WASHINGTON, D.C. – Former Sen. Jim Talent provided Chairman Paul Ryan and members of the House Budget Committee with an update on the grave condition of America’s military urging them to prioritize the government’s most basic responsibility: national security.

“There is unquestionably a cost to sustaining military strength, and the Budget Committee must take that cost into account,” Talent said. “But there is also a price to be paid for weakness; it can be very substantial and if the Committee is going to budget honestly you must take that into account as well.”

Talent’s testimony illustrated the need to fund the military at the level that gives the greatest chance for peace and security in the future.

“The good news is that making the right decisions now will expand the range of palatable alternatives in the future; the inherent resiliency of the volunteer force and the people who constitute it may make it possible to recover our strength sooner than might reasonably be expected,” Talent concluded.

The full text of Talent’s testimony will be available at http://budget.house.gov.

Talent currently serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and was a member of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel.  He represented Missouri in the United States Senate from 2002-2007.  He served on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

###

Contact: Katie Smith 314-625-5107

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Former Sen. Jim Talent, a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a Member of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, will testify on Capitol Hill Thursday to address budget necessities to protect America’s national security.

Senator Talent will provide Chairman Paul Ryan and House Budget Committee members with an update on the condition of America’s military and its likely condition in the future if current trends continue.

The hearing will be broadcast live on the Committee website: http://budget.house.gov

To learn more about Senator Talent’s work on defense issues go to: http://bit.ly/JimTalent

Who:              Senator Jim Talent

What:             House Budget Committee Hearing on National Security

Date:              Thursday, July 7, 2011

Time:             10:00 am EDT

Where:           210 Cannon House Office Building and live on the web at http://budget.house.gov

By Sen. Jim Talent, Honorary Chairman

Published on December 4, 2009 in Springfield News Leader

Today, the President is hosting a “jobs summit” to find solutions to the current unemployment rate, which is more than 10% and is rising.  A lot of Americans are hurting badly and the President is right to focus on jobs.

Many of the President’s political opponents will say this meeting is political.  They are partly right.  He can read polls and knows Americans’ top concern is the economy.  The meeting shows the President is “feeling their pain.”  But good politics isn’t automatically bad policy.  Our representatives should care about our concerns, and we shouldn’t fault them for doing what’s right because it is popular.  I’m giving the President the benefit of the doubt that he really wants to know how to bolster the economy.  In that spirit, I want to offer some advice.

Roughly 98% of American jobs are in the small business sector.  Big businesses tend to make money by finding ways to reduce costs; small businesses do that too, but tend to be more “entrepreneurial.” These entrepreneurs are often more willing to take risks to grow.  Growing firms usually hire more employees.  But it is important to understand that no business, big or small, grows for the specific purpose of hiring employees; they grow to be successful, and the free market defines success at least partly in terms of profit, because if they don’t make a profit eventually, they die.

Ask Kmart if you don’t believe me.  Remember them?

Unlike the government, businesses don’t have a choice in this matter. The government can, and does, fail without having to make changes or hard decisions.  Entrepreneurs don’t have that luxury.

I chaired the Small Business Committee in the House of Representatives from 1997 until 2001.  I’ve spoken with thousands of entrepreneurs, and learned from them.

Most entrepreneurs view the government as, at best, a burden, and at worst an enemy.  The government is constantly demanding they spend time and money doing things that have no direct connection to the success of the business.  Many of those burdens are mandated regulations they must comply with: environmental, safety, quality, consumer, personnel, trade, building. The list goes on.

These mandates come from every level of government at the same time.  They constantly change, and are often very difficult to understand.  So the entrepreneurs not only have to spend money to satisfy the government; they have to spend money figuring out what the government wants, and if they are wrong they pay the penalty.

I’m not saying these mandates are necessarily bad, but they usually make it more difficult for the business to succeed.

Here is an example.  Say you run a restaurant chain of 100 stores and are hoping to make 100,000 dollars per restaurant.  Perhaps you were planning to open 10 new stores with that profit.  But if a new law – like the new health care legislation — costs $25,000 per store, you have just lost 25% of your profit.  If that happens, will you be more or less likely to build the new stores?  If you don’t build the stores, then you are not hiring new restaurant managers, or giving business to construction firms, or buying more product from your suppliers.

This doesn’t even take into account the tax burden.  Businesses that make a profit pay income taxes.  If you believe they don’t, disabuse yourself of that notion.  The income taxes usually come from both the federal and state governments, but many local governments levy income taxes as well.  Entrepreneurs have to pay a host of other taxes as well – sales, use, franchise.  And they must spend hundreds of billions of dollars per years to figure out what they owe because the tax laws are so complicated.  Even failing businesses pay taxes – like the payroll tax.  Every business that hires a new employee has to pay 15% of that employee’s wage or salary to the federal government in taxes, regardless of whether the business is making a profit.

Does that make it more or less likely they will hire new employees? Remember that firms don’t grow for the purpose of hiring people; they grow, in part, because they think expansion will turn a profit.  The more taxes they have to pay, the less profit they get by growing, and the more certain they must be that expansion is a really good investment before they will decide to make it.

In an atmosphere of increasing government mandates, and increasing taxes, entrepreneurs become more cautious. They don’t make marginal investments and they won’t grow their business.

It’s easy for public officials to ignore this, or show contempt for the business community.  But I’ve been in public life for a long time, and I can tell you this from personal experience:  There are very few politicians who will cast a vote or make a decision if they think it will cost them their career.  They shouldn’t expect entrepreneurs to be any different.

So here is some simple advice for the President.  If he wants to create jobs, he shouldn’t spend more money on a new “stimulus.”  Government borrowing is part of the problem, not the solution.  Instead, the President should announce that, until the economy is growing, at say 3-4% per year, and unemployment has dropped below 6%, he will not approve new taxes, or any new mandates.

I’d like him to actually reduce taxes and regulations, but given his philosophy that is probably too much to ask.  He could at least make clear he is not going to make the burden on business bigger until the economy is back on its feet.

That would be a significant shot in the arm for the economy.  It would allow entrepreneurs to plan for the future with some degree of certainty.

We can get by with a government that doesn’t grow.  We can’t get by with an economy that doesn’t grow.  If the President will just realize that, then unemployed Americans will have some hope, for the first time in a long time.

To read other articles written by Sen. Jim Talent visit:

www.freedomsolutions.org

www.heritagefoundation.org

http://cbskmoxam.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/3pm-panel.mp3?dl=1

Thursday, July 8, 2010 from 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Celebrations at the Tower

310 Broadway

Cape Girardeau, MO

seMissourian.com

By Jim Talent

Those who have not done so recently would benefit from studying what the U.S. Constitution says about the federal government’s responsibility to provide for the common defense. Most Americans had to memorize the preamble to the Constitution when they were children, so they are aware that one of the purposes of the document was to “provide for the common defense.” But they are not aware of the extent to which the document shows the Founders’ concern for national security.

Providing for common defense

In brief, the Constitution says three things about the responsibility of the federal government for the national defense.

National defense is the priority job of the national government. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution lists 17 separate powers that are granted to the Congress. Six of those powers deal exclusively with the national defense — far more than any other specific area of governance — and grant the full range of authorities necessary for establishing the defense of the nation as it was then understood. Congress is given specific authority to declare war, raise and support armies, provide for a navy, establish the rules for the operation of American military forces, organize and arm the militias of the states, and specify the conditions for converting the militias into national service.

Article 2 establishes the president as the government’s chief executive officer. Much of that article relates to the method for choosing the president and sets forth the general executive powers of his office, such as the appointment and veto powers. The only substantive function of government specifically assigned to the president relates to national security and foreign policy, and the first such responsibility granted him is authority to command the military; he is the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

National defense is the only mandatory function of the national government. Most of the powers granted to Congress are permissive in nature. Congress is given certain authorities but not required by the Constitution to exercise them. For example, Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress power to pass a bankruptcy code, but Congress actually did not enact bankruptcy laws until well into the 19th century.

But the Constitution does require the federal government to protect the nation. Article 4, Section 4 states that the “United States shall guarantee to every State a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion.” In other words, even if the federal government chose to exercise no other power, it must, under the Constitution, provide for the common defense.

National defense is exclusively the function of the national government. Under our Constitution, the states are generally sovereign, which means that the legitimate functions of government not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to the states. But Article One, Section 10 does specifically prohibit the states, except with the consent of Congress, from keeping troops or warships in time of peace or engaging in war, the only exception being that states may act on their own if actually invaded. (This was necessary because, when the Constitution was written, primitive forms of communication and transportation meant that it could take weeks before Washington was even notified of an invasion.)

The great irony of our time is that the bigger the federal government has become, the less well it has performed its priority function of providing for the national defense. For example, Congress spent $787 billion in the “stimulus” bill last year, yet not a dime of it was spent on military procurement or modernization — despite the fact that America is in greater danger today than it has been at any time since Communism was threatening Europe in the late 1940s.

The state of America’s defenses

The Heritage Foundation has written extensively on the risks facing America and the state of our defenses. Here is a brief summary of the salient facts.

America has no strategy for victory in the war on terrorism — we’re not even calling it a war anymore — and the momentum has shifted to the terrorists. The outcome in Afghanistan is in doubt. If the terrorists succeed there, they can reconstitute their safe havens, plan further attacks on the United States, and threaten to gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, a bipartisan commission with the status of the 9/11 Commission, found unanimously that the terrorists would “more likely than not” develop and use a weapon of mass destruction against a Western city by 2013. The director of National Intelligence publicly agreed with that assessment.

The international regime for controlling nuclear weapons is broken. Pakistan has a substantial and growing nuclear arsenal. Its intelligence organization has been penetrated by the Islamists. Both North Korea and Iran are steadily increasing the range, payload, and accuracy of their ballistic missiles. No one seriously believes that the Iranians will voluntarily stop their nuclear program or that the West (except perhaps the Israelis) will use force to stop them.

According to our Pacific commander, China is increasing its military strength far more quickly than our intelligence predicted. The Chinese have already acquired an arsenal of advanced fighters and missiles that threatens to deny the American Navy access to the Taiwan Strait. They are building as many as five submarines per year and have established a modern submarine base on the island of Hainan. They have announced plans to build a variety of the ships necessary to field a blue water capability. By many reports, China has the most far-reaching cyber warfare capability in the world. China is suppressing the native Tibetan culture; supporting genocide in Sudan, oppression in Burma, and repression and political terror in Zimbabwe; and turning a blind eye to nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran.

The American military is significantly weaker than it was at the end of the Cold War. The Army was cut from 18 divisions to 10 and is short on equipment. The Navy is smaller than it has been since 1916 and continues to shrink. The Air Force is smaller than it has been since Pearl Harbor, and the average age of the Air Force inventory is 23 years. Half of our bombers are considered antiques by FAA standards. There are no plans to replace them. Most of our tankers are equally as old. They will not be replaced, if at all, until the 2030s. The Department of Defense wants to close our most modern cargo aircraft production line and will close our most sophisticated fighter line. The missile-defense budget has been cut, and according to most reports, the Obama administration will cut modernization budgets even further.

As important as it is for the federal government to restrain itself from interfering where it does not belong, it is equally important that the government perform its constitutionally mandated function of providing for the national defense. That is why The Heritage Foundation sponsors Protect America Month each year.

Taking our stand for freedom

Ever since the end of World War II, American power has been the chief deterrent to aggression: the shield under which the tools of diplomacy, trade and engagement have produced unprecedented progress toward freedom and democracy. But the shield is cracking. America’s global influence is being checked and rolled back, and even the homeland is no longer safe from attack.

The situation can still be recovered, but only if our leaders understand their duty, regain their confidence and re-energize the defense of freedom here and abroad. Otherwise, the developments that we are witnessing almost daily in Korea, Iran, Russia, China, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Africa and Eastern Europe will be only the leading edge of a terrible storm — the “first foretaste,” as Churchill said after Munich in 1938, “of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

Jim Talent is distinguished fellow in military affairs at the Heritage Foundation. He served as a U.S. senator from Missouri from 2002 to 2007.