President Obama has made many gaffes suggesting unfamiliarity with things like military medical personnel, otherwise known as corpsmen. This time he has shown himself to be unfamiliar with the defense budget and arithmetic.
“The nice thing about the defense budget is it’s so big, it’s so huge, that a 1 percent reduction is the equivalent of the education budget,” Obama said, immediately noting he was “exaggerating” the exact numbers.
“But it’s so big that you can make relatively modest changes to defense that end up giving you a lot of head room to fund things like basic research or student loans or things like that,” the president said.
In fact, his numbers are wildly wrong.
“Contrary to his wildly exaggerated statement, a 1 percent reduction to the Pentagon’s proposed fiscal year 2012 base budget would be $5.5 billion—or 7 percent of the Department of Education’s proposed FY 2012 budget,” wrote Brownfield.
The political left has exaggerated the size of the defense budget for years. The fact that a left wing president would do it is an example of how far from reality they are.