Earl Blumenauer: “I voted against this bill because, at its core, it gives too much money to the wrong people to do the wrong things…”

“I voted against this bill because, at its core, it gives too much money to the wrong people to do the wrong things, while missing out on important priorities for the safety and wellbeing of our troops and our nation. This budget provides $3.4 billion--$170 million more than the President's request--for an untested and unproven national missile defense system and continues to fund the unnecessary FA/22 Raptor and the C-130J cargo plane, which even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has tried to kill. At a time when we are at war, the United States can hardly afford to waste billions of our defense dollars on programs that don't work or address the new threats we face. I'm disappointed that an amendment I intended to offer was not allowed to be debated, which would have delayed the 2005 BRAC round until the Pentagon had a strategy, including expected funding, to cleanup the bases closed in the 1988 BRAC round. At the same time, in addition to missing the opportunity to deal with issues of unexploded ordnance and environmental cleanup at BRAC sites, this bill doesn't include TRICARE for our reservists or address the threat of nuclear proliferation by sufficiently funding the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission. A glaring omission is the lack of any meaningful provisions dealing with torture and prison abuse by our country.…”