The Issues Part I

The GOP campaigning and debates are already starting for the 2012 Presidential Race. I thought this would be a good time to go over some of the issues that we will be hearing a lot about. All indications currently indicate that the Democratic Party wishes for President Obama to run for a second term, so all the campaigning we will be hearing for now will be from the GOP. At my last count there were either 6 or 7 candidates that have officially announced they will be running under the GOP ticket with 3 or 4 others in the wings. Between now and early next year all of them will be campaigning hard just to get the GOP nomination. Even within a single party there are major differences in the issues that our Nation is facing. Here are some of the issues I believe you will be hearing a lot about and my opinion on them. I know my opinion will not match many of your opinions or the opinions of the candidates, even the one that I would like to see elected. That’s what’s great about this; it’s an opinion only, so are theirs. If I can get each and everyone of you thinking about what your opinion is then I’ve accomplished part of what I wanted to accomplish. The next thing is to get everyone looking at the potential candidates and actually voting for the one that fits your qualifications, not the one that the “party” says is electable. If enough people actually vote for who they want, even if it’s a write in, then just maybe that candidate could be elected.


The Military

There seems to be the attitude today that we have to have our military in all corners of the globe in order to ensure our safety. One list I was able to find listed 87 permanent military bases overseas, 9 in South Korea, 9 in Japan, 9 in Italy, 27 in Germany and the rest spread out throughout Europe, the Middle East and other countries. I’m sure there are more bases throughout the world that are just not considered to be permanent. For example Japan is about the size of the State of California. California, one of America’s largest states, only has 7 military bases. The argument is that we need these bases in order to protect our National security. The truth is that we have the overseas bases for Nation building. With our current technology we do not need to have bases overseas to protect the United States.

When President Obama decided to interfere in Libya the bombers that dropped the bombs came from Tinker field in Oklahoma, not from one of the Air Bases in Germany, Spain, Bahrain, Italy or Turkey. When Osama Bin Laden was located Seal Team Six was deployed, they are stationed in Virginia Beach, VA, that’s located on the east coast of the United States, not overseas. With this information the question should really be why all these bases are overseas when we are not going to utilize them in times like I stated above. The plain answer is that we are in all these countries to nation build.

America did not start establishing bases outside of our borders until sometime around World War I when the Philippines were an American Territory. At that time the reasoning was to protect our homeland and territories. That I agree with. When Germany surrendered we established numerous bases throughout Germany, we occupied Germany. The German people have rebuilt their Nation and their Government, why are we still there? The same holds true with Japan.

With the economic environment in the USA does it make sense to continue to send money and personnel overseas to man these bases? Would it not make more sense to bring our troops home, back onto American soil to protect our borders and to keep our dollars at home? Another factor that needs to be considered is that with today’s technology do we really need to be in everyone else’s backyards? We can have missile defenses systems to protect us from incoming air attacks. We also have the Navy, the only constitutionally authorized continuous military service, on patrol for defense and immediate response to threats against the United States. To be clear on that, the President has the authority by the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to commit troops to defend against immediate threats to the United States, he does not have the power to commit our military to long term military involvement. Only Congress can commit our military to long term involvement with a declaration of war. In the event we need to act immediately to protect the United States and her citizens we can deploy the Marines, who are a part of the Navy.

There has not been one conflict that was so immediate that the President did not have the time to get the approval of Congress, it’s only been in the last 60 years or so that Congress would give their approval in order to provide funding but would not actually declare war, e.g.… Korea and Vietnam. What could we do with the funds that we are spending to keep the bases abroad? What National Defense system could we fund if we were not sending foreign aide to all corners of the globe? I’m not even going to go into the constitutionality of funding the Army and the Air Force or what we could do if we honored the 10th Amendment and States provided the militias as needed for National defense.

The Economy

The American Government is over 14 Trillion Dollars in debt and is once again approaching their debt ceiling. Congress has until August 2nd to either vote to raise the debt ceiling or not. If Congress votes to not raise the debt ceiling it could mean that America will go into default, we will not be able to borrow enough money to pay what we owe. If we do raise the debt ceiling then Congress will not have learned their lesson. The out of control spending that has gotten us where we are now will continue. Raising the debt ceiling or not raising will not make any difference in where the United States is headed, not unless we can get the out of control spending under control. To get the spending under control there needs to be a balanced budget, meaning that there are no more deficits and no increasing of the debt ceiling.

When the politicians try to get the American People on there side they bring up the fact that we are putting our children and grandchildren in debt, we are making them slaves to the nations debt before they are even born. What no one wants to talk about is that this was put in place back in the 1935 when the Social Security Act was signed into law. In fact the seed for this was planted before this with the passing of the Mothers Pension Programs by the Theodore Roosevelt Administration in 1911. Granted this program was run by the State Governments but it was born out of the Federal Government and later taken over by the Federal Government, this was the seed of all the entitlement programs we now have.

As long as the Federal Government continues to run entitlement programs, engages in Nation building and provides subsidies there will never be a balanced budget. Our debt will continue to grow and our children, grandchildren and so on will be slaves to this debt

Steve Avery
6-25-11