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Krauthammer's Take
August 25, 2011 5:43 P.M.
By NRO Staff
From Wednesday night's Fox News All-Stars:
On the Congressional Budget Office's new deficit numbers:
It has to accept all the assumptions it's given. So in some way it's garbage in and garbage out.
The reason its deficit projection for the next decade is relatively low, the $3.3 trillion, [is] in part because of the deals the Republicans have forced on the president this year, but also in part it has to accept the assumption under the current law, [that] the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of next year …
Of course, nobody will permit the expiration of the cut on the middle class. That is where the money is. Obama of course wants to retain it — as the Republicans do. That is where the money is. It's $3 trillion. The [Bush tax] cut on the rich is only $0.8 . So if you add it together … we'll be at $6.5 trillion — under the best of circumstances — of debt [increases] over the next decade. That's immense.
On the Pentagon's overdue annual report on China's military strength:
There are two questions with China. The capacity — its capacities and its intentions. And everybody pretends that its intentions are obscure. It is not. It is obvious that China wants to dominate its region. There might be a question as to whether ultimately it wants to challenge us on a global level the way the Soviets did in the Atlantic and other places, but if it happens it's half a century away. What we're talking about is now, in the next decade or two.
Obviously it wants us out of the western Pacific, which we have dominated. It's our waters. It's our pond. And China's developing all these weapons systems, which would be a way to deny us access. You've got the cyberspace [capacities], the outerspace, the surface ships, the submarines, the aircraft carrier, the ship-to-ship missiles, the J-20 fighter. All of these would be weapons systems that would make it difficult or dangerous for America to enter the [Pacific Rim] waters.
It [China] wants to dominate its region. It has claims on the waters that a lot of countries in Southeast Asia are claiming. And that's its objective.
The huge increase in its capacities is aimed clearly at making it its waters and not ours. And that's the obvious coming threat."
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