Fact ChecK: Did Kerry Vote Against Defense Appropriations Bills?

[Nbadan]

Looks like the Republican have thrown important issues to the wind and have decided best to unleash the attack machines with an all-out assault using the usual list of mud slinging tools they have used against Kerry for the last year. Hell, they may even bring back the Swifties for one last glourious stand.

But FSP is here to help you dig through the Republican mud-slinging with real facts. Facts that you can use to make a informed decision on Nov. 2nd.

So, Did Kerry Vote against Defene Appropriations bills as Zell said at the RNC Convention?



Sen. Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat who delivered the Republican National Convention's keynote address Sept. 1, said Kerry "opposed" weapons including the B-1, B-2, F-14, F-15, and Apache helicopters. "This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our US Armed Forces?" Miller exclaimed. "Armed with what? Spitballs?"

Miller said "Americans need to know the facts" about Kerry's record, but his applause-getting recital is a decade or so out of date. Kerry did oppose all the weapons Miller cited when he was a candidate for the Senate in 1984, and did vote against the B-2 bomber, Trident nuclear subs and "star wars" anti-missile system more than a decade ago. Kerry also voted in three different years against the entire Pentagon budget.

But in his nearly 20 years in office Kerry's record has evolved. Kerry hasn't opposed an annual Pentagon appropriation since 1996. And he's voted for them far more often than against them.

This is a Republican line of attack that we first took on back in February. Nothing much has changed. Miller was a bit more careful in his wording than some previous Republican critics, and avoided saying anything factually incorrect.


Zell Miller's Spitball

*sic*

Kerry the 1984 Candidate

Miller didn't say that Kerry voted against the weapons on the list he rattled off, only that he opposed them. And indeed Kerry did, in 1984, as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Senate from Massachusetts.

All the weapons cited by Miller are listed in a memo from the 1984 Kerry campaign, which we posted along with our Feb. 26 article on Republican distortions of Kerry's defense record. In that 1984 memo Kerry called for "cancellation" of the very weapons Miller cited.

Kerry the Senator

Once elected, however, Kerry's voting record evolved. He did cast votes more than a decade ago against the B-2 Stealth Bomber in 1989, 1991 and 1992. But by 1992 even President Bush (the current incumbent's father) was calling for cancellation of the B-2 and promising to cut military spending by 30% in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was no secret -- Bush did that in his 1992 State of the Union address. But Miller left out that little detail.

Miller did avoid some earlier Republican excesses, as when Miller's fellow Georgia senator, Republican Saxby Chambliss, told reporters on Feb. 21 in a Bush campaign conference call with reporters that Kerry had a "a 32-year history of voting to cut defense programs and cut defense systems." Since Kerry has only been in Congress for just under 20 years, the Chambliss statement was an impossibility. Republicans have also accused Kerry of voting against more mainstream weapons including the M-1 Abrams tank and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, but have been unable to cite any specific votes against those weapons. The best they can do is point to occasional votes Kerry cast against the entire Pentagon budget, which hardly constitutes opposition to any specific weapon.

Kerry voted against the entire Pentagon appropriations bills in 1990 and 1995. Kerry also voted against the Pentagon authorization bills (which provide authority to spend but not the actual money) in those years and also in 1996 . However, he hasn't opposed an annual Pentagon appropriation since then, nor did he do so in 16 of his 19 years in office. So by the Republicans' own measuring stick, Kerry voted for the weapons they list far more often than he voted against them.

From "Stupid" to "Responsible"

Kerry himself conceded that some of the positions he took 20 years ago were "ill-advised, and I think some of them are stupid in the context of the world we find ourselves in right now and the things that I've learned since then." That was in an interview published in June, 2003 in the Boston Globe. "I mean, you learn as you go in life," Kerry was quoted as saying. He added that his subsequent Senate voting record on defense has been "pretty responsible."

Factcheck.org (http://factcheck.org/article.aspx@DocID=252.html)

So, Kerry was for saving the peace-dividend, as were Bush41, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld at the time. Subsequently, he voted against defense programs in 1984 which included some of the weapons programs Zell Miller mentioned in his speech, but Kerry hasn't voted against a weapons programs or military appropriations bill since 1996. Well after any of the current technology we are using in Iraq was ever even conceptualized.

[whottt]

Yes he managed to gain control of his stupidity, but then he somehow came to the conclusion he was qualified to lead this nation when it was at war, could make decisions on his own and with the bullseye firmly on he and he alone, and suffered a tremendous stupidity relapse in the process. 8 years of recovery down the drain. A damn shame.

[whottt]

Hey I know a guy that just graduated highschool after 10 years(democrat)...I think he should be valdictorian of his class since he can recite all the textbooks from memory.[/kerry suporter]

[Nbadan]

Yes he managed to gain control of his stupidity, but then he somehow came to the conclusion he was qualified to lead this nation when it was at war,

Unlike W, I like that Kerry is able to admit that he made mistakes. It shows that he has been able to grow from his experiences. W. just reinforces his moral cowardice when he keeps denying that he never made a policy error in 4 years.

[Nbadan]

What about the Kerry Amendment to cut intellience that Right-wing talking heads keep mentioning?


As reported on March 15 , it’s accurate to say that Kerry "voted against billions" for intelligence spending, and did so a year after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But that was a time that even many Republicans were coming to the conclusion that intelligence spending could safely be scaled back because the Cold War was over.

What Kerry voted for in 1994 was an amendment that he himself had proposed, which included a cut in intelligence funding of $1 billion in 1994, and to cap spending at that level through 1998. That would amount to a $5-billion cut over five years, somewhere between 3% and 4% of estimated US intelligence spending at the time.

The Kerry amendment was a comprehensive deficit-reduction package that also targeted a variety of other cuts, including reductions in programs for agriculture, commerce and administration. Kerry's amendment went down to defeat with only 20 votes in favor.

However, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is not the only context in which Kerry’s vote can or should be placed. When the Berlin Wall fell five years earlier in 1989, the event marked the end of the Cold War. Over the next half dozen years the diminished threat from the former Soviet Union (which dissolved in 1991) led to a national debate over the level of intelligence spending, which had ballooned to an estimated $30 billion per year.

Four years prior to Kerry's amendment, for example, in July of 1990 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report calling for new fiscal scrutiny of intelligence and saying “it is clear that the underlying rationale for many of these programs is in serious need of review.” The intelligence committee found massive duplication and waste in the Pentagon's intelligence programs particularly, noting separate intelligence arms with their own "separate buildings, separate security, separate communications, separate support services" at every echelon, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Army, Navy, Air Force and even regional commanders around the globe.

And the same year Kerry voted to cut intelligence funds, 1994, a bipartisan commission was formed to assess the state of US intelligence efforts. It concluded two years later that cuts in intelligence spending were inevitable and might be made without endangering national security. In 1996 the 17-member Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community (also called the Aspin Commission) found that, despite cuts already made to that time, intelligence spending was still 80% higher than it had been in 1980 even including adjustments for inflation. By comparison, other defense spending had decreased 4%. To be sure, the commission didn’t recommend any more cuts in intelligence spending, but it acknowledged that balancing the federal budget would probably require that cuts be made:

Aspin Commission: Reductions to the existing and planned intelligence resources may be possible without damaging the nation's security. Indeed, finding such reductions is critical . . . (I)t is clear a more rigorous analysis of the resources budgeted for intelligence is required.

Among the Republican commissioners who unanimously approved that language were Paul Wolfowitz, who is currently Bush's Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Sen. John Warner, now chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Also worth noting is that after Kerry's proposal to cut intelligence spending by $1 billion a year failed, a Republican-sponsored cut sailed through easily. In 1995 Republican Senator Arlen Specter proposed to cut $1 billion from the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) for fiscal year 1996. That cut was considered so uncontroversial that it passed by a voice vote.

Fact Check (http://factcheck.org/article.aspx@docID=209.html)

[Useruser666]

So, Kerry was for saving the peace-dividend, as were Bush41, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld at the time. Subsequently, he voted against defense programs in 1984 which included some of the weapons programs Zell Miller mentioned in his speech, but Kerry hasn't voted against a weapons programs or military appropriations bill since 1996. Well after any of the current technology we are using in Iraq was ever even conceptualized.

I'm finding this hard to follow. Are you saying Kerry stopped voting against weapons programs that are used in Iraq by begining to vote yes in 1996 or that he voted against such programs by not voting for them earlier? If you could please clarify.

[Nbadan]

I'm finding this hard to follow. Are you saying Kerry stopped voting against weapons programs that are used in Iraq by begining to vote yes in 1996 or that he voted against such programs by not voting for them earlier? If you could please clarify

I'm saying that anyone claiming that Kerry voted against any of the military arsenal used in Iraq is flat out lying, including Zell Miller.

[Useruser666]

I'm saying that anyone claiming that Kerry voted against any of the military arsenal used in Iraq is flat out lying, including Zell Miller.

But are you saying that because Kerry has voted pro-military since after 1996?