[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 15, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5049-S5070]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the concurrent 
resolution.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield myself as much time as I might consume, but I 
would like the Chair to notify me when I have 15 minutes left because I 
want to make sure my cosponsors get ample time to speak on the 
amendment as well.
  Did the Senator from Nebraska want the floor?
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, could I pose a question now so we could 
establish this? This is the first amendment that is being offered. Do 
we have time agreements on amendments?
  I remember in the opening remarks, the chairman of the committee 
indicated some time limits on the amendments. For the information of 
this Senator and the Senate as a whole, will the Chair please indicate 
how much time is allotted to the amendment, the first degree? I assume 
that timeframe would continue unless we get unanimous consent at some 
future time to change it. What is the agreement on time limits?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On the Budget Act, there are 2 hours equally 
divided on first-degree amendments, 1 hour equally divided on second-
degree amendments.
  Mr. EXON. So there are 2 hours, and 1 hour, half an hour a side, on 
any amendments to it. Is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Second-degree. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. EXON. I thank the Chair, and I thank my friend from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I assume that my time is starting right now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has not called up his amendment. 
We will not proceed until the amendment is at the desk.


                           Amendment No. 3963

                 (Purpose: To reduce defense spending)

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask 
for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Grassley], for himself, Mr. 
     Exon, Mr. Kohl, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Feingold, and Mr. Harkin, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 3963.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 4, line 8, decrease the amount by $8,300,000,000.
       On page 4, line 17, decrease the amount by $2,300,000,000.
       On page 8, line 3, decrease the amount by $8,300,000,000.
       On page 8, line 4, decrease the amount by $2,300,000,000.
       On page 52, line 11, decrease the amount by $8,300,000,000.
       On page 52, line 12, decrease the amount by $2,300,000,000.
       On page 59, at the end of line 2, insert ``This section 
     shall not apply to defense discretionary budget authority and 
     budget outlays caps for fiscal year 1997.''

  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield myself 15 minutes, Mr. President, off of my 
time.
  For those on the Budget Committee, this amendment attempts to do 
almost exactly what I did in the Budget Committee, somewhat lower 
numbers, but also the numbers are not fenced in the truest sense of the 
word because, under the budget resolution, that would be subject to a 
point of order, and we wanted to make sure the amendment was germane.
  So to the Budget Committee members, we are still trying to reduce the 
deficit by the amount we are saving on defense. For the rest of the 
Senate, I want to say my approach is the same, the same goal, lower 
numbers. We are

[[Page S5050]]

speaking about reducing the defense numbers, and we are speaking about 
reducing the deficit when we save money on defense. The exception to 
that would be the President of the United States capability of 
declaring that he needs more money for defense and having that be 
considered, in an emergency, and not having to have offsetting numbers.
  It strikes a balance, I believe, between administration proposals for 
defense spending and that proposed in the budget resolution.
  The amendment would reduce the budget authority for defense for 
fiscal year 1997 by $8.3 billion below the budget resolution. Outlays 
for defense in fiscal year 1997 would be reduced by $2.3 billion. The 
savings are earmarked for deficit reduction.
  Some of my friends might be concerned that down the road, we will 
need more funds for national security. In that case, this amendment 
allows the President to propose emergency spending for defense without 
requiring offsets.
  I am pleased to be joined on this amendment as my main cosponsor by 
Senator Exon, a member of the Armed Services Committee and ranking 
Democrat on the Budget Committee, as well as Senators Kohl, Kerry, 
Feingold, and my colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin. I should note 
this amendment is supported by the National Taxpayers Union, one of the 
top deficit hawk groups in Washington, DC, and I ask unanimous consent 
to print that letter in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                     National Taxpayers Union,

                                     Alexandria, VA, May 15, 1996.
     Hon. Charles Grassley,
     U.S. Senate, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Grassley: Thank you for contacting the 
     National Taxpayers Union (NTU) regarding the amendment you 
     plan to offer to the FY 1997 Budget Resolution in an effort 
     to control defense spending.
       Your amendment would ``fence'' $11.3 billion in budget 
     authority and $2.9 billion in outlays (the difference between 
     the President's proposal and the Committee's mark for FY 
     1997), making the additional funding contingent upon the 
     President's certification that the funds are necessary for 
     national security. If the President fails to make that 
     certification the funds would be used to reduce the deficit.
       America's taxpayers deserve a more fiscally responsible and 
     cost effective federal government, as well as the lower taxes 
     that should result from spending reductions.
       Your legislation will be helpful in that regard, and 
     therefore NTU is pleased to endorse it and urge your 
     colleagues to support it.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Al Cors, Jr.,
                                   Director, Government Relations.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, just so everyone understands the history 
behind this amendment, let me call your attention to this chart. I want 
to call your attention to this chart because with the budget authority 
side of the chart, it lays out the history of where we are and where 
budget resolutions take us and where the President is.
  Last year, the Senate budget resolution proposed that in fiscal year 
1997, we should have this figure of $253.4 billion. What is important 
and significant about what we did last year and this year is that we 
had 60 Senators on a very bipartisan vote last year reject an amendment 
that would have increased the dollar amount of $253.4 billion, a 
bipartisan vote in the Senate not to go above $253.4 billion.
  Now we have this budget resolution which has disregarded the Senate's 
action last year and disregarded last year's vote, practically the same 
membership in this body, and has proposed $265.6 billion for defense. 
That is the number in the resolution that is before us, $265.6 billion.
  Simple arithmetic. That is $11.3 billion more than the President's 
mark. The President's mark is this middle figure. What he proposed to 
us in his budget this February, $254.3 billion. You can see the 
difference, $11 billion; $11.3 billion, to be exact.
  It is also $12.2 billion more than the level voted by 60 Members of 
this body last year.
  What the amendment offered by this Senator and my colleagues would do 
is provide a compromise by allowing defense to increase $3 billion 
above the President's mark and nearly $4 billion above the level voted 
by the Senate last year. That would be $4 billion above this figure of 
$253.4 billion.
  So I hope that you realize that we are trying to do a compromise 
approach here, not just one of these take it or leave it, we want 
everything or we don't want anything approach.
  It is a good compromise, I believe, that will address the concerns of 
those who want to ensure adequate spending for defense and also ensure 
that defense spending does not grow out of control.
  I want to give some background and rationale for this amendment. It 
probably does not differ from the background and rationale that I would 
give for similar amendments I have offered over the many years that I 
have been in the Senate.
  Every so often, since the 5th century B.C., some bright scholar 
states the obvious. The most recognized statement was by philosopher 
George Santayana when he said, and we have all heard it so many times:

       Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat 
     it.

  He goes on to say some very crucial and insightful things about 
learning from our experience. He says:

       Progress . . . depends on retentiveness . . . [W]hen 
     experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is 
     perpetual.

  Mr. President, this body, the U.S. Senate, is coming dangerously 
close to what George Santayana described. We are close to acting like 
children. I know that might shock the public. At issue is whether the 
Senate is condemned to repeat the mistakes of the 1980's; specifically, 
whether we will pump up the defense budget with no justification and 
with no control over it and, in the process, we would be getting less 
defense than planned.
  Last year during conference discussions--that is ironing out the 
differences between the House and the Senate on the budget resolution--
we were promised Defense Department reforms. We were forced to support 
higher defense numbers, but the quid was that we would get reforms this 
year. We were told that there would be complete top-to-bottom reform of 
the Pentagon, so much so that it would change the Pentagon into a 
triangle.
  Mr. President, I drive by the Pentagon each night that I go to my 
house that I occupy here in Washington--not my home, but my house. My 
home is in Iowa. Each night since last June 28 when we heard that in 
that conference--that is when we voted that conference report--I 
watched and waited. As of last night on my drive home, it is still a 
pentagon, it is not a triangle.

  The justification for my amendment is to stop the raping and 
pillaging of the Treasury under the guise of national security. There 
is a very sophisticated con job going on with this defense budget, and 
I would like to describe it so that the taxpayers know exactly how it 
works, how the defense industrial military complex picks their pockets.
  There are two facets of this con job. The first is bureaucratic; the 
second is congressional. Congress collaborates with defense bureaucrats 
in an extortion of the taxpayers who think they are paying for national 
security. Instead, they are paying for pork for Members of Congress.
  The game the bureaucrats play is the most sophisticated. It took me a 
couple of years to figure this one out. First, the bureaucrats 
deliberately underestimate the cost of everything in the budget. That 
way, everything they want gets squeezed in. Nothing gets turned down. 
You can have it all, just like you can have your cake and eat it, too, 
almost. ``Just get all the programs approved,'' the bureaucrat says, 
``we'll worry about the money later on.''
  You see, once a program gets started, programs hardly ever end. You 
might say they never end. Too many jobs and too many careers are at 
risk. When the actual bills come in, they say, ``Oops, we've 
underestimated the costs. By gosh, we've got to do something about 
that. We need more money to buy all this stuff that we've committed.''
  That creates then constant pressure to raise the defense budget, but 
it does something else as well: there is not enough money to cover all 
the cost overruns, so we buy fewer quantities. This drives up the 
prices even further. Over time, because of bad management, we buy less 
for much more. This hurts our ability to defend our country. That is 
the bureaucrats' game.

[[Page S5051]]

  Here is how it is handled when it gets to the Hill. We saw it last 
year, and we are seeing it again this year:
  The Armed Services Committee collaborates with the Budget Committee. 
They find a nice fat defense number that can accommodate everyone's 
insatiable appetite for pork. The numbers start to move through the 
Budget Committee. Meanwhile, the Armed Services Committee starts to 
cram all their pet programs into the budget, all the way to the brim. 
There is even some overflowing, Mr. President.
  The budget resolution then goes to the Budget Committee; from the 
Budget Committee to the floor. That is where we are today.
  Some Senators offered amendments to squeeze the defense budget, to 
rid it of pork and waste, just like the Grassley amendment. But such an 
amendment is put at a great political disadvantage. The taxpayers are 
unaware of this, but members of leadership and members of the 
committees are busy behind the scenes twisting the arms of undecided 
Senators. They confront undecided Senators with a newly drafted defense 
bill crammed in with all the pet programs.
  The undeciders are told, ``If you vote to squeeze the defense budget, 
as Mr. Grassley wants to do, we'll take program A, B, or C out of the 
bill. Your State will suffer. You'll lose jobs.'' Of course, that is 
intimidation. And some people are intimidated and vote then for fatter 
defense numbers.
  What Senator wants to lose potential jobs in his or her State? These 
Senators might be intimidated, but for taxpayers it is extortion. They 
are really getting the shaft. The same thing happened last year. This 
year the Senate committee wised up and did the same thing as was done 
in the House last year. The bottom line is, bureaucratic and political 
games are wreaking havoc with the taxpayers' bottom line, all in the 
name of national security. They are conspiring against the taxpayers' 
interests, pure and simple.
  I remind my colleagues of the promise accompanying last year's budget 
conference report, with the bloated defense budgets that I pointed out 
here--$265.6 billion. They said, you will get reforms next year. The 
reforms were supposed to be of infrastructure and base closures. The 
savings would then be used for modernization. This was the specific 
promise of the Secretary of Defense as well.
  But we have the General Accounting Office out there, that nonpartisan 
group of people that are to make sure that we use honest numbers in 
Government. The General Accounting Office just completed a review of 
the infrastructure savings. The GAO's findings are truly amazing.
  Despite four rounds of base closures since 1988, there are no 
savings. And now, despite very dramatic cuts in our force structure, 
there are no savings. DOD infrastructure costs are going up, not down.
  On April 25, I spoke about this in detail on this floor, Mr. 
President, laying out all the facts. The promise was that we would have 
savings. The reality, Mr. President--there are no savings. It is not 
that there were not modest savings, the problem is, it has all been 
spent. It has been spent on new infrastructure projects like public 
affairs and headquarters and, in other words, creating more spin and 
fattening up headquarters. Overhead--that does not come very cheap. It 
soaked up all of the savings.
  So as the force structure of our armed services gets smaller and 
smaller and smaller, headquarters gets bigger and bigger. It is still 
then a pentagon; it is not a triangle.
  Once again, Mr. President, the Pentagon is proving that it cannot 
allocate money sensibly. Once again it is proving it cannot save money 
even with such golden opportunities given by base closures. That means 
that we will not have the money promised for the modernization so that 
we can meet the needs of our national security in this new budget 
environment we are in to balance the budget.
  The question is, do we reward this bad management with even more 
money or do we hold the Department of Defense's feet to the fire? Do we 
support the defense budget in this resolution or do we put a meaningful 
constraint around it so that it will be managed better?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used his 15 minutes.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield myself 1\1/2\ more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. That is the essence then of my amendment. It is an 
attempt to better manage the Pentagon's resources, because enough is 
enough. Promised reforms are not the same as real reforms. We shovel 
billions into the defense budget on the promise of reforms. 
Historically the reforms have failed to materialize, yet we still throw 
good money after bad.

  If we fail to learn the lessons of the past, as George Santayana 
preaches to us, ``We're doomed to repeat them ad nauseam.'' If we do 
that again this year, Mr. President, we will be falling into the 
familiar trap once again expressed by the great philosopher Georg 
Hegel. He said, ``We learn from history that we learn nothing from 
history.''
  So I urge my colleagues to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. 
I ask them to vote for the bipartisan amendment, the Grassley-Exon 
amendment. I yield the floor.
  Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I thank my colleague and friend from Iowa 
for yielding me time. I simply say that there undoubtedly will be 
opposition to this Grassley-Exon amendment. I certainly do not think it 
is proper for me to be managing the time in opposition to an amendment 
that I am a cosponsor of. So I just alert Senators who are likely 
opposed to this amendment that they should come here, and someone 
should assume the responsibility for managing the time against the 
amendment.
  First, Mr. President, I am reminded of a couple years ago when the 
Democrats were the majority party in the Senate. And I teamed up with 
Senator Grassley for an Exon-Grassley amendment at that time that 
proposed to cut $26 billion in outlays and $42 billion in budget 
authority over a 5-year period. We were working on a 5-year proposition 
then.
  Do you remember the wailings at the time? The Secretary of Defense, 
who is still the Secretary of Defense, the Assistant Secretary of 
Defense, who is now Director of the CIA, and others, moaned and 
groaned, and the wailing went on about how Exon-Grassley was 
devastating our defense budget.
  Well, they did not have the horses. Exon-Grassley at that time 
passed. And it was a modest step at that time dedicated to reducing the 
deficit.
  This year, with the Republicans in the majority in the Senate, I was 
very pleased when my friend and colleague from the neighboring State of 
Iowa came and asked me my advice on this amendment. It is true that 
Senator Grassley offered in the Budget Committee on which I serve an 
amendment that eliminated the $11.3 billion increase over the 
President's budget. And I supported that in the Budget Committee. And 
it lost on a 12-to-12 vote.
  When we conferred upon the proper course of action here, we agreed 
that--I think, and I think a near majority of the U.S. Senate feels, 
that the amount authorized over the President's budget for defense, 
which was $12.9 billion, $12.9 billion, I say, in the Armed Services 
Committee, and $11.3 billion over the President's budget, as it came 
out of the Budget Committee, is more than we need to spend, because it 
is more than the President requested; it is more than the Pentagon 
requested; it is more than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has 
requested. So I simply say that I think that the Grassley amendment, 
and others, this time is in good form and proper taste.
  I suggested to my friend from Iowa, in our conversation about this, 
that probably rather than duplicating the effort in the Budget 
Committee by eliminating all of the $11.3 billion increase, that we 
would possibly recognize that maybe we would garner some support if we 
would not cut the whole $11.3 billion, but allow for a modest $3 
billion increase to the President's numbers.
  I have no definite word on this from the White House, but I am quite 
confident that the President would accept a modest $3 billion increase 
that we are suggesting over the recommendations that he has made. I do 
not know whether he would veto the defense authorization bill if faced 
with an $11.3 billion

[[Page S5052]]

increase, which I think may be veto bait. I do not think this slight 
increase would be veto bait, and I appreciate the fact that the Senator 
agreed and thought that was the right figure to go with.
  Certainly, I simply say the amendment, in technical terms, reduces 
the defense numbers in the Republican mark by $8.3 billion in budget 
authority and $2.3 billion in outlays. This still represents an 
increase, once again, of $3 billion over the President's budget request 
and the budget authority and $600 million additional in outlays. It 
seems to me this Grassley-Exon amendment has something in it for almost 
everyone because it is the ultimate in reality, I believe, at this 
time.
  Let me summarize this amendment, although the Senator from Iowa has 
basically gone through it. This amendment does two things. First, it 
reduces defense numbers by $8.3 billion in budget authority and $2.3 
billion in outlays. Second, it revises the budget resolution language 
that eliminates designating appropriations as emergency by creating an 
exception for defense. This allows the President and the Congress to 
approve increased defense funding over and above Grassley-Exon by the 
use of an emergency designation.
  I think the Senator from Iowa stipulated what this is about. This is 
simply saying in another fashion that with the $3 billion over and 
above the defense numbers suggested by the President and the Pentagon, 
there is a means in the case of an emergency, if that should occur, for 
the President and the Congress to go up to the $11 billion figure, if 
such an emergency occurs.
  Is that the right interpretation of this, I ask the Senator from 
Iowa?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes.
  Mr. EXON. The Republican defense budget for 1997 is excessive in a 
time when we are desperately trying and seeking to balance the budget.
  This amendment would scale back the Republican overzealous $11.3 
billion increase to the President's request but still provide a modest 
$3 billion increase to try to satisfy some, if not all, of the 
priorities that have been expressed in the Congress on both sides of 
the Hill. At a time when we are trying to balance the budget, such an 
exorbitant increase of $11-plus billion is uncalled for. We cannot 
return to an era of just throwing money at the defense problem at will, 
especially when the experts in the administration and the Pentagon have 
not requested it.
  This action recently taken by the defense authorizing committees, I 
think, demonstrates the point that I am trying to make. In the House 
National Security Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, 
the majority added $4 billion in procurement and R&D accounts that was 
neither in the Pentagon's 1997 request nor in the Pentagon's 5-year 
future years defense plan. That means that the authorizing committees 
approved $4 billion for programs that the Pentagon would never have 
bought even if it had had the money.
  The real issue, Mr. President, is not how much to give defense but 
how to distribute it over a 6-year timeframe. Both the Republican 
budget resolution and the President's request propose to spend $1.6 
trillion--that is $1.6 trillion on defense between 1997 through the 
year 2002.
  The real allocation for defense differs by only $11 billion. The 
Republican plan increases defense dramatically in the first few years 
and then flattens it out in the outyears. How we will pay for the 
associated rise in operation and support costs and still balance the 
budget is a mystery. The present budget at least increases the outyears 
to reflect defense budget realities to the point that it is $11 billion 
more than the GOP plan in the year 2002. And the President still 
balances the budget by the year 2002, as certified by the Congressional 
Budget Office, as I said earlier today.

  This amendment leaves open the possibility to increase defense 
spending, as I have outlined and as Senator Grassley has outlined, if 
necessary. By reinstating the ability to declare supplemental 
appropriations of defense budget by emergency, a simple majority in 
Congress with the approval of the President will still be able to 
increase the defense budget if it truly is an emergency and truly in 
the national interest.
  Mr. President, I have just received a letter from Director Alice 
Rivlin that the administration states its position on the defense 
numbers in the resolution that Senator Grassley and I are trying to 
reduce. In that letter from the Office of Management and Budget, 
Director Alice Rivlin states: ``The resolution provides $11 billion 
more in the defense budget than the President's budget in 1997 which 
commits historically high levels of resources through readiness as 
measured in funding for the troops. Further, in the critical years of 
defense modernization at the turn of the century, the resolution does 
not provide enough budget authority compared to the President's defense 
program.''
  Mr. President, I urge adoption of the Grassley amendment. I reserve 
the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time have I used or has been 
used in opposition to the amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. None at this point.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I will speak for a few moments. The word should go out 
there are a number of Senators on our side who want to speak against 
the amendment. We have plenty of time, but we do not want to be here in 
quorum calls. We have sought not to do that once we go to work on the 
resolution. I hope they will come to the floor and be heard.
  Mr. President and fellow Senators, let me first indicate 
unequivocally that Senator Grassley is consistent. He has consistently 
called for reduced spending and he has consistently been concerned 
about whether or not the spending on defense is being done in the most 
efficient manner. In many ways, he has been successful. We have 
consistently reduced defense spending since 1987. Since 1987, defense 
spending has declined 34 percent after inflation.
  On the other hand, since 1987, the rest of the discretionary programs 
of America have increased by 31 percent. For those who say, in the last 
few years, domestic spending has been cut, the truth of the matter is--
and these are in constant dollars in this chart behind me--1987, this 
red bar is defense discretionary; domestic discretionary is the green 
bar; the big, big expenditure, sort of the blockbuster is the purple 
bar, which is entitlements.
  Moving over a decade we will find in real dollars defense is down 34 
percent; domestic discretionary is up 31 percent, and, of course, the 
entitlement programs are a 41 percent increase. So that is the story of 
spending as it relates to defense and domestic in the United States.

  So, in a very real sense, Senator Grassley's concern about getting 
spending down has not fallen on deaf ears. Obviously, some big events 
occurred in the world, but many, many things have happened for the 
better in the Defense Department in terms of efficiency, in terms of 
better contracts, less waste, less loopholes, less opportunities to 
take advantage of the taxpayer.
  This budget resolution reduced defense spending from last year's 
assumption over the next 6 years by $14.3 billion. That is, over the 
next 6 years we have reduced defense over what we assumed last year as 
we produced a 7-year trend line--reduced it by $14.3 billion.
  Senator Grassley would reduce defense spending next year from that 
number that we have by $8.3 billion. That will be the 12th straight 
year of decline.
  Now, I agree with Senator Grassley in one important way. He has said 
in the Budget Committee--and while I was not here for his entire 
speech, I believe it is fair to say that the Clinton administration has 
played politics with this year's national security budget, the defense 
budget. The President has proposed a significant reduction in defense 
spending this year, despite his 1995 State of the Union Address that 
drew a line on further defense cuts.
  Now, it is interesting, and the President will probably say, along 
with those who defend his budget, that looking out over the next 6 
years, the President lets defense grow a little bit. Well, this is so 
typical of the budgets coming out of the White House. For domestic 
spending, which he wants to say he is not cutting, those go up in the 
first few years and then come tumbling off the wall in years 4, 5, and 
6 from now. On defense, we turn it the other

[[Page S5053]]

way and say, do not worry, we are going to cut it this year, but it is 
going to go up. We think both of those approaches are inconsistent with 
what is good for the men and women who are in the armed services, the 
operation and maintenance, and seeing to it that they have good 
equipment, as modern as possible.
  Now, cut defense spending so you can show big add-ons in the 
nondefense budget, but then send your military chiefs of staff to the 
Hill. They come to the Hill and they ask for more money. In fact, our 
adding up of what the chiefs--the Chief of the Air Force, a four-star 
general; the Chief of the Marines; and the head admiral of the Navy--
they have come up here and said, ``Yes, we are a part of the 
President's budget, but we sure would like some more money, because we 
need it.'' They asked for $15 billion. We could not do that. We gave 
them less.

  So, in a sense, I agree with the distinguished Senator, except I do 
not have enough confidence in trusting the President to ask for money, 
from now until the election, if they need it. One of my friend's--
Senator Grassley--ideas is let us give him his budget, and let him have 
to come up here and ask for more. Frankly, I do not think that will 
happen until after November, even if we did. I do not want to take that 
risk.
  I figure we can just as well go ahead and analyze the requests made 
in the committees. The authorizing committee of the U.S. Senate, the 
Senate Armed Services Committee--I believe Senator Exon is a member, 
and if my recollection is wrong, and he can correct me--voted 20-0 to 
report out a Defense authorization bill that is consistent with the 
Republican mark and the Republican budget, not the mark or the dollar 
numbers the President asks for in his budget.
  So maybe some would like us not to bail out the President, but I 
believe it is not bailing out the President. If that happens to be a 
side-effect of doing what is right by the Defense Department, and by 
the men and women of the military, who need our help--incidentally, Mr. 
President, when we voted in the all-volunteer military--the All-
Volunteer Army and Navy and Air Force and Marines, during the Nixon 
era, we said we were going to pay them the equivalent wage of what they 
would make in the civilian sector. I am very pleased that we are having 
a very powerful commission evaluate this to see if we are really doing 
that. I merely make the point that I am quite convinced that they are 
going to tell us we have to pay our men and women more.
  I make that rather bold pronouncement because I feel confident it is 
going to happen. I am not interested in seeing more than the 12,000 
military men and women who are already on food stamps. In fact, I am 
hopeful they will tell us how to get them off of food stamps and pay 
them what they are entitled to. That is not a large number, you will be 
told, and our laws are strange on Medicaid and food stamps. But I 
believe that is not consistent with the pledge made when we decided to 
have an All-Volunteer Army. Just on its face, it is not consistent.
  I also comment that many of the vehicles that the Air Force is 
operating under are extremely old. You recall, much is being made in 
the news today of a plane that is 27 years old. I think the plane that 
crashed was 27 or 29 years old. Many are suggesting that we better be 
careful when they get up there at that age.

  Well, fighter aircraft, at this point, are as follows: In 2001, the 
Air Force pilots will be flying aircraft 15 years old, on average. This 
means that some of those aircraft will be 30 years old. I do not know 
what that means, but I have been led to believe that is getting pretty 
close to critical time. If it is critical on the civilian side, and if 
we do not want to have 30-year-old planes on the civilian side, I do 
not think we want a lot of our men and women in the military flying 30-
year-old aircraft. We do not have any big money in this budget, nor did 
the President put any in, to have a systematic approach to ameliorating 
that situation.
  I could go on. Squadrons of airplanes are shrinking. They used to be 
24, and we are down to 15, in many cases, and even 12. So we have more 
sites for them but fewer airplanes. I understand we do not want to 
close down installations, but, obviously, the cost of maintaining and 
operating smaller units like that is very, very high in comparison to 
larger units. Ultimately, something will be done about that.
  Now, I want to close with this. Once again, so there will be no 
misunderstanding, I have nothing but the highest respect for the 
distinguished Senator from Iowa, Senator Charles Grassley. He is 
consistent. He believes what he says, and he works at it. He believes 
firmly in this position. I understand how he feels and what he is 
thinking. But I believe that in this case it is too risky; it is too 
risky for our men and women and our national defense to allow this 
amendment to pass. And I hope it does not.

  Mr. EXON. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Of course.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I would like to ask the chairman one thing 
about the chart that is up here. The 1987 that he referenced there is 
some kind of a benchmark. Is it not true that in 1987 there existed 
such a thing as a very powerful and threatening Soviet Union and a 
Warsaw Pact that is not here today?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Absolutely.
  Mr. EXON. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I did not say we cut it just to eliminate waste. I said 
it has been cut. For those who say it is always increasing while 
domestic is not, I just want to say it has been coming down for 1 
decade. That is all.
  Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I want to yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Illinois.
  He also would like to be added as a cosponsor of my amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, might I inquire? Can I then ask that 
following in sequence Senator Hutchison from Texas have 5 minutes and 
Senator Cohen from Maine have 10 minutes in that order?
  Will the Senator have additional speakers?
  Mr. EXON. We will have additional speakers.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Senator Kyl and Senator Inhofe.
  How much time does the Senator desire?
  Mr. INHOFE. Four minutes.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Can we agree on 5 minutes for Senator Inhofe?
  Will Senator Hutchison control time for me for the next 15 minutes?
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Yes.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I first want to commend my colleague from 
Iowa. As Senator Domenici said, through the years we have to be more 
prudent in defense spending.
  I am for this amendment for two reasons: One is it reduces the 
deficit.
  Some of us on this floor right now are members of the Budget 
Committee. Let me tell you without a constitutional amendment to 
require a balanced budget the 7 years that both sides are talking about 
will not result in a balanced budget. We put all the tough decisions 
off to the end. Not all of them but most of them. So we are not going 
to achieve a balanced budget without a constitutional amendment, and 
this at least moves in the direction of reducing the deficit.

  Second, I am for it because the budget as it is constituted has an 
imbalance. What the Grassley amendment does is gives the Defense 
Department $3 billion more than they requested.
  Frankly, if I were to put the budget together--for example, in 
yesterday's New York Times is a story, ``U.N. Says North Korea Will 
Face Famine as Early as This Summer.'' And in today's Washington Post 
it says ``No Help Set for N. Korea.''
  I do not think that we ought to be using hunger as a political tool. 
I think we would be much smarter saying we want to help feed people who 
are hungry whether they are Communists, anarchists, or what their 
background.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to put these two items in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S5054]]

                [From the Washington Post, May 15, 1996]

                        No Help Set for N. Korea

            (By Mary Jordan) Washington Post Foreign Service

       Tokyo.--Reclusive North Korea will not receive any 
     immediate new shipments of rice or other food from the United 
     States, Japan or South Korea despite new reports of 
     widespread malnutrition there.
       ``With respect to food aid and [the easing of economic] 
     sanctions, we have no plans at this time to go forward,'' 
     said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord, 
     concluding two days of talks with top Japanese and South 
     Korea officials over what policy to adopt toward the 
     deteriorating north. ``We will keep the situation under 
     review.''
       The three countries issued a joint statement saying they 
     agreed to continue efforts to persuade the North to accept 
     four-nation peace talks proposed by Washington and Seoul last 
     month.
       The three-nation talks, held on the South Korean island of 
     Cheju, again pointed out the difficulty these three allies 
     have maintaining a united front to deal with the Communist 
     regime in Pyongyang. The issue of food aid is seen as 
     critical because some experts believe an increasingly hungry 
     North Korea could opt to use its 1.2 million-man army to end 
     its crisis in a hail of missiles and bullets.
       Others argue that offering help only rewards the missile-
     exporting nation, Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole and 
     others have criticized President Clinton for ``coddling'' 
     this Stalinist regime whose military threat keeps 37,000 U.S. 
     troops on its border.
       Generally, the United States has favored sending food aid 
     to ward off an immediate crisis. Even in the last few days, 
     U.S. Ambassador James Laney and State Department spokesman 
     Nicholas Burns indicated that the United States was 
     considering new aid and easing sanctions.
       U.N. food aid officials Monday issued fresh alerts that 
     ``food stocks are critically low,'' that there is ``no 
     further food assistance in the pipeline'' and that peasants' 
     rations are being cut in half.
       The United States has enforced economic sanctions against 
     North Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. But it 
     has also donated more than $2.2 million in aid since floods 
     last summer exacerbated the food crisis in the crumbling 
     state, which lacks heat for homes and cash for imports.
       South Korea, whose capital city, Seoul, lies minutes away 
     from the missiles that North Korea has aimed at it, sees the 
     situation differently. South Korean officials oppose food aid 
     because they say the military will likely divert the food for 
     its own stockpiles. They also doubt the severity of the 
     hunger. An official in Cheju today said that although the 
     food shortage is serious, he did not think it would lead to 
     an ``African-style famine.''
       The chief Japanese delegate, Deputy Foreign Minister Shunji 
     Yanai, told reporters at the end of the talks that at the 
     moment Japan had ``no plans to extend food assistance.'' It 
     had earlier sent 500,000 tons of rice. But Japanese officials 
     have also indicated they might pursue a more independent 
     dialogue with their unpredictable neighbor.
       Lord stressed the need for talks involving the two Koreas, 
     the United States and China to hammer out a formal peace 
     treaty to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean 
     War.
       Lord, Chung and Yanai agreed that such talks had the best 
     chance of achieving stability on the Korean peninsula.
       Beijing has not committed itself to the proposal, first 
     suggested last month by President Clinton and South Korean 
     President Kim Young Sam, but has indicated it would back the 
     move once North Korea accepted.
       North Korea, which until now has refused to discuss a peace 
     treaty except in bilateral talks with Washington, a condition 
     rejected by Washington and Seoul, has not agreed to the 
     proposal.
       Shortly after a similar conference among the three nations 
     held in Hawaii earlier this year, the United States gave $2 
     million in food assistance to North Korea. Since then, there 
     have been some encouraging signs in the U.S.-North Korean 
     diplomatic relationship.
       Just in the past few days, the two countries reached a 
     breakthrough agreement that will allow the first joint effort 
     to recover the remains of U.S. soldiers unaccounted for since 
     the Korean War. More than 8,100 servicemen are still missing, 
     and many of them are believed to be buried in North Korea. 
     The recovery effort could begin before the end of the year.
                                                                    ____


                [From the New York Times, May 14, 1996]

     U.N. Says North Korea Will Face Famine as Early as This Summer

                        (By Nicholas D. Kristof)

       Tokyo--Hunger in North Korea is growing more intense as the 
     country's economy continues to deteriorate, so that 
     malnutrition could become widespread in the coming months, 
     some experts say.
       In the latest sign of the country's crisis, the World Food 
     Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the 
     United Nations warned today that ``the food supply is 
     becoming increasingly desperate'' in North Korea, and that 
     without emergency food imports, ``the consequences are likely 
     to be devastating for large segments of the population.''
       In their statement, the two agencies said that the 
     situation had deteriorated just in the last few months and 
     that the shortages were likely to grow worse this summer.
       ``There are some cases of malnutrition, but it is not 
     widespread at this time, as far as we can tell,'' Trevor 
     Page, the country director for the World Food Program, said 
     by telephone for the organization's office in Pyongyang, the 
     North Korean capital. ``However, with levels of rations that 
     are now being distributed, malnutrition will develop and 
     become widespread in the coming months unless there are 
     substantial food aid shipments.''
       North Korea, with the world's last Stalinist government, 
     remains virtually sealed off from the rest of the world, and 
     few foreigners are allowed to visit. But many Western 
     diplomats, business executives, academic experts and visitors 
     to the country say there are growing signs that the economy 
     is deteriorating.
       Even in Pyongyang, which has by far the best standard of 
     living in the country, visitors say that power outages are 
     now routine and that water is often cut off for much of the 
     day.
       Some Western diplomats and military officials worry that 
     North Korea's economic crisis could make it unpredictable 
     or even lead it to attack South Korea and the American 
     forces stationed there.
       North Korea, with a population of about 24 million, was the 
     better-endowed part of the Korean Peninsula when Japan ended 
     its occupation in 1945. The North has a wealth of minerals 
     and other natural resources, but it has been hobbled by its 
     rigid Communist model, by huge spending on its 1.2 million-
     member armed forces, and by the collapse of trading partners 
     in the former Communist world. Now many North Korean 
     factories are idled by lack of oil and electricity, and 
     collective farms are returning to draft animals because there 
     is no fuel for tractors.
       The American Ambassador to South Korea, James T. Laney, 
     warned in a speech on Saturday of ``serious risks,'' 
     including the possibility that ``the North may look for other 
     ways of using the only remaining asset it possesses which 
     commands international respect--its military might.''
       In a speech that seemed to signal a shifting direction in 
     American policy, Mr. Laney suggested that the old approach of 
     simply emphasizing deterrence against North Korean attack was 
     no longer sufficient. Now, he said, deterrence must be 
     augmented by inducements to get North Korea to cooperate with 
     the West.
       Senior officials from the United States, Japan and South 
     Korea are now meeting in South Korea to discuss policy toward 
     the North. Diplomats say that they are expected to agree on 
     an assistance plan on condition that the North agrees to 
     President Clinton's proposal last month for four-party peace 
     talks involving both Koreas, the United States and China.
       North Korea's economy has been deteriorating for years and 
     was further devastated by widespread flooding last year. 
     Rations have already been halved, and experts say that some 
     peasants are eating bitter wild grasses and roots that have 
     not been part of the diet since 1951, during the Korean War.
       But one such emergency food, a grass called naengi, stops 
     growing this month and so will be unavailable in the crucial 
     summer months, until the next grain harvest is ready in the 
     fall. This year's harvest is also expected to be poor, 
     because bad weather delayed planting by about two weeks.
       Experts say there are other signs of economic desperation, 
     including the sale by peasants of anything they have--even 
     human hair--to China in exchange for wheat flour. Russia is 
     said to have cut freight train service for lack of payment of 
     bills, and that may complicate North Korea's trade picture.
       Most staple foods are distributed in North Korea by the 
     Government, but the alert today said that this system ``is 
     perilously close to collapse.'' Moreover, foreign 
     assistance--which eased the shortages over the winter--is 
     coming to an end.
       Foreign shipments averaged about 50,000 tons of grain a 
     month since late last year, but plunged to 12,200 last month 
     and an anticipated 9,300 this month. Next month, 2,500 tons 
     are anticipated, and the nothing is in the pipeline.
       Some North Korea watchers have suggested that the hunger 
     could lead to a revolt or to the disintegration of the 
     system, and there have indeed been a growing number of North 
     Koreans who risk being shot by sneaking across the border 
     into China. But visitors say they have seen no sign of 
     political unrest in North Korea, perhaps the most tightly 
     controlled society in the world.
       ``Although food shortages are all over, there are no signs 
     that this will cause the political collapse of the country,'' 
     Mr. Page of the world food Program said.
       The food shortage in North Korea may become perennial, 
     experts say, unless the rigid Communist economic system 
     changes dramatically. The Government appears to be bending 
     its rules a bit by turning a blind eye as peasants plant 
     larger private plots than they are allowed or sell food in 
     informal markets in some parts of the country. Likewise, in 
     the cities some residents are planting crops on spare bits of 
     land or raising chickens on their balconies. But North Korea 
     has given no indication that it is contemplating any major 
     opening.
       Another problem for North Korea may be declining cash 
     transfusions from ethnic Koreans living in Japan. Nicholas 
     Eberstadt, a

[[Page S5055]]

     scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, 
     has concluded that the transfusions were never as great as 
     widely believed and have plunged since the late 1980's.

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, let me point out what is happening in 
defense spending.
  Here is the United States. Here are the next five countries in 
defense spending: Russia, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, and 
Germany. We are spending more on defense than the next five countries 
combined. The cold war is over, as Senator Exon just pointed out.
  Let me take you back to the year when Senator Grassley and I came to 
Congress, fiscal year 1975. Do you know what the defense budget was 
then adjusted for inflation? It was $234 billion, $32 billion less than 
we are requesting here. Then we faced the nuclear confrontation with 
the Soviets. We had a war in Vietnam, as my friend from Iowa will 
remember. We had all kinds of challenges. Today we do not need to spend 
anywhere near this amount.
  If we were to cut the defense budget in half--and I do not advocate 
that--but if we were to do that, we would still be spending appreciably 
more than any other country on the face of the Earth. A little prudence 
as this amendment suggests is just common sense.
  I hope the Senate will listen to our friend from Iowa with his 
amendment. I am proud to be a cosponsor of it. I think it makes sense 
fiscally. I think it makes sense from the viewpoint of what we ought to 
be doing in the defense area.
  So, Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the Grassley 
amendment, and I hope there will be enough Senators who say let us look 
at our real needs. Let us look at our deficit situation. The Grassley 
amendment logically ought to be overwhelmingly supported. I know that 
is not going to be the case. If we win it will be by a narrow vote. But 
we ought to vote for the people of this Nation on this next vote. And I 
think that is a vote for the Grassley amendment.

  I yield back the balance of the time to Senator Grassley.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I respect Senator Grassley very much. 
I respect Senator Simon, and Senator Exon. But I serve on the Armed 
Services Committee, and I think they are wrong on this issue.
  In fact, let us cut to the chase. We are not talking about allowing 
the President to come back in and certify that he needs more money. The 
President has said that he does not want the money. His budget came in 
$11 billion lower this year in real terms than it was last year, and 
that was after telling the American people in his State of the Union 
Message that he did not think we should cut defense spending any more.
  Mr. President, we have had testimony before the Armed Services 
Committee from every single high ranking military and civilian official 
in this administration; the President's own administration. Every chief 
of every service has said we cannot continue to train our forces and 
modernize our forces if we do not have the money to do it. This is the 
12th straight year of declining defense spending; the 12th straight 
year. Weapons procurement is down 70 percent since 1985.
  It is proper after the cold war that we would draw down our military 
spending. But, Mr. President, we have gone far enough. If we maintain 
keeping the funding level that Senator Grassley is suggesting that we 
cut, the $8.3 billion, what would it take away from our Armed Forces? 
What would it do to us?
  First, it would stop the increasing modernization that we must have 
as we are drawing down our force numbers. It is essential that we have 
the modernization, equipment, and technology to make up for the smaller 
numbers of people that we will have in the field. That is what the 
drawdown requires if we are going to be able to fight and win two 
simultaneous major regional conflicts. We must have the technology and 
the equipment to do it.
  It will pay for an improved quality of life for the men and women who 
risk their lives to serve our country. We are asking for a 3-percent 
pay raise for our military; 3 percent. These are the young men and 
women who volunteer to fight for the freedom and independence of our 
country. We must assure that they have a better quality of life that 
demonstrates to them that they have the complete support of the 
American people.
  We will also not be able to increase our commitment to counter the 
ballistic missile threats; the threat of ballistic missiles launched at 
our country. The Secretary of Defense testified that we do not have a 
defense to ballistic missiles fired at the United States. He said that 
this year. The Secretary of Defense, himself, thinks that we need to go 
forward with the technology for a ballistic missile defense for our 
country. At least 30 countries throughout the world have ballistic 
missile technology and capabilities. Many of those have nuclear, 
biological and chemical weapons capability as well. So, of course, we 
ought to be able to defend our shores, or any of our troops in the 
field against incoming ballistic missiles. Yet, if you cut $8 billion 
that Senator Grassley wants to cut, we will not be able to go forward 
in that technology.

  Mr. President, we should have learned a lesson from our experiences 
in previous wars. That is what history is for--to teach us lessons. We 
should learn the lesson of the Korean war. We should not forget the 
lessons of Task Force Smith, when we had drawn down our forces after 
World War II, and we did not have the equipment and the training going 
into the Korean war, and Task Force Smith was a unit that was rushed 
into combat in the early days of the Korean war and were obliterated by 
the North Koreans. They were brave soldiers who fought courageously but 
because they were not equipped with up-to-date equipment and their 
training was woefully short they suffered terrible casualties. We 
cannot forget the sacrifice of those who died in Task Force Smith and 
now once again repeat those same mistakes today by undercutting the 
ability of our troops in the field to have the equipment and the 
training and the technology they need to do the job when they signed up 
to protect our freedom.
  We saw in Desert Storm an almost perfectly executed war, but we had 
almost 6 months to prepare for that war. Our enemies will not always 
give us 6 months to prepare for a war. They saw what happened to Saddam 
Hussein when he did that. So when you talk about cutting $8 billion out 
of our defense budget, you are talking not about fat; you are talking 
about muscle and bone. You are talking about cutting the critical 
support for our military that we must continue to provide if we are 
going to maintain the strength of our military.
  As President Reagan once said, we got peace through strength. Being 
weak and unprepared and technologically inadequate is not what America 
is about. If we are going to have the greatest nation on Earth and the 
last superpower status on Earth, we must have the equipment and the 
technology and the upgrading to do the job. So cutting our military 
budget to the level that the President asked for is certainly not going 
to do that.
  I implore my colleagues to look at the big picture and to remember 
the lessons of Task Force Smith. Let us not let the deaths of those 
brave men go unheeded. Let us keep our freedom and our strength, and 
let us keep our commitment to our troops in the field for a quality of 
life and let us have a ballistic missile defense for our country going 
into the 21st century.
  Now, Mr. President, according to the previous order, I yield 10 
minutes to Senator Cohen.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I was interested in listening to the 
comments of my colleague from Illinois when he held up several press 
accounts that the North Koreans may be heading for starvation, and so 
the solution, I suppose, is to send food.
  Mr. President, the North Koreans would not be headed for starvation 
if they were spending less on weapons, less on putting half a million 
people right on the DMZ, having 1.2 million under arms, and doing more 
to grow food.
  So the word ought to be to the North Koreans, ``Make food, not war.'' 
Yet we are being called upon here for us to

[[Page S5056]]

now feed the North Korean Army, because that is where the food is 
going, it is not going to feed the general population.
  Let me suggest to my friends who now would adopt the policy of send 
food and not prepare for defending South Korea that the North Koreans 
have not been responsive to date to these sorts of gestures. We have 
been sending them fuel oil so they would not go forward and build a 
nuclear weapons capability, and now we are being told they are on the 
verge of starving, so, therefore, we must cut back, we must in fact 
trim our procurement needs in order to accommodate the needs of the 
North Korean people whose military regime continues to spend them into 
bankruptcy.
  It was also suggested with a chart over there that there are some 
five countries that we spend more in defense than the total of these 
five countries. Well, which countries are they? Is it Russia? Is it 
China? Can anyone on the Senate floor tell me how much China spends on 
their military? Can you tell me how much Russia spends for its 
military? If any of you can even establish that in nominal terms?

  Would you like to compare what it costs the United States taxpayer to 
acquire a fighter aircraft from McDonnell Douglas versus the Chinese 
Government?
  Mr. President, there is no sense in trying to compare our 
expenditures to those of five countries when we cannot even identify 
the true costs of what those countries are spending. Assuming that you 
could, are we going to take the position in the Senate that we now 
would like to see the Japanese, for example, increase their defense 
spending so they can assume a greater responsibility in the field of 
seapower, and extend their seapower capabilities throughout that 
region?
  Do we want to see Germany, for example, have a much greater 
expenditure in defense to adopt much greater responsibility than they 
currently have? Are we willing to see that our stabilizing presence 
throughout the world should be diminished with all the consequences we 
have seen during the history of warfare during the 20th century; that 
every single time the United States has cut back and cut back and cut 
back we have seen the seeds of future wars sewn?
  Mr. President, it has been talked about here of how the peak of 
spending has gone down over the past 10 years. I have a chart here as 
well that can show very clearly how it has dropped significantly since 
1985--70 percent.
  We think back to our capability in World War II. I ask this question 
frequently: How many ships did we have during World War II? Take a wild 
guess. Five thousand warships. How many are we headed for today? Three 
hundred forty-six.
  Bismarck indicated that there are only two things that do not change 
in life. One is history and the other is geography.
  We still are required to sail the same seas. We still are required to 
defend this country's interests globally. That has not changed. So we 
now are required to cover the globe with our sea power capability with 
346 ships, not 5,000. Indeed, these 346 ships are more capable than 
those 5,000 we had in World War II, but we have to continue to 
modernize them.
  The fact is we are operating them at a greater operational tempo. 
They are wearing out faster. So what we are asking our young men and 
women to do is to sail in ships that are operating at a higher tempo, 
that are wearing out faster, that need replacement, need repairs, and 
we put their lives in jeopardy because we are cutting back and cutting 
back.
  We are doing so in contradiction to what the President promised. This 
is what is most ironic. For years, the administration has been telling 
us that the procurement budget is going to turn around. Just wait until 
next year. It is sort of like us in New England; we keep saying about 
the Red Sox: Next year we are going to get the pennant. Just wait one 
more year.
  That is precisely what has been said about the defense budget: Next 
year it is coming. We know it is going to an all-time low. It has to 
come up because we are sacrificing our qualitative edge here, folks, so 
it has to come up. Two years ago, Secretary Perry testified, and I am 
going to quote:

       We cannot sustain these low levels of procurement for long, 
     and we are projecting an increase beginning next year, fiscal 
     1996.

  Mr. President, it did not happen. Last year, the Clinton 
administration said that the upturn in the procurement budget will 
begin next year, in 1996. Now they say that it is not going to happen. 
Last year, the administration said it was going to be requesting $44 
billion in fiscal 1997 for procurement. We got the budget, and it was 
38.9 for procurement. Now here we go again. The administration says the 
procurement upturn is going to start next year, fiscal 1998. So we were 
promised in 1996. They broke the promise. We were promised in 1997. 
They broke the promise. Now they say wait, just hold on; if we can just 
get to 1998, it will start to upturn.
  Mr. President, when is that going to happen? The reason we are here, 
the reason we have added this funding for our defense capability is 
that we cannot rely upon empty promises. We have had military adviser 
after military adviser come forward and say, ``Yes, we support the 
President's budget,'' but when pressed, ``Yes, we could use a little 
bit more.''
  Let me just quote something else for you. Last fall, General 
Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began banging the 
drum pretty loudly for a ramp up in procurement, saying we need to get 
the procurement budget up from this year's $42 billion to $60 billion 
by fiscal 1998.
  If you started reading the trade press accounts in the last couple of 
months, you would have seen a series of articles quoting General 
Shalikashvili and other senior officials saying maintaining our 
military edge depends on achieving $60 billion in procurement by fiscal 
1998. Yet, the President's budget calls for procurement spending in 
1998 essentially unchanged from this year and not reaching the $60 
billion mark until after the turn of the century.
  So, all told, this year's budget calls for $26 billion less for 
procurement over the next 5 years than the Department of Defense said 
just last year that it needed.
  So, Mr. President, the reason we are here in opposition to this 
amendment is that we cannot afford to take the chance, we cannot afford 
to put the lives of our young men and women on the line with equipment 
that is wearing out, wearing down, and needs to be replaced. That 
equipment needs to be kept up to the best level that we can possibly 
maintain it.
  When the call comes to go to Bosnia, we are the ones who have to go 
over there with the best equipment. When the call came to send two 
aircraft carrier battle groups over to Taiwan, when the Chinese were 
threatening with missiles headed toward Taiwan's territory, we were the 
ones who sent two aircraft carrier groups over. Every time there is an 
emergency that affects our interests or that of our allies, we are the 
ones who are called upon. Do we send our people over with deficient 
equipment or marginal equipment? No, we say we send them with the best. 
We are not going to put our people in harm's way under circumstances 
that put them at a great disadvantage.
  Mr. President, we are asking that we reject this amendment. We think 
it is necessary to begin the procurement, not next year and not in 
fiscal 1998, but now. This is a commitment that was made by the Clinton 
administration 2 years ago. It was not kept. It was made again last 
year. It was not kept. This year we intend to see that the commitment 
is adhered to.
  Mr. President, I ask our colleagues to reject this amendment and that 
we do so with an overwhelming vote.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). Who yields time?
  Mr. COHEN. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Oklahoma.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator for yielding. I also rise to oppose 
this amendment. I have to ask the question, what is this obsession that 
we seem to have around this place for cutting the military, for putting 
ourselves in a defenseless posture?
  I am just shocked every time this discussion comes up, and hardly a 
day comes by when there is not talk about this. It is interesting that 
a President who ran on a balanced budget, ran on a strong national 
defense, ran on all of these things, wants to cut only defense. He has 
increased spending in every

[[Page S5057]]

other program. The only area where he has suggested, in his budget, he 
wants dramatic cuts is in defense.
  When he promised, prior to the 1994 budget, that he was going to ask 
for $62 billion, he ended up asking for $48 billion. For the 1995 
budget, he promised he would ask for $55 billion and he only asked for 
$46 billion.
  The Senator from Maine talked about the various missions that are 
taking place around the world today. I opposed it even back during the 
Republican administration, in December 1992, when we sent troops to 
Somalia, even though they sent them over for 90 days and they did not 
come back until after 18 of our troops were murdered and their corpses 
were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. I opposed sending troops 
there then. I opposed sending troops to Bosnia. I opposed sending 
troops to Haiti. Not because I am not compassionate, not because I am 
not concerned for the plight of these people all around the world, it 
is just we do not have the military assets to go out and take care of 
all these social problems around the world and be able to defend 
ourselves.
  So I think we have a twofold problem here. We are dramatically 
reducing, year after year after year, our military budget, and at the 
same time we are taking on additional responsibilities. Currently, we 
have more troops deployed around the world than we have had at any 
other time that is supposedly nonwartime, and we have taken huge cuts 
in our defenses. Since 1985--this is 12 years--for 12 consecutive years 
we have taken cuts in our Nation's defense.

  What makes it even worse, it was pointed out by the Senator from 
Maine, our defense spending has fallen 41 percent since 1985. It is 
really worse than that, because procurement has dropped 72 percent 
since 1985. So, if overall defense spending has dropped 41 percent, 
procurement 72 percent, that is where the modernization is, that is 
where the new equipment is, that is where the accounts are that make us 
competitive. We have watched, year after year--1985, $405 billion using 
1997 dollars, down to roughly $250 billion. We cannot afford any more 
cuts.
  One of the things that has been stated is that the Pentagon did not 
make these requests. It is interesting, I heard not more than a month 
ago when we had testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee--
it was also before the House committee--that we had the four Chiefs all 
in agreement that we have to have an additional $20 billion in our 
readiness account in order to be competitive. Yet, that is the first 
time I can remember in my recollection of American history when the 
Chiefs themselves came out and said, ``No, the President is wrong. We 
are sorry. He is the Ccommander in Chief, but we are the ones 
responsible for protecting America, and we are not able to do it.''
  Look what has happened. You want to talk about administrations? 
During the Democratic administration of 1961, President Kennedy, in the 
percentage of the total budget, 50 percent was for defense, 16 percent 
for social spending. Now it is just reversed: 17 percent for national 
defense, 60 percent for social spending.
  The areas where we are going to be suffering are the very areas that 
affect our troops that are in combat situations, preparing for combat 
situations--quality of life, black boxes for aircraft. Time and time 
again I get in 141's and 130's and I look down there--I have been a 
commercial pilot for 40 years, and I look down and see they actually 
have equipment I have not seen in 20 years. We are sending our people 
out without GPS's, a very inexpensive piece of equipment. It is because 
we are cutting down those procurement accounts to a level that we are 
not going to adequately take care of those individuals who are in the 
field.
  I would just make one more comment about what has been said over and 
over again on the floor. It was said most recently by the very 
distinguished Senator from Illinois, that this amendment is still $3 
billion more than the Pentagon requested. All I can say is, I hope all 
of America knows--certainly we know in this body here--that the 
President speaks for the Pentagon. He is the one, and they carry out 
his orders. But when you stop and ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the 
Chiefs of the services--I will quote right here, ``Unless we 
recapitalize''--I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Could the Senator use 2 more minutes? I yield 2 more 
minutes to the Senator.
  Mr. INHOFE. ``Unless we recapitalize, we are not going to be ready to 
meet the threats of the future.'' That is the Chief of Staff of the Air 
Force, Ron Fogelman, March 14, 1996.
  In the same meeting: ``If we do not modernize, we ultimately place 
future readiness at risk.'' That was Adm. Michael Boorda, same meeting.
  ``Further deferral of modernization will incur significant risks to 
future readiness.'' This is Gen. Dennis Reimer of the U.S. Army, March 
13, 1996.
  It is there. The Senator from Texas talked about another great 
problem, and that is the problem that we have cut back, as a result of 
the veto of the DOD bill last year, on our ability to defend ourselves 
from a national missile attack. We do not have a National Missile 
Defense System in place. Most of the people in America believe we have 
one, and when they find out we do not have one, it scares them to 
death. Why are they scared? Because such great people as Jim Woolsey, 
who was the CIA Director under two Democrat Presidents, said that 
currently we have a great threat out there. We know of 25 nations that 
have or are in the final stages of completion of a weapon of mass 
destruction, either biological, chemical, or nuclear, and are 
developing the missile means of delivering it.
  So we are imperiled, Mr. President. We have a great deal to do to 
rebuild our defenses, to go back and take us out of the posture we were 
in in 1980 when we could not afford spare parts. What we are doing 
today is trying to get ourselves into a position where we have adequate 
spare parts, adequate procurement, so that our troops out there can be 
competitive with the others.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield myself 30 seconds, and then I 
will change with Senator Bumpers.
  Mr. President, I say to Senator Inhofe that I just want to 
congratulate him on his remarks and on his steadfastness on the Armed 
Services Committee. I want to compliment you for the learning that has 
taken place in a very short period of time. Many Senators look to you 
for information on the Defense Department.
  My accolades go out to you because I think it is clear that you are 
genuinely interested, and it shows. I want to just tell you we all 
understand it and appreciate it very much.
  I do not know what the arrangement was. Would you like Senator 
Bumpers to go next? We have had two or three of ours.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Just for 5 minutes if the Senator from Iowa will yield 
to me.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Arkansas.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, so that we will have things lined up, 
after his 5 minutes, could we go 10 minutes for Senator Kyl and Senator 
Stevens wants 10 minutes?
  Mr. STEVENS. But I will be happy to wait for someone on the other 
side.
  Mr. DOMENICI. If there are no Democrats, they can go in between and 
then we can go to Senator Stevens. I ask that be the unanimous-consent 
request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President I want to congratulate my distinguished 
colleague from Iowa for a very sensible amendment, one that ought to 
receive the unanimous approval of this body.
  This budget contains just over $500 billion in discretionary 
spending. I want my colleagues to think about this for a moment. We are 
looking at a total budget of between $1.6 trillion and $1.7 trillion 
and only a bit over $500 billion of that is for discretionary spending. 
Under this budget, about $265 billion of that is for defense. That does 
not leave much for programs that go to the very heart of the values of 
the country and the things that really make this Nation strong, like 
education and transportation. I can tell you that the number of 
explosions you can set off with weaponry is not necessarily related to 
the real strength of this Nation. I am always nonplused and puzzled 
when so many people jump

[[Page S5058]]

under their desks every time somebody mentions cutting defense. You can 
savage education, which this budget does, you can savage the 
environment, which this budget does, you can savage the programs that 
people depend on for their very livelihood, earned-income tax credits, 
and on and on it goes, you can deal with those programs and you can ask 
for a whopping tax increase for the wealthiest among us, but if you ask 
defense to take one single dollar less, everybody goes berserk.
  Now, there are some politics in this. But I want you to remember that 
the amendment of the Senator from Iowa is well above the 
administration's request. There is not any reason why Republicans ought 
to join in lockstep to vote against this. It is well above what the 
President has requested for the Pentagon, it is well above what the 
Defense Department says it needs.
  I heard the distinguished Senator from Texas a moment ago, a woman 
whom I admire and respect, saying that we just simply cannot weaken our 
defenses. I want to ask my colleagues this: Who are the enemies you are 
going to spend this money for? Who are they?
  Mr. DOMENICI. I did not hear the question.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Pardon?
  Mr. DOMENICI. What was the question?
  Mr. BUMPERS. The question is, who are the enemies against whom we 
must spend $265 billion? Who are the enemies that we feel constrained 
to spend over $1.6 trillion over the next 6 years to defend against? 
The Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Simon], said a moment ago that we spend 
as much on defense in this Nation as the top five possible adversaries, 
including China and Russia. It is worse than that. We spend as much as 
the top 10, and if you add NATO, we spend almost twice as much as the 
top 10 and there is not an enemy in sight.
  Mr. STEVENS. Do you want to yield on that?
  Mr. BUMPERS. No, I am not going to yield until I finish.
  Mr. STEVENS. All right.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Then the Senator from Texas proceeded to talk about how 
weak we could become. I will tell you how you get weak. You get weak by 
paying interest on a national debt that we incurred during the 1980's 
when defense spending went from $150 billion to $300 billion in 8 
years. If we had not been so foolish, we would not be fighting about a 
balanced budget these days. It is because of the interest on that 
staggering debt increase that we cannot balance the budget.
  There is not anybody here that I will yield to on supporting our 
defense needs. I served 3 years in the Marine Corps during World War 
II, and I learned a little bit about defense first hand, and now I sit 
on a defense appropriations subcommittee. I know how it all works, and 
I know how it happens. But I can tell you, this amendment will save the 
taxpayers of this Nation billions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Thirty seconds.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield 30 seconds.
  Mr. BUMPERS. I have to admit that over the period of this budget 
resolution, there is a sum total of $11 billion difference between the 
Republican budget proposal and this amendment--$11 billion.
  Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield on my time?
  Mr. BUMPERS. The President cuts back on defense spending now and the 
budget resolution cuts back on it later.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired. Under the 
previous order, the Senator from Arizona is recognized for 10 minutes.

  Mr. KYL. Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to respond to some of 
the challenges just raised by the Senator from Arkansas. They are good 
questions. They deserve a response, and I think we have the response.
  Before doing that, though, let me pay a compliment to the Senator 
from Iowa for raising this amendment, even though I strongly oppose it. 
The Senator from Iowa cares very much about the spending of taxpayer 
dollars in this country, and he knows that there are some places in the 
defense budget where we could make savings, and he is right in that. 
But I believe it is also the case that if that money were to be cut, we 
would not make the savings in the places where they ought to be made, 
but rather would continue to cut on important research and development, 
on readiness and on procurement, on the things that we have to spend 
more money on, and that is why I will end up opposing the amendment of 
the Senator from Iowa.
  I would like the attention of the Senator from Arkansas because he 
raised some important questions a moment ago. He said, ``Who is our 
enemy?'' Mr. President, the United States of America is now the only 
superpower in the world. We are the country to whom everyone else in 
the world looks to for protection, not only of themselves but for the 
democratic ideals that animate many countries' pretensions to become a 
part of the civilized world.
  I just returned from a conference in Prague, the Czech Republic, in 
which Central European nations said to the United States, ``Please 
continue to assist us to help bring us into the European Community, 
because we have the same basic ideals that you do.'' We cannot do that 
if we do not have a strong defense.
  Who are our enemies? Well, it all depends. If we want to come to the 
defense of Kuwait, then our enemy in that situation is Iraq. If we want 
to protect Taiwan, then our enemy might be China. If we want to protect 
South Korea, then our enemy is North Korea. If we want to stand up to 
Qadhafi, then our enemy is Libya. If we want to stop the terrorism from 
coming from Teheran, then Iran may be our enemy.
  The point is, there is not any other country in the world that 
everybody looks to to stop this kind of aggression than the United 
States of America.
  Mr. President, I will never forget what Dick Cheney said when 
everyone was patting him on the back for winning the gulf war. 
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney at that time said, ``It wasn't Dick 
Cheney who won the war. It wasn't George Bush. It wasn't Norman 
Schwarzkopf.'' He said, ``As great as they were, it wasn't even just 
our great troops that won this war. We won the gulf war because of 
decisions that were made by courageous members of previous 
administrations and previous Congresses 10 and 12 and 15 years ago to 
give us the weapons, the high-tech weaponry and to provide for the 
training of our troops,'' so that we would be prepared to win a 
conflict that nobody could have even predicted back then, could not 
even have predicted just a few weeks before the invasion of Kuwait, in 
fact, apparently was not predicted by anybody until the invasion 
occurred.

  So the point is, Mr. President, you cannot say that until we have 
identified a specific enemy, in the sense that we have been attacked, 
we should not be spending money on defense. That argument is absolutely 
wrong. Dick Cheney was absolutely right. What he said is, ``I hope that 
the decisions that I'm making as Secretary of Defense today will enable 
my successor's successor, maybe 10 or 12 years from now, to win a 
conflict that nobody today can predict but which, as surely as we're 
sitting here, will occur.''
  Mr. President, that is the challenge of all of us sitting in this 
body today. We cannot predict who the enemy is. But we have an 
obligation to provide for that basic research, that readiness, that 
procurement that we know will win the next conflict wherever it is. To 
those who say we are savaging education, savaging the environment, 
spending overall on those accounts has not gone down, has not gone up 
much, but it has not gone down.
  Defense spending has gone down now for 12 straight years, the only 
department of Government where that has occurred. As a matter of fact, 
defense spending last year and this year will be less than we spent 
before Pearl Harbor. Either as a percentage of the Federal budget or as 
a percentage of gross national product, we will be spending less on 
defense than we did the year before Pearl Harbor.
  Now we are the only acknowledged superpower in the world. We are the 
country that everybody else turns to. Before my time is out, Mr. 
President, let me simply note that there are numerous reports, 
statements, pieces of testimony from representatives of the 
administration who say that we are already spending too little. If we 
were to cut the Republican committee request even further, as our 
friend from Iowa is suggesting that we do here, we would be setting our 
procurement program

[[Page S5059]]

back by years and we would not be in a position to win that kind of 
conflict of which I spoke.
  One of the people who I think we should rely upon here is the 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Shalikashvili. He stated 
in his 1996 Force Readiness Assessment report a little bit earlier this 
year:

       As overall defense spending has been reduced, permanent 
     accounts have been the bill payer for other readiness-related 
     spending. We can no longer afford to push procurement into 
     the outyears.

  Specifically with regard to the spending and the amounts, General 
Shalikashvili summarized the situation this way:

       We are now fast approaching the time when we will no longer 
     be able to rely on what we built in the 1980's, and so we 
     must commit ourselves to a sufficient procurement goal, a 
     goal I assess to be approximately $60 billion annually, if 
     our force is to remain as ready tomorrow as it is today.

  Mr. President, despite General Shalikashvili's assessment, the 
administration's 1997 request devotes less than $40 billion to 
procurement spending, less than at any time since the Korean war. What 
that means is, we are still going to be $20 billion short. Now the 
committee has added $11 billion back. That is still $9 billion short 
just with regard to procurement. If we were to adopt the amendment of 
the Senator from Iowa, we would be back to the point where we are at 
least $20 billion short just in the area of procurement, according to 
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  Without reading the statements made by other members of the Joint 
Chiefs and other representatives in the military, let me just summarize 
it this way. There is not anybody in the military who does not believe 
we could make good use of the money that the Armed Services Committee 
has put back in. There is a list here presented by each of the services 
that spends more than that amount of money. They would like to have it 
if they could.
  They are good soldiers, following the Commander in Chief, who sent 
his budget up and said, we are not going to spend any more than the 
amount requested. But if you ask them, they will give you the list of 
things they say they need.
  That is why I conclude again by answering the question of the Senator 
from Arkansas. We know who our potential enemies are. We know who we 
have to be prepared to defend against. What we are doing, in as best a 
way as we can, in the budget of the Armed Services Committee, in the 
authorization from the Armed Services Committee, is to request the 
minimal amount that we think we are going to need to sustain those 
requirements.
  To go back to what Secretary Cheney said when he was Secretary of 
Defense: If we have the courage today to make the kind of decisions 
that people 10 and 15 years ago did that permitted us to be able to win 
the cold war, and win the first hot war since then in Iraq, then we 
will be able to say that at the time that it counted we stood up and we 
did the right thing. We had the foresight, we had the courage, and we 
were willing to defend the position to spend the money necessary to 
fulfill the first and most important obligation of the U.S. Government, 
of the Federal Government, and that is to defend the people of 
the United States.

  That is why at the end of the day I support the distinguished 
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Thurmond, and 
the work of his committee in bringing forth their requests and 
respectfully oppose the amendment of our good friend from Iowa, Senator 
Grassley.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Alaska is now recognized for 10 minutes.
  Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I say to Senator Thurmond, the previous 
order has Senator Stevens to speak for 10 minutes and then the Senator 
from South Carolina.
  Mr. STEVENS. I am happy to defer to the chairman of the Armed 
Services Committee, if he wishes.
  Mr. THURMOND. Go ahead.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the 
proponents of this amendment. I spent this morning, as chairman of the 
Defense Appropriations Committee, in a classified session, meeting with 
members of the Department of Defense, uniformed members, considering 
what we do about replacing our fighter force. The F-15 will be 30 years 
old in 2003, Mr. President. We have a situation where, after the turn 
of the century, the C-141's and the C-5's will be retired. They will be 
retired. They also will be about 30 years old, one of them 30-plus 
years old. We have to find a way to replace them, too.
  I find it interesting to listen to people who propose this amendment, 
because they are unwilling to take the step that would be necessary to 
accomplish what they want to do, and that is restore the draft. Over 60 
percent of our money spent for defense, sometimes almost 70 percent, 
depending upon the year involved, goes to pay for the Volunteer Force, 
the best force in the world. It is the force of a superpower, but it is 
an expensive force. The remainder of the money goes for research and 
development, for acquisition of new systems.
  What this amendment will mean is the people that have come to our 
committee already and said they want add-ons for this budget, they want 
things changed in the President's budget, they will not only be denied, 
but a series of things that are in the budget have to be taken out 
because the President's budget is not an honest budget.
  It does not fund for contingencies, just as last year he did not fund 
for Bosnia at all. We have to find $5 to $6 to $7 billion every year to 
pay for things this President has ordered that he spends out of the 
money that we provide for defense under his power as Commander in 
Chief.

  But what we are doing right now is ignoring our duty as Members of 
Congress if we do not follow the Constitution, which says we must 
provide for the common defense. To provide for the common defense of 
this country requires that we make the investment now to be assured 
that in the next century we will be as successful as we were in the 
Persian Gulf war.
  That Persian Gulf war demonstrated, as was just said by the Senator 
from Arizona, the wisdom of the decisions that were made in the 1970's 
and in the 1980's to acquire the F-15, to finance the Tomahawk, to 
produce the Stealth 117. All of those were possible because of the 
discretionary spending that was available then.
  If the amendment of the Senator from Iowa is adopted, we lose our 
advantage, we lose our capability to invest in the future, to invest in 
the research and development that is necessary, or we have to go to a 
draft, we have to start drafting people. I joined Senator Goldwater in 
opposing the draft in peacetime. We brought about the end of the draft 
in peacetime.
  We do not believe in drafting our people in peacetime. I hope we will 
never be forced to do it. But we certainly will be forced to do it if 
we adopt this amendment, because the testimony I heard this morning, as 
I said, in a classified session, demonstrates that we must have the 
money to invest in the systems that are being researched now, some of 
them in a development stage, so that we can have the systems to keep 
our country in a position of being No. 1 in terms of capability out 
into the next century.
  Now, I do not know any way to do it if we constantly have erosion on 
this budget, as mentioned by the Senator from Arizona. There has been 
an erosion on the budget every year. When Jack Kennedy was President of 
the United States, 51 percent of the budget of the United States went 
to defense. It is nowhere near that because of the growth of 
entitlements, the growth in interest rates. We get a portion of the 
controllable expenses for defense. It is a sizable portion, but nowhere 
near what we need.
  In terms of need, if we really defined need and came in here and 
asked for the replacement of all the systems that are aging, this 
budget would be much higher. It cannot go down, as was projected by the 
President, and maintain the defense of this country into the next 
century. We are not talking now. People ask, who is the enemy now? The 
enemy will be met with the investments we made in the 1970's and 
1980's. For the next century, it will be the investments of the balance 
of this decade. To cut the investments means we weaken the United 
States in its ability to make commitments around the

[[Page S5060]]

world to protect our interests. I cannot get more worked up about 
anything than the continued demand that we try to defend this budget in 
terms of what is the threat now.
  Look at Iraq. We had sitting Members of the Senate visiting Saddam 
Hussein about 5 months before he moved into Kuwait. Would anyone have 
come to the floor and when asked to define the threat, come up with 
Iraq, as we debated the bill, the year before that trip? I cannot 
define who is going to be the next country that we have to call an 
enemy.
  I can say to the Senate that if this amendment is adopted--I can see 
the Senator from Massachusetts here--I can tell you the money will not 
be there for Patriot. It will not be there for Patriot, which is being 
upgraded to a new, better system than that which we had at the time of 
the Persian Gulf war. It will not be there for improving the Aegis 
system, which will provide area defense for our Navy.
  I went with the Senator from Hawaii during the last recess to Hawaii 
and looked at some of the systems that are being tested now. They are 
just being tested, Mr. President. They are not capable of going into 
production yet. We went to classified bases and saw some of the things 
they are doing. They are very good. We have to have those systems to 
combat what is out there now.
  Russia is selling arms to the world. So is France. Many of our people 
are selling arms out there. We talked about this problem that happened 
in the Persian Gulf war when we found systems our allies were using 
were in the hands of Iraq at the same time.

  We have to design and produce and deploy systems that are capable of 
meeting any challenge that you can conceive now, in the next century. 
The difficulty is, some of the challenges we face we might not be able 
to conceive. So we continue our research. We continue our basic 
research to develop new systems to defend this country's interests.
  I think if we do not have the money called for in this budget--and I 
congratulate the Senator from New Mexico for his wisdom in putting it 
out--we will face a series of reductions in our effort before the turn 
of the century.
  The Senator from Arkansas says, ``Look at the budget. The President's 
budget is just $11 billion different from the budget that the Senator 
from New Mexico has presented over the 6-year period.'' That is true. 
That is true. But if you want to look at it in terms of defense, it 
declines continually until the year 2000. What is the year 2000? The 
end of the next Presidential term.
  What happens in 2001 and 2002? Mysteriously, substantial funds are 
ready for defense; more money than cut in the last 5 years is ready for 
the Presidency, starting in 2001. Is that not a miracle? A real 
miracle. Whoever is President in 2001 will have to have a new monetary 
system to finance what is proposed in the President's budget for 
defense. It is a false, phony budget. We need to correct that now.
  We cannot have a decline in defense over a period of 4 more years and 
expect in 2 years, magically, after the turn of the century, we will 
have an enormous increase in spending. That is false. It is fake. You 
cannot rely on it. You cannot rely on it in terms of the defense of 
this country and our interests well into the next century.
  I will say in terms of the comments made by the Senator from 
Arkansas, we have some very basic differences even when we look out 
into the future, because I want systems that will be capable of meeting 
those threats that we can project now through analyzing what we know 
other countries are doing.
  My area of Alaska is adjacent to the north Pacific. Six of the seven 
largest armies of the world are active in the Pacific region today, Mr. 
President. If you look at the national intelligence estimate, it says 
the continental United States does not have any threat for missiles for 
15 years. Senator Inouye and I say: What about Alaska and Hawaii? Well, 
that is another thing. North Korea and Iran have missiles that can 
reach our States now, and the President wants to ignore the missile 
defense systems of this country.

  I say defeat this amendment and get back to the business of restoring 
the capability of our military well into the next century. That is what 
this amendment is all about.
  Mr. WARNER. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. STEVENS. I have no time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has control of the 
time.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Have we agreed on the order of any others?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. No. The unanimous consent has expired.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Let me say to Senators, any Senator that wants to speak 
on the defense amendment on our side, and I think I am speaking for 
your side, we want to try to vote here early in the evening, not late 
in the evening. If they could let us know if they want to debate so we 
can start allocating enough time.
  Senator Exon is here and is willing to take that up with his side. 
Senator Grassley has 20 minutes left.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I promised the Senator from Massachusetts I would give 
him 4 minutes, but while I am standing here and have the floor, I will 
say I hope that if you are going to take time off of your bill, that 
Senator Exon would take time so we could have equal time on my 
amendment--if there is time coming off the bill after our time runs 
out.
  Mr. EXON. The Senator from Iowa made a point that I would like to 
make. Everyone wants to know when we will vote. We have 21 minutes left 
on the allotted time.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I was not planning on going over.
  Mr. EXON. It all depends on how much time you continue to yield in 
excess of the amount that was allotted to your side of the debate. We 
are not going to sit here and let you keep yielding time and then beat 
us over the head because you do not have a vote. We have 21 minutes 
left under the original agreement by the Senator from Iowa. I hope we 
intend to use that time, but no more. I will yield time off if you are 
going to continue to yield 10 and 15 minutes to people to speak against 
it. All I am asking for is fairness.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, it may be fair. If we need more time, you can 
have more time. That is fairness. We have Senators that want to speak 
on this amendment. We will accommodate them. There is a lot of time on 
this budget resolution. We will accommodate you. How much time has the 
majority used in opposition to the Grassley amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority has used 62 minutes.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I have three additional speakers on our side. The 
chairman of the Armed Services Committee, how much time did you want?
  Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, 7 or 8 minutes.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, 5 for the Senator from New Mexico, so we 
need 20 additional minutes. Also, Senator Cohen wants 6 minutes, so we 
will need 30 minutes on our side.
  Senator Exon, however you want to handle it, if you want to use 30 
more minutes.
  Mr. EXON. If we are not going to go over that, we would allow you to 
continue, but it is we who are trying to expedite the matter. If 
Senator Grassley controls the time, and, as I understand it he has 21 
minutes left, if we have now reached an agreement on how much time you 
are going to continue to yield, I say to the chairman of the committee, 
then we might be able to hold to our side to 21 minutes, which I point 
out gives your side considerably more time in opposition to the 
amendment than the time we are using in support of it.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Maybe, for the benefit of all the Senators, not just 
those on the floor, we can reach an agreement. If we need 30 minutes 
and the Senator has 20, if we extend that to 30, that would be an hour. 
Could we plan to vote at 7 o'clock? I think your side desires that. Or 
maybe we can make it 6:50. That is an hour. You get half an hour and we 
get half an hour.
  Mr. KERRY. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I 
would like to inquire. Was there an order of speaking being asked for, 
or might we have an alternative process here, seeking proponents and 
opponents?
  Mr. DOMENICI. We are going to work it out as fairly as we can. We do 
not intend to keep anybody here. Other Senators have been waiting a 
long time. If

[[Page S5061]]

we can get the hour locked in, a half hour each, Senator Exon and I can 
work out the order.
  I ask unanimous consent that there be 1 hour, equally divided, on the 
Grassley amendment, after which we vote on or in relation to that 
amendment, and that we control 30 minutes, and Senator Grassley and 
Exon control the other 30 minutes.
  Mr. EXON. Does that include the 21 minutes Senator Grassley has 
remaining?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Yes; a total of 1 hour, and at 6:50 we would vote.
  Mr. EXON. What the Senator is saying is that although you have used 
more time than we have, you want to divide the remainder of the time 
equally?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Yes.
  Mr. EXON. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa, [Mr. Grassley], is 
recognized.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from 
Massachusetts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator from Massachusetts yield me 10 
seconds?
  Mr. KERRY. Yes.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following 
the Senator from Massachusetts, the distinguished Chairman of the Armed 
Services Committee be recognized to speak for up to 10 minutes.
  Mr. WARNER. Reserving the right to object, I request that I follow 
the distinguished Senator from South Carolina with 4 minutes.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I so request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Following the Senator from Massachusetts, the Senator from South 
Carolina will be recognized for 10 minutes, followed by the Senator 
from Virginia for up to 5 minutes.
  The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment of the 
Senator from Iowa, as a cosponsor thereof. I begin my comments by 
saying that, like most of us here, we all care enormously about the 
ability of the United States to carry out its responsibilities and to 
have a military that is second to nobody in the world. I believe we 
have that military, and I think that it is vital in the post-cold-war 
period to begin to make a tougher set of judgments about how we are 
spending money, what our priorities are within the military, to 
guarantee that the reforms that we are promised are delivered on, and 
to guarantee that we are making choices about technology that are 
totally connected to the nature and definition of threat. I agree with 
the Senator from Alaska that nobody can say with specificity exactly 
which country will emerge, but we can make some pretty good judgments 
about what is happening in the world.
  I have a chart here, and, regrettably, it is not blown up, but it 
does not take very much vision to see that there is only one 
significant bar on the entire graph. All of the others are very, very 
small compared to the expenditure of the United States in the $260-
billion-plus mark.
  China is the next largest expenditure in the world, with somewhere in 
the vicinity--it is hard to figure out exactly--of $30 billion-plus. So 
we have $30 billion or so in China. The People's Liberation Army today 
is engaged in making CD's and engaged in pirating intellectual property 
in order to support the military. We know that their modernization 
program is not, by most intelligence analysts' determination, geared 
for expansionism. It is geared toward modernization. Most military 
intelligence analyst experts do not suggest that there is, at this 
moment, some enormous threat. We are supplying arms to Taiwan, and I 
think our combined threat with respect to Taiwan is fairly significant.
  China is the first of those sort of potential adversaries--if we 
wanted to put them in that category--that comes even close in terms of 
the next expenditures. But before China, the next highest expenditures 
in the world are Russia, now an ally; France, an ally; Japan, an ally; 
Germany, an ally; Britain, an ally. After China, you go to Italy, an 
ally; Saudi Arabia, an ally; South Korea, an ally; Taiwan, an ally; 
Canada, an ally; India, an ally; Spain, an ally; Australia, an ally; 
Turkey, an ally; Netherlands, an ally; Brazil, an ally; Israel, an 
ally; Sweden, an ally; and finally you get to North Korea.

  So you can look at all the potential threats of the world, and when 
you add the expenditures of all of our allies to the United States of 
America, you have to stop and say to yourself, ``What is it that we are 
really preparing for in a post-cold-war world?''
  Mr. President, if you look at the potential weapons of most of these 
potential threats, you look at Syria, or North Korea, or China. The 
relative difference between Iraq, prewar, and those countries' weapons 
today is not really that enormous. Iraq, prewar, had 338 combat 
aircraft and 700 tanks. Iran, today, has less aircraft and marginally 
more tanks. North Korea has significantly less aircraft and maybe 3 
times as many tanks. But we saw what the military of the United States 
was able to do in a matter of hours, let alone days, let alone weeks. 
The notion that we have to be proceeding to invest at a rate that is 
commensurate with the pre-cold-war period is simply irrational.
  So, Mr. President, I suggest that all the talk about the United 
States' military capacity being threatened by this amendment is just 
talk. It has no relationship to the reality of the threat or to what is 
happening in the world. We in the U.S. Senate ought to make a tougher 
set of judgments about our military expenditures.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
South Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, prior to my remarks on this bill, I 
commend the able Senator from New Mexico for the fine job he does on 
the Budget Committee, and especially his attitude and what he has done 
for defense.
  I rise to oppose the Grassley amendment, which would reduce defense 
spending from the $265.6 billion of the proposed budget resolution to 
$257.3 billion. I understand that the amendment would, however, make 
additional funds available to the President if he certifies a 
requirement for such additional funds. This is an unprecedented 
approach and an unnecessary and inappropriate transfer of power and 
authority from the legislative branch to the executive branch.
  Let me be clear, Mr. President. The amendment of the Senator from 
Iowa is really a nullification of 75 percent of the Budget Committee's 
recommended increase to the President's budget request. Why would the 
President, who has already submitted his budget request, certify to the 
Congress that he needs additional funds for quality of life, 
modernization or readiness programs? Further, if he did request 
additional funds, those funds would likely be for programs that have 
not been directed by the Congress. We must all remember that the 
Constitution gives the Congress, not the President, the power to 
``raise and support armies,'' and ``to provide and maintain a navy.''
  Mr. President, I believe that the Budget Committee has acted wisely 
and prudently in recommdending an increase to the President's 
inadequate request for defense.
  In order to buy the same level of national security in 1997 as we did 
in 1996, we would have to spend $273 billion. The President's request 
is $18.6 billion below this. The budget resolution proposes to increase 
the budget for defense by $11.2 billion; therefore, we are still $7.4 
billion below the fiscal year 1996 level of funding in real terms. Does 
the Senator from Iowa believe that our Armed Forces will be asked to do 
less in fiscal year 1997 than they did in fiscal year 1996? I ask him 
to answer that.
  The question we should be asking, therefore, is not whether we should 
increase the President's inadequate budget request by a minimal amount; 
rather the question should be: What risks are we taking by not adding 
more? Our Nation's top military leaders answer that question.

  General Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says he is 
``very concerned that our procurement accounts are not where they ought 
to be.''

[[Page S5062]]

  General Reimer, Army Chief of Staff, says that ``further deferral of 
modernization will incur significant risk to future readiness.''
  Admiral Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations, says ``If we do not 
modernize, we ultimately place future readiness at risk.''
  General Fogleman, Air Force Chief of Staff, says that ``Unless we 
recapitalize, we are not going to be ready to meet the threats of the 
future.''
  And General Krulak, Marine Corps Commandant, says that ``The Marine 
Corps * * * cannot absorb further reductions without sacrificing 
critical core capabilities.''
  These statements of our top military officers were made in open 
committee hearings. If they were free from political concerns, one 
could expect an even more candid, and dire, assessment. Even Secretary 
of Defense Perry has acknowledged that ``we have to start increasing 
the modernization program or, we will start to have a real problem of 
obsolescence in the field.'' The Clinton administration has certainly 
achieved consensus among the services and the Department of Defense, 
but in a way that the Goldwater-Nichols Act never envisioned.
  Our defense needs are underfunded, from both a historical and 
operational point of view. We are at the lowest level of defense 
spending since 1950. Procurement has been reduced by 70 percent since 
1985, and by more than 40 percent under the Clinton administration. 
Programs to support our servicemen and women's quality of life are 
inadequate. Our ability to protect our soldiers from ballistic missile 
attacks suffers from lack of funding and commitment. Our military 
research and development is anemic. If anything, we should be 
considering amendments which provide floors--not ceilings--on defense 
funding.
  I realize that our great Nation has numerous domestic and 
international obligations. But none--I repeat none--of these 
obligations rises to the level of our responsibility to provide for the 
common defense. Protection of our Nation's citizens is the Federal 
Government's first order of business. Without meeting this paramount 
obligation, the basic guarantees of ``life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness'' can easily become empty promises.
  Defense spending is now at its lowest level in the second half of 
this century. This half century has been the era of American superpower 
status. Our superpower status is not something we can maintain cheaply. 
We won the cold war through our steadfastness and robust military 
capabilities. Yet, we are asked by the administration and supporters of 
this amendment to continue undermining our military capabilities.
  I hope the Members of the Senate will agree with me that we cannot 
afford for our Nation to be less vigilant, less capable, and less 
ready. I strongly urge the Senate to vote against the Grassley 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Virginia is now recognized for up to 5 minutes.
  Mr. WARNER. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I would like to follow on the statements of the 
chairman of the Armed Services Committee when he said the modernization 
for the 1996 fiscal year decline represents the 40-year low since 1950. 
So I went back and I looked at a chart which shows exactly what we 
bought just 10 years ago. To give you an example, 10 years ago, in 
1986, the number of tanks we purchased in the field was 840. This year 
we purchased zero tanks. In 1986, tactical aircraft, 399 tactical 
aircraft; this year, 1997, 34. Most alarming of all, Mr. President, is 
the purchase of naval ships. In 1986, we purchased 40; in 1997, a mere 
6. That is a clear indication, Mr. President, of the decline in the 
equipment.
  When the members of the Joint Chiefs came before our committee, I, 
together with other Senators, asked each this question: First, what is 
the condition, say, of the Navy today? And the answer very proudly 
given by the Chiefs is it is in the best condition, it is ready, and it 
is well equipped. Then we asked with this level of procurement, what 
will your successor be able to say 10 years hence? And it is 10 years 
from the drawing board to the operational status of most of your major 
weapons systems, ships, aircraft, tanks, and the like. Each and every 
one of those Chiefs looked at the members of the committee, and you 
could read their faces. ``We cannot give you an answer as to what our 
successor a decade hence with this level of procurement would be able 
to testify today with respect to the Armed Forces of the United 
States.''
  Mr. President, I am quite puzzled over this amendment because it is 
so clear that we need these forces. We need this money.
  But I went back and looked at some polling data as to how the United 
States say 10, or 15 years ago viewed our defense situation. And 
clearly about half of the people ranked up there at No. 1, or No. 2, in 
their concerns about the security of the United States and how that 
appears in polling data today. Mr. President, the top item is the 
balanced budget, 26 percent; morale, 14 percent; crime, 11; taxes, 10; 
welfare, 10; jobs, 8; national defense--only 4 percent of the people 
are concerned; that low level of people, directly in conflict with the 
information that has been discussed on this floor about the threat that 
is poised against the United States.
  The Defense Intelligence Agency looked back 10 years and found but 
maybe 30 different spots of the world which we termed as ``hot spots'' 
into which our troops might be called. That was 10 years ago. Today, 
that is number is 60 areas of the world into which our troops might be 
called to defend freedom, or the security interests of the United 
States.

  So, Mr. President, while the public may think that we are safe and 
secure today, the reality is this is a very troubled world. I think it 
is our obligation to ensure that today, tomorrow, and in the years to 
come we are buying adequate numbers of ships, aircraft, and other items 
such that the men and women of the Armed Forces will remain as they are 
today--the best equipped in the world. We owe no less obligation to 
those who volunteer to proudly wear the uniform of the United States.
  This amendment would cut $8.3 billion from the defense budget number 
reported out by the Budget Committee, and bring us almost back down to 
the inadequate level of defense spending requested by the President.
  We have heard a lot during this debate about the increase in the 
defense budget contained in the budget resolution. There is no 
increase. What the Budget Committee has done is simply slow the rate of 
decline.
  But even with the defense number reported out of the Budget 
Committee--$265.6 billion--the defense budget will decrease in real 
terms from the fiscal year 1996 level by $7.4 billion. This year will 
mark the 12th straight year of declining defense budgets--even without 
the additional cuts proposed in this amendment. Enough is enough.
  U.S. troops are currently deployed in 10 separate military operations 
overseas. From Bosnia to the Persian Gulf, from the Adriatic Sea to the 
Taiwan Strait, we are calling on the men and women of the Armed Forces 
at an ever-increasing rate. The end of the cold war did not bring peace 
and harmony to the world.
  It is our responsibility to provide our troops with adequate 
resources so they can effectively and safely perform their missions. We 
must not condemn them to enter the battlefield ill-prepared, with 
outdated equipment. As Army Chief of Staff Reimer told the Armed 
Services Committee in March, ``In the event of a conflict, a lack of 
modern equipment will cost the lives of brave soldiers.''
  In testimony this year before the Armed Services Committee, our 
military leaders were candid about their assessment of funding 
requirements, and their concerns with the level of funding proposed by 
the President.
  They recognize that today's military is second to none as a result of 
actions taken 10 years ago. I told all of the service chiefs that their 
challenge today is to ensure that the military leaders 10 years hence 
have the forces and equipment they will need to protect our Nation's 
interest. It was clear from their testimony that the budget submitted 
by the President would not provide for that capability.
  Because of the Armed Services Committee's concerns with the low level 
of funding contained in the President's request, the committee 
requested each

[[Page S5063]]

of the services to provide a list of urgent requirements that were 
unfunded in the administration's request. These lists totaled over $20 
billion, and were used as a guide by the committee in adding $12.9 
billion during our recent markup.

  I was particularly concerned that the Clinton budget would continue 
the precipitous decline in the procurement accounts--or as Admiral 
Owens has called it, the crisis in procurement.
  Despite promises last year from Administration officials that the 
modernization ramp up would begin in fiscal year 1997, the decline 
continues. We are now at a 40-year low--not since the start of the 
Korean war have we spent so little on purchasing new weapons for our 
troops.
  To give just a few examples--in fiscal year 1986, we purchased 840 
new tanks, this year, no new tanks were requested; in fiscal year 1986, 
we purchased almost 400 new tactical aircraft, this year, 34 new 
tactical aircraft were requested; and in fiscal year 1986, we purchased 
40 new ships this year, only 6 new ships were requested.
  Even though the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously recommended a 
procurement budget of $60 billion as soon as possible, the 
administration proposed a budget of only $38.9 billion for procurement 
in fiscal year 1997. Ten years ago, the procurement budget was over 
$100 billion in 1997 dollars. If the administration has its way, the 
$60 billion procurement budget recommended by the Joint Chiefs will not 
be seen until fiscal year 2001.
  We cannot afford to further delay the recapitalization and 
modernization of our military equipment. Our troops in the field a 
decade hence will inherit outdated, obsolete equipment if we allow this 
procurement decline to continue.
  During markup, the Armed Services Committee added almost $8 billion 
to these vital procurement accounts. This will not solve the problem, 
but it is a step in the right direction. We must not backslide now from 
our determination to adequately modernize the force.
  I share my colleagues' desire for deficit reduction. But placing at 
risk the security of this Nation and the lives of our troops is not the 
way to achieve a balanced budget.
  Our defense budget is already at its lowest level--in real terms--
since 1950. We cannot afford to go any lower.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, did we not have any other agreements?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the order that was the last speaker, the 
Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. STEVENS. I am perfectly willing to wait for the Senator from 
Iowa, if he wants to use some of the time.
  Mr. DOMENICI. That is fine.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I will be glad to do so.
  Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes.
  How much time do I have?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Seventeen minutes.
  The Senator from Iowa is recognized.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, first of all, we have been hearing from 
a lot of very competent Senators who are members of Defense 
Appropriations, who are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, 
who have the responsibility to make sure that we meet our defense 
needs.
  I compliment them for doing that. We have people on the Armed 
Services Committee who are using budget arguments rather than national 
security arguments. I think if they want more money for defense, they 
have to be able to justify it on national security grounds. While I 
have these good friends of mine who are members of this committee 
saying why we ought to spend more, one of the reasons I feel very good 
about having Senator Exon as a cosponsor of my amendment is because he 
brings good judgment to this issue because he sits both as a senior 
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and he is also the senior 
Democrat on the Budget Committee. So I believe that Senator Exon as 
well has a point of view that he can bring to this, and I thank him for 
doing that, but I hope that my colleagues on this side of the aisle who 
oppose what I am doing know that we have taken both the national 
security argument and the budget argument into consideration.
  Senator Stevens has suggested that the defense budget should not be 
defined and sized to the threat as we know it today. There may be some 
unknown threat out there, I would have to admit, but we do not know 
about it. But that is not how it is done. We always determine the size 
of the budget by the threat that we see today and in the future. What 
we see is a dramatic decrease in the threat, so why should the budget 
go up? The budget should not go up. That is why I have my amendment 
here.
  I say to my good friend from New Mexico, the remarks that he made in 
the opening of the debate against my amendment are macrobudget 
arguments, not national security arguments. The fact is the Soviet 
threat is history. In constant dollars, we are still very close to the 
cold war spending average. What is more, this budget is not based on a 
valid national security strategy. It is based on an outdated strategy. 
It is a cold war strategy.
  Furthermore, history shows more money does not mean defense if 
reforms are not made. And they have not been made despite the promises. 
The Secretary of Defense has said modernization would be paid for 
through reform savings. That would take care of the concerns of the 
Senator from New Mexico. But we have not seen the savings. The 
responsible way is to force the savings to occur so we will have the 
money for modernization. Otherwise, we are just throwing good money 
after bad.
  When will we learn, I ask my colleagues, that it is not the proper 
way to do things, that it just encourages more abuse of the taxpayers' 
dollars. I guess I would beg my colleagues, particularly those on this 
side of the aisle, to consider the same sort of intense look at 
spending that you do when you look at domestic programs. You always 
want to make the other side of the aisle understand that throwing money 
at a problem does not solve the problem. We tell them, the liberals of 
this body, that it is how you spend the money, not how much you spend.

  When are we going to learn that that same principle which fiscal 
conservatives use against the liberals of this town on domestic social 
programs also applies to the defense budget?
  Those arguments that are made by my colleagues are more budget 
arguments than they are national security arguments, and I think that 
is why they miss the point. Many of my colleagues then want to keep 
pumping up the defense budget. I say it makes no sense at all. Not only 
does it make no sense; it defies reason. It defies understanding.
  Threats to our national security, that is the engine that is supposed 
to drive the defense budget, but in this debate we do not see it 
driving. It is strictly a budget argument: More dollars are going to 
accomplish more defense. Not so. That point was brought home nicely in 
Colin Powell's book, ``My American Journey.'' This is what General 
Powell said he learned during a tour of duty with the National Security 
Council, and I quote from page 340:

       Overarching all other concerns was our relationship with 
     the Soviet Union. Our defense strategy and budget were almost 
     wholly a reflection of Soviet capabilities and intentions as 
     we read them. The size and the state of the Red Army were the 
     measures against which we built our forces.

  So for Senator Cohen, who raised the question of, do we know about 
the Soviet threat, well, Colin Powell says we know about that threat. 
We made our judgments based on that threat. That is the word from the 
last Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  The military power of the Soviet Union was a principal driver behind 
our defense budget. Well, the Soviet Union is history. Russia might not 
be history, but things are changing there. The threat is gone. We all 
agree the cold war is over. Using General Powell's ruler as a guide, 
the defense budget should be coming down, not going up. When the Soviet 
Union went down, our defense budget should have come down.
  Now, I know we still live in a dangerous, unstable world. I admit 
that. I know we have vital interests overseas that we want to be able 
to give direction to, and the military is one way of doing that. I 
suppose I have to realize the live fire maneuvers of Communist China 
over the Taiwan Strait is a

[[Page S5064]]

harsh reminder of that. We need a strong defense. We can have a strong 
defense, but that defense has to be defined within the concept of our 
budget needs. It has to be defined in a way that is attainable. It is 
different now than it was before the fall of the Soviet Union. I think 
President Clinton is providing one.

  For those of you who have some doubt, I have given you the benefit of 
that doubt. In fact, the numbers in this amendment are dictated through 
our cooperation with Senator Exon because, sitting on the committee, he 
felt that there should be maybe some leeway. I am willing to give that 
leeway based upon the judgment of a member of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee.
  President Clinton has the defense budget on the right track. He has 
it on the right glidepath. A smaller threat requires a smaller defense 
budget. President Clinton's $254.3 billion request for fiscal year 1997 
reflects that change in threat. His budget addresses our real defense 
needs in the post cold war. There is just one problem, though, with his 
budget. The bureaucratic machine at the Pentagon is still running on 
cold war inertia. Pentagon bureaucrats are trying to craft a cold war 
program with a post-cold-war budget. That is going to lead us to 
trouble. It is going to lead us to another hollow force like we had in 
the 1970's. The cold war warriors will have to rob the readiness 
account to pay for all their cold war programs. They have to rob the 
readiness account because the cold war programs are all underfunded. 
They are all underfunded because their outrageous price tags cannot be 
justified without a Soviet threat.
  I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thompson). Who yields time?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, Senator Cohen desired some additional 
time. How much did the Senator want?
  Mr. COHEN. How much time does the Senator have?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Five minutes. Does Senator Stevens want 5 minutes.
  Mr. STEVENS. I will have 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Five minutes each, all right, in that order.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, it is curious, and I should say 
``curiouser,'' as I sit in the Chamber and listen to this debate. My 
colleague from Iowa says we are going to throw good money after bad.
  Are you saying that we are throwing bad money at our systems? Is that 
what we tell the American people? Is that what we tell the men and 
women in the service, that we have been throwing bad money at them? Was 
it bad money that we spent on the stealth fighter aircraft that were 
able to take out the Iraqi defense in a matter of a few hours? Was it 
bad money that we spent on cruise missiles that we used to take out 
their weapon storage facilities? Was it wasted money we spent on Aegis 
destroyers, one of the most sophisticated systems that we have?

  General Powell did not fight the Soviets. He fought the Iraqis in 4 
days. He fought them in 4 days because we had the strategy and the 
capability to take down their army in that period of time with limited 
loss of life. I daresay, if we want to quote from pages other than page 
320 of General Powell's book --we should not engage in selective 
quotation because a quote taken out of context can be used as a 
pretext. I doubt very much whether General Powell is saying that the 
President's budget is adequate to meet the threats of the future.
  I have page after page of statements coming from our service Chiefs. 
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, ``I am very concerned our procurement 
accounts are not where I think they ought to be * * * [We] must commit 
ourselves to a sufficient procurement goal, a goal I judge to be 
approximately $60 billion annually.''
  Chief of Staff of the Air Force: ``Unless we recapitalize, we are not 
going to be ready to meet the threats of the future.''
  Chief of Staff of the Army, General Dennis Reimer: ``Further deferral 
of modernization will incur significant risk to future readiness.''
  Adm. William Owens, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, ``I want to 
talk about procurement because I believe it is the crisis in the 
defense budget today,'' and on and on, page after page. These are the 
people who are seeking to throw good money after bad?
  Mr. President, it is really ironic, this whole debate. Last year we 
had the same thing, the same sort of approach. We have people coming 
up, supporting an amendment such as this--the same people who get on 
the floor here and vote to cut back on defense spending because they 
think it is too much, and yet they send us letters. I will not take the 
time or embarrass the Members who have sent these letters. Here is the 
compilation of all the letters Members sent to us, ``Please, we need 
more money for defense.''
  I have talked to my colleague from Alaska. Mr. President, 60 percent 
of the people who wrote these letters here to the Defense Authorization 
Committee and the Appropriations Committee --their requests were 
complied with--they come on the floor and they vote against the 
spending. And they say, ``By the way, do you think you can help us out, 
we think we need more assistance in these systems?'' So the same people 
who are cutting the defense budget request here end up getting the 
systems funded so they can stand proudly on the floor and say, ``I am 
for lower defense but, my God, please help spend some more money for 
our projects.''
  I think it is time we put an end to that. I think it is time we put 
an end to Members saying ``We need more for defense'' who then come to 
the floor and posture, saying, ``We are for lower defense spending, the 
cold war is over.''
  I do not think there is anybody on the floor who can tell you what 
the threats are going to be in the future, 5 or 10 years out. We have 
to start procuring today to meet those threats as best we can. You 
cannot wait until the threat occurs and then decide you want to build 
more submarines or cruise missiles or aircraft or tanks. We have to 
start the procurement now.
  The President of the United States said we were going to increase 
procurement 2 years ago, in 1996. He did not do it. He broke that 
promise. He said wait until next year, 1997. He broke that promise, 
too. Now we are told just give us until 1998 and once again procurement 
will go on the upswing.
  It is our responsibility to listen to the service Chiefs, the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, the ones who are writing us saying, ``We can use more. 
Yes, we can live with this budget the President has submitted if we 
have to. We are on the ragged edge right now. We do not know what 
tomorrow will bring. You have to give us more assistance here. We need 
more assistance if you can give it to us.''
  That is what they have been saying. For the first time this year, as 
compared to all other years where they have previously said we can live 
within the budget, now they are saying we could use a little bit more. 
They have been honest about it. They have come to us.

  I have a list some two pages long totaling $21.1 billion that the 
service Chiefs have indicated to us they could use for modernization 
and procurement accounts, funding that is needed to meet the future 
threats. Yet, sure, they will come up and swear, take an oath, and say, 
``We can live with it if we have to. But we are telling you we need 
more.''
  The Members who write to us saying give us more, they ought not come 
to the floor today and vote for this amendment and say we are going to 
vote to cut defense and then come back later and say we want our 
systems funded.
  Mr. President, I can tell you from this Member's point of view, I am 
going to see to it that all of those requests are denied and deleted, 
if that is the case, because they cannot have it both ways. You cannot 
say you want more for defense privately and get on the floor and say we 
are going to cut it publicly.
  I yield the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have a chart here that shows the 
situation in the last 10 years. We have three basic types of spending: 
Defense discretionary, domestic discretionary, mandatory spending. In 
1987, in terms of 1997 dollars, we had almost $375 billion in defense 
money. The discretionary spending was considerably less than that, and 
this the entitlement, the mandatory spending in this year. In our 
budget it is down 34 percent from

[[Page S5065]]

1987 for defense. It is up 31 percent in terms of discretionary 
spending, domestic discretionary. And it is up 41 percent in terms of 
mandatory spending. We have, in fact, as the Senator from Iowa 
demanded, reduced spending. We have reduced spending by 71 percent in 
terms of procurement in defense. Our money for defense is 71 percent 
less than it was before. We have reduced manpower down. Even though it 
is voluntary, we still have reduced manpower by 33 percent.
  I have the same comment that the Senator from Maine has made. I have 
here the list of last year, the requests from Members that came to the 
defense appropriations subcommittee, for Members' add-ons. About 20 
percent of them were actually mentioned in the President's budget, but 
even those, most of them, the request was to increase the President's 
budget. This is the book of all the letters that we received from 
Members. We accommodated, as the Senator from Maine said, approximately 
60 percent, almost every request we got from Members and, I might say, 
about 60 percent to the Armed Services or the Appropriations Committee 
were added on.
  There you are, the Members who want to see how they succeeded last 
year in adding money to the budget, there it is. The reason we are able 
to do that is because we won the battle with the President. We added 
money last year.
  This time the President has come down from even the amount that he 
agreed to for 1995. In any event, we are going to be cutting from the 
1995 level for next year.
  I agree with the Senator from Maine, there is no way that we can 
accept the concept of having people vote to cut the money and then come 
in and tell us their State absolutely needs additions to even the 
budget prepared by the Budget Committee. We did that. We even added to 
the levels of the Armed Services Committee in the appropriations 
process, and Members will remember that argument on the floor.
  But this is unconscionable. When you look at it--just take the C-17. 
Right after the turn of the century the only airlift we will have to 
take our Armed Forces overseas will be the C-17. We originally were 
going to order 240 of them. The President's request comes down to 120. 
Mind you, that will be the only transport beyond the year 2006. I do 
not understand people when they say you have to cut that even further. 
The President's level will take it to 120. There is no way we can 
project our capability to defend this country with these continued 
changes.
  The Senator from Virginia was here. He mentioned to us about the time 
four of us here, Senator Inouye, myself, Senator Warner, and Senator 
Nunn, sat in Israel when we awaited the incoming Scud, the missile that 
was shot at Tel Aviv while we were there. Thank God there was a Patriot 
there and thank God it did glance off that Scud and the four of us are 
here because of that.
  But the President's budget cuts missile defense and 77 percent of the 
people think we now have the capability of defending this country 
against missiles, which is not true. Not unless we spend some of the 
money that is absolutely necessary.
  Mr. COHEN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. STEVENS. Did the Senator want to ask a question?
  Mr. COHEN. I was just going to ask, my understanding was that the 
President went to California and said we needed more C-17's, not fewer. 
So we have people going out to the local districts, or States which are 
politically populous, and appealing for votes in the fall, saying, 
``Gee, how can we help you? Can we keep that base open? We are not 
going to shut down a facility in Texas or California, we are going to 
keep it open,'' in order to purchase votes. I think the time has come 
for us to listen to what the service Chiefs and the Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs are saying, I say to my colleague from Alaska: They need 
more not less.
  The President submitted a budget, and that budget has defined the 
national security needs. What the military people are really saying is, 
``We're at the edge. We have to start ramping up on procurement. We 
should have done it 2 years ago. We don't need it next year; we need it 
now.''
  I support what the Senator from Alaska is saying. We cannot afford to 
continue to do this. When my colleague from Massachusetts says what 
happens when we are spending more money than our friends from Germany, 
Japan, Italy, or all of our allies, when the 911 call goes out, are we 
going to send the British fleet to Taiwan? Are we going to send the 
Italian fleet or the German fleet?
  The fact of the matter is, we are the superpower. If we can change 
that, we can say, ``We don't want to be a stabilizing force in Europe 
or Asia.'' If that is the case, let us make that determination, but we 
ought not to do what we are doing now, and that is, constantly rob 
procurement in order to keep ready and then keep ready by overutilizing 
the ever-diminishing inventory that we have.
  We have to make procurement changes. The President is unwilling to do 
so in an election year, saying, ``Wait until next year; wait until I 
get by 1996; wait until 1997 or 1998.'' We cannot afford to do that 
unless we are willing to place our men and women in jeopardy.
  Mr. STEVENS. Beyond that, I wonder how many people drive to work in 
the Senate in 30-year-old vehicles. The people who are flying our 
planes are flying planes made 30 years ago. By the turn of the century, 
every plane we have in the inventory will be 30 years old, except for 
the B-2 and F-117.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senator from New Mexico. I have finished my 
comments. I urge the defeat of this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa has 7 minutes.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield myself 5 minutes.
  Mr. President, you just heard the last two arguments. The basis of 
those arguments is blue smoke. The savings promised--now I am talking 
about savings promised--by the Defense Department through 
infrastructure reforms should have occurred regardless of all these 
letters that have been referenced here, all the letters that my friends 
are referring to.
  The money was supposed to go toward modernization, but it did not 
materialize. I will not tolerate throwing good money after bad, and 
that is why I am offering this amendment.
  I want to elaborate just a little bit on savings promised that never 
materialized. I want to say that there is another good colleague of 
ours, Senator John McCain, who is a member of the Armed Services 
Committee. He put out a white paper entitled ``Ready Tomorrow: 
Defending America's Interest in the 21st Century.'' On page 23, he had 
this to say:

       We must, therefore, look for ways to do more with less, and 
     we must make the hard choices to ensure the best military 
     force within the limited resources available for defense.

  That is the essence of my amendment. I am not saying Senator McCain 
is for my amendment. I am just saying Senator McCain is a member of the 
Armed Services Committee and in that one sentence and throughout his 
entire paper lays out a basis to end this belief that we have around 
here, particularly on this side of the aisle, that all you have to do 
is throw more money at defense and you get more defense.

  If I thought that the Defense Department was trying to save money, I 
might feel differently about adding $11.3 billion to the defense 
budget. The extra $11.3 billion would be used primarily for 
modernization.
  The weapons and equipment that the military purchased over the past 
20 years obviously is starting to age. If we are to maintain our 
military edge in the future, then we must begin to replace all this 
stuff at some point. I agree, but my Republican colleagues want the 
extra $11.3 billion to get the ball rolling, and I do not think that 
ball is ever going to roll.
  From day one, senior defense officials, like Secretary Perry, have 
been making an important promise: New weapons would be bought with 
savings from lower infrastructure costs.
  Mr. President, all the evidence indicates that the promised savings 
are nowhere on the horizon. The General Accounting Office has just 
completed a review of the defense infrastructure costs. Infrastructure 
dollars are spent to maintain the bases, facilities, and activities 
that house and sustain the armed services. They are support costs.
  In a nutshell, this is what the GAO found:


[[Page S5066]]


       Despite four rounds of base closures and dramatic and 
     continuing cuts in force structure, there are no savings.

  Defense infrastructure costs are going up, not down. The driving 
force behind the base closure effort was to save money by reducing 
overhead. Our base structure exceeded the needs of our sinking force 
structure. The whole idea was to close excess bases and to save money.
  Once again, savings promised by the Pentagon have evaporated into 
thin air. Here was a golden opportunity to save money, and the Pentagon 
blew it.
  I know base closings require upfront costs, in some cases 
substantial. But upfront costs are supposed to be followed by 
downstream savings. That is Mr. Perry's promise; that is Mr. Perry's 
testimony before the committee. He has identified $10 billion in 
savings. Mr. Perry promised the money would be used for the 
modernization that my colleagues are calling for here.
  That is fine and dandy, but where is the $10 billion in savings? The 
GAO cannot find the money. It has audited the books and finds 
infrastructure costs will rise significantly in the outyears.
  It is true, base closings did, in fact, produce some real savings, 
but underscore ``did,'' which is past tense. Unfortunately, as soon as 
those savings popped up on the radar screen, Pentagon bureaucrats 
grabbed the money and spent it. The money is not being plowed into 
modernization and readiness, as Mr. Perry promised. Those savings are 
being diverted into new infrastructure projects, like new headquarters.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 5 minutes has expired.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I give myself 1 more minute, and the 
last minute I give to the Senator from Nebraska to close.
  If we do not hold the Defense Department's feet to the fire, the 
savings will be frittered away on pork projects. Base closures and 
continued shrinkage in the force structure should have one inescapable 
result: lower infrastructure costs. I hope my colleagues on the Armed 
Services Committee will make sure that that happens.
  I have referred to Senator McCain's white paper. Right at the top of 
Senator McCain's list of places to save money are infrastructure 
requirements. This is what he has to say:

       Infrastructure and military force structure need to be 
     brought back into balance. Elimination of excess 
     infrastructure would reduce operating costs and free up funds 
     to maintain force readiness and to modernize our smaller 
     force.

  I agree with my friend from Arizona 100 percent. I only hope that 
when we get to the defense authorization bill, he will help me find an 
enforcement mechanism. We need an enforcement mechanism.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I thank my friend for yielding. Everybody 
wants to know about when we are going to vote. As far as I am 
concerned, it looks like we can vote shortly after or about 6:45. I am 
going to take 5 or 6 minutes, whatever additional time I need, after 
the 1 minute allotted to me by my friend from Iowa, and I yield myself 
the time off the bill.
  I have been listening in total amazement to the statements that have 
been made here. First, I want to say in answer to the statement that 
had been made by the chairman of the committee early on that the 
committee of jurisdiction for authorization, the Armed Services 
Committee, already voted 21 to 0 for the change that we are suggesting 
here now. I speak for myself and several other members of the Armed 
Services Committee who voted 21 to 0 for the bill, because we thought 
basically it was a pretty good bill, but just before that vote was 
taken, this Senator and others indicated that they would be offering 
some amendments on the floor, including amendments with regard to the 
level of funding over the President's mark. That is what I am doing 
now.
  I have heard in total amazement here General Shalikashvili, the 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who put his seal of approval on 
the President's budget, being quoted tonight as if you would think 
General Shalikashvili was for the increase. He is not. He is not for 
the increase.
  These Senators that have been up on the floor saying, ``Well, the 
military says they need it.'' You show me a military man worth his 
salt, and you go to him and say, ``You know, what more could you use?'' 
I would be shocked and disappointed if such a military man would not 
say, ``Well, I want this and this and this and this.''
  The facts are, the President's budget has the stamp of approval of 
General Shalikashvili, the other members of the Joint Chiefs, and the 
Commander in Chief, the President of the United States. All of these 
comments that I have heard on the floor would lead one to believe that 
this is a group of people who were trying to destroy our national 
defense.
  The amendment that I am cosponsoring with my friend from Iowa is 
being attacked exactly as was the Exon-Grassley amendment 2 years ago. 
The same type of phraseology, the same type of wording--``devastating 
national defense.'' I simply say that if you believe the President of 
the United States, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Joint 
Chiefs themselves, and the Pentagon would put their stamp of approval 
on a level of defense spending outlined in the President's budget that 
was not sufficient, then you are indirectly accusing them of destroying 
the national defense of the United States of America, if you listen to 
some of these people on the floor tonight.
  I think too much of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Joint 
Chiefs to think they would put their stamp of approval on something 
just to kowtow to the President of the United States. I think they are 
better, I think they are bigger men than that.
  I simply say, any time you want to spend more money for defense and 
call in some military people and say, ``If you had more money, how 
would you use it?'' of course, they would come up with something. I 
would be surprised if they did not.
  I simply say, also, that you would think that Senator Grassley's 
amendment, cosponsored by myself and others, was a further cut in 
defense. It is an increase of $3 billion. It is an increase of $3 
billion over what was recommended by the Pentagon. But you have people 
on this floor who are so expert, who have sacrificed themselves to be 
in Israel and were saved by a Patriot missile. You know, it is a little 
too much for this Senator, who has stood stalwart for defense spending 
ever since I have been here.
  So what we are doing with the Grassley amendment is to provide $3 
billion more than the Pentagon and the President said was needed. These 
people who are criticizing this amendment have decided on their own 
that they are the experts, that they are the ones who know how much 
money we should spend for defense, regardless of what the Pentagon and 
the Commander in Chief says. They want an $11 billion increase.
  The Grassley amendment says, ``All right. We don't think that much is 
necessary. Some of us would like to go down to what the Pentagon says 
is needed, but we'll go along with the $3 billion increase.'' But that 
is not enough, evidently, by what I have heard here tonight.
  I also heard statements--the Senator from Texas, for example, 
complained that if the Grassley amendment is adopted, military 
personnel would not get their 3 percent pay increase, as I understand 
it. The fact of the matter is, that is not accurate. The facts are that 
the 3 percent increase to the military personnel is included in the 
President's budget. The Grassley amendment provides $3 billion over and 
above that.
  I simply say that I never have been very much impressed by a group of 
Senators getting together saying they know more about everything, the 
needs of the national defense, than even the Pentagon. I want to make 
it clear once again that the Pentagon agreed to and gave a stamp of 
approval to the President's budget. It is only these people, who I know 
are well-intentioned--and I know of their good intentions--that have 
said, ``No. That's terribly wrong. It will destroy our national 
defense. So arbitrarily we have come up with $11 billion more that we 
need for this.'' I would rather trust the real military

[[Page S5067]]

leaders and experts in the Pentagon. But I am willing to say, OK, let 
us add $3 billion.
  I have heard here tonight that if the Grassley amendment is not 
defeated, it will end all of the work that is being done on Star Wars 
or a version of it. I would simply point out that all of the Star Wars 
technology that has been paraded out here in speeches tonight would 
lead one to believe that Star Wars, or a version of it, would not go 
ahead if the Grassley amendment is adopted. But the increases that the 
Senate Armed Services Committee and the House National Security 
Committee approved above the President's request were only $300 million 
and $330 million, respectively.
  Senator Grassley and I are adding $3 billion. So everything that 
these people who are out here attacking the Grassley amendment as 
ending the star wars research is not true. We can do everything they 
want to do because their requests are only about $300 million in 1997 
above the President's request. We could do all of what they want to do, 
have all the Patriots we need to protect Senators who are in Israel 
with the $3 billion. We could spend the $300 million that they want for 
Star Wars for this year and still have $2.7 billion on top of that.
  I simply say, Mr. President, there is room for argument on all of 
these things. But there is not room, I do not think, to conclude that 
others are in bad faith. It is wrong to say that General Shalikashvili 
does not support this budget, because he does. Senator Grassley and 
Senator Exon are saying, ``OK, we give you some leeway. We'll add $3 
billion on top of what the Pentagon said is needed. That should be 
enough.'' I urge the support of the Grassley amendment.
  I am prepared to yield back the remainder of our time if we have any 
left and proceed to go to a vote.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I listened with great interest the 
comments made by the senior Senator from Iowa--especially those that 
referenced my defense white paper. For the record, I strongly oppose 
the Grassley amendment. And while I am flattered that he choose to 
quote from my paper, the report makes the clear case that funding for 
our Nation's military is far too little to fully meet our vital 
national security needs.
  Even though we are seeking to add $11 billion to secure our national 
defense, these limited resources are being stretched to the limit. I 
intend to insert into the Record a more complete statement to rebut all 
of the comments made by my friend from Iowa.
  In closing, let me again emphasize my strong opposition to the 
Grassley amendment and urge my colleagues to vote against the 
amendment.
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I join today with Senator Grassley to urge 
my colleagues to support this very simple amendment to put some 
restraint in our defense budget.
  In effect, our amendment accepts the higher defense spending levels 
for fiscal year 1997 currently in the budget resolution. However, it 
places a fence around $8.3 billion in budget authority and $2.3 billion 
in outlays. If the President certifies that, in fact, these additional 
funds, are required for our national security, the funds will be 
released. If the President does not make this certification, the funds 
will go toward deficit reduction.
  This is a reasonable amendment. It gives the President every 
opportunity to use these funds for defense should there truly be a need 
to do so.
  Last year, when the Senate passed its version of the fiscal year 1996 
budget resolution, the Senate endorsed the administration's defense 
spending level for fiscal year 1997. When proponents of more defense 
spending tried to increase defense spending over the next 5 years, the 
Senate rebuffed that effort.
  The vote last year gives me confidence that our amendment will 
succeed today, for there is bipartisan support for maintaining defense 
spending at reasonable levels. On May 23, 1995, in a strong bipartisan 
vote, the Senate defeated an amendment to last year's budget resolution 
which would have increased defense spending above the level requested 
by the administration. Sixty Senators voted against that amendment to 
increase defense spending not only for fiscal year 1996 but for fiscal 
year 1997 too. Unless they have changed their minds, the same 60 
Senators should support this amendment. It offers another chance for 
the Senate to support reasonable defense spending levels.
  Let us review some of the numbers for a minute, in case anyone is 
concerned that the proposed level of defense spending in our amendment 
is anything less than robust. Our amendment does not reject the $266.4 
billion in budget authority and $264.6 billion in outlays as called for 
in the budget resolution reported out by the Budget Committee. Should 
the President determine that the money we fence is not needed for 
defense then, eventually, $8.3 billion in budget authority and $2.3 
billion in outlays will be returned to the Treasury, a mere 1-percent 
reduction in the spending level endorsed by the Budget Committee.
  Let me say a few words about inflation adjustments. Senators should 
realize that thanks to adjustments in the cost of doing business for 
the Pentagon we are really talking about an increase that surpasses the 
$11.3 billion added by the Budget Committee in terms of buying power.
  Earlier this year, Secretary Perry announced that the Defense 
Department had discovered $45.7 billion in inflation savings after 
reestimating the defense budget for FY1997-2001 using lower inflation 
rates from the Bureau of Economic Analyses. The administration gave the 
Defense Department the green light to plow $30.5 billion of these funds 
back into the defense budget even though the additional buying power 
provided by these funds was not anticipated by the Defense Department 
nor was it requested. $4.3 billion of these inflation savings are built 
into the administration's fiscal year 1997 defense budget.
  I am concerned that in the rush to increase defense spending, we have 
ignored the fact that in terms of buying power, the administration has 
already proposed significant increases which we are now building into 
our own numbers without any acknowledgment or discussion. Senator 
Grassley, Senator Bradley, and I raised this issue with the Budget 
Committee earlier this year and I ask unanimous consent that a letter 
on this subject be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my 
remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. KOHL. If we are serious about reducing the deficit and achieving 
a balanced budget, we cannot increase spending when favorable economic 
conditions bring down the costs of Federal programs. We must use these 
savings to help pay off our burgeoning debt. Yet, here we are turning 
around and giving the Defense Department even more.
  And with all due respect to my colleagues, there never seems to be a 
specific goal here: It is always just more defense spending. Two years 
ago, we had a readiness crisis, now we have a so-called modernization 
crisis. Unfortunately, the only crisis we have here is a crisis of 
hemorrhaging tax dollars.
  No one has made an effective case as to why we must be spending even 
more on defense. After more than four decades of building up a defense 
infrastructure to respond to the menace of the Soviet Union and its 
Eastern bloc allies, we are now pumping even more money into this same 
infrastructure without any real effort to reassess the basic 
assumptions underlying our national security posture. Is our defense 
spending relevant to the threats of the future? We cannot possible 
answer that question for the real conundrum is that we have no idea 
what these threats are. And, we are having a hard enough time 
articulating what we need to face the current threats.
  Frankly, we are facing no major threats today. When the American 
people talk today about insecurity, they are talking about job 
security, personal security, and perhaps moral security. Even the 
threats to our national security posed by episodes of regional 
instability and conflict are less likely to be resolved with military 
force and more likely to be resolved through political or diplomatic 
intervention. To be sure, we need a strong defense. We need to develop 
a strategy and maintain a force structure to protect and advance our 
interests in the new global environment. If we could start over again 
and create a new force structure from scratch to meet the new 
challenges of this era, I am confident that

[[Page S5068]]

we would have a leaner, more mobile and more efficient force at far 
less cost.
  I must confess, I am perplexed by arguments made that we must provide 
additional funds to the military because the service chiefs have said 
they want these funds. Of course they do. Are there any Federal 
agencies, when asked if they want additional funds, that would say no? 
I am certain that if we asked each Cabinet Secretary to lay out his or 
her unmet requirements we would have equally impressive shopping lists 
to compete with those sent over by the services.

  I am also puzzled by arguments that we must front load defense 
spending in the early years of a 7-year plan because spending in the 
out years cannot be relied upon. Mr. President, the spending we vote 
for today--much of it devoted to new procurement and new research and 
development projects--lays the groundwork for increased spending down 
the road. Frankly, the spending proposed today ensures that reductions 
proposed for the out years will not occur.
  If we allow this tremendous increase in defense spending to stand, we 
are reinforcing a disturbing trend. Last year, for the first time in 14 
years, Congress ultimately increased defense spending well above the 
level identified by the Defense Department as necessary for our natonal 
security. During consideration of last year's Defense authorization 
bill, Senator Grassley and I attempted to bring defense spending back 
to the level in the Senate's budget resolution by cutting $7 billion. 
Our amendment was endorsed by a variety of groups focussed on deficit 
reduction and included in the annual scores generated by the Council 
for a Livable World and the Concord Coalition.
  Although the amendment received bipartisan support, it was narrowly 
defeated.
  I should note that this year the National Taxpayers Union and 
Taxpayers for Common Sense have already endorsed our efforts. I ask 
unanimous consent that a letter from the Taxpayers for Common Sense be 
printed at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 2.)
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, no one has explained to me how we can 
maintain these high levels of defense spending and reduce the deficit. 
We cannot continue to spare the Defense Department from the deep 
regimen of cuts we are asking the rest of our society to absorb. If we 
are committed to reducing the deficit and balancing our budget, we must 
make the hard votes.
  I know for some this will be a hard vote. However, I urge my 
colleagues to vote for this responsible approach to defense spending.

                               Exhibit 1


                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                   Washington, DC, April 18, 1996.
     Hon. Pete V. Domenici,
     Chairman, Committee on the Budget,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: We are writing to express our strong 
     concern about the Defense Department proposal to spend some 
     $30.5 billion dollars in ``inflation savings'' realized 
     because of lower inflation estimates over the next five 
     years. We urge you to raise this issue during your hearings 
     on the FY 97 budget and to direct these funds toward deficit 
     reduction.
       Inflation estimates used by the Defense Department over the 
     years have been grossly inaccurate. In the 1980's, 
     overestimates of inflation resulted in a $50 billion 
     windfall. That money disappeared. Then two years ago, the 
     Defense Department told Congress that it had underestimated 
     inflation and needed another $20 billion to execute future 
     defense programs. Now, just two years later, the Defense 
     Department is telling us that it has once again overestimated 
     inflation--this time to the tune of $45.7 billion. This 
     history undermines the credibility of the Defense 
     Department's financial estimates.
       In its FY 97 budget submission, the Defense Department is 
     proposing to use $30.5 billion of these inflation savings to 
     buy more weapons systems.
       We are troubled by the notion that any agency should be 
     able to keep such a large windfall and increase its total 
     spending because inflation estimates were inaccurate. 
     Responsible budgeting demands that these funds be returned to 
     the Treasury and that the Defense Department not be rewarded 
     for changes in economic conditions.
       Furthermore, purchasing more programs with inflation 
     windfalls creates tremendous instability in program 
     management.
       If we truly intend to reduce the deficit, no area of the 
     budget should be exempt from cuts. Cuts must be shared by all 
     segments of our society. The Defense Department is no 
     exception as long as threats to our national security 
     continue to decline. In fact, given that the defense budget 
     constitutes as much as 18 percent of the federal budget, we 
     cannot afford to make the Defense Department an exception. 
     And, we certainly cannot afford to give the Defense 
     Department an unexpected $30.5 billion.
       We urge you to direct these funds toward deficit reduction 
     before the Budget Committee finalizes its FY 1997 budget.
           Sincerely,
     Herb Kohl,
     Bill Bradley,
     Charles E. Grassley.

                               Exhibit 2


                                   Taxpayers for Common Sense,

                                                     May 15, 1996.

   Taxpayers Say Support Grassley-Kohl Amendment on Defense Spending

       Dear Senators Grassley and Kohl: Taxpayers for Common Sense 
     is pleased to support your amendment to the FY97 Budget 
     Resolution to ``put the brakes'' on the Pentagon's budget. In 
     particular, we support your amendment that would fence the 
     Budget Committee's $11.3 billion increase to the 
     Administration's request. We understand that the fence would 
     apply to the FY 1997 request only.
       We understand that your amendment provides that the funds 
     would be released only if the President certified that the 
     additional amount was necessary for national security. If 
     that certification is not made, the funds would go to help 
     reduce the national deficit.
       According to a recent GAO report, there have been no 
     savings in the DoD infrastructure despite several base 
     closures and significant cuts in force structure. At this 
     crucial time, with our nation struggling to balance its 
     budget all government agencies must share the burden of cost 
     cutting.
       We would urge the Senate to approve your amendment.
           Sincerely,
                                                    Jill Lancelot,
                                             Legislative Director.

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Iowa, Mr. 
Grassley, for offering an amendment to the fiscal year 1997 budget 
resolution which seeks to reign in some of the excess defense spending 
in the Senate budget resolution and bring a little common sense to our 
Nation's defense budget.
  The Grassley amendment seeks to reduce $8.3 billion in new budget 
authority and $2.3 billion in budget outlays of the Senate Budget 
Committee's markup for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 1997, 
unless the President certifies that these additional funds are needed 
to ensure the national security of the United States.
  Mr. President, while I feel this amendment does not go far enough in 
cutting all of the $11.3 billion added by the Senate Budget Committee 
over and above the President's fiscal year 1997 request for defense 
spending, I feel it is a necessary first step in beginning to bring 
some sanity to our Nation's defense spending. As every other budget 
account is on a glidepath to reduction, the largest budget of them 
all--the defense budget--is reversing course and moving to return to 
its artificially high levels. The budget resolution funds the Defense 
Department at a level of more than $11 billion over the Clinton 
Administration's fiscal year 1997 request. The Pentagon is seeking 
$254.3 billion in fiscal year 1997 budget authority and $260.8 billion 
in budget outlays in defense spending, while the Senate Budget 
Committee has recommended $265.6 billion and $263.7 billion, 
respectively. Already our military budget is more than 3 times that of 
Russia's; 17 times larger than the combined budgets of North Korea, 
Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Libya, and Syria who are most often identified as our 
most likely enemies; and is above the level spent by Germany, France, 
England, Russia, China, South Korea, India, Japan, and Australia 
combined.
  Mr. President, this budget plan for the Department of Defense is a 
recipe for fiscal havoc, and the Senate should insist upon more 
rationality. We simply cannot afford to continue spending at current or 
increased rates for defense, as this budget resolution seeks to do to a 
tune of $11.3 billion. Nor can we afford to insulate any department, 
including the Defense Department, from scrutiny as we seek to reduce 
the Federal debt. In a year when we are cutting programs and fighting 
for deficit reduction, increasing the defense budget is simply 
irresponsible. We cannot achieve a balanced budget by bloating defense 
spending. Deficit reduction requires that we make very hard

[[Page S5069]]

choices and defense programs cannot be insulated in this manner.
  For these reasons, I have cosponsored Senator Grassley's amendment to 
the budget resolution, supported by the National Taxpayers Union, which 
seeks to begin to bring our fiscal house in order and to budget a 
little more wisely for the future. We simply cannot afford to 
jeopardize our country's economic health and to mortgage our future by 
spending tens of billions of dollars in additional funding beyond that 
which the Pentagon and the Clinton administration have requested.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Grassley amendment, and I yield 
the floor.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to the 
Grassley amendment to the fiscal year 1997 budget request.
  The budget provides the Congress with a framework in which it must 
work. By overly restricting the margins of that framework, we eliminate 
our ability to make the broad budget decisions necessary to meet our 
future defense needs. Senate Concurrent Resolution 57 preserves the 
Senate's flexibility to consider funding for those programs in the 
defense budget that should be eliminated and to make increases based on 
military evaluations and needs for the future.
  The level of funding the President requested this year has been 
questioned by many individuals, including the Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili and the service Chiefs. We 
need the flexibility in the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution to 
consider the additions these leaders of our Armed Forces have requested 
and accept or reject them on their own merits, not through a sweeping 
budget cut.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time on the amendment has expired.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a vote on or in 
relation to the Grassley amendment occur at 6:55, and the time between 
now and then be equally divided.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. EXON. That is all right.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Who 
yields time?
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Georgia.
  Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I am not sure that I need that much time. I 
do not believe the Senator has that much time, if I am looking at the 
clock correctly and dividing the time in half. I will take just a 
couple minutes.
  Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Grassley amendment to 
reduce the defense spending levels in this budget resolution.
  For several years I have been expressing my concern that the 
projected declining budgets in defense are not sufficient from four 
standpoints: First, to maintain the current readiness of our forces; 
second, to provide the standard of living that military personnel and 
their families expect and deserve; third, supporting the force 
structure necessary to carry out the full range of missions that we 
expect our military to perform; and, fourth, to provide for the 
modernization that is the key to the future capability and future 
readiness of those forces. Mr. President, modernization today is our 
greatest deficiency.
  We are living off the capital of previous investment. The men and 
women in the military continue to perform superbly every time they are 
called on. We call on them all the time, as we can see every day. We 
owe it to them to give them the support they need to do the job.
  We also have to ensure that the men and women who will be called on 
5, 10 or 20 years from now will have the same advantages vis-a-vis 
their potential opponents that our military forces have today, 
including technological superiority.
  That latter point is where we are having problems today. You can live 
off the corpus for awhile. I think our force structure has been brought 
down about right. We have done a superb job in bringing it down, the 
military has, and keeping up the morale of our people.
  The readiness of our forces is in good shape today. I do not agree 
with those who say that we have declined in readiness. I think our 
readiness is in good shape. What we are really doing, though, is 
borrowing from the future. We do not have enough money in the outyears 
of defense projections to be able to maintain the kind of research and 
development and procurement that we must have.
  I do believe that the Budget Committee has it about right. I think 
this amendment would take the defense number down too low. It is 
important for all of us to realize that even with the Budget Committee 
number, which is higher than the President's, it is less in real dollar 
terms than last year.
  When we are talking about this budget increasing defense spending, we 
are talking about relative to the President's budget, not relative to 
real dollars last year. This is still a defense cut, but it is moving 
toward stabilization. I think we do need to move toward stabilizing the 
defense budget in real dollar terms. I urge my colleagues to vote 
against the Grassley amendment.
  While I believe the funding levels requested for readiness, military 
pay raises, and quality of life initiatives in the President's budget 
are about right, I think there are clearly insufficient funds going 
into modernizing our force. Modernization, for the most part, is 
delayed into the outyears under the current future years defense 
program. And we all know from experience how illusory these budget 
projections become 4 or 5 years down the road.
  For the past few years, the Air Force has bought virtually no new 
fighter aircraft. The Air Force has no bomber modernization program. 
The Navy is not buying enough ships to modernize even a 300 ship Navy. 
The Marine Corps is years away from having a replacement for its aging 
amphibious assault vehicles. For the Army it would probably be quicker 
to list the modernization programs they do have left than to list the 
ones they don't.
  The fiscal squeeze on the defense budget is already intense. As we 
seek to balance the budget--especially if we try to enact tax cuts at 
the same time, which I hope we will not do--the pressure will get even 
more intense. This gives me even less confidence in the outyear funding 
predictions that show funds for defense modernization increasing.
  In my view, we need to increase the defense topline now, to restore 
the balance to our defense program. We also need to preserve the 
firewalls that the Senator from New Mexico has included in both last 
year's budget resolution and in the budget resolution that is before 
the Senate today to protect any defense increases we are able to 
achieve and to provide some stability in the defense budget. Firewalls 
have not and will not mean defense cannot be cut, but they ensure that 
if it is cut the savings go to reducing the deficit and not to spending 
on other programs.

  We have been reducing the defense budget for a long time. The current 
buildown started during President Reagan's second term, even before the 
fall of the Berlin Wall, and continued, accelerated, throughout the 
Bush administration and the current administration. However, the time 
has come to stabilize the defense budget as much as possible, since the 
defense budget has already made a greater contribution to deficit 
reduction than any other part of the budget.


               Modernization Funding Should Be Increased

  The future readiness and future capability of the Defense Department 
requires modernization and it requires research and development, and 
those are the programs that have been cut most deeply during the 
defense drawdown.
  The pressure to achieve and maintain a balanced budget will make it 
very difficult to increase the defense budget above current levels, yet 
current levels are still somewhat artificially low as we work our back 
toward a normal level of procurement and a normal level of 
infrastructure investment.
  Because we were reducing the size of the force and were able to keep 
the most modern equipment as we downsized, a temporary decline in 
procurement was appropriate. But we are now reaching the point where we 
have to get our modernization budget back up to a long-term level that 
will sustain our forces for the future. We have to start increasing the 
procurement budget to prevent the average age of our weapons technology 
from reaching unacceptable levels.

[[Page S5070]]

  Similarly, during the BRAC era we underinvested in facilities 
modernization because nobody wanted to waste a lot of money modernizing 
facilities we might be about to shut down. But now that we have made 
those decisions and the BRAC process is over we are going to have to 
put more money in modernizing and maintaining the facilities we have 
left.
  So our challenge will be to have a budget that is slightly larger 
than the ones now planned, if we are going to balance the budget it is 
unrealistic to plan for more than a slight increase, and the budget 
plan in this resolution only increases the budget by about 1 percent 
over the levels in the administration's request--in order to have 
adequate funds for capital investments in weapons and facilities.
  This is why I oppose this amendment which would eliminate the 
increase in the defense topline number that the Armed Services 
Committee has recommended. This increase has gone almost entirely to 
modernization. I think my colleagues will find that the funds the Armed 
Services Committee added to the modernization accounts have gone 
mostly, not completely, to programs the service chiefs have requested, 
and generally these are things the administration was already planning 
to buy.
  In conclusion, Mr. President, many of my colleagues share my concern 
that we have cut the defense budget too far, too fast and that we are 
mortgaging our future by sacrificing the capability of our forces 10 
years down the road in order to fully fund current readiness. This 
amendment would eliminate our ability to fund modernization programs 
vital to the future capability of our military forces, and I urge my 
colleagues to reject it.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I have 2\1/2\ minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield myself that time.
  I hope one thing that all my colleagues will remember comes out of 
this debate. We have heard the argument from the other side that 
dollars define our defense. That is an upside-down way of making 
national security policy and the budget that is necessary to carry it 
out.
  The way we decide how much money we are going to spend in defense is 
to define our national security policies, define our needs, have policy 
to fit those needs, and finance those policies. The other side has not 
made that argument. They have only made an argument that we need x 
number of dollars more for defense. That is upside-down reasoning.
  Now, the other point I hope my colleagues remember from this debate 
is that we have been promised savings because of reforms. The General 
Accounting Office has told us--the nonpartisan General Accounting 
Office--has told us those savings have not materialized. They have not 
gone into modernization. That is what Secretary Perry said he was going 
to do. They have gone into administrative overhead and things of that 
nature.
  If we are going to be promised reforms, we should see those reforms 
before we give more money. Whatever money we give should be based upon 
a policy determination of carrying out our national security goals and 
our interests. The other side has not made the case for more money.
  I yield the floor, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I gather the consent agreement has 
already been arrived at that we will vote at 6:55?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. We will vote at 6:55.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank all the Senators that came to 
the floor this evening and today. I think it was an excellent debate. I 
commend my friend, Senator Grassley, but I do not believe we should 
adopt this amendment.
  Obviously, he is consistent. From what I can tell, this is not the 
time to expect the President to ask for increases if they are needed. I 
believe that will not happen and we will get a budget that is 
politically motivated, not really one that the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
totally support. As evidence of that, they have come to the Hill, 
singularly and together and asked for an additional $15 billion. I do 
not think they did that lightly. I think that is what they need.
  Clearly, we ought to go with the Budget Committee's number and in due 
course debate can occur on how we spend it. I believe it will be spent 
wisely.
  I yield the floor, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment 
of the Senator from Iowa. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The 
clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hutchison). Are there any other Senators 
in the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 42, nays 57, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 113 Leg.]

                                YEAS--42

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Brown
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Byrd
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Glenn
     Graham
     Grassley
     Harkin
     Hatfield
     Jeffords
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Pell
     Pressler
     Pryor
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Simpson
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                                NAYS--57

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Breaux
     Burns
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Dole
     Domenici
     Faircloth
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Robb
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Inouye
       
  The amendment (No. 3963) was rejected.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote by which 
the amendment was rejected.
  Mr. LOTT. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, might I say to the Senators, since 
there are a lot of them present here tonight, Senator Exon and I have 
been trying to work together to see if we can move this resolution and 
the amendments along. We would very much appreciate it if Senators who 
have amendments could begin to tell us what the amendments are by noon 
tomorrow and perhaps begin to turn in amendments by noon tomorrow so we 
can begin to schedule the amendments in some kind of sequence.
  Having said that, Senator Exon and I have conferred. Senator Exon is 
going to lay down the President's budget at 9:30 in the morning. There 
will be ample time to debate. There is plenty of time on the 
resolution. Indeed, there is time for amendments to the President's 
budget, and we will have some of those ready on our side.

                          ____________________