Steve Buyer: “I rise in strong support of this amendment. Today, the defense budget faces a double threat. First, the Clinton…”

“I rise in strong support of this amendment. Today, the defense budget faces a double threat. First, the Clinton administration has embarked on a plan to cut from Defense, over the next 5 years, $127 billion more than the amount the Bush administration proposed over the same period. The second threat is the idea, firmly embraced by the administration, that the defense budget is a ready pool of funds that can be raided for any project deemed necessary by the President. Funding for peacekeeping has become one of those projects. Mr. Clinton has made the United Nations a centerpiece of his foreign policy. Deferring to this international body on a variety of foreign policy crises, we have seen the folly of this approach from Bosnia, to Somalia, to Haiti. Yet today, we see the rapid expansion of United Nations peacekeeping operations around the world. With this expansion, we have seen the extensive involvement of the U.S. military in support of the U.N. This support is not without costs. By the end of this year, the United States will be in arrears to the United Nations in excess of $1 billion.”