[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 13, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1252-S1253]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE MILITARY BUDGET

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I will continue on with a few more 
comments about the national security issue, which is being highlighted 
this week, of course, by the President.
  We have talked about the most obvious issue dealing with the 
military; that is, having to do something for personnel. Without that, 
we can't have a military. We can't have defense. Furthermore, it is 
very unfair. We ask people in the military to serve the country, and 
they do that willingly. We have a responsibility to ensure that they 
are reasonably reimbursed and their living conditions are kept as high 
as possible.
  Obviously, the military budget is one of considerable concern. It is 
the largest item in discretionary spending. We have discretionary 
spending of about $630 billion. Nearly half of that, $300 billion, is 
defense. It is very large. On the other hand, when we ask our country 
to defend against threats around the world --and this is not 
necessarily a peaceful world at this time--then we have to expect that 
it will be costly. We are faced with, of course--at least in the notion 
of many--what has been a period somewhat of neglect over the last 8 
years where the military has not had the highest priority, has not had 
as high a level of support as many believe it should have.
  Last year the uniformed Service Chiefs testified to a requirement of 
between $48 and $58 billion per year in additional funding above the 5-
year projected budget. That is the impression, that is the notion from 
the military leadership of the amount of dollars that are essential. 
One of the things that makes that even more obvious in terms of needs 
is that while the military has not been supported as highly and as 
strongly as it might be, this administration that just passed has 
deployed more troops overseas than at any previous time during the same 
length of time. In the past decade, our active duty manpower has been 
reduced by about a third, active Army divisions have been cut by almost 
50 percent. Not all that is bad, of course.
  As the Senator from Iowa indicated, there are changes that need to be 
made. Certainly the economic accounting, the management of the 
economics in the military could stand some strengthening. I am sure 
that is the case. We ought to expect that kind of expenditure of 
taxpayer dollars. However, we do find ourselves in a state where we do 
need to change things. The lack of spare parts for aging systems has 
forced the military to take parts off of other vehicles and other 
airplanes and cannibalize other kinds of things. It is so widespread 
that personnel in the Air Force apparently spent 178,000 man-hours over 
2 years removing parts from bombers and fighters and transports, some 
of those kinds of things that certainly do not bode well for the kind 
of military we, indeed, want to have.
  Obviously, there are needs for change. Often bureaucracies--and 
frankly, the military has its share of bureaucracies--find it difficult 
to make change: We have always done it that way so we are going to 
continue to do it that way. Certainly that can't be the case with the 
military, as things have changed substantially.
  I heard testimony this week before one of the committees that 
indicated there could be a good deal more cooperation and unification 
among the branches of the military to make it more economic. That is 
probably true.
  One of the items that is being considered is the national missile 
defense. There is a great deal of interest in that. It is not a new 
idea. It has been around for about 20 years. It certainly has merit. If 
we thought we could develop some kind of an overall network of defense 
mechanisms, that would be a wonderful thing to do. On the other hand, 
there is substantial question about what the costs would be. I think 
there is substantial question even about the technology. It has not yet 
been developed.
  I favor moving toward a national missile defense. I don't think we 
are ready to sacrifice some of the other things that we do because we 
are talking about doing a national missile defense.
  First of all, as I mentioned, it is very expensive. We don't really 
know the cost. I have been to Space Command in Colorado Springs, CO. 
They indicated that even though they are enthusiastic about it and 
doing experiments, we haven't reached the technological level where it 
would work. I think there is a legitimate role for the missile defense 
soon. However, I think we are going to run into, No. 1, the cost; and 
No. 2, technology; and, No. 3, certainly we are going to have 
difficulties dealing with some other countries in terms of the 
agreements that we have.
  I think we need to understand that, at least from what we know about 
it now, it is going to be a relatively limited defense system, probably 
based on the islands of Alaska. It will be designed to deal with rogue 
states that have very limited capacity but certainly have the scary 
capacity to put a missile in the United States, even though certainly 
that would not win a conflict for them. But it would do a great deal of 
damage to us.
  I think the Space Command is working on the kind of system that would 
be there in case something came from a couple of the countries that are 
likely to be out of control in doing these kinds of things. They would 
be limited to defending against a limited number of reentry vehicles. 
They would not be able to deal with the whole issue of a major missile 
attack, of course.
  I guess what I am saying is that we now have a nuclear capacity of 
our own, probably the strongest in the world. We have had it for a good 
long time. We deal in three areas, of course, land-based missiles, 
ship-to-ground missiles, and ground-to-air missiles. They constitute a 
very important part of our defense in terms of a deterrent. I think it 
is very necessary to continue to do that.
  The President has talked about reducing the number of nuclear 
weapons. I think that makes sense. We are in the process of doing that 
now. We are in the process of removing some of our missiles under START 
I, and we are moving toward the restrictions that will be there in 
START II, in terms of the land-based missiles we have had over time, of 
course, the peacekeepers that have been multiple warhead missiles. 
These are being changed and replaced by the Minuteman III missiles, 
which would be a single warhead. We can do a good deal of reduction 
through this ongoing arrangement. There needs, in my view, however, to 
be the time START II or even START III was agreed to with the Russians, 
a minimum of 500 missiles that we would have, which brings us down to 
that 2,000 missiles that we talked about--the warheads we talked about 
in START I and II. We could do that. There is some talk about the idea 
of a hair trigger alert. There was something on TV last weekend, taken 
from the

[[Page S1253]]

command room in one of these missile silos. I have been through this, 
and the fact is, there is a real system for ensuring that is not a hair 
trigger kind of a thing. It doesn't happen unless there is approval 
from three different areas before that happens. But more important than 
anything, I think it does really take from us the day-to-day deterrent 
that is out there, and the idea, of course, that if you only had a few 
missiles, we put your missiles in that place and do away with those--
when you have them spread as we do now, basically about three different 
places land-based, then it is possible to do that.
  I guess I am encouraged that we are talking about a missile defense 
system, that it would be there to augment the idea of maintaining our 
capacity to have this deterrence. I think it is terribly important that 
we do that as part of our strategy. We can move forward to reduce those 
numbers and get down to a START II agreement. I hope we do that.
  We are going to be going forward, of course, on a number of things 
that all have to do with budgets, all have to do, then, with surpluses 
and taxes. These things are all related, of course, and should be. I am 
hopeful, frankly, from the standpoint of the budget, that the President 
pursues the idea that we ought to be able to have a budget that is 
basically inflation increases, which we overstepped last year 
substantially.
  Occasionally, there are areas--certainly in health care--where we are 
going to want to expand. But I think regardless of the surplus it is 
important that we try to keep Government spending under control in some 
way. We seem to think if there is money, we ought to spend it. I think 
when you go out into the country and talk to people, they are very 
concerned about having a Federal Government that is continuously 
growing, that is more and more involved in our lives. And we would like 
to see these kinds of activities shifted back to the States, counties, 
and local governments, where government is closest to the people being 
governed.
  So when we talk about budgets, we have to look at that in terms of 
the tax reductions. We are finding from the other side of the aisle a 
good deal of resistance to returning the money that people have 
overpaid in taxes to the people who paid it. That is a pretty stiff 
argument to undertake. We need, of course, to set up spending to pay 
down the debt. I think we have an opportunity to deal with these things 
in a balanced way so we can come out of this session of Congress--if we 
are really persuaded as to what we want to do, I hope we may give some 
thought, individually and collectively, to what we want to have 
accomplished when this session of Congress is over. What do we want to 
say we have done in terms of tax relief? What have we been able to 
accomplish? What do we want to say we have been able to do in terms of 
controlling spending? What are our goals in terms of paying down the 
debt?
  I think these are some of the things we talk about a great deal. We 
talk about them kind of independently and, obviously, everybody has a 
different idea, and that is legitimate. It seems to me that we ought to 
be able to establish fairly and collectively some goals, some vision of 
where we want to be, what we want to have accomplished when these 2 
years are over, and then be able to measure the things we do against 
the attainment of those goals.
  Unfortunately, I am afraid that, from time to time, it is not always 
the measurement of individual actions as to how they contribute to 
overall attainment. Will there be agreement on all of those things? Of 
course not. That is the nature of this place, the nature of any group 
that makes decisions. They don't all agree. They have different views 
and values, and we have to deal with that. There is nothing wrong with 
that. But we do want to be able to move toward accomplishing those 
things that we believe are good for the country, good for the long-term 
merits, and that, it seems to me, is our challenge.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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