National Defense Panel Slams Sequester – But Can It Change Minds?

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/07/national-defense-panel-slams-sequester-but-can-it-change-minds/

National Defense Panel Slams Sequester – But Can It Change Minds?
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on July 31, 2014 at 2:32 PM

WASHINGTON: This afternoon, a congressionally chartered panel of prestigious defense experts denounced sequestration as “self-defeating” and a “serious strategic misstep” that “Congress and the President should repeal…immediately.” But will it preach to anyone not already in the choir?

While bipartisan, the National Defense Panel is most heeded by House Republicans. They see it as a valuable alternative to the Obama administration’s Quadrennial Defense Reviews, which House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon in particular considers so inadequate as to violate the law. (There were NDPs under Clinton as well, but not during the Bush years). Both the 2010 NDP and this one call for more defense spending in general and a stronger Navy in particular. No wonder, then, McKeon hailed its release and that Republican Rep. Randy Forbes – the House seapower subcommittee chairman and an arch-foe of sequestration – called me this morning to tout the report.

“I don’t know of anywhere where you bring together such a diversity of talent and expertise as you do on this independent panel to review the QDR,” Forbes told me, “You don’t get more (bipartisan) than this panel, (and) I certainly think it gives us a lot of support for positions that we have been advocating.”

What do Democrats think? “Given that they’re endorsing some things most of the Armed Services Committee already agrees with, e.g. repealing sequestration… you’ll see the NDP being whipped out and used as a rhetorical support,” predicted one House Democratic aide. “It will be used by people who already believe in the message — and everyone else will ignore it.”

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Here's the bottom line boys: We The People already coughed up our sequestration money.

Your turn.