[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 36 (Thursday, March 26, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1632-H1636]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


      THE STATUS OF OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE AND OUR NATIONAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hulshof). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss an 
issue that is not one of the front page stories nationally, but which 
really needs to be discussed in this body, and that is the status of 
our national defense and our national security. It is an especially 
timely discussion tonight because we are about to take up for 
consideration both in this body and the other body a supplemental bill 
that will partially deal with the funds that we have been expending in 
Bosnia and in other parts of the world where our troops are currently 
deployed. But before I get into my overview, Mr. Speaker, let me 
respond to some of the discussion from our colleagues on the other side 
during the previous hour.
  They attempted to portray the Republicans as being insensitive to the 
needs of working people, not caring about seniors, not caring about 
families, not caring about education, not caring about health care. In 
fact, nothing could be further from the truth, Mr. Speaker.
  I take great pride in being a Member who, by profession, spent years 
as a public school teacher in a suburban district next to Philadelphia, 
ran a chapter 1 program for economically and educationally deprived 
children, and like my colleagues on the Republican and on the Democrat 
side, cared desperately about the future of our young people.
  We in the Republican Party simply have a fundamental difference with 
our Democrat colleagues. We think that the American people can best 
decide how to spend their money, what the priorities should be. 
Obviously, we could spend the money of the American people in a number 
of different ways, and that is what many of our colleagues on the other 
side think should be the role of the Federal Government. We, however, 
believe that giving the American people more of their hard-earned money 
to spend on their priorities is in fact the best way to allow us all to 
enjoy the liberties under this system that we are so blessed with.
  In fact, following my presentation tonight, one of our colleagues, 
the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske), will be doing an in-depth 
discussion of health care, and I think he will be raising some very 
provocative issues about our need to look at the way health care is 
being provided in this country.
  So Republicans do care, Mr. Speaker, and Democrats do care. And I 
think for Members of either party to get up and totally tear apart the 
other side is, in fact, what it appears to be; it is just shallow 
rhetoric, it is political rhetoric designed to try to continue what 
happened in the last campaign cycle. We do not need that. With the 
difficult problems that this Nation has, we need to have intelligent 
discussion, debate, and deal with the real issues that face this 
country.
  One of those issues, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, that has not been 
getting much attention has been our national security. In fact, if we 
look at the record over the past 7 years, the only major area of the 
Federal budget that has in fact been cut in real terms is our defense 
portion of the budget. In fact, it has gone down for 13 consecutive 
years.
  Now, many would argue that the world has changed, and since we are no 
longer in the Cold War where we are having to keep up with a very 
powerful Soviet Union, that reductions in defense spending are 
appropriate; and in fact, Mr. Speaker, I agree with that, and I have 
supported many of the reductions that we in fact have caused to occur 
over the past several years.
  For instance, for the past 3 years, I have been a Republican, as 
chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Research and Development, 
voting consistently against the B-2 bomber. It is not that I do not 
like the technology, I think Stealth technology is critically 
important, but I just do not think we can afford the B-2 bomber with 
the budget limitations we have and with the other problems that we have 
as a Nation.
  But we need to look at the facts, Mr. Speaker, in terms of what has 
been happening with our defense posture, what the threats are, and 
where we are going to be at the beginning of the next century, because 
I think we are going to face a very perilous period of time.
  First of all, let us make some comparisons. Now the people of 
America, my constituents back home in Pennsylvania, believe that we are 
spending so much more of their tax dollars today on defense than what 
we did in previous years. The facts just do not bear that out, Mr. 
Speaker. In fact, in the 1960s, and I picked this period of time 
because we were at relative peace, it was after Korea, but before 
Vietnam, the country was not at war. John Kennedy was the President. 
During that time period, we were spending 52 cents of every Federal tax 
dollar sent to Washington on our military. We were spending 9 percent 
of our country's gross national product on defense. We were at peace.
  Today, Mr. Speaker, we are spending 15 cents of the Federal tax 
dollars sent to Washington on the military, about 2.9 percent of our 
GNP. So, in fact, as a percentage of the total amount of money taken in 
by Washington, we have in fact dramatically cut the amount of that 
money going for national security.
  But some other things have changed during that time period that we 
have to look at. First of all, Mr. Speaker, back when John Kennedy was 
the President, we had the draft. Young people were sucked out of high 
school, they were paid far less than the minimum wage, and they were 
asked to serve the country for 2 years.
  Today's military is all volunteer; we have no draft. Our young people 
are paid a decent wage. In fact, many of them have education well 
beyond high school, college degrees, some have advanced degrees. So we 
have education costs. We have housing costs because many of our young 
people in the military today are married; so we have health care costs, 
housing costs, education costs that we did not have when John Kennedy 
was President because our troops were largely drafted. So a much larger 
percentage of this 15 cents on the dollar that we bring into Washington 
for the military goes for the quality of life of our troops.

  And in fact, the bulk of our money today, the bulk of the money spent 
in the defense budget goes to provide for quality of life for the men 
and women who serve this country. So that is a fundamental change. But 
some other things have happened, Mr. Speaker.
  First of all, we have to look at what has occurred during the last 7 
years or 6 years as this President has seen fit to dramatically cut 
defense far beyond what I think is a safe level in terms of long-term 
spending. During a time where the President has proposed massive 
decreases in defense spending, he has increased the deployment rate of 
our troops to an all-time high, in fact, the highest level of 
deployments in the history of America.
  Now, let me give some examples, Mr. Speaker. I have a chart that 
bears this out. This chart shows the number of deployments that our 
country has provided our troops in terms of the past 7 years. We have 
deployed our troops, rather, the President has deployed our troops 25 
times at home and around the world. These are deployments that involved 
military operations, some have involved confrontation, many are 
peacekeeping, some are involved with disaster relief, a whole host of 
missions. But the point is that during the period of time where we 
decimated defense spending to an all-time low, we increased the 
deployment low to an all-time high. Mr. Speaker, 25 deployments in the 
past 7 years.
  Now, compare that to the previous 40 years. We had 10 deployments in 
that period of time. So in the previous 40 years, prior to Bill Clinton 
becoming the President, our troops were deployed a total of 10 times. 
Just in the last 7 years, our troops have been deployed 25 times.
  Now, what is so significant about that, Mr. Speaker? Well, what is so 
significant about that is that none of those deployments were budgeted 
for, none of them were planned for. So to pay for those deployments, we 
had to take money from other accounts, because there were no special 
monies made available to pay for the costs of all of these deployments.

[[Page H1633]]

  Now, Mr. Speaker, that has a devastating impact on our ability to 
modernize our military equipment and to maintain the morale of our 
troops. Let me give an example.
  The Bosnian operation, we were told, would only last for a matter of 
months, perhaps a year to 2 years at the most. By the end of the next 
fiscal year, the American taxpayers will have spent $9.4 billion on the 
Bosnia operation alone. In fact, Mr. Speaker, over the past 7 years, 
with those 25 deployments, we have spent $15 billion on contingency 
operations around the world, none of which were budgeted for.
  Now, someone might say, Mr. Speaker, well, that really does not 
matter. The military is getting paid anyway; why can they not do their 
training in these faraway places? Well, sometimes they can do some of 
that training, Mr. Speaker, but by and large, we cannot pay for the 
bulk of the support necessary to pay for our troops just out of the 
training accounts. It just does not work.
  What is even more troubling is, as the President has deployed our 
troops at this rapidly escalating rate, he has not taken the time to 
get our allies to pay their fair share of the deployment costs.
  Now, let me give a comparison. George Bush deployed our troops to the 
Middle East in Desert Storm, a very expensive operation. But there was 
a fundamental difference, Mr. Speaker. In Desert Storm, leading up to 
that operation, President Bush interacted with the leaders of the world 
on a regular basis. He said to them, we will go in there and we will 
provide the support of our military in cooperation with an allied 
forces group, and we will provide the bulk of the sealift and the 
airlift. But, he said to our allies, not only must you provide the 
troops to go in with our troops, but you must pay for the operation 
itself.
  Desert Storm cost $52 billion. America was reimbursed over $53 
billion. So that in terms of the cost, there was no negative impact on 
our budget process.
  The $15 billion that we have spent on the 25 deployments since Desert 
Storm have not been paid for and shared by our allies. America has had 
to pay that bill itself, and all of that funding has come out of 
defense budgets, none of which was planned for.
  What does that mean? That means we have slipped programs to the 
outyears. It means we have not bought new helicopters to replace old 
ones. We wonder why we are having helicopter accidents today. In fact, 
Mr. Speaker, we are going to be flying helicopters built during the 
Vietnam War that will be 45 years old before they are retired, because 
to pay for those deployments, we have had to stretch out the 
replacement buys that will allow those helicopters to be retired.
  The B-52 bomber, Mr. Speaker, will be 55 years old before we 
ultimately retire that aircraft, yet it is still a critical part of our 
capacity in terms of bombing needs that we might have around the world.
  So to pay for all of these deployments, we have had to raid the 
defense budget. We have kept the numbers that we agreed to, and our 
party has held fast. But we have eaten out of the Defense Department's 
capability to modernize our forces and to maintain the quality of life 
for our troops.
  But it is even more outrageous than that, Mr. Speaker. In these 
deployments where our troops have been sent to Haiti and to Somalia and 
Macedonia and to Bosnia, the concern of our colleagues in Congress is 
not that we should not be there; I think almost all of us in this body, 
Democrats and Republicans, believe, as the world's only remaining 
superpower, we have an obligation to help settle regional conflicts.

                              {time}  2200

  That is not the issue. The issue in the Congress, Mr. Speaker, is 
that this administration has not gotten support from our allies to be 
involved and to pay their fair share.
  When this body went on record and voted on whether or not to support 
the President's decision to go into Bosnia, the bulk of our colleagues 
that I talked to were not against going into Bosnia. They were upset 
that America was putting 36,000 young Americans in that part of the 
world when the Germans, right next door to Bosnia, were only committing 
4,000 troops. Our colleagues and I say, what is going on here? If 
Bosnia is right next to Germany, why should not Germany be committing 
more of its troops, and why should not the European nations be paying 
more of the cost of the Bosnian operation?
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that in the case of some of 
the Scandinavian militaries, we actually agreed to pay some of their 
housing costs to get their troops to be part of the multinational 
force.
  The same thing has occurred in Haiti. Our troops are still in Haiti, 
still maintaining the peace, when we were told they would only be there 
for a few months at the longest period of time.
  In Haiti the President has said to the Congress, I have gotten other 
nations to come in with America. He is right. But, Mr. Speaker, what he 
has not told the American people is that to get those countries to come 
in, he actually has had American DOD dollars pay for the salaries, the 
housing costs, and the food for those foreign troops. The Bangladesh 
military has sent 1,000 troops into Haiti to help out. Why? Partially 
because American tax dollars have paid for those troops to come into 
Haiti.
  The point is one, I think, Mr. Speaker, that points up the fact of 
the problem of our defense budget. In a period where we have cut 
defense spending dramatically because the threats have decreased, we in 
fact, Mr. Speaker, have increased deployments and not gotten our allies 
to share that burden. It has caused us to face a crisis right now in 
the military.
  There is one more factor we have to look at, Mr. Speaker. That is the 
fastest growing portion of the defense budget, the fastest growing 
portion of the defense budget, in a very quickly shrinking budget, is 
not for new weapons systems. It is not for salary increases for the 
troops. It is for a fund that we call environmental mitigation.
  I take great pride in my environmental voting record, Mr. Speaker, as 
a Republican, and will continue that record as long as I am in this 
body. But we are spending $12 billion this year of DOD money for what 
we call environmental mitigation.
  Some of that is critically important. When we decommission nuclear 
submarines, we have to make sure that we deal with that spent nuclear 
fuel and that we do it in a safe way. When we close down military 
sites, we have to make sure that we clean up those sites from any 
hazards that may be there.
  But Mr. Speaker, we have gone to the extreme. We have begun to use 
the defense budget as a cash cow. A military base is open on one day, 
where you have the children, the offspring of military personnel, going 
to an elementary school on the base and not suffering any adverse 
consequences.
  The base closes down, and then the local leaders of the community 
say, this base is a toxic waste site because the military used 
chemicals there. Then they demand from the Federal government, and we 
have gone along with this game, hundreds of millions of dollars not to 
just clean up those sites, but to develop very extensive reuse and 
economic development schemes, using money that was originally designed 
to be used for the defense of this country. That fund, Mr. Speaker, is 
now $12 billion, and it is growing each year.
  The point that I am trying to make is not that we have in fact the 
need to dramatically increase defense spending, because we cannot do 
that. But, Mr. Speaker, we have some hard choices to make.
  This President has either got to help us reform the laws dealing with 
these bases that we have closed, to give us some flexibility in the 
Congress and in the administration of these base closings in terms of 
the costs that we have to put forward, he has to get our allies to pay 
more of the share of these deployments, or reduce the deployment levels 
that our troops are being asked to commit to around the world, or he 
has to do what he has already asked for, and that is another round of 
base closings.
  The administration today is pleading for this Congress to approve 
another round of military base closings. Let me say, Mr. Speaker, I 
agree with the President. We should close more bases in America. I 
agree with the President, but the President is not going to be able to 
get a base closing bill through this Congress.
  The average citizen would say well, if we need to close more bases, 
if that is going to help us save money because it

[[Page H1634]]

will reduce our military, why then will not the Congress approve a base 
closing process? The answer is simple, Mr. Speaker.
  In the 12 years that I have been in Congress, one of the most 
difficult assignments that we had to make 6 or 7 years ago was how to 
reduce the military infrastructure as we cut the number of troops in 
the military. No Member of Congress wants to close a base in his or her 
district. It is political suicide. So we went to great lengths, 
Democrats and Republicans, to set up an independent process to remove 
politics from base closings, so neither Democrats nor Republicans could 
decide whose base would be closed based upon politics alone.
  This independent commission twice recommended base closings. One of 
the first bases closed was the Philadelphia Navy Yard, right next to my 
district. When it closed, 13,000 people lost their jobs. But with a 
shrinking Navy, we cannot support eight public shipyards. We had to 
close four of them. So the base closing process worked twice. We closed 
a significant number of bases.
  Then a third round of base closings was recommended, and something 
different happened. President Clinton, in the year that he was running 
for reelection, made a decision. He said, we are going to take the 
recommendations of the commission, except for two. I am going to 
recommend that we keep one base in California and one base in Texas 
open, even though it has been recommended for closure. So those two 
bases were given reprieves.
  It just so happened that those two bases are in the two States with 
the most electoral votes. Many would say that the reason the President 
disagreed with the base closing commission was because he wanted to 
have California and Texas support him in the campaign. I am not going 
to make that accusation today, but what the President did do, Mr. 
Speaker, was that he soured the process.
  Members of Congress today, Democrats and Republicans, will not vote 
for a new round of base closings because they do not trust this 
administration. We were fooled once, and we will not be fooled again. 
This President took a nonpolitical process that Republicans and 
Democrats agreed to and he violated that process. Now we do not have 
the confidence that this administration will go back to the way base 
closings occurred in the past.

  Therefore, we are in a dilemma. We need to close more bases, but this 
administration, who says we need to close more bases, cannot get a base 
closing process approved by this Congress. It is because of the actions 
of this President.
  All of these things occurring are affecting our defense budget. That 
is why the debate coming up this week and next week on the floor of the 
House and the floor of the other body will be about whether or not we 
replenish some of that money that has been spent on Bosnia into the DOD 
budget. I think that is the only thing we can do. We have had a budget 
agreement that has been very tight. We set caps on defense spending, 
and we have now violated those caps.
  The Congress did not go in and take money out of that defense budget, 
we did not raise the caps. It was the President himself that deployed 
these troops to exotic places around the world, many of which I 
supported, and did not propose a way to pay for them. Therefore, our 
defense budget was unilaterally cut.
  What we want the supplemental to do, what I want the supplemental to 
do, is to reinstate some of that money, less than $2 billion, to those 
defense accounts that have been decimated by over $9 billion just for 
Bosnia alone, and $15 billion for all of our contingency operations 
over the past 7 years. I think that is the right thing to do for our 
troops, and the right thing to do for our military.
  Let me get on to the next point I wanted to make, Mr. Speaker: that 
is, the President lulling us into a false sense of security. The 
President is the Commander in Chief. When my constituents back in 
Pennsylvania listen to the President give a speech, they know he is 
also the Commander in Chief, and he knows what the threats are in the 
world. But let me talk about some of those threats. Let me talk about 
the President's use of the bully pulpit to convey to the American 
people a false sense that there are no longer threats in the world.
  As I said earlier, I am the first to admit, it is a changed world. 
The Cold War is over. But does that mean Russia is no longer a threat? 
Mr. Speaker, I do a significant amount of work with Russia. I formed 
and chair the initiative with their Duma. I have been to Russia 14 
times, four times in the last year. My undergraduate degree is in 
Russian studies. I know the language, and I am working right now on a 
number of positive programs to help stabilize Russia.
  I do not see Russia as an evil empire, Mr. Speaker. But let me say 
this: Russia is more destabilized today than at any time in the last 50 
years. We need to understand that, not from fear of having Russia mount 
an all-out attack on America. I do not believe that is in any way, 
shape, or form what Boris Yeltsin or any other leader would want to do. 
But there is a heightened opportunity or a heightened potential for 
incidents involving and as a result of the instability in Russia today.
  Let me give some examples. With the economic chaos in Russia today, 
more and more of Russia's conventional military is being decimated. The 
generals and admirals who were the key leaders in the Soviet military 
have been forced out of their positions with no pensions, with 
inadequate housing, in most cases no housing.
  In many cases, as General Lebed testified before my subcommittee last 
week here in Washington, and as he has told me on two other visits in 
Moscow and Washington, they have now had to resort to criminal 
activities to take care of their families.
  So these generals and admiral, who know where all the technology is 
in Russia, who know where the nuclear materials are in Russia, are now 
resorting to selling those materials on the black market because they 
feel betrayed by the motherland. We are seeing technology transfer 
occur at a rate now that we have not seen in the past 50 years.
  This is not being fostered by Boris Yeltsin, it is occurring because 
of instability in Russia, because of Russian military officers who feel 
betrayed by their country. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, Russia's 
demise of their conventional military has caused them to be more 
reliant on their offensive, long-range strategic missiles.
  The President has given a speech three times in this well and 190 
times in America where he has said something like this. He has looked 
in the camera and said, you all can sleep well tonight because, for the 
first time in 50 years, there are no long-range ICBMs pointed at 
America's children.
  As the Commander in Chief, Mr. Speaker, he knows we have no way of 
verifying that. The Russians will not allow us to have access to their 
targeting, just as we will not allow them to have access to ours. But 
he also knows, Mr. Speaker, you can retarget an ICBM in 15 to 30 
seconds. In addition, Mr. Speaker, he knows that China today has 18 to 
25 ICBMs, each with a range of 30,000 kilometers, that are aimed at 
American cities that can launch at any city in America.
  But let us look beyond that, Mr. Speaker. Let us look at whether or 
not there is a potential for an incident to occur that would threaten 
American troops or the American people.
  In January, 1995, Norway announces to Russia in a written 
communication that they are going to launch a multi-stage weather 
rocket from an island off the coast of Norway. It is a courtesy to 
notify a neighboring country. The date of the launch comes about, and 
Norway launches this multi-stage weather rocket. Russian intelligence, 
with systems that are not being properly maintained, sees this multi-
stage rocket taking off and mistakes it for an American multi-stage 
ICBM coming from one of our submarines at sea.
  The Russian security system puts the system in Russia on a full 
alert, which means that they activate the black boxes, the cheggets, 
that control the Russian nuclear arsenal which are in the hands of 
Boris Yeltsin, at that time Pavel Grachev, the defense minister, and 
General Kolesnikov, the chief of the command staff, which meant that 
Russia had 15 minutes within which was the time period allocated to 
call off a nuclear response against America to a weather rocket that 
they had been forewarned of by Norway.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not a Stephen Spielberg science fiction movie, 
this is

[[Page H1635]]

what occurred. The Russians have acknowledged this. In fact, Boris 
Yeltsin's explanation was that it was a good test of their system; that 
with 7 minutes left, he overruled Kolesnikov and Grachev and called off 
the response.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. Speaker, that is the threat. The threat is from an accidental 
launch. The threat is from a rogue Nation getting a capability that 
threatens our troops, our allies, and our people. That is why we need 
to continue to focus on national security. Not because Russia is the 
``evil empire,'' because they are not. Not because China is coming 
after us, because they are not. But because there are risks in the 
world today that I would argue are greater than what they have been for 
the past 50 years, mainly because of the lack of cohesion inside of 
Russia and with the Russian Government and its military.
  Another example, Mr. Speaker, last May I was in Moscow, and among the 
meetings that I had were with the senior leaders of the Duma, including 
the Deputy Defense Minister; the Minister of Natural Resources, Orlov; 
the Minister of Atomic Energy, Mikhaylov; and Boris Nemtsov, the Deputy 
Prime Minister.
  I met again with General Lebed. And as you know, General Lebed is a 
four-star retired general. He is the individual credited with ending 
two wars that Russia was involved in: the war in Moldavia and the war 
in Chechnya. Lebed himself ended both of those conflicts. He ran for 
the presidency against Yeltsin, and Yeltsin was so fearful of his 
candidacy that he enticed him to leave the race to come work for him as 
one of his top advisors.
  Many give General Lebed the credit for allowing Yeltsin to win the 
last election, because if Lebed had stayed in the race, he would have 
taken enough votes away from Yeltsin that the Communist Zyuganov would 
have won the presidential election in Russia at the same time the 
Communist Party was winning 165 seats in the State Duma.
  General Lebed, in our meeting last May, a private meeting with six 
Members of Congress, was talking to us about the security of Russian 
nuclear weapons. He was talking to us about decommissioned submarines, 
nuclear powered submarines sitting in dry-dock with no solutions in 
sight to deal with that nuclear waste and those contaminated products.
  He gave us a number of examples of Russian military going into Mafia-
type operations, selling equipment, hardware, and even the potential of 
selling nuclear materials. But then he talked about one specific 
incident. He said in response to a question I asked him about nuclear 
devices, whether or not Russia had any small nuclear devices, he said, 
``Let me tell you a story. When I was the secretary of the Defense 
Council for President Yeltsin, one of my assignments was to account for 
132 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs. These are devices that could be 
carried by two people, each with the capacity of approximately 1 
kiloton, which is about one-tenth the size of the Hiroshima bomb.
  He said Russia built 132 of these. ``I was given the assignment to 
account for them.'' He said, ``My people could only find 48.'' We said, 
``General, where are the rest?'' And he said, ``I have no idea.'' He 
said, ``They could be safe. They could be secure. We do not know where 
they are. They could be in someone else's hands. They could be on the 
border. They could be in the former Soviet States, I just do not 
know.''
  Mr. Speaker, I came back from that trip. There was no press in place. 
This was not an attempt, as the Russian Government would later say, by 
Lebed to get some headlines. There was no press in the meeting. There 
was no press conference. I came back to Washington and I debriefed the 
CIA and the DIA on what the Russian general had told me. They could not 
tell me whether or not they knew whether or not General Lebed knew that 
these devices were not secure. Our intelligence just did not know the 
answer to that question.
  Now, the Russians trashed General Lebed. They called him a traitor. 
They said he did not know what he was talking about, this general had 
no idea of whether or not Russia ever built nuclear devices. And many 
of the senior officials from Russia denied that Russia ever built these 
devices.
  ``60 Minutes'' contacted me in August when they read my trip report, 
which became a part of the Congressional Record, and they said, 
``Congressman, did the general really say this?'' And I said yes. They 
said, ``Can we interview you?'' I said yes. They interviewed me and 
went to Moscow and interviewed General Lebed. And the first story in 
September of last year by ``60 Minutes'' was General Lebed repeating 
what he told me in that meeting in Moscow.
  Again, the Russia media denied what the general said. They trashed 
him. In fact, our own Department of Defense, our press spokesman said 
publicly, ``We have no reason to doubt that Russia does not control any 
small nuclear devices they may have built.''
  So in October, I invited one of my Russian scientific friends to come 
to Washington. Alexei Yablakov. Dr. Yablakov is one of the most world-
renowned environmental leaders in Russia. He is an ecologist. Dr. 
Yablakov came. He is a member of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He 
came to Washington and testified before my committee. He said on the 
public record that he knew that General Lebed was telling the truth. 
Russia built these devices, and he knew scientists who were his 
colleagues who had worked on these devices and who told him that some 
of them were built for the KGB, and that it was imperative for Russia 
to find and locate and destroy these nuclear suitcases.
  Yablakov was called a traitor back in Moscow. The media trashed him. 
They said he was no good. Yablakov defended his honor. The story was a 
major story all over Russia. In fact, the Defense Minister called 
Yablakov into the Kremlin, and working with him, said they would issue 
a decree, a presidential decree to account for any of these devices 
that may have been built which they denied had been built earlier.
  Mr. Speaker, I was again in Moscow in December, and on that trip I 
met for an hour and a half with the Defense Minister of Russia, General 
Sergeyev. In his office I again asked him about the small nuclear 
devices. He said, ``Congressman, we did build these devices. In fact, 
we built several types of them, as your country did. We know that have 
you destroyed all of your small nuclear devices. We still have 
approximately 200. But I commit to you that by the year 2000, we will 
have them all destroyed.''
  Now, why do I tell this story, Mr. Speaker? I tell this story because 
to create the impression that all is stable in Russia is exactly the 
wrong position to be stating to the American people. We do not need to 
scare the American people, but we need to be honest with them, candid 
with them, and the same thing applies with Russia itself.
  Because of the instability in Russia, many individuals and entities 
are looking to sell off technologies and products to rogue nations. Two 
years ago, we caught Russian institutes and individuals transferring 
guidance systems for rockets to Iraq. In fact, the Jordanian and 
Israeli intelligence intercepted these devices which are very 
expensive, that had been taken off of Russian SSN-19 rockets, very 
sophisticated long-range rockets that were being shipped to Iraq.
  Three times the CIA caught Russia transferring sets of guidance 
systems to Iraq. One hundred twenty sets of these guidance systems, Mr. 
Speaker, went from Russia to Iraq, to allow Iraq to improve the 
accuracy of their Scud missiles which killed our 27 Americans 7 years 
ago.
  Not one time did this administration impose sanctions as required 
under the treaty between the U.S. and Russia called Missile Technology 
Control Regime, which requires sanctions when a nation or an entity is 
caught selling material that is covered by that treaty. In fact since 
1993, we have caught Russia violating the Missile Technology Control 
Regime seven times. We have not imposed sanctions once.
  This past summer, the Israelis came to America and they said, we have 
evidence that Russian scientists are working with Iran to allow Iran to 
build medium-range missiles that we cannot defend against. Initially 
the administration raised cain because that kind of intelligence 
information they did not want out. When the investigation was done, we 
found out exactly what happened, and that in fact was Russian entities 
involved with the Russian space

[[Page H1636]]

agency had been transferring technology to Iran to allow Iran to build 
a medium-range missile partly based on the Russian SS-4 missile.
  What does this mean, Mr. Speaker? This means that within 12 months, 
Iran will have a medium-range missile that can hit any one of 25,000 
American troops that this President today has deployed in Bosnia, in 
other regions around the Middle East, Somalia, Macedonia, because of 
the capability of those missiles. It also means that Iran will be able 
to hit, from its homeland, Israel directly with a medium-range missile.
  It means that Iran is working, as well as Iraq, on developing medium-
range missile capabilities that is going to destabilize that part of 
the world. And the horror story here, Mr. Speaker, is we will have no 
system in place to defend Israel against those missiles when they are 
deployed.
  Now, some say we have the Patriot system. It was great during Desert 
Storm. The Patriot system was not designed to take out missiles. It was 
built as a system to shoot down airplanes. When the risk of Saddam's 
Scud missiles appeared in Desert Storm, Raytheon Corporation was able 
to heat up that Patriot system to give us some capability to take out 
low-complexity Scud missiles. But our military has acknowledged 
publicly that during Desert Storm, the Patriot system was at best 40 
percent effective, which meant that 60 percent of the time we could not 
take out those Scud missiles. And even when we did hit the Scud 
missile, we were not hitting the warhead where a chemical or biological 
weapon would be. We were hitting the tail section, so that the debris 
would actually land on the people and still do the devastating damage 
of the bomb or the weapon of mass destruction and have its impact on 
the people whom it was intended to hurt.
  In fact we had our largest loss of life of American troops in this 
decade in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, when that low-complexity Scud missile 
went into that barracks.
  The point reinforces my notion, Mr. Speaker. While we need to 
continue to control the amount of defense spending, we need to be 
prepared for what is happening in the world today. China is spending a 
larger and larger amount of its money on defense. North Korea has now 
deployed a medium-range missile that we thought we would not see for 5 
years. It is called the No Dong. It now threatens all of Japan. It 
threatens South Korea, and potentially troops in that theater, and they 
are working on a longer-range missile that eventually will be able to 
hit Alaska and Hawaii.
  The point is that as much as we want to spend more and more money on 
domestic programs, we cannot do that by sacrificing the strong 
deterrent that a strong military provides. The reason we have a strong 
military is not just to fight wars. It is to deter aggression. There 
has never been a nation that has fallen because it is too strong. And 
while we do not want to be the bully of the world, we need to 
understand that strength in our military systems deters regional 
aggression. And regional aggression is what leads to larger 
confrontations and eventually world war.
  Here is a summary, Mr. Speaker, of the budget projections from 1991 
to 2001. The blue bar graph is mandatory outlays. They are going to 
increase by 35 percent during that 10-year period. The green bar graph 
is domestic discretionary spending. That is going to increase by 15 
percent during the 10-year period. The red bar graph is defense 
spending. It is decreasing by 35 percent during that 10-year time 
period.
  We need to be careful, Mr. Speaker, that we do not approach a similar 
situation to what occurred in the 1970s, because if we allow our 
military to not modernize, to not provide the support for the morale of 
the troops, we could begin to see a decay that we will not be able to 
reverse.
  Now, why is all of this important and why do I discuss it today? 
Because the budget problems that I outlined at the beginning of my 
special order are going to be exacerbated after the turn of the 
century. This administration has postponed all modernization in our 
military and, therefore, everything has been slid until the next 
administration comes into office. This administration looks great. They 
have been able to balance the budget, they have been able to cut 
spending. They say they have cut Federal spending. They have only cut 
defense. That is the only area of the Federal Government where we have 
had real decline in real terms.

                              {time}  2230

  But in the process of doing that, they have postponed decisions for 
new systems until the next century. In the year 2000 and beyond, these 
are the systems that are currently scheduled by this administration to 
go into full production: the V-22 for the Marine Corps; the Comanche 
for the Army; the F-22 for the Air Force; the F/A-18E and F for the 
Navy; the Joint Strike Fighter for the Navy, Air Force, and Marine 
Corps; a new aircraft carrier; new destroyers.
  The Army after next, an information-controlled Army: missile defense, 
theater missile defense, national missile defense. All of these 
programs, Mr. Speaker, are coming on line at the beginning of the next 
century and none of them can be paid for because of what we are doing 
to the defense budget today.
  Now, what have I proposed? I have told the administration, cut more 
programs. If you are not going to cut environmental costs, if you are 
not going to reduce deployments, if you cannot close more bases, and if 
you are not going to give us more money for defense, then cancel more 
programs.
  I voted to cancel the B-2, and the President kept the line open one 
more year during his election year in spite of the fact that we should 
have canceled it and saved that money. And I told the administration, 
cancel one of the tactical aviation programs. We cannot build three new 
TACAIR programs. This year we are spending $2.7 billion on tactical 
aviation that is buying new fighter planes.
  The current plans of this administration in building the F-22, the 
Joint Strike Fighter, and the F/A-18E and F, the GAO and CBO estimate 
in 10 years would cost us between 14 and 16 billion dollars a year. 
Where does this President think he is going to get--he is not going to 
be here. Where does he think the next President is going to get an 
increase of $10 to $12 billion just for tactical fighters alone? It is 
not going to happen, Mr. Speaker.
  That is why I am predicting a major train wreck, a train wreck that 
could jeopardize security of this country. We have got to be realistic 
about what the threats are. We have got to be realistic about what our 
needs are. We have got to be realistic about the way that we prioritize 
spending. We have got to be honest with the American people. And we 
have not done this.
  This administration in the State of the Union speech two months ago 
mentioned national security out of an 80-minute speech in two 
sentences. Yet the President is quick to deploy our troops around the 
world, but does not want to fund the dollars to support those very 
troops and modernize them.
  Something has got to give, Mr. Speaker. And I hope this special order 
tonight will make our colleagues, will make this city, and will make 
this country understand the dilemma we are facing. I am not here to 
advocate massive increases in defense spending. I am here to say help 
us control the amount of money we are currently putting forth, cut 
where we can, be realistic about what the threats are, and be honest 
about what our needs are in the 21st century. Because if we do not do 
that, I think the prospects for the long-term security of this country 
and the free world get dimmer and dimmer.

                          ____________________