[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 37 (Tuesday, February 28, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E462-E463]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  RED INK GREATER THREAT THAN RED ARMY

                                 ______


                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 28, 1995
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, one of the gravest errors 
that the Republican majority is in the process of making is to increase 
military spending over what we have already voted while it proposes 
serious cuts in important domestic programs. And for those who do not 
share my sense that these programs should be preserved, the increase in 
defense spending can be seen as a threat to further deficit reduction, 
or even to tax reductions for those who prefer that course. In any 
case, spending money that we do not need on the military at a time when 
we are short of resources is an error. For this reason, I will from 
time to time be sharing with my colleagues knowledgeable commentary 
from national security experts who are pointing out that it is a grave 
error to increase military spending, and that in fact, given the 
collapse of the Soviet Union, the severe weaknesses of the Russian 
military, the untapped ability of our Western European and East Asian 
allies to do far more in the area of military spending, we in fact can 
afford to make further reductions in the military without in any way 
endangering national security or the well-being of the men and women 
who have so gallantly volunteered to defend us.
  Recently, one of the most distinguished experts in the national 
security field, former Director of Central Intelligence William Colby, 
wrote an article in the Hill on February 22 pointing out how unwise it 
is to increase--and even maintain--the current level of military 
spending. Mr. Colby's tenure as Director of Central Intelligence began 
in the Nixon administration and extended into the administration of 
Gerald Ford, so he can hardly be dismissed as the voice of Democratic 
liberalism. His hard-headed, persuasive argument for military spending 
reductions is an important contribution to our budget debate and I ask 
that it be printed here.
         Which is Greater Security Threat: Red Army or Red Ink?

                         (By William E. Colby)

       The Cold War is over, but you wouldn't know it from 
     America's defense budget or from Republican calls for more 
     defense spending. The once fearsome Red Army no longer 
     threatens Europe at the Fulda Gap in North Germany. Instead, 
     it hardly is able to enter a medium sized Chechnya city 
     against lightly-armed partisans, even with the advantage of 
     air power and heavy artillery.
       But the U.S. defense budget still siphons off some $250 
     billion from the national economy as political leaders talk 
     about a balanced budget (but don't act to produce), promise 
     middle income tax cuts instead of building savings, and vie 
     to cut domestic and foreign programs. U.S. defense 
     expenditures still amount of well over twice the $121 billion 
     spent by the eight other nations that conveivably could pose 
     a threat to U.S. national interests, and over three times 
     what Russia spends on its reduced, rusting and hapless 
     military.
       One would think that an intelligence assessment of dangers 
     for the U.S. in the years ahead, and a strategic review of 
     how we should respond, would focus on some of the obvious 
     threats looming ahead in the economic field, which has now 
     replaced military competition as the main arena of conflict 
     in the post-Cold War world.
       The most obvious danger is the national debt and its 
     servicing costs, which threaten the economy and will crush 
     almost all discretionary spending unless economically 
     depressing and politically unpalatable new taxes are imposed. 
     Similarly, the inexorable march of the Cold-War-era baby 
     boomers toward senior-citizen status clearly threatens the 
     Social Security system and will mean a generational conflict 
     with a younger generation saddled with the bills. The 
     sloshing of trillions of panicky dollars through global 
     electronic markets, as just occurred with Mexico, is 
     spreading to other emerging economies is today's real threat 
     to the nation's economy--and security.
       And it is not that the defense budget is beyond challenge, 
     for need or for specifics. Former Secretary of Defense Les 
     Aspin's ``bottom up review'' assumed two regional wars on the 
     scale of the Gulf War, conducted 
     [[Page E463]] simultaneously, without allies, with no build-
     up period and with rotation capability for a long 
     engagement--an obvious gold-plated invitation to the 
     ``bottom'' of the military to plan forces at about the 
     current levels. A bit of top-down guidance might have 
     insisted on a more realistic scenario.
       The review did not question some of the sacred cows of 
     current planning: another attack submarine (against which 
     fleet?); a better attack fighter (when our present ones are 
     the best in the world); the Cold War B-2 bomber when 
     modernized B-52's were the main muscle used in the Persian 
     Gulf; a surfeit of aircraft carriers to ``show the flag'' 
     when Aegis cruisers demonstrated their capability to hit an 
     office complex in Baghdad from the Red Sea and the Persian 
     Gulf; continued land and sea-based nuclear missiles aimed at 
     the open ocean in numbers far above the 100 or so that 
     respected defense experts agree is sufficient for deterrence.
       If to these are added 20 more B-2's designed to penetrate 
     Soviet airspace after a nuclear exchange, six huge C-17 
     airlifters when C-5's can carry what needs to go by air and 
     heavy tanks should go by sea or be prepositioned to be 
     available in real quantity, and new Trident submarine-
     launched strategic missiles, one can see that the mindset of 
     the planners is clearly to continue to prepare for and deter 
     the now-outdated massive threat from the Soviet Union. At 
     least 24 budget conscious Republican congressmen deeped sixed 
     the SDI, recognizing that the more proximate threat of a 
     nuclear weapon arriving in the U.S. would we in the hold of a 
     nondescript freighter.
       The real post-Cold War world calls for the deployment of 
     new kinds of ``secret weapons'' such as the diplomatic 
     efforts of former President Jimmy Carter, who has already 
     averted violence in Haiti and North Korea and at least has 
     tried in Bosnia. It calls for programs to reduce the 
     population growth bomb which is already exploding in Asia and 
     Africa. And it calls for carefully planned and conducted 
     anti-terrorist operations with formerly hostile nations and 
     services.
       It also calls for more ``competition'' between the 
     expenditures to fight a Cold War better and the need to keep 
     our nation's economy strong and targeted on the real 
     threats--and opportunities--of the future.
     

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