Des Moines Register:
Ames, Ia. -Republican Rudy Giuliani, campaigning in Iowa the same day that Bill Clinton was in the Hawkeye State, charged Thursday that the former president had weakened the American military and intelligence services through spending cuts during his administration.
...
"Bill Clinton cut our military and our intelligence budget by such a huge amount that we've never made up the difference," said the former New York mayor, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
Really, now?
FactCheck.org:
It is not correct to say that the Clinton administration began to cut U.S. military forces.
No matter how you measure defense spending, President George H.W. Bush had significantly trimmed it by the time Clinton was sworn in.
...in testimony given January 31, 1992, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Bush's secretary of defense explained that “overall, since I've been secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend.… And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.”
That defense secretary, of course, was Dick Cheney.
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