If the Tea Party’s newly elected spokespeople really want to prove they are serious, they must dare to gore a familiar ox.
The best place to start? Pentagon budgets.
It’s not just me saying that. Just as Congress overspends domestically, it overspends militarily, primarily by what Cato Institute’s Downsizing the Federal Government website defines as “overreach”:
We would improve the nation’s security by adopting a more restrained and defensive strategy. We should cut the number of military personnel and reduce overseas deployments to save money and relieve burdens on military families.
But Cato’s a think tank. What say actual, elected Tea Party politicians?
Well, Sen. Tom Coburn recently wrote that “Taking defense spending off the table is indefensible.” Further, Senator Elect Rand Paul has called for a debate in the Senate and House over the war in Afghanistan. He started off by saying that Congress had proved lax in its duty to declare war, and then argued that the debate ten years ago on the Afghanistan intervention was not enough for the war’s continuation. He brought up a list of sensible concerns that require careful discussion.
Tea Party politicians should also see the political value of strategic disengagement from any number of worldwide hotspots. Or funding sinkholes, like Europe. Being the world’s policeman costs us dearly, in more ways than one. Were Republicans to rethink their traditional No Pentagon Budget Left Behind approach, Democrats might have less standing to oppose the domestic cuts that must be made.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.