[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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