No surprise that Brookings' Michael O'Hanlon would offer his take on Secretary Gates' analysis of the Pentagon's budget. But what is a surprise--no, odd-- is that he used the Tea Party to talk about it. In his Politico opinion piece today, "On defense, what tea party gets right," O'Hanlon invokes the Tea Party as those who serve as the model for forward and big picture thinking on the defense budget.
Right now, the nation is at war, the economy still needs major stimulus, and there is no consensus on cutting the rest of the federal budget. This is no moment for big reductions.
But in a broader sense, some members of the tea party — as well as some liberal Democrats — understand correctly that bigger questions await. Now is the time to begin using congressional hearings to air ideas about how the nation might, in the future, consider deeper cuts to its defense budget as part of an integrated program of fiscal reform and deficit reduction.
The budget radicals are right — our national debt predicament is dire. As Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has noted, the debt has begun to pose a direct threat to national security.
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