Chuck Grassley: “I rise to discuss my reasons for voting for the bill, but also to state some concerns I have about the direction that…”

“I rise to discuss my reasons for voting for the bill, but also to state some concerns I have about the direction that the Department of Defense is taking. I want to commend, first of all, the Appropriations Committee and, of course, its chairman, Senator Hatfield, for doing what I think is a very responsible thing, and that is to offset the cost of the readiness through rescissions, not from other Departments of Government, but from Defense Department programs. I recently requested both the CBO and the General Accounting Office, GAO, to review the defense budget to determine whether there were programs being funded that were not directly related to a strong military and our national security operations and responsibilities. CBO identified $64 billion falling into that category, and the GAO identified $70 billion. Those are figures that cover the next 5 years. They suggested that these programs were absolutely clearly not related to our national security, but they identified these programs for review to determine whether these programs should be continued in the defense budget. My view, in general, is that we should not only scrutinize nondefense spending in the defense budget but many defense-related items as well.”