[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 135 (Friday, September 23, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       MORE ON MILITARY SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Kasich].
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Speaker, the difficulty that we have found ourselves 
in, is entering this stage of deep cuts in the Department of Defense 
budget. And while this debate has gone on up here in the Congress, 
there has been a constant fight about whether the level of funding will 
be adequate or whether we find ourselves in this position of having 
shortages in money for either effective weapons systems or the 
readiness of our forces.
  That is why, Mr. Speaker, this morning, when we read an article that 
says that money shortages forces the Navy to curtail the training of 
reserve forces and that the Navy has canceled training and drills for 
thousands of reservists for the rest of this month, it begins to raise 
this issue one more time.
  What I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, is that as we enter the next 
budget cycle, that we be very careful to make sure that we make good 
assessments of the kind of moneys we want to spend on our military; 
that we, in fact, Mr. Speaker, not slash and burn and cut the 
Department of Defense budget to feed the other programs of the Federal 
Government, leaving our Pentagon in a position of where our soldiers 
will not get the kind of training that they want or that we will not be 
able to afford the kind of systems that we need for our soldiers to be 
able to be victorious.

                              {time}  1310

  We should guarantee them a commitment through committing enough 
resources to the Department of Defense so that our soldiers are 
adequately prepared, and at the same time, they have got the most 
modern equipment to carry out the mission.
  Mr. Speaker, I would direct all of the Members of this House to pay 
attention to this article this morning, and to think about what the 
implications of this would be. We do not want to continue to slash and 
burn defense, while at the same time we take that money and use it to 
run many inefficient programs in the Federal Government. We owe more to 
the men and women in our Armed Forces, and I would suggest that, Mr. 
Speaker, on a bipartisan basis we go back, we begin to restore some of 
the spending reductions that the White House has insisted upon, and we 
do what we need to do to avoid the boom and bust cycles of defense, and 
that we stop the consistent movement in this body towards hollowing out 
the U.S. Armed Forces and making sure we are as ready and as prepared 
as this Nation deserves to be.

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