Richardson: Redirect Pentagon funds towards domestic issues

With the backdrop of the new $459 billion Pentagon spending bill that passed the Senate on Wednesday, in a speech today Bill Richardson will call for a significant decrease in Pentagon funding.  He will add that simply throwing money at the Pentagon won't make America safe -- diplomacy will:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will detail a plan today to rebuildAmerican diplomacy while reshaping the U.S. military with 50,000additional troops and slashing $57 billion annually from Pentagonweapons programs.

"Restoring Americanleadership means abandoning rogue cowboy diplomacy. It means giving upthe idea of stubbornness as a foreign policy," he said. "It meansrestoring those American principles which once allowed us to build thealliances which defeated the Nazis and crumbled the Soviet Union."

Richardsonsaid Wednesday in an interview with The Des Moines Register that hewants to reduce the Pentagon's budget and modernize the military byeliminating what he describes as Cold War weapons systems designed tofight a long-extinct Soviet empire. Some of the savings would be usedto bolster the military, but most of the money would be redirected todomestic programs, such as health care and education, he said.

If the Republicans really believe this is a 'new kind of war,' then as Richardson hinted, we should start acting like it.  Why are we building a missile defense system when the last thing we need is a new arms race with Russia and China?  Why did Bush nominate a Cold War era Russian specialist to head the State Department, when the top security concerns of the 21st century are terrorism and unstable rogue states?

Lastly, keep in mind that Richardson is the only Democratic candidate proposing a balanced budget amendment, which the European Union has in its constitution.  No wonder Europe's currency is stable, unlike ours.

Comments

[granny]

I REALLY like Bill Richardson. He's straight forward, and stands for positions I like. Makes sense every time he picks up an issue. He'd be my candidate if I thought he could win. There's that nasty tactics thing again...
(which is the hidden item in all our conversations : about money, about appearances, about polls, about jockeying for position in the debates - all of it. All of it is tactical: "a game of thrones")

Could a just plain good man/woman win the nomination? I think he is one.

A ticket with him as Vice Presidential candidate would have my vote (that's because I am assuming - yeah, I know - that he would not accept that bid if he got it from Clinton. And I don't think there's a snowball's chance he would)

[granny]

Oct 5-Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gov-bill-richardson/blueprint-for-a-21st-cent_b_67360.html