Democrats have been in charge of Congress for two years and the economy is slipping. I’m personally feeling the pinch. I can say without a doubt I was better off two years ago than I am today. I did not like the spending spree the Republicans went on when they controlled Congress, but the future, from a small business owners perspective, with the Democrats in control is downright scary.
I can’t imagine how much worse off I’ll be if Barack Obama were to win the White House and you had completely Democratic control of both the legislative and executive branches of our federal government. Wait, I don’t have to imagine. I just have to look at how New Mexico’s per capita income stacks up against our neighbors in Colorado, Texas and Arizona.
Now, throw into the mix the article today that points out that our Air Force is looking at flying 80 year old aircraft (subscription), and we’ve got the makings of a serious nightmare.
“If everything goes perfect with our new KC-45 acquisition — which isn’t likely — the last KC-135 will not retire until 2043,” he said. “We’ve never flown 80-year-old airplanes — no one has. So we’re headed into the unknown.”
It’s not just air tankers that are getting old. The average age of the Air Force’s workhorse fighters — the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon — is more than 20 years.
“At the end of the Vietnam war, the average military aircraft was about 8 years old,” Suminsby said. “At the end of Desert Storm, it was about 17 years old. Today, the average (Air Force) aircraft is nearly 25 years old, and that’s climbing steadily.”
Suminsby admits he’d like Congress to fund all the Air Force’s needs, including its $18.8 billion “wish list.”
But more importantly, he said, America needs to address two fundamental problems with the federal budget: the mismatch between our national security strategy and its associated costs; and burgeoning entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
Security gap.
Suminsby says there’s a huge gap between the nation’s security strategy — which is to maintain the capability to fight two major conflicts concurrently or in rapid succession — and what it’s willing to pay to implement that strategy.
The role of government is moving closer and closer everyday to providing entitlement programs to take care of everyone, and further and further away from making security and infrastructure the number one priority. If the Democrats take complete control of the government, we will see an acceleration of this shift.
We need to wakeup and smell the coffee. Throughout history, world wars have begun because others smell weakness. The wolves will begin to circle when the best we can do is protect ourselves with 80 year old weapons. This a time honored tradition. Nature abhors a vacuum.