Guns or butter............Defense secretary vows to push for $18.4 billion budget boost
DESPITE NEWS THAT SURPLUS IS DRYING UP, HE SAYS BUSH BACKS BIG INCREASE
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Mercury News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Responding to calls from Capitol Hill to trim the administration's Pentagon budget, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that he would push Congress to approve the full $18.4 billion budget increase for next year.
``We need every nickel of that,'' Rumsfeld said at a news conference. ``The president has indicated that defense is a top priority for him, and he intends to be assisting to see that the full $18.4 billion tab that is up there is passed.''
Rumsfeld conceded the Bush administration would have a ``busy time'' winning support for the increase, but said he believed that most members of Congress would vote for it.
Wednesday, the administration's Office of Management and Budget predicted that the federal budget surplus outside Social Security would almost disappear because of the economic slowdown, higher-than-expected spending and Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut.
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced this week that they would not support the Pentagon spending increase.
Both senators asserted that paying for the full increase would entail dipping into surplus Medicare and possibly Social Security funds, which most lawmakers in both parties have declared off limits to spending for anything except Social Security expenses or debt reduction.
``He's not proposed any way to pay for it,'' Conrad said Wednesday of the requested increase.
Rumsfeld was to update Bush today on his defense-restructuring efforts. A cut or denial of the defense-spending increase would create havoc for Rumsfeld's effort to reshape U.S. defense strategy and spending.
President Bush said Thursday that there were still enough funds for his priorities.
The updated budget figures ``showed that the budgets we submitted not only are in balance but meet the priorities that I think are important, including defense and education,'' Bush said in Crawford, Texas.
The Bush Pentagon budget would be the largest increase for the military since 1986, under Ronald Reagan.
Rumsfeld has said the increase is needed to stem problems with military readiness and modernization, fund higher pay and better benefits, and accelerate work on a system to protect the United States, its troops abroad and allies from small ballistic-missile attacks.
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The New York Times contributed to this report. Contact Jonathan Landay at jlanday@krwashington.com |
