[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 59 (Wednesday, April 5, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H2704-H2705]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE COST OF DEFENDING OUR COUNTRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, defense spending was $348 
billion in 2002. Now it is well over $600 billion a year, and this 
total does not include the military construction budget which has 
totaled more than $181 billion over the last 10 years, and many 
billions more in supplemental appropriations. There is presently a 
request for another $30 billion supplemental appropriations for the 
military.
  On top of all this, almost every year for the 29 years I have been 
here, there has been an end-of-the-year omnibus appropriations bill 
which always contains even more for the Defense Department.

                              {time}  1045

  I have always believed that national defense is one the most 
important, most legitimate functions of the Federal Government. But I 
am also a fiscal conservative.
  With our Nation $20 trillion in debt and many trillions more in 
unfunded future Social Security and pensions liability in the years 
ahead, we desperately need some fiscal conservatives in the Pentagon.
  I realize that the easiest thing in the world to do is to spend other 
people's money; and you can never satisfy any government's appetite for 
money or land. They always want more. But it is a myth to say or think 
that the Defense Department is underfunded when defense spending has 
doubled since 2002.
  Yet, even though this spending has gone way up, most people around 
the country seem to believe it has gone way down. We hear some saying 
the military has been decimated or has undergone drastic cuts. This has 
been a masterful public relations job, I assume, by the Pentagon, 
working with defense contractors and think tanks funded by the defense 
industry.
  Last year, we spent $177.5 billion for new equipment, tanks, planes, 
weapons of all sorts. Most of this equipment does not wear out after 
just 1 year, yet we keep spending similar amounts on new equipment 
every year.
  I mentioned that the military construction funds are in a separate 
bill, not in the regular Defense Department appropriations bill. The 
$181 billion we have appropriated over the last 10 years in this bill 
means you probably cannot find any military base in the world without 
new construction going on, and much more that is only 3 or 4 years old 
or even newer.
  We have a $20 trillion national debt. Last week, I read in The 
Washington Times that the estimate now is that we will be $91 trillion 
in debt 30 years from now. Obviously, if we allow that much debt, we 
will be printing so much money that our Social Security and military 
and civil service pensions will be worth very little.
  In the biography, ``Bonhoeffer,'' about the famous theologian, by 
Eric Metaxas, it says that, in 1921, the currency exchange rate was 75 
German marks to the dollar. The next year, it was 400 marks to the 
dollar. Then inflation really took off, and, by early 1923, it was 
7,000 to 1.
  Metaxas wrote: ``The resultant economic turmoil would make the bleak 
conditions of a few months earlier look like the good old days.''
  By August, a dollar was worth 1 million marks. The book says: ``By 
the end of 1923, things had become impossible. In October, Dietrich 
wrote that every meal cost 1 billion marks.''
  Germany, in the early 1920s, was one of the most educated countries 
in the world. It is hard to imagine what could happen here in the 
United States if we continue to spend money we do not have and run 
trillions more into debt.
  With the exception of a brief downturn in 1958, President Eisenhower 
gave the Nation 8 years of peace and prosperity and balanced budgets, 
and he looks better with the passage of time. He spent most of his 
career in the military and loved and respected that institution.
  But in a new book called ``Ike's Bluff,'' by Evan Thomas, is this 
very interesting observation: ``Eisenhower

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was, in effect, his own Secretary of Defense.'' When Defense Secretary 
Neil McElroy warned him that further budget cuts could harm national 
security, Eisenhower acerbically replied: If you go to any military 
installation in the world where the American flag is flying and tell 
the Commander that Ike says he'll give him an extra star for his 
shoulder if he cuts his budget, there'll be such a rush to cut costs 
that you'll have to get out of the way.''
  He would periodically sigh to Andy Goodpaster, his Chief of Staff, 
``God help the Nation when it has a President who doesn't know as much 
about the military as I do.''
  As we all know, Eisenhower made a famous statement in his farewell 
address warning against the excesses of the military-industrial 
complex. I think, Mr. Speaker, he would be shocked at how far we have 
gone down that road against which he warned us.

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