Ron Paul’s Statement on H. R. 6599, Military Construction/Veterans Affairs Appropriations

August 1st, 2008 by Michael Nystrom
This comes via the speeches & statements section on Ron Paul’s Congressional website.
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Madam Speaker, I rise in reluctant opposition to this appropriations
legislation. It is unfortunate that my colleagues have decided to
combine the necessary appropriations contained in the Veterans Affairs
portion of this bill with the bloated and unconstitutional military
construction appropriations. In the past I have voted in favor of
Veterans Affairs appropriation bills when they were not combined with
unwise and wasteful spending of other appropriations like military
construction.
This appropriation will allocate $9.5 billion to close bases in the
United States while spending nearly $12 billion building other
facilities overseas! As a matter of fact, any construction of new bases
in the United States is prohibited by this bill. While I am not
necessarily in favor of building new bases in the United States , we
certainly should not be spending money to close existing domestic bases
in favor of constructing new bases overseas.
The bill will transfer more than $200 million to NATO, an
organization with no purpose that should be disbanded immediately, for
the construction of NATO facilities in countries where we have no
business having our military in the first place.
We have been told that we will have no permanent bases in Iraq , but
then again we have no “permanent” bases in Korea either even though we
have had a military presence there for more than 50 years. It is
unclear how much of this $12 billion will go to building new facilities
to maintain an indefinite presence in Iraq , but any such expenditure
will be counterproductive to US national interests.
This appropriation increases construction funds to the service
branches by as much as 50 percent over current levels, which is
financially dangerous and unsustainable particularly in view of next
year’s record budget deficit.
Madam Speaker, it is a tragedy that necessary spending to keep
promises to American veterans should be held hostage to this out of
control spending on maintaining an unnecessary and dangerous US empire
overseas. We are doing no favors to today’s veterans or to future
veterans – or to the US taxpayers — with this appropriations bill.