[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 18, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10736-S10738]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  DEFENSE POLICY AND DEFENSE SPENDING

  Mr. DORGAN. Now, having said that, and there will be more discussion 
about that in future days, I want to turn just for a moment to the 
discussion we have seen on the floor of the Senate now for 45 minutes 
this morning.
  Senators have every right to come to this floor and talk about 
defense policy, and the Senators who came are Senators for whom I have 
great respect. But I have real disagreement with those who would 
leverage the issue of American troops going in harm's way to the 
Persian Gulf this morning, leaving their loved ones because the 
Commander in Chief and our military people feel it is necessary to send 
them to the Persian Gulf. I have real concern about those who would 
leverage that with criticism of the President for his defense budget 
proposals just weeks before an election, in an obvious attempt to try 
to find a way to undermine President Clinton on this Senate floor. But 
it not only tries to pull the rug out from under President Clinton, I 
think it sends all the wrong signals at this moment as this country 
prepares to confront foreign policy initiatives that are serious.
  The discussion on the floor is, ``President Clinton wants to cut 
defense spending.'' Let us look at the record just for a moment. Oh, 
the President has cut some in defense. I will give you an example of 
what he cut, he and Vice President Gore. There was a 16-page regulation 
on how to buy cream-filled cookies at the Pentagon. They cut that. It 
does not take 16 pages of regulations anymore to buy cream-filled 
cookies because this administration said that does not make any sense. 
That is nuts. Let us streamline all that.
  They tried to buy $25,000 worth of ant bait to kill ants. It took 
them months and dozens and dozens of pages of regulations and forms. 
They cut that.
  So, has the President wanted to cut some in defense? Yes--unnecessary 
regulations, unnecessary bureaucracy. It is about time. We ought to 
commend them for that, not criticize them.
  Now, on the question of spending, what was sent to this Congress from 
the Defense Department? A budget. The cold war is over. The Soviet 
Union does not exist. And from the height of the cold war we are now 
spending less than we were spending then. Does anyone in this country 
think that we ought to spend now as much on military preparedness and 
defense as we did at the very height of the cold war? Does anyone 
believe that? Of course not. We are not at the height of the cold war. 
Things have changed. Defense spending has come down some--not a great 
deal, but some. So what is the debate?
  The debate is this. The Pentagon prepares a budget. The uniformed 
personnel, the service Secretaries going through the White House, they 
prepare a budget, send it to the Congress, and they say: Here is what 
we think, as an Army, Navy, a group of Marines, and the Air Force, here 
is what we think is necessary to defend America. Here is what we think 
we must build, what we must spend. Here is what we think we must 
accomplish to defend America.
  That budget came to this Congress, giving us the best recommendations 
of those who wear our uniform in this country, the generals and the 
admirals, the service Secretaries, saying here is what we want to 
defend America. But when it got here it was not enough. We had folks in 
this Chamber saying, ``You know, we think you are dead wrong. It is 
true we are the folks who stand up and boast every morning about how 
much we want to cut Federal spending, but we think you are wrong. We 
think, Mr. and Mrs. Pentagon, over there in that big building, we think 
you ought to spend $13 billion more. We think you ought to buy more 
trucks, more ships, more planes, more submarines. We think you ought to 
spend more money because we think you are wrong.''

  Everybody has a right to his or her opinion on what it takes to 
defend this country. Everybody has a right to stand up and talk about 
that. I do not deny that. But I would like to talk about a couple of 
the specifics, because I think in many respects this has a whole lot 
more to do with politics than it has to do with policy. It has a whole 
lot more to do with elections than it has to do with the defense of 
this country. I want to run through just a couple of charts, because I 
think it is instructive on this issue.
  One of the big items we have been debating is the issue of star wars. 
I know they do not like to call it that, but star wars. There is a 
proposal called the Defend America Act. Who on Earth can be opposed to 
defending America? The Defend America Act is to build an astrodome over 
America, an astrodome effect that would prevent missiles from coming in 
and hitting our country. We have already spent somewhere around $99 
billion on research and development on missiles. We have built one ABM 
site--incidentally, we built it in my State. It was declared mothballed 
the very month it was declared operational, after the equivalent of 
today's $25 billion was spent on it. But we have people saying that it 
does not matter what the cost is, we need to build this.

[[Page S10737]]

  The Congressional Budget Office says the proposal that they have been 
talking about here would cost up to $60 billion to build and up to $4 
billion a year to operate. And, in a reasonable time period, would cost 
$116 billion. The question is, where does that come from? Senator Dole 
held a press conference about it, feeling--and it was in the Washington 
Post--feeling this would give him an edge in the election. This can be 
a wedge issue. We support defending America with the star wars program, 
somebody else does not, so therefore we are better than they are. At 
the press conference he was asked:

       Senator, how much do you think this is going to cost? And 
     where is the money going to come from?
       Well, I'll leave that up to the experts.

  The majority leader, asked the same question:

       We'll have to look at that . . . I don't have a fixed 
     number in mind.

  I will tell you what it costs, $60 billion to build, $4 billion a 
year to operate. The question is where are you going to get the money, 
who is going to pay for it, but, more important, do we need it? What 
kind of system do we need for our defense?
  The reason I mention this issue is this issue happens to be one which 
is a very large expenditure that is proposed for which there is no 
proposed method of payment. It is just saying: We are for defense and 
the other folks are not. I happen to think the defense of this country 
is critically important. I think there is a lot of waste in defense. 
But I have been on plenty of military bases and seen men and women 
wearing the uniform of this country who do some wonderful things, and 
who sacrifice greatly for this country. They ought to have the best 
equipment that we can purchase for them. They ought to fly the best 
airplanes we can purchase. I know, despite what a lot of people say 
about our Defense Department, I think we have the best defense system 
in the world by far.
  We spend far in excess of any other country or group of countries 
combined. If you take all the NATO countries combined and throw all 
their defense expenditures into one pot, they don't measure up to our 
knees on defense expenditures. The fact is, we spend an enormous amount 
of defense money, far more than any other country in the world--far 
more than any other country in the world--and for anyone to say somehow 
those men and women and the equipment we buy don't measure up, I just 
don't think they understand.
  The controversy has not been that somebody is weak on defense. The 
controversy is some see defense as a jobs program. I have come to the 
floor and said, ``Here are trucks the Pentagon said it didn't want that 
some insisted be built. Here are jet fighters the Pentagon didn't want 
to build that some in Congress insisted they build. Here are ships that 
the Defense Department said it didn't want to build at this point.'' 
The Congress said, ``You must build.''
  I even found buried deep in the Defense authorization bill an 
authorization, I think, for $60 million to buy blimps. No hearings, no 
discussion, no debate, just somebody writing in, ``Let's buy blimps.'' 
Lord knows what they would buy blimps for, but buried deep in an 
authorization bill, ``Let's buy blimps.'' When the Defense bill is on 
the floor, the sky is the limit.
  So the question is not for this President or for this Congress of 
whether we should have a strong defense, a defense this country can 
count on. The President wants that, I want that, all my colleagues want 
that. The question is, What kind of investments and expenditures will 
provide a strong defense?
  Did it strengthen our country to have 16 pages of regulations to buy 
cream-filled cookies? I don't think so. I suppose you can make the case 
the person hired to interpret the regulations on how to buy cream-
filled cookies was defending America. It seems to me they were 
defending cream-filled cookies. If we streamline that and that person 
is now doing something more meaningful in this country's defense, 
doesn't that strengthen defense?
  I urge you to look at what this Vice President and this President 
have done in the area of reinventing Government and see what they have 
done in the Pentagon in streamlining rules and regulations, especially 
with respect to purchases and acquisitions. And if you are not 
impressed by that, you will not be impressed by anything.
  This administration deserves credit for that. The fact is, the 
Pentagon is one of the largest organizations on this Earth, and like 
every large organization in the public or private sector, it has an 
enormous amount of bureaucracy and fat. And this administration has 
tackled that.
  But the administration has done more than that. This administration 
has also proposed directed, specific investments in weapons programs 
and systems that will strengthen this country, and I think it ill 
behooves other Members of Congress to come to this floor and try to use 
this issue for leverage for an election. That is what this is about. 
This is not about troops moving to Iraq or the Persian Gulf today. It 
is about an election that is held in early November. When I heard that 
this morning, I thought, ``This needs a response. This really needs a 
response.''
  I would like to just make a couple of other points. We are often, 
when we discuss these issues, having to economize, as is a classic case 
in the field of economics. We have to try to determine what are our 
wants and needs and what are our resources. The wants are almost 
unlimited and resources are limited. How do you respond to unlimited 
wants with limited resources? That is true in defense, and it is true 
in our entire budget.

  I thought it was fascinating about a year ago when I was standing at 
this point in the well of the Senate, and we had conflicting proposals 
that I thought made it stark, as clear as it can be about priorities. 
We had a tiny little program called the Star Program, a tiny little 
program, and the proposal was, ``Well, let's cut star schools 40 
percent,'' and then a big program called star wars, ``Let's increase 
star wars 120 percent.'' I can't think of anything clearer than where 
the priorities were for those who opposed it.
  Is there a relationship between education and defense? You bet. Where 
do you think F-16's came from? Where do you think the stealth bombers 
came from? Where do you think the Patriot missile came from? It came 
from the product of this country's education and genius and people who 
invent, create, build, construct. That is where it all comes from.
  My first job out of graduate school, after I got my MBA, was with the 
Martin Marietta Corp. I saw firsthand the marvels of engineering and 
the genius of invention in not only NASA but also defense programs with 
weapons systems. It is quite remarkable. But the Martin Marietta Corp. 
knew, as do most others in this country, that that starts with 
education.
  You tell Americans that we will short change education and somehow we 
will be a stronger country, we will have a better defense, and most 
Americans will say, ``No, no, you're not thinking very straight.'' 
Thomas Jefferson once said, and I have quoted this many times and I 
will again because it is so important, ``Any country who believes it 
can be both ignorant and free believes in something that never was and 
never can be.''
  So my point is we are hearing now today about criticism of a 
President who some believe has not proposed enough money for defense. 
We have, in fact, a President who has proposed a defense budget that 
represents what the armed services believes is necessary to defend this 
country and that makes some very important strategic investments in new 
weapons programs and new systems, and I think the budget the President 
proposed is a good budget. In fact, if you take a look at last year's 
Republican budget enacted by the Senate and take a look at the 
President's proposed budget and go to the outyears, 2000 and 2002, you 
will see the President is proposing higher defense spending than those 
who are now criticizing him. I don't understand that either.
  So, there is more to say, I guess, but we will likely hear a great 
deal about this and a dozen other issues where someone thinks they 
might be able to drive a wedge between now and election day. It is 
important, I think, now, however, for us to decide that as troops go to 
the Middle East and as we as a country try to speak with one voice 
about our goals, we ought to decide that debate about defense policy is 
perfectly appropriate for all of us. But mingling a defense policy 
debate at this point with the discussion about the role of our troops, 
I think, is not

[[Page S10738]]

what we ought to do here in the Senate or elsewhere.
  Mr. President, Senator Feinstein is here and is prepared to speak, I 
believe, on this and another subject. I, at this point, yield the 
floor, and I may use some time later in the special order.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Senator from North Dakota. I also thank 
the Chair.
  I must say, I came to this floor to speak for the fifth time about 
methamphetamine this morning. However, I happened to hear the preceding 
speakers, and I really want to identify myself with the comments just 
made by the Senator from North Dakota.
  Even on this side of the aisle, there is legitimate difference about 
how much should be in the defense budget. I, for one, voted for more 
than the President put forward in his budget. I think that is 
legitimate, but I also think we should talk about it, and I think we 
should debate it.
  However, it is clear to all of us, I think, that we are engaged in a 
military operation. Therefore, the lives of our pilots, of our men and 
women in the Armed Forces, and of innocent civilians are at risk.
  I think during a military operation, an attack on the President, on 
the very policy that is determining that operation is, frankly, ill-
advised, I think it is highly partisan, I think it could put American 
and other lives at risk, and, frankly, I think it is just plain tacky.
  So I want to say that. I would be hopeful that during a time of some 
national emergency--and I think this operation does qualify--we can 
come together as Republicans and as Democrats to support the Commander 
in Chief of the United States of America, who happens to be the 
President, whether that President is Democratic or whether that 
President is Republican. I pledge as a Democrat that should the 
President be a Republican, I would do the same, because I think it is 
important.

                          ____________________