A key choice in 2012: Defense or food stamps?

The president has made no secret of his desire to gut the military and the current budget showdown in just another example of  Obama's unwavering agenda. Mackenzie Eaglen writes about the debate between funding the military and expanding food stamps in the Wall Street Journal this week:

Washington is battling these days over "sequestration," the $500 billion additional cut to the defense budget looming in January. The White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill insist that intransigent Republicans are risking cuts that no one wants. This is a charade. By his own admission, President Obama has always wanted to cut the defense budget dramatically.

In April 2011—long before the near shutdown of the government and the last-minute debt-ceiling deal, which paved the way for sequestration—the president outlined $400 billion in defense cuts he had already approved. He also said that he wanted to "do that again" and find another $400 billion in military spending reductions. All this without any talk of threats, strategy or requirements—just arbitrary budget targets imposed on the military.

It's clear that Mr. Obama prioritizes sundry domestic spending programs over the defense budget. That budget "is so big," he said last July, "that you can make relatively modest changes to defense that end up giving you a lot of head room to fund things like basic research or student loans or things like that." He added later: "A lot of the spending cuts that we're making should be around areas like defense spending as opposed to food stamps."

Even before sequestration and the possible loss of a half-trillion dollars, the U.S. military has seen three years of budget cuts. The consequences are already here. We have to look all the way back to 1916 to find a year when the Air Force purchased fewer aircraft than are included in Mr. Obama's 2013 budget request.

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