Obama’s Sequestration: Imperiling Us At Home & Weakening Us Abroad

Muslim nations are imploding against the looming backdrop of sequestration, the trillion-dollar budget cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act, passed by Congress last year. As of January 1, 2013, half of those cuts must come from defense, which amounts to about $600 billion over a period of ten years. American Thinker interviewed experts to get their opinions on how the Obama administration is gutting America’s national security.

President Obama unveiled his sequestration plan, which calls for cutting discretionary defense appropriations by 9.4%, a $55-billion hit. Among the projected cuts: spending for weapons procurement and shipbuilding, money spent on the war in Afghanistan, a reduction of readiness for many non-deployed units, delays in investments for new equipment and facilities, and cutbacks in military research and equipment repairs.

On the one hand is President Obama embracing these defense cuts, and on the other hand is Mitt Romney, who stated, “We can always find places to end waste. But we cannot cancel program after program, we cannot jeopardize critical missions, and we cannot cut corners in the quality of the equipment and training we provide.”

What these recent riots have shown is that this administration was unprepared, that the American overseas diplomatic institutions need to be made into fortresses, and that foreign governments cannot be depended on for security. President Obama deals with this obvious and costly problem through reducing the funding for embassy security, construction, and maintenance by 8.2% as part of his sequestration plan.