White House Press Briefing

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

February 28, 2001
PRESS BRIEFING BY ARI FLEISCHER
Aboard Air Force One

Q: Missile defense not factored in here --

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, it is factored in here, and that's why there's a
reserve of about $1 trillion, as the President made clear in his
speech last night, and he also talked about the force structure review
at the Pentagon and when we have the strategic analysis about what our
military needs, that will be accommodated within the budget.

But I would refer you to, I think it was the CBO report on missile
defense last year, which cited the cost could be anywhere between, I
think it was about $4 billion a year, they estimated, because they had
a 15-year cost for the missile plan.

Q: I'm sorry, 15 years --

MR. FLEISCHER: One of the estimates in the CBO report was, I think
they said it was $60 billion over 15 years under one scenario --
missile defense. So, again, I would just urge you to use - review the
numbers for what they are. I'm not saying that's what our estimate
will be, but there will be costs associated with it, but that's why
we've built in a reserve fund. But there will also be savings. The
President talked about the potential to unilaterally reduce the number
of nuclear missiles we have to protect the United States. There's a
cost savings associated with that as well that's not factored in.

Q: So that $1 trillion reserve is meant to, in part, pay for - I
mean, that's set aside to pay for this missile defense?

MR. FLEISCHER: All defense. There's also a reserve fund that's built
into the domestic discretionary accounts. If you see that on the
tables, I think it was $5.7 billion, $5.6 billion, and that also will
help for something the President promised during the campaign, that
instead of piling all this money on top for emergencies and then
building it into the departments' budgets, this should be an emergency
reserve fund based on an average of the real emergencies - tornadoes,
floods, natural disasters that have taken place.

So when you look at the budget for FEMA, when you look at the budget
for the Department of Agriculture and the change from last year, while
there is still more spending on those programs than there was two
years ago, three years ago, we had allocated money in an emergency
reserve, domestic discretionary and paid for pile for legitimate
natural disasters. So you will see that as a source of funding also.
That's kind of what the private sector does.