The federal government is constitutionally-obligated to provide for the common defense of the American people. That’s an integral part of our contract with our government. We pay taxes, Washington makes sure we don’t have to live in fear of a foreign invasion.

You know what’s not called for in the Constitution? Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. Government-run health care. Funding for community organizing groups. The National Endowment for the Arts. Any of the multitude of special interest funding provisions or entitlement programs Washington has decided to fund.

Now let me ask you this: We’re running a $1.4 trillion deficit. The national debt is about $12 trillion. Obviously we need to cut back to the essentials. So why are we increasing entitlement funding, and even adding new programs, while we tell our military to learn to live with less?

The point man in charge of requirements at the Pentagon, vice chair of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Hoss Cartwright, just told the services to “wake up!” at a CSIS sponsored conference in Washington, DC. In the real world, not the fantasy bubble of never ending defense budget increases, there are such things as economic dislocation, fiscal deficits and resource constraints, he said.

“You are not going to have 300 to 500 ships. You are not going to have thousands of fighters.” At the same time, America must try and reverse its course of the last decade, which was bringing us to the point where we would have one ship on each coast and one plane on each coast, and focus on quantity to help reverse that stark reality: “We need quantity more than we need that high end exquisite capability. If we can’t figure out how to get to that we’re living in denial of the world we’re in and hoping for the world we want to have in front of us.”

Why not? Why can’t the United States Navy have the number of ships it requires? Why can’t the same branch and the United States Air Force have the number of fighters required? Why does the military have to learn to defend the country with less funding and resources?

I don’t see the welfare sector of our nation having to deal with less. In fact, Congress keeps adding entitlement programs to ensure the welfare sector can keep leaching off the productive sector. We just passed a $1 trillion plus government health care program to buy insurance for illegal aliens and college kids.

But the military — a constitutionally-obligated fighting force entrusted with the protection of 300 million people — has to learn to live with less because, hey, times are tough and we need to cut spending. Pardon my French, but that’s complete and utter bullshit.

Welcome to America under a Democratic president and Congress, my friends. We can afford ever-expanding welfare programs but not the common defense.