[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19350-19351]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       DEFENSE DEPARTMENT BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, several times over my 29 years 
in Congress, I have wondered whether there are any fiscal conservatives 
at the Pentagon. It seems that the Defense Department is just like 
every other gigantic bureaucracy. When it comes to money, the refrain 
is always more, more, more.
  On November 14, the House passed what one Capitol Hill paper 
described as a $700 billion compromise Defense bill. It was $80 billion 
over the budget caps and many billions more than even President Trump 
had requested.
  I opposed almost all the major initiatives of the Obama 
administration, but it was false to say that the Defense Department had 
been depleted or eviscerated during those years or that now we must 
rebuild the military. In fact, public relations experts in future years 
should conduct studies about how the Defense Department has been able 
to convince the public it has been cut when it is now getting more 
money than ever.

                              {time}  1030

  Defense Department appropriations have more than doubled since 2000. 
In addition, the Department has gotten extra billions in several 
supplemental or emergency appropriations bills.
  The military construction bill is a separate bill that has added 
another $109.5 billion over the last 10 years. It would be hard to find 
any U.S. military base anyplace in the world that has not had several 
new buildings constructed over the last few years.
  In fiscal year 2016, we spent over $177 billion on new equipment, 
tanks, guns, et cetera. We have spent similar amounts for many years. 
Most of this equipment does not wear out or have to be replaced after 
just 1 year.
  It is ironic that the only President in the last 60 or 70 years who 
has tried to rein in defense spending is the only President in that 
period who spent most of his career in the military.
  In Evan Thomas' book, ``Ike's Bluff,'' when told by his top staffer 
that he could not reduce defense spending, President Eisenhower said if 
he gave another star to every general who cut his budget, ``there would 
be such a rush to cut costs, you'll have to get out of the way.''
  The book also quotes Eisenhower as saying: ``Heaven help us if we 
ever have a President who doesn't know as much about the military as I 
do.''
  Therein lies an explanation for a big part of what has caused much 
excessive and/or wasteful defense spending and the willingness, even at 
times eagerness, to go to war and support permanent, never-ending wars.
  Only 18 percent of the current Congress has ever served in any branch 
of the military. Members are afraid that if they do not vote for an 
increase in defense spending or if they question waste by the military, 
some demagogue will accuse them of ``not supporting the troops.''
  It would be a huge understatement to say that I usually do not agree 
with New York Times editorials, but the editorial board, on October 22, 
published an editorial entitled ``America's Forever Wars,'' pointing 
out that ``the United States has been at war continuously since the 
attacks of 9/11'' and now has ``troops in at least 172 countries. . . 
.''
  The board wrote that so far, the American people have ``seemed to 
accept'' all this militarism, but ``it's a very real question whether, 
in addition to endorsing these commitments, which have cost trillions 
of dollars and many lives over 16 years, they will embrace new 
entanglements. . . .''
  The New York Times added that ``Congress has spent little time 
considering such issues in a comprehensive way or debating why all 
these deployments are needed.''
  Backing these words up was a cartoon in the October 25 issue of 
Politico, a Capitol Hill newspaper. The cartoon showed six Senators 
sitting at a hearing. The first Senator, reading a newspaper, says: Who 
knew we had troops in Niger?
  The second says: Heck, we don't even know how the military budget 
gets spent.
  Finally, the cartoon shows a Senator saying: War is hell. I say we 
just give the Pentagon an extra $80 billion and call it a day.
  Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, himself a veteran, as am I, 
wrote on October 23: ``But there is something else at work here: the 
slavish veneration now accorded the military. You can see it every time 
someone in uniform testifies before Congress.''
  Since now that less than 1 percent of the people serve in the 
military, it may be that many people who never served feel, perhaps 
even subconsciously, that they must bend over backwards to show their 
patriotism. However, it is not unpatriotic to oppose wasteful defense 
spending or very unnecessary permanent, forever wars.
  President Reagan once said: ``Our troops should be committed to 
combat abroad only as a last resort, when no other choice is 
available.''
  We have far too many leaders today who seem to want to be new Winston 
Churchills and who are far too eager to send people to war. No true 
fiscal conservative could ever justify spending many billions more than 
even President Trump requested.
  Our national debt recently went over the $20 trillion level. A few 
days ago, it was reported that the deficit for fiscal year 2017 was 
$666 billion. This fiscal year, it may be even higher.
  Conservatives used to be against huge deficit spending. They also 
used to be against massive foreign aid. Much of what we have been doing 
in both Iraq and Afghanistan, training police and farmers, repairing 
electrical and water systems, even making small business loans, is pure 
foreign aid.
  Many of our foreign interventions have been done under the auspices 
or authority of the United Nations.
  Conservatives used to be the biggest critics of the U.N. and world 
government. Most of our

[[Page 19351]]

so-called ``coalitions'' have been funded almost entirely by American 
taxpayers.
  Most interventionists at some point resort to a slur referring to 
their opponents as isolationists. This is so false.
  Traditional conservatives support trade and tourism and cultural and 
educational exchanges with other countries and they agree with helping 
during humanitarian crises.
  They just don't believe in dragging war out forever, primarily so 
defense contractors, think tanks, and military bureaucrats can get more 
money.
  One last point: We have far too many officers. In Scott Berg's 
biography on Woodrow Wilson, it says during World War I, we had one 
officer for every 30 enlisted men.
  Eisenhower once said we had too many officers when there were nine 
enlisted for every officer. Now we have one officer for only four and a 
half to five and a half enlisted (varies by branch).
  This is very expensive, both for active duty and retirement, but it 
also makes it much more likely that we will get involved in every 
little conflict around the world and/or continue basing troops in 
almost every country.
  We simply do not have enough money to pay for defense of so many 
countries other than our own nor the authority under our Constitution 
to try to run the whole world.

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