[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 135 (Thursday, September 8, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H5211-H5214]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PORK SHIPS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, tonight we are going to talk about pork
ships. Now, you may be scratching your head. What is a pork ship?
Well, a pork ship was a name coined by POLITICO. Some may think,
well, maybe that is a creative barbecue dish. Or military historians
might say: Well, maybe it has something to do with the Bay of Pigs.
Others might think it is an Oscar Mayer-sponsored cruise liner. But all
those guesses would be wrong.
The term actually applies to a chronically unreliable ship, the
littoral combat ship.
Well, how unreliable is this ship?
In just the last 9 months, four of the six ships that we have built
as Littoral combat ships have been in trouble. They have broken down.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I have been working to
rein in this program for years. Unfortunately, the ship's manufacturers
and some Members of Congress seem intent on throwing good money after
bad.
The LCS has cost us almost $20 billion so far; $20 billion for six
ships. But we have many more that we are going to build that are going
to be flawed and that will break down. So the total cost of the ships
over the course of the program is a mind-blowing $120 billion. That is
right, $120 billion.
Now, we are scraping right now to find enough money for the defense
budget. We are scraping right now to come up with $2 billion to protect
Americans from the Zika virus. Meanwhile, we are spending truckloads of
money on ships that don't float.
Now, maybe I am being a little hyperbolic here, but I am going to
follow through by talking about the history of the ship. The ship is so
poorly conceived that even the name, littoral combat ship, doesn't fit.
The term ``littoral'' means that the ship should be able to operate
along the shoreline. Yet, Navy officials have admitted that they
haven't studied carefully enough whether the LCS is the right ship for
warfare in shallow waters.
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Combat. Combat isn't accurate either since the Defense Department's
Testing Office has said the LCS is not survivable in combat settings.
Littoral combat ship. It doesn't meet the term ``littoral.'' It
doesn't meet the term ``combat.'' And considering that one of these
ships spent 58 percent of a 10-month deployment idle in a port, we
might suggest that maybe it is not even a ship.
The Navy now wants to call it something else. Since this grand scheme
that was concocted back in the 1990s doesn't quite fit today, let's
just rename it a frigate.
So what is a frigate?
A frigate is a heavy, slow, and survivable ship. The littoral combat
ship meets the heavy because it is much heavier than it was supposed to
be. It is much slower than it is supposed to be, but it is not
survivable.
So the question then becomes: What are we doing? We are never going
to get back the nearly $20 million we have already appropriated on that
vessel, but are we going to spend extraordinary sums of money on
something that didn't meet the initial expectations and has proven over
and over again that it is not working?
Let's talk about the evolution of the LCS and how we got to this
point. One of the primary reasons for building the LCS was to increase
the size of the Navy by building smaller and presumably cheaper
vessels. However, there was never a consistent agreement on the LCS'
mission.
Military correspondent David Axe has called the LCS ``Frankenstein's
warship'' and questioned whether the LCS should be a heavily armored
combat vessel, a mine clearer, a submarine hunter, a low-cost
patroller.
How about a small, fast amphibious ship?
It was apparently meant to be all those things, yet we seem to have
ended up with a ship that can do none of these things.
Since the Navy didn't conduct rigorous analysis on the ship until
billions of dollars were already spent, they were building it without a
strategic plan. As a result, the LCS program has changed its
fundamental acquisition plan--now, get this--four times since 2005.
{time} 1745
We now have a ship that is less survivable and less lethal than
originally planned. The real threshold question is: Do we really want
to put our sailors' lives at risk on a vulnerable ship? That should be
the threshold question. If this ship is so plagued with flaws and is
not survivable in combat, are we not putting our sailors at risk?
On top of the fact that the LCS is struggling to perform its intended
missions, it is turning out to be the proverbial lemon. As detailed by
a Politico article in July, the ship's maiden voyages have been marked
by cracked hulls, engine failures, unexpected rusting, software
glitches, and weapons malfunctions.
So let's start with February 2011. Here we are. What happened there?
In February 2011, the USS Freedom sprung a 6-inch crack in its hull
that required several months' worth of repairs. All right, that is the
USS Freedom.
Now we are in June 2011, just a few months later, and we find that
the USS Independence has suffered severe corrosion and has been
sidelined.
In December 2012, the Defense Department's director of operational
test and evaluation released a report saying: ``The LCS is not expected
to be survivable . . . in a hostile combat environment.'' Now, this is
the office within the Department of Defense within the Department that
is charged with making sure our weapons are safe, effective, and
accurate; and the testing office is saying: Do you know what? It is not
survivable.
In July 2013, the USS Freedom was, once again, immobilized during a
trial run. So it has got two strikes now. Also in July of 2013, the GAO
urged Congress to restrict the purchase of new LCS until the Navy
completed technical and design studies and figured out how much it will
cost to fix the vessel's problems. These were very good suggestions.
Now, we pay these departments to make these recommendations. But guess
what. We just ignored it.
We move from July 2013 to December 2014, Secretary of Defense Hagel
directed the Navy to study ways to improve the program. However, the
Navy doubled down on its failed strategy and prioritized costs and
schedule considerations over mission requirements.
In December 2015, the USS Milwaukee--yet another LCS--broke down and
had to be towed 40 miles after a software malfunction. In the same
month, Secretary of Defense Carter directed the Navy to cut the program
which would save billions of dollars. Once again, Congress resisted
these efforts.
Another LCS, the USS Fort Worth, in January 2016 was sidelined
because its operators failed to follow proper maintenance procedures.
In June of this year, GAO recommended Congress not fund any LCS for
2017. So what did Congress do? In a strained budget, did we heed the
GAO? No. No, we didn't. The NDAA authorized not one, not two, but three
new ships--three new ships--adding $1.5 billion to the budget. Now,
this is after the GAO said: Do not authorize any more LCS this year.
What did we do? We actually upped the department's request of two to
three.
But there is more. In July of this year, the USS Freedom--oh, my God,
the third time--yet again encountered more mechanical issues. How bad
is it? This time its engine will need to be rebuilt or replaced. This
is a $400 million ship that has been in dock, paralyzed, and towed in
three times already, and now we are being told we have to replace or
rebuild the engine.
Then most recently, yet another--there are only six of them, mind
you, and five of them have had problems. In August of this year, the
USS Coronado broke down because of an engineering problem.
Despite all of these problems and all of these warnings, what do we
do in Congress? We continue to throw money at this ship. Lemons may
float in water, but this lemon of a ship evidently does not, and it is
taking taxpayer money to the bottom of the ocean with it.
Even the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
John McCain, has questioned the LCS program, demonstrating that this is
not a partisan issue.
Members, we have a responsibility to take care of the taxpayers'
dollars. It makes you wonder why certain House Members are so committed
to not just sustaining, but boosting the LCS production. Aren't we
supposed to be prudent with taxpayer money?
The answer may be looking at what the shipbuilders were doing in
Washington from January to March of this year. During that time, these
shipbuilders were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby
Congress. Do you know what? I bet we are all paying for that in the
bottom line of that particular contract.
I experienced firsthand what that money can buy when I attempted to
introduce an amendment to the FY 2017 Defense Appropriations bill that
would have reduced the total ships purchased from three to two for this
fiscal year.
Now, the Rules Committee apparently decided that my amendment was not
germane to the bill. I mean, truly, that is right. An amendment on
defense spending was deemed not relevant to a defense spending bill.
This wasn't an absurd proposal either; it was in line with the
President's budget request. It certainly wasn't a poison pill. That one
ship represented only about 0.06 percent of the total defense budget.
In hindsight, I should have followed GAO's recommendation to not fund
any LCS next year. I thought only going with two ships was a fair
compromise. We won't know because we weren't even allowed to vote on
it. That is what we do here. We avoid voting on controversial issues.
But that is our job, and this is more than just controversial. This is
spending taxpayer money and spending it poorly.
Even LCS shipbuilder Lockheed Martin must have been surprised that my
amendment never reached the House floor. They had already sent out a
letter urging a ``no'' vote on it. Now, as I mentioned, it never even
got considered because it was held to be nongermane in a defense
spending bill. But their arguments for voting against the amendment are
about effective as a littoral combat ship is at a littoral combat,
which is to say not very.
Lockheed said that if we reduced the LCS program, the Navy would be
``unable to sustain fleet capability and
[[Page H5213]]
meet global requirements.'' However, the Secretary of Defense said that
cutting the LCS would actually improve our naval forces by allowing us
to invest in more pressing needs.
Lockheed's letter also said that we shouldn't reduce the LCS program
because ``ship count is crucial for the Navy to meet its tactical
missions.'' Ship count may be an important measurement of capability,
but we should not be spending billions of dollars just to reach an
arbitrary ship number, especially if those ships aren't survivable in
combat or stall out on the open seas and have to be towed back to port.
But that is what we are funding. We are funding flawed ship design, and
we are funding flawed ships that are costing us a truckload of money.
Lockheed also maintains if we cut the program it would force the
shipyards to shut down. But that is not even true. The GAO says both
companies who work on the LCS variants already have enough work on the
books to keep their shipyards running to the year 2021.
Fortunately, there is still an opportunity to salvage some savings
from this shipbuilding program. The NDAA conference committee has been
meeting to discuss provisions for the final bill. The Senate version
supports Secretary Carter's directive to reduce the number of LCS. As a
member of the conference committee, I have argued for the adoption of
this provision. Cutting the total number of ships will save billions of
dollars of taxpayer money over the long run.
As wasteful and as unnecessary as this program has been, it is just
the tip of the iceberg of Congress forcing the Defense Department to
spend taxpayer money on weapons it does not want and only seem to
benefit certain industries.
For example, the House NDAA bill redirects $18 billion in critical
funding for wartime operations towards programs the Defense Department
did not request. As a result, the bill would only fund the Defense
Department through next April, effectively sidestepping the Bipartisan
Budget Act compromise signed onto by both Republicans and Democrats
that we reached just last year and putting funding for combat
operations at risk.
In any budget environment, this is not the way we should be doing
business, but House Republicans think nothing of engaging in these
wasteful and irresponsible budget shenanigans--and some Democrats, too.
Now, I am all for Congress revisiting budget caps and looking for
waste and areas where spending and support should be increased. But I
do not support cutting funding to crucial, existing programs to fund
programs the military doesn't even want.
Furthermore, should we be funding programs and should we be funding
weapons that have not been fully tested, as the LCS is, that has
already shown that it is flawed, that has already shown that five out
of the six ships that are afloat have had problems, and they are big
problems?
Whom do we work for? Do we work for big business; or do we work for
the American people? Throwing taxpayer money at failed programs solely
for the benefit of industry is not how we should be operating.
I am going to stop here. I am joined by my colleague from Minnesota.
He is one of the most outspoken people in this Congress on issues
around fairness in budgeting, and I am grateful that he is here.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).
Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Speier for yielding.
I appreciate the gentlewoman being the leader on this issue, looking
after the public dollar and looking after our national security making
sure that we don't waste any money but that we put our energy into
making sure that we protect the American people at the most proper cost
because a dollar that we waste is a dollar we cannot use to do anything
else. So the gentlewoman's advocacy here, I think, is absolutely
important.
I would like to thank the gentlewoman for organizing this hour to
highlight an area of incredible waste of funds, the littoral combat
ship. The Operational Test and Evaluation office in the Pentagon said
in January that the ship is not reliable.
{time} 1800
The Pentagon wants to pay for only two of these ships in 2017, enough
to preserve competition and to make sure that taxpayers get the best
deal for their money. Yet some in Congress want to force the Pentagon
to buy three ships. Key Members of the Congress have expressed their
concerns about the ship.
Senators John McCain and Jack Reed do not believe that the littoral
combat ship could defeat an enemy fleet ``unless the enemy fleet
consists of a small number of lightly armed boats at extremely short
range.''
The GAO thinks the problems with the littoral combat ship are severe
enough to merit a complete production pause. The GAO recommends that
Congress not fund these ships in 2017. The last of the Navy's
survivability tests will not be completed until 2018, giving us the
answers we need to guide future development.
The events of this week only reinforce the GAO's recommendation. The
Navy ordered all littoral combat ship crews to stand down and halt
operations in order to review procedures and engineering standards.
Every single sailor with an engineering role on the crew will need to
be retrained. This is due to ongoing challenges. That ought to be
enough for us to take notice.
Yet Congress is not listening to the facts. The House appropriated an
extra $348 million for this ship in 2017. $348 million goes a long way
to buying other things that can promote national security, but also
things that can help domestic security--things like housing, things
like food, jobs, all these kinds of things that we have urgent needs to
address. We haven't taken up the Zika. We haven't dealt with Flint.
Many urgent needs.
This is not a worthwhile meritorious expenditure. Somebody is getting
paid, and it is not right. The American people's interest should be
upheld first. That is $348 million above what the President requested
for a ship that is not even working.
There are better uses for the taxpayer's money. Like I said, Zika.
Let's make sure that our veterans are stably housed and support mental
health programs. How about universal child care for working families?
There are so many urgent needs that the American people have. Or, if we
stick to military needs, let's support our troops overseas for an
entire year, not just a few months.
I want to thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier) for
bringing to light this critical issue. She always is at the forefront
when justice needs a champion. I want to urge Ms. Speier to keep up the
fight. We are very proud of her and the work that she does. We will
always be standing by her side.
Ms. SPEIER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr.
Ellison) for his comments. He hit the nail on the head. There are so
many important resources, there are so many important services that we
need to fund, and yet we don't find the money for that. Meanwhile, we
have six ships, five of which have had problems, flaws, and yet we will
not only continue to fund those ships, continue to rehabilitate those
ships, but they are going to add three more.
When will we finally get the message that there is something wrong
with this ship? Let's go back to the drawing board. Let's do this the
right way. Let's not build more ships until we find out what is really
wrong. This ship has not been fully tested yet.
Imagine if we put cars on the road that haven't been fully tested and
then were breaking down and they were being towed. Would we put up with
that? Absolutely not. But we are putting up with it when it comes to
the funding of these ships, and I think it is a travesty.
I would say the LCS program has to go. Not just the name, because we
have already proven that it is not subject to littoral shorelines. It
is not eligible for combat survivability, and there is a big question
as to whether or not it is a ship at all since it has the potential, or
the propensity, to sink or to break down.
Let's trim the fat from this pork ship and finally sink it.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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