[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 11 (Tuesday, February 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: February 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
DEFENSE SPENDING
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Kyl] is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KYL. Madam Speaker, I also express my disappointment that we were
not able to have the debate this evening, but for all of those who have
been expecting it, we would ask that they consult us for the time when
we can reschedule, and I appreciate the gentleman's willingness to
moderate the debate this evening.
We thought we would take a few minutes, the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] and I, and discuss the issue since we are
both here and we are ready to at least lay some of the groundwork for
that debate, when it occurs, and particularly to talk about this
important issue as the President has now laid his budget before us. We
can begin to analyze it both for its general purpose and how it may
affect the debate.
So we would like to take a few minutes here this evening. I would
like to begin by yielding to my colleague, a member of the Armed
Services Committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].
Mr. WELDON. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding to me.
I, too, am disappointed that we could not engage in the Oxford-style
debate that was to take place tonight between two Members of the
Republican Party against two Members of the Democratic Party on the
issue of further cuts in defense spending, which was going to be the
position of those in the majority.
I would like to say at the outset that even though there were two
Republicans against two Democrats on this issue, my position would have
been at the outset that there are many, many Democrats, including most
on the Armed Services Committee, who are, in fact, in agreement with
the position that we would have taken that further defense cuts would
not be in the best interest of America, our national security, and
freedom-loving people around the world.
{time} 1750
This would not have been, in my opinion, a Democrat versus Republican
debate. It would have been a debate between those who are the majority
in the Congress who feel that we are at the point where we cannot cut
defense spending any further.
I would like to start out, Madam Speaker, by just highlighting where
we are today, because unfortunately, the perception out there across
America is that somehow we have dramatically increased the amount of
Federal tax dollars that are sent to Washington being spent on the
military. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have a chart here
that I would like to refer to, which I would be happy to share with any
of my colleagues, or perhaps anyone nationally, who would like to see
it, that shows defense outlays as a percentage of our Gross National
Product.
Most industrialized nations compare their defense spending or other
areas of spending as a percentage of their gross national product, or a
percentage of their total Federal outlays. That is what we are going to
do here.
In the 1960's, following the Korean war, America was at relative
peace. We all had thought at that point in time there would be no major
war, things were stabilizing, and we could revert back to a peacetime
economy and a peacetime scenario. During John Kennedy's tenure in the
early and mid-1960's, we were spending 9.1 percent of our Gross
National Product on the military, and roughly 51 cents of every Federal
dollar that was sent to Washington was spent to support our national
military and our national defense.
If we look at where we are today, as we have seen defense spending
decline, this year's defense budget will see us spend roughly 3 percent
of our Gross National Product on the military, and about 17 cents of
every dollar on the military. So whichever mechanism we use to compare
defense spending, it has actually been cut dramatically. In fact, the
only area of Federal spending receiving such massive cuts is in fact
our defense budget.
It was kind of ironic when President Clinton stood in this very room
just several weeks ago and slammed his fist on the table and said ``no
more defense cuts.'' I would like to believe our President, but if we
look at what he requested for this next fiscal year, and the following
2 years, it is actually less money in each of those years than what we
are spending today. In my book, and in most of our books, that is a
cut, so we continue to see requests to decrease military spending.
In fact, if we look at the President's 5-year budget plan, which many
of us opposed because of this condition, $128 billion of cuts over 5
years would be in the defense area, many of them unspecified. One of
our biggest problems this year is going to be to deliver on the second
year of the 5-year defense cuts that President Clinton used to base his
budget numbers on. In fact, there are many, including former Secretary
Aspin, in his bottom-up review, who have already said we need to
increase spending just to be able to keep up with our military needs
this year.
What is most troubling about the defense numbers is not so much that
we should pull a number out of the air, because that is not the way we
should decide the level of defense spending. In fact, many of us on the
Committee on Armed Services are outraged because that is how the
President evidently arrived at the $128 billion number.
I say that using two quotes, one from Senator Sam Nunn, who, when the
original budget numbers were given last year, said that these budget
cuts were pulled out of the air. They were not based on some analysis
of the threat to America's existence and our facilities around the
world, they were simply pulled out of the air by a pencil-pushing
budget director over at the White House.
In fact, just today we had a briefing, a closed intelligence
briefing, for the Committee on Foreign Affairs by Dr. Joseph Nye,
chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and each of the various
subheads who were responsible for gathering all of the intelligence on
which we can base the threat to Amercia and our security around the
world.
Under a direct question from me, Dr. Nye responded that not even he
had been consulted by President Clinton nor the people who made that
decision as to what our budget level should be for the next 5 years.
What troubled me the most is that we are making these decisions on
our budget numbers from this year through the next 5 years largely
based on numbers pulled out of the air, not on a threat assessment, not
on the reality of the world conditions, not on the potential conflict
that could come about from the former Soviet republics, not on the
situation in the Middle East, not on the potential for North Korea
using its nuclear technology, not on the situation involving Pakistan
and India, and other nations in that part of the world, but simply we
are basing this on a number pulled out of the air to fit with the
President's 5-year budget plan. That really is scary, and it has many
of us concerned.
Not only is defense being cut, as proposed by President Clinton, by
$128 billion, but the people of America have to understand that
Congress is also having its way in cutting defense even further. The
defense appropriations and authorization bills that we have passed in
the last session of Congress were loaded down with programs that have
nothing to do with national security. Funding a $40 million hospital in
Denver, CO, was one of the items that many of us tried to question but
could not get a separate vote on, or funding special grants to colleges
that have nothing to do with defense. All were stuck in the defense
bill.
In fact, it was Senator John McCain who publicly has said that in
last year's defense appropriation bill, there were $4 billion of
unauthorized appropriations, items that found their way in, in many
cases having nothing to do with our national security.
When we talk about the defense cuts we are making, we have to add in
that a major or a substantial portion of the defense appropriation does
not take into consideration the fact that other programs are put in
there by Members of Congress that have nothing to do with our strategic
interest or our national security.
On top of that, the President has requested approximately $20 billion
over 5 years for what he calls defense conversion, and in fact, when
one looks at that conversion number, they find out that many of those
conversion items have been targeted or earmarked for certain districts
or for certain companies or for certain Members, and are not based upon
a real concerted effort to find and develop dual use technologies and
new emerging technologies from work that we have done in the military.
Madam Speaker, the position that I would have taken if the debate
were in fact held tonight is that we must base our defense numbers on
the threat that is there and evident to the people of America around
the world, and it must be based on scientific evidence that we then
discuss and analyze, and systems that are needed to maintain our
national security.
It should not be based on some artificial number pulled in by some
budget pencil-pusher down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Second, if we are looking at ways that we can improve our defense
spending, we in this Congress have got to stop using the defense budget
and the defense spending process as a cash cow, where we can add in all
these other programs that have nothing to do with our national
security.
Madam Speaker, I think we must also remember if there is one thing we
could attribute to the downfall of communism in the Soviet Union, it is
the work and effort of Ronald Reagan, followed by George Bush, in
building up a strong military.
It was just recently, as a matter of fact, it was last March that
Aleksandr Bessmertnykh, in a conference held here in Washington, said
that SDI and the military posture of this country under Ronald Reagan
were the reasons why the Soviet system eventually had to back off, and
why Gorbachev had to back off, because they could not continue to go up
against America on security issues.
No nation has ever been threatened because it was too strong. Our
concern is that as we move through the remaining years of the Clinton
administration, that we have to be careful that we not short change our
military and end up with a hollow force structure, as we did in the
1970's, which just invites despots and leaders around the world to take
on our allies and attempt to involve our allies in conflicts that could
lead to a world escalation or a world war.
The threat is still there, the danger is still there. One classified
briefing that was held several weeks ago, one of my colleagues said
that at this point in time there were over 60 hostile actions taking
place today between countries and between people and ethnic groups, any
one of which could involve America, so this notion that somehow things
are all rosy and we have no more concern for national security is just
totally untrue.
Before I yield back to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from
Arizona, John Kyl, I know he is going to talk about the need for
nuclear deterrents and for ballistic missile systems to deal with the
threat they pose, which I have not even talked about, which are also
major concerns of the American people.
We have to understand that as the debate unfolds on the President's
budget, this year and in the out-years, we have to deal on facts and
reality, not on perceptions. What the President did in this room, in
the State of the Union, in pounding his fist, was nothing but a
perception that he is not going to let defense be cut any more. That is
just not what is happening. It is not borne out by the facts and it is
not borne out by the budget numbers contained in the document that I
sent up here yesterday.
I urge the American people and our colleagues to be vigilant as this
process unfolds.
{time} 1800
Mr. KYL. Madam Speaker, I would ask my colleague if he would just
take another minute to explain the other chart that is on the easel
behind the one that he has talked about, the color chart which I think
graphically demonstrates another point, and that is the comparison
between defense spending and the domestic spending that has increased
over the years, and I yield to my colleague for that purpose.
Mr. WELDON. I thank my colleague for again yielding. I am happy to
explain this very vivid chart which I think describes what is again a
misconception. The people of America have again been to some extent
hoodwinked into thinking that all of our Federal dollars have gone for
the military and we have cut domestic discretionary spending and
mandatory spending dramatically. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
If you look at this chart which provides cumulative real changes from
fiscal year 1990 through fiscal year 1999 you see almost a 40-percent
increase in mandatory spending programs, the entitlement programs, you
see a 12-percent increase in domestic discretionary spending, and yet
you see a 35-percent decrease in defense outlays, an actual decrease.
The only area of the budget that we have cut in the last several years
and are proposing to cut in the future are in fact national security
and defense.
This President, even in cutting his Federal workers, and he counts
that heavily, what he does not tell the American people is the bulk of
those workers are going to be Pentagon workers, they are going to be
the people who work for the military, the young people who committed
their lives and their careers to defending this country. What he also
does not tell the American people is, looking at two studies done, one
by the Office of Technology Assessment and the other done by the
Congressional Budget Office, using the numbers that they had available
for the original Clinton 5-year cuts in defense, the estimates of job
losses in America over the next 5 years will range between 1.2 and 2.8
million workers who will lose their jobs. These are both uniformed
personnel at the Pentagon and people who work for defense contractors
and the defense industrial base. There are only 5.5 million Americans
who work in the defense industry right now today, and what we are
talking about is seeing up to one-half of those people, one out of
every two workers get a pink slip. And the problem is we have no place
to put them. We have no jobs that can take their skills and their
knowledge and reemploy them, and that is what is so outrageous, that we
are doing this in a vacuum. Not that we should keep the defense budget
high just to employ people, but there has to be some thought process
given to where these people are going to go to work. That has not
happened and it does not exist today, and all across America tens of
thousands of husbands and wives are losing their jobs and do not know
what to do because of the drastic downsizing that is currently
occurring with our military, while at the same time, by the way, we are
increasing dramatically domestic spending.
Mr. KYL. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the eloquent statement by my
colleague from Pennsylvania, Kurt Weldon, who serves on the Armed
Services Committee, and who, as he indicated, participated in a hearing
just this morning, an intelligence hearing describing the threat that
is posed to us around the world and from the intelligence point of view
the kinds of things we are going to have to do to meet that threat.
To just play for a moment on one of the last points made by my
colleague, and these are statistics that I borrowed, by the way, from
the former Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, who points out the fact
that it takes 9 years to build a modern aircraft carrier from
authorization to deployment. It takes about 25 years to train an
officer capable of commanding a modern armor division in combat, and it
takes 13 years before a new Navy aircraft can be deployed. So Madam
Speaker, it obviously is the case that you cannot draw down a force and
rebuild it overnight. And my colleague from Pennsylvania, in pointing
out the number of people both in the civilian jobs and in the military
who are being given the pink slip, as he put it, or are going to be out
of this process, our military industrial base will be gravely
undermined, and yet because of the severe time periods here that it
takes to rebuild the forces, we would not be able to respond quickly to
a crisis, but rather would have to take a long time, 9 years, for
example, to build a modern aircraft carrier, and in the case of
training an officer, 25 years. So we are talking about a very serious
proposition when we talk about a rapid build-down, quite an oxymoron
that, build-down, but a very serious proposition when we consider the
time constraints and then rebuilding that force back up.
So to restate some of the statistics that demonstrate the fact that
we are actually significantly cutting defense spending now, whether
measured as a percent of gross domestic product or as a percent of the
Federal budget, here are the quick numbers again: Defense spending has
dropped since 1985 from 27 percent of the Federal budget to less than
17 percent, which by the way, Madam Speaker, is the lowest share of the
Federal budget since before Pearl Harbor. Defense spending has dropped
to just 3.9 percent of the gross domestic product versus 11.9 percent
at the time of the Korean war, 9.1 percent during the Vietnam war, and
6.3 percent during the height of the Reagan buildup. And finally, since
1950, as my colleague pointed out, entitlement programs have grown from
18 percent of the Federal budget to over 50 percent, and have become
the largest single sector of U.S. Government spending, while defense,
of course, has gone from about 50 percent down to less than 17 percent.
So the first point that I think we would have made had this debate
occurred this evening is that we have already cut defense spending
significantly. And as the President said, whatever else you might think
about his plans for cuts over the next 5 years, as he said from that
podium a couple of weeks ago, we cannot cut defense spending any
further.
Now why is that so? We are not talking about abstract numbers here
or, as my colleague pointed out, just to keep people employed. We are
talking about the need for a strong defense in order to maintain world
peace.
Madam Speaker, we talk a lot about our crime problem, and one of the
things we want to do about that is to put more cops on the beat. And as
a matter of fact, the President proposed spending a lot of money to put
more cops on the beat. Why do we do that? Why do we want to have more
cops on the beat? To deter crime. The more cops you have on the beat,
the less crime you are going to have committed on the streets, and the
same thing is true internationally. As long as the United States
maintains a strong overwhelming presence, and we can back up our
foreign policy decisions whatever they may be, other people in the
world are not going to mess with us. They understand what happens with
people who argue militarily with the United States of America.
But as soon as our defense begins to deteriorate, as it did during
the 1970's, as soon as others believe that they can get away with
trouble around the world, then you see these hot spots that my
colleague pointed out begin to crop up. And nations test our will, and
when they find that will wanting, and when they find us unable to meet
threats all over the globe, then is when you see trouble begin.
I suspect that was one of the things that was going through the mind
of Saddam Hussein. Who could have predicted that he would be the
aggressor against Kuwait, but very quickly that threat developed, I
think, because among other things, he did not think we would respond. I
think he was the most surprised person in the world when he saw the
resolve of President George Bush and eventually the Members of this
body, Madam Speaker, who agreed to support the President when he said
we are going to stop that aggression, we are going to kick Saddam out
of Kuwait and take away his capability to threaten his neighbors in the
future.
But we were able to do that. Why? Because, the United States, as
shown on an earlier chart, during the first part of the 1990's built up
our forces to the best, the strongest, the most capable military force
the world has ever known. It was not only strong from a personnel point
of view and from the point of view that we had the best trained people,
but also because they were the best equipped with the most technically
advanced weapons ever. And what was one of the results of that, in
addition to the fact that we were able to repulse an aggressor, kick
him out of where he had gone and ensure that the could not threaten his
neighbors for a long time to come? One of the results of that kind of
capability was that this was all accomplished with the lowest rate of
casualties of any comparable military conflict in the history of the
world.
That is something that we tend to forget, Madam Speaker. One reason
that we want to put money into defense, to train people well and to
have the right kind of equipment is because we know that then when we
send our young people into harm's way they will do our will at minimum
risk to themselves, and to every mother and father, to every one of us
who vote to put them in harm's way, nothing could be more important
than making sure that they can do their job with the least risk of harm
to themselves.
When we play this game of marginal benefits, of trying to see how
close to the line we can get before somebody attacks us, we not only
invite that kind of trouble around the world, but we also guarantee
when we do have to respond that young men and women, Americans in
uniform will die needlessly, and there will be needless casualties. We
have history to back us up in this respect. Dick Cheney used to talk
about World War II when we had such a dramatic falling off of the
military budget and the end strength, and we ended up in Korea with a
lot of lives lost unnecessarily because we had not learned the lessons
of the past. So there are important lessons here to be learned
historically.
Let us talk a little bit about the threats before we wind up this
evening. We heard testimony today, as I said, about threats around the
world. It is interesting that Jane's Defense Weekly reports there are a
total of 73 flashpoints worldwide today, some not presenting
significant threats to world peace, but certainly some that do.
{time} 1810
If you just look about where some of these things are, where some of
these conflicts are, you can see that there are potential flashpoints
that could very easily involve not just the United States but literally
the world.
One that tends to be forgotten about even though it is very much in
the news today is the Balkan crisis, that which spawned World War I. We
tend to think of the trouble in Bosnia today as demanding a response
because of the shelling of Sarajevo. What we tend to forget about is
the fact that you have a very tense situation on the border between
Serbia and Macedonia, that if there should be a conflict there or in
Kosovo, in the Kosovo region, you could easily involve countries like
Greece and Turkey which are building up at a fairly significant rate,
Madam Speaker, and before long you could bring in a lot of other
countries in the world into a very bad situation.
Mr. WELDON. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I just think
it is appropriate at this point as the gentleman is talking about the
Balkans and the potential conflict there that here we have an
administration that is downsizing the military dramatically, and we
were going to have a discussion about further downsizing further even
beyond what President Clinton is asking for which I think would be
outrageous, but the same administration is in fact deploying our troops
to more of the hot spots around the world, whether it be Macedonia or
surrounding Haiti or the promise of 25,000 troops into the Balkans or
whether it is the troops that we have over in Somalia that we withdrew
and then put back in again because we were embarrassed because we had
taken them out too quickly; we have troops literally in more places
today than at any point in time in recent years and at a time when we
are cutting back the military.
What does this mean? When I was in Somalia 1 year ago almost to this
very day in Mogadishu with the appropriators, we talked to some young
Marines at a base camp in Baidoa, and they said, ``You know,
Congressman, our biggest concern is that for three of the last four
holiday seasons we have been deployed. We go from one operation to
another. We have no time to regroup. We have no time to go see our
families. We have no time to get ourselves together. We are constantly
being deployed from training exercise to mission to commitment.''
What we have to understand in this body and what this administration
has to understand is that it is not just saying cut defense, because
you are talking about a direct impact on people's lives, young men and
young women, and what really kind of scares me, and it ties in with the
gentleman's point about the potential involved in the Balkans, is we
cannot keep doing both things. Some Members of this body have done
that, they have voted for us to stay in Somalia longer than we should
be, and we should have been out of there 6 months ago, and they want us
to deploy troops to Haiti, but they do not want to pay for adequate
support for our military to provide those services. Those two things
just cannot continue.
Mr. KYLE. The gentleman makes a very valid point.
We have an all-volunteer service. We rely upon people to join the
service. When they find that they are going to be deployed over and
over again without that period of R&R, it certainly diminishes
their incentive to continue to serve and for others to decide to serve.
To just expand on the point that the gentleman made, the United
States has used military force more than 240 times since 1945, and well
over 80 percent of those uses of force had nothing to do with the
U.S.S.R. or any Warsaw Pact country. So, Madam Speaker, although the
cold war is over, we found historically, and certainly today, that much
of the conflict around the world or the potential flashpoints do not
involve anything approximating the cold war, but the kind of ethnic
violence and other kinds of long-simmering disputes that could well
swell into a more significant kind of crisis.
One of the comments that was made today in the hearings that the
gentleman referred to by Dr. Joseph Nye, who is chairman of the
National Intelligence Council, is this, that the problems that come
along as surprises are quite considerable. That is a direct quotation
from his testimony. His point being that you never know for sure where
the next conflict is going to be.
I think that it is interesting that well over 90 percent of American
uses of force between 1945 and 1993, and let me repeat that, between
1945 and 1993, well over 90 percent of the American uses of force were
not included on the scenarios used for planning U.S. Forces the year
before, and well over 90 percent involved less than 3 months of
strategic warning. That is a very interesting statistic.
In fact, the uses of force for which the United States strategic
planners did not shape force plans or have strategic warning included
Korea, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, Grenada,
Panama, as well as the gulf war, Somalia, and Bosnia. So history shows
us in very graphic terms that you cannot always predict where the next
conflict will be.
I mentioned the Baltics. How about the Korean Peninsula? Here you
have a tinderbox situation that could easily erupt into a major
conflagration, and, of course, as my colleague pointed out earlier, if
we had a better strategic defense system, a ballistic missile defense,
we would not have near the crisis there that we do, but because we do
not have the kind of missile defense system deployed which could
obviate the threat from North Korean missiles, we are faced with a very
serious potential threat.
We have China, which is rearming itself at an alarming rate, and an
economy growing also at an alarming rate, I should not say alarming,
but at a most impressive rate. The combined factors could certainly
suggest that in 10 years or so you could have a potential threat there
if the leadership in China should change.
The same thing is true about the leadership of Russia. Today we do
not feel threatened by Russia, but certainly missiles, 27,000 warheads
of nuclear material, pose a very serious threat should the leadership
of those countries be changed and should they be redirected at the
United States or our allies.
This is not even to mention the Middle East with Iraq and Iran,
certainly Iraq wanting to cause more trouble, and Iran causing
terrorism problems around the globe and on and on and on.
Madam Speaker, the point is this, that we know there are dangerous
situations, that the world is still a dangerous place. We know the most
serious conflicts that have arisen we did not have adequate warning of.
We know just as sure as we are standing here that there is going to be
conflict in the world. We know that before the end of this century we
are going to need to deploy our forces in some way in harm's way, and
yet we have folks in this country who would continue to denude the
military of the manpower, the technology, the ability to meet these
kinds of threats. I will simply allude to, and not quote from, a report
done in July of 1993 by my colleague from Arizona, a member of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John McCain, the title of
which is ``Going Hollow, the Warnings of Our Chiefs of Staff.'' It is
replete of page after page after page of examples of our military
forces now facing a hollow-force situation because of the inability to
fund and afford repairs, equipment replacements the kinds of things
necessary for training and readiness, aircraft parts, shipbuilding,
maintenance, on and on and on. That is the kind of hollow force that
was created during the 1970's which occasioned the need for the kind of
buildup done at the beginning of the 1980's.
Madam Speaker, I think without going into a lot of detail, the points
that we have established here tonight, and we certainly want to debate
when we have the opportunity next time are that we have already cut
defense significantly, that compared with other spending, defense has
become a very small part of our budget, that there are still many
threats in the world, the world remains a dangerous place, and that, as
a matter of fact, we cannot predict where the next conflict will arise.
We know we have to be prepared for it.
We know that when we are strong we are able to deter aggression. We
are able to dissuade people from engaging in bad conduct around the
world.
As I said, we have more cops on the beat in order to deter crime. We
do the same thing with a strong military force, so it becomes dangerous
to marginalize that force and invite risk, and it also creates a much
larger threat that there will be casualties once we have to engage our
military forces.
Defense is a lot like insurance, I guess I would say. It is
interesting to me that in this very body people are debating day after
day the need for universal health insurance to insure against unknown
and even unlikely problems with our own personal health, but we
understand the need for that kind of insurance, and yet at the same
time they are not willing to recognize the fact that we also need to
have insurance against unknown and even unlikely threats against our
interests around the world, that that insurance is our defense.
We do not know exactly where we will need it, when we will need it,
or what we will need. But we do understand just as sure as we are here
we will need to have that kind of force at some point. We dare not
reduce our ability to the point that we invite aggression or create
unnecessary casualties with the people that we send in harm's way.
That is why we strongly stand for the proposition, as President
Clinton said from this Chamber a couple weeks ago, we cannot cut
defense further.
I look forward to the debate with our colleagues about this
proposition when we can reschedule it and look forward to the debate
over the authorization and appropriations bill on defense when those
matters come before this body as well.
Madam Speaker, that concludes my remarks.
____________________