The problem is focused on one number. If they talk about that this is not a cut in defense spending, we need to look and examine that, which I will do in a few minutes. Actually, thanks to the Obama…
The problem is focused on one number. If they talk about that this is not a cut in defense spending, we need to look and examine that, which I will do in a few minutes. Actually, thanks to the Obama administration, overall defense spending has been cut by $10.7 billion in 2009. You might say 2009 was not his year. It was. The second half of the emergency supplemental fell under his jurisdiction, so that is an accurate figure. It would be cut again in fiscal year 2010, based on projected inflation and the potential use of what is now being called overseas contingency. I call that the global war on terror. They want to rename it now. It sounds a little more palatable to some of these editorial liberals to whom I have already referred.
We have reached a crossroads where we will have to choose to either invest in the modernization and readiness of our military or kick the can down the road. That is what we have been doing for a long time.
We had a hearing yesterday in the Readiness Subcommittee, chaired by Evan Bayh. The ranking member is Richard Burr. We went over all of this with some of the top people in the military. Quite frankly, they agreed with all these comments that I am making today and I made yesterday on this committee. Based on the projected defense budget for the next 10 years, it looks as though the administration is taking us down the same path that led to a weaker and poorly equipped military.
It is interesting that a lot of the people over the years who have been critical of defense spending--talking about liberals who are here in this Chamber--are the same ones now saying: Wait a minute, our Guard and Reserve can't handle the op tempo. That is a term used, ``operation tempo,'' number of deployments and all this. The problem we have is that we gone through--and I will show this in a minute--a period of time in the 1990s where we downgraded the military, and then we turned around and along comes 9/11. All of a sudden, we have a President who has to prosecute a war, at the same time trying to build a military.
The plan he announced is intended to reshape the priorities of America's defense establishment and profoundly reform how DOD does business. I agree that we need to have procurement reforms in the Pentagon. There is no question about that. But let's don't use that for an excuse to cut modernization programs.
I was in Afghanistan at the time this decision was announced, and it comes at a time in our history when we have dramatically increased our domestic spending in trillions of dollars under the umbrella of emergency bailouts and stimulus packages and all of that. If you stop and think about the amount of money this administration has really spent--look at the $700 billion bailout. Then you have the $789 billion stimulus package. Then you have the omnibus bill that is $410 billion. That adds up to $2 trillion. That is in the first 3 months. So when you look and think of the stimulus package, how much better would it have been if we could have had more defense spending at that time. There is nothing that employs more people, that better stimulates the economy than defense spending. We tried to do that. Of course, that was defeated. So this President is on track to grow this country's obligations to 22 percent of our GDP while he shrinks defense spending probably down to 3 percent. Right now, it is at 4 percent of GDP. As I calculate, it will be down to 3 percent.
Let's see the chart. I would like to show people so there is no question about this. The chart we have here shows what happened back in the 1990s. The black line on top is when Bill Clinton came into office. That is fiscal year 1993. As it is projected forward for the next 8 years, the black line would say--let's say we want to keep defense spending in terms exactly as it is today, back in 1993, except for inflation. That black line is where it would be if we had kept that level of defense spending. The red line was the Clinton budget. That is what I am saying. We are going through the same thing now percentage- wise, almost the same thing that we went through there. So the difference between the Clinton budget and what would have happened with the level of spending is $412 billion. So you can say that is a $412 billion cut.
Many of us on the floor of the Senate in the 1990s--me probably more than anybody else--talked about these dramatic, massive cuts in procurement and modernization. With very few exceptions, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have been using the same weapons systems while fighting a two-pronged war for 8 years, weapons and weapons systems from back during the Cold War, the same ones we are using today. We have been unsuccessfully trying to get past this bow wave created in the 1990s when the military budget was cut by $412 billion and acquisition programs and research and development were pushed to the right. That is a term we use that means if you are going to delay something, you push it to the right.
The cost of kicking our military modernization down the road is twofold in that the increase in the cost to modernize and the increased cost to develop and fuel new weapons is an increased cost to operate and maintain. It gets to the point where it is like the car you drive. You buy a new car. You drive it for 20 years. At least that is what I do. You finally get to the point where you are paying more to maintain that car than if you would get a new one. A lot of that is because of the accounting system that Government has. It is somewhat guilty of forcing this type of thing. But that is what has happened. We have forced ourselves to use older and older stuff.
Our major combat systems that our troops are using today are those developed and procured during the 1980s. Some of them go all the way back to the 1950s. The Reagan administration was handed a military, everyone agrees now, that was a hollow force. No one questions that. At that time, people thought: There is not going to be any problem now. And then when the Cold War was over, everyone had this euphoria: We no longer have a threat out there. The Cold War is over. The term they used, if you will remember, was--I can't remember what it was now. It was a great benefit to put that money into social programs, which is what we are doing today. A peace bonus, that is what it was.
So anyway, our combat systems are older and older, and the Reagan administration expanded the military budget, increased troop size, reenergized weapons procurement, revived intelligence capabilities, and returned this country to its superpower status that it had been in the past. He guaranteed the superiority of the U.S. military's weapons systems capabilities through long-term investments and ensuring that our troops were provided with the most advanced equipment available.
Secretary Gates said in January of 2009:
Our military must be prepared for a full spectrum of
operations, including the type of combat we are facing in
Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as large-scale threats that we
face from places like North Korea and Iran.
I want to say one more time that I don't blame Secretary Gates. I am glad he is the Secretary of Defense. I just wish he had a better hand dealt him so he could do a better job. I think he is operating under the limitations of a White House that is just not a prodefense White House. Far too often, we have learned the hard lessons that we don't have a crystal ball to precisely predict what our needs will be in the future.
This actually happened to me. The last year I served in the House was 1994.
I was on the House Armed Services Committee at that time. I will always remember we had someone come in and testify and say that in 10 years we will no longer need ground troops. They were talking about all the precision stuff the Air Force does and the technology that was coming. That was testimony a lot of people rejoiced to hear so they could start cutting the Marine Corps and the Army, which is exactly what happened. Then what happened? Then we had Bosnia and we had Kosovo and we had Iraq and we had Afghanistan. Now, after 7 years engaged in the war on terror, we know he was wrong.
The strategic environment has become increasingly complex, dynamic, lethal, and uncertain. Today, our military is fighting with equipment that is decades old and with a force structure that is 40 percent less than it was in the 1980s. That is essentially what was cut during this timeframe right here. It was a cut of about 40 percent, if we take the budgets at the beginning and the end of it.
So we are talking about force structure and modernization. Right now, the Air Force has 2,500 fewer aircraft. The Navy has cut its fleet size in half. The Army has reduced its force to half the number of divisions it had during the first gulf war. This all happened in the 1990s. For the past 17 years, our military has been asked to do more with less.
One of the concerns I had back during the 1990s, when they were cutting the force strength--that was back during the time they were all rejoicing with this euphoric attitude I mentioned that the Cold War was over and we do not need a military anymore--so they were cutting it back at that time and believing we were not going to have to have the needs we were going to have. Unfortunately, what took less than a decade to field in the 1980s will now take us several decades to field. In the case of KC-X, the KC-X was supposed to be online. We were supposed to actually have it by this time. Right now, our fueling capability is done with KC-135s.
I will say this: At Tinker Air Force Base, they do a great job of taking these ancient aircraft and continuing them in service. But there will come a point where we can no longer continue to do that. In the United States, we are going to have to build and sustain military capabilities required to respond to possible future threats across the spectrum.
Wouldn't it be great if we knew what the next war was going to be like? We have never been in that position. We have tried to guess, but we have always been wrong. The next war will not be like the past one or even like the one we are in now. History has taught us that very hard lesson. It also does not mean the next war will be like the one we might have to fight 5 or 10 years from now. The decisions we make today on the Senate floor will set the stage for what happens in the next 40 years. I wish there were time. I wish we could instantly determine what our needs will be 20 years from now and not
have to prepare in advance. We cannot do that. Does anyone want to hazard a guess what the world will be like in 20 years?
There is a Marine Corps general. I have his name down here somewhere. In just this past February, he made this statement to a bunch of young marines. I was over there at the time he made it. This is a quote I want to read:
You say the next conflict will be a guerrilla conflict. I
say, it depends. In my lifetime, we have been in 5 big fights
and a bunch of little ones. In only one of those 5 big ones--
And Desert Storm is what he was referring to--
had we prepared for the type of war we wound up having to
fight.
That is one out of five.
It is one thing to say that a certain type of fight is more
or less likely; it is quite another to say it is certain to
be one or the other. In war, the only thing certain is
uncertainty.
He went on to say:
It may be that nobody can beat us in a conventional fight
today, but what we buy today is what we will have to fight
with in 2020.
Furthermore, advertising that our focus of effort is on the
low-to-mid intensity fights of the future reduces the
deterrence that powerful conventional capabilities
demonstrate to traditional state actors. Non-state actors,
guerrillas, terrorists are not likely to be deterred by our
capabilities. Nation-states are.
See, we are used to that. He is dead right in this case. We knew during the Second World War who the enemies were: Germany and Japan. We knew their capabilities. During the Cold War, we knew the capabilities. I sometimes look wistfully back on the days of the Cold War because at least then it was predictable. We knew how they thought, their thinking process. We knew their capabilities.
He goes on to say:
We had better well have the capability to fight the
guerrilla and the nation-state, regardless of which of these
is more or less likely.
That is a very wise man. He is advising his young marines, and they listened, and it makes sense.
We were not able to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, the rapid growth of the ballistic missile capability of North Korea, or the rise in the asymmetric warfare in which we are currently engaged. It does not matter how great our military leaders or intelligence is, our strategic thinking will always be imperfect. We have a lot of smart generals out there, and they are going to try to tell us what we are going to need 10 or 15 years from now, and they are going to be wrong because they have always been wrong. They understand that, as that Marine Corps general stated.
In order to provide stability, America is going to have to be able to deter or defeat any threat, be it an insurgency or a challenge from a near-peer competitor. We cannot any longer fool ourselves that we are still sending our sons and daughters out with the best equipment.
When I talk to people around the country, there is an assumption out there that when we go to war, regardless of what kind of war-- asymmetrical or conventional warfare--we are sending our kids out with the best of equipment. That is not true.
In a minute, I am going to show you that there are other countries that have things that are better than what we have in our defense capability, in our effort to conduct warfare. But before I do that, let me at least address what all these critics of me were saying when we talked about how much less money right now we are going to be projecting into our force structure, in our military spending, if we do the math. So let's go ahead and do it.
As I stated earlier, we need to look at the total defense budget-- what DOD actually spends on all its operations.
During the Bush administration, the sources that funded our defenses were not all just DOD or the Department of Defense, appropriations and authorizations. They were also the DOE funds. DOE has a lot of funds for nuclear ships and weapons. We have certainly wartime supplementals. All of those added up to what we spent on defense. What they are trying to do now is say, well, the DOD appropriations are actually going to be greater today than they were in fiscal year 2009. Well, that may be true, but that is not the total amount of defense spending. That is just a small part of it.
I think the best evidence of that is to see what systems we have to cut in order to act under the confines of this budgeting.
First, there is a net loss in defense spending in 2009 of $10.7 billion. This is the second increment of the supplemental that came under the jurisdiction of the current administration, the Obama administration. President Bush increased the total defense budget in 2009 by $37.2 billion.
He also approved $65.9 billion in supplemental funds for the first part of fiscal year 2009.
President Obama's supplemental request of $75.5 billion for defense needs funds an increase of 21,000 troops. Well, I agree with his message that we need to increase the number of troops and increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. That is very reasonable. But we are going to have to pay for those troops, and we cannot pay for those troops with the same amount of money we had when we had 21,000 fewer troops.
The GAO report on the cost of the Iraq withdrawal said it will be a ``massive and expensive effort'' . . . that costs would more often increase in the near term. In other words, as you draw down in Iraq, that is going to increase the actual cost.
It went on to say that the cost of equipment repairs, replacements, closing, and turning over 283 military installations in Iraq and moving troops and equipment home ``will likely be significant.''
Unfortunately, defense spending actually decreases in 2009 by $10.7 billion due to President Obama's decreased total supplemental request from $189 billion to $141 billion.
So let's compare 2009 to 2010, where I have been accused of not being able to do the math.
Defense spending does increase from 2009 to 2010 by $14.9 billion. But according to President Obama's letter to Speaker Pelosi, there will be no more supplementals. If we take the supplementals out, then it is a dramatic reduction in spending. That would mean DOD would have to fund all wartime operations out of the hide to the tune of $100 billion-plus.
However, President Obama does fence off $130 billion for ``Overseas Contingency Funds.'' Well, that is within the budget, and I guess that is what he now calls the war on terror. Even adding the $130 billion to defense spending--which is never the case with supplemental funding-- the overall increase in defense spending for 2010 is $3.5 billion.
I say that because we know when we have an emergency supplemental, everybody puts everything they can into it, and that is where the effort is taking place.
Now, we add the accelerated growth of the Army and Marine Corps--a 65,000 and 22,000 increase, respectively--at a cost of approximately $13 billion to cover pay and health care costs, and we start to see the beginnings of how our military modernization gets gutted.
The DOD has certain ``must pays,'' things they have to pay. They have to pay personnel, operations and maintenance, ongoing wartime, and contingency operations. With a zero supplemental fund, the money to pay for these ``must pays'' will be taken from the base Defense budget, and the areas that are always hit are research and development and acquisition. There we are talking about modernization.
So what I would like to do--well, first of all, just look at what is being cut. We know about the Future Combat System. I am going to cover these in a minute, but there are the F-22s, the C-17s, the national missile defense system, the future bombers, and it does not stop in 2010.
As we look at the projected defense budget through 2019, we see a decreasing defense budget compared to GDP starting at 3.8 percent in 2010 and ending with 3 percent in 2019.
This is interesting to compare, to use the percentage of GDP. If we go back and look at what happened in the entire 20th century--for 100 years--and we take the average of defense spending as a percentage of GDP, it is 5.7 percent--5.7 percent. I have been asking to just keep it at no less than 4 percent. Right now, it is a little under 4 percent, but it would go down to 3 percent with the budget expectations we are looking at right now.
So when compared to a sustained annual defense investment of 4 percent of GDP to recapitalize and modernize our military, the 10-year proposed Obama defense budget is $1.3 trillion in the
red. It is so similar to what we went through in the 1990s. I do not like to be overly critical, but there are a lot of people who are liberal people who generally, in their own mind, do not think we need a military. I have listened. They will never admit it. But they say, well, if all nations would stand in a circle and hold hands and unilaterally disarm, all threats would go away.
I respect people who have this opinion, even though the opinion is wrong.
So we have ships and naval aircraft that currently average being 18 years old, and Marine Corps aircraft that now average being over 21 years old. Refueling tankers--I am talking about the KC-135s--are over 44 years old; Air Force fighter aircraft, 19 years old; special operations aircraft, over 27 years old. Special ops--everyone realizes what a great job they are doing. It is kind of like the Marine Corps. They always have to make do with older equipment but never complain about it.
In order to keep 40-year-old KC-135s in the air, the DOD had to reprogram almost $3 billion from the KC-X to repair KC-135s. For the KC-X, we might remember--that was kind of confusing--a contract was let, and that contract was challenged. That would have given us--not immediately, certainly, but over the next 20 years, we would be able to replace the KC-135s.
I think it is easier--rather than to spend any more time talking about very complicated things in terms of budgeting--to just look and see service by service. The Army's current fleet of combat vehicles was developed and procured between 30 and 60 years ago.
We have the M1 Abrams tank, which has done a great job, that was developed back in the early 1970s and fielded in the early 1980s. The M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle--we are still using that right now, and it is 25 years old. It is on its third significant modification, and it has been crucial in defending our troops against the IEDs the RPGs. Both of these combat-proven vehicles continue to undergo fleetwide resets. Yet they are so old.
So let's look at another particular one, the best artillery piece we have in the U.S. Army. It is called a Paladin. The Paladin is a technology developed in World War II. You actually have to get out after each shot and swab the breech.
Now, it has gone through some new reiterations, and currently there is another one that is taking place. But again, this is what we have. There are five countries now, including South Africa, that make a better artillery piece than our Paladin. This is one of the programs that is a part of the FCS program that is going to be cut. Secretary Gates didn't say it was completely cut; he just said it is delayed. That is a nice way of saying it is cut, it is gone.
So I would hope one thing: That when we are going through what they call the PIM Program--the Paladin Integrated Management Program--we keep these running, to upgrade them so they will be somewhat competitive in the battlefield. I would say at the very least we should keep that PIM Program going if we cut the future combat system. We should keep the future combat system on track, but if we dump the FCS, we don't want to dump the PIM with it. So even with that PIM update, the Army expects to keep the Paladin in use until 2060, and that is 100 years on the battlefield.
Our Army is long overdue for a thorough and comprehensive modernization. I would just go back again to 1994 when we had people testifying that in 10 years we would no longer need ground capability or ground fighters. The proposed Defense budget would cancel the Army's future combat system and the modernization programs intended to replace the Paladin. FCS would bring improved armor and would save lives. Nonetheless, that was one of them that was cut.
Let's go to the Air Force. For nearly two decades, our Air Force has dominated the skies and ensured air superiority. But a recent GAO study stated that air sovereignty alert operations--the post-9/11 operations that protect our homeland--are at risk due to aging aircraft and insufficient procurement. The Air Force grounded 259 of its 441 F-15 Eagles from November 1997, and last May the service parked 500 of its T-38 Talons, the trainers. A lot of those were taking place at Vance Air Force Base in my State of Oklahoma. They don't have quite enough of them yet, but again, that is part of the problem we are having right now. Our aging fleet is out of service. Last October, the Air Force ordered more than half of its 356 A-10 fighters to stay put because of cracks inside the wings. While we have enjoyed the benefit of investment during the 1980s of the F-15, the F-16, the A-10, the F-117, which is now out of service, the service is talking about retiring 137 F-15s, 177 F-16s, and 9 A-10s. I say that creates a problem.
We had a very courageous general named John Jumper. John Jumper ended up being the Chief of the Air Force, but before he was Chief of the Air Force--and this was about 1998, so it was during the Clinton administration, and it took a lot of courage for a uniform to stand up and admit publicly, with his background that no one would question, that now--back in 1998--he said the Soviets--the Russians--are making the SU series that are really fifth-generation fighters and we don't have anything that can really compete with them that is better than our F-15s or F-16s, which is all we had at that time. So in spite of all of the above, President Obama is shutting down the F-22, the only fifth- generation fighter we have. Remember, we were going to have 750 of them, and he is going to stop at 187. If you stop the production line at 187, we are not going to be able to produce any more of these things.
If some President comes along in 4 years and says: No, they made a mistake 4 years ago, we are going to have to get that line going again, the first ones would cost about twice. So this is one of the problems we are having.
They are talking about increasing the F-35s--that is the Joint Strike Fighter--but that is a different mission. It certainly can't compete with the F-22.
Well, we have a very serious problem. Again, it gets down to, do we really have an expectation in America--we send our kids into battle in the air or on the ground--that we are going to get them the best equipment to work with? I wish that were the case, but it is not the case.
The Navy. At a time when the U.S. Navy is being called on to project its presence in more parts of the world than ever before, the recommendation that is coming from the White House is that the Navy shrink its carrier fleet to 10 aircraft carriers by 2012 and delay the acquisition of the other portions of its fleet. We see what is happening now. We have these aircraft carriers staged all over the world, and to be cutting that fleet, to me, is totally irresponsible.
I remember when I was first elected to the House. My first year was 1987. The first weekend I was in the House of Representatives, and I was going to be on the House Armed Services Committee, I spent the weekend down off the coast of Virginia on the USS Coral Sea. I went out there and landed on the carrier. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, it had such capability. At that time, in 1987, as we looked as the Sun was coming up, we could see the Soviet ships that were going around with their periscopes, the submarines, looking at what we had. Now that is out of commission; the Coral Sea is gone. These things don't last forever. The opposition--China, right now, is building these things. We have to stay better than they are. Yet we are cutting our carrier fleet.
This reduction of aircraft carriers goes further below the previous QDR--that is the Quadrennial Defense Review--of 12 carriers required for moderate risk. So we have a situation where we need 12 carriers-- not 10 but 12--for moderate risk. Moderate risk is a term that is used in the military as to lives. If you have no risk, you are not going to lose human lives. If you have high risk, you are going to lose a lot of human lives. This is moderate. So we are saying we are willing to cut two aircraft carriers below what we call moderate risk or loss of life. I am not willing to do that.
In the last few weeks, we have seen how important the Navy is in watching some of the pirate counterterrorism operations off the coast of Africa. I was over there in Somalia and in that area just a week ago. We are having some successes in our battle with the pirates, but again, a very critical part of that is our carrier capability.
Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese submarines continue to be a threat to our
forces, with China operating over 60-something quieter subs. Since the 1990s, China has been unilaterally hedging its maritime power to exclude the U.S. Navy from the Taiwan Straits and along China's coasts. We all know that. Now we have China, Japan, Australia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh, and South and North Korea either now or planning to acquire submarines to compete against ours. In all, we now have found it acceptable in this budget that is coming out of the White House to cut our total ships down to 300. I remember when there were 700 ships.
Missile defense. This is something I think everyone should understand now. We think about the tragedy of 9/11. We think, as bad as that was, how much worse it would have been if they had had the capability of the nuclear warhead on a delivery system, hitting a major city in America. We wouldn't be talking about 3,000 deaths; we would be talking about 300,000 or maybe 3 million deaths.
On February 3, Iran launched a satellite on the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, demonstrating key technologies of propulsion, staging, and guidance. This is what they did. We are talking about just 2 months ago in that demonstration. Then, going all the way back to 1979, I recall in--I was concerned in 1998 as to what the capability was going to be for North Korea in terms of having a multistage rocket capability, and the administration at that time, the Clinton administration, said it will be from 8 to 10 years, on August 24 of 1998. Seven days later, even though they said it would be 8 to 10 years before they had the capability, they fired one, and that demonstrated the capability they had.
It makes you wonder how accurate we are right now in our assessment of their capability. Nonetheless, this budget recommended a 16-percent cut in the missile defense budget by $1.4 billion, and this is something that is totally unacceptable. We are going to have to reverse this.
It wasn't long ago that we recognized we had to have a capability in the Czech Republic and in Poland. We wanted to have a radar capability in the Czech Republic and an interception capability in Poland, next door. Why do we need this? Because as they develop their capability in Iran and they want to come and shoot something at Western Europe and possibly to get to the east coast of the United States of America, the only place we can reliably, with our technology, shoot that down would be in that area of Eastern Europe.
So we went and negotiated with the Parliaments. I was there. Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, who happens to be one of my favorite people in the world--and he is one who helped us get this through Parliament. It wasn't easy. The thinking was: Well, is this going to be a threat? Are we going to have Russia coming down and complaining, saying this is an act of aggression? No. We are just trying to knock down a missile that might be coming from a place such as Iran or Syria or someplace else going toward Western Europe and the United States. Well, they finally agreed. The Parliaments of Poland and the Czech Republic agreed, and now we pull the rug out from under them with this proposed budget.
The airborne laser--where is the chart on the missile defense?
All right. I know this is heavy lifting, and this is not an easy thing to understand. But if you look at a missile defense system--let's keep in mind, this is the 26th anniversary of Ronald Reagan, saying SDI--members of the Strategic Defense Initiative--everyone criticized them: No one will ever be able to hit a bullet with a bullet. Well, they hit a bullet with a bullet. We have had several tests demonstrating that we can do it. Well, how do you knock down a missile coming in? You have three phases. There is a boost phase, a midcourse phase, and a terminal phase. We are currently in good shape on the midcourse phase and the terminal phase, but the main area where we are stark naked is in the boost phase. We don't have anything.
We have the airborne laser. That is getting very close to being able to deploy a system to knock down an incoming missile when it is easiest to hit them. That is the boost phase, before they are going all that fast. And they cut that out of this budget.
We need to have--we decided on a policy several years ago, and certainly the Senate Armed Services Committee as well as on the House Armed Services Committee that was headed at that time by Duncan Hunter and I think agreed to by the Democrats and Republicans at that time, that we need to have redundancy in all three areas if we are going to be able to knock down an incoming missile.
I don't think there is anyone in America today who denies that the capability of, No. 1, hitting America is there and, No. 2, of being able to knock it down is there if we continue with this program. But we have to have that capability in the boost phase, and this budget takes that out. I am just as concerned about that as I am about the fact that we really lied to the Czech Republic and to Poland and put them in a very awkward position.
So I guess in conclusion I agree with the President and Secretary Gates that we are going to have to reform our Defense acquisition system. There is a lot of waste in that. The Presiding Officer and I both serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we know we need to do some work, but we don't want to be doing this at the risk and at the expense of properly modernizing our services. I have stated many times in this Chamber that the greatest trust placed upon Congress by the American people is to provide for their security by maintaining a strong national defense.
Tom Cole, a House Member from Oklahoma, said it best the other day. He said that eloquence and charm are a poor substitute for a strong national defense. You can be very eloquent, as our President is, and very charming, as our President is, and talk about these things and act as if the threat is not there, but we need to have a strong national defense.
I think Ronald Reagan said it better. He said just to be sure we are prepared. He said: Trust but verify. Trust but verify. We trust these guys over there that they are not going to attack us, but let's verify it.
We can avoid this far too frequent debate on the defense budget by ensuring a minimum level of funding for our military.
So this is where we are today in our situation. I again look at something totally unprecedented. I have something here, if I can find it, that is rather interesting to compare. What we have done--and this is something no one has seen yet because we are still working on it, but we are taking a comparison of 1993 and today. That was the year President Clinton was elected. He also had control of the House and the Senate and the White House, just as the Democrats do today. And we went through the election process. We understand that. But the things they are doing, that President Clinton did at that time and President Obama is doing today, are just remarkably similar.
In the military, the Army was cut back in the Clinton administration by 18 divisions down to 12 divisions, and here we are doing the same thing today. At that time on health care--right now, the President is talking about a universal Government-run health care system. Back then, they called it Hillary health care.
They called it Hillary health care, the same thing. Gun control, the same type of thing. I will wait and do this all at once. I am trying to get to the amount of money. I was on the floor criticizing President Clinton because he proposed $243 billion in tax increases. The current President is talking about $1.4 trillion in tax increases. The budget they are operating with right now--I don't have it here--at that time, he talked about a budget of $1.5 trillion. That was Bill Clinton in 1993. Now it is over twice that much. These are numbers we never thought about before. If you add together the $700 billion bank bailout, the $789 billion stimulus plan, and the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, that adds up to over $2 trillion, which is unheard of. It is very similar. It is just on a larger scale than that of 1993.
That is the concern I bring to the floor today. I have only a few minutes left. I will cover one of my other three concerns. I have talked about the TARP funding on the floor. The TARP funding was supposed to be used to buy damaged assets. At that time, in October of 2008, the Secretary of the Treasury promised that if we would give him
$700 billion, he would spend it to buy damaged assets. Some in this Chamber believed him. I didn't. I said put it in writing, let's get it into the law. But they were in too big a hurry and said: We have to do it now or we will have another Great Depression. He spent the money to bail out many banks that didn't even want to be bailed out and banks that previously both Geithner and Paulson were associated with. So that was a problem and we should now try to salvage what we can out of that program. So that is another subject--one I have spent quite a bit of time on over the last 7 years.
Seven years ago, when the Republicans had a majority in the Senate, I became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. At that time, we were very close to ratifying the Kyoto Treaty. We remember this all started with the United Nations and then, of course, the people in Hollywood, the Hollywood elitists, moveon.org, and the Michael Moores of the world--and they had a right to do it--were saying we are going to have to stop emissions of greenhouse gases, and that the anthropogenic gases and manmade case gases were causing global warming.
I remember so well, in 1975, in the State legislature, at that time the same magazines that are putting on the front page this idea that global warming is taking place--they are not doing it now, but they were up until about 5 years ago. Back then, they were saying: Get ready, another ice age is coming, we are all going to die. I remember using the term that this has to be the greatest ``hoax'' ever perpetrated on the American people.
Fast forward to the late 1990s, when Kyoto was there, when I was chairman of the committee and I believed that manmade gases were causing global warming, until the Wharton Business School came out with the Wharton econometric survey. They showed clearly that if we were to sign on and ratify the Kyoto Treaty, it would cost the American people in the range of between $300 billion and $330 billion a year. Then, if you fast forward that to the next McCain-Lieberman bill, it was even more than that, and the Warner-Lieberman bill was even more than that.
When I looked at it at that time, back when we were very close to ratifying the treaty, I found out that the science was not there. A lot of scientists were saying it was there, but it wasn't. Today, if anybody wants to get into my Web site, inhofesenate.gov, you can see all of the scientists. We have over 700 of them who used to be on the other side of this protecting their grants. They had to play this game to do it. They are now coming over to the skeptic side.
As we listen to the current administration, they are now going to try to, by regulation, impose this giant tax on the American people because they know they cannot get it through this Chamber. We defeated it a year ago today--the last effort to have a cap-and-trade tax on the American people--by almost a 2-to-1 margin. They are going to try to do it again. When you talk about the $700 billion bailout and the stimulus bill, at least that is a one-shot deal. With this, you are talking about a regular annual tax increase on the American people of about $350 billion. The estimates are between $3,000 and $4,000 a year per family. What good would that do? Even if it is true, if people listening to me today, including fellow Members, believe manmade gases are causing global warming--if they believe that to be true, what good would it do us in the United States to unilaterally say we are going to impose these restrictions and pay $400 billion a year? And what good will it do if we do that, because our manufacturing base will go into countries where they have no restrictions. That would happen.
I inquire as to the time remaining?
Mr. President, I think the other speakers are here. Later on, I will talk about the assets we have, and that we have to keep Guantanamo Bay--Gitmo, as it is referred to. It has performed well for us since 1903. I cannot think of one statement, other than political statements, as to why we have to get rid of that great asset.
With that, I thank the Chair for his tolerance and I yield the floor.
Exhibit 1
To: CSIS J. Board of Trustees, Advisers, and Friends
From: John J. Hamre
Date: April 13, 2009 (Number 298. Two pages)
Re: Cancelling weapons systems
I was out of the country last week when Secretary of
Defense Gates announced his recommendation for wholesale
termination of a large number of weapon systems. This was
such a big deal that he skipped the 60th anniversary
celebrations of the founding of NATO in order to prepare for
the announcement.
Secretary Gates epitomizes what Americans want in public
service--fairness, decisiveness and decency. And he clearly
captured broad public support with his recommendations. In
dozens of conversations, I always heard some version of ``it
is about time we had a leader that did this.'' This is
usually followed up by a question ``do you think he will be
reversed by Congress?''
There is a myth in American politics, that defense
contractors are powerful manipulative forces in Washington.
Ever since President Eisenhower coined the term ``the
military-industrial complex'' the popular sense is that
defense companies manipulate the Department and the Congress
to get whatever they want. I have been in and around the
defense business for 30 years. My experience has been that
they are not the all-powerful force of popular imagination.
Defense contractors are hugely vulnerable because they are
entirely dependent on the attitude of one customer--the
Defense Department. If the Secretary of Defense decides we
don't need something (and the Joint Chiefs go along with the
decision--a crucial factor), defense contractors have
virtually no recourse.
Yes, Congress has occasionally reversed the decision of a
defense secretary. I remember when the Congress kept the B-1
bomber alive after President Carter recommended its
termination. But the B-1 would never have been built had it
not been for President Reagan who used it to symbolize his
different approach to defense policy.
I suspect that most of the Secretary's recommendations will
hold. Every year the Congress receives the president's
defense budget, tears it apart and puts it back together, and
usually approves 97% of what is requested. A powerful member
of congress can add $10-20 million here or there for
something, but adding billions of dollars to reverse the
Secretary's decision on a single weapon system is almost
impossible. We are again returning to an environment when
adding something to the defense budget must be offset by
cutting something out. A congressman can strongly plea to add
$2 billion for program X, but very rarely offers offsetting
cuts in other programs. And with each instance, the pleading
congressman has to ultimately argue ``my judgment is superior
to that of the Secretary of Defense''.
Board of Trustees and Counselors
CSIS trustees are drawn equally from the worlds of public
policy and the private sector. They contribute a wealth of
expertise to the Center's mission and management. One
asterisk (*) denotes a member of the Executive Committee and
two asterisks (**) denote a CSIS Counselor.
Chairman: Sam Nunn* **--Cochairman & CEO, Nuclear Threat
Initiative since 1999.
Vice Chairman & Co-Founder: David M. Abshire--President,
Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.
Chairman of the Executive Committee: William A. Schreyer*--
Chairman Emeritus, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
President & Ceo: John J. Hamre*--President & CEO, CSIS.
Trustees: George L. Argyros--Chairman & CEO, Arnel &
Affiliates; Richard Armitage--President, Armitage
International; Reginald K. Brack--Former Chairman & CEO,
Time, Incorporated; William E. Brock**--Counselor and
Trustee, CSIS; Harold Brown**--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS;
Zbigniew Brzezinski**--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; William
S. Cohen--Chairman & CEO, The Cohen Group; Ralph Cossa--
President, Pacific Forum/CSIS; Richard Fairbanks--Counselor
and Trustee, CSIS; Henrietta H. Fore--Former Administrator of
the USAID; William H. Frist--Trustee, CSIS; Michael P.
Galvin*--President, Harrison Street Capital, LLC; Helene D.
Gayle--President & CEO, CARE USA; Linda W. Hart*--Vice
Chairman & CEO, The Hart Group, Inc.; Ben W. Heineman, Jr.--
CSIS Trustee and Senior Adviser; Thomas O. Hicks--Chairman,
Hicks Holdings LLC; Carla A. Hills**--Chairman & CEO, Hills &
Company; Ray L. Hunt--Chairman of the Board, President and
CEO, Hunt Consolidated, Inc.; E. Neville Isdell--Chairman,
The Coca-Cola Company; Muhtar Kent--President and CEO, The
Coca-Cola Company; Henry A. Kissinger**--Chairman & CEO,
Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Kenneth G. Langone--President &
CEO, Invemed Associates, LLC; Chong-Moon Lee--Chairman of
Board of Directors, Nara Bancorp, Los Angeles; Donald B.
Marron--Chairman & CEO, Lightyear Capital; Joseph Nye--
Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University, Kennedy
School of Government; Thomas Pritzker--Chairman & CEO, The
Pritzker Organization, LLC; Joseph E. Robert--Chairman and
CEO, The J.E. Robert Companies (JER); Felix G. Rohatyn--Vice
Chairman, FGR Associated, LLC; David M. Rubenstein--Cofounder
and Managing Director, The Carlyle Group; Charles A.
Sanders--Former Chairman & CEO, Glaxo Inc.; James R.
Schlesinger**--Former Secretary of Defense and Energy; Brent
Scowcroft**--President, Forum for International Policy; Rex
Tillerson--Chairman & CEO, Exxon Mobil Corporation; Frederick
B. Whittemore*--Advisory Director, Morgan Stanley.
Trustees Emeriti: Betty Beene--Former President & CEO,
United Way of America; Amos A. Jordan--President Emeritus,
CSIS; Murray Weidenbaum--Hon. Chair, Weidenbaum Center,
Washington University; Dolores D. Wharton--Retired Chairman
and CEO, Fund For Corporate Initiatives, Inc.
Counselors: William E. Brock--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS;
Harold Brown--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; Zbigniew
Brzezinski--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; Frank C. Carlucci--
Counselor, CSIS; Richard Fairbanks--Counselor and Trustee,
CSIS; Carla A. Hills--Chairman & CEO, Hills & Company; Zalmay
Khalilzad--Counselor, CSIS; Henry A. Kissinger Chairman &
CEO, Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Theodore McCarrick--
Counselor, CSIS; Sam Nunn--Cochairman & CEO, Nuclear Threat
Initiative; James R. Schlesinger--Former Secretary of Defense
and Energy; Brent Scowcroft--President, Forum for
International Policy; John Warner Counselor, CSIS.
