C. W. Bill Young: “Mr. Chairman, several questions have been raised that really have not been answered. The question about how many B-2's…”

“Mr. Chairman, several questions have been raised that really have not been answered. The question about how many B-2's does the Pentagon want or did the Pentagon want, I remind my colleagues that in the beginning of the B-2 program, the Defense Department wanted 132 B-2's. When funding was obviously difficult, they reduced it to 75. And funding was even more difficult, they reduced it to 20. And as my colleague from California pointed out, when it became politically advantageous, the 20 went up to 21. So the Department of Defense has been all over the board on how many B-2's they wanted. The Congress is of the opinion as we voted on the armed services authorization bill last month, that there should be nine additional B-2's to make it a three squadron force. Where would the money go? The amendment would take this money from the B-2 line and put it into KC-135 reengining. In that account we are already $152 million over the budget. The breast cancer program that most all of us support, the administration has never asked for it in the defense appropriations bill, but we have for years have funded it, and this year this bill is $125 million over what the President's budget was. That was a big zero. The gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] talked about how we outspend everybody else in the world, and there is a lot of reason for that. One reason is we are an all-volunteer force. We do not have a draft.”