Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.),
Pres., Center for Defense Information
HOST:
Admiral John Shanahan (USN, Ret.)
Director, Center for Defense Information
DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH:
David T. Johnson
DIRECTOR of TELEVISION:
Mark Sugg
SENIOR PRODUCER
Ira Shorr
NARRATOR:
Kathryn Schultz
PRODUCERS:
Glenn Baker
Jennifer Hazen
Daniel Sagalyn
Stephen Sapienza
PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER:
Martin Calhoun
SEGMENT PRODUCER:
Jennifer Hazen
VIDEO GRAPHICS:
Adam Luther
ORIGINATION:
Washington, D.C.
PROGRAM NO.:
907
INITIAL BROADCAST:
29 October 1995
CONDITION OF USE:
Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" (Center for Defense Information).
KEITH GEIGER
President, National Education Association
RICHARD KOGAN
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
LAWRENCE KORB
The Brookings Institution
Assistant Secretary of Defense, 1981-84
Rep. J.C. WATTS (R-OK)
House of Representatives
with additional comments from:
Senator DALE BUMPERS (D-AR)
Rep. RICHARD ARMEY (R-TX)
Senator DAN COATS (R-IN
Rep. RON DELLUMS (D-CA)
Senator SAM NUNN (D-GA)
Rep. FLOYD SPENCE (R-SC)
Senator STROM THURMOND (R-SC)
Rep. BOB STUMP (R-AZ)
(Sound of chain saw.)
NARRATOR: It is the sound of lawmakers cutting and, in some cases, eliminating government programs and services in an effort to balance the federal budget. But as spending cuts take root in Congress, many Americans are asking: Are these cuts fair? And are they necessary?
KEITH GEIGER: You aren't talking about balancing the budget, you're talking about balancing the budget on the backs of the very poorest in this country, and the children.
Sen. STROM THURMOND (R-SC) (Floor speech, 19 May '95):
"Mr. President, I am strongly in favor of cutting the federal spending and reducing the deficit, but we must meet our national security needs."
LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think that Congress has cut social programs more than they need to because they don't want to touch defense.
NARRATOR: As Congress prepares to make unprecedented cuts in federal spending, "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" asks: "Who will be forced to sacrifice and who won't?
["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]
ADM JOHN SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.): I'm Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, director of the Center for Defense Information.
During a recent press conference, President Clinton, while discussing the federal budget, ticked off a number of items on the domestic side which could be covered for the price of just one B-2 bomber. Do we have it right when we increase military spending and at the same time cut domestic spending in efforts to balance the federal budget? The subject of today's program.
WOMAN in the Street: My opinion is that it's a good thing for them to be attempting to balance the budget.
MAN in the Street: I definitely think we need to balance the budget. I think that's one of our most serious issues in America.
NARRATOR: Throughout its history, it was not unusual for nation's federal government, on occasion, to spend more money than it collected in taxes. These budget deficits usually were followed by surpluses. But in the 1980s, federal deficits exploded when the government cut income taxes and dramatically raised military spending without cutting enough in other areas to make up the difference.
As each year's deficit was added to those of previous years and the government was forced to borrow money just to stay in business, a massive national debt accumulated. By 1995, this debt had soared to nearly $5 trillion.
Rep. J.C. WATTS (R-OK): You've got $100 to spend and you've got $300 worth of expenditures. How do you get there? That's an unbalanced budget.
NARRATOR: Together with other members of Congress, Oklahoma Representative J.C. Watts is working to carry out the Republican promise in the "Contract with America" to trim government spending and eliminate federal deficits by the year 2002.
Rep. WATTS: I don't think there's anyone in America today that would say we don't need to balance our budget. Everybody understands where we are. We're at a critical time in American history. We must balance our budget.
NARRATOR: To move toward a balanced budget, and also to finance a promised $245 billion tax cut, in June of 1995 Congress approved a plan to cut federal spending by $894 billion over the next seven years. However, three areas of the budget -- Social Security, military spending, and interest payments on the national debt -- are to be excluded from cuts.
With more than half of all federal spending "off the table," and military spending actually projected to increase, all of Congress' planned savings must be squeezed from Medicare, Medicaid, and the remaining slice of the federal budget pie that consists of domestic programs covering everything from education and the environment to highways and national parks.
Over seven years, Congress would reduce spending on Medicare, the national health care program for the elderly, by $270 billion. It would reduce spending on Medicaid, the national health care program for the poor, by $182 billion, and it would cut spending on domestic programs by a third or more.
Each year Congress must pass and the president must sign 13 appropriations, or spending, bills. Already, the issue of budget cuts has caused considerable controversy as Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, and Congress and the White House argue over B-2 bombers, education programs, and other competing national priorities.
Sen. DAN COATS (R-IN) (Senate floor debate, 4 August '95):
"Our choice, our real choice is not between the B-2, for example, and Head Start. Our real decision is between a cutting-edge military capable of offensive operations and an unthinkable, immeasurable future cost in American lives and American resources."
Sen. DALE BUMPERS (D-AR) (Senate debate, 4 August '95):
"Of all the spending cuts over the next seven years, poor little old non-defense, domestic discretionary spending -- education, health care, law enforcement, you name it -- takes 43 percent! -- 43 percent of the total spending cuts over the next seven years!
"The Senator said this is not about B-2 versus Head Start. That is precisely what it's about."
NARRATOR: America's citizens, as well, have their own opinions about Congress' planned budget cuts.
WOMAN in the Street: I think that we need a balanced budget, but I just don't feel that the domestic programs are where it needs to be cut. That the poorer families and children have to pay for it.
MAN in the Street: I feel they're needed, I really do, I mean, for the working man, I mean, the way -- you know, taxes and stuff is going, every little bit -- Every little cut or saving is going to help out eventually.
WOMAN in the Street: Well, I don't like the idea that they want to cut education or medicare.
INTERVIEWER: Why?
Same WOMAN: Well, all us folks have worked for this stuff all our lives. We're going to be needing our Medicare.
NARRATOR: Few question the need for America to get its financial house in order and Americans realize that reducing the deficit calls for painful choices and sacrifice. But to what extent will this sacrifice be distributed fairly and evenly? Might not some spending cuts prove detrimental to our nation's security? And how will these cuts affect people?
These were some of the questions raised at a September 1995 press conference organized by mayors and county officials from across America to respond to the cuts proposed by Congress.
Mayor NORMAN RICE, Seattle WA:
"It's time for Congress to balance the federal budget, just as mayors and county officials have balanced their budgets every years. But there's a right way and a wrong way to balance the federal budget and we're calling upon Congress to balance the budget in ways that make America stronger, not weaker. We're calling on Congress not to cut proven programs that make our citizens safer, healthier, and more competitive.
"At a time when America should be investing in our people and our economic infrastructure, this budget is a unilateral retreat. This budget would cut job training. It would cut education. It would cut youth programs and it would cut vital economic infrastructure."
NARRATOR: The mayors presented the findings of a 145-city survey of the potential impact of federal spending cuts on the nation's urban environments.
Mayor MARC MORIAL, New Orleans LA:
"Strikingly, the results were overwhelming. Ninety-six percent of the respondents believe that the proposed budget cuts would have an overall negative impact on their cities. Eighty-seven percent believe that the cuts would negatively impact crime reduction strategies. And 93 percent believe it would have a negative impact on human investment, meaning job training, summer jobs, and some programs of the like."
NARRATOR: At the same time that the federal budget squeeze is threatening America's investment in cities and other infrastructure, Congress is also looking to save money by reforming and cutting back the nation's welfare system, a "safety net" that many believe has failed to achieve its purpose.
Rep. WATTS: Since 1965 we have spent $5 trillion on welfare. We have a deeper poverty in 1995 than we had in 1965. How do you explain that? I mean, I think that's the question that people are asking.
NARRATOR: While few would contend that welfare has solved all of the problems of America's poor, Richard Kogan believes it has met with far more success than failure. Kogan is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
RICHARD KOGAN: Many, many, many people become eligible for welfare, apply, get it for a reasonable amount of time and work their way out. The system does exactly what it's supposed to do. It keeps them from having their families being torn apart, their children taken away, their losing their apartment, their having to be on the streets while they're trying to get their act together.
NARRATOR: Over the next seven years, Congress plans to cut spending on federal programs that serve low-income people by tens of billions of dollars. The proposed cuts that Richard Kogan objects to most are those in nutrition programs and in the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Mr. KOGAN: What it means is that poor people generally, in the case of the nutrition programs, and poor working families, in the case of the Earned Income Tax Credit, will have less resources. The diet that would be supported by the cut back Food Stamp Program would no longer meet minimum nutrition requirements. And so, there would be some degradation -- no one knows how much, of course, because we haven't done this -- in the actual physical health of the poorest people in the population.
NARRATOR: Congress is planning to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax break for the working poor, at the same time that it is reducing the tax burden for wealthier Americans.
Mr. KOGAN: The Earned Income Tax Credit is an income supplement. It's a wage supplement program for people who are working who have -- largely for people who are working who have children. The one thing it isn't by definition is a welfare program. In fact, it's the substitute for welfare. It says, 'If you can get a job, we can supplement your wages.' It makes work more attractive than welfare. And I think seriously large cuts in it may have the exact unintended result of making welfare more attractive than work. Not a good idea.
NARRATOR: Another area of federal spending expected to feel the pain of congressional budget cuts is education.
Dr. GEIGER: Well, the cuts are devastating. We're talking about $36 billion in cuts over the next seven years, the largest decrease in the education budget in the history of this country. But it's not the dollars, it's the people that it's going to reach that's going t be devastating.
NARRATOR: Keith Geiger fears that the sound of the school bell is being drowned out by the roar of congressional chain saws. Geiger is president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union.
Dr. GEIGER: You're talking about $10 billion in cuts in the student loan program. That means that students in the lower and middle income families simply are not going to be able to go to college.
You're talking about cuts in the Head Start Program, in the Title I program, a billion dollars in Title I. That means a million children are not going to be able to get remedial math, remedial science, remedial English, and most of those in the early elementary grades. That's the devastation of the cuts.
NARRATOR: According to Geiger, no amount of school bake sales will compensate for the expected loss of federal education dollars. Even at $1000 apiece, America's schools would have to sell about four million brownies to make up for education's loss of federal support in just 1996 alone. Moreover, cutting education funding, defenders of this funding agree, could result in higher student dropout rates, more crime in our streets, and fewer children who grow up to be intelligent adults.
Dr. GEIGER: I don't believe we can make the drastic cuts in Head Start, in early childhood education and expect our kids to be intelligent 20 years from now. The research that we have shows that students who start kindergarten on about equal footing as far as the background that they've had do about the same. And it doesn't matter what racial minority the student is in or whether it is a white student. What we do know is that when students start out on different plateaus, those that are down here never catch up.
NARRATOR: But members of Congress who have voted to reduce funding for Head Start and other education programs believe that these cuts are necessary not only to balance the budget, but to eliminate waste.
Rep. WATTS: I think that our kids today in America, we are competing in a global marketplace. And I definitely believe that if our kids can't do the math and they can't do the science and they can't read, they will not be able to compete. But is that to say that we should not scrutinize education, that we should not demand accountability from education?
There's 14,000 Head Start programs around the country. Less than 7,000 are getting the desired results. The funding in Head Start -- The enrollment in Head Start increased 39 percent.
The funding in Head Start increased 128 percent. Are we not to scrutinize that and ask questions?
NARRATOR: But Keith Geiger believes the evidence shows that education programs are working.
Dr. GEIGER: If you take a look at the SAT scores and other test scores of the last five years, test scores of specifically minority students have been dramatically increasing. We have lowered the gap between the white students in our country and the minority students, and just about everybody says that is because we have put programs in place to help the poor areas, the urban centers, the southern states, and so on. Those students are not going to get these programs anymore.
I think we have to deal with efficiency and we have to deal with getting rid of the waste, and so on. But it is a very interesting debate when Congress puts in B-2 bombers that the Pentagon says that they don't need and they don't want, and then they talk about waste in other areas.
NARRATOR: Is Congress searching for savings and looking for waste in the wrong places? Is it slashing some federal programs unnecessarily so that military spending may remain untouched?
Rep. FLOYD SPENCE (R-SC) (House National Security Committee, 8 Feb.'95):
"We will cut non-defense spending not to be malicious, but because we simply have no choice."
NARRATOR: And does the pressure to balance the budget leave Congress with no choice but to make deep cuts in domestic spending?
Dr. KORB: Well, I think that Congress has cut social programs more than they need to because they don't want to touch defense.
NARRATOR: Dr. Lawrence Korb is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. From 1981 to 1984, he served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration's Pentagon.
Dr. KORB: If they were willing to say take the defense program that's on the table for the next seven years, which is about a trillion-and-a-half dollars, and say, well, we'll cut that to maybe 1.3 trillion, which is still a pretty substantial amount, that would be $200 billion that they would have to deal with these social programs.
NARRATOR: America's military budget currently accounts for about 18 percent of all federal spending. In comparison, the main federal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, accounts for just one percent of the federal budget. Cuts in military spending potentially offer far more savings than cuts in any other federal program whose spending can be adjusted without requiring changes to laws.
But rather than cut military spending, Congress voted to increase it in 1996 by about $7 billion more than the Clinton administration requested. This includes an additional $493 million for what supporters say is just a down payment for 20 more B-2 bombers, bombers the Air Force has said it does not need nor want.
Rep. RICHARD ARMEY (R-TX) (House floor debate, 13 June '95):
"The B-2 does for me and for my children's future, and for my nation, and for my nation's treasury everything I can ask of a weapons system. This is truly, ladies and gentlemen, a flying miracle for the future and it's something we ought to be very, very serious about."
NARRATOR: For the $7 billion the Congress voted to add to the 1996 military budget, you could fund all of these programs that have been targeted for elimination or cuts for an entire year and still have left several billion dollars to apply toward reducing the deficit.
Congressional action to increase the amount of money in the military spending bill, while cutting funds for programs in domestic spending bills the White House wants to protect, prompted President Clinton to threaten vetoes of these bills. Nevertheless, in part perhaps as a response to charges that he is "soft" on defense, the president also is planning to raise rather than cut military spending.
Dr. KORB: To try and cut military spending right now is hard for a number of reasons. First of all, you have a lot of people who work in defense industry and you have a lot of people who work on military bases. And in order to cut spending, you're going to have to get rid of some weapons systems, close some bases. And a lot of the politicians don't want to bear the short term cost of laying those people off. There's also a great over-estimation of the threat.
Sen. COATS (Senate floor debate, 4 August '95):
"It does not take much imagination to imagine what our threats are. Eighty percent of North Korea's forces are within 100 kilometers of the DMZ. Tensions between India and Pakistan are high. Iran is more assertive, Iraq is unpredictable, Algeria on the edge of Islamic revolution."
Rep. BOB STUMP (R-AZ) (House National Security Committee,
8 Feb. '95):
"I personally don't believe that the Soviet Union has suddenly been rendered impotent. I think the threat is still there. I think the threat of China and Korea is going to grow stronger, stronger all the time."
NARRATOR: But others believe the military threats to the United States today provide little cause for concern. For example, America's current military budget is 17 times the military budgets of Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Libya and Cuba combined. These nations are most often cited by the Pentagon today as potential adversaries. The United States spends more money on the military in just three weeks than these countries together spend on their militaries in an entire years.
Dr. KORB: Our military is supposed to be able to fight two major regional wars simultaneously, one in Southwest Asia, the Persian Gulf, one in North Korea. If you take a look at what Iraq and North Korea are spending on defense, it's less than
$5 billion total. But somehow or another we're saying that even with that small amount of money, their forces are as good as ours. We're downplaying the contributions of our allies in both Korea and in the Gulf. And the military and its supporters are going around saying not only are we not spending enough, we ought to be spending more.
Sen. THURMOND (Senate floor debate, 4 August '95):
"I am concerned about defense spending levels. I have argued for years that defense was underfunded. Even this year's budget resolution recommends defense budget levels lower than those I have advocated."
Sen. SAM NUNN (D-GA) (Senate floor debate, 4 August '95):
"There are many members of this body in the House and the Senate who feel that defense spending should be higher and are willing to take it out of domestic."
Rep. WATTS: It is a commitment that I feel like that I need to have, and that's to make sure that our troops are ready to fight the wars.
NARRATOR: Many of those opposed to cutting military spending argue that America's military budget over the past decade has already undergone substantial reductions. One of the primary goals of the Republican "Contract with America" is to reverse this trend.
Sen. COATS (Senate floor debate, 4 August '95):
"Next year, as has been pointed out, will be the eleventh consecutive year of real decline in defense spending. To suggest that the Defense Department has not done its share in addressing budget deficits or freeing up funds for domestic discretionary spending is factually, totally inaccurate."
Rep. WATTS: You look at what the cuts that the military has taken over the last seven to ten years, if everyone else across the board would have taken those same cuts, we would probably have a balanced budget.
NARRATOR: But others point out that while America's military spending has declined, it remains near average Cold War levels. The $258 billion requested by President Clinton to fund the military in 1996 is $20 billion more than the country spent on the military in 1980, a time of great Cold War tension.
Lawrence Korb believes that effective military security can be assured at far less expense than is currently the case.
Dr. KORB: I think America's current military spending is in excess of what we need to be what Speaker Gingrich said not only defend ourselves, but even to be the world leader. Even if you had a defense budget of $50 billion less than you have now, you would still be spending more than any other nation in the world, and if you add our allies. If you take United States spending, NATO spending, and Japan, which is our ally, right now we account for 80 percent of the total expenditures in the world.
So, let's say you took the United States down by $50 billion, well, we'd still with our allies by about 70 percent of all the military expenditures in the world, which is more than enough to provide for your security.
Rep. RON DELLUMS (D-CA) (House National Security Committee, 8 Feb. '95)|:
"As I have said before, a nation's budget is its clearest expression of its priorities and its values."
NARRATOR: The current federal budget debate is very much about how America defines its security needs and its priorities. With President Clinton widely perceived as being on the defensive when it comes to military issues and a congressional majority eager to raise military budgets, there is tremendous pressure to cut domestic programs. Some argue that the United States must spend more to remain strong militarily.
Sen. THURMOND (Senate Armed Services Committee, 9 Feb. '95):
"National security and the preeminence of the United States must be guaranteed. Our young men and women in uniform and their families deserve to live in dignity. Readiness must be revitalized. Modernization must be progressive and robust. Missile defense must become a reality. These are our priorities."
Rep. STUMP (House National Security Committee, 8 Feb. '95): "There are many of us on this committee, Mr. Secretary, that will do at every opportunity we have what we can to increase this defense budget to the maximum extent possible."
NARRATOR: Others believe that the real threats to America's security today are internal.
Dr. KORB: President Eisenhower used to say that national security is a combination not only of military power, but economic strength. And if you're spending so much on the military that your economy is suffering because you're not, say, investing enough in infrastructure or education, then, in fact, in the long run national security will be hurt.
Dr. GEIGER: Anybody that takes a look at this country and where it's going will say that the economy and the education and of its children are as important to the defense of this country as any money in the defense budget."
Sen. BUMPERS: (Senate floor debate, 4 August '95):
"Not to be trite, but the truth of the matter is that we, like so many civilizations, from the
Israelites on, may very well find that the strength of this nation is not all in planes, and tanks, and
guns. How we treat our people, the kind of health care they get, the kind of education they get,
the kind of environment they live in, those things determine what a powerful nation is, too.
ADM SHANAHAN: We spend $5 billion every week on our military to counter unpredictable and unforeseen threats to our vital interests. This over-insurance may be a luxury that we can ill-afford. The decision rests with the American people.
For "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I am Jack Shanahan.
[End of broadcast.]
(C) Copyright 1995, Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.