[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 140 (Thursday, October 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10759-S10761]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE DEFENSE BUDGET

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, about 10 days ago the Senate adopted the 
appropriations bill on defense. I sit on the appropriations committee. 
I was one of five Senators who voted no. I think the bill passed 95 to 
5.
  I don't enjoy voting against a defense budget. I am not running 
again, so I am not worried about somebody accusing me of being soft on 
defense. That has always been the mortal fear of Members of the Senate 
when you are voting on weapons system, that their opponent in the next 
election will accuse them of being soft on defense.
  Sometimes I think we should be accused of being soft in the head. We 
passed a bill that contained $247.5 billion for defense, and that did 
not include nuclear weapons and weapons development. That is all 
handled in the energy and water appropriations bill. And it did not 
include military construction, which is also in a separate bill. When 
you add those together, the appropriations for national defense total 
$268.2 billion. That is right up there with what we spent in the cold 
war.
  If, in 1985, you had asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
indeed, if you had asked all the chiefs, ``If the Soviet Union were to 
suddenly be dissolved and disappear, how much do you think we could cut 
the defense budget,'' I promise you the answer would have been anywhere 
from $50 billion to $100 billion. Today the Soviet Union has been 
dissolved. It does not exist anymore. The military forces of Russia are 
in shambles. And we are appropriating $268 billion--big, big figures.
  What are we thinking about? There is not a major enemy in sight. How 
much do we spend? And who are we afraid of? Here is a little chart that 
I believe my colleagues will find interesting. When we appropriate $268 
billion, we are spending twice as much as all of the eight potential 
enemies we could possibly conjure up. Here is what the United States 
spent, $268 billion; Russia, $82 billion; China, $32 billion; and the 
six rogue countries, $15 billion. So we spend twice as much as all of 
those countries, twice as much as Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, North 
Korea, Syria, Libya, Cuba combined. And when you add the NATO alliance, 
Japan and South Korea to what we are spending, it comes to four times 
as much. The United States and its allies are now spending four times 
as much for defense as virtually everybody else in the world.
  That is the macro overlook of what I think is terribly wrong with the 
way we are appropriating money. But within that $268 billion, let me 
just tell you some of the reasons I could not stomach it. Between 1998 
and 2001, under that bill, we are going to retire 11 Los Angeles class 
submarines that have an average of 13 years left on their lives. What 
are we doing? When we appropriated the money to build Los Angeles class 
submarines, we were assured these submarines were the best in the world 
and that they had a 30-year life.

[[Page S10760]]

 Everybody beat themselves on the chest and said isn't that wonderful, 
we are building submarines that have a 30-year life. So now we are 
retiring 11 of them that still have 13 years left on their lives. Why? 
So we can build one new attack submarine in fiscal 1998 at a cost of 
$2.3 billion.
  You talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish; we are going to spend 
$3.4 billion for four DDG-51 destroyers. That is even one more than the 
Pentagon requested. How are we going to pay for that? Well listen to 
how we are going to pay for it. First of all, I am offended because 
they are retiring a ship that Betty Bumpers is the chief sponsor of. We 
christened the CGN-41, a guided missile nuclear ship, back in 1979. 
That ship had a life expectancy of 38 years, and we are about to scrap 
it. It is as modern as tomorrow. We are going to scrap it so we can 
build four new DDG-51 class destroyers, to keep the shipyards busy. We 
are retiring one of the most beautiful ships you will ever see, and it 
has 18 years left on its life.

  We are also retiring three Perry-class frigates that have 20 years 
left on their life. What in the name of all that is good and holy do we 
care what the life expectancy of a ship is if we are going to retire 
them in order to make room for some more ships? The first thing you 
know, we will be building them and retiring them before they go into 
service so we can keep the shipyards busy.
  Then, Mr. President, there is the $331 million in this bill for the 
B-2 bomber. Let me say in all fairness, as long as William Jefferson 
Clinton is President, we are not going to start building B-2 bombers. I 
heard him speak on that subject. But what are we doing? We are saying, 
``Well, Mr. President, we know you don't like the B-2, so what we're 
going to do is give you $331 million to start building nine more B-2 
bombers, but if you don't want to do that, then spend this money on 
spare parts on the ones we have.''
  The Pentagon and the Air Force didn't ask for an additional $331 
million in spare parts, and we are not going to build the B-2. Why in 
the name of all that is good and holy are we putting $331 million in 
the budget?
  I come finally to the two items that really burn me worse than any 
other part of the budget. First, the F-22 fighter. When you start 
seeing full-page pictures in the New York Times and the Washington Post 
and in Roll Call and The Hill newspaper of this magnificent F-22 
fighter, you can bet your bottom dollar the full-court press is on. I 
have no more ability to stop the F-22 fighter than I can keep the Earth 
from revolving. Once a plane like that develops the kind of momentum 
the F-22 has, nobody can stop it. Nobody can stop it no matter how 
foolish it is.
  Let me wedge the F-22 fighter for you in between two other fighter 
planes. Right now we are beginning to build a new version of the Navy's 
F-18 fighter plane called the F-18 E/F. It is the most advanced version 
of the F-18 to date. Cost? Mr. President, $90 million each. Number? 
Probably around 600.
  The Navy says, and the intelligence community confirms, that the F-18 
fighter will be superior to any other non-American fighter plane in the 
world through the year 2015. I repeat: The 500 to 600 F-18 E/F's we are 
going to build will be superior to any non-American fighter plane known 
in the world between now and the year 2015. The Navy says it will 
provide air dominance until the year 2020. I am for it. We are building 
it. It is a magnificent airplane.
  So what are we going to do now in the year 1998 to 2000? We are going 
to start building this F-22. Do you want to know the cost of that? 
Sixty-two billion dollars for 339 airplanes. That comes to somewhere 
between $180 million and $190 million each, which makes it precisely 
twice as expensive as the most expensive fighter plane ever built in 
the United States.
  If we needed it, we might justify the cost. But if we don't need it, 
we couldn't justify it at any cost. An Air Force official has said, ``I 
promise you, we will build these 339 planes for $61.7 billion.''
  We just happened to be debating the authorization bill for defense at 
that time. I said, ``OK, we'll take you at your word. I can't stop the 
plane, which I would divinely like to do, but we will hold you to your 
word. You say you can build it for $61.7 billion. Let's put that in the 
bill, that you may not spend more than that.''
  Do you know what? They are already hollering like a pig under a gate: 
``We can't live with it.''
  So when you talk about a $190 million airplane, that is what they are 
saying today. Anybody who has been in the Senate as long as I have 
knows they are not about to build that plane for that. They already cut 
the number of planes because they faced a $16 billion cost overrun.
  To proceed with the sequence, in the year 2005, we are going to start 
building what we call the Joint Strike Fighter, and we are going to 
build about 2,800 of those. I happen to support the Joint Strike 
Fighter because it is going to be used by the Navy, the Air Force, and 
the Marine Corps. It is supposed to cost much less than $100 million 
each and be a state of the art fighter plane.
  So why are we sandwiching this F-22 fighter at a cost of $62 billion 
between the F-18 and the Joint Strike Fighter? Why? Because the 
lobbyists have the power to make it happen, not because we need it. It 
is a cold-war relic.
  You might ask, ``Well, who dreamed up the F-22?'' I will tell you who 
dreamed it up. The Russians. Back when the old Soviet Union kept us 
from sleeping at night, they announced in the early 1980's, back in the 
heyday of the Soviet Union, ``We're going to build a fifth-generation 
fighter that's going to be superior to anything ever built in the 
history of the world.''
  That is all you have to do to get the Pentagon's attention. So the 
Air Force went to the drawing board and started designing the F-22 to 
meet the threat of the Soviet Union and their fifth generation fighter.
  What happened? The Soviet Union went bankrupt, and the fifth 
generation remained on the drawing board where it is today, unless they 
have lost it. What are we doing? We are getting ready to produce an 
airplane designed to compete with a plane that is still on the drawing 
board in Russia and may never come off the drawing board.
  The F-22 has virtually no ground-attack capability. They put a couple 
bombs on it just so they could say it has ground-attack capability. It 
is a good airplane. I am not arguing that. You can build all kinds of 
airplanes that are good airplanes, but I want to tell you something, 
while it has a good air superiority capability, in Desert Storm and 
Iraq, we flew four times more ground-attack flights than we did flights 
to achieve air dominance and air superiority. Mr. President, this cold 
war relic should never have been built.
  Finally, the argument that I thought I was going to finally win--I 
don't win many arguments on defense. I don't know of anybody who ever 
tries to kill a weapons system or bring some sanity to defense spending 
that ever wins. I can only remember two or three weapons systems in my 
23 years in the Senate that we have ever stopped. They take on a life 
of their own, and the minute Congress starts looking at them, the 
manufacturers start running full-page ads in every newspaper and 
magazine in the United States, giving the American people the 
impression that we will be seriously threatened if we don't build that 
particular weapons system.
  The one I thought I was going to win was to stop plans to backfit our 
Pacific fleet submarines with new ballistic missiles. We have 10 
Trident submarines in the Atlantic and 8 in the Pacific. The ones in 
the Atlantic are furnished with what we call the D-5 missile. A fine 
missile, very accurate. It is the most modern, accurate ballistic 
missile we have. Our eight Trident submarines in the Pacific are 
equipped with an older missile called the C-4.
  The C-4 is not quite as accurate as the D-5. Do you know what the 
difference is, Mr. President? According to unclassified data from the 
Congressional Budget Office, the C-4 lacks having the accuracy of the 
D-5, and the accuracy shortage is about 450 feet, or the distance from 
where the Presiding Officer is sitting right now to where the Speaker 
of the House is sitting down the hall.
  When you consider the smallest warhead that goes on these missiles, 
the 100 kiloton W-76 warhead, would wipe the District of Columbia 
completely off

[[Page S10761]]

the map, why, again, in the name of all that is good and holy are we 
getting ready to spend $5.6 billion to take the C-4 missiles off our 
Pacific fleet and replace them with the D-5 missiles? Do you know why? 
Because the Navy wants it, and the Navy and the industrial complex have 
the power to get it.
  We had a serious debate in the appropriations committee on this, and 
as I started to say earlier, I thought I had won that debate. I thought 
the committee was agreeing with me. I thought the committee agreed that 
it would be the height of foolishness to retrofit those submarines in 
the Pacific when the warheads and the missiles on them will last longer 
than the submarines. No question about it.
  So what are we going to do here when the cold war has long since 
ceased to exist? We are going to scare the life out of the Russians by 
modernizing our ballistic missile submarine fleet and spend $5.6 
billion that we could save doing it. We may also keep the Russians from 
ratifying START II.
  Oh, I could go on and on about what an utter waste of money that is. 
Did you know that those C-4 warheads I just described for you and the 
missiles on which they sit will last longer than the submarines? We are 
not even going to backfit four of the submarines because they are going 
to be retired before the C-4 missile will have lived out its 
usefulness.
  So, Mr. President, I do, indeed, get agitated about these things, and 
I get frustrated.
  The people sent us here to do a job as best we see fit.
  When I see the needs of this country, when I see an educational 
system that needs to be fixed, when I see a planet threatened by 
environmental concerns, and when I see us fighting over who is going to 
get highway money to take care of the 200 million vehicles in this 
country, I get frustrated. Mr. President, do you know, just sort of 
digressing for a moment, when I was a young marine in World War II, I 
remember seeing in one of the papers in California that we had 30 
million vehicles on the road.
  You know how many we have today? Two hundred million. By the year 
2050, at the rate we are going, we will have 400 million. Mother Teresa 
was the exemplification of a woman who lived the consummate Judeo-
Christian life, God bless her soul, but she was fighting a losing 
battle from the very beginning. When she was a young novitiate, India 
had 250 million people. Today, they have almost 800 million. Mother 
Teresa was fighting a losing battle.
  The highway commissions in our respective 50 States are fighting a 
losing battle, too. They are trying to build more highways, wider 
highways to accommodate 30 percent of all the vehicles in the world. 
Those 200 million vehicles in this country are 30 percent of all the 
vehicles in the world.
  We are going to have to think differently and act differently if we 
are going to deal with our transportation needs in the future, or every 
city in America is going to be in gridlock.
  In that connection, in putting that in the context of another burning 
issue around here called global warming, those 200 million vehicles 
contribute 27 percent of all the world's greenhouse gases that the 
United States throws into the stratosphere.
  When you think of what it is going to cost to clean up all the 
Superfund sites in this country. To try to keep our water and air 
clean, and when I looked at the kind of money we spend on defense, so 
much of which is wasted, I had to come to the floor to make this 
speech.
  I did not want to vote against the defense budget. I just simply say 
I thought it was too much money. It was a lot more than too much money. 
It was putting weapons systems in mothballs that have long lives left. 
It was buying weapons systems we do not need. It was cold war mentality 
at its worst when the cold war is over.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. KOHL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin is recognized.
  Mr. KOHL. Thank you, Mr. President.

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