I 
110TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1702 
To reallocate funds toward sensible priorities such as improved children’s 
education, increased children’s access to health care, expanded job train-
ing, and increased energy efficiency and conservation through a reduction 
of wasteful defense spending, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 26, 2007 
Ms. WOOLSEY (for herself, Ms. LEE, Mr. KUCINICH, Ms. JACKSON-LEE of 
Texas, Ms. KILPATRICK, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. 
SERRANO, Mr. STARK, Mr. BECERRA, Ms. CARSON, Mrs. CHRISTENSEN, 
Mr. ELLISON, Mr. FILNER, Mr. GUTIERREZ, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. HONDA, 
Ms. KAPTUR, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. MCGOVERN, Mr. RUSH, Ms. SOLIS, 
and Ms. WATSON) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Armed Services, and in addition to the Committees on En-
ergy and Commerce, Education and Labor, Homeland Security, Foreign 
Affairs, and Veterans’ Affairs, for a period to be subsequently determined 
by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall 
within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To reallocate funds toward sensible priorities such as im-
proved children’s education, increased children’s access 
to health care, expanded job training, and increased en-
ergy efficiency and conservation through a reduction of 
wasteful defense spending, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
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SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Common Sense Budget 
Act of 2007’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) The Department of Defense’s increasingly 
large budget provides for total defense spending that 
is greater than that of the other 192 countries in the 
world combined, yet— 
(A) the United States now ranks 42nd in 
the world in infant mortality, behind most of 
the nations of Western Europe and the indus-
trialized Far East, while $60,000,000,000 of 
the United States defense budget is expended 
annually on weapons designed to thwart Soviet 
Union aggression during the Cold War and 
other wasteful programs; 
(B) Federal spending on elementary and 
secondary education has fallen to less than 8 
percent of the proposed 2008 outlays for the 
Department of Defense, while schools through-
out the Nation are eliminating programs in 
music, foreign language, and physical edu-
cation; 
(C) 46,000,000 individuals in the United 
States lack health insurance during some period 
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of any given year, and half that number of indi-
viduals (over 9,000,000 of whom are children) 
lack such insurance for the entire year; 
(D) the Government Accountability Office 
estimates that— 
(i) 1⁄3 of the Nation’s public schools, 
serving 14,000,000 children, need exten-
sive repair or need to have their entire 
physical plants replaced; 
(ii) 85 percent of the Nation’s public 
schools, 
73,000 
facilities 
serving 
40,000,000 children, need some repair 
work; and 
(iii) the total cost for the repairs and 
replacement described in this subpara-
graph is over $120,000,000,000; 
(E) research conducted by the National 
Center for Education Statistics shows that mid-
dle school students in the United States rank 
9th in science test scores and 15th in math test 
scores internationally, behind students in such 
countries as the Republic of Korea, the Slovak 
Republic, Singapore, the Russian Federation, 
and Malaysia; and 
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(F) the Government Accountability Office 
estimated in 2003 that the Department of De-
fense 
could 
not 
account 
for 
over 
$1,000,000,000,000 in funds appropriated to 
the Department of Defense. 
(2) 
The 
United 
States 
spends 
over 
$20,000,000,000 annually to maintain its nuclear 
arsenal, although many of the weapons in that arse-
nal no longer have practical utility. The United 
States needs to eliminate spending on obsolete weap-
ons systems and use the funds saved to meet urgent 
domestic needs for health care, education, job train-
ing, and increased energy efficiency and conserva-
tion. 
(3) The Department of Defense is spending bil-
lions of dollars developing space weapons and pre-
paring plans to deploy them, although— 
(A) those expenditures and plans con-
travene White House policy, in place for a dec-
ade, that emphasizes arms control and non-
proliferation pacts; and 
(B) the development of those weapons is 
opposed by many United States allies, who have 
rightly stated that a shift in policy towards that 
development will create an arms race in space. 
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