[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9796-9808]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



    PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4576, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 
                        APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2001

  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 514 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 514

       Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this 
     resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule 
     XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the 
     Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of 
     the bill (H.R. 4576) making appropriations for the Department 
     of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2001, and 
     for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be 
     dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of 
     the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the 
     bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and 
     controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the 
     Committee on Appropriations. After general debate the bill 
     shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. 
     Points of order against provisions in the bill for failure to 
     comply with clause 2 of rule XXI are waived. During 
     consideration of the bill for amendment, the Chairman of the 
     Committee of the Whole may accord priority in recognition on 
     the basis of whether the Member offering an amendment has 
     caused it to be printed in the portion of the Congressional 
     Record designated for that purpose in clause 8 of rule XVIII. 
     Amendments so printed shall be considered as read. The 
     Chairman of the Committee of the Whole may: (1) postpone 
     until a time during further consideration in the Committee of 
     the Whole a request for a recorded vote on any amendment; and 
     (2) reduce to five minutes the minimum time for electronic 
     voting on any postponed question that follows another 
     electronic vote without intervening business, provided that 
     the minimum time for electronic voting on the first in any 
     series of questions shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of 
     consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall 
     rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as 
     may have been adopted. The previous question shall be 
     considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to 
     final passage without intervening motion except one motion to 
     recommit with or without instructions.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. 
Myrick) is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost); pending 
which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration 
of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
  Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Committee on Rules met and granted an 
open rule for H.R. 4576, the fiscal year 2001 Department of Defense 
Appropriations Act.
  The rule waives all points of order against consideration of the 
bill. It provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and 
controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee 
on Appropriations.
  The rule waives points of order against provisions in the bill for 
failure to comply with clause 2 of rule XXI prohibiting unauthorized or 
legislative provisions in a general appropriations bill.
  The rule allows the chairman of the Committee of the Whole to accord 
priority in recognition to Members who have preprinted their amendments 
in the Congressional Record.

[[Page 9797]]

  The rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole to 
postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce voting 
time to 5 minutes on a postponed question if the vote follows a 15-
minute vote.
  Finally, the rule provides for one motion to recommit with or without 
instructions.
  Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 514 is an open rule for a strong bipartisan 
bill. In fact, the Committee on Appropriations approved this bill 2 
weeks ago by voice vote and without an amendment.
  I have always admired the patriotism and dedication of our military 
personnel, especially given the poor quality of military life for our 
enlisted men and women; but today we are doing something to improve 
military pay, housing, and benefits.
  We are helping to take some of our enlisted men off of food stamps by 
giving them a 3.7 percent pay raise, and we are offering $163 million 
in enlistment and reenlistment bonuses. They are called bonuses, but 
they earn them.
  To follow through on our health care promises to our service men and 
women, we are providing a 1-year 9 percent increase in health care 
resources. A good portion of these funds will go to improve care for 
our military retirees who have never been given the treatment that they 
deserve.
  At the same time, we are boosting the basic allowance for housing so 
that our military families do not have to pay as much out of their own 
pockets.
  Along with personnel, we have to take care of our military readiness. 
We live in a dangerous world, and Congress is working to protect our 
friends and families back home from our enemies abroad. We are 
providing for a national missile defense system so that we can stop a 
warhead from places like China or North Korea or Iraq if that day ever 
comes.
  We are boosting the military's budget for weapons and ammunition. We 
are providing $40 billion for research and development so our forces 
will have top-of-the-line equipment for their job.
  I urge my colleagues to support the rule and to support the 
underlying bill, because now more than ever we must improve our 
national security.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule and in strong support of 
the Department of Defense appropriations for fiscal year 2001. This 
bill provides $288.5 billion in budget authority for the programs of 
the Department of Defense, the very programs that ensure the security 
of this Nation and which, in large part, enable our country to keep the 
peace and remain the leader of the free world.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill reflects the understanding of both Democrats 
and Republicans for the need to ensure that our national defense is 
second to none.

                              {time}  1445

  This bill also reflects the understanding that in order for our 
military to maintain its global superiority, it is necessary to make 
substantial financial commitments in order to restructure our Cold War 
forces to meet the challenges of the 21st century. This bill addresses 
serious readiness deficiencies and equipment modernization shortfalls 
that have seriously strained the ability of our military forces to meet 
the demands of the many missions they undertake.
  I am pleased to support this revitalization of our armed forces. 
Among the important provisions of this bill, Mr. Speaker, is a 3.7 
percent military pay raise and $12.1 billion for the Defense Health 
Program, which provides monies not only for active duty personnel and 
their families, but also to an unfortunately limited extent military 
retirees and their dependents. This bill does make positive strides in 
expanding prescription drug coverage for Medicare eligible military 
retirees but falls short in providing for a permanent health care 
system for military retirees.
  While I appreciate the fact that the bill contains a provision 
requiring the submission of a plan to Congress by an independent 
oversight panel no later than December 31, 2002, I would encourage the 
subcommittee to at least consider including the language of the Taylor 
amendment in a conference agreement since this amendment was agreed to 
by an overwhelming vote of 406 to 10 during the DOD authorization 
debate. We have made a promise to our military retirees, and it is time 
for us to keep it.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill also continues the commitment to a wide range 
of weapons programs that will ensure our continued military superiority 
in the skies, on land, as well as at sea. I am particularly pleased 
this bill includes $2.15 billion for the procurement of 10 F-22 
Raptors, the next generation Air Force fighter that will assure our 
continued dominance in any air campaign against any foe in the future 
with air-to-air and air-to-ground capabilities. The bill also provides 
$396 million in advance procurement and sets aside an additional $1.411 
billion for research, development, test and evaluation of the F-22.
  The bill also includes $1.1 billion for the procurement of 16 V-22 
Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for the Marine Corps, $336 million for 4 Air 
Force V-22s, and an additional $148 million for research and 
development on this important addition to our military arsenal. In 
addition, the bill provides $249 million for various F-16 
modifications.
  Mr. Speaker, during the recent recess in April, I had the opportunity 
to travel to Bosnia and Kosovo to see firsthand the dedication of the 
men and women of our military who are serving there. I had the 
privilege of visiting some of the National Guardsmen from the State of 
Texas who are serving in Bosnia to see how they are faring under very 
difficult circumstances. I can say, Mr. Speaker, that these troops are 
doing a remarkable job and are fully aware of the importance and 
necessity of their mission.
  However, as I mentioned in the Committee on Rules yesterday, this 
bill does nothing to fund the missions that we have undertaken in 
Bosnia and Kosovo. Mr. Speaker, it is vital that funds to reimburse the 
Department of Defense for expenditures already made to meet our 
obligations in that region be included. It is simply not responsible to 
delay this funding, forcing the Defense Department to face shortfalls 
in critical operations and maintenance accounts during the last quarter 
of fiscal year 2000.
  I was certainly gratified when the chairman and ranking member of the 
committee assured me yesterday during the hearing before the Committee 
on Rules that this funding would most likely be included in the 
conference agreement on the military construction appropriations 
measure no later than August 1, and I know of their commitment to 
making the Department whole. However, Mr. Speaker, I think it is 
important that we all understand that American men and women are 
serving an important mission in Bosnia and Kosovo and this Congress has 
the responsibility to provide the money to make this mission a success 
without shortchanging other programs within DOD.
  I spoke with a representative of the Army this morning who told me 
that the Army faces a very bleak picture in the fourth quarter of this 
fiscal year if this money is not provided forthwith. It is unfortunate 
that this legislation is on the floor without addressing the money for 
Kosovo and Bosnia. Because if this money is not provided as an add-on 
to the military construction appropriation later this summer, the 
Defense Department and the Army, specifically, will be forced to 
curtail, drastically curtail, training and other activities that are 
critical to the success of their mission.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill; and I urge Members to support it.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer).
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I would share with my colleagues that I 
believe we have a very fair rule and also a very strong bipartisan bill 
that is coming to the House floor that will serve the national security 
needs of those men and women who serve in our armed forces.

[[Page 9798]]

  I want to compliment the Committee on Appropriations. I think the 
chairman and the ranking member did a very good job in working with the 
authorizing committee. I have not seen this type of cooperation in the 
8 years I have served here in Congress. Sometimes we get conflict 
between the authorizing and the appropriating committees, but in this 
case I extend great compliments on their work.
  Let me first speak about the quality of life. Despite 5 years of 
sustained efforts to improve the quality of living for U.S. military 
personnel and their families, service members continue to voice their 
displeasure with the military life by leaving the force, which is very 
bothersome to many of us. As a result, each of the services has 
experienced significant recruiting and retention problems, threatening 
the strength and readiness of the all-volunteer force.
  The authorizing and the appropriation committees recognize the great 
personal sacrifices made by U.S. service members and have focused 
quality-of-life improvements in two areas: one, reforming the Defense 
Health Program and, number two, sustaining the viability of the all-
volunteer force.
  While efforts in these areas in recent years have been substantial, 
there are no silver bullets to end the quality-of-life challenges 
facing the U.S. military. It will require a commitment to a long-term 
battle against these challenges if America is to sustain the world's 
foremost military force. It is with this commitment that the committees 
recommended a quality-of-life package that will improve the military 
health care system, provide for fair compensation, support the morale, 
welfare and recreational programs, and improve the facilities for which 
the military personnel live and work. We also are working on sustaining 
the proper weapon systems that they need.
  Let me speak for a moment about the military health delivery system. 
Again, I extend compliments to the appropriators, because what we are 
trying to do here is put our arms around all of these different 
programs that are out there, and specifically with regard to the 
military retiree. Now, all of us here in this body have heard from our 
constituents about the TRICARE System. As we seek to implement TRICARE, 
we have had hiccups and little burps here and there with that system, 
and it has been difficult. We have sought to make improvements. And I 
appreciate the support of the appropriators. We are going to work to 
create savings in the claims processing area, which will save $500 
million and then will be poured back into the system.
  Now, what about the military retiree? The military retiree is 
disgruntled, and rightfully so. The question is whether or not we as 
the Federal Government are fulfilling our obligation to the military 
retiree, given the sacrifices that they have given on behalf of the 
Nation. With the expectation that they would receive health care 
benefits for life, have we been fulfilling that requirement? The answer 
is no.
  When the military retiree retired and lived next to that military 
base during the 1970s, 1980s and into the early 1990s, there was a 
comfort zone. Even though they were turning 65, they gained access to 
the medical treatment facilities despite in law that they would be 
triggered into the Medicare program. When we went through the base 
closure process, they were triggered directly into Medicare, and they 
did not gain access to the medical treatment facilities. So they came 
to Congress.
  Congress is fishing for the right answer. We create different types 
of pilot programs, and we struggle with them and try to figure out what 
is the best way to provide relief in the system. I believe we have come 
close to finding the right answer, and that is we have put our arms 
around these pilot programs and we extend them to 2003. We sunset the 
programs. We have created the commission to examine it; and in the 
meantime, what we can deliver is the pharmacy benefit. I appreciate the 
appropriators for funding the pharmacy benefit to the military retiree. 
It is a generous benefit.
  What was bothersome to the military retiree was that they felt that 
because of their sacrifice and the protections of the freedoms and 
liberties that we enjoy in our Nation, that perhaps they should be 
treated a little differently. So it bothered them that they were then 
taken and thrown right into the Medicare system back in 1965, which 
many of them did not even realize until the early 1990s. So now, as 
Congress is presently about to deliver a pharmacy benefit that is 
different from the Medicare population, it is a richer benefit, the 
last thing we should do is now say, oh, every grandma and grandpa who 
never served in the military should now be treated just as if they had 
served in the military.
  What a curious thing. I think some people in this body look out the 
window and think, well, everybody should drive the same kind of car and 
should be treated the same way. False. I just wanted to bring this up 
because it was not long ago, about 10 days ago, that the President 
endorsed that. Well, of course he endorses it, because he thinks 
everybody should be treated alike in this country. That is false. There 
are different people who have done different things.
  So I want to compliment the appropriators who have said, yes, we are 
going to follow the lead from the authorizing committee; and we are 
going to fund the pharmacy benefit for the military retirees, which 
they rightfully deserve.
  I also want to share that we are providing a 3.7 percent military pay 
raise that has been funded; also $163 million for the reenlistment 
bonuses. Those are extremely important. We provide $64 million for the 
basic housing allowance. I think many of us wish that the numbers could 
be higher in that regard, but the more monies we can move directly into 
the pockets of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines is extremely 
important. The more money we get in the pocket, and especially tax 
free, the more we can actually help them.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, first, let me plead guilty 
to one of the accusations that was leveled by the previous speaker. I 
do believe that older people who are sick should have their 
prescription drugs covered. The fact that there are 70- and 80-year-old 
women who did not serve in the armed forces and who cannot afford their 
prescription medicine does not seem to me a good reason to deny them a 
prescription drug benefit under Medicare. So I will plead guilty to 
that accusation.
  Indeed, that is one of the reasons why I am opposed to this bill. 
Much of what it does is very important, the pay increase and the 
improvement in the living conditions for the people; but it maintains 
an effort to fund inadequately an extremely flawed strategy. Obviously, 
we should provide the funds necessary to carry out what we say we are 
going to do militarily. The problem is we say we are going to do too 
much. We continue to err by keeping large numbers of troops in Western 
Europe when our Western European allies are well enough financed to be 
able to do this on their own. We continue to hold to an obsolete two-
war theory. We continue to fund weapons whose idea began in the Cold 
War.

                              {time}  1500

  So, yes, I want an adequately funded military. I want one with a 
margin of safety. I want the United States to be as it has been and 
will continue to be by far the strongest Nation in the world. But we 
make a mistake when we overreach and then use the overreach as an 
excuse to overspend. And there we have also, of course, the tendency of 
people, particularly in the Senate, to add weapons whose primary 
justification is not the enemy they will confront but the constituents 
they will comfort.
  We have nuclear attack submarines that we are going to fund, and I 
have not yet been able to have anyone explain to me who the enemy is. 
They are wonderful weapons. But the fact that they are so 
technologically skilled is not enough of a justification to have them. 
It is unlikely that they are going to encounter Iranian, Libyan, or 
North Korean submarines that they have to encounter.

[[Page 9799]]

  This bill will spend more than half of the money available to the 
Federal Government in discretionary accounts. And prescription drugs 
are relevant. Because the people who support this bill are telling us, 
on the other hand, some of them, that we cannot afford prescription 
drugs, that we cannot afford to send money to build schools, that we 
cannot afford more police on the streets, that we cannot afford more 
effective cleanup.
  This bill overspends to defend the people of Western Europe against 
nonexistent threats when they can afford to do it themselves. It 
overspends on weapons whose political justification far exceeds their 
military justification. It overspends to fund outdated theories that 
date from the Cold War. And, consequently, it requires us to underspend 
on important domestic priorities.
  The bill ought to be defeated and sent back to the committee. It 
increases by tens of billions of dollars over last year, and that comes 
directly out of every other appropriation bill.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Buyer).
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I would advise everyone that it is no secret 
that the Republicans are putting together the plan to derive a pharmacy 
benefit for the over-65 individuals of whom are most needy; and we are 
not ashamed of that at all.
  I will also say that what a curious thing it is that we will always 
have a critic that will always question a weapons system that will say, 
well, what is the purpose of that? It has never shot a nuclear missile?
  My colleagues, we had a B-2 bomber, this is called the Spirit of 
Indiana, and I dedicated that B-2 bomber in Indiana; and when I 
dedicated it, I prayed that it would never drop a bomb.
  Now, why would we ever build a billion-dollar weapon system and pray 
that it would never drop a bomb? Because it is a deterrent.
  A police officer, when he carries a weapon, I say to the gentleman 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), he says a prayer that he never has to 
use his weapon. When he pulls that weapon, he does not say, I want to 
brandish it, I want to threaten, actually, I want to pull the trigger 
and shoot and kill someone because it is going to make me feel good. 
No. It is used as a deterrent. We have different weapon systems out 
there that are used as a deterrent, and they are extremely important.
  For the gentleman to question to say, why are we building nuclear 
weapons, in fact, that we are never going to use them, and then to say 
that we have other domestic priorities is ridiculous and rather silly.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BUYER. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, in the first place, I did 
not question nuclear weapons. I questioned nuclear submarines, attack 
submarines.
  Obviously, we should have nuclear weapons. I want us to keep most of 
them. My point was nuclear attack submarines had a Cold War 
justification; and given the state of the enemy that we are likely to 
confront today, the smaller, poorly armed, evil-minded states, nuclear 
attack submarines are a waste of money and do take away from other 
things.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the Russian Bear has been 
replaced by a thousand Vipers; and we have to be leaning forward and be 
very prepared and be very ready because we do not know who is going to 
be the next threat.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Dicks).
  Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding me the 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to say first of all that I think this is a very 
fine rule that allows the House to work its will on this very important 
legislation. I think this is an exceptionally good bill.
  First of all, I want to compliment the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Lewis), our chairman, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), 
our ranking Democrat, for their excellent leadership on this particular 
bill.
  One of the things that I think stands out in my mind about this bill 
is the fact that we are moving forward the Army's program to transform 
Army brigades to a new medium configuration that can be deployed within 
96 hours anywhere in the world on a C-130 or, better, on a C-17. I am 
very pleased that the Army has selected Ft. Lewis, Washington, as the 
place to do this transformation of two of these brigades.
  I think the Army is correct to try to have a more deployable force. 
We saw the problems in Kosovo with the Apaches, first of all the 
inability to deploy them for some period of time, and then the fact 
that they were not prepared when they got there to be utilized. I think 
that is a serious problem for the Army that we must confront.
  I would only say to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Frank), that attack submarines, by the way, were just given a scrub by 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They think the fact that we only have 50 is 
a serious mistake. They think we should have about 68. We will be very 
fortunate if we can keep 57 attack submarines.
  Now, I would point out to the gentleman that there is an ASW role for 
attack submarines. There is a special forces role for attack 
submarines. There is a very important intelligence role. And they are 
very crucial in any kind of a war-fighting scenario against any 
country. Anytime somebody has a ship at sea, an attack submarine is the 
last thing they want to confront. So I think they still have a very 
important utilization.
  One of the things that I worked on, and I see my good friend from 
Texas and my good friend from California here on the floor, has been 
the effort to modernize our bomber force. In this whole defense debate, 
I do believe the one serious mistake we are making is not adequately 
funding our bomber force.
  I was particularly proud of the fact that the B-2 bomber was 
utilized, along with the B-1s and the B-52s, in the war in Kosovo and 
Yugoslavia. Many of us read the report in Newsweek that talked about 
the difficulty against relocatable targets. Well, I will tell my 
colleagues this, that the B-2 with the 2,000-pound JDAMs was used 
against fixed targets and it was extremely accurate and extremely 
effective.
  In fact, we are now going to, with the money that is in this bill, 
put a new bomb rack on the B-2s and we are going to be able to put 80 
500-pound JDAMs on each of these planes. And they will all be 
independently targetable. We will be able to take out 80 separate 
targets in one sortie. I mean, this is revolutionary.
  We are also adding capability with Link 16 to give the B-2 not only 
the ability to go deep underground but also to go against relocatable 
targets and, with the use of submunitions, to go against advancing 
armor. This will turn out to be the most impressive, the most important 
conventional weapon ever developed by the United States or by any 
military force in the history of mankind. I am proud that the Congress, 
this House, four times voted with the gentleman from Washington on this 
particular issue.
  I think we have been vindicated by those who said it could not fly in 
the rain. By the way, in Yugoslavia, it was the only plane that did fly 
in the rain that could drop bombs because we were using the GPS system, 
which does not rely on laser guidance. So I am very proud of the fact 
that we continue the modernization of the B-2 with some adds in this 
particular bill to give it even greater capability. Its mission 
planning has been improved. We were giving it a multitude of bombs that 
it can handle. It will be a conventional weapon that I think allows us 
to make some reductions under START I, under START II, and eventually 
under a START III agreement in the number of nuclear weapons that we 
need for deterrent purposes.
  I think it is much more important to have conventional weapons that 
we can utilize. It is true that deterrence is based on weapons like the 
Trident submarine, which I have been a major supporter of. But we are 
not going to use those weapons. In fact, I hope that we

[[Page 9800]]

can take the four Tridents that we are downsizing and use them for 
conventional purposes, to add a conventional capability with Tomahawk 
to those four Tridents and maybe using two of them for special forces 
operations.
  So I think there are many good things.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McKeon).
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this rule and H.R. 4576.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the first year that the President has brought us 
a reasonable defense budget for consideration. Over the last 7 years, 
the President's budget has failed the military service chiefs and our 
fighting men and women in uniform. While the President's budget was 
reasonable this year, it still failed our arms services to the tune of 
$16 billion, according to what the service chiefs have told us.
  However, under the leadership of the gentleman from California 
(Chairman Lewis), the House has once again added funding to support our 
defense requirements. While still living within a balanced budget, we 
have added $4 billion to the President's defense request. This was used 
to fund much-needed programs.
  For instance, the B-2 bomber that my friend the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Dicks) just spoke about was the central part of the 
success story from the air war in Kosovo. The B-2's success in this 
conflict underscored our need for an adequate and modern bomber fleet.
  We also learned some very important lessons about the effectiveness 
of our smart bombs during the war and we learned we had some 
shortcomings. We found that there are changes that could be made that 
would make our bomber fleet more effective. One of those was to add 
500-pound bomb capabilities instead of just the 2,000-pound bombs. We 
used to talk about how many planes it would take to take out a target. 
Now we are talking about how many targets one plane can take out.
  Unfortunately, the President failed to fund the research and 
development of the 500-pound JDAM and the 500-pound JDAM bomb rack even 
though the service chiefs had told us that that was a high requirement.
  It was under the leadership of the gentleman from California 
(Chairman Lewis) that funding was added for these upgrades and 
advancements. In total, the committee added funding of $96 million for 
upgrades on the B-2. These include the Link 16 upgrades that will 
modernize the cockpit and allow for in-flight replanning, research, and 
development of the 500-pound JDAM and the integration on the B-2.
  The flights that we had over Kosovo were actually 30-hour flights 
that went from the State of Missouri. And when we are on long missions 
like that, sometimes changes are made in the planning. These Link 16 
upgrades will allow for that. With the success of the B-2, these 
upgrades will allow our military to exert further strength and keep 
freedom and peace abroad, thus making B-2 truly the Spirit of America.
  This is just one program of many that the committee has seen fit to 
fund at the level it needs. Faced with a very difficult task, the 
committee found a way to ensure that our forces are taken care of and 
our national security remains strong. I congratulate them for this 
bill, and urge a yes vote on this rule and on the legislation.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Vermont (Mr. Sanders).
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time that we in Congress get our priorities 
straight. Today, despite the so-called economic boom, tens of millions 
of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages than was the case 
25 years ago. They are working two jobs or they are working three jobs 
and they are desperately trying to keep their heads above water.
  In the United States today, 44 million Americans have no health 
insurance, and millions more are underinsured. The United States has 
the greatest gap in the industrialized world between the rich and the 
poor, and 20 percent of our children live in poverty, the highest child 
poverty rate of any major country.
  Millions of senior citizens in this country and middle-income 
families cannot afford the prescription drugs they need, and the U.S. 
Congress has made the health care crisis even worse by cutting in 1997 
several hundred billion dollars from Medicare. Throughout this country, 
veterans who put their lives on the line defending this Nation are 
unable to get the quality health care they need and deserve.
  In the United States today, we are experiencing an affordable housing 
crisis, with millions of hard-working families paying more than 50 
percent of their limited incomes just to pay the rent; and some of the 
more unfortunate low-income workers are people sleeping out on the 
streets or in their automobiles.
  In this country we talk a whole lot about education, but millions of 
American middle-class families cannot afford to send their kids to 
college and many of our kids who graduate find themselves deeply in 
debt.
  In other words, Mr. Speaker, the middle class of this country, the 
working families, our senior citizens, our veterans, our young people, 
low-income people, have some very serious problems.

                              {time}  1515

  Unfortunately, when these constituents cry out to Congress and ask 
for help, they are told over and over again that there is just no money 
available to help them, that we just do not have the resources. But 
when it comes to military spending, it appears that the defense 
contractors who want to design the most exotic and expensive weapons 
systems in the history of the world are able to obtain all of the 
funding they want. When it comes to defense spending, we apparently 
have billions to spend on the construction of a national missile 
defense system that many scientists believe will not work and is not 
needed; billions to spend on aircraft carriers and fighter planes that 
just coincidentally are built in the States and districts of powerful 
Members of Congress; billions to spend on military projects that 
coincidentally are built by contractors who contribute huge sums of 
money to both political parties. When it comes to military spending, we 
apparently have the resources to increase the defense budget by 7 
percent, a $22 billion increase from last year.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that the U.S. needs a strong and superior 
military system. We must be prepared for the new threats and challenges 
that lie ahead. We must provide decent pay, good housing, good quality 
health care and child care and other vital services to our men and 
women in uniform.
  We must do a much better job than at present in understanding the 
cause of Gulf War illness which is why I am offering an amendment later 
on in this bill so that we can better understand the cause of that 
illness which is affecting 100,000 Americans.
  But the bottom line, Mr. Speaker, is enough is enough. Today when we 
look at our military budget, it is not just that we spend more than 18 
times as much as the military spending of all of our potential 
adversaries combined; but when we combine our spending with NATO, who 
will be our allies in any major international conflict, the numbers are 
absolutely incredible. The bottom line is that we as a Nation have got 
to get our priorities right. There is a limited sum of money out there, 
and we must make sure that we spend it appropriately. We cannot turn 
our backs on our seniors, on working people, on the children and simply 
look toward the military budget.
  I would ask that this bill be defeated, sent back to the committee 
and brought forth again for a more appropriate response.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Quinn).
  Mr. QUINN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina 
for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to take with my short time maybe a little bit 
different

[[Page 9801]]

tack here. I want to speak on the rule for just a minute or two. I 
think this is a good rule. I want to associate myself with the remarks 
of the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) earlier from the other 
side who took some time to talk to the rule and to the bill. I think 
that the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) have taken great effort to fashion a bill 
that warrants debate. The rule this afternoon allows for that kind of 
debate to take place here in the House and offers everybody an 
opportunity should they wish to be heard on that. I suggest to Members 
that they approve the rule.
  On the bill, itself, Mr. Speaker, we find increasingly here in the 
House that nothing is easy when we are talking about appropriations 
bills. We are asked increasingly to do more with less, whether we are 
talking about this bill or any of the others that will come these next 
few weeks and months. I happen to believe that our priorities in this 
case are appropriate. I think as I said on the rule issue a few moments 
ago that some time and energy has taken place here to make sure that we 
do have a bipartisan bill for us to look at.
  We have a bipartisan opportunity for us to talk about what should be 
done and what should not be done, but when we are talking about money 
and when we are talking about taxpayers' money and priorities, I 
believe that this time around we are going to offer the House an 
opportunity to vote affirmatively on a bill that has those priorities 
in place. Whether we are talking about those of us who want to 
geographically cast ourselves from the Northeast and the Midwest and 
the West and the South, I think that the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Lewis) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) have taken that 
time, have listened to their members, they have listened not only to 
the members on the subcommittee and the full committee, but they have 
listened to Members at large who had things to say before the committee 
during some of those hearings.
  I would say to our colleagues who are out in their offices and will 
be back here later this afternoon and this evening to vote on this bill 
that they take a good look at it. I think that we have begun this early 
in our system of rules and bills because it is a bipartisan effort. I 
suggest approval later this evening.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Waxman).
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, we are about to consider the defense 
appropriations bill. Buried in this bill is a seemingly innocuous 
provision that would have a profound effect. The provision would 
require the Defense Department to obtain prior approval from both 
defense authorizing and appropriating committees before transferring 
funds to the Justice Department for litigation.
  The motivation for this provision may be to allow the Congress to 
keep track of funds appropriated to the Defense Department, but the 
provision has a major unintended and adverse effect. It would 
effectively block the Defense Department's contribution to the Justice 
Department's suit against the tobacco industry. This suit is currently 
under active consideration in the courts. Cutting off funds would 
seriously cripple DOJ's efforts to hold the tobacco industry 
accountable and to recover the billions of dollars spent by the 
Government on smoking-related health care.
  The tobacco lawsuit is strongly supported by the Department of 
Defense. Smoking-related illnesses cost the Department nearly a billion 
dollars each year. If the Justice Department case is successful, it 
could result in a substantial financial benefit to DOD health care 
programs which stand to share in the recovery.
  I had considered offering a simple amendment. It would ensure that 
the restrictions on transfers would not apply to currently pending 
litigation. It would thus ensure that there is no unintended impact on 
the tobacco case. However, I do not intend to offer my amendment at 
this time. I understand that the underlying provision is part of the 
bill's report language, not its statutory language; and I believe that 
the provision can and, I am hopeful, will be fixed in conference so 
that it no longer has any impact on the tobacco litigation.
  However, other appropriations bills moving through the House, such as 
VA-HUD and Commerce-State-Justice contain statutory language that is 
explicitly designed to stop the tobacco lawsuit. This is simply wrong. 
Rather than supporting the administration's effort to protect the 
Federal taxpayers and public health, these bills are trying to defund 
the litigation. This is nothing less than a secret gift to the tobacco 
industry. As the other appropriations bills move through the process, I 
urge my colleagues to strip out special protections for big tobacco; 
but if these provisions remain, I intend to shine the spotlight on them 
and fight to eliminate them.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Calvert).
  Mr. CALVERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and to 
express my full support for H.R. 4576, the Defense Appropriations Act 
for fiscal year 2001. This important legislation honors the men and 
women serving in our Nation's armed services. I commend the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Murtha) for their leadership and commitment in addressing the needs of 
our service men and women and their families.
  This bill enhances recruiting, retention and quality-of-life 
programs. It also includes a 3.7 percent pay raise and an additional 
$64 million for basic housing allowances. It also addresses procurement 
shortfalls that our military has suffered since the Kosovo campaign.
  In particular, I am thankful for the gentleman from California's 
support for metrology and calibration accounts and the C-17 Globemaster 
funding levels. I look forward to working with the gentleman to explore 
the active associate wing concept for any additional C-17s procured.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe this bill is good for the U.S. service men and 
women, good for the national security needs of our country, and a sound 
investment for the people of the United States. Once again I would like 
to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the staff of the 
Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations for their 
long hours and dedication. I know my district and the Nation's service 
men and women are better off because of their commitment. I support the 
rule and the bill.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today would in 1 year raise funding 
for the Pentagon by $24 billion. Given some of the stories I have heard 
from the troops in the field, some of that money might be well spent. 
Unfortunately, I do not believe it is in this bill, and I do not 
believe it is getting to the folks that need it. I met the dad of a 
Marine who had a fancy new digital radio, that is true, they had 
acquired that for him; but the Pentagon told him they could not afford 
a waterproof cover for the nonwaterproof digital radio, and his dad was 
in GI Joe's in Oregon buying the kid a waterproof cover for his radio. 
There is something wrong with a Pentagon that can provide the fancy 
equipment, but it cannot provide the basics. We still have families in 
the military on food stamps. This bill does not take care of that 
problem. We have recruitment and retention problems. We have problems 
for hard duty, sea duty. There were requests by the Pentagon to fund 
those programs. They are not funded in this budget.
  This budget does not take care of the young men and women serving us 
in the military, but it does take care of the defense contractors. Huge 
new weapons programs will be rushed forward with this bill. More 
billions for Star Wars that is yet to have one successful test. We are 
going to rush production of the F-22 aircraft. Yet this is

[[Page 9802]]

an aircraft that is 2 years behind on its flight tests and has yet to 
complete even basic flight testing.
  But we are going to move ahead to procurement of a weapon that may 
not be needed that at this point does not work at a cost of $300 
million per fighter plane. It is supposed to be stealthy. The only 
thing stealthy about it is if we spend all our money on F-22s, they 
will be stealthy, we will hardly see an American fighter plane in the 
next war because we will not have hardly any and the ones we have might 
not be able to fly. Let us slow that down.
  Contractors return voluntarily nearly $1 billion of overpayments sent 
to them by a Pentagon that cannot keep track of its funds, and the GAO 
says there were another $5 billion of overpayments at least that were 
rendered. They cannot even do bookkeeping. The answer is to give them 
another $24 billion; $24 billion that does not go to the troops, $24 
billion that does not go to basic readiness, $24 billion that does not 
go to recruitment and retention problems, $24 billion that flows to 
weapons systems that we do not need, that do not work, that are costing 
outrageous amounts of money.
  It is time to inject a little common sense into this debate. I am 
going to offer an amendment on the F-22 to slow that program down and 
save $1 billion. I am also going to offer another simple common sense 
amendment, perhaps too common sense for us inside the Beltway here, not 
for me but maybe for other Members, that would say that any contractor 
who three times is convicted of procurement fraud against the taxpayers 
of the United States would not be eligible to further contract with the 
Department of Defense. I will not even go back in time. If we did it 
retroactively, it would disqualify all our defense contractors. But let 
us go from this date forward and say from this date forward defense 
contractors are not going to commit fraud against the taxpayers of the 
United States; and if they do, they will lose their contracts.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio 
(Mr. Kucinich).
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, the Preamble to the Constitution of the 
United States when it speaks of we the people of the United States, it 
goes on to speak of forming a more perfect union, establish justice, 
ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote 
the general welfare, securing the blessings for ourselves and our 
posterity.
  Providing for the common defense is something that we as Members of 
Congress need to do. But we also have to ask when $24 billion extra is 
put into a defense budget, when the defense budget today is in excess 
of $300 billion, we have to ask whether or not some of the other 
promises to the people of this country are being ignored. Because 
certainly the national defense should include the ability to provide 
for decent health care for all, for a decent education for all, for 
decent jobs for all. That too should be part of our national security. 
If that is not, then we should in the alternative make sure that in 
this huge Federal budget that we meet the economic and social needs of 
the people.

                              {time}  1530

  Now, this bill, Mr. Speaker, includes a provision for $1.8 billion 
for a boondoggle called the National Missile Defense System. This 
system is a fraud on the taxpayer, and it is a danger to arms 
reduction. First, the technology is not feasible. It is not testable, 
and, therefore, not reliable. It does not protect against real threats, 
but it does richly line the pockets of military contractors.
  It will destabilize our relations with our allies worldwide and will 
spark a new and expanded nuclear arms race. It violates years of work 
towards disarmament and nonproliferation. This national missile 
defense, so-called defense, is a technological failure. A recent New 
York Times article gives Congress an inkling to the truth about this 
missile defense.
  This Times analysis, which was based on a report from an MIT 
scientist, goes on to state that, well, the national missile defense 
system depends on the system's ability to discriminate between the 
target warhead of an incoming missile and decoys, something has gone 
wrong with this system.
  According to the New York Times, the system has failed those tests, 
that it cannot discriminate between the target warhead of an incoming 
missile and decoys. This is a quote from the newspaper, ``The Pentagon 
hailed the first intercept try as a success, but later conceded that 
the interceptor initially drifted off course and picked out the decoy 
balloon rather than the warhead,'' end of quote, that is because, 
according to the Times, the system cannot tell the difference between 
warheads and decoys. Experiments with the National Missile Defense 
System have revealed that the system is, quote, ``inherently unable to 
make the distinction,'' and that is between the target warhead, and 
decoys. The New York Times characterized the MIT scientist as saying 
the signals, quote, ``from the mock warhead and decoys fluctuated in a 
varied and totally unpredictable way,'' that is inner quotes, revealing 
no feature, inner quotes, ``that can be used to distinguish one object 
from another,'' end quote.
  Indeed, the Times reported the test showed that warheads and decoys 
are so similar that sensors might never be able to tell them apart. In 
other words, Mr. Speaker, the national missile defense which we are 
about to appropriate close to $2 billion for does not work and cannot 
work because it is inherently unable to tell the difference between 
warheads and decoys, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpaying America.
  Now, listen to this, Mr. Speaker. After this report appeared in the 
New York Times, Defense saw to it that this letter that was sent was 
classified. Now, it was classified before we had a chance to have a 
debate over this on this floor; that classification tactic was simply, 
I believe, to chill the debate.
  I am going to be called on the appropriate legal enforcement agencies 
to investigate this whole effort to cover up a system that does not 
work, to trick up test results, because there is fraud and deceit here. 
The taxpayers are being cheated. I am going to offer an amendment that 
seeks to, as other Members will, deal with this subject, because the 
national missile defense does not address the real threats that exist, 
and the system will simply line the pockets of major defense 
contractors.
  It is wrong to cheat the taxpayers of the United States. And that is 
what this so-called phony missile defense program does. We have already 
spent $60 billion in the last 15 years on antimissile defense research, 
and it has not produced a weapons defense system that can work. It is 
wholly ineffective. It is a lie, and it needs to be exposed and it will 
be.

            [From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 6, 2000]

                  Missile Defense Is Political Fiction

                        (By Frances FitzGerald)

       The debate over national missile defenses has been nothing 
     short of surreal.
       On the one hand. President Bill Clinton and Vice President 
     Al Gore have been promoting a limited defense system to 
     protect the nation against attacks by rogue states, though 
     the system has not been proven and may never work reliably. 
     They have also been asking Russia to agree to amend the anti-
     ballistic missile treaty to permit such a system, though the 
     Russians have always adamantly opposed such an amendment and 
     continued to do so at the summit meeting last weekend in 
     Moscow.
       On the other hand, Gov. George W. Bush has promised a much 
     more robust national missile defense, though based on 
     technologies he has not yet named.
       In addition, he has promised deep reductions in the 
     American and Russian strategic arsenals. The Russians, 
     however, have already told us that they see a larger defense 
     effort as a threat to their nuclear deterrent. The idea that 
     they would make deep reductions in the face of such an effort 
     defies logic.
       Everyone in Washington knows all of this, so what is going 
     on?
       The answer, of course, is politics. But it is a politics 
     that cannot be understood apart from the history of the 
     debate, a debate that has never been about reality.
       On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan, whose hard-line 
     anti-Soviet policies had by then given rise to the largest 
     anti-nuclear movement in Cold War history, personally--and 
     almost in secret--wrote an insert

[[Page 9803]]

     to a routine defense speech, calling on the scientific 
     community to turn its great talents to the cause of world 
     peace and to give us a means of rendering nuclear weapons 
     ``impotent and obsolete.''
       In background briefings after the speech, there was talk of 
     such Buck Rogers weaponry as space-based lasers that could 
     destroy the entire Soviet missile arsenal.
       Reagan's own officials, among them Secretary of State 
     George Shultz, were appalled, and some speculated that the 
     president had gotten the idea from a science-fiction film. It 
     took them almost a year to discover what a stroke of 
     political genius the speech insert was.
       Since 1946, opinion polls had shown that the vast majority 
     of Americans believed that scientists could develop a defense 
     against nuclear missiles if they put their minds to it. 
     Indeed, except when the issue of vulnerability was front and 
     center in the news, most Americans expressed confidence that 
     the United States had a defense against nuclear weapons 
     already.
       Just two weeks after Reagan's speech, a White House poll 
     asked respondents whether they believed scientists could come 
     up with ``a really effective way to destroy Soviet nuclear 
     missiles from space.'' The answer was, as always, a 
     resounding yes.
       Reagan certainly expected this answer. In addition, he and 
     his close aides recognized that, because of its inherent 
     ambiguity, a defense initiative would appeal to conservatives 
     as a way to develop a weapons system even while it appealed 
     to the public at large as a means to eliminating the nuclear 
     threat.
       By the time of Reagan's re-election in November 1984, all 
     of his top officials had lined up behind the Star Wars 
     concept. A number of existing research programs were cobbled 
     together, and the Strategic Defense Initiative was launched 
     with great fanfare and much rhetoric about the potential of 
     lasers and other exotic technologies.
       Shultz, Robert McFarlane and other moderates in the 
     administration wanted to use SDI as a bargaining chip for 
     Soviet strategic weapons.
       ``It would be like giving them the sleeves off our vest,'' 
     Shultz told the president.
       However, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, his aide 
     Richard Perle and their fellow hard-liners had other ideas. 
     They saw SDI as a way to block offensive-arms reductions, to 
     tear up the 1972 ABM treaty and to begin an arms race in 
     defensive as well as offensive weapons.
       The two sides brawled for the rest of the Reagan 
     administration, and neither succeeded in gaining its ends.
       In the meantime, however, SDI became extremely popular in 
     the polls. While the hard-liners pleased knowledgeable 
     conservatives by blocking strategic talks, Reagan pleased the 
     public by offering to share SDI technology with the Soviets 
     and promising the elimination of nuclear weapons. The anti-
     nuclear movement, its rhetoric stolen, gradually faded away.
       In the past 15 years, the United States has spent $60 
     billion on anti-missile-defense research and has yet to 
     produce a workable weapons system. An effective defense of 
     the country remains wholly elusive.
       Yet Republican conservatives have continued to speak as if 
     exotic technologies were ready to jump off the assembly 
     lines, and have continued to press for a deployment of 
     something--anything--that would irrevocably commit this 
     country to an open-ended process of developing national 
     missile defenses.
       Congressional Democrats tried to resist the pressure, but 
     their ability to do so waxed and waned with their own 
     political fortunes and those of the Republican right. In 
     early 1998, or around the time the Republicans took their 
     impeachment case against President Clinton to the Senate, the 
     Democrats gave way.
       The previous fall a commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld, a 
     former defense secretary, had concluded that ``rogue states'' 
     could acquire ballistic-missile technologies, and North Korea 
     had test-fired a long-range missile out over the Pacific.
       In January the Clinton administration pledged financing for 
     the deployment of a national missile-defense system to cope 
     with this threat. In March the Senate, with administration 
     support, overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for a 
     deployment.
       At the time, White House officials commented that the 
     administration's support for the bill would help to defuse a 
     potent political issue for the Republicans in the campaign of 
     2000.
       Last fall Clinton announced that he would make a final 
     deployment decision this summer, in the very midst of the 
     presidential campaign.
       This determination clearly had little to do with 
     technology, for the schedule did not permit time for adequate 
     testing--and since then one of the two tests has failed. 
     Rather, it had to do with the fear that the Republicans would 
     call Democrats weak on defense.
       In their unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Russians to 
     agree to the deployment, administration officials assured 
     them that they could defeat the system if they kept 1,000 or 
     more strategic nuclear weapons on full alert. This was hardly 
     a bargain for either country, given the decay of the Russian 
     early-warning system and the increasingly real threat of an 
     accidental launch.
       In the midst of these technological and diplomatic 
     embarrassments for the administration, Bush revived the 
     political issue by calling for the entire Reagan program: 
     Star Wars, radical nuclear-arms reductions, the de-alerting 
     of nuclear forces and the sharing of anti-missile technology 
     with our allies and possibly the Russians as well.
       The proposal is, of course, self-contradictory. It is also 
     wildly implausible, in that the Pentagon is no more likely to 
     agree to give away advanced American technology than it ever 
     was, and no country except the United States can afford an 
     open-ended missile-defense program.
       But then, the majority of Americans did not notice any of 
     these problems when Reagan made the proposal 15 years ago.
                                  ____


                [From the Washington Post, June 4, 2000]

                A Strategy of Silence on Missile Defense

                          (By Greg Schneider)

       If President Clinton wants to show Russian President 
     Vladimir Putin the potent mix of interests making ballistic-
     missile defense a priority in this country, he could invite 
     Putin to continue their summit at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza 
     Hotel in Philadelphia.
       There they would find an archetypal blend of politics, 
     military and industry in the form of a week-long conference 
     hosted by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and co-chaired by the 
     Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and 
     Lockheed Martin Corp.
       Inside those closed-door sessions are the stakeholders in a 
     campaign to create a land-based anti-missile system designed 
     to shoot down warheads launched at the United States by 
     terrorists or ``rogue'' states. The National Missile Defense 
     program is to receive $12 billion over the next six years and 
     could grow much larger.
       While President Clinton weighs a decision on whether to 
     order construction of the system, and while Republican 
     presidential candidate George W. Bush calls for an expanded 
     defense shield, the nation's defense contractors are 
     uncharacteristically silent about this potential windfall of 
     them and their shareholders.
       The Philadelphia conference is closed to the public and 
     press, though representatives of several foreign militaries 
     will take part. The companies in attendance and others in the 
     defense sector do virtually no marketing of missile defense 
     in the media. They don't even do much direct lobbying on 
     Capital Hill, according to executives, lobbyists, staffers 
     and experts.
       The technology is too risky, sources said, and the issue 
     has too many international complications. But mostly there is 
     little need to lobby, because Congress is already dead set on 
     finding a way to stop hostile foreigners from hitting 
     American troops or cities with long-range missiles.
       ``It's religion on Capital Hill,'' said an industry 
     executive who asked not to be named.
       ``I think [the companies] sense there's an irresistible 
     drive that something is going to be fielded, and perhaps in 
     this instance they can sit out the overt plug for the system 
     itself and let the events just carry the current like a wave 
     ahead of them,'' said retired Army Col. Daniel Smith, chief 
     of research at the nonpartisan Center for Defense 
     Information. ``That way they can be good guys in a sense and 
     still get the contracts and save their powder for the real 
     battles.''
       Critics charges that the companies take a subterranean 
     approach to the issue, funneling money to think tanks that 
     use speeches studies and seminars to spread the gospel of 
     missile defense. ``It's been a very sophisticated disciplined 
     lobbying effort,'' said William D. Hartung of the World 
     Policy Institute in New York.
       The stakes are high and growing. The national has spent 
     more than $60 billion on missile-defense research since 
     Ronald Reagan announced his plan for a space shield against 
     Russian warheads in the early 1980s. It could spend anywhere 
     from $30 billion to $50 billion more on the National Missile 
     Defense program by 2015, depending on how extensive a system 
     is built, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
       Thousands of companies across the country benefit from 
     ballistic-missile defense programs, though nearly half of the 
     spending goes to four major players: Lockheed Martin, Boeing 
     Co., Raytheon Co. and TRW Inc.
       Although much of the work is done in Alabama and 
     California, a breakdown of $2.55 billion in current contracts 
     shows 46 Northern Virginia-based companies receiving a total 
     of $166 million, according to Eagle Eye Publishers, Inc. in 
     Fairfax. Seventeen contractors in Maryland and the District 
     divided another $28 million.
       Others would like to get into the field. Northrop Grumman 
     Corp., for example, has spent years prepping for a chance to 
     build radar for an expanded version of the National Missile 
     Defense program.
       But John Johnson, director of advanced technology 
     businesses at Northrop Grumman's electronics sector near 
     Baltimore, said he recently learned that National Missile 
     Defense prime contractor Boeing is planning to stick with the 
     radar it currently buys from Raytheon.

[[Page 9804]]

       ``It's difficult to understand why in the world they would 
     not want to have competition,'' Johnson said. ``Especially 
     when you consider the fact that whoever does this is going to 
     have a monopoly for the next 20 to 30 years in that 
     particular line of business. We're talking a tremendous 
     amount of money, billions of dollars, for tens of years.''
       Such scale is especially irresistible to the big companies 
     that hunger for huge, long-term contracts after a decade of 
     industry consolidation and several years of rejection by Wall 
     Street. The primary question is how far Congress will 
     ultimately be willing to go.
       Reagan's original vision of a vast space shield, dubbed 
     ``star wars,'' evaporated in the hot glare of physics and 
     negative publicity. But the Persian Gulf War rekindled the 
     issue as Saddam Hussein menaced Israel and attacked U.S. 
     troops with crude Scud missiles. The military had no reliable 
     answers to that threat so Congress ordered it to come up with 
     something.
       Since then, North Korea and other potential enemies have 
     worked to develop rocket technology that could let them 
     deliver warheads of every description to faraway places--
     theorectially including the United States.
       So the Pentagon is stoking antiballistic missile technology 
     on two fronts: The National Missile Defense program would 
     establish a limited network to protect the nation from the 
     odd missile or two launched by terrorists. And several 
     ``theater missile defense'' programs are aimed at protecting 
     troops or ships in battle from Scud-like threats.
       Boeing is the lead company on National Missile Defense, 
     having won a three-year, $1.6 billion contract in 1998 to 
     assemble a basic system.
       Lockheed Martin lost out on that contract but is the major 
     player in theater missile defense, with its upgraded version 
     of the Patriot missile and the Army's $14 billion Theater 
     High-Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, system. The company 
     could gain an important role in national missile defense as 
     well, if the program is expanded to include Navy ships using 
     Lockheed Martin's Aegis combat system.
       Raytheon and TRW are present as subcontractors on virtually 
     every type of missile-defense program. Raytheon makes the 
     crucial X-band radar for both National Missile Defense and 
     for Thaad, as well as the ``kill vehicle'' on the tip of the 
     NMD missile. TRW is creating the battle management, command 
     and control system for NMD; is working with Boeing and 
     Lockheed Martin on the Air Force's Airborne Laser program; 
     and is competing to build a low-orbiting network of early-
     warning satellites.
       The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which 
     coordinates most of the systems, also has a small-business 
     innovation program that has awarded about $450 million in 
     research contracts to thousands of companies in all but about 
     three states since 1985. The agency sends out a monthly 
     newsletter highlighting technology contracts in particular 
     states, which experts say is BMDO's most overt effort to 
     emphasize the far-flung political constituencies of its 
     programs.
       National Missile Defense is by far the most politically 
     sensitive project. It is a topic not only at this weekend's 
     summit in Russia but also in this year's presidential 
     campaign. The central issue is when to begin deploying a 
     land-based missile-defense system, and how big to make it. 
     Many defense officials expect President Clinton to postpone 
     the deployment decision until the next administration.
       One executive in the defense industry said that while 
     contractors believe George W. Bush would act faster and on a 
     bigger scale, they also have faith that pressure from 
     Congress would make Democrat Al Gore follow suit eventually.
       Either way, the executive said, the research dollars will 
     keep flowing.
       Such research could lead to valuable spinoff technology in 
     other business areas such as communications, remote sensing 
     and optical technologies, said Malcolm O'Neill, who heads 
     Lockheed's air and missile defense efforts. O'Neill, a 
     retired Army general who was the first commander of the 
     Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, continues to serve on 
     a BMDO advisory panel.
       The industry's expectation that research dollars will flow 
     regardless of when the system is deployed is one reason, 
     insiders say, that defense lobbyists are not trying to push 
     missile defense.
       A bigger factor is that the topic ``is so political that 
     the defense contractors really don't want to be prominently 
     involved in something that is that visceral in terms of 
     opposition or support,'' said Richard Cook, a veteran 
     lobbyist and former head of government operations for 
     Lockheed.
       Cook recalled catching a company official briefing a group 
     of senators on the promise of missile defense in the early 
     1980s. ``I chewed [him] out,'' Cook said. ``I said, `Hey, 
     what are you doing talking about missile defense? You have no 
     idea what it's going to cost, and the politics are such that 
     you're going to have little or no influence and in fact 
     you'll probably end up embarrassing Lockheed.' ''
       At that time, too, he said, the company's own scientists 
     were divided over whether the technology would even work.
       Critics argue today that the whole effort--but especially 
     National Missile Defense--is technologically impossible. 
     ``This isn't going to defend anyone except defending the 
     interests of some defense contractors and lining their 
     pockets,'' Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) said last week at 
     a rally against missile defense.
       He pointed out that the four biggest contractors are heavy 
     campaign donors. The defense industry as a whole supplied 
     more than $2.3 million in soft money to the major parties 
     last year, according to Common Cause.
       Hartung, the arms-control expert at the World Policy 
     Institute, charges that defense companies have shaped the 
     debate over missile defense by working indirectly through 
     think tanks and study groups that influence key participants.
       ``These companies are desperate for cash, and they view 
     this system as their meal ticket--not for this year but for 
     the next generation,'' Hartung said.
       He emphasized links between defense contractors and the 
     Center for Security Policy, an arms advocacy group run by 
     former Reagan defense official Frank J. Gaffney Jr. The 
     center has written speeches for politicians who support 
     missile defense, hosted conferences and honored public 
     figures for championing the cause.
       Gaffney said in an interview that he hopes his group has 
     helped accelerate interest in missile defense, but he 
     rejected the suggestion that his effort is tainted because 
     the center's board of advisers includes executives from 
     Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other companies.
       ``I think people who don't like our message would find any 
     pretext to dismiss the message,'' he said. The center 
     reported that corporations contributed 17 percent of its $1.2 
     million in revenue for 1998, the most recent year available.
       Gafney also is intimately involved with a new group called 
     the Coalition to Protect Americans Now, which has funded a 
     pair of television ads warning that ``America is unprotected 
     against missile attacks and calling on the president to 
     deploy ``a strong missile defense--now.''
       The ads, which were being run on CNN this weekend so that 
     the president could see them in Europe, are being funded by 
     Colorado heiress Helen Krieble, Gaffney said.
       He expressed frustration that the companies involved in 
     ballistic-missile defense have not so far chosen to 
     participate. That was a sentiment shared by Curt Weldon, the 
     Pennsylvania congressman who persuaded the Ballistic Missile 
     Defense Organization to hold the conference in Philadelphia 
     tomorrow through Thursday.
       ``I think they've not done enough'', and they've benefited 
     from these programs,'' Weldon said of the companies. ``They 
     have a responsibility I think, to use their resources to at 
     least make the case why it's important business-wise. We're 
     not doing this because it means jobs, but the fact that it 
     does means jobs make it somewhat critical for them to tell 
     that story.''
       Five or 10 years ago, Weldon said, the companies were 
     reluctant to take a high profile because the programs were so 
     controversial. ``But we've changed that. We've changed the 
     whole debate in this country,'' he said. ``Now I think it's 
     appropriate for them to weight in . . . and I will continue 
     to press them until that happens.''
                                  ____


       Scientific Panel Says National Missile Defense Won't Work

       The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Massachusetts 
     Institute of Technology Security Studies Program today 
     released the first major study presenting technical evidence 
     that the planned US National Missile Defense (NMD) system 
     would be defeated by simple responses from new missile 
     states.
       The report, by a panel of eleven independent senior 
     physicists and engineers, also finds that the current NMP 
     testing program is not capable of assessing the system's 
     effectiveness against a realistic attack.
       ``This so-called national missile defense system won't do 
     the job,'' said report chair Dr. Andrew Sessler, former 
     director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and past 
     president of the American Physical Society. ``The United 
     States should shelve its NMD plans and rethink its options 
     for countering missile threats.''
       The NMD system is intended to defend US territory from 
     attacks by tens of intercontinental-range ballistic missiles 
     armed with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. 
     President Clinton is scheduled to decide on deployment this 
     fall, after a third intercept test in June and a Pentagon 
     recommendation in July. The first intercept test in October 
     scored an ambiguous hit; the second test in January was a 
     miss.
       The report was researched by top scientists from Lawrence 
     Berkeley Laboratory, MIT, Cornell University, the University 
     of California at Los Angeles, the University of Maryland, and 
     the University of Pennsylvania. Study members include senior 
     defense consultants to the US government and nuclear weapons 
     laboratories, and former members of the Defense Science 
     Board, the Rumsfeld Commission, and the Lockheed Corporation. 
     The scientists used physics and engineering calculations to 
     analyze both the planned NMD system and the simple steps--

[[Page 9805]]

     known as ``countermeasures''--that nations developing long-
     range missiles could take to foil the defense.
       For biological or chemical weapons, the missile warhead can 
     be divided into many small bomblets that would be released 
     from the missile early in flight and overwhelm the defense 
     with too many targets. The analysis in the report shows that 
     the technology for bomblets would be readily available to an 
     emerging missile state.
       ``Any long-range missile attack with biological weapons 
     would surely be delivered by bomblets,'' said Dr. Kurt 
     Gottfried, a physicist at Cornell University and chair of the 
     Union of Concerned Scientists. ``The planned NMD system could 
     not defend against such an attack.''
       The report also finds that attackers using nuclear weapons 
     could defeat the system by deploying their warheads inside 
     mylar balloons and releasing many empty balloons along with 
     them, presenting the defense with an unwinnable shell-game. 
     Or a nuclear warhead could be covered by a shroud cooled to 
     very low temperatures, preventing the heat-seeking 
     interceptor from detecting and homing on the target.
       The US intelligence community, in a September 1999 report, 
     also found that developing nations could deploy 
     countermeasures with their long-range missiles and would be 
     motivated to do so by US NMD deployment.
       ``Any country that can deploy a long-range missile with a 
     nuclear or biological weapon can deploy these 
     countermeasures,'' said Dr. Lisbeth Gronlund, a physicist at 
     UCS and MIT. ``Pentagon claims that the system can deal with 
     countermeasures simply do not stand up to technical 
     scrutiny.''
       The study shows that the NMD testing program will not be 
     able to determine if the system would be effective against 
     these countermeasures. Tests against realistic targets will 
     not be conducted before the first phase of deployment in 
     2005, if at all.
       ``Since we find that even the full NMD system would be 
     defeated by realistic countermeasures, it makes no sense to 
     begin deployment,'' said Dr. Sessler. ``A defense that 
     doesn't work is no defense at all.''
       As a companion to the new report, USC produced an animation 
     that shows how straightforward devices like balloons and 
     bomblets would confuse the NMD system. The animation and 
     report can be viewed on the UCS website at www.ucsusa.org/
 arms/.
                                  ____


             Missile Shield Analysis Warns of Arms Buildup

                   (By Bob Drogin and Tyler Marshall)

       Washington--The U.S. intelligence community is writing a 
     secret report warning the Clinton administration that 
     construction of a national missile defense could trigger a 
     wave of destabilizing events around the world and possibly 
     endanger relations with European allies, a U.S. intelligence 
     official said Thursday.
       The new National Intelligence Estimate will sketch an 
     unsettling series of political and military ripple effects 
     from the proposed U.S. deployment that would include a sharp 
     buildup of strategic and medium-range nuclear missiles by 
     China, India and Pakistan and the further spread of missile 
     technology in the Middle East.
       A supplement to the highly classified report will also note 
     that the threat of attack from North Korea has eased since 
     last fall, when Pyongyang effectively froze its ballistic-
     missile testing program in response to U.S. overtures.
       Outside critics have long argued that the proposed national 
     missile defense could backfire and actually diminish national 
     security and global stability. But the CIA-led analysis and 
     updated threat assessment are the first official evaluation 
     of how the system could generate new threats.
       The administration has pledged to decide this fall whether 
     to proceed with an initial base of 100 ``interceptor'' 
     missiles in Alaska, backed by ground-based phased radar 
     stations and satellite-based infrared sensors, in a system 
     designed to shield the continental United States from a 
     limited missile attack.
       Proponents of the system argue that North Korea, Iran or 
     Iraq may threaten U.S. territory with intercontinental 
     ballistic missiles someday. Critics argue that the threat is 
     exaggerated, that the antimissile technology is unproved and 
     that deployment would undermine crucial arms control and 
     nonproliferation regimes.
       CIA analysts believe that Russia would accept U.S. 
     arguments that no system could protect against the number of 
     missiles Moscow could launch and that its deterrent thus 
     would be preserved. But China has only 20 CSS-4 
     intercontinental ballistic missiles in vulnerable silos, and 
     the analysts say that, after a U.S. deployment, Beijing would 
     conclude that it had lost its deterrent force--and act 
     accordingly.
       ``We can tell the Russians that [the missile defense] won't 
     affect the viability of their deterrent force,'' the 
     intelligence official said. ``I don't know how we can say 
     that to the Chinese with a straight face.''
       If the U.S. system is built, the CIA believes, China would 
     install multiple independent nuclear warheads on its missiles 
     for the first time in an effort to overwhelm any missile 
     shield. Beijing has possessed the technology for more than a 
     decade but has not used it so far.
       In addition, Beijing is deemed likely to build several 
     dozen mobile truck-based DF-31 missiles, which it first 
     tested last year, to create a more survivable force. It also 
     is likely to add such countermeasures as booster 
     fragmentation, low-power jammers, chaff and simple decoys to 
     confuse or evade U.S. interceptors.
       The intelligence official said that Russia and China both 
     would increase proliferation, including ``selling 
     countermeasures for sure'' to such nations as North Korea, 
     Iran, Iraq and Syria.
       Moreover, the official said, India is deemed likely to 
     increase its nuclear missile force if it detects a sharp 
     buildup by China, its neighbor and longtime rival. That, in 
     turn, likely would spur Pakistan, India's archenemy, to 
     increase its own nuclear strike force, the official said.
       Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft called 
     such a scenario ``plausible'' and expressed concern about its 
     possible implications.
       ``We ought to think whether we want the Chinese to change 
     their very minimalist strategy,'' he said in a telephone 
     interview. ``I'm not sure what the answer is, but this is 
     certainly one of the possible consequences that, in a sense, 
     is more serious than the Russian reaction might be.''


                   The Likelihood of a Domino Effect

       Other specialists said that, while it is likely China would 
     move to increase its intercontinental ballistic missile 
     arsenal--now thought to be about 20 strong--it is 
     questionable whether India and Pakistan would follow suit.
       ``China has had a strategic capability for a long time 
     relative to India, and India has hardly gone on a missile 
     arms race to counter it,'' noted John E. Peters, an arms 
     control specialist at Rand Corp., a Santa Monica-based think 
     tank.
       Michael O'Hanlin, who tracks the missile defense issue at 
     the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in 
     Washington, argued that, however dramatic it may sound, a 
     domino-style nuclear arms buildup would be a lesser threat to 
     the United States than China's potential willingness to 
     develop and sell missile defense countermeasures to countries 
     like North Korea. Arms control specialists have expressed 
     strong concern that the missile defense system as designed 
     would be incapable of overcoming relatively cheap and easy-
     to-deploy countermeasures, such as clusters of decoys.
       ``If they do that, it could defeat the entire purpose of 
     the national missile defense,'' O'Hanlin said, ``That is the 
     scenario that's very important.''
       Further afield, the intelligence official who outlined the 
     report said, America's allies in Europe and the North 
     Atlantic Treaty Organization could be angered if the United 
     States is seen to be walling itself off from its allies with 
     an antimissile shield.


                     n. korea's test program frozen

       The updated threat assessment notes that North Korea has 
     frozen its program to test an intercontinental ballistic 
     missile--the Taepo-Dong 2--since the administration proposed 
     relaxing economic and diplomatic sanctions last year.
       The missile still could be tested on short notice, the 
     official said, and related tests of the system's electronics, 
     pumps, tanks and other equipment are still going on.
       CIA analysts, who warned last year that Iran may try to 
     test an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2010, have 
     detected little progress in Tehran's program. ``We're not 
     seeing some of the things we expected,'' the official said. 
     ``We're not seeing the threat advance.''
       The White House requested the intelligence estimate as part 
     of its decision-making review.
       The analysis, to be delivered next month, presents two 
     different scenarios of how other nations are likely to react 
     to a U.S. deployment.
       The first is based on the premise that Russia agrees to 
     U.S. demands to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty of 
     1972 to allow a missile shield. The second assesses the 
     effect if Russia refuses and Washington simply abandons the 
     arms control process, as many Republicans have demanded.
       At the moment, Russia and China are the only potential 
     adversaries capable of hitting the United States with nuclear 
     missiles. Russia has about 1,000 strategic missiles and 4,500 
     warheads.
       The report pointedly declines to describe North Korea and 
     other hostile states as ``rogue'' nations, since the argot 
     suggests that their leaders are irrational.
       ``The term rogue state almost predisposes you in favor of'' 
     the missile defense system, the intelligence official said.
       Moreover, the report warns that the missile defense shield 
     would not protect Americans against what the official called 
     ``more accurate, more reliable and much cheaper'' ways of 
     delivering chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. These 
     include ship-launched missiles, suitcase bombs and other 
     covert means.
       ``The joke here is, if you want to bring a nuclear weapon 
     into the United States, just hide it in some drugs,'' the 
     official said.

[[Page 9806]]

     
                                  ____
         Bipartisan Thinkers Look Past Traditional Arms Control

                        (By Carla Anne Robbins)

       Washington--When President Clinton goes to Moscow next 
     month, he will try to sell Russian President Vladimir Putin a 
     new arms-control ``grand bargain.''
       For years, the prospect of any agreement would have been 
     greeted with cheers and sighs of relief. This deal, in which 
     Washington trades somewhat deeper cuts in both sides' 
     arsenals for Moscow's grudging acquiescence to a limited U.S. 
     missile-defense program, is supposed to break a seven-year 
     stalemate in nuclear-arms reductions.
       But a decade after the Cold War's end, a group of American 
     thinkers from both parties is raising a more radical idea: 
     Traditional arms control simply might not work anymore.
       With the world vastly changed, they are calling for the old 
     rulebook to be jettisoned. In this bold new order, there 
     would be deep, even unilateral cuts in U.S. nuclear forces. 
     Russia, and perhaps China, would join the U.S. and Europe in 
     building missile-defense systems. Finally, there would be a 
     global campaign, championed by Washington and its allies, 
     along with Moscow and Beijing, to control the spread of 
     terror weapons.
       Stephen Hadley, a top aide in the Bush Pentagon, says he 
     can imagine a day when the U.S. and Russia simply ``advise'' 
     each other of their nuclear plans. ``It's a perverse outcome 
     of Cold War arms control [that] both sides have kept an 
     inventory of strategic weapons far above what they need or 
     want,'' he says. Jan M. Lodal, a former top official in the 
     Clinton Pentagon, warns that the U.S. is ``making a huge 
     diplomatic effort to preserve treaties that don't have any 
     effect on the real problems'' of fighting proliferation.
       It is hard to overstate what a sweeping change this would 
     mean. For 30 years, mankind's survival was thought to rest on 
     the successful negotiation and implementation of arms-control 
     treaties. Only arms control could walk the world back from 
     the nuclear brink.
       So why would anyone dare to try a different way?
       Consider some current problems:
       The U.S. and Russia agreed in 1993 to slash their arsenals 
     to 3,000 to 3,500 long-range weapons, but domestic and 
     international wrangling has blocked the cuts. Even if Mr. 
     Clinton and Mr. Putin make a deal, the GOP-led Senate is 
     threatening to reject it, while the Pentagon is already 
     planning a larger antimissile program. The next president 
     will have to start renegotiating the grand bargain a few 
     months after taking office.
       The nuclear-driven India-Pakistan conflict is today's most 
     dangerous clash. But since neither country is recognized as a 
     ``nuclear state'' under the nonproliferation treaty, the U.S. 
     can't give them technology or know-how to help prevent 
     accidental launches or wars of miscues.
       Chemical weapons have been outlawed by an international 
     treaty championed by the U.S. But the organization negotiated 
     to monitor the ban has been hobbled by its members states' 
     lowest-common-denominator restrictions. The country setting 
     the lowest denominator? The U.S.
       With such a grim record, there may be little choice but to 
     start over. Nobody can be sure how well a new arms-control 
     order would work. But here's how it might look:
       Step one: The U.S. must begin, the new thinkers say, by 
     shrinking its own arsenal to reflect a world where nuclear 
     war with Russia is far less of a risk than the risk of Russia 
     losing or selling off its weapons to rogue states or 
     terrorists.
       Moscow--which spent only about $5 billion on all its 
     defenses last year, or less than 2% of the Pentagon's 
     budget--already is calling for both sides to go down to 1,500 
     long-range weapons. U.S. military planners are insisting on 
     keeping 2,000 to 2,500 weapons.
       Mr. Lodal says the U.S. can cut back to 1,000 
     ``survivable'' weapons, mainly on hard-to-find submarines, 
     and still deter all potentials enemies. For the sake of 
     speed, he says the U.S. should make those cuts unilaterally 
     and expect the Russians to follow suit. Future agreements 
     with Russia would focus on ``transparency'' to calm 
     suspicions of a secret buildup by either side.
       There is a precedent of this ``arms control by example,'' 
     In 1991, President Bush broke all of the rules, unilaterally 
     taking all U.S. strategic bombers off alert and pulling all 
     American short-range nuclear weapons out of Europe and Asia. 
     A week later, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled all of 
     his short-range nuclear weapons back to Russia and pledged to 
     slash another 1,000 long-range weapons from the Soviet 
     arsenal. The shocking moves and countermoves had analysts 
     heralding a new ``arms race in reverse.''
       Step two: The U.S. has to figure out how to build missile 
     defenses without creating a permanent international crisis.
       There are serious doubts about whether the technology is 
     ready or the rogue-state threat imminent. Nevertheless, 
     national missile defense may be a political inevitability.
       The prohibition against building defenses, enshrined in the 
     1972 ABM treaty, is the most passionately held arms-control 
     taboo. During the Cold War, stability was supposed to be 
     based on mutual vulnerability to devastating nuclear 
     retaliation.
       That high-risk equation may no longer be necessary, says 
     Barry Blechman, a longtime critic of President Reagan's Star 
     Wars concept who now embraces the need for limited defenses. 
     The threat today, he argues, comes from a few rogue states or 
     terrorists, making defenses an easier technological problem 
     to solve. But the challenge is still so daunting that it will 
     be years before the U.S. can build anything that can defeat 
     Russia's force.
       ``I've always been of the mind that deterrence is what you 
     do if you can't defend.'' Mr. Blechman, chairman of the 
     Stimson Center, a Washington international security think 
     tank.
       The biggest challenge may be to calm Russia's fears of a 
     multbillion-dollar missile-defense race. Russia is unlikely 
     to launch a major nuclear buildup. But a spurned Moscow could 
     still make real trouble: slowing arms reductions, cutting off 
     cooperative nuclear-security programs or even selling 
     technology to foil missile defenses to North Koreas or Iraq. 
     By pulling out of the ABM, and provoking a crisis with 
     Russia, the U.S. would also seriously damage its already 
     strained credibility as a crusader against global 
     proliferation.
       Mr. Hadley, who now advises the presidential campaign of 
     Texas Gov. George W. Bush, but says his ideas are his alone, 
     believes the best hope is to revive a Bush administration 
     proposal to bring the Russians and perhaps the Chinese into a 
     ``Global Protection System.''
       The U.S., he says, could start by sharing early-warning 
     data with Moscow. Russian and U.S. defense companies could 
     collaborate on building and selling smaller theater missile-
     defense systems to countries that otherwise might be tempted 
     to acquire their own missiles. Most ambitiously, the U.S., 
     Russia and Europe could work together to develop a national 
     missile-defense system that all could deploy.
       The West would likely have to foot a good part of Russia's 
     cost, while Moscow would have to implement far tougher 
     technology-transfer controls. If China also wanted in, it 
     ``would have to show a real commitment to the effort against 
     proliferation that so far it hasn't shown,'' says Mr. Hadlen. 
     Even then, China, which has about 20 long-range missiles 
     capable of hitting the U.S., is almost certain to increase 
     its nuclear forces to be sure of being able to overwhelm the 
     U.S. system.
       Some of the fiercest opponents to Mr. Hadley's plan could 
     be members of his own party, who increasingly argue that the 
     U.S. can ignore a weakened Russia's objections. And while Mr. 
     Gorbachev once expressed interest, it isn't certain whether 
     Russia's new leaders would want to join.
       Step three: Really fight weapons proliferation.
       Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan showed how few tools 
     there are to punish countries determined to flout 
     international treaties. The U.S. is still hoping to dissuade 
     the two rivals from mating nuclear warheads to missiles. If 
     that fails, it may have little choice but to rewrite or defy 
     the nonproliferation treaty, providing both countries with 
     the technology and know-how to prevent accidental wars.
       ``Arms-control treaties are only good when they reflect the 
     underlying realities,'' Mr. Blechman says.
       Ferreting out secret cheaters is even harder. Politics is 
     part of the problem. To win Senate ratification of the 
     Chemical Weapons Convention, the Clinton administration 
     reserved the right to block challenge inspections on national 
     security grounds and barred monitors from taking chemical 
     samples abroad for analysis. Now ``other countries will have 
     the ability to block the inspectors the same way,'' warns Amy 
     Smithson of the Stimson Center. The Indian parliament is 
     considering the Technology may be a bigger obstacle, 
     especially when chemical and biological weapons can be cooked 
     up in a garage or a bathroom.
       So what to do? The new thinkers suggest the U.S. will have 
     to move beyond treaties. It will need to enlist Russia and 
     China, the biggest potential sources of illicit weapons, as 
     well as its European allies, in a global antiproliferation 
     campaign: Sharing intelligence, policing their defense 
     industries and scientists, and joining in diplomatic 
     initiatives to isolate offenders.
       Sen. Richard Lugar, a longtime arms-control proponent, says 
     that even with their weaknesses, these multilateral treaties 
     can still provide useful ``norms'' for rallying international 
     pressure or justifying unilateral punishments, as in the U.S. 
     bombing of Iraq. ``It may be the only real sanction in the 
     world is the U.S. armed forces,'' the Indiana Republican 
     says.

  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire of the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Frost) if he has any more speakers.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I respond that I reserve the final 2 minutes 
to close. There are no other speakers on the floor.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may assume to the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer).

[[Page 9807]]


  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to some of the comments from the 
critics of the bill and from those of whom consistently vote against 
the defense bills that are brought to this House floor in a bipartisan 
basis. It always is difficult for me to try to understand the dimension 
of others of whom perhaps do not share my opinions, because I, for one, 
believe that part of the purpose of forming a government is to make 
sure that we protect the Nation's borders; that we protect our 
interests; that we protect those of whom sleep in peace and tranquility 
and domestically within the borders of our own country, so we take 
great pride in our police force, our firefighters, those who serve in 
the military, those of whom who put on the uniform and say they give an 
oath to lay down their life.
  It was a Vietnam veteran that turned to me when I was a young cadet 
and said I want you to memorize this statement: those who serve their 
country on a distant battlefield see life in a dimension for which the 
protected may never know.
  Those of whom may be the protected yet have never seen the horrors of 
a battlefield are very quick to become the critics of the defense 
industry, become critics of those of whom serve in the military, those 
of whom question a system of honor and of integrity, of character, of 
the essence of the nobility of life.
  They say, well, we will be there when you need it; that is false. It 
takes the commitment of a Nation, weapons systems that we will use in 
the next war are not crafted and built based on the successes of the 
last. If we do that, it is a prescription for failure.
  You design your weapons systems thinking far ahead; it is why when 
you go into battle that we want to place our men and women who serve in 
harm's way with the ability to overmatch, so we do not see the coffins 
coming back to Dover, Delaware.
  That is why I enjoy it when the defense bill comes to the House 
floor, because it is one of the few bills that this body comes together 
as Democrats and Republicans.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BUYER. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana. Since I am a little 
hard on you, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I do not take from anything that the 
gentleman said that the gentleman would endorse fraud.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I will reclaim my time, that is a silly 
statement. No one in this body endorses fraud, for crying out loud. I 
do not even know where that came from. What bothers me is it is easy to 
say, oh, well, the Pentagon, they spend this much on a weapons system, 
they spend that much on a part, these weapons systems are highly 
sophisticated and it takes awhile. They only make one or two parts. It 
is not making 10,000 parts.
  Let me go back to my compliment, though, to the body. My compliment 
to the body is that we have many Members in here that have put on the 
uniform, and no one ever asked when we took that oath whether we were 
Republican or Democrat. So those of us who served in the authorizing 
committee and the appropriating committees who have the interest on 
national security keep that dimension.
  Now, there will always be a critic of a bill for one particular 
reason or another. We have those of whom who are passivists. They 
should take pride in themselves, if they are a passivist, say they are 
a passivist. Do not just pick apart the bill for one reason or another. 
Expose your character. If they do not, I will be more than happy to.
  Let me tell you something else that has bothered me when we take an 
individual who may be a critic of the defense industry or, in 
particular, of our defense. They are the same individuals of whom are 
seeking to socialize our military. So when they stand up here on the 
House floor and they talk about, well, we are having recruiting and 
retention problems in the military, and they give this long laundry 
list of what is wrong with the military, see they are the same ones who 
endorsed socialization policies of our military.
  Socialization policies that, in fact, then begin to hurt the 
military. A sergeant at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, came up to me and 
says, Congressman, if the Army gets any more sensitive, it is going to 
cry. We have to stop and think what are we doing to the military.
  Mr. Speaker, I have traveled around; and I have conducted a lot of 
hearings, being chairman of personnel. Well, many are quick to blame 
recruiting and retention problems on a good economy, easy access to 
other sources of college funding, reduced propensity to enlist, a 
shortage of quality recruits. My findings point to other issues that 
stress the military force. It is called lack of spare parts, lack of 
adequate training time, aging equipment and high depreciation rates on 
our equipment, socialization policies, longer working hours and 
prolonged family separation due to an increased operational tempo.
  We also have a mismatch in the Clinton/Gore national security 
strategy between a foreign policy of engagement and enlargement at our 
national military strategy. When we take 265,000-plus troops and put 
them in 135 nations all around the world and then we begin to have them 
serve as quasidiplomats, we then have a workforce out there that begins 
to then have questioned the mission; it is called mission credibility. 
They say I do not mind being separated from my family, but to do this? 
And they say then, wait a second, what happened to the warrior. The 
warriors now have become the humanitarian.
  They are outstretched all over the world as quasidiplomats on all of 
these humanitarian missions. Now, are some of them noble? Are some of 
them worthy? Yes. But we always have to be very careful about what 
happens when you take a warrior and we then turn him into a 
humanitarian. You dull the war-fighting skill. When you do that to a 
division, it takes us a year to retrain the division back to the war-
fighting skill.
  So as I listened to some of the comments of some of the Members, it 
is easy to pick apart the bill. I believe that this bill is going to 
receive a large bipartisan support.
  Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BUYER. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
  Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman, I understand 
his criticisms and critique. We could give a critique on both sides of 
the aisle, but what the gentleman just said, I think, is the most 
important thing, and that is, we need to continue to maintain a 
bipartisan consensus in the House for national defense, for our troops, 
for taking care of the spare parts problems. I think it is good if we 
can try to work and build consensus behind national defense.
  I hear some of the criticism on my side of the aisle, because they 
are worried about wastefulness. They are worried are we doing enough in 
terms of testing, national missile defense, have we done enough testing 
on the F-22. Frankly, as a member of the committee I am concerned about 
those issues myself.
  I think we need to be careful as stewards of national security not to 
always believe everything we are told, I know the gentleman does not 
fall under this category, by the Pentagon is necessarily totally 
accurate. I mean, we have to go in and do a good job of oversight and 
looking at what has actually happened. And that is why I was impressed 
when the gentleman said he was going out and taking a look to see about 
spare parts.
  By the way, our committee has added hundreds of millions of dollars 
over a sustained period of years on these issues during the Reagan 
buildup, during this buildup; but I hope we can try to have the 
rhetoric in a constructive tone, rather than in a tone that kind of 
gets us into a fight over this issue.
  There still is a huge consensus in this Congress, at least 325 
Members, who are strongly committed and it is very bipartisan. So I 
just wanted to make those points.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, I reclaim my time. My compliments to the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

[[Page 9808]]

He has have devoted a great deal of his time in Congress to the issues 
of national security. The issues on spare parts, I think American 
people would be shocked to go out on the flight line and see that we 
are swapping out engines to put F-14s in the air.
  If we told our parents that, you know, I am going to be a little bit 
late for Christmas dinner because I have to pull the Chevy engine out 
of the car and put it in any other car, they say what are you doing; 
that sounds ridiculous. With the spare part problem out there that we 
are actually swapping out engines to put planes in the air is a little 
stunning.
  I want to compliment the gentleman, because he has worked very hard 
on our spare part problem and concern.
  Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, this 
is a good bill. I see the gentleman from California here. I want to say 
to the gentleman, too, our subcommittee, it is a great subcommittee to 
be a Member of, there is never any partisan rhetoric to speak of; and 
we try to focus in on trying to do the best possible job with the 
resources we have to do the best for defense.
  I think this year, for example, taking the money and accelerating the 
two brigades that will be part of the Army's effort to lighten up and 
be more mobile. That is a great decision on the part of the committee. 
I hope the Congress will endorse that, and I hope we can get the Senate 
to go along with it.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think we are going to 
see the real compliment of the work product that came, not only out of 
the authorizing committee, but also the gentleman's work, this bill is 
going to pass in a huge bipartisan bill. I compliment the gentleman.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. It will pass with a very 
significant bipartisan vote of both Democrats and Republicans.

                              {time}  1545

  I would only like to underscore one point that I made earlier in the 
debate, and I would hope that the leadership on the other side of the 
aisle in this body will impress upon the leadership on their side of 
the aisle in the other body how important it is to move the defense 
supplemental for Kosovo and Bosnia right now. Because while there is 
significant money in this bill for 2001, our troops face a crisis in 
the fourth quarter for fiscal year 2000, beginning in about a month, 
because of the inability of this Congress to fund what has already 
happened in Bosnia and Kosovo, and because of the fact that this 
requires our military to take money away from training and to take 
money away from the vital things that need to be done right now in the 
remainder of this fiscal year.
  So while it is laudable that we are going to pass by a significant 
bipartisan vote a good piece of legislation for the fiscal year that 
starts October 1, we need to move the money in the supplemental for the 
remainder of this fiscal year, or we are going to face a real crisis 
situation starting about August 1.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) to close.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate what the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost) spoke about and the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Dicks). The supplemental is important. We have over 21 
ships that are tied up to the pier that cannot go anywhere, and we are 
going below that 300-ship Navy. Yet, there are some people on that side 
of the aisle that would even cut defense in an emergency situation like 
this. I think that is wrong.
  I would like to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) 
and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and the Subcommittee on 
Defense of the Committee on Appropriations. When I served on the 
authorizing body, it was the absolute best committee to serve on. There 
are no Republicans and no Democrats on that committee; they are all 
looking forward to helping the men and women in the services. 
Unfortunately, when we get to this floor, there are critics of those 
policies that want to cut for social spending. That is wrong. We put at 
risk our men and women in the services.
  I would like to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost) and the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the authorizers. This is a good rule. I 
thank especially the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the 
chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on 
Appropriations, who has been tied up in another committee today.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a good rule and a good bill. I thank my 
colleagues for supporting it. We need to get the other body in line 
with the supplemental.
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I 
move the previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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