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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JakeStraw who wrote (611089)	8/26/2004 11:35:13 AM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Yes, I see you didn't continue with the rest of the article: The Kerry amendment was a comprehensive deficit-reduction package that also targeted a variety of other cuts, including reductions in programs for agriculture, commerce and administration. Kerry's amendment went down to defeat with only 20 votes in favor... And the same year Kerry voted to cut intelligence funds, 1994, a bipartisan commission was formed to assess the state of US intelligence efforts. It concluded two years later that cuts in intelligence spending were inevitable and might be made without endangering national security. In 1996 the 17-member Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community (also called the Aspin Commission) found that, despite cuts already made to that time, intelligence spending was still 80% higher than it had been in 1980 even including adjustments for inflation. By comparison, other defense spending had decreased 4%. To be sure, the commission didn’t recommend any more cuts in intelligence spending, but it acknowledged that balancing the federal budget would probably require that cuts be made: in Commission: Reductions to the existing and planned intelligence resources may be possible without damaging the nation's security. Indeed, finding such reductions is critical . . . (I)t is clear a more rigorous analysis of the resources budgeted for intelligence is required. Among the Republican commissioners who unanimously approved that language were l Wolfowitz, who is currently Bush's Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Sen. John Warner, now chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Also worth noting is that after Kerry's proposal to cut intelligence spending by $1 billion a year failed, a Republican-sponsored cut sailed through easily. In 1995 Republican Senator Arlen Specter proposed to cut $1 billion from the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) for fiscal year 1996. That cut was considered so uncontroversial that it passed by a voice vote. That's why the ads are misleading, because Republicans also proposed and passed cuts, and Wolfowitz himself agreed that cuts would not harm intelligence efforts, and in fact *finding such reductions is critical*