House leader: Defense cuts can reduce debt

House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Monday called the country's rising debt a "national security threat" and suggested that the government trim fat from the defense budget to help rein in the need for foreign loans.

"The deeper our nation sinks into debt, the more our choices will be constrained and the more our leadership will be challenged by nations, especially China, that hold our debt," Hoyer said in a policy address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"It's time to stop talking about fiscal discipline and national security threats as if they were separate topics," he added.

Hoyer warned that "unsustainable debt has a long history of toppling world powers." Defense spending, Hoyer said, should not be exempt from the types of "hard choices" other federal agencies are making with their budgets.

And he pointed to an acquisition reform bill enacted last year, as well as a follow-on bill the House passed this year, as ways to cut wasteful or unnecessary spending from the Pentagon's budget.