[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 71 (Friday, June 9, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E954]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       ARTICLE BY JAMES L. HECHT

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MARK UDALL

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, June 9, 2000

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, as we go forward with the budget 
process, I'd like to bring the attention of my colleagues to an article 
published in the Baltimore Sun. The author is a senior fellow at the 
Center for Public Policy and Contemporary Issues at the University of 
Denver. Although I don't necessarily agree with all the points he 
makes, I think the article is valuable for purposes of informed debate.

                   [The Sun: Tuesday, March 21, 2000]

                        Special Interest Defense

                          (By James L. Hecht)

       For a while, it looked as if Congress might do the right 
     thing: kill an unneeded weapons program, saving $60 billion 
     and increasing security. But in the end, Congress gave a 
     higher priority to the interests of Lockheed Martin, 
     providing $1 billion in this year's budget to buy up to six 
     F-22 fighters--and keeping alive the possibility of buying 
     more than 300 more at a cost of at least $187 million each.
       The F-22 is an example of how the military budget is driven 
     more by the desire of members of Congress to get re-elected 
     than by security. The public interest is no match for 
     lobbyists for the military-industrial complex who in 1996 
     contributed an average of $18,065 to every member of 
     Congress, almost three times the level of tobacco-industry 
     influence peddling.
       Why is the F-22 an unneeded weapon? The American F-15 and 
     F-16 fighters are the best in the world and, if more fighters 
     are needed, these can be built for less than one-quarter the 
     cost of an F-22. Moreover, the F-22 may be outdated soon by 
     the Joint Strike Fighter, an even better plane on which the 
     Pentagon is spending billions for development.
       We spend more than $30 billion a year to maintain more than 
     10,000 nuclear warheads. A 1,000-warhead force with the 
     destructive force of 40,000 Hiroshima explosions would be 
     more than enough--and save about $17 billion a year.
       How political pork supersedes military needs is 
     demonstrated by the appropriation in last year's budget of 
     $435 million for seven C-130 cargo transport planes. The 
     Pentagon requested only one. They got seven because 
     manufacture of these planes provided jobs in Newt Gingrich's 
     district.
       Huge expenditures for unneeded weapons is one reason that 
     U.S. military spending is more than twice as much as all 
     potential adversaries combined, including Russia, China, 
     Iraq, Iran and North Korea. While polls indicate that 72 
     percent of Americans believe it better to have too much 
     defense than too little, 83 percent think that spending 
     should be no greater than that of all potential adversaries 
     combined.
       America's unreasonable military spending also results from 
     the policy that the United States be able to simultaneously 
     fight and win two major regional wars without the help of 
     allies. This two-war doctrine is rooted in the idea that the 
     United States should be able to exercise unilaterally its 
     ``global responsibilities.''
       But having this capability and then using it to act alone 
     or with little military support from allies--as we did in 
     Kosovo and continue to do in the skies over Iraq--decreases 
     our security. We make bitter enemies of people that are no 
     threat to us militarily, but can be a serious threat if in 
     anger and frustration they resort to terrorism.
       Our security also is decreased because our huge military 
     spending consumes money that otherwise could be spent on 
     education. With the economic success of nations becoming 
     increasingly more dependent on a well-educated work force, 
     shortchanging educational needs is a threat to the economic 
     security of Americans in the 21st century.
       Security is the most important function of government. But 
     we should not--in the name of security--needlessly spend tens 
     of billions of dollars a year for the benefit of politically 
     connected interests.

     

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