SAINT ROBERT, Mo. (July 28, 2010) — State Sen. Bill Stouffer knows he’s in an uphill battle trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton. When he visits military installations, he routinely sees everything from dog kennels to major training facilities named after Skelton, who as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has brought literally billions of dollars to Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman Air Force Base.

So why would anyone ask voters in a county like Pulaski, where Skelton is widely credited with saving Fort Leonard Wood from closure, ask voters to close out Skelton’s congressional career of more than three decades?

In a Wednesday appearance at the Sunshine Café in St. Robert, Stouffer said he understands the problem. Living in the northern end of the district near Whiteman Air Force Base, Stouffer serves on the Missouri Military Preparedness and Enhancement Commission along with State Rep. David Day from Dixon, State Sen. Frank Barnitz whose district includes Pulaski County, and Dalton Wright, owner of the Lebanon Daily Record, and said he realizes Skelton’s role on the House Armed Services Committee can’t be replicated by any freshman congressman.

However, Stouffer told his audience, mostly composed of Pulaski County businessmen, that due to his advanced age, Skelton will have to leave office soon anyway.

A more serious problem, according to Stouffer, is that Skelton’s votes in recent years have moved substantially to the left of his district’s viewpoints.

“Ike’s running a lot of veteran commercials, and a lot of veterans I talk to say, ‘This is not what I fought for, we need a change,’” Stouffer said. “Just the bare facts of the matter are if you have a 78-year-old that is the only thing that is keeping these two bases open, folks, we’re in trouble anyways.”

As with Skelton, Stouffer had medical conditions that prevented him from entering the military, and Stouffer still carries his “4F” document that doctors issued to him when he attempted to report for the draft during Vietnam but was unable to do so. However, Stouffer said there’s no question about his support for the military.

“I will truly support those bases to the utmost. I have in the past and I will in the future,” Stouffer said. “I don’t want there to be any question: I truly believe that Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman are strategic to the defense of the United States, and I think they will earn the funding that they deserve, but if it’s only Ike Skelton who is keeping those bases open, then they shouldn’t be here. But I truly believe that they are fundamental to the defense of the United States.”

Stouffer pointed to his role along with that of Rep. David Day on the Missouri Military Preparedness and Enhancement Commission in working to make Missouri a more military-friendly state. Fort Leonard Wood was saved from closure through several rounds of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, and actually gained numerous missions such as the Chemical School and Military Police School when other installations such as Fort McClellan closed, and Stouffer said there are things Missouri can do and has been doing to make closure of Fort Leonard Wood much less likely.

“What David and I have been doing the last four years is really trying to BRAC-proof Missouri,” Stouffer said. “We really moved Missouri from being in the Pentagon’s eye, anti-military to making it military friendly, and it is extremely important that we do that.”

Some of those changes include making it possible for military spouses to teach in Missouri with a temporary certificate if they’re already certified in another state, not requiring students to pass a test on the Missouri state constitution to graduate from high school if they’ve already taken a class on another state’s constitution and history, allowing students who have already completed kindergarten in another state to enroll in first grade even if they didn’t meet the Missouri age requirements for kindergarten, and giving military children in-state tuition rates even if their parents move out of state due to military orders.

“A lot of these things are not big deals but we’ve made it easier for military families to move in and out of the state of Missouri,” Stouffer said.

Waynesville Councilman Mike France hit the question head-on, noting that he recently received an e-mail from Skelton warning of a possible future Base Realignment and Closure process to reduce the federal deficit.

“What do you see in that?” France asked. “This tax commission that Obama put together to figure out how to get us out of debt … basically Sen. Judd Gregg is talking about doing another round of base closings. He thinks we’re spending excessively on the military, and that’s Ike’s message that Whiteman and Fort Leonard Wood and everything, based on them putting about $4.3 billion into the economy of Missouri, just those two installations, was his number.”

Stouffer said he’s not convinced Skelton has been as effective as he claims to be.

“It seems to me that our chairman takes credit for the things that he gets …. when Ike gets something he takes credit for it, and when he loses it, it wasn’t his fault,” Stouffer said. “I’ve learned over the years that maybe our chairman is not quite as powerful as what he would like for us to believe he is.”

France pressed his point on what will happen if Ike Skelton becomes too sick or ill to continue to serve in Congress, noting that at Skelton’s events he sees young people taking notes for Skelton.

“If the office becomes vacant then the governor calls a special election, and then there’s a Republican Fourth Congressional District committee and a Democratic committee. They would appoint the nominees; there would not be a primary election,” Stouffer said.

Responding to further inquiries from France, Stouffer said that Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, would have no role in replacing Skelton or other U.S. Representatives , unlike the procedure to replace U.S. Senators or most county officials in Missouri when the posts become vacant.

Stouffer said the way to support Fort Leonard Wood isn’t through earmarks, which has been a favorite tool of many congressman to direct money to projects in their districts. Stouffer isn’t alone in his objections to earmarking; U.S. Senator Clare McCaskill also objects to earmarks.

“I would like to see stuff justified; I am not an earmarks guy,” Stouffer said. “Harvard did a study and they looked at congressional districts that took a lot of earmarks versus those that took none, and what they found was the economy in the high-earmark districts was worse than it was in the low high earmark districts … The reason for that is the government just spends money, but when private industry makes investments they are looking for returns so they make wise investments.”

Earmarks may provide short-term benefits, Stouffer said, but on a long-term basis they create problems.

“When the government pours money in, they skew the market signals and so you wind up supporting something that may not be justified. What I would much rather do is leave that money in your pockets and let you make the investments because you will look for return where government doesn’t,” Stouffer said.

Stouffer didn’t endorse Judd Gregg’s call for a new round of military base closures, but he did say the Department of Defense needs to be accountable in its spending.

“I’m a zero budgeting kind of guy. I think you shouldn’t get what you got last year just because you got it last year, you ought to be able to go back and justify expenditures,” Stouffer said. “I am not going to sit here and claim to be an expert on what’s happening in the Department of Defense, but I do think that we have your tax dollars and we need to be very careful that you’re getting a dollar of goods for every dollar we’re spending whether it’s in the defense department or social services or anything else.”

Stouffer said he already has a solid track record in the state legislature of requiring financial accountability before spending money on programs, including proposing mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients if credible allegations are made of drug use.

“I have a history of trying to protect taxpayer money and I would do the same thing on the federal level. I know that we have got to be able to defend this country in the most efficient manner possible and that’s what I would be for,” Stouffer said.

France, a retired command sergeant major, said he supports greater accountability.

“Having been a member of the defense department for a protracted period of time, the defense budget is not always about defense. I remember that one year we had over $300 million that was supporting museums throughout the entire United States,” France said. “I know that the most recent funding for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars contained I don’t know how many billions to make retroactive up to 99 weeks of unemployment because they knew that no one would vote against the military’s war effort.”

That problem is pervasive in the federal government, Stouffer said, not just the military. Stouffer, a farmer who is a former MFA board member, said more than two-thirds of the agriculture budget consists of feeding programs and other things that have nothing to do with agriculture.

“We need single-issue bills. We do it in our legislature. I know they’d have to work a little longer, but there is no reason to have 2,500-page bills except to get stuff through that wouldn’t stand on its own,” Stouffer said.

France said scandals such as $600 toilet seats happen because of factories built to meet federal contracts, and said better accountability could help.

Stouffer agreed, and said the problem is that government officials don’t think like a business.

“A bureaucrat’s job is to perpetuate their own job. They get no reward for being innovative, they get no reward for saving money, and if they step out and take a risk and it falls through, they get slapped up the side of the head,” Stouffer said. “We need to break some of that stuff up.”

Interviewed after the meeting, Stouffer said he realizes that many of his fellow Republicans in Pulaski County have supported Skelton for years, but he said he hopes that will change.

“I think that any businessman or any citizen in Pulaski County will find me to be very responsive, and when I send a reply, it will relate to what you ask me about,” Stouffer said. “You don’t get form letters from me, and I pride myself in my ability to serve my constituency I don’t think anybody is going to come up short just because they vote for me rather than Ike.”

Few areas have placed Skelton more obviously between a rock and a hard place than his stance on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Department of Defense policy created under former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s which still bars practicing homosexuals from serving in the military but won’t discharge them unless they do something to make their homosexuality known. Skelton helped create that policy and has publicly defended it, but the policy is under direct attack by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, and President Barack Obama, who made overturning the policy a part of his campaign platform. While liberal Democratic leaders have criticized Obama and Pelosi for not pushing harder on repealing the policy, Skelton has faced major opposition in his own district.

Stouffer said he understands Skelton’s dilemma but said he needs to be more aggressive in using the power of his chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee to defend his own stated convictions and the views of his district.

“Ike came up with don’t ask, don’t tell. It’s working; I don’t care what other people do in their bedroom, I just don’t want to know about it. The fact that we’re doing this at this point in time is unconscionable,” Stouffer said. “I don’t believe the military should be used for social experiments … I think (repealing) don’t ask, don’t tell at a time when we’re sending folks into the battlefield multiple times, the stress of battle, now is not the time to be trying a social experiment.”

Stouffer took particular aim at Skelton’s decision to allow a bill banning anti-homosexual hate crimes to be attached to a defense funding bill.

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