Obama versus Romney on national debt and national security

The LA Times, Obama's reliable Left Coast bootlicker, has published an interesting Op-Ed on national security and the federal debt. The Op-Ed, penned by two "foreign policy scholars at the [liberal] Brookings Institution" requires a bit of digging to find some of less than flattering statements about our President.  But, since this is the LA Times we also find some sharp jabs at Mitt Romney's candidacy. Here are few interesting quotes:

...Adm.Michael G. Mullen, was fond of saying, national debt has become perhaps our top national security threat. And neither major presidential candidate is doing enough about it.

The United States has been running trillion-dollar deficits, resulting in a huge explosion in the country's indebtedness. Publicly held debt now equals 70% of gross domestic product, a threshold many economists consider significant and highly worrisome.

Just highly worrisome?  Gosh, that doesn't sounds too serious, like soap film on a shower door or a bad case of athlete's foot.

Making matters worse, half of our current deficit financing is being provided by foreigners. We are getting by with low interest rates and tolerable levels of domestic investment only because they find U.S. debt attractive, which may not last.

Ya think?  Remember these are "scholars". Try not to giggle.

....President Obama's long-term budget plan would allow publicly held debt as a fraction of GDP to rise further, up to 75%, within a decade. Mitt Romney's proposal, featuring tax cuts and defense spending increases and as-yet-unspecified (and thus less than fully credible) entitlement reform, appears worse. It would probably drive publicly held debt to 95% of GDP over the same period. Put differently, though both are serious and pragmatic men, neither major party's presidential candidate is adequately stepping up to the plate, with Romney's plan the more troubling of the two.

How can something not specified be credible or even less than fully credible?  Further, these scholars then add the not specified to the rest of Romney's proposal, summing up   to an "appear worse". Try not to giggle.  Oh, there is not a single mention of Obamacare and the 21 new taxes that will hit the middle class on January1, 2013. Must have been an innocent oversight by the scholars.

The authors worry about Romney's unspecified plan while the financial ship of state already had huge gashes from Obamacare; the only lifeboats left are to vote this Administration out of power and repeal the act.

 I can think of several thousand adjectives to describe our Golfer-in-Chief, but pragmatic would not make the list.

...we are headed for a level of debt that within a decade could require us to spend the first trillion dollars of every year's federal budget servicing that debt. Much less money will be left for other things. That is a prescription for a vicious cycle of underfinancing for our infrastructure, national education efforts, science research and all the other functions of government that are crucial to long-term economic growth. Robust defense spending will be unsustainable too. Once we get in this rut, getting out will be very hard.

Hey scholars, we are already deeply mired in that rut! To have missed this basic truth you guys must have sipped too much Chardonnay and eaten too much Brie on the DC party circuit.

When running for president last time, Obama eloquently articulated big foreign policy visions: healing America's breach with the Muslim world, controlling global climate change, dramatically curbing global poverty through development aid, moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons. These were, and remain, worthy if elusive goals. However, for Obama or his successor, there is now a much more urgent big-picture issue: restoring U.S. economic strength.

Wait a minute, when exactly before the last election, did Obama tell us that these were his big policy visions?  He didn't. This is the intellectual Left rewriting history. In a July 15^th, 2008 speech, Obama clearly stated his five foreign policy goals; end the war in Iraq, finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban, secure nuclear weapons from terrorists and rouge states, work toward energy security, and rebuilt alliances to meet the 21^st century challenges.  It all sounded so reasonable to so many back then.

Happy Birthday America! I'll be voting you for a better year ahead in November.