SoxFan, what would you propose as the appropriate level of defense spending? Given the erosion to our military preparedness during the nineties and the hightened threat of terrorism, the Bush budget doesn't seem all that extravagant.
More testimony:
"Concerning defects, I think the administration's defense budget contains relatively few.
It has corrected shortfalls in military pay and benefits, raised funding for readiness accounts, covered the Pentagon's share of the cost for the war on terrorism, and increased research and development funding for transformational technologies.
The one area where the budget is deficient is procurement -- the replacement of aging weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimate that $105 billion in procurement funding is needed each year to prevent the existing force structure from shrinking or aging.
The administration's proposed budget for 2003 only funds two-thirds of that amount, and thus assures that an increasingly decrepit arsenal will continue aging.
The shortfall in procurement is not new: the Clinton years were the only period during the last half century when procurement spending was consistently less than 20% of the defense budget.
One consequence was that the average age of Air Force aircraft rose from 13 years in 1990 to 22 years today. The average Navy plane today, for the first time in history, is older than the average warship.
Some Army and Marine helicopters have become so aged that they pose a danger to both the readiness and the safety of U.S. forces."
