[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.
____________________