[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 77 (Wednesday, May 21, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H4688-H4689]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     SUPPORT OUR AIR NATIONAL GUARD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, today's congressional business is to 
deal with the defense authorization legislation. This is a critical 
bill, a real opportunity to balance our needs for a strong defense and 
care for our men and women in uniform, with the hard budget realities 
and unsustainable trend lines that we are seeing across the budget 
categories.
  But because we are ducking the hard tradeoffs in this Defense 
Authorization, tradeoffs that at least the administration--to its 
credit--and the Pentagon laid before Congress with their 
recommendations. We are going to have to resort to an amendment process 
on the floor to use these areas of opportunity to make longer-term 
savings and to use part of that money to address key priorities that 
are shortchanged.

                              {time}  1015

  Now, I have an amendment that would help support our Air National 
Guard. The Guard and Ready Reserves are a cost-effective way to provide 
support for our military establishments. They have proven their worth 
time and time again overseas, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, and here at 
home as they help us deal with natural disasters.
  The Air National Guard also operates a fleet of 130 F-15 fighter jets 
in installations across America, but more than half these planes rely 
on an outmoded, limited radar technology from the 1970s. That means 
that for many of our pilots, their radar is older than they are. It 
went out of production in 1986. It limits their capacity, and it breaks 
down more frequently. It is less reliable. That is why my amendment 
will actually save money over the next 10 years.
  Soon we will be voting on whether or not we will do the right thing 
to support this vital work of the Air National Guard. Now, during the 
debate last night, the opponents couldn't argue against the wisdom of 
making the Air Guard more effective by upgrading this outmoded radar 
technology that is unreliable and limits their capacity. In fact, they 
admitted that the little bit that the budget will do to upgrade some of 
them actually was helpful. They had no good reason to continue to 
shortchange the Guard.
  Instead, during the debate, they tried to make this modest proposal 
into a larger debate about the one-half to two-thirds of $1 trillion we 
will be spending over the next 10 years for our whole nuclear weapons 
program. Now, that is a debate I will welcome on the floor of the 
House.

[[Page H4689]]

  In fact, I have legislation that would save $100 billion over the 
next 10 years and would start us on a much different path to rein in 
the bloated, expensive, unnecessary, and redundant nuclear deterrent 
that is many times more than we can afford or that we need. How many 
times do we have to completely destroy a country from how many 
different platforms in order to meet our objective of deterrence? We 
are spending more in inflation-adjusted terms than we spent at the 
height of the cold war with the Soviet Union. Not only is the program 
more than we need, but the costs are out of control.
  I am pleased that later today we will debate an amendment that the 
Rules Committee made in order to make last year's Congressional Budget 
Office report on the reliability of the weapons costs an annual event. 
That is important because the first report that was issued in December 
showed that there is a $150 billion underestimation from the 
administration's current program projections, and that is before the 
committee added more money and changed the timelines.
  By all means, let's have that debate on the floor of the House, on 
how many of these weapons we need. We have never used these weapons in 
69 years and are too expensive and actually, in and of themselves, are 
dangerous. Let's have the debate sooner rather than later so that we 
can set our priorities. In the meantime, let's not confuse the tiny 
reallocation under my amendment with a larger question that is 1,000 
times greater.
  What it does show is that the money is there to help the Air Guard do 
their job right. It would be a shame if we let them down and did not 
approve the Blumenauer amendment.

                          ____________________