U.S. Funds Pancakes, but Waffles on Defense

The President may be gutting our national defense budget, but don't worry. We may not have money for weapons, but Homeland Security just bought enough snow cone machines to fight the next cold war. Yesterday, President Obama stood at the Pentagon's podium and announced steep new cuts to the U.S. Defense Department. Although he wouldn't divulge exactly where the $487 billion would come from, the President is estimated to scale back the size of the Army and Marine Corps by more than 120,000, which will significantly impact security for all families--not to mention military families and their benefits. (To them, the message may as well be, "Thank you for your years of sacrifice. The unemployment line starts over there.") Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the new plan would also put the brakes on weapons development, missile defense, and America's nuclear force.

Clearly, the White House is looting national security to make room for its pricy liberal domestic agenda. And under the Budget Control Act, the Pentagon will be staring down another half-trillion dollars in cuts if Congress and the President can't reach a deal. "I'm sympathetic to the challenges that we face in terms of the deficit," former Secretary Robert Gates said last November. "But the truth of the matter is...the Department of Defense is not the problem." He's right. The White House is trying to balance the budget on the backs of the military, while domestic spending balloons out of control. It's like taking a hatchet to the military and using a butter knife on the rest of the budget.

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, is just one of the members who hit the ceiling over the President's approach. "This is a lead from behind strategy for a left-behind America," he said. "[It] ensures American decline in exchange for more failed domestic programs. In order to justify massive cuts to our military, he has revoked the guarantee that America will support our allies, defend our interests, and defy our opponents." While the country becomes more vulnerable, Obama's pet projects do not. By dismantling the military, the President has even more money to spend on friends like Planned Parenthood.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) understands how disingenuous the cuts are in light of the billions of dollars Washington throws away every day. He published an entire "Wastebook" of projects that Congress could end to make room for some of America's real needs. It seems the administration would rather disarm the troops than stop sending dough to a Texas pizza chain (p. 13). Want to understand the slippery slope of congressional spending? Stop by the $86,014 ski museum (p. 32). Or maybe we should couch our argument in the $862,000 cushion for furniture storage (p. 29). Between the Pakistani mango farmers (p. 4) and the $765,828 helping of D.C. pancakes (p. 7), it adds up to $6.5 billion in federal idiocy. This doesn't include the hundreds of billions wasted in federal agencies and programs every year. Which begs the question--why is the President shrinking the military if he can't even win a war on pork? Both Congress and the administration say they've exhausted their options for trimming the deficit. But after a year on the Oregon Cheese Trail (p. 30), surely they can Muenster up some courage to cut more. Otherwise, America's future is headed to the same place as Alaska's $15.3 million bridge: nowhere.

The Gumption of Presumption

Same-sex "marriage" is not just an attack on a traditional social institution--it's an attack on the order of nature itself. That was made clear again this week when an Iowa court ruled that a child whose mother was a lesbian "married" to a woman and whose father was an anonymous sperm donor should have both female "spouses" listed on the child's birth certificate. The ruling was based on a legal principle called "the presumption of paternity," which historically has stated that when a child is born to a married woman, her husband is presumed to be the father of that child. In other words, the law "presumed" what was almost always true. But in the wake of the Iowa Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex "marriage" in 2009, Judge Eliza Ovrom has twisted the "presumption of paternity" into a "presumption of parentage." So what was once a presumption of something that was nearly always biologically true has now become a "presumption" of something that is biologically impossible (since a child cannot have two genetic mothers). Ironically, homosexual activists are reporting that the court ordered that an "accurate" birth certificate be issued--when in fact they ordered issuance of a certificate that is inaccurate since it fails to list both the mother and father.

Sen. Santorum Guests on Washington Watch Weekly!

While he gears up for the New Hampshire primary, Sen. Rick Santorum made time to drop by the radio show to talk about his success in Iowa and the idea of inevitability in the presidential race. I'll also be joined by Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) to discuss the latest developments on Capitol Hill, including the payroll tax extension and the "Megabus." For more information or to find a radio station near you, check out FRCRadio.org.

** In the week before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, FRC's Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison talk about his legacy in their new Huffington Post column, "Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.: He Kept His Eyes on the Prize."