Commentary: Soldiers, food stamps and cranberries

After loudly condemning President Clinton for the declining readiness of the American military, a tough-talking Congress this election year has taken defense matters into its own hands. Here's how some powerful Senators would set things right: break their promise to get soldiers off food stamps, buy three flying limousines for generals and admirals at a cost of $52 million each, and feed the troops more cranberries.

In truth, despite their blame-Clinton game, Senators stand accused by their own referees of writing defense money bills this year that favor back-home pork projects and glamorous weapons over the unglamorous spare parts and other items that make the armed services genuinely more ready to fight. Here, for example, are some of the unusually blunt words the Republicans' own analysts wrote in explaining to the Senate how its Defense Appropriations Subcommittee marked up Clinton's fiscal 2001 budget:

"Having decided to spend most additional money on major equipment items and not on readiness, the Defense Subcommittee not only left [spending money] on the table but it also disregarded the assumptions of the budget resolution" that Congress would raise pay enough to get troops off food stamps.

"The question must be asked," the assessment continues, "does this Senate-reported Department of Defense appropriations bill take full advantage of the opportunity afforded by the budget resolution to more fully address the serious readiness deficiencies created by the Clinton administration and the senior leadership of the Department of Defense? Moreover, does the bill specifically reject the Senate's 99-0 vote and implicit advice to address the issue of military food stamps?"

Those words almost certainly will be hurled at Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Daniel K. Inouye, R-Hawaii, the ranking Democrat on the Defense Subcommittee, when their money bill is debated and amended in the coming days. John McCain, R-Ariz., the most outspoken anti-pork legislator, has already blasted his Senate Armed Services Committee for failing to get men and women in uniform off food stamps when it marked up its $310 billion defense authorization bill last month.

"We should have acted to eliminate the food stamp Army," McCain said in casting the only vote against sending that bill to the full Senate. "To do less is an affront to our most needy service members and their families. It is unconscionable that the men and women who are willing to sacrifice their lives for their country have to rely on food stamps to make ends meet, and it is an abrogation of our responsibilities as Senators to let this reality go on without some sort of legislative remedy."

McCain, in his written dissent, also blasted his own committee for failing to address critical shortages in the military while adding $460 million-money the Navy did not request-for an LHD-8 amphibious assault ship. The ship will be built by Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi, which happens to be the home state of Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Lott and Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine also succeeded in getting an extra $144 million authorized for the DDG-51 destroyers built both at Litton Ingalls and at Maine's Bath Iron Works.

"Not to be outdone by the surface shipyards," McCain fumed, "the submarine builders received early authorization to procure the next five Virginia-class submarines at a cost of $2.1 billion each, accelerating the authorization for the fifth boat by a full year from the Navy's current plan. In effect, the submarine shipbuilders [General Dynamics Electric Boat of Groton, Conn., and Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia] have been given permission to continue the current noncompetitive teaming arrangement instead of allowing the market to determine whether only one shipyard is needed."

The vigor with which the public applauded such anti-pork remarks when McCain ran for President suggests a perception beyond the Capital Beltway, justified or not, that Congress is wasting defense dollars rather than acting as the Pentagon's responsible overseer. The fine print of congressional budget language-including words urging the consumption of more cranberries-can only harden that impression.

In its report on its fiscal 2001 Defense appropriations bill, the Senate Appropriations Committee wrote: "The committee understands that medical studies indicate the potential benefits of cranberry juice and other cranberry products in maintaining health. The committee urges the Secretary of Defense to take steps to increase the department's use of cranberry products in the diet of on-base personnel and troops in the field. Such purchases should prioritize cranberry products with high cranberry content such as fresh cranberries, cranberry sauces and jellies and concentrate and juice with over 25 percent cranberry content."

The report neglects to explain to the taxpayers-or to anyone else-that the Senate committee's language was driven by the mountains of unsold cranberries piling up in such states as Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Further disillusionment awaits the ordinary taxpayer who checks the Internet and sees that the Ocean Spray Cranberries political action committee contributes to a long list of lawmakers, including several on congressional military committees.

Another Senate Appropriations Committee action, revealed in the fine print of its report but not otherwise explained, was to order the Pentagon to buy three flying limousines that the President did not request, for about $50 million each. If the committee action becomes law, the Air Force will get one Boeing 737-700 airliner for $52 million, and the Navy, which buys planes for the Marine Corps as well as for itself, will get two for a total of $110 million. Generals and admirals for years have hankered after new and larger executive aircraft to take them and their staffs from place to place in comfort. The plane the committee would buy, designated the C-40, is designed to carry 121 passengers or 19 tons of freight, but not combat troops or tanks.

Much of the fine print in the military bills to be voted on in coming days seems to embrace the philosophy, "To the 'vicars' belong the spoils." The vicars in this case are key Capitol Hill leaders and members of the four military committees in Congress-the Senate and House Armed Services committees, and the Senate and House Defense Appropriations subcommittees. Lott, for example, is credited with this language in the pending Senate and House Defense appropriations bills: "None of the funds appropriated or made available in this act shall be used to reduce or disestablish the operation of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron of the Air Force Reserve." This hurricane-hunting squadron is located in Biloxi, Miss.

Other well-positioned Senate vicars who helped their parishes within the same bill include Stevens-last year named as Alaskan of the Century-and Inouye of Hawaii. The Defense Appropriations Subcommittee added $17 million to improve the Fort Wainwright and Fort Greeley Army bases in Alaska. It also took $10 million out of the Air Force's most crucial readiness account-operations and maintenance-and gave the money to the Transportation Department "to realign railroad track on Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson"-both in Alaska. Hawaii got an extra $24 million for its Pearl Harbor shipyard, along with $15 million not requested by Clinton for Hawaiian health care centers.

Teeth marks of two of the chamber's oldest lions, Republican Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Democrat Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, show up in other parts of the same Defense appropriations bill. The now-closed Charleston, S.C., Navy shipyard is down for $10 million in unrequested funds, and the National Guard chief is directed to see if Camp Dawson, W.Va., would make a suitable center for training Guardsmen in helping victims of gas, nuclear, or germ attacks.

Here's another pork provision in the same vein. Language tucked into both the Senate and House Appropriations bills is reminiscent of past successful campaigns by Sen. Arlen Specter, who is now the third-ranked Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, to force the Pentagon to buy coal from his home state of Pennsylvania and ship it to Germany to heat U.S. military barracks there. This year's provision sets up a quid pro quo under which the Air Force would help modernize the heating plant of the German city of Kaiserslautern-home to a large U.S. Air Force base-if it burns Pennsylvania coal.

Fretted one Pentagon official: "The mayor of Kaiserslautern is already mad at us for all the coal we sent him. He would rather buy German coal." The defense official, however, said enough wiggle room may be put in the final congressional language to keep another mountain of Pennsylvania coal from rising in Germany.

House vicars, too, have found spoils for their parishes in the Defense appropriations bill. Norm Dicks, a Democrat from Washington state, pushed up Clinton's request for research funding for an advanced B-2 bomber from $48 million to $145 million. Dicks' district includes a lot of Boeing Co. workers who help make the plane's wings. House appropriators also aided lawmakers from Connecticut by tripling the Administration request for UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, made by Sikorsky in Stratford, Conn. The extra 11 Blackhawks would go to the politically powerful Army Reserve and National Guard-not the active-duty Army.

Congressional tinkering with presidential budgets is not always a bad thing. Past Congresses showed more vision than the Pentagon did in pushing the nuclear submarine fleet into being, for example, and this Congress is wisely restructuring the Joint Strike Fighter program. But McCain had it right when he said: "The military needs less money spent on pork and more money spent wisely to redress the serious problems caused by a decade of declining defense budgets. Those of us who have been criticized for sounding alarm bells about military readiness now have the empty satisfaction of seeing that there is more to maintaining a strong defense than a politician's history of falsely promising to do so."