Clinton To Hike Military Outlays

WASHINGTON President Clinton today pledged to seek a $25 billionincrease in military spending during the next six years to improvetroop readiness and quality of life.

Flanked by Defense Secretary William Perry and the Joint Chiefsof Staff, Clinton also said he would ask Congress for an emergencyincrease in this year's defense budget to pay for unanticipatedmilitary deployments.

"I have pledged that throughout the life of this administrationour military will remain the best trained, best equipped, the bestfighting force on earth," Clinton said. "We ask much of our militaryand we owe much to them."

Clinton disputed a suggestion that his request for additionalPentagon spending was an acknowledgment that he had cut too muchlast year. He said the request was mostly because of unanticipateddeployments to the Persian Gulf, Haiti and elsewhere.

"We have seen the military having to deal with an amazingvariety of challenges," Clinton said.

Clinton did not say how much extra money he would request forthe Pentagon this year. Without it, he said, the Pentagon would haveto curtail training and find cuts elsewhere.

The $25 billion in additional spending beginning next year isdesigned to cover a projected $40 billion shortfall over five yearsthat had been created by a congressionally required pay raise, and byinflation. This fiscal year's Pentagon's budget was $264 billion.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the outgoing chairman of the HouseArmed Services Subcommittee on military forces and personnel, saidthat even with the extra money, the Pentagon still would face anapparent$15 billion shortfall.

"It's better now than later . . . but it doesn't cover it," saidSkelton, who has criticized defense cuts in both the Bush and Clintonadministrations.

Congressional Republicans have criticized Clinton for defensecuts they say have eroded military readiness, and the House GOP'sagenda proposes a $60 billion increase in defense spending.Clinton's announcement today was an effort to answer the GOPcriticism and counter the Republican budget proposal.

The president also seemed determined to answer the recentsuggestion by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) that Clinton was not fit tobe commander in chief. In announcing his new spending initiative,Clinton rattled off a list of military actions he has ordered aspresident, including use of troops to help restore Haiti's democracyand deployment of U.S. forces to Kuwait to counter an Iraqi troopbuildup along the Iraq-Kuwait border.

"Saddam Hussein got the message," Clinton said.

And in a holiday season reassurance to U.S. troops, Clintonguaranteed they will receive pay increases approved by Congress. Theamount of the increase is tied to inflation. The last raise wasabout 2 percent.

Clinton said the increased spending next year and beyond wouldprovide other "quality of life" improvements for U.S. forces andtheir families, including better housing, child care and familysupport services.

Clinton's announcement came just two weeks after the Armyannounced that three of its 12 divisions had fallen below peakreadiness levels because money that would have gone to trainingexercises had been diverted to pay for operations in Rwanda, Haitiand elsewhere.