Tiny Tim Geithner Isn't Obama's Only Cabinet Member Who Should Go-- Meet Leon Panetta

Does it sound horrible and indefensible that Obama is about to make David Petraeus head of the CIA? It should-- but it shouldn't sound surprising that Petraeus will be heading the world's most hated governmental agency, nor should it really sound any worse that Petraeus is replacing ex-Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta, the new Secretary of Defense. The Military Industrial Complex is a world unto itself-- a consumer of more of the nation's wealth than any other sector and the source of more corruption than even Wall Street. So it certainly shouldn't have shocked anyone that the former Democratic congressman from California turned Military Industrial Complex honcho would call for cut backs in Social Security and Medicare to keep the machine rolling along-- the machine Eisenhower once warned the country about in no uncertain terms (see video above).

Panetta started his career as a Republican working for Senator Tom Kuchel (R-CA) and then for the Nixon Administration. He jumped the fence in 1971 because his centrist vision was no longer at home in a Republican Party moving sharply right. That centrist vision helped hold back a progressive agenda for nearly two decades while he served in Congress, particularly when he was a powerful member (and then chairman) of the House Budget Committee, the Paul Ryan of his time.

"We're already taking our share of the discretionary cuts as part of this debt-ceiling agreement, and those are going to be tough enough," Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday. "I think anything beyond that would damage our national defense."

He said savings need to come from entitlement programs and from higher taxes-- not further defense cuts. In effect, that puts the six Democrats who will soon be appointed to the committee on notice: don't screw around with this.

Democrats are now demanding clarity from the White House: does President Obama think Medicare and Social Security can be cut by $500 billion over 10 years, but the bloated defense budget can not?
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) put the question to Obama in a Friday letter.

"I urge you to make clear that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta did not speak for the Administration when he stated yesterday that additional spending cuts, beyond those in the recent debt-ceiling agreement, should come from non-discretionary spending such as Social Security and Medicare while the military budget is spared," Frank wrote.

The key to all of this, of course, remains the GOP's steadfast commitment to never raising a single new dime of revenue. While Panetta made clear that the consequence of GOP intransigence on this score will have a deleterious effect on U.S. security, he also made it harder for Dems to stand firm and let penalties kick in if Republicans don't bend.

Cecil Bothwell is the progressive Asheville City Councilman running for the Democratic nomination against reactionary Blue Dog Heath Shuler. Yesterday he shared his ideas with us in regard to the horrible Boehner-Obama deficit deal that led to the S&P downgrade. This morning you can see how consistent those ideas are with his vision for a more realistic Pentagon. "There is no excuse for our so-called 'defense' spending," he told me. "The fact that our military budget exceeds those of the rest of the world's countries combined reeks of empire. Yes, we need to defend our borders. No, we do not need to be the world's policeman. Panetta has drunk the Pentagon Kool-Aid, and ought to be replaced."

Generally-speaking this is where most progressives stand in terms of Panetta's reactionary position. Two of the Blue America-backed candidates are campaigning on a very different vision. Nick Ruiz (D-FL): "When half of U.S. tax revenue is consumed by the military industrial complex, we need only look at defense budget order takers like Leon Panetta to understand why it is so. And he wants zero realistic cuts to defense!? The real question Americans should ask themselves is why did the 'Democratic' President of 'hope and 'change' nominate Panetta for the directorship of the CIA-- and then nominate him for Secretary of Defense? Doesn't sound progressive or Democratic to me-- sounds downright hawkish and imperialistic."

Across the country, Norman Solomon (D-CA) was making a similar point:

This goes to the truism that you choose your advisers and you choose your advice. Populating the cabinet with Tim Geithner or Leon Panetta makes it very likely that the advice will skew toward the interests of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex, especially given that those secretaries of Treasury and Defense are functioning in tandem with current administration priorities that skew toward the historic rightward edge of the Democratic Party. On its merits, Panetta's statement is a collapse of core moral values under the pressure of an insatiable drive for military prowess and corporate profits, very much in sync with what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism." If we must have a warfare state while the young and the old, the poor and the nearly poor, suffer needlessly and endlessly, then Panetta is ably fulfilling his duty. But, in the name of basic human decency, we must not have such a state.

Watch Barney Frank with Rachel last night talking about how excesses in the military budget hurt America: