[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.

[[Page H5212]]

  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.

[[Page H5214]]

  

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