Obama Places U.S. And It's Economy At Risk By Wasting $1 Billion Bombing Libya

Both the Senate and House are in recess for "constituent work week" and will return on March 28th. It is seems odd that President Obama and his administration timed its actions to their absence to launch his wasteful "Wag the Dog" attacks on Libya which is using up valuable military assets for which there is no plan to replace. The US is "broke" and the Department of Defense is even constantly complaining about the cost of military veterans.

I never anticipated that as editor of the ARRA News Service, I would find myself quoting radical liberal Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) who released the following statement,

"While the action [of President Barack Obama and his administration] is billed as protecting the civilians of Libya, a no-fly-zone begins with an attack on the air defenses of Libya and Qaddafi forces. It is an act of war. The president made statements which attempt to minimize U.S. action, but U.S. planes may drop U.S. bombs and U.S. missiles may be involved in striking another sovereign nation. War from the air is still war.

It is hard to imagine that Congress, during the current contentious debate over deficits and budget cutting, would agree to plunge America into still another war, especially since America will spend trillions in total for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and incursions into Pakistan. The last thing we need is to be embroiled in yet another intervention in another Muslim country. The American people have had enough. First it was Afghanistan, then Iraq. Then bombs began to fall in Pakistan, then Yemen, and soon it seems bombs could be falling in Libya. Our nation simply cannot afford another war, economically, diplomatically or spiritually."

Today on FoxNews, Kucinich stated "“I’m gonna read this and then tell you who said it. ‘The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.’ Now that was Barack Obama who said that on December the 20, 2007. We’ve got to be very sure here that we follow the Constitution, and president Obama didn’t do that.” He identified that the Obama current intervention we’ve already committed to will cost “half-a-billion dollars.”

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit points out the hypocrisy of Barack Obama in pursing the intervention in Libya:

In July 2007, Barack Obama made a stunning admission during a campaign stop. The democratic hopeful suggested that genocide of innocent civilians was a better option than continuing our military campaign in Iraq.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

But, that was back when Bush was in charge.
Suddenly Obama has decided that innocent civilians need to be protected.
Obama, and the UN, approved US military intervention in Libya to aid defenseless civilians.
Libyans must be worth more to Obama than Iraqis.

The National Journal has identified the related cost of military operations that while Congress is in recess. Note the critical weapons which is now no longer available for defense and other uses. This is NOT the military;s fault. It is the deliberat actions by President Barack Obama. The Journal says,

"The first day of Operation Odyssey Dawn had a price tag that was well over $100 million for the U.S. in missiles alone. And the U.S. military, which remains in the lead now in its third day, has pumped millions more into air- and sea-launched strikes targeting air-defense sites and ground-force positions along Libya’s coastline.

The Pentagon has the money in its budget to cover unexpected contingencies and can also use fourth-quarter dollars to cover the costs of operations now. “They’re very used to doing this operation where they borrow from Peter to pay Paul,” said Gordon Adams, who served as the Office of Management and Budget’s associate director for national security during the Clinton administration.

However, there comes a point when there simply isn’t enough cash to pay for everything. The White House has not yet indicated whether it will request emergency funding, but former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim estimated that the Defense Department would need to send a request for supplemental funding to Capitol Hill if the U.S. military’s share of Libya operations expenses tops $1 billion."

The Senate on its return will continue work on S. 493, the bill reauthorizing the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. It is hoped they will also take immediate action to review the actions of the Obama administration.

Still pending to S. 493 is the McConnell amendment, which would block the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a move that would amount to a backdoor national energy tax. Democrats have repeatedly pushed back a vote.

With the one year anniversary of President Obama signing the unpopular 2,700 page health care bill into law coming this week, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog examined some of the claims made by Democrats about it last week.

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler writes, “House Democrats held a birthday party last week for passage of the health-care law. Just as we looked at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s floor speech noting the milestone, we will now examine some of the claims made by Democrats. McConnell framed his speech in negative terms, citing data to back up his language. Both Democrats and Republicans can pick and choose numbers and studies to make their case, but we found that generally McConnell did not exaggerate or use bogus figures. In fact, he correctly described a Congressional Budget Office analysis suggesting a potential reduction in employment of 800,000 jobs (technically, one-half of 1 percent of household employment in 2021) that other Republicans have misrepresented. By contrast, House Democrats appear to show little hesitation about repeating claims that previously have found to be false or exaggerated.”

One claim Democrats repeated was then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assertion that “[h]ealth insurance reform creates 4 million jobs . . . .” Evaluating her claim, The Fact Checker writes, “Here, Pelosi is repeating a talking point from the health-care debate. The 4 million figure comes from a report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning group, which estimated that universal health care would add 250,000 to 400,000 jobs a year. Pelosi took the top end of the range and then multiplied it by 10, a numerical sleight-of-hand that Polifact last year labeled ‘half true.’ A Pelosi spokesman noted she has been using this statistic for 14 months now, but we frown on the reuse of statistics previously found to be suspect. In this case, since the bill has passed, the Congressional Budget Office has done its own analysis (the one McConnell cited) that cast some doubt on the CAP analysis, written before the bill was passed into law. Presumably, members of Congress should pay more attention to estimates by their own budget agency than think tanks that promote their agenda. Repeating this dubious statistic is worth at least a Pinocchio or two.”

Another selling point Pelosi and other Democrats repeatedly used on the health care spending bill was the idea that it would somehow “reduce the deficit more than $1 trillion over the life of the bill” while it was increasing government spending on health care. According to The Fact Checker, “This is another bogus statistic for which we have previously awarded three Pinocchios. . . . Pelosi claims more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction by using a 20-year figure that is particularly absurd. As we wrote in January: ‘There are too many uncertainties to be precise, and the CBO itself merely offered a tentative guess of a “broad range of around one-half percent of GDP,” with significant caveats. Democrats simply took that percentage, multiplied it against the predicted size of the GDP 20 years from now (itself a pretty fuzzy figure) and, presto, they had a number. But it's a fairly meaningless one.’”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has given a more realistic assessment of Democrats’ health care law. “According to the independent CBO, the health care bill will result in the loss of more than 800,000 jobs over the next 10 years. What’s more, 200 economists and experts, including two former CBO directors, have said that the law’s ‘expensive mandates and penalties create major barriers to stronger job growth.’  Another chief selling point of the bill was the promise it would lower costs. Yet now we hear estimates from one of the administration’s top actuaries that it will increase costs by $311 billion. And the CBO now estimates it will increase federal health care spending by nearly half a trillion dollars over the next decade.”

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