UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, December 8, 1994
7A
Army officials dispute Republican accusations
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Preparedness problems in the 1st Infantry Division and two other combat divisions are a "blip" that will be repaired soon, the Army general in charge of measuring military readiness said yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales Jr. disputed Republican assertions that defense spending cuts have led to an overall decline in the military's ability to fight.
"This is a blip on the screen that is going to get fixed in short order," Scales said in an interview in the Army's underground command center at the Pentagon.
Congressional Republicans, particularly Rep. Floyd Spence, R-S.C., have accused the Clinton administration of cutting so deeply into defense
budgets that it is starting to show in the front lines. Spence cites missed training exercises, dwindling inventories of spare parts, and evidence of units being overworked across all the military services.
Scales was reluctant to take on the lawmaker set to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Nevertheless, Scales said, the largely anecdotal evidence assembled by Spence misses the big picture.
"This is an organization of half a million people. I can go down and find individual soldiers or units that are unready," Scales said. In general, he said, "the Army we have today is the best Army we've had in my 28-and-a-half years."
Last month the Pentagon announced that three of 12 Army combat divisions are far below par in terms of readiness. Deployments to Haiti, Rwanda,
and the Persian Gulf prompted the Army to dip into training funds set aside for backup units.
The 1st Infantry Division, Mechanized, at Fort Riley was among those that received the next to lowest readiness grade because of missed training.
Defense Secretary William Perry, in a separate interview at the Pentagon, said readiness problems within the Army will be repaired within a matter of months.
"The issue in my mind has always been future readiness," Perry said. "What you don't want to do is allow things to erode over a two- or three-year period." That long-term concern, he said, is being addressed in President Clinton's proposal to add $25 billion to the defense budget over six years.
"When the Berlin Wall came down, that made it real that communism had fallen." Brownback said yesterday.
"They could see it. People cheered. I want to give this to the people so they can see the vision of less federal government," he said.
House Republicans approved a resolution introduced Tuesday by Brownback to explore whether it would be cost-effective to sell a congressional building. Brownback, who officially becomes Kansas' new 2nd District representative in January, insisted the study wouldn't simply gather dust on some out-of-reach bookshelf.
Representative wants to scale back by selling congressional property
"I'm going to be pushing it very aggressively," he said. "This is the symbolic manifestation of the revolution."
The Kansas Republican wants Congress to sell one of its buildings.
Besides the Capitol itself, congress
sional offices are scattered about in five House and three Senate buildings. Most of them are connected by tunnels and a subway system to the Capitol itself.
The Associated Press
Two are not, and it's those two Brownback sees as prime candidates for sale.
WASHINGTON — Rep.elect Sam Brownback has discovered, well, a concrete way to show voters Republicans are serious about scaling back the federal government.
One, the Ford building, is located about a half-mile away and houses a number of special-interest caucuses the GOP has decided no longer should get taxpayer funds.
The other is the O'Neill building, a one-time hotel that houses some congressional staff, living space for congressional pages and more caucus offices.
"There's a group of us who are very impatient to make the changes that the American people want to make," Brownback said. "Our impact as a freshman class is greatest right now. You have to figure out how you can use that wave."
"They work for free, but I question whether this is our role," Brownback said.
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