Green Party of New Jersey
Updated
May 09, 2008
Saxton-McCain oddity and a Green look at defense
For years, McCain has championed military revitalization and railed against wasteful "pork barrel" defense spending. In Medford, he blamed his own party - the majority in Congress - for adding $2 billion in pork to this year's military budget.
Congress has provisioned so many C-130 airplanes to the military in the last decade, McCain joked, that we will soon have one in every schoolyard.
Yet, in May, Saxton voted in favor of H.R. 4425, the military-construction appropriations bill that included $468 million for the acquisition and conversion of six C-130J maritime patrol aircraft to be used in drug-interdiction efforts (itself a topic of dubious fiscal responsibility). McCain voted against that bill when it reached the Senate, one of only four senators to oppose it.
Year after year, the record finds McCain and Saxton at odds on defense-spending issues. In 1998, when President Clinton used his line-item veto to eliminate 38 projects from that year's defense bill, Saxton's vote helped override that veto while McCain voted to keep pork-barrel projects out.
My position on defense is that the budget should focus on training, readiness, and support of military personnel, not acquisition of new, high-tech weaponry. I wish to cut the defense budget by at least $50 billion and refocus the remaining funds on maintenance and training, cooperative allied defense, and the human needs of the individuals and families who make up our military.
This should be another convincing example that proves Green Party politics are not simply "liberal" or "conservative" - they are progressive and rational.
Aaron M. Kromash
Mount Holly
The writer, a self-employed translator of Japanese, is the Green Party's congressional candidate in the Third District.
