[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 39 (Thursday, March 5, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3033-H3039]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ELLISON. Here we are for yet another Progressive Caucus, 
progressive message coming to the American people to articulate a 
progressive vision for the society that we live in.
  I'm so happy to be talking about the progressive message today. And 
I'm going to be joined by our chairwoman, who is none other than 
Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, and I look forward to having a very robust 
dialogue today.
  Well, it's budget time, time to discuss the budget. And what better 
time than budget time to talk about how we're going to reshape our 
budget in a progressive and effective way that will reflect the needs 
and wants of the American people. Budget time, where we look at things, 
where we set our priorities, and where we really examine where we're 
going.
  Tonight we're going to focus on a particular part of the budget. 
We're going to talk about the defense budget and the need for reform, 
to review what we've been spending our money on, to make sure that 
while we absolutely protect the American people, that we do not spend 
so much money that the American people really can't afford it, and that 
we try to get that peace dividend that after the fall of the Soviet 
Union we all thought we would be realizing. This is what we're going to 
talk about tonight with the progressive message, which we come to you 
with every single week.
  The progressive message tonight: The budget. Tonight: The defense 
appropriation and how this particular end of the budget needs to be cut 
so that we, as Americans, can have the money we need to not only keep 
America safe, but also to keep America in the black and not in the red. 
Very important dialogue tonight.
  Let me invite our chairwoman, Lynn Woolsey, to have some open 
remarks. I yield to the gentlelady from the great State of California.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, as co-Chair of the Congressional 
Progressive Caucus, it is my honor to be here again tonight with 
Congressman Ellison and other members of the Progressive Caucus who 
will come down to talk about the Federal budget and our progressive 
priorities.
  When we talk about the budget, it's easy for people to have their 
eyes just glaze over because they automatically think we're going to be 
talking about a bunch of numbers on a page. But, you know, this budget 
and every budget is so much more than that. While you will hear a bunch 
of numbers being thrown around here for the next hour, the important 
thing that must be remembered is that all of these figures represent 
what we believe. They represent what we, as a Nation, have as our 
priorities, what that says to every citizen of this country and every 
nation around the world.
  The funding decisions that are included in the budget are the choices 
that every Member of Congress must make on what our priorities as a 
country should be for the next--not 1 year, but 10 years. These are 
choices that affect the lives of every single American. It is choices 
like whether or not we ensure that everyone will receive adequate 
health care, or whether or not we build yet another weapons system that 
we don't need. And these choices speak as loudly as anything on who we 
are as a Nation. That's why it's so important to talk about this and to 
understand what the numbers in the budget mean for our constituents, 
and to let them know that all this isn't set in stone, but that there 
are real choices to be made.
  For the past 2 years, and again this year, the Progressive Caucus 
will be offering a full budget alternative, an alternative that will 
bring defense spending under control, that will balance our tax code to 
ensure that everyone is paying their fair share, and invests in 
renewable energy, in education, transportation, housing, veterans 
benefits, and health care for all.
  These are our priorities; they're priorities that we, as 
progressives, have laid out. And I look forward to discussing all this 
with my progressive colleague, Mr. Ellison, and others who are here 
tonight
  Mr. ELLISON. All right. Well, it's good to be here again. Thanks for 
getting us started.
  Let me invite Congressman Polis from the great State of----
  Mr. POLIS. Colorado.
  Mr. ELLISON. Colorado. Congressman Polis, forgive my lack of 
sharpness on that point. But you're a welcomed friend tonight, and we 
want to thank you.
  Would you like to make some opening comments as we begin to talk 
about the progressive message, the progressive budget, and we're going 
to be focusing on responsible defense spending tonight?
  Mr. POLIS. Yes, I do. Thank you so much to my colleague from 
Minnesota. I'm a new member of the Progressive Caucus.
  Mr. ELLISON. And we're honored to have you.
  Mr. POLIS. I am pleased to inform my colleagues that we have joined 
as of yesterday. And I'm particularly thrilled that we're willing to 
look at defense spending as part of the overall picture. It's hard to 
have a real route to fiscal responsibility and balancing our budget 
without looking at defense spending. And whether we're looking at 3 
years or 5 years or 10 years out, this is going to be a critical 
component of the return to fiscal responsibility. I look forward to 
being a voice for that within the Progressive Caucus.
  Mr. ELLISON. Well, Congressman Polis, you are a very welcomed voice. 
We agree wholeheartedly.
  You know, the American people may be under the mistaken impression 
that the more money you spend on defense, the more secure you're going 
to be. Well, tonight we're going to talk about how that isn't true.
  What I want to do is start out by quoting our President, Barack 
Obama, in his first address to Congress last Tuesday. He said, ``We 
will eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq 
and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War era 
weapons systems we don't use. At the risk of repetition let me just 
say, ``We will eliminate the no-bid contracts that we have wasted 
billions in Iraq and reform our defense budget so that we are not 
paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use.''
  When I quote that statement of our President, Congresswoman Woolsey, 
what sort of thoughts come to mind for you?
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, the first thought that comes to my mind is, the 
Cold War is over, it's been over for a long time, and why are we still 
investing in weapons systems and equipment to fight the second 
generation of Russian weapons that aren't even being produced in 
Russia? Why are we doing that? What is it costing us? And what can we 
do with that money instead of wasting it?
  Mr. ELLISON. Well, Congresswoman Woolsey, you know every dollar spent 
is a dollar earned by somebody. And I imagine that these weapons 
systems may be quite a pretty penny for some people.
  Congressman Polis, when I read that quote from our President--you 
were here last Tuesday night--what sort of thoughts come to you right 
away?
  Mr. POLIS. Well, you know, there comes a point when more spending 
equals less security. And you need to look at the whole picture, 
including the diplomatic picture with regard to foreign aid, with 
regard to helping developing nations, with regard to promoting peace in 
the Middle East and elsewhere.
  Mr. ELLISON. Well, I think that's dead on the mark.
  I want to say that, just yesterday, President Obama began by making 
good on his promise by signing the Presidential memorandum that will 
reform government by contracting. What this memorandum talks about is 
strengthening oversight and management of taxpayer dollars, ending 
unnecessary no-bid, cost-plus contracts, and maximizing the use of 
competitive procurement processes and clarifying the rules prescribing 
when outsourcing is and is not appropriate.

[[Page H3034]]

  The Office of Management and Budget will be tasked with giving 
guidance to every agency on making sure contracts serve taxpayers, not 
contractors. It's important to focus on who really matters here; this 
is taxpayer and American citizens, not contractors. That's the focus 
that we need to have. So I'm very happy to see the President taking the 
focus and really drilling down on getting the most for the American 
taxpayer.
  I think we've also been joined by the gentleman from the State of 
Washington who has been pitching hard for so long, speaking so 
eloquently for so long about issues of peace, issues of security, and 
important issues on the welfare of the American people. I am speaking 
of none other than Jim McDermott of the State of Washington.
  I would yield to the gentleman for any comments you might make on 
this important topic tonight.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Well, I have to commend you for coming out here and 
talking about the defense budget.
  There's a lot of talk in Congress about entitlements. When we talk 
about entitlements, people think, oh, you mean Medicare and you mean 
welfare and you mean Social Security and all these things, but there 
is, in fact, a defense entitlement in this country. It's as though the 
Defense Department is entitled to get more and more money every year. 
And anything anybody can think up for a new defense system, we wind it 
up, whether it makes any sense or not.
  Now, if you look at the wars that we've been involved in or the 
military actions that we've been involved in, they have not been 
standard wars where tanks are facing tanks or machine guns; it has been 
mostly counterinsurgency, guerrilla-type events. And we continue to 
spend huge amounts of money on a variety of weapons that simply don't 
deal with what the country is facing today. And I think that the most 
egregious example of this was when the last administration decided that 
Iran was a problem; therefore, we have to have a missile defense system 
in Europe against Iran. So we went to the Czech Government, we leaned 
on them. They said, okay, you can have a tracking station here. And we 
went to the Poles and said, we're going to put missiles right on the 
border with Russia.
  Now, first of all, they've made Iran into a boogyman. And they began 
to create a defense, and suddenly we're selling and we're putting all 
this stuff out there, and lo and behold, the Russians don't like it. 
Now, is that any surprise? If you were a sovereign country and somebody 
came and put missiles right on your border, how can you possibly think 
that that wouldn't be responded to by the Russians?
  The next thing we know, they go into Georgia. And everybody's all up 
in arms and saying, oh, my goodness, my goodness, what are they doing 
going into Georgia? Well, if you go on a pretext to go into Iraq and 
attack Iraq, the Russians say, look, we went into a next-door neighbor 
that asked for our help. You went 9,000 miles to a place that wasn't 
asking for it.

                              {time}  2000

  So the military use of our power, in my view, has been greatly 
exaggerated in its real importance. What we need today is soft power.
  I was just in Iraq, and I think that President Obama, one of the 
things that will be his toughest jobs is to get back control of 
reconstruction from the military. We fill the military budget with all 
this money and expect them to go out and build sewer systems and water 
systems and all these other things.
  That's not what the military's job is. That should be the job of 
USAID and the State Department, and it shouldn't be done by soldiers.
  Now, as long as we inflate the military budget and don't put the 
money over into the areas where it's really needed, we are not going to 
change the political climate in these countries. Whether you are 
talking about Iraq or whether you are talking about Afghanistan or a 
lot of places, you can talk about Pakistan, what we do is we give them 
a lot of money from the military budget to buy military equipment from 
the United States.
  And, in my view, in the long run, we are not safer. The question is, 
are we developing a system that makes us secure? And just having tanks 
everywhere and Humvees and all this kind of stuff does not make us 
safer.
  What should be done with our money is to look at what's happening to 
these countries who are economically being destroyed by this world 
economic situation and dealing with helping them reconstruct their 
country. Now, the irony of being in Iraq this weekend was realizing 
that we were rebuilding things that we bombed and destroyed. The 
question comes to your mind, well, what did we get out of that except a 
lot of destruction and a lot of ways to spend money in this country?
  The Inspector General was out there on the trip with us, and here we 
have military colonels, you have got a colonel that was just sentenced 
to 9 years in a Federal penitentiary for taking a $7 million bribe in 
Iraq. Another colonel and his wife and his sister-in-law were taking 
bribes and running them through their church, trying to hide them by 
washing them through the church that they belonged to.
  This is what is needed in oversight and a clear plan for what we are 
trying to do with our money. We have thrown money away endlessly. Talk 
about waste, fraud and abuse, the military, in my view, is as ripe for 
an investigation as any part of government. Before we expand the 
budget, we ought to look at and have investigations, as Harry Truman 
did, after the Second World War. He made his reputation on looking at 
the misexpenditure of money in the Second World War, and that's what 
ought to be going on now.
  We are simply bloating the budget around issues that do not make us 
more secure and make us, actually, more enemies in the world. For that 
reason I think your examination, the Progressive Caucus examination of 
the budget is extremely important.
  I think that this is an issue, obviously, people, as you point out, 
have jobs. People make a living making war machinery. But there have to 
be other things they can make, maybe things related to green energy, or 
there's a lot of other places that the workers in this country, with 
all their creativity, could be put to work rather than simply building 
more and more arms to sell around the world and for us to use in 
various situations.
  We are talking about leaving Iraq. But one of the soldiers said to 
me, if we are getting ready to leave Iraq, why are we still building 
buildings like that one over there, what are we building for?
  It is a really good question. I mean, if you listen to the soldiers, 
they can see that lots of money is being spent wastefully. There is a 
tower, a control tower for an airport in Iraq. We spent $14 billion 
building a control tower for a field where there are two helicopters, 
two helicopters.
  Now, you ask yourself, what was that tower built for and why was it 
built there? And these kinds of questions aren't being asked, and I 
think that's why it's important that the budget that the Progressive 
Caucus is putting out is really raising a whole series of issues, and I 
think that the members of the caucus, of the larger Democratic Caucus, 
should think long and hard about how much money is put into the 
military budget.
  At a time when we need things all across this country in terms of 
health and infrastructure and education, all these issues are going to 
be sacrificed to the defense entitlement. And Members have to ask 
themselves are we going to continue to feed the military monster or are 
we going to take some of it away and deal with the domestic problems of 
Americans today. So I thank you for the opportunity to talk about it, 
and I think the American people should be listening and thinking about 
what makes sense, what makes us safer?
  I served in the military, so I am not against war. I am not some kind 
of a crazy peacenik that thinks you never go to war.
  I served during the Vietnam era. I took care of casualties, so I know 
there is no glory in war, and I know what happens to those casualties 
when they come back to the United States. We are creating, by this war, 
a lot of costs in the future that no one is willing really to talk 
about. They said today in the newspaper that there may be as many as 
300,000 brain injuries from this war.
  And you think about what that's going to mean as we try to deal with

[[Page H3035]]

those veterans over the next 30 or 40 years. These kids are 20, 30 
years old. They are going to live to 70, so we are looking at least to 
40 years, and that is a cost that's built into this kind of behavior.
  I think it really has to be carefully examined, and I think that 
Barack Obama is correct in bringing as many of those troops home. I 
think he should bring them all home, but he is talking about bringing 
100,000 home and leaving 50,000 over there. I don't know what for. Is 
that just kind of for them to sit around and if something happens 
somewhere they will go jump out and do something?
  They said they are going to be for training police and training the 
Army, 50,000 advisers? It doesn't make sense. So thank you for raising 
this issue. I think it's important that you take an hour tonight and 
talk about it.
  Mr. ELLISON. Well, I just want to say that I think it's critical that 
we discuss this issue. I believe that a budget is a statement of 
values. And if we value human life, and if we value peace, then we 
should have that reflected in our budget. That's why tonight we are 
talking about taking a look at the defense budget.
  I just want to tell you, draw your attention to this chart up here, 
Mr. Speaker, Cold War-era weapons systems. Things that were mentioned, 
the anti-ballistic missile system, this is a pretty big-ticket item. If 
you could look at what we could save by cutting the Bush's fiscal year 
2008 request, and then there is a task force that proposed a reduction, 
these would not result in any reductions in safety and security for the 
American people, and this chart was generated by the task force on the 
united security budget.
  I just want to talk about it a little bit. Let me frame it this way.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. If I could ask a question?
  Mr. ELLISON. Yes, sir.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. I can't quite read that bottom figure. Is that $60 
billion?
  Mr. ELLISON. That's $60 billion, with a ``B.''
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Over 10 years.
  Mr. ELLISON. Yes, and that's quite a pretty pity, quite a bit of 
money there.
  As a matter of fact, let me just say that Congressman Frank, like 
yourself, Congresswoman Woolsey and many others, Congresswoman Lee, 
have been working with the Center for American Progress and have 
adopted one of their proposals for reducing defense spending. That 
proposal, coupled with ending the war in Iraq, will be at the center of 
this plan to reduce military spending.
  First, a timely withdrawal from Iraq could create $105 billion of 
savings in 1 year if the recommendation for the Center for American 
Progress report, ``Building a Military for the 21st Century,'' is 
followed. That's where this chart actually comes from.
  If we were to take these proposals and reduce the Virginia Class 
Submarine and this destroyer, if we were to deal in a very sensible way 
with offensive space weapons. What do we need to be fighting in space 
for? I have no idea.
  To reduce our nuclear arsenal which, you know, under the nuclear 
nonproliferation treaty, countries that don't have nuclear weapons 
shouldn't get them, but countries that do have them should be reducing 
them. This could be a significant savings. Then waste procurement and 
business operations, a 7 percent reduction.
  We could save $60 billion. How many college educations is that? How 
many teachers, how many cops? Could we afford a universal single pair 
health care system?
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Yes.
  Mr. ELLISON. Could we afford the things that will make our country 
ready for this new age, this green economy.
  Let me ask you, Congresswoman Woolsey, what are your views on this 
subject?
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, I have some.
  Mr. ELLISON. I had a feeling you did.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Probably because I am a peacenik, I just am, have been, 
I think I was born that way.
  But, you know, before we talk about the savings, I think we should, 
first of all, know that this is the third Progressive Caucus 
alternative budget in the last three budget cycles that we have 
introduced, and all of our budgets have been around what our President 
said in his speech, reforming our defense budget so that we are not 
paying for Cold War-era weapons systems that we don't use. You said 
that, I am going to emphasize that.
  Now we are working with Congressman Barney Frank. This budget is 
going to be wrapped around cutting 25 percent of the defense budget so 
that our colleagues will have an option. They will have an alternative. 
They will be able to vote their conscience if they want to cut the 
defense budget. I am not saying they won't vote for the base budget, 
but they will have a chance to vote for a budget that cuts defense and 
invests in our national priorities.
  But here is why we know we can do this. The United States doesn't 
just lead the world in defense spending, we almost outspend the rest of 
the entire world combined.
  Mr. ELLISON. Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that if you take 
every country in the world from Palau to Brazil, Russia to Israel, from 
Argentina to Brunei, you add them all up, you mean we still spend more?
  Ms. WOOLSEY. That's right, and a full 43 percent of the world defense 
spending comes from the United States alone. When we add NATO allies 
into it, it's over 50 percent.
  So our annual defense budget dwarfs that of all our biggest rivals, 
and we spend four times as much as China and eight times as much as 
Russia. Why? That's what I ask you, we don't need to do that.
  And if you want to put this in perspective, every single person 
spent, when we add up our Pentagon budget, that's 40 percent of the 
taxes that every single person pays, 40 percent of their taxes go to 
the Pentagon. Why, I ask you? It does not make it safer and, in the 
end, you are less safe.
  So what kinds of weapons are we cutting? You have got your chart up 
there, we are saving $15 billion a year by reducing the number of 
nuclear warheads that we have in our arsenal. We are going from 10,000 
to a thousand. We don't think we need 10,000 warheads. We need 1,000 to 
keep us safe, even with the rest of the world. Over time, we should be 
working to have a nonnuclear world because it's nuclear weapons that 
can actually do all of humanity in, and shame on us for not knowing 
enough to stop that.
  So we also, in this budget, get rid of the F-22 Raptor. We save $4 
billion because this fighter jet was designed to fight, as I said, the 
next generation of Soviet planes, which were never even built.
  It makes sense to build a plane that fights ghosts? I ask you, no, it 
doesn't.
  There is the Virginia Class Submarine that, like the F-22, was built 
to fight the Soviets. It's more expensive than the submarines we 
currently have, and it doesn't have any new capacity or capability.
  So there is so much about this that makes no sense.

                              {time}  2015

  And the other thing that we have to know is an investment in defense 
spending on weapons does not nearly enough for our economy. If you want 
to invest in the economy, invest in jobs and infrastructure and 
education.
  Mr. ELLISON. Early childhood, health care.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Right. Health care. Invest in what gives back to the 
people of this country.
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. McDermott, a great American whose birthday we 
celebrate every January 15, actually on April 4, 1967, said these 
words: ``A Nation that continues year after year to spend more money on 
military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching 
spiritual death.'' Those words were spoken by Martin Luther King.
  What do you think about that quote?
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Well, I think it's obvious that one of the things that 
President Obama faces is the fact that this country has used its 
military might all over the world for the last 7 years and lost its 
moral authority by issues like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and a variety 
of other things. And it is clear, and it was Hubert Humphrey, from your 
home State and actually was mayor of your city, who said that a country 
will be judged by how it deals with those in the twilight of life and 
those at the dawn of life, the children and the old people.

[[Page H3036]]

  Mr. ELLISON. In the shadows of life.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Right. You know the quote.
  Mr. ELLISON. Yes, I do.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. A guy from Minnesota should know it.
  Mr. ELLISON. Absolutely.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. But the fact is that that is the essence of what the 
government is about. The Constitution and the Declaration of 
Independence are basic documents that say it is our responsibility to 
protect the life and liberty of the American people and allow them to 
develop themselves to the fullest extent possible. And there is a point 
at which when we don't educate our children and when we don't take care 
of their health care, when we're the only industrialized country on the 
face of the Earth that doesn't have universal access to health care, 
you have to ask yourself how many guns do we need? How many bombers? I 
mean I would like to take a few of those off there and use them as 
financing for extending the health care system to everybody in this 
country. It wouldn't take very much out of this budget. But it would, 
in fact, make us a safer country and make us a morally responsible 
government to deal with the problems of our people.
  For us not to do that, for us not to do in energy what needs to be 
done, in the long run it doesn't make any difference how many nuclear 
weapons we have. If global warming causes the oceans to rise and all 
these other things begin to happen, nuclear weapons aren't any good to 
shoot at polar bears or at whatever. I don't know. We'll have this 
stockpile of weapons, and some day people will come along a thousand 
years from now and say, I wonder what they were planning to do with all 
those weapons? They built them and they sat here and rotted. And that's 
really what's happening.
  I really think that making a sensible and reasonable defense system 
is important. But we have gone way over the top, as has been suggested 
by some of these weapons systems that people were imagining something. 
I mean this whole business of Star Wars, it started with Reagan. I mean 
he said, well, you know, suppose they get up there in the sky and they 
start shooting rockets down on us. We've got to have this missile 
defense. And we are spending money even today on that stuff, and it 
makes no sense whatsoever.
  If you look around the world and ask yourself are we really 
threatened by the Iranians? Are we really threatened by the Pakistanis? 
Are we really threatened by the Chinese? The Chinese have got so many 
problems of their own. But we continue to build weapons as though they 
were sitting over there just about to launch off into attacking us, and 
it could be nothing further from the truth. Chinese families want food 
and housing and an education for their kids and a health care system 
and a government that makes peace and makes a decent life for the 
people. They're not looking to attack us. But yet we continue to build 
weapons systems.
  In fact, I think in some cases the military industrial complex was 
sad when the Berlin Wall fell because they had nothing to justify this 
stuff. And they've been scrambling around to justify it ever since, 
trying to find somebody to be afraid of. When, in fact, what we ought 
to be doing is building a peaceful world and dealing with our own 
problems at home and the problems of AIDS and hunger and disease around 
the rest of the world. If we would spend our money on those things, we 
would have much more peace than we will have building these weapons 
that are on the chart next to you. There's no security in that kind of 
continued----
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ELLISON. I was going to ask you to react to the quote, if you 
would, ma'am. Would you react to the Martin Luther King quote, or 
should I read it again?
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Read it again. That would be beautiful.
  Mr. ELLISON. ``A Nation that continues year after year to spend more 
money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is 
approaching spiritual death.''
  How do you react to that? And then add on what other thoughts you may 
have.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, I believe it with all my heart. That's why I have 
introduced every year for the last 5 years SMART Security, which has 
war as the very last option when countries aren't getting along, if we 
even need that option, and it cuts military spending and invests in 
soft power and in diplomacy and international relations.
  I want to read something out of an article that Barney Frank has in 
The Nation.
  Mr. ELLISON. Please do.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. The March 2 edition of The Nation. And I would like to 
enter this article into the Record. It's a great article, and it 
supports his and our 25 percent cut in defense spending in our budget. 
And he says, in the middle of this article, ``Spending on military 
hardware does produce some jobs, but it is one of the most inefficient 
ways to deploy public funds to stimulate the economy.''
  Then he went on to talk about when he was talking with Alan 
Greenspan. He said, ``When I asked'' Alan Greenspan ``what he thought 
about military spending as stimulus, to his credit, he said that from 
an economic standpoint military spending was like insurance: If 
necessary to meet its primary need, it had to be done, but it was not 
good for the economy, and to the extent that it could be reduced, the 
economy would benefit.''
  There is no question. President Eisenhower, before he left office, 
said beware of the military industrial complex, Americans, because it's 
got us going in the wrong direction. And we have a chance now to turn 
it around. We have a new President who does believe in diplomacy. We 
have a majority in the House and the Senate and we have our President 
in the White House, and now it is time for us to stand up and put 
together plans that will meet Martin Luther King's promise to us, and 
that's that we would have a world of peace as the world we want to live 
in.

                    [From the Nation, Mar. 2, 2009]

                      Cut the Military Budget--II

                           (By Barney Frank)

       I am a great believer in freedom of expression and am proud 
     of those times when I have been one of a few members of 
     Congress to oppose censorship. I still hold close to an 
     absolutist position, but I have been tempted recently to make 
     an exception, not by banning speech but by requiring it. I 
     would be very happy if there was some way to make it a 
     misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget 
     deficit without including a recommendation that we 
     substantially cut military spending.
       Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal 
     organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits 
     by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other 
     programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to 
     talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would 
     have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and 
     diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good. 
     Obviously people should be concerned about the $700 billion 
     Congress voted for this past fall to deal with the credit 
     crisis. But even if none of that money were to be paid back--
     and most of it will be--it would involve a smaller drain on 
     taxpayer dollars than the Iraq War will have cost us by the 
     time it is concluded, and it is roughly equivalent to the 
     $651 billion we will spend on all defense in this fiscal 
     year.
       When I am challenged by people--not all of them 
     conservative--who tell me that they agree, for example, that 
     we should enact comprehensive universal healthcare but wonder 
     how to pay for it, my answer is that I do not know 
     immediately where to get the funding but I know whom I should 
     ask. I was in Congress on September 10, 2001, and I know 
     there was no money in the budget at that time for a war in 
     Iraq. So my answer is that I will go to the people who found 
     the money for that war and ask them if they could find some 
     for healthcare.
       It is particularly inexplicable that so many self-styled 
     moderates ignore the extraordinary increase in military 
     spending. After all, George W. Bush himself has acknowledged 
     its importance. As the December 20 Wall Street Journal notes, 
     ``The president remains adamant his budget troubles were the 
     result of a ramp-up in defense spending.'' Bush then ends 
     this rare burst of intellectual honesty by blaming all this 
     ``ramp-up'' on the need to fight the war in Iraq.
       Current plans call for us not only to spend hundreds of 
     billions more in Iraq but to continue to spend even more over 
     the next few years producing new weapons that might have been 
     useful against the Soviet Union. Many of these weapons are 
     technological marvels, but they have a central flaw: no 
     conceivable enemy. It ought to be a requirement in spending 
     all this money for a weapon that there be some need for it. 
     In some cases we are developing weapons--in part because of 
     nothing more than momentum--that lack not only a current 
     military need but even a plausible use in any foreseeable 
     future.

[[Page H3037]]

       It is possible to debate how strong America should be 
     militarily in relation to the rest of the world. But that is 
     not a debate that needs to be entered into to reduce the 
     military budget by a large amount. If, beginning one year 
     from now, we were to cut military spending by 25 percent from 
     its projected levels, we would still be immeasurably stronger 
     than any combination of nations with whom we might be 
     engaged.
       Implicitly, some advocates of continued largesse for the 
     Pentagon concede that the case cannot be made fully in terms 
     of our need to be safe from physical attack. Ironically--even 
     hypocritically, since many of those who make the case are in 
     other contexts anti-government spending conservatives--they 
     argue for a kind of weaponized Keynesianism that says 
     military spending is important because it provides jobs and 
     boosts the economy. Spending on military hardware does 
     produce some jobs, but it is one of the most inefficient ways 
     to deploy public funds to stimulate the economy. When I asked 
     him years ago what he thought about military spending as 
     stimulus, Alan Greenspan, to his credit, noted that from an 
     economic standpoint military spending was like insurance: if 
     necessary to meet its primary need, it had to be done, but it 
     was not good for the economy; and to the extent that it could 
     be reduced, the economy would benefit.
       The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions 
     approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting 
     fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an 
     adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of 
     Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy.
       I am working with a variety of thoughtful analysts to show 
     how we can make very substantial cuts in the military budget 
     without in any way diminishing the security we need. I do not 
     think it will be hard to make it clear to Americans that 
     their well being is far more endangered by a proposal for 
     substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other 
     important domestic areas than it would be by canceling 
     weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we 
     are likely to face.
       So those organizations, editorial boards and individuals 
     who talk about the need for fiscal responsibility should be 
     challenged to begin with the area where our spending has been 
     the most irresponsible and has produced the least good for 
     the dollars expended--our military budget. Both parties have 
     for too long indulged the implicit notion that military 
     spending is somehow irrelevant to reducing the deficit and 
     have resisted applying to military spending the standards of 
     efficiency that are applied to other programs. If we do not 
     reduce the military budget, either we accustom ourselves to 
     unending and increasing budget deficits, or we do severe harm 
     to our ability to improve the quality of our lives through 
     sensible public policy.

  Mr. ELLISON. Congressman, you've been reflecting quite a bit on 
issues of military reductions and focusing on our country's security, 
not sacrificing that, but on how we might save more money. But what do 
you think about this idea of military expenditures not being a good 
economic investment, not stimulating a lot of jobs? Any thoughts occur 
to you about that?
  Mr. McDERMOTT. If you spend a dollar in a school educating a kid who 
then does better in the world and gets a job and makes money and pays 
taxes and contributes to the society, you've created something. When 
you build a nuclear weapon and put it on a shelf somewhere, you have 
developed nothing. It just sits there. Or you build a tank or you build 
a Humvee.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. And it kills somebody.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. You have to ask yourself why do we keep building more 
and more and more? And, in fact, there's a curious thing about Iraq. 
Having been over there, it reminds me, we have 150,000 soldiers over 
there and we also have 150,000 contractors. Now, if a soldier is paid 
$50,000 and a contractor is paid $100,000, why isn't it more sensible 
to hire another soldier than to hire a contractor for twice the money? 
And that's going on all over Iraq, in fact, all over the world. We are 
contracting things out that ought to be done by our own soldiers and 
would be done in a much more reasonable and cost-efficient way. So if 
you look at this budget, there are a million places where you can find 
places to save money if you care about that.
  Mr. ELLISON. Talking about soldiers as opposed to contractors, I will 
never forget the hearing in which General Petraeus was asked how much 
he makes, and I think he makes about $170,000 a year for managing a 
whole lot of people and a whole lot of equipment. And then somebody 
asked Erik Prince, who is the head of Blackwater, how much he makes, 
and he makes quite a bit more than that, definitely millions. And I 
mean he runs an operation quite a bit smaller than the United States 
military and a comparable force. So even when it comes to the 
leadership in the military arena, we're contracting military leadership 
and we are paying them a whole lot more than we are those soldiers who 
are at the head of our military and who are really doing the real hard 
work and can't just walk away, and it's not just about a dollar and 
cents for them. When you made your observation about contractor versus 
soldier pay, that was another image that stuck in my mind.
  I yield back to you.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. I think that is the whole thing that we have not 
seriously looked at for the last 7 years. We have been spending, 
spending, spending. We've had budget after budget, supplemental 
budgets. They come in and say we need another $30 billion. We need 
another $70 billion. We're going to use $50 billion for reconstruction. 
We're going to use this. But no oversight. They've been putting that 
money out there, but nobody has been actually looking. And that's why 
you get control towers, as I said, built out in the desert for $14 
million and nobody says to themselves, gee, what's that about? Who did 
that? Well, it was a contractor. You know, I don't know if it was KBR 
or which one of the contractors, but we let a contract to somebody to 
build a very sophisticated control tower. And we talk about the 
``bridge to nowhere'' in our infrastructure. We complain if somebody 
puts a piece in the budget for a bridge somewhere. We put military 
things out like that and we don't even ask a question.
  Mr. ELLISON. You've hit on something. Why has it been somewhat taboo 
to discuss the military budget? What is in operation that would make 
someone shy about asking tough questions about military expenditure?
  Does the gentlewoman from California have any views on this?
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, first of all, there's a big fear of looking like 
you're not patriotic around here. The second thing is it's very 
embarrassing when you ask the question and nobody has the answer and 
you're talking about billions of dollars. And that's why Barbara Lee 
and I have been working with the GAO to have the DOD implement the over 
2,000 recommendations that the GAO has made to the DOD to cut waste, 
fraud, and abuse. So they now know they have to do it, and we are 
counting on those cuts of those 2,000 wasteful expenditures in our 
Progressive Caucus budget.
  Mr. ELLISON. Congresswoman, we have just been joined by Congressman 
Sam Farr, who is a member of the Progressive Caucus.
  Congressman Farr, tonight we have been talking about the Progressive 
budget and how examining the defense budget in a tough way will allow 
us to save a whole lot of money which we can use for human need. And I 
just want to know do you have any comments on that, any reflections?

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. FARR. Well, without a doubt the way we have been spending and 
putting the war efforts into just an emergency supplemental doesn't 
make any sense, because there has never been an accounting for it. The 
new administration has said they are bringing us in their budget the 
cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, so there is going to be some fiscal 
responsibility, and everyone knows there will be a day when we will not 
be spending that much money, which is a lot of money, and therefore 
those costs can be cut.
  I think that there is no way that we cannot. As we try to balance 
this budget or get it into sense in the outyears, the largest increase 
over the years has been the Defense Department, and therefore they are 
going to be the one that is the most dramatically reduced. I think all 
of us feel that the plan is to have a smaller military, but without a 
doubt it has to be a smarter military, and the investment in smartness 
is not the kinds of things you see on that board.
  I am very excited about upgrading the skills of American military, 
particularly because my background in the Peace Corps is that you find 
in Afghanistan and Iraq what is missing now is what we call soft power, 
which is that we have learned to kick down the doors anywhere in the 
world at any time, but we have not learned to win the hearts and minds 
of people. If indeed we are going to have peace and stability, we have 
got to do a lot more work on the soft power side, which is

[[Page H3038]]

less expensive and probably more effective. So, obviously there is room 
for reductions. As we argue the cost of health care, we have to also 
argue the cost of defense.
  Mr. ELLISON. Congressman Farr, one of the things that Barney Frank 
says is that on September 10th, 2001, we had no idea how we were going 
to deal with the expenditures associated with an Iraq war. Somehow over 
the course of time we figured out how to come up with $10 billion a 
month to fight the Iraq war. Yet people tell you and they tell me we 
can't afford universal health care. That is just too expensive. The 
prior President even told us that and vetoed the State Children's 
Health Insurance Program because it cost too much money.
  But what does that mean to you when we think about reexamining our 
defense budget for waste, fraud and abuse, and dealing with some of 
these Cold War era weapons systems? In your view, what do we really 
need a ballistic missile defense for in this age and day? Do you have 
any thoughts on that topic?
  Mr. FARR. You have the expert on health care here with Dr. McDermott 
and the American leader on single payer plans, and certainly he can 
give a lot of that.
  But I think what I see missing in the dialogue here is that a lot of 
people, conservatives who would not agree with us would argue that 
government ought to run itself more like a business. You don't hear 
businesses talking about costs and expenditures. When they spend money, 
they talk about investments.
  Indeed, if America is going to grow and strengthen itself, then it 
has got to talk about these things as investments. And if you really 
analyze the investment in education, the investment in health care, not 
costs in, but investments in, obviously you want to run them well, and 
if you really look at the military and talk about an investment in 
peace operations and stability, which is what it is all about, I think 
you come up with different numbers than just costs. You come up with 
different priorities.
  Mr. ELLISON. Congresswoman Woolsey, do you want to reflect on this?
  Ms. WOOLSEY. I just want to say you also should put the cost of not 
doing those things, the cost of not having a healthy community, not 
having an educated constituency, not having people ready for jobs for 
the 21st century. Those costs, we never look at that when we are doing 
our budgeting.
  I have a question, if I may, to just throw out to the three of you. 
Sam, before you came down here we were talking about 150,000 
contractors in Iraq and why our military, which is one-third of the 
cost, each one of our troops, why we just didn't have them doing it 
all.
  My question is, wouldn't we have to have a draft in order to have 
that many troops available? I don't think we have volunteers that would 
be able to double the size of the troops in the units over in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, because I don't think people are that excited about going 
over there for $50,000 a year, for one thing.
  Mr. FARR. Well, the difficulty you have is, again back to that 
investment, if indeed the contracting purpose is to build 
infrastructure, it is nuts to think that a company from the United 
States has a vested interest in the outcome and survivability of that 
project. We learned that with the ``ugly American,'' where we would go 
and build things in other countries and leave and they would fall 
apart, because in the process we never got the host country nationals 
involved in building it, in owning it, in wanting to run it and keep it 
up and learn how to, as we saw with generators in Iraq that we 
installed and nobody put oil in them and they all burned out, because 
they said it doesn't matter, they will wait until they come back and 
replace them.
  So I think this dialogue is really important, because the first line 
of our national security is investment in a well-informed electorate or 
well-informed public. So the first line of our national security is 
investment in education. That is our biggest defense system, security 
system, and we have to make that investment equal to or greater than 
obviously it has been historically if we want to build a stronger 
America.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. One of the interesting things, I am standing here 
listening to this, and, I don't know, as people are sitting at home 
listening to this and wondering about all this, this is a sacred cow 
that we are never supposed to look at. That is why we don't discuss the 
defense budget, because people are afraid if you talk about it and talk 
about reducing it at all, you are not a patriot. That is the accusation 
that is made immediately.
  But what happens in the Defense Department is they say, well, you 
know, we would like to build a submarine, so this year we will put $1 
million into the budget and sign a contract to build a submarine in the 
next 2 years. So the next budget comes along and here is a contract 
already signed, and the next $10 billion goes into the budget, and the 
next year it is ten more. And that kind of sort of sneaking it in under 
the door without people actually seeing what is being committed to, 
that is how this missile defense stuff and all that is done, 
incrementally. Nobody ever sees the long-term cost of what we are doing 
and what it is going to mean in terms of what isn't available for the 
things that this society needs.
  The minute anybody raises it and says, why are we doing this, 
somebody says, well, you don't care about the safety of this country. 
That couldn't be further from the truth for any one of the four of us. 
But in fact people will say it and they will think that somehow if you 
cut one dime out of the defense budget, the whole country suddenly is 
going to be cowering in the corner and the world is going to be 
threatening us. Nothing could be further from the truth.
  Mr. ELLISON. Well, Congressman, the fact is that in all this 
exorbitant, precipitous expansion of the defense budget, you really 
haven't seen the average soldier getting a whole lot more money. We 
have had to increase the budget for the VA. When you talk about the 
human element in the military, this almost seems like the forgotten 
element.
  When you think about a weapon like this ballistic missile defense 
over in Europe, agitating the Russians, the Iranians aren't threatening 
to bomb America. I haven't heard that one yet. The fact is that this 
thing in the Bush budget was $10 billion. The fact is you have got this 
$21 billion for nuclear weapons. We live in a time of asymmetrical 
warfare. What do we need $21 billion for? Why do we need that?
  The fact is that is one of the things that is so appalling. One of 
the things we are doing tonight is saying it is not unpatriotic to 
examine the military budget. It is not a sign that you are a coward and 
you don't want to face the enemy if you want to cut the military 
budget. It doesn't mean that you don't care about the troops. Of 
course, we desperately care about the troops. Part of what we are 
arguing for is for the sake of the troops.
  So the thing is that it is so important to be having this dialogue 
tonight, so critical that we do not shrink from this critical dialogue 
about cutting this budget. I am so happy that President Obama came 
right in this Chamber a little more than a week ago to say ``we will 
eliminate the no-bid contract that have wasted billions in Iraq and 
reform our defense budget so that we are not paying for Cold War era 
weapons systems we don't use. Let it begin now.''

  Mr. FARR. You know what is interesting about your comment? I sit on 
the Military Construction Appropriations Committee. That is the 
military quality of life. We interview the soldiers, have them come in 
and ask them to prioritize what they want. Never in my 15 years have I 
ever heard them ask for a weapons system. What they ask for, their 
number one issue is quality of housing. The number two issue is 
childcare. Childcare. That is what the soldiers want. It is quality of 
life, because they are raising their families in the military. They are 
getting deployed and they are coming back.
  The weapons system, those are all Fortune 500 companies that make 
those. That is Wall Street. So you have a different lobbying effort 
between the personnel, the human factor in the military, and the 
weapons systems or the procurement side of the military, and that is 
what is incredibly remarkable. And I am really pleased that you are 
pointing out if we are going to make proper adjustment, we have got

[[Page H3039]]

to really scrutinize these expenditures to really make them essential 
to a new global world order.
  We are not fighting conventional wars. We are fighting asymmetrical 
wars, and I don't know what a ballistic missile system is going to do 
in an asymmetrical war in fighting people that are using the Internet 
and public transportation to move their weapons and ideas around.
  Thank you for your time tonight. I really appreciate it.
  Mr. ELLISON. Congressman Farr, let me thank you for being here. Let 
me also thank Congressman Woolsey, Congressman McDermott, and also 
Congressman Polis was with us for a moment.
  This is the progressive message, the progressive message tonight that 
we came with, to talk about just the defense aspect of the progressive 
message. We believe that if we follow the program that has been offered 
by the Center For American Progress that Congressman Frank has been 
working on, we can save a lot of money for the American people without 
any reduction in safety for the American people.
  It is not unpatriotic to question the military budget. It is not 
unpatriotic to talk about waste, fraud and abuse in the military. It is 
to enhance the quality of life for the soldier and security for the 
American people.
  My name is Keith Ellison. I have been happy to be here tonight for 
the Progressive message. It has been great, another fantastic hour. We 
will be back, week in, week out, projecting a progressive message to 
the American people.

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