Democrats Propose Spending Cuts!?!

Although not generally known for being in favor of limiting the size of the federal government, to their credit liberal Democratic lawmakers are becoming increasingly boisterous about reducing the Pentagon's budget.

"A growing number of centrist Democrats say they’re open to trimming Pentagon spending in the face of record budget deficits and mounting public debt.

Liberal Democrats for years have called for cuts to the massive defense budget to no avail. Even after Democrats regained control of Congress in 2007, their few attempts at reining in defense spending have proven futile, partly because of opposition from centrist Democrats hawkish on defense issues.

Now that opposition is softening amid rising concern about the nation's fiscal future and the fact that defense makes up more than half the country’s discretionary spending.

“We are going to have to adopt the philosophy that nothing can be off the table,” said Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho), one of the first members of the class of 2008 to be admitted into the Blue Dog Coalition. “And that is increasingly becoming the dominant view of the Blue Dogs.”

I fully support a massive decrease to our defense budget (off the top of my head, a 75% cut sounds about right), and believe these lawmakers have it at least half right (although I'm sure if pressed they would admit a preference to taking the "savings" and spending it on yet another social program that would unfortunately create a host of unintended and unhelpful consequences, just like most of them).

What exactly are our troops doing in 150 countries, other than just our own? We all know what they're doing - they are propping up failed regimes, training local governments in the latest counter-insurgency techniques, inexplicably lingering around decades after World War II and the Korean War ended, and generally wasting US taxpayer money.

US troops should all be based here in the US, providing for our own national defense.

If all of tin-pot dictators around the world want to use US firepower and know-how to protect their own rear-ends, then let them hire Blackwater or some other private outfit and pay the going rate, and not rely on the US taxpayer to pay the bills for them.