President-elect BILL CLINTON (Election Night, 3 Nov.'92, Little Rock AR):

"This election is a clarion call for our country to face the challenges of the end of the cold war and the beginning of the next century."

NARRATOR: President-elect Clinton said he wanted to rebuild America.

President-elect CLINTON (Election Night, 1992):

"...restore growth to our country and opportunity to our people. To face problems too long ignored from AIDS, to the environment, to the conversion of our economy from a defense to a domestic economic giant."

NARRATOR: President Clinton said he wanted to reduce military spending.

President CLINTON (17 Feb.'93, State of the Union Message):

"It is true that we can responsibly reduce our defense budget."

NARRATOR: Yet, the Clinton administration is now planning to spend one trillion, 300 billion dollars on the military over the next five years. Or, only 4 percent less than what President Bush was planning to spend.

Is President Clinton going to be able to rebuild America while spending so much on the military?

ANN MARKUSEN: There is a vision that if we invested in people through education and in infrastructure, we would build a stronger economy, and that's part of the equation. The problem is the Clinton administration is not devoting enough resources to that.

["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]

Admiral EUGENE CARROLL: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

There's a big budget battle going on here in Washington. President Clinton wants to rebuild America, to invest in our future. He says we need more policemen, we need more school teachers, we need a new health care program. But it all takes money and you have to ask where is the money coming from. Some say that the money can come from unnecessary and excessive military spending. Others say, no, that will weaken our security. And this is the heart of the battle.

The question is: Can we safely cut military spending in order to rebuild America? A great many of your tax dollars are riding on the answer to this question.

President CLINTON (Budget Briefing):

"I hope that you will encourage the members of your delegation, especially this year when we're not having this contentious fight over the tax issue, to vote for this budget."

NARRATOR: In early February 1994, the Clinton administra-tion released its proposed 1995 federal spending plan. Of the one and a half trillion dollars in President Clinton's 1995 spending proposal, half will be spent on entitlement programs, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and farm subsidies. The president has little control over entitlements because they are required by law.

Another 14 percent of the federal budget will be spent on paying interest on the national debt. The rest of the federal budget is used for key investments to meet critical national needs. This is the portion of the budget that is referred to as discretionary spending, meaning that it's at the discretion of the president and the Congress to decide how this money should be spent.

For 1995, President Clinton proposes to spend more than half the discretionary budget, or $271 billion, on the military, leaving only $251 billion for all other domestic programs, including $38 billion for transportation, $54 billion for education and social services, 9 billion for community and regional development, $22 billion for the environment, and only $1 billion for federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the primary federal program to assist poor families.

As you can see, if Congress passes the 1995 budget as proposed, America will be spending more on the military than on all domestic discretionary programs combined. Yet, there is lots of talk about cutting military spending.

Senator ROBERT DOLE (R-KS), Senate Minority Leader:

"I think we're going too fast on defense cuts."

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense (7 Feb.'94 press conference):

"We are projecting two more years of substantial cuts in the defense budget."

NARRATOR: But military spending still remains at cold war levels. This chart shows how much money was spent on the military each year since 1950. Military spending went up by 50 percent during the early 1980s. As you can see, military spending is now at about the same level as it was in 1982, when America was confronted with a hostile Soviet Union.

LAWRENCE KORB: What I did was I looked at how much we spent on average every year from 1950 to 1990.

NARRATOR: Lawrence Korb thinks the reductions in military spending are not enough and don't reflect the disappearance of America's primary military concern, the Soviet Union.

Mr. KORB: Then I looked at the Clinton plan and I found out that there's only a 15 percent reduction from the average level, which I think is the best way to look at it if you assume that we were spending this amount of money to deal with a major military power like the Soviet Union, and they've vanished now. It's hard to think that any combination of countries would add up to 85 percent of the Soviet threat, and they're probably much closer to 50 percent.

NARRATOR: Another way to look at our military tax burden is to compare what the US spends on the military to what other coun-tries spend. As you can see from this chart, America spends more on its military than the amounts spent by all our European and Asian allies combined.

Now look at what we spend compared to the countries the Defense Department says we might face as potential adversaries in the future. As you can see, US military spending is almost three times as much as what China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia and Syria spend combined.

Mr. KORB: I mean, we talk about, oh, Iran. Well, they're spending $5- or $6 billion a year on defense. We talk about Russia. Russia's down to about $25 billion. They've cut their budget by 90 percent. You talk about China. You know, they're in the $20 billion range. The only country in the world, major country whose budget's going up are China and France, and their budgets are in the $30 billion range.

NARRATOR: A number of experts we spoke to believe President Clinton and Congress are failing to take advantage of an historic opportunity to shift resources from the military into domestic programs.

Ms. MARKUSEN: Military spending is stuck at historically high levels and this is a big disappointment because President Clinton did promise when he came into office to cut the military budget substantially now that the cold war is over.

GREG BISCHAK: There's no way, spending the kind of money that President Clinton has put forward in his five-year defense plan, that we can in fact meet his acclaimed objectives for rebuilding America, reinvesting in America. We're not spending nearly enough to reinvigorate our national economy, to catch up with our competitors in civilian research and development, and to catch up with where they are at in terms of investing in 21st Century infrastructure necessary to compete in the global economy.

NARRATOR: Most people we spoke to were concerned with the problems at home, here in America, and want a shift in spending priorities.

INTERVIEWER: What's important for you as far as areas for federal investment right now?

MAN on the Street: I'd say crime.

MAN on the Street: Education.

WOMAN on the Street: Social services.

MAN on the Street: I think probably education is the most important, and ending crime.

MAN on the Street: Drug abuse prevention.

WOMAN on the Street: Well, I think the issues are what's going on in this country. I think there are a lot of people in this country who need support and need help, and I think the tax dollar ought to be focussed primarily on taking care of people at home.

LES ASPIN, then-Secretary of Defense (1 Sept.'93 press conference:

"This danger, as you will see as we lay it out -- this danger, the regional dangers is the main thing that drove the size of the defense establishment that we're going to present to you today."

NARRATOR: President Clinton's first secretary of defense, Les Aspin, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell developed a military strategy in 1993 which remains the basis for the military's planning and spending priorities.

General COLIN POWELL, then-Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (1 Sept.'93 press conference):

"So, this is a fundamental underlying principle of President Clinton and Secretary Aspin and the Joint Chiefs of Staff strategy statement for the Bottom-Up Review, being able to deal with two major regional contingencies or conflicts near simultaneously."

NARRATOR: The strategy calls for being able to fight in two major regional wars at nearly the same time, without any help from allies. A war in the Middle East against Iraq, or Iran, and a war in Asia against North Korea were identified as the conflicts we were most likely to fight in the future.

Lawrence Korb thinks the generals and admirals who came up with this two-war strategy and who persuaded top Clinton offi-cials to accept it were exaggerating the military dangers to the United States.

Mr. KORB: What they convinced the civilian policymakers from the Clinton administration that, if you will, Iraq plus North Korea equals 85 percent of the Soviet threat. So, what they did was inflated those threats to make it look like they were much larger than there were. And then the other thing that they did is they assumed almost that we'd have to fight these wars by ourselves.

NARRATOR: Two wars -- one enormous burden for US taxpayers. Is it fair or even necessary to ask Americans to shoulder the entire burden of protecting Middle Eastern oil supplies?

Mr. KORB: I mean, if you look at the Middle East and you assume that there would be some sort of move by Iraq or maybe Iran to take over the world's oil reserves, the Europeans would be there. I mean, it's their oil. In fact, they get more from the Middle East than we do. And they came the last time, during Desert Storm; why wouldn't they come this time?

Paradoxically, since they know that we're not counting on them, they're cutting their defense budgets even more rapidly than we are. I think we have to make it clear to them that, look, we're all in this and, you know, we need at least five divisions and five air wings from our allies in Europe to do that.

NARRATOR: This year the United States will spend about $50 billion preparing for war in the Middle East. For that amount, we could increase our spending for energy efficiency and alternative fuels 35 times. By making America more energy efficient, we could greatly reduce our need for Middle Eastern oil.

The second war scenario is also fiscally daunting. The cost of preparing to fight in Asia is enormous. This year the United States will spend about $60 billion to defend South Korea. Is this spending necessary?

Mr. KORB: Well, if you take a look at South Korea, we're going to be putting as many forces in there as we did in 1950 to deal with the North Koreans. I mean -- And you look at South Korea today, they have twice as many people as North Korea, their GNP is ten times as large. They have a military that's very sophisticated; it has the latest equipment. North Korea's mili-tary, they're not even training; they're out doing nation-building tasks. They don't have enough oil to let their pilots fly very much. And we're arguing that the South Koreans can't handle it by themselves.

NARRATOR: For what the United States will spend in 1995 defending South Korea, about $60 billion, we could, for example, increase the Environmental Protection Agency budget eight times, thereby making substantial progress in cleaning up and preventing further damage to the environment.

Today, America's environmental bills are staggering.

RALPH DeGENNARO: Each agency, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy has clean-up costs which may exceed $200 billion over the next 30 or 40 years. These are fantastic amounts and horrible problems. In addition, you have a whole set of civilian SuperFund cleanups that will require a couple of hundred billion more in federal expenditures.

NARRATOR: The Clinton administration has increased funding for the environment significantly.

Mr. DeGENNARO: The latest budget proposed by President Clinton is what I call an "earth budget." His people have really looked at the budget and I think done a great job trying to iden-tify what the priority environmental programs are and identifying some programs where additional money would get real results for Americans who care about their health and the environment.

NARRATOR: However, more needs to be done, according to Ralph DeGennaro.

Mr. DeGENNARO: If you really look at the problems and the spending needs, even the Clinton agenda, as good as it is, is too little and too slow.

Secretary of Defense PERRY: (7 Feb.'94 press conference):

"We talked about the importance of maintaining modernization."

NARRATOR: Besides planning to fight two major regional wars at the same time without help from allies, the Pentagon has also convinced President Clinton that it's necessary to continue building scores of new weapons, which it originally wanted to fight the now-defunct Soviet Union.

Secretary PERRY (same press conference):

"We continue to invest in the next generation weapons systems."

NARRATOR: With the Soviet Union gone, the Pentagon has invented new reasons to justify the continued development and buying of weapons.

Senator DALE BUMPERS (D-AR): And the one thing the Pentagon knows how to do is to come up with new justifications, new rationales for spending money for whatever they happen to want.

NARRATOR: The Air Force wants to buy 442 F-22 fighters, initially designed to shoot down the next generation of Soviet fighters. With the collapse of communism, the anticipated Soviet jets will never be built. Do we still need the F-22?

Mr. KORB: You take the F-22, the new fighter that the Air Force is moving toward, that was designed in 1981 to be able to engage in air-to-air combat with the latest MIG, the MIG-30-something. Well, there is no MIG-30-something. We're still going ahead with that, even though the F-15 is better than any other plane existing in the world. And the idea that you need a plane to do sophisticated air combat with the air forces of Libya, or Iraq, even North Korea, it just simply doesn't make sense.

NARRATOR: If President Clinton cancelled the F-22, as much as $62 billion could be saved. This amount of money could rebuild more than half our nation's decaying sewer system and create more than an estimated two million jobs.

For the cost of just two of the 442 proposed F-22s, an estimated $322 million, Amtrak could acquire additional passenger trains and upgrade its existing equipment to meet new environ-mental requirements and make its facilities accessible to the disabled.

The Milstar satellite system, originally designed for communications during a six-month nuclear war against the Soviet Union, is another expensive weapons system made obsolete by the collapse of communism. If Milstar were cancelled, an estimated $19 billion could be saved. With this money, the federal govern-ment could double the amount of assistance to public schools with low income and disadvantaged children and maintain that level for three years. This money would also create an estimated 129,000 additional teaching jobs.

IRIS ROTBERG: Well, in the study I directed at the RAND Corporation, we recommended a $6 billion increase -- that's a doubling -- of the current level.

NARRATOR: Iris Rotberg is an expert on public education at the National Science Foundation. The views she expresses on this program are her own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the National Science Foundation.

Ms. ROTBERG: The point is that money won't solve all of our problems, but without adequate resources in low income schools, these children don't even have a fighting chance. Schools in these communities can't deliver a decent education if they don't have the money to do a job.

NARRATOR: Over the past decade, federal educational assis-tance to disadvantaged students has not kept pace with demand.

Ms. ROTBERG: It still, however, isn't anywhere near the level that it needs to be to make a dent in the education of children in low income schools.

NARRATOR: President Clinton has increased funding for another educational program that targets disadvantaged youths. Head Start is slated for an additional $700 million in 1995. This would allow an estimated 90,000 additional children to partici-pate in the program. However, we could fully fund Head Start and serve all eligible children for the next five years, adding 600,000 children a year, if the Army cancelled plans to buy 1300 new Comanche helicopters. The Comanche was originally designed to seek out Soviet tanks in Europe.

INTERVIEWER: If I were to ask you what would be priorities for you as far as where federal tax dollars should be invested right now, what comes to mind as priorities about where federal money should be put?

WOMAN on the Street: Primarily biomedical research.

NARRATOR: When asked about potential new priorities for federal investment, many people we spoke to were especially interested in federal funding for medical research.

MAN on the Street: The health sciences, try and exterminate some of these diseases.

NARRATOR: While President Clinton has increased funding for cancer research by nearly $1 billion, he could have increased it by an additional $3 billion if he had just said "no" to the Pentagon's request for an additional 70 D-5 submarine-launched nuclear-tipped missiles. These missiles were originally designed to kill Soviet leaders hiding in underground bomb shelters and to destroy heavily protected Soviet missile silos.

Pentagon officials also want to buy a number of costly weapons they admit they don't need now, such as the Seawolf sub-marine, in order to maintain the industrial facilities to build them quickly in the future should the need arise.

Secretary of Defense PERRY (7 Feb.'94 press conference):

"If we thought we never had to face a super power again, we could have imagined a force structure in which nuclear submarines just went out of the force. We did not think it was responsible for that conclusion. Therefore, we are taking the steps, and they're very expensive steps, to sustain the ability to build nuclear submarines, so that if we ever need them in the future, we will have the capability to build them."

NARRATOR: Is this the best way to spend American tax dollars?

Ms. MARKUSEN: I think it's a ludicrous argument to say that in order to be prepared for the future, we have to continue to make things that we don't need now. Think about World War II. In World War II, President Roosevelt decided we were going to produce 50,000 airplanes and within two years, we were producing 50,000 airplanes.

NARRATOR: Ann Markusen thinks the Pentagon should encourage military contractors to diversify and build products for the civilian sector.

Ms. MARKUSEN: And the second problem with the argument is that it really does show the absurdity of having defense facili-ties committed just to military ends. We should really have dual use factories and the way to get them is to say, "Okay, we don't have to build another Seawolf submarine just to keep this 10,000 people assembled in Groton, Connecticut. We can have them build solid waste containers. They could build passenger ferries. They can build some of the new commercial ships coming on-line." Doing that would provide us with capability for the future without costing us the two to three billion dollars that a Seawolf submarine costs.

NARRATOR: If the $1.2 billion the Pentagon wants for the Seawolf were channeled into the Job Training Partnership Program, over the next five years an estimated 40,000 people could be enrolled and learn new skills to make them productive workers.

President Clinton is not investing enough in conversion programs, according to Ann Markusen.

Ms. MARKUSEN: There is a vision that if we invested in people through education and in infrastructure, we would build a stronger economy, and that's part of the equation. The problem is the Clinton administration is not devoting enough resources to that, nor is the administration really taking on the tough chal-lenge of an industrial policy, which is what we really need. We really need to say we've made a big mistake: We built this defense industrial complex. Every other advanced industrial country is moving ahead of us. We need to take some of the talents and capabilities we have, especially in environment, energy and transportation -- we have great potential in this country -- and really build the industries and link them up to people being displaced in defense industries and in the armed forces and new job creation.

President CLINTON (25 Jan.'94 State of the Union Message):

"Last year I proposed a defense plan that maintains our post-cold war security at a lower cost. This year many people urged me to cut our defense spending further to pay for other government programs. I said no."

NARRATOR: Why is President Clinton adamant about not reducing military spending further?

Mr. KORB: He knows he's vulnerable on that defense issue. Democrats are considered liberal on defense. He, because of his own lack of military experience, does not want to take on the military chiefs in an open confrontation.

NARRATOR: Will the president be able to live up to his campaign pledge of investing in America?

Mr. BISCHAK: Clinton can't meet his promise to rebuild America and reinvest in our infrastructure and our citizenry's skills and talents to make us more competitive. His budget that's laid out for five years falls far short of what he promised in his "Vision for Change" document when he came into office last year. There's nowhere he can go for the money now unless he cuts deeply into the military budget. We're strapped in the way of tax revenues; we can't raise them any further. We have other deficit reduction targets to meet. And the only place that we can get cash right now to rebuild America is with a $100 billion reduction in the defense budget over the next couple of years.

Mr. DeGENNARO: I think Clinton and Gore know what the investment agenda for the country needs to be. I think their minds and their hearts are in the right place. That's why it's so important for the public to send a message to Washington that they want change and they can envision a different idea of national security, a different idea of economic prosperity. If that public message comes to Washington, that will help people like Clinton and Gore, who I think want to do the right thing, make change faster.

NARRATOR: Every year the president presents his budget to Congress and the public. Over the course of seven to eight months, Congress decides where our tax dollars will be invested. Top Pentagon officials testify before Congress and ask for money to buy weapons. Independent analysts also tell Congress what they think Pentagon priorities should be.

What has been missing, for the most part, is public testimony on where our true security needs really lie. During the cold war, there was very little public debate on how much money to spend on the military. With the cold war over, can the public afford not to be involved?

Admiral CARROLL: Well, you've heard some sharply conflict- ing opinions about how we should be spending our money today. Members of the administration want to maintain a high level of military spending, while others seek support for important domestic programs. Perhaps if the two sides shared a common definition of national security, they could come closer to agreement. There is certainly more to national security than just military strength.

For example, we need a strong national economy and jobs for American workers. We need a healthy, well educated American public. And we need peaceful streets. The violence in our streets today is a greater threat to our security than any enemy.

Once everyone recognizes that money wasted on expensive and unneeded weapons actually reduces the security and wellbeing of all Americans, then it will be much easier to make wise decisions in the current budget debate.

Until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Eugene Carroll.

[End of broadcast.]