Kerry's record on defense questioned
March 21, 2004
BY JOHN SOLOMON
WASHINGTON -- When John Kerry offered a surprise plan to trim $43 billion in spending a decade ago, he encountered some harsh resistance: The cuts would threaten national security. U.S. fighter pilots would be endangered. And the battle against terrorism would be hampered, opponents charged.
And that's just what Kerry's fellow Democrats had to say.
''We are putting blindfolds over our pilots' eyes,'' Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), a decorated World War II veteran, said of the effect of Kerry's proposed intelligence cuts. Senators rejected Kerry's plan 75-20.
As Kerry, now a presidential candidate, assails President Bush's stewardship of national security, his voting record in the Senate is coming under increasing scrutiny. On Thursday, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona came to Kerry's defense, saying the Massachusetts Democrat wasn't weak on defense.
Kerry's plan was offered in February 1994 as Congress debated spending plans. At the time, Kerry was a champion of trimming spending to balance the budget, but his plan, offered as an amendment, also came on the heels of significant defense and intelligence cuts already imposed by President Bill Clinton and the Congress.
Chad Clanton, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, said Friday that the 1994 amendment showed that his boss was willing to make tough choices. ''Unlike George Bush, John Kerry does not support every special project defense contractors like Halliburton and others want,'' he said. ''John Kerry absolutely voted against business as usual in our intelligence community.''
When Kerry introduced his plan, he focused his arguments on an overall cut of $43 billion over several years and the elimination of wasteful or unnecessary domestic programs, hardly mentioning the money he wanted cut from military and intelligence programs.
''What we have offered to the Senate is an opportunity to register our votes for real choices, for a set of choices that reflect what the American people would really like to be spending their money on as opposed to being forced to spend it by the continuation of programs that the president has asked to have cut; that the National Academy of Sciences boards have said are worthless; that most of the evaluations say are wasteful,'' Kerry argued.
A handful of senators joined Kerry in support. But several of the Democrats' senior senators zeroed in on the cuts Kerry proposed for military and intelligence.
Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), then the Intelligence Committee chairman, took Kerry to task at the time for reducing intelligence spending by $6 billion over six years, saying it would leave Americans vulnerable.
AP
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