Panel approves funding for DoD troops, maintenance

With its chairman declaring he was determined to improve the everyday life of service men and women, a Senate Armed Services subcommittee voted Tuesday to approve legislation designed to upgrade military housing and relieve the strain on mechanics trying to keep trucks and planes ready to fight.

By voice vote, the Subcommittee on Readiness and Manpower Support approved its portion of the $310 billion draft defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2001 during a brief, closed-door session, according to participants.

Subcommittee Chairman James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., told National Journal News Service that "it was a crime" to ask military people to live and work in dilapidated quarters, which he said he has seen at Fort Bragg, N.C., and other bases in the United States. He said the subcommittee agreed that more dollars must go for "quality of life."

Bemoaning a lack of spare parts and shortage of new equipment, the chairman said that mechanics, as a consequence, "have to work 16 hours a day to maintain equipment" in their charge.

Although the subcommittee tried to redirect as many dollars as it could to improve living and working conditions, "there weren't enough dollars" within the budget to meet the desperate needs of the active-duty military," Inhofe added.

His subcommittee was one of three Armed Services panels to kick off the Senate's consideration of the Clinton Administration's fiscal 2001 defense budget request. Working under an accelerated schedule, three more subcommittees plan to mark up their portions of the defense authorization bill Wednesday before the full committee begins a scheduled two-day markup at 3 p.m. the same day.

The readiness panel held its markup as the Associated Press reported that U.S. Air Force readiness to fight a war slumped in recent months to its lowest level in 15 years, declining 28 percent since the end of the Cold War. The wire service quoted a senior military official as saying that only 65 percent of the force's combat units were considered operating at the military's best levels of readiness in December and January.

The unnamed official blamed budgets that didn't allow enough for spare parts and didn't offer service members salaries competitive in today's booming U.S. economy. "I think that all of us underestimated the amount of money you needed to keep the force going" after the post-Cold War drawdown in people, equipment and so on, he told AP.

Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., chairman of the full Armed Services Committee, said the readiness panel and other subcommittees are determined to reverse the negative trends in today's military establishment. Warner said the combination of immediate needs plus the widening threats from such countries as China, Iraq and North Korea, will require continued increases in the total defense budget.

"We need a good decade of increased defense spending," Warner told National Journal News Service.

"More and more threats are being directed toward the United States from non-states," Warner said in reference to possible terrorist attacks. He specifically mentioned threats by groups led by or linked to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire and Islamic militant believed to be living in Afghanistan.

Asked what he considered the most significant development in the whole defense authorization process this year, Warner replied that it was "another year of increased defense spending following 13 years of cutting defense."