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With Vice President Cheney set to attack his opponents Monday for supposedly wanting to cut defense spending in the 1980s, I wanted to pass along this quote from Cheney from the same time period. According to the 12/16/84 Washington Post, as a House leader, Cheney went on record and specifically attacked President Reagan for not cutting defense spending:
If Reagan "doesn't really cut defense, he becomes the No. 1 special pleader in town...The severity of the deficit is great enough that the president has to reach out and take a whack at everything to be credible...If you're going to rule out the other two [Social Security cuts and a tax increase], then you've got to hit defense."
- Dick Cheney quoted in the Washington Post, 12/16/84
How can Cheney attack others for supposedly wanting to cut defense in the 1980s, when he was leading vocal attacks against a President of his own party for not cutting defense?
...and Phredd provides:
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Copyright 1990 Federal Information Systems Corporation
Federal News Service
FEBRUARY 1, 1990, THURSDAY
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING
LENGTH: 38836 words
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SEC. CHENEY:[Introductory remarks omitted]
To give a quick history, Mr. Chairman, since I became Secretary last spring, we've been through a fairly major process of reducing the defense budget. In the package that we submitted last spring that I think was approved in broad outlines by Congress, we cut almost $65 billion out of the five-year defense program. The package that we're submitting today for '91 involves taking another $167 billion out of the defense program, for a total of about 231 billion [dollars]. That's roughly the difference between the Reagan line in January of '89 and the Bush line that's being submitted in January of '90.
The Defense Management Report contains reductions of 39 billion [dollars]. That's part of the 167 [billion dollars] above it. And the reductions in '91 amount to about $22 billion. Now, that is computed based upon taking the program that Congress approved for '90, just last year, running it into '91 -- that's 28 divisions for the Army, the 561 ships for the Navy, the B-2, and all of the other problems that were authorized in the budget by the Congress for Fiscal Year '90 -- and pricing them in '91; comes to about $317 billion. We're submitting a request for budget authority of 295 [billion dollars] -- roughly a $22 billion reduction in '91 numbers.