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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama's health care programs for the middle class should be slashed to stop scheduled sequester cuts from "destroying the military."

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace point out that the White House has said that if the sequester cuts are not stopped then 70,000 children will lose Head Start, food inspections would be cut and $900 billion in small business loan guarantees would be lost.

"You know the president will say that your party is forcing this to protect tax cuts for the wealthy," Wallace told Graham.

"The commander-in-chief came up with the idea of sequestration -- destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk," Graham insisted. "Here's my idea, let's take Obamacare and put it on the table. You can make $86,000 in income and still get a subsidy under Obamacare. Obamacare is destroying health care in this country."

"If you want to look at ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, let's look at Obamacare. Let's don't destroy the military and just cut blindly across board," he added. "The president promised it wouldn't happen, he's the commander-in-chief and on his watch, we're going to begin to unravel the finest military in the history of the world at a time we need it most."

"The Iranians are watching us, we're allowing people to be destroyed and slaughtered in Syria. So, I just really -- I'm very disappointed in our commander-in-chief."



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It seems Fox regular Angela McGlowan's comments yesterday weren't just a one off. Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has apparently been repeating the same line out on the campaign trail. He just managed to do it without the same Palin-like word salad we got from McGlowan on Saturday.

Here's the clown crew at Fox & Friends from this Sunday, doing their best to carry water for Ryan. Ryan's got his Orwellian spin down painfully well.

MORRIS: And yesterday out on the campaign trail, this subject was not lost on the candidate Paul Ryan making the point yesterday that we need to change our strategy as it relates to our foreign policies. Strength, showing strength and resolve. President Obama has tried a more moderating approach in his outreach to the Middle East in talking about having a hand open, not a clenched fist – recall that from the 2008 election. How has that worked?

Paul Ryan in Florida had a take on it. Have a listen.

RYAN: We're seeing pictures of our President being burned, We're seeing our flags being burned in these foreign capitols all over the world and what we're doing as a result of the Obama foreign policy, by gutting defense, by showing we want to cut defense, by being equivocal, by not speaking up forcefully and clearly for American values of freedom and individual dignity and individual rights and religious freedom, we are projecting weakness abroad.

And if you project weakness abroad a vacuum occurs and it gets filed by people who do not like us. For the sake of our own peace and for the sake of our own security and prosperity, we need peace through strength. That means a strong military. That means a military that is indisputably the strongest in the world. And that is not what we're getting from the Obama doctrine.

The Fox & Friends panel went on to express their dismay over the fact that much of the world doesn't like us and that they're still burning American flags in the streets and to pretty much ignore that our foreign policy has been pissing off people in that region of the world for decades now. They also tried to pretend that any backing away from, rather than a continuation of some of Bush's policies is what has many so angry. Par for the course, it's always upside down land at Fox. Whatever promotes Republicans and neocons talking points is good and whatever supports Democrats is bad. And all of our problems started when President Obama got elected.



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White House senior adviser David Plouffe on Sunday chastised Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan for backing away from his earlier support of defense cuts, saying the Wisconsin congressman "was running away from them with the kind of pace he ran in that fictitional marathon."

Although Ryan voted for a deal that would have triggered significant cuts to defense, he has recently criticized the sequestration plan.

During an interview on Sunday, CBS host Chief White House Correspondent Norah O'Donnell asked Ryan why he was "criticizing the president for those same defense cuts you’re voting for and called a victory."

"I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism that says the sequester will occur if we don’t cut $1.2 trillion in government," Ryan explained.

"Right, a trillion dollars in defense spending, and you voted for it!" O'Donnell pointed out.

"No, Norah," Ryan replied. "I voted for the Budget Control Act."

"That included defense spending!" O'Donnell pressed.

"Norah, you’re mistaken," Ryan insisted.

After hearing that he had refused to even admit he had supported defense cuts, Plouffe drew a comparison to Ryan's recent false claim that he had run a marathon in less than three hours.

"Interesting to hear Congressman Ryan," Plouffe told O'Donnell. "You asked him questions. He voted for the sequester. He voted for the Budget Control Act. He was running away from them with the pace that he ran in the fictitional marathon that you asked him about."

"Getting our fiscal house in order, dealing with the sequester is very simple. We need compromise," he added. "President Obama is the one person in Washington who is very committed to compromise."



Kilmeade: It's a 'Sin' to Cut Defense Spending

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Fox News host Brian Kilmeade says that cutting defense spending is just not the Christian thing to do.

During a Thursday Fox & Friends segment about a defense industry-sponsored study that warns unemployment will rise if Congress does not find a way to avert $500 billion in sequestration cuts, Kilmeade declared that it would be a "sin" to reduce defense spending back to 2006 levels.

"Could the $500 billion in cuts from the next budget mandate potentially trigger a recession?" Kilmeade exclaimed. "According to the Aerospace Industry Association, the unemployment rate would climb above 9 percent and more than 2 million jobs would be lost all in the name of cutting back defense!"

"It threatens our national security, it threatens our economic security, it threatens our technological leadership, it threatens over 2 million jobs," agreed Jay DeFrank, a public relations official with defense contractor Pratt & Whitney.

"It's a sin that Republicans and Democrats both brought the defense industry in to this," Kilmeade asserted. "They had nothing to do with the [debt ceiling negotiations] impasse that took place last year."

But even as defense contractors are warning of a recession, their stock is up 11 percent this year, outperforming Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Lockheed Martin CEO Bob Stevens recently told the House Armed Services Committee that "sequestration kills jobs," but his company's earnings are also up 26 percent.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Stallard told Bloomberg that defense contractors that "stray into the area of politics" by threatening mass layoffs could open themselves up to questions about profits and executive compensation.

"It is potentially a risk down the line that these politicians come back with things that maybe the defense industry is not prepared for," he explained.

(h/t: Media Matters)