Military

DATE=10/23/02

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=CQ BUSH DEFENSE SPENDING (L)

NUMBER=2-295596

BYLINE=SCOTT STEARNS

DATELINE=WHITE HOUSE

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

///EDS: REISSUED TO CORRECT FIRST BUSH ACT. NO OTHER CHANGES.///

INTRO: President Bush has signed legislation boosting U-S defense spending by nearly 40-billion dollars, the largest one-year budget increase since the end of the Cold War. V-O-A's Scott Stearns reports, the president says America's military is ready for action in Iraq if diplomacy fails to disarm Saddam Hussein.

TEXT: President Bush says the 355-billion-dollars in military spending will help protect the country from the new dangers it faces following last year's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

/// BUSH ACT ///

We have asked our military to bring justice to agents of terror. We have asked our military to liberate a captive people on the side of the earth. We have asked our military to prepare for conflict in Iraq if it proves necessary.

/// END ACT ///

At the signing ceremony, President Bush told a Rose Garden audience of military and Congressional leaders that the increase in defense spending reflects what he calls "a new kind of war."

/// SECOND BUSH ACT ///

The bill today says America is determined and resolute to not only defend our freedom, but defend freedom around the world; that we are determined and resolute to answer the call to history, and that we will defeat terror.

/// END ACT ///

The defense bill includes a four-percent pay raise for soldiers and more spending on military family housing. Its seventy-two-billion-dollars worth of new weapons purchases is an 11-billion-dollar increase over existing levels.

The defense bill passed Congress with bipartisan support, though it did not give the president all he wanted. Mr. Bush failed to gain control of a 10-billion-dollar fund to fight terrorism overseas without Congressional oversight on how that money is spent.

The president got almost all of the more than seven-billion-dollars he wanted to build a missile defense system. His determination to develop that system led Mr. Bush to withdraw from the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. (SIGNED)

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