Coburn Boldly Calls For Cutting Pentagon’s ‘Sacred Cows’: ‘Taking Defense Spending Off The Table Is Indefensible’ 5NOV10 from THINKPROGRESS

CAN it be true????? Will Sen. Coburn force the gop to take this sort of action in Congress or will they cave to pressure from the military-industrial complex? From ThinkProgress...

This morning, conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has an op-ed in the Washington Examiner titled “What Republicans Can Accomplish In The 112th Congress.” In the op-ed, Coburn lays out a legislative agenda that he thinks Republicans should pursue in the new Congress. Many of these are boilerplate conservative ideas, like refusing to raise the debt ceiling and relying entirely on spending cuts instead.
Yet at one point, Coburn breaks with many of his Republican colleagues — and his party’s own much-touted “Pledge For America” — by calling for cuts to the defense budget. He writes that “Republicans also should resist pressure to take all defense spending cuts off the table.” He advocates for taking “common sense steps like freezing defense spending until the Pentagon can pass an audit and remove all nondefense spending from the Pentagon’s budget.” Coburn concludes that “taking defense spending off the table is indefensible. We need to protect our nation, not the Pentagon’s sacred cows“:

Republicans also should resist pressure to take all defense spending cuts off the table. Newly elected Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky had the courage to say he’d go after defense waste during his campaign, and I look forward to working with him.
We should start by taking common sense steps like freezing defense spending until the Pentagon can pass an audit and remove all nondefense spending from the Pentagon’s budget. Our nation’s military leaders understand the need to cut spending.
As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “Our national debt is our biggest national security threat.” History shows that every nation eventually adopts the foreign policy it can afford. Taking defense spending off the table is indefensible. We need to protect our nation, not the Pentagon’s sacred cows.

As Coburn notes with his praise for Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY), he isn’t the only Senate Republican calling for reining in the military budget. Paul told PBS’s Gwen Ifil last month that that cutting defense spending “has to be on the table.” The same month, Pennsylvania candidate Pat Toomey criticized Congress for voting for “programs the Pentagon doesn’t even want.” The week before, Illinois Senator-elect Mark Kirk said we need “across-the-board” reductions in defense spending. Earlier that same month, Johnny Isakson (R-GA) told a local news station that reducing the deficit “begins with the Department of Defense.” And two weeks ago, Bob Corker (R-TN) said on CNBC that defense cuts have to be “on the table” because there’s “a lot of waste there.”
If these Republicans are really serious about reining in the defense budget, they can look to The Sustainable Defense Task (SDTF) report released earlier this year. The SDTF — which comprises Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and some of the nation’s leading defense and budget experts — identified nearly $1 trillion in waste that can be cut from the defense budget over the next ten years simply by eliminating outdated Cold War-era programs. They could also reference a recent report by CAP experts Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley that lays out $108 billion in defense cuts in the current 2015 budget forecas

Banks and Populism 4NOV10 from MOJO

REPUBLICORP'S TAKEOVER OF THE GOVERNMENT BEGINS...This should not be a surprise to anyone, after all, gop and tea-bagger supporters voted to protect the shareholders of the banks and financial institutions of wall street, didn't they? See my earlier postings on this blog, 'ARE THE TEA PARTIERS BEING TAKEN FOR A RIDE?' 30OKT10, 'REPUBLICORP, BUYING DEMOCRACY ONE RACE AT A TIME' 23OKT10, 'OFFICIAL REPUBLICORP MERGER' 12OKT10. This from MOJO.....
Spencer Bachus, who's likely to be the new chairman of the House financial services committee, wants to go through the financial reform bill "page by page" and gut its toughest provisions, including the Volcker rule, which bans proprietary trading. The Financial Times explains:

Underlining the change in Congress, Mr Bachus, who as ranking Republican on the committee could replace Barney Frank as chairman of the panel, expressed concern that shareholders of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase will be hurt because the banks will be less profitable.

Kudos for honesty, I guess. No shilly shallying here about how this is bad for consumers or bad for America or anything like that. It might hurt Goldman Sachs shareholders, so the Volcker Rule has to go.
This is one of the great political triumphs of our day. Right-wing opposition to healthcare reform I get. Liberals and conservatives have been fighting over national healthcare for a century. But opposition to modest banking reform? In the wake of the most catastrophic financial failure since the Great Depression? It's mind boggling. Somehow, all those tea partiers who are mad as hell at Wall Street and aren't going to take it anymore have been persuaded to believe that financial reform is a gigantic socialist/statist conspiracy to....what? I'm not even sure. But they're mad about it and think Bachus is doing the Lord's work by trying to repeal it. If you ever needed any evidence that the tea party movement is largely in thrall to all the usual Republican power centers, this is it. How else can you explain why a plumber in Dubuque is convinced that a bill to rein in Wall Street excesses is really a socialist ruse to allow Barack Obama to take over the banks?

$960 BILLION IN DEFENSE DEPARTMENT FAT 25AUG10

THE Defense budget should be subject to the same scrutiny all other department budgets are subject to, and if waste and abuse are found they should be deleted from the budget and returned to the Treasury. The military-industrial complex's hold on our economy has to be broken, and Reps Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) have a proposal in Congress to start this by trimming $960 billion in "defense" spending. Please see the campaign from TrueMajority below and participate by clicking the link to send a letter to your representative to support them. Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower may have said it best: "The United States should spend as much as necessary on national defense, but not a penny more."

Dear Craig,

"Hey, Congress, trim the fat!" Barney Frank wants to save billions. Will you help?

We could cut over $960 billion from the Department of Defense and be just as safe as we are now. Perhaps even safer.

With the national debt continuing to soar, unemployment teetering around 10 percent and the threat of a double-dip recession hovering, the last thing we need is for a government bureaucracy rife with inefficiencies to continue costing us billions of dollars with no overhaul in sight.

But there is another way.

Led by Congressmen Barney Frank and Ron Paul, a bipartisan group in Congress is demanding an honest look at military spending without sacrificing our safety.

The good news? Over $960 billion could be cut without endangering our current safeguards and programs. The bad news? This opportunity is probably not on your member of Congress's radar.

Which is why we need your help. Send a message to your member of Congress, asking him or her to sign on in support of Congressman Frank's effort to clean up the wasteful spending in the Pentagon!

We'd like to believe that our military power stems directly from a financially sound American government and a vibrant economy that supports not just the protection of the people, but the education, health and well-being of the people as well.

But we have to speak up for what we believe.

Will you tell your representative to help put an end to wasteful government spending by supporting Congressman Frank's letter?

Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower may have said it best: "The United States should spend as much as necessary on national defense, but not a penny more."

We hope Congress thinks so too.