Jeff Bingaman: “let me start by saying what I am sure is true for all those speaking for this amendment and that is we agree that the…”

“let me start by saying what I am sure is true for all those speaking for this amendment and that is we agree that the United States needs to maintain the most capable and effective military anywhere in the world. But I rise to support Senator Exon's amendment, his freeze amendment to trim spending in this defense authorization bill to the same level as is in the current fiscal year because I believe that kind of fiscal discipline is possible and prudent and still allows us to maintain the most capable military on the face of the planet. The Pentagon is able to live with a freeze. We are outspending all of our potential foes by at least a factor of 2. The foes that we most often hear discussed when we are talking about defense issues are Iraq and North Korea. Mr. President, both of those countries are bankrupt. The combined defense budgets of both of those countries equal about 5 percent of our defense budget. We have allies in Europe, in Asia, whose defense budgets also dwarf those of our potential foes. Our colleagues who voted for the concurrent resolution last week are asking our nondefense agencies to live with a freeze in discretionary spending after the budgets of those same agencies were cut by more than $10 billion last year.”