[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 23, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
             NATIONAL SECURITY, IMMIGRATION AND HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. CLAYTON). Pursuant to the Speaker's 
announced policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Hunter] is recognized for 30 minutes as the minority leader's 
designee.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank the Speaker. Under an agreement, although we are 
constrained for time under this new arrangement, there is always still 
time for comity and some friendship in the House. I would like to yield 
to the gentleman from Oregon so that they may complete their time 
requests and hope that they would reciprocate when we have need in the 
future. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Oregon.


                          black history month

  Mr. KOPETSKI. I thank the gentleman for his friendship and allowing 
me these brief moments to add to this evening's special order organized 
by the distinguished gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes] on Black History 
Month.
  Madam Speaker, this is my last contribution to this important effort 
that we do in the House every year. This is my last year in the 
Congress. In previous years I have spoken about the importance of black 
Americans in Oregon history, my home State, and do so tonight as well.
  At this point I place in the Record two articles on the role black 
Americans have played in Oregon's history. One is from the Statesman 
Journal of January 23, 1994, by Rick Harmon, editor of the Oregon 
Historical Quarterly. Mr. Harmon contributed this work from the 
Statesman Journal. I commend him for his effort, and I recognize the 
Statesman Journal for participating in this commemoration and 
highlighting of Black Americans Month.

  The second article, contributed to the Oregon Statesman Journal by 
Hank Arends. This article references a new book entitled ``Northwest 
Black Pioneers: A Centennial Tribute,'' coauthored by Mr. Joe Franklin.
  But tonight, Madam Speaker, I want to remind my colleagues that 
history is important and critical and it is important to recognize 
African-Americans as part of our chronicle of American history. Also, 
it is important to recognize African-Americans today who today are 
making history.
  The person I want to highlight is a good friend of mine, a comrade-
in-arms, Mr. Ron Hearndon.
  Let me take a few moments to highlight Ron's career thus far. He 
comes to Oregon from Kansas, he is a graduate of Reed College in 
Oregon, he did graduate study at the University of Liberia. He also 
attended the UCLA Graduate School of Business. His professional 
experience: He has gone from teacher to director of the black 
educational center to executive director of the National Association of 
Schools of Excellence, Director of the National Head Start Program. He 
was elected in 1988 to the National Head Start Directors Association 
and in 1991 elected vice president of the National Head Start 
Association.
  I am proud to say that in 1993 he was elected president of the 
National Head Start Association, representing 700,000 Head Start 
children and families and over 100,000 Head Start staff members. He 
received numerous awards and honors for his efforts today. I will not 
go into those.
  Finally, I do want to say that Ron is making history today for what 
he is doing for the children of Oregon, African-American and non-
African-American as well, and for the children of America, again 
African-American and non-African-American as well. Ron Hearndon has 
made the lives of countless children in Oregon and in America better. 
He has dedicated his life, his experience, his education, to make life 
better for children throughout this land. It is an honor to have him as 
a friend, a tribute to his heritage that he has dedicated his life to 
where we all should put an emphasis, as he is, and that is for our 
children.
  Madam Speaker, I thank you and I thank the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Hunter].
  The articles referred to by Mr. Kopetski are as follows:

              [From the Statesman Journal, Jan. 23, 1994]

          Don't Forget the Efforts of Black Pioneers in Oregon

                            (By Rick Harmon)

       Who were Oregon's African-American ``pioneers,'' and what 
     can we say about their contribution to the state's history?
       The ``pioneer period,'' so far as the state of Oregon is 
     concerned, traditionally has been situated in the two decades 
     between 1840 and 1860.
       During that time, because of the large-scale migration of 
     white Americans to the Willamette Valley, the foundation was 
     laid for the conquest and subjugation of the American Indians 
     who had occupied the Oregon Country for centuries.
       That conquest, euphemistically called ``settlement'' by 
     earlier historians and by various cultural mythmakers even in 
     our own time, was largely a white enterprise.
       But African Americans, and other nonwhite people, did play 
     a role.
       From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, black 
     Africans and their genes were carried en masse to the 
     Americas via the slave trade. Before that, Africans of 
     various shades had appeared sporadically for centuries 
     throughout the Western world.
       During these years, and especially during the period of the 
     slave-trade diaspora, African genes mixed widely with the 
     genes of Caucasians as well as with those of other nonwhite 
     peoples.
       When Europeans and Amercians began aggressively to explore 
     the Pacific Northwest coast and interior in the eighteenth 
     and nineteenth centuries, individuals with genes of recent 
     African origin unquestionably took part.
       A few, such as the slave York, who journeyed with 
     Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their overland 
     expedition in 1805-06, were indisputably African American.
       Others, such as Marcus Lopez, cabin boy of the Lady 
     Washington when it anchored on the Oregon coast in 1788, and 
     Moses ``Black'' Harris, an Oregon Country trapper and guide 
     in the 1830s and 1840s, were more racially ambiguous.
       One thing is certain, though: York, Lopez, Harris and most 
     likely dozens of others who helped conquer the Oregon 
     Country, would have felt the sting of the post-Civil War 
     ``Jim Crow'' laws of the South.
       In that sense, at least, we can consider them African 
     Americans and acknowledge their contribution.
       What distinguished nineteenth-century African-American 
     pioneers in Oregon Country from their white counterparts? As 
     far as the indigenous population was concerned, little 
     distinguished them.
       They were interlopers, one and all. However, for most of 
     the nineteenth-century white immigrant population, the 
     difference between white and black was the difference between 
     Oregon as an imagined Eden and Oregon as just another 
     vexatious extension of the great dispute about slavery that 
     racked the states.
       Thus, though early Oregonians were divided in their 
     loyalties and sympathies between North and South, they were 
     nearly unanimous in their racist hostility to African 
     Americans.
       Between 1840 and 1870, the classical pioneer and state-
     founding years of Oregon history, the citizens of Oregon 
     enacted a variety of racist laws designed, in the first 
     instance, to discourage African Americans from coming to 
     Oregon, and, in the second instance, to punish them or limit 
     their civil rights if they did come.
       The year 1993 marked the sesquicentennial of the so-called 
     Great Migration of 1843. Public officials, journalists, 
     entrepreneurs and various hucksters spent more than a year 
     encouraging Oregonians and tourists to celebrate the 
     achievement of the largely white overland pioneers (and to 
     buy a variety of products fraudulently linked to a historical 
     episode).
       Indeed, the 53,000 or so people who came to Oregon along 
     the Oregon Trail by 1860 were a tough and determined bunch.
       But if our purpose is to recognize extraordinary courage 
     and fortitude (not properly the business of historians, in 
     any case), let's not forget the couple hundred African 
     American pioneers who had settled in Oregon by 1880.
       These pioneers not only withstood the rigors of the journey 
     and the resistance of the native inhabitants, but they 
     survived as well the enmity and ingratitude of their fellow 
     conquerors.

              [From the Statesman Journal, Jan. 23, 1994]

                      Black Pioneers: Oregon Roots

                            (By Hank Arends)

       The colorful settling of the West depicted in film includes 
     many figures of Caucasian cowboys and wagon train pioneers, 
     regal Americans Indians and a few Hispanics.
       The role of the black Americans often is neglected. But 
     their struggle for a better life echoes through to the peace 
     and justice efforts of the 1990s.
       With black slavery a way of life for part of the United 
     States in the 1800s, hundreds of blacks chased a dream of 
     freedom toward the ``Golden West.''
       They often found that enduring the hardships of travel 
     across the country only subjected them to further affliction 
     at the end of the trail. Yet they persevered to carve lives 
     of hope and substance for their families.
       The first blacks to visit Oregon accompanied the explorers 
     of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Marcus Lopez was 
     the first black to arrive, coming aboard the ship Lady 
     Washington with Capt. Robert Gray.
       Lopez was killed in a property dispute with Americans 
     Indians, making him the first black to die in the territory. 
     A man named York was thought to be the second black in the 
     area, spending the winter of 1804 near what is now Astoria 
     with the Lewis and Clark expedition.
       The era of the explorers, the mountain men and trappers, 
     and early missionaries lasted for the first four decades of 
     the 1800s.
       The wagon trains of the 1840s led to a population explosion 
     in the Oregon Territory. There also were many blacks who 
     hitched their hopes for a brighter future with the west-
     heading wagons.
       The Oregon census of 1850 listed 207 people who were 
     identified as being black or mulatto. About two-thirds of 
     these are thought to have been Hawaiians or mixed-breed 
     Native Americans because the Caucasian census takers lumped 
     the races into a single category.
       The count came at the end of the decade, when those seeking 
     the dream of freedom saw it eroded by the restrictive 
     antiblack residence and property laws approved by the early 
     government. The Bureau of Census reported 1,107 blacks in 
     Oregon by the 1900 count.
       The laws of the early Oregon territory forbid the permanent 
     residence of blacks. The only known legal application of the 
     restriction came in 1851 against Jacob Vanderpool. He 
     operated a saloon and boarding house across the street from 
     the Oregon Statesman newspaper, then in Oregon City.
       Despite his lawyer arguing that the law was 
     unconstitutional, the judge found him guilty of the 
     misdemeanor and ordered him out of the territory within 30 
     days. An exclusionary clause would remain an unenforced part 
     of the Oregon Constitution until 1926.
       The question of owning slaves was the other major piece of 
     legislation affecting blacks that was debated in Oregon for 
     years. The constitutional convention of 1857 was looking 
     toward statehood and left the matter to a vote of the people. 
     Slavery was rejected by a vote of 7,727 to 2,645.
       Even with the overwhelming margin of the vote, life wasn't 
     all sweetness for blacks in the state. A.E. Flowers described 
     Portland in the 1860s:
       ``When I arrived in Portland there was only one Negro 
     church in the whole town, the `People's Church,' which was an 
     independent organization. It was organized in 1862.
       ``At this time, colored people were not allowed to own any 
     property. They were not allowed to go into any kind of 
     business and they were not allowed to vote. Every Negro had 
     to pay a $10 head tax. The colored people had no civil 
     rights. It was very difficult to get jobs except as a 
     menial.''
       Despite legislation, the 1860 census showed a few of the 
     128 blacks in the state as slaves. Others were servants to 
     white families and most were living independently. They 
     earned their living as farmers, cooks, blacksmiths and in 
     other service occupations.
       They were the people who helped lay the foundations for the 
     Oregon of today.
       Joe Franklin, a Portland educator and historian, has 
     written many articles on the black experience in the 
     Northwest. He is co-author of the book Northwest Black 
     Pioneers, a Centennial Tribute. He was tapped as the chairman 
     of the Northwest African American Writers' Workshop.
       Franklin said the study of the black pioneers was relevant 
     for all races in 1994.
       ``Some of the lessons that we should learn is that we all 
     share our human experience and its ups and downs and 
     peculiarities,'' he said.
       ``Through all of the trials and tribulations that the human 
     spirit endures--be it black, white, red, or yellow--prevails 
     the humanity of all these people.
       ``As we get to know each other better and understand the 
     life that we all live--the common life--we grow to have more 
     appreciation for each other. That engenders more cooperation 
     and more respect, which produces a better citizen for 
     America.
       ``That gives us all a higher standard of life, because we 
     are looking for the best in people. It is always easy to find 
     the worse, if we look in the news. We are looking for the 
     best and for an avenue for people to grow.''
  Mr. HUNTER. I am happy to give time to our friend, and I want to 
thank him for his great service to the House.
  I yield to the gentleman from Maryland, Madam Speaker.
  Mr. MFUME. I thank the gentleman from California very much. I will 
attempt to be brief.
  The gentleman has been kind enough to wait in order, and I do not 
want to delay the business before this House which the gentleman seeks 
to address.
  However, Madam Speaker, as the chairman of the Congressional Black 
Caucus, I do want to express my thanks to Members of this body, black, 
white, Jew, gentile, Hispanic, Asian, and of course the women of this 
Congress, who have come forth either this evening or who have submitted 
for the official Record their own remarks highlighting and underscoring 
not just the need but the purpose of Black History Month; why, as Dr. 
Carter G. Woodson thought many years ago that it was important for us 
to take pause as a nation to reflect on the contributions of our 
citizens and, even more importantly in this month, on those of African 
ancestry.
  My thanks on behalf of the caucus to all of those who have come and 
who will come in future days to do the same. I would also ask that I be 
allowed to submit formal remarks for the Record.
  (Mr. MFUME asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia 
[Ms. McKinney].
  (Ms. McKINNEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her 
remarks.)
  Ms. McKINNEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  On this occasion, as it is my father's birthday, I would like to lift 
his name up and to say to him that I appreciate all of the things he 
has done to help me.
  During this time of Black History Month, I would like to say that my 
father taught me my pride, taught me history and to know myself and 
instilled in me a readiness and a commitment to my community, a 
readiness to serve my community. He has given me the single-minded 
purposefulness to serve the people of Georgia and my State.
  I thank the gentleman.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] 
may resume his time. I may say it was very kind of the gentleman to 
extend his time.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, listen, it is my pleasure, and I am sure 
that that is the position everyone will take on this side, and we may 
have to remind our friends when we run short that they would yield.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. And this Member will help the gentleman from 
California to remind them.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank the Speaker.
  Madam Speaker, I want to address three areas tonight that are very 
important not only to the Republican Members of the House of 
Representatives but, we know, to the other side of the aisle, to the 
Democrat Representatives and also the American people.
  I want to talk a little bit about national security, the first and 
most primary responsibility of the Federal Government to its people. I 
want to talk a little bit about immigration, about that subject that is 
on everyone's mind and is very much a concern of the taxpayers, and I 
want to talk a little bit about health care.

                              {time}  1820

  Let me start off, Madam Speaker, addressing the national defense 
question because the explosions in the Balkans that are now so well 
illustrated on national television every night, the ongoing problems in 
the Middle East, the continuing development of nuclear weapons on the 
Korean Peninsula by the Northern Koreans, and other trouble spots 
around the world, continue to remind the American people that it is not 
a safe world yet and that this most important obligation to the 
American people that this House maintains is to defend our people and 
to protect them, and that there is some question as to whether or not 
we are cutting our defenses too fast and too deeply.
  Now, Madam Speaker, we have now a very cerebral Secretary of Defense, 
Mr. Perry. He is a man who is a studious man, an analyst. He knows 
weapons systems forward and backward, and his job is to try to take 
dwindling dollars, massive defense cuts, if my colleagues will, and 
render our military smaller, but no less ready than the military that 
maintained America's power projection and defenses through the 1980's, 
and no less effective than that military. I think we have some 
problems, Madam Speaker.
  President Bill Clinton took the Bush defense budget, which President 
Bush cut after consulting with Secretary Cheney and the Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, by $50 billion over his 5-year plan. So, in 
1992, Madam Speaker, George Bush had a defense budget from which he had 
slashed $50 billion. Let us use that as a baseline.
  President Clinton, after achieving office, decided to cut defense an 
additional $127 billion. I think that cut is too deep, too serious and 
leaves our forces too vulnerable, and in later years, 1996, 1997, 1998, 
it will lead to the same problems that we saw in the Carter years.
  When I came into office in 1980, when, as a new Congressman from San 
Diego I was confronted with a military that involved about 1,000 petty 
officers in the Navy, those were the people that really knew how to 
make the ships run--leaving the Navy--1,000 people every month leaving 
the Navy, young men and women in the Armed Forces on food stamps being 
told by memos that were circulated by the command, ``Don't be ashamed 
to take food stamps even though you're wearing the uniform,''--by an 
air fleet, aircraft, jet aircraft, attack aircraft, that were less than 
50 percent fully mission capable because so many of them had been 
cannibalized for the spare parts to make the remaining aircraft run. We 
had, after extensive analysis, a hollow Army, an Army in which we had 
fewer people than we had ever had in our history who had high school 
degrees, and these people were expected to operate high-technology 
equipment.
  We had to rebuild national security and national defense in the 
1980's and I think everyone in the United States would agree that that 
investment in strength was worthwhile.
  Madam Speaker, it was worthwhile because by showing strength to the 
Soviet Union when they emplaced SS-20 missiles in Europe in Europe 
around the borders of our allies, we were able to respond in strength 
by starting to move our cruise missile program into Europe by moving 
Pershing II's into Europe, and, when we started to do that, lo and 
behold the Russians told us they wanted to come to the bargaining 
table. They did come to the bargaining table, and the consummation of 
that bargaining process was unprecedented arms agreements, and 
ultimately the breakdown of the Soviet Union itself and the bringing 
down of the Berlin Wall.
  So, Madam Speaker, strength worked.
  In the 1980's strength worked, and I would be happy to yield to my 
friend, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston].
  Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Hunter] for yielding to me.
  Madam Speaker, one of the points I wanted to make along that line is 
to have an effective military one of the things that, of course, we did 
with Desert Storm is, when we were dropping bombs down chimney chutes, 
it was doing more than blowing up a building. It made a statement 
worldwide that the American military has the best technology, the best 
force night or day. We are ready to fight. We can do it accurately. We 
can do it effectively. And that kind of statement is such a security 
guarantee for people all over the world because it said, ``You know, I 
don't want to take on America,'' and we have been a peace-loving nation 
in that I have heard many times, as the gentleman has, that, if there 
is going to be a policeman of the world, let us hope there does not 
have to be one, but, if there is, let us let it be America.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, the gentleman makes an excellent point.
  As my colleagues knows, I think, if someone was to analyze, or guess, 
why the Serbs are pulling back artillery right now that is ringing 
these civilian population centers, why they are pulling it back rather 
than take on the United States, the answer may be that they saw some of 
the film clips from CNN from Desert Storm when literally we were able 
to hit pinpoint targets with smart weapons. What that teaches us is we 
need not just a large military with enough men and women to operate 
equipment and operate it well, but we also have to put a lot of money 
into research and development, into some high tech systems, so we do 
not have to throw 50 bombs at a target, and maybe have some collateral 
damage, some civilian damage. We also need to have the ability to 
pinpoint a weapons system so we can go in and take out a military 
target without hurting civilians, and I think that if I were the Serbs 
watching some of those CNN news reels where we absolutely hit precisely 
what we were aiming at, that I, as a Serb military leader, would 
certainly have taken that into account in deciding whether to take on 
the United States or not.
  Mr. KINGSTON. It would make one think twice.
  Now, the gentleman mentioned earlier about the personnel and about 
the differences in today's military personnel versus the early 1980's, 
and one of the things I was able to do last week was greet an airplane 
full of troops coming back from Somalia, and I was the second hand they 
shook when they got on American soil for the first time since they were 
back, and I was impressed, and I also spent a lot of time at Fort 
Stewart with the 24th Infantry Division, at Hunter, and also Kings Bay, 
and I know the gentleman visits it quite frequently, and I have always 
been impressed of the dedication of the young men and women serving our 
military today, that they are professionals, have a deep amount of 
pride and patriotism in what they are doing. They know what their 
mission is. Their mission is clear to them. They follow their duty.
  And I am just so proud, as the gentleman knows, to shake hands with 
these folks when they were coming off the plane. It was a real thrill 
to me, but it also made me sleep a little bit better at night knowing 
that that is the type of person that we have in today's Armed Forces.
  Mr. HUNTER. As the gentleman knows, Madam Speaker, I thank him for 
bringing that up because of the defense budget.
  The Clinton defense budget, the fiscal year 1995 DOD budget, really 
contains a military pay cut, and we have to remember what we did for 
our young people in the 1980's. In 1981 we brought in a military pay 
raise in October of 12.2 percent, and that brought a lot of military 
families out of the position where they were having to take food stamps 
to a position where they can wear the uniform with pride--teaching our 
military to have pride, to once again acquire pride in itself. That was 
an important lesson in the 1980's. Part of that was because of pay 
increases and the fact that we did not have long lapses between pay 
increases like we had had in the 1970's.
  The Clinton defense budget is going to give a real cut in terms of 
real buying power to our military families, and let me just tell my 
colleagues that here is a problem that President Clinton's defense 
budget has whether he has Secretary Perry or Secretary Aspin, who has 
left, or anybody else coming in to try to make this shoe fit. He has 
two problems.
  The first problem is:
  ``You can't fight two wars simultaneously with the Clinton defense 
numbers.''
  Now we know that because Secretary Aspin, who was the chairman of the 
Committee on Armed Services before he left, did an analysis of what it 
would take to fight two wars, and he came to the conclusion that the 
only way to fight two wars simultaneously; that is a Desert Storm type 
operation and have enough reserves on hand to handle the Panama Canal 
type of a contingency, was to go with the option in which approximately 
$50 billion was cut from the Bush defense baseline.

                              {time}  1830

  So we went with the $50 billion cut, called that option C, and said 
we can live with that. President Clinton has now cut $127 billion below 
that, and there is a very important point here for Americans to 
remember. The reason we were able to win Desert Storm decisively 
without a lot of casualties was because we offered overwhelming force.
  One thing that our military leaders have taught us is if you go in 
and engage an enemy, where you have just as many, just barely have the 
number of troops that he has and barely have the number of weapons and 
technology, and you just hold him off and you grind each other down, as 
you grind each other down, you take enormous casualties. And that means 
black body bags come back to the United States filled with Americans.
  Now, the way to win a war in an effective fashion and to save your 
young people in uniform is to do what Colin Powell said, strike the 
enemy with overwhelming force. The option C that was provided by 
Secretary Aspin gave us at least the ability to win two wars, to handle 
two wars at the same time and present some force on the battlefield 
with those two wars and maybe handle the Panama canal contingency at 
the same time.
  Now, the option that we now are being presented by President Clinton 
says this, and you have to listen carefully to what he says. He says we 
can win two wars nearly simultaneously. What does that mean?
  That means that if we have a Desert Storm type operation, where we 
have to go in and stop Saddam Hussein or someone like that from going 
into Saudi oil fields, and we take them on and we are engaged there 
and, at the same time, the North Koreans look at this as their 
opportunity, their opening, and they break out on the Korean peninsula, 
then President Clinton says, ``I can almost handle them both at the 
same time.''
  What does ``Almost simultaneously'' mean? What it means is, you can 
handle one war by just holding off the enemy but taking a lot of 
casualties, because you are not winning the war. You are just grinding 
them down, holding them off. You go in and try to win the other 
battlefield and when you have won on the second battlefield, you come 
back to where you were holding them, where you have taken enormous 
casualties, and then you try to win there. And that is going to be 
costly to Americans.
  Mr. KINGSTON. In the real world situation, we all agree that we need 
to kill a fly with a sledge hammer, because that is the way to save the 
most lives and not have the highest casualties. You are saying we have 
a potential problem in Korea wit the North Korean build up. Then we 
have Bosnia. We do not know what the Serbs are going to do. Last week 
they backed off. Let us hope that they are willing to sit down and 
negotiate. But you have those two hot spots right now. Then you have 
the Middle East. So what would happen if all three of these areas 
erupted?
  Mr. HUNTER. What we have right now, with the military being cut 
drastically as it is right now, we are cashiering 2,000 young people a 
week out of the military right now. We could not fight and win a Desert 
Storm operation right now in the same fashion that we won Desert Storm.
  Another gentleman just walked in. His name is Duke Cunningham, who is 
a great top gun of Vietnam fame.
  He pointed out today, and I think this is an important point for the 
gentleman from Georgia, that we are going to be procuring only about 
250 aircraft in 1995. Excuse me. We are going to be procuring 
127 aircraft in 1995. According to the gentleman from California, who 
spoke today on this point, Mr. Cunningham, just to maintain your force 
level, because your aircraft are aging, as you go out on flight 
operations with them and you have to replace them, we have to procure 
about 350 aircraft a year, military aircraft, just to keep the force 
level modernized, just so you do not have a bunch of old planes out 
there that will get the young people killed.

  So we are only procuring 127 planes. And that means we are building 
in obsolescence right now to our fighter air fleet. And at some point 
in 1996, 1997, 1998, we are going to be in the same position that we 
were in the 1970's when Jimmy Carter had the hollow military.
  At the same time, I might add, in fiscal year 1995, we are only going 
to build six ships. We are only going to build 18 strategic missiles, 
and we are building no tanks whatsoever. So there are absolutely no 
replacements now being built for tanks. That means at some point down 
the line those tanks are going to be old. They are going to be 
obsolete, and they will not present that top-of-the-line battlefield 
force that we had in Desert Storm.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I would like to ask you some more details about that 
procurement, because one of the things I am concerned about, and maybe 
the gentleman from San Diego can talk about this a little bit, but the 
situation with the maintenance worries me. Because now the gentleman 
has been a pilot, and I guess you know what it is like to be up there 
and maybe hear a strange sound coming out of the engine. That has to be 
worse than spotting an enemy airplane. What about the maintenance 
situation?
  Mr. HUNTER. Let me frame that question for our friend from San Diego, 
the top gun, Mr. Cunningham.
  I have a paper in front of me that says the navy today has a budget 
shortfall of $765 million, and because of that they have a backlog of 
unrepaired aircraft numbering 150. they have a backlog of 250 aircraft 
engines that need maintenance right now. Is that accurate?
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Yes; it is. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  One of the problems that we have is the O&M accounts, which is 
operations and maintenance.
  I think the President and this administration and the House is trying 
to beef up that O&M account, knowing that there is that shortfall. But 
in many cases, our pilots are operating with their planes that are 15 
through 20 years of age. It is like your car, the older that car gets, 
the more difficult it is to maintain.
  For example, the Navy and Marine Corps are only procuring 24 
airplanes this year. It takes 360 to maintain current force level. You 
don't have to be a mathematical genius to figure out that you are going 
to turn into a pumpkin. and when you do that, how do you expand that 
force out, as you try and rework it, put the rewiring in, you upgrade 
it. But essentially, you take a 1950 Chevy, which in some cases are 
pretty good, by the way, the Chevies are, and expand them for some 20 
to 30 years. But if your are driving that airplane every day, which we 
are in Somalia, we are wearing it out. We did in Desert Storm. We took 
a tremendous toll on the aircraft life and the service life not only 
aircraft but tanks and ships and everything else. And then in Somalia 
and then, if we get into Bosnia, which I do not support, we will tire 
those machines out.
  In the future, there is no procurement scheduled to buy new 
airplanes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. You have been in the cockpit. My question to you is, we 
have got the mechanical problem. We have the financial problem. But 
what about the morale problem? What does it do to a pilot, when he or 
she is put there in this machine worrying about the maintenance log 
being backlogged? What will that do to our esprit de corps?
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. A pilot is not going to take, generally, I would say 
99\9/10\ of the time, a pilot, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Army, is 
not going to take an airplane they feel is unsafe. The airplane is 
going to have to be up. It may not have some of the systems working. 
You may fly that airplane without enough radar, which determines the 
amount and type of training that you can receive. But if there is a 
doubt in their mind that that airplane is not up to speed mechanically, 
they are not going to take it.
  I have seen that as an exception, but we try and do away with that.
  The second phase is that the more you fly an airplane, the safer that 
airplane actually is because you are exercising it. With the training 
cutback and the funding cutback, that becomes deficit also, so your 
pilots are not getting trained as much.
  But the morale, knowing that you do not have the up airplanes, like a 
Navy squadron on a carrier is likely to have 12 to 13 airplanes, with 
F-18's, F-14's, A-6's, A-7's, but generally 10 to 12 airplanes. If you 
have eight of those airplanes that are down because you cannot fix 
them, the pilots will take the two, but what does that mean for the 
other 20 pilots in that squadron that cannot fly because those 
airplanes are down? That morale, I sat on the Indian Ocean because we 
did not have Optar money to fly, and plus our machines were down. We 
were operating with 20-year-old Phantoms. That is like flying a World 
War I airplane in World War II. And the morale was terrible.

                              {time}  1840

  Mr. HUNTER. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for his 
observations, and will go to the second problem that the Clinton 
administration has with defense. The first problem is that under the 
scenario that we must live with, that is, the chance that two wars may 
break out simultaneously, we do not have a budget that will meet those 
two wars, and that is basically admitted by the Clinton administration 
when they talk about how we are going to have the ability, and listen 
carefully, to fight two nearly simultaneous wars, meaning if the North 
Koreans take advantage of a break-out somewhere else, and attack, that 
we are not going to be able to win with overwhelming force on the 
Korean Peninsula. That means a lot of American casualties.
  The first problem that the Clinton administration has is they are not 
giving enough money to defense, they are cutting defense by 35 percent, 
and they are cutting the men and women in uniform, depriving them of 
the ability to win quickly and decisively in the battlefield, and 
thereby win a conflict with a minimum of casualties.

  The second problem that the Clinton administration has is that even 
if we acknowledge, even if we accept their goal, their budget, and say, 
``OK, we agree that this type of equipment, this level of O&M funding, 
operations and maintenance, this number of tanks, this number of 
airplanes, this number of people is acceptable,'' we say it is not 
acceptable because we cannot win two simultaneously plus a small 
conflict, but even if we said it is acceptable, the President is not 
providing enough money to do it. He is underfunding the programs about 
$50 billion.
  I want to ask the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] to 
comment on this, because this is an Air Force quote from a senior Air 
Force official. I quote: ``Twenty fighter wing equivalents,'' and that 
is what President Clinton promises, ``make a lot of sense if we are 
going to fight in two places separated by the globe,'' the senior 
defense official said, ``but because of the falling budget in the next 
couple of years the Air Force will either have to reduce the force to 
keep it sustainable or find other ways to fund production of new block 
50 F-16's or F-15E's.'' He said, ``These are the only two things I know 
how to do.''
  So you either have to cut the number of aircraft that you have, 
according to this senior official, under the Clinton budget, or we are 
going to have to come up with some new creative financing mechanism.
  Could the gentleman comment on that?
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. It was not just the Air Force, it was the Commandant 
of the Air Corps and the Chief of Naval Operations, and they are 
exactly right. The funding levels for 1995 they are looking at, they 
can get by, but if we really do get in a conflict, and the Vice 
President, Al Gore, in his statement ``Reinventing Government'' made 
the statement that the cuts were based not on what we really needed to 
fight two wars, as it was supposed to be, but on the $127 billion 
Clinton cut.
  Second, Dr. Warner, who did the Bottom-Up Review, in our hearing 
before the Committee on Armed Services also alluded to the fact that it 
was based on the $127 billion administration cut, not on what we need.
  Even if you are doing similar to close to simultaneous wars, say it 
was Somalia, say that we got involved with Bosnia or India, or any of 
the other countries that could be a potential threat, to me that would 
send a signal, for example to North Korea, to come down across the 
parallel. What this cut is doing is risking not only the United States 
but it is risking the world.
  Madam Speaker, what this cut is really doing, it is not only risking 
the national security of the United States, but it is risking the 
security of the world, whether it is Bosnia, Somalia, or other parts we 
might get into.
  Equally critical, the $50 billion cut or shortfall that we have under 
the Bottom-Up Review is an administrative or accounting, because they 
did not charge inflationary rates, but we are still short that. We are 
short hundreds of billions of dollars just in operational and training 
time.
  Something else that is not funded is the BRAC 1993.
  Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman might explain what BRAC 1993 is.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. The base realignment and closure, because during the 
1993 rounds there is not even the dollars to close those bases, take 
care of the environmental concerns, so that we can actually save 
dollars down the line.
  Both the Marine Corps Commandant and the Chief of Naval Operations 
said unless we can get these facilities closed as the administration is 
planning, we will not reap the savings, so that what we will have down 
the line is no new airplanes, we will be totally out of business, both 
the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Air Force.

  Mr. KINGSTON. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, there is the other BRAC 1995 round that 
will be coming up soon, and as I understand it, the intention of that 
will be eventually every base and post in the United States will fill 
that, in some way, 50 percent of them directly. So what the gentleman 
is saying, if BRAC 1993 was not funded properly, then 1995 is going to 
get off course and may have to be more severe than it is already 
promised to be.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. If the gentleman will yield, it not only affects DOD 
and the number of personnel in the military, but infrastructure. For 
example, the Navy determines it needs 12 carriers to do its job. It 
needs to say, just like a business, ``Where can I cut?'' That is in 
infrastructure and that is in personnel those cuts will come. I do not 
care if you are a Republican or Democrat, your base is going to be 
looked at.
  That equates to jobs, because defense means jobs in this country, and 
it also means national security. That is going to be brutal in 1995. We 
have not even funded 1993 yet.
  Mr. HUNTER. Let me just say to the gentleman that that $50 billion 
cut, and we are undertaking a $50 billion shortfall in the Clinton 
budget in defense just to do what we have to do, is about 1 million 
jobs. A $50 billion cut is about 1 millions jobs.
  Let me go to something that I think is also important here. That is 
confidence. In the 1980's, Americans had differences on many occasions 
with President Reagan and with President Bush, but one thing they had 
that allowed them to sleep a little bit better at night was the 
knowledge that under those two administrations they could be confident 
that we had a strong military. That means that if their son was out on 
a mission halfway around the world and was in the Marine Corps, he was 
out in some very difficult situation, they knew, number one, that their 
son had the best equipment you could find in the world today.
  They knew, number two, that their son was accompanied by a lot of 
bright young mean who had been selected through a very vigorous process 
to be Marines, for example, if he was in the Marine Corps, who had a 
high degree of education and had excellent, excellent leadership.
  They knew that they were safe, they knew that they could sleep 
easily, because they had a strong national security. The American 
people during the 1980's learned that it is a truism that you achieve 
peace through strength. They had a lot of confidence, I think, in 
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, our last Secretary of Defense during 
Desert Storm. I think they had a lot of confidence in General 
Schwarzkopf, in Colin Powell, in the team that had been assembled under 
Presidents Reagan and Bush.
  It is interesting, a lot of people decried President Reagan's so-
called Star Wars initiative when he said, you know, ``There are a lot 
of ballistic missiles around the world and they are making more all the 
time, and I think it might be important for us to learn how to shoot 
those down, because some of those might be incoming at some point.''
  I remember presidential candidate Walter Mondale who said, ``That is 
war in the heavens. Shooting down missiles, SDI, that is war in the 
heavens, and I will not engage in war in the heavens.'' Yet when we 
shot down those Scud missiles that were incoming at our troops in 
Desert Storm, I am sure that Walter Mondale said, ``Because of Ronald 
Reagan, thank heavens.'' So the American people had a lot of 
confidence.

  Today there is not cause for confidence under President Clinton and 
there is not cause for confidence, because President Clinton has, No. 
1, refused to provide the numbers of equipment and men and women that 
are necessary to handle a dangerous world; that is, a two-conflict 
world, because you have to bet that if you are involved in a conflict 
somewhere, another guy may come and jump on you, knowing that you are 
vulnerable, knowing that your forces are occupied. The President has 
not given us a two-conflict force.
  No. 2, he has not even funded the force he has given us. He is $50 
billion short. What that means, I think it is important that the 
gentleman from Top Gun speak on this point, because what that really 
means, and we both know it, is that in the end, when we run short of 
money, the place where you can get cash fast is out of the spare parts 
account, out of the readiness account, where you repair your aircraft, 
and that means that more young men and women are going to die in a 
conflict or in training than if they had top-notch equipment.
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. What is even worse is that where you have a force 
that is not trained properly, because it does not have the maintenance 
or the airplanes to fly, but when you have a foreign policy like 
Somalia that had 18 marines killed and 77 wounded, because they would 
not commit armor, where you have a policy where you want to commit the 
Marine Corps with sidearms only in Haiti, where you have a policy where 
you could get us into Bosnia, that will not do the United States any 
good, coupled with the depreciation of our Armed Forces, it is going to 
be terrible for us not only now but in the out-years as well.

                              {time}  1850

  And communities are going to suffer as well, not just the national 
security. So it is not just the cuts in defense, but it is the foreign 
policy and the strength of those decision that are necessary. And yes, 
I include Lebanon under a republican President that to me was a tragedy 
that we put our Marines and let them get shelled and let them sit there 
without fully employing, and that was a disaster and a wrong decision 
as well. So I think it is not unique just to this administration. But 
we need a strong foreign policy that is going to protect our people. 
And we need the high-technology equipment, the manpower, and the 
training to go along with it.
  You fight like you train. Unless you have the machines to train, then 
you are not going to be able to do any good.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
  I yield to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston].
  Mr. KINGSTON. I am sitting here listening to the two experts, and I 
am agreeing with everything they say. I think one of the things though 
that you have mentioned, but not directly, is that not only do you have 
to have consistency in terms of your training and in terms of your 
equipment maintenance and equipment, but you have to have consistency 
in terms of dealing with other international leaders. And if you tell 
the folks from other nations, whether they are our NATO allies or 
whoever, that we are going to do something, when you set a deadline you 
have to honor it, and you have to be the first one to do that. And that 
is one of the new criticisms that I think the United States is getting 
globally right now, is that we do not have the consistency and the 
follow-through internationally that we did under the Cheney first 
string that you were talking about earlier with the Schwarzkopfs of the 
world, and so forth.
  Mr. HUNTER. I think the gentleman has stated it well when he talks 
about the first string. We have definitely had the first string in at 
that time, and I think the jury is out on the string that is in right 
now.
  I am happy to yield to the gentleman from San Diego.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. In 1972, I wrote a book, and I wrote the book because 
I held some of my friends in my arms that died on a carrier. Some I was 
not able to because they were killed. And I can remember thinking,

       Don't the Members of Congress know what they are doing? 
     Don't the liberals know that we don't want to be here but we 
     need their support, we need better equipment, we need the 
     parts to fly our airplanes because we are in combat, that we 
     are not competing for six gold medals?

  I also look at the potential of Somalia, and I wrote about it in 
Operation Proud Deep in which we were forced to fly in weather that is 
overcast because the North Vietnamese were coming down the Ho Chi Minh 
trail, and we had not been bombing North Vietnam, and we called back. I 
did not call back. I was a lieutenant junior grade at the time, but the 
admirals called back and said we cannot risk our pilots over an 
overcast because there are surface-to-air missiles. And they said no, 
those are the only 5 days you have. And in that time we lost a couple 
of dozen airplanes in 5 days. Why? Because the SA-2 missiles were 
coming up through the overcast, and it did not give us time to react. 
Second, if you flew underneath it, and remember it is wintertime in the 
Bosnia area right now, we would be skylighted against the clouds for 
their airplanes and the gunners knew our altitude, and it was 
devastating.
  We also found our bomb damage assessment after the weather cleared 
that we had hit less than 1 percent of our targets. And I told the 
Secretary if he wanted to that I would take him at 600 knots over the 
Blue Ridge Mountains and put a million pieces of artillery. First, he 
would not see any of them. But if he was lucky enough to hit one, what 
good would it do, because they have a couple of million more.
  For us to get into Somalia and wear out our equipment at a time when 
both sides of the aisle are trying to come up with a health plan, a 
crime bill, welfare reform, education, and H.R. 6 is coming up for 
education, can you imagine just the cost?
  We stood on the House floor during the Somalia debate when this House 
extended the time in Somalia. They knew what it would cost. But yet 
they still wanted to stay there in Somalia through March when Aideed 
and all of his other henchmen are still going to be there at risk of 
life and cost. But guess what? We just had to provide a supplemental to 
pay for that when we could have used those dollars.
  And when folks say we need to save dollars, we need to look and do 
that with the defense cuts.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.


                           immigration policy

  Mr. HUNTER. Let me move on to another area where the Clinton 
administration needs to form what I would call a national will, and 
that is immigration.
  Under the leadership of Lamar Smith and Carlos Moorhead and Elton 
Gallegly, and I might say the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Cunningham]----
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We are going from Bosnia to illegal immigration.
  Mr. HUNTER. Yes, I knew you would like this smooth transition. But 
under the leadership of those gentlemen and all of the Members on this 
Republican task force on immigration, we put together an overall 
immigration plan which does a couple of things. First, it strengthens 
the border because there is no substitute for having an enforceable, 
strong border with border patrolmen with enough border patrolmen to 
stop illegal immigration.
  Second, it cuts off what we would call the magnets of free social 
service, free education and all the welfare and social services that 
are bringing people across the border when they find out that they can 
make more by staying in bed all day as an illegal alien in the United 
States than putting in 8 hours of work in their native country.
  And I want to speak just to one area of that particular Republican 
task force plan because it is important. We have to have a border. 
There is no substitute for a border. And no matter how you handle the 
social problems of illegal immigration, just the criminal alien aspect 
alone, that is criminals that come across from other countries into the 
United States to rob, rape, murder, and move narcotics, justifies 
having a border. And let me give a little example.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We need to clarify that not everybody coming across 
the border illegally is doing that.
  Mr. HUNTER. No. But there are a large number of criminal aliens who 
are coming across the border. And I want to describe a recent test that 
we took.
  The INS took a number of criminal aliens, about 300 that had served 
their time in the United States, had been deported to Mexico City. 
Within a very short period of time we apprehended 10 percent of them, 
which means probably the rest of them got through, coming back across 
the Mexican-American border into the United States to continue their 
criminal enterprise. That means you have to have a border.
  Let me just say to my friends that we have a 2,000-mile border in the 
Southwest, and in our district in San Diego, CA we have the smugglers' 
corridor. And that is the land, the international border between 
Tijuana to the south and San Diego to the north. And it is a stretch of 
land about 15 miles wide. It goes from the Pacific Ocean on the west to 
the California coastal hills to the east. And across that smugglers' 
corridor comes about half of the illegal aliens and illegal narcotics 
smuggled into this country.

  We have learned a lot of things. One of the things we have learned as 
a result of this experience in building a fence across the smugglers' 
corridor, putting up lights, putting up a road and starting to get the 
number of border patrolmen we need to the border, one thing we have 
learned is we are going to need about 10,000 border patrolmen to 
control the border. There is no substitute for people.
  Now I want to put this in context. The Clinton administration has 
funded about 4,500 border patrolmen for next year. They increased the 
contingent by 600 border patrolmen last year after an amendment was 
forced on them by the House of Representatives.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Thanks to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. HUNTER. Which a number of us put forward. And that added 600 
border patrolmen. So they basically dispersed the border patrolmen who 
had been forced on them by Congress, and they pumped the number up to 
4,500 border patrolmen.
  Our studies show that we need 10,000 border patrolmen because you 
have 12 smuggling corridors in the Southwest from San Diego to Tijuana 
and from Brownsville in Texas to Matamoros, and you have to have the 
number of people to put them on line to stop the illegal immigrants 
from coming in. Now we need 10,000 border patrolmen.
  The Clinton administration has said they are going to give up 4,500. 
We are still about 6,000 short. At the same time we are cashiering out 
of the military about 2,000 young people every week. That means if we 
just took 3 weeks' worth of personnel slots where young marines, and 
Army, and Air Force and Coast Guard personnel are being cashiered, just 
3 weeks of people who are being taken out of the Air Force and put 
those job slots in the border patrol, we would be able to stop illegal 
immigration in the Southwest.
  Similarly, about 350,000 bureaucrats or Federal workers work in 
Washington, DC, not counting the Department of Defense.

                              {time}  1900

  If we took 6,000 of those slots, of those 350,000 people who work in 
Washington, DC, in administration doing paperwork, if we took just 
6,000 of those slots and put them on the border, then we could stop 
illegal immigration. So illegal immigration, stopping illegal 
immigration, is not space-based lasers, it is not technical and does 
not require a lot of R&D. What it does require is national will.
  I have looked forward to the Clinton administration, which has talked 
a very strong line on illegal immigration, and they have had good 
rhetoric, but I have looked forward to them providing the additional 
6,000 border patrol agents. But to date the bill that provides the 
6,000 border patrol agents is the Republican bill on immigration, and I 
hope that President Clinton will take this bill and work with us to see 
to it that we have the number of border patrolmen that we need.
  I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia and then my friend, 
the gentleman from California.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to shore up what the gentleman is saying. I 
think it is important for people to realize that right now something 
like 22 to 24 percent of the prisoners in the Federal penal system are 
illegal immigrants, and that goes exactly into what the gentleman is 
saying that they many times have come to America to extend their 
criminal activities and take on new territory, if you will.
  Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman is correct. We got a report from San Diego 
County, and that is that 22 percent of the inmates in the county jails 
in San Diego County are illegal aliens. So we are spending an enormous 
amount of taxpayer money taking care of those folks, and if my friends 
would allow me, there is one other thing I would like to talk about 
that I think is very important to us which is coming up shortly.
  That is a little-known bill called H.R. 6.
  First, I want to yield to my friend, the gentleman from California, 
because he has something else to say about immigration. Go ahead, 
before I make my transition.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I am on the Education and Labor Committee with H.R. 
6, and I will be happy to address it.
  The only thing I would like to say is we need to be very careful when 
we talk and focus and let people know we are talking about illegal 
immigration, not normal immigration.
  The United States has more legal immigration in the United States 
than all the other countries put together. But what we are talking 
about is the illegal immigration, and the effects on health care, law 
enforcement, and education, and they are here illegally, and that is 
what we want to stop. That is the only point I wanted to make.
  Mr. KINGSTON. This will just take 30 seconds, but one of the things I 
have found out recently is that in Georgia we have 28,000 illegal 
immigrants, and we are not a border State in the sense of California or 
Texas where traditionally you think about that. But the number that we 
got in the illegal immigrations task force, as you remember, was $14 
billion to $15 billion each year is lost directly as a result of our 
liberal public assistance programs going to illegal immigrants.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
  Let me talk briefly about H.R. 6 and just ask my friend, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham], who is on the Education 
Committee, about a call that I got along with a lot of other calls. It 
was a teacher. She said, ``You know, Congressman, I hear that they are 
going to offer a bill, H.R. 6, in Congress, that will force parents who 
are involved in education to be credentialed, to get certification of 
some kind.'' She said, ``That is terrible.'' She said, ``We teachers 
want parents to work with us in helping to educate their kids, and the 
idea that big government is going to take the teachers away just when 
they are really working with this in our particular school district 
makes no sense whatsoever.''
  I have gotten a lot of calls from folks who have said, ``Doggone it, 
when we all agree the problem with society is parents are not having 
enough time with their kids, the idea government is going to say you 
cannot teach your own kid because they do not have the right government 
credentials does not make any sense at all.''
  I want to ask the gentleman to tell us about H.R. 6 and what it does 
do.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. H.R. 6 is monumental. There are over 200 different 
programs.
  Mr. HUNTER. Tell us about the credentialing of parents.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. What the gentleman is talking about is an amendment 
was offered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Clayton). The time of the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Hunter] has expired.
  Pursuant to the Speaker's announced policy of February 11, 1994, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 10 minutes as 
the minority leader's designee.

                          ____________________