Gore Follows Bush to VFW, Rebuts Him on Defense Cuts

Vice President Al Gore, courting a major veterans’ group his Republican rival addressed the day before, said Tuesday that he would back a military pay raise to keep the U.S. military the “best-trained, best-equipped, best-led fighting force in the entire world, bar none.”

Gore, who ended a four-day riverboat trip down the Mississippi on Monday, took pains to counter rival George W. Bush’s portrayals of a U.S. military in disrepair. “If anyone doubts our strength, let them talk to our pilots patrolling the skies over Iraq right now,” he said at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention.

But while saying America’s armed forces are “the strongest and best in the entire world,” Gore tried to deflect veterans’ concerns about past defense cutbacks onto the presidency of Bush’s father.

“I’m proud we finally reversed the defense cuts begun in the previous administration with a safe, long-term increase in defense spending,” he said. “I will insist that we continue that.

“Right now, the number of military families on food stamps is less than one-third of what it was in the previous administration. But some still need stamps, and that is just wrong.”

Without naming him once during his remarks, Gore also struck out at Texas Gov. Bush, saying it concerned him “when others try to run down America’s military for political advantage in an election year. That’s not only wrong in fact--it’s the wrong message to send our allies and adversaries across the world.”

Gore also said his rival’s proposed tax cut, which amounts to $1.3 trillion over 10 years, would “make it impossible to modernize our armed forces, meet our commitments to the veterans and keep them ready for battle.” Gore has offered a series of tax credits for long-term care and college tuition that would amount to about $500 billion over 10 years.

Gore also offered a reminder that Bush had not served in the Vietnam War. He entered the convention hall wearing a dark suit and VFW post cap. Repeating a line from his speech at the Democratic Party convention last week, he said that, as an Army reporter in Vietnam, “I didn’t do the most or run the gravest danger, but I was proud to wear my country’s uniform.” Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

Gore also drew heavy applause in announcing to the veterans that he had awarded the Purple Heart earlier in the day to an infantryman who was captured and killed on a death march in the Korean War.

In his campaign, the vice president is proposing to increase defense spending by $127 billion over 10 years, including the 3.7% pay raise enacted this year, though aides said the figures would be revised in the fall to reflect larger surplus projections.

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution think tank, said the difference between the proposals of the two major party candidates is “one of degrees.” But he said neither had offered specific enough plans to tell for sure.

Gore also said Monday that he would back the “largest increase in veterans’ education since the GI Bill” but offered no figures. In the past, he has said he would support $1.2 billion for veterans’ job training and education over five years. Under the Clinton administration, he said, “we are reducing waiting times in our VA health system, upgrading outdated facilities and meeting veterans’ health challenges.”

Bush aides said the Clinton-Gore administration has failed veterans and noted their proposed fiscal 2000 budget would have frozen spending on veterans’ medical programs. They said their military spending plan is higher than Gore’s by about $45 billion over 10 years.

Gore drew a mixed response as he took the podium, with some in the convention audience of several thousand standing with arms crossed while others politely applauded. Several veterans said Gore received a warmer reception than the Texas governor did Monday.

The same audience on Monday turned stern as Bush said the nation’s armed forces had slipped into severe disrepair, with low salaries, shortages of spare parts and declining readiness. He said he would raise military salaries by a total of $1 billion annually on top of the pay hike approved by President Clinton last year, in addition to higher overall defense spending. Bush also reminded the veterans of his father’s service as a fighter pilot in World War II.

“I’d probably go with Gore right now,” said Gordon Harmon, 70, an Army artillery man in the Korean War who now lives in Wisconsin. “He’s a veteran, for one thing.”

“I’ve seen the military come a long way in the last five or six years,” said John Trembley, 68, a former Air Force cook from Maine who has two grandsons in the armed services. “My grandsons are making double what I made [at retirement] after 20 years.”

Several other veterans said the distinctions between the two major party candidates on defense spending mattered less than their differences on taxes and economic policy.

Edwin Nehls, 67, a former Army infantryman from Wisconsin, said “the military under Clinton has slipped somewhat.” He said he disagreed with Gore on the abortion issue. But Nehls, now a real estate agent, said he plans to vote for Gore because “I have made more money in the last eight years than I did under [President] Bush. How do you take on the administration with the lowest interest rates?”

Later in the day, Gore flew to Chicago for a speech to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America union convention and for a Democratic Party fund-raiser that collected $500,000.