Editorial: Guard saved in House bill

Sunday, May 14, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

In January we blamed the Bush administration's tax cuts for putting the Pentagon into the untenable position of proposing a massive cut to the National Guard during a time of war.

The Pentagon, as a consequence of the tax cuts for the wealthy, was looking for ways to cut more than $11 billion from the budget of the Army alone.

It proposed cutting about 17,000 National Guard slots. With the Guard playing a significant role in the Iraq war, and with so few troops available anyway that many were seeing their tours in Iraq extended by many months, we felt that this proposed cut was an insult to our armed forces.

Fortunately the House feels the same way, as evidenced by the $513 billion defense authorization bill it passed Thursday. The bill would save the Guard positions and also strengthen the regular Army by 30,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps by 5,000 Marines.

Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, spoke our language when he told the Washington Post that a cut in National Guard funding "didn't make sense."

Of course, the tax cuts that forced the Pentagon into making such a proposal make even less sense. Congress, foolishly, extended the tax cuts last week. We're glad the House approved strengthening our armed forces, but it is disgusting that, because of the tax cuts, the money to pay for the strengthening will have to be borrowed and the payments met by future generations.