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Today's Poll!Hartzler: Defense spending must be budget priority
Rep. Vicky Hartzler says defense spending must be a budget priority. Photo by The Associated Press.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler voted against last summer’s budget deal because it “didn’t go far enough. I also didn’t like how they were balancing this budget on the backs of the military — immediately cutting $465 billion.”
But Hartzler, R-Harrisonville, told members of Jefferson City’s Downtown Rotary Club on Monday afternoon, that she’s even less happy, after the congressional “debt supercommittee” failed this month to agree on any plan to cut at least $1.2 trillion in spending — because the summer budget deal included a “sequestration” process to reduce military and other spending equally, if the supercommittee didn’t get to a final agreement.
“There (is to) be an additional $500 billion of cuts,” Hartzler said. “That’s almost a trillion dollars worth of cuts to our national defense. ...
“We’ve had multiple hearings in the (House) Armed Services Committee, and general after general has come forward and said that these amounts of cuts would hollow-out our forces and it would very much jeopardize our national security.”
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Comments
wow 1 year, 5 months ago
Politicians (Dem-Rep-Indep-TPtry- you name it) who have never "served" this nation a day in uniform or as an "elected official" are making some of the worst decisions ever. There's many different suspicions as to why this is happening and although there may be some disagreement on why this is so. It's clearly not the fault of one party or person, but even more importantly...it's got to stop.
I don't want to take money from anyone...but I also expect people to shoulder their fair share of the responsibility to help make and keep things right. It's not right that illegal immigration only refers to Mexican immigrants. It's not right for the rich to profit from tax scams, just as it's not right for those receiving public assistance to cheat the system. It's not right that our military/public safety members are expected to do more with less as our elected officials who don't work near as hard as the military/public safety folks, yet these elected officials continue getting their huge salaries, raises and other benefits! It's not right that we make our high school children take and pass a drug test before they can participate in a sport, yet we don't require our elected officials to take and pass the same test before they can begin working in politics.
It's clearly obvious that the people making the rules are always the ones or are the ones in the circle of the ones getting the biggest/best and some times the only benefit from the final outcome. How much longer is this going to go on?
JCLifer 1 year, 5 months ago
GREED.
evenkeel 1 year, 5 months ago
gosh, I agree with you wow. Knock me down with a feather.
How much longer is this going to go on?
I would say it is going to change when one of two things occur.
1. We will collapse from the burden of too much debt and too little free enterprise.
Or
2. We will return to the concept of a limited federal government that stays within the boundaries that the framers intended.
I'm hoping for the second, expecting the first.
tonto_goldberg 1 year, 5 months ago
There's way too much of the "same old, same old" in Ms. Hartzler's comments. The short version ..."We need to make a lot more cuts, just not in my jurisdiction." That's how our budget got in the shape it's in, and doing more of the same things we have done in the past is not going to make things better.
She does have nice teeth. Congratulations to her dentist.
It might be a good thing if the military was not robust enough to invade a third-world country, or two, or three at a time on trumped up evidence and flimsy fabricatioin. It might be a good thing if a bunch of those generals who are so concerned about a "hollowed-out" military had to retire. It might be a good thing if we limited our military investment to those parts of the world where we have a legitimate policy interest. It might be a good thing if we limited our military to the size we need to respond to the very few real threats we have in the world.
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