

– Sen.-elect Pat Toomey (R-PA): Toomey, who has in the past called the Tea Party a “very constructive movement for positive change,” criticized Congress for voting for “programs the Pentagon doesn’t even want” during a debate with Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA).

– Sen.-elect Mark Kirk (R-IL): The week before Toomey’s statement, Kirk, who has received backing from the tea party movement, said that we need “across-the-board” reductions in defense spending during a debate with his Democratic opponent Alexi Giannoulias.

– Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN): Corker has gone out of his way to accrue Tea Party support. “We embraced the tea party spirit when it was in its infancy last August,” said Todd Wom­ack, his chief of staff. Three weeks ago, Corker said on CNBC that defense cuts have to be “on the table” because there’s “a lot of waste there.”

– Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY): Tea Party “darling” told PBS’s Gwen Ifil during the campaign that that cutting defense spending “has to be on the table.” Paul reiterated his call for reducing the military budget this weekend while appearing on ABC’s This Week. He tweaked Republicans for “never” saying “they’ll cut anything out of military. … There’s still waste in the military budget. You have to make it smaller.”

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK): Tea Party-backed ultra-conservative Coburn used the op-ed pages of The Washington Examiner last weeks to praise Paul’s “courage” in calling for a smaller military budget and said he looks forward to “working with him” toward that goal. “Republicans should resist pressure to take all defense spending off the table. … Taking defense spending off the table is indefensible. We need to protect our nation, not the Pentagon’s sacred cows,” he concluded.

– Progressive Sens. Pat Leahy (D-VT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT): These four stalwart progressive senators joined with 55 members of Congress, including conservative Republican Reps. Ron Paul (TX) and Walter Jones (NC), to send a letter to the President’s Deficit Commission urging it to “subject military spending to the same rigorous scrutiny that non-military spending will receive. … We strongly believe that any deficit reduction package must contain significant cuts to the military budget.”

Now, I don't expect draconian cuts at all, but even so, I'm proud that two of the Republican Senators I supported this fall--Rand Paul and Mark Kirk--are in this group.