Spence believes that President Clinton has hollowed out the military with deep defense cuts over the last eight years. And with his own tenure as chairman winding down at the end of the year due to GOP committee term limits, Spence wants to use his final months as chairman to do as much as possible to improve morale and readiness at the Defense Department. With his committee set to begin work on its defense authorization bill this week when the House returns to session, Spence spoke last week to Roll Call Co-editor Ed Henry about his priorities for the rest of the year. We have to try to increase the size of the force. So we don't have enough of a military to be carrying on even all these missions we already have all around the world.
People are overworked.
Three people are doing the work of five, so we've got to see if we can't turn that around and get more people in the military. It's been cut back too much already. And then we have to go ahead and improve the modernization of existing programs. We've got to improve readiness. The retired part is a big part of it, too.