McKinley Votes for Defense and Military

Press Release

Congressman David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.) voted today to save hundreds of thousands of military jobs, crack down on fraud and abuse in government programs, while saving taxpayers billions of dollars and cutting the national debt by $300 billion, at the same time. Because of the failed attempt last summer by a special committee to reduce the nation's debt by $1.2 trillion dollars in 10 years, massive across-the-board cuts are scheduled to take place in January if an alternative plan is not presented. The across-the-board cuts include reducing the strength of our troops by 200,000 and eliminate 1.5 million jobs. The Obama Administration's own Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called the automatic across-the-board cuts unacceptable and was quoted as saying, "We'd be shooting ourselves in the head" if the defense cuts go through. The defense cuts would also create: * The smallest ground force since 1940 * The smallest fleet of ships since before the U.S. entered World War I * The smallest tactical fighter force in the history of the Air Force "The House Leadership recognized the devastation this could cause to our economy and our national defense if an alternative plan wasn't presented so they found billions of dollars in savings, elsewhere," said Rep. McKinley. "It's not perfect but it prevents the drastic cuts in our defense which would leave us vulnerable as a nation and weaken a slow economic recovery." Rep. McKinley and other conservative colleagues found savings from reforms to Medicaid by cracking down on waste and abuse; repealing Obamacare slush funds; ensure food assistance goes to those who actually qualify for it and not allow lottery winners, prisoners, and others to unfairly abuse the system; and streamline 47 overlapping job training programs. "These are common sense reforms that target waste, fraud, abuse in federal programs," said Rep. McKinley. "Congress needs to make sure the money of the hard-working taxpayer is spent wisely. Today, we took a step to make sure this happens."

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