The Heritage Lectures. Congressional Misperceptions and tne SDI Battle of the Budget.
Abstract
I welcome the opportunity to talk with you at this critical time in our program, in view of the upcoming continuation of the debate in the Congress, and in the Senate in particular, on the President's FY1993 budget request for the SDI program. This is a continuation of the many contentious debates in several quarters regarding SDI throughout its history. Generally I have categorized our efforts to advance the SDI objectives in terms of three categories of negotiations: (1) with Congress, (2) within the Pentagon, and (3) with the Soviets, and now the Russians. It is hard to keep the progress in these three key areas uniform. It seems rather normal that we take two steps forward and one step back-and this is a very complicated process to manage since the three areas of activity are coupled, and yet they are not being conducted in any sort of a synchronous fashion. Congressional Backsliding Witness the performance of the Congress over the past year. Last year, the Missile Defense Act of 1991 was an enormously important step forward, and now the congressional debate is over how far to regress from that very positive step. The Bumpers-Sasser Amendment, which is the principal issue to be taken up if the Senate does move the Defense Authorization Bill back on the floor, is potentially lethal to our program. If it becomes law, it would scuttle any meaningful defense for the United States. You should understand that the Bumpers-Sasser amendment is not only premised on a $3.3 billion budget this year-a cut of $2.1 billion from the President's FY1993 budget request, but it is derived from a flawed plan put forward by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which would essentially cut the President's planned budget in half for the out years.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 08, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA338720
Entities
People
- Henry F. Cooper