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J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, right, accompanied by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, testifies on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Smaller defense budgets proposed by Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will cancel some made-in-America ships, airplanes and unmanned aerial vehicles and slow down the purchase of others.
The Obama budget also threatens to shut manufacturing and repair facilities, such as the 212-year old Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which sits on an island between Maine and New Hampshire.
Obama’s budget blueprint calls for defense outlays to drop by 5 percent over the next two years, and fall from 19 percent of federal spending this year to 13 percent by 2022.
In a four-hour hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, Panetta defended his call for fewer ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other hardware.
But he faced concerns and criticism from both Republicans and Democrats on the committee -- about the threat to blue-collar manufacturing and repair jobs as well to national security.
Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., told Panetta that “perhaps most disturbing of all” was the fact that at a time when U.S. strategy is increasingly focusing on East Asia and the Pacific, “this budget would reduce shipbuilding by 28 percent.”
Sen. Roger Wicker, R- Miss., whose state is home to the Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, pointed to the 8.3 percent unemployment rate and noted that Obama’s budget proposal has various job creation ideas -- such as transportation infrastructure -- in it.
The Grio's Perry Bacon, Former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, and the Huffington Post's Jon Ward discuss the latest political news, including the GOP candidates' public comments about the President's budget.
“It makes no sense to me -- at a time when there is an effort to create more jobs with other spending -- to cut defense spending, which gives us the ‘two-fer’ of protecting the country and protecting the industrial base, which is a whole lot of Americans working to provide us with the infrastructure we need,” Wicker said. “It is a fact, is it not, that this budget will have an adverse effect on our industrial base?”
Panetta replied, “We’ve taken a lot of steps to try to protect against that happening, because we absolutely have to protect our industrial base and those industries that support the defense budget. We can’t afford to lose any more and, for that reason, we design an approach that will keep them in business …”
But keep them in business with fewer manufacturing jobs, Wicker noted.
“There will be, I understand that, and that does have some impact,” Panetta admitted.
Later in the hearing, pressed by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Panetta said he would make sure that “we keep our industrial base busy, serving our needs.”
“Once that industrial base is gone, you never get it back and once those trained workers go into other fields you’ve lost them forever,” Collins told Panetta. “And that would greatly weaken our capabilities.”
When Panetta served as a House member from California in 1991, he saw BRAC first hand when the BRAC commission closed Ft. Ord near Monterey, costing more than 16,000 jobs.
President Barack Obama's newly-proposed 2013 budget, has been criticized by Republicans as a political document in an election year – calling it "dead on arrival." Economist Greg Ip takes a closer look at Obama's plan“I’ve been through the process; frankly I don’t wish the process on anybody,” he told Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D- N.H., who was defending the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
“Twenty five percent of my local economy was hit by virtue of a BRAC closure,” Panetta told her. But he said the community did use the closing as an opportunity to develop a college campus.
“I see very little support for the president’s proposal on BRAC,” Collins said, in an interview during a break in the hearing.
“If you look at the GAO reports on the last BRAC round, it has turned out to cost the government money, rather than saving money -- at least for the first five years. So I think there’s a great deal of skepticism both about the savings that would be produced and also whether there really is excess capacity.”
She said she did not think Congress would vote to launch another BRAC round. Portsmouth was on the hit list in 2005, but the BRAC commission overrode the Pentagon recommendation that it be closed. “Tony Principi, the BRAC chairman at the time, described Portsmouth Naval Shipyard as ‘the gold standard in naval yards.’”
The economic impact of closing the shipyard would huge in southern Maine, Collins said: “It’s a major employer in York County and beyond York County. Half the workers are from New Hampshire -- it affects both states”
In bipartisan accord was her Democratic neighbor, Shaheen who said after hearing, “The number one priority is national security. The Portsmouth Naval shipyard was created … because of national security – but there are a lot of good jobs there. To look at the equation without factoring that in, along with costs, would be shortsighted.”
One dissenter on the committee was Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., who said he did not consider defense manufacturing as “a job creator for America.” He also said he does think it’s necessary to consider another BRAC round -- “as hard as that is for my colleagues.”
Tompom
#1 - Tue Feb 14, 2012 4:54 PM EST
Greg-621390
Tompom
Defense is over half of the discretionary spending in the budget. I understand big ships are pretty vulnerable to anyone with a motorboat and a missile, or an airplane etc. They are handy to get large numbers of troops to foreign countries - but there are probably other viable options options that are at least as quick and cheaper.
Building expensive, outdated behemoths just to create jobs doesn't seem like a very good idea to me. If we sink our economy to produce expensive toys today, we won't have any power tomorrow.
Building expensive, outdated behemoths just to create jobs doesn't seem like a very good idea to me. If we sink our economy to produce expensive toys today, we won't have any power tomorrow.
- 95 votes
Greg-621390
All these politicians care about is making it look like they give a hoot about the people who put them in office. Most of them own stocks in the companies that are pillaging the government at every turn. Everyone knows that the whole acquisition system for DOD is a complete disaster and ends up costing tax payers more and more each year. Notice of course that all but one of the negative comments come from republicans that have facilities on the chopping block. This is all part of the pork barrel spending that everyone complains about yet, when it comes to something like this, the President is an a$$. Perhaps if Congress gave the President line item veto authority, there could be a more direct approach at killing these BS pork barrel projects that every member of Congress wants in the budget. Just as many posts have stated: it seems that the 97% has been forced to make cuts over the past couple years in order to live within their means and just to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. But, this isn't the case with the government. So, we can do one of two things make budget cuts or raise taxes, otherwise the deficit will continue to rise. So, as most of the American public has been forced to cut out about every enjoyment in life that they had in order to survive it's time for others that have been making huge profits to pick up their fair share of the burden. Congress needs to overhaul taxes and place more of a burden on the top 3%, who have been living high on the hog at the expense of the other 97%. Then, they need to look at tax reform for businesses. If they choose to build there products overseas and then bring them to the US I say put a tariff on them. This includes tariffs on all the call center jobs that companies like AT&T have shifted overseas. If businesses aren't going to choose to bring jobs back to America, then make it less lucrative for them and better for the rest of us. 50% of this nation lives in poverty and the lowest economic class, there is no reason why those who live in their million dollar homes and go out and spend $500 on a meal at a restaurant, shouldn't have to pull their weight. I believe in the security of our nation otherwise, I wouldn't have spent 21 years in uniform but, perhaps instead of playing police for the world and having bases all over the place that cost billions of dollars a year to run with foreign workers maybe we need to bring our troops back to the US, place them all around the nation providing better security within our borders and let the government spend money running bases that employ Americans, who will pay US taxes. Hell, we still don't have a budget for the fiscal year that began October 1st, does anyone really think that the current Congress can come to any compromise? I say vote them all out and let's look at a fresh start.
william whittemore-3007421
#1.16 - Tue Feb 14, 2012 6:09 PM EST
william whittemore-3007421
Yeah, Tompon is out of touch a little bit and has no idea what he is talking about. All you have to do is do a little past history research to find out that after every war the government cut back on the military and defense spending. Guess what happened when we got caught up in another war? We were caught with our pants down and lacking the resources to fight the modern battlefield. The Navy has to be stronger than the other services. It cost a lot of money to send troops and equipment from point A to point B. Also, our adversaries aren't waiting for us to catch up with them in the technology department. The Navy punches a hell of a lot of firepower whether you know it or not. Especially the submarines.
- 15 votes
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