[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 63 (Tuesday, May 4, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H2612]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H2612]]
                 WE ARE SPREADING OUR MILITARY TOO THIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, later this week we are going to be asked 
to take a very, very difficult vote, and it will involve how much 
should the Congress authorize to spend for this war in the Balkans, and 
as a previous speaker, my colleague from Indiana, just said, there are 
many of us, not only here in Congress but around the country, that have 
serious concerns about this war. What my colleague from Indiana did not 
mention is history, and there is an old expression, and I think it is 
from Montezuma, who said that those who refuse to learn from history 
are doomed to repeat it.
  Mr. Speaker, let me give the Members a very important history lesson 
that the Germans learned in the 1940s, in World War II. In World War II 
the Germans sent 400,000 troops into the Balkans, they suffered 70,000 
casualties, and at the end of the war they controlled less ground than 
the day that they marched in.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a war that I think we need to think long and 
hard before we get even more deeply involved, but we had the debate 
last week on that, and we had our votes, we had a chance to vote. This 
week, though, we are going to get a chance to vote on whether or not we 
should fund the war; and then secondly, if the Republican leadership is 
successful in the Committee on Rules, whether or not we should vote for 
even more funding than the President requested.
  I want to talk a little bit about history as well because we are 
continually told that we have spread our military too thin, and I agree 
with that. The truth of the matter is we have spread our military too 
thin, but I think the best analogy is an analogy of peanut butter and 
jelly. We have spread our peanut butter and jelly entirely too thin, 
but it is not because we are not giving our military enough money.
  I want to talk a little bit about what is happening. We have been 
told, for example, in the last several weeks that we are about 14,000 
sailors short in terms of our Navy, but do my colleagues know what? We 
are not short a single admiral, we are not short any generals. In fact, 
as this chart indicates, in 1945 when we had 12.1 million Americans in 
uniform, we had 31 generals above the rank of four star. Today we have 
1.3 million Americans in uniform, and we have 33 generals. So, we may 
be short on Army personnel, we may be short on people in the Navy, but 
we are certainly not short on generals.
  Let me point out another chart, and this is really for the benefit of 
my Republican colleagues.
  As my colleagues know, just 4 years ago we passed a 7-year balanced 
budget plan, and in that balanced budget plan we said that in Fiscal 
Year 1999, the year that we are in right now, we said that we would 
spend $267 billion on defense. That is what we said we would spend this 
year. Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office, we actually 
will spend this year $273 billion. So, in other words, we are already 
spending $6 billion more on defense than we said we were going to be 
spending.
  Now despite that we are being asked this week to fund an additional 
$13 billion. Now I go back to my analogy of the peanut butter and 
jelly. It is not that we are not giving the military enough money or 
enough peanut butter and jelly, the problem is that we are spreading it 
far too thin. We currently have troops in 135 different countries. We 
are prepared to fight a war in Korea, we are prepared to fight a war in 
the desert, and now we are apparently going to have to  fight a war in 
Kosovo. The problem is, Mr. Speaker, we are spreading ourselves too 
thin, and at some point we in the Congress have to say the problem is 
not that we do not give enough money to the Pentagon, the problem is 
that the administration wants to spread that money too thinly.

  I simply want to ask my colleagues and the Members of the House a 
couple of very simple and straightforward questions, and frankly as it 
relates to defense policy, as it relates to foreign policy and 
ultimately as it relates to budget policy. We ought to get clear and 
simple answers to tough questions, and I would like to propose two 
questions to my colleagues in the House:
  First of all, should we borrow from Social Security to pay for a war 
in Kosovo? My answer is no.
  The second question is: Should defense spending get preferential 
treatment in the appropriations process, or should we give them a 
special appropriation now? And again my answer is no, and I think the 
numbers speak for themselves.
  Ultimately, Mr. Speaker, we are going to be asked, Republicans and 
Democrats alike: Is this such an important policy, is this such an 
important war, that we are going to take money out of the Social 
Security Trust Fund? I hope we will say no.
  Now my proposal will be that we give the President exactly what he 
asked for. He is asking for $6.05 billion in emergency supplemental 
appropriations, but I believe we ought to offset that with spending 
cuts in other parts of the government, and that can be done. In fact, 
if we do that, it means that every other department will have to cut 
its appropriations in the next several months by about 1 percent.
  Now that is a big cut, but we are talking about a $6 billion cut out 
of a $1,700 billion budget. I think we can tighten those belts, and 
that will mean that we will not be stealing money from Social Security.
  It was only a couple of weeks ago that we here on the House floor 
said we are going to pass a budget for the first time in American 
history or for the first time in recent history that actually balances 
the budget, and for the first time saying that every penny of Social 
Security taxes will go only for Social Security. That was just a few 
weeks ago. Well, I meant it when I said it then, and I think most of my 
colleagues meant it, and I think we ought to make the tough choice when 
we have to vote on this emergency supplemental where we will already be 
spending more money than we said we were going spend just a few years 
ago in defense. I am willing to give defense the extra money the 
President has requested, but I think it ought to come out of other 
parts of the budget.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  (Mr. ALLEN addressed the House. His remarks will appear hereafter in 
the Extension of Remarks.)

                          ____________________