[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16232-16233]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            FEDERAL SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, it seems that the Federal Government is so 
big and bureaucratic that it cannot do anything in an economical or 
efficient way. In fact, we read and hear about so many examples of 
waste of Federal money that we too often take it for granted or shrug 
our shoulders about it.
  The San Francisco Chronicle reported recently that the Defense 
Department ``couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in 
financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and 
planes.'' Listen to what this story said:
  ``Though defense has long been notorious for waste, recent government 
reports suggest the Pentagon's money management woes have reached 
astronomical proportions. A study by the Defense Department's Inspector 
General found that the Pentagon couldn't properly account for more than 
a trillion dollars in monies spent. A GAO report found defense 
inventory systems so lax that the U.S. Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 
32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile command launch units.''
  This story, Mr. Speaker, was not based on reports from some 
antidefense group. It came from studies done by the Defense 
Department's own Inspector General and the General Accounting Office of 
the Congress. This comes on the heels of the Congress overwhelmingly 
voting for the biggest increase in defense spending ever. And now the 
Defense Department wants another mega-billion increase and a mega-
billion supplemental appropriation, all taking place after we downsized 
the military by about 1 million troops and closed several bases. All of 
us want to support the military, but surely we cannot just sit around 
and allow such horrendous waste to continue.
  Then there is the case, Mr. Speaker, of Eric Rudolph. The FBI spent 
untold millions and had hundreds of agents involved over several years 
in this manhunt. The FBI should be embarrassed that Rudolph was finally 
found by a rookie local small-town police officer who had only been on 
the force for about 9 months. And he found him in Rudolph's home area. 
We give far too much of our law enforcement dollar to Federal agencies 
which make only a very tiny fraction of the arrests, probably less than 
1 percent. What we need to do is give far more of our law enforcement 
money to local police and sheriff's departments. They are the officers 
who are fighting the real crime, the street crime that people want 
fought.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, talk about waste, we have spent hundreds of 
billions, with a B, on our intelligence agencies over the last 10 or 15 
years. We spend more on intelligence than all the rest of the world 
combined. We will vote to authorize even more spending on intelligence 
tomorrow. Yet during this time our intelligence agencies missed the 
coming down of the Berlin Wall; they missed, failed to predict, the 
breakup of the Soviet Union; they missed on 9/11. Worst of all, they 
missed or exaggerated on Iraq. Even the Weekly Standard, probably the 
most pro-war publication in America today said, ``The failure to 
discover stocks of WMD material in post-Saddam Iraq raises legitimate 
questions about the quality of U.S. and allied intelligence.''
  Columnist Josh Marshall, writing in The Hill newspaper asked: ``Did 
we

[[Page 16233]]

have bad intelligence? Did political appointees dismiss good, but less 
threatening intelligence? Or was damning intelligence actually cooked 
up for political purposes? Those are all legitimate questions. But when 
Congress starts trying to get at the answers, we should be open to the 
more complex but in its own way no less disturbing possibility that at 
least some of the main proponents of this war were so consumed by their 
goal to crush Saddam and so driven by ideology that they fooled 
themselves as much as anyone else.''
  These are good, legitimate and very important questions. Another good 
question: Why did the National Security Agency find out ``about the 
attacks of 9/11 by watching CNN,'' as reported by intelligence expert 
and author James Bamford?

                              {time}  2200

  This is an agency that we built a plush supertechnical $320 million 
building for a few years ago at a cost of $320 a square foot. Probably 
the most important question of all, why are we getting so little and so 
much of that for all these hundreds of billions of taxpayer money?
  The standard response of all Federal departments and agencies when 
they are criticized is that they were underfunded. If they had just 
been given more money, this or that problem would not have occurred. 
These agencies, if anything, are overfunded, far more money than any 
company in the private sector. Our intelligence committees are filled 
with good people; but no one seeks to serve, much less is appointed, to 
the intelligence committees unless they are strong supporters of the 
intelligence community. Once they are on the committee, they are 
heavily courted by the intelligence agencies. So it will be very 
difficult for a member of these committees in either body to ask the 
really tough questions that need to be asked. But, Mr. Speaker, I hope 
for the sake of our own taxpayers and for the future of national 
security of this Nation that someone on one of the intelligence 
committees will start asking the hard questions and demanding the 
truthful answers that our citizens deserve.

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