February 23, 1972
Page 5277
MUSKIE OR MUSK-OX ON NATIONAL SECURITY?
(Mr. WYMAN asked and was given permission to extend his remarks at this point in the RECORD and to include extraneous matter.)
Mr. WYMAN. Mr. Speaker, hints of what some of the alternatives to President Nixon might involve for the United States of America next year, are to be found in today's Evans and Novak column in the Washington Post. Implicit in the reporting of these distinguished writers is the suggestion that Candidate MUSKIE would cut defense funds and to blazes with the national security.
This ties in with another Democrat contender, Senator MCGOVERN, who has publicly proposed a $33 billion cut in defense over a 3-year period – all while the incontrovertible evidence is that the Soviet Union is sharply increasing its defense – offense? – spending and the United States is spending for defense even if the DOD fiscal year 1973 requests are not cut, $6.6 billion below the 1964 budget.
I wonder if either of these gentlemen who aspire to the Presidency of the United States with its solemn responsibilities, realize that increases in prices and increases in pay and allowances for military personnel since 1964 have increased defense costs for these items alone by more than $32 billion since 1964? And none of this buys us any hardware or research and development.
I wonder, also, if these would-be Presidents realize that nondefense spending alone is up 150 percent since 1964?
President Nixon has requested a modest budget increase for defense, principally for new ships and submarines. May the Lord save America if anything less than this become the order of the day.
It is the continuing responsibility of those of us in the Congress and the executive branch to keep America strong so our people can be safe. There are no poverty programs in Communist nations – only concentration camps for protesters – or mental hospital if they are too brainy.
The utter indifference to the national security of the Muskie, McGovern positions is a caution to voters who want a free, safe America in the years ahead. It is said that voters do not carefully ponder such things. I believe they do.
The article follows:
SENATOR MUSKIE'S DISARMERS
(By Rowland Evans and Robert Novak)
The pressure for wholly irresponsible cuts in defense spending by Sen. Edmund S. Muskie's active supporters is reflected in a bizarre discussion last November among his secret policy advisers ending with recommendations smacking of unilateral disarmament.
The Muskie advisers talked about cutting $30 billion from Pentagon spending ($7-8 billion for this fiscal year) and redistributing the money to the poor. Although it is inconceivable that Muskie as president would even contemplate such irresponsibility, one of the senator's top aides sat in on the meeting without one serious word of dissent.
That reflects a little understood fact about the Muskie campaign. Whereas the senator maintains a centrist image in his drive for president, both his paid staff and his voluntary advisers are situated well to the left. Consequently, Muskie will prove an extraordinary political balancer if he can appeal to the masses and simultaneously satisfy his ideologically rigid supporters.
Such supporters make up the "Muskie Domestic Issues Group" headed by Morris B. Abram, distinguished attorney and former president of Brandeis University. It meets regularly at Abram’s elegant Manhattan apartment in The Dakota with Donald E. Nicoll, Muskie's longtime aide and confidant, flying up from Washington to attend.
The Nov. 17 meeting of the Abram group accurately reflected the caliber of its advice to Muskie. S. M. Miller, professor of educational sociology at New York University, presented a paper on redistribution of income which proposed $30 billion of tax relief for poor-to-middle brackets by cutting annual defense spending that much within three or four years.
Even Muskie's own liberal staffers privately acknowledged $30 billion easily transcends reality when Soviet military spending is ominously rising. Moreover, currently studying possible defense cuts, the Muskie staff, properly, starts from what US. foreign policy commitments ought to be and how much must be spent for defense to sustain them. Prof. Miller's approach – setting an arbitrary $30 billion target – reverses this.
But Nicoll, Muskie's staffer present at The Dakota, offered no rebuke. Instead, he echoed the sidestepping of Muskie himself on defense. According to the meeting's official minutes: "Nicoll said that Sen. Muskie's position was that the military budget must be cut but that he had not proposed a fixed amount for that cut, because we are not sure of the correct figures involved and it is very difficult to get these figures."
That triggered several flights of fancy. Miller said the way to cut defense spending was to promise more spending in education and housing. Sociologist Herbert Gans talked about cutting military spending for "right wing dictatorships" (actually an insignificant amount).
At no time were the harsh realities of national security discussed.
Abram agreed that the defense budget "had become almost a sacred cow," adding: "This military budget is a monstrosity and a disgrace. We should lock the Chiefs of Staff in a room and tell them not to come out until they have cut $20 billion from the military budget and we should use that money to raise the minimum (tax) exemption to $1200 per person (presently $750)."
In conclusion, Nicoll injected a note of political, though not military caution. ". . . It is hard to sell a $20-billion reduction now with the economic situation as bad as it is. He (Nicoll) liked the approach of going at the problem in stages and talking of reduction gradually over three or four years."
Officially, the Muskie camp values the Abram group's advice. Privately, however, Muskie aides say it is humored mainly because of Abram's talents in attracting big campaign money.
Nevertheless, advice from it and other leftish sources has its relevance. With Muskie getting lurid recommendations of $30 billion in defense cuts, a reduction of a few billion – dangerous though that might be to national security – might seem quite modest to him. Certainly, there is no voice today warning Muskie of the peril to the nation in the years immediately ahead.