Excerpt from Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1997 and the Future Years Defense Program, Vol. 1: Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session, on S. 1745; Military Posture, Ballistic Missile Defense, Service Secretaries, Unified Commands, Service Chiefs, Department of Energy On the positive side of the ledger, I was very pleased that the military pay raise was fully funded in this budget request. The young men and women who serve our Nation in uniform continue to be the most important asset of our Nation's defense. This year, I intend that this committee will continue to provide increased funding for the quality of life initiatives and programs we began in last year's authorization bill. Mr. Secretary, I am troubled over several decisions you made in the proposed budget. First is the Defense Department's decision to again reduce funding for critical ballistic missile defenses. We should be seeking ways to accelerate the development and deploy ment of both theater and national missile defense systems, not delay them. Under the Department's new proposal, we would not deploy a theater high altitude area defense system, commonly known as thaad, or Na upper tier for another decade. This delay is unacceptable. I fin it hard to believe that the administra tion would continue to place the lives of our servicemen and women, and indeed our population, at risk by delaying this critical capability. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.