[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 47 (Monday, April 4, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E615-E616]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      PROTECTING NATIONAL SECURITY BY CUTTING THE MILITARY BUDGET

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 4, 2011

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, two things are very clear. 
One, we should over the next years adopt a plan for substantially 
reducing our national debt. Two, we cannot do that in a reasonable way 
without making substantial reductions in America's worldwide military 
footprint. For too long we have allowed the rest of the world to become 
dependent on us. As our wealthy allies cut their own military budgets, 
we are expected to increase ours. The recent Libyan situation 
illustrates the problem we have created for ourselves by encouraging 
this sense of dependence on the part of so many wealthy nations. 
America is thousands of miles away from Libya while many of our 
strongest and closest--and prosperous--allies are within hundreds of 
miles. But it fell to America to take the lead in the coalition effort 
against Libya and the reason for that, we were told, is that only 
America had the capability to do it. To the extent that it is true, it 
is a shortcoming that we must remedy. We must insist that our wealthy 
allies no longer expect us to shoulder so much of the burden. It is 
important that we recalibrate our military spending to more closely 
approximate our own genuine needs, and if we do not do that, there is 
no way to bring the budget deficit down in a responsible way.
  Mr. Speaker, Winslow Wheeler is a thoughtful student of military 
spending and understands how America's genuine defense would be 
enhanced and not in any way threatened by a substantial scaling back of 
military expenditures. He wrote a very thoughtful article explaining 
this in the Wednesday, March 9 issue of the Hill, and because no issue 
is more important than getting the budget deficit down in a responsible 
way, I ask that that article be reprinted here.

               The Defense Budget: Ignorance Is Not Bliss

                        (By Winslow T. Wheeler)

       Polling from Pew and Gallup reveals major public 
     misconceptions about the defense budget. Fifty-eight percent 
     of Americans know that Pentagon spending is larger than any 
     other nation, but almost none know it is up to seven times 
     that of China. Most had no idea the defense budget is larger 
     than federal spending for education, Medicare or interest on 
     the debt.
       The scurrilous in Washington promote the misimpression of 
     an under-funded Pentagon. They imply it is smaller than 
     during the Cold War by saying it was at 8 percent of gross 
     domestic product in the late 1960s, but only 4 percent of GDP 
     now. Therefore, it's gone down and is now low, right?
       Some use hyperventilated rhetoric to pressure for more 
     defense dollars. Sadly, this category now must include 
     Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who termed 
     ``catastrophic'' the recommendations of the

[[Page E616]]

     Obama deficit commission to merely maintain defense spending 
     at its post-WWII high, and who deemed a ``crisis'' the idea 
     of a 1 percent--$5 billion--reduction in the 2011 defense 
     budget compared to 2010.
       Some on Capitol Hill, such as the chairman of the House 
     Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), blanch 
     at the idea of restraining defense spending, claiming it 
     would be ``dangerous'' to do anything but grow the defense 
     budget while the nation is ``at war.''
       They don't just ignore the facts, they torture them--but 
     that's nothing new in politics. What is different, however, 
     is that the aggressive ignorance about the defense budget is 
     beginning to shrivel, revealing a new paradigm: the defense 
     budget is outrageously bloated.
       The new conventional wisdom is that we now spend more on 
     the Pentagon than at any time since WWII, and that President 
     Obama will exceed George W. Bush's defense spending. Some 
     even appreciate that he will also exceed Ronald Reagan's. 
     Others understand defense spending does not just exceed a few 
     other functions in presidents' budgets, it exceeds them all, 
     except one--Social Security. In most cases, DOD doesn't just 
     exceed the others; it is multiples of them.
       During the Cold War, we averaged $450 billion annual 
     Pentagon budgets. Today, with no massive conventional threat 
     and a much-diminished nuclear one, we operate at spending 
     levels more than $200 billion higher, if you include funding 
     for the wars--almost $100 billion higher if you do not.
       The distortion of a lesser threat compelling more spending 
     is propelling the paradigm shift.
       Moreover, the wars we have been fighting are against poorly 
     trained and equipped irregulars. It is not to diminish the 
     sacrifice the national leadership extracts from the men and 
     women who serve in Afghanistan and, previously, Iraq, but 
     today's conflicts are--materially--minor events compared to 
     the wars in Korea and Vietnam, when we deployed hundreds of 
     thousands more and faced more than 200 Soviet and Warsaw Pact 
     divisions in Europe.
       While we have spent more than $1.3 trillion for Iraq and 
     Afghanistan since 2001 (in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars), 
     we also added another trillion dollars to the parts of the 
     defense budget that the Pentagon tells us is not for the 
     wars--the so-called ``base'' budget.
       Just before 9/11 we were operating at an annual level of 
     spending for the Pentagon at $400 billion. Today, in the same 
     inflation-adjusted dollars, we are operating at a ``base'' 
     budget level well above $500 billion. It is in that context 
     that we are told by Gates and McKeon that a 1 percent 
     reduction in a single year constitutes a ``crisis'' or 
     something ``dangerous.''
       The real crisis is what has been happening to our forces. 
     With a $300 billion increase in funding, the Navy's 
     ``battleforce'' shrank from 318 ships in 2000 to 287 in 2010. 
     With more than $300 billion added to its budget, the Air 
     Force shrank from 146 combat squadrons to 72. The Army burned 
     another $300 billion to increase brigade combat team 
     equivalents from 44 to just 46. According to data from the 
     Congressional Budget Office, this includes not a smaller, 
     newer equipment inventory, but an older one.
       Worse, the Pentagon can't track its own inventory, 
     financial transactions, or even what it has paid out to 
     contractors and received in return. Despite the 
     accountability clause of the Constitution, the General 
     Accounting Act of 1921, and the Chief Financial Officers Act 
     of 1990, the Pentagon has maintained itself in a state where 
     it cannot be audited.
       But then, if I were presiding over this mess, I would want 
     not you to know the facts either.

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