Florida Congressman and retired U.S. Army officer Allen West has accused President Barack Obama of placing political considerations above the needs of military families, veterans and America’s active-duty warriors in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV.
“He can come out and give all of the speeches that he wants, but just yesterday he threatened a veto of the military construction and VA benefits bill if it did not have anything about project labor agreements, which would favor unions,” declared the retired lieutenant colonel on Friday.
Watch our exclusive interview. Story continues below.
The congressman charged that President Obama is “putting political issues above taking care of our military, their families and also our veterans.”
His assessment is consistent with a Gallup poll released this week, which finds that veterans overwhelmingly favor GOP nominee Mitt Romney over the president by a margin of 58 percent to 38.
West claims that healthcare fees for the military and their families as well as America’s veterans would have tripled under Obama’s proposed budget.
“We know that there are a lot of cuts to the military that he is not standing up to try to stave off. For the United States and our veteran community, they understand who is standing up for them. And it’s definitely not the president,” said West.
West has been critical of the between $500-600 million in automatic defense spending cuts that are expected to kick in early next year.
Such cuts would result in the smallest ground force that the United States has had since 1940, the smallest Navy since 1915, and the smallest Air Force since the advent of the modern Air Force, according to West.
“That is why we shouldn’t have people talking about military operations until we solve this thing about sequestration and we find the requisite amount of spending cuts up here in Washington, D.C. to make sure that we don’t have our military — which is only about 19.6 percent of our total budget — consuming about 50 to 55 percent of budget cuts,” he added.
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