[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 18 (Tuesday, February 2, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H319-H325]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  A RESPONSE TO THE PRESIDENT'S PRESENTATION OF THE DEFENSE BUDGET TO 
                                CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to respond to the President's 
presentation of his defense budget to the U.S. Congress. We listened to 
Secretary of Defense Cohen today as he made this presentation to us, 
and explained to us that we are in fact, according to him, increasing 
defense for the first time in many years.
  I think it is important to respond to Secretary Cohen and to the 
President, because otherwise I think the American people will be 
somewhat misled with respect to his presentation.
  First, we are not, I repeat, not, increasing the defense budget of 
the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration has cut defense 
since they took over in 1992 by $102 billion below what President Bush 
had planned for our country when he sat down with Colin Powell and 
other defense leaders. So he put together a blueprint for where he 
thought defense should go, and President Clinton, when he took over, 
decided to cut that blueprint by $102 billion.
  So now he is coming up slightly in this year's budget with a $12 
billion increase. I say it is $12 billion, even though they averaged a 
$112 billion increase, because the last half or two-thirds of that 
increase is not during his presidency. That means that he is giving us 
a recommendation that defense be increased by some other president some 
other time.
  That means some president who is elected, who is out there in the 
year 2004, 2005, is, according to the recommendation of President 
Clinton, going to increase defense, but I do not think the American 
people nor the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States 
can count on that increase. All we can count on President Clinton doing 
is what he is capable of doing and has the legitimate right to do under 
his presidency. So let us focus on that.
  If we look at Ronald Reagan's defense budgets back in 1986 and 
compare them with today's, our defense budget today is well over $100 
billion less on an annual basis than it was in 1986. It is way under 
what it was in 1986.
  Let us look at what has happened as a result of these defense cuts. 
First, Mr. Speaker, let me speak a little bit about what is happening 
with respect to mission capable rates. The mission capable rates are 
the rates at which your aircraft can fly out, fly from their carrier or 
from their home base, do their mission, and return to the United States 
or return to their home base.
  That rate in 1991 was 83 percent for the Air Force. It is now down to 
74 percent. It was 69 percent for the Navy. It is now down to 61 
percent. For the Marine Corps it was 77 percent and it is now down to 
61 percent.
  That means that under the Clinton administration, the ability of our 
aircraft, for some reason, whether it is lack of pilot training, lack 
of pilots, lack of spare parts, lack of fuel, our aircraft are not able 
to rise off their carrier deck or rise off of their air base, go out 
and do their mission, and return home like they were just a few years 
ago. That is a very serious problem with our ability to project 
military power.
  Mr. Speaker, let me talk about our equipment shortages a little bit. 
I am the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Procurement. I looked 
at the President's military budget for this year. That budget calls for 
a six-ship building program this year.

  Now, Navy ships have a life of 30 to 35 years, so that means that the 
President's budget is building toward a fleet of only 200 ships. When 
he came in we had 546 naval vessels. Now we are down to about 325. If 
we keep building at this low rate, we are going to be down to 200 ships 
in our Navy.
  With respect to ammunition, we are $1,600,000,000 short in basic 
ammunition for the U.S. Army. We are $193 million short in ammunition 
for the Marine Corps. With respect to equipment our CH46s are 40 years 
old, our AAVs average about 26 years old. We have many, many pieces of 
equipment, right down to Jeeps and trucks and tanks, that are extremely 
old. Basically, we are living on what we had during Ronald Reagan's 
presidency, and we haven't replaced that equipment.
  Now, the interesting thing is that most Americans have looked at the 
old pictures on television of our air strikes during Desert Storm, and 
they have the impression that we are able to wage a war like we waged 
in Desert Storm just a few years ago, but we are not able to do that.
  The reason we are not able to do that is because we do not have the 
equipment and the force structure that we had just a couple of years 
ago. We have cut our military almost in half. That is, we had 18 army 
divisions in 1992. We are now down to 10. We had 546 ships during 
Desert Storm. We are now down to about 325. We have 346 on this poster. 
They have actually retired more ships since we made the poster. Active 
airwings were down from 24 airwings to only 13. If we include reserve 
airwings, we are down from 36 to only 20.
  What we have done under this administration is we have cut America's 
force structure of our Armed Forces almost in half. The tragedy is, Mr. 
Speaker, that while we have cut it in half, the half that we have left 
is not ready. It is not ready to fight.
  Mr. Speaker, let me get to another very critical area. We are 18,000 
sailors short right now in the Navy. That means that the few sailors 
that we have left, and this is manning a very, very reduced fleet, the 
few sailors that we have left now have to shift back and forth between 
ships.
  It also means that when a sailor comes home to be with his family, he 
may be called the next week and told, ``Instead of getting that 1- or 
2- or 3-month reprieve and being able to stay home with your wife and 
family, you are going to have to head out again, because we don't have 
enough people to man all of our ships. You are going to have to go back 
out and join the fleet again, and go back into these strenuous 
operations without seeing your family.''
  That is called personnel tempo. That is the amount of time--basically 
it reflects the amount of time that a soldier or sailor or airman or 
marine spends away from his family.
  That means that, for example, with the Marine Corps, we are seeing a 
higher personnel tempo, marines away from their families more than they 
have ever been since World War II. That is

[[Page H320]]

important to us as a U.S. Congress that is in charge of raising the 
Army and the Navy and the marines and maintaining it, because we have 
an all-volunteer service. If people will not join, we cannot draft 
them, so we have to have a service that is attractive enough to get 
people to join.
  One aspect of that attractiveness has to be quality of life. Quality 
of life can mean a lot of things. It can mean having a nice home for 
your family if you live on base, if you are an enlisted person, for 
example, or an officer. It can mean having a good barracks, if you are 
a single enlisted person, or a good bachelor officer's quarters, if you 
are an officer. It can mean having enough of a housing allowance to 
live in a fairly nice place in the community that your base is located 
in. It can mean having decent pay. We will talk about that in a minute. 
But it also means having some time with your family. That means not 
being constantly deployed.
  The interesting thing about the Clinton administration is they have 
deployed their people more often than any other president. While they 
have deployed these people more often than any other president, they 
have cut the number of people that we have; that is, the force 
structure: the number of ships, the number of sailors, the number of 
army divisions, the number of marines. They have cut that force 
structure so much that we have this thin line of American defenders 
literally running around the world, running themselves ragged.
  What does that mean? It means that people are not reenlisting. I 
think in our marine aviators, we have 92 percent of the pilots not 
reenlisting, which is remarkable for us, because they have always 
reenlisted in record numbers; in much higher numbers, up in the 
forties. It means that we are the 18,000 sailors short that I spoke of. 
It means that we are going to be 700 pilots short in the Air Force this 
year.
  It is very, very difficult to keep these people in the service, and 
it is very difficult to build people in these technical skills if you 
do not have a lot of time and a lot of money. It costs as much as $1 
million, $2 million, to build some of the technical skills to give 
these folks all the schools they need, and once that person walks out 
the door, he takes with him that enormous investment.
  Then our other problem is once a person walks out the door, we now 
have the problem of going out and recruiting another person to take his 
or her place. That person is looking at a domestic job market which is 
quite good right now; looking, for example, if they are a pilot, at the 
prospect of going into the airlines; if they are a mechanic, looking 
into going into an automotive industry; if they are an electronics 
technician, looking at going into one of those areas on the outside in 
the civilian sector. It is more and more difficult to bring people into 
the military.

                              {time}  1845

  Once again, this Congress does not want to have to be faced with the 
prospect of having to draft people. That means we are going to have to 
treat our people better. That means we are going to have to slow down 
OPTEMPO and Personnel Tempo, not stretch our people so thin, not run 
them so ragged, pay them better money. That means get them up in a much 
higher bracket so that they cut into what is now a 13 percent pay gap 
between people who are in the service and people who are in the private 
sector.
  When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, we had a 12.6 percent 
pay gap, and we closed that pay gap in a very short period of time. 
Well, today we have a 13 percent pay gap. The Clinton administration is 
offering a 4.4 percent pay raise, but that is not nearly enough to pay 
for that major gap that has people leaving in droves, and at the same 
time bring up the modernization, the spare parts, ammunition, and all 
the other things that we need to make our military work.
  Mr. Speaker, let me go to one other aspect of national security that 
I think is very important. The President now realizes that we have 
indeed a problem with missile defense. We know and we knew ever since 
those scud missiles hit our barracks in Saudi Arabia that we had a 
problem with not being able to stop those missiles coming in. Those are 
very slow missiles. Those were the Model Ts of ballistic missiles. 
Today, many years later, we still have very little capability in terms 
of stopping missiles.
  There are several classes of missiles. We hear about the 
intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those are the missiles that can be 
launched from Russia or China and presumably hit a city in the United 
States. It is a long-range missile that goes very fast.
  One also has short-range missiles, and those missiles go a little 
slower. But what they can hit are our troop concentrations in Korea or 
Saudi Arabia or other places.
  We have to build and maintain a missile defense. So far, we do not 
have that defense. This budget, Mr. Speaker, is not going to allow us 
to proceed fast enough to build that missile defense before our 
adversaries build the offensive missiles that can overwhelm that 
defense.
  When I talk about that, what I am saying is we need to look at the 
North Korean missile that was just launched over the Sea of Japan. We 
realize now it is a two-stage missile, that it could hit some parts of 
the United States if it took in its full flight, built by North Korea. 
We know that China is moving ahead on its strategic weapons program.
  We know that we have to place our troops in concentrations all over 
the world just like we had troops in Saudi Arabia. We had troops in 
Kuwait. We have troops right now in South Korea. We have to be able to 
maintain those troops.
  If missiles can be launched from long range to hit those troops with 
concentrations of chemical or biological weapons, then it is going to 
be very, very difficult to convince America's moms and dads that we 
should be allowed to keep their youngsters in the military, move them 
into foreign theaters which are very, very dangerous, and expect them 
to stay in the uniform.
  So it is going to be very, very difficult to recruit people unless we 
have a way to protect them in foreign theaters. That means we have to 
have missile defense. This administration, in slashing the defense 
budget dramatically, has not put enough money into missile defense.
  So Mr. Speaker, this President has said that he is increasing defense 
dramatically. Let us put it in perspective. Most of the $112 billion 
that he has proposed to increase is supposed to be done by some other 
president at some other time.
  It is like handing a blueprint of a house to our neighbor and saying, 
``After I am gone from this neighborhood, I want you to build this 
house on that lot over there.'' And our neighbor says, ``Do you have 
any legal right to make me build it?'' And you say ``No, but it is my 
recommendation that you build this house over here after I am gone.''
  The President is recommending to some president who has not even been 
named yet, has not been elected yet, that he build this defense, 
rebuild national defense on his watch after President Clinton is gone.
  So the President cannot increase defense $112 billion in 2005 because 
he will not be the President then, and he has no control over the 
President at that time. All he can do is offer a suggestion.
  Of course, if the future president looks at what this President did 
rather than what he says with respect to defense, he will not increase 
defense at all because this President has not increased defense at all.
  What we have to do in the U.S. Congress, Democrats and Republicans, 
is listen to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that is the services, the Army, 
the Air Force, the United States Marines, and the Navy, and give them 
the equipment that they say they need.
  The Army says they need $5 billion worth of equipment per year. They 
need $5 billion worth of increased funding per year for equipment and 
for people. The Navy says they need an additional $6 billion a year. 
The Air Force says they need $5 billion. The Marines say they need 
$1.75 billion. And that excludes this pay raise that we all agree our 
service people need of $2.5 billion per year.
  If we add those numbers together, that is $20 billion this year that 
we need. The President has only offered $12 billion. We have to come up 
with the difference.

[[Page H321]]

  So then, as Republicans and Democrats put this budget together, it is 
incumbent upon us to listen to our armed services, listen to the men 
and women who serve in the military, and make sure that they are well 
equipped and that they have quality of life and that they have decent 
pay.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield the balance of my time 
to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) so that he might 
control it.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). Without objection, the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) will control the balance of 
the time.
  There was no objection.


                             General Leave

  Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks 
on the subject of this Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from South Carolina?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Speaker, Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution 
says that the Congress shall have power to provide for the common 
defense of the United States, to raise and support armies, to provide 
and maintain a navy, to make rules for the government, and regulation 
of the land and able forces.
  My highest priority as an American, a Member of Congress, and as 
chairman of the Committee on Armed Services is to ensure that our 
Nation is properly defended.
  This world is a dangerous place. Most people are unaware of the 
serious threats we face in this world and how unprepared we are to 
properly defend against them.
  I wonder how many people, Mr. Speaker, remember Pearl Harbor. Looking 
back on it, all the warning signs we should have had that something big 
was going to happen, and we did not listen, we did not learn, and we 
see what happened.
  Remember Korea. No one expected that to happen, and it did. I am sure 
that people in those days felt as confident, if not more so, than we 
feel today that we are in a world that we can handle, we can deal with 
all these problems. All of a sudden, this world changes real fast.
  Imagine if, all of a sudden, all the lights went out in this place, 
not only here, but throughout the area, the automobiles would not 
start, the radios would not work, televisions would not work, no 
telephone communications, the computers were down. These things can 
happen just that fast.
  There is something called EMP, electromagnetic pulse effect. If a 
nuclear weapon had exploded up in the atmosphere, all these things can 
happen on the earth without killing anyone, but shutting down all these 
systems that I said; and one can see how paralyzed we would be. This 
could happen. Russia, as a matter of fact, had it in their order of 
battle. Other terrorist groups could use this as a way of rendering us 
impotent, immobile.
  Or imagine if people all around us started getting sick and dying; 
and by the time we found out what was happening, it was too late, but 
we found out that someone had released over Washington, D.C. about 
three pounds of something called Anthrax from a civilian aircraft and 
destroying or killing between 1 million and 3 million people within 24 
hours because we could not vaccinate enough people fast enough to take 
care of them.
  Or imagine an accidental launch of an intercontinental ballistic 
missile with a nuclear warhead. In 1995, the Norwegians launched a 
weather rocket into the atmosphere. The sensors in Russia mistook that 
for a missile launched from one of our strategic missile systems. They 
were within a few minutes of launching nuclear weapons against us in 
retaliation before they found out their mistake and did not do it. We 
were that close to a nuclear war.
  We have no defense against one of those type missiles even launched 
accidently, and there are thousands of them in the world.
  This is truly a dangerous world in which we are living. We have other 
threats. Weapons of mass destruction we hear about so much today. 
Chemical and biological and bacteriological warheads can be put on 
shorter ranged ballistic missiles and launched against us and our 
troops and our friends and our allies. These are cruise missiles that 
can be bought across borders today by anyone. And these types of 
warheads can be put on them.
  These weapons of mass destruction can be put together in laboratories 
in inexpensive low-tech ways. One does not have to be a superpower to 
produce these things. Terrorists can use them and bring all of us under 
the threat of these dangerous types of weapons.
  The point is this is a very dangerous world, and we are unprepared to 
defend against these threats. We only have limited defenses against 
shorter range ballistic missiles and none whatsoever against 
intercontinental ballistic missiles.
  We have a national strategy that says we are supposed to be able to 
fight two nearly simultaneous regional contingencies, something like a 
war with Iraq and Iran and North Korea about the same time.
  We have cut back so much on our defenses since Desert Storm, the 
Persian Gulf conflict that we had back in the early 1990s, we have cut 
back so much since that time, I doubt very seriously that we could do 
one today, just one, certainly not with the same degree of efficiency 
that we did back then.
  This is a very dangerous world, and we are unprepared to deal with it 
sufficiently. At the same time, we have been cutting back. We have 
charts, which I could show my colleagues, all over the world of nations 
which have the capability of launching these types of threats against 
us. Take one's pick: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, China, North Korea, 
Russia, and the list goes on and on.
  As the former director of the CIA said with the end of the Cold War, 
``It is as if we have slain a dragon and suddenly found a jungle filled 
with many very poisonous snakes.'' What have we done to prepare for 
these threats?
  The President's fiscal year 1999 budget request represented the 14th 
consecutive year of declining defense budgets. As defense spending 
declines, the downsizing of our military forces has been dramatic.
  Since 1987, active military personnel have been reduced by more than 
800,000. Since 1990, the active duty Army has shrunk from 10 to 8 
divisions. Since 1988, the Navy has reduced its ships from 565 to 346. 
Since 1990, the Air Force has shrunk from 36 to 20 fighter wings, 
active and reserve. Since 1988, the United States military has closed 
more than 900 facilities around the world and 97 major bases in this 
country.
  At the same time, the United States military force has been 
shrinking, operations around the world are increasing. We remain 
forward deployed with 125,000 troops per day that are overseas on 
forward exercises or operations.
  The Army conducted 10 operational events during a 31-year period from 
1960 to 1991, but 26 operational events in the 8 years since 1991.

                              {time}  1900

  The Marine Corps participated in 15 contingency operations during the 
7-year period between 1982 and 1989, with 62 contingency operations 
just since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
  The competing pressures of a smaller military, declining defense 
budgets, aging equipment and the increased pace of operations are 
stretching our forces to the breaking point. Today, they do more with 
less environment is eroding readiness and risking the ability of the 
military to successfully perform its missions.
  Our deployed units, the pointed end of the spear, may be ready. But 
ready for what? Deployed units are getting peacekeeping training, not 
high intensity warfare training. Pilots are not able to get enough 
training to maintain air combat skills.
  The national military strategy, as I said earlier, calls for us to be 
able to fight and win wars, and we are training for peacekeeping 
missions. Many believe that we cannot conduct, as I said, just one of 
these type operations because of it.
  The Army tells us it takes 9 months to retrain people when they come 
back from a place called Bosnia because they are not getting 
warfighting training.
  Although President Clinton admitted the Nation's military was 
confronting serious problems just recently, after us

[[Page H322]]

trying to tell him for a long time, and he recognized that increased 
defense spending would be necessary to address these problems, the 
fiscal year 2000 defense budget falls well short of the mark. The 
President's budget request addresses only about 50 percent of over $150 
billion in critical readiness, quality of life and modernization 
shortfalls that the Nation's military leaders, the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff have identified.
  Much of the proposed funding is also budgeted after both the 
President's term and the balanced budget agreement expires.
  Our military confronts real problems that require real solutions, not 
halfway measures and budget gimmicks.
  The President's fiscal year 2000 budget request has been touted as a 
$12.6 billion increase, but it is not. The increase is primarily the 
result of internal adjustments and reprogrammings within the defense 
budget. Of the alleged $12.6 billion increase for fiscal year 2000, 
only $4.1 billion is new money. The remaining $8.5 billion result from 
optimistic economic assumptions, spending cuts and budget gimmicks, 
including $3.8 billion in savings based on unusually low inflation 
rates and extremely low fuel costs; $3.1 billion cut in the already 
underfunded military construction accounts that provide decent housing 
for our troops and their families; approximately $2.5 billion in 
recisions of prior year defense funds, including almost $1 billion of 
recisions to missile defense and intelligence funds to offset the cost 
of the Wye River Agreement.
  Even if all of these assumptions, spending costs and cuts and 
gimmicks are counted, earlier this year the chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, General Shelton testified before the Committee on 
Armed Services, that the President's budget request would still result 
in a shortfall of approximately $8 billion in fiscal year 2000 alone.
  If the assumptions, spending cuts and gimmicks are invalid, the 
President's budget falls $70 billion short of meeting the service's 
most critical unfunded requirements over the next few years, 6 years.
  The service's unfunded requirements are real; while savings 
associated with the optimistic economic assumptions and gimmicks may 
never be.
  I would yield this time to other Members who can elaborate on what we 
have been talking about.
  Mr. RYUN of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I would like to add some points with 
regard to national defense, offer an example of how our armed forces 
are continuously being asked to do more with less.
  Within the district that I represent, which is the Second District of 
Kansas, resides the 190th Air Refueling Wing of the Kansas Air National 
Guard. Now, this Wing is responsible for a variety of support 
operations, including air refueling of operations worldwide, support of 
the no-fly zones in Iraq, organizing disaster and humanitarian relief 
and various other community outreach programs.
  In the past year, under the stress of continued deployments, the Wing 
has sent personnel and aircraft to various places such as Iceland, 
Germany, France, Turkey and to Alaska. However, Mr. Speaker, the newest 
KC-130 aircraft used by the 190th was built in 1963. The oldest 
aircraft was built in 1956.
  The President's budget forces this Wing that has extensive activities 
around the world to use these aircraft until the year 2040. That would 
make the existing aircraft 80 years old.
  Now, I have had the privilege of addressing a panel of experts during 
a hearing in the Committee on Armed Services, and I asked them the 
question then, would you feel comfortable flying an 80 year old 
aircraft? In fact, would you feel comfortable putting your son or 
daughter in that particular aircraft and asking them to fly?
  They gave me the same answer if I had put one of my sons or daughters 
in there. No, they did not feel comfortable with that.
  We must make that change. We must not ask our brave pilots to go into 
combat into aircraft that would be considered antiques in any other 
area. We must increase defense spending to give our military personnel 
the equipment they need to remain the world's premier military force. 
So I know there is much we need to do.
  Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Buyer), the chairman of our Subcommittee on Military Personnel.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, first I would like to commend the gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spence) for scheduling this very important special order. 
As chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, I am deeply 
concerned about maintaining the quality of our force that has been the 
hallmark of our military.
  We have entered an era where the ability of our military to attract 
and retain quality young Americans is no longer assured.
  On the issue of recruiting, Mr. Speaker, military recruiting can no 
longer be described as an unfavorable trend. Notwithstanding the 
significant increases in funding by the Services and by Congress for 
recruiting operations, advertising and incentives, the booming job 
market, erosion of the military pay and benefits package over the years 
have made military service increasingly unattractive for America's 
youth and made it questionable for those who are presently in the 
military to say it is worth it to spend their 20 years in the military, 
which causes retention also as an issue.
  Let me stick with recruiting here for a moment and take it one 
service at a time. With regard to the Army, traditionally it is the 
first service to feel the pressure from downturns in recruiting. It 
began with the process of what I have noticed, what the military has 
done here to address the issue is they began a process of cutting 
recruit quality standards.

  Now, they did that in March of 1997 by reducing the goal for diploma 
high school graduates. Even with the reduced recruit quality and 
additional funding, the Army failed to meet its recruiting objective 
for fiscal year 1998 and fell below the Congressionally set minimum 
troop strength.
  Currently, during the first quarter of the fiscal year 1999, Army 
recruiting again is failing, and that is quite disturbing to me. If 
recruiting is not improved this year, the Army end strength would fall 
approximately 6,000 below the Congressionally authorized troop strength 
by year's end. So let this be a warning signal to the Army.
  With regard to the Navy, during the fiscal year 1998, when recruiters 
missed their recruiting goal by approximately 7,000, approximately 13 
percent, the Navy failed to meet the Congressionally set minimum end 
strength. During the past year, the Navy calculated that there were 
approximately 22,000 vacant positions, of which 18,000 were sea going 
billets.
  Now, with regard to the 327 ships out there, when there are many 
billets open on the ships, these ships are now setting for sea at 
levels of readiness strength at C2, and we ought to question is it C2 
plus 1? So before the ship even leaves harbor they may now be at a C3 
level, which would be very concerning because what this does is then 
place great stress on the sailors who are actually running the ship. We 
are asking them to do more with less.
  On January 15th of 1999, the Navy announced that they will follow the 
Army's lead by reducing its recruiting goal for diploma high school 
graduates. Even with this change, the Navy could miss both its 
recruiting goal and Congressionally set end strength for fiscal year 
1999, and I have expressed my disappointment to the Navy for reducing 
its quality and its standards.
  With regard to the Air Force, the Air Force has long been considered 
immune to recruiting problems but, again, the Air Force missed its 
recruiting objective during the first four months of fiscal year 1999. 
The Air Force now projects that recruiting and retention problems will 
result in the service coming to 4,800 under the end strength floor set 
by Congress for fiscal year 1999.
  I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but these Services are 
not meeting their goals, nor the end strength as mandated by law and 
set forth here by Congress.
  The Marine Corps continues to meet its recruiting goals, but only 
after adding funding to recruiting advertising, incentives and 
operations. In addition, the Marine Corps continues to lead all 
services in stress on recruiters with 75 percent of recruiters 
reporting that they work over 60 hours a week. I will

[[Page H323]]

extend compliments to the commandant of the Marine Corps.
  With regard to retention, today with the drawdown, and I want to be 
cautious, Mr. Speaker, to say with the drawdown at near an end, because 
the drawdown seems to always continue but there are clear signals that 
the potential retention problems that first captured the attention of 
the committee several years ago are now becoming the leading edge of 
the retention crisis, and the chairman, the gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spence), warned many of us several years ago that the 
edge is near and the crisis is approaching, and we are now feeling 
those signs from the military.
  Like any of life's decisions, the current retention problem stems 
from a complex series of issues. Throwing money, more money at this 
problem, is not going to be the sole answer. The current high 
operations tempo, the time away from home, long working hours, eroding 
value of pay and allowances, reduction in retirement benefits, lack of 
resources and the facilities to do the job, erosion of health care 
benefits, and the perception of others, the loss of confidence in the 
military and civilian leadership are all factors, both perceived and 
real, that contribute to the environment that is driving people from 
the military.
  When you add that to the economy that continues to provide a 
significant pull on the high quality of men and women, you create a 
retention environment that could degrade the military readiness that 
this Nation so vitally relies.
  In the Navy, Navy retention problems extend across the force, both 
officer and enlisted. The aviator, the quote, take rates, end quote, 
for aviation continuation pay are running well behind the force 
sustaining levels. Even retention of junior officers in the surface 
warfare and special operations communities are running well behind 
their required levels. Enlisted retention for all career groups in the 
Navy is also running at a minimum of 10 percent behind the force 
sustaining rates.
  Retention of mid-career personnel is in the area of great concern 
with a current rate of 45 percent against the goal of 62 percent. This 
has prompted the Chief of Naval Operations to declare retention of 
quality personnel the Navy's highest short-term readiness priority.
  In the Air Force, retention concerns in recent years have been 
focused on pilots, where the current shortage of 850 is expected to 
increase over 1,300, and that is 10 percent, by year 2000.

                              {time}  1915

  Air Force enlisted retention has now eroded to the point where it 
rivals the pilot retention problem. The mid career reenlistment rate 
has dropped from 81 percent in 1994 to 69 percent in fiscal year 1998. 
The reenlistment rate for the most junior personnel also continued to 
slide from a high of 63 percent in 1995 to 54 percent in 1998, below 
the 55 percent objective for the first time in 8 years for the Air 
Force. That should be a wakeup call to everyone because the Air Force 
generally does not have this concern.
  The Army for the first time is experiencing a pilot retention problem 
with a shortage of 140 Apache attack helicopter pilots. The Army Chief 
of Staff has also noted a negative trend in the retention of junior 
officers over the last 3 years. Although the Army has been achieving 
overall enlisted retention objectives, the rate of first-term attrition 
has risen sharply to 41 percent, a contributing factor to the Army's 
failure to meet the congressional end strength floors of the Department 
of Defense bill.
  With regard to the Marine Corps in retention, the Marine Corps is not 
immune from the pilot retention problems that plague all the services. 
Pilot retention rates within the individual weapons systems are running 
8 to 21 percent below the rates required to sustain the force. The 
Marine Corps continues to meet its enlisted retention objectives 
although the retention objectives for the Marine Corps are lower than 
the other services and are becoming increasingly more difficult to 
maintain.
  With regard to the President's plan, Mr. Speaker, the recruiting and 
retention problems confronting the military are real and are deserving 
of the urgent attention of Congress. That is why I compliment the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) for holding this special 
order. I am sure that there are some Members of Congress that are going 
to be aghast that we would be increasing defense funding. Well, it is 
about time we are increasing defense funding. I will extend a 
compliment to the chiefs because we have been beating up the chiefs at 
each of the services asking for their candor. Now they have come 
forward and they have talked about the shortfalls and they have given 
us their requirements. But now that they have set forth their 
requirements, the President has not even funded their requirements. We 
here in the Congress have a responsibility, and that is to fund the 
requirements the military need to satisfy the national military 
strategy as set forth to meet the President's national security 
objectives. We play a vital, important role in that function. I 
compliment the gentleman from South Carolina for holding this special 
order. We will do our part in the personnel committee. We will begin by 
focusing not only on the recruiting and retention, the pay and the 
pensions issues, and we will start by a personnel hearing at Norfolk to 
focus on the Navy, and the other services will also be there.
  Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina 
(Mr. Hayes), a new member of our committee.
  Mr. HAYES. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to thank our 
distinguished chairman the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) 
for his leadership and guidance in pointing out to the Congress, the 
administration and the American people the shortfall in the President's 
year 2000 defense budget proposal. The public deserves to know. More 
importantly I commend the chairman and my colleagues on the Committee 
on Armed Services for their enduring commitment to the men and women 
who serve our Nation in the armed forces. Their attention and diligence 
to the steady decline of our country's military under this 
administration were brought to light during last month's State of the 
Union address. At last the President took heed of the advice from 
Congress and professed to the American people his intention to reverse 
current trends of reduced defense spending. President Clinton's 
emphasis on a strong defense was applauded by Members on both sides of 
the aisle. His acknowledgment of the military's needs and his vow to 
restore teeth to our Nation's defenses served notice to our men and 
women on the front line, their families and the American people that 
this country protects her own.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, as we have seen today, the President's 
pledge rings hollow. I do not intend to repeat what my colleagues have 
so eloquently made clear, but I do want to reiterate that Mr. Clinton's 
defense budget does not, as he claims, represent a $12 billion increase 
for fiscal year 2000. It certainly does not reflect a $112 billion 
increase over the next 5 years. I will mention, however, that I am 
particularly disappointed by the gimmickry the administration used in 
its military construction budget. They have literally, as Secretary 
Cohen confirmed today, borrowed from one account to bolster another. I 
am not sure if David Copperfield could create a better illusion. The 
President's partial funding of scores of construction projects gives 
false hope of starting and no expectation for completion of vital 
military construction.
  In North Carolina's 8th District, Fort Bragg and Polk Air Force Base 
have been promised only 23 percent of their needs. In my district, the 
8th of North Carolina and countless others, this is unacceptable. After 
review of the administration's budget, it is clear that we as 
authorizers have a great deal of work ahead. It is my sincere hope that 
the President will work with us to make good on his promise to shore up 
defense spending. It is irresponsible to play politics with our 
Nation's security by playing games with the budget. I look forward to 
his cooperation.
  Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. 
Talent), a very valuable member of our committee and also the chairman 
of the Committee on Small Business.
  Mr. TALENT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Beyond that I want to 
thank him for his leadership on this issue. If ever there was a voice 
more or less in the wilderness, it was the voice

[[Page H324]]

of my friend and the friend of America's safety and America's greatness 
the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) who ever since I have 
been in the Congress has been sounding the alarm about what is 
happening to America's military and finally people are beginning to 
listen. Let us hope that they have not begun to listen too late.
  Mr. Speaker, the American military is broken. Everything my 
colleagues have heard tonight, the statistics, the charts, the 
passionate speeches, the details offered by Congressmen and women who 
are in a position to know. That is what it all amounts to. America's 
military is broken. If the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in a position to 
tell the unvarnished truth, that is exactly what they would say, that 
America's military is broken, and they have been saying it, using the 
language of the Pentagon, for the past several months. I am very glad 
that they are saying it. Wisdom is always welcome, even if it comes 
late in the game.
  It is no surprise and it should come as no surprise to anyone that 
America's military is broken. It is the inevitable result of a series 
of decisions taken over the last 10 years and accelerated by 
the administration. It had to happen and it has happened. We have had 
13 years of declining defense budgets. That chart shows it. Nobody 
argues this. Nothing I am going to say today and nothing that has been 
said tonight is going to provoke any argument as to the facts of what 
happened.

  At the same time as America's spending on defense was going down, we 
were cutting the size of America's force by approximately one-third. We 
have a military that is approximately one-third less than it was 10 
years ago. And at the same time as we have been doing that, we have 
been increasing the responsibilities of America's servicemen and women 
around the world. There were 10 deployments of America's military in 
the Cold War era till the fall of the Berlin Wall. There have been 28 
since then. They have been costly and they are ongoing and nobody 
expects that trend to stop. We have asked our servicemen and women to 
do more and more and more, and we have given them less and less and 
less to do it with. As a result, the American military is broken.
  It is not their responsibility. What have they done? What have the 
services done in response to these trends? They did the only thing they 
could do. They had to make the dollars go further. So they cannibalized 
units that were not deployed, units that were here in the United 
States, they took key personnel away from them, they took key pieces of 
equipment away from them in order to bring up to readiness those units 
that have been deployed all around the world, in Bosnia and in Haiti, 
and everyplace else. They borrowed from the long-term accounts, the 
procurement accounts, the modernization accounts, things that we needed 
for the future, they borrowed from them in order to meet the immediate 
needs of today. And so we have not recapitalized the force as we 
should. We have in a few years a huge bill to pay. In fact we are in a 
position where we are beginning to have to pay it now. I am going to 
talk about that in just a minute with the chairman's indulgence. We are 
going to have to pay for the ships and the aircraft and the tanks that 
we should have been paying for all along in addition to those that have 
to be replaced in the normal course of events.
  And then the services did something else they did not want to do and 
it may be most tragic. They bled the people. They took the money away 
from personnel. We just heard the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Hayes) talk about the shortage of military construction in his 
district. We have made the servicemen and women live in facilities they 
should not have to live in because we do not have the money to build 
them decent barracks. They have not had the pay increases they should 
have because we do not have the money for that. We have underfunded 
systematically their health care system, not just for them but for the 
retirees. We have broken the promise we made to them because we did not 
have the money because we were trying to do more and more with less and 
less and playing this essentially dishonest trick on them and on the 
American people. We forced them to do more without giving them the 
funds that they needed. It is amazing that they have done it.
  We have held up as well as we have held up because we have the finest 
people ever to serve in the history of humankind in the military in 
America's Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. But the train is reaching 
the end of the line, Mr. Speaker. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff has come before the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate 
Armed Services Committee in the last few months, the Secretary of 
Defense came before the House Armed Services Committee today and 
affirmed that we are $148 billion short over the next 5 years of the 
minimum necessary funding to provide for minimum readiness for 
America's military in the short and long term, $148 billion, $30 
billion a year over the next 5 years. It did not just happen overnight. 
It happened as a result of these decisions and the neglect on the part 
of the government that owed more to its servicemen and women.
  What is the impact on the average serviceman, the average 
servicewoman? Mr. Speaker, I flew to Washington today and on my 
airplane I met a couple of men who were coming up to do work for the 
Air Force. They are pilots. They are in the reserves now. They told me 
the story. I have heard this 100 times. The people in the reserve 
components, in the Guard and the Reserve, they sign up to do a very 
important job. They sign up to be ready and to go to war if we have a 
war. And they are being involved in all these deployments all over the 
world.
  I said to them, what is happening as a result of that? They said 
people are leaving. We are 18,000 sailors short in the Navy. So when an 
aircraft carrier task force comes steaming home from the eastern 
Mediterranean, another one is steaming out to take its place, we have 
to take sailors off the decks of the carriers that are coming in and 
put them on the decks of the carriers that are going out. They have 
just been at sea 6 months, they have got to go out for another 6 
months. Mr. Speaker, this is a volunteer force. These are highly 
qualified, highly trained people. They do not have to stay. Most of 
them have families. They love their country and they love their duty, 
but they cannot do it year after year after year after year while we 
play games here not giving them what they need. It is terrible for this 
country and, more than that, it is just wrong.
  What does it mean to the American people? Well, it means this force 
is going hollow. If we do not do something about it, it is going to be 
hollow and it is going to be hollow fast, and a hollow military is very 
bad for you and me and your families. It means we cannot effectively 
counter the growing power of China or fight a war against terrorism the 
way we should around this globe. It means we cannot defend the Korean 
peninsula. We could not fight another Desert Storm without 
unnecessarily high risk and high casualties. It means we have no 
missile defense. If these rogue nations get long-term missile 
capability as fast as we now believe they will, we cannot defend our 
allies or ourselves because we have not been doing our duty in this 
government and in this body. It means, Mr. Speaker, that war is more 
likely to happen and more likely to kill an unnecessarily high number 
of servicemen and women if it does happen. And it is wrong. We have 
given these years over to the locusts and given the men and women who 
count on us in this country and in the services over to the locusts 
with it and it is wrong. It is worse than wrong. It is just shameful.
  What do we do now? We do the one thing that will make a difference. 
We put our money where all our mouths have been tonight. We step up to 
the plate, this Congress, this year, not 2 or 3 or 4 years from now 
when many of us are out of office and we can make promises on behalf of 
successor Congresses and successor administrations, we step up now and 
we put enough money in this budget to enable these people to do what we 
have asked them to do on our behalf and on behalf of our families.

                              {time}  1930

  And not smoke and mirrors, not a couple billion dollars in projected 
increases, and then the rest of it is supposed to come out of existing 
spending authority. We do not assume that fuel costs are going to be 27 
percent less

[[Page H325]]

next year than they are now and say, therefore, we are going to be able 
to spend more money on other things. We stopped the dance; we have been 
doing that long enough.
  This issue is vital to America's safety, it is vital to our 
commitment to our men and women, and it is vital to our greatness, and 
we have to do something now. That is why the chairman is here 
organizing this special order. That is why those of us on the committee 
on both sides of the aisle are so concerned. That is why this House has 
to act in the people's House.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for holding this special order, and 
I thank him for his tireless efforts, his persistence year after year 
in sounding this alarm. You were right, Mr. Chairman. I bet you wish 
that you had not been right, but you were right.
  Now we have a chance to do something. There is no stronger signal 
that we can send to the men and women in uniform that we care about 
them than to do something.
  Now I am going to close with a story from my first year on the 
Committee on Armed Services. It was then under the chairmanship of the 
gentleman from South Carolina's predecessor, Mr. Ron Dellums, our 
friend from California, an outstanding and gracious gentleman. We had a 
hearing on a very contentious issue, and there was a retired officer 
who testified, and he talked about the issue, and then he talked about 
the military life.
  He said, you know, it is hard being in the military; we move a lot, 
it is a big strain on our families, it is very difficult. He said we 
have to put our lives on the line, we have to contemplate the fact we 
may have to go to war and die, and it is not easy. He said we are glad 
to do it because we care about our country and we care about the 
traditions of our services. He said we are glad to do it. And then he 
looked up at the Armed Services Committee, all three tiers of us 
sitting there, and there I was on the lowest tier over on the side 
because I was a freshman. And he looked at us, and he said:
  But we count on you to protect us. We count on you.

  They count on us, Mr. Speaker, and we have let them down. It is time 
to stop letting them down. We need to do it this year, now, not on the 
next guy's watch.
  Mrs. BONO. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak to this body and the 
nation, especially those in California's 44th district, about the 
President's FY 2000 budget for Defense.
  Since 1985, Mr. Speaker, Defense spending has gone down in this 
country. When the Constitution was drafted, it was based upon the 
doctrine of limited government. Those powers that were not granted the 
federal government were reserved to the States. One of the primary, and 
exclusive powers, of the federal government is to provide for the 
national defense. This means fully funding our military to make them 
the strongest, best trained, best equipped, and, not to mention, the 
best taken care of force in the world. Many of those who live in the 
district I proudly represent are or were in the military. The 
sacrifices they made or are making should never be forgotten; for they 
contribute to the freedoms we now enjoy.
  The President's budget claims to increase defense spending in Fiscal 
Year 2000 by $12.6 billion and $112 billion over the next 5 years. Due 
the Administration's creative accounting and their rosy forecasts for 
the economy, the reality is that this ``increase'' is really $4.1 
billion in FY 2000 and $84 billion over those same 5 years. I applaud 
the Administration for the increase, but it falls way short of what the 
military needs. In fact, two weeks ago, the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
testified before the House Armed Services Committee, under the 
questioning of my Chairman of Procurement, Duncan Hunter, about what 
they will need in budget authority this year to fund their requests at 
the bare minimum. The total came to $20 billion. Even assuming the 
Administration's funding projections were accurate, that would still 
leave the military $8 billion short of what they require. Maybe the 
Administration could have displayed their commitment to the armed 
forces by coming up with the extra $8 billion.
  What we need to do is make a real commitment to the men and women of 
the Armed Services. We need to get back to what this country, this 
body, our President, was chartered to do: to provide for the national 
defense. I, also, want to save Social Security, reform Medicare, 
enhance education, but I also want to get our men and women in the 
armed services good health care, modern equipment, time with their 
families and decent pay and retirement. But more importantly than that, 
I want this nation to make a solid commitment to the defense of this 
country with a domestic missile system. So our people will know that 
if, and I pray to God that this will never happen, a rogue nation were 
to fire a missile onto this country, we will have the defenses to 
protect our citizenry.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the Administration's budget proposal does 
not go far enough to meet those goals.

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