Washington, D.C. - Today, Congressman Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) voted to pass the Fiscal Year 2002 budget resolution and issued the following statement:

"Today, the United States House of Representatives put hard working American families first. The House passed a sensible, responsible, and fair budget that pays down an historic $2.3 trillion in debt by 2011 and refunds families the money they overpaid in taxes to the government to the tune of $1,600 per year for an average family of four.

The budget also addresses our commonsense priorities like improving education for our children, increasing funds for our national defense, and protecting Social Security and Medicare.

As a new Member of Congress that represents a district with a large military presence, I was pleased that this budget begins to rebuild our armed forces and make America strong again.

One of our government's top priorities is to protect American lives and the way we ensure America remains safe is through strengthening our military. Unfortunately, over the last eight years our military has been hollowed out. The size of our armed forces has been reduced by almost 40 % while deployments have increased about 300 %. Today, our country faces threats across the world and we must take into the account the reality of nuclear proliferation, attacks from non-state terrorist groups, and worldwide criminal elements. Our budget takes these factors into account and heads in the right direction to make America strong again.

Most importantly, our budget makes sure that a clear and focused defense strategy drives our defense spending. This budget allows for enough flexibility to ensure that additional military funding priorities can be met once the Administration has completed it's top-down review," said Crenshaw.

The budget resolution increases defense spending by almost 5 % and sends an immediate boost of at least $14.2 billion extra to fund our commitment to America's armed forces - $5.6 billion of the increase will go toward the quality of life needs for our servicemen and women. The budget also enhances the research and development budget by $2.6 billion as a downpayment to ensure that our fighting forces have all of the best resources available to assist in their mission.

The budget resolution passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 222-204.