Rumsfeld Defends Bush Funding Delay

Rumsfeld Defends Bush Funding Delay

NewsMax.com Wires
Monday, Feb. 12, 2001

WASHINGTON, UPI – With President George W. Bush set to begin a three-state tour of eastern military bases, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday defended the administration's decision not to seek immediate extra cash for the military budget.

Bush announced earlier that there would be a comprehensive review of defense needs before asking for a supplemental spending bill that would pay for equipment and personnel.

"It seems to me a perfectly rational and logical thing for a president of the United States to do to engage his brain before he opens the taxpayers' wallet," Rumsfeld said in an appearance on ABC's "This Week."

The administration's move raised the concerns among some congressional members and military leaders who had banked on Bush's campaign promises, particularly those made in a September 1999 speech at The Citadel where he pointed out that $21 million worth of food stamps were redeemed at military commissaries.

For their part, Democrats claim that the administration's spending initiatives, many of which Bush has been touting heavily in the first three weeks of his presidency, would erode the federal budget surplus. They say Bush's coveted $1.6 trillion tax plan – coupled with the spending he promised on defense, prescription drug coverage for seniors, education and a host of other programs – will ultimately entail either deficit spending or breaking into trust funds for Social Security and Medicare.

During his campaign, Bush had promised to add $1 billion for military pay increases over 10 years, improve housing conditions on military bases and pump an additional $45 billion into defense coffers over 10 years. The Pentagon currently has a $296 billion budget and $340 billion in a 2002 spending package slated to go to Congress for approval. Military officials say they are now looking at requesting $4 billion extra in 2001, down from the $7 billion to $10 billion the service chiefs told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January they would need this year.

"What the president has said, and certainly I agree fully with it, is he wants me and the Department of Defense to undertake a defense review, a series of task forces looking and a number of these subjects and report back to him in a relatively short period of time, at which point he'll make his judgments with respect to adjustments or no adjustments with respect to the budget currently before the budget bureau," Rumsfeld said.

Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent Bush a letter last week calling an emergency supplemental bill for defense the only way to address critical readiness and quality-of-life problems. "These are bills which must be paid now," Warner wrote. It is those issues, Rumsfeld said, that the defense review would address.

Warner told UPI Friday at the Pentagon he is confident Rumsfeld will arrange for a supplemental within "90 to 100 days" and that the military would get what it needed.

In addition to funding commitments Bush vowed to restore moral among troops and implement a missile defense system that would protect states from attacks by so-called "rogue states" such as North Korea, which he said had developed a weapons program capable of striking Hawaii or Alaska.

In an effort to push that message, the president is expected to fly on Monday to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga., where he plans to discuss morale among service personnel. On Tuesday, he travels to Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia, where he is expected to participate in a video-teleconferencing battle exercise, and then on Wednesday he plans to watch a disaster relief simulation at the West Virginia Emergency Operations Center in Charleston.

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