David Obey: “I rise to express dissenting views to those which apparently generally prevail in this House on this legislation. We are…”

“I rise to express dissenting views to those which apparently generally prevail in this House on this legislation. We are about to vote on the largest appropriations bill that comes before us this year. We will do it in very little time, with very little debate and with very little protest, if you please, about what I consider to be some of the misguided efforts of this Congress in dealing with military budget. I would simply point out that I heard during the discussion on the rule that there was alarm because there had been a number of years during which we have had a significant real reduction in the military budget. I would point out that is because we have had a significant reduction in the military threats facing this country. The fact is that since the collapse of the Soviet empire we have had about an 80-percent drop in Russian military spending. We have not seen a concurrent reduction in our own military spending to nearly that degree over that same period of time. I would also say that there have been a number of warnings that we are in effect, by what we are buying in the military budget, that we are again getting ready to fight the last war and not getting ready to fight the kind of war we could be facing in the future.”