[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 114 (Wednesday, September 5, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H5393-H5399]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            NATIONAL DEFENSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Johnson of Illinois). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I want to start off by 
commending the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for his very 
appropriate and very logical comments which I will follow up on in a 
few moments.
  Before doing so, however, Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay my 
personal tribute to one of our colleagues who passed away over the 
break, the Honorable Floyd Spence. I had known Floyd Spence as many of 
our colleagues did in a very personal way over the past 15 years that I 
have served in the Congress. He was a leader on national security 
issues when I came to the Congress. He was one of those individuals 
that I looked up to for guidance and for early orientation to fully 
understand the role of the Congress in making sure that our military 
was being properly supported.
  Congressman Spence, Chairman Spence, was one of those very unique 
individuals who had severe health problems, in fact had a major double 
lung transplant, and had gone through turmoil in his life from the 
health standpoint. I can remember the days when they wheeled him to the 
floor of the House in a wheelchair with a ventilator, yet he came back 
and rose to become the full chairman of the House Armed Services 
Committee and for 6 years he led this body in issues affecting our 
national security.
  He was a quiet man, a gentleman, someone that never had a cross word 
for anyone, even those he disagreed with and was someone who would be a 
role model for someone aspiring to become a Member of this body. He had 
a

[[Page H5394]]

profound influence. During a time of difficulty in the 1990s when 
defense budgets were not what they should have been, it was Chairman 
Floyd Spence who rose above the political fray and led this Congress in 
a very bipartisan way to increase defense spending by approximately $43 
billion over President Clinton's request for defense over a 6-year time 
period. If it had not been for Chairman Spence fighting tirelessly for 
our military, for the quality of life for our troops, if it had not 
been for Chairman Spence fighting for modernization and fighting for 
the basic dignity of our military, I do not know where we would be 
today, Mr. Speaker, because the summary I am going to give following 
this tribute to Chairman Spence will outline some very severe problems 
in our military.
  Thank goodness Chairman Spence was here. Thank goodness he was 
fighting the battle. Thank goodness he was building bipartisan 
coalitions on behalf of the sons and daughters of America serving in 
uniform. He did a fantastic job in this body. He was someone who had 
many friends on both sides of the aisle and someone who will be 
terribly missed. I could not attend the funeral of Chairman Spence 
because I was in Huntsville, Alabama, giving a major speech to 800 
people on missile defense.
  It was only because of Chairman Spence's leadership that we have 
moved missile defense along as far as it has gone. As a tribute to him 
on that opening day of the conference, the entire group joined in a 
prayer together, a prayer of sympathy for the family of Floyd, for his 
wife and his sons, and to let all of America know that Floyd Spence has 
been a true champion, one of our real patriots.
  It was just last April, Mr. Speaker, where I had the pleasure of 
recognizing Chairman Floyd Spence at our annual national fire and 
emergency services dinner. We have two types of defenders that we 
support in America: Our international defenders, our military, and 
Floyd Spence was definitely their champion. That night as we have for 
the past 14 years, we honored our domestic defenders.
  Our domestic defenders are the men and women who serve in the 32,000 
organized fire and EMS departments all across the country. We honored 
Floyd Spence that night because 6 months prior, in last year's defense 
authorization bill, it was Floyd Spence as chairman working with the 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who just left this Chamber, who 
allowed me to move forward legislation that created a grant program to 
provide matching funds for local fire and EMS departments so that they 
can better equip themselves to be America's domestic defenders. On that 
night, 2,000 leaders of the fire and emergency services from all over 
America gave Floyd Spence a standing ovation for the work that he had 
done on behalf of our domestic defenders.
  So Floyd Spence's legacy is a legacy that all of us could look up to 
and hope to achieve, one of supporting those people who wear the 
uniform, the uniform to protect America overseas, and the uniform to 
protect America at home. To Floyd's family, his wife, his sons, we say 
thank you for giving us a tireless public servant whose legacy will 
live on forever, who did so much in such a short period of time and who 
will be so sorely missed in this body and in the minds and hearts of 
military leaders across this country and around the world where our 
troops are stationed. Floyd Spence was a true American hero.

  Mr. Speaker, it is appropriate that following this brief tribute to 
Floyd Spence, that I highlight a trip that took place the last week of 
August by myself and several of our colleagues. We are going to go into 
more detail next week in a 2-hour special order where I will be joined 
by my ranking Democrat colleague the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ortiz), 
a good friend of mine, as he and I along with the other Members of our 
delegation go through in very great detail the findings of our trip 
around the country, a trip that I think was a first of its kind in the 
history of Congress, a trip that was designed to assess the status of 
our military's problems.
  Mr. Speaker, most of the times when we in Congress take trips to 
military bases, they roll out the red carpet. They invite us to lunch 
with the base commander or the admiral. They sit us down and give us 
nice slide presentations, feed us well, give us a windshield tour of 
the facility and tell us how well everything is going. Those kinds of 
trips usually last an hour to an hour and a half. We wear suits and 
ties and the military personnel are all in their best garb and we see 
the best but we do not see the worst.
  That is not what this trip was about, Mr. Speaker. As the chairman of 
the Readiness Committee, the committee that oversees the readiness of 
our troops, approximately one-third of our defense budget, my challenge 
to our staff and to the services over 5 weeks ago was to put together a 
trip that would for the first time allow our colleagues in Congress to 
see the real story of the status of our military.
  I called the service reps in; and in my office 5 weeks ago, I 
outlined my vision for this trip. I said it was going to be a whirlwind 
trip that would go basically around the clock, have us engage directly 
with the troops, not pre-positioned people that would know we were 
coming with prestaged answers but, rather, a very candid and openhanded 
method of assessing the real problems that our military is encountering 
today.
  We challenged each of the services to come up with bases that we 
could visit that would give us a real glimpse into problems that we 
know are there, problems of declining readiness, problems of the lack 
of ammunition, problems of the lack of ability of spare parts to keep 
our planes in the air, problems of infrastructure, airfields that were 
not being maintained, buildings, housing, both barracks and multifamily 
units, problems with child care and schools and health care, so we 
would come back and be able to give to our colleagues in this body a 
full, detailed, accurate assessment as to whether or not we are living 
up to the requirement that is given to us as our first priority in the 
Constitution.
  Mr. Speaker, as I was sitting in my office, I heard some of my 
colleagues talk for an hour about the President's tax cuts and how they 
are going to wreak havoc in America. I heard them talk about the need 
for more money for education, more money for a prescription drug 
program, more money for domestic spending, more money for foreign aid, 
but I did not hear much debate about the need for more funding for our 
military.
  I pulled out my copy of the Constitution, and the Declaration of 
Independence which is the governing authority for our power in this 
country, and I looked up article 1, section 8, which defines the role 
and powers of the Congress. Mr. Speaker, as I assess article 1, section 
8 and I see the powers of the Congress, I do not see anything there 
talking about raising the money to fund education in America, even 
though I am a teacher by profession and support the role of helping 
improve our quality of education. But it is not in the Constitution.

                              {time}  2245

  I do not see any mention in article I, section 8, of the Constitution 
establishing a program of prescription drugs for our seniors, although 
I support the effort to provide prescription drug coverage for those 
seniors who cannot afford it. I do not see any provision in article I, 
section 8, covering many of the programs that we fund in this 
institution. But, Mr. Speaker, I do see six separate parts of article 
I, section 8, that deal with our national security. This is not 
something that we have interpreted in the Constitution. These 
provisions are in the Constitution.
  Mr. Speaker, under our Federal system, under our Constitution, one of 
the mandates, the primary mandates of this body, is to provide for our 
national defense, to raise an army, to raise a navy, to provide for the 
operation of our military. It is right there in the Constitution. Most 
every other thing that we do now is not in the Constitution by 
definition. In this case, our responsibility to our military is defined 
by the founders of our country in very clear terms. So with all the 
other rhetoric about all the other programs we want to fund, what 
bothers me is we are not hearing Members of Congress talk about our 
support for the military.
  Now, in my own estimation, Federal funding for national security has 
gone down dramatically as a percentage of total Federal revenues taken 
in. In fact, when I give speeches around my

[[Page H5395]]

district and around the country, when I compare today's budget to the 
budget of a previous administration, and I usually pick John Kennedy, 
because it was a similar period of time of relative peace. It was after 
Korea, but before Vietnam, when John Kennedy was the President. We were 
spending 52 cents of every Federal tax dollar on the military. We were 
spending 9 percent of our Nation's gross national product on defense.
  In this year's budget, Mr. Speaker, we are spending approximately 15 
cents of the Federal tax dollar on the military, about 2.5 percent of 
our GNP on defense. I would agree that after the cold war ended there 
was a need for us to make some cutbacks. In fact, I supported many of 
those cutbacks. But, Mr. Speaker, many of us feel that we have gone too 
far.
  Many of us feel that over the past 10 years two major problems have 
occurred simultaneously. I say 10 years, because this did not start 
with a Democrat administration and having me come up and just rail 
against a Democrat President.
  This first problem actually started with the end of a Republican 
administration, 10 years ago, because that is when the cuts in defense 
spending started to occur dramatically. That is when we began those 
cuts that brought us down to a 15 cents on the dollar expenditure for 
national security, 2.5 percent of our GNP. Many would argue it is the 
largest continual decrease in defense spending in the history of 
America.
  Now, granted, the dollar amounts that we are spending today are more 
than they were 10 and 20 years ago, but the actual percentage of 
available dollars and the percentage of our gross national product has 
decreased dramatically.
  But at the same time that defense spending was going down, something 
else occurred, and that was the commanders-in-chief of our country, the 
Presidents, as allowed under our Constitution, decided in their wisdom 
they would deploy our troops.
  If you take the period of time from the end of World War II until 
1991 and look at all of the administrations during that period, from 
Democrat Harry Truman to Republican George Bush, Sr., they could have 
deployed our troops any time they wanted. They deployed our troops a 
total of 10 times in major deployments over a 40-year time period. In 
the previous 10 years, starting in 1991 up until 2001, we have had no 
less than 37 major deployments, a massive increase in the use of our 
troops.
  Mr. Speaker, none of those deployments, except for Desert Storm in 
1991, was paid for. In each case when our troops were inserted into 
harm's way by the President, we in the Congress were left to try to 
find a way to pay for the cost of those deployments.
  Bosnia, we were told, would end 5 years ago when President Clinton 
promised the troops would be home by Christmas. We are still in Bosnia 
today; and we have spent approximately $18 billion of our DOD budget, 
unfunded, taking it out of other programs, to pay for the Bosnian 
operation.
  Add in Haiti, Somalia, East Timor, Macedonia, Colombia, and every 
other one of those 37 deployments, and you see that while our defense 
budget was going down and deployments were going up, as our troops were 
deployed, the Congress had to find a way to pay the bill.
  What the Congress did over the past 10 years, Democrats and 
Republicans together, was to take money out of that already-decreasing 
defense budget. That meant that we did not make the repairs on our 
military bases. That meant that we cut back on reordering spare 
parts. That meant that we did not build new base housing, that we did 
not modernize our barracks, that we did not build new child care 
centers. That meant that we did not build new schools.

  Today, Mr. Speaker, we are in the midst of a train wreck. We do not 
have enough dollars to pay for the cost of our military's operations. 
We are overcommitted overseas. So this trip was to give us a chance to 
see what problems have been created at our bases here in the 
continental United States because of a lack of appropriate funding for 
infrastructure and for what we call readiness.
  Mr. Speaker, what we found on our trip was outrageous and was 
immoral. We have an all-volunteer force today, risking their lives, 
giving their entire lives up to guaranteeing our freedom and security, 
which is the basis of our Constitution and our free democracy.
  We saw living conditions worse than public housing in our inner-
cities. We saw raw sewage leaking out of barracks, with a stench so bad 
you could not stay in the building, where the military had to 
completely excavate under the building because a pipe had been leaking 
for years raw sewage.
  We saw showers on the first floor of barracks where our voluntarily 
enlisted military personnel had to take their showers with 3 to 4 
inches of sewage water around their feet coming from the upper floors 
of that barracks because of improper drainage.
  We saw drinking water taken out of taps that was so dirty and cloudy 
you would not give it to an animal, let alone a human being or a member 
of our military.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been in Congress for 15 years. The gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Ortiz), who was my cochair of this trip, has been in 
Congress longer than I. We were joined by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Reyes), a newer Member, and a brand new freshman Member, the gentleman 
from Virginia (Mr. Schrock). We were also joined by four leaders of the 
Pentagon, representatives of the Secretary of Defense and Secretaries 
of the services. All of us were appalled. All of us were shocked. None 
of us believed that things were as bad as they are.
  Now, on this trip, Mr. Speaker, it was unique, because we traveled 
over 8,000 miles in military aircraft, a plane that took off from 
Andrews Air Force Base. As we traveled around the country, because our 
crew could not continue to fly around the clock as we wanted, we 
transferred off to helicopters. We transferred off to P-3s. We kept 
moving from 7 in the morning until midnight each night, and we 
interacted with the troops on a continual basis.
  When we arrived at a base, they knew we were coming; and they knew we 
were not going to be dressed in suits and we were not looking for fancy 
meals. We had told our base commanders that we wanted to see the worst 
conditions that existed on that base and we wanted to see when we 
arrived examples of what was happening, because of the lack of support 
by the Congress and the White House to deal with the ongoing 
maintenance of our facilities. That is what they showed us.
  Each trip to each base lasted for approximately 1\1/2\ to 2 hours, 
and was filled with very real and visual examples that we documented 
and of which photographs will be presented to Members of this Congress 
in a written report, hopefully next week.
  Throughout the entire trip, we took the media with us. Every step of 
the way, nothing was off base, no conversation was off limits. We had 
the media traveling with us to document what we saw. The Army Times, 
Navy Times, Air Force Times, and Marine Times next week will come out 
with a massive report on what we found, for starters.
  Mr. Speaker, the way that you maintain a building or a property is to 
invest a certain percentage of the value of that property in 
maintenance each year. That maintenance prevents that building from 
deteriorating and from collapsing before its scheduled lifetime. The 
industry standard for maintaining what is called real maintenance is 
approximately 4 to 6 percent of the value of the replacement cost of 
that building, that structure or that complex.
  In the military, we could never achieve a 4 to 6 percent rate, so our 
standard is 1.75 percent. The standard for the Defense Department is 
that we put 1.75 percent of the replacement cost value of our military 
bases in a budget each year, which is used to repair broken pipes, fix 
bad electrical outlets, take care of problems with housing and 
maintaining roadways and bridges and runways.
  In our travels across America in 15 states, in 4 days, at 24 
installations, no base that we went to in any of the services came 
within one-half of that 1.75 percent figure. The highest amount was 0.8 
percent. Most bases were funding their real property maintenance at 
between 0.1 and 0.4 percent of the replacement cost value.
  Now, what does that mean? That means that to pay for all those 
deployments that we got ourselves involved

[[Page H5396]]

in in the nineties, we took money away from keeping the quality of life 
for our troops healthy, and we used that money to pay those unpaid 
bills.
  It was great while it lasted. The last administration was able to use 
money for the other purposes. Members of Congress were able to claim 
that we were balancing the budget. All during that time period less and 
less money was spent on maintaining our infrastructure.
  We saw the results. Let me go through the results briefly. Later this 
week and next week in a 2-hour Special Order we will detail with a 
bipartisan task force in very great detail what we found at our 
military bases.
  We started out at the Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts; and 
there we found out, among other things, that we cannibalize one C-5A 
aircraft for every launch we make. What does cannibalize mean? That 
means because we have not bought enough spare parts, we have to take 
apart other planes and take parts off of them to keep a certain few 
planes flying in the air. Cannibalization of our military aircraft and 
equipment is now the standard. So to keep our military operational, we 
have maintenance people all across America at every base taking apart 
perfectly good aircraft to use those parts to keep other aircraft 
operational.
  At McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey we learned that one half of 
the entire fleet of vehicles, 1,000 vehicles, need immediate 
replacement. What does that mean? That means that we do not have the 
vehicles to perform emergency services, that we do not have vehicles to 
maintain the integrity of the boundary lines of the base, because we 
have not replaced those vehicles, maintained them, changed the oil, 
because the money to do that went to pay for these deployments overseas 
out of a rapidly decreasing defense budget. The airfield lighting 
system was inadequate. The underground heating and air conditioning 
infrastructure was breaking down and had severe problems because of a 
lack of maintenance.
  At the Naval Air Station in Oceana where we visited in Virginia, we 
saw encroachment, where local towns were being built right up to the 
boundary line of the facility, causing us problems in allowing our 
troops to train, with people that knew there was a base there buying 
houses and developers building complexes, and then the people who moved 
next to the base say we do not want the noise; we do not want the 
planes flying over. So the military has to curtail the flights, the 
pads and the abilities of our troops to prepare. We had a fighter wing 
command at Oceana in temporary buildings that you would not house your 
worst enemy in.
  At Norfolk, we had a pier recently collapse. The entire pier just 
collapsed, where we station our supreme naval vehicles. In fact, the 
majority of our piers at Norfolk were built prior to World War II or 
during World War II. They cannot handle our new aircraft carriers. They 
cannot handle our larger ships. They are not equipped. They do not have 
the electrical outlets, they do not have the supplies to maintain the 
water and power needed to take care of America's fleet, even though it 
is much smaller in the 21st century. We are working on those piers, but 
the work is not going fast enough.

                              {time}  2300

  In our air station in Norfolk, we saw nine World War II hangars that 
are still being used, but they all have serious deficiencies. The naval 
air station in Newark does not meet our antiterrorism guidelines, nor 
our force protection standards, and most of the barracks at the naval 
air station do not meet our criteria to have a one-plus-one standard of 
two soldiers with one bathroom in one living unit.
  At Fort Riley, our next stop in Kansas, we saw old, inadequate motor 
pools. We saw military personnel being asked to change engines out in 
the driving heat, the drenching rain, and the freezing cold, because we 
have not put the money on the table to build new motor pools, because 
they are not sexy like an aircraft carrier or a B-1 or a B-2 bomber. I 
mean, who can crow about having built a motor pool?
  So the people we are asking to maintain our fleet and our tanks and 
our artillery are having to work under impossible conditions, outside, 
24 hours a day, 365 days a year, because we have not given them the 
facilities with which to repair this equipment that we spend tons of 
money on.
  Then, at Fort Riley, we have a provision that makes no sense at all. 
We allow the State governments to tell our military what buildings they 
can or cannot repair. If a building is old on a military base, instead 
of the base commander deciding where to spend the money, the State 
historic commission comes in and says, oh, no, you are not going to 
tear that building down; you are not going to leave that building 
unattended; you are going to repair that building.
  Mr. Speaker, that is ridiculous that we have a State historic 
commission determining for our base commanders what buildings can or 
cannot be fixed up. If a State historic commission wants to repair an 
old building, let them use State money, but they should not have the 
power to take money away from the vital improvements needed for our 
troops to be put into historic preservation.
  We traveled to Fort Lewis. At Fort Lewis we saw that 60 percent of 
our barracks are nowhere near standard. We have a major spare parts 
problem for every piece of equipment, urban encroachment issues and 
major problems with Army Reserve spare parts for helicopters.
  At Whidbey Island out in Washington State, there is earthquake damage 
to a flight simulator building that occurred months ago that is still 
not repaired because we have no money, no money for upgrading and 
improving these earthquake problems. Now, we can spend billions of 
dollars to reimburse local towns for earthquakes, but we did not spend 
the money for the military to fix the earthquake damage that they had 
from earthquakes and wildland fires and other natural disasters that 
have hit their facilities.
  We have no wash rack for the P-3 aircraft. It all must be done 
outside in the freezing cold weather. A 50-year-old control tower does 
not even have a view of the entire runway. In fact, we heard about a 
child care facility on Whidbey Island where there has been a recurring 
problem of mold, where there is a lack of fire protection systems that 
would otherwise close that complex down if it was not on the military 
base; and at one point in time, they had the child care center closed 
down for a 30-day time period.
  Mr. Speaker, these are people that volunteer their lives to serve our 
country. These are people who did nothing wrong. These are people who 
are working for our government who are providing a number one service 
required by our Constitution to provide for our national security, and 
we have let them down. Democrats and Republicans, White House and 
Congress, we have let them down.
  We traveled along to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, the home 
of our B-1s, and as we arrived there and we were in the hangar looking 
at a B-1B bomber that had just been fixed, the commanding officer 
introduced us to a young mechanic. We were told that mechanic had just 
worked 6 straight days, 12 hours a day. Now, in the military you do not 
get overtime. We basically own you when you are in the military. This 
young mechanic left his family, including leaving and ignoring personal 
commitments he had with his kids, to work 6 straight days, 12 hours a 
day, to take parts off another B-1 to put this B-1 back in the air. Of 
the six planes in the B-1 squadron at Mountain Home Air Force Base, 
three are operational. The others are either inoperable or have been 
cannibalized, because the backlog for some spare parts for the B-1 is 
over 360 days.
  Mr. Speaker, that B-1 mechanic did not join the military voluntarily 
to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week because we did not supply enough 
spare parts.
  We have one F-15, one of our top tactical fighters in our fleet, on 
the ground for 43 straight days being used to cannibalize it to keep 
other planes in the air.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not the story at Mountain Home alone. I am 
giving highlights of each base. These problems are occurring at every 
military base we visited.
  We went on to Edwards Air Force Base in California. There we have 
lost some frequency spectrum so they cannot conduct their normal 
routines

[[Page H5397]]

where our high-tech work is being done all the time. The training and 
testing of our newest equipment is done at Edwards, yet we cannot do it 
because we have lost frequency spectrum.
  We have the oldest fleet of aircraft at the most state-of-the-art 
test facility in our national inventory at Edwards. The oldest fleet of 
aircraft for test purposes at a facility that gives us the most 
cutting-edge testing capability that our military owns.
  We have a major problem at Edwards in keeping engineers. They no 
longer want to stay and work for the government. Even though our 
military has to maintain its cutting-edge leadership, they are leaving. 
We cannot get new engineers to come in.
  We have crumbling runways and water problems in the housing area. In 
fact, Mr. Speaker, we brought back a jar of water that looks like it 
was colored with a kind of water coloring one uses to dye one's Easter 
eggs at Easter time. We took it right out of the tap and it was brown, 
because our water system does not have the proper treatment 
capabilities to drive out the solids and the heavy minerals that are 
located in the facilities at Edwards.
  We went down to Miramar, the headquarters of our Navy and Marine 
Corps cutting-edge flight operations for the West Coast, and there we 
have a severe shortage of housing. Our young Marines cannot find a 
place to stay because housing in southern California is out of sight 
and there is not enough housing on the bases. We had parts shortages 
for our C-8-46s. We cannot keep our basic helicopters in the air 
because we cannot get spare parts to repair them.
  In fact, we visited North Island in Coronado while we were there, and 
there we saw our major runway. This runway handles 300,000 takeoffs and 
landings a year, 300,000. The runway is in such bad shape that when 
they drove us out, we saw potholes in the runway. We saw pieces of 
macadam and concrete, they call it FOD in the military, that could fly 
up and if it got in an engine would destroy an engine, a million-dollar 
engine, destroy it, or could cause a plane to crash. Yet this is our 
premier facility for naval and Marine Corps aviation on the West Coast.
  In fact, it was at the same site that we were looking at a terrible 
problem of a shortage of adequate facilities to house spare parts, 
inventory and equipment. They took us by a bunch of temporary 
buildings, buildings that no one would work in in this country if you 
were in the private sector because OSHA would shut you down, yet all of 
our military personnel were working in these buildings. And we stopped 
at this one complex which was basically a steel cargo facility that 
would normally be used to transfer port cargo on a vessel at sea, on a 
cargo ship. And there inside of this steel-enclosed cargo container was 
a Navy sailor who had been working in this facility for a year and a 
half. No electricity, no lights, no water, no ventilation, 24 hours a 
day, 7 days a week, young sailors finding spare parts with flashlights 
in what is basically a metal storage container to be used on cargo 
ships.

                              {time}  2310

  Mr. Speaker, that is not the world-class military that America is 
supposed to have. Imagine the morale of somebody who goes to work every 
day in a metal building with no light, having to use a flashlight to 
look for expensive spare parts.
  Camp Pendleton, our showcase facility for the Marine Corps. We have 
allowed the environmental radicals in California to basically take over 
Camp Pendleton, a monstrous base on the coast of Southern California. 
As we flew the helicopter up and down the coast, we saw city after city 
along the California coastline built up to such an extent that one 
could not see open land.
  Therefore, the wildlife and the endangered species have no place to 
go, not because of anything our military did, but because the city 
leaders and the planners and the State of California ignored the 
planning process and allowed families and buildings to be built side by 
side all along the coastline.
  The only open area on the coast of Southern California is Camp 
Pendleton. The military then becomes the haven for endangered species. 
So what does the Fish and Wildlife Service say? You at Camp Pendleton 
cannot do any training if it infringes on endangered species.
  What about the rest of the coast of California that caused the 
endangered species to have to go to Camp Pendleton, the only open area 
on the coast of Southern California? But no, what we are going to do 
instead of penalizing the towns is we are going to tell the Marines, 
``You cannot train here,'' So Marines, when they do amphibious assault 
training off the coast, believe it or not, Mr. Speaker, they have to 
put them on buses and take them under highways to get to the other side 
of the training area.
  Our most widely used and best beach for amphibious training is called 
Red Beach. I am going to provide an overlay for every Member of 
Congress. Almost 80 percent of Red Beach, the number one spot for 
Marine amphibious training, cannot be used because of endangered 
species. And heaven forbid that a Marine come close to an endangered 
species, which California ignored while they massively built up their 
coastline.
  That is the way we treat our Marines, those men and women that we 
send in first to secure the front line capabilities that our military 
has to have?
  Forty percent of the buildings at Camp Pendleton were built during 
the 1940s and 1950s. The utility system is grossly outdated and 
marginally capable. They are making some progress, but again, brown 
water comes out of our taps because of a lack of improvement to our 
water systems.
  We went on to Fort Bliss, where the barracks are below standard. 
Advanced training facilities are rated as unacceptable. Two new water 
towers are needed. They are so old they are ready to collapse. They 
have low water pressure. Hospital and medical facilities are rated as 
unacceptable.
  So here we have young people going into the service being told if 
they serve their country, we will give them and their family health 
care, we will give the family child care. We worry about child care for 
those people in public housing, but we do not hear Members get on the 
floor and talk about decent child care, decent health care for the men 
and women who serve in uniform.
  We went on to Fort Sill, where our motor pools were too small to 
handle the modern equipment we are giving them. We had a roof collapse 
in a major storage facility where the entire truss beam fell in. The 
entire beam, this monstrous beam, just collapsed. They cannot use the 
whole building now. It is condemned until we get the money, who knows 
when that will come, to replace that truss.
  There are 15-year-old barracks falling apart, with leaking roofs, 
leaking walls. There we saw something that is just unbelievable. We saw 
three-story dormitories or what we call barracks where the sewage 
system is so inadequate that when soldiers on the second and third 
floor take their showers, the water backs up in the first floor 
showers, so the soldiers taking their showers on the first floor are 
standing in ankle deep water that has just come off the soldiers that 
have showered on the second and third floors.
  Mr. Speaker, if this occurred in any building anyplace in America, we 
would raise Cain. If this happened in a public housing unit, we would 
have Members screaming on the floor. These are the men and women who 
serve our country. Where is the outrage? Where is the demanding to hold 
accountable the fact that we have not provided the decent funding to 
repair these facilities?
  We went down to Kelly Air Force Base, where that base has just been 
privatized and the other half has been transferred over to Lackland. 
There we saw F-16 aircraft at best 71 percent mission capable. That 
means 29 percent of the time they cannot fly the F-16. We saw part 
shortages for the C-5 and the F-60, not enough spare parts to keep the 
planes in the air.
  At Lackland we saw an unbelievable situation. A sewage line under a 
barrack leaked. Because there was no maintenance money to repair it, 
the leak got worse and worse, so they had to go under the building and 
excavate it to find the leak. We went under the building.
  The smell of raw sewage was so bad one would never want one's worst 
enemy to be stationed there, let alone living there. If American 
parents knew

[[Page H5398]]

that their sons and daughters would be put into barracks where raw 
sewage would be leaking underneath those barracks, they would demand 
our heads. That is what is happening at Lackland.
  We had one technical training dorm that was so bad the entire dorm 
was evacuated and could not be used anymore. Heating, ventilation, and 
air conditioning systems were so old they were breaking. They had to 
move a fleet of portable chillers from one building to another so the 
soldiers and sailors and Air Corpsmen could continue their work, 
continue to eat in the heat, because the chillers had broken down 
because they had not been maintained and repaired.
  We went on to Fort Hood. In Fort Hood, we saw something unusual, a 
couple of things unusual. We had a young female, and we happened to 
visit her dorm because as we went around the bases and they took us to 
housing, we would stop the bus and get out and go talk to ordinary 
people. We talked to some wives that were standing out in front of 
their moldy family housing at one site. We talked to recruits. We 
talked to young servicepeople. Whoever we saw, we went over and grabbed 
them to get some anecdotal feedback.
  In this case, we went to a dorm or a barracks and a young woman was 
there. She let us see her room. This young woman went out with her own 
money that she makes, whatever that meager amount of money is, and 
bought a caulking gun, caulk, and tile because the holes and the cracks 
in her room were so bad that she decided that rather than wait for 
months and months and never get it fixed, she would take it upon 
herself to spend her own money, seal up the cracks, put new tiles in 
the bathroom, and try to make her living unit more comfortable.
  Mr. Speaker, that is not what we asked of these young people when 
they volunteered to serve our country.
  Then, Mr. Speaker, at Fort Hood, as we interviewed some more 
individuals, we met a young colonel who had just gotten back from 
Bosnia. He gave me a statement that I think should make this entire 
body, the White House, and the other body, feel a sense of shame upon 
all of us.
  He said, ``Congressman, I just returned from 9 months in Bosnia. I am 
a career military person, and I joined voluntarily to serve my country. 
But let me tell you, Congressman, we had better facilities in Bosnia 
than here in the U.S. That is why our morale is a 5 on a scale of 1 to 
10, because of work conditions and housing conditions.''
  That was a young colonel, and I have his name, just returning from 
Bosnia, who tells a group of Members of Congress that he had it better 
in Bosnia, with our tax dollars, by the way, than he does at his own 
base here in America at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia.
  We also met someone else at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia. We were 
in a building where they maintain our fleet of helicopters. Hunter is 
important because that is our primary staging area for the Army of the 
future to move out quickly to respond to any situation worldwide. They 
have to be ready to go in 22 hours. That is their mandate, so they are 
our cutting edge.
  In the facility where this equipment is maintained, there was no air 
conditioning.

                              {time}  2320

  Yet down in Hunter Army Air Station where this place is, it gets very 
hot in the summer. So a young private first class, new to the military, 
realizing the working conditions were intolerable, went out with his 
own money and bought an air conditioner so that everyone in his unit 
could have a cooler working environment while they did the job of 
preparing and maintaining the cutting-edge force for America's first-
response worldwide.
  We saw inadequate sewage treatment. We saw all housing facilities at 
Hunter declared unacceptable.
  Our final stop was Fort Bragg, limited training ranges, only 60 
percent of what is needed; 600,000 square feet of storage vehicle 
maintenance facilities not available to maintain this cutting-edge 
complex. Our supply and storage buildings are World War II. The largest 
barracks deficiency in the Army is at Fort Bragg.
  We went into one barracks at the end of the night. It was about 
eleven o'clock on our last night before we came home. In this one 
barracks it was like a scene from a World War II movie. I thought we 
had gotten rid of these years ago. An actual barracks, not for new 
recruits, but for people being trained at Fort Bragg, open with about 
24 beds and little individual storage lockers. No privacy, everybody 
out in the open in one common living area.
  Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong here. There is something wrong 
when the men and women who wear the uniform to serve the country have 
it worse than some of the people in public housing in our cities. We 
have to bear the responsibility, Democrats and Republicans, White House 
and the Congress. We have failed our military miserably.
  In my eulogy to Floyd Spence, I credit him with leading the Congress 
with bipartisan votes to plus-up $43 billion over Clinton's request, 
our defense budgets over 6 years. I do not know where we would be if we 
had not done that.
  Mr. Speaker, we have got problems. To fix up every backlog of repair 
and maintenance today, the estimates by the Pentagon are $150 billion. 
We could never meet that need. In a report that was mandated by last 
year's defense bill, the Pentagon said that we need $4.9 billion just 
to catch up on basic maintenance and repair. So, Mr. Speaker, as a 
final response to our trip we are going to recommend that this body 
take action.
  This is a disaster as bad as any flood. It is a disaster as bad as 
any hurricane. It is a disaster as bad as any wildlands fire. It is a 
disaster as bad as any building collapse. These are the young men and 
women in uniform who volunteer to do the one thing that our 
Constitution mandates, and that is provide for our national security; 
and they are doing it in substandard facilities. They are doing it 
without spare parts. They are doing it without adequate training. They 
are doing it where they risk their lives, not from their duty but in 
training and living. That is unacceptable. I challenge this body and 
the other body and the White House to come together in an emergency 
situation because that is what this is, and pass a special one-shot 
funding package that I am preparing right now, separate from our 
defense request by the President, to take care of these immediate 
needs. If we have to declare it off budget, so be it.
  If there are others in this body that say, wait a minute, you will 
take this from some other source, so be it. This is an emergency. These 
troops deserve better.
  Mr. Speaker, let me say to our men and women in uniform what I said 
to them in each of our stops, our 24 stops around the country. By the 
way, many of our colleagues joined with us. We had about 20 Members of 
Congress from both parties come out and meet us as we stopped at each 
site. This is what I told our military personnel: you have got to stop 
being taken for granted.

  It is amazing, Mr. Speaker, I asked some of our troops at the bases, 
How many of you are registered to vote? In some cases less than half of 
them raised their hands. We in Congress have taken aggressive steps to 
have Motor Voter, where we register people when they go to get their 
car license renewed. We have taken steps to have people register to 
vote at welfare offices. Yet we do not do anything to encourage our 
military personnel to register at military bases.
  I am challenging our military leaders to have a massive voter 
registration drive so that when a young recruit comes to a base, he or 
she is automatically registered to vote, I do not care what party they 
are, so they can start to have an influence on how we spend their 
money, so they are no longer disenfranchised, so they have a right to 
vote.
  I also encourage this body to pass a waiver so they can choose to 
register at their place of residence or military base, whatever is most 
convenient for them. So they can vote as college students do, where 
they work. College students can register at the college campus where 
they go to school. Why should not military personnel be able to 
register at the base where they are stationed and still keep the 
benefits that would accrue from living back in their original home 
while they are serving their country?

[[Page H5399]]

  If we empower the military, if the military speaks out, then our 
colleagues in this body will stop taking them for granted.
  Mr. Speaker, some will say that yes, you are right. We should spend 
some money; and, therefore, we should take it from the President's 
request for missile defense. No. It does not work that way, Mr. 
Speaker.
  The President has made the case based on threat assessments, that we 
have a new threat we have to deal with and that requires a significant 
new amount of dollars. To blame this shortfall on the President's tax 
cut or the President's request for missile defense is looking at and 
denying the fact that for 10 years we have not given the military the 
money they need. We allowed the previous two administrations to cut 
defense spending too low and not provide the support for real property 
maintenance and upgrades in spare parts and housing to support the 
quality of life for our troops.
  We need missile defense as much as we need to support our troops, and 
the tax cut just occurred this year. It did not cause the shortfalls 
that should have been corrected over the past 10 years that my 
colleagues on the other side will now try to blame on President Bush. 
That does not work, Mr. Speaker.
  It is time for us to come together as we did on this trip, Democrats 
and Republicans, House Members and Senators along with the President 
and demand that we deal with this emergency.
  In dealing with this emergency, it is going to cost us money. We have 
to replace the dollars that were taken away from maintaining the 
quality of life that our troops deserve, the spare parts that our 
military equipment needs, the improvements to runways and housing and 
hospitals and child care to keep our military's morale up. If we do not 
do that, then we will have failed our military personnel, and we will 
have failed the Constitution of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, next week we will do an in-depth bipartisan summary of 
the trip. Our colleagues will join us, hopefully, the 20 or so that 
were a part of this whirlwind trip; and together we will move forward 
to pass a supplemental piece of legislation dealing with the emergency 
needs that we have now evidenced in a firsthand way that our military 
has across the country, across all services.

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