In line with Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel’s admonition that no crisis should go to waste, the Obama Administration is preparing to exploit the massive debt and deficits to push for drastic cuts in our national U.S. military budget. The proposed cuts, which total $960 billion, could leave the U.S. as a second-rate military power.

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Under the “Sustainable Defense Task Force” plan advanced by the so-called “odd couple” of Reps. Ron Paul (R-Tx.) and Barney Frank (D-Ma.), the U.S. Navy would be cut to 230 combat ships (from a planned number of 313). Under President Reagan, the U.S. had come close to achieving a 600-ship Navy.

Other proposals include:

Rep. Frank, one of the most left-wing members of Congress, created the “Sustainable Defense Task Force” that came up with the cuts and worked in cooperation with Reps. Paul, Walter Jones (R-N.C.), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Their plan is designed to serve as a model for Obama’s proposed cuts.

The “left-right coalition” making up the membership of the group included people from the Center for American Progress and the Cato Institute, both of them funded by George Soros. Another member came from the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies.

Its members included:

The involvement of two officials of the libertarian Cato Institute confirms our fears about the influence of what we called the “Progressive Libertarians.” These libertarians, sometimes mistakenly referred to as conservatives, have often collaborated with left-wing organizations and individuals, especially on cuts to national defense and on the liberal social agenda.

We noted, “The seeds of this strange collaboration of interests were planted decades ago, when the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) held a seminar under the title of ‘Left and Right,’ featuring Marcus Raskin of IPS and Karl Hess, then an IPS fellow. The speakers at this 1969 event included economist Murray Rothbard and Jeff Liebling, the latter identified as ‘former Youth for Goldwater’ and ‘SDS member.’ Hess, a former Barry Goldwater speechwriter who died in 1994, traveled easily between left and right.”

A September 1970 IPS seminar on “U.S. Strategy in Asia” was organized by Earl C. Ravenal, then an IPS Associate Fellow, who would later join the Cato Institute as a distinguished senior fellow in foreign policy studies. A book featuring the proceedings of the event reveals the participation of Morton Halperin, then with the liberal Brookings Institution and now a top employee of George Soros.

We noted that Justin Logan of the Cato Institute had appeared on the Glenn Beck show along with another Cato scholar, Chris Edwards, who said that we should “pull back the foreign troops” and drastically reduce the U.S. defense budget. This will produce “higher security” for the U.S., he claimed.

Sounding like an anti-war progressive, Edwards charged that sinister arms manufacturers were pushing funding for unneeded weapons.

Obama had already cancelled the F-22 Raptor, the most advanced air superiority fighter in the U.S. inventory, at a time when the Russians are developing their own version of a fifth generation fighter.

The Cato Institute favored the Obama policy of killing the F-22.

On top of this cut, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pledged on June 28 to cut $100 billion from the military budget over the next five years.

The left-wing IPS, a key component of the “progressive” coalition backing Obama, has been waging a campaign to have Obama veto more “unneeded weapons systems” and is urging the President to make the defense cuts “much deeper” than those already proposed.