WASHINGTON -- House Democratic leader Jim Wright criticized the Reagan administration Tuesday for having a 'one dimensional view' of national security that places too much emphasis on military power.
Other factors that contribute to national security 'are being dangerously neglected,' Wright said in a speech prepared for delivery to the National Press Club.
The Texas lawmaker cited problems with the nation's industrial base, agriculture, energy resources, and education.
Wright, who is expected to become speaker of the House next year following the retirement of Speaker Thomas O'Neill, warned of a 'tendency in recent years to mesmerize ourselves with a one dimensional view of national security, as though it consisted exclusively of military power and could be guaranteed simply by a plentitude of bristling armaments.'
Wright said America's industrial base, which should be 'strong and vibrant,' is 'eroding dangerously' as plants close and the trade deficit worsens.
He charged the administration with giving 'only lackadaisical lip service to this problem which increasingly threatens our position as an economic power.'
He described education as 'the most important pillar of our national security,' but said Reagan 'continues his relentless drive to reduce funds for education.'
The administration also 'has never understood the need' for alternative energy supplies, Wright said. And he criticized Reagan for his veto last year of a bill intended to help save 'perhaps 200,000 American family farms from foreclosure.'
'I for one am unwilling to accept as an inevitability that our national future lies in ever larger and ever fewer farms,' Wright said.
Wright stressed that he was not speaking against 'an adequate level of national defense,' but 'I speak for a better balance between the military and non-military aspects of national security.'
He warned that unless the leaders of both the United States and the Soviet Union 'stop thinking of security solely in traditional military terms, we both may see the future slip from us in mounting debt and interest rates that suffocate the capacity of our families and our foreign friends to support the common efforts which promote security.'
