Tony Thurmond: “this budget resolution represents a historic endeavor by the Congress and the administration. For the first time in 28…”

“this budget resolution represents a historic endeavor by the Congress and the administration. For the first time in 28 years, we have agreed on a path designed to balance the Federal budget by the year 2002. The fiscal irresponsibility that drove us into a national debt of more than $5 trillion, with interest payments amounting to 15 percent of our annual Federal budgets, was surely leading this Nation toward a day of economic reckoning with severe consequences. I am delighted that, aided by a strong economy, we seem to be moving toward setting our fiscal house in order. Despite my enthusiastic support for a balanced budget, I must admit that I remain deeply concerned about the state of our national security and plans for funding our defense establishment in this post-cold-war era. When the Clinton administration took office in 1993, it immediately began to cut defense spending. Within the context of the bottom-up review, they cut over $120 billion out of the Future Years Defense Program. Despite this severe underfunding of our military forces, the administration has shown no reluctance to use them. Multilateral peacekeeping operations under the United Nations became the vogue during the early years of the Clinton administration. The debacle in Somalia, where 18 American soldiers were killed in the streets of Mogadishu, awakened the Congress and the American people to the folly of these policies.”