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Panetta blasts congressional ‘dysfunction’ in farewell speech
Defense secretary Leon Panetta warned Wednesday that “partisan dysfunction” in Congress is threatening to create the most serious readiness crisis the military has confronted in a decade.
In what Panetta billed as one of his final addresses as Defense secretary, he said that the gridlock in Congress has created an atmosphere where governing means jumping from crisis to crisis.
“Today, crisis drives policy. It has become too politically convenient to simply allow a crisis to develop and get worse and then react to the crisis,” Panetta said in a speech to students at Georgetown University.
Panetta, who will soon be stepping down from his Pentagon post, has been among the most vocal critics of sequestration, the across-the-board cuts that were set in motion by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
And while he laid out the dangers of sequestration in his Georgetown speech, his larger point was that the political environment itself is a threat to national security and the economy.
“My fear is that there is a dangerous and callous attitude
that is developing among some Republicans and some Democrats, that these
dangerous cuts can be allowed to take place in order to blame the other party
for the consequences,” he said. “This is a kind of ‘so what?’ attitude that
says, ‘Let's see how bad it can get in order to have the other party blink.' "
Panetta served in Congress and the Clinton administration before becoming CIA director and Defense secretary under President Obama. He compared today’s attitudes to 1995 when budget gridlock led to a government shutdown.
“When they did it in 1995, it badly hurt the American people,” Panetta said. “And it created a political backlash that damaged those who were blamed for that crisis. Same damn thing is going to happen again if they allow this to occur.”
