Ron Paul Quotes.com 2006 Ron Paul Chapter 35 Ron Paul Quotes.com: National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2007 11 May 2006 Home Page   Contents Congressional Record   Cached Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional website.

National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2007 11 May 2006 HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, May 11, 2006 The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 5122) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2007 for military activities of the Department of Defense, to prescribe military personnel strengths for fiscal year 2007, and for other purposes: 2006 Ron Paul 35:1 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this enormous defense authorization bill. At $512.9 billion, this defense authorization is $2.7 billion more than the president’s request. 2006 Ron Paul 35:2 What concerns me most about this authorization, however, is that it seems to focus more on defending other nations than on defending the United States. U.S. troops are based in more than 100 countries overseas, in many cases guarding foreign borders and ports while our own borders and ports remain almost completely unguarded. 2006 Ron Paul 35:3 The hundreds of billions of dollars spent overseas by this bill will do very little to defend the United States against attack. In fact, our interventionist foreign policy that is funded to a good degree by this bill actually makes the United States less popular overseas and may even unintentionally make the United States more of a terrorist target. At any rate, it definitely makes us less secure. 2006 Ron Paul 35:4 This bill sends overseas hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid. For example, this bill will send almost $400 million as aid to Russia. Additionally, the bill will send $200 million to help build additional NATO bases overseas, even though the Cold War has been over for more than 15 years. 2006 Ron Paul 35:5 This legislation will send almost two billion American taxpayer dollars to Central and South America in the hopes that the production of drugs overseas will be curtailed. We do know that much of the money spent on Plan Colombia and similar programs over the past few years has not made much of a dent on drug cultivation, but that much of it is likely being skimmed off by corrupt leaders overseas. There must be a better — and less expensive — way to deal with this problem than sending this much money overseas. 2006 Ron Paul 35:6 The bill also opens the door for more military interventionism overseas, directing the Pentagon to report to Congress on any current or planned U.S. military activities in support of peacekeeping missions of U.N. or NATO forces in Sudan. 2006 Ron Paul 35:7 Mr. Chairman, as a Vietnam-era U.S. Air Force veteran, I am in favor of a strong defense of the United States. I believe we need to focus on our own homeland security rather than spending half a trillion dollars on policies and programs that will not make Americans more safe, but may well have the opposite effect. We need to re-focus our defense priorities on the United States, on our own borders and our ports.

---

Previous   Next

---

Home Page   Contents   Concordance   Links