Letters: Rep. McKeon can’t have it both ways

Re “Patt Morrison Asks: Howard ‘Buck’ McKeon,” Opinion, Sept. 18

Patt Morrison notes that Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon’s (R-Santa Clarita) “campaigns have benefited from the district’s aerospace and defense industries.”

So when he asks for better funding for the military as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is he representing actual Americans or his contributors? This brings to mind the fox guarding the chicken coop.

Even with sequestration, the U.S. will have a military many times more powerful than that of any potential adversary. Under the spending cuts McKeon is seeking to reverse, we simply need to put our military in places around the world where it is actually needed.

McKeon and other “representatives” who are bankrolled by the military/industrial complex should recuse themselves from voting on the military budget.

Seymour R. Levin

Los Angeles

McKeon sounds like the moth who got too close to the flame. And now he’s lamenting the fact that his own military interests weren’t exempted from sequestration. Talk about passing the buck.

The FBI’s new director recently stated that because of funding cuts, his headquarters as well as field offices might have to close from time to time (except for skeleton crews) and that special agents might be furloughed. What’s more important to McKeon — funding the FBI, which protects all Americans and has brought domestic terrorism suspects to justice, or bombing Syria?

McKeon voted for sequestration, and now he wants an exemption for the military. How about authoring some legislation to repeal the sequester?

Kimberlyn Hearns

San Bernardino

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