Opinion Contributor
Still time to save small businesses
Our nation has a defining choice to make, and time is short. The Pentagon is bracing for devastating cuts through sequestration. For the sake of national security, jobs and the next generation, we must stop this in its tracks. There is still time to fix it — if we show leadership and make tough choices.
The House has presented alternative plans to replace sequestration with thoughtful spending cuts. President Barack Obama has already missed his deadline, and failed to offer Congress even the most meager outline to prevent these cuts. This deep bite could have far-reaching consequences to military planning and the struggling economy.
Continue ReadingThe House Small Business Committee is set to hold a hearing Thursday to examine how these cuts will affect many small firms. The threatened haphazard slashing of programs already has contractors scrambling, with more jobs at risk. Economic progress is still far too weak and our nation’s security too important to sustain new job losses in military manufacturing, supply, research, development, testing and more.
Small businesses need a measure of certainty to survive and create the jobs our economy needs. “Small companies like mine,” Perry Casto of Allied Associates International, already told the committee, “however, do not have the fiscal resources to stay in business while the government sorts out the issues surrounding sequestration.”
The damage will likely be exacerbated because of the sequester’s arbitrary design. Cuts are not based on logic or military tactics. What calls for a scalpel will instead be subject to a cleaver, smiting even the most essential programs.
Americans unapologetically value a strong defense. Our nation exists because some had the courage to take up arms and defend their homes and their neighbors. History, along with events around the globe, justifies the need for a powerful force to ensure peace and prosperity. Americans will be rightly incensed as they learn more about this so-called “plan” to gut the military.
Readers' Comments (9)
West: "The House has presented alternative plans to replace sequestration with thoughtful spending cuts."
While I respect Mr. West more than most of the congressional light weights, there weren't any thoughtful spending cuts, were there? There were only, at best, decreases in the amount of increases masquerading as cuts, but mostly just increases.
The private sector needs stability and consistency. We've had neither for years, including under Bush. But the real problem is that politics has become the confluence of influence and affluence... Those who bribe, get the contracts... If there is a pony to be had, they will get it.
Well, the rest of us in the private sector, those of us who are "building our own", who don't covet the government largess, but only wish government would stop clogging the free markets, want you all to stop trying to help, particularly based on the information given by those businesses large enough to employ your help in blocking the next up-start entrepreneur.
As to the military, try this philosophy for a few years (as in -- until our budget is balanced) , stop meddling in countries all over the world! Let these global cultures, evolved as they have to meet the challenges of their world, determine their own destiny, based on their values, not what you and the state department feel would be useful to our interests... Our troops occupy what... about a 100 countries now? Bring them home. Put them on the borders until they're discharged. Our foreign policy seems to be creating enemies we then must subdue. Stop it.
In other words, defense, not offense, would save us billions, if not trillions.. Didn't your mother ever tell you to mind your own business? Sequestration seems not too bad from down here. We can't afford your philosophy any more.
One would think that the reality that West is obviously lobbying for more Defense spending would erode that respect.
This is where I get so frustrated with tea party people.
Their money and their mouth never seem to even have a passing acquaintance.
The military industrial complex is one of the key factors that is bankrupting our country. We are responsible for 40% of the world's military expenditures to defend less than 5% of the world population. A very small percentage of the military budget actually goes towards defending the country and its borders. If the military focused on what our founders intended its purpose to be the country would probably be a safer place and we wouldn't need to spend almost a Trilllion dollars a year on defense.
This is funny, it is almost like Allen West would have us believe that he did'nt vote for this or something, but WAIT... look here : http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201...
Allen West actually VOTED YES for this mess. In an effort to kick the can down the road and because Republicans were unwilling to allow even a 10:1 ratio of spending cuts to new revenue, they settled for the sequestration idea. Now they all want to back peddle and pretend like it wasnt their vote that put this thing in place.
WHY THE #$%# DID YOU VOTE FOR THIS TERRIBLE LEGISLATION MR. WEST? You voted to kill jobs and to make this country less safe. You are a disgrace.
In 2010 the people voted these T-Party Knuckleheads into office. Your getting what you asked for. Don`t blame the Knuckleheads,blame the people who put them in office.
This piece should be called "Time for the taxpayers of America to fund jobs in my district". Mr. West has a dismal record of voting for any bill which would help the middle class. He has compared social security, a program which has lifted seniors out of poverty, to slavery. Yet, he desperately wants to continue the defense buying by the government because the products are made in his district and his state by his constitutents. He touts this on his own website, worrying about the jobs Florida will lose if the sequester goes through. No jobs for the rest of America, just for his own slice of it.
West is a RINO!!!! Government spending never creates private sector jobs, N-E-V-E-R.
Private Industry can not be dependent on the Government. Get those socialists defense industry CEO's off the Government Teet and back into the unregulated market!!!!
Kick West the RINO OUT!!!!!
Instead of the US being able to destroy every city on the planet in three hours, they will have to do it in four. Instead of thousands of new planes, subs, and aircraft carriers, they will build a few less. Tax payers should benefit from the savings.
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