[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 102 (Thursday, July 11, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S7788]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL

 Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I wish to discuss the Defense 
authorization bill, which passed the Senate yesterday. The bill 
contains several provisions that I have strongly advocated and worked 
hard to advance.
  First and foremost, the bill authorizes funds for three military 
construction projects in my home State of Delaware that will add to our 
military preparedness. The first of these is a C-5 aerial delivery 
facility at Dover Air Force Base that will allow the base to fulfill 
the strategic brigade airdrop mission, enhancing Dover's leading role 
in meeting our new military requirements in the post-cold war era. 
Second, $12 million for new visiting officers quarters will ease a 
severe housing shortage at Dover and also allow for a much-needed 
transportation upgrade at the base. Third, an operations and training 
complex for the Air National Guard will improve readiness by replacing 
several outdated and dilapidated facilities at the Air Guard's 
headquarters at the New Castle County Airport. I am grateful to my 
colleagues on the Armed Services Committee for including these 
projects, which I had requested.
  I am also pleased that the bill provides for the transfer of the last 
parcel of military-controlled land at Cap Henlopen to the Delaware 
State Park System, completing a long-standing project I began when I 
first arrived in the Senate.
  In addition, the bill restores two important provisions that I fought 
hard to include in the antiterrorism act, but were removed by the 
conference committee. First, the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment, of 
which I am an original cosponsor, gives authority to the Armed Forces 
to assist local law enforcement, should we ever face an emergency 
involving a chemical or biological weapon. The Armed Forces alone have 
the capacity and equipment to respond to such an incident. In addition, 
this amendment will improve our ability to interdict weapons of mass 
destruction before they reach American soil. It will help ensure the 
security of all Americans by expanding programs to safeguard nuclear 
material in the former Soviet Union.
  The second antiterrorism provision is a Feinstein-Biden amendment to 
prohibit the distribution of bomb-making information on the Internet. 
The Senate had overwhelmingly approved this amendment to the 
antiterrorism bill, but it was not included in the final conference 
report.
  I am pleased that these two crucial antiterrorism provisions are 
included in the Defense authorization bill.
  Another important amendment to this bill calls for a study of the 
benefits and costs of enlarging the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 
to include the new democracies of Central Europe.
  While I believe that the addition of Poland, Hungary, the Czech 
Republic, and Slovenia may well strengthen our own security, that or 
our allies, and that of Europe as a whole, we must understand in detail 
what we are undertaking before asking these countries to shoulder the 
burdens of NATO membership. The mandated study will answer the relevant 
questions.
  Despite these significant achievements, Mr. President, I cannot 
support a bill that is fiscally irresponsible. If we are serious about 
balancing the budget, no area of Government--including defense--should 
be immune to a critical review of spending.
  Between 1981 and 1992, the annual Federal deficit quadrupled--from 
$74 billion to $290 billion. Since 1992, the deficit has been cut by 
more than half--the Congressional Budget Office now projects that the 
Federal deficit will be about $140 billion this year, down from $290 
billion at the end of the Bush administration.
  This marks the first time in modern budget history--since we 
demobilized at the end of WWII--that the deficit has gone down 4 years 
in a row.
  The deficit is now less than 2 percent of our Nation's output--we 
have the best budget record of any of the advanced industrial 
economies. Today, Federal spending as a share of the economy is the 
lowest it has been since 1979.
  This is a record that owes a lot to the hard choices we made in 1993 
and to the discipline it has taken to stick with those decisions. We 
cannot--we must not--put this record in jeopardy. We certainly should 
not throw more money at the Pentagon than it says it needs.
  For every dollar wasted on exotic weapons systems that the Department 
of Defense is not asking for, there is less for crime prevention, for 
the infrastructure that underpins our economy, and for education and 
research that will be the key to tomorrow's productivity growth.
  We have to balance our priorities carefully and to use our scarce 
resources efficiently. The Defense budget should not become the new way 
to keep old habits alive.
  The overwhelming majority of the money added to the President's 
Defense authorization request would go toward procurement and 
development of weapons systems that the Pentagon does not believe are 
necessary to ensure the security of the United States. In fact, $3.8 
billion of the additional money is for programs that are not even in 
the Pentagon's long-range plan to defend our country.
  Mr. President, my distinguished colleagues argued for this 
unnecessary spending on the grounds that the readiness of our military 
was at stake. This ignores the fact that American military readiness 
today is at an all-time high.
  We cannot take an additional $11.4 billion our of the pockets of the 
taxpaying American people to buy airplanes and ships we don't need. We 
cannot continue to borrow from our grandchildren's future to pay for 
additional weapons at a time we face no major military threat. In 
short, we cannot afford this bill.
  Mr. President, I could not in good conscience vote to spend $11.4 
billion more than the military itself believes is necessary to defend 
our Nation. It is my hope that the conferees will work to bring down 
the spending in this bill to an acceptable and responsible level, so 
that at time, I can support the bill.

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