When the President gives Americans the bad news tomorrow,

[sad sally]

will he mention his three wars? Will serious cuts to military spending be on the table? With the Defense Dept pressuring Iraq to leave tens of thousands of troops there, which will require changes to the 2008 agreement or a new UN mandate; surges/additional military strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and demands by the freedom fighters in Libya who say the US needs to provide more air and ground support, what sacrifices will he ask Americans to make in order to maintain the war status quo?

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2011/0412/Libya-turmoil-highlights-US-military-spending.-Next-step-cuts?du

Odyssey Dawn is thus important to the budget debate not because of its initial costs, but because it puts military spending back in the headlines, where it belongs. The real money in defense, however, lies elsewhere.

This year the US will spend about $110 billion in Afghanistan and $44 billion in Iraq. Regular defense spending is even larger, at about $550 billion. Military spending will total more than $700 billion this year.

That spending gets far less scrutiny than it deserves. Discussions of our long-run budget challenges usually emphasize the big entitlement programs – Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – and the need for new revenues. Congressional budget debates, meanwhile, have bogged down on the sliver of spending that goes to domestic discretionary programs.

Defense should be on the table as well. Military spending has more than doubled over the past decade. Some of that increase has been necessary to respond to the 9/11 attacks and the new challenges they revealed. But not all. Some of the increase has simply been excess.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made this clear in remarks in January. Because of the dramatic expansion of the Pentagon budget, he said, "We've lost our ability to prioritize, to make hard decisions, to do tough analysis, to make trades."

We also have embarrassingly little ability to track that spending. When the Government Accountability Office recently audited the government's finances, it concluded – as it has for many years – that the Defense Department's books are so poorly kept that they can't be audited. Taxpayers are thus giving $700 billion a year to an organization that can't prioritize and can't tell us where the money is going. That's unacceptable.

With military intervention in Libya front and center, Congress should use this moment as inspiration for reviewing the defense budget. President Obama's fiscal commission and the Domenici-Rivlin debt-reduction task force (on which I served) recommended substantial cuts in defense spending as part of large deficit reduction efforts. Those cuts could reduce our national debt by $1 trillion over the next decade without compromising our security. Congress should act on them.

[Poll_Blind]

1. A U.S. soldier and a member of the Taliban could appear out of nowhere, grappling, during his speech

And all he would do is push them out of frame and continue not talking about the goddamned wars.

PB

[somone]

2. What wars?

[cognoscere]

3. He'll be too busy telling us how imperative it is to let Medicare and

Social Security be privatized so they can survive. Hmmm....all kinds of people have proven that those two programs are successful and self-funding and would continue to be so if the fucking mega-rich would pay what taxes they should, so I guess he'll just be lying.

[PurityOfEssence]

4. Let's hear what he has to say.

We've been told how he'll turn and fight one day...

[inna]

5. well, Purity, you don't mind if we make some educated guesses here, do you.

it's sort of what discussion boards/internet forums (fori?) are for, anyway.

[Blue_In_AK]

6. If he doesn't turn and fight soon,

even his staunchest supporters on DU and elsewhere will have a hard time defending him. I think we've come to the point where a line needs to be drawn in the sand (actually, I think we came to that point some time ago). If he doesn't do it, if he capitulates to the right on these very important decades-old social contracts, what are we going to do? Can he really call himself a Democrat at that point?

I do hope that he finally forcefully stands up and fights for the vast majority of American people who are not millionaires. No more compromises! He likes to take a stand-offish approach, but he's the PRESIDENT, for God's sake. Why doesn't he LEAD?