[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 72 (Friday, June 10, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 INSTABILITY ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE

  (Mr. HUNTER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman in the chair for his 
remarks about Normandy.
  My colleagues, we live in a dangerous world. It is a world in which 
there is continuous instability in the Middle East; the former Soviet 
Union has broken down into at least four former Soviet states which 
still have nuclear weapons, many of which are still directed at us.
  China has taken an increasingly aggressive attitude in the South 
China Sea and, probably most alarming, North Korea is developing and 
building nuclear weapons.
  We could be at war in North Korea on the Korean Peninsula in a fairly 
short period of time.
  Against this backdrop of a dangerous world, the Clinton 
administration has continued to cut the national defense budget to a 
dangerously low level.

                              {time}  1020

  We now have about 50 percent of the fighter force that we had a few 
years ago. We are slashing people out of the military. Young people are 
being terminated at the rate of 1,700 per week, 6,000 a month, 72,000 a 
year, and yet we have these dangerous situations like Korea, where the 
President is going to need options, and one of those options requires a 
strong American military. Unfortunately the House joined the President 
in slashing the defense budget to a dangerously low level yesterday by 
passing a drastically reduced defense budget.
  We need to reverse that course, my colleagues. The President of the 
United States needs to remember we achieved peace in the last 10 years 
by being strong, not by being weak.

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