Cut Spending First

Cutting taxes hasn’t done anymore to reduce the size of the federal government than cutting the size of the military has done to reduce its operational tempo, and the burden of multiple deployments and time away from family faced by our men and women in uniform. We have the greatest military the world over, and the finest citizen soldiers in our nation’s history. Our Guard and Reserve units are every bit as capable and effective as their active duty counterparts. They are an integral part of the total force. But these units are the reserve, to be used in a time of “national emergency.” Yet Guard and Reserve units have served tours of duty even longer than those of other active duty units. The continual deployment rotations sending some service members on their third or even fourth tour lead me to one of two conclusions. Either our active duty force isn’t large enough to do everything we ask of it, or we have our forces spread too far, and too thin around the globe, at far too much cost to the taxpayer and to our service members away from home. We have troops in over 130 countries, over 700 bases. We shouldn’t be defending the world; we can’t afford it, neither in blood nor treasure. And we can’t afford to be cutting taxes in the midst of a war and expect we’ll be able to pay for all of our military misadventures around the world.