and the congress now are fighting each other for the right to raise the defense budget. both sides of the fight want more spending on the military. that s the fight that we re about to have in washington. that s the two sides that were set up today. you want to cut defense, well i want to spend more on defense. oh, yeah, no, i want to spend more on defense, you re the one who wants to cut it. that s the fight we re now about to have in washington. and the question of whether there really will be ever a drawdown again, after an american war, that remains a question that is only discussed well outside of polite company. joining us, barney frank, former democratic congressman of massachusetts, longtime advocate for reducing american spending on the military. it s good to have you on the show. thank you for being here. thank you, rachel. i always enjoy this. what do you make of the pentagon s proposal today? i m a little bit more yeah, it s in this context. i agree, chuck hagel wan
vote for this or criticize the bill is beyond any recognition i could come up with. there just comes to a point when some people step over the line. you know, when you criticize something and you have no idea what you re criticizing, it undermines your credibility. john for national review magazine joining us now. john, if you would allow me to bundle a few questions off the bat, here they are. you know, at this point, what is the tea party s motive and is the tea party losing credibility as stated by speaker boehner, and what are the valid poichbts in their position? well, first of all the tea party is not a party. it s millions of americans who are concerned about the seize of government. there are groups in washington that say they speak for the tea party and they re upset with john boehner and partly for good reason. i mean this is a bill that a law that punts everything down the road, it doesn t address the real debt and deficit problems.
provide for you in the future. and the president made a statement about this deal. he said we can t break our trust with our seniors. he was implying entitlement reform. my goodness, yes, we shouldn t. but what about the promise we made to veterans and those who serve? it was foolish to think this is the way we can balance our books. it s not a long-term solution and it s certainly a temporary break in trust with those who serve. why can t there be protective language protect our rights each and every day and come home and this is the most unsafe place for them to be for their future? they get nothing but uncertainty. so the economy gets certainties for two years. that was one of the good things about this deal. the defense spending and sequester goes back to dod and that s good. it gives them a buffer. but the uncertainty this provides the military families who will see their pay increase decrease over the future because, again, washington cannot get out of its own way and address
ironic because in essence it could be the middle class that is getting hit by obama care more than anyone else. this speech sound ed a lot likea speech he gave in kansas. he was hitting on income inequality saying the growing deficit problems according to president obama and said that is the biggest challenge of our time and said that he is going to spend the last three years in office trying to battle that. that is a populist kind of message one that he tried to strike before the election of 2012 and again that he has tried to hit again and again about income in equality. it is tough for the president to make with this president dealing with the economy that he has been staeering now for a few
you want. on the up side for republicans, is there an upside there s a focus on obama care, not only the technical side of it but the substance of it and the $17 trillion in debt some people don t talk about a lot but they ve heard a lot about over the past few weeks. is there some silver lining any republicans can take out of the past two weeks? i think so. this whole idea people are talking about obama care now and wouldn t have been if it weren t for ted cruz, that s over done. people would have been talking about obama care, republicans have been talking about it for a long time and it s been a disastrous rollout. that said, ted cruz and mike lee did help reinforce the brand of the party definitely against obama care that takes this debt and deficit stuff very seriously. going forward as obama care gets worse maybe, i think probably, the deficit problems get worse definitely, those are good issues to be on the right side