Rep. Todd Akin joins Fred Grandy inside the Cloakroom to discuss the defense cuts caused by the Supercommittee’s failure to agree on sufficient deficit reduction measures. Before the sequestration cuts, DOD has already cut somewhere between $450-$600 billion, which is the equivalent of 45 aircraft carriers. This is already a huge cut before the Pentagon even gets to the sequestration cuts. There is a false idea that these cuts take place in 2013 and therefore do not apply to security today. The military is already making cuts today, in anticipation for the cuts in 2013. The Navy will be decommissioning 50 ships, taking the number of available ships down to 290. As recently as 1990, the Navy had almost doubled that number. Our military is about half of what it was in 1990; how can it provide adequate security? How can our navy patrol the globe with its size? 90% of all commerce travels through water; therefore, our navy must patrol the seas to provide security for those products. What can be done to help ensure national and global security? Are Obamacare and entitlements more important than security?
You can hear the rest of Rep. Todd Akin’s interview here and on today’s show post.