The following email and statement by Senator McCain reflect one of the few times that a politician has done something unpopular based on principles.  This makes Senator McCain "On-the-Level" and within the possibilities of Technidigm-2000in this instance.  This is not a Technidigm.org endorsement of his campaign for resident, but it is a statement of hope for America.  - Charles R. Jones

When men have departed from the right way, it is no wonder that they stumble and fall.

Dear Patriots,

There is an e-mail circulating that faults Senator McCain - among others -- for voting against the Defense Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2000. Senator McCain was listed as one of those who did not support the Appropriations Bill
and we want to explain why he did not.  Senator McCain is perhaps the strongest supporter of the military in the entire
Congress. His service to his country for over 22 years as an active duty Naval officer (5 1/2 of which were spent as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam) and his subsequent Congressional record are clear proof of his commitment to the
Armed Services.

A major point in the e-mail letter was that these Senators, in voting against
the Defense Appropriations Bill, were voting against the 4.8 percent pay raise
for military personnel. The fact is that Senator McCain AUTHORED the pay raise
and several other benefits in a bill that was ultimately adopted in the
National Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2000 and paid for in this
Appropriations bill. Senator McCain's proposal is what brings the military a
4.8 percent pay raise, pay table reform, repeal of Redux, and the Thrift
Savings plan. He worked tirelessly to ensure this package of benefits was
passed this year -- and worked with the leadership of the Senate to ensure that
it was one of the first bills introduced in the Senate last January.

Senator McCain voted FOR the Authorization Bill which authorized all these
benefits to be put in place. But when it came time to pay for the authorized
bill (approximately $285 billion including the pay raise) the Senate and House
weighted the bill down with over $6.4 billion in pork barrel spending. The
conference participants did not act on many of the Defense Department's stated
requirements, but instead added $6.4 billion in pet projects for their home
states. It was this Congressional abuse of the system that Senator McCain voted
against.

The Appropriations bill passed overwhelmingly and was signed by the President.
Senator McCain voted against the bill because he felt it was a poorly written
bill, not because he did not want the men and women of the Armed Services to
receive better benefits and higher pay raises. He made a statement on the
Senate floor -- which we have attached - that said that he reluctantly had to
vote against the bill because it was a clear example of Congress larding the
bill with billions of dollars worth of projects that were neither requested nor
required by the Department of Defense.

Furthermore, Senator McCain worked to provide extra pay on top of both the pay
raise and the pay table reform to E-1s to E-5s to remove nearly 12,000 military
families from the Food Stamps rolls. The conference participants chose to drop
Senator McCain's proposal from the final bill.

Please forward this message to as many addresses as you can, to ensure that
those who received the first letter have a chance to understand why Senator
McCain, a man whose dedication to the military is unquestioned, voted against
the pork-laden Appropriations Bill. Thank you.

Sincerely,

McCain 2000 Patriots Network

The American public has a very cynical view of its elected representatives,
which strikes at our credibility and legitimacy by discouraging individuals
from participating in the democratic process. People don't vote when they
become convinced that their vote doesn't matter. That level of cynicism is
particularly strong where the federal budget--one of our primary
responsibilities as legislators--is concerned.

Looking at this bill - larded with earmarks and set-asides for powerful defense
contractors, influential local groups and officials, and other parochial
interests - one can understand the distrust with which the average citizen
views the federal government. The use of gimmicks and budgetary subterfuge
simply deepens the gulf that exists between those of us who toil within the
confines of the Beltway, and Americans across the nation who see large portions
of their paychecks diverted by Congress for purposes they often do not support.
We have truly become morally bankrupt when we can stand here on the floor and
argue the absolute national security imperative of passing a $268 billion
defense spending bill that includes the level of obfuscation and waste in the
legislation before us today.

What kind of message are we sending American businessmen and women, especially
the small businesses most affected, by telling DOD to purposely delay paying
its bills? When DOD fails to pay contractors on time, those contractors often
have to tell their suppliers, subcontractors, and employees that they'll have
to wait for their check. The trickle-down effect is felt most by the employees
and their families whose budgets often can't absorb a delay of a week in
getting a paycheck, much less the 29-day delay mandated in this bill.
This provision simply pushes off until the next fiscal year the bills that come
due in the last month of this fiscal year. Does anyone in this body believe
that it will be any easier next year to live within the budget caps? Well, I
can tell you that it will be more difficult, because, by approving this
gimmick, we are spending $2 billion of next year's available funding. In fact,
we already pushed another $6 billion into the next fiscal year by "forward
funding" programs in the Labor/HHS Appropriations bill. In total, we will have
already spent $8 billion our of next year's budget cap before taking up a
single FY 2001 appropriations bill.

And how can we explain the categorization of $7.2 billion for normal,
predictable operations, training, and maintenance funding as "emergency"
spending? Clearly, the budget gurus know that ongoing operations around the
world cost money, as does necessary training as well as maintaining the
admittedly bloated infrastructure of the Department of Defense. None of this
should come as a surprise to the appropriators, and thus cannot be justified as
"emergency" spending, other than as a clear manifestation of an effort to evade
budget caps.

This $7.2 billion will come straight out of the budget surplus that the
Congress promised just a few months ago to return to the American taxpayers.
Together with the ever-increasing $8.7 billion in "emergency" farm aid (some of
which is admittedly justifiable), we will have already spent the entire
non-Social Security surplus - and even a few billion of the Social Security
Trust Fund. How can we vote - not once but four times - to put a a "lockbox" on
the Social Security surplus and then turn right around and spend it without
blinking an eye?

At the same time, we are funding ships and aircraft and research programs that
were not requested by the military, and in fact do not even appear on the
ever-expanding Unfunded Requirements Lists, the integrity of which have been
thoroughly undermined by powerful members of Congress in their ever-present
pursuit of "the other white meat."

Mr. President, this bill includes $6.4 billion in low-priority, wasteful
spending not subject to the kind of deliberative, competitive process that we
should demand of all items in spending bills. Think about that. Six billion
dollars--more than ever before in any defense bill.

Argue all you want about the merits of individual programs that were added at
the request of interested Members. At the end of the day, there is over $6
billion worth of pork in a defense spending bill at the same time we are
struggling with a myriad of readiness and modernization problems. No credible
budget process can withstand such abuse indefinitely and still retain the level
of legitimacy needed to properly represent the interests of the nation as a
whole.

The ingenuity of the appropriators never ceases to amaze me. In this defense
bill, we are wasting money on unrequested research and development projects
like the $3 million for advanced food service technology and on activities
totally unrelated to national defense, such as the $8 million in the budget for
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Resource Preservation.

These items are representative of the bulk of the pork-barrel spending that is
inserted into spending bills for parochial reasons: hundreds of small items or
activities totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Combine them with the
big-ticket items in the bill--like the 11 Blackhawk helicopters at a cost of
over $100 million; the $375 million in long-lead funding for an amphibious
assault ship--funding added to the bill following a disgraceful episode
involving congressional intimidation of the Navy to add funding not programmed
by the service; and the $275 million for F-15 aircraft above the $263 million
in the budget request--and you have a major investment in special interest
goodwill at the expense of broader national security considerations. Two of
these programs, the amphibious assault ship and the Blackhawk helicopters, are
specifically mentioned in the Secretary of Defense's letter to the chairmen of
the Senate and House Appropriations Committees as diverting funds from "much
higher priority needs..."

And how long are we going to continue to acquiesce in the forced acquisition of
security locks just because they are manufactured in the state that was
represented by a very powerful former member of this body? Making a bad
situation worse, we have extended the requirement that one particular company's
product be purchased for government-owned facilities to also include the
contractors that serve them, and earmarked another $10 million for that
purpose. What's next? Are we going to mandate that these locks be used for the
bicycles of children of defense contractors?

Another distasteful budget sleight of hand was the addition of 15 military
construction projects totaling $92 million that were neither requested nor
authorized. The Appropriations Conference took care of that, however: they are
both authorized and fully funded in the Conference Report, calling into
question the relevance of the defense authorizing committees in the House of
Representatives and the Senate.

As apparently one of very few members of Congress actually concerned that the
Navy, by design, will lack the means of supporting ground forces ashore with
high-volume, high-impact naval gunfire for at least another 10 years, I am more
than a little taken aback that the California delegation has placed a higher
priority on accumulating tourist dollars than on preserving one of the last two
battleships in the fleet. The $3 million earmarked for relocating the USS Iowa
represents a particularly pernicious episode of giving higher priority to
bringing home the bacon than to national security interests. Simplistic
platitudes regarding the age of these ships aside, no one can deny that they
continue to represent one of the most capable non-nuclear platforms in the
arsenal. But, yes, they do make fine museums.

Also discouraging is the growing use of domestic source restrictions on the
acquisition of defense items. The Defense Appropriations Conference Report is
replete with so-called "Buy American" restrictions, every one of which serves
solely to protect businesses from competition. The use of protectionist
legislation to insulate domestic industry from competition not only deprives
the American consumer of the best product at the lowest price, it deprives the
American taxpayer of the best value for his or her tax dollar. It undermines
alliance relations while we are encouraging friendly countries to "buy
American." As Secretary Cohen stated, such restrictions "undermine DoD's
ability to procure the best systems at the least cost and to advance highly
beneficial armaments cooperation with our allies."

Mr. President, our military personnel will not fail to notice that, while we
are spending inordinate amounts of money on programs and activities not
requested by the armed forces, we rejected a proposal to get 12,000 military
families off food stamps. That is not a message with which I wish to be
associated. This bill appropriates $2.5 million, at the insistence of the
House, for the Alliance for Youth program, yet, because of the opposition of
the House, not one penny to get the children of military personnel currently on
food stamps off of them. The cost of the provision I sponsored in the defense
authorization bill was $6 million per year to permanently remove 10,000
military families from the food stamp rolls. Apparently, some members of the
House, who fought hard to defeat that measure, have no problem finding hundreds
of millions of dollars to take care of businesses important to their districts
and campaigns.

This conference report represents everything those of us in the majority were
supposed to be against. We weren't supposed to be the party that, when it came
to power, would abuse the Congressional power of the purse because we couldn't
restrain ourselves from bowing to the special interests that ask us to spend
billions of dollars on projects that benefit them, not the nation as a whole.
We were supposed to be the pro-defense party, the party that gave highest
priority to ensuring our national security and the readiness of our Armed
Forces. We weren't supposed to be the party that wastes $6.4 billion on
low-priority, wasteful, and unnecessary spending of scarce defense resources.

Our Armed Forces are the best in the world, but there is much that must be done
to complete their restructuring, retraining, and re-equipping to meet the
challenges of the future. I support a larger defense budget but I know that, if
we eliminate pork-barrel spending from the defense budget, we can modernize our
military without adding to the overall budget. Every year, Congress earmarks
about $4 to 6 billion for wasteful, unnecessary, and low-priority projects that
do little or nothing to support our military. Because Congress refuses to allow
unneeded bases to be closed, the Pentagon wastes another $7 billion per year to
maintain this excess infrastructure. If we privatized or consolidated support
and depot maintenance activities, we could save $2 billion every year. And if
we eliminated the anti-competitive "Buy America" provisions from law, we could
save another $5.5 billion every year on defense contracts. Altogether, these
common-sense proposals would free up over $20 billion every year in the defense
budget that could be used to provide adequate pay and ensure appropriate
quality of life for our military personnel and their families; pay for needed
training and modern equipment for our forces; and pay for other high-priority
defense needs, like an effective national missile defense system.
Instead, the Congress continues to squander scarce defense dollars, while
nearly 12,000 of the men and women who protect our nation's security, and their
families, must subsist on food stamps. It is a national disgrace.

Moral indignation serves little practical purpose in the halls of Congress. In
the end, we are what we are: politicians more concerned with parochial matters
than with broader considerations of national security and fiscal
responsibility. I do not like voting against the bill that funds the Department
of Defense, not while we have pilots patrolling the skies over Iraq and troops
enforcing the peace on the Korean peninsula and in such places as Bosnia,
Kosovo and even East Timor.

However, I cannot support this defense bill. It is so full of wasteful spending
and smoke and mirrors gimmickry that what good lies within is overwhelmed by
the bad. It literally wastes billions of dollars on unnecessary programs, while
revitalizing discredited budgeting practices--all in the name of "bringing home
the bacon." Those of us in the majority correctly rejected the Administration's
ill-considered attempt to incrementally fund military construction projects-but
now we are proceeding to institutionalize budgeting practices that warrant even
greater contempt.

I strongly urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.

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