[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 140 (Monday, October 30, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H11534-H11535]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NATIONAL SECURITY AT A LOW EBB

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 19, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker. In answering my colleague with respect to 
getting out of town, I think a lot of us, Democrat and Republican, have 
come to the conclusion that the president will not take ``yes'' for an 
answer until it is politically expedient to do so. You can make an 
agreement in 5 minutes or 5 days or 5 months, and we obviously have 
great resistance at the White House right now.
  Madam Speaker, let me talk about an aspect of this administration 
which needs addressing in a very short period of time after the new 
President takes office. Today, national security is at a low ebb. I 
reflect back on Vice President Gore's new invention that he came up 
with in the last debate, in which, along with inventing the Internet 
and various other American inventions, he invented four Army divisions. 
He stated that when he came in as vice president, the Army had gone 
down, but that he increased the number of divisions.
  Well, in fact in January of 1993, when Vice President Gore took 
office, there were 14 divisions in the United States Army. A division 
is a big group. It is a large number of people, a lot of equipment, in 
some cases upward of 20,000 personnel.
  Today, after the Clinton-Gore administration has run down national 
security, I might say, for 6 years, there are only 10 divisions in the 
United States Army. So when Vice President Gore came into office, there 
were 14 divisions. He claims he increased the number of divisions, but 
today it is down to 10 divisions. So somewhere along the line the vice 
president has invented four Army divisions, which is not an 
insignificant thing.
  Now, if you look across the array of military equipment shortages and 
ammunition shortages, a number of things jump out at you. One thing we 
need to know is that since the vice president and President Clinton 
took over in 1992, we have cut the military almost in half. We have 
gone down, as I said, from 14 Army divisions January 1, 1993, to only 
10 today, so we have cut the Army by a good 30-35 percent. We have cut 
the Navy from 546 warships to only 316 warships, so we have cut the 
Navy in numbers by about 40 percent. We have cut our fighter air wings 
from 24 fighter air wings to only 13 fighter air wings. So we have cut 
air power almost in half under this administration.
  Now, the interesting aspect of that, and I think the real tragedy of 
this slashing of national defense, is this: Usually when you cut an 
organization, whether it is a sports organization or a business 
organization, when you decrease it, when you cut it back in size, 
Americans presume that the core that is left after you have made these 
cuts is going to be well-trained, well-equipped and ready to go. The 
sad facts are that the small military that is left after Vice President 
Gore and President Clinton have taken the action to it, the small 
military that is left, this half a military that is left, is not as 
ready as the big military that we had that won Desert Storm in the 
early 1990s.
  Let me give you some examples. They are tragic examples. A few weeks 
ago we had the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Shinseki, testifying 
to us. He had to report to us that the Army is $3 billion short of 
critical ammo supplies. Ammunition. Now, you may not agree with the B-2 
bomber, you may not agree with the F-22 fighter. Every American feels 
that it is good for our troops to have ammunition, because they may 
need it.
  This $3 billion shortage was not measured against any requirement

[[Page H11535]]

that Congress laid on the administration, it was not measured against 
what the Senate or the House felt we needed in ammunition, it was 
measured against what the administration itself analyzed that we needed 
to be able to fight the so-called two regional contingency conflict. 
That is the kind of conflict where we might get involved in a Desert 
Storm operation against Saddam Hussein, or we might have a Kosovo 
operation, and, at the same time, the North Koreans, for example, might 
take advantage of that and try to come south on the peninsula, so 
American forces might have to deploy to two different areas of the 
world. We feel that to be safe and to give our service people the best 
chance of returning alive, we need to have the equipment, the 
ammunition and the capability of handling those two conflicts at about 
the same time, because it could happen. Well, that $3 billion 
ammunition shortage that General Shinseki spoke about is with respect 
to the two MRC contingency.
  So let us rebuild national defense. Madam Speaker, I think help is on 
the way.

                          ____________________