“We just can’t be the country that we are capable of… if we just keep spending ourselves into oblivion.” –Adm. Mike Mullen
The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said at a breakfast Tuesday in Washington that the national security implications of the national debt are keeping him up at night, even as budget negotiators are “doing handstands … as if the problem has gone away.”
Adm. Mike Mullen, who retired in 2011 after serving in parts of George W. Bush’s last term and President Obama’s first term, stressed at the Concerned Veterans for America event that “the military is part of the solution to better outcomes around the world, but on a higher level it’s really about economies.”
“If you can create some stability in a peaceful environment, people’s standard of living will improve and economies will start to thrive,” he said.
Mullen said he was “delighted” with the progress made through bipartisan budget and appropriations agreements in Congress, but “I worry that it sends the signal that it’s over.”
“We just can’t be the country that we are capable of… if we just keep spending ourselves into oblivion,” the four-star retired admiral warned. “It’s going to take sacrifice, quite frankly, on the part of everybody.”
Even for all of the complaints about defense eating up the budget, Mullen said pouring the entire Pentagon budget into the debt still would have “minimal impact” without entitlement reform.
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