Political Republican Opinion:
In the first part of the series comparing John McCain and Barack Obama on the issues, The Political Republican Opinion Blog will focus on national defense. As was stated in the introductory article to the Comparing McCain and Obama series, the two presidential candidates differ widely on many of their positions and this isn’t any exception.
The purpose of this series is not to necessarily show how the candidates differ on the minutia of any given issue, but to show how their positions will impact American taxpayers. When a candidate’s position indicates an increase in spending, the word “INCREASE” will appear, followed by the projected dollar amount, if stated. When a policy results in a decrease in spending or a tax cu or rebate, the word “DECREASE” will appear, followed by the projected dollar amount, if stated. If there appears to be no increase or decrease, “NEITHER” will appear. The Political Republican Opinion Blog will interject comments from time to time when warranted (it is an opinion blog), as well. That said; let’s take a look at the candidates’ positions:
Military Size
Barack Obama feels we need to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marines by 27,000 troops. He states that “increasing our end strength will help units retrain and re-equip properly between deployments and decrease the strain on military families.” INCREASE: dollar amount unknown.
John McCain also believes that our existing force is overstretched, adding, “recruitment and retention suffer from extended overseas deployments that keep service personnel away from their homes and families for long periods of time.” INCREASE: dollar amount unknown.
Political Republican Opinion: Here Barack Obama defines the size of increase while McCain does not. How Obama arrives at this figure appears arbitrary but both men seem to agree on this issue. Both are increasing spending on this aspect of national defense.
Taking Care of Military Personnel and their Families
Barack Obama will create a “Military Families Advisory Board to provide a conduit for military families’ concerns to be brought to the attention of senior policymakers and the public … and establish predictability in deployments so that active duty and reserves know what they can and must expect.” INCREASE: dollar amount unknown.
John McCain will continue to fight for “improved military pay and benefits, and an improved quality of life for military families” and will keep working to “ensure that benefits for deployed Reservists and National Guardsmen are brought in line with our active-duty military forces.” INCREASE: dollar amount unknown.
Political Republican Opinion: Both candidates will increase spending in this regard, but in different ways. Obama’s increase is in the size and cost of government while McCain’s spending increase goes directly to the troops. Although John McCain’s increase will probably be greater than Barack Obama’s, at least the money will be going to those soldiers and their families who are enduring the burden of protecting America and the country’s interests.
Equipping our Military
Barack Obama says he believes we must fully support our troops by getting “vitally needed equipment to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines before lives are lost.” He specifically points out the need to ensure that armored vehicles, body armor and unmanned aerial vehicles are available in order to reduce casualties. INCREASE: dollar amount unknown.
John McCain believes that America must have the “best-manned, best-equipped, and best-supported military in the world.” He states that this “requires addressing force protection needs to make sure that America’s combat personnel have the best safety and survivability equipment available.” INCREASE: dollar amount unknown.
Political Republican Opinion: This is where things begin to go awry for Barack Obama. It is always best to judge a man by his deeds and not simply by his words. In May of 2007, Barack Obama voted against a $120 billion appropriation bill, mostly for war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan that would have helped to provide American troops with much of the sorely needed equipment they were lacking. Only thirteen other Senators voted against this desperately needed funding. John McCain was not one of them.
Missile Defense
Barack Obama says his administration “will support missile defense, but ensure that it is developed in a way that is pragmatic and cost-effective; and, most importantly, does not divert resources from other national security priorities until we are positive the technology will protect the American public.” DECREASE?: dollar amount unknown.
John McCain is a strong advocate of missile defense, both nationally and internationally. He believes that “effective missile defenses are critical to protect America from rogue regimes like North Korea that possess the capability to target America with intercontinental ballistic missiles, from outlaw states like Iran that threaten American forces and American allies with ballistic missiles, and to hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China.” NEITHER an increase nor decrease in dollars spent.
Political Republican Opinion: It’s hard to determine by either of the candidates’ statements whether they believe in an increase or decrease in spending on missile defense. John McCain’s position seems to be the status quo, so there may actually be no increase in spending for missile defense systems. Barack Obama’s statement is even more perplexing; it’s hard to tell what it really means. It sounds like double speak for “we’ll look at it if it doesn’t cost any money for you to prove that it works.” If it is somehow proven reliable to his satisfaction, is he saying he will then divert resources away from other “national security priorities” in order to fund the systems? If that is the case, his position is truly terrifying!
Modernizing the Armed Services
Barack Obama believes that we must “build up our special operations forces, civil affairs, information operations, and other units and capabilities that remain in chronic short supply; invest in foreign language training, cultural awareness, and human intelligence and other needed counterinsurgency and stabilization skill sets; and create a more robust capacity to train, equip, and advise foreign security forces, so that local allies are better prepared to confront mutual threats.” Obama further states that we need “greater investment in advanced technology” for our Air Force “recapitalize” our Navy by replacing aging vessels with “smaller, more capable ships, providing the agility to operate close to shore and the reach to rapidly deploy Marines to global crises.” Additionally, Barack Obama will seek a “worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites [and] work in cooperation with our allies and the private sector to identify and protect against emerging cyber-threats.” INCREASE: dollar amount unknown.
John McCain believes that we need to adapt “our doctrine, training, and tactics for the kind of conflicts we are most likely to face … [which] calls not just for a larger and more capable military, but for a new mix of military forces, including civil affairs, special operations, and highly mobile forces capable of fighting and prevailing in the conflicts America faces.” He also believes in “procuring advanced weapons systems” and that our new, more modern military “will be engaged in, among other things, counter insurgency, counter terrorism, missile defense, counter proliferation and information warfare.” INCREASE: dollar amount unknown.
Political Republican Opinion: Both of the candidates believe that our military personnel need to be trained in new tactics in order to defeat our enemies and to prevent attacks. Both also believe in investing in advanced weapons systems and technology. Senator Obama’s plan to retrofit the Navy would obviously result in a HUGE spending increase that is not advocated by John McCain on his website. I also wonder how Barack Obama plans to get countries that wish to do us harm from interfering with our military satellites just because we “banned” it. Furthermore, I would contend that a vast majority of the perpetrators of cyber crime may not necessarily be “our allies.”
Smarter Defense Spending
Barack Obama believes we need to “Create Transparency for Military Contractors” and “Restore Honesty, Openness, and Commonsense to Contracting and Procurement.” He states that the nation will “realize savings by reducing the corruption and cost overruns that have become all too routine in defense contracting.” He wants to “end the practice of no-bid contracting … end the abuse of supplemental budgets by creating a system of oversight for war funds as stringent as in the regular budget [and] develop a strategy for determining when contracting makes sense, rather than continually handing off governmental jobs to well-connected companies.” DECREASE: dollar amount unknown.
John McCain supports “significant reform in our defense acquisition process to ensure that dollars spent actually contribute to U.S. security [and has] worked aggressively to reform the defense budgeting process to ensure that America enjoys the best military at the best cost.” He also feels “that our nation’s military spending, except in time of genuine emergency, must be funded by the regular appropriations process, not by “emergency” supplementals that allow defense to be funded outside the normal budget cycle.” John McCain has always been a strong opponent of pork-barrel spending - especially when it comes to the defense budget - adding that “unauthorized earmarks drain our precious defense resources and adversely affect our national security.” DECREASE: dollar amount unknown.
Political Republican Opinion: Both of the candidates have the same positions on this issue and no American (save for executives at Halliburton, perhaps) would argue with spending our tax dollars more wisely. One can only wonder what the administrative costs associated with overseeing this commonsense practice will be. Unfortunately, many morally bankrupt politicians and defense contractors cannot see their patriotic duty because of the giant dollar signs that it hides behind.
Conclusion
It doesn’t seem like a lot of cost-cutting will be going on in the defense department. In fact, it looks like there may very well be quite an increase in spending by both candidates. One can only wonder how much that increase will be and how either candidate can claim to have a position on fixing the economy without discussing the costs associated with programs that they advocate. Maybe their stances on the other issues will be more specific in that regard (I doubt it). Until I compared both men’s positions side by side, however, I never would have guessed that Barack Obama might be the candidate who planned to spend the most on defense!
Next up in the Comparing McCain and Obama Series: The Economy and Taxes … coming soon!
Recent Comments