[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 192 (Wednesday, December 14, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H8904]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICA'S UNSUSTAINABLE PATH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. One thing that most of the Occupy Wall Street 
protesters and the majority of the Tea Party advocates agree upon is 
that the United States is not on a sustainable path.
  The economy is still floundering. We are in too many cases losing the 
competition to other countries in things like building, maintaining our 
infrastructure for the future and in keeping up with the advances of 
education. We have the world's most expensive health care system that 
leaves too many people without coverage and provides the Nation overall 
with mediocre results.
  Americans get sick more often, take longer to get well, and die 
sooner than most of our European competitors; and half that cost is 
loaded on the backs of the employers and embedded in the prices of 
their products.
  But perhaps the most glaring example of unsustainability is not our 
health care system or our tax system; it is the massive defense and 
security spending with escalating costs, which is, sadly, not 
strategically oriented.
  We cannot continue to spend almost as much as the rest of the world, 
friend and foe alike, combined. Our military was stressed, and 
continues to be hobbled by the reckless action in Iraq and further 
challenged by the war in Afghanistan. Yet we have a defense 
reauthorization that we will be considering on the floor today that 
ignores the big picture, does not lay the foundation for a dramatic 
scaling back of open-ended spending commitments, especially in dealing 
with issues like a nuclear weapons system far more expensive and out of 
proportion to what we will ever need or use. There are patterns of 
deployment that cry out for reform.
  There are long overdue elements to deal with cost-effectiveness and 
the environmental footprint. Energy costs of $400 a gallon for fuel to 
the front, billions of dollars just for air-conditioning are symbols of 
a system that is not sustainable. We need key improvements. 
Unfortunately, we're on a path of trying to do more than we can or that 
we should do.
  The greatest threat to our future is losing control of our ability to 
sustain the military because we can't sustain the economy. Unlike the 
past, we feel now that we don't have enough money to train and educate 
our next generation. It is a problem now that American infrastructure 
is not keeping pace with the demands of our communities, let alone the 
global economy.
  We should reject this blueprint. We should begin the process now of 
right-sizing the military, of getting rid of the burdensome nuclear 
overreach and patterns from the past--spending on things that would 
help us with the Cold War or World War II, maybe even do a slightly 
better job on the misguided mission in Iraq--but not the most pressing 
challenges for American security in this century.
  We have the most powerful military in the world and will, by far, 
even if we invest substantially less. Our problem is that the American 
public is being ill-served by a government that is not investing in our 
future and in an economy that will not be able to sustain ever-
increasing military commitments, to say nothing of the demands of 
investing in our communities and our people, especially the young.

                              {time}  1010

  I was, from the beginning, appalled at the burden we were asking of 
our young men and women to bear when we put them in the reckless Iraq 
adventure. People who are in the front deserve our best in terms of 
equipment and facilities. They and their families need to be well cared 
for, not just in the field but when they come home. We can do this, 
even in difficult times, if we get our priorities right. And we can get 
our priorities straight and the job done with less money.
  The cuts initiated by Secretary Gates and the Obama administration, 
plus what would be required by sequestration, would only bring our 
defense establishment to the level of 2007, adjusted for inflation. 
There is no question that over the next 10 years, we can manage that 
transition and that we will have to do it. What is sad is that the bill 
we will be considering today doesn't make the progress we need to get 
us there.

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