Obama's long history of pushing gutting defense cuts

Phillip Klein:

In 2000, the relatively inexperienced state Sen. Barack Obama challenged four-term Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush for his congressional seat representing the South Side of Chicago. Running against one of the most liberal members in the House of Representatives, Obama sought to burnish his own image as a self-described "progressive urban Democrat" who supported universal health care and tough campaign finance reform.

He also wanted to cut military spending.

According to a contemporaneous account published in the Chicago Tribune, during a March 2000 debate sponsored by the Urban League and League of Women Voters, Obama "criticized Congress for extravagant defense spending." At the time, the United States had just undergone a decadelong post-Cold War military drawdown. The defense budget, measured as the percentage of the economy, had fallen to its lowest level since before World War II.

On Tuesday, President Obama warned that automatic spending cuts to the Department of Defense would "jeopardize our military readiness" if they went into effect as scheduled on March 1. But Obama's ability to blame Republicans for the onset of the so-called sequester is complicated by his long record of advocating deep cuts to spending on national defense.

Following his unsuccessful House campaign in 2000, Obama regrouped and, soon enough, announced a long-shot bid for the U.S. Senate. In December 2003, as reported by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama sought the endorsement of the liberal Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization.

In its candidate survey as part of the endorsement process, the group asked Obama, "Do you agree with the current proposed level of funding for the military?" Obama answered that "spending levels are too high" and blamed it on the Bush administration's "unilateralist" approach to foreign policy. "A foreign policy that sought better collaboration with our allies -- and emphasized diplomacy over military might -- would enable us to reduce our military budget while focusing it more effectively on the fight against international terror," he argued.

When he was running for president four years later, Obama recorded a video seeking the endorsement of Caucus4Priorities, a group founded by Ben Cohen (of Ben and Jerry's) to get candidates to commit to cutting defense. Obama was even more explicit: "I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending," he vowed. "I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems, and I will institute an independent Defense Priorities Board to ensure the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending."

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Since he has been President he has also cut defense spending while fight the wars.   He just has no credibility in blaming Republicans for these cuts.  The House has passed two bills to restore military spending and cut elsewhere, while Obama bitterly clings to his refusal to deal with entitlements.  He has zero chance of getting tax increases.  We sill see the sequester implemented and Obama will lash out at everyone but himself.  He is teh guy who never takes responsibility for the messes he makes.