Colin Powell: Cut Defense

Let me just let the man's words sink in for a minute:

But the real money in the entitlements, it's Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. And unless we do something about those, you can't balance the budget. You can't fix the deficit or the national debt by killing NPR or National Endowment for the Humanities or the Arts. Nice political chatter, but that doesn't do it. And I'm very put off when people just say let's go back and freeze to the level two years ago.
Don't tell me you're going to freeze to a level. That usually is a very inefficient way of doing it. Tell me what you're going to cut, and nobody up there yet is being very, very candid about what they are going to cut to fix this problem.

oh wait, there's more:

"As we draw down from Iraq and as over the next several years as we draw down from Afghanistan, I see no reason why the military shouldn't be looked at," he said. "When the Cold War ended 20 years ago, when I was chairman and Mr. Cheney was secretary of Defense, we cut the defense budget by 25 percent. And we reduced the force by 500,000 active duty soldiers, so it can be done. Now, how fast you can do it and what you have to cut out remains to be seen, but I don't think the defense budget can be made, you know, sacrosanct and it can't be touched."

Here, just watch him.

Let's be honest, this is just brutal honesty. The GOP members of Congress, talking about cutting discretionary spending, but not touching entitlement pay-outs, the military, and old debt, are really just signaling a dislike for the government doing anything, not bringing fiscal sanity. Cutting ALL of the discretionary spending in the country may get rid of government, but it won't fix the fiscal mess. Colin Powell, is simply stating the facts.