Gibbons raps administration for spending too little on military

Scott Sonner

Tuesday, April 20, 1999 | 4:07 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - A congressman who served as a combat pilot in the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars says a trip to the Balkans confirmed his worst fears about the downsizing of the U.S. military.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said he saw "hollow" American forces, plagued by overworked soldiers and shortages of spare parts.

"When I see our troops cannibalizing spare parts off one vehicle for another, one airplane to another, it tells me we are critically underfunded in spare parts," he said Tuesday from Washington.

Gibbons, a critic of what he called cutbacks in Pentagon spending during the Clinton administration, visited U.S. troops and refugee camps in the Kosovo region over the weekend as well as NATO headquarters in Belgium.

"It seems to me this administration has a real appetite to engage in these types of operations but lacks a willingness to fund our military strength," Gibbons told The Associated Press.

"For the last six years, we have mortgaged tomorrow's military readiness to maintain today's readiness," he said.

Gibbons said he was communicating his concerns in meetings Tuesday with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Defense Secretary William Cohen.

A member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, Gibbons hasn't decided whether he supports President Clinton's request for a $6 billion emergency appropriation for the Balkans. Republicans in Congress have asked for much more spending.

Gibbons said he will seek assurances for a long-term commitment to overall defense spending.

"I am tired of listening to the administration say, 'Yeah, we are reducing military spending but we can keep doing this.' We cannot keep doing this," Gibbons said.

"When you pull an aircraft carrier off duty in the Pacific to help cover the Mediterranean, leaving us exposed to Taiwan and China, that tells me we've got serious problems.

"When we are pulling aircraft out of Turkey that were doing northern watch on Saddam Hussein, and stop watching Saddam Hussein, that tells me we have a hollow force."

The Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and his House counterpart, Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., both predict Congress will beef up Clinton's request.

"We're wearing out our troops, we're wearing out the equipment," Young said.

He suggested Clinton round up Democratic support for an expanded package because "the president made the decision to get us into this. Republicans didn't put us into this war."

Clinton in January proposed a $268.2 billion overall budget for the Pentagon next budget year beginning Oct. 1, about a $12 billion increase from the current year.

It would mark the first time since 1991, the year of the Persian Gulf War, that Pentagon spending would rise above the level of inflation. It also would be the largest increase since President Reagan's Cold War buildup of the mid-1980s.