[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 49 (Tuesday, April 28, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2382-H2383]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   MEETING THE NEEDS OF OUR MILITARY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, this week we begin the 
annual process of marking up our defense bills. These are the largest 
bills that we enact in this Congress each year and, perhaps, I would 
argue, the most important.
  Unfortunately, we are facing an impossible situation. The only major 
area of Federal spending where this administration has actually cut has 
been in the area of national security. All other Federal agencies have 
either remained stagnant or they have received slight increases. In 
fact, this is the twelfth consecutive year of defense cuts. Some would 
say, well, we are still spending more money on the military, but the 
facts all prove otherwise.
  In John Kennedy's era, a time of relative peace after Korea and 
before Vietnam, we were spending 52 cents of every Federal tax dollar 
on the military. This year, we are spending 15 cents on the military. 
In John Kennedy's era, we spent 9 percent of our country's gross 
national product on defense. This year, it is 2.9 percent.
  And back in John Kennedy's era, Mr. Speaker, we had a draft where 
young people were taken out of high school and they were forced to 
serve the country and then they served for 2 years and left the service 
of the Nation. Today, we have an all-volunteer force, well-paid, 
families, children, education costs, housing costs. So quality of life 
is a much larger portion of that smaller amount of money that we spend 
on defense. Our job is to try to meet the needs of our military in a 
very difficult budget environment.
  Now added to this problem of decreasing defense assets is the fact 
that, over the past 6 years under this President, we have had our 
troops deployed 25 times around the world at home and abroad. Now that 
compares to 10 deployments in the previous 40 years. Twenty-five 
deployments in 6 years versus 10 deployments in the previous 40 years. 
And the problem, Mr. Speaker, is none of these 25 deployments were 
budgeted for, none of these 25 deployments were paid for.
  So in spite of the dramatically declining defense budgets, we have 
added up an additional $15 billion that was not planned for that had to 
come out of defense programs. So we have had an additional cut of $15 
billion below the authorized budget amount.
  The problem, Mr. Speaker, is, in the case of Bosnia, we are spending 
$9.42 billion on the Bosnian operation. It is not that we do not think 
we have a role for the U.S. in Bosnia, but what is being said in this 
body and the other body is, why should America go it alone? Why did we 
put 36,000 troops in Bosnia when the Germans right next door only put 
4,000 troops in that theater? Why are we always asked to foot the bill 
for these deployments that are so important for regional and global 
security?
  After all, President Bush in Desert Storm got the allied nations to 
reimburse the U.S. $53 billion for the costs of Desert Storm which were 
$52 billion. Under this administration, we have had no reimbursements; 
and the $15 billion of contingency costs have all come out of an 
already strapped defense budget.
  I raise this issue, Mr. Speaker, because we are in for tough times as 
we approach the 21st century. We cannot continue to meet the needs of 
our troops under the type of robust commitments that this President has 
made for the men and women of America's military. We need to understand 
the sacrifice, and we need to understand that we need to stop the 
continuing drain of defense dollars that are so necessary to provide 
the support for these brave men and women.

[[Page H2383]]

  We also must fund the emerging threats that we see arising. Missile 
capabilities around the world are coming up. Iran, Iraq are now 
developing medium-range missiles that North Korea already has.
  Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, I would ask our colleagues to join us on the 
Rayburn Triangle where we will unveil one of the Army's newest programs 
called THAAD, along with a Scud missile, a 40-foot-long missile that 
was used by Saddam 7 years ago to kill 28 young Americans in Saudi 
Arabia. This new Army system that we are desperately tying to fund in 
this difficult budget environment is designed to meet that threat in 
the 21st century.
  I urge our colleagues to join the Army and the Ballistic Missile 
Defense Organization in seeing firsthand the kind of technology that we 
are trying to produce in this very difficult budget environment.

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