[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 30 (Wednesday, February 15, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H1767]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             STAR WARS: DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE

  (Mr. MEEHAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet 
invasion of Afghanistan helped produce a consensus for higher defense 
spending and a landslide victory for the GOP in 1980. But instead of 
concentrating on the ability to fight terrorism and conventional wars, 
Ronald Reagan used his mandate for a stronger military 
indiscriminately. He poured billions into strategic nuclear weapons and 
space-based missile defenses designed for all-out war against the 
Soviet Union, and instead of focusing on improving the combat 
capability of conventional and special operations forces, Reagan chose 
to fund expensive and complex new weapons programs based on unproven 
technology. The result was a larger military that required 
unsustainable levels of resources, and the country is still dealing 
with the consequences of that debt.
  Today, once again, the Republicans are doing little to address 
legitimate concerns about the readiness of our troops. Instead, they 
are proposing massive increases in defense spending to field super-
sophisticated weapons, including space-based defenses designed for the 
cold war. I call on my Republican colleagues to stop and think about 
what the country's real defense needs may be. We need the best trained 
and equipped soldiers in the world, not another 30-50 billion dollar's 
worth of work on star wars systems that wouldn't work even if they 
addressed a real threat. Let us not make the same mistake twice and dig 
our country deeper into debt.




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