The Defense Department needs to boost its investments in science
and technology, said lawmakers from the Delaware Valley region.
The additional spending on research is important both to improve
the capabilities of the military forces and also to keep the industrial
base vibrant, said Reps. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.)
and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), in recent interviews.
Weldon stressed that even though defense spending has gone up significantly
this year, the increases are not funding a lot of new technology,
but rather existing weapon programs and health care requirements.
“When you get through all of that, the actual increase in
defense spending is around $10 billion,” he said.
“We’re building fewer ships in President Bush’s
budget than we did under President Clinton.” Weldon noted
that he was the only Republican who voted against the president’s
budget, “because I wasn’t happy with the fact that the
$10 billion they set aside should have been put into new programs
and technologies,” he said.
Bartlett, who was a scientist and inventor before being elected
to Congress, said that more federal dollars should be allocated
for defense-related research. “We’re all pleased, of
course, that there’s more money for defense [this year]. My
concern is that there’s not enough,” he said. “If
we don’t get a big increase in funding, through an emergency
supplemental for instance, I think at the end of the day, our military
might be worse off, less ready, at the end of this war than it was
before it started,” Bartlett said.
“I understand that we want a balanced budget. I understand
there are other priorities, but if we don’t do this right,
no other priority matters,” he said. “Many of our pilots
are flying planes that are older than they are—planes their
fathers flew. You can’t have the world’s best military
and be flying 40-year-old planes. We took a modernization holiday
for eight years, and we have to come back very strongly, or we are
going to live to regret that,” he said.
Cummings noted that defense technology investments are very valuable
to the economy of the Delaware Valley. “It helps this region
from the standpoint of jobs, economic development, business development,
and that’s very important.
“This is a defense year, with the threats to our country
and the problems that have taken front-and-center stage since September
11. This is the time for defense types of technology to play an
important role,” Cummings said.