[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 86 (Thursday, June 30, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
              IN SUPPORT OF FITZSIMONS ARMY MEDICAL CENTER

  Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. President, I support keeping the authorization of 
appropriations for a planned replacement hospital at Fitzsimons Army 
Medical Center [FAMC] in Aurora, CO. In case anybody missed it, the 
Senate Armed Services Committee decided to deauthorize $390 million 
that Congress approved 2 years ago for this project.
  The DOD medical system is split into several regions. FAMC is the 
lead agent for the provision of health care in the central region, and 
the major medical referral center for Army and Air Force hospitals in 
this region. That includes 12 states: Colorado, Utah, Illinois, 
Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, 
Missouri, and Wisconsin.
  This is the largest geographic region in the entire defense medical 
center system, and FAMC is the only such medical center in the U.S. 
heartland. In addition, FAMC is one of seven Army teaching hospitals, 
and provides medical and surgical care for all branches of the Armed 
Forces, their dependents, and retired personnel.
  The FAMC region includes a beneficiary population of at least 
735,000, and probably closer to 900,000, which makes it sixth out of 
the 12 DOD regions in terms of population. This region already has the 
fewest referral, tertiary care beds of any DOD medical region.
  The Army desperately wants to build a replacement facility at FAMC. 
In fact, the hospital has been part of the Army's overall military 
construction plan since 1989. The reason this is such a priority is 
obvious to anyone who has ever been there: FAMC's buildings are by far 
the oldest in the DOD health care system, more than twice as old as any 
other defense medical center.
  That is why Congress, in 1992, authorized $390 million for a 450-bed 
teaching hospital, and appropriated $57 million for design and site 
preparation. Last year, Congress appropriated $4 million for a 
telephone facility, and the Department of Defense released $30 million 
to finish the design phase of this project.
  Because of changing needs due to military downsizing, in January of 
this year the Under Secretary of Defense, John Deutch, limited the 
scope of the project to 200 beds and $225 million, and set fiscal year 
1996 to commence construction.
  Granted, this project has its detractors within the Department of 
Defense. In March, the DOD discontinued efforts to build a replacement 
facility. The IG argued that DOD should reduce graduate medical 
programs, and send local patients to civilian facilities, rather than 
refer them to FAMC.
  The Army strongly disputed the IG's conclusions, noting that the IG 
failed to acknowledge FAMC's regional mission and medical training 
functions. The Army also contends that three separate economic analyses 
and the DOD's own COBRA model analysis all supported a replacement 
hospital at FAMC.
  Despite the Army's arguments, and despite the obvious support for 
this project from the Under Secretary, the Senate Armed Services 
Committee decided to deauthorize the entire $390 million for this FAMC 
hospital. The committee report claimed that the Assistant Secretary of 
Health Affairs concurred with the IG's conclusions about the FAMC 
project. Well, that may have been true in January, when longtime 
Fitzsimons foe Dr. Edward Martin was acting as assistant secretary. I 
can assure the committee that the current, duly confirmed Assistant 
Secretary for Health Affairs, Dr. Stephen Joseph, does not share the 
committee's opinion. In fact, Dr. Joseph joined the Army in appealing 
to Secretary Perry and Under Secretary Deutch to make the retention of 
Fitzsimons authorization a DOD priority.
  My office, and to my knowledge most other offices from the 12-State 
region, were caught completely by surprise. When my staff asked after 
the fact why the committee made this decision, the committee's majority 
staff director simply replied, ``It was a good government thing to 
do.'' Well, I don't see it that way. This decision was not good 
government, and it certainly did not show a spirit of cooperation and 
consultation before making such controversial decisions.
  I understand the Armed Services Committee has to consider all 
military construction projects very carefully, given tight budgets and 
changing military needs. I know that we all have to share the pain of 
budget cuts--Colorado already lost the Pueblo Depot Activity, which was 
a big part of the city of Pueblo's economy, and Lowry Air Force Base, 
which will be a great loss to the cities of Denver and Aurora. I've 
always told my constituents that I won't fight to keep a military 
facility open just as a jobs program.
  But I also believe that we make these decisions in broad daylight, 
with much consultation and public debate. That's why we have public 
committee hearings, and why we set up a public process for making base 
closure decisions.
  In the case of Fitzsimons, however, I never had the chance to even 
make a comment. There was one hearing, on April 28, in the Military 
Readiness Subcommittee hearing on the military construction budget. At 
that hearing, the subcommittee chair, Senator Glenn, asked several 
questions specifically about the IG report on Fitzsimons. Since FAMC 
was not an item in this year's budget and was not listed as a topic for 
discussion, in my mind this hardly constitutes a public hearing on the 
subject.
  I also find it interesting that while slashing Fitzsimons, the 
Committee let stand several other hospital replacement projects: at 
Portsmouth, VA, for $176 million; at Elmendorf, AK, for $160 million; 
at Fort Bragg, NC, for $240 million; and at Fort Sill, OK, for $68 
million.
  I was also surprised to learn that the DOD IG had issued an audit 
report on the Portsmouth project in September, 1993, which concluded 
that constructing this facility would ``further aggravate an already 
excessive rate of empty beds in Government hospitals in the Norfolk 
area, and further divert patients from already underutilized non-
federal hospitals in the area.'' The IG recommended changes that would 
save $49 million on this project; apparently, the Committee decided not 
to implement most of those recommendations.
  I believe that if the IG did audits on every single hospital 
replacement project, that audit would draw similar conclusions. The IG 
says it would be cheaper to rely on civilian health facilities and 
reduce graduate military medical programs. That will be true of any 
defense medical facility. This is a policy question as well as an 
economics question: does the DOD and Congress want to take those steps? 
Are those steps in the best interests of our Nation's armed forces?
  If members of the Armed Services Committee are going to allow the DOD 
Inspector General to make these policy decisions for them, then let's 
be fair about it--let's do IG reports on all military construction 
projects, and implement their recommendations without debate. If they 
won't do that, then the committee has a responsibility to the Senate to 
ensure that they make the decisionmaking process open and fair.
  The House of Representatives did not adopt a similar provision 
regarding Fitzsimons, and I intend to work to ensure that House and 
Senate conferees keep authorization for the FAMC replacement hospital. 
I am more than willing to consider ways to save money on military 
facilities in my State, as long as I am part of the process. In this 
case, I was not, and I do not accept the committee's decision.
  This decision leaves the entire middle of the country with one old, 
inadequate facility to handle its enormous mission. That's a big hole 
in the military medical system, and we need to fill it.
  Mr. NUNN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Wellstone). The Senator from Georgia [Mr. 
Nunn], is recognized.
  Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, we are still in the process of trying to get 
a unanimous consent agreement, which I believe is going to happen but 
has not yet happened. If that agreement is entered into, then it would 
mean we would be debating the B-2 tonight. Therefore, unless there is 
some other Senator that wants to be recognized now on one of the 
defense-related subjects, I will go ahead in the interest of time and 
start making a few comments on the B-2.
  These comments basically relate to what the committee did, and 
everyone is going to need to understand that before voting on the 
amendment to strike what the committee did, which will be offered by 
the Senator from Michigan. So I believe the best use of time is for me 
to go ahead and make my presentation.
  Mr. President, the Levin amendment will cut the $150 million the 
committee recommended for a bomber industrial fund. I want to begin by 
emphatically saying what the bomber industrial fund in this bill does 
not do. It is not an authorization for more B-2's. That is prohibited 
by the committee bill and by other existing laws that are unchanged by 
our bill. It is not a start or long lead for more B-2's. That is 
strictly prohibited by the committee bill. It is not a waste of money. 
Roughly $75 million of the $150 million will go to keep the vendor base 
supplying spare parts for the 20 B-2's already approved and which they 
will ultimately need. In other words, this is buying spare parts that 
will be consumed by these B-2's in the years ahead, ones we already 
have.
  The other $75 million of the $150 million keeps the production 
facilities ready should the Department and the Congress conclude next 
year that, as part of an industrial based plan and the review of the 
overall bomber requirements, which our bill requires, there is need for 
more B-2's. We are giving the Department of Defense, the Air Force, the 
Congress, and the American people an option. That is what we are doing. 
That is what the $150 million does.
  As I will make clear now, I do not think we are prepared, I certainly 
do not believe the Department of Defense is prepared, to make that 
decision at this time based on the information base.
  I want to lay out for the Senators why the bomber industrial base is 
an integral part of the committee's overall bomber plan and why it 
should be retained. Years ago the Air Force's bomber road map, which 
was their detailed plan of what we needed in terms of bombers for the 
future, called for a force of 184 active bombers, virtually all the 
bombers the Air Force now owns or has on order, in order to deal with 
the opening phase of a Desert-Storm-type operation. This was based on 
an assumption of an operation in which the enemy did not allow us 6 
months to build up our forces in the region, which of course we had in 
the Desert Storm-Iraqi war.
  For these 184 bombers, the bomber road map called for the procurement 
of an array of smart precision weapons, both smart iron bombs for use 
by the B-2 and smart standoff weapons for the nonstealthy B-1's and B-
52's which make up most of the bomber force.
  Last fall the administration's Bottom-Up Review concluded that U.S. 
strategy should be based on, and U.S. military forces sized to prevail 
in, a two-regional scenario with the second contingency occurring 
nearly simultaneously. The MRC's, as they are called, would occur 
nearly simultaneously. That was the planning assumption on which the 
Clinton defense plan had been based.
  The Bottom-Up Review established a new requirement of 100 bombers for 
each of these theaters with the assumption that the B-2 would be moved 
or swung from the first MRC theater to the second after attacking the 
tough targets that were heavily defended. So the Bottom-Up Review 
bomber force adds up to the same 184 bombers that the bomber road map 
previously had recommended, but allocated those 184 bombers to two 
separate theaters and two wars rather than one.
  So it has been a matter of considerable amount of attention in our 
committee because there has been no real analytical explanation about 
how you move from the bomber road map of requiring 184 bombers for one 
war to the Bottom-Up Review which basically spreads that same force 
structure over two regional wars occurring simultaneously.
  The fiscal year 1995 defense budget submitted to the Congress in 
February proposed to cut the number of active nonstealthy bombers from 
168 to only 100. The budget also proposed to permanently retire 47 of 
the 95 B-52-H bombers--that has been a matter of considerable concern 
to our committee, and, I think, a matter of considerable concern to the 
Members of the Senate--and not to fund any of the conventional weapons 
upgrades for 23 of the 95 B-1B bombers, rendering these 23 useless for 
conventional nonnuclear combat missions.
  Moreover, in the outyears, only 800 nonstealthy B-1's and B-52's 
would be retained as fully combat-capable aircraft. Thus, with an 
average of 16 combat-ready B-2's--and that is what we have now, only 16 
available; once all the 20 bombers have been delivered, you get 16 that 
will be available--the total active bomber inventory in the outyears 
would be only 96 heavy bombers, even fewer than the 100 bombers that 
the Bottom-Up Review found to be the minimum number for one 
contingency.
  Mr. President, someone listening to this debate might ask what the 
basis for this downsizing is, this dramatic downsizing of the bomber 
force. The answer is we do not know. We do not know on the Armed 
Services Committee, and neither, apparently, does the Defense 
Department at this stage.
  Secretary Widnall suggested at a hearing that bombers might be swung 
from the first theater to the second. We have had other explanations, 
including an Assistant Secretary who claimed that the Bottom-Up Review 
was a misprint, that it always intended to say that 100 bombers were 
enough to cover both MRC's and that the text should have called for all 
bombers to swing through the second theater.
  A classified briefing provided for the committee by the Office of the 
Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs provided no--zero--analytical 
basis for DOD bomber proposals, either those in the Bottom-Up Review or 
those in the budget request.
   In contrast to DOD's lack of any kind of real quantitative analysis 
on the bomber question, Mr. President, the committee has received no 
less than four very recent detailed, quantitative studies of bomber 
requirements from well-qualified analysis groups.
  While each study uses slightly different scenarios and assumptions, 
their conclusions are unanimous. Two of them were done by people who 
have a stake in the game; they are defense contractors. Two of them 
were done by people who are basically independent and have no stake in 
the procurement of bombers. So it is interesting that they came to the 
same conclusions.
  The force proposed by DOD of only 89 stealthy bombers plus 20 B-2's 
is grossly inadequate to meet a two MRC challenge. And bomber numbers 
as low as those proposed by the Department of Defense would 
substantially increase the probability of failure even if we had a 
single regional war. Those were the results of detailed analyses that 
have not been rebutted by the Department of Defense.
  Moreover, Mr. President, a central finding of two of these studies is 
that a bomber force made up of mostly nonstealthy bombers--that would 
be B-52's or B-1's--requires very large numbers of expensive standoff 
precision munitions; that is, munitions that can be fired from a 
distance from the target so the bombers do not have to fly over the 
target where they are so exposed to enemy fire. That means that these 
expensive standoff precision munitions would enable the nonstealthy 
bombers that can be seen by radar to deliver early and massive attacks 
in from outside the reach of enemy defenses until the defenses are beat 
down by some other force. Some other force has to come in and suppress 
those defenses before we can take in B-52's and B-1's, which are 
vulnerable if they fly into heavily defended areas. Therefore, we have 
to have something else that goes in and does the job to suppress those 
defenses before those planes can come in and hit their targets.
  What else is there that can do that? Well, I think the primary near-
term options are stealth aircraft. These are the B-2 or the F-117's 
that have to be used in this regard. Both studies conclude that a few 
additional B-2's would greatly accelerate the destruction of these 
enemy defenses. And this is interesting for those who are interested in 
the B-52: If you can suppress those enemy defenses, then the B-52's 
have a much greater role in the future than is the case otherwise. They 
have to have some condition precedent to flying over these targets 
unless we are willing to risk very substantial lives in the process.
  I will resume my comments on the B-2 later.
  I yield to the majority leader.

                          ____________________