[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 17 (Thursday, February 4, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E157-E158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    ``YOU CAN'T SUCCEED AT DEFICIT REDUCTION WITHOUT REALLY TRYING''

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 4, 2010

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, there is wide agreement 
that we should be taking tough measures to reduce the budget deficit. 
There appears at present to be a powerful myth that this can be done 
without attacking the biggest single area of increase in the federal 
budget in recent years, the military budget.
  The transition from the Clinton to the Bush administration, which 
meant a transition from a surplus to a deficit situation, had as its 
single most important cause a decision by President Bush to fight two 
wars with five tax cuts. While President Obama has not repeated that 
same pattern, his announcement that he is going to begin deficit 
reduction, while exempting the ever-increasing military budget from the 
same scrutiny that goes to other Federal expenditures, means either 
that deficit reduction in both the near and long term is either doomed 
to failure, or that devastating cuts will occur in virtually every 
Federal program that aims at improving the quality of our lives.
  I intend to work with many others to make the case that over the next 
10 years we can save substantial amounts of money--a trillion or more 
of currently proposed expenditures--by reexamining some of the 
fundamental premises of American military policy. Some of those are 
based on Cold War assumptions--the need for three separate delivery 
systems for several nuclear weapons, which was designed in an era of 
confrontation with the Soviet Union. We also must suggest the notion 
that America can be the world's pacifier, policemen etc. Our security 
interest must be protected, and there are beleaguered nations 
threatened with hostile, foreign assaults where our support is 
justified. But our range of commitments goes far beyond that and must 
be scaled back.
  There are also obviously places where the current military budget can 
be cut, even before we begin to reduce the level of commitments. In the 
very useful publication Congress Daily for Monday, February 1st a 
thoughtful and experienced journalist, who is an expert on the military 
budget, George C. Wilson, cogently rebuts the President's assertion 
that military requirements mean that we cannot subject the huge and 
growing Pentagon budget to the kind of scrutiny that goes elsewhere. 
Note that Mr. Wilson is talking primarily about a budget aimed at the 
current level commitments. A serious review of those commitments, which 
should result in a reduction in their scope, would allow us to go much 
further in reduction, reaching the magnitude of savings that are needed 
for us to be able to have the military budget make a substantial 
contribution to deficit reduction.
  Madam Speaker, no issue before us is more important than the need for 
people to include a realistic assessment of military spending in any 
effort to reduce the deficit much less this year, or over the next ten. 
I ask that George C. Wilson's extremely well-argued article, which 
makes such an essential contribution in this debate, be printed here.

               [From the Forward Observer, Feb. 1, 2010]

                          Fattest Lady Singing

                         (By George C. Wilson)

       In declaring in his State of the Union address that he 
     won't cut the Pentagon budget, President Obama is like a 
     trainer telling the fattest lady in his class that she need 
     not do her exercises. Why didn't Obama order the fat Defense 
     Department to join the government-wide effort to reduce the 
     deficit by killing off weapons that no longer make sense?
       Two-thirds of our casualties in the Iraq War were inflicted 
     by hidden bombs that the bad guys set off by cell phones or 
     other simple devices available at Radio Shack. Neither our 
     new aircraft carriers costing $12 billion apiece nor our new 
     F-22 fighter aircraft costing $350 million a plane can keep 
     our troops from being killed or wounded by cheap improvised 
     explosive devices.
       This doesn't mean that deficit cutters should cancel such 
     super weapons willy nilly. More conventional wars than the 
     ones in Iraq and Afghanistan may well be in America's future. 
     But Obama and Congress should at least order Defense 
     Secretary Gates and his deputies to justify every major 
     weapon by explaining what red-hot threat out there justifies 
     spending fresh billions on it.
       The GAO drew a good road map for conducting such a review 
     last year in its devastating report on Pentagon cost 
     overruns. Entitled ``Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of 
     Selected Weapon Programs; the GAO studied 96 major weapons in 
     2008 and discovered that the contractors' original price tag 
     had nothing to do with reality.
       The cost overruns on the weapons studied totaled $296.4 
     billion. Just making the contractors, not the taxpayers, eat 
     their own cost overruns would reduce the deficit by almost 
     $300 billion.
       Instead of making such a demand, Obama last Wednesday gave 
     defense contractors, their overseers in the Pentagon and 
     Congress a pass: ``Starting in 2011 we are prepared to freeze 
     government spending for three years. Spending related to our 
     national security, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security 
     will not be affected. But all other discretionary government 
     programs will.''
       Where is Congress in this supposed war against the deficit 
     that Obama just declared? The Founding Fathers in Article I, 
     Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to 
     ``provide for the common defense,'' not the president.
       When are the lawmakers going to start cutting Pentagon 
     programs like outrageously expensive warships, planes that 
     soar over the price tags contractors originally put on them 
     and missile defenses that have a lot bigger flaws than 
     Toyota's stuck gas pedals?
       ``Never,'' is the answer I get from some of the walking 
     wounded who fought in past battles of the Pentagon budget. 
     They say any weapons, whether justified by today's threats or 
     not, get protected by lawmakers as long as they provide jobs 
     back home.
       Congress, these vets contend, to reassert its 
     constitutional right to provide for the common defense, 
     should deny money to produce any weapon before it is 
     thoroughly tested; forbid congressional add-ons to the 
     Pentagon budget unless CBO and GAO have determined what the 
     pet project would cost and, if deemed worthy, conduct an open 
     competition to build it; forbid any congressional staffer 
     from vaulting to a job in the Pentagon or defense industry.
       Obama did take one step toward making congressional 
     wheeling and dealing on add-ons more transparent by declaring 
     in his address that ``I'm calling on Congress to publish all 
     earmark requests on a single Web site before there's a vote 
     so that the American people can see how their money is being 
     spent.'' That might help some but not much. Voters in the 
     lawmaker's district or state might not object to getting 
     earmarked for goodies.
       As one who has studied the military-industrial-political-
     intelligence complex for almost 50 years now from the front 
     row seat a defense reporter gets, I think the deficit, 
     unemployment, cost overruns on weapons that don't work and/or 
     have nothing to do with winning the war against terrorists--
     along with voter disgust with Washington's spending binge--
     will eventually force the president and Congress to rein in 
     their spending on dubious weapons.
       The overseers will realize that real national security 
     means fixing the national economy, not letting the Defense 
     secretary and Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps 
     continue to drive the taxpayers to the poor house in 
     Cadillacs.
       As one who spent seven and a half months on an aircraft 
     carrier, let me fuel the eventual battle of the Pentagon 
     budget by asking right here and now whether it makes sense in 
     these economic times to build all three of the new carriers 
     of the class named after the late President Gerald R. Ford.
       In its latest Selected Acquisition Report, the Pentagon 
     projects that three of these Ford class carriers will cost a 
     total of $35 billion, or almost $12 billion each. A pilot who 
     really knows carriers from taking off and landing on them 
     thousands of times told me that the bad guys could disable 
     the carrier flight deck with comparatively cheap missiles or 
     do what our own Navy frogmen have already done: Sneak aboard 
     a carrier at night undetected by climbing up its steel sides 
     on magnetic shoes. ``They can make it rain longer than we can 
     swim; the pilot said of those bent on dethroning the queen of 
     the Navy fleet.

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