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Grover Norquist, the anti-tax zealot, has become an ally in the fight to cut the military budget. He criticized the two day-old Romney/Ryan ticket yesterday, for the fact that they would increase defense spending:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his would-be vice president Paul Ryan, and defense hawks in Congress are wrong that savings can’t be found in the U.S. defense budget, according to Grover Norquist, the influential president of Americans for Tax Reform, who said that he will fight using any new revenues to keep military spending high.
“We can afford to have an adequate national defense which keeps us free and safe and keeps everybody afraid to throw a punch at us, as long as we don’t make some of the decisions that previous administrations have, which is to over extend ourselves overseas and think we can run foreign governments,” Norquist said Monday at an event at the Center for the National Interest, formerly the Nixon Center [...]
“Other people need to lead the argument on how can conservatives lead a fight to have a serious national defense without wasting money,” Norquist said. “I wouldn’t ask Ryan to be the reformer of the defense establishment.”
Norquist is really condemning the Obama Administration as much as he does Ryan-Romney here. His fear is that increases in taxes will be used to stop the defense sequester from happening. This has been endorsed by Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham at various points, and could end up being the final resolution, depending on who wins the election. Romney has called for a delay to the sequester cuts, I believe on the defense and non-defense sides, for a year, to give space for tax reform.
But this is what Norquist has argued against. He believes that the sequester ought to go through, and that the Pentagon will need to make do with less. That opinion is widely shared, at least on the principle that the country can make it spending slightly less than the rest of the world combined on the military, as opposed to more than the rest of the world combined. It’s just an inch below the leadership level, so the perspective rarely gets heard. But if Norquist goes hard with this opinion, you’re going to see a significant part of the tea party House agree with it. And I think liberals are already there with the idea that nominal tax increases should not just get shoveled into the gaping maw of the military.
Norquist sounded confident that the tax-writing committees would not agree to these military expenditures as a location for tax increases. In one respect, this whole speech is even better than it looks, because Norquist actually concedes some increases in revenues here in a roundabout way. But more to the point, it’s good news for those who want to see reductions in the military.
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We literally spend more every year air-conditioning tents in Iraq and Afghanistan than we do on NASA.
Sounds like some ass saving is starting.
They are not completely delusional.
How are they going to sell cutting Social Security and Medicare to “save it” while they say they want to increase the 1 trillion dollar a year military budget?
The serfs might say enough.
So here we go. Let the illusion that they are “slashing” the military budget through sequestration begin. It is all about pointing fingers anyhow.
For the military they will blame the Democrats and Obama for u”slashing” the military budget and for the people who they are telling that Social Security and Medicare need to be cut to save they will claim Republicans are looking out for them.
Win win for tools of the elite.
Kabuki Show Time on steroids!! w00t! Grover grovels about cutting Military spending? I. Don’t. Believe. It.
I’ll only believe what happens. Political posturing during campaign season counts for: ZIP, NADA, ZERO, BUPKISS, NOTHING. Fahgeddaboudit.
Thanks for the post, however, as it’s, uh, “amusing” in a weird kind of way.
WTF! I’m beyond caring what his motivation is because Norquist actually wields considerable power over our (s)elected representatives and any reduction in the MIC war budget and meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations is good policy.
Wouldnt cutting the Millitary budget at this time be the kind of stupid, contractionary, “austerian” move that would be bad for the economy? Norquistian pro-cyclism? Especially since they are cutting spending everywhere else and any cuts to the millitary budget are garunteed not to be the kind that will end the multitude of wars, or change the culture of generally, absurdly high levels of millitary spending – any cuts to “millitary spending” at this time are likley to be cuts to spending on lower level personell and services that kill jobs (base closings) and not the contractor welfare (unneeded,unwanted weapons systems)OR the graft and corruption (payments in the millions to the freinds and famillies of Afghan puppet politiicans) – regardless of anything norquist is saying.
I have a possible solution to the military spending issue:
You want the US troops to protect you? Pony up. We won’t do it for free anymore. Not only do we put our troops in harm’s way at our own expense, but then there’s foreign aid to support the residents while we’re protecting them.
That should stop.
If troops are needed, as in South Korea for example, then South Korea needs to pay for the presence.
You’d be surprised how quickly our troops would no longer be in demand. And if they are, the American taxpayer wouldn’t have to foot the bill.
Watch defense expenditures drop like a rock from the top of the Sears tower.
Norquists see’s his high paid gig slowly slippy through his greasy palms!
You got that right.
Norquist is running scared.
You act as if USA,Inc. isn’t trying to expand our military presence and attribute this to the desires of the countries where we establish bases. How do you explain the deployment of US troops to Australia and H. Clinton trying to convince Ecuador to allow the US to re-establish a US military presence? That foreign aid you reference generally requires that the nation receiving it use the funds to purchase weapons from the US. Our presence in foreign nations isn’t to protect them, it’s to feed US hegemony and protect corporations.
The Republican idea of military cuts is surely reductions in pay for enlisted personnel. Like Wal-Mart, they’re happy if buck privates are poor enough to qualify for food stamps.(yes, I know they would never get food stamps, since they can be fed on-base. But their families can.)
USA Troops in foreign countries have almost NOTHING to do with providing that country with aid or protection or defense. It has nearly EVERYTHING to do with USA Imperialism and using some foreign country to further inure to the benefit of making the 1% richer.
A lot of other countries don’t really want Team USA located on their fair shores. Just ask the citizens of Okinawa how they feel about the troops.
The truth is you cannot have global trade with out an empire to enforce the trade routes. We just took over from the British Empire.
The only allegiance these trans-national corporations and Republicans have is to keeping our military global and not pay for it in taxes.