Earl Blumenauer: “the priorities represented in this bill are misplaced. It spends $310 billion, over half of our discretionary budget.…”

“the priorities represented in this bill are misplaced. It spends $310 billion, over half of our discretionary budget. This is $4.5 billion more than the President requested and $21 billion above the amount appropriated for fiscal year 2000. We are spending too much in this bill on too many unproven technologies, duplicative systems, and, in some cases, congressional add-ons that our military leaders don't want. We are spending enough on things like environmental remediation of past actions. For example, the estimated pricetag for clean-up of the unexploded ordnance that contaminates millions of acres of land and internal waterways is over $100 billion. The funding in this bill for environmental restoration is a mere $1.3 billion, less than half a percent of the total. We don't need three brand-new advanced fighter jets. We will have military air superiority over all potential adversaries for years to come with our current planes. We will spend over $300 billion over the next 10 to 20 years on the Air Force's F-22, the Navy's F-18 E/F, and the Joint Strike Fighter. We are doing this rather than made the hard decisions we need to in order to make proving for our national defense more cost-effective. It is also troubling that the hate crimes provision was not included in this bill.”