[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.
____________________