[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 17 (Tuesday, February 26, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E189-E190]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DEFENSE BUDGET STATEMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 26, 2002

  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, February 6th, Secretary of 
Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before the House Armed Services 
Committee and asked for a record increase in defense spending. He 
pointed to the brave new world post-September 11th as justification for 
the largest hike in defense spending in 20 years. Sadly, Secretary 
Rumsfeld thinks that the brave new world of post-September gives us 
amnesia about 9/11 and the events before 9/11. He also mistakenly 
believes that all of his destabilizing proposals can be justified as a 
reasoned response to 9/11. An incredibly, both

[[Page E190]]

the Vice President and the President placed calls to Tom Daschle asking 
that the fog of ignorance around the events prior to and the day of 9/
11 not be lifted.
  The fact, however, is that September 11 was not a failure of our 
nation's defenses. Rather, September 11 was a colossal intelligence 
failure--a failure to act on timely and accurate warnings predicting 
massive terrorist attacks against our nation. The LA Times and other 
leading press agencies have identified some of these missed warnings. 
And this was not the first time that our intelligence agencies have let 
us down. The same failure to act on critical warnings happened with 
respect to the terror attacks against our embassies in Africa.
  Even the CIA, the FBI and other senior Capitol Hill figures all now 
agree that there were serious lapses in the handling of perishable and 
highly significant warnings preceding the September 11th attacks. But 
instead of examining what went wrong with respect to these warnings and 
then trying to prevent it from ever happening again, President Bush and 
Vice President Cheney now seek to actually prevent the Congress from 
investigating these and other events surrounding September 11th. 
Indeed, Senator Richard Shelby, a member of the Senate Intelligence 
Committee told CNN: ``It was a real massive failure . . . In my 
judgment too many bureaucratic failures, not enough coordination 
between the Agencies.'' The active efforts to prevent a Congressional 
investigation into the events surrounding September 11 not only violate 
the principles of good government but are an affront to the memories of 
all those who perished in the September 11 attacks. But sadly, the 
Administration now chooses to direct us on a path of war while refusing 
to allow us to know how we got there.
  I have been asked by my constituents to explain to them why and how 
September 11 happened. Indeed, the whole world community continues to 
search for answers to those exact questions. That cannot be done if the 
Executive Branch will not cooperative with the Legislative Branch in 
answering important questions about what was known before, during, and 
after the tragedies in New York and Pennsylvania and Washington, DC. 
Why doesn't the Executive Branch want us to know answers to these 
questions? Is there something that they don't want the American public 
to know?
  Instead of working with the Congress to search for answers to these 
questions the Administration has now become obsessed with finding ways 
to expand the U.S. military budget. The White House is now using our 
new War Against Terror as a means of siphoning public attention away 
from the events surrounding September 11th in order to generate 
widespread support for the largest increase in defense spending in a 
generation. The Administration has even identified a dubious ``axis of 
evil'' to further justify this increased spending.
  The President has requested an increase of $48.1 billion in defense 
spending. Sadly, many commenters have already pointed out that his 
father stands to personally gain immense profits from the President's 
proposals because of the former President's relationship with The 
Carlyle Group, a leading defense conglomerate. One particular defense 
contract, for the development and purchase of a mobile howitzer, the 
Crusader, exists with the Carlyle Group. Though the company has 
received millions for this, the Crusader is too hefty to transport, has 
not yet reached its production phase despite years of engineering and 
re-engineering, and is far from fulfilling its purpose or need.
  In his testimony before the Congress Wednesday, Secretary of Defense 
Donald Rumsfeld said that America can afford this increase just fine. 
This comes after defense spending snared a whopping 62 percent of all 
new spending for the year 2002. This accounting is specious, as 
Rumsfeld himself noted on the eve of September 11th, that ``according 
to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.'' 
Increased spending should occur under no circumstances without 
increased financial accountability. Does Arthur Anderson keep the 
Pentagon's books?
  Rumsfeld's trick of throwing bones to would-be critics in the form of 
pay raises for the troops should not obscure the fact that the bulk of 
this budget hike goes not for pay raises, but for expensive gadgets 
such as missile defense, three new, separate fighter planes and space-
based lasers. Of the $48.1 billion requested in more funding, less than 
5 percent of that increase is for soldier pay raises. And let us not 
forget that the President's first act in this war on terrorism was to 
waive the high-deployment overtime pay for our troops who are on the 
front line of this war.
  I might remind Mr. President that we still have veterans from the 
Vietnam war suffering from the ill effects of Agent Orange, we still 
have Vietnam veterans impoverished and sleeping on the streets of our 
Nation's Capital, we still have veterans from the Gulf War suffering 
the ill effects of Gulf War syndrome and we still have service men and 
women in our armed forces living on food stamps and residing in poor 
housing. How in good conscience can the Secretary of Defense come 
before this Committee and ask for yet more money for aircraft, ships 
and missiles and not adequately address these critical issues 
concerning the personal welfare of our veterans and serving men and 
women?
  Sadly, however, at the same time that the President proposes the 
largest defense spending hike in 20 years, hisbudget also proposes to 
cut funds for programs that bridge the digital divide, reducing funds 
for highway construction and urban development and cutting funding for 
the EPA by $300 million. And despite the down-turned economic 
situation, the President has also proposed to cut back on job training, 
assistance for low income home heating, and rural housing and utility 
improvements. Moreover, funds to cleanup the Savannah River Site 
nuclear weapons complex are sliced, and abroad, international food aid 
and peacekeeping funds are also shrunk.
  At $379.3 billion, the President's proposal will not tell us how just 
a few months ago during the trial of suspects charged with initially 
bombing the World Trade Center in 1993, a suspect told U.S. officials 
that bin Laden's group was trying to make war on the United States and 
in particular would bomb an embassy, yet we did nothing and lost 
hundreds of lives in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam. Nor will this budget 
explain the Mossad warning of a major terrorist force of 200 
individuals entering the U.S., which apparently again fell on deaf 
ears. What of the supposed warning to German police by an Iranian in 
Hamburg of an impending attack on the U.S. using hijacked planes? And 
nor will this budget illuminate for us who performed the unusual stock 
trades on the Friday and Monday before September 11th, but has since 
decided not to pick up the tidy profit that was made. The U.S. 
Government is now being sued by survivors of the African embassy blasts 
because it has become clear that the United States had ample warning 
but chose to do nothing rather than prevent the loss of life. Given the 
prior warnings, insider stock trades, and convoluted financial 
interrelationships, September 11th represents yet another wasted chance 
to save innocent lives.
  The most shocking aspect of the President's request involves the New 
Defense Strategy to be implemented now. Secretary Rumsfeld testified 
that a major role now for the U.S. military will be to occupy an 
opponent's capital and replace his regime. In as much as the Secretary 
has identified some 60 countries, including our own, that host terror 
cells, and publicly stated his intention to ``drain the swamp,'' we can 
only surmise that the U.S. military is now in the business of taking 
over capitals around the world and replacing regimes . . . starting 
with Washington, DC.

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