[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 64 (Wednesday, May 5, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2781-H2788]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 KOSOVO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona 
(Mr. John Shadegg) who has, I think, a good health care proposal and is 
one of our leaders in Congress on health care issues.


                    Patients' Health Care Choice Act

  Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. And I 
presume he is going to discuss with us a little bit later some issues 
about national defense, and I will await hearing his topic and hearing 
his remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, today, on behalf of myself and 13 other colleagues, I 
have introduced the Patients' Health Care Choice Act, H.R. 1687. We are 
embroiled in a great debate about health care reform in this Nation, 
and it is appropriate that we should be embroiled in that debate, and 
there is a great deal of discussion about how we ensure that Americans 
get quality health care. But, as a part of that discussion, we have 
left out a big piece of the debate.
  We have talked a lot on this floor about patient protection 
legislation. I want to make it very clear. I do think that we need HMO 
reform. I do believe that we need to do something to ensure that 
Americans get the health care that they purchase and that they pay for 
and that they deserve.
  But I want to make it equally clear that the entire problem cannot be 
solved by a mega-regulatory piece of legislation which puts a Band-Aid 
on the current problems in health care, which addresses the short-term 
problems we have and ignores the long-term problems with our health 
care system. And be sure, there are long-term problems.
  The Patients' Health Care Choice Act is a bill that takes a long-
range look at the health care industry and says that we can do it 
better. Fundamentally, it operates on the premise that giving Americans 
greater choice in their health care options, that giving them greater 
access to health care and improving the incentives for them to purchase 
and consume health care services in a responsible fashion will do far 
more to improve our health care system in America than a whole new set 
of complex government regulations that try to mandate the marketplace 
and tell businesses how to run their businesses.
  Let me talk about those three issues that I have just addressed, 
greater choice and health care options. Today, most Americans get their 
health insurance through their employer; and that has been a good 
system. It has enabled millions of Americans to get health care. But, 
regrettably, it does not give those Americans the kind of choice that 
we have everywhere else in the market.
  If any one of us wants to go buy an automobile, we have dozens we can 
take our pick from. If we want to buy a pair of shoes or a new suit or 
a new home, we have virtually unlimited choices; and this is a great 
aspect of the American economy.
  But one of the drawbacks of the health care system that we have in 
America today is that many Americans, indeed more than half of the 
Americans who are insured, are given two choices or less. And indeed 
many of those, and the statistics are disputed, many in fact get only 
one choice: Their employer says, ``You may have this plan.''
  This bill, the Patients' Health Care Choice Act, says we ought to be 
giving Americans a much broader choice. Let them pick the kind of 
health care plan they want. Let them pick the plan that suits their 
needs and their family's needs. Let them shop with their feet and make 
market decisions about their health care.
  Now, how can we do that? Well, I will explain how this bill does 
that.
  But there is a second aspect of our health care system that is 
equally broken, and that is access to health care. Let me explain that.
  Beginning during World War II, many employers wanted to be able to 
give their employees additional incentives to work for them and they 
wanted to do that by giving them raises. The government, however, had 
instituted wage and price controls. As a result of those wage and price 
controls, employers were prohibited from giving their employees 
additional raises.
  So, the mind of man being ingenious, they came up with the idea of 
saying to their employees, ``We will give you health care benefits.'' 
And as a result of a ruling of the IRS and a ruling of the Tax Code, 
what we established during World War II was a policy which has driven 
employer-based health insurance. And that policy says that if their 
employer provides them health coverage, that health care coverage is a 
deductible expense to the employer. That is, he can deduct it from his 
tax return before he pays taxes on that tax return or before she pays 
taxes on the earnings of that business but, most importantly, it is 
excluded from income to the employer. That is to say, it is unlike 
wages, which would be taxed when received by the employee. Instead, 
health care benefits are excluded from income.
  Now, what has that meant? What it has meant is that many, many 
businesses offer very, very strong health care plans that have many 
aspects to them and give Americans health care. That is very, very 
good. But there has been an unintended consequence of that, one I 
already mentioned, and that is now we have got employers purchasing 
health care, not individual employees, and that is taking away choice, 
as I already mentioned.
  But another consequence of the current structure is that all of those 
Americans not fortunate enough to be working for an employer that 
offers them health insurance coverage are left out of the system.
  Let me try to explain that. If they are a lucky American and they 
work for an employer who provides them health care insurance, they are 
getting that health care from their employer and they are getting a tax 
subsidy because their employer's cost is subsidized. It is a deductible 
expense to the employer, and it is not income to them.
  But what about those uninsured Americans? Today, in America, there 
are 43 million uninsured Americans. How do we treat them under our Tax 
Code? The answer is we kind of give them the back of the hand.
  Now what we say to them is they are not going to get a subsidy from 
the government for their health insurance. They are not going to get a 
tax write-off. What we are going to do is say to them, we are going to 
punish them. If

[[Page H2782]]

they decide to go out and do something prudent and take some of their 
hard-earned dollars and buy a health insurance plan, we are going to 
punish them because we are going to say that they have to pay for that 
plan with after-tax dollars, dollars on which they already paid taxes.
  What that means to the average American whose employer does not 
provide them health coverage is that their cost of health coverage is 
somewhere between 30 and 50 percent higher than their peer that works 
for an employer who provides health coverage. I suggest that that is 
absolutely irrational and insane.
  Let me make a point at this particular instance. In America, I 
believe we have reached a consensus some years ago, maybe 5, maybe 8, 
maybe 10, that no American should go without basic health care. If that 
is our belief, if our public policy in this Nation is that people 
should not go without health care, then how can we have a policy that 
says, if they are lucky enough to work for an employer that provides 
health care, the government will subsidize it with a deduction to that 
business; but if, by pure happenstance, they are either unemployed or 
they are employed by an employer who cannot offer them or does not 
offer them health insurance coverage, we are going to punish them and 
we are going to say they ought to go out and buy insurance but, if they 
do, we are going to charge them 30 to 50 percent more because the 
government will not help.
  Well, the Patients' Health Care Choice Act takes a giant step towards 
helping those people by providing a refundable tax credit for those 
people. It is a refundable tax credit set at a modest level, but its 
purpose is to put on an equal footing to create equity between those 
Americans who get their health insurance from their employer and those 
Americans not lucky enough to do that.

                              {time}  2015

  What would this tax credit mean and who would be eligible for it? Any 
American who does not get health insurance coverage from their employer 
would be eligible for the tax credit. The tax credit would be set, is 
set, at an amount roughly equal to the tax benefit that employers now 
get, the tax subsidy that those who are employed now get for their 
coverage.
  All one would have to do to qualify for the tax credit would be to go 
out and buy at least a catastrophic policy. You would then apply to the 
government, you would certify that you have bought the policy and you 
would immediately get the tax credit.
  Is the tax credit difficult to administer? It is not. It works 
through the withholding system, so that you could withhold from your 
wages, or you would get a benefit in a withholding of your wages to 
allow you to pay for your health insurance as you go and let you buy 
that health care as you move forward. We honestly believe that is a 
giant step forward for Americans.
  I do not know how I am doing on time, but let me just finish with the 
last portion of the bill because I think it is critically important. 
The third piece of the bill is to institute some major improvements to 
both the group insurance market and the individual insurance market by 
instituting health marts, association health plans, and a new concept 
called individual membership associations.
  Health marts are organizations that are set up, and association 
health plans are similar to those, to create new pooling mechanisms so 
that companies could go together and create pooling mechanisms to offer 
their employees greater choice. Individual membership associations are 
a new concept in the law, and they do essentially the same thing, only 
they move away from relying solely on employer-based health insurance.
  What they say is that new organizations, like for example the 
American Automobile Association, or any other association, the 
Daughters of the American Revolution, in my home State of Arizona the 
Arizona State University Alumni Association or the University of 
Arizona Alumni Association, could sponsor a health care plan, pool 
together a large number of Americans and have a group health care plan 
called an individual membership association. Those health care plans 
would provide new pooling mechanisms and help bring down the cost of 
insurance.
  The last aspect of this bill that I think is critically important 
goes to the issue of choice, is that as I mentioned at the beginning, 
many, many Americans are trapped in one health care plan. Their 
employer offers them only one plan and that is the plan they get to 
pick from. Sadly, that does not give people the kind of options they 
want.
  The final piece of this bill, to encourage the creation of a market 
and to give people choice, is a provision in the bill which says that 
at the employer's decision, employees could be allowed to opt out of 
their company's health care plan.
  Let us say right now you are an employee of a company and you are 
being offered a health care plan. Let us say hypothetically after this 
legislation goes into effect, you say that you would rather go shop in 
the private market, you would rather go look and see if you wanted to 
join a health mart or see if you wanted to go to an association health 
plan or see if you wanted to join one of the insurance plans offered by 
an individual membership association.
  What you would do is you would go to your employer and you would say, 
``I would like to consider opting out of my employer-sponsored plan.'' 
The employer would then calculate his or her actual cost of insuring 
you. In reality we know that younger people cost a lot less to insure 
than older people. So an employer might do a calculation. To insure a 
single young woman 21 years old might be as little as $850 a year. By 
contrast, to insure her counterpart, a 58-year-old secretary, might be 
two or three or four or five times that amount of money.
  The employer would make this calculation based on an actuarial basis, 
looking at the employee's age, sex, and geographical location, and come 
up with a figure. That figure for a young employee might be $800; for 
an older employee it might be $4,000. They would then say to the 
employee, ``This is the amount of money you have to shop.''
  If the employee then went out and shopped and found a health care 
plan which better suited his or her needs or his or her family's needs, 
that amount of money could be spent by that employee to purchase that 
amount of insurance. Now, we do require that the money must be spent to 
purchase insurance. However, if you are lucky enough to go out and buy, 
for example, a catastrophic policy and have some savings, the 
legislation allows you to roll that savings into a medical savings 
account or a medical IRA for future health care needs.
  What we will have done by achieving this is we will have truly made 
health care personal and portable for those Americans who choose to opt 
out of their employer's plan. We, the cosponsors of this legislation, 
the Patients' Health Care Choice Act, H.R. 1687, believe that giving 
Americans choice will create the right kind of market incentives that 
will improve quality and bring down cost, and will do so in a fashion 
that will benefit the entire system.
  We also believe it will be tremendously beneficial to small employers 
with a relatively small number of employees who do not want to be in 
the business of procuring health insurance for their employees. They 
would have the option of allowing their employees to opt out and 
creating this new system.
  We have dealt with the problem which will be raised, the issue of 
adverse selection, by allowing the employer to make this actuarial 
calculation, so that people will not have a motivation to opt out of 
their employer's system for any reason other than they would like to 
have a choice. We believe fundamentally that choice and market 
incentives will improve health care.
  We would end the problem that plagues our current system of 
overconsumption. Right now, the current system, because your employer 
pays for the plan and you consume it, has created a great incentive for 
overconsumption. The average employee, understanding that somebody else 
or believing that somebody else, their employer, has already paid for 
the benefits, they tend to overutilize the system.
  I recently had a conversation with a leader in the Senate who 
indicated to

[[Page H2783]]

me that he had recently had a conversation with a family member who had 
a cold. The family member said, ``I'm going to go see the doctor 
tomorrow about this cold.'' This leader said, ``Well, jeeze, why are 
you going to go see the doctor about the cold?'' The individual said, 
``Well, I already paid for it, and it's free.''
  Of course that is not true. They did not already pay for that 
particular visit, and of course no visit to a doctor is free. But that 
is the mind set we have gotten into in America, where we have made 
people not individually responsible for purchasing their own health 
care acting in an irresponsible fashion.
  I believe this legislation takes us in the right direction. I am 
extremely pleased that as we introduced it today, the House majority 
leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), was an original cosponsor 
of the bill and had some very nice things to say about this 
legislation. He said, ``I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the 
Patients' Health Care Choice Act,'' and he complimented the tax credit 
provision of it which will deal with the problem of uninsured Americans 
by giving them a tax credit to go out and buy health care coverage.

  I am also extremely pleased that the American Medical Association, in 
a letter sent to me on April 29 of this year after having reviewed our 
draft legislation, specifically said, ``Your proposed bill will make a 
significant step in the right direction.'' I think that is because the 
bill does many of the things that the American Medical Association says 
need to be done.
  We need to make health care personal, we need to make it portable, we 
need to change the system where one person, employers purchase health 
care, but others, individual employees, consume that health care. We 
can restore the marketplace here, we can do things that will benefit 
people in a very positive fashion, and we can do that through this 
legislation.
  I am extremely excited about it. I am thrilled to have the 
encouragement of the AMA and of many leaders here in the Congress. I 
look forward to working on this legislation, the Patients' Health Care 
Choice Act of 1999, H.R. 1687, I am thrilled that we can move this kind 
of legislation forward to give Americans a long-term solution to the 
health care problem.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. If the gentleman would answer one question.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Surely.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I do not feel that our colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle, the answer in their Patients' Bill of Rights was to have 
unlimited lawsuits, which in my opinion would drive up the cost of 
health care and destroy our HMOs, versus what you are planning to do is 
to make changes, to make sure that people have access and adequate 
care. Is that correct?
  Mr. SHADEGG. That is exactly right. The whole theory behind the 
Patients' Bill of Rights is between a combination of complex government 
regulations, and going at the issue of ERISA reform by allowing 
lawsuits, we can solve the problem. That is not going to solve the 
problem.
  Our legislation says, let us create a marketplace. If people want to 
buy a plan where the plan is less expensive because they have given up 
their right to sue their plan, let them do that. On the other hand, if 
people want to pay a little bit more for a plan and recognize that in 
paying more, they are getting the right to sue their plan, that seems 
to me to give them an option. In addition to which I think this 
Congress is going to move forward on thoughtful legislation for HMO 
reform which will not open the door to unlimited lawsuits. I agree with 
the gentleman, the last thing we want to do is create a litigation 
frenzy.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I thank the gentleman for his leadership on the 
health care issues. I am on the Labor-HHS appropriations committee. I 
think it is absolutely exciting seeing the revolutionary research that 
is being done all the way from cancer to Alzheimer's to Parkinson's, 
diabetes. Many of us want to double that research budget over the next 
5 years. We are going to have trouble doing that by some of the things 
that I am going to talk about here today. But I thank the gentleman for 
his leadership.
  Mr. Speaker, I am Randy ``Duke'' Cunningham. I represent the 51st 
Congressional District in north county, San Diego. I come here tonight, 
as someone once said, with a very heavy heart.
  I would say, Mr. Speaker, unlike many of my colleagues in this body 
and the other body, I spent the majority of my adult life in the 
military. I come with a lot of experience. I have flown in three 
fighter squadrons. I was both a student and an instructor at the Navy 
fighter weapons school, which most people call Top Gun, where we 
devised the tactics and invasions of countries of our potential 
enemies. I served on Seven Fleet Staff, where we planned and my 
preliminary job was planning the invasion and the defense of Southeast 
Asia countries. I flew 300 combat missions in Vietnam. I was shot down 
on the 10th of May, 1972, and I was very fortunate, unlike my colleague 
Sam Johnson in this body, was not taken prisoner of war but had a 
helicopter rescue me before the enemy got to me. I was commanding 
officer of an adversary squadron that flew Russian and Chinese tactics, 
forces against our fighters and allied fighters. And I am a student of 
history, not only of the capabilities but the planning, the strengths 
and weaknesses in the deployment of air, land and sea forces. That was 
my job in the military.
  I come tonight first of all to speak on Kosovo. Many people will tell 
you about the problems. They will tell you about the travesties that 
are taking place, on both sides in my opinion, but they will not give 
you any solutions.
  Mr. Speaker, what I would like to do tonight is first give in my 
opinion what some of those solutions are instead of committing ground 
troops or continuing the air war, because as I give the solutions, Mr. 
Speaker, I think my colleagues will see that the causes and the 
problems come in fold. I would like to start first of all by starting 
at what I consider the beginning of the end.
  The first was Rambouillet. Rambouillet was an agreement. I would ask 
you, Mr. Speaker, would you take this agreement in hand? First of all, 
if you were going to allow a foreign power to occupy what you 
considered your country. Secondly, that that foreign power would hold 
that country, yours, in its hand for 3 years and then turn it over to a 
country like Albania that since 1880 has not only tried to take Kosovo 
in expansionism but also Macedonia, Montenegro and even parts of 
Greece. That is why the Greeks are so petrified.
  The ad hoc air campaign is no strategy. It is a disaster in my 
opinion. The strategy of bombing until they capitulate is poor foreign 
policy and is not a strategy. For us that have fought in wars, unlike 
many of my colleagues in this body, it is easy to kill but it is very, 
very difficult to work to live.
  What would you do, then, Mr. Congressman, if you had the power? First 
of all, halt the bombing. Jesse Jackson, who I disagree with most of 
the time, has shown more leadership than the President or many of the 
leaders in this body and the other body in my opinion. Jesse Jackson 
has said that a diplomacy with no diplomacy is no diplomacy; that 
bombing and forcing an enemy to capitulate with no other dialogue is 
wrong. I agree.
  First of all, Russian military, 70 percent of the Russian military, 
according to our CIA. I would say, Mr. Speaker, nothing I am going to 
say here tonight is secondhand. It is firsthand, face to face, either 
with our intelligence agencies, our military or sources directly 
related to Kosovo.

                              {time}  2030

  But 70 percent of the Russian military support the overthrow of the 
Yeltsin government. These are the hard-line Communists, the hard-line 
Communists that want to see Yeltsin leave and communism returned to the 
former Soviet Union. These are the same Communists that strongly 
support Milosevic, and it is part of the problem.
  So how do you resolve that? Let us solve Russia's problem, and the 
United States and Kosovo and the Albanians at the same time.
  The Serbians, the Yugoslavians have said that they would allow 
Russian troops to act as peacekeepers because they trust them. The 
Greeks, the Scandinavians, the Italians and maybe even the Ukrainians, 
but let us keep out the United States, Britain and Germany, who is 
Yugoslavia's bitter enemy since Hitler's days. They do not trust them,

[[Page H2784]]

and they are not about to let them on what they consider their 
homeland.
  Kosovo, as per Rambouillet, you have got to start over. The President 
had a total disregard for the gut feeling of what Kosovo means to the 
Yugoslavian people and to the Albanians as well. It was a no-win 
situation, and let us start over. You may have a vote on Kosovo, but it 
will have to remain, if you want peace in that part of the world, it 
will have to remain part of the greater Serbia.
  You can have a cantonization program, much like they have in the 
Scandinavian countries to where they have an area for the French, where 
they have French speakers in French schools, and for the Germans, and 
for the Swiss, and on and on. That is accepted by the Orthodox Catholic 
Church of both Greece and greater Serbia and over 200,000 Serbian 
Americans.
  Milosevic, once there is stability with the peacekeeping troops that 
he trusts and that the Albanians trust, then Milosevic has got to 
withdraw his troops and his armor prior to Rambouillet. It does not 
mean they have to give up full power or autonomy, but they have got to 
remove the threat to the Albanians and to themselves in the long run.
  The KLA who is supported, and this is not secondhand, not just in the 
newspapers, but looking George Tenet, head of the CIA, eye to eye, face 
to face, and George Tenet told me. He says:

       Duke, the KLA is supported by Osama Bin Laden, the 
     terrorist that blew up our embassies. Izetbegovic, a Muslim 
     leader in Sarajevo, has over 12,000 Mujahideen and Hamas that 
     surround him, Mr. Speaker, 12,000. They have emigrated from 
     Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan and Syria, the fundamentalist 
     Muslims. These are the Jihad, the real bad people in this 
     world. They know that some day that NATO and the United 
     States will pull out of both Bosnia and Kosovo, and they have 
     surrounded themselves with people they think will give them 
     the strength. Unfortunately, the strength is a threat to 
     world peace and a threat to the United States and the free 
     world, in my opinion.

  So, the President has got to look the President of Albania in the eye 
and say: We want every single one of those Mideast Mujahideen and Hamas 
out of the country within a short time. He has got to look Izetbegovic 
in the eye and say: I want every single one of the Mujahideen and Hamas 
and other fundamentalist terrorists out of Bosnia, out of Kosovo and 
out of Europe. Besides that, the President has got to look the 
President of Albania in the eye and say: You have got to stop your 
expansionism toward Kosovo, toward Macedonia, toward Montenegro and 
toward Greece.
  When there is stability and not before there is stability can you 
even start considering bringing back in the refugees. There will have 
to be some kind of outside source to determine which refugees should 
come back to Kosovo.
  One of the problems the Serbs created themselves is tearing up the 
papers of the Albanians. Why? Because over 60 percent of the Albanians 
in Kosovo are there illegally. They have crossed the border, they are 
not citizens, and to separate now the citizens from the noncitizens, I 
think the Serbs have made it even more difficult. But yet that has got 
to be accomplished, in my opinion; and it is going to have to be done 
thoughtfully.
  In the meantime, we are going to have to take a look at the millions 
of people, in my opinion, that the United States, NATO and Milosevic 
himself have caused through forced evacuation, that those people 
starving, they are hungry. If you look into the eyes of the children, 
they do not have the slightest clue of what is going on.
  These are not the Albanians that I am talking about, the terrorists. 
These are people like you and me with families that just want to live 
and survive.
  But I would also say there is the Yugoslavians the same way, that to 
identify an entire race as evil is wrong. We have gone down that road 
in history too often, and each time it has been disastrous.
  So we have to aid the citizens on both sides at least with minimal 
conditions because what are you going to do? You going to bring them 
back into Kosovo in tents, with no food, and there has got to be a 
general plan and a central clearinghouse.
  The United States should provide leadership, technology and 
intelligence in its part of the cost. Europe countries, Russia, Greece, 
Ukraine, Italy, France, Britain and the others, need to pick up the 
slack and to put the pieces of the puzzle back together; and NATO needs 
to pay its fair share. The United States is paying for 90 percent of 
this war. That is wrong. There are 18 other nations in this war, and 
they should have burden sharing equal to ours.
  One of the other problems, Mr. Speaker, is that the President talks 
about wanting to save Social Security and Medicare and education. Every 
penny of that surplus that he is talking about comes out of Kosovo. We 
have already spent $16 billion in Bosnia. We still spend $25 million a 
year in Haiti building roads and bridges. That all comes out of the 
military budget, and that has got to change. We are in over 150 
countries. Our military is so spread out and so distraught that we are 
only saving about 23 percent of our enlisted and 30 percent of our 
pilots. That means your experience, not only your troops working on 
your maintenance, but your aviators and your personnel are without 
leadership in many cases and/or expenses.
  We have been in Korea over 50 years. Bosnia, we were supposed to be 
there 1 year, and it is $16 billion. We are still in Saudi Arabia. It 
has got to stop, and this all needs to be part of the solution as well 
as strength through peace.
  Mr. Speaker, let me go back and tell you in my opinion what some of 
the causes, and there is a saying:
  If you smell the roses, look for the coffins.
  In Vietnam it is: Where have all the flowers gone?
  As I mentioned, Rambouillet was a disaster, a shortsighted attempt at 
foreign policy, and I quote Henry Kissinger and Larry Eagleburger:
  Was an offer that the President either knew or could not accept, that 
the Yugoslavians could not accept to give up Kosovo even if Milosevic 
had said I will give up Kosovo. The Serbian people with 
their nationalism have been fighting in Kosovo since 1385, that one in 
three Serbs during World War II gave up their lives against 700,000 
Germans on April 5, 1941. The Germans bombed Belgrade and along with a 
half a million Croatians and a quarter million Muslims have fought with 
Nazi Germany. One in three Serbs died defending Kosovo, and they either 
kicked out or killed every single one of the Muslims, of the Croatians 
and the Nazis, and in doing that they paid for that country in their 
blood in their opinion. And I think before you ever have a solution, 
before you ever have a foreign policy, you have got to look in the eyes 
of all the sides affected, not just one side, or that diplomacy will 
fail. It will be a no-win situation.

  The President basically tried to put a horse's head in bed with the 
Serbian people, Milosevic. Milosevic sent him the rest of the horse 
back because the President had not a clue on the gut feeling of the 
Yugoslavian people as far as Kosovo.
  This is the home of the Orthodox Catholic Church. It is their 
Jerusalem, and they will not give it up. So Kosovo has got to go off 
the table and remain part of greater Serbia, but yet it can be 
cantonized.
  The military, the Pentagon, told the President. I can name the guys 
that I flew with in these wars that are now in the Pentagon. They 
looked me eye to eye and said:
  Duke, we told the President not to get into this air war, not to do 
it, because, A, the goals could not be achieved with air strikes alone, 
and the unwillingness to conduct ground troops and to insert them into 
the war, that we would make things worse, that we would kill a lot of 
innocent people, we would stretch our military beyond belief, we would 
make ourselves vulnerable in North Korea and Iraq and other places in 
the world and that we would accelerate an increased forced evacuation 
of refugees. And that is exactly, Mr. Speaker, what we have done.
  When you ask the people where were you when the Serbs came: We were 
in our homes; they told us to get out. They were not evacuating, they 
were not refugees, but our bombing forced acceleration of that, and 
there are millions of people that in my opinion this President and 
Milosevic are responsible for that would not be there today, and this 
is a sad thing to say about your own country, Mr. Speaker, and the lack 
of planning and understanding and leadership.
  You think in the planning to just conduct air strikes, something I 
did for

[[Page H2785]]

20 years, that the President would have looked at the weather to 
commence air strikes when the weather is predicted to be overcast and 
bad weather, which you cannot conduct your air strikes safely for 2 
weeks. Do you think they might have checked the weather?
  When Chernomyrdin was on his way to the United States knowing how 
Russia supports the Serbs, do you think they might have notified 
Russia? Instead Chernomyrdin had to turn around his airplane and go 
back to Russia. To me, that is ludicrous. It is not something that you 
would plan.
  And this ad hoc air circus warfare that is stepped up little by 
little with very little planning is not the way to win a war, and I 
would ask you, Mr. President, to think about what we have done.
  Mr. Speaker, do you know the total number of people killed in Kosovo 
prior to our bombing? It is amazing. People will say 10,000, 20,000. It 
is 2,012. Prior to us bombing, this great massive killing, 2,012.
  Tudjman, the head of the Croatians, slaughtered 10,000 Serbs in 1995 
and ethnically cleansed out of Croatia 750,000 Yugoslavians. Where were 
we then? And on a scale 2,012, and one-third of those were Serbs killed 
by the KLA. Was there an apartheid? Yes. Ninety percent, not all 
Albanians, made up of other nations.
  As my colleagues know, there was over 100,000 Serbs that left Kosovo 
because of the harassment by the KLA. There was fighting on both sides. 
And before you can have diplomacy, you have got to understand the only 
problem is not Milosevic. The KLA is a problem. Tudjman is a problem. 
Our lack of understanding of European problems is the problem.
  And again what I tell you is not secondhand; it is firsthand.

                              {time}  2045

  General Clark, face-to-face, when I was in Brussels, said, Duke, NATO 
only wanted to bomb one day and quit; to me, face-to-face, not in a 
newspaper, not from an Intel source, that NATO only wanted to bomb one 
day and quit.
  Secretary Cohen said, well, Duke, our biggest problem is the media. 
If we have the media coming down on us, we are lost. In other words, 
the spin has got to come. Because I asked, why did they continue? 
Because the President got ahold of Blair from Britain, and the German 
Chancellor, and pushed the bombs to what we are doing now, and that is 
why I think it really is a Clinton-Gore war.
  For us to disregard the Pentagon, to not have the knowledge of what 
Kosovo meant, to push NATO into this, and now they are into it, and 
then to say NATO speaks with one voice after last week in their 
meeting, if they are speaking with one voice, why is Hungary still 
shipping oil to Serbia, a NATO country? Why is France still shipping 
oil? Why is France trading nuclear weapons to Iran? These are part of 
NATO nations and they are speaking with one voice?
  I think that is wrong. The policy to bomb into submission is a lack 
of policy.
  Again, I would like to thank Jesse Jackson, who I disagree with most 
of the time, and his son serves here on the other side of the aisle, 
but I want to say Mr. Jackson gave more leadership and more thought 
toward this problem than the President of the United States, and I want 
to personally thank him for that.
  It is easy to fight, we have the power, but it is difficult to work 
and live, and I quote Jesse Jackson: There is fear on both sides. The 
understanding, the diplomacy.
  When I was a youngster, I worked in a hay field and I sat on a bench 
and I had a Persian cat jump up in my lap, and I was petting the cat. 
Just a few minutes later a Siamese cat came on the other side. Of 
course, the two cats tensed up but I was going to make them friends. I 
was smarter than those cats, and I knew their attitudes could be 
changed.
  I moved those cats closer and closer and they would tighten, and I 
would pet them. They would tighten and I would pet them, and I would 
move them closer. I sat there out of the hay fields with no shirt on 
and those cats hit each other and I was a shredded mess.
  If one tries to bring refugees into a country where they want to kill 
each other and put the United States in the middle, it is going to be a 
disaster.
  The Serbs fear the KLA. The Albanian people fear the Serbs. The Serbs 
feel that the country is theirs. The Albanians feel that portions of 
the country is theirs. Again, before we can have any diplomacy, the 
President has to understand, when the liberal level attempts to use a 
vehicle like the military that they neither understand nor have 
supported in the past, they are bound to fail.
  They have a strange dichotomy, Mr. Speaker. They have a vehicle which 
they loath at times, and at the same time they use this vehicle to 
serve foreign policy. They are inept, and I would say that the Strobe 
Talbotts, the Jane Fondas, the Tom Haydens, the Ramsey Clarks are bound 
to fail because they do not have the gut inclinations on what the use 
of the military is, and especially when they deny what their 
warfighters say and go on.
  Let us look at NATO today. It is not Ronald Reagan and Margaret 
Thatcher. Let us look at the makeup. France is a socialist communist 
coalition. Italy, a former, and I say ``former'', communist; they say 
he is a quick study for democracy. Germany, a Greenpeace socialist. 
Tony Blair, a liberal left labor party. And then the President with his 
military record.
  I contend that this is not leadership in foreign policy with the use 
of that vehicle that will be successful, especially if they turn their 
heads away from their advisors, the people that know what they are 
doing in conflict. They are out of their element and disaster is 
inevitable.
  I asked General Clark, face-to-face, I said, how many sorties, how 
many flights, is the United States making? We have got 19 nations in 
this. With his eyes he looked at me and he said, Duke, to the sortie we 
are flying 75 percent of the air strikes. That does not include the B-
2s, the C-17 logistics, the tanking and the other missions. That puts 
us up over 86 percent. Ninety percent of the weapons dropped are from 
the United States. There are 18 other nations, Mr. Speaker, in this.
  Our supplemental coming up tomorrow should be a check from NATO. 
Billions of dollars for a European war and we are paying for it, and we 
are taking the money out of the things that we are trying to support 
like medical research and Social Security and Medicare and education to 
fight this war.
  There are many of us who think that we should not be there, and that 
there is a better way. Eighteen other nations. I think that is wrong.
  I talked to Stavros Dimas, he is number two in the Greek parliament 
on the minority side. They are absolutely petrified of Albanian 
expansionism because, like I said, in the early 1800s they wanted even 
parts of Greece. History, in 1389 when Kosovo was one, and I mentioned 
that on April 5, 1941, 700,000 German troops invaded Kosovo and 
Belgrade was bombed. The Chetniks, who were mostly the guerilla 
fighters, the partisans and the loyalists, were led by a general named 
Miholevic, not Milosevic but Miholevic, and they killed or kicked out 
every single German out of Kosovo.
  The CIA, George Tenet, again, told me that the KLA is supported by 
Osama bin Laden, the Mujahideen and Hamas from Middle East countries. 
And these are the people that some of my colleagues want to arm?
  They say, oh, no, no, no, that is not true. That is not true. There 
cannot be any KLA sympathizers to Mujahideen and Hamas.
  Well, I would tell my friends that they are wrong and it is backed up 
eyeball-to-eyeball with George Tenet.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a tape here. I cannot play it on the floor 
because it is illegal to use electronics on the floor of the House, and 
I will not play it, but what is in this tape is some 36 surface-to-air 
missiles fired at a strike in January of 1972. My flight had over 36 
SAMS fired at it. I lost two good friends this day. I lost two other 
good friends and pilots in a strike up by Quang Tri City.
  Part of the supplemental that we are going to fight for tomorrow has 
these stand-off weapons, the stand-off weapons that have kept many of 
our pilots safe but yet because of Iraq, because of other places the 
President has gotten us into, four times in Iraq, the Sudan, Somalia, 
Haiti, that we are running out of these stand-off weapons like the

[[Page H2786]]

Tomahawk. We call it a TLAM. The conventional air launch cruise missile 
we call a CALCM, these run at about $2 million apiece. The Tomahawk 
runs at about a million. The Joint STARS, which is a joint surveillance 
large aircraft that gives us the intelligence and the information we 
need on the ground, we are short of those. We have lost two F-16s. We 
have lost two Apaches. We lost an F-117 fighter.

  I would say, Mr. Speaker, we are going to lose more aircraft, and if 
we commit ground forces into Kosovo, even if we force Milosevic to 
capitulate, we then buy Kosovo. If you look at the history, General 
Shelton said this is absolutely the most difficult land and area 
environment to attack in the world. It is one of the easiest to defend.
  A single rocket launcher can knock out a tank and these narrow roads 
can tie up a whole column of tanks. Guerilla warfare, which they are 
used to fighting, they have been fighting there for 800 years. Yes, I 
think we can overcome the Serbian forces but if we do, A, at what cost? 
B, we have just bought Kosovo. And then what? I think it is a disaster.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I think with the history of the area, that with the 
lack of understanding by the White House, the lack of diplomacy with 
Russia and the threat of Russia becoming involved, it is very evident 
that we are in a very dangerous situation.
  I have here, Mr. Speaker, an article that I would like to submit. It 
says, Head of U.S. Air Command Warns of Strained Forces. They warned of 
strained forces long before Kosovo ever took place.
  We had 14 of 24 jets at Top Gun down for parts; 137 parts were 
missing. Eight of them were down for engines. The 414th, which is the 
Air Force aggressor squadron in fighter weapons school, was about the 
same way. Oceana, a training base, had 4 of 35 jets up, only 4, which 
trained our new pilots, because they are sending the parts forward.
  I do not guess Iraq is important anymore because the no-fly zone, we 
are letting that skid. Or the threat to North Korea is not there.
  There is another article here that I would like to submit, Mr. 
Speaker, that says if we were forced to go into North Korea or these 
other areas, that we could no longer fight a two-conflict battle, which 
is what our national security policy has been.
  This is a very difficult time for my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle. We will find a mix of people on both sides of this issue from 
both sides of the aisle. I like to bring to it an understanding, not 
only of the diplomacy that is needed but the understanding that is 
needed before we can ever have a peace.
  The President's position of just bomb until Milosevic quits will not 
work, in my opinion. Even if there is a short halt in the peace, it 
will escalate again, and I think that is wrong.
  I look at other problems not only in Kosovo but around the world with 
foreign policy.
  I would ask, Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, read the New York Times about 
the lab secrets that were stolen for China in our nuclear labs. It was 
found out. The gentleman pleaded guilty. He actually took secrets on 
our missile technology and submarine technology to China. He gave it to 
the PLA, the communist People's Liberation army, showed it to them and 
then burned it and came back. He has confessed. But is he up for 
treason? No. The judge would not handle it. He got a 1-year sentence 
and he is out this year from a prison in California. Treason?
  Colonel Liu, who is General Liu's daughter, the head of technology 
transfer for the People's Liberation Army in China, Colonel Liu met 
with John Huang. John Huang introduced Colonel Liu to the President, 
gave the President, the Clinton and Gore campaign, $300,000.
  Loral gave the Clinton-Gore campaign a million dollars. Hughes gave 
the Clinton-Gore campaign a million dollars. The following week the 
President waived, against the Department of Defense, the Department of 
Energy, the National Security Agency, waived and let the Chinese have, 
and what did he let them have, Mr. Speaker? Secondary and tertiary 
missile boost capability, which we were briefed by the CIA that Korea 
was 10 years away from striking the United States. Guess what? They 
magically have that now after we gave it to China.
  The laboratories, what was stolen? The President was briefed in 1996 
that we had a spy at our laboratories, at our nuclear labs, and they 
did nothing. What did they steal? They stole the W-88 warhead, which is 
a small nuclear warhead. And what did the President waive, against the 
Department of Defense and national security advisors?

                              {time}  2100

  The MIRVing capability, which now allows China to put eight nuclear 
warheads on a single missile. If that is not bad enough, the targeting 
devices, before, yes, they could hit the United States, or if they were 
targeting Chicago, they may hit Peoria. But now they could hit the 
fourth window on the third apartment on 32nd Street, with that 
accuracy.
  When we have that kind of foreign policy mixed with Kosovo, mixed 
with the threat to this country with Iraq and Iran, then I think this 
country needs to take a sidestep and readjust not only its foreign 
policy but its trade policy as well.
  Mr. Speaker, it brings me a lot of sadness to come to the well 
tonight to speak in this manner. But this is not an easy situation for 
any of us. Let us get out of Kosovo. There is a much better way, a 
peaceful way, to achieve this and to work.
  I do not think there will be peace in the Middle East in my lifetime, 
there may not be peace in Northern Ireland in my lifetime, but we have 
to keep working in that direction. But it does not mean that we have to 
put troops in Northern Ireland or the Middle East, or keep them in 
Korea or in Saudi Arabia, because we have a lot of things in our 
country that we need to do like social security, like Medicare, like 
education, like medical research.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the following articles:

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 27, 1999]

                Analysis: Warnings of Air War Drawbacks

                          (By Bradley Graham)

       With NATO leaders still wedded to a strategy of pounding 
     Yugoslavia only from the air, a top alliance commander warned 
     yesterday that the relentless bombing could end up setting 
     the country's economy back several decades and still not 
     produce the desired results.
       General Klaus Naumann, outgoing head of NATO's military 
     committee, told reporters that alliance leaders came out of 
     their summit conference here this weekend determined to 
     pursue and intensify the month-old bombing campaign. U.S. 
     military commanders differ, however, over when to start using 
     two dozen AH-64A Apache attack helicopters now on station in 
     Albania, he said. Some officers fear the low-level aircraft 
     are still to vulnerable to Yugoslav anti-aircraft missiles.
       With consideration of ground forces put off for the time 
     being, Naumann said he and Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the 
     alliance's top military officer, still look to the air 
     campaign to force President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw 
     Yugoslav forces from the embattled Serbian province of 
     Kosovo, largely because of a sense that no responsible head 
     of government would allow his country to be reduced to 
     rubble.
       ``Of course, we may have one flaw in our thinking,'' he 
     added. ``Our flaw may be that we think he may have at least a 
     little bit of responsibility for his country and may act 
     accordingly, since otherwise he may end up being the ruler of 
     rubble.''
       Naumann indicated he favors using the Apache gunships 
     against Yugoslav artillery emplacements along Kosovo's border 
     with Albania, saying the Apaches stand a better chance of 
     finding and destroying these targets with less harm to ethnic 
     Albanian refugees in the area that higher-flying NATO 
     warplanes now in use. But yesterday's crash of an Apache in 
     Albania, during what defense officials described as a 
     training accident, only heightened concerns among some 
     Pentagon officers about putting the Apaches into action in a 
     risky environment.
                                  ____


           [From the Military Readiness Review, April, 1999]

Kosovo and the National Military Strategy: The Cost of Doing More With 
                                  Less

 (Written and produced by Floyd Spence Chairman, House Armed Services 
                               Committee)

       ``The [U.S. military] must be able to defeat adversaries in 
     two distant, overlapping major theater wars from a posture of 
     global engagement and in the face of WMD and other asymmetric 
     threats. It must respond across the full spectrum of crises, 
     from major combat to humanitarian assistance operations. It 
     must be ready to conduct and sustain multiple, concurrent 
     smaller-scale contingency operations.''--The National 
     Military Strategy of the United States.
       The National Military Strategy of the United States 
     requires that the U.S. armed

[[Page H2787]]

     services be prepared to fight and win two major theater wars 
     at the same time they conduct multiple, concurrent smaller-
     scare contingency operations and maintain a posture of global 
     engagement around the world. The sustained reduction in 
     military force structure and defense budgets since the end of 
     the Cold War has seriously called into question whether the 
     U.S. military is able to execute the national military 
     strategy. Since 1989, the Army and the Air Force have been 
     reduced by 45 percent, the Navy by 36 percent and the Marine 
     Corps by 12 percent while operational commitments around the 
     world have increased by 300 percent.
       Strained by the already high pace of day to day operations, 
     as well as on-going contingency operations in Iraq and 
     Bosnia, the U.S. military now faces a rapidly escalating 
     commitment in Kosovo. Indeed, the build-up of aircraft for 
     Operation Allied Force in the Balkans will soon approach the 
     size of the air fleet required in a major theater war--in 
     essence, Kosovo has become a third major theater of war. The 
     U.S. military is already feeling the strain in critical 
     areas:
       Aircraft Carriers. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore 
     Roosevelt, originally scheduled for deployment to the Gulf 
     region, has been assigned to the Balkans and arrived on 
     station April 5. The gap in the Persian Gulf has been filled 
     by the USS Kitty Hawk, normally stationed in the Far East. 
     She arrived in the Gulf on April 1, and will be relieved by 
     the USS Constellation in June. With no carrier deployed in 
     the Far East in the foreseeable future, the Air Force has 
     been compelled to put its fighter aircraft in the region on 
     higher alert in an effort to partially compensate for the 
     loss of the carrier-based Navy aircraft. The Navy has 12 
     aircraft carriers in the fleet to cover commitments world-
     wide. With five currently in shipyards and the rest either 
     recently returned from deployment or just beginning pre-
     deployment training, Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig 
     recently testified that the service's carrier fleet is 
     ``being stretched.''
       Conventional Fighter and Attack Aircraft. Including the 
     aircraft aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and the 82 
     additional aircraft just approved for deployment, 
     approximately 500 total U.S. aircraft are currently involved 
     in Operation Allied Force. This includes over 200 fighters 
     and attack aircraft. General Wesley Clark, NATO's Supreme 
     Allied Commander, recently requested some 300 additional U.S. 
     aircraft in order to intensify the air campaign. If approved, 
     it will bring the total number of U.S. aircraft in the region 
     to 800. In addition, the European Command recently removed 10 
     F-15 fighters and 3 EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft 
     from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and deployed them in Aviano 
     Air Base in Italy. Press reports indicate that in an April 1, 
     1999, meeting, the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed concern 
     that General Clark's growing requirements for aircraft and 
     other equipment will mean higher risks in other hot spots 
     around the world.
       F-117 Fighters. The Air Force has deployed 24 F-117 
     aircraft to the Balkans to support Operation Allied Force. 
     Because of their stealth capabilities, F-117s are in high 
     demand for the type of operations currently being conducted 
     over Yugoslavia. However, the United States has a total of 
     only 59 F-117s to cover all requirements world-wide.
       Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint 
     STARS). JSTARS is a modified Boeing 707 aircraft equipped 
     with a long-range air-to-ground surveillance system designed 
     to locate, classify and track ground targets in all weather 
     conditions. Currently, the United States has just five JSTARS 
     in the inventory. Two are supporting operations in the 
     Balkans, placing a strain on the remaining three aircraft 
     that must respond to all other commitments around the world.
       EA-6B Prowler. The EA-6B is used to collect tactical 
     electronic information on enemy forces and to jam enemy radar 
     systems. It is also equipped with the HARM anti-radiation 
     missile that is used to destroy enemy radar systems. The EA-
     6B is found in Navy, Marine Corps and joint Navy/Air Force 
     squadrons. With a total of only 123 in the inventory, nearly 
     20 are currently deployed to support operations in 
     Yugoslavia. Combined with the on-going deployments in support 
     of Operations Northern and Southern Watch in Iraq and other 
     commitments around the world, the EA-6B fleet is considered 
     by DoD to be ``fully committed'' at the present time.
       KC-135/KC-10 Aerial Refuelers. Currently the Air Force has 
     over 50 KC-135 aircraft and approximately 15 KC-10 aircraft 
     supporting operations in the Balkans. The refueler fleet is 
     heavily committed on a day-to-day basis during normal 
     peacetime operations. As a result, the active Air Force 
     relies heavily on the Guard and Reserve, who fly 56% of the 
     refueling missions for the Air Force. Normally, the Air Force 
     meets its world-wide commitments using volunteers from the 
     Guard and Reserve. However, as the operation intensifies, Air 
     Force will be unable to meet commitments with volunteers 
     alone. The pending Presidential Guard and Reserve call-up is 
     likely to contain a high percentage of KC-135/KC-10 crews. On 
     April 26, 1999, the Secretary of Defense announced that an 
     additional 30 KC-135/KC-10 aircraft and crews, both active 
     and Reserve, will deploy to the region.
       Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles (CALCM). Prior to 
     Operation Desert Fox against Iraq in December 1998, the Air 
     Force had approximately 250 CALCMs, the non-nuclear version 
     of the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) that are launched 
     from U.S. bombers. The Air Force fired 90 against Iraq during 
     Operation Desert Fox. In Operation Allied Force, 78 have been 
     fired during the first three weeks of operations leaving 
     approximately 80 in the inventory. The Congress recently 
     approved an emergency reprogramming of $51.5 million in FY 
     1999 funding to convert an additional 92 ALCMs to CALCMs. In 
     the White House's recent emergency supplemental budget 
     request, CALCMs were designated as the Air Force's number one 
     shortfall.
       Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM). The TLAM has become 
     the Administration's weapon of choice to strike heavily 
     defended or high value targets while posing no risk to 
     American pilots. During Operation Desert Fox strikes against 
     Iraq, 330 TLAMs were fired from Navy ships. To date, 
     approximately 178 additional TLAMs have been fired against 
     targets in Yugoslavia. The type of TLAM that is being 
     depleted most rapidly, the Block IIIC model, is the most 
     advanced and therefore the most in demand by military 
     commanders. Further, the U.S. shut down the last remaining 
     TLAM production line in fiscal year 1998 and production of 
     the follow-on missile system is not planned until fiscal year 
     2003. The White House's emergency supplemental appropriations 
     bill identified TLAM shortfalls as an urgent priority, and 
     included funds to convert older cruise missiles to the more 
     advanced Block IIIC model.

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 30, 1999]

  Head of U.S. Air Command Warns of Strained Forces--General Says War 
                         Stretches U.S. Forces

                          (By Bradley Graham)

       The general who oversees U.S. combat aircraft said 
     yesterday the Air Force has been sorely strained by the 
     Kosovo conflict and would be hard-pressed to handle a second 
     war in the Middle East or Korea.
       Gen. Richard Hawley, who heads the Air Combat Command, told 
     reporters that five weeks of bombing Yugoslavia have left 
     U.S. munition stocks critically short, not just of air-
     launched cruise missiles as previously reported, but also of 
     another precision weapon, the Joint Direct Attack Munition 
     (JDAM) dropped by B-2 bombers. So low is the inventory of the 
     new satellite-guided weapons, Hawley said, that as the 
     bombing campaign accelerates, the Air Force risks exhausting 
     its prewar supply of more than 900 JDAMs before the next 
     scheduled delivery in May.
       ``It's going to be really touch-and-go as to whether we'll 
     go Winchester on JDAMs,'' the four-star general said, using a 
     pilot's term for running out of bullets.
       On a day the Pentagon announced deployment of an additional 
     10 giant B-52 bombers to NATO's air battle, Hawley said the 
     continuing buildup of U.S. aircraft means more air crew 
     shortages in the United States. And because the Air Force 
     tends to send its most experienced crews, Hawley said, the 
     experience level of units left behind also is falling. With 
     NATO's latest request for another 300 U.S. aircraft--on top 
     of 600 already committed--Hawley said the readiness rating of 
     the remaining fleet will drop quickly and significantly.
       His grim assessment underscored questions about the U.S. 
     military's ability to manage a conflict such as the assault 
     on Yugoslavia after reducing and reshaping forces since the 
     Cold War. U.S. military strategy no longer calls for battling 
     another superpower, but it does require the Pentagon to be 
     prepared to flight two major regional wars at about the same 
     time.
       As the number of U.S. planes involved in the conflict over 
     Kosovo approaches the level of a major regional war, the 
     operation is exposing weaknesses in the availability and 
     structure of Air Force as well as Army units, engendering 
     fresh doubts about the military's overall preparedness for 
     the world it now confronts. If another military crisis were 
     to erupt in the Middle East or Asia, Hawley said 
     reinforcements are still available, but he added: ``I'd be 
     hard-pressed to give them everything that they would probably 
     ask for. There would be some compromises made.''
       The Army's ability to respond nimbly to foreign hot spots 
     also has been put in question by the month it has taken to 
     deploy two dozen AH-64A Apache helicopters to Albania. While 
     Army officials insist the helicopter task force moved faster 
     than any other country could have managed, the experience 
     appeared to highlight a gap between the Pentagon's talk about 
     becoming a more expeditionary force and the reality of 
     deploying soldiers.
       Massing forces for a ground invasion of Yugoslavia, 
     officials said, would require two or three months. Because 
     U.S. military planners never figured on fighting a ground war 
     in Europe following the Soviet Union's demise, little Army 
     heavy equipment is prepositioned near the Balkans. Nor are 
     there Army units that would seem especially designed for the 
     job of getting to the Balkans quickly with enough firepower 
     and armor to attack dug-in Yugoslav forces over mountainous 
     terrain.
       ``What we need is something between our light and heavy 
     forces, that can get somewhere fast but with more punch,'' a 
     senior Army official said.
       Yugoslav forces have shown themselves more of a match for 
     U.S. and allied air power than NATO commanders had 
     anticipated. The Serb-led Yugoslav army has adopted a duck-
     and-hide strategy, husbanding air defense radars and 
     squirreling away tanks,

[[Page H2788]]

     confounding NATO's attempts to gain the freedom for low-level 
     attacks to whittle down field units. Yugoslav units also have 
     shown considerable resourcefulness, reconstituting damaged 
     communication links and finding alternative routes around 
     destroyed bridges, roads and rail links.
       ``They've employed a rope-a-dope strategy,'' said Barry 
     Posen, a political science professor at the Massachusetts 
     Institute of Technology. ``Conserve assets, hang back, take 
     the punches and hope over time that NATO makes some kind of 
     mistake that can be exploited.''
       Hawley disputed suggestions that the assault on Yugoslavia 
     has represented an air power failure, saying the full 
     potential of airstrikes has been constrained by political 
     limits on targeting.
       ``In our Air Force doctrine, air power works best when it 
     is used decisively,'' the general said. ``Clearly, because of 
     the constraints, we haven't been able to see that at this 
     point.''
       NATO's decision not to employ ground forces, he added, also 
     has served to undercut the air campaign. He noted that combat 
     planes such as the A-10 Warthog tank killer often rely on 
     forward ground controllers to call in strikes.
       ``When you don't have that synergy, things take longer and 
     they're harder, and that's what you're seeing in this 
     conflict,'' the general said.
       At the same time, Hawley, who is due to retire in June, 
     insisted the course of the battle so far has not prompted any 
     rethinking about U.S. military doctrine or tactics, nor has 
     it caused any second thoughts about plans for the costly 
     development of two new fighter jets, the F-22 and Joint 
     Strike Fighter. Despite the apparent success U.S. planes have 
     demonstrated in overcoming Yugoslavia's air defense network, 
     Hawley said the next generation of warplanes is necessary 
     because future adversaries would be equipped with more 
     advanced anti-aircraft missiles and combat aircraft than the 
     Yugoslavs.
       If the air operation has highlighted any weaknesses in U.S. 
     combat strength, Hawley said, it has been in what he termed a 
     desperate shortage of aircraft for intelligence-gathering, 
     radar suppression and search-and-rescue missions. While 
     additional planes and unmanned aircraft to meet this 
     shortfall are on order or under development, Hawley said it 
     will take ``a long time'' to field them.
       In the meantime, he argued, the United States must start 
     reducing overseas military commitments. He suggested some 
     foreign operations have been allowed to go on too long, 
     noting that the U.S. military presence in Korea has lasted 
     more than 50 years, and U.S. warplanes have remained 
     stationed in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, flying patrols over 
     Iraq, for more than eight years.
       ``I would argue we cannot continue to accumulate 
     contingencies,'' he said. ``At some point you've got to 
     figure out how to get out of something.''
       The Air Force blames a four-fold jump in overseas 
     operations this decade, coming after years of budget cuts and 
     troop reductions, for contributing to an erosion of military 
     morale, equipment and training. The Air Force has tried 
     various fixes in recent years to stanch an exodus of pilots 
     and other airmen in some critical specialties.
       It has boosted bonuses, cut back on time-consuming training 
     exercises and tried to limit deployment periods. It also has 
     requested and received hundreds of millions of dollars in 
     extra funds for spare parts.
       Additionally, it announced plans last August to reorganize 
     more than 2,000 warplanes and support aircraft into 10 
     ``expeditionary'' groups that would rotate responsibility for 
     deployments to such longstanding trouble zones as Iraq and 
     Bosnia.
       But Hawley's remarks suggested that the growing scale and 
     uncertain duration of the air operation against Yugoslavia 
     threaten to undo whatever progress the Air Force has made in 
     shoring up readiness. Whenever the airstrikes end, he said, 
     the Air Force will require ``a reconstitution period'' to put 
     many of its units back in order.
       ``We are going to be in desperate need, in my command, of a 
     significant retrenchment in commitments for a significant 
     period of time,'' he said. ``I think we have a real problem 
     facing us three, four, five months down the road in the 
     readiness of the stateside units.''

                          ____________________