Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 61 (Thursday, May 14, 1998)

[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 61 (Thursday, May 14, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4850-S4875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1999

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now
resume consideration of S. 2057, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 2057) to authorize appropriations for the fiscal
year 1999 for military activities of the Department of
Defense, for military construction, and for defense
activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe personal
strengths for such fiscal year for the Armed Forces, and for
other purposes.

The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.

privilege of the floor

Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a list of
staff that I send to the desk, be permitted the privilege of the floor
during the pendency of the Department of Defense authorization bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The list of staff follows:

Armed Services Committee Staff Members

Les Brownlee, Staff Director
George Lauffer, Deputy Staff Director
Scott Stucky, General Counsel
David Lyles, Minority Staff Director
Peter Levine, Minority Counsel
Charlie Abell
John R. Barnes
Stuart H. Cain
Lucia Monica Chavez
Christine E. Cowart
Daniel J. Cox, Jr.
Madelyn R. Creedon
Richard D. DeBobes
John DeCrosta
Marie F. Dickinson
Keaveny Donovan
Shawn H. Edwards
Jonathan L. Etherton
Pamela L. Farrell
Richard W. Fieldhouse
Maria A. Finley
Cristina W. Fiori
Jan Gordon
Creighton Greene
Gary M. Hall
Patrick ``PT'' Henry
Larry J. Hoag
Andrew W. Johnson
Melinda M. Koutsoumpas
Lawrence J. Lanzillotta
Henry C. Leventis
Paul M. Longsworth
Stephen L. Madey, Jr.
Michael J. McCord
J. Reaves McLeod
John H. Miller
Ann M. Mittermeyer
Bert K. Mizusawa
Cindy Pearson
Sharen E. Reaves
Sarah J. Ritch
Moultrie D. Roberts
Cord A. Sterling
Eric H. Thoemmes
Roslyne D. Turner

Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, today the Senate begins consideration of
S-2057, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999. I
want to thank all members of the Committee who have worked so hard this
year to bring this bill to the floor. I particularly want to thank
Senator Levin, the Ranking Member, for his cooperative support.
I also want to acknowledge the contributions of Senator Coats,
Senator Kempthorne, and Senator Glenn. This will be their last defense
authorization bill. On behalf of the committee and the Senate, I want
to thank them for their dedication to the national security of our
country and their support for the young men and women who serve in our
armed forces. We will miss these three outstanding Senators who have
served our country and the committee so well.
Mr. President, I also want to express my appreciation to the members
of the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee. We on the
Committee are very proud of our staff. I believe that we have the most
competent and professional staff on Capitol Hill. They work well
together in a very bi-partisan way and all of us on the Committee are
indebted to them for their selfless dedication. I ask unanimous consent
that a list of the members of the staff be included following my
remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. THURMOND. This is the 40th defense authorization bill on which I
have worked since I joined the Armed Services Committee in 1959. It is
my fourth as Chairman of the committee and as I indicated earlier this
year, while I intend to remain on the Committee, this will be my last
year as Chairman. I look forward to the floor debate on this bill as
well as the conference with the House. I am hopeful that we are able to
complete the bill and send it to the President before the July 4th
recess. It is essential that we complete floor action before the
Memorial Day recess in order to meet this ambitious schedule.
We have accelerated significantly our process this year. I cannot
recall ever bringing the defense authorization bill to the floor this
early in the year. If we are successful in completing conference in
late June, we may be setting a modern day record.
Mr. President, the Defense Authorization bill for Fiscal Year 1999
which I bring before the Senate today is only 3.1 percent of Gross
Domestic Product--the lowest since 1940. Defense outlays peaked in 1986
at 6.5 percent. President Reagan's defense buildup was one of the great
investments in our history. As a result of President Reagan's strong
leadership and our strengthened military, we won the Cold War.
Therefore, we have been able to reduce our defense force structure.
These reductions enabled the Nation to reduce the

[[Page S4851]]

deficit and achieve a balanced budget. The victory in the Cold War and
the resulting peace dividend, which began, by the way, under President
Reagan, is now saving us over $250 billion per year--the major factor
in achieving a balanced budget.
Mr. President, we haven't debated the levels for defense spending on
the floor of the Senate for some time. Maybe its because defense
doesn't rank very high these days in the polls which reflect the
concerns of the American people. Or maybe it's because everyone assumes
that the defense budget is adequate and there is no reason to debate
it. I am concerned first of all because I believe there is a clear
shortfall between the ambitious foreign policy of this Administration
and the resources we are willing to provide for national defense.
The operational tempo of our military forces is at an all time high.
American forces are deployed literally around the globe. The foreign
policy of this Administration has raised the number of separate
deployments to the highest in our history. Our servicemen and women
spend more and more time away from their homes and families on more
frequent and extended deployments. As a result, recruiting grows more
difficult and retention is becoming an extremely serious problem--
especially for pilots.
We are also beginning to see increasing indicators of readiness
problems. Spare parts shortages, increased cannibalization, declining
operational readiness rates, cross-decking of critical weapons,
equipment and personnel foretell a potential emergence of readiness
difficulties that could seriously cripple our military forces in the
very near future. The Chiefs of the military services indicate that
they are on the margin in readiness and modernization. The Chief of one
of our military services has recently stated orally as well as in
writing that his budget for fiscal year 1999 is, for the third year in
a row, inadequate.
While, at the present time, the American people may not be expressing
concern about threats to our national security or the readiness of our
armed forces, we in the Senate are not relieved of our responsibilities
to ensure that we have capable, effective military forces ready to
defend our nation's vital interests. It is our job in the Congress to
examine the readiness and capability of our armed forces and ensure
that we have provided adequate resources and guidance to the Secretary
of Defense so that he can carry out his mission to protect our national
security. I believe, as I have stated so many times on this floor, that
nothing that we do here in the Congress is as important as providing
for our national security. I intend to continue to make this point
whenever I believe that we in the Senate may not be paying enough
attention to this most critical issue.

Mr. President, the Congress has endeavored over the past several
years to shore up our defense budgets with annual add-ons. However,
reductions in the defense budgets over the last 3 years to pay for
Bosnia have denigrated the effect of those Congressional plus-ups.
Almost half of the $21 billion we added to the defense budgets over the
last 3 years, which was intended to enhance readiness and
modernization, was spent instead for operations in Bosnia. The
maintenance of our forces in Bosnia and in the Persian Gulf, places
great strain on our military forces and budgets.
As many of you are aware, we have been forced to cope with a $3.6
billion outlay shortfall in the defense budget resulting from scoring
differences between the Office of Management and Budget and the
Congressional Budget Office. The Chairman of the Budget Committee,
Senator Domenici has been very helpful in working out a solution to
help alleviate this problem. I am sure the Chairman of the
Appropriations Committee joins me in thanking Senator Domenici and his
staff for their assistance.
Under the budget agreement, we have not added funds to the defense
budget this year. I do not believe that a majority of Senators would
support adding funds to the defense budget in violation of the budget
agreement. Therefore, we have conducted our markup consistent with the
budget agreement. However, I have stated in the past and I say again, I
believe that we are not providing adequate funds for defense. The
Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House National Security Committee
have also called for increases in the defense budget. It remains my
firm belief that we should provide additional funds for our national
security.
In this bill, the Committee has achieved a balance among near-term
readiness; long-term readiness, through investments in modernization
infrastructure and research and development; force levels; quality of
life and ensuring an adequate, safe and reliable nuclear weapons
capability. The Committee modified the budget request to improve
operations and achieve greater efficiencies and savings and to
eliminate spending that does not contribute directly to the national
security of the United States.
The Committee recommended provisions to provide a 3.1 percent pay
raise for the uniformed services; to enhance the ability of the
services to recruit and retain quality personnel; and to restore
appropriate funding levels for the construction and maintenance of both
bachelor and family housing. The bill recommends increased investment
in research and development activities to ensure that the Department of
Defense can leverage advances in technology.
The Committee remains concerned about the level of resources
available for the reserve components and the continued lack of a spirit
of cooperation between the active and reserve forces. The Committee
recommended a number of policy initiatives and spending increases
intended to continue the improvement of the readiness of the reserve
forces and to permit greater use of the expertise and capabilities of
the reserve components. One such measure is the authority for the
reserve components to prepare to respond to domestic emergencies
involving the use or intended use of a weapon of mass destruction. I am
proud to be able to recommend this important legislation which will
enable the Nation to be prepared for the most unimaginable terrorist
incident.
I do want to tell my colleagues that this defense bill does not
include a long list of new major projects or new initiatives. Quite
simply, there is no money to support new major projects or new
initiatives. However, I should note that over the past three or four
years, the Committee on Armed Services has produced defense bills with
major new program starts, reforms of the acquisition process,
initiatives related to missile defense and counter proliferation, and
programs to achieve efficiencies and enhance readiness. The Secretary
of Defense must now implement these major programs. As the Department
of Defense executes the programs we enacted over the past several
years, I anticipate that they will come back to the Congress to suggest
modifications addressing areas in which they believe they need
additional flexibility.
Mr. President, I would like to remind my colleagues that any
amendments to the defense authorization bill that would increase
spending should be accompanied by offsetting reductions.
Mr. President, this is a sound bill. It provides a road map to take
our Nation's Armed Forces into the 21st century. I urge my colleagues
to join the Members of the Armed Services Committee and pass this bill
with a strong bipartisan vote.
I yield the floor.

Exhibit I

armed services committee staff members

[[Page S4852]]

Lawrence J. Lanzillotta
Henry C. Leventis
Paul M. Longsworth
Stephen L. Madey, Jr.
Michael J. McCord
J. Reaves McLeod
John H. Miller
Ann M. Mittermeyer
Bert K. Mizusawa
Cindy Pearson
Sharen E. Reaves
Sarah J. Ritch
Moultrie D. Roberts
Cord A. Sterling
Eric H. Thoemmes
Roslyne D. Turner

Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join the chairman of our
committee in bringing the defense authorization bill for fiscal year
1999 to the floor. As we all know, as Senator Thurmond has so
eloquently reminded us, this is the last year that he will be chairman
of the Senate Armed Services Committee, through his choice. Therefore,
it is the last year that he will be bringing an authorization bill to
the floor. I just want to thank him and commend him for the commitment
that he has made to our Nation's defense. It has been longstanding, it
has been a matter of keen devotion. It is really a significant moment
for me to be here with him as this defense authorization bill comes to
the floor. I know I am thanking him on behalf of all of the members of
our committee and the Senate for the energy he has placed into this
issue of defense, security, and this bill itself.
Mr. THURMOND. Thank you very much.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, this is also the final defense
authorization bill for three other members of our committee--Senators
Glenn, Coats and Kempthorne. They will be leaving us this year, also
through their choice. We will miss them keenly. They have all made
tremendous contributions to the work of the Armed Services Committee
and to the national security of our country. Sometimes their ways were
similar and sometimes they were different, but we are grateful for
their contributions. I wanted to note that as we get to work on the
defense authorization bill.
The bill that we bring to the floor this morning is the product of
several months of hard work by the Armed Services Committee. It is a
large and complicated bill that could not have been produced without
the dedicated effort of our chairman, the other members of our
committee and our staffs. I join Senator Thurmond in thanking our
staffs for their work.
While I don't agree with everything in this bill--none of us do or
ever can in a bill this big and complicated--I think it will improve
the quality of life for the men and women in uniform and for their
families. It will continue the process of modernization of our Armed
Forces to meet the threats of the future.
Senator Thurmond has already summarized the provisions of the bill. I
will just highlight a few provisions that will make a significant
contribution to the national defense and to our men and women in
uniform.
The bill contains a 3.1 percent pay raise for military personnel and
authorizes a number of bonuses to enhance our ability to recruit and
retain quality men and women for our armed services.
The bill would authorize three health care demonstration projects
that would address concerns about gaps in the military health care
system by requiring the Department of Defense to provide health care to
retired military personnel and their families who are over 65 and
Medicare-eligible.
The bill contains a bipartisan Defense Commercial Pricing Management
Improvement Act, which would require the Department to address
management problems in sole-source buying practices.
The bill would provide funding for the U.S.-Canada environmental
clean-up agreement, and for a new $24 million initiative for the
development of pollution prevention technology.
Finally, the bill includes a series of other provisions that are
designed to assist the Secretary of Defense in his effort to streamline
our defense infrastructure and improve the Department's so-called
``tooth-to-tail'' ratio. These provisions would require reductions in
DOD headquarters staff; extend current personnel authorities available
to the Department to assist in downsizing; encourage public-private
competition in the provision of support services; require improvements
in the Department's inventory management and financial management
systems; enable the Department to undertake needed reforms in travel
management and the movement of household goods; and require the
Department to streamline its test and evaluation infrastructure.
Mr. President, the committee was presented with a dilemma on the Air
Force's F-22 fighter program. Although there is broad support for
achieving the revolutionary capability the F-22 program promises, a
number of us remain concerned about the degree of overlap between
development, testing, and production in the program. Four years ago, we
expected that 27 percent of the flight testing hours would have been
completed before the Air Force signed a contract for the first
production aircraft. Last year, that number had fallen to 14 percent.
This year, the committee was faced with the Air Force's plan of signing
a production contract with only four percent of the flight testing
completed.
The bill would address this problem by making the long-lead funding
for the six F-22 aircraft in FY 2000 contingent upon certifications by
the Secretary of the Air Force that: (1) adequate flight testing has
been conducted to address technical risk in the program; and (2) the
financial benefits of going forward with the program exceed the
financial risks.
I am also pleased that the bill contains a provision to encourage and
facilitate organ donation by service men and women. Organ donation
represents, in my view, one of the most remarkable success stories in
the history of medicine. Over the past several years, the Department of
Defense has made some strides in increasing the awareness among service
members of the importance of organ donation. With our encouragement,
DOD has included organ donation decisions in their automated medical
databases, and established policies that give service members regular
opportunities to state a desire to become organ donors upon their
deaths.
In an effort to enhance the value of these initiatives, the bill
provides the framework in which DOD will provide each new recruit and
officer candidate information about organ donation during their initial
weeks of training, and will include organ donation procedures in the
training of medical personnel and in the development of medical
equipment and logistical systems. This initiative is likely to have a
vital impact on the survival of countless individuals who will, one
day, benefit from organs donated by service men and women.
From the beginning of the year, Secretary Cohen and the Joints Chiefs
of Staff have stressed three things that they would like to achieve in
this bill:
First, they have requested authority to close excess military bases
in order to fund their modernization priorities in the next decade;
Second, they have urged us not to undermine military training and
readiness by reducing operations and maintenance budgets; and
Third, they have urged us to provide the necessary funding to support
U.S. military operations in Bosnia during FY 1999 in a manner that does
not cut into current levels of DOD funding.
I would say that the committee has achieved roughly one and a half of
these three goals.
First, the bill before us would authorize $1.9 billion for continued
U.S. military operations in Bosnia, in the manner requested by the
Department. I am sure that many Members will want to be heard on this
subject as we debate this bill. At the appropriate time I intend to
offer my own amendment, which would ensure that the President reports
to the Congress on progress toward achieving benchmarks toward
implementation of the Dayton Accord with an exit strategy and that the
Congress has an opportunity to vote on the continued presence of U.S.
ground combat forces in Bosnia beyond June 30, 1999.
Second, the Armed Services Committee did a reasonable job of funding
training and readiness, given the budgetary constraints under which we
were

[[Page S4853]]

operating. Overall, the bill would reduce operations and maintenance
funding by roughly $300 million, but these cuts would be achieved
through reductions for fuel savings, foreign currency fluctuations, and
civilian underexecution--which, if DOD's and CBO's predictions prove
right, should not have a significant negative impact on military
training and readiness.
On the other hand, the Secretary has asked us not to cut operations
and maintenance accounts at all, because any cuts to these accounts
pose some risk of a negative impact on training and readiness. We have
been hearing complaints for several years now that the Administration
has not provided adequate funding for military training and readiness.
If we are not able to increase the level of O&M funding in conference,
the cuts in this bill mean that Congress must share responsibility with
the Department of Defense for any training and readiness problems
resulting from O&M funding shortfalls that DOD may experience in the
next year.
On the third point, I am deeply disappointed that the Armed Services
Committee has again filed to authorize a new base closure round, as
requested by the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the
Quadrennial Defense Review, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The
Secretary's Report on Base Closures from Secretary Cohen contains
almost 1,800 pages of backup material. It is responsive to those who
said last year that we need a thorough analysis before we can reach a
decision on the need for more base closures.
The Report reaffirms that DOD still has more bases than it needs.
From 1989 to 1997, DOD reduced total active duty military endstrength
by 32 percent, a figure that will grow to 36 percent by 2003. Even
after 4 base closure rounds, the reduction in DOD's base structure in
the United States has been reduced only 21 percent.
DOD's analysis concluded that DOD has about 23 percent excess
capacity in its current base structure. For example, by 2003:
The Army will have reduced the personnel at its classroom training
commands by 43 percent, while classroom space will have been reduced by
only 7 percent.
The Air Force will have reduced the number of fighters and other
small aircraft by 53 percent since 1989, while the base structure for
those aircraft will be only 35 percent smaller.
The Navy will have 33 percent more hangars for its aircraft than it
requires.
Secretary Cohen's report also documents the substantial savings that
have been achieved from past base closure rounds. Between 1990 and
2001, DOD estimates that BRAC actions will produce a total of $13.5
billion in net savings. After 2001, when all of the BRAC actions must
be completed, steady state savings will be $5.6 billion per year.
Based on the savings from the first four BRAC rounds, every year we
delay another base closure round, we deny the Defense Department, and
the taxpayers, about $1.5 billion in annual savings that we can never
recoup by studying to death the question of savings from previous
rounds. In his report on base closures last month, Secretary Cohen
stated: ``More than any other initiative we can take today, BRAC will
shape the quality and strength of the forces protecting America in the
21st century.'' General Shelton told our committee: ``I strongly
support additional base closures. Without them we will not leave our
successors the warfighting dominance of today's force.''
Admiral Jay Johnson, the Chief of Naval Operations, stated:

This is more than about budgeting. It's about protecting
American interests, American citizens, American soldiers,
sailors, airmen, and Marines. We owe them the best force we
can achieve. Reducing excess infrastructure will help take us
there and is clearly a military necessity.

Mr. President, closing bases is a painful process. I know that as
well as anyone. All three Air Force bases in my state have been closed,
and we are still working to overcome the economic blow to those
communities. We have heard a lot of complaints in the last year about
inadequate funds for modernization or for readiness. I am sure that we
will hear more such complaints in the next year. But we don't have much
standing to be critical of DOD for underfunding important defense needs
if we don't allow them to do what Secretary Cohen and the Chiefs have
repeatedly said they need to do--close unneeded bases.
There are several other issues in the bill that concern me. I am
disappointed by the committee's cuts in the Department of Energy's
stockpile stewardship program, which Secretary Pena says will have a
real and dramatic impact on our ability to maintain the safety and
reliability of our nuclear weapons stockpile and undermine confidence
in our nuclear deterrent. I am disappointed by the cuts we have made in
the chemical demilitarization program, which may make it impossible for
the United States to comply with our obligations under the Chemical
Weapons Convention. And I am disappointed that we have funded several
weapons systems for which the Department of Defense says that it has no
current need. I look forward to amendments that will improve the bill
in these and other areas in the course of our debate.
Mr. President, I know that there will be some vigorous debate on this
bill, and I hope Senators will come to the floor and offer their
amendments so that we can complete Senate action on the bill in a
timely manner then go to conference with the House.
I must leave here for perhaps a half hour to an hour. I note that
Senator Cleland will be floor managing the bill for this side of the
aisle. This is an important day for us. I know it is meaningful for
him, but it is an important day for us and for this institution, and
for this country to note that Senator Cleland, who is truly a hero for
all of us, is now managing this bill. I can't think of anyone I would
rather have do that, anyone in whom I have greater confidence to
protect this Nation's interest, as he always has, than Senator Cleland.
I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 2399

(Purpose: To increase the amount for classified programs by
$275,000,000, and to offset the increase by reducing the amount for Air
Force procurement for the Advance Medium Air-to-Air Missile System
program by $21,058,000, and by reducing the amount for Defense-wide
research, development, test, and evaluation for engineering and
manufacturing development under the Theater High Area Defense program
by $253,942,000)

Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask
for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Thurmond], for himself
and Mr. Levin, proposes an amendment numbered 2399.

Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

In section 103(2), strike out ``$2,375,803,000'' and insert
in lieu thereof ``$2,354,745,000''.
In section 201(3), strike out ``$13,398,993,000'' and
insert in lieu thereof ``$13,673,993,000''.
In section 201(4), strike out ``$9,837,764,000'' and insert
in lieu thereof ``$9,583,822,000''.

Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment on behalf
of the Armed Services Committee.
This amendment implements an agreement between the Armed Services
Committee and the Intelligence Committee. Pursuant to this agreement,
the Armed Services Committee has agreed to reduce by $275 million funds
in the pending bill for nonintelligence programs and to increase by
$275 million funds for the next Foreign Intelligence Program, which is
also part of this bill.
The Armed Services Committee has considered the range and options for
implementing this agreement, all of which involve making difficult
choices to cut defense programs. After considerable deliberation, the
committee has decided to reduce funding for the Theater High Altitude
Area Defense Program by $250 million and the Advanced Medium Range Air-
To-Air Missile System by $21 million. These funds are now assigned to
these two programs.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the DoD authorization bill, as reported,
includes a cut of some $550 million in classified intelligence
programs. I serve on both the Armed Services and the Intelligence
Committees. I am very aware of the tough choices that members of both
committees have to make in discharging our respective responsibilities.
However, I must say that the

[[Page S4854]]

magnitude of this cut to intelligence programs disturbed me, as it did
other members of the Committee.
Based on these concerns, the Committee agreed during the markup of
the Defense Authorization Bill to try to come to some compromise with
the Intelligence Committee that would reduce the magnitude of this
reduction. This amendment restores $275 million of the original
reduction made by the Committee. I am glad that we have worked together
to achieve this outcome.
The bulk of the funds to increase the level of intelligence programs
in this amendment comes from one particular program, the Theater High
Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD program. The THAAD program is designed
to meet a theater missile defense requirement. I have supported theater
missile defense programs like THAAD because we have a clear requirement
for theater missile defense systems.
The THAAD program has had a number of testing failures, and two days
ago, there was another unfortunate test failure in the program. Mr.
President, this failure led the Committee to the conclusion that it
would be appropriate to adjust the fiscal year 1999 funding for the
THAAD system. While we do not know the full implications of this test
failure, it is clear that it would now be premature for the THAAD
program to move from the demonstration/validation phase of the program
to engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) next year as
proposed in the fiscal year 1999 budget. The Committee amendment to the
bill implementing the agreement with the Intelligence Committee
eliminates EMD funding for THAAD in fiscal year 1999, since it is
unrealistic to expect THAAD to enter EMD during that period.
I must point out that the Committee is proposing that the Senate make
this adjustment without prejudice to the THAAD program. I believe that
the Committee will need to follow this program as we proceed to
conference with the House on this bill. If it turns out that we need to
adjust this position to one that is better for the underlying THAAD
program, I will work with Chairman Thurmond to do just that.
Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I rise to address the
committee amendment offered by the Senator from South Carolina and the
Senator from Michigan. This amendment implements agreements made
between the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee.
Pursuant to this agreement, the Armed Services Committee has agreed to
reduce by $275 million funds in the pending bill for non-intelligence
programs, and to increase by $275 million funds for the National
Foreign Intelligence Program, which is also part of this bill.
The Armed Services Committee has considered a range of options for
implementing this agreement, all of which involve making difficult
choices to cut defense programs. After consideration deliberation, the
committee has decided to reduce funding for the Theater High Altitude
Area Defense (THAAD) program by $254 million and the Advanced Medium
Range Air-to-Air Missile system by $21 million. The $21 million in
AMRAAM is now excess to program requirements as a result of contract
negotiations between the Air Force and the contractor. The funding
issue related to THAAD is more complex.
We have all heard the news of Tuesday's THAAD test failure. This was
the fifth time in a row that THAAD has filed to intercept a target.
Although we don't have the details, we know that there was an
electrical failure in the booster which caused the missile to self-
destruct early in flight. Whatever impact this may have on the long-
term prospects for THAAD, judging by what we now know it appears that
the THAAD program will not be able to enter engineering and
manufacturing development (EMD) during fiscal year 1999.
In its markup of the Defense Authorization Bill, the committee
expressed concern that THAAD might not be able to spend all of its EMD
budget during fiscal year 1999 even if the recent flight test was a
success. Therefore, the markup included a reduction of $70 million in
THAAD EMD. This left $254 million in the THAAD EMD budget, $498 million
in the THAAD Demonstration and Validation (Dem/Val) budget, for a total
of $752 in fiscal year 1999 for THAAD.
With the recent test failure, however, it will be virtually
impossible for THAAD to enter EMD during fiscal year 1999, which means
that the remaining $254 million of THAAD EMD money cannot be spent.
I am very disappointed by the results of the THAAD test, but I
continue to believe that this program is important and must be
permitted to proceed. Therefore I believe that the Senate should
support the full budget request of $497 million for THAAD demonstration
and validation. Nonetheless, due to the circumstances that the THAAD
program is now in, I believe the best course of action to take now is
to disapprove funding for THAAD to enter EMD during FY99. I would
remind the Senate that this would leave almost $500 million in the
THAAD program overall.
I would like to emphasize that I fully support the THAAD program and
I would not have supported this reduction if I felt it would in any way
hinder current progress on the program. The THAAD program is a critical
upper-tier theater missile defense program that has encountered a
setback, but I have full confidence these programs can be corrected and
the program can move forward to its next test.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, this amendment has been agreed to on
both sides of the aisle. I now ask for a vote on this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enz1). Is there further debate on the
amendment?
Mr. CLELAND. Mr. President, our side supports the amendment. We think
it is a good compromise. We think the staff and the committee did an
excellent job of putting this together. It was a difficult choice. But
we support the amendment.
I urge its adoption.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment? If
not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator from
South Carolina.
The amendment (No. 2399) was agreed to.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which
the amendment was agreed to.
Mr. CLELAND. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I now turn to Senator Coats for
recognition.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana is recognized.
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank the chairman for his recognition.
I want to also thank Senator Levin for the kind remarks he made about
my service on the committee. It has truly been an honor for me and a
privilege to serve for 10 years on the Armed Services Committee. I say
without reservation that my service on that committee is the most
enjoyable aspect of anything I have done in the U.S. Senate. It is a
truly bipartisan committee working for one purpose: To strengthen our
Armed Forces, and to strengthen our national security, and to provide
our men and women in uniform with the very best that we can under
obviously difficult budget conditions.
It is the first responsibility of government to provide for the
common defense. We are proud of the work that our men and women in
uniform have done--their dedication, their commitment, their sacrifice,
their loyalty, their duty, their honor--all virtues which are in short
supply in this country today. There are few institutions left that
honor those virtues. The military is one of them.
It has been a great pleasure for me over the past 10 years to be a
part of that, to help shape those forces to address the needs and
concerns, to look to the future to see what is needed, and to hopefully
put in place those programs and policies that will address those needs
in the future. It has not been easy.
The decade of the 1980s was clearly a great time to be serving on
that committee. We had a challenging and important time. We had a
demonstrated need. We had a demonstrated bipartisan commitment to
address that need, and we had the resources to accomplish that. It all
culminated in the most extraordinary and outstanding victory in the
history of warfare. The United

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States' and the allies' performance in Desert Shield and Desert Storm
was revolutionary in terms of the way warfare is dictated.
I will never forget the debate that we had both in committee and on
the floor regarding what our participation should be in that situation,
and the authorization for use of force, if necessary. Those were
difficult times. We feared significant loss of life. And yet, the
magnificent synergy of quality personnel, quality leadership, quality
weapons, quality training, doctrine and command resulted in something
that was truly extraordinary: A decisive victory in a very short period
of time with minimal loss of life and injury--creating a dominant
military the world has seldom witnessed in its history.
However, that was the culmination of the decade of the 1980s. Those
were decisions that were made during the 1980s in terms of how we
structure our forces, what kind of training and equipment we provide
them, how we develop our leadership, and how we bring all of that
together. The 1990s have been a different story. It has been a time of
budget constraints. It has been a time of very significant cutbacks, a
time of rejoicing over the fall of the Berlin Wall, over the fall of
the Iron Curtain, the demise of a nuclear superpower that was
challenging us for world superiority, not that we were looking for
that, but that it was a triumph of an idea, a triumph of an idea of
freedom, the concept of freedom, and an economic concept of free
enterprise over totalitarianism and Marxism. That, obviously, led to
major changes in the way we structured our defense.
The decade of the 1990s has been a transition period, a period in
which budget limitations have driven very significant changes, a period
in which the Department of Defense has contributed more to the
elimination of deficit spending than perhaps all of the other aspects
of Government combined. The little-told story about why we now have a
surplus with our budget, why we have been able to control Government
spending, is the contribution of the Department of Defense to that
achievement. That contribution has overwhelmed all other contributions
put together. The roughly 30-percent to 40-percent declines in spending
in real dollars, the substantial downsizing of the military, the
substantial downsizing in procurement, the substantial savings that
have been achieved over what we would have had to spend had we
maintained our military defense spending at the level of the 1980s, has
made the most significant contribution to deficit reduction. And we
shouldn't forget that fact. That has happened with a truly bipartisan
effort.
So it has been a joy for me to work with my colleagues, Republican
and Democrat, on these issues. Have we had differences of opinion? Yes.
Have we had difficult debates? Closed-door debates? Yes. But in the end
we have always forged a consensus, and we have done so because foremost
in our minds was providing for the common defense in an effective way
and looking out for the needs and the interests of our service
personnel.
Mr. President, let me just briefly comment on the fiscal year 1999
defense authorization bill that has just come out of committee and that
we are addressing here on the floor. First of all, I want to start with
quality of life and briefly touch on that.
I served for 4 years as ranking member and 2 years as chairman of the
Personnel Subcommittee.
While I still serve on that committee, I no longer am chairman. I
will leave much of the details of what that committee has done to
Senator Kempthorne and the ranking member. However, I view this as the
No. 1 priority of the committee in establishing our budget because no
weapon, no doctrine, no training manual, nothing can take the place of
quality personnel. And so our goal has been to attract the very best we
can, to retain those personnel, and to provide them with the essentials
of what they need, and to provide for them a standard of living that is
commensurate with their sacrifice.
Let me say that no standard of living that we can provide is
commensurate with the kind of hours and the kind of sacrifice and the
kind of commitments that are made by our military personnel, but we try
to do the best we can. Over the years they have been shortchanged in
terms of housing. They have been shortchanged in terms of pay. And they
have been shortchanged in terms of benefits. We have tried to make up
for some of that. It is certainly better than it was but nowhere equal
to the kind of commitment and the demands that we ask of our military
personnel. Yet, day after day, year after year, they continue to
provide the kind of effort and the kind of service that is unheard of
in the private sector, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude as a
Nation. It means that we need to keep their pay consistent with pay on
the outside.
Today, we are attempting to attract people who are skilled in
technical areas, who have the capacity and the capability and the
training and the experience to employ today's modern military equipment
using today's advanced operational concepts. It is not just simply foot
soldiers carrying heavy loads, walking through the mud, although that
will always be an essential part of our military as it needs to be. But
it is that foot soldiers and everyone else involved in our military are
today operating very sophisticated, modern equipment. They need to
think on their feet. They need to have capabilities in terms of
information processing, in terms of utilizing the latest in
technologies, in weapons and computers and information sources that are
commensurate with what is needed in the private sector.
And so we have to have the incentives in place, and pay in place to
allow us to compete, and to attract and to retain these personnel.
In that regard, we have provided in this bill a 3.1-percent pay raise
for military personnel. We also provide an increase of $500 million in
military construction projects, $164 million of which will fund
barracks, dining facilities, and military housing. If there is a
shortfall in terms of what we have done for our troops over the years,
it is military housing. Much of it, nearly two-thirds of military
housing is substandard, substandard by military code, military, not
commercial standards --and the military standards in many cases are not
up to the same level as private standards--and yet year after year we
ask our military families to live in this housing. It is inadequate
housing, it is substandard housing, and they do so without complaint.
We owe it to them, to the single soldiers and airmen and marines, men
and women, and to their families. We owe it to them to give them
affordable, decent housing.
We are underway with an initiative that was started by Secretary
Perry to, in many cases, privatize or leverage the ability of the
Department of Defense to utilize private contractors to provide
military housing in arrangements which allow us to make maximum use of
the funds we have, to leverage those funds in the way that the private
sector leverages their money to address this housing shortfall, and so
we are underway with that.
Health care is another major issue. I won't go into that. I will let
Senator Kempthorne address that. This is a major concern of our
military personnel, something that needs to be addressed. We are in the
transition period with that also, and there are many questions that
need to be answered. We attempt to do some of that in this bill
including the direction of three health care demonstrations for our
military retirees who are Medicare eligible: one related to FEHBP; one
related to TRICARE; and one related to mail order pharmacy benefits. I
support these initiatives, but more needs to be done.

Let me now talk about readiness. The bill also adds over $400 million
to the readiness account levels requested in the President s budget for
our Active and Reserve Forces. We are all aware of the demand on
readiness with our commitments overseas--Bosnia and the Persian Gulf,
to name just two, and there are many, many more. These are stretching
our capacity. These are costly. They affect our readiness and our
ability to sustain the preparedness of the force. And we need to
understand that this is a major concern which should be continually
monitored and addressed by the Congress.
I want to focus most of my comments, though, Mr. President, on the
modernization question. For years we have deferred modernization of our

[[Page S4856]]

weapons systems and of our equipment--trucks, radios, and basic
equipment. We have deferred that modernization because we have not had
the resources available to fund quality of life, readiness, all other
aspects of our national defense such as research and development, as
well as the modernization of weapon platforms and systems.
Now, this underfunding of modernization was done with the
understanding that by fiscal year 1998, which we are now in, and we are
dealing with the 1999 fiscal year with this budget, we will have ended
this pause where we have downsized our modernization spending by as
much as 70 percent over previous levels. And the understanding, the
promise, was that this administration would bring procurement back to
at least a $60 billion a year procurement level in fiscal year 1998 in
order to replace aging tanks, aging planes, and aging equipment. This
is what was originally programmed and projected. Not all of us thought
that was attainable. We thought that we were doing less than we should.
We were able to secure some funds to plus-up some of that modernization
in the past but at levels far below what was recommended to us by
experts outside the military and by military personnel who were looking
at this question.
Well, here we are with an increased modernization budget but still at
a $50 billion level, not the $60 billion level we were supposed to have
achieved last year. So, again, modernization accounts remain on the
margin. We are unable to modernize in a way that we believe is most
effective from a cost standpoint and from a requirements standpoint. We
have increased procurement in some areas. And I think we appreciate the
ability to gain some extra funds for that, but I just want our
colleagues to know there is no basis on which to come to this floor and
criticize the Armed Services Committee for spending too much on new
systems. We are still spending too little on the modernization of our
military forces. We are below what the Department of Defense has told
us, well below what they have told us is required to replace the aging
weapons systems that we currently use, and recapitalize our joint
warfighting capabilities.
Several of these modernization issues come through my committee. I am
privileged to chair the Airland Committee. Let me just talk about some
of these major procurement items.
First, the land portion of this--land power. The committee has held
hearings on land power, and we are pleased to note that the Marine
Corps advances in urban warfare experiments and revolutionary
expeditionary capabilities with the MV22 and the AAAV seem to be on
schedule. They are important in the future.
We are also pleased that the Army is moving forward to consolidate
gains it has learned from its Force XXI process. And that the Army says
it is investigating the transformation to the faster, smaller, more
lethal and more deployable force structure it will need in the 21st
Century. But the Army's modernization strategy to pursue this
modernization is short particularly in some of the less glamorous areas
of aviation, armored vehicles, and trucks. The committee has added
provisions which address these issues. Again, there is not as much
procurement for landpower as we would like, but at least we are moving
in the right direction.
I want to say, Mr. President, that we have also made some very
significant progress in this whole question of addressing Reserve
component modernization. Thanks to the fine work of Senator Glenn in
particular, and committee and staff, we have for the very first time
structured what I believe is a coherent process in determining Guard
and Reserve procurement. For the first time, the budget request by the
Department has included a substantial amount of funds for National
Guard and Reserve procurement--a $1.4 billion level, which is a 50-
percent increase over last year. Our mark adds to this another $700
million.
But the important point to note here is that all of the additions
that we have added for the Army Guard were requested by the Army Chief
of Staff, including Blackhawk helicopters to enhance tactical airlift,
new and remanufactured trucks that improve our transportation
capabilities and reduce operating costs, and radios that enable the
Guard to integrate with the Active Army's tactical internet. Clearly,
the Senate's bipartisan efforts in this regard have had a very positive
effect on the whole concept of total force integration.
As we look at limited defense budgets on and over the horizon, and as
we look at ways in which we assess the threats of the future, and at
our ability to deploy, and at the cost of those overseas deployments,
and at our ability to preposition equipment, and at, perhaps, the
denial of access to facilities overseas--to landing strips, sea ports,
and bases--we need total force integration across our Active Army, and
our Army Reserves, and our Army National Guard. And in order to
accomplish that, we need to dispense with the former practice of making
the Guard and Reserve budget requests a secondary priority to that of
the Active Army, but to make them an integral part of the budget
request sent over from the Department of Defense. The Department needs
to assess what the Reserve components need, and they need to tell us
that in the budget request, and then we need to look at that as an
integrated requirement, rather than as two separate entities.
We have begun, under the prodding of the SASC, that process of total
force integration and taken a significant step forward this year. I
commend the Department for doing that and we need to do more for total
force integration in the future.
Let me talk about TACAIR, tactical aircraft. We have held a number of
hearings on TACAIR to assess the status of the F/A18-E/F, Super Hornet
and the F-22 Raptor. The Navy and the Director for Operational Test and
Evaluation provided their assessment that the Super Hornet's, the F/
A18-E/F, the wing-drop and buffeting issues have been fixed, and that
the program should proceed with production as planned. This
authorization supports those funds requested for the F/A18-E/F.
These issues with the Super Hornet were not as serious as many had
thought. They were, really, reported as being more serious than they
were. However, they were issues that needed to be addressed. The
Department of the Navy and the contractors have successfully addressed
these issues, and I am pleased that the F/A18-E/F program will proceed
as planned.
Now, let me speak about the F-22. Last year I spoke on the floor at
length about my concerns with F-22 cost overruns and demonstrated
performance. And I want to state for the record here, up front, I
address these issues as a supporter of F-22 development, not as a
critic of the F-22. And I spoke last year because was concerned that if
we don't keep our arms around this issue and keep a good, clear
oversight of the issue, the F-22 may run into very serious problems in
terms of funding and in terms of support for that funding. And I don't
want to jeopardize that. Based on the testimony of the Air Force and
the assessment of the General Accounting Office and other entities,
there are many who share a deep concern over whether or not we can
maintain support for the F-22 if costs continue to escalate toward $200
million per aircraft. So we need, and we ask for, adequate
demonstration of performance and cost control.
The bill that is before us authorizes the requested F-22 funding
levels. I want to repeat that. The bill before us, for those who are
supporters of F-22--and there are many here, because it is a marvelous
new leap-ahead technology that is important for our national security
and our national defense in the future--many support this marvelous new
development in technology that is going to provide the basis for Air
Force air dominance capabilities in TACAIR for many, many years in the
future. We have authorized every penny that has been requested for next
year's budget in order to continue developing the F-22. But we have put
some key oversight provisions in place that will help the Congress and
help the administration keep the program on track. And the reason we
have done this is because there is a great deal in jeopardy if we don't
do that.

Several things could happen if we cannot control F-22 costs, none of
which are good. One, we could end up treating F-22 as we ended up
treating B-2, another leap-ahead technology that provided us with one
of the most

[[Page S4857]]

amazing developments in long-range strategic aircraft that any nation
has ever enjoyed. But we ended up producing far fewer than what we had
planned because the cost per copy had escalated so high we just simply
couldn't afford to produce more. While the threat today doesn't
necessarily justify additional B-2s, the threat of tomorrow could and
we won't have those planes. We don't want that to happen to the F-22.
Second, we could lose support for other key systems that are
necessary to provide for our future defense needs, such as carriers,
Comanche, V-22. We could jeopardize those systems if the cost overruns
for F-22 escalate to the point where we are spending more money on that
program, and we have to take it from somewhere else. And I am afraid we
would have to take it from these key and necessary weapons platforms
that we require in the future.
Or third, we could lose the ability to produce what we need of the
Joint Strike Fighter. The Joint Strike Fighter is the complement to the
F-22 that is coming on at a later date. It is currently in its early
stages of its engineering and manufacturing development, and we could
jeopardize this program if F-22 costs grow. The reason why we cannot
allow that to happen is that the Navy and the Marines are absolutely
depending on the Joint Strike Fighter to provide stealth and to address
their other TACAIR needs for the future, just as the Air Force is
depending on F-22 to address their needs.
In fact, the Marine Corps has staked their entire TACAIR future on
Joint Strike Fighter. So we have to be careful that we preserve our
ability to go forward with the conventional variant, the carrier
variant, and the short take-off / vertical land (STO/VL) variant of the
JSF. And that is why we have placed some prudent oversight provisions
on F-22.
Here is what we have done and here is why we did it. When we reviewed
the F-22 program, the Air Force planned F-22 flight tests beginning in
May of 1997 with a contract award for the Lot I production scheduled in
June 1999. Lot 1 is the first two production planes, which are followed
by a Lot 2 of six aircraft. And this gets a little esoteric here--they
planned for that contract award for June of 1999 when there would be
601 hours of flight testing complete, which is 14 percent of the total
flight-test program.
The 14 percent is an important threshold because the Defense Science
Board Report of 1995 on the F-22 production noted that most of the
``program killer''--how they describe it, ``program killer'' problems
are usually discovered in the first 10 to 20 percent of developmental
flight tests.
Our experience in the past has demonstrated that somewhere in that
10- to 20-percent range we find the kind of problems that can
potentially terminate or cause major modifications to the technical
specifications of the program that are so significant they don't
justify the expense to go forward and fix the problem. You almost have
to go back to page 1 of the program, and obviously that puts it in
great jeopardy. So we were concerned that before we execute a contract
for production, we reach a threshold level of testing, flight testing
that would give us some assurance that executing that contract would be
wise--a wise business decision, and a decision in the best interests of
our taxpayers, but also in line with our defense needs before we
executed that contract.
Unfortunately, this F-22 flight testing program has had to slip. The
first flight was nearly 4 months late. Instead of May of 1997, it was
in September 1997. Another test flight had to be canceled. To date,
only 3 hours of flight time have been accumulated. In addition, the
program is experiencing manufacturing delays of up to five months. And
we have already had the previous assessment of a Joint Evaluation Team
of Air Force and industry experts that concluded the F-22 program would
significantly exceed its cost estimates and that it should be
restructured to reduce risk. This caused us to reallocate a very
significant amount of funds, $2.2 billion, to get the program back on
sound footing.
Yet, despite all these problems, the Air Force wants to move the
contract award not back, not to keep it at the same level, but to move
it forward 6 months when the program hopes to have only 4 percent of
its flight testing
We have had a lot of debate about this. We have had hearings. We have
heard from the contractors. We have heard from the Air Force. We have
heard from outside witnesses. We have heard from experts. We have
debated among ourselves. And I believe we have reached an acceptable
consensus as to how we ought to address this particular problem.
We need to address it because the obvious answer, the first answer
that comes to mind, is, ``Well, let's just delay; let's just delay
until they get to 14 percent.'' I wish it were that easy. Delay means
that the prime contractors have to cease a schedule of lining up
subcontractors, of establishing production lines, of hiring workers--a
myriad of tasks that have to be accomplished, people who have to be
hired, procedures that have to be put in place--and that delay costs a
great deal of money and can break the production base of the program.
We have had this very complicated schedule to put together. We are
talking about one of the most complex and difficult development
processes and production processes that anybody can imagine. This
involves a great deal of effort, time, and cost. To delay that incurs
considerable risk and considerable cost.
By the same token, going forward without adequate testing produces a
great deal of risk--risk that the F-22 will not turn out as we hope it
turns out, risk that the flight testing between the current level, the
4-percent level, or the 14-percent level will turn up something that is
a showstopper, that is a ``program killer.'' So we are trying to
balance this risk against the cost of delay.
In addition to this, there has been a very complex set of
negotiations that have taken place with the Air Force and the
contractor, in particular, that imposes a fixed-price contract for
these initial production aircraft. The Air Force states: ``This is all
the money you are going to get. No matter what problems come up, we're
not going to give you more, so you have to operate under the fixed-
price contract.''
The contractor comes back and says: ``Well, if we have to operate
under the fixed-price contract, you can't delay the contract, because
there is no way we can meet the goal of producing what you want us to
produce at the time you want us to produce it under the cost cap that
you have imposed on us if you delay the contract and production
process.''
So all of this has to be put into the mix and a decision must be made
in terms of how we proceed.
This is what we decided to do: No. 1, we are going to approve the
budget request for the full funding of continued development for the F-
22. However, we are going to put what we call a fence--that is, we are
going to put some of the what we call long lead money, money that is
going to be spent in the future on items that allow us to prepare for
production--we are going to put that money in a category which says it
will not be released for expenditure until a couple of things happen.
First of all, I need to point out, we are going to go ahead and
produce and buy the Lot I series of F-22 which consists of two
aircraft. We are going to keep that on schedule. There are no
restraints on that, no holds, no fences, no conditions. This is
underway. We need to proceed. We are going to buy those first two
planes.
Lot II consists of the next six planes. What we are going to do is
say that advance procurement of lot II F-22s, the next six aircraft,
cannot commence until we reach a threshold level of 10 percent of
testing, which is the minimum that was specified by the Defense Science
Board back in 1995--not the 14 percent, but the 10 percent. Remember,
they gave us the range of 10 to 20 percent. We thought 14 percent was
an adequate number. We are going to drop that down to 10 percent. That
is the minimum. So there is still risk, and we are trying to minimize
risk and balance risk against cost.

We are going to fence that money until 10 percent of testing is
complete or until the Secretary of Defense certifies to us that a
lesser amount of flight testing is sufficient and provides his
rationale and analysis for that certification. And we are also
requiring the Secretary to certify that it is financially advantageous
to proceed to

[[Page S4858]]

Lot II production, aircraft three through eight, rather than wait for
completion of the 10 percent of the currently planned test schedule.
That last portion is something Senator Levin suggested. The first
portion is what I suggested. The two together, I believe, form a good
basis for us to impose upon the Secretary of Defense a certification
and verification process that provides us the necessary assurance that
they have kept their eyes on the program, have determined through
testing that if that level is 8, 8\1/2\, 9 or 9\1/2\, that is
sufficient. There is no magic to the 10-percent number. Again, it was
selected because the Defense Science Board set it as its minimum.
However, we have new production techniques, we have new manufacturing
processes in place for this plane, which have never been done before.
And if we can, through simulation, if we can, through other procedures,
determine that we have adequate information relative to the performance
and capabilities of this plane to go into production at a lower level
of demonstrated performance, then the Secretary can certify that for
us.
He can't do that if the flight testing is less than 4 percent. We
have to get to at least that level. Of course, that is the level
suggested to us by the Air Force as necessary, and that is the level
they currently plan to achieve before contract award. Those are the
necessary flight test hours that are required to move up the contract
award 6 months.
Those are the committee's efforts to try to balance risk with excess
cost for delay and put in place a process that will give us the
opportunity to have the oversight and to force the Secretary of Defense
to keep his focus on the F-22 program and on any kind of cost
escalation that might jeopardize the program.
We have reached this accord with the significant help of members on
both sides of the committee. The committee was unanimous, Republicans
and Democrats--unanimous--that this is the procedure that we ought to
put in place. So there is complete bipartisan support for this effort.
I am urging my colleagues, and I have already had discussions with
some of our House colleagues about why this is important. This should
not be an item for compromise. We have made some very, very tough
decisions here.
Mr. President, in moving away from TACAIR, let me talk for a moment
about defense transformation, something Senator Lieberman and I have
worked on diligently in the past several years. I am pleased he has
joined me on the floor, and I know we will hear from him about this
when I am finished.
Defense transformation is, I think, a necessary process to address
the threats of the future and to have the capability to deal with those
threats. What happens under defense transformation will bear fruit 10
or 15 or 20 or more years from now. Just as the astounding success of
Desert Storm was the result of decisions made in the late seventies and
throughout the eighties, the successes that we can achieve in
addressing threats of the future in the year 2014 or the year 2020 or
beyond will be determined by the decisions that are made today, and in
2001, and 2003, and 2007.
Those decisions--in terms of the kind of platforms and equipment that
we purchase, in terms of the kind of doctrine that we develop to
address those new threats, in terms of the kind of forces that we
structure, in terms of the kind of assessments that we make of those
threats and the response to those threats --those decisions will be
made now and in the next several years. And we will understand the
significance of that well beyond the time that most of us will still be
in the U.S. Senate.
But we owe it to the future--just as those who made the decisions in
the late 1970s and in the 1980s provided for the future success of our
national defense strategy in the late 1980s and 1990s--we owe it to the
future and future generations to make the right decisions now.
We know that the threats of the future will be different than the
threats of the past. Few, if any, tyrants or dictators or world leaders
will ever again amass forces in a desert situation and line them up in
traditional warfare and take on the capabilities that the United States
demonstrated during the Gulf War.
No dictator is going to pour tens and hundreds of billions of dollars
into building the kind of defense structure that the United States
annihilated in Desert Storm. They are going to be looking at different
types of threats, threats that we call asymmetric, not what is typical,
not what we expect, not the war of the past, but the war of the future.
Historians will tell you that those who fight wars based on the last
war lose the next war--because their adversaries are always adjusting,
always evaluating and transforming. We saw that with Blitzkrieg; we saw
that in naval aviation and a number of ways throughout history. The
last thing we want to do is maintain the status quo, because the status
quo will not be adequate to address threats of the future. So defense
transformation is necessary. It is necessary to prepare us for the
future. But how do we transform our military capabilities?
The Armed Services Committee has focused on this issue. A couple of
years ago we authorized what we call the Quadrennial Defense Review
(QDR). It simply means once every 4 years there is a review of the
threats, and the processes and capabilities we have put in place as the
means by which we address those threats. This QDR was an internal
process. It was a process that takes place within the Department of
Defense.
We believe there needs to be an ongoing, continuing process, a
continual update and assessment of the threat, and how we address that
threat, and what changes need to be made, and what structures need to
be imposed in order to successfully address those threats in the
future.
With that, we combined the QDR with a process which we labeled the
National Defense Panel (NDP). It was a selection of outside experts who
took a look at the same situation, a second opinion, if you will. Faced
with a serious disease, people should--and I think in most cases do--
get a second opinion. We don't just go to the very first doctor and
say, ``Well, that sounds good. Let's go ahead.'' And we should treat
our national security the same way. ``This is so serious, potentially
life threatening, I want a second opinion before I make a decision.''
The NDP was our second opinion, but it was an outside opinion.
We worked closely with Secretary Perry, Deputy Secretary White, and
others to fashion how we select these individuals for the NDP, and how
we put this process together. It was led by Phil Odeen, chairman of the
National Defense Panel, and with distinguished and recognized outside
thinkers, experts, and experienced people with military background and
training.
That panel produced an extraordinary report which ought to be one of
the blueprints for the future. We have combined this external NDP
process with the internal QDR process to try to lay out an assessments
of where we are, where we are going, and how we will get there. Our
defense authorization bill this year includes a sense of the Congress
on a key process at the foundation of fulfilling some of these
requirements--the designation of a combatant commander who has the
mission of developing, preparing, conducting, and assessing a process
of joint warfare experimentation.

This joint warfighting experimentation is at the foundation of this
whole defense transformation. Basically, what this process says is that
before we rush into what Senator Coats or Senator Lieberman or the
Armed Services Committee, or even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or
the Secretary of Defense, thinks is the direction we ought to go, let
us test it, let us test some ideas, let us experiment, let us look at
how we develop all of this, let us take the good ideas and throw out
the bad, let us not just commit to something that turns out 4 or 5
years from now to be the wrong item or the wrong direction.
Secretary Cohen is reviewing currently, for his signature, a charter
which would assign the mission of joint warfighting experimentation to
a combatant commander, the Commander in Chief of US Atlantic Command
(USACOM) in Norfolk. We have met with Secretary Cohen. And we met with
General Shelton and Admiral Gehman, the CINC of USACOM. They

[[Page S4859]]

have worked with us to craft this language. We have their full support.
We are not going forward here thinking that we know all the answers
to these issues. We are not the experts. We have some ideas and we
would like to move them forward. And we have bounced them off the
Department. And we have worked together. And we have structured
something which we agree on. I visited USACOM. I visited their joint
training and simulation center, and their joint battle lab. And I can
report, Mr. President, that progress is being made to develop the
foundation for this joint experimentation process.
The Senate, I believe, has been keenly aware of the need to transform
our military capabilities to address the potentially very different
challenges we are going to face in the future. The National Defense
Panel report argues that these challenges--which include things such as
challenges in power projection, information operations, and weapons of
mass destruction--can place our security at far greater risk than what
we face today.
Correspondingly, the NDP recommended establishing this combatant
command which will drive the transformation of our military
capabilities through this process of joint experimentation. The NDP
testified that the need for this joint experimentation process is
``absolutely critical'' and ``urgent.'' I am pleased that the
Department of Defense has been so cooperative in working with us in
helping to establish this new mission for a command and this new
process. The resounding consensus from several hearings on defense
transformation that we have held in the committee support the
combination of joint and service experimentation as the foundation for
the transformation of military capabilities to address the operational
challenges of the future.
So we are taking joint and service experimentation, and combining our
efforts, those best efforts and forces of our services and of our
unified commanders, along with individual service experimentation
initiatives--Force XXI, Sea Dragon--and a whole number of other joint
and individual service processes, and looking at ways in which we take
the very best insights as the basis for developing our capabilities for
the future.
This process of experimentation is designed to investigate the co-
evolution of advances in technology, with changes in the organizational
structure of our forces, and with the development of new operational
concepts. The purpose of joint experimentation is to determine those
technologies, those organizations, and those concepts which will
provide a leap-ahead in joint warfighting capability. Just as we are
looking to leap-ahead technologies in platforms, aircraft carriers,
joint strike fighters, et cetera, we are looking for leap-ahead
development in concepts, and in doctrine, and in force structure.
As I said earlier, it is just as important to select winners as it is
to determine losers. Under joint experimentation, failure can be a
virtue. We know everything will not be a success. We do not want to
reward failure, but we want to recognize failure as important to
determining what works and what does not. The worst thing we could do
is make a commitment to a major change in doctrine, operational
concepts, weapon systems, or force structure only to find out that it
does not address the relevant threats of the future. It is through
experimentation that we can distinguish the true leap-aheads in
capability, from those that fall short.
Identifying these failures will be just as important to our achieving
success in transformation, as identifying the leap-aheads themselves
because it will allow us, in a time of limited budget, to deploy and to
utilize our resources in the most effective way.
We cannot afford to do what we did in the 1980s. The threat was so
great, the work that we had to do was so needed, the status of our
defense forces and our national security was so at risk, that we had to
risk failure to determine success. But we had the budget to accommodate
this failure if we had to. We had the budget to experiment and still
develop all the potential systems. We don't have that luxury anymore.
We don't have the kind of funds that were available in the 1980s.
Therefore, we must be selective. And therefore we must have a process
which allows us to determine what is the wisest course of action to
take.
Mr. President, previously in our history this country has found
itself unprepared for the threats we have faced at the outset of war.
With God's grace and with the magnificent commitment and response of
the American people, we have always rallied to eventually overcome
these threats to our freedom.
That was always done at a cost, not only the fiscal cost to the
taxpayer, but the cost in terms of the lives of young people who made
the ultimate sacrifice for our country. We are currently contemplating
the construction of a World War II memorial down on The Mall. It will
join the Vietnam memorial. It will join a tribute to the Korean war. It
will join other monuments to wars that this country has fought which
ought to sober all of us and remind us of the tremendous cost we had to
pay in order to secure and maintain our freedom, and to provide freedom
for millions of people around the world.
Previously in this nation's history, we have found ourselves
unprepared for the threats we faced at the outset of war. Because we
were unprepared, we were vulnerable. Because we were vulnerable, we
were exploited. And we had no choice but to respond. We did so, but we
did so often at a terrible cost. It was worth the cost because we have
maintained our freedom and we enjoy that freedom today. But we
desperately want to learn from our history how to avoid those
circumstances. And the tragedy that we should have learned is that
being unprepared for the threats we face at the outset of conflict
results in the need to build significant memorials to those who
sacrifice their lives, and to those whose lives were correspondingly
changed forever--those families, those relatives, those friends. All
this because we failed to prepare for the relevant threats that
confront us.
We desperately want to avoid this situation. We know we will be
facing different threats in the future. We know that the way we are
currently constituted doesn't necessarily prepare us to address those
threats successfully. Obviously, the most successful thing we can do is
ensure we are never vulnerable to be exploited in the first place--to
be so prepared and to be so strong that no adversary desires to take us
on. For us to achieve this preparedness, it is going to take a
transformation in thinking. And it is going to take a transformation in
structuring our military forces and in our operational concepts for us
to be prepared to address the threats of the future. The joint
experimentation program is one piece of the puzzle in terms of how we
transform our capabilities to do that, and this bill supports that
effort. In short, joint experimentation is essential to ensuring that
our Armed Forces are prepared to address the security challenges of the
21st century.
In conclusion--I have taken a long time--the bill makes great strides
in improving quality of life, readiness, and modernization of the
force. And this bill also lays the framework for the transformation of
defense capabilities to address the operational challenges envisioned
in the 21st century.
I want to acknowledge and thank the distinguished service of our
chairman, Senator Thurmond, who has provided such diligence and
tremendous effort as chairman of this committee. He has been a member
of the Senate Armed Services Committee for nearly 40 years. This will
mark his last defense authorization bill as chairman of the committee.
He will always be chairman in our hearts, and chairman emeritus of that
committee, and will continue to make significant contributions. What a
privilege it has been for this Senator to serve under this
distinguished leadership of this distinguished member who has given so
much to this committee!

I also thank Senator Glenn for his support and stewardship of defense
issues in this, our last defense authorization bill. People have said,
``What has happened to our heroes in this country?'' John Glenn is a
genuine American hero--first to orbit the Earth, and now, at the age of
77, at the termination of a distinguished Senate career, he will climb
back in the shuttle and orbit the Earth once again. I think that is one
of the most remarkable achievements of this century. And we recognize
him for that.
Senator Levin, as ranking member, has made an outstanding
contribution

[[Page S4860]]

to our efforts. Many others, up and down the committee, have also
played very significant roles in this. Again, I say this is a truly
bipartisan effort.
Finally, without the support of our staff, this could not have been
accomplished: Les Brownlee, staff director; and his counterpart David
Lyles as minority staff director; our committee staff, Steve Madey and
John Barnes who have been so helpful to me on the Airland Subcommittee;
Charlie Abell, who I think is on the floor here, was so helpful to me
during my time as Personnel Subcommittee chairman.
My personal staff--Frank Finelli, Pam Sellars, Bruce Landis, Sharon
Soderstrom, and others--has been so helpful. I couldn't do it without
their help.
And in closing, I wish to state that this defense bill has my full
support, and I strongly encourage all members to support it.

Privilege of the Floor

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, in that regard, I ask unanimous consent
Bruce Landis, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges
throughout the consideration of this bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Chair recognizes the Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I wish to commend the able Senator from
Indiana. First, he has delivered a magnificent address on the
importance of the Armed Services Committee work and defense in general.
Next, I want to commend him for the long, faithful service he has
rendered to this committee. I don't know of any member of the committee
that has worked harder and has stood stronger for defense and has been
more knowledgeable in accomplishing what we have been able to do than
the able Senator from Indiana. He is truly an expert on armed services
matters. I wish him well in all that he does in the future.
I regret that he has seen fit not to run again. We will miss him
here. A vacuum will be created. It will be hard to fill. He is such a
fine man, such a knowledgeable man, and such a dedicated man. I want
him to know that our country appreciates what he has done.
I yield the floor.

Privilege of the Floor

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent floor privileges
be granted to John Jennings, a fellow in my office, during the pendency
of this defense bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Chair recognizes the Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the fiscal
year 1999 defense authorization bill.
I do want to add my own voice to those who have offered thanks and
praise to the leadership of our committee, the distinguished chairman,
the Senator from South Carolina, the Senator from Michigan, who have
worked together as chairman and ranking member to do exactly what
Senator Coats said earlier, which is to build a strong, bipartisan--in
many ways, nonpartisan--effort to meet the defense national security
needs of our country.
We used to say, and sometimes we are still able to, that partisanship
stops at the Nation's borders, at the water's edge, when we enter
foreign policy, defense policy. It could also be said in good measure
that partisanship stops when we enter the rooms of the Senate Armed
Services Committee. I thank the leadership of this committee for making
that possible.
I want to pay particular tribute to Senator Thurmond, who is an
American institution, a figure that looms large in our history, who, as
we all know from personal service with him, manages to do what they
used to say only about wine, which is that he gets better as he adds
years. He is not only informed and experienced and committed; the truth
is, he is a great patriot. In so many ways that will never be visible,
his leadership has strengthened the security of the United States of
America in the world. It has been a great honor to get to know him at
this stage of his career, to work with him, particularly on the Armed
Services Committee, to thank him on this historic occasion as he
manages the last of these armed services bills through the Senate. The
nation is in his debt, deep debt. I think all of us who have served
with him are very proud that we have.

This is a person who, in the hurly-burly and sometimes mean-spirited
world of politics, never seems to have anything but a positive word to
say--certainly, toward his colleagues. In addition to all of the
substance that I have talked about, that notion of spirit is one that I
deeply appreciate.
Mr. President, while we are talking about members of the committee, I
do want to thank Senator Coats, the Senator from Indiana, for the
remarkable statement he has just made--eloquent, thoughtful, informed.
He has made a tremendous contribution on this committee. It has been a
real pleasure to work with him on a host of issues. In our case, it
almost seems that I don't have to say ``across party lines,'' because
we never thought about that; we were focused on common interests.
We got interested in this business of the military transformation
when we were both invited, on the same day, to a day-long seminar that
a think tank in town was holding on national security. We spoke at
different times during the day. We had not talked to each other about
the fact that we were on the same program, and we both essentially gave
the same speech about the challenges facing our military--that in a
world where we have faced a remarkable range of challenges, post-cold
war revolution, technology, and fiscal resources constraint we had to
begin to think about how to stay with it and produce the most cost-
effective defense we could. From that coincidence, we began to work
together on some of the elements of this authorization bill that
Senator Coats has spoken of and which I will get back to in a moment. I
wanted to thank him, while he was on the floor, for his tremendous
contributions, and in a personal way, thank him for the partnership
that we have had, which has also become a friendship. I hate to see him
leave; I am going to miss him, and the Senate will miss him. I know
that wherever he is, by his nature, he will be involved in public
service. I wish him Godspeed in that work.
Mr. President, I rise to support the bill before us because I believe
it is a very responsible bill. It is a bill that adequately provides
for our Armed Forces, which is our constitutional responsibility, fully
in accord with our duty of raising Armed Forces to protect our Nation.
After all, it is one of the primary responsibilities that motivates
people to form governments, and I think this bill continues to carry
out that responsibility, uphold that duty in a way that is measured and
as best we could do under the circumstances. It has never been easy to
make the choices that are necessary to make when one deals with
national security. I would say, having been honored to be part of this
process on the committee, that it has been even harder than normal this
time, because we have been working with very severe fiscal constraints.
Senator Coats made the important point--one that I think is little
appreciated here in Congress and, more broadly, around the country--
that as we have worked very hard to bring our Federal Government books
into balance, the real contributor to that balance in reduced spending
has been the defense side of the budget. That is the fact. Sometimes
people look at the amount of money we are authorizing and appropriating
for national security and say, ``You folks don't understand that the
cold war is over.'' Believe me, we understand, and the programs have
been constricted, have been in some ways squeezed, and even strangled
occasionally to live within the constraints, to give what we have been
asked to give to help in this great effort that is now successfully
achieved--to balance our budget.

Lets talk specifically. By my reckoning, this is the 14th straight
year in which our defense authorization and the spending to follow has
declined in real dollars. We are spending a smaller percentage of our
gross domestic product on defense today than at any time since prior to
the beginning of the Second World War. I know the cold war is over, but
the reality is that the world not only remains an unsettled and
dangerous place--as we have seen in the last few days with the nuclear
explosions in India--but that our military, in many ways, is operating
at a more

[[Page S4861]]

intense and faster up-tempo than it did during the cold war. And the
limitation on funding that we have imposed on ourselves has made it
difficult to do all that we need to do, has made it difficult to
provide for our personnel as we want to provide for them, and has put
us in a position to push them at a very intense level, leading some to
leave.
As is well known, Mr. President, the Air Force particularly is seeing
a significant departure of pilots. They have invested a lot of money in
training, pushing them at a very hard pace, and more and more of them
are just reaching the conclusion that, well, I love my country, I love
to serve, I have been trained to do this, I love being a pilot for the
U.S. military, but my family can only take so much; it is time to leave
and get a much higher-paying job in commercial airlines and have more
time with my family.
So this steady constriction of our spending on the military has had
an affect on us. This budget is 1.1 percent below the rate of
inflation. The budget that we put before you, the authorization bill,
S. 2057, is 1.1 percent below the rate of inflation. That means more
pressure to get more out of what is being provided. It is having an
affect.
Let me describe one area I am particularly interested in, because I
have had the privilege of serving as the ranking Democrat on the
Subcommittee of Armed Services on Acquisition and Technology. It is a
pleasure to serve with the Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Santorum, who
has done a superb job as chairman of the subcommittee. There are no
partisan differences here. We both agree that there is a dangerous
trend in our investment in science and technology. It has often been
said, but it bears repeating, that we are some distance from the great
victory we achieved in Desert Storm and the Gulf war. The remarkable
technologically and sophisticated weapons system that so dominated the
enemy in that war didn't just spring out of nowhere a year or two
before the war; they are the result of investments in science and
technology that occurred in the 1970s, which came to maturation in the
1980s, which produced the systems and the equipment that we used so
successfully in the early 1990s in Operation Desert Storm.
The Department of Defense's science and technology budget has three
basic elements: basic research, applied research, and advanced
technology development. The total science and technology budget,
comprised of these components just mentioned, has declined from $9.5
billion in fiscal year 1993 to $7.7 billion last year, and to somewhat
over $7.1 billion this year. These are the investments we are making in
the brilliant ideas that lead to the remarkable weapons systems that we
are going to need in the future to defend ourselves.
No business would do this. Today, in fact, private business,
understanding how important innovation and knowledge are, are investing
more and more. The best businesses constantly reinvest in basic
research technology and creative development. This is an alarming
trend, and I point it out on the floor here this morning with the hope
that we will see it, come to understand, and turn it around. I am
encouraged to believe that my colleague from New Mexico, Senator
Bingaman, will, at some point, be offering an amendment to this
bill, if not a freestanding bill, which would set some higher standards
and goals for increasing our support of the science and technology
aspect of the defense budget.

Incidentally, Mr. President, there is a bright story to be told here.
The investments we make in defense technologies have produced enormous
benefits for civilian and commercial technology, and for our world, our
economy. Most people, if you ask them what the most exciting
technological development of recent years is, would say personal
computers, the Internet--the unprecedented ability we have to
communicate with each other and the people around the world to gain
knowledge rapidly.
The Internet is the result of investments that the Defense
Department--DARPA, the research agency--made years ago for its own
original military uses. Then it spun off and become the Internet. You
could mention one after another of the remarkable developments that
make our lives more exciting and make it easier to be educated but in
effect make us safer but healthier. They came from science and
technology budgets of the DOD. We cut that. We are again down from $9.5
billion in 1993 to almost $7.2 billion in 1999, the next fiscal year.
That is a problem. We are all going to pay for it.
Mr. President, overall when we look at the various factors that
create the environment for security and international security, when we
look at the effect that these technological changes are having in
creating what the experts call a revolution in military affairs, we can
do things we could never do before. Commanders are able to see the
entire battlefield before them in real time, not only on the
battlefield. We have the ability now to send a picture of real time
back to somebody at a base, or even at the Pentagon thousands of miles
away from the battlefield, to see what is happening and sight the
enemy. We have the ability to strike an enemy from standoff positions,
exposing our own personnel to no danger, with remarkable accuracy. And
it is changing constantly.
So we have the revolution in military affairs. We have the global
changes that are occurring: The end of the cold war; breakouts in some
places of nationalistic and ethnic rivalries; and the spread of
technology so that nations that are less wealthy than we are can focus
their energy into, unfortunately, lower priced means of not only
defense but offense--weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological,
and nuclear; the means to deliver those weapons with the unprecedented
ability from standoff positions and with great accuracy.
Ballistic missiles: I voted yesterday for cloture on the measure
introduced by the Senator from Mississippi, Senator Cochran, and the
Senator from Hawaii, Senator Inouye, on the policy of creating a
national missile defense and stating that clearly here in the Senate. I
didn't agree with every provision of the bill. To me, it is an urgent
national problem that deserved our debate. When we got to it, I was
going to prepare some amendments. I hope eventually we do get to it and
we can have an agreement across not only the aisles here but between
the Congress and the administration to state clearly that the
development of a national missile defense is a national priority and
here is the way we ought to go at it.
Incidentally, when we go at it, we ought to begin to negotiate it
with our friends in Russia about how it affects the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, not to do it by way of surprise or antagonism. But the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was negotiated and signed more than a
quarter of a century ago. The world is a very different place. In many
ways, the strategic interests of Russia and the United States are
comparable certainly on this ground: Common concerns about being
affected by the spread of technology and ballistic missiles delivering
weapons of mass destruction.

So put that together--revolution of military affairs, global
changes--and add to that the fiscal restraints that I have described,
and you have a tough situation, one that falls on us here in Congress
and on those who serve our Nation in uniform and as civilian leaders in
the Pentagon, to not accept the status quo, to stick with it.
Everything is changing. You can't succeed and stay static, stay the way
you have been doing. You have to keep moving. You have to keep looking
for better ways for doing what you are doing. You have to keep looking
for efficiencies and finding ways to save money so you can use that
money to invest in other areas that help you with your future defense.
There is a great company headquartered in the State of Connecticut.
Awhile back, I was reading in one of our newspapers that they were
about to achieve record profits in a quarter, that they were going to
go well over a couple of billion dollars on an annual basis, I believe,
in profits. What is the story? The CEO of the company is calling in all
of the division heads and pushing them for how they are going to find
new efficiencies in the company--What are the market opportunities of
the future? What are their competitors going to be doing?--knowing
that, as great as things are now, unless they keep asking those
questions, they are not going to stay on top 5 years from now or 10
years from now.

[[Page S4862]]

That is exactly the way I think we have to approach our national
security. We are the strongest nation in the world; unrivaled. Yet the
world is changing. We have to keep focusing on those changes.
General Shalikashvili a while ago, when he was Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, informed us and warned us about what we call--as
Senator Coats mentioned today--``asymmetric warfare.'' Yes, we are the
superpower, but a much lesser power, much less wealthy, less
technically developed, smaller military can focus its investment of
funds into an area where they see some vulnerability in us, asymmetric,
and strike at that vulnerability--perhaps our capacity to forward
deploy our troops, perhaps using weapons of mass destruction, chemical
warfare; or, noting how dependent we are now on space-based assets for
navigation, for surveillance, targeting, for communications, perhaps to
try to develop systems that would focus on that dependence and try to
incapacitate some of those systems, hurting us in a conflict.
So we have to look at that wide range of threats and protecting our
assets in space, developing our ability to defend against weapons of
mass destruction delivered by ballistic missiles.
That is why we have to continue to find within a budget that is going
to be constrained--I don't see in the near future, certainly barring
the kind of international crisis that none of us wants, hope and pray
never occurs, a great public support, a support here in Congress, for
the kinds of increases in our military spending that we truly need.
So we are going to have to squeeze more out of the rock. That means
tough questions. It means, in my opinion, that we are going to have to
go back and do another look at our infrastructure. It is controversial;
I understand. But all of the statistics tell us that we have more
infrastructure than we need, that we have reduced our personnel and
other expenditures much more than we have reduced the spending we are
doing on our bases. We have to come back to that and acknowledge that
maybe we have to find a better way to do it, but somehow we have to do
it because we need that money. As I say, we have to continue the work
we have done on acquisition reform as a way to find more funds for
these programs that we need to support.
It is in this context that I come to two amendments that are in this
bill, in which I think we have, as a committee and hopefully now as a
full Senate, stepped up to our responsibility to oversee the
transformation of our military to the future course that will not only
protect our security better in the 21st century but will do it in a
more cost-effective fashion.
There are two provisions in this bill that I think are very important
for our execution of this oversight responsibility. I want to speak
about them. The first supports the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, our current chairman, General Shelton--doing a superb job--in
his decision to establish a joint experimentation process. The second
requires on a regular basis a Quadrennial Defense Review and a National
Defense Panel assessment be done every 4 years--the experience we have
been through in the last couple of years not to be a one-time
experience but it continue on.
Let me talk about the first. And, again, I see this not only as a
move to jointness, not only as a way to better take advantage of the
revolution of military affairs, but to be more efficient. We have
developed a force service. They are remarkable centers of excellence
and purpose, patriotism, but no one would want to diminish the unique
contributions each one of them makes; and yet there are redundancies
and we have to find ways while preserving the uniqueness of each
service--and the special edge that some of that competition among them
brings--to also bring them together more in joint requirements, joint
experimentation because our premise is--and the experts tell us this,
the National Defense Panel told us this--that more and more war
fighting of the future will be joint war fighting.
During the 1980s it became clear that we needed to change the way our
military was organized, with more joint planning, more joint conduct of
military operations. The Congress of the United States in that period
of time stepped up to the responsibility when, frankly, the Pentagon
would not and responded with the Goldwater-Nichols act, which I would
say that most everybody today in Congress and outside says was right
and necessary.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the unprecedented explosion of
technological advances that could fundamentally redefine military
threats and military capabilities in the future, once again, have
generated the need this bill responds to to examine the suitability of
our defense policies, our strategy, and our force structure to meet
future American defense requirements. Several assessments have been
done but the rapid pace of change, I think, outstripped the ability of
these assessments to give us durable and continuing relevant answers.
General Shalikashvili, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, reacted to this changing environment and published Joint Vision
2010 in May of 1996 as a basis for the transformation of our military
capabilities. I think this was a brilliant and far-sighted document
which embraced the improved intelligence and command and control
available in the information age, and also developed the operational
concepts of dominant maneuver, precision engagement, full-dimensional
protection, and focused logistics to achieve the objective of the
widest spectrum, full spectrum dominance in war fighting--a very
important step forward.
We in Congress have also been concerned about the shortcomings in
defense policies and programs derived from some of the earlier
assessments. In 1996, we passed the Military Force Structure Review
Act. That act required the Secretary of Defense to complete in 1997 a
Quadrennial Defense Review of our programs to include a comprehensive
examination of our defense strategy, force structure, force
modernization plans, infrastructure, and other elements of the defense
program and policies with a view toward determining and expressing the
defense strategy of the United States and establishing a revised
defense program through the year 2005.

That Military Force Structure Review Act of 1996 also established a
National Defense Panel, a team B, a group of outside experts, many of
them with active military experience, to assess the Quadrennial Defense
Review and to conduct their own independent, nonpartisan review of the
strategy force structure and funding required to meet anticipated
threats to our security through the year 2010 and beyond--an attempt to
force the process to do what our colleagues in the private sector do,
try to look out beyond the horizon, make some reasoned and informed
judgments as best we could about what threats we face, what competition
we face, and then come back and decide where should we be investing,
how should we be restructuring and reorganizing to be in the best
possible position to meet those threats of the future.
I appreciate the bipartisan, unanimous support that was given to that
Military Force Structure Review Act of 1996, and I believe it resulted
in two reports that have had a very important effect on our military
and how we view our future needs.
The QDR, as it is called, the Quadrenniel Defense Review, completed
by the Secretary in May 1997, defined the defense strategy in terms of
shape, respond and prepare now--three cardinal principles. The QDR
placed greater emphasis on the need to prepare now for an uncertain
future by exploiting the revolution in technology and transforming our
forces toward Joint Vision 2010. It concluded that our future force
will be different in character than our current force.
Then came the National Defense Panel. Its report, published in
December of 1997, concluded that ``the Department of Defense should
accord the highest priority to executing a transformation strategy for
the U.S. military starting now.''
Let me just repeat those words. A transformation strategy, broad,
bold transformation strategy to the next era of threat and opportunity,
offense and defense, and the final words ``starting now.'' It is
timely. It is important. It recommended the establishment of a joint
forces command with responsibility as the joint force integrator and

[[Page S4863]]

provider, a center of activity to meld the services together in some
joint experimentation, investments, requirements, training.
Also, the NDP recommended that this joint forces command have the
responsibility and budget for driving the transformation process of
U.S. forces, including the conduct of joint experimentation. If we are
not experimenting together, how are we going to really be prepared for
the joint war fighting that the experts tell us will dominate the
future?
Admiral Owens, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said to us on many occasions to look around and note that we don't have
joint bases, and that is something to think about. That may be one.
Both of these assessments, the QDR and the NDP, provide Congress with
a compelling argument that the future security environment and the
military challenges we will face will be fundamentally different from
today's. They also reinforce the fundamental principle, the
underpinning of the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986,
the so-called Goldwater-Nichols act, and that fundamental principle was
that warfare in all its varieties will be joint warfare requiring the
execution of joint operational concepts.
As a result of these two assessments, the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Shelton, and the Senate Armed Services
Committee certainly have concluded that a process of joint
experimentation is required to integrate advances in technology with
changes in the organizational structure of the Armed Forces and the
development of joint operational concepts which will be effective
against the wide range of anticipated threats, and will not just be
effective, but will be cost effective because they will achieve
efficiencies of scale; they will eliminate redundancies; they will pool
resources for maximum results.
It is necessary to identify and assess independent areas of joint
warfare which will be key to transforming the conduct of future U.S.
military operations. To do this, U.S. Armed Forces must innovatively
investigate and test technologies, forces and joint operational
concepts in simulation, war game and virtual settings, as well as in
field environments under realistic conditions against the full range of
future challenges. The Department of Defense, I am pleased to note, is
committed to conducting aggressive experimentation as a key component
of its transformation strategy. Service experimentation and the
resultant competition of ideas is vital in this pursuit. To complement
the ongoing service experimentation, it is essential that an energetic
and innovative organization be established within the military and
empowered to design and conduct this process of joint experimentation
to develop and validate new joint warfighting concepts aimed at
transforming the Armed Forces of the United States to meet the
anticipated threats of the 21st century.
Mr. President, in this regard I refer my colleagues to title XII of
this defense authorization bill, S. 2057, which sets this out in the
form of a sense of the Senate, in a quite detailed form and, in my
opinion, quite progressively, as a result of very constructive
discussion among the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of
Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I think we have
a blueprint here which expresses the transformation that our military
is now undergoing, led by the Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and sets down a mark that is an expression of the
policy desires of the Congress in this regard, that we not only
appreciate that the military move in this direction; dispatching our
constitutional responsibility, we urge them to do just that. And we
require, here, a series of reports to tell us how they are doing. The
joint experimentation provision in the bill, title XII, is our
statement of support to General Shelton, as he designs and executes his
plans for joint experimentation, to select a command, the Atlantic
Command, presumably, to carry out this important responsibility.
Title XII does not dictate either the method that the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs should choose nor the outcomes that he should arrive at.
It is a sense of the Congress. It helps establish a framework for us to
explore the options for our future security in the hard light of tests
on the ground, the only place where these arguments can begin to be
settled objectively and where these theories can be tested
realistically. And this provision in title XII offers a mechanism for
us to get a report about the process, about the results, that is
detailed enough for us to provide the kind of oversight we should and
must provide if we are going to make the right decisions about our
national security in the coming years.
Finally, the provision that requires a quadrennial defense review and
national defense plan to be conducted every 4 years is equally
important. The assessments that were conducted and the debate they have
engendered within the Congress, within the inner community of active
defense thinkers, and hopefully increasingly within the country, has
been very useful. But the valid criticism by some, of both of these
studies, and the conflicting ideas that they have raised make it
obvious that a one-time assessment is not going to provide us all the
answers we need.
We also know that the world is not going to stop changing, and just
as that CEO of that large private company headquartered in Connecticut
that I described who, at the moment of greatest historic success, was
pressing his managers to review where they were, look forward, decide
what they had to do so they would stay on top, 5, 10, 15, 20 years from
now--the repetition of these two reports, the QDR and the Inside the
Pentagon Review, and the NDP, a nonpartisan, independent review, offer
that same hope of constant reevaluation, sometimes provocation, and
hopefully, some good, solid ideas. That kind of formal review of our
national security posture every 4 years will permit the needed look at
where we have been and what course corrections we need to make without
the disruption of too frequent interference, with the certainty that we
will not slide into destructive or unproductive or irrelevant paths
because we simply haven't stopped to look at what we are doing and
where it is taking us.
Mr. President, I thank the Chair, I thank my colleagues. Bottom line,
this is a balanced bill, the best I think this committee could offer
the Senate, Congress, and the Nation, to protect our national security
in a time of restraint on resources that is greater than I think is
really in our national interest. But we have done the best we could.
Again, I thank the leadership of the committee for the purposive,
cooperative and informed way they have led us through the exercise that
has produced this bill.
I yield the floor.
If there is no one else on the floor seeking recognition, I suggest
the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Roberts). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The distinguished Senator from South Carolina is recognized.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I thank the able Senator from
Connecticut for the kind remarks he made about me. I also wish to thank
him for the great service he renders as a member of the Armed Services
Committee. He is one of the most valuable members of our committee.
I also thank him for the great service he renders this Nation. He has
taken sound positions and he has followed a course of action that our
Nation would be well to follow. I appreciate all he does for his
country and want him to know his colleagues hold him in high esteem.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator is recognized.

[[Page S4864]]

Amendment No. 2387

(Purpose: Relating to commercial activities in the United States of the
People's Liberation Army and other Communist Chinese military
companies)

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I have an amendment No. 2387 which I
call up at this time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson), for himself and
Mr. Abraham, proposes an amendment numbered 2387.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

Add at the end the following new title:
TITLE ____--COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES OF PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY

SEC. ____. FINDINGS.

Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The People's Liberation Army is the principal
instrument of repression within the People's Republic of
China, responsible for occupying Tibet since 1950, massacring
hundreds of students and demonstrators for democracy in
Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, and running the Laogai
(``reform through labor'') slave labor camps.
(2) The People's Liberation Army is engaged in a massive
military buildup, which has involved a doubling since 1992 of
announced official figures for military spending by the
People's Republic of China.
(3) The People's Liberation Army is engaging in a major
ballistic missile modernization program which could undermine
peace and stability in East Asia, including 2 new
intercontinental missile programs, 1 submarine-launched
missile program, a new class of compact but long-range cruise
missiles, and an upgrading of medium- and short-range
ballistic missiles.
(4) The People's Liberation Army is working to coproduce
the SU-27 fighter with Russia, and is in the process of
purchasing several substantial weapons systems from Russia,
including the 633 model of the Kilo-class submarine and the
SS-N-22 Sunburn missile system specifically designed to
incapacitate United States aircraft carriers and Aegis
cruisers.
(5) The People's Liberation Army has carried out acts of
aggression in the South China Sea, including the February
1995 seizure of the Mischief Reef in the Spratley Islands,
which is claimed by the Philippines.
(6) In July 1995 and in March 1996, the People's Liberation
Army conducted missile tests to intimidate Taiwan when Taiwan
held historic free elections, and those tests effectively
blockaded Taiwan's 2 principal ports of Keelung and
Kaohsiung.
(7) The People's Liberation Army has contributed to the
proliferation of technologies relevant to the refinement of
weapons-grade nuclear material, including transferring ring
magnets to Pakistan.
(8) The People's Liberation Army and associated defense
companies have provided ballistic missile components, cruise
missiles, and chemical weapons ingredients to Iran, a country
that the executive branch has repeatedly reported to Congress
is the greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world.
(9) In May 1996, United States authorities caught the
People's Liberation Army enterprise Poly Technologies and the
civilian defense industrial company Norinco attempting to
smuggle 2,000 AK-47s into Oakland, California, and offering
to sell urban gangs shoulder-held missile launchers capable
of ``taking out a 747'' (which the affidavit of the United
States Customs Service of May 21, 1996, indicated that the
representative of Poly Technologies and Norinco claimed), and
Communist Chinese authorities punished only 4 low-level arms
merchants by sentencing them on May 17, 1997, to brief prison
terms.
(10) The People's Liberation Army contributes to the
People's Republic of China's failure to meet the standards of
the 1995 Memorandum of Understanding with the United States
on intellectual property rights by running factories which
pirate videos, compact discs, and computer software that are
products of the United States.
(11) The People's Liberation Army contributes to the
People's Republic of China's failing to meet the standards of
the February 1997 Memorandum of Understanding with the United
States on textiles by operating enterprises engaged in the
transshipment of textile products to the United States
through third countries.
(12) The estimated $2,000,0000,000 to $3,000,000,000 in
annual earnings of People's Liberation Army enterprises
subsidize the expansion and activities of the People's
Liberation Army described in this subsection.
(13) The commercial activities of the People's Liberation
Army are frequently conducted on noncommercial terms, or for
noncommercial purposes such as military or foreign policy
considerations.

SEC. ____. APPLICATION OF AUTHORITIES UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL
EMERGENCY ECONOMIC POWERS ACT TO CHINESE
MILITARY COMPANIES.

(a) Determination of Communist Chinese Military
Companies.--
(1) In general.--Subject to paragraphs (2) and (3), not
later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this
Act, the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the
Attorney General, the Director of Central Intelligence, and
the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, shall
compile a list of persons who are Communist Chinese military
companies and who are operating directly or indirectly in the
United States or any of its territories and possessions, and
shall publish the list of such persons in the Federal
Register. On an ongoing basis, the Secretary of Defense, in
consultation with the Attorney General, the Director of
Central Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, shall make additions or deletions to the
list based on the latest information available.
(2) Communist chinese military company.--For purposes of
making the determination required by paragraph (1), the term
``Communist Chinese military company''--
(A) means a person that is--
(i) engaged in providing commercial services,
manufacturing, producing, or exporting, and
(ii) owned or controlled by the People's Liberation Army,
and
(B) includes, but is not limited to, any person identified
in the United States Defense Intelligence Agency publication
numbered VP-1920-271-90, dated September 1990, or PC-1921-57-
95, dated October 1995, and any update of such reports for
the purposes of this title.
(b) Presidential Authority.--
(1) Authority.--The President may exercise the authorities
set forth in section 203(a) of the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1702(a)) with respect to any
commercial activity in the United States by a Communist
Chinese military company (except with respect to authorities
relating to importation), without regard to section 202 of
that Act.
(2) Penalties.--The penalties set forth in section 206 of
the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C.
1705) shall apply to violations of any license, order, or
regulation issued under paragraph (1).

SEC. ____. DEFINITION.

For purposes of this title, the term ``People's Liberation
Army'' means the land, naval, and air military services, the
police, and the intelligence services of the Communist
Government of the People's Republic of China, and any member
of any such service or of such police.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my good
friend and colleague, Senator Abraham of Michigan, be added as an
original cosponsor of the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, today's debate is about the security
of the United States. The underlying question in the debate today on
the Defense Department authorization bill concerns the safety and
security of the citizens of the United States, and that is why I am
offering an amendment that will give the President increased powers to
confront America's greatest threat, or certainly America's greatest
external threat, and that is the People's Liberation Army of the
People's Republic of China.
My amendment mirrors exactly the language that passed overwhelmingly
on the floor of the House of Representatives last November. This
language, in bill form, in the House passed by a vote of 405 to 10.
The amendment would do two things: First, it would require the
Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Attorney General, the
Director of the Central Intelligence and the Director of the FBI, to
maintain a current list of Chinese military firms operating directly or
indirectly in the United States. This list, consisting strictly of PLA-
owned companies, would be updated regularly in the Federal Register.
Secondly, the amendment would give the President enhanced authority
under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to take action
against Chinese military-owned firms if circumstances warrant,
including the President would have the authority to freeze assets or
otherwise regulate these firms' activities. Thus, if a PLA-owned firm
is found to be shipping missile-guidance components to a rogue state
like Iran, the President would have the authority to take immediate
action against a United States subsidiary of that firm which might, for
example, be selling sporting goods in the United States.
I should note that this amendment would not require the President to
take any action whatsoever. It would simply enhance his ability to do
so should he believe that the circumstances warrant that action.
Let me explain the reasoning behind this amendment and why it is so
critical, I believe, that the Senate adopt this amendment.

[[Page S4865]]

Mr. President, last week I came to this floor to discuss the growing
threat that the People's Republic of China poses to the citizens of the
United States. I discussed the recent CIA report covered in the
Washington Times on May 4, 1998, under the headline, ``China Targets
Nukes At U.S.'' This article and this CIA report noted that 13 of
China's 18 long-range strategic missiles, with ranges exceeding 8,000
miles, have single nuclear warheads aimed at the United States of
America.
These missiles, which are under the control of the PLA, with PLA
officers manning their nuclear buttons, are in addition to China's 25
CSS-3 missiles, with ranges of more than 3,400 miles; its 18 CSS-4
missiles, with ranges exceeding 8,000 miles; and its planned DF-31,
with a range exceeding 7,000 miles.
Until last year, China lacked the military intelligence necessary to
manufacturer boosters that could reliably strike at such long
distances.
Unfortunately, the Pentagon has reported that two U.S. companies--
Loral Space and Communications and Hughes Electronics--illegally gave
China space expertise during cooperation on a commercial satellite
launch which could be used to develop an accurate launch and guidance
system for ICBMs. This issue is still under investigation. But while it
was still under investigation, in February, Loral launched another
satellite on a Chinese rocket and provided the Chinese with the same
expertise that is at issue in the criminal case.
The chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Space and
Technology has received word from an unnamed official at Motorola that
they, too, have been involved in ``upgrading'' China's missile
capability. Interestingly, this executive claims that the work is being
done under a waiver from this administration, thus circumventing all
bans and restrictions on such technology transfers.
The People's Liberation Army is engaged in a massive military buildup
which has involved a doubling since 1992 of announced official figures
for military spending by the PRC. We do not know how much may be spent,
how much investment there may be in their military establishment that
is not released for official consumption, but the official public
figures indicate a doubling of that expenditure since 1992.
The PLA is working to coproduce the SU-27 fighter with Russia and is
in the process of purchasing several substantial weapons systems from
Russia, including the 633 model of the Kilo-class submarine and the SS-
N-22 Sunburn missile system specifically designed to incapacitate U.S.
aircraft carriers and Aegis cruisers.
So the question arises, Mr. President, how does the People's
Liberation Army fund the ongoing arms race? By selling its technology
to rogue states is one means by which they do it, selling arms, or at
least attempting to sell arms, to U.S. gangs in our inner cities and
selling CDs, socks, consumer electronics, and scores of other
commercial items to U.S. consumers.
For example, the People's Liberation Army has contributed to the
proliferation of technologies relevant to the refinement of weapons-
grade nuclear material, including transferring ring magnets to
Pakistan. Additionally, the PLA and its associated defense companies
have provided ballistic missile components, cruise missiles, chemical
weapons ingredients, to Iran, a country that the executive branch has
repeatedly reported to this Congress is the greatest sponsor of
terrorism in the world today.
I point to this chart. The source is the Office of Naval
Intelligence, March of 1997. They reported:

Discoveries after the Gulf War clearly indicate that Iraq
maintained an aggressive (W)eapons of (M)ass (D)estruction
procurement program.

And then they point out:

A similar situation exists today in Iran with a steady flow
of materials and technologies from China to Iran. This
exchange is one of the most active weapons of mass
destruction programs in the Third World, and is taking place
in a region of great strategic interest to the United States.

So we have, I think, very clear, overwhelming evidence that China
continues to export technology, nuclear technology as well, and in so
doing places at risk the national security of the United States.
They also are funding the arms buildup in China, not only by selling
weapons to rogue states like Iraq and Iran, but also there is evidence
that they are trying to actually sell weapons produced in the People's
Republic of China to gangs in the United States.
In May 1996, the U.S. authorities caught the People's Liberation Army
enterprise entitled Poly Technologies--a PLA-owned and operated
enterprise--they were caught by U.S. authorities, and the civilian
defense industrial company, Norinco, that is also involved, the U.S.
authorities caught these two companies attempting to smuggle 2,000 AK-
47s into Oakland, CA, and offering to sell urban gangs shoulder-held
missile launchers capable of taking out a 747.
Communist authorities, upon capture of these individuals, punished
only four of them--four low-level arms merchants--and they did so,
sentencing them May 17, 1997, to brief prison terms.
I would suggest and I suspect that the prison terms given to these
merchants of arms to the young people of this country were far less
than the prison terms that have been exacted upon those prisoners of
conscience, those who dared to speak up against the oppressive regime
that controls the largest nation in the world. Eight years was given to
Wang Dan for his support of the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square
almost 9 years ago in addition to the 12 years that he was recently
serving for supporting democracy in China.
It is estimated that the PLA earns $2 billion to $4 billion a year in
earnings through the many enterprises that it operates that deal in
nonmilitary commodities and that these enterprises profit handsomely
from their activities in the United States. A report released earlier
this year indicated that vast quantities of goods, as varied as toys,
skis, garlic, iron weight sets, men's pants, car radiators, glassware,
swimming suits, and many more such commercial domestic items are being
sold to U.S. consumers by PLA-owned firms.
This chart indicates--and I will quote from this chart regarding the
PLA-affiliated companies and their operation in the United States. This
comes from the Institutional Investor, July of 1996: ``And we find that
military-affiliated companies can be found in virtually every part of
the Chinese economy with the most rapid expansion occurring in the
lucrative service industries. Though the PLA enterprises are scattered
throughout the economy, they have carved out niches in the eight areas
to the right''--including transportation, vehicle production,
pharmaceuticals, hotels, real estate development, garment production,
mining and communications.
Some of these products are being exported--which becomes a rich
source of revenue for the People's Liberation Army. Even those products
and those services that are sold domestically to the Chinese people
become an unaccounted for subsidy, if you will, for the arms race, in
the development of the PLA military strength and might. So I believe
this should be of great concern to us as we continue to see the PLA
fund the arms race.
I point out that the Chinese defense industrial trade organizations
have a broad, broad interrelationship with the industries in China.
This chart shows the web of PLA-owned enterprises that operate in the
United States and around the world.
All of the companies on the left, in the peach color, are companies
that have been documented by our Defense Intelligence Agency as being
directly owned by the People's Liberation Army. The ones to the other
side, in the yellow, are their defense industrial base. Some of them
have indirect connections also, but they are not directly owned by the
People's Liberation Army.
This next chart I believe shows the chain of command for companies
like China Poly Group, China Carrie Corp., and other well-known Chinese
companies and their interrelationship with the government and the PLA
and the Communist Party. In fact, the Communist Party Central Military
Commission is right at the top of the chain of command--going down to
these various companies, including the China Poly Group, and the 999
Enterprise Group, and so forth. I think the American people would be
shocked to see the companies listed on this chart. This, I

[[Page S4866]]

might add, is a very incomplete list, which is why I emphasize again
the need for this amendment which would require a listing to be
published of all PLA-owned enterprises that are buying and selling and
doing business in the United States.

It is well documented that the PLA violates international
intellectual property rights by running factories which pirate videos,
compact discs, and computer software that are products of the United
States. This is the main reason the People's Republic of China failed
to meet the standards of the 1995 memorandum of understanding with the
United States on the protection of intellectual property rights. During
my trip to China in January, I saw firsthand the evidence of the
pirating of videos and CDs and the selling of those pirated products on
the market, on the streets of Shanghai and Beijing.
In violation of a February 1997 agreement with the United States, the
People's Liberation Army continued to operate enterprises which engaged
in the transshipment of textile products through third countries, thus
thwarting tariffs and restrictions on illegally produced items from
China.
With all but five of China's long-range nuclear missiles pointed at
the citizens of the United States, it is obvious that the increasingly
aggressive People's Liberation Army views the United States as its most
serious adversary. My colleagues have said they would like China as an
ally. We would all like to have China as an ally. But let us not fool
ourselves. When our Central Intelligence Agency tells us their
missiles--13 of 18 of their long-range nuclear missiles--are pointed at
the citizens of the United States, it is clear they view us as an
adversary. It is a sad paradox that U.S. consumers, American consumers,
purchasers of products in retail stores across this country, are the
unwitting supporters of and funders of the military that has their hand
on the nuclear button that threatens cities in the United States.
Now, as we talk about the response of this amendment, of letting the
American people know what companies are owned directly and indirectly
by the military of the Chinese communist government, it seems to me to
be a very basic freedom-of-information kind of issue, the right-to-know
kind of issue.
We talk about the response of the President, having the enhanced
authority to deal with those PLA-owned companies that might be
subsidizing the military buildup in China. It is important for us to
remember the ongoing human rights violations that are occurring in
China. Not only are they increasing their threat internationally, but
within their own borders they continue to oppress their own people.
This is not some human rights watchdog group that I am going to cite.
It is our own State Department which each year issues a report from
various countries around the world on human rights conditions. The
latest State Department report on human rights in China shows that
China is still one of the major offenders of internationally recognized
human rights standards. This report notes that China is continuing to
engage in ``torture, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest and
detention, forced abortion and sterilization, crackdowns on independent
Catholic and Protestant bishops and believers, brutal oppression of
ethnic minorities and religions in Tibet and Xinjiang, and absolute
intolerance of free political speech or free press.''
To visit Shanghai, to visit Beijing, some of the largest cities in
the world, the most populous cities in the world, and to realize there
is not one free newspaper in those cities--in northwest Arkansas, in a
two-county area, population of 200,000, we have half a dozen competing
newspapers. These are free voices--free to criticize me, free to
criticize this U.S. Senate, free to criticize our President--and in the
largest cities in the world in China, not one voice of freedom, not one
voice to reflect the values of democracy.
So let us in this China debate, and as we look at amendments to the
Department of Defense authorization bill, remember the ongoing human
rights abuses that are taking place. Furthermore, that the current
policy that we have pursued has so dismally failed.

According to a recent report in the Washington Post entitled ``U.S.-
China Talks Make Little Progress on Summit Agenda,'' the United States
is getting very few concessions from China relating to the inspection
of the technology we share with them, concessions on limiting
proliferation of technology to third parties like Iran, or concessions
on human rights conditions, particularly in Tibet.
So our President is preparing to go to China next month, negotiations
going on. We would hope they would be positive in light of our so-
called policy of constructive engagement, yet we find our policy is one
of give and give and give. We are not seeing corresponding concessions
on the part of the Chinese Government. In fact, we are continuing to
see these horrible human rights abuses taking place.
We have provided key technology that puts our own country at risk. We
have set up a hotline that reaches from the White House to China. We
have begun assisting China on its efforts to gain membership in the
World Trade Organization. We dropped, to the consternation of many
Members of this body, we dropped our annual push for a resolution
condemning China's human rights record at the United Nations, something
this country has done year after year as part of our foreign policy. We
dropped that resolution so as not to offend the Chinese Government. We
continue to allow PLA-owned companies to operate unregulated in the
United States, and we continue to provide China most-favored-nation
status. In return, we have witnessed the release of four, in return for
all of these concessions that we have granted, we have seen the Chinese
Communist government release four prominent prisoners out of the
thousands upon thousands of political and religious dissidents being
held today in Chinese prisons.
So I say to my colleagues, the American people have a right to know
they are funding the People's Liberation Army. I believe the American
consumers ought to know whether the products they are buying--including
things like toys, sweaters and porcelain that they might purchase for
the upcoming holidays--are supporting the People's Liberation Army and
the kind of activities that I have identified today. The American
people have a right to know. It may not be possible for American
consumers to go into a Wal-Mart or Kmart or Target store and to
identify all of the Chinese-produced products and to decide voluntarily
they are not going to support that. But at least they ought to know
which of those companies are controlled, directly or indirectly, by a
military establishment in China that has targeted American cities with
its missiles.
This amendment will help to do just that. It is needed both to shed
light on the PLA's activities in the United States and to ensure that
the President has the latitude and has the authority he needs to take
appropriate actions when the evidence of wrongdoing arises. I hope my
colleagues will support this amendment.
Again, this amendment merely requires the Secretary of Defense to
document and list PLA-owned companies operating in the United States
and provides the President with the power, authority, and discretion to
take action against these companies, should circumstances so warrant.
It does not require the President to do anything. I believe it is a
commonsense amendment that, once again, passed by an overwhelming
margin in the U.S. House of Representatives. I ask for my colleagues'
support.
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. WARNER. Madam President, the Senator brings to the attention of
the Senate through this amendment a very important subject, one which
is currently before the Senate in a number of committees--Foreign
Relations Committee, Banking Committee, and in all probability the
Commerce Committee has an interest in it. I say to my colleague that
the Armed Services Committee, indeed, would have an interest, of
course, because it goes to the fundamental proposition of national
security.
But I have to say in total candor that this amendment would require
consideration by at least the three enumerated committees as well as
ours. What I am asking of my colleague, and I

[[Page S4867]]

want to ask a few questions about it, is that I hope the Senator would
be agreeable to laying this amendment aside so that the Senate would
proceed with other amendments, and within that period of time it would
be the pending amendment, within that period of time, we will get the
expression and the views of colleagues serving on those other
committees.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I thank the chairman for his consideration, and I
would not object to laying it aside so long as I will be assured there
will be a rollcall vote if I so request it.
Mr. WARNER. Madam President, he has requested and gotten his rollcall
vote.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Madam President, I only point out that I think it
would be very appropriate to consult with and visit with the
appropriate chairman. I remind my distinguished colleague that this is
the exact language that passed by a 405-10 vote in the House, and I
would regard that as pretty bipartisan and noncontroversial. That
language passed out of the House last November and has been referred to
the appropriate committees, where it has--if I might use the word--
``languished'' for several months without any action. So it is for that
reason I think it is imperative that the Senate have an opportunity to
express its will on something the House expressed its opinion on months
ago.
Mr. WARNER. I thank my colleague.
At this time, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this
amendment be laid aside but that it remain as the pending business on
this bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I see other colleagues here who may wish
to continue with opening statements on the bill.
Mr. LEVIN. I wonder if my friend from Virginia would yield to me so I
could ask the Senator from Arkansas a question?
Mr. WARNER. Yes, I yield the floor.
Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, on the matter that was set aside, I
wonder if the Senator could tell us whether or not there have been any
discussions between you and those committees that we have now asked
their reaction from relative to holding hearings on that amendment.
Could he give us a little background on that?
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I think there were 10 bills that passed out of the
House regarding China policy as a block, separate bills, but that was
last November. Two of those have passed, in various forms, in the
Senate. Six of those bills were referred to the Foreign Relations
Committee. The other two--the two I am now offering--one was referred
to Banking and the other to Finance. I have had ongoing discussions
with Senator Helms of the Foreign Relations Committee. It is my
understanding that they will address these bills this coming week.
Therefore, I defer taking any action upon those because of the
committee's anticipation of looking at these next week.
The ones in Banking and Finance I thought were important to move
ahead on. This was the most appropriate vehicle before us. I am not
aware that there were any plans for hearings. Since so much time had
elapsed since they were referred to the Senate, it would seem to be the
appropriate time to move them.
Mr. LEVIN. If I could ask the Senator an additional question. I am
not familiar with his amendment. Is this particular amendment--has this
been introduced as a bill in the Senate separately, or was it a House
bill that came over and was referred? And, if so, was it referred to
Banking or Foreign Relations?
Mr. HUTCHINSON. This particular bill was referred to Banking.
Mr. LEVIN. Has the Banking Committee indicated that they are likely
to hold a hearing and have a markup on this bill?
Mr. HUTCHINSON. They have not indicated to me their intent to hold
hearings or move on this bill.
Mr. LEVIN. Have there been discussions between you and the chairman?
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I have not talked to Senator D'Amato about the bill.
Mr. LEVIN. I thank my friend.
Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
Mr. THOMAS. Madam President, I rise to talk not so much about this
bill but the bills that have been talked about here that passed in the
House last year. Many of them were referred to the Foreign Relations
Committee, of which I happen to be chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia
and the Pacific Rim. These were not heard because the committee did not
choose to hear them. Now we find ourselves having a hearing this
morning on China. We find the President preparing to go to China.
So this bill, of course, as the Senator pointed out, was referred to
Banking. I am not familiar with that one. I am here to tell you that I
don't think this is the appropriate procedural place to deal with these
bills. There are committees that have jurisdiction over them. They have
been referred to those committees. They can be referred to those
committees, and, in my view, they should be referred to those
committees. So if we are going to extend the length of this debate by
having each of 10 bills discussed here and voted on, then I think we
need to prepare ourselves for a rather long time.
Furthermore, I think we talked at great length this morning about
China and about these kinds of issues. The point of the matter is that
nobody disagrees with some of the issues that are to be done here; the
disagreement is how they should be handled. To send the President off
to China with language of this kind doesn't seem to be a proper thing
to do. They were talking about it when Jiang Zemin came here last time.
So I am prepared to talk about these bills if that is what we are
going to do. But, procedurally, it doesn't seem to me that this is the
appropriate place to deal with the bills. We can go on for a very long
time if that is what is going to take place on this authorization bill.
I yield the floor.
Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment to the
National Defense Authorization bill offered by the Senator from
Arkansas to address what is clearly a national defense issue--the
conduct of Chinese companies, owned and operated by the People's
Liberation Army, in the United States. It is based on a provision in a
comprehensive bill I introduced last year, the China Policy Act.
I believe that this bill is not only an appropriate place to consider
this issue, it is the most appropriate, and is indeed an issue of
supreme national security interest. Furthermore, Mr. President, if I
thought the original bill that was passed by the House by a vote of
405-10 would actually be considered by the Banking Committee, it may be
appropriate to wait. But it has been over six months, Mr. President,
and no action has been taken. Given this is a national security issue,
we need to discuss this here and now.
Therefore, Mr. President, I wish to outline some of my specific
national security concerns regarding these People's Liberation Army
companies. First, we are all familiar with the well publicized examples
of Polytech and Norinco, two companies caught trying to smuggle fully
automatic AK-47 assault rifles, along with 4,000 clips of ammunition,
valued at over $4 million, to supply street gangs and drug runners in
the United States. During the course of this undercover sting
operation, U.S. agents were offered a slew of other heavy ordinance,
including shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
Now Mr. President, these two companies are effectively controlled by
the People's Liberation Army. In fact, the head of the Polytech parent
company, Poly Group, is Major General He Ping, the son-in-law of Deng
Xiao-ping. He heads Poly Group, a company that reports directly to the
Central Military Commission of the People's Liberation Army. At the
same time, Norinco is the parent company of 150 businesses, including
the largest motorcycle maker in China and one of the country's most
successful automakers.
As state-owned enterprises, PLA companies frequently operate on non-
commercial terms, conducting their affairs for such non-market reasons
as military espionage and prestige considerations. Critics have also
contended that the China Ocean Shipping Company, otherwise known as
COSCO, have offered transoceanic shipping at well below market rates
because of state subsidization and extremely low crew costs, in order
to penetrate markets and further develop a strategic lift capability.
Last, Mr. President, the profits from these companies will end up
financing

[[Page S4868]]

the Chinese military. Karl Schoenberger, writing in Fortune Magazine,
estimated that the profits from these PLA activities is conservatively
estimated at $2 to $3 billion. Based in part on this purchasing power
and the Chinese military establishment's considerable use of off-budget
financing, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency estimated that
Chinese military spending is nine times what it announced.
The question therefore becomes, Mr. President, do we want to know
which companies in the United States are financing Chinese military
expansion? Do we want to know which companies are financing the arm of
repression in the PRC that has been extensively detailed on this floor
over the past year? Do we want to give the American consumer the
opportunity to know whether the product they are buying will help
finance the oppression in Tibet? I believe that is our responsibility,
Mr. President, and that this amendment will provide that vital
information for our national security, by mandating that the Director
of Central Intelligence and the Director of the FBI compile a list of
these PLA companies operating in the United States.
Finally, Mr. President, the President of the United States needs the
additional authority to take decisive action against those companies
that do threaten our national security. This amendment provides that
economic authority to stop the operation of these front companies, and
provides the only effective tools in this economic warfare--the
prohibition of economic activity.
Therefore, Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support this
amendment as necessary, germane to the Defense Authorization bill, and
vital to our national security.
Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire is recognized.
Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Madam President, I rise as chairman of
the Strategic Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee to focus on
some areas that are very critical to our Nation's defense. Certainly,
``strategic'' takes on a new meaning as we hear news in the last few
days of what is happening in India.
We tried, in our subcommittee, to continue initiatives that have been
started in previous years. At the same time, because of overall funding
reductions, we were forced to make some substantial cuts, cuts that I
did not want to make. But as part of the overall budget, we felt we had
to do it. So we do have a budget cap, and that issue, in and of itself,
is somewhat controversial.
I think it is time, as we look at the reduction in defense spending,
to begin to look at that cap and, in my opinion, remove the cap. We
must recognize that the defense budget has been cut deeply, and these
cuts are beginning now to affect the effectiveness of our military
force.
The budgets of both DOD and DOE, which are in my Strategic
Subcommittee, had to be reduced. I tried to do that as fairly as I
possibly could. Let me just outline some of the tough choices that we
had to make. Missile defense, of course, is an area that I care deeply
about. But there is some redundancy in some of the programs that we
have. We have to begin to set some priorities.
The budget, as it was presented to us by the President, had some
areas in it that were funded in this budget but not in future years. So
the question is, If a program such as MEADS--Medium Extended Air
Defense System--is not funded beyond 1999, what is the purpose of
providing funding for it in fiscal 1999? So I tried to look at this. If
I could not get a commitment from the administration to fund beyond
fiscal year 1999, then I, for the most part, reduced or eliminated the
funds for next year. In the case of MEADS, our intent is to encourage
DOD to find alternative approaches to meeting the requirement. But we
cannot support the program if DOD has no budget for it in the future.
Another very controversial reduction, which I was not happy about,
was our cut of $97 million from the Airborne Laser Program. Because
this was a tough decision, I want to explain what happened.
There were a lot of news reports that said we ``slashed'' the
Airborne Laser Program, that we ``ruined'' the program, that we
``killed'' the program, that we have made it impossible for the program
to recover, and so on. This is unfair and inaccurate. I simply felt
that we had an obligation to review the technical and operational
viability of the program.
Two years ago, our Committee included report language which basically
called on the Air Force and Airborne Laser Program advocates to come
forward and justify the program. I do not believe that they have done
so.
So we withheld funds for placing this very complex technology on an
actual aircraft, a 747, until the capability is more fully tested and
the operational concepts are better defined by the Air Force. I do not
want to go into great detail; to some degree I cannot because it is
classified. But let me be clear--we only cut the dollars intended for
integrating this technology on an aircraft. This does not destroy the
Airborne Laser Program, nor does it make any comment, subtle or
otherwise, by anyone on the committee that somehow this program is not
worthy. It does require the Secretary of Defense, with the help of
outside experts, to review the program's technology and concept of
operations, and show us how this technology will work when it is placed
upon an aircraft. I don't think it destroys the program to delay the
purchase of an airplane for a year or two while we find out whether the
technology and the operational concept is valid. This is what
congressional oversight is all about.
We have increased funding for Navy Upper Tier, another missile
defense program, and the space-based laser readiness demonstrator,
which is the ultimate step, I think, in missile defense--the space-
based laser.
We tried to reduce as much of the risk as possible in the NMD Program
by encouraging the Department to modify the program. Currently the so-
called 3+3 program is extremely high risk. To deploy a complex system
in 3 years is very, very difficult. It is an artificially compressed
date and an artificially compressed program. It requires us to do
everything at once instead of running a low-risk program to ensure
everything fits together first. There is no margin for failure or
problems. If one thing goes wrong, the whole program could collapse. It
needs to be run like any other defense acquisition program, with the
objective of reducing the program risk.
With the Administration's 3+3 program, we must first decide that
there is a missile threat to the United States. Then we assume that in
3 years we can deploy a system to intercept that missile. I think that
assumption just does not make sense.
Can we depend on our intelligence to give us that information? I draw
my colleagues' attention to what happened in the last few days with
India's nuclear tests. We didn't, frankly, know what was happening
until it happened. We either did not have that information, or we did
not heed it.
I am not trying to fault the intelligence community, other than to
say that intelligence is not always objective. It is not always
thorough. It is not always timely. It is not always heeded. The
question we have to ask is, Are we willing to take the risk once we
know that somebody has the capability and the intent to use a missile
against us, and are we then prepared to say that in 3 years we will
have the technology deployed to intercept that missile? I am not
prepared to take that kind of chance, which is why I was very
disappointed in the vote in the Senate yesterday on Senator Cochran's
legislation, which would have established a policy to deploy a national
missile defense system when it becomes technically feasible. That wise
legislation was rejected; it did not get enough votes to bring it to
cloture. So the current administration plan for NMD 3+3 means an NMD
system will be developed in 3 years, and when a threat is acknowledged
this system will be deployed in 3 years.

This just does not make a lot of sense. It naively assumes that we
will see all emerging threats, and that if and when we see one, we can
confidently deploy a complex system in just 3 years.
So I hope my colleagues in the Senate sometime sooner rather than
later

[[Page S4869]]

will come to the realization of how dangerous this 3+3 approach really
is. Perhaps a few more unforseen nuclear tests will convince them. If
not, this extremely naive and extremely dangerous complacency could
cost us dearly in years to come. We are seeing proliferation of
missiles, and of the technology to develop missiles, all over the
world--China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Iran. And, yet, we were
denied the opportunity yesterday on the Cochran proposal to get going
on a national missile defense system.
It is extremely disturbing. As one who deals with these issues every
day on the Armed Services Committee, and specifically as the chairman
of the Strategic Subcommittee, I know full well that this is a naive
policy. It is well intended--there is no question there--but naive.
Colin Powell, former National Security Adviser to President Reagan
and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Bush and
Clinton, used to say we have to be concerned first and foremost about
the capability of an enemy because we never know what his intent will
be. The intent tomorrow might be good. It might be bad. But what is the
capability? We all know that the Chinese, and the Russians, have the
capability to fire a missile at the United States of America. Do they
have the intent? Maybe not today. But what about tomorrow?
So we have to deal with capability. If we deny that, if we look the
other way, we are really putting our heads in the sand.
In space programs, the committee increase funding for a range of
activities: space control technology development; the enhanced global
positioning system; the microsatellite program and the space maneuver
vehicle. The budget for those programs were increased. These efforts
are critical for the future exploitation and use of space by the United
States.
Another area of the strategic forces subcommittee budget concerns
weapons and other activities of the Department of Energy. We tried
there to stabilize the core mission funding for weapons activities and
environmental cleanup. As you know, we have a lot of environmental
cleanup to do as a result of DOD and DOE activities over the past
several decades, especially during the cold war.
So we tried in our budget to maintain the capability to remanufacture
and certify enduring U.S. nuclear warheads. We tried to maintain the
pace of cleanup at DOE facilities with our funding, and though the
overall DOE budget was reduced, a number of funding increases were
authorized for programs critical to achieving these goals.
Increases include additional funding for the four weapons production
plants, tritium production, and environmental management technology
development. Some will criticize these DOD cuts. But it is a matter of
balance. If you look at the budget in real terms, since 1996, DOD
funding has decreased by 5.2 percent, and DOE has increased by 7.7
percent.
We did the best we could. I hope that my colleagues will be
supportive of the recommendations that we have made, not only in the
Strategic Subcommittee but in other subcommittees as well. It is a
tough job. I don't think there is a member of the committee who doesn't
feel that we have gone probably too far, that we need to, perhaps,
remove that budget firewall and begin to put more dollars into defense.
But given the constraints of the budget agreement, we had to do with
what we had.
In conclusion, I thank Senators Thurmond, Levin, and Bingaman for the
cooperation that we have had together, especially Senator Bingaman on
the subcommittee who has always been courteous to me.
I want to thank Eric Thoemmes, Paul Longsworth, and Monica Chavez of
the Armed Services Committee staff, and John Luddy, Brad Lovelace, and
Steve Hellyar of my own staff as well.
I would be happy to yield the floor, Madam President. I see others
who wish to speak.

Privilege of the Floor

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges
of the floor be granted to Adam Pawluk, Chrissie Timpe, and Meg
Dimeling for today's session of the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Who seeks recognition?
Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. I note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HAGEL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. HAGEL. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to reflect on the
business at hand today; that is, our Department of Defense
authorization bill.
Three hours ago, I had the privilege of joining a couple of my
colleagues at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during a very somber,
serious ceremony to exhume the remains of the unknown Vietnam veteran
from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. If you have followed this, as all
of our colleagues in this body and most of America have, you are aware
that through sophisticated, primarily DNA testing--and you, Mr.
President, of all people understand this very well--we now are going to
be able to identify almost all remains from the Vietnam war.
I begin my remarks this afternoon with that reflection because what
we are about here today is serious business. It is about the business
of national defense--defending America's interests in the world. It is
costly, it is serious, and at some times it is devastating. It is
devastating for the families who lose loved ones in crisis, in war, in
conflict.
But when I say it is costly, Mr. President, I mean costly. As one who
has spent some time in the Armed Forces, who is somewhat familiar with
the sacrifices that we ask of our men and women and their families, I
am as concerned today about the defense capabilities of our armed
services as I have been since the late 1970s. Not that our men and
women, our warriors, are not up to the task, but I fear what we are
doing to our men and women who have committed their lives to the
defense of freedom and the defense of this Nation is that we are not
providing them, we are not making to them, the kind of commitment in
the resources they need to do their job.
We are asking--and this has been the case over the last 10 years--our
Armed Forces to do more with less--more deployments, longer
deployments. And as you look at our Defense Department budgets, this
fiscal year 1999 budget represents the 14th consecutive year of decline
in defense spending. In real dollars, I think the American public
should know that this budget represents $3 billion less than current
levels and about a 40-percent drop from the spending levels of the mid
to late 1980s.
I compliment my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee for
dealing with a difficult issue. I especially compliment Chairman
Thurmond, who, I understand, will lead this authorization bill fight
for the last time. His commitment to his country is not only exemplary
but it is truly unmatched in this Chamber. There is no one who
understands this business better than Chairman Thurmond and who
understands what I am talking about today.
I will jump to the conclusion of my remarks by saying this. It is
time the Congress of the United States be direct and honest with the
American public and say what needs to be said, and that is, we need to
increase spending for our Defense Department. We need to increase
spending. Any measurement you take of where we are in inflation-
adjusted dollars, this year's defense budget represents the smallest,
in real dollars, the smallest Defense Department budget since the
beginning of the Korean war. We have the smallest military in nearly 50
years.
I am astounded that the President of the United States comes before
the Congress and the American public and says we have the smallest
Government ever. First of all, we don't have the smallest Government
ever; a $1.7 trillion Government is rather significant. But he is half
right; we have a military that we have continued to hollow out over the
last 10 years. We will pay a severe price for what we are doing to our
Armed Forces capability.
About 3 percent of our gross domestic product today, less than half
of what we had in the 1980's, goes to defense

[[Page S4870]]

spending. By any measurement you take of this issue of research,
acquisition, and deployment of new weapons systems, we are relying on
aging and older equipment.
I had an interesting conversation over the weekend at the airport in
Omaha, NE. It was with two DOD auditors who have been with the DOD,
auditing systems equipment, for almost 30 years. Each of them told me
independently that they have never seen such a situation since the late
1970s. When they are auditing military orders to cannibalize equipment
in order to get spare parts off of our jets, off of our ships, off of
our military vehicles, something is drastically wrong when that
happens, drastically wrong.
I hear very interesting commentary from the Secretary of Defense,
whom I admire greatly, about, if you would just close more bases, that
would give us more money and free up the resources. Well, that may do
some of that, but what is interesting is that it does not give you any
more manpower, and in fact in the President's budget this year he calls
for cutting 36,000 uniformed men and women from military service,
12,000 Reserve men and women. How can we, in fact, focus the resources
and make the commitment we need to make to our men and women who defend
this Nation?
Let's remember something. National defense is the guarantor of our
foreign policy. Without a national defense, we have no foreign policy.
Yet we continue to ask our men and women in uniform to do more. Since
1990, our Armed Forces have been used in 36 foreign missions compared
to 22 from 1980 to 1989. The Army decreased its manpower by 36 percent
while increasing the workload by over 300 percent. Since 1989, the Air
Force personnel have been cut by one-third yet the number of missions
has quadrupled. From October to January of last year, we lost over 600
Air Force jet pilots. The Army estimated in 1997 that its deployable
units spent 180 to 190 days away from home each year. This was before--
before--the recent escalation of our forces in the Persian Gulf.
The Army Chief of Staff, General Dennis Reimer recently said, ``Our
requirements exceed our people to man those requirements.''
Let's look at the quality of life. Let's ask what we are doing for
the men and women we are asking to commit, in some cases, their lives;
what we are asking them to do and what we are giving in return--not
only the increasing rate of deployment, longer deployment, cutting
their time with families, impacting their quality of life, but what
about housing? It is disgraceful. Last year, the outgoing Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, said that, ``* *
* we have family housing that we ought not be asking our folks to live
in.''
In the Air Force alone there are over 41,000 families on waiting
lists for decent housing. In my State of Nebraska, at Offutt Air Force
Base alone, there is a terrible need for decent housing. When I say
decent housing, I don't mean villas, I mean running water, hot water,
plaster not falling from the ceiling, windows not broken out. These
people in our Armed Forces are not asking for palaces. How do we expect
the men and women in our Armed Forces, as we send them, deploy them all
over the world, to concentrate on the serious business before them if
they are worried about their families at home because we in the
Congress and the President are not paying attention to focusing on the
resources that our men and women need?
Military pay lags 13 percent behind that of the private sector. By
the Department of Defense's own estimates, more than 23,000 men and
women in uniform, and their families, are eligible for food stamps.
What does this do to retention, recruitment and readiness? That is the
essence of a capable military. The Army has fallen short of its
recruitment goal for the first time since 1979--the first time. And the
percentage of recruits in the United States Army with high school
diplomas is declining. Since Desert Storm, the percentage of Navy petty
officers who say they intend to make the Navy a career has dropped by
10 percent.
Look at the world today. Is it getting safer? Need we really look
beyond what happened earlier this week with the atomic testing done by
India? We have major troop deployments around the world today: 37,000
troops in South Korea, major deployments of forces in the Middle East,
Japan, Europe, Bosnia. And what about the flash points that are there
today, the real possibilities of conflict south of Bosnia, Kosovo? What
is yet to happen on the subcontinent of Asia with Pakistan and India? I
will be in the Caspian Sea region in 2 weeks--a tinderbox. Are we
prepared?
The end of the cold war has reduced some threat. But now is no time
to not only withdraw American leadership but to withdraw the commitment
to our Armed Forces. Our armed services are the capability that we are
relying on to protect our national interests, our role in the world, to
guarantee our foreign policy. That will not be done by hollowing out
our military. Today we see a world that is shifting globally in its
geopolitical, economic, and military power structures. We cannot allow
America to become weaker, or withdraw from that world. Now is not the
time. Now is the time for America to project its leadership and help
form and help craft and help incentivize and lead the world to more
freedom. You cannot accomplish that with an unprepared military.
I looked at the President's budget again this week, his fiscal year
1999 budget. The President proposes $123 billion in new domestic
programs, but again proposes to cut our military budget. Surely now--
surely America's national interests and our national security has some
priority in this budget.

As we step back for a moment and survey the world as it is--not as we
hope or wish it will be, but as it is--if we in fact are, and I believe
we are, capable of taking advantage of the tremendous opportunities and
hopes and the series of historical consequences and events that have
come together in a rather magnificent way to make the world better, it
is going to require American leadership. Not that we need to shoulder
all the burden--of course not. But part of that American leadership is
a national security worthy of who we are and a commitment to the people
that we ask daily to defend our Nation--a commitment to give them the
resources they need.
I would say finally, Mr. President, to me a part of that commitment
is not to underfund our military but, in fact, it is to start
rebuilding our military. I hope as this issue develops and debate
develops, that the issue we are about today will extend far beyond the
narrowness of the focus that we debate today, but interconnects with
the future and our leadership, and much of that future resides at the
core of our national defense capabilities.
I thank my colleagues who serve on the Armed Services Committee for
their efforts, their leadership, and their lives that many have devoted
to making this a more secure world and helping our military.
I yield the floor.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I thank my able colleague from Nebraska
for his kind words about me. I also wish to thank him for the great
service he has rendered this country here in the Senate. He is an
expert on defense matters and his opinions are certainly worth the
consideration of every Senator here.
Again, it is a pleasure to serve with him. I wish him continued
success.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator will yield just for
one moment?
Mr. THOMAS. Certainly.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. I simply want to add my thanks to the Senator from
Nebraska. Every year when this bill comes up, he is here. It is a very
important contribution which he is making to the national defense. We
on the Armed Services Committee do the best we can, but we have
colleagues such as the Senator from Nebraska who add their immense
expertise and passion and feeling about these issues, and it is
significantly important to us and I thank the Senator for doing that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, what is the pending business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending business is the Hutchinson
amendment.

[[Page S4871]]

Amendment No. 2401 to Amendment No. 2387

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to amendment No. 2387
to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Thomas] proposes an amendment
numbered 2401 to amendment No. 2387.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

In the pending amendments, on page 1, strike lines 5
through page 5, line 4.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I simply send the amendment which will
deal with the findings of this bill and eliminate them in a second-
degree amendment.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Privilege of the Floor

Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Ed
Fienga, a Department of the Air Force fellow in the office of Senator
Kay Bailey Hutchison be granted the privilege of the floor during the
consideration of S. 2057.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
pending business be set aside so that I can offer a second amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.

Amendment No. 2388

(Purpose: Relating to the use of forced labor in the People's Republic
of China)

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2388 and ask
for its consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson), for himself and
Mr. Abraham, proposes an amendment numbered 2388.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

Add at the end the following new sections:

SEC. ____. FINDINGS.

SEC. ____. AUTHORIZATION FOR ADDITIONAL CUSTOMS PERSONNEL TO
MONITOR THE IMPORTATION OF PRODUCTS MADE WITH
FORCED LABOR.

There are authorized to be appropriated for monitoring by
the United States Customs Service of the importation into the
United States of products made with forced labor, the
importation of which violates section 307 of the Tariff Act
of 1930 or section 1761 of title 18, United States Code,
$2,000,000 for fiscal year 1999.

SEC. ____. REPORTING REQUIREMENT ON FORCED LABOR PRODUCTS
DESTINED FOR THE UNITED STATES MARKET.

(a) Report to Congress.--Not later than 1 year after the
date of the enactment of this Act, the Commissioner of
Customs shall prepare and transmit to Congress a report on
products made with forced labor that are destined for the
United States market.
(b) Contents of Report.--The report under subsection (a)
shall include information concerning the following:
(1) The extent of the use of forced labor in manufacturing
products destined for the United States market.
(2) The volume of products made with forced labor, destined
for the United States market, that is in violation of section
307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 or section 1761 of the title
18, United States Code, and is seized by the United States
Customs Service.
(3) The progress of the United States Customs Service in
identifying and interdicting products made with forced labor
that are destined for the United States market.

SEC. ____. RENEGOTIATING MEMORANDA OF UNDERSTANDING ON FORCED
LABOR.

It is the sense of Congress that the President should
determine whether any country with which the United States
has a memorandum of understanding with respect to reciprocal
trade which involves goods made with forced labor is
frustrating implementation of the memorandum. Should an
affirmative determination be made, the President should
immediately commence negotiations to replace the current
memorandum of understanding with one providing for effective
procedures for the monitoring of forced labor, including
improved procedures to request investigations of suspected
prison labor facilities by international monitors.

SEC. ____. DEFINITION OF FORCED LABOR.

As used in sections ____ through ____ of this Act, the term
``forced labor'' means convict labor, forced labor, or
indentured labor, as such terms are used in section 307 of
the Tariff Act of 1930.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add my good
friend and colleague, Senator Abraham of Michigan, as an original
cosponsor of this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, this amendment is simple and, again,
it was noncontroversial when it was voted on in the House of
Representatives. In fact, the language in this amendment passed the
House with almost unanimous support. Having served in the House 4
years, I know this happens rarely. It was a 419-to-2 vote. So, it had
overwhelming bipartisan support.
This amendment will simply do two things: First, it will express the
sense of the Congress that the President should replace any memorandums
of understanding on prison labor that lack effective monitoring
procedures like the one negotiated with the People's Republic of China
and replace the agreement with a stricter monitoring system.
Second, the bill authorizes $2 million in additional funds for the
U.S. Customs Service to monitor the importation of slave-labor-produced
goods. As everyone in this body knows, the importation of goods made by
convicts has been banned for more than a half a century. This law
underscores Americans' firm conviction that such products produced by
coerced and forced labor should not be sold in this country. I believe
Americans are repulsed by the very thought of benefiting from cheap
prices on products produced by the sweat and blood of foreign
prisoners.
Despite this ban, products made in Communist China's vast archipelago
of slave labor camps, known as the laogai, continue to flow into this
country unabated. This system of laogai, a word meaning reform through
labor, was designed for the dual purposes of political control and
forced economic development. Interestingly, this system is modeled on
Stalin's Soviet Gulag, which we all remember was exposed most
graphically by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
This system of forced labor, slave labor, has been an integral part
of Chinese totalitarianism since the inception of the People's Republic
of China in 1949. Harry Wu, a survivor of the laogai, and a friend of
mine, has estimated that some 50 million Chinese men and women have
passed through these camps, of whom 15 million have perished. Today,
anywhere from 6 to 8 million people are captive in the 1,100 camps of
laogai, held and forced to work under grossly inhumane conditions.

[[Page S4872]]

According to official statistics, the laogai operate 140 export
enterprises selling products to over 70 nations abroad, including the
United States. These enterprises are responsible for producing key
commodities, including uranium, graphite, rubber, cotton, asbestos, and
one-third of Chinese tea is produced in these slave labor camps, as
well as a huge array of consumer goods, including toys, artificial
flowers and, ironically, Christmas lights and rosaries.
When I went to China in January, I asked to visit a laogai prison. In
fact, I asked every day. I asked repeatedly, and repeatedly, but my
requests to visit a laogai prison were denied. Fortunately, one of my
colleagues in the House on an earlier trip, Representative Frank Wolf,
was able to visit Beijing Prison No. 1. This is the exterior of that
prison camp that Congressman Wolf visited, a prison camp that includes
a slave labor industry.
This second photo shows us the picture of the Beijing hosiery
factory. This is located inside of that prison camp.
The third photo actually shows the assembly line where these products
are made.
In this prison, Mr. Wolf found slave laborers producing socks on this
assembly line. I have some of the very socks produced on that assembly
line which Mr. Wolf brought back. You can see the socks. This
particular pair was determined to be for export. This is not just a
matter of laogai slave labor prisons, which would be horrific enough,
that would be bad enough, but these particular products were made for
export to other countries.
When I was in China, I saw many things. One thing I did not see was
any golf courses, but the logo on these socks is a person swinging a
golf club, obviously not intended for sale within China but for sale on
the foreign market.

Although the United States entered into binding agreements with China
in 1992 and 1994 to bar trade in prison labor products and to allow
inspection of its forced-labor camps, the Chinese Government has
frustrated their implementation, both by using dual names to disguise
camp products and by denying access to those slave labor camps.
In 1996, the Chinese Government granted access to just one prison
labor camp. Out of the whole laogai system, access in 1996 was granted
to only one that had been requested by the U.S. Customs Service.
Mr. President, the following two charts show examples of laogai
prison camps that have never been inspected, though the request has
been made to visit. These photos were taken, obviously, outside the
camp. This is laogai slave labor camp No. 5 and Zhejiang laogai slave
labor camp. Both of these labor camps--we have a second picture as
well--show individuals going into the camp. These pictures were
obtained by the Laogai Research Foundation.
Mr. President, the two most recent State Department human rights
reports on China state that ``Repeated delays in arranging prison labor
site visits called into question the government's intention regarding
the implementation of the two agreements.''
So we have two agreements with China which were to provide for
inspections of these camps in which these kinds of products are made to
compete with American workers. According to our State Department, we
have found, instead of cooperation, obstructionism and delays in
arranging for visits to those labor camps.
Obviously, I think this indicates that the Chinese Government is not
intent on cooperating with us on trying to ensure that the products
produced are not being sold domestically or to the foreign market and
that humane conditions prevail in these camps.
The U.S. Customs Service has already banned 27 different products of
laogai camps. Unfortunately, in testimony before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, on May 22, 1997, the Customs Commissioner George
Weise noted that the Customs Service is too weak and understaffed to
monitor China's slave labor enterprises.
Specifically, he said:

We simply do not have the tools within our present arsenal
at Customs to gain the timely and in depth verification that
we need.

I want to say I do not know whether he is accurate in that contention
or not. I would not presume to say whether or not the Customs Service
actually has the resources to do the job or not. But I want them to
have no excuse; I do not want them to be able to come to the House or
to the Senate, to our committees, our oversight committees, and say, we
simply cannot do the job that we are mandated to do in ensuring that
these products are not being sold in the United States of America that
are being produced in these slave labor camps.
These expansive forced-labor camps operate at very low costs even in
relation to China's lower wage scale, thus providing them a competitive
advantage over other firms and giving them sizable profit margins that
help to fund the Chinese Government. The laogai are in a win-win
situation. It is a win-win for China. They help maintain their
political control and indoctrination of the citizenry, and they funnel
money into their treasury through these slave labor enterprises.
American businesses that use wage-earning employees are being placed at
a competitive disadvantaged by less scrupulous competitors who use this
illegal source of artificially cheap labor.
These socks are the kind of thing they are producing. And they are
producing them with slave labor, prisoners who are being paid little,
if anything. And those laborers are competing with American workers,
placing our workers at an incredible disadvantage. As more businesses
rely on Chinese slave labor and slave-labor-produced goods, U.S.
employment in these industries fall. Thus, despite the productivity
advantage of U.S. labor--and I do not believe there is a better worker
in the world; I do not believe there are harder workers in the world
than the American worker--but in spite of that high productivity, how
can we ask them to compete? And, in fact, they cannot compete against
low- or no-cost employment in the People's Republic of China.
Mr. President, I doubt American consumers would knowingly fund a
Stalinist system of forced labor and repression. That is why they
support laws banning this practice and expect the U.S. Government to do
everything possible to ensure that such products are not sold in the
United States. Yet because of the lax enforcement and the open Chinese
disregard for United States law, Americans are being duped into buying
products made by slave laborers. I think that is unfortunate. I think
they are doing so unwittingly. But I think we have to do a better job
to ensure, in monitoring those products that are coming into this
country, that they are not made in inhumane, slave labor conditions
that exist in hundreds of prisons in China today.
That is why this is a modest--what I would call a baby step, this is
a minimalist approach. This is the least we can do, to simply give $2
million to the Customs Service and say we have to have better
monitoring of these products. We have a moral obligation to do
everything in our power to stop slave labor and to end the flow of
slave-labor-produced goods in this country which will stop the flow of
profits or at least slow the flow of profits into the PRC. I think it
is a rational first step, a small step but a rational step.
I urge my fellow Senators to join 419 Members of the U.S. House of
Representatives by passing this amendment to increase the Customs
Service enforcement funding and to reach agreements that give the
Customs Service the powers they need to end this bloody trail.
I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
Is there a sufficient second?
There is not a sufficient second.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. THURMOND. I would like to inquire of the Senator, here he
provides $2 million to be used to handle this situation. Will that come
out of the defense bill?
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I say to the chairman, I would presume that the $2
million--this is an amendment to the Department of Defense bill, so I
would assume the $2 million would come out of the defense bill. And $2
million, I might add--if I might inquire of the chairman, the total
budget, the total amount authorized in the defense bill, is how much?

[[Page S4873]]

Mr. THURMOND. If that comes out of defense, then I will have to
oppose the amendment.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I simply say that the national security of the United
States--part of that is ensuring that the People's Liberation Army and
the Chinese Government not receive resources and revenues through
products produced by slave labor.
Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I am glad to.
Mr. HARKIN. To answer the chairman's point, it does not come out of
defense. It just authorizes the Department of Treasury to allocate $2
million.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Two million dollars.
Mr. HARKIN. For this purpose.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I thank my colleague for that clarification.
Mr. HARKIN. It does not come out of this.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I say to the chairman, may I clarify my previous
response that in fact it would not come from the Department of Defense,
not come from the defense budget, but authorizes $2 million from the
Department of Treasury. So it would not in any way intrude upon that
which your committee has sought to ensure adequate defenses for the
country.
Mr. THURMOND. Thank you for the clarification.
Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

Amendment No. 2402 to Amendment No. 2388

(Purpose: To increase monitoring of imported products made with forced
or indentured labor and forced or indentured child)

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have an amendment to the Hutchinson
amendment I send to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin], for himself and Mr.
Wellstone, proposes an amendment numbered 2402 to amendment
No. 2388.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask that reading of the amendment be
dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

In lieu of the language proposed to be inserted, insert
the following:

SECTION 1. FINDINGS.

Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The United States Customs Service has identified goods,
wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or
manufactured under conditions of convict labor, forced labor,
or indentured labor, in several countries.
(2) The United States Customs Service has made limited
attempts to prohibit the import of products made with forced
labor, resulting in only a few seizures, detention orders,
fines, and criminal prosecutions.
(3) The United States Customs Service has taken 21 formal
administrative actions in the form of detention orders
against different products destined for the United States
market, found to have been made with forced labor, including
products from the People's Republic of China.
(4) However, the United States Customs Service has never
formally investigated or pursued enforcement with respect to
attempts to import products made with forced or indentured
child labor.
(5) The United States Customs Service can use additional
resources and tools to obtain the timely and in-depth
verification necessary to identify and interdict products
made with forced labor or indentured labor, including forced
or indentured child labor, that are destined for the United
States market.
(6) The International Labor Organization estimates that
approximately 250,000,000 children between the ages of 5 and
14 are working in developing countries, including millions of
children in bondage or otherwise forced to work for little or
no pay.
(7) Congress has clearly indicated in Public Law 105-61,
Treasury-Postal Service Appropriations, 1998, that forced or
indentured child labor constitutes forced labor under section
307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1307).

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR ADDITIONAL CUSTOMS PERSONNEL TO
MONITOR THE IMPORTATION OF PRODUCTS MADE WITH
FORCED OR INDENTURED LABOR.

There are authorized to be appropriated $2,000,000 for
fiscal year 1999 to the United States Customs Service to
monitor the importation of products made with forced labor or
indentured labor, including forced or indentured child labor,
the importation of which violates section 307 of the Tariff
Act of 1930 or section 1761 of title 18, United States Code.

SEC. 3. REPORTING REQUIREMENT ON FORCED LABOR OR INDENTURED
LABOR PRODUCTS DESTINED FOR THE UNITED STATES
MARKET.

(a) Report to Congress.--Not later than 1 year after the
date of enactment of this Act, the Commissioner of Customs
shall prepare and transmit to Congress a report on products
made with forced labor or indentured labor, including forced
or indentured child labor that are destined for the United
States market.
(b) Contents of Report.--The report under subsection (a)
shall include information concerning the following:
(1) The extent of the use of forced labor or indentured
labor, including forced or indentured child labor in
manufacturing or mining products destined for the United
States market.
(2) The volume of products made or mined with forced labor
or indentured labor, including forced or indentured child
labor that is--
(A) destined for the United States market,
(B) in violation of section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930
or section 1761 of title 18, United States Code, and
(C) seized by the United States Customs Service.
(3) The progress of the United States Customs Service in
identifying and interdicting products made with forced labor
or indentured labor, including forced or indentured child
labor that are destined for the United States market.

SEC. 4. RENEGOTIATING MEMORANDA OF UNDERSTANDING ON FORCED
LABOR.

It is the sense of Congress that the President should
determine whether any country with which the United States
has a memorandum of understanding with respect to reciprocal
trade that involves goods made with forced labor or
indentured labor, including forced or indentured child labor
is frustrating implementation of the memorandum. If an
affirmative determination be made, the President should
immediately commence negotiations to replace the current
memorandum of understanding with one providing for effective
procedures for the monitoring of forced labor or indentured
labor, including forced or indentured child labor. The
memorandum of understanding should include improved
procedures for requesting investigations of suspected work
sites by international monitors.

SEC. 5. DEFINITION OF FORCED LABOR.

In this Act, the term ``forced labor'' means convict labor,
forced labor, or indentured labor, as such terms are used in
section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The term includes
forced or indentured child labor--
(1) that is exacted from any person under 15 years of age,
either in payment for the debts of a parent, relative, or
guardian, or drawn under false pretexts; and
(2) with respect to which such person is confined against
the person's will.
Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1307) is
amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
``For purposes of this section, forced or indentured
labor includes forced or indentured child labor.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this is a second degree to the Hutchinson
amendment.
I ask unanimous consent to add my name to the Hutchinson amendment as
a cosponsor; and Senator Wellstone also wanted to be added as a
cosponsor of the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HARKIN. I have spoken with the author of the pending amendment,
and I am very supportive of Senator Hutchinson's amendment. This is a
friendly amendment, which he accepts. My amendment does not in any way
change the intent of the Hutchinson amendment nor does it add any more
money.
Basically, this amendment reflects the intent of Congress to include
forced and indentured child labor in the interpretation of section 307
of the Tariff Act of 1930.
The Congress spoke with one voice when it instructed the U.S. Customs
Service to block from entry into the United States any imports made by
forced or indentured child labor, as they are inherently for imports
made with forced and indentured labor.
This clarification of congressional intent was part of the fiscal
year 1998 Treasury-Postal appropriations bill which the President has
signed into law. So, again, this amendment does not change anything
really of the Hutchinson amendment. It simply adds forced and
indentured child labor as part of the amendment.
As I said, it preserves the congressional intent passed last year.
The U.S. Customs Service will still be able to aggressively pursue
items made with convict labor, forced labor, or indentured labor, and
prevent them from reaching our shores. They should rightly do so. That
is why I am supportive of the Hutchinson amendment.
Again, the reason this is necessary is a little over a year ago--
actually about 2 years ago now--I contacted the Treasury Department to
ask if section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 covered forced and
indentured child labor.

[[Page S4874]]

I got a letter back saying, well, they did not know. They needed
clarification. Last year, under the Treasury-Postal appropriations
bill, we provided that clarification that it indeed covered forced and
indentured child labor. And that is what my amendment does here; it
just adds those words back in there.
And, again, it should be added because in many cases these children
are like slaves. They are sold, maybe sometimes for an outstanding debt
that is owed to a family. They are traded like cattle. Typically what
happens is, a child is sold into a factory or plant as a payment for an
outstanding debt. The middle man, a loan shark, transfers the child to
a work setting far away from his home. And these kids literally work as
virtual slaves doing anything from making rugs to soccer balls to
serving as prostitutes, to breaking bricks or mining granite or making
glassware. Many times these kids are never released from their bondage
until they get too old to do the work. They are punished severely; a
lot of times they work 12 to 15 hours a day.

Mr. President, last year I visited a place out of New Delhi called
the Muki Ashram, or ``liberation retreat'' established in 1991 by
Kailash Satiyarti, president of the South Asian Coalition on Child
Servitude, located right outside of New Delhi, a place where bonded
child laborers are freed from the shackles of slavery. They are brought
there, they are rehabilitated, they are able to go to school, learn a
trade and regain their sense of self-worth. I was deeply moved by this
establishment.
I saw somewhere between 50 and 100 kids who were there, many as young
as 8 years of age, many of whom had been beaten. I saw kids that had
marks still on their face and their arms where they had been burned
with red-hot pokers and things like that. These kids were now being
taught in a school, provided nutrition. As I said, they get their sense
of self-worth back.
I have two stories here of two of the kids who I saw when I was
there. I ask unanimous consent that these two stories be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Story of Exploited Child

Mohan, a seven year old boy exploited by a carpet loom
owner. He was taken away by a dalal from his native village
of Bihar to a carpet loom in Allahabad, U.P. Labour recruiter
(Dalal) came to his parents and lured them by giving false
promises of a good life and bright future of Mohan Kumar.
After reaching Allahabad, his cruel employer treated him
just like an animal, Mohan was forced to work for 16-18 hours
a day. While working he was beaten very frequently by his
master or his attendant. Some times he passed sleepless night
due to pain, but nobody was taking care of him. In the name
of food, he was given only two chapaties, and forced to eat
at the same place where he worked. He was guarded by the
attendant of his master in the night and even not allowed to
go for routine work alone.
One day Mohan was weeping to go to meet his parents at the
very moment, his cruel employer hitted him by a pointed
weapon. His left eye had injured. His parents came to know of
his pathetic condition, they reported the matter to the
activists of BBA-SACCS. A raid and rescue operation was
organized by activists of BBA-SACCS for releasing of Mohan
Kumar.
After releasing, Mohan Kumar joined Mukti Ashram, he was
suffering from the traumatic effects. Still he has the mark
of that brutal act of his master under his left eye. Slowly
and gradually, he accustomed with the environment of Mukti
Ashram and recovered from the traumatic effect. He began to
taking interest in his studies. Now his ambition to become a
Sub-divisional Magistrate (SDM) so that, he can help to those
miserable children, who are in bondage.
____

Smile Even When You Are in Trouble

One fine morning Nageshwar sang while walking in Mukti
Ashram's garden--``Smile and sing even when you are in
trouble.'' For every winter follows spring as the dawn
follows dusk.
And the Mukti Ashram celebrated it, Everyone, children and
teachers were singing and dancing, `Thank God! Nageshwar's
voice came back, which he lost for more than three weeks.
Nageshwar comes from a remote district of Bihar. When he
was seven and playing with his two younger brothers, a Dalal
(Labour recruiter) came along with four children of the same
age of Nageshwar lured him by giving some sweets and false
promise of a good life and bright future. Due to allurement,
Nageshwar and his brothers were ready to go with Dalal. Dalal
taken away them to a carpet loom situated in the remote area
of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh.
Carpet loom owner treated him just like a slave. Nageshwar
was forced to work for 18 to 20 hours a day even some times
for whole night also. While weaving the carpet his cruel
employer often beat him brutally with a panja ( a tool used
in carpet weaving). In the name of food, Nageshwar's employer
given him two chapaties with salt twice a day and forced to
eat. Nageshwar has no separate place to sleep and forced to
sleep only for two hours in the same place where he worked.
It was November 1st, 1995 the acts of barbarism against
Nageshwar reached their peak. Around mid night after
Nageshwar had helped his two younger brothers to escape from
the continuous harassment, physical torture and tyranny they
had been suffering for years, his employer punished him with
red hot iron rod, causing irreparable damage to his body.
Nageshwar cried and cried--`Oh God, Oh father' but no body
was their to help him.
When the villagers noticed the sign of this torture they
reported to BBA-SACCS. November 4th 1995 was the independence
day for Nageshwar. On that day Nageshwar and his younger
brothers and other four children were released with the great
efforts of the activists of BBA-SACCS.
When Nageshwar came to the Mukti Ashram, he was ``shell
shocked'', and lost his speech. After a month of
comprehensive medical treatment and special care and
attention from other children and the Ashram staff, he became
able to speak and express his feelings Slowly and gradually
he had begun to enjoy the life of Mukti Ashram.

Mr. HARKIN. Again, I want to make it clear I am very supportive of
the Hutchinson amendment. I believe it is a good amendment. This is a
friendly amendment--just to add the word ``child.'' In other words,
under ``forced and indentured labor'' to include ``forced and
indentured child labor'' to clarify section 307 of the Tariff Act of
1930.
I am proud to be a cosponsor of the Hutchinson amendment.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. HARKIN. Yes.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I may have missed this. Would you clarify it, was
this the language that was adopted last year?
Mr. HARKIN. Yes, this exact language was adopted by both the House
and the Senate last year on the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. But because it was appropriations, it was only good
for 1 year?
Mr. HARKIN. That is the problem.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I express my support for the friendly amendment and
appreciate your support for the underlying amendment.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if the Chair will advise as to the pending
amendment so everybody listening has it clearly in mind.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending amendment is amendment numbered
2402 offered by the Senator from Iowa as a second-degree amendment to
the amendment of the Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. WARNER. For further clarification, the yeas and nays have not
been ordered?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe). That is correct.
Mr. WARNER. And therefore the debate and the colloquy on this
amendment should continue. I am advised that we would not be successful
in a unanimous consent requirement to lay it aside and am perfectly
willing at this time to continue debate on the Senator's amendment.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I would like to modify my amendment to
accept the Harkin second degree.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment will be so modified.
The amendment (No. 2388), as modified, is as follows:

At the end of the bill add the following:

SECTION 1. FINDINGS.

[[Page S4875]]

(3) The United States Customs Service has taken 21 formal
administrative actions in the form of detention orders
against different products destined for the United States
market, found to have been made with forced labor, including
products from the People's Republic of China.
(4) However, the United States Customs Service has never
formally investigated or pursued enforcement with respect to
attempts to import products made with forced or indentured
child labor.
(5) The United States Customs Service can use additional
resources and tools to obtain the timely and in-depth
verification necessary to identify and interdict products
made with forced labor or indentured labor, including forced
or indentured child labor, that are destined for the United
States market.
(6) The International Labor Organization estimates that
approximately 250,000,000 children between the ages of 5 and
14 are working in developing countries, including millions of
children in bondage or otherwise forced to work for little or
no pay.
(7) Congress has clearly indicated in Public Law 105-61,
Treasury-Postal Service Appropriations, 1998, that forced or
indentured child labor constitutes forced labor under section
307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1307).

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR ADDITIONAL CUSTOMS PERSONNEL TO
MONITOR THE IMPORTATION OF PRODUCTS MADE WITH
FORCED OR INDENTURED LABOR.

SEC. 3. REPORTING REQUIREMENT ON FORCED LABOR OR INDENTURED
LABOR PRODUCTS DESTINED FOR THE UNITED STATES
MARKET.

SEC. 4. RENEGOTIATING MEMORANDA OF UNDERSTANDING ON FORCED
LABOR.

It is the sense of Congress that the President should
determine whether any country with which the United States
has a memorandum of understanding with respect to reciprocal
trade that involves goods made with forced labor or
indentured labor, including forced or indentured child labor
is frustrating implementation of the memorandum. If an
affirmative determination be made, the President should
immediately commence negotiations to replace the current
memorandum of understanding with one providing for effective
procedures for the monitoring of forced labor or indentured
labor, including forced or indentured child labor. The
memorandum of understanding should include improved
procedures for requesting investigations of suspected work
sites by international monitors.

SEC. 5. DEFINITION OF FORCED LABOR.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, on behalf of the chairman of the Armed
Services Committee, Mr. Thurmond, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Privilege of the Floor

Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Richard
Voter, a military fellow in the office of Senator Warner, be granted
floor privileges for the duration of the Senate debate on S. 2057, the
Defense Authorization Act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is ordered.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, the chairman of our committee, the
distinguished ranking member, and myself are trying the best we can to
accommodate a number of Senators. The Senator from Minnesota is anxious
to speak in relation to one of the pending amendments by the Senator
from Arkansas.
I ask unanimous consent that following the Senator from Minnesota,
the Senator from California be recognized for the purpose of another
amendment, and then we will take it from there.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may be
permitted to proceed for up to 5 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the unanimous consent
request?
Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________