{"id":1328,"date":"2013-02-26T14:49:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T14:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/megalextoria.wordpress.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2013-02-26T14:49:17","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T14:49:17","slug":"acceptance-of-defense-cuts-signals-shift-in-g-o-p-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2013\/02\/26\/acceptance-of-defense-cuts-signals-shift-in-g-o-p-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Acceptance of Defense Cuts Signals Shift in G.O.P. Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With Congress unlikely to stop deep automatic spending cuts that will strike hard at the military, the fiscal stalemate is highlighting a significant shift in the Republican Party: lawmakers most keenly dedicated to shrinking the size of government are now more dominant than the bloc committed foremost to a robust national defense, particularly in the House.<\/p>\n

That reality also underscores what Republicans, and some Democrats, say was a major miscalculation on the part of President Obama. He agreed to set up the automatic cuts 18 months ago because he believed the threat of sharp reductions in military spending would be enough to force Republicans to agree to a deficit reduction plan that included the tax increases he favored.<\/p>\n

\u201cFiscal questions trump defense in a way they never would have after 9\/11,\u201d said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. \u201cBut the war in Iraq is over. Troops are coming home from Afghanistan, and we want to secure the cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and one of the lawmakers Democrats had hoped would never accept the military cuts, went almost as far. \u201cRepublicans aren\u2019t cookie cutter,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we do agree on the basic premise of where we\u2019re trying to go. And if we don\u2019t get our fiscal house in order, it\u2019s very hard to provide for the defense of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

As lawmakers prepared to return to Washington, the White House tried to raise the ante by highlighting the effects the cuts would have on programs in every state.<\/p>\n

But at the heart of the battle over sequestration \u2014 the nearly $1 trillion in budget cuts that are scheduled to begin on Friday and accelerate over the next decade \u2014 are fundamental misunderstandings between the two parties over their respective priorities.<\/p>\n

Full article: http:\/\/www.nytimes.c \u2026 c-cuts.html?hp&_r=1&<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Congress unlikely to stop deep automatic spending cuts that will strike hard at the military, the fiscal stalemate is highlighting a significant shift in the Republican Party: lawmakers most keenly dedicated to shrinking the size of government are now more dominant than the bloc committed foremost to a robust national defense, particularly in the House. That reality also underscores what Republicans, and some Democrats, say was a major miscalculation on the part of President Obama. He agreed to set up the automatic cuts 18 months ago because he believed the threat of sharp reductions in military spending would be enough to force Republicans to agree to a deficit reduction plan that included the tax increases he favored. \u201cFiscal questions trump defense in a way they never would have after 9\/11,\u201d said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. \u201cBut the war in Iraq is over. Troops are coming home from Afghanistan, and we want to secure the cuts.\u201d Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and one of the lawmakers Democrats had hoped would never accept the military cuts, went almost as far. \u201cRepublicans aren\u2019t cookie cutter,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we do agree on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}