[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 61 (Friday, April 24, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4710-S4717]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MILITARY BUDGET

  Last Monday, I did not have much time on the Senate floor to get into 
the problem that I see, and the problem was with the announcement that 
was made by Secretary Gates, the Secretary of Defense. It happens by 
coincidence that I was in Afghanistan when that happened. I was looking 
around

[[Page S4711]]

and I saw the Bradleys going back and forth and the helicopters and 
these kids getting ready to go on their patrols and I was thinking: 
Wait a minute. Why is the President of the United States gutting the 
military right at a time when we are at war? This has never happened 
before.
  So I did a YouTube from there. I talked about the problems I had with 
the announcement made by Secretary Gates. I had to say, and I will 
repeat it over and over during the course of this discourse, it is not 
really Secretary Gates. He is in a position where he is given a 
number--I know he cannot say this, and he will probably deny it--he is 
given a number to say: You try to defend America within the confines of 
this number.
  So what do we have? We have the F-22, the only fifth generation 
fighter that is being stopped. We have China and Russia, both of them, 
with vehicles that are fifth generation, but our kids are not going to 
have that if they are successful in making these cuts, and I do not 
think they are going to be successful in making these cuts.
  The C-17--we all remember the C-17 is the best high-lift vehicle this 
country has ever seen or that the world has ever seen. We need many 
more of them, but they have stopped this. The national missile defense 
system--we will get into all of this, the future combat system, the 
fact that we are sending kids out there with equipment that is not as 
good as some of the prospective adversaries.
  Nonetheless, I happened to be responding to the Gates statement from 
Afghanistan. This new thing--I don't understand all the technology, but 
I was using YouTube. They said: Just talk on this, and they will pick 
it up. And I mean, it hit the fan. I came back, and every liberal 
journalist in America was just outraged.
  MSNBC's Ed Schultz featured my video as part of his regular beat, the 
so-called ``Psycho Talk.'' He said: Inhofe is as wrong as he could be. 
Keith Olberman said I should do the math. And his guest, an unbiased 
guest, was Speaker Pelosi. And they said my criticism of Obama's 
defense budget was simply desperation, and on and on and on.
  Not to be left out, Rachel Maddow used the same talking points and 
said, once again, the budget was actually going to increase. Then she 
brought on a guest, Eugene Robinson, associate editor and columnist, 
who is supposed to be some unbiased party, saying: Inhofe is making 
this stuff up. He is lying.
  Rich Sanchez didn't want to be outdone. That is CNN. He came on and 
talked about: I am going to do a fact check and it is ridiculous.
  It is interesting how hateful these extremists are. All you have to 
do is say: We need to put America in a position where we have the best 
of everything because we don't know what contingencies are coming, and 
they go crazy. Fortunately, there are more responsible people around. I 
enjoyed the editorial, after getting all this criticism, in the Wall 
Street Journal where they are talking about how the Navy is left with a 
fleet of fewer than 300 ships. Is that adequate? I don't think it is. I 
can remember when it was 700. Now we see the piracy, all the problems. 
We know there is a need for more carriers, and yet this cut is being 
made.
  They criticized the Gates decision for killing the stealthy F-22 
fighter. That is true. Originally, we were going to have 750 F-22s. Now 
he wants to stop it at 187--totally inadequate--saying that the F-35 is 
going to be cheaper. That is technology down the road. The mission 
isn't the same. It certainly can't compete with the F-22.
  They criticized the Gates budget priorities as giving no indication 
as to how the Pentagon is going to ensure military dominance and extend 
the battlefield to the future in outer space. Outer space is where the 
future battles are going to be fought, but not according to this 
report, $1.4 billion cut. This is out of the Wall Street Journal 
editorial. I already have this in the Record. I put it in last Monday.
  This is something we are talking about. Many of us were concerned 
over the ability, in some places such as Iran--could be Serbia, 
someplace else, Syria perhaps--of being able to hit Western Europe and 
then, with the longer range, hit the east coast of the United States. 
So we went to the Czech Republic, talked personally with the President 
Vaclav Klaus. He is one of the best Presidents in the history of 
Eastern Europe. Their Parliament agreed to let us put radar in there. 
And then next door in Poland, their Parliament agreed to have us put in 
a launching system. Now we are coming along and pulling the rug out 
from under them, and this is all covered.
  By the way, if you don't like the Wall Street Journal, there is an 
organization called the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 
I defy anyone to criticize this organization. The chairman of that 
organization is Sam Nunn. We all remember him. I served with Sam Nunn. 
If you look at the people on this--Richard Armitage, former Defense 
Secretary Bill Cohen, Bill Frist, Henry Kissinger--you can't find a 
heavier list of people. James Schlesinger, Brent Scocroft were a part 
of this organization. They came through and talked about all of the 
systems proposed for termination by Secretary Gates as very valid 
missions and real requirements. None of them is a wasteful program. 
These are Democrats and Republicans. This is not partisan.
  They go on to say that Congress should legitimately question spending 
priorities and perhaps take the next step, which we intend to do. I am 
second ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. Certainly, the 
Presiding Officer is serving on that. I will be looking for his support 
to try to look at these cuts and see what is really necessary for us to 
keep to defend America.
  They talk about the B-52 bomber. By stopping the advanced bomber, 
which is in this program, the Obama program, we are going to be relying 
upon this B-52 that has been in existence for 50 years. It is twice the 
age of the pilots who are flying it. We can't continue to do this.
  I want to go ahead, after the conclusion of my remarks, and put in 
this report, which is the report of the CSIS, the Center for Strategic 
and International Studies. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed 
in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. INHOFE. The problem is focused on one number. If they talk about 
that this is not a cut in defense spending, we need to look and examine 
that, which I will do in a few minutes. Actually, thanks to the Obama 
administration, overall defense spending has been cut by $10.7 billion 
in 2009. You might say 2009 was not his year. It was. The second half 
of the emergency supplemental fell under his jurisdiction, so that is 
an accurate figure. It would be cut again in fiscal year 2010, based on 
projected inflation and the potential use of what is now being called 
overseas contingency. I call that the global war on terror. They want 
to rename it now. It sounds a little more palatable to some of these 
editorial liberals to whom I have already referred.
  We have reached a crossroads where we will have to choose to either 
invest in the modernization and readiness of our military or kick the 
can down the road. That is what we have been doing for a long time.
  We had a hearing yesterday in the Readiness Subcommittee, chaired by 
Evan Bayh. The ranking member is Richard Burr. We went over all of this 
with some of the top people in the military. Quite frankly, they agreed 
with all these comments that I am making today and I made yesterday on 
this committee. Based on the projected defense budget for the next 10 
years, it looks as though the administration is taking us down the same 
path that led to a weaker and poorly equipped military.
  It is interesting that a lot of the people over the years who have 
been critical of defense spending--talking about liberals who are here 
in this Chamber--are the same ones now saying: Wait a minute, our Guard 
and Reserve can't handle the op tempo. That is a term used, ``operation 
tempo,'' number of deployments and all this. The problem we have is 
that we gone through--and I will show this in a minute--a period of 
time in the 1990s where we downgraded the military, and then we turned 
around and along comes 9/11. All of a sudden, we have a President who 
has to prosecute a war, at the same time trying to build a military.

[[Page S4712]]

  The plan he announced is intended to reshape the priorities of 
America's defense establishment and profoundly reform how DOD does 
business. I agree that we need to have procurement reforms in the 
Pentagon. There is no question about that. But let's don't use that for 
an excuse to cut modernization programs.
  I was in Afghanistan at the time this decision was announced, and it 
comes at a time in our history when we have dramatically increased our 
domestic spending in trillions of dollars under the umbrella of 
emergency bailouts and stimulus packages and all of that. If you stop 
and think about the amount of money this administration has really 
spent--look at the $700 billion bailout. Then you have the $789 billion 
stimulus package. Then you have the omnibus bill that is $410 billion. 
That adds up to $2 trillion. That is in the first 3 months. So when you 
look and think of the stimulus package, how much better would it have 
been if we could have had more defense spending at that time. There is 
nothing that employs more people, that better stimulates the economy 
than defense spending. We tried to do that. Of course, that was 
defeated. So this President is on track to grow this country's 
obligations to 22 percent of our GDP while he shrinks defense spending 
probably down to 3 percent. Right now, it is at 4 percent of GDP. As I 
calculate, it will be down to 3 percent.

  Let's see the chart. I would like to show people so there is no 
question about this. The chart we have here shows what happened back in 
the 1990s. The black line on top is when Bill Clinton came into office. 
That is fiscal year 1993. As it is projected forward for the next 8 
years, the black line would say--let's say we want to keep defense 
spending in terms exactly as it is today, back in 1993, except for 
inflation. That black line is where it would be if we had kept that 
level of defense spending. The red line was the Clinton budget. That is 
what I am saying. We are going through the same thing now percentage-
wise, almost the same thing that we went through there. So the 
difference between the Clinton budget and what would have happened with 
the level of spending is $412 billion. So you can say that is a $412 
billion cut.
  Many of us on the floor of the Senate in the 1990s--me probably more 
than anybody else--talked about these dramatic, massive cuts in 
procurement and modernization. With very few exceptions, our soldiers, 
sailors, airmen, and marines have been using the same weapons systems 
while fighting a two-pronged war for 8 years, weapons and weapons 
systems from back during the Cold War, the same ones we are using 
today. We have been unsuccessfully trying to get past this bow wave 
created in the 1990s when the military budget was cut by $412 billion 
and acquisition programs and research and development were pushed to 
the right. That is a term we use that means if you are going to delay 
something, you push it to the right.
  The cost of kicking our military modernization down the road is 
twofold in that the increase in the cost to modernize and the increased 
cost to develop and fuel new weapons is an increased cost to operate 
and maintain. It gets to the point where it is like the car you drive. 
You buy a new car. You drive it for 20 years. At least that is what I 
do. You finally get to the point where you are paying more to maintain 
that car than if you would get a new one. A lot of that is because of 
the accounting system that Government has. It is somewhat guilty of 
forcing this type of thing. But that is what has happened. We have 
forced ourselves to use older and older stuff.
  Our major combat systems that our troops are using today are those 
developed and procured during the 1980s. Some of them go all the way 
back to the 1950s. The Reagan administration was handed a military, 
everyone agrees now, that was a hollow force. No one questions that. At 
that time, people thought: There is not going to be any problem now. 
And then when the Cold War was over, everyone had this euphoria: We no 
longer have a threat out there. The Cold War is over. The term they 
used, if you will remember, was--I can't remember what it was now. It 
was a great benefit to put that money into social programs, which is 
what we are doing today. A peace bonus, that is what it was.
  So anyway, our combat systems are older and older, and the Reagan 
administration expanded the military budget, increased troop size, 
reenergized weapons procurement, revived intelligence capabilities, and 
returned this country to its superpower status that it had been in the 
past. He guaranteed the superiority of the U.S. military's weapons 
systems capabilities through long-term investments and ensuring that 
our troops were provided with the most advanced equipment available.
  Secretary Gates said in January of 2009:

       Our military must be prepared for a full spectrum of 
     operations, including the type of combat we are facing in 
     Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as large-scale threats that we 
     face from places like North Korea and Iran.

  I want to say one more time that I don't blame Secretary Gates. I am 
glad he is the Secretary of Defense. I just wish he had a better hand 
dealt him so he could do a better job. I think he is operating under 
the limitations of a White House that is just not a prodefense White 
House. Far too often, we have learned the hard lessons that we don't 
have a crystal ball to precisely predict what our needs will be in the 
future.
  This actually happened to me. The last year I served in the House was 
1994.
  I was on the House Armed Services Committee at that time. I will 
always remember we had someone come in and testify and say that in 10 
years we will no longer need ground troops. They were talking about all 
the precision stuff the Air Force does and the technology that was 
coming. That was testimony a lot of people rejoiced to hear so they 
could start cutting the Marine Corps and the Army, which is exactly 
what happened. Then what happened? Then we had Bosnia and we had Kosovo 
and we had Iraq and we had Afghanistan. Now, after 7 years engaged in 
the war on terror, we know he was wrong.
  The strategic environment has become increasingly complex, dynamic, 
lethal, and uncertain. Today, our military is fighting with equipment 
that is decades old and with a force structure that is 40 percent less 
than it was in the 1980s. That is essentially what was cut during this 
timeframe right here. It was a cut of about 40 percent, if we take the 
budgets at the beginning and the end of it.
  So we are talking about force structure and modernization. Right now, 
the Air Force has 2,500 fewer aircraft. The Navy has cut its fleet size 
in half. The Army has reduced its force to half the number of divisions 
it had during the first gulf war. This all happened in the 1990s. For 
the past 17 years, our military has been asked to do more with less.
  One of the concerns I had back during the 1990s, when they were 
cutting the force strength--that was back during the time they were all 
rejoicing with this euphoric attitude I mentioned that the Cold War was 
over and we do not need a military anymore--so they were cutting it 
back at that time and believing we were not going to have to have the 
needs we were going to have. Unfortunately, what took less than a 
decade to field in the 1980s will now take us several decades to field. 
In the case of KC-X, the KC-X was supposed to be online. We were 
supposed to actually have it by this time. Right now, our fueling 
capability is done with KC-135s.
  I will say this: At Tinker Air Force Base, they do a great job of 
taking these ancient aircraft and continuing them in service. But there 
will come a point where we can no longer continue to do that. In the 
United States, we are going to have to build and sustain military 
capabilities required to respond to possible future threats across the 
spectrum.
  Wouldn't it be great if we knew what the next war was going to be 
like? We have never been in that position. We have tried to guess, but 
we have always been wrong. The next war will not be like the past one 
or even like the one we are in now. History has taught us that very 
hard lesson. It also does not mean the next war will be like the one we 
might have to fight 5 or 10 years from now. The decisions we make today 
on the Senate floor will set the stage for what happens in the next 40 
years. I wish there were time. I wish we could instantly determine what 
our needs will be 20 years from now and not

[[Page S4713]]

have to prepare in advance. We cannot do that. Does anyone want to 
hazard a guess what the world will be like in 20 years?
  There is a Marine Corps general. I have his name down here somewhere. 
In just this past February, he made this statement to a bunch of young 
marines. I was over there at the time he made it. This is a quote I 
want to read:

       You say the next conflict will be a guerrilla conflict. I 
     say, it depends. In my lifetime, we have been in 5 big fights 
     and a bunch of little ones. In only one of those 5 big ones--

  And Desert Storm is what he was referring to--

     had we prepared for the type of war we wound up having to 
     fight.

  That is one out of five.

       It is one thing to say that a certain type of fight is more 
     or less likely; it is quite another to say it is certain to 
     be one or the other. In war, the only thing certain is 
     uncertainty.

  He went on to say:

       It may be that nobody can beat us in a conventional fight 
     today, but what we buy today is what we will have to fight 
     with in 2020.
       Furthermore, advertising that our focus of effort is on the 
     low-to-mid intensity fights of the future reduces the 
     deterrence that powerful conventional capabilities 
     demonstrate to traditional state actors. Non-state actors, 
     guerrillas, terrorists are not likely to be deterred by our 
     capabilities. Nation-states are.

  See, we are used to that. He is dead right in this case. We knew 
during the Second World War who the enemies were: Germany and Japan. We 
knew their capabilities. During the Cold War, we knew the capabilities. 
I sometimes look wistfully back on the days of the Cold War because at 
least then it was predictable. We knew how they thought, their thinking 
process. We knew their capabilities.
  He goes on to say:

       We had better well have the capability to fight the 
     guerrilla and the nation-state, regardless of which of these 
     is more or less likely.

  That is a very wise man. He is advising his young marines, and they 
listened, and it makes sense.
  We were not able to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, the rapid 
growth of the ballistic missile capability of North Korea, or the rise 
in the asymmetric warfare in which we are currently engaged. It does 
not matter how great our military leaders or intelligence is, our 
strategic thinking will always be imperfect. We have a lot of smart 
generals out there, and they are going to try to tell us what we are 
going to need 10 or 15 years from now, and they are going to be wrong 
because they have always been wrong. They understand that, as that 
Marine Corps general stated.
  In order to provide stability, America is going to have to be able to 
deter or defeat any threat, be it an insurgency or a challenge from a 
near-peer competitor. We cannot any longer fool ourselves that we are 
still sending our sons and daughters out with the best equipment.
  When I talk to people around the country, there is an assumption out 
there that when we go to war, regardless of what kind of war--
asymmetrical or conventional warfare--we are sending our kids out with 
the best of equipment. That is not true.
  In a minute, I am going to show you that there are other countries 
that have things that are better than what we have in our defense 
capability, in our effort to conduct warfare. But before I do that, let 
me at least address what all these critics of me were saying when we 
talked about how much less money right now we are going to be 
projecting into our force structure, in our military spending, if we do 
the math. So let's go ahead and do it.
  As I stated earlier, we need to look at the total defense budget--
what DOD actually spends on all its operations.
  During the Bush administration, the sources that funded our defenses 
were not all just DOD or the Department of Defense, appropriations and 
authorizations. They were also the DOE funds. DOE has a lot of funds 
for nuclear ships and weapons. We have certainly wartime supplementals. 
All of those added up to what we spent on defense. What they are trying 
to do now is say, well, the DOD appropriations are actually going to be 
greater today than they were in fiscal year 2009. Well, that may be 
true, but that is not the total amount of defense spending. That is 
just a small part of it.
  I think the best evidence of that is to see what systems we have to 
cut in order to act under the confines of this budgeting.
  First, there is a net loss in defense spending in 2009 of $10.7 
billion. This is the second increment of the supplemental that came 
under the jurisdiction of the current administration, the Obama 
administration. President Bush increased the total defense budget in 
2009 by $37.2 billion.
  He also approved $65.9 billion in supplemental funds for the first 
part of fiscal year 2009.
  President Obama's supplemental request of $75.5 billion for defense 
needs funds an increase of 21,000 troops. Well, I agree with his 
message that we need to increase the number of troops and increase the 
number of troops in Afghanistan. That is very reasonable. But we are 
going to have to pay for those troops, and we cannot pay for those 
troops with the same amount of money we had when we had 21,000 fewer 
troops.

  The GAO report on the cost of the Iraq withdrawal said it will be a 
``massive and expensive effort'' . . . that costs would more often 
increase in the near term. In other words, as you draw down in Iraq, 
that is going to increase the actual cost.
  It went on to say that the cost of equipment repairs, replacements, 
closing, and turning over 283 military installations in Iraq and moving 
troops and equipment home ``will likely be significant.''
  Unfortunately, defense spending actually decreases in 2009 by $10.7 
billion due to President Obama's decreased total supplemental request 
from $189 billion to $141 billion.
  So let's compare 2009 to 2010, where I have been accused of not being 
able to do the math.
  Defense spending does increase from 2009 to 2010 by $14.9 billion. 
But according to President Obama's letter to Speaker Pelosi, there will 
be no more supplementals. If we take the supplementals out, then it is 
a dramatic reduction in spending. That would mean DOD would have to 
fund all wartime operations out of the hide to the tune of $100 
billion-plus.
  However, President Obama does fence off $130 billion for ``Overseas 
Contingency Funds.'' Well, that is within the budget, and I guess that 
is what he now calls the war on terror. Even adding the $130 billion to 
defense spending--which is never the case with supplemental funding--
the overall increase in defense spending for 2010 is $3.5 billion.
  I say that because we know when we have an emergency supplemental, 
everybody puts everything they can into it, and that is where the 
effort is taking place.
  Now, we add the accelerated growth of the Army and Marine Corps--a 
65,000 and 22,000 increase, respectively--at a cost of approximately 
$13 billion to cover pay and health care costs, and we start to see the 
beginnings of how our military modernization gets gutted.
  The DOD has certain ``must pays,'' things they have to pay. They have 
to pay personnel, operations and maintenance, ongoing wartime, and 
contingency operations. With a zero supplemental fund, the money to pay 
for these ``must pays'' will be taken from the base Defense budget, and 
the areas that are always hit are research and development and 
acquisition. There we are talking about modernization.
  So what I would like to do--well, first of all, just look at what is 
being cut. We know about the Future Combat System. I am going to cover 
these in a minute, but there are the F-22s, the C-17s, the national 
missile defense system, the future bombers, and it does not stop in 
2010.
  As we look at the projected defense budget through 2019, we see a 
decreasing defense budget compared to GDP starting at 3.8 percent in 
2010 and ending with 3 percent in 2019.
  This is interesting to compare, to use the percentage of GDP. If we 
go back and look at what happened in the entire 20th century--for 100 
years--and we take the average of defense spending as a percentage of 
GDP, it is 5.7 percent--5.7 percent. I have been asking to just keep it 
at no less than 4 percent. Right now, it is a little under 4 percent, 
but it would go down to 3 percent with the budget expectations we are 
looking at right now.
  So when compared to a sustained annual defense investment of 4 
percent of GDP to recapitalize and modernize our military, the 10-year 
proposed Obama defense budget is $1.3 trillion in the

[[Page S4714]]

red. It is so similar to what we went through in the 1990s. I do not 
like to be overly critical, but there are a lot of people who are 
liberal people who generally, in their own mind, do not think we need a 
military. I have listened. They will never admit it. But they say, 
well, if all nations would stand in a circle and hold hands and 
unilaterally disarm, all threats would go away.
  I respect people who have this opinion, even though the opinion is 
wrong.
  So we have ships and naval aircraft that currently average being 18 
years old, and Marine Corps aircraft that now average being over 21 
years old. Refueling tankers--I am talking about the KC-135s--are over 
44 years old; Air Force fighter aircraft, 19 years old; special 
operations aircraft, over 27 years old. Special ops--everyone realizes 
what a great job they are doing. It is kind of like the Marine Corps. 
They always have to make do with older equipment but never complain 
about it.
  In order to keep 40-year-old KC-135s in the air, the DOD had to 
reprogram almost $3 billion from the KC-X to repair KC-135s. For the 
KC-X, we might remember--that was kind of confusing--a contract was 
let, and that contract was challenged. That would have given us--not 
immediately, certainly, but over the next 20 years, we would be able to 
replace the KC-135s.
  I think it is easier--rather than to spend any more time talking 
about very complicated things in terms of budgeting--to just look and 
see service by service. The Army's current fleet of combat vehicles was 
developed and procured between 30 and 60 years ago.
  We have the M1 Abrams tank, which has done a great job, that was 
developed back in the early 1970s and fielded in the early 1980s. The 
M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle--we are still using that right now, and it 
is 25 years old. It is on its third significant modification, and it 
has been crucial in defending our troops against the IEDs the RPGs. 
Both of these combat-proven vehicles continue to undergo fleetwide 
resets. Yet they are so old.
  So let's look at another particular one, the best artillery piece we 
have in the U.S. Army. It is called a Paladin. The Paladin is a 
technology developed in World War II. You actually have to get out 
after each shot and swab the breech.

  Now, it has gone through some new reiterations, and currently there 
is another one that is taking place. But again, this is what we have. 
There are five countries now, including South Africa, that make a 
better artillery piece than our Paladin. This is one of the programs 
that is a part of the FCS program that is going to be cut. Secretary 
Gates didn't say it was completely cut; he just said it is delayed. 
That is a nice way of saying it is cut, it is gone.
  So I would hope one thing: That when we are going through what they 
call the PIM Program--the Paladin Integrated Management Program--we 
keep these running, to upgrade them so they will be somewhat 
competitive in the battlefield. I would say at the very least we should 
keep that PIM Program going if we cut the future combat system. We 
should keep the future combat system on track, but if we dump the FCS, 
we don't want to dump the PIM with it. So even with that PIM update, 
the Army expects to keep the Paladin in use until 2060, and that is 100 
years on the battlefield.
  Our Army is long overdue for a thorough and comprehensive 
modernization. I would just go back again to 1994 when we had people 
testifying that in 10 years we would no longer need ground capability 
or ground fighters. The proposed Defense budget would cancel the Army's 
future combat system and the modernization programs intended to replace 
the Paladin. FCS would bring improved armor and would save lives. 
Nonetheless, that was one of them that was cut.
  Let's go to the Air Force. For nearly two decades, our Air Force has 
dominated the skies and ensured air superiority. But a recent GAO study 
stated that air sovereignty alert operations--the post-9/11 operations 
that protect our homeland--are at risk due to aging aircraft and 
insufficient procurement. The Air Force grounded 259 of its 441 F-15 
Eagles from November 1997, and last May the service parked 500 of its 
T-38 Talons, the trainers. A lot of those were taking place at Vance 
Air Force Base in my State of Oklahoma. They don't have quite enough of 
them yet, but again, that is part of the problem we are having right 
now. Our aging fleet is out of service. Last October, the Air Force 
ordered more than half of its 356 A-10 fighters to stay put because of 
cracks inside the wings. While we have enjoyed the benefit of 
investment during the 1980s of the F-15, the F-16, the A-10, the F-117, 
which is now out of service, the service is talking about retiring 137 
F-15s, 177 F-16s, and 9 A-10s. I say that creates a problem.
  We had a very courageous general named John Jumper. John Jumper ended 
up being the Chief of the Air Force, but before he was Chief of the Air 
Force--and this was about 1998, so it was during the Clinton 
administration, and it took a lot of courage for a uniform to stand up 
and admit publicly, with his background that no one would question, 
that now--back in 1998--he said the Soviets--the Russians--are making 
the SU series that are really fifth-generation fighters and we don't 
have anything that can really compete with them that is better than our 
F-15s or F-16s, which is all we had at that time. So in spite of all of 
the above, President Obama is shutting down the F-22, the only fifth-
generation fighter we have. Remember, we were going to have 750 of 
them, and he is going to stop at 187. If you stop the production line 
at 187, we are not going to be able to produce any more of these 
things.
  If some President comes along in 4 years and says: No, they made a 
mistake 4 years ago, we are going to have to get that line going again, 
the first ones would cost about twice. So this is one of the problems 
we are having.
  They are talking about increasing the F-35s--that is the Joint Strike 
Fighter--but that is a different mission. It certainly can't compete 
with the F-22.
  Well, we have a very serious problem. Again, it gets down to, do we 
really have an expectation in America--we send our kids into battle in 
the air or on the ground--that we are going to get them the best 
equipment to work with? I wish that were the case, but it is not the 
case.
  The Navy. At a time when the U.S. Navy is being called on to project 
its presence in more parts of the world than ever before, the 
recommendation that is coming from the White House is that the Navy 
shrink its carrier fleet to 10 aircraft carriers by 2012 and delay the 
acquisition of the other portions of its fleet. We see what is 
happening now. We have these aircraft carriers staged all over the 
world, and to be cutting that fleet, to me, is totally irresponsible.
  I remember when I was first elected to the House. My first year was 
1987. The first weekend I was in the House of Representatives, and I 
was going to be on the House Armed Services Committee, I spent the 
weekend down off the coast of Virginia on the USS Coral Sea. I went out 
there and landed on the carrier. I thought I had died and gone to 
heaven, it had such capability. At that time, in 1987, as we looked as 
the Sun was coming up, we could see the Soviet ships that were going 
around with their periscopes, the submarines, looking at what we had. 
Now that is out of commission; the Coral Sea is gone. These things 
don't last forever. The opposition--China, right now, is building these 
things. We have to stay better than they are. Yet we are cutting our 
carrier fleet.
  This reduction of aircraft carriers goes further below the previous 
QDR--that is the Quadrennial Defense Review--of 12 carriers required 
for moderate risk. So we have a situation where we need 12 carriers--
not 10 but 12--for moderate risk. Moderate risk is a term that is used 
in the military as to lives. If you have no risk, you are not going to 
lose human lives. If you have high risk, you are going to lose a lot of 
human lives. This is moderate. So we are saying we are willing to cut 
two aircraft carriers below what we call moderate risk or loss of life. 
I am not willing to do that.
  In the last few weeks, we have seen how important the Navy is in 
watching some of the pirate counterterrorism operations off the coast 
of Africa. I was over there in Somalia and in that area just a week 
ago. We are having some successes in our battle with the pirates, but 
again, a very critical part of that is our carrier capability.
  Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese submarines continue to be a threat to 
our

[[Page S4715]]

forces, with China operating over 60-something quieter subs. Since the 
1990s, China has been unilaterally hedging its maritime power to 
exclude the U.S. Navy from the Taiwan Straits and along China's coasts. 
We all know that. Now we have China, Japan, Australia, India, Malaysia, 
Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh, and South and North Korea 
either now or planning to acquire submarines to compete against ours. 
In all, we now have found it acceptable in this budget that is coming 
out of the White House to cut our total ships down to 300. I remember 
when there were 700 ships.
  Missile defense. This is something I think everyone should understand 
now. We think about the tragedy of 9/11. We think, as bad as that was, 
how much worse it would have been if they had had the capability of the 
nuclear warhead on a delivery system, hitting a major city in America. 
We wouldn't be talking about 3,000 deaths; we would be talking about 
300,000 or maybe 3 million deaths.
  On February 3, Iran launched a satellite on the 30th anniversary of 
the 1979 Islamic revolution, demonstrating key technologies of 
propulsion, staging, and guidance. This is what they did. We are 
talking about just 2 months ago in that demonstration. Then, going all 
the way back to 1979, I recall in--I was concerned in 1998 as to what 
the capability was going to be for North Korea in terms of having a 
multistage rocket capability, and the administration at that time, the 
Clinton administration, said it will be from 8 to 10 years, on August 
24 of 1998. Seven days later, even though they said it would be 8 to 10 
years before they had the capability, they fired one, and that 
demonstrated the capability they had.
  It makes you wonder how accurate we are right now in our assessment 
of their capability. Nonetheless, this budget recommended a 16-percent 
cut in the missile defense budget by $1.4 billion, and this is 
something that is totally unacceptable. We are going to have to reverse 
this.
  It wasn't long ago that we recognized we had to have a capability in 
the Czech Republic and in Poland. We wanted to have a radar capability 
in the Czech Republic and an interception capability in Poland, next 
door. Why do we need this? Because as they develop their capability in 
Iran and they want to come and shoot something at Western Europe and 
possibly to get to the east coast of the United States of America, the 
only place we can reliably, with our technology, shoot that down would 
be in that area of Eastern Europe.
  So we went and negotiated with the Parliaments. I was there. Vaclav 
Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, who happens to be one of my 
favorite people in the world--and he is one who helped us get this 
through Parliament. It wasn't easy. The thinking was: Well, is this 
going to be a threat? Are we going to have Russia coming down and 
complaining, saying this is an act of aggression? No. We are just 
trying to knock down a missile that might be coming from a place such 
as Iran or Syria or someplace else going toward Western Europe and the 
United States. Well, they finally agreed. The Parliaments of Poland and 
the Czech Republic agreed, and now we pull the rug out from under them 
with this proposed budget.
  The airborne laser--where is the chart on the missile defense?
  All right. I know this is heavy lifting, and this is not an easy 
thing to understand. But if you look at a missile defense system--let's 
keep in mind, this is the 26th anniversary of Ronald Reagan, saying 
SDI--members of the Strategic Defense Initiative--everyone criticized 
them: No one will ever be able to hit a bullet with a bullet. Well, 
they hit a bullet with a bullet. We have had several tests 
demonstrating that we can do it. Well, how do you knock down a missile 
coming in? You have three phases. There is a boost phase, a midcourse 
phase, and a terminal phase. We are currently in good shape on the 
midcourse phase and the terminal phase, but the main area where we are 
stark naked is in the boost phase. We don't have anything.
  We have the airborne laser. That is getting very close to being able 
to deploy a system to knock down an incoming missile when it is easiest 
to hit them. That is the boost phase, before they are going all that 
fast. And they cut that out of this budget.
  We need to have--we decided on a policy several years ago, and 
certainly the Senate Armed Services Committee as well as on the House 
Armed Services Committee that was headed at that time by Duncan Hunter 
and I think agreed to by the Democrats and Republicans at that time, 
that we need to have redundancy in all three areas if we are going to 
be able to knock down an incoming missile.
  I don't think there is anyone in America today who denies that the 
capability of, No. 1, hitting America is there and, No. 2, of being 
able to knock it down is there if we continue with this program. But we 
have to have that capability in the boost phase, and this budget takes 
that out. I am just as concerned about that as I am about the fact that 
we really lied to the Czech Republic and to Poland and put them in a 
very awkward position.
  So I guess in conclusion I agree with the President and Secretary 
Gates that we are going to have to reform our Defense acquisition 
system. There is a lot of waste in that. The Presiding Officer and I 
both serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we know we need 
to do some work, but we don't want to be doing this at the risk and at 
the expense of properly modernizing our services. I have stated many 
times in this Chamber that the greatest trust placed upon Congress by 
the American people is to provide for their security by maintaining a 
strong national defense.
  Tom Cole, a House Member from Oklahoma, said it best the other day. 
He said that eloquence and charm are a poor substitute for a strong 
national defense. You can be very eloquent, as our President is, and 
very charming, as our President is, and talk about these things and act 
as if the threat is not there, but we need to have a strong national 
defense.
  I think Ronald Reagan said it better. He said just to be sure we are 
prepared. He said: Trust but verify. Trust but verify. We trust these 
guys over there that they are not going to attack us, but let's verify 
it.
  We can avoid this far too frequent debate on the defense budget by 
ensuring a minimum level of funding for our military.
  So this is where we are today in our situation. I again look at 
something totally unprecedented. I have something here, if I can find 
it, that is rather interesting to compare. What we have done--and this 
is something no one has seen yet because we are still working on it, 
but we are taking a comparison of 1993 and today. That was the year 
President Clinton was elected. He also had control of the House and the 
Senate and the White House, just as the Democrats do today. And we went 
through the election process. We understand that. But the things they 
are doing, that President Clinton did at that time and President Obama 
is doing today, are just remarkably similar.
  In the military, the Army was cut back in the Clinton administration 
by 18 divisions down to 12 divisions, and here we are doing the same 
thing today. At that time on health care--right now, the President is 
talking about a universal Government-run health care system. Back then, 
they called it Hillary health care.
  They called it Hillary health care, the same thing. Gun control, the 
same type of thing. I will wait and do this all at once. I am trying to 
get to the amount of money. I was on the floor criticizing President 
Clinton because he proposed $243 billion in tax increases. The current 
President is talking about $1.4 trillion in tax increases. The budget 
they are operating with right now--I don't have it here--at that time, 
he talked about a budget of $1.5 trillion. That was Bill Clinton in 
1993. Now it is over twice that much. These are numbers we never 
thought about before. If you add together the $700 billion bank 
bailout, the $789 billion stimulus plan, and the $410 billion omnibus 
spending bill, that adds up to over $2 trillion, which is unheard of. 
It is very similar. It is just on a larger scale than that of 1993.
  That is the concern I bring to the floor today. I have only a few 
minutes left. I will cover one of my other three concerns. I have 
talked about the TARP funding on the floor. The TARP funding was 
supposed to be used to buy damaged assets. At that time, in October of 
2008, the Secretary of the Treasury promised that if we would give him

[[Page S4716]]

$700 billion, he would spend it to buy damaged assets. Some in this 
Chamber believed him. I didn't. I said put it in writing, let's get it 
into the law. But they were in too big a hurry and said: We have to do 
it now or we will have another Great Depression. He spent the money to 
bail out many banks that didn't even want to be bailed out and banks 
that previously both Geithner and Paulson were associated with. So that 
was a problem and we should now try to salvage what we can out of that 
program. So that is another subject--one I have spent quite a bit of 
time on over the last 7 years.
  Seven years ago, when the Republicans had a majority in the Senate, I 
became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. At that 
time, we were very close to ratifying the Kyoto Treaty. We remember 
this all started with the United Nations and then, of course, the 
people in Hollywood, the Hollywood elitists, moveon.org, and the 
Michael Moores of the world--and they had a right to do it--were saying 
we are going to have to stop emissions of greenhouse gases, and that 
the anthropogenic gases and manmade case gases were causing global 
warming.
  I remember so well, in 1975, in the State legislature, at that time 
the same magazines that are putting on the front page this idea that 
global warming is taking place--they are not doing it now, but they 
were up until about 5 years ago. Back then, they were saying: Get 
ready, another ice age is coming, we are all going to die. I remember 
using the term that this has to be the greatest ``hoax'' ever 
perpetrated on the American people.
  Fast forward to the late 1990s, when Kyoto was there, when I was 
chairman of the committee and I believed that manmade gases were 
causing global warming, until the Wharton Business School came out with 
the Wharton econometric survey. They showed clearly that if we were to 
sign on and ratify the Kyoto Treaty, it would cost the American people 
in the range of between $300 billion and $330 billion a year. Then, if 
you fast forward that to the next McCain-Lieberman bill, it was even 
more than that, and the Warner-Lieberman bill was even more than that.
  When I looked at it at that time, back when we were very close to 
ratifying the treaty, I found out that the science was not there. A lot 
of scientists were saying it was there, but it wasn't. Today, if 
anybody wants to get into my Web site, inhofesenate.gov, you can see 
all of the scientists. We have over 700 of them who used to be on the 
other side of this protecting their grants. They had to play this game 
to do it. They are now coming over to the skeptic side.
  As we listen to the current administration, they are now going to try 
to, by regulation, impose this giant tax on the American people because 
they know they cannot get it through this Chamber. We defeated it a 
year ago today--the last effort to have a cap-and-trade tax on the 
American people--by almost a 2-to-1 margin. They are going to try to do 
it again. When you talk about the $700 billion bailout and the stimulus 
bill, at least that is a one-shot deal. With this, you are talking 
about a regular annual tax increase on the American people of about 
$350 billion. The estimates are between $3,000 and $4,000 a year per 
family. What good would that do? Even if it is true, if people 
listening to me today, including fellow Members, believe manmade gases 
are causing global warming--if they believe that to be true, what good 
would it do us in the United States to unilaterally say we are going to 
impose these restrictions and pay $400 billion a year? And what good 
will it do if we do that, because our manufacturing base will go into 
countries where they have no restrictions. That would happen.
  I inquire as to the time remaining?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has 40 seconds.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I think the other speakers are here. Later 
on, I will talk about the assets we have, and that we have to keep 
Guantanamo Bay--Gitmo, as it is referred to. It has performed well for 
us since 1903. I cannot think of one statement, other than political 
statements, as to why we have to get rid of that great asset.
  With that, I thank the Chair for his tolerance and I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

     To: CSIS J. Board of Trustees, Advisers, and Friends
     From: John J. Hamre
     Date: April 13, 2009 (Number 298. Two pages)
     Re: Cancelling weapons systems
       I was out of the country last week when Secretary of 
     Defense Gates announced his recommendation for wholesale 
     termination of a large number of weapon systems. This was 
     such a big deal that he skipped the 60th anniversary 
     celebrations of the founding of NATO in order to prepare for 
     the announcement.
       Secretary Gates epitomizes what Americans want in public 
     service--fairness, decisiveness and decency. And he clearly 
     captured broad public support with his recommendations. In 
     dozens of conversations, I always heard some version of ``it 
     is about time we had a leader that did this.'' This is 
     usually followed up by a question ``do you think he will be 
     reversed by Congress?''
       There is a myth in American politics, that defense 
     contractors are powerful manipulative forces in Washington. 
     Ever since President Eisenhower coined the term ``the 
     military-industrial complex'' the popular sense is that 
     defense companies manipulate the Department and the Congress 
     to get whatever they want. I have been in and around the 
     defense business for 30 years. My experience has been that 
     they are not the all-powerful force of popular imagination. 
     Defense contractors are hugely vulnerable because they are 
     entirely dependent on the attitude of one customer--the 
     Defense Department. If the Secretary of Defense decides we 
     don't need something (and the Joint Chiefs go along with the 
     decision--a crucial factor), defense contractors have 
     virtually no recourse.
       Yes, Congress has occasionally reversed the decision of a 
     defense secretary. I remember when the Congress kept the B-1 
     bomber alive after President Carter recommended its 
     termination. But the B-1 would never have been built had it 
     not been for President Reagan who used it to symbolize his 
     different approach to defense policy.
       I suspect that most of the Secretary's recommendations will 
     hold. Every year the Congress receives the president's 
     defense budget, tears it apart and puts it back together, and 
     usually approves 97% of what is requested. A powerful member 
     of congress can add $10-20 million here or there for 
     something, but adding billions of dollars to reverse the 
     Secretary's decision on a single weapon system is almost 
     impossible. We are again returning to an environment when 
     adding something to the defense budget must be offset by 
     cutting something out. A congressman can strongly plea to add 
     $2 billion for program X, but very rarely offers offsetting 
     cuts in other programs. And with each instance, the pleading 
     congressman has to ultimately argue ``my judgment is superior 
     to that of the Secretary of Defense''.


                    Board of Trustees and Counselors

       CSIS trustees are drawn equally from the worlds of public 
     policy and the private sector. They contribute a wealth of 
     expertise to the Center's mission and management. One 
     asterisk (*) denotes a member of the Executive Committee and 
     two asterisks (**) denote a CSIS Counselor.
       Chairman: Sam Nunn* **--Cochairman & CEO, Nuclear Threat 
     Initiative since 1999.
       Vice Chairman & Co-Founder: David M. Abshire--President, 
     Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.
       Chairman of the Executive Committee: William A. Schreyer*--
     Chairman Emeritus, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
       President & Ceo: John J. Hamre*--President & CEO, CSIS.
       Trustees: George L. Argyros--Chairman & CEO, Arnel & 
     Affiliates; Richard Armitage--President, Armitage 
     International; Reginald K. Brack--Former Chairman & CEO, 
     Time, Incorporated; William E. Brock**--Counselor and 
     Trustee, CSIS; Harold Brown**--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; 
     Zbigniew Brzezinski**--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; William 
     S. Cohen--Chairman & CEO, The Cohen Group; Ralph Cossa--
     President, Pacific Forum/CSIS; Richard Fairbanks--Counselor 
     and Trustee, CSIS; Henrietta H. Fore--Former Administrator of 
     the USAID; William H. Frist--Trustee, CSIS; Michael P. 
     Galvin*--President, Harrison Street Capital, LLC; Helene D. 
     Gayle--President & CEO, CARE USA; Linda W. Hart*--Vice 
     Chairman & CEO, The Hart Group, Inc.; Ben W. Heineman, Jr.--
     CSIS Trustee and Senior Adviser; Thomas O. Hicks--Chairman, 
     Hicks Holdings LLC; Carla A. Hills**--Chairman & CEO, Hills & 
     Company; Ray L. Hunt--Chairman of the Board, President and 
     CEO, Hunt Consolidated, Inc.; E. Neville Isdell--Chairman, 
     The Coca-Cola Company; Muhtar Kent--President and CEO, The 
     Coca-Cola Company; Henry A. Kissinger**--Chairman & CEO, 
     Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Kenneth G. Langone--President & 
     CEO, Invemed Associates, LLC; Chong-Moon Lee--Chairman of 
     Board of Directors, Nara Bancorp, Los Angeles; Donald B. 
     Marron--Chairman & CEO, Lightyear Capital; Joseph Nye--
     Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University, Kennedy 
     School of Government; Thomas Pritzker--Chairman & CEO, The 
     Pritzker Organization, LLC; Joseph E. Robert--Chairman and 
     CEO, The J.E. Robert Companies (JER); Felix G. Rohatyn--Vice 
     Chairman, FGR Associated, LLC; David M. Rubenstein--Cofounder 
     and Managing Director, The Carlyle Group; Charles A. 
     Sanders--Former Chairman & CEO, Glaxo Inc.; James R. 
     Schlesinger**--Former Secretary of Defense and Energy; Brent 
     Scowcroft**--President, Forum for International Policy; Rex

[[Page S4717]]

     Tillerson--Chairman & CEO, Exxon Mobil Corporation; Frederick 
     B. Whittemore*--Advisory Director, Morgan Stanley.
       Trustees Emeriti: Betty Beene--Former President & CEO, 
     United Way of America; Amos A. Jordan--President Emeritus, 
     CSIS; Murray Weidenbaum--Hon. Chair, Weidenbaum Center, 
     Washington University; Dolores D. Wharton--Retired Chairman 
     and CEO, Fund For Corporate Initiatives, Inc.
       Counselors: William E. Brock--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; 
     Harold Brown--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; Zbigniew 
     Brzezinski--Counselor and Trustee, CSIS; Frank C. Carlucci--
     Counselor, CSIS; Richard Fairbanks--Counselor and Trustee, 
     CSIS; Carla A. Hills--Chairman & CEO, Hills & Company; Zalmay 
     Khalilzad--Counselor, CSIS; Henry A. Kissinger Chairman & 
     CEO, Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Theodore McCarrick--
     Counselor, CSIS; Sam Nunn--Cochairman & CEO, Nuclear Threat 
     Initiative; James R. Schlesinger--Former Secretary of Defense 
     and Energy; Brent Scowcroft--President, Forum for 
     International Policy; John Warner Counselor, CSIS.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah is 
recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. HATCH pertaining to the introduction of S. 897 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')

                          ____________________