Rep. Barney Frank's Call For Defense Spending Cuts

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., continued his crusade for defense spending cuts at the Take Back the American Dream conference on Monday, calling on participants to pressure a congressional deficit-reduction "super committee" to focus all of its spending reductions on the military budget. In the video above, he offers a typically blunt explanation of why he thinks it's justified to call on the military to bear the burden of budget cuts, and mocks what he calls the "military Keynesnism" of the right.

George Zornick of The Nation wrote [1] that "if he continues this push in public, it will be significant—there has yet to be significant progressive pressure on the super-committee to focus on defense spending cuts."

The Boston Globe highlighted [2] Frank's criticism of what he considers a bipartisan, longstanding, unnecessary extension of military power around the world, and in particular President Obama's continued military involvement in Afghanistan.

Frank said the United States is financially overcommitted to defending “wealthy nations in Europe against a nonexistent threat,” unlike the threats posed by the Nazis in World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

He also expressed his displeasure with the prospect of President Obama maintaining a US military presence in Afghanistan, saying that while he continues to strongly support the president, “that is wholly unacceptable and we must make that clear.”