Mitt Romney (11/21/2011):
“They set this trap by saying we’re going to cut the military by $600 billion,” Romney said of the automatic cuts that would happen if the Super Committee did not reach a deal. “With the world that’s a dangerous place, we’re going to put the military on the chopping block. It’s like holding a gun to your own head. I can’t imagine the circumstance that ever makes any sense at all. Then with that as the possible outcome, you have a president who didn’t get involved in the process.”
Meanwhile in reality, this past week saw major developments in our actual military’s strategic and technological capabilities. First there was the announcement by President Obama that the United States will permanently station 2,500 Marines in Australia. Then, on that same day, the Army announced that they had successfully tested a hypersonic missile that can strike any location on earth within an hour. That doesn’t sound much like “holding a gun to your own head.”
We’re going to hear a whole lot of this type of rhetoric in the next few days by Republicans. The congressional super committee has broken their promise to reach a bi-partisan compromise that would lower our national debt. Instead of trying to reach an agreement that was made up of honest concessions by both party’s, the Republicans decided to reject any proposal that included tax increases for the rich. It doesn’t matter that two-thirds of those polled earning over $100,000 believe that millionaires should be taxed higher, or that a majority of Republican voters agree with this sentiment. None of that matters for the super-wealthy congress that doesn’t want to believe their eyes when they read the part of the constitution that say’s, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United State.”
And so now we’re going to have to hear politicians gripe about the draconian consequences of the “triggers” going into effect as if they didn’t have an alternative. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are going to take pot shots at Obama for failing to “lead” and for making our country “weak”. The Super-Committee will release phony statements that include sentences such as, ”Despite our inability to bridge the committee’s significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation’s fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve.”
The only thing that our representatives are not going to say is “sorry” – sorry for manufacturing a crisis and for being too incompetent to manufacture a solution.