On Aug. 27, 2010, President Obama's then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said our national debt is "[t]he most significant threat to our national security." He then went on to point out that the interest on that debt in 2012 will approach the equivalent of the entire defense budget for a year. Apparently, as his new National Defense Strategy suggests, the president put those two ideas together and concluded that cutting the defense budget is the best way to eliminate the debt threat.
Moreover, President Obama's philosophy of leading from behind ignores the primary constitutional responsibility of the federal government - our national defense. In 1958, national defense spending was nearly 60 percent of the total federal budget. Today, it is just under 20 percent. The president is trying to convince you that military spending is the problem with our deficit, but clearly it is not.
More In contrast, I have committed to cut $5 trillion over five years in the areas that are the real problems for our national debt: non-defense related federal spending, including the much needed reform of entitlements like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
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