Republicans Plan to Protect Pentagon by Taking From Poor
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January.
The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.
The House Budget Committee meets Monday to officially act on the measure, the product of six separate House panels. It faces a likely floor vote Thursday.
Fully one-fourth of the House GOP spending cuts come from programs directly benefiting the poor, such as Medicaid, food stamps, the Social Services Block Grant, and a child tax credit claimed by working immigrants. Federal workers would have to contribute an additional 5 percent of their salaries toward their pensions, while people whose incomes rise after receiving coverage subsidies under the new health care law would lose some or all of their benefits.
read: http://www.9news.com/news/article/266916/188/GOP-plan-boosts-Pentagon-cuts-social-programs
On balance, Republicans would devote about $8 billion more to defense appropriations than anticipated under the Budget Control Act, while non-defense spending would face a net loss of $27 billion.
At the same time, the GOP is actively moving this week to try to protect the Pentagon from a second major piece of the same Budget Control Act: automatic spending cuts to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
The first $110 billion round of these reductions is scheduled to hit home in early January, just weeks after the November elections. Farm subsidies and Medicare account for a portion, but the lion’s share would come from the same appropriations bills now being written — creating a “now you see the money, now you don’t” election-year dynamic.
About $43 billion of the sequester would come from non-defense appropriations, but since House Republicans are already proposing to cut more than $27 billion from these same accounts, the real skin-in-the-game for domestic spending is about $16 billion.
By comparison, defense would be left exposed and could lose a minimum of $55 billion.
read: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/75996.html
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All that money, and they couldn't even protect themselves from a passenger plane. 
What good are they when they can't even protect us here at home? The Pentagon is useless, and a colossal waste of money. Unless they can explain their failure to protect us on 9/11, I say de-fund them. May was well have the Boy or Girl scouts protect us.
