[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 154 (Friday, November 18, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2425]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                CONGRATULATIONS TO CHAIRMAN DAVE HOBSON

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                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, November 18, 2005

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Chairman Dave 
Hobson (R-OH) for his bold, principled stance to eliminate federal 
funding for the bunker buster bomb. It was a major victory for the 
United States and the world.
  This achievement means the United States will send the message of 
responsibility to other nations who are considering building nuclear 
weapons. The United States can continue to advocate for the Non-
Proliferation Treaty, whereby the United States and other nuclear 
powers pledged to disarm in return for other nations not seeking 
nuclear weapons. Because nuclear bunker-busters would be seen as 
tactical nuclear weapons, the development of these weapons would make 
it more difficult to encourage Russia to dispose of its arsenal of over 
4,000 tactical nuclear weapons. Chairman Hobson has given the United 
States more clout to pressure Russia to eliminate its tactical nuclear 
weapons.
  Again, I commend Chairman Hobson for his defense of our Nation.

             [From the Columbus Dispatch, November 13, 2005

                Hobson Will Keep Busting Nuclear Weapon

                         (By Jonathan Riskind)

       The battle of the bunker buster, round two, goes to Rep. 
     David L. Hobson.
       But the Springfield Republican isn't so sure the Bush 
     administration, especially Defense Secretary Donald H. 
     Rumsfeld and others in the defense community, has given up on 
     building a nuclear-tipped missile able to penetrate 
     underground bunkers.
       This is a saga last visited in this space a year ago. Then, 
     too, Hobson, as chariman of the House Appropriation 
     Committee's energy and water subcommittee, successfully 
     fought the administration's push to build a specialized 
     tactical nuclear weapon.
       Pursuing new nuclear weapons when the United States is 
     pushing nonproliferation around the world is wrong headed and 
     dangerous, Hobson believes. And he's been told by scientists 
     and candid members of the military that a nuclear bunker 
     buster is likely to kill many innocent people and inflict 
     such harm on the environment that no president would ``OK'' 
     its use.
       So Hobson refused to include $4 million Rumsfeld wanted in 
     the 2006 energy bill for bunker-buster research.
       Hobson's counterpart in the Senate is Pete Domenici of New 
     Mexico, who chairs the Senate Appropriation Committee's 
     energy subcommittee. Domenici favors going ahead with the 
     research, but he told the Albuquerque Tribune that the 
     administration has abandoned its plans for a nuclear bunker 
     buster. He said that, however, after Hobson won the fight; 
     the final 2006 House-Senate agreement on a $30.5 billion 
     energy and water bill being sent to the White House reflects 
     Hobson's views.
       So while it's ``over in my bill for this year,'' Hobson 
     said, his attention is focused on whether the Defense 
     Department will try to include bunker-buster money in the 
     still-pending 2006 defense-spending bill.
       ``I have to watch in the defense bill to try and make sure 
     they don't go around me,'' said Hobson, who is a senior 
     member of the defense-spending subcommittee.
       This is one example of how public policy is enmeshed in the 
     fabric of the annual spending bills. Hobson's measure, for 
     instance, tackles the post-Katrina issue of improving the 
     efficiency with which the Army Corps of Engineers spends the 
     money Congress doles out to it, though part of the solution 
     is making sure lawmakers don't tie the corps' hands with a 
     plethora of pet projects. One tack seen in the energy and 
     water spending bills is to limit the ability of the corps to 
     take money intended for one project and spend it on another, 
     only to later come back and request yet more money for the 
     first project. Hobson also hopes the bill will force the 
     corps to do more long-term planning and to do a better job 
     moving projects along.
       He cites a dam on the Ohio River between Illinois and 
     Kentucky that was authorized by Congress in 1988 at an 
     estimated cost of $775 million over about eight years. 
     Completion is now scheduled for 2015, at a revised estimated 
     cost of $1.4 billion.
       ``We're trying to bring some business management to the way 
     the corps conducts business,'' Hobson said.
       But the most far-reaching policy platform in Hobson's bill 
     amounts to a nuclear nonproliferation stand that bucks the 
     notoriously stubborn Rumsfeld.
       ``We had a meeting and he made his views known and I made 
     my views known,'' Hobson said. ``He said there will be 
     another day. I don't think they've given up.''
       But Hobson vowed to defuse the bunker-buster proposals for 
     as long as he's a committee chairman. He has three more years 
     to head the energy subcommittee before chairman term limits 
     set in, and intends to run for re-election to a ninth term 
     next year and serve all three of those years.
       ``They aren't changing my mind,'' Hobson said. ``It is bad 
     foreign policy to build a new type of nuclear weapon at the 
     same time you are telling everyone else in the world, don't 
     you do it.''

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