[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12130]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



          MILITARY IS LOW PRIORITY FOR CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

  (Mr. SCHAFFER asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Madam Speaker, if my colleagues look at this chart 
which shows the extraordinary decline in defense spending under the 
Clinton administration, they might be alarmed at just how low a 
priority the military has been given in recent years.
  But this chart does not tell the whole story. This chart shows the 
cuts in procurement spending, the kind of spending that impacts 
military readiness years down the road.
  Here we see the very cuts of our military capabilities have been 
slashed, especially during the first 2 years of this administration, 
when antimilitary Democrats controlled Congress.

                              {time}  1030

  The scary part about these cuts is that future Presidents will have 
to worry about them long after the current President is out of office. 
Spending on new weapon systems, modernizing old ones and upgrading the 
state-of-the-art equipment have all taken a back seat during this 
administration to new Washington programs that mainly benefit special 
interests.
  Republicans want the best military possible. Military strength tends 
to guarantee the peace. Weakness invites aggression. When will the 
other side learn this lesson?

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