[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14018-14020]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      MILITARY NEEDS MORE FUNDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kerns). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I have taken the floor a number of times 
over the last 8 years during the Clinton administration strongly 
criticizing the Clinton administration for what I consider to be a 
weakening of our national security. We had budgets that annually were 
short in terms of equipment being replaced, low pay for our military 
personnel, substandard housing for our military families, a lack of 
readiness, spare parts and training for our forces that might have to 
move around the world on a moment's notice, and overall shortchanging 
of national security by substantial amounts each year in the budget.
  I want to go through the facts that I have laid out over the last 
several years with respect to what was then the Clinton 
administration's defense budget. First I pointed out that we have cut 
our military forces since 1991- 1992, the days of Desert Storm, by 
about 50 percent, and I pointed out that we had gone from 18 Army 
divisions to 10, we had gone from 24 fighter air wings to only 13 
active air wings, we had gone from 546 Navy ships to 316, now down to 
less than that and going toward a 300 ship Navy.
  I pointed out that we had declining mission-capable rates for our 
frontline aircraft. A mission-capable rate is if I called up a neighbor 
who has two cars and I ask him what his mission-capable rate was, and 
he said wait a minute, Duncan, and he went out to try to start them and 
only one started, he would say 50 percent; one out of two.
  The mission-capable rate is the ability of an airplane, whether it is 
a fighter plane from a Navy carrier deck or an Air Force aircraft from 
an air base, to be able to fly out, take off, go do its mission, 
whether it is reconnaissance or escort or fighter duties, and return 
back to that base and land. Can it do its job? That is a mission-
capable rate.
  The mission-capable rates of all of our front-line fighters have been 
dropping dramatically during the last 8 years of the Clinton 
administration. I pointed out that they have gone down, and this chart 
represents that fall in mission-capable rates. They have gone down from 
an average of about 83 percent to 88 percent back in the early nineties 
to only about 73 percent today. So that means that this small Air Force 
that we now have, these 13 air wings, actually are less than that, 
because each of those air wings has fewer aircraft that are ready to go 
than the air wings of the force of 1992.
  I pointed out during the last 8 years of the Clinton administration 
that our shipbuilding rate was falling; that instead of building the 9 
to 10 to 11 ships that we needed each year to maintain at least a 300-
ship Navy, we were consistently building only four or five or six or 
seven ships, building toward a 200-ship Navy. That is compared to 
Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy of the 1980s. I criticized that strongly.
  I criticized the fact that the Army, by their own admission, by their 
own statement from the Chief of Staff of the Army, was $3 billion short 
of basic ammunition. One thing you do not want to run out of in a war 
is ammunition; yet we were $3 billion short. I criticized the fact that 
the Marine Corps was $200 million short of basic ammunition.
  At the same time, we criticized the fact that the U.S. Air Force was 
at one point 700 pilots short. That got up in the Clinton 
administration to as high as 1,200 pilots short. The last time I talked 
to Secretary Peters, then-Air Force Secretary under the Clinton 
administration, right at the end of the administration, at that point 
it had gone from 700 pilots short to 1,300 pilots short. It had gone 
back a little bit. We were still 1,200 pilots short in the U.S. Air 
force.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I strongly criticized the Clinton administration as 
the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Procurement of the 
Committee on Armed Services for what I consider to be an inadequate 
budget that did a disservice to our men and women in uniform, and, more 
importantly, did a disservice to national security.
  Well, today we have a new administration. It is the Bush 
administration, and it is headed by George W. Bush, a President whom I 
admire, a President of great personality, great vision, good common 
sense, and a President whom I think most Members of this House, whether 
they are Republican or Democrat, have a deep respect for.
  But, Mr. Speaker, facts are stubborn things, and if we are going to 
maintain intellectual honesty in this body, and I think all of us try 
to do that as much as we possibly can, we have to be consistent. I have 
looked at this budget that this President has sent over to Congress, 
and this budget, which is seeking right now to plus-up defense, to add 
to defense $18 billion, which would take it up to a level $18 billion 
ahead of the last Clinton budget that was submitted and voted on and 
increased by this Congress, I find that that budget is still totally 
inadequate.
  Facts are facts. We still have only 10 Army divisions, down from 18. 
We still have only 13 Air Force divisions, Air Force air wings, down 
from 24. This year, under this administration's budget, we are only 
going to build five ships, which is building at a rate that would lower 
the U.S. Navy to less than 200 ships.
  We still have the $3 billion ammo shortage in the U.S. Army. We still 
have the $200 million ammo shortage in the U.S. Marine Corps. We still 
have a major gap in pay between our military personnel and the civilian 
sector.
  I checked the other day, Mr. Speaker. I asked the Air Force, where is 
the pilot shortage now? Are we down from the 1,200 in the Clinton 
administration? The answer was no, we are still at 1,200, and we might 
even be shorter over the next several months.
  Spare parts, have we got the spare parts that we need? The answer is 
no. We started something in the Clinton administration, Mr. Speaker, 
that I thought was an important tool of accountability, and that is 
that our great chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. 
Spence), always asked the military to give their honest answer after we 
had the Clinton budget. He would say, what do you really need? What is 
your unfunded requirement? What is that you need in terms of ammo, 
spare parts, pay, training, that your budget did not give you? They 
would send over a list.

[[Page 14019]]

  Well, this year we have continued that practice with my President in 
the White House, George Bush; and the answer this year is close to $30 
billion short from the military.
  We had GAO do a report for us, and we asked them if you take all of 
our ships and tanks and trucks and planes and you figure out about how 
old they are and how old they will be when they have to retire, figure 
out how many we have to replace each year so we have a fairly modern 
force. Could you do that for us?
  That is like telling a guy that owns 100 taxicabs, figure out how 
many taxicabs you have to buy each year. If each of your taxicabs has a 
10-year life, how many taxicabs do you have to buy each year so your 
taxicabs average about 5 years old, so they are not too old, so you do 
not end up with a bunch of '56 Chevys. The answer is you have to buy 
about 10 each year to keep that taxicab force fairly modern.
  So we asked the GAO, do the same things for our tanks, trucks, ships 
and planes; and they came back with an answer, and their answer to us 
was the United States of America needs to spend an additional $30 
billion a year to have modern equipment for the people that wear the 
uniform of the United States to operate in training and in war.
  We also asked them to tell us how much more money they thought we 
needed to spend on training if we wanted our pilots to have enough 
flying time and our people that operate our ground equipment to get 
enough training time. They came back with an answer of about $5 billion 
more a year we have to spend.
  We said what is it going to take if we full up our personnel and give 
them pay that is commensurate with the civilian sector? The answer was 
it is going to average about $10 billion a year.
  We said how much more do we need for missile defense if we really 
want to have a robust missile defense? We asked a lot of experts that. 
We figured out we need to have between $2 and $5 billion a year more.
  We asked how much for ammunition, because we are about 50 percent 
short. Along with the Army $3 billion shortage and the Marine Corps 
$200 million shortage, all the services are short in what we call 
precision munitions.
  That is what Americans watched in the Desert Storm war against Saddam 
Hussein when they watched the guy that the news stations called the 
world's luckiest taxicab driver, the car going across a strategic 
bridge, and we were coming with an aircraft to knock that bridge out, 
and we launched not a lot of bombs like we had to in the old days, the 
carpet bombs, and hoped to knock the bridge out; we launched one bomb 
at one of the struts under that bridge, and we could see on a camera 
that bomb going in, a laser-guided bomb, hit precisely at that strut 
just as the taxicab driver got to the end of the bridge, and it blew up 
that bridge.
  That is called a precision munition. It is very important in 
warfighting. We used it in the Kosovo campaign. So instead of having to 
carpet bomb with a lot of dumb bombs, you send one in that hits 
precisely the right point, and you get the same capability.
  Well, we are about 50 percent short in those precision munitions 
across the board. So if you add money for the ammunition account and 
the munitions account, that is about another $5 billion a year we have 
to spend.
  Mr. Speaker, that adds up to over $50 billion for equipment, for 
people, for training, for spare parts, for ammunition. I wanted to be 
able to stand here today and say my President, George Bush, provided 
that, just like my President Ronald Reagan came in in 1980 and rebuilt 
national defense and brought down the Russian empire under a motto, 
under a program that was called Peace Through Strength.
  If you are strong, you can help the weaker nations in the world. If 
you are strong, you can help people to become free. If you are strong, 
you can protect your own people. If you are strong, you may be able to 
convince your adversary, which was then the Soviet Union, that the 
right way in this world is to go to the bargaining table with the 
United States and make a peace agreement. That happened under Ronald 
Reagan.
  This budget this year submitted by this administration is more than 
$100 billion less than Ronald Reagan's budget in real dollars in 1985, 
$100 billion less. Now, it is true we do not need as much money as we 
needed in 1985, when the Soviets were ringing our allies in Europe with 
SS-20 missiles, when they were developing high combat-efficient 
capability in the air and on the land, and when they had a massive ICBM 
force threatening the United States.

                              {time}  1130

  We needed to spend more, but we have cut too much. We cut too much in 
the Clinton administration, and I am sad to say that this defense 
budget does not do much above the Clinton administration's level. It 
does a little, but it does not do much.
  That takes me, Mr. Speaker, to my next subject, which is China. I 
spoke yesterday during the vote to give China Most Favored Nation 
trading status. That means we are going to give them the same 
privileges in trade with the United States that we give our best 
friends around the world.
  I argued that, in 1941, we were sending American steel to Japan to 
build the Japanese fleet, we were sending petroleum to Japan to fuel 
that fleet, and we had one Congressman, Carl Anderson, who said 6 
months before Pearl Harbor: If we have to fight the Japanese fleet, we 
are going to fight a fleet that is built with American steel and 
powered with American petroleum. Six months later, we had thousands of 
Americans dead, lots of planes shot down, lots of ships destroyed by a 
Japanese fleet fueled with American petroleum and built with American 
steel.
  I analogize that to China. We are sending $80 billion a year more in 
China than they are sending to us, so they end up with $80 billion more 
American dollars than we end up with dollars from them. They are taking 
those dollars, Mr. Speaker, and they are buying and building a war 
machine that one day may kill Americans on the battlefield. They bought 
the Sovremenny class missile destroyers from Russia. Those were 
designed with Sunburn missiles for one purpose: to kill American 
aircraft carriers. And they bought those after they had been 
embarrassed over the Taiwan issue by the United States, and they vowed 
never to be embarrassed again.
  So they bought the Sovremenny class missile destroyers. They are 
buying air-to-air refueling capability from the Russians. They are 
buying high-performance SU-27 fighter aircraft from the Russians; and, 
yesterday, as we walked out of the vote giving China Most Favored 
Nation trading status and guaranteeing this flow of American dollars to 
China, we walked out to look at a headline in the Washington Post and 
the newspapers around the country saying China completes $2 billion 
deal with Russia to now buy 38 SU-30 aircraft. Those are attack 
aircraft, from Russia. And we also noted that they are now Russia's 
biggest customer for Russia's war machine.
  So we spent trillions of dollars offsetting Russia's war machine 
during the Cold War, and now we are rebuilding that war machine with 
American trade dollars in China.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to close on a good note. Hopefully, 
there is a good note here. One hope, and I think this is the hope of 
all Members who understand the plight of America's military today, 
Democrat and Republican, I think certainly all members of the Committee 
on Armed Services, we need that $18 billion. We are told we might not 
even get the $18 billion above the Clinton budget that we thought we 
were going to get and which we made a place for in the budget a few 
months ago.
  If we do not get that $18 billion, Mr. Speaker, we are going to see 
more planes that cannot get off the ground; we are going to see more 
empty ammo pouches with the Army and Marine Corps personnel who have to 
defend this country; we are going to see more spare parts shortages 
throughout the services; we are going to see more substandard housing 
for military families; and we are going to see a continued decline of 
America's military strength.

[[Page 14020]]

  Now, we did do something very phenomenal last week; and we recognized 
this in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. That was that we did 
shoot down a bullet with a bullet in a national missile defense test.
  Now, I have put up here, Mr. Speaker, the results of the last eight 
Patriot 3 tests. That is our smaller defensive system that handles 
Scud-type missiles, and I put it up here to show that, in fact, we are 
now hitting a bullet with a bullet with missile defense. We can shoot a 
Scud missile that goes faster than a .30-06 bullet, that is a high-
powered rifle bullet with a Patriot 3 missile that also goes faster 
than a .30-06 bullet. We have had now eight out of nine successful 
intercepts.
  Mr. Speaker, at about 11:09 on Saturday night last Saturday, 148 
miles above the earth in the mid-Pacific, we hit a Minuteman missile 
launched out of Vandenberg, California, going some 11,000 feet per 
second. That is about four times the speed of a .30-06 bullet. We hit 
it with an Interceptor from Kwajalein Island, 4,800 miles from the 
west. We launched that Interceptor, and it also had a speed about four 
times faster than a .30-06 bullet, and they collided 148 miles above 
the earth.
  That utilized radar capability, the Beal Air Force station in 
California, also our ex-band radar on Kwajalein, also radar at Hawaii 
with hundreds and hundreds of Navy and Air Force assets monitoring that 
test. And with some 35,000 Americans, whether they were members of the 
Army that helped develop the radar or the Air Force team that launched 
the missile from Vandenberg Air Base or the Navy and Coast Guard that 
provided security, some 35,000 plus Americans, engineers, scientists, 
technicians, blue collar workers, participated in making that test a 
success.
  It was a great day for the United States, but it was a chart along a 
very difficult road of trying to achieve missile defense.
  The Bush administration has the right idea about missile defense. 
They know it is necessary because we live in an age of missiles. We 
found that out when we had a number of our personnel killed in Desert 
Storm by a ballistic missile launched by Saddam Hussein at an American 
force concentration. We can defend today, even though we have a 
weakened defense, we still have defenses against ships, tanks, 
aircraft. We have no defense against an incoming ICBM coming into this 
country.
  So that is why the administration is working with the Russians to try 
to develop a cooperation that will allow us to deploy defenses, and it 
is why also the Bush administration has the right idea, that if we 
cannot make an agreement with the Russian, it is in our national 
interests to build a missile defense system, because it is the United 
States Government that has a constitutional responsibility to its 
people to provide for national security. National security must now and 
forever on include defense against incoming ballistic missiles.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I would hope that the administration would work 
overtime to try to increase this defense budget. Let us not look back 
on this era of relative prosperity when the American people are doing 
well as an era that was similar to the era immediately preceding Korea, 
when we decided that there would not be any more wars and that we did 
not need to have a military that was ready to go. Then, on June 6 of 
1950, we found ourselves pushed down the Korean peninsula by a third-
rate military; and when the dust had cleared, over 30,000 Americans lay 
dead because we had underestimated the danger of the world; and we had 
also underestimated the drawdown of the American military that took 
place after World War II.
  Mr. Speaker, we must keep a strong military. That is the 
underpinnings of our foreign policy, which is ultimately the 
underpinnings of our economic policy. So let us try to get that $18 
billion, Mr. Speaker. It is crucial to everybody that wears a uniform 
in the United States, and it is crucial to every American.

                          ____________________