For Heaven’s Sake, Congress, Protect the People

The Preamble to the U. S. Constitution states very succinctly the reason the states came together to form a national government:   
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
In this very short list of purposes is, “To provide for the common defense” of the American people. The federal government now engages in vastly more activities than those specifically listed in the Preamble. As the national government takes on a plethora of other functions, there is a tendency to downplay the primary functions, one of which is to defend the people from foreign aggression.
United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis recently appeared before Congress to remind them of their duty to provide sufficient funding, and to do so in a manner which enables our military to plan and to make decisions based upon an established budget plan. Congress’ inability to agree upon a budget undermines our military’s capacity to do the critically important and difficult task with which they are charged.
The American people know that Congress is dysfunctional. Secretary Mattis spelled out for them the magnitude of the price the American people are paying for their recklessness:
Without “sustained, predictable appropriations, my presence here today wastes your time.”
He said that continuing as they are currently doing, creating short-term budget resolutions, will mean that the Army will not be able to recruit 15,000 soldiers; the Air Force will be unable to recruit 4,000 airmen, and aircraft will be unable to fly because they lack spare parts and maintenance.
That is not all; he added, “Let me be clear, as hard as the last 16 years of war have been on our military, no enemy in the field has done as much to harm the readiness of the U.S. military than the combined impact of the Budget Control Act’s defense spending caps, worsened by operating for 10 of the last 11 years under continuing resolutions of varied and unpredictable duration.”
These people we sent to Washington continue to squabble over far less important things than the safety of the American people. These are troubled times. We ended the Cold War and hoped for a long era of peace. With the war on Islamic terrorism not won, with Russia and China ever-more challenging us around the globe and with North Korea threatening our cities with nuclear weapons, now is the time for our elected representatives to put their differences behind them. If they don’t do anything else, they must give our protectors what they require to keep us safe.