[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10573-10574]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        AMERICA'S FISCAL CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Forbes) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FORBES. Mr. Speaker, our country truly is facing a financial 
crisis. I guess the good news is that even Congress is beginning to ask 
a question that is part of that financial crisis, which is simply this:
  How long can we continue to spend almost twice as much money as we 
bring in?
  The unfortunate part is that we've waited so long to ask that 
question. I wish we'd asked it before we embarked upon the series of 
bailouts and stimulus bills that we have embarked upon over the last 
several years. I am happy that I'm one of only 17 Members of Congress 
who voted against each and every one of those, but I'm unhappy where it 
has brought us, which is the fear that we had: that this runaway 
spending would bring us to a point where we had to begin cutting the 
national defense capabilities of our country.
  Today, we will vote on the Defense appropriations bill, H.R. 2219, 
which will reduce the President's budget for national defense by $8.9 
billion. That's only a downpayment of the cuts that are going to come. 
The next cuts, we are told, could be $400 billion to $700 billion from 
our national defense. Before we do that, there are two crucial 
questions we need to ask.
  The first one is: What is the risk assessment that the United States 
faces today?
  Now, that should be answered by our Quadrennial Defense Review, but 
if you look at a bipartisan independent assessment of that Quadrennial 
Defense Review, you'll find out that we are a train wreck that is on 
its way to happening because that defense assessment has truly become 
no more than a reaffirmation of what we are already doing.
  The second thing that we should be asking before we decide what we 
can cut is how much we are currently spending and what the risk will be 
if we make those cuts. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense hasn't 
provided us with the audited financial statements the law requires so 
that we know where we're spending those dollars and so that we know the 
true risk of making those cuts.
  Yet, Mr. Speaker, let me just tell you that there is a way you can 
find out. Our commanders in the field provide us with the Quarterly 
Readiness Report to Congress, which is a classified document. Now, I 
know as chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee for the Armed Services 
Committee that I'm in the minority, and am probably going to vote 
against this bill today.

                              {time}  1050

  But, Mr. Speaker, I am also in the minority of the individuals who 
have

[[Page 10574]]

read this classified report. And the one thing that I would encourage 
our Members to do before they cast their vote today to begin down that 
series of cuts to our national defense is at least go in to our staff 
today and read the Quarterly Readiness Report to Congress that is a 
classified document. Our staff is ready to show you the document, to 
let you review that document. And, Mr. Speaker, I believe if you will 
just do that, it will be very difficult to then come on this floor and 
begin to start voting to cut and make the cuts we're going to make to 
national defense. Mr. Speaker, that's why today I can't support that 
bill and will be voting against it.

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