James M. Talent: “I decided to come to the Senate for a few minutes this evening to speak to the Senate because of growing concern over…”

“I decided to come to the Senate for a few minutes this evening to speak to the Senate because of growing concern over the defense budget and, in particular, the growing likelihood that we are going to see cuts in the defense budget so that next year's budget is lower than what the President had proposed for fiscal year 2007. I am moved especially by a recent ``Inside Defense'' column which reports that because of pressure from the Office of Management and Budget, the Deputy Secretary of Defense may well require that the service chiefs take $7.5 billion out of next year's budget and $32 billion in cuts over the next 5 years--this at the end of the budget cycle, not as a result of an assessment of military need or necessity. As I will show in a minute, one could hardly in any dispassionate view of our military needs believe we could absorb $7.5 billion in cuts next year because of procedure that is budget driven. When I see that, it reminds me of other things I have been hearing lately. I felt it was deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra might have said. I remember the days in the 1990s when military needs were determined by the budget rather than the budget being determined by military needs. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended, our country was justifiably pleased. We believed there was a peace dividend available. The Clinton Administration took a lot of money out of the defense budget. I will go into that in a minute.…”