Retiring Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R- 25th District) on Monday blasted the new defense department budget proposed by Secretary Chuck Hagel as trying to “…solve our financial problems on the backs of our military—and that can’t be done.”
McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, spoke before the National Press Club criticizing the Obama Administration for not speaking enough about the war in Afghanistan and voiced disapproval about the proposed reductions in defense spending. Key components of the new Pentagon proposal include reducing Army personnel between 440,000 and 450,000 persons—a 10 percent deeper cut than originally planned and the lowest level since 1940 when it had 267,000 active members. Hagel said the current troop level of 520,000 is bigger than necessary and “…larger than we can afford” to modernize and keep ready. “Our analysis showed that this force would be capable of decisively defeating aggression in one major combat theater,” Hagel said, “while defending the homeland and supporting air and naval forces engaged in another theater against an adversary.”
The new budget asks for $522 billion—more than China, Russia and Great Britain combined—and is expected to face stiff opposition on Capitol Hill, especially since troops remain on the ground in Afghanistan and with rising instability in the Middle East.
McKeon said Monday that the American people know the war in Afghanistan is going badly, but the Obama Administration’s reliance on polls and media coverage do not tell the full story. He said the Taliban has reformed into a more powerful adversary and has regained entire segments of territory once liberated by American forces. The White House, he said, has remained mum regarding these findings.
“Why on earth will he not take credit for his own strategy?” McKeon asked. “At the beginning of the Obama presidency, less than 30 percent of Americans thought the Afghanistan war was a mistake. Just last week—and for the first time ever—Gallup found a majority of Americans now believe the war was in error. Counterinsurgencies have two fronts—the one out there, and the one right here. The troops have held their line out there. The president has not held the line here. By eroding public support for the war, the president has cost himself political capital that could have been used to solve a number of problems. It’s not much to ask, that every once in a while, we hear from our Commander-in-Chief.”
In a June 2013 op-ed piece for the Washington Post, McKeon said that when readiness is low, the threat to U.S. national security is high.
“There have been three rounds of defense cuts in the past four years,” McKeon wrote, noting that then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ effort was a “successful failure” and that a purported $300 billion in savings originally intended to support deployed forces in the Middle East was, in effect, “snatched away” by Obama to fund domestic programs. “Most of the money authorized for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has gone to our deployed forces. But some of it has gone toward restoring readiness—fixing tanks, repairing ships and resetting equipment damaged in combat—but the White House has snipped this budgetary lifeline. The Obama Administration’s fiscal 2013 war funding request was short by approximately $12 billion. About the same time the Defense Department was issuing furlough notices to nearly 800,000 people, the White House revised its request and slashed the defense budget by an additional $5 billion.”
McKeon has promoted boosting missile defense spending, funding for the F-22 fighter jet and restoring the House tradition of passing defense authorization bills without controversial social items. McKeon founded the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus which helps to educate members of Congress and the public about the strategic, tactical and scientific value of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or “drones.”
“In the last few years, we’ve changed our strategy that has stood us well since World War II—that we should be able to be equipped, ready to [fight] two major contingencies at a time,” McKeon continued on Monday. “We’ve cut that back to ‘fight one, hold one.’ Maybe people have kind of not heard that speech that the president gave when we cut our strategy back.”
McKeon announced in January that will not seek reelection in 2014 after nearly 21 years on Capitol Hill.
