[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 25506-25507]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      A MORE DANGEROUS WORLD TODAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Madam Speaker, as we begin this week, we obviously have 
many important domestic issues before this body, and that is entirely 
very appropriate. The question is being asked, are we better off in 
terms of where we are today than we were 8 years ago, and I want to 
focus on a very important part of that question that has been ignored 
in the debate that is going across our land, and it is the question, 
are we better off in terms of national security than we were when the 
wall came down about 12 years ago?
  I think it is very arguable that the world is a much more dangerous 
place than it was at that time, and I think it is arguable that we are 
much more vulnerable, and, tragically, Americans have been lost at home 
and abroad recently, as we know with the Cole, to underscore that 
situation.
  I know that some of the candidates have talked about their foreign 
policy experience, and I know that Vice President Gore, who has been on 
watch for the past 8 years with President Clinton, claims that our 
foreign policy has accomplished some good things.
  I would take strong issue with that. I do not think our foreign 
policy has been much of a success at all. It has been characterized by 
unevenness, but, most importantly, by missed opportunity.
  Most of our friends think that the United States of America as the 
world's most important power, most free country, most successful 
economy, is adrift. They are puzzled by what we are doing and what we 
are not doing. Our enemies are certainly taking opportunity to score 
points where we are missing our opportunities.
  I think that when you take a look at the problems with our national 
security policy, you can fit them very neatly into some categories.
  First of all, just starting with our concern about security at home. 
The Clinton-Gore policy record on protecting our national secrets and 
dealing with national security has been nothing short of abysmal, 
whether it is the State Department missing laptops, whether it is the 
former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency knowing he should 
not take home, but taking home classified information, and making it 
vulnerable for being picked up by hackers. Things like that are just 
inexcusable.
  But we have not vetted all of the people who need security 
clearances, by any means, and we have put them into sensitive jobs. We 
have a long waiting list, and we are falling down on that type of 
thing, whether it the White House or the Defense Department or the 
State Department. Certainly we have underscored the problem 
dramatically with the loss of the weapons secrets from the Los Alamos 
labs.

[[Page 25507]]

  We have in the Clinton-Gore administration seen a cultural disdain 
for security, an arrogance, that we know better somehow, so we do not 
have to play by the rules.
  Combat readiness is another area where we want to take a look at our 
national security. Vice President Gore has made a great deal about 
reinventing government and saving 330,000 jobs. If 300,000 of those 
jobs have come out of our defense forces, what does that say about our 
readiness? We understand we have ships going to sea undermanned. We are 
cannibalizing equipment in order to get spare parts. We are bypassing 
rotations so our troops are not getting the necessary R&R, an 
opportunity to see their loved ones. We are cutting corners. We are 
cutting corners on training, and sooner or later, it catches up with 
us, and, tragically, it has.
  Right now I do not believe that there is much vision about readiness, 
and I think that has been underlined in the types of readiness that we 
need to have. It is no longer navies against navies, dreadnoughts 
against dreadnoughts at Midway, or carriers and carriers fleets against 
carrier. It is now dealing with things like terrorists and narcotics 
cartels, things that affect our American citizens in deadly and 
dreadful ways.
  We have also had some extraordinarily bad judgment in our policies, 
whether you start with the tragedy of Somalia, whether you go on to 
Haiti, where we have now seen a grotesque tragic and expensive failed 
foreign policy result. The Balkans are still very much at unrest. We 
have much work to do there, and many troops committed there, and we 
have not resolved the underlying problems.
  Saddam, if you wonder why the price of heating oil and price of 
gasoline at the pumps is being debated in this chamber and elsewhere, 
it is largely because we have messed up in the Mideast so badly and 
been asleep at the switch so long under the Clinton-Gore administration 
that our policies on energy have gone adrift and we have been 
victimized by others as a result.
  Africa, a whole continent that we have pulled back our capabilities 
on by direct order of the Clinton-Gore administration, is a continent 
that is torn by all kinds of carnage and brutality, unsettled 
conditions, a breakdown of law and order, misery and suffering across 
the board, and tragically, again, loss of American life because we were 
unprepared with the blowing up of those embassies.
  These are the kinds of things that I think we need to think about 
when we talk about what we need for the vision of the future; the right 
kind of readiness, the right kind of preparedness. I think that is an 
important part of this debate, and I know we are going to be talking 
more about it in this week as we are here.

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