The last 11 years have been some of the worst strategic of economic growth we have seen. Job creation has been anemic and most of the new jobs are low wages positions. Our debt when from 5 Trillion in 2000, to 14 trillion in 2011. While our economy declines, we got involved in wars, without going to war time economy. To make matters worse, we increased entitlement spending with Medicare Part D and Obamacare. Then we had an economic collapse and still engaged in War and entitlement spending.

Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is stepping down. He is warning America can’t continue to be both a welfare state and a superpower. We have top choose what type of nation we have.

Robert Gates, who steps down next month after four-plus years at the Pentagon, is making his retirement lap a tutorial on America’s defense spending and security needs. His message is welcome, especially on Memorial Day, and even if he couldn’t always heed it in his time as Secretary of Defense.

In a series of farewell speeches, Mr. Gates has warned against cuts to weapon programs and troop levels that would make America vulnerable in “a complex and unpredictable security environment,” as he said Sunday at Notre Dame. On Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Gates noted that the U.S. went on “a procurement holiday” in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration decided to cash in the Cold War peace dividend. The past decade showed that history (and war) didn’t end in 1989.

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But on coming into office, the Obama Administration put the Pentagon on a fiscal diet—even as it foisted new European-sized entitlements on America, starting with $2.6 trillion for ObamaCare.

America needs to be both an economic and military superpower. It can’t be that if we go the route of the welfare state. To be a military superpower, we need to be an economic power. The only way we can be an economic power is by eliminating the welfare state and entitlement reform.  The choice is ours to make.