There He Goes Again
Yesterday, (3-09-04) President Bush told a crowd
of supporters in Houston that, back in 1995, two years after the
first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Sen. John Kerry
introduced legislation to cut the intelligence budget by $1.5
billion. "Once again, Sen. Kerry is trying to have it both
ways," the president said.
"He's for good intelligence; yet he was willing
to gut the intelligence services. That is no way to lead a nation
in a time of war." Bush further charged that Kerry's bill
was "so deeply irresponsible that he didn't have a single-co-sponsor
in the United States Senate."
Bush and his operatives are making a practice of
mischaracterizing the voting record of the presumptive Democratic
nominee. Two weeks ago, the Republican National Committee put
out a "Research Brief" that flagrantly distorted Kerry's
votes on weapons systems. Bush's remarks yesterday are more dishonest
still.
One thing is true: Kerry did introduce a bill on
Sept. 29, 1995,S. 1290 that, among many other things, would have
cut the intelligence budget by $300 million per year over a five-year
period, or $1.5 billion in all.
But let's look at that bill more closely.
First, would such a reduction have "gutted"
the intelligence services? Intelligence budgets are classified,
but private budget sleuths have estimated that the 1995 budget
totaled about $28 billion. Thus, taking out $300 million would
have meant a reduction of about 1 percent.
This is not a gutting.
Second, and more to the point, Kerry's proposal
would have not have cut a single
Intelligence program.
On the same day that Kerry's bill was read on the
Senate floor, two of his
colleagues Democrat Bob Kerrey and Republican Arlen Specter introduced
a similar measure.
Their bill would have cut the budget of the National
Reconnaissance Office, the division of the U.S. intelligence community
in charge of spy satellites.
According to that day's Congressional Record. Specter
said he was offering an amendment "to address concerns about
financial practices and management" at the NRO. Specifically,
"the NRO has accumulated more than $1 billion in unspent
funds without informing the Pentagon, CIA, or Congress."
He called this accumulation "one more example
of how intelligence agencies
sometimes use their secret status to avoid accountability."
The Kerrey-Specter bill proposed to cut the NRO's
budget "to reflect the
availability of funds E2 80 A6 that have accumulated in the carry-forward
accounts" from previous years. Another co-sponsor of the
bill, Sen. Richard Bryan, D Nev., noted that these "carry-forward
accounts" amounted to "more than $1.5 billion."
This was the same $1.5 billion that John Kerry
was proposing to cut over a five-year period, in his bill. It
had nothing to do with intelligence, terrorism, or anything of
substance. It was a motion to rescind money that had been handed
out but never spent. In other words, it's as if Kerry had once
filed for a personal tax refund and Bush accused him of raiding
the Treasury.
By the way, the Kerrey-Specter bill, which called
for the same intelligence cut that
George W. Bush is attacking John Kerry for proposing, passed on
the Senate floor
by a voice vote.
It was sheer common sense. It also led to major
investigations into the NRO's finances, both by the White House
and by the CIA's general counsel.
John Kerry's bill died its title was read on the
floor, then it was sent to the Senate Budget Committee,but, again,
not because it was an abhorrence. It died for two reasons. First,
some of its provisions, including the intelligence cut, were covered
in other bills.
Second, Kerry's bill was not just about the intelligence
budget; it was a 16-page document, titled "The Responsible
Deficit Reduction Act of 1995," that called for a scattershot
of specific cuts across the entire federal budget. (The New York
Times , reporting on Bush's attack, states that Kerry's bill "also
proposed cuts in military spending." The story neglects to
mention that it proposed just as many cuts in non-military spending.)
Through the early-to-mid-'90s, Congress was rife
with bills and amendments to
reduce the deficit and balance the budget. Most of them were tabled
to committees, then hung out to dry. Kerry's was one of them not
because it was unpatriotic but because it was redundant.
Kerry's campaign office has thus far been a bit
off-the-mark in responding to
Bush's outlandish charges.
A Kerry spokesman, Chad Clanton, is quoted in today's
Times as saying that the senator had "voted against a proposed
billion-dollar bloat in the intelligence budget because it was
essentially a slush fund for defense contractors." Not quite.
The NRO had a slush fund, but not for "defense contractors."
It's difficult to correct the distortions of a 10-second sound
bite. Usually, it takes a minute or so to set the record straight,
and that's too long for the networks. This one should have been
easy.
How about something like: "Sen. Kerry
was merely trying to return unspent
money to the taxpayers. Shame on President Bush for twisting a
simple bookkeeping adjustment to make it look like an act of treachery."
More...
The Perfect Storm That's About to Hit:
Rising Oil Prices and a Weak Dollar could Shatter the Global Economy
|
