[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 35 (Friday, February 24, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3074-S3075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  DEFENSE SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes this 
morning to review and comment on action taken this week by the House of 
Representatives during consideration of the defense supplemental.
  I am deeply concerned by the legislation that the House is sending 
us. It is, in my view, deficient in at least three respects.
  First, it spends too much money. The administration asked for a $2.6 
billion in emergency defense spending to pay for operations already 
undertaken in the past in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Southwest Asia, 
Haiti, and Cuba. The House approved that, but it also added an extra 
$680 million that neither the administration nor the Pentagon 
requested.
  Even Defense Secretary Perry has said the Pentagon, and I quote him, 
``has higher priority bills that should be funded first,'' and that the 
Pentagon would seek to reallocate money from existing defense funds in 
the spring to pay some of the $680 million worth of bills that the 
House wants to fund immediately. Since there is no urgent need for 
these unrequested funds, I see no reason to provide them in a 
supplemental.
  My first point then, Mr. President, is simply the additional $680 
million should be stricken out when the Appropriations Committee 
considers this legislation.
  Second, I am not yet persuaded--and I sit on the Defense Subcommittee 
of the Appropriations Committee--that all of the $2.6 billion that the 
administration did ask for ought to be funded necessarily in the 
supplemental. A supplemental request is supposed to be reserved for 
unexpected and unanticipated exigencies. However, at least some of the 
administration's request appears to be for normal or routine or 
expected expenses, like the no-fly zone over Bosnia and Iraq, which has 
been underway for years.
 If we are to really reform the budget process, we have to prevent 
agencies from low-balling their initial requests because they believe 
they can always come back and ask for more later in a supplemental. It 
is kind of a habit that we have gotten into, and I do not think it is a 
particularly good one. We need to insist that the military, like every 
other agency, submit budget requests sufficient to cover predictable 
expenses.

  And third, I am concerned about the offsets the House used to pay for 
this supplemental. Now, I agree that we should offset expenditures 
whenever 
[[Page S3075]]  possible. Even though this request can be treated as an 
emergency, which would allow the spending to be added to the deficit, 
it makes sense to offset as much as we can. It makes sense to cancel or 
cut programs that are wasteful or lack merit, but I strongly object to 
some of the cuts that the House made.
  To begin with, the House of Representatives got about half of its 
offsets from nondefense programs at a time when it is already moving to 
make deep cuts in domestic programs. We read about them every day now. 
The House intends to rescind about $17 billion from nondefense spending 
in the next few weeks. The domestic side of the budget is getting 
slaughtered, and I cannot justify taking money from already depleted 
domestic accounts to pay for defense spending when the defense budget 
is the only one being protected.
  We ought not cut domestic programs to provide funding for defense 
especially when we have not examined carefully every Pentagon program. 
We ought to, to the extent we can, fund this internally, find the 
offsets within the Pentagon's own budget.
  Mr. President, for many years, the defense budget was protected by a 
wall that prevented the Congress from raiding defense to pay for 
underfunded domestic programs, and some of the strongest defenders of 
the so-called budget wall when it protected defense now want to rip it 
down rather than allow it to protect domestic programs. Members of 
Congress who supported such a wall must recognize that it works both 
ways. Just as it kept money from going out of defense to the domestic 
budget, it should keep funds from being transferred out of domestic and 
into the defense budget.
  So I am profoundly bothered by the notion of paying for any of this 
defense supplemental with cuts in nondefense spending. If offsets are 
necessary, the Senate ought to examine the Pentagon's budget, make 
tough decisions and cut funding for lower priority defense programs.
  Now, I think there are plenty of low-priority programs that exist 
there, but if the Pentagon does not agree then the threat of internal 
cuts might give it an incentive to explore other alternatives, and I 
will give you an example. One is to have our allies pay their fair 
share of our costs of being represented in those countries where we 
help provide a defense mechanism for them as well as for the world at 
large.
  The bill already contains over $300 million in such contributions. We 
can and we should get more. That is what happened in the Persian Gulf 
conflict, and that is what ought to happen here now as well.
  But, Mr. President, if in the end we cannot find enough outside 
contributions or internal defense cuts to fully pay for this 
supplemental, then we ought to declare the remainder an emergency as 
the law allows.
  Under the rules of the budget process and common sense, we can, if we 
must, say that emergency spending should be added to the deficit, and 
that is what the American public does when they face an emergency in 
their own lives; when a family member gets sick, they do not deny 
themselves medical care just because it has to go on a credit card. The 
same reasoning ought to apply to the Federal Government. And I see no 
reason to insist on fiscal purity in dealing with this supplemental 
especially when it is already mathematically unbalanced.
  As Congressman Obey, the ranking member on the House Appropriations 
Committee, pointed out, the supplemental the House passed is balanced 
only in terms of budget authority. Now, the distinguished occupant of 
the chair sits on the Budget Committee with me, and we clearly know the 
difference between outlays and budget authority.
  In terms of outlays--the actual money that we spend--this 
supplemental adds $282 million to the deficit this year and $644 
million to the deficit each year over 5 years. In terms of fiscal 
purity, this bill is already sullied, so that no ideological argument 
can be properly raised against overtly declaring some of this bill an 
emergency.
  Mr. President, as the Senate considers the House-passed supplemental, 
I hope we are going to modify it in ways that I have suggested. I think 
it is important that the public be aware of what happens when we rely 
on domestic programs to fund some of the Defense Department's needs--
not that each should not get its fair consideration. But too often the 
term ``domestic programs'' obscures the real mission that we undertake. 
When we see these days that child nutrition programs are being either 
cut or withdrawn, when we see programs for education in our country, a 
vital part of our development, our competitive opportunities in the 
future and to stabilize our society, are being cut, in many ways, Mr. 
President, I think the domestic programs offer us as much by way of 
defense of what we care about in our country as does the military 
budget.
  So as we review this, I do not believe the argument that says we are 
going to weaken our defenses, we are going to reduce our strength 
applies. We need to build our strength in our domestic programs as well 
as our military programs.
  Mr. President, I hope we will be able to look at this, modify our 
view on whether or not the House of Representatives supplemental as it 
is being offered is something that we should accept as is. We ought to 
make the changes we feel are necessary to provide for both major parts 
of our budget.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on 
leaders' time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________