House GOP Defense Bill Calls For Billions More In Defense Spending Than Obama Plan

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — In an election-year challenge to President Barack Obama, House Republicans are pressing ahead with a defense budget that adds billions of dollars, boosts nuclear weapons programs and slows cost-cutting reductions in the force as the military emerges from two long wars.

Republicans argue that the Democratic president is shortchanging the military and leaving the nation vulnerable, requiring billions more for defense. In a reversal earlier this year, the GOP abandoned the spending levels for defense and domestic programs set last summer in the deficit-cutting agreement between Obama and Congress. They boosted defense spending by $8 billion and offset the increase with deep cuts in safety-net programs for the poor such as Medicaid and food stamps.

The budget "helps ensure the Pentagon's new national security defense strategy is not a hollow one. And, despite historic cuts to our wartime military, it plugs critical capability and strategic shortfalls opened in the president's budget submission," Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday at the start of three days of debate. Final passage is expected on Friday.

But the GOP political argument that Obama is soft on defense has less resonance with voters after the killing of Osama bin Laden, repeated drone strikes in the war on terror and a weakened al-Qaida. Opinion surveys show that Americans give the president high marks on national security.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/defense-budget-house-gop_n_1523877.html?ref=politics

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The Republican idea of 'less spending': Boost defense spending by offsetting the increase with deep cuts in safety-net programs for the poor such as Medicaid and food stamps.