[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 18, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3898-H3904]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1400
NATIONAL SECURITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chambliss). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from California [Mr.
Hunter] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thought I would start out my discussion
today, I want to talk a little bit about national security, but I
thought I would start out the discussion today, since MFN, that is
most-favored-nation treatment for China, trade treatment for China, is
at issue and we will be discussing and debating this issue on the House
floor, there is a lot of commentary on it right now, I thought I would
start out today with a statement that was made, apparently by the NFIB
or one of our other good groups that wants to continue this trade
relationship with China, and presumably this $40 billion annual trade
deficit that we suffer at the hands of China, one of their statements
was, gee, if we cut off China, we are not going to get any Tickle Me
Elmos because apparently Tickle Me Elmo is made in, of course, Red
China. It is made in China and presumably some of the slave labor that
makes some of the textiles in China also makes Tickle Me Elmos.
I thought that in light of what the Chinese are doing with the $40
billion trade surplus that they enjoy over the United States, that
means they get $40 billion in hard American dollars for things they
sell us in excess of what we sell them, when we do all of our trading
at the end of the year, they have got 40 extra billion dollars in their
bank accounts that we do not have in our bank account because they
enjoy a trade surplus over us. That is largely because the Chinese have
a massive tariff for almost every American item.
Of course, they enjoy virtually free access to the American market.
But they make Tickle Me Elmo. It is made in China. One of our good
trade groups said, gee, we will not have any more Tickle Me Elmos and
should we not be upset about that because we want our children to have
a nice life and having a Tickle Me Elmo presumably is a real
illustration of quality of life now.
But here is the reason why we should not care whether or not we get a
lot of Tickle Me Elmos or other toys from Communist China. They are
taking that $40 billion and they are going to their friends, the Soviet
Union, former Soviet Union, now the main player is Russia, and they are
buying military hardware. They are buying a lot of this hardware and
aiming it at guess who, the people that provided the dollars in the
first place, the good old Americans. They are using this 40 billion
extra dollars a year to arm.
That means they are not only building these, this is a missile
destroyer that they just purchased from Russia, it has one purpose and
that is to kill American carriers. That means killing the 5,000
uniformed sailors who are on board an American carrier as well as the
attending ships in the battle fleet formation. This was designed by the
Russians with their surface-to-surface missiles, their N-22, their SSM,
their 44 SAN-17's and their SAM's and their four point defense systems
and their 130 millimeter guns and their helicopter. That has one job in
mind and one purpose, and that is to destroy American surface ships.
The Chinese are able to buy these now from the Russians with hard
dollars. They did not used to pay hard dollars. They would give IOUs
and they did not get very much of that, because they were a dollar
short. They were cash strapped. We have now given them all kinds of
money from these doggone Tickle Me Elmo sales and dozens of other
commodities that we now purchase from them. And they are buying weapons
and they are aiming them, their nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles are
aimed at the guys, the American people who gave them the money in the
first place. They are aimed at American cities.
So as we enter into this debate over whether or not we should
continue to have these Tickle Me Elmo transfers with China, I would
suggest that they are in reality a Torture Me Elmo transaction, because
in the end the same young Americans, the people that we are trying to
give a good lifestyle to now, our children, may face American
technology. And in the least they are going to face military technology
that was purchased with American dollars from their own parents on the
battlefield, coming back our way, the bullets will be coming back at
us. So when we put together this China policy, I think we have to look
at a couple of things.
One thing is, by maintaining this beneficial trade relationship with
China, when I say that I mean beneficial especially for China, we are
making China economically strong. China is becoming very economically
powerful. As they become economically powerful, it is our hope, of
course, that they will have a benign leadership, a leadership which
appreciates human rights, appreciates the rights of other nations on
the earth to exist and will not have, not focus in the future on
military exploitation and on an aggressive national security stance. We
hope that but we do not know.
So the point is, we are making China strong economically and
militarily with our dollars and we do not know where China is going.
Incidentally, that carries me to a second subpoint.
We passed an amendment in the Committee on National Security. I wish
the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Taylor] was here from Mississippi
who was very instrumental in that debate, along with the gentleman from
California [Mr. Bono] and a number of other members of the Committee on
National Security and the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie], and
we passed an amendment that prevents an arm of the Chinese Government,
it is called COSCO, COSCO is not where you go to buy your lawn chairs,
COSCO is the Chinese Ocean Shipping Corporation. And they have done a
pretty smart thing. They have corporatized different arms of their
government on the basis that good old Americans, Republicans and
Democrats, are a little bit wary of the Communist army and other
agencies that are centralized agencies in part of the Beijing
Government, but if you call something a corporation, that makes us feel
very comfortable because we are a bunch of capitalists and we like
corporations.
So they have corporatized a maritime arm of their government. And
that maritime arm is buying the U.S. Naval Base at Long Beach or
leasing the U.S. Naval Base at Long Beach. Of course, the port reuse
facility or entity, that is the Reuse Commission at Long Beach, when
the Long Beach Naval Station got closed, were looking around for a
beneficial use. When we put that law into place that allowed for some
closing of military bases, we envisioned that there would be industrial
parks and other types of development that would take the place of
military activities on these bases. We never envisioned in our wildest
dreams that a foreign nation, especially one that has nuclear weapons
aimed at our cities, would want to lease one of our U.S. naval bases.
But that is what they are doing with the 135 acre terminal at Long
Beach. I think that is bad for a number of reasons.
I am glad to see my friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr.
Weldon], the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Research and
Development of the Committee on National Security, joining me.
There are a number of problems with allowing a foreign government to
have such a large facility at a fairly strategic location like that.
First, you can do a lot more with a 135-acre facility in terms of
intelligence gathering than you can if you are just trying to intercept
signals coming off a ship with your own ship. You have a permanent
location. You are able to have bigger physical facilities to intercept
intelligence.
Also presumably you have a pretty large staff of people. We know as a
matter of record that the Chinese Government attends its industrial
facilities around the world with intelligence
[[Page H3899]]
agents. So unless they change course and do something that they have
not done before, they will have intelligence agents at this base at
Long Beach, and presumably they are going to use them to gather
intelligence on U.S. military activity and presumably also on the high
tech industry in California.
Anyway, it is clear that China is on the rise, on the ascension in
terms of its military buildup, its military apparatus, and it would be
very wise for us, I think, to do two things. First, to be very wary
about funding the buildup. Why pay for their arms buildup by buying a
bunch of doggone Tickle Me Elmos and other things that we purchase from
them? And second, let us make sure that our own national security is
not on the descent. I want to tell you where we are at with respect to
our security because most Americans do not know this.
When we won Desert Storm, here is what we had. We had 18 Army
divisions. We had 24 active fighter airwings, that was our air power.
We had 546 Navy ships. Since Desert Storm, since we saw those great
pictures on television of us taking care of Saddam Hussein in short
order, we have gone to this buildup or this force structure because we
have actually built down. We have gone from 18 Army divisions in 1991
to 10. We have cut the Army almost in half. We have gone from 24
fighter airwings to 13. So we have cut our air power almost in half.
And we have gone from 546 Navy ships to 346 so we have cut the Navy by
about 40 percent in terms of structure.
Interestingly, we are down to the level that is just about where we
were when on June 25, 1950, the North Koreans invaded South Korea. We
had 10 Army divisions in those days. Within 3 days, the North Koreans
had taken all of Seoul; that was the capital of South Korea. They were
driving southward on the Korean peninsula. The peninsula looks a little
bit like Florida. They almost pushed the Americans entirely off the
peninsula. Pusan is a little port at the southern tip of South Korea.
We were right at the southern tip there. And we formed the perimeter.
We flew part of the 25th Infantry Division from Tokyo to try to stop
them. They got torn to pieces. We flew in the rest of the division. The
division commander got captured. We lost 50,000 people killed in Korea.
That is just about as many as the Vietnam War. But we did that because
we drew down our military strength so sharply after World War II that
we were so weak that a third rate military power pushed us down in the
Korean peninsula just a few years later.
So we need to rebuild national security. And we are going to be
having the defense bill on the floor here in just a matter of hours. I
think tomorrow it will be coming up on the floor. And I want to yield
to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] who has done a
tremendous job heading the Subcommittee on Military Research and
Development.
Let me say, before yielding to him, that our chairman, the gentleman
from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] has done a great job of taking a few
scarce extra dollars that the Republican side of the aisle has put into
the budget for defense, not enough of an increase in force structure to
what I think it should be, but they have given a few extra dollars. The
gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] has allocated that money
with only one direction to us. Try to make our national security
apparatus stronger, try to get the equipment that the men and women in
uniform need and try to see to it that we have the best in terms of
quality of life for those men and women.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding to me.
I cannot stay with him for the entire hour, but I appreciate his
leadership, not just for this special order but for the leadership he
provides on the committee and as chairman of our acquisition and
procurement operations. He has done a fantastic job. I appreciate that.
I know that the country does as well.
I want to follow up on his point about the perception of the American
people that somehow we have dramatically increased defense spending
over the past several years. Unfortunately, I think part of that
perception has been created by the White House itself.
Let us go back. The gentleman talked about some of the things that
have taken place in terms of cutbacks. Let me highlight a few other
facts that our colleagues need to keep in mind tomorrow as we begin the
defense bill.
During John Kennedy's era, that was at a time of relative peace, it
was after Korea and before Vietnam, we were spending 9 percent of our
gross national product as a Nation on the military. We were spending
over 50 cents of every Federal tax dollar coming into Washington on the
military, nine percent of our GNP over 50 cents of every tax dollar.
In this year's budget, we are spending less than 3 percent of our GNP
on defense; 16 cents out of the Federal tax dollar will go toward the
military in this next fiscal year, 16 cents and dropping. That does not
take into consideration the fact that when John Kennedy was President,
we drafted young kids out of high school. They were paid less than the
minimum wage. They served the country for peanuts. They were not
married. They did not have families.
Today we have an all-volunteer force. Our kids are better educated.
Many of them are married. They have spouses. We have housing costs,
health care costs, education costs. We pay them a decent wage. So out
of that 16 cents that we are spending, a much higher percentage of that
goes for quality of life. It does not go for exotic weapons systems. It
goes to protect the morale and the well-being of the members of the
military and their families and loved ones.
We take those factors and then add in that we have had an
administration over the past 5 years who has increased the level of
deploying our troops to the highest level in the last 50 years. This
President has committed our troops to more locations and more
operations than any President since World War II. So we have increased
costs with deployments that we did not budget for.
In fact, as the administration has put our troops in Haiti, which was
hotly debated in this Congress, the problem is not just the increased
costs that we have to pay for our troops to be there, but as the
gentleman full well knows, we are also paying for the cost for the
housing and the food of the other countries.
The President talked about how he has a multinational effort. What he
does not tell the American people is the reason why Bangladesh sent
1000 troops is we are paying their housing and food costs. It is a
great deal for them.
What the President did not tell the American people in the Balkans,
when he committed us to get involved in the Balkans over in Bosnia, and
I would say that the majority of the Members of this body did not
disagree with our being a part of the multinational force, our problem
was, why were we committing 36,000 troops to that theater on the ground
and in the area when Germany, right next door, was only putting 4000
troops in and when the Japanese were not paying their fair share?
{time} 1415
So the point is, as the defense dollar has gone down, as quality of
life costs have gone up, we have seen a President who has overseen
these cuts increase dramatically where we send these kids around the
world, and also increase dramatically the amount of DOD money going for
environmental cleanup. So the largest pot of money being used to clean
up environmental sites in America is not the energy bill, it is not the
commerce bill, it is not the bill to reauthorize EPA, it is the
Department of Defense bill. And, as the gentleman full well knows, we
are spending hundreds of millions and billions of dollars out of DOD's
budget to clean up sites and to pay lawyers, which is the bulk of what
we do.
The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Krulak, told me one month
ago he was required in this fiscal year to request one-half of the
amount of money he is spending on his total buying for all the Marine
Corps on environmental costs. So he is spending one-half of his total
buy just on environmental costs.
Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will allow me to reclaim for a second,
that means when our Marines get back from places like Bosnia, places
like Somalia, they have very little money to refurbish their equipment
and get ready for the war.
[[Page H3900]]
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Exactly.
Mr. HUNTER. Because if they do not do the environmental cleanups on
places like Camp Pendleton, the commander goes to jail if he does not
comply.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Right. So all of these factors have
caused us to be put into an environment where we cannot meet the needs
of our military. That has resulted in a decline of morale. That has
resulted in problems in terms of funding.
I have been with base commanders who have not paid their electric
bill for 8 months because they have had to shift money over to help the
administration pay for deployments that they never budgeted for. All of
this we have to deal with.
Now, for the past 2 years, the Republicans, supported by a
significant number of Democrats who are our friends, this is a
bipartisan debate in the Congress, the battle here is not Republicans
versus Democrats. The battle here is this Congress versus a White House
that is totally insensitive, in my opinion, to the military needs. We
increased funding for defense for the past 2 years.
What did the administration do? They soundly and roundly criticized
us. They said this money was going for what they called pork barrel
programs, even though 98 percent of what we funded were requests by the
services.
But what really offended me was former Secretary Perry coming in
before our committee and testifying that they had stopped the cuts in
the acquisition accounts. In effect, what he was doing was taking
credit for the plus-ups that they had criticized us for putting in the
year before.
Even more outrageous, and the gentleman knows full well this issue
because he and I cochaired this hearing, we told the administration
that in each of the past 3 years they were grossly underfunding our
requests for national missile defense. We put extra money in and we
were criticized.
What did the administration do the beginning of this year? Secretary
Cohen, being an honest broker, came before the Congress and said,
``Well, ladies and gentlemen, we made a mistake. We have underfunded
national missile defense by $2.3 billion.''
So after the President submitted his budget, we were then given the
task to go out and find the money that the President did not ask for,
that we told him about for the past 3 years, to fund missile defense.
So out of my subcommittee I had to eat a $474 million plus-up just for
national missile defense, to fund the shortcomings and the
mismanagement of this administration.
On top of that, because they underfunded the intelligence budget,
they asked me to also put up $207 million of additional funding to fund
the shortfall in intelligence.
On top of that, even though the President pounded his fist on the
table and said to the AIPAC members across the country that he was for
the Nautilus program, and that he would fight to protect the Israeli
people, he never requested funding for that very program. And as the
gentleman full well knows, we had to go and find out ourselves by
plussing up our own estimate of what the money would be needed to give
the Department of Defense enough money next year to actually implement
the cooperative program with Israel called tactical high energy laser.
Once again, the administration committed to it but never asked for the
funding to make it happen. All of these things we have attempted to
deal with in this bill.
I say to my friends and my colleagues who will listen to the debate
tomorrow that they should be very careful because we are in a very
difficult time. We are having to make decisions in an environment where
the administration is not giving us the leadership. They are causing us
to spend more money than we have, they are causing us to stretch
programs out, driving up the costs of those programs, and they are not
working with us in a way they should be working with us for the
betterment of our people and for our troops.
I would add one more point. The administration talks a good game
about jobs and so do the Members on the other side. I heard some of my
colleagues down here wailing about the loss of jobs in this country.
And as my good friend knows, we do not fund defense because it provides
jobs, we fund defense because we want to support our troops and because
there has never been a country that has been attacked because it was
too strong. We never want to lose that edge.
But over the past 5 years, under this President, something we have
never heard the other side talk about when they have railed about
NAFTA, when they have railed about this side of the aisle, is the 1
million men and women who belong to unions who have lost their jobs
because of this President's cuts in defense spending. He has decimated
defense in aerospace.
So the gentleman has had a million workers who belong to the UAW, the
IAN, the building trades, all the major metal trades, and all of them
have felt the impact of the downsizing. Most of those people are out
looking for positions paying not even one-half of what they were making
when they worked in the defense industry. Another important point about
the impact of the defense downsizing and the impact on our industrial
base that has occurred over the past 5 years.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I thank him for
the dialogue that he has commenced with a lot of working people in this
country to let them know how important defense is from an industrial
base perspective.
I might mention that about 250,000 of those aerospace workers who
lost their jobs, it is real, because 250,000 of them lost their jobs in
California as a result of the downsizing.
But I want to take the gentleman back, because first he has been our
leader in missile defense, and his subcommittee, the Subcommittee on
Military Research and Development, is the place where we put our
plans together for missile defense to defend this country and to defend
our troops in theater, and we move out with those plans and try to
build those systems over the years.
I want to start the gentleman at about 1986 or 1987, when the
gentleman and myself put together a letter that we sent to the defense
secretary or defense minister of Israel, and we told him that at some
point in the near future Israel would be attacked with ballistic
missiles, made in Russia, coming from a neighboring nation. In that
case I think we suggested in our letter that that might be Syria.
Turned out it was another nation, it was Iraq, but in fact that
happened.
We urged Israel to commence a program, not of building fighter
planes, because everybody builds fighter planes, to drop that Lavi
fighter, but to make the centerpiece of the American-Israeli production
agreement and cooperation to make that missile defense. Because nobody
in the free world made missile defense, and at that time we did not do
it.
Partly as a result of what we did, and I think also as a result of
what our Secretary of Defense did at that time, and I think some good
thinking on the part of Israel's leaders, they embarked on the ARROW
program, which is one of their missile defense programs, and they have
a certain sense of urgency, because they know life is real, missile
attacks happen. They have moved out with some urgency and are having a
pretty good program with ARROW.
I would like the gentleman, because he is the expert on missile
defense, to walk us through our programs, our Navy programs and our
Army programs, and let our folks know, the Members of Congress and the
American people, where we stand on those programs. What is happening?
And I yield to him.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman and
appreciate his lead on missile defense initiatives.
This Congress, again in a bipartisan manner, Democrats and
Republicans, have come together for the past 3 years, and the single
biggest difference between our position on security and the President's
is we have said we have to move aggressively in protecting our troops,
our allies and our citizens. Two years ago we plussed up by a billion
dollars in this area, last year by a billion. This year our bill calls
for about $800 million of additional spending.
Now, why do we do that? My friend and colleague knows the largest
loss of life from a single incident that we have had, at least in the
last 5 years, actually a little bit longer than 5 years,
[[Page H3901]]
was when we lost those troops that were killed by that incoming Scud
missile in Saudi Arabia. It was horrible. These young kids never had a
chance. What hit them? A low-class, very rudely constructed missile
that Iraq fired into that barracks.
Mr. HUNTER. It was basically the Model T of missiles.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. That is right, the Model T.
We said as a Nation, never again will this happen to our troops. That
is why the Congress gave the administration carte blanche. We said we
would give them the money they needed, we would give them the
resources, but they needed to give us a system that is highly
effective, that will protect our kids wherever they are in the world.
What has been the administration's response? They now are projecting
that they want to wait until 15 years after those kids were killed to
deploy the first battery of that highly effective system that is now
called THAAD, theater high altitude area defense system. We say that is
unacceptable.
We provide the full funding for THAAD, but we go beyond that. We fund
the Navy's lower tier program, because we believe, as the scientists
have told us, that the best way to protect our troops and our allies
and our people from the threat of missile proliferation, that the best
way to do it is to have a layered approach.
The first layer is Navy lower tier, which provides protection against
cruise missiles. Cruise missiles are now being built by over 20
nations. Over 75 nations in the world now have cruise missiles.
Pakistan, India, Iraq, Iran, every country we can think of has cruise
missiles that they can fire.
We are putting the funding in well above what the President asked
for, but what the Navy requested to implement Navy lower tier as soon
as possible. We have a promising capability, as my colleague and
friends know, in Navy upper tier to give us a capability using the
Aegis systems to allow us to protect our ships wherever they are and to
provide a wider range of coverage against faster, hotter missiles.
We have funded that system to a higher level, again in line with what
the Navy says they need to move aggressively, to see whether or not
Navy upper tier offers us potential well beyond just protecting a fleet
of ships, perhaps even becoming eventually a national missile defense
system.
Now, while we have been doing that, funding Navy upper tier, Navy
lower tier, THAAD, cruise missile defense, we have also funded a space-
based sensing capability so that we can detect the moment that a rocket
is launched so that we can activate a response.
Now, some on the liberal side would say we should not do that, that
is destabilizing. The Russians have had the world's only operational
ABM system in place since the ABM Treaty was signed back in 1972. It
protects 80 percent of the Russian people around Moscow and they have
modified it three times.
The Russians, as my colleague and friends knows, have some of the
most sophisticated missile defense systems they are now selling on the
marketplace. In fact, the gentleman and I have had conversations that
perhaps we ought to buy that system, because under this President we
are never going to be able to deploy a decent, effective system.
General Lyles is on the record, and Under Secretary Kaminski, in
charge of technology for DOD, said that we will not have a highly
effective system under their plan to protect our troops until 2006.
Now, why is that such a priority for us? As my colleague and friend
knows, we were told by the intelligence community that we would not
have to worry about a threat to our troops or our homeland. They said
we would see evidence of an aggressive testing program by an adversary
like North Korea. We were told the No Dong missile of North Korea, with
a range of 1,300 kilometers, would never threaten our troops because we
would see it developing, so we could take our time.
Up until 1 month ago, when the world community saw North Korea deploy
the No Dong missile system now. So that today, June 16, we have all of
our troops in Japan, South Korea, and Okinawa at risk from the threat
of a No Dong missile being fired at them, for which we have no
defensive system that can shoot that missile down.
That is outrageous, and that is what this whole debate is about,
giving us a capability that we know is there. It is kind of ironic that
the administration now comes back this year and says to the Congress,
``Well, we criticized you soundly last year and the year before on
missile defense, but we guess you were right. We did underfund national
missile defense by $2.3 billion, and would you please help us find that
money?''
But it really irritates me that it has taken us 3 years to convince
the administration that they had in fact not had the facts on their
side. Only because of the efforts of a bipartisan group in this
Congress with the leadership of my good friend and colleague, joined by
Members of the other side, have we been able to keep these missile
systems in place to protect us.
While we have done that, as the gentleman knows, we are increasing
funding above the administration to protect us against the chemical or
biological attack. That is the Congress taking the lead, not the White
House.
{time} 1430
Three years ago we started funding money for chem-bio technology, for
training our first responders. The administration followed us. We were
the ones in the Congress that funded extra money for technology
relative to information warfare above what the White House requested.
This Congress has been the guardian of the defense of this country
for the past 6 years under this administration. Once again, we hope
that our colleagues tomorrow will begin to understand why this has been
so important and why we ask for them to join with us in a strong
bipartisan vote.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the gentleman
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon]. He has made an excellent statement. He
gives us great leadership on the committee, and I look forward to
seeing him tomorrow and seeing a lot of other folks who presumably will
give us a lot of support also. I thank the gentleman for his leadership
on national defense.
One thing that the gentleman said, I think, should be very well taken
by the people who have put together national security, and that is that
we should have the Boy Scout motto, ``Be Prepared.'' Because we have a
number of nations in the world that have nuclear systems right now and
have missiles, and right now they may not have the political intent to
do us harm, but political intent can change overnight. Political intent
can change with one election, one coup, one dramatic change of
direction by any of a number of countries, and we will then, right
then, have to be prepared to defend ourselves.
The idea that this administration says that is not so, we do not have
to start preparing until it is clear that somebody intends to do us
harm, is an illustration of the fact that the folks in the
administration have not read history books.
We were not prepared for Pearl Harbor. I asked a number of our
intelligence agents, intelligence leaders to tell me the other day how
many of them predicted the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina.
None of them predicted that. Well, I went to something a little easier:
How about the fall of the Russian empire, how many of them predicted
that? None of them predicted the fall of the Russian empire. Lastly, I
said, how many of them predicted the invasion of Kuwait? One said,
before or after the tanks started rolling? I said, no, it has got to be
after the tanks had started rolling. None of them predicted the
invasion of Kuwait.
So we know this: We have had a lot of wars in this century; we lost a
lot of Americans killed in action; we are going to have more wars. That
is human nature. That is the nature of nations. It is the nature of
some of the aggressors around the world that we will have wars.
The only question will be, will we be so prepared and so strong that
other countries do not mess with us? We are not that strong at this
point, and we need to turn it around.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on the way out, the
gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter]
[[Page H3902]]
struck a note that I had to come back and respond, because he is
raising very valid points here. When he talks about intelligence and
how we decide how much money to spend on defense, it is supposed to be
driven by the threat that we see emerging around the world.
Unfortunately, in many cases it has not been done in that manner. In
fact, it has been basically a budget number given to us. But hopefully
tomorrow, to my good friend and colleague, the Committee on Rules will
allow me to offer one, and I have actually asked two amendments to be
put in order, and the gentleman will know the importance of each of
these amendments.
The reason why we have such a tough time convincing the American
people on the issue, or the American people have been lulled into a
sense of complacency, is that we have heard nothing from the bully
pulpit except do not worry, everything is OK.
As my good friend, the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] knows,
this President on 135 occasions has made a speech that has the same
phrase in it. He has done it 3 times at the podium in this room. He has
done it on college campuses. He has done it before women's groups and
national associations where he has looked this group squarely in the
eye, squarely in the TV camera, and he said, ``You can sleep well
tonight because, for the first time in 50 years, there are no long-
range missiles with nuclear weapons pointed at America's children.''
Now, he has made that statement 135-some-times, and most of our
constituents, since the President is the Commander in Chief, think that
he probably knows what he is talking about. My amendment says one very
simple thing: Mr. President, certify to the Congress the facts that
bear out your statement. Certify to us that you can document that there
are no long-range ICBM's pointed at our children. Certify to us how
long it takes to re-target those missiles, which we have been told in
hearings takes about 30 seconds, some have said 10 seconds. And certify
to us that if a missile is taken off of targeting, that when that
missile is activated it reverts back to the original targeting
pinpoint, which would mean it would be aimed at an American city.
The President, as my good friend knows, cannot certify that. Because
we have heard testimony over and over again that we do not know whether
or not Russia has taken its missiles off of activation in terms of
targeting our cities. We cannot verify that. But the point is that when
the President says that over and over again, that drives the mood in
this country that there is no longer a threat.
The second issue is one that is becoming increasingly important. As
my good friend, the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter], knows, I
work Russian issues aggressively and advocate engaging the Russians.
But there has been a project in the Ural Mountains that Russia has been
working on for 18 years. They built a city of 65,000 people right next
to it. The site is called Beloretsk 15 and 16. And this site, we just
do not know what it is for. They actually have mined out over 18 years
a monstrous underground complex.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would hold for a second,
that complex is bigger, as I understand it, than the District of
Columbia.
Mr. WELDON. That is right, it is exactly bigger.
Mr. HUNTER. All underground.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. All underground. There have been articles
in the London Times and the New York Times and there have been over 30
articles in the Russian media about this project.
When I was in Russia, my 10th visit to that country, 3 weeks ago, I
met with Minister of Atomic Energy Mikhaylov, I met with Minister of
Natural Resources Orlov, I met with Boris Yeltsin's top assistant,
Boris Nemtsov, I met with the Deputy Defense Minister Mikoshin and I
met with the No. 2 guy in the general staff, General Manlov, and I
asked each of them about this project and I said, we need to have some
transparency.
The response was, each of them knew about the project but none of
them would claim that it was their project. In fact, Mr. Mikoshin said
to me in front of five Members of Congress, ``Mr. Chairman, Mr.
Congressman, I know of that project, and I do not like that project.
But to get further information, you have to go directly to Boris
Yeltsin.''
Now I could tell my friend and colleague, I have had all the
briefings that we can get as Members, classified at the highest levels.
We do not understand what is going on there. If you read the Russian
media, in 1991, General Zyuganov, who was in charge of this project,
said that it was an ore mining project. In 1992, General Zyuganov said
that it was a facility to store food and clothing. Since that point in
time, the Russian security apparatus has identified this project as one
that is of strategic importance, that is one of the highest security
that exists in Russia today.
My point is, at the same time that we have a President and an
administration trying to create a feeling that there is no longer a
concern, we ignore the fact that there are things going on in the
world, not just in Russia, the transfer of technology from China, the
M-11 missiles, the ring magnets, the chemical-biological technology,
the Iraqis taking accelerometers and gyroscopes from Russia for long-
range missiles. All of these things are happening, and not in a vacuum,
and yet we have a President that is telling the American people, do not
worry, there is nothing to be concerned about.
In fact, he is even going so far as to basically ignore the
enforcement of the arms control agreements that he maintains should be
the cornerstone of our relationship. He has waived the sanctions under
the MTCR with China. He has waived the sanctions under the MTCR with
Russia time and again. So even though the administration claims arms
control agreements are the critical component of our bilateral
relationships, there is a pattern here of consistently waiving
sanctions that should be imposed under them.
The reason why I mention all these things is because the
administration is driving a feeling in this country that creates a
false sense of security. As my friend knows, we are not advocating that
we resort to the cold war again. In fact, we are doing more with Russia
than any Congress has done in the last 50 years proactively. But we
want an administration to work with us, to be candid, to be honest and
forthright.
We get none of those things in this administration. In fact, we have
gotten little or no cooperation on strategic programs that we feel are
important, that our Joint Chiefs feel are important to our long-term
security.
I thank my colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] for
yielding on those couple of points I wanted to also add.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr.
Weldon], so much for his words. I hope they will be well taken on the
floor tomorrow.
Let me go back to what we actually have in terms of a defense
apparatus that he spoke so eloquently about. As I have said, we have
gone from 18 to 10 Army divisions, 24 to 13 fighter air wings, 546 Navy
ships to 346, all since Desert Storm.
Now what does Congress and what does the President owe to the
American people in terms of national security? According to the
Constitution, the President is the Commander in Chief. The Congress is
charged with raising the navies and the armies necessary to defend
America. Well, what is that?
Well, over the years, we have come to the conclusion that we have to
be prepared to fight two wars almost at the same time. The reason we
have to be prepared for that is because if we get in a conflict in
Korea or in the Middle East and we get our military tied down in that
area, there is a chance that somebody else on the other side of the
globe is going to look at that as an opportunity to do something, like
invade South Korea, for example, or do something else along that line.
So we have to be prepared to fight two wars at about the same time.
Now, we have folks in the Pentagon, great folks, great minds,
civilian and military, doing war games all the time and trying to
figure out what it is going to take, how many people do we need, Army,
Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, how many planes, tanks, ships do we
need, what type, how much ammo do we need to fight that two-war
scenario. They are supposed to put that all together and come up to us
with a
[[Page H3903]]
bill for it and say, here is what it is going to cost, Mr. Congressman,
Mr. Representative, Mr. Senator, Mr. President. Here is what it is
going to cost to defend the American people, our number one obligation.
So we have said, well, it has got to be a two-war requirement. We
have to have the ability to fight those two fights at the same time.
Well, what are those two fights? It is interesting because two of the
wars that we think are the most possible, the most probable, are wars
we have already fought. We fought on the Korean peninsula starting June
25, 1950. We fought Desert Storm on the sands of Iraq after Saddam
Hussein invaded Kuwait. We fought that war.
I want to tell my colleagues what it took to fight both those wars.
First, in Korea we used seven Army divisions. That is seven. In Desert
Storm, we used eight Army divisions. That is eight. Eight and seven is
15. The Clinton administration has cut our Army divisions from 18 to
10. So we have the prospect of fighting two wars that used a combined
15 Army divisions, and we only have two-thirds of that strength. We can
go right down the list with respect to air power and with respect to
U.S. Navy requirements and we are short. We are short of fighting the
two-war scenario.
I looked at Louis Johnson's testimony. He was then the Secretary of
Defense in 1950, just a couple months before North Korea invaded the
South. And I see a lot of the same words that we see coming from this
President's administration back then. Louis Johnson did not seen very
alarmed. He had no idea that a bloody war would start in about 4
months. He said things like, ``We are turning fat into muscle. We are
getting a lot of people from behind their desks and putting then in the
field. We are creative. We are innovative.'' He had a very pleasant
and, I think, a very optimistic view that he presented to the U.S.
Congress.
We asked Omar Bradley, then General of the Army, five-star General
Omar Bradley, to comment on the state of the defense budget. One thing
Bradley was known for, even though he went along with what his
President requested, he did give us one warning that we did not heed.
He said, ``We cannot win a major war with the size of the military we
have now.'' He said that he did go along with the budget because it
provided a core around which we could build in times of an emergency,
But Omar Bradley knew that we could not fight a major war. And,
unfortunately, within a few months we were in a major war.
Now, a lot of folks back then had the same idea that the Clinton
administration has today. They said, you know, we are never going to
have to fight the Chinese or the Koreans or anybody else because we
have, guess what, the atom bomb, and nobody wants to mess with a
country that has the atom bomb.
But nonetheless, after the North Koreans pushed us down the
peninsula, we finally got a foothold in the Pusan perimeter, we pushed
them back up, we started to win. The Chinese sent in hundreds of
thousands of troops, surprising us by getting involved in this war we
never thought they would get involved in.
{time} 1445
The Secretary of Defense who is a fine gentleman, Secretary Cohen, a
man I really like and respect, had somewhat of the same description
about Desert Storm. I pointed out that we did not have as many Army
divisions as we had then and we used up almost all of them, 8 of them,
in Desert Storm. We only have 10 today. And he talked about Saddam
Hussein being weaker now than he was in the old days. But remember, we
were worried that other nations in that area would come to Saddam
Hussein's assistance, would help him, and he was out shopping around
trying to get his neighbors to support him against the United States.
But every time he got to one of those countries, George Bush had been
there in front of him and had lined that country up solidly on our
side, countries like Egypt, that Saddam Hussein thought he might be
able to bring over. So Saddam Hussein had to fight Desert Storm alone.
That might not happen in the future. We cannot make all of our war
plans based on Saddam Hussein acting alone the next time. We have to be
prepared for him to act with some allies.
Similarly when the Chinese had no problem with getting involved in
Korea when we had nuclear weapons and they did not, today they have
nuclear weapons aimed at American cities, and they have that leverage
and we have nuclear weapons also. They are much stronger in a relative
sense than they were in 1950. They had no problem with sending their
hordes of people south to kill Americans on the Korean Peninsula in
1951. They will not have any qualms about doing that today. So we are
weak.
We have undertaken this drawdown that is a historic cycle in America.
After we got involved in World War I, we lost a lot of people, our
people came home and wanted to do other things, Americans had no taste
for a large defense budget, we cut our budget dramatically. The
justification for cutting it was we said, ``We have already fought the
war to end all wars.'' For folks that are studying history, that was a
well-known phrase in the 1920s because World War I was so bloody and so
tough and so rugged on people that we did not contemplate there would
ever be another war. Well, a war to end all wars was followed by what,
another war to end all wars. That was World War II which once again
caught us without the industrial base that we needed and without the
defense forces that we needed to deter Japan, that means keep Japan
from attacking the United States. So we had a bloody war. We lost a ton
of good Americans. Once again we came home after the war, we had about
9 million people under arms in 1945, we came home after the war, we
threw away our weapons, General Marshall was asked how is the
demobilization going, he said, ``It's not a demobilization.'' He said,
``This is a rout. People are just throwing their weapons away.'' We
need to stay strong but we did not stay strong and we only had 10 Army
divisions when Korea started. That is the number of Army divisions we
have today. We kidded ourselves about not having to have those people.
In fact, in that year in 1950 just before Korea was invaded, the other
body, the Senate, tried to pull the defense numbers down by $100
million. The House of Representatives stood up to them and would not
let them make that reduction. We have now won the cold war. But the
ambitions of Russia can be reconstituted just as fast as they were
dissipated. Russia has turned and within just a few months' time
actually changed their intentions with respect to the United States
from being an extremely aggressive nation, an extremely ambitious
nation that was working hard in Africa, they were working hard in our
own hemisphere in running supplies into Central American nations, they
had met us on battlefields around the world where they met us with
Russian-made equipment in Vietnam, in Korea, and in Afghanistan we met
them with American help for the Afghan freedom fighters. We had fought
in proxy wars around the world during this cold war. Their intent
toward the United States changed so quickly that none of our
intelligence people, at least the ones I talked to, the presumably
really smart ones, none of them predicted the falling of the Berlin
Wall. People laughed at the idea that President Ronald Reagan went to
the Berlin Wall and said, ``Mr. Gorbachev, bring this wall down,'' and
yet within a few months it happened. Their intent can go from a benign
intent toward the United States to an aggressive intent toward the
United States just as quickly. They have the apparatus, they have the
nuclear weapons still. As the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon]
said so eloquently, if they are not aimed at the United States it takes
30 seconds to retarget them. That means that a Soviet missile
specialist sitting in a silo can re-aim those nuclear weapons at cities
in the United States as quickly as the average rifle shot at the
Olympic rifle marksmanship trials can lift his rifle up and aim it at a
bull's-eye. That is how fast the Russians can retarget. We have China
trying to step into the superpower shoes that were left by the Soviet
Union and their military is on the ascendancy. They are adding things
like this missile destroyer. This missile destroyer has only one enemy
in the entire world. It is designed specifically to destroy American
ships and kill American sailors. They are doing that incidentally with
the toy money and the other money that we send to
[[Page H3904]]
the tune of $40 billion a year in surplus to Communist China.
Mr. Speaker, we live in a very dangerous world. The last thing that I
think it is important for my colleagues to know is that while we are
short on Marines, we are short on Army, we are short on Air Force, we
are short on Navy in terms of force structure, we are also short on
ammunition. The Army has certified to myself and to the gentleman from
Missouri [Mr. Skelton], who is the minority ranking member on the
Subcommittee on Procurement, that they are $1.6 billion short of what
it takes in ammo to fight those two wars that we talked about. The
Marine Corps has said in their letter that they are $300 million short
in ammo. They are 93 million M-16 bullets short of what it takes to
fight those two wars we talked about. The point is we have entered a
trough, a time of weakness, it is a historic cycle, a cycle down in
this case for America in terms of defense spending. We need to boost it
back up. I guess what I would ask all of my colleagues is to stick with
us, stick with the few extra dollars that we put into this defense
budget to give some modicum of support to the men and women who serve
in our Armed Forces.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is clear that our motto with respect to
national security should be, ``Be prepared.'' We are not prepared now
if the intent of other nations around the world changes dramatically
and suddenly. We owe it to the American people not to be ready to build
a strong defense but to be ready with a strong defense already built in
case we should have a war.
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