Patty Murray: “it is my pleasure to join Chairman Burns in recommending for the Senate's consideration the FY 1999 military…”

“it is my pleasure to join Chairman Burns in recommending for the Senate's consideration the FY 1999 military construction appropriations bill. Through a bipartisan effort, we have created what I think is a very fair and just bill that should please both DoD and my colleagues here in the Senate. As he does every year, Chairman Burns had to weigh the priorities of the Department of Defense, the requests of his colleagues, and the recommendations of the Armed Services Committee. He had to do this with an unacceptably low budget request of $7.784 billion, which was $1.4 billion less than the $9.18 billion we appropriated last year. Thanks to Chairman Sevens, that budget request was raised to an $8.48 billion allocation--which we have completely allocated in an equitable and bipartisan way. You will find that the budget request yet again tremendously short ended the Guard and Reserve--asking for only $179 million compared to the $390 million we appropriated last year. Thanks to some creative maneuvering and forward thinking, we were able to fund the Guard and Reserve this year at $446 million without disadvantaging any other portion of our bill. As Chairman Burns noted, the active components were given $2.57 billion for military construction. In an attempt to fund even more projects, Chairman Burns and I have also created a $200 million package of quality of life projects that has been added to the authorization bill.”