Senator David Perdue, a member of the Senate Budget and Foreign Relations Committees, on Thursday highlighted the impact the federal debt crisis is having on the country’s ability to support the military and protect the nation.
Here are highlights:
Responsibly Funding The Federal Government: “The primary role of Congress is to responsibly fund the federal government.
To do that, we must set clear national priorities that we can financially support. All too often, the process of setting – and then sticking to these national priorities – has become a purely political exercise, not a function of governing…Coming from the business world, I clearly see two interlocking crises we face as a country. First we have a global security crisis…Interlocked with what is our national debt crisis, which threatens our ability to defending our country today.”
Fiscal Crisis Jeopardizing Our Military: “Under President Carter, Clinton, and Obama we’ve seen three different periods of disinvestment in our military. Our 30-year average of defense spending has been 4.2 percent of GDP…We’re about to have the smallest Army since WWII, the smallest Navy since WWI, and the smallest and oldest Air Force ever. How can this be? The world is more dangerous right now than at any point in my lifetime…Our women and men in uniform need to have the tools and resources to complete their missions around the world. This fiscal crisis is jeopardizing our ability to actually fund the missions being asked of our military today.”
JSTARS Capability Gap: “JSTARS is a fleet of planes, 16 in number…Today, they fly missions providing critical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), ground targeting, and battlefield command and control capabilities to all branches of our military in multiple regions of the world. The problem is they have outlived their useful life…But because of our intransigence in Washington, the funding is not there to replace them so we’re now facing potentially eight years where we will not be able to fulfill their mission.”
National Debt Driving Disinvestment: “So, what’s causing this great disinvestment in our military? Well, there’s only one answer. The national debt…We no longer have the luxury of debating both issues separately. In the past seven years, Washington has spent $25 trillion running the federal government. That’s bad enough but the problem is we borrowed $9 trillion of that $25 trillion.”
Defense And Fiscal Hawks Coming Together: “You know, it used to be that fiscal hawks and defense hawks were at odds with each other in Washington—and I’ve said this—but today I see more people, who are one or the other, beginning to come together and recognize the other problem. They’re interrelated in a way they’ve never been.”
Solving The Underlying Problem: “In the private sector, you fix a business by first drilling down and finding the underlying problem. The way that Washington funds the federal government –the time it takes to complete the federal budget, the fact that the current process allows Members of Congress to put off making tough decisions—is the real problem. In business, this would never be allowed. In your personal homes, this cannot be tolerated, but somehow, we’re able to do it here year after year. This process has only worked four times in the past 42 years.”
We Need To Act Now: “Every member of this body knows that we need to act now. My question is, well, why aren’t we acting? The challenge is to stop talking about it theoretically and start putting the solutions into practice…Let’s not lose sight of Congress’ number one responsibility. We are charged in the Constitution – under Article I – to responsibly fund the federal government, and to ensure that the six reasons why 13 colonies came together in the first place can actually be realized.”
View the full transcript here.