[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 59 (Monday, May 15, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E831]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E831]]
        NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                             HON. RON PAUL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 11, 2006

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 5122) to 
     authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2007 for military 
     activities of the Department of Defense, to prescribe 
     military personnel strengths for fiscal year 2007, and for 
     other purposes:

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this enormous defense 
authorization bill. At $512.9 billion, this defense authorization is 
$2.7 billion more than the president's request.
  What concerns me most about this authorization, however, is that it 
seems to focus more on defending other nations than on defending the 
United States. U.S. troops are based in more than 100 countries 
overseas, in many cases guarding foreign borders and ports while our 
own borders and ports remain almost completely unguarded.
  The hundreds of billions of dollars spent overseas by this bill will 
do very little to defend the United States against attack. In fact, our 
interventionist foreign policy that is funded to a good degree by this 
bill actually makes the United States less popular overseas and may 
even unintentionally make the United States more of a terrorist target. 
At any rate, it definitely makes us less secure.
  This bill sends overseas hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign 
aid. For example, this bill will send almost $400 million as aid to 
Russia. Additionally, the bill will send $200 million to help build 
additional NATO bases overseas, even though the Cold War has been over 
for more than 15 years.
  This legislation will send almost two billion American taxpayer 
dollars to Central and South America in the hopes that the production 
of drugs overseas will be curtailed. We do know that much of the money 
spent on Plan Colombia and similar programs over the past few years has 
not made much of a dent on drug cultivation, but that much of it is 
likely being skimmed off by corrupt leaders overseas. There must be a 
better--and less expensive--way to deal with this problem than sending 
this much money overseas.
  The bill also opens the door for more military interventionism 
overseas, directing the Pentagon to report to Congress on any current 
or planned U.S. military activities in support of peacekeeping missions 
of U.N. or NATO forces in Sudan.
  Mr. Chairman, as a Vietnam-era U.S. Air Force veteran, I am in favor 
of a strong defense of the United States. I believe we need to focus on 
our own homeland security rather than spending half a trillion dollars 
on policies and programs that will not make Americans more safe, but 
may well have the opposite effect. We need to re-focus our defense 
priorities on the United States, on our own borders and our ports.

                          ____________________