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 At the risk of sounding like a broken record, earlier this week during a joint press conference in Washington, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said entitlement program spending is putting America is at risk. With entitlement programs consuming more than 60 percent of the federal budget, America cannot afford delays in reforms that would inevitably add to the pressure to shortchange national security funding.
The new debt super-committee, enacted as part of this month’s debt deal, is charged with reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the 10 years. Failure to achieve these savings would automatically trigger defense spending cuts with “devastating effects” for national defense, as Panetta once again argued.
The Heritage Foundation’s Mackenzie Eaglen explains that the draconian cuts to our armed forces would result in a military ill-equipped to sustain its mission at home and around the world.
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Secretary Panetta said any additional defense cuts—on top of the hundreds of billions over the past several years and hundreds of billions over the next 10 years—would result in a hollow force. The term “hollow force” describes the situation when readiness declines because the military does not have enough funding to provide trained and ready forces, support ongoing operations, and modernize simultaneously.Like a freshly painted house with no plumbing or wiring inside, the military may appear functional, but in reality it would be too poorly trained and equipped to be reliable without incurring excessive and unnecessary risk. |
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What are your thoughts on defense cuts? Continue reading on MyHeritage and be sure to leave your comments.
When asked why he’s a conservative, Heritage Young President’s Club member Tim Kachuriak responds, “I suppose the default answer is because I was raised that way. But it’s definitely not the same answer for my bride.”
Rebecca, Tim’s wife and a fellow Heritage Young President’s Club member, did not share the same conservative upbringing as her husband.
“Funny back-story, I was raised liberal,” Rebecca says. She admits she voted for Al Gore in 2000.
But despite differences in their ideological rearing, Tim and Rebecca have long held one fundamental belief in common: The sanctity of all human life. It is the pro-life cause that forms the core of their now shared conservative beliefs. After all, “without life,” Kachuriak explains, “all other issues are meaningless.”
For example, Tim, whose mother started the first crisis pregnancy center in his hometown, and whose father is an entrepreneur, successfully combined the lessons learned from his parents to start an innovative new internet program dedicated to saving unborn babies from abortion. The program Online for Life, now a year old, has verifiably saved 90 babies so far.
To find more on Tim and Rebecca and their efforts to promote conservatism among young Americans, visit MyHeritage today.
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