Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said yesterday if elected he intends to shield the Pentagon from planned spending cuts.
Romney, addressing the American Legion in Indianapolis, took aim at reductions brought about by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which both parties in Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed into law. The act cuts planned defense spending by $487 billion over 10 years, a reduction the Pentagon has included in its budget. The law also set in motion a process that could result in another $500 billion in so-called sequestration cuts to the defense budget over the next decade, which the Obama administration has not yet factored in its longterm spending plans.
Romney sought to blame the cuts on Obama, saying his administration “is set to cut defense spending by nearly $1 trillion.”
“My administration will not,” Romney told the military crowd. “Working together with my running mate, Paul Ryan, I will make reductions in other areas and install pro-growth policies to make sure that our country remains safe and secure. There are plenty of places to cut in a federal budget that now totals well over $3 trillion a year. But defense is not one of them.”
Obama opposes sequestration but has said he would veto legislation that would tinker with it, saying he wants Democrats and Republicans in Congress to agree on a new wide-reaching deficit-reduction plan to replace sequestration before the cuts are slated to start next January. Many lawmakers in both parties in Congress want to stop the $500 billion sequestration reduction but haven’t yet agreed on an alternate budget-cutting plan.
The Republican National Convention has been underway all week in Tampa, and delegates officially nominated Romney and Ryan on Tuesday. Ryan alluded to deficit-cutting negotiations during his acceptance speech last night but did not speak specifically about defense spending.
Ryan, though, told a defense-industry crowd in North Carolina last week that if Congress cannot agree this year on “a sequester-replacement bill,” he and Romney want to use a special procedure early next year to thwart the cuts retroactively. The Republican-led House has passed a bill that he supports to offset the first year of decade-long sequestration cuts by cutting politically sensitive areas including food stamps.
“In January our intention is, if we don’t fix it in the lame-duck (session of Congress after the November election and before the end of the year), is to fix it retroactively once a new session of Congress takes place,” Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, said Aug. 23. (Defense Daily, Aug. 24)
Romney told the Indianapolis American Legion yesterday that $1 trillion in defense cuts over a decade would “weaken the military…severely shrink our force structure, and impair our ability to meet and deter threats.”
“The devastation will be felt here at home, where up to 1.5 million jobs could be lost,” he said. “(Gross domestic product) GDP growth could fall significantly. These cuts will place further stress on an already stretched (Veterans Affairs) VA system, and impair our solemn commitment that every veteran receives care second to none.”
Romney maintained the nation’s “security and prosperity are connected.”
“Our ability to field the strongest fighting force in the world depends on the leaders in Washington who know how to set priorities, write real budgets, and protect our soldiers and their families from devastating cuts,” he said.
At the Republican National Convention last night, Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the country “can’t afford another $500 billion in cuts to our defense budget,” referring to sequestration reductions.
McCain charged Obama “is playing no leadership role in preventing this crippling blow to our military,” noting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta dubbed the cuts devastating.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told GOP convention delegates last night that U.S. “military capability and our technological advantage will be safe in Mitt Romney’s hands.”
Romney plans to make his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination tonight in Tampa.
The Democratic party plans to nominate Obama as its presidential pick next week at its convention in Charlotte, N.C.