National Security

California Democrats support a strong national defense that includes considerations for all aspects of defense, not just the Armed Forces. We are committed to a foreign policy that holds the use of military forces as the last defense option, only when all else fails. We support the consolidation of all aspects of the national defense budget, now spread among Defense, State, Energy, Homeland Security and other cabinet departments, into a single, consolidated budget line item, so that redundancies can be eliminated and, more importantly, no aspect of total national defense goes under-served.

To protect and defend California and our Constitution, Democrats will:

• Rebalance the security portfolio in the context of a consolidated defense budget to place more emphasis on nonmilitary security tools such as diplomacy and foreign aid, by shifting as much as 10 percent of the current security funding from Defense to State and Homeland Security;

• Reduce the defense development and procurement programs to those items deemed essential for defense against real and not imagined threats;

• Increase the security of ports by greatly increasing the inspection routine at all air and seaports and by further limiting points of access and increasing the inspection routine on all land borders;

• Integrate anti-terrorist information and actions by rapidly establishing the free exchange of threat information among the anti-terrorist operating agencies;

• Increase foreign non-military aid for improved anti-terrorist police training, investigation, information exchange, and international cooperation;
• Reaffirm posse comitatus and forbid the use of American troops on American soil, except in the event of invasion or in an assistance role to the states in the event of a natural disaster, and then only at their request;

• Increase federal funding to states and communities for equipping, training and expanding the force of first-responders;

• Rebuild and strengthen the National Guard as the states’ principal means of providing internal security under the command of the various governors; and

• Further, California Democrats recognize the supremacy of the United States Constitution in all matters, and enjoin our representatives in Congress to reaffirm the civil and personal rights in that document and not trade them off against invasive and intrusive security legislation against imagined threats. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” – the price must not be our constitutional rights.