Christopher Shays: “We have a world crisis and an acute national emergency. I support this $12.9 billion spending package. I have opposed…”

“We have a world crisis and an acute national emergency. I support this $12.9 billion spending package. I have opposed past defense spending bills because we have failed, in my judgment, to take four difficult but necessary steps to realize savings and modernize our military. We failed to: cancel procurement of expensive, unnecessary weapon systems; close unnecessary military bases and depots at home and abroad; and require our allies, particularly Europeans, to pay their fair share of stationing U.S. troops in their countries. And we are still funding a military designed to fight the Cold War, but the Cold War has ended. The world today is different, and it is a more dangerous place. The war in Kosovo costs money, and lots of money. As a fiscal conservative during my 11 years in Congress with consistently high marks from the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, and other fiscal watch dog organizations, I am on the floor to say we need to appropriate this money. The fact is that we have already spent it.”