Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives and Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee, warned about the consequences of not investing in the military. Without reserves and without proper funding, national security is put at risk, they said.

Deployment of under-trained troops puts everyone at risk and by deploying reserves and the National Guard the government is taking away from homeland security and disaster relief, Abercrombie said. The "handful" of combat ready troops the Army and Marine Corps do have barely meet recruiting standards both in number and in standard of quality, he said.

Murtha discussed the lack of training and the shortage of equipment and armor. "It's embarrassing that we're not giving our kids what they need," he said, talking about the 44,000 troops sent to the Iraq theater without body armor.

Simply increasing the number of troops, Murtha added, would not solve the readiness problem. With the increase of troops deployed in Iraq boosted to 130,000, the violence had increased as well, he said.

Last week Congress approved a $377.6 billion 2007 Defense Appropriations bill in addition to a $70 billion bridge fund for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Abercrombie claimed the bill was $42 billion short of needed funding for the U.S. Army. Constitutionally, he argued, the U.S. Congress was responsible for providing for the military. He accused the people who defeated his amendment, which would have restored the $42 billion in funding, of practicing bad politics. It was well-known, he said, that the defense budget was being short-changed. .

"After the elections, the Army will ask for emergency supplemental funds, well it's not an emergency if everyone knew the original bill was short," Abercrombie said. "It's irresponsible."

Expecting the needed funds to be added on a supplementary basis, Murtha said, was dangerous. "We can't depend on budget supplements, it's not planning ahead," Murtha said. "What about planning for tomorrow?"

The solution, according to Abercrombie, was three-fold. First, he said, the U.S. government needed to to remove American troops from Iraq so they could be retrained and revitalized.

Second, Murtha said, there needed to be fresh leadership running the U.S. Department of Defense. "Replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld," he said.

Third, Murtha urged the Bush administration to restore the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to the levels of manpower and readiness they were at before the start of the Iraq war in March 2003.

However, James Carafano, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, disagreed with Abercrombie's solution. "Leaving Iraq doesn't solve the spending problem," he said.

Typically when a war ends, politicians feel less compulsion to spend on military and defense, he explained. Huge supplemental spending pays for operating costs but at the end, there needs to be reinvestment and historically, that hasn't happened, Carafano said.

Carafano offered a different, two part solution to the U.S. military readiness problem.

First, he said, "You need to sustain a level of spending percentage on defense for decades," he said.

Carafano suggested spending a regular four percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product on defense. Otherwise, in the "out years" the spending would drop, he said.

Second, the U.S. government needed to reform all federal spending, especially entitlement, social security, Medicare and Medicaid, Carafano said. "Until then, the military will always be hollow," he said.

The public is separated from the war experience; watching it on television doesn't make military problems real to those who don't experience it firsthand, Abercrombie said. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army was struggling with equipment, training, recruiting standards and until people were honest about the problems, little change could occur, he said.

However, Abercrombie and Murhta's criticsms looked likely to make the issue of military readiness a major one in the upcoming congressional campaign.

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