At Monday’s foreign policy debate, Mitt Romney again swiped at President Barack Obama over the “unacceptable” policy of sequestration. “I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars … That in my view is making our future less secure,” he said.
Obama replied that “capabilities” were more important than funding, emphasizing outer space and cyber security.
Defense cuts are a crucial part of Romney’s campaign message in the swing state of Virginia, where many of America’s largest defense contractors reside. Hours before the debate, the Republican candidate tweeted:
Troops rank jobs as top issue. I’ll fix economy & stop defense cuts that could force 200k out of uniform. mi.tt/X2FAoF #militarymon
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 22, 2012
Those numbers come from a recent George Mason University report [PDF] sponsored by Aerospace Industries Association, estimating the job losses that would be caused by the sequestration bill President Obama signed into law. If Congress does not ink a deal pre-empty defense cuts, then the law’s budget reductions will kick in on January 2 and shrink the Pentagon’s budget by up to $1 trillion over the next decade. Despite what Romney tweeted, the roughly 200,000 jobs lost would include civilian personnel.
Ned Resnikoff is an urban policy analyst, researcher, writer, and editor. His byline has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Dissent, and The Nation. He writes the newsletter Public Comment, which can be found at publiccomment.blog.