Politico reports this morning that lobbyists are converging on Capitol Hill this week in an effort to convince the debt reduction super committee against budget cuts effecting their clients. Indeed, right-wing hawks are hosting an event on the Hill this afternoon projecting the view that further cuts in military spending will “change the military as we know it” (or as we knew it in 2007, anyway).
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) is leading the charge in the House. The House Armed Services Committee chairman said he “has a group of about 30 lawmakers, mostly Republicans, ready to fend off any ambitious supercommittee cuts.” And in a move Politico called “the opening argument in a campaign to lobby the panel against further defense cuts,” McKeon’s committee yesterday released a video yesterday using 9/11 imagery to promote the U.S. military. Watch it:
Given that McKeon and his allies are employing a campaign of misinformation in an effort to protect the Pentagon’s coffers, it’s not entirely surprising that he and his committee would turn to 9/11 exploitation to ensure the military industrial complex remains in place.
But if that effort fails, there is a Plan B. “The unofficial fallback plan: The Defense Department, lawmakers that oversee the Pentagon and wealthy defense contractors might well be able to get Congress to block the automatic cuts, which wouldn’t take place until 2013.”
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