[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8359-8366]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               REGARDING SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I serve here in Congress as the chairman of 
the Subcommittee on Military, a subcommittee of the Committee on Armed 
Services. Before I move into remarks regarding the supplemental 
appropriation that will deal not only with the funding shortfalls in 
Kosovo and the funding shortfalls to fund our national military 
strategy, along with disaster assistance and humanitarian aid, I would 
like to comment on some remarks made by one of my own Republican 
colleagues here tonight during the 5 minutes. He put up a chart and on 
the chart he had lists that in World War II, with a 13 million force, 
we had 31 four-star generals and with our force of today, we have 33 
generals, and that even though we have reduced our force, we still have 
all of these general officers.
  Being responsible for the force structure decisions of the United 
States military, I would like to advise America that I have held the 
line on the increase, the demand for the increase out of the Pentagon 
on general officer strength. The force that fought World War II, that 
military force, is completely different from the military force of 
today. We also have encouraged jointness, greater cooperation and 
interoperability between all the services. When you do that, yes, you 
end up creating some bureaucracies and an increase in need for general 
officer strength. But more importantly we are going to maintain the 
sort of rank-heavy military for a very important reason. Kosovo really 
is that third scenario, ``third scenario'' meaning we have a national 
military strategy to fight and win two nearly simultaneous major 
regional conflicts. So you take a circumstance in Korea, you can take a 
circumstance in Iraq, and now we have the third circumstance with 
regard to Kosovo. If, in fact, the United States found itself on a 
three-front war and we had the necessity to have to build a force 
rapidly, we could do that when we maintain officer strength in the 
general officer corps along with senior noncommissioned officers. That 
is the reason we are going to hold the line on those strengths. So the 
chart that was used tonight is somewhat misleading, and I wanted to 
correct the record.
  Over the next 1 hour, the gentleman from the 52nd District of 
California (Mr. Hunter) chairman of the Subcommittee on Military 
Procurement and myself will discuss why all of the Members, and to 
inform America why we should support the emergency supplemental 
appropriation that we will be voting on here later this week.
  Let me be very clear that there are some Members that point to this 
bill as though it were some form of a referendum on the President's 
actions in Kosovo, or that if we add additional funding to this 
supplemental appropriation that somehow we are forward funding the 
Clinton-Gore war. There is a lot of rhetoric, political rhetoric that 
is being used around here. So what the gentleman from California and I 
would like to clarify for everyone is what is the purpose of this 
emergency supplemental funding and why we have an increase in military 
funding in this bill that is over and above the President's request.
  I believe that this bill is mislabeled. It should not be emergency 
funding with regard to Kosovo. This bill is necessary to fund the 
national security strategy of this country. The President has the 
singular responsibility to lay out the national security interest of 
this Nation. He then turns to the military planners and said, ``What is 
the national military strategy to carry that out?'' That is what makes 
us uncomfortable today.
  Let me pose to you this question. Can anyone name this country, a 
country whereby 709,000 active service personnel, eight standing Army 
divisions, 20 Air Force and Navy air wings with 2,000 combat aircraft, 
232 strategic bombers, 13 strategic missile submarines, with 232 
missiles, 500 ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missile systems, with 
1,950 warheads, four aircraft carriers, 121 surface combat ships and 
submarines. Can anyone name this country with that type of force 
structure?

[[Page 8360]]



                              {time}  2145

  Is that country the former Soviet Union?
  No.
  Is that country Russia?
  No.
  Is that country China?
  No.
  Is the country the United Kingdom?
  No.
  You give up?
  That country, the global superpower, no longer exists.
  You see, the force structure that I just listed is how much the 
American military forces have been cut since 1990.
  So why does our force structure matter so much?
  First, let us look at the success.
  In 1990 and 1991, the 45-day Gulf War was highly successful.
  Why?
  Well, in our active forces in 1990 we had 18 divisions. In the Air 
Force tactical wings we had 24. Navy ships and submarines, we had 546 
as we were coming out of the Cold War era.
  Part of the success was not only the force structure, but it was also 
because we had a highly-trained, well-equipped combat-ready force.
  The question that is painful for those of us that serve on the 
Committee on Armed Services and those who appropriate funds on its 
behalf, was challenging for the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), 
and myself and others, is that we have to ask that question:
  Could we fight and win a Gulf War today?
  You see, that makes us very uncomfortable if you were to ask us that 
question, because we have forces in Korea on the peninsula, we have our 
forces in Iraq today, and now the President has us in a third scenario 
in former Yugoslavia.
  So when we look at that force structure in 1990 and we see where 
President Clinton and Vice President Gore have taken us down to today 
with those budgets, we today have:
  Army divisions, we have 10.
  Air Force tactical wings, we only have 13.
  And Navy ships and submarines, we only have 315.
  The number that is used so often here in Washington is, if we do not 
hold the line on the Navy, we could dip below a 300-ship Navy, and that 
is fearful, my colleagues.
  What is really concerning about these 10 active divisions: If you 
were to say, ``All right, Congressman. Of those 10 divisions, how many 
are ready to go right now?'' Five, only five because the other five 
divisions are called the follow-on divisions, and they have been 
hollowed out. They are short over 300 noncommissioned officers per 
brigade, over 300.
  So we have got some anxiety building up between myself, and the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and others about our present 
force structure today.
  Let me put this into real numbers for my colleagues, divisions, 
wings, submarines, ships. Let me put it into numbers so my colleagues 
can relate, for those who are not familiar with the military.
  The Army has been reduced. When we say taking down the size of these 
divisions and those who support them, we have reduced the Army strength 
by 250,000 personnel. The Navy has been reduced by 200,000 personnel, 
the Air Force has been reduced by 150,000 personnel, and the selected 
reserve has been reduced 250,000 personnel. And what is also very 
difficult today is we are not retaining the qualified personnel, nor 
are we recruiting the sufficient numbers to meet current service 
requirements. That is very challenging to many of us.
  So why is force structure so important? Why are we talking about 
that? Force structure is important because earlier when I mentioned the 
purpose of the military, it is the means to the political objectives 
laid out by the President with regard to our national security 
interests.
  I am going to read from the annual report to the President and 
Congress signed by the Secretary of Defense William Cohen here in 1999. 
He lays out our military strategy. The military strategy is in sum, and 
says on page 17:
  In sum, for the foreseeable future U.S. forces must be sufficient in 
size, versatility and responsiveness in order to transition from a 
posture of global engagement to fight and win in concert with our 
allies two major theater of wars that occur roughly at the same time. 
In this context they must also be able to defeat the initial enemy 
advance in two distant theaters in close succession and to fight and 
win in situations where chemical and biological weapons and other 
asymmetric approaches are employed.
  That is the present national military strategy.
  So earlier I used this example of if we are involved in a Gulf War 
scenario, and North Korea decides to do something foolish, do we have 
the force structure to fight and win a two-front war? The open secret 
and the pain that we have to deal with is we do not have the force 
structure to do that today.
  I do not get into the strategy decisions, but I am not going to be 
just the critic. I want to be the constructive critic. Do my colleagues 
know what would be different from a Republican administration and the 
Democrat administration with regard to this military strategy? I would 
take out where it says in order to transition from a posture of global 
engagement. I would strike those words from the military strategy. You 
see, that foreign policy of the President, this engagement around the 
world is what strains the military force. So the President has our 
military force stretched so thin in so many different places around the 
world, that is what makes it challenging, and I am going to speak to 
that a little bit more here later.
  Let me also refer to the difference in the dollars that are used on 
the defense along with the utilization of the force. You see, the world 
is not as stable, and this is a paradox. The world is not as stable 
today as it was during the stand-off of the Cold War. So often we hear 
in this town that the Russian bear has been replaced by a thousand 
vipers. The enemy today is difficult to define. The force structure 
that we have, we have to be more mobile and more fluid as we think of 
how to fight and win the next war. If you plan the next war how you won 
the last one, you have positioned yourself for failure, so we have to 
be very smart about our business.
  But what is clear here by this chart is there is a mismatch between 
funding and the use of military force. Now you can look at this force 
here during the Bush administration, and the dollars, and the 
procurement, and the funding and the readiness to utilization. Some 
would be quick to say: Well, look, you have got too much money and you 
are not using the force. I heard our own Secretary of Defense say:
  ``Well, what's the purpose of the military if you do not use them?''
  I am not sure I can follow her logic.
  The purpose of the military is to fight and win the Nation's wars and 
to protect our interests, not to utilize the war in every corner of the 
world as though we are the world's policemen. You see, that is what 
gets us in trouble.
  When I think of the paradox, it is almost those who say the B-2 
bomber, and this is before the Kosovo incident, never dropped a bomb. 
That is a good thing, my colleagues. If the military never has to fire 
a shot, that is a good thing. When we are the finest, the best, the 
most well equipped military in the world, who wants to take us on? Our 
enemies are not cooperative. They take us on when we are vulnerable, 
and we are getting vulnerable.
  Look at this one right here. From 1993 to 1999, we have reduced the 
budgets, and we have increased the utilization. So during the Bush 
administration the War Powers Act reporting to Congress, there were 
six. President Clinton's term, and Al Gore, 46 reports have been sent 
to Congress. That is the utilization. So not only has he taken our 
military force and stretched them to those 135 countries around the 
world, he has actually placed our military into harm's way in over 46 
places around the world. Over utilization.
  So what is happening to the force? The wear and tear on our forces, 
it is showing. It is showing, and the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Hunter) is going to talk about that coming up.

[[Page 8361]]

  Let me go to this chart for just a second. When I talked about the 
utilization all around the country, Mr. Speaker, the President has a 
foreign policy of engagement. Engagement. And he uses our military as 
though they are diplomats, and military-to-military contacts and 
everything all around the world. But let us talk about some of the 
larger ones.
  North Korea, we have 40,000 troops.
  Bosnia, we have the 10,000.
  In Iraq we have 20,200 aircraft, 1 carrier battle group.
  Kosovo, 30,000 troops, 800 aircraft, one carrier battle group.
  But we have got troops all over the place from Haiti, Honduras, Cuba, 
Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, 
Colombia, Argentina, Egypt, India, Israel, Kenya, Tanzania, Diego 
Garcia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Japan, Australia, China, Singapore, 
Thailand. The list goes on, and on, and on. So, we have taken our 
military force, we have cut down the structure, and we have spread them 
all around the world, but you see the President in their force 
structure says we can transition from spreading our forces all around 
the world, and then all of a sudden we can bring them together and we 
can fight and win in two near simultaneous major regional conflicts, 
and, oh, by the way, if we happen to get bogged down in Kosovo, do not 
worry, we can win.
  No, this is very uncomfortable, Mr. Speaker, very, very 
uncomfortable.
  As chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, I have 
conducted numerous hearings on the growing problems facing our service 
men and women. Although pay and benefits is important, there are other 
equally important issues stressing the force, quality of life issues, 
health care, lack of spare parts, lack of adequate training time, the 
aging of equipment, the high depreciation rates on our equipment, 
increased operational tempo, longer working hours and the family 
separation, reusing and reusing the same people. Asking them to do more 
with less is not a strategy for success.
  Do not take my word for it, Mr. Speaker. Let me read some excerpts 
from a letter I received from a young Navy lieutenant:
  Honor, courage and commitment are words that are often used in jest. 
What they should say is honor the sailor, respect the job and the 
sacrifices that he endures. Have the courage to give those who risk 
their life every day in the defense of our country and democracy the 
proper equipment to do their job. Make the commitment to the basic 
human needs that every human being, even sailors, need for themselves 
and their families. We need to provide the fleet with all the tools to 
maintain our assets. Just-in-time manning and ramping up for deployment 
is ludicrous. People and assets need to be in position and on board to 
benefit the rigors of the training cycle. Sailors need to be properly 
trained. They need to have the proper support, equipment to test the 
systems, be it on a ship or on an aircraft. They need publications that 
are up to date. They need various hand and automated tools to 
adequately perform the maintenance and maintain the equipment. I do not 
know what the fix is, and I do not know all the answers, but I will 
tell you I have never seen the Navy in such a sad state of affairs. I 
love this business and have always believed that there is honor in my 
chosen profession. Every cut back has a cost. In this case I think we 
cut too deep.
  This Navy lieutenant said it in words for which I could not replace. 
So what have we done? We increased those missions dramatically, we have 
stressed the force, and this sailor is sending a basic message to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), and myself, and the gentleman 
from Virginia (Mr. Bateman), and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Hefley) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) who chair 
subcommittees in the Committee on Armed Services that we need to take 
care of the force as much as we can, and that is the purpose of our 
supplemental. We have asked for some billions of dollars over and above 
the President's mark, spending mark, and what we are trying to do is to 
fund this national military strategy.
  This is no attempt by the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and 
myself or others to front load some Kosovo war or anything else. We 
recognize that there are stresses in the force.
  The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) tells a story about some 
F-16s in the Pennsylvania National Guard that did not have GPS, the 
global positioning system in the F-16s when they were deployed to Iraq 
in operation Provide Comfort. So what did the pilots do? They went to 
Radio Shack, bought it, strapped it onto their legs.
  When one is flying an aircraft at high altitude over the desert, 
there is not much to navigate off of, and one has to have that GPS 
system. I feel awful, America, that we are not even doing the 
modernization of our force and pilots are actually going to Radio Shack 
to modernize their own fighter aircraft.

                              {time}  2200

  That is sad.
  Let me move now to a quote from Admiral Jay Johnson. He said, we have 
approximately 18,000 gap billets in the fleet. What does that mean, Mr. 
Speaker? That means in the Navy today we are 18,000 sailors short.
  Navy ships are being deployed at 10 to 20 percent under their 
strength. What does that mean? That means that when an aircraft carrier 
or a cruiser, when they leave harbor, they are leaving about 80 percent 
strength. So when they are deployed at sea and they end up with 
injuries, a workplace injury, a back or sick call, there are no 
replacements. They do not send replacements out to sea. Everybody has 
to then carry the load.
  So instead of now working in the boiler room where maybe 10 people 
are assigned they now have seven. Two people get hurt, five now have to 
pick up the load. Instead of working 10 hours, they are now working 14 
hours. That is what is happening to our force, and it is very, very 
difficult.
  Let me mention Kosovo for a second. Here is something that is also 
very, very concerning to us. The current Kosovo mission has forced the 
United States to divert planes from their patrols over Iraq in order to 
support the ongoing campaign.
  This quote here, in the New York Times, in early April, the Navy 
shifted its only aircraft carrier in the western Pacific and its 75 
combat jets out of the region indefinitely to help wage war in the 
Yugoslavia campaign.
  If we have taken our only carrier now out of that region of the world 
to support this so-called humanitarian war, how can we satisfy the 
national military strategy? We cannot. We cannot.
  The second quote is, the Pentagon briefly suspended enforcement of 
the no-fly zone over northern Iraq when fighter bombers and radar-
jamming planes were dispatched to the air war in Serbia.
  Mr. Speaker, if we are having difficulty here at the moment 
maintaining the front against the forces in North Korea on the 
peninsula, maintaining the no-fly zone requirements in Iraq, and we 
have this war now in Kosovo and we cannot even mix and match, that is a 
very strong signal to us that we have to take corrective action, and it 
is immediate.
  If all we do is fund what the President's request is, all we do is 
fund the bullet for bullet which they are firing, shame on us. We have 
to step forward, bite the bullet, that the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Hunter) is going to talk about, and do much more than that and go 
beyond.
  I yield to the gentleman from San Diego, California (Mr. Hunter), a 
highly decorated Vietnam veteran and well respected in this House, the 
chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Procurement.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Buyer), for yielding me this time and for making such a 
superb presentation on the inadequacies of military funding that exist 
right now.
  I have to protest that I did nothing special in Vietnam. I simply 
showed up, but I did serve with a lot of great people. I want to 
commend my friend for his participation in Desert Storm.

[[Page 8362]]

  I think a good point here that the gentleman made very strongly is 
the fact that, while the military has shrunk by almost 50 percent, and 
most people do not realize that but some people realize that, they 
realize it is smaller, the natural tendency is to feel that since it is 
50 percent of the original size it has been cut back so dramatically, 
over 200,000 people in the Navy and 200,000 people in the Army and so 
on, the team that is left has to be well paid, well armed and well 
trained.
  One would think, boy, the residual people that we have there after we 
pared it down from this huge military that we had, a lot of people 
think we had in 1990, 1991, this military has to really be just in 
great shape, with lots of new equipment and ready to go.
  The tragedy is, we have cut the military almost in half; and the half 
that we have left is not well paid, number one. The gentleman has 
really done wonders working as chairman of the Subcommittee on Military 
Personnel, and he has been pushing hard to get compensation, and we 
know that the average military personnel today are making about 13.5 
percent less than their civilian counterparts. That means if someone is 
an electronics technician in the Navy, they are making about 13.5 
percent less on the average than the guy who is working for a private 
company out in industry.
  The real tragedy of that is that, at the end, the bottom line is we 
have today about 10,000 military personnel on food stamps.
  As I watched the stock market go through the roof the other day, I 
thought about that. Here we are in one of our most prosperous times and 
people are commenting on the endurance of this prosperity that we have 
had, the longevity of this prosperity. We have a military that is half 
as big as it was a few years ago, and the men and women in that 
military are underpaid, and 10,000 of them are on food stamps.
  So, wrong, the first instinctive reaction is this must be a well-paid 
military since it has been cut in half. Answer, no.
  Second, people must think, well, my gosh, it is half the size it was, 
it must be really well trained since it is pared down to this smaller 
force.
  I think of Colonel Rosenberg, who was one of the national trainers at 
the National Training Command hearing that the gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Bateman), chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Readiness, held 
at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada. Colonel Rosenberg said, and I 
paraphrase him, he said, it is a real tragedy that this military that 
we built out of the ashes of the Vietnam War, that won so 
overwhelmingly in Desert Storm, is being destroyed before our very 
eyes.
  When we asked for particulars from Colonel Rosenberg and others who 
were testifying there, these are the trainers at the National Training 
Center, it is kind of like the military college where the infantry goes 
and the armor goes and the artillery units go to get their upper level 
training. Once they have graduated from high school, so to speak, they 
go to this military college, which really is a big training ground out 
in the desert in the West, and they have to perform against a mock 
enemy, and they are given points.
  The trainers said, among other things, the troops that we get often 
do not know anything about maneuver with armor. They do not know 
anything about the basics of calling in artillery fire. They do not 
know how to handle many, many procedures that have to be handled on the 
battlefield. In other words, this is like getting people in their first 
year in college and one realizes that they never should have graduated 
from the 11th and 12th grades in high school and one feels like they 
have to send them back for a refresher course.
  We have fine young people in the military. So why are not they 
getting the training that is necessary, at least to get them into the 
upper training level? Well, the answer is, those dozens of deployments 
that the gentleman just talked about, that the gentleman from Indiana 
(Mr. Buyer) just talked about, where the President has pulled people 
out of school, and a lot of these military schools are very technical, 
they have to sit there in a classroom and really learn to know their 
job, but these people are pulled out of their schools before they can 
finish it. They are kept from going to their schools.
  It is like a kid who is in high school. He is supposed to get good 
grades his last year in high school. His dad has a farm, and his dad 
pulls him out of class 3 days out of 5 in the week, so he is only going 
to class about half the time he should have gone to class in his senior 
year, and all of a sudden he figures out he is not ready for college.
  That is what this President has done with this downsized military. He 
has stretched it all over the world.
  The average person will say, wait a minute. Those people that are in 
Bosnia, that is training. Well, it may train them for deployment, but 
it does not train them with the simulators. It does not train them with 
the test ranges that we have. It does not train them with the classroom 
work that they need.
  So the second fallacy most people believe is that this smaller force 
is well trained, and it is not.
  One last example, talking to the Marines, we talk about the V-STOL 
aircraft that goes straight up off the ground, the jet aircraft, that 
the Marines use, instead of going down a runway and lift off; very, 
very difficult aircraft to fly. When one asks the Marines, how many 
hours do these pilots really need to maintain proficiency in this very 
difficult aircraft, they will always say, over 20, 22, 24 hours a 
month. They have to have that to maintain proficiency.
  What are they getting? They are getting about 12. They are getting 
about 12, because there is no money for training. That is just one of 
the many, many examples of inadequate training.
  So that second fallacy that these people are well trained is, in 
fact, a fallacy.
  Lastly, one would think, my gosh, if we have an Army that is 10 
divisions today instead of 18 divisions, we have a Marine Corps that 
has been cut back, we have a Navy that has been cut back, and I noticed 
the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer) is more precise than I am, we 
had 546 ships when we started, when we did Desert Storm. When we made 
up our chart last year, we had 346. When I gave my last briefing, it 
was 325. Now it is down to 315. We are dropping like a rock.
  One would think when this Navy has been compressed to such a small 
fleet those ships that are there must be bristling with armaments. 
Wrong. It is not well armed. The reason is, we have starved our 
ammunition accounts. If anything qualifies, if we are talking about 
this emergency supplemental, and I hope every single Member of 
Congress, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, I hope we all 
vote for it tomorrow. Because if there is anything that is an 
emergency, it is an inadequacy of ammunition. We have a shortage of 
ammunition.
  One of the most important ammunitions that we have a shortage of is 
cruise missiles, long-range missiles, like Tomahawks, like conventional 
air launch cruise missiles. Because what we see today is a very complex 
and difficult to penetrate air defense in most of the world where we 
have to operate. We see that in Kosovo right now, but it is not limited 
to Kosovo. We are seeing the Iraqis continue to strive to build an air 
defense that is going to be able to take down American aircraft. They 
have not done it yet, but they import SAM missiles. We see that with 
the North Koreans.
  So anyplace we go, we figured that the air defense over North Vietnam 
was more intense than it was over Berlin in World War II because of 
surface-to-air missiles. So we devised a way to allow our pilots, our 
neighbors who are pilots, to go out there and fly their mission, 
release a payload and return to their carrier deck or the tarmac of 
their runway without being killed.
  The way we were able to do that is with cruise missiles. That is 
stand-off missiles. That means a B-52 does not have to fly into all 
that flak like they did over North Vietnam in December of 1972 when, as 
I recall, about 10 were shot down the first day.
  The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Johnson) recalled sitting in his prison

[[Page 8363]]

cell and watching a B-52 get hit in midair by a SAM missile and just 
explode before his eyes.
  We are flying those same B-52s today, but we have missiles on them 
that are launched from many miles away from the target. The cruise 
missile takes off, it travels like an unmanned airplane itself, and it 
hits a target. And, meanwhile, the pilot is hundreds of miles away from 
that antiaircraft fire; and he returns safely to his base. We are short 
on those missiles.
  It does not make any sense that this country, as prosperous as we 
are, as devoted to human life as we are, and especially the lives of 
our service people, should have a shortage in cruise missiles.
  I want to tell my friend, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), who 
has made just an eloquent presentation tonight, we are short on cruise 
missiles. We are short several billions of dollars' worth of cruise 
missiles.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, let me ask the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Hunter) this question: I have the sense that the military planners in 
the Pentagon, in order to maintain readiness levels to their comfort, 
they have taken money that should have gone to ammunition and they are 
using it to maintain present operations and they are assuming a risk, 
are they not?
  Mr. HUNTER. That is exactly right.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I would like for the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Hunter) to discuss that assumption of risk, how serious 
is it, how is it measured and what we are going to do about it in the 
supplemental.
  Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman is exactly right. Because every time we 
have had one of these contingencies where the President wants to send 
troops, whether it is an operation that we consider justified or not, 
every time we have one of those operations, to fund the operations 
initially they take money out of the ammunition accounts. They also 
take money out of the spare parts accounts. That is why our mission 
capability rates are dropping below 70 percent on average.

                              {time}  2215

  They have dropped more than 10 percent, meaning a plane, out of 100 
aircraft that take off that are built to do a particular mission, only 
about 70 of them now can do that mission.
  So the President takes that money, or the military looks around for 
money, Congress is not giving them any extra money to fund an operation 
where the President said, you steam over here and do this mission, so 
they take it out of ammunition. They were going to buy that ammunition, 
but they will buy it next year, right, when they get the money back?
  All of a sudden, they do the mission, they get a little money back, 
maybe in a supplemental funding bill, but they never get as much as 
they took out, so the ammunition accounts get lower and lower.
  They say, when they appear before us, and the gentleman always asks 
that great question, and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Floyd 
Spence) asks that question, as well, our great chairman of the 
Committee on Armed Services, he says, what is going on here, Admiral? 
What is going on here, General? Can we win these two wars?
  They say, well, we can win those wars, but we now are taking on a 
higher risk. When we ask them to translate what risks means, it means 
risk of casualties, heavy casualties. Because we cannot win a war now 
with overwhelming force, like Norman Schwartzkopf did in Desert Storm, 
where you just crush the enemy, bring all your body bags empty to the 
United States. There are no dead Americans to put in them, and they all 
come home fairly quickly.
  We no longer have that overwhelming force. What we have is the 
ability, like two fairly evenly-matched fighters, to slug it out, 
taking a blow for every blow that we give. That means taking dead 
Americans for every casualty we inflict on the enemy. And hopefully in 
the end, because we have a superior industrial base and because we have 
a democracy with a strong economy, we overwhelm the enemy at some 
point, maybe the allies come in and help, and we finally win. But when 
we win, it is like one of those boxing matches where the sportswriter 
said that after looking at the faces of both of the fighters, it was 
hard to determine who the winner was. Instead of looking at the faces 
of the fighters, we are looking at body bags stretched out in front of 
us of dead Americans who ran out of ammunition.
  Right now the Marines are $193 million short of basic ammunition, and 
the Marines are the 911 force. The Army is $3.5 billion short of basic 
ammunition.
  That is not a standard that I created, and that is not a standard 
that the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer) created or the gentleman 
from South Carolina (Mr. Floyd Spence) or the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Bill Young), who is chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, 
who has done such a great job, along with the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Jerry Lewis), chairman of defense appropriations, of putting this 
supplemental together.
  We did not go out and set some standard and say, we have decided that 
instead of 100 million M-16 rounds, we want 200 million, that is a 
Republican standard. We took the President's standard. We wrote in to 
the services and said, how many M-16 bullets do you need to be able to 
fight that two-war contingency that we might have to fight? How much 
should we have in reserve?
  They answered back. In fact, they answered back across the total line 
of ammunition. I have a summary of that here. In total ammunition 
across the board, and I have two pages here, but I will show Members 
just a summary page, we are $13.8 billion short, according to the 
President's standard. That is according to President Clinton's own 
standard of how much ammunition we need.
  So when the President says, I do not want you adding extra things to 
this defense bill, he means that he does not want to give the full load 
of ammunition to his troops that his own clerks and auditors and 
generals and admirals have figured out they may need in an extended 
battle. Somehow, ammunition is no longer a prerequisite to having a 
strong military.
  I would say if there is anything that is an emergency it is 
ammunition. If I had my way, let me tell the Members, we would have a 
supplemental tomorrow of not $13 billion, but one that was $28.7 
billion, because that is what the services told us they could use right 
now in ammunition and spare parts and equipment. Because we not only 
want to have enough ammunition for the soldiers' ammunition pouches, we 
also want to have planes that can take off and lift off the ground. 
Today, as Members know, our mission capability rates have been dropping 
like a rock.
  Mr. BUYER. If the gentleman will yield further, Mr. Speaker, if the 
gentleman's concern is as great as mine that we are unwilling to assume 
a risk that will increase casualties in a war scenario around the 
world, the funding shortfall if we do not do even a piece of that in 
the emergency supplemental, I would say to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Hunter), would we not have to wait then until the 2000 
budget cycle, which means that the ammunition and the missiles which we 
are requesting may not even get to the force until about 18 months from 
now?
  Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman is exactly right. In fact, we will have to 
wait for next year's funding, so we will have to wait at least 4 or 5 
months before we can even enact the bill and have next year's funding 
levels start. That means having the Pentagon ready to start making 
contracts.
  And then most of these ammo lines, some of them are closed, so most 
of these ammo lines will have to be reassembled, the assembly lines. By 
the time the soldier actually gets the bullets in the field or the 
airplanes get the cruise missiles or the Navy gets its particular 
missiles, 18 to 24 months can go by.
  Do Members know what is interesting, some of the administration 
people have argued, well, we cannot execute this contract in the next 
12

[[Page 8364]]

months, so we do not think we should do it now. They are saying, it 
takes a long time to get ammunition, so let us not start now.
  Well, when do they want to start? Do they want to start when we have 
a conflict and we discover that we are out, we are empty? And I think 
our enemies should make no mistake about it, we still have an enormous 
nuclear arsenal, but I do not think anybody in this Chamber wants to 
rely on a nuclear arsenal as a deterrent.
  In 1950 we did. One of the arguments for drawing down the force, we 
had 9 million people under arms in World War II. We just stacked arms. 
We got out of the military so fast and drew those units down so fast, 
because Americans wanted to come home and have babies and work on their 
farms and get jobs and enjoy the prosperity of America. We stacked 
arms.
  General Marshall was asked, how is the demobilization going, in 1948? 
He says, this isn't a demobilization, it is a rout. We are just 
throwing our guns away. A few years later the Koreans marched down the 
Korean peninsula, a third-rate military, and almost pushed us into the 
ocean past the Pusan perimeter.
  We were pretty sure that the Chinese would not mess with us. In fact, 
we didn't think anybody would mess with us because we had nuclear 
weapons. In fact, in those days we had the only nuclear weapons.
  One reason that we allowed our forces to get so small, and 
incidentally, the Army was 10 divisions, just like it is today, we had 
drawn it down that small, but we figured that nobody would mess with us 
because we had nuclear weapons. We had this high technology that 
everybody was afraid of.
  All of a sudden we discovered this third-rate military pushing our 
people down the Korean Peninsula. They overwhelmed the 25th infantry 
division, captured the commanding general, William Dean, our bazookas 
bounced off the T-64 Soviet tanks, because they had not stood still, 
they had continued to make and develop their weapons systems, and we 
lost a lot of people.
  In my cousin's home in Fort Worth, Texas, we have a picture of my 
second cousin, Son Stillwell. Son was a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. 
Marine Corps, First Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps who died in 
Korea. Lots of us in America have pictures on our mantles of people who 
lost their lives in wars which we were not prepared to fight.
  Probably nobody today knows or can remember what social program took 
priority over a strong military in 1950, when so many of us lost 
relatives in the Korean War. But everybody that looks at those pictures 
on their mantles remembers who they lost.
  I would say that our number one obligation as Members of the U.S. 
Congress to our people, and we do lots of things for people that the 
Constitution never mandated, we know that, and we all participate in 
it. But our number one obligation is to defend our people.
  We have allowed the military to be bled down so low that we can no 
longer look our constituents in the eye and say, we can defend you and 
we have a real good chance of your youngsters coming home alive.
  Mr. BUYER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, I 
have heard some comment by Members that some of the emergency 
supplemental funding will actually be coming out of the social security 
trust fund. In other words, if Congress had made the pledge that every 
dollar of the surplus is to go to the social security trust fund, are 
we not really spending that social security dollar on defense?
  We have also recognized that there will be funding in the surplus for 
payments on the national debt and a tax cut for any dollar that is over 
and above that allotment towards social security.
  I will concur with the gentleman's comment that one of the first 
requirements of a government is to protect its people. I think what 
makes me very uncomfortable, the gentleman and I and those that serve 
in this body, it is easy to be the critic of the President or those in 
the Pentagon, but we have to become very constructive, because we are 
responsible.
  The Constitution, does it not, I would ask the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Hunter), places us with the singular responsibility to 
build the force and make sure that it has what it needs to meet the 
legitimate needs of this Nation.
  So when the gentleman laid out the scenario of what happened in Korea 
after World War II, the gentleman almost laid out the scenario that 
history is about to repeat itself; that those of us, myself and the 
comrades who served in the Gulf War, America and the world was 
impressed with our high-tech military force, so much so that no one 
would dare take on the United States military, especially in an air-
land war, and that we could move anywhere in the world we want.
  So in the face of such a deterrent, we drew down the force so rapidly 
and so quickly that now in force structure it is there, we have people. 
They are not as well-equipped as we would like. They are not as well-
trained. And, oh, by the way, if we have to use them, I guess we will 
try to use what ammo we can, and we will never be in a two-war 
scenario, anyway. We hear that rhetoric around the town.
  But I would say to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), if we 
do this plus-up in this emergency supplemental, would the gentleman 
agree that we can immediately open up these lines for the missiles and 
begin replacing a lot of the needs?
  Mr. HUNTER. Yes. Mr. Speaker, to answer the gentleman from Indiana 
(Mr. Buyer), and he has made such an eloquent presentation and made a 
great case for increasing our national defense funding, if we do in 
fact come up with this money, one thing we can do is go to the vendors.
  If we have an ammunition line or a spare parts line or a missile 
line, you may have 25 or 30 major suppliers, companies that used to 
make little parts for that particular unit. You have to go get them and 
say, hey, you have to go back into business, because we are low on ammo 
and we need to get this ammo turned out quickly.
  We can work with them, with a partnership of business and government. 
We can get in there and accelerate those lines and get them up and get 
producing. I think we can start turning out, for example, cruise 
missiles and other things a lot faster than the Pentagon thinks we can. 
I think when the Americans really want to do something, they can do it.
  With respect to the senior citizens and their concern about social 
security, my feeling is, I have no qualms about using this money for an 
emergency. Lack of ammunition is an emergency. The generation that 
saved Private Ryan is going to want to help save this country. I am 
reminded that without national security, there is no social security.
  With respect to the other programs, the tax cuts and social programs, 
whether you are a liberal who loves social programs and thinks tax cuts 
are terrible, or you are a conservative like myself who thinks that tax 
cuts increase the economy and increase jobs, no matter where your 
position is on the political spectrum, we should all agree that 
ammunition comes first. Let us have ammunition before we have tax cuts 
and before we have social programs. I do not think anybody would 
disagree with that.
  Mr. BUYER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, I 
want to ask this question, but I am going to lay out a statement first.
  If we do not have access to some of our high tech munitions such as 
laser-guided munitions, where an aircraft can stay miles up and drop a 
laser-guided munition through the front door of a target, I have heard 
comments, the hall comments, that we have all types of dumb bomb 
munitions that we could access.
  But if we are to play into this, that we have so much dumb bomb 
munitions, are we not asking our pilots, who could stay miles above, to 
assume a risk? Because in order to drop that dumb bomb, they are going 
to have to come down into radar coverage, pick up the sight of their 
target, and immediately pull out. So those who are advocating, well, 
let us just drop dumb bombs, we will assume risks.

[[Page 8365]]



                              {time}  2230

  It is stunning for me how some people in this body are willing to let 
soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines, pilots assume risks and not 
adequately equip them. Does the gentleman have a comment?
  Mr. HUNTER. I would say there is no sight more gratifying I think to 
the member of a military family, to a spouse and the kids, than to have 
their dad get off of that airplane or get off of that ship in the good 
old United States and welcome them with open arms to come home.
  Bringing our pilots home is very important to us. And the thing that 
allows them to come home alive is for them to be able to keep their 
plane a hundred miles from the target, launch a standoff weapon that 
can go in and hit the target while they stay out of range of those 
surface-to-air missiles. And I think one of the greatest agonies that 
we ever endure is when we have POWs and when we see what happens to 
some of them. And we have listened their stories when they come home. 
We have had some great ones on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and 
Republicans.
  Smart weapons, standoff weapons, cruise missiles save lives. It is an 
absolute disservice to our uniformed people to not give them the very 
best. They deserve the very best. They are not getting adequate pay 
right now. We all know that. They are 13 percent below the domestic 
sector. We are trying to ramp that up. I know the gentleman is leading 
that charge and he is going to get some fruition to his efforts. That 
is one reason why the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis) and 
the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) and the other members of 
the Subcommittee on Defense and the full Committee on Appropriations 
sat down and added ammunition to this supplemental, they added a lot of 
smart weapons.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to offer an amendment that I hope is approved 
by the Committee on Rules that allows us to restart the Tomahawk 
missile lines, because I think we have got to have a lot of Tomahawk 
missiles because we cannot tell how fast we are going to have to use 
them. And I think we should build at least as many as President 
Clinton's own analysis say we need for the two-war requirement.
  But to answer the gentleman's question, standoff weapons mean that 
Air Force families get to see their daddy. And having to fly over a 
target and drop a gravity bomb on that target with all that anti-
aircraft fire and all of those very sophisticated surface-to-air 
missiles shooting back means that we of going to have dead pilots and 
we are going to have prisoners of war.
  Mr. BUYER. As the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Military 
Procurement, I would like for the gentleman to comment on some other 
questions that Members are asking and some of their comments that 
increasing this billions of dollars over and above the President's 
number, that we are putting in things that the Pentagon did not ask for 
and that it is pork laden. So I ask the gentleman to comment on that, 
because I know the numbers that I put together for the Guard and 
Reserve, I spoke to each of the chiefs of each of services for their 
go-to-war requirements. Period. Operational. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HUNTER. Let me answer the gentleman. I can tell the gentleman 
that I sent over a request to the services to tell us exactly what they 
need. I did not ask any contractors what they wanted to sell. And I did 
not ask any congressmen what they wanted to get for their district.
  I think most of the congressmen that I have talked to just want to 
get what is right for America. They realize we have got to refill the 
ammunition coffers. This list, it represents a direct response from the 
services with respect to how much they have right now in terms of 
cruise missiles and all the other things that we need and how much the 
President's own analysis says we need and what the shortages are.
  So they sent over the shortages. We did not get them from anybody 
else. We did not set any new standards to try to embarrass the 
President. We just used his standards. That is what this is.
  Incidentally, the cruise missiles I am sorry to say, they used to be 
built in San Diego in my district. Well, about 10 years they moved out 
and they are now built in Arizona across the Colorado River, and so 
Arizonans have jobs building cruise missiles. I do not care. I do not 
care if they are built in the northeast, the Midwest, wherever. They 
save pilots' lives. I would like to have them come back to San Diego 
some day, but I do not think that is going to happen. But I think all 
Americans just want to see ammunition right now.
  Mr. BUYER. Will the gentleman yield? The large request that I put in 
was in excess of $800 million. My district: Agricultural. A lot of 
corn, soybeans, wheat, a lot of pork, cattle, chickens, duck 
production, automobiles. I do not have the big defense contractors. So 
those who want to say that it is pork laden, I do not sell any of my 
hogs, none of my hogs out of Indiana for this bill.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, let me say to the gentleman who put together 
this Guard and Reserve package and does it for the Armed Services 
Committee, the gentleman has always acted with total integrity and has 
always met the needs of the services. Unfortunately, we have always had 
to cut what the services need, cut the supply of resources that we are 
going to give those shortages by about 50 percent. There are lots of 
things that the Guard and Reserve need right now on their equipment and 
in their training and in their ammunition and spare parts to be able to 
go off and serve in a foreign theater.
  Mr. BUYER. One of the examples the Chief of the Army Reserve put on 
the list, he requested fire trucks. It would be very easy for someone 
who does not know anything about the military to look at the list of 
equipment necessities under the emergency supplemental and say why are 
we funding fire trucks?
  The answer is very simple. The Army Reserve has the ground support 
mission for the Apaches that were sent over to Albania and the present 
fire trucks from the Army reserves are utilized in Bosnia and they need 
to have the fire trucks.
  Mr. HUNTER. People need to know when an aircraft comes in on fire, 
and this is one thing I learned in San Diego watching our Federal 
firefighters who handle the jets out there, they have to have 
incredible training and great equipment to be able to put out those 
fires on the aircraft and save lives. So they have to carry a 
contingent of firefighters with them.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield?, he will be 
happy to have yielded to me because I am going to extend a great 
compliment to the gentleman. I have been impressed with the gentleman's 
chairmanship over the years. With his focus on operational 
requirements, getting to the services what they need to fight and win 
the Nation's wars.
  I want to compliment the gentleman as one of the strongest advocates 
to make sure that our ammunition bins are filled. Because I can say 
that, yes, we all share the responsibility on procurement, but it is 
singular with the gentleman from San Diego in this body because we have 
to turn to him as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Procurement 
to tell us what those needs and requirements are. And, actually, we 
yield to the gentleman's integrity that he will make those proper 
decisions. That is not just us; America yields to him. America out 
there whose sons and daughters may be in Korea right now, part of the 
37,000 that are right now on the line in Korea or in a ship or in 
Okinawa or maybe they are in Iraq right now or wherever they are in the 
world to face a threat they have to be able to sleep in comfort that 
the gentleman from California has made sure that their son or daughter 
can access just in time to get that ammunition. And that is why I 
compliment the gentleman.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I say to my friend, I thank him for that 
compliment. When I see the gentleman

[[Page 8366]]

from Indiana up there in the Committee on Armed Services, I see a 
soldier who has a great integrity and devotion to his country and to 
his people that he serves with and to the people that are still 
serving. The gentleman has done a wonderful job.
  What I think is a great tragedy is that I do not think we are 
fulfilling our obligation. I do not think we as a body are fulfilling 
it. And if we get to a point where we have our Marines and soldiers or 
sailors or airmen coming up short of ammunition, short of spare parts 
and more of them die on the battlefield because of that, then we will 
have failed them.
  So I hope that every Member votes for this supplemental appropriation 
tomorrow and I hope they vote for the amendments. And it is going to be 
in two days. I hope they vote for the amendments that increase the 
ammunition supply. Even if we vote for those, we are still going to be 
about $12 billion short of basic ammunition. So we are not taking care 
of the problem, but we are taking care of part of the problem.
  I really thank the gentleman for his hard work. And maybe the 
gentleman could share with us his ideas too about how we are going to 
finally close this pay gap over the next several months and years.
  Mr. BUYER. Well, I will close this tonight and reclaim my time that 
on May 13 we will mark up the Subcommittee on Military Personnel's 
Chairman's mark and we are going to address the increase in military 
pay. We are going to change the pay tables to increase retention. We 
are concerned about the retention not only at the mid-level officer and 
NCO, but also the retention of general officer strength. They are 
leaving for other jobs and that is not healthy.
  We are going to reform the retirement system. We are looking at 
creating a Thrift Savings Plan for the military. Part of this emergency 
supplemental, about $1.8 billion, is for the funding of the pay 
package, subject to the authorization that we come up with. So we are 
going to address the pay differential and we are going to take a very 
serious look at a lot of other things.
  I did not totally concur with the Senate's package, S. 4. It became a 
huge Christmas tree and everybody wanted to throw their arms around the 
soldier. But the problems are much greater. It is the quality of life 
issues. It is the housing issues. It is the readiness. It is the lack 
of spare parts. It is a large issue. So we are going to make sure that 
we try to address it by the breadth and we are going to be smart about 
our business.
  Let me close with this one story that has always moved me, and I 
think it will go to the heart of the spirit of why the gentleman from 
California and others work so very, very hard on these issues. I think 
of the World War II veteran. It is the World War II veteran I believe 
is a generation that changed the world and left freedom in their 
footsteps.
  Mr. Speaker, I will conclude by saying that they understand the total 
sacrifice and they have taught a generation what freedom means. The 
gentleman's example on Korea here tells us let us do not relive 
history. Let us accept the responsibility. This is not an emergency 
supplemental for Kosovo; this is funding our national military strategy 
and it must be done.

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