[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4831]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        HONORING FORMER REPRESENTATIVE BILL DICKINSON OF ALABAMA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to rise and talk a little bit 
about a great former member who just passed away, Bill Dickinson of 
Alabama.
  Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues, when I came in in 1981 and campaigned 
with Ronald Reagan in that great year in which we brought back a policy 
of peace through strength to the United States Government with respect 
to foreign policy, I was lucky enough to be placed on the Armed 
Services Committee and Bill Dickinson was the new ranking Republican 
member.
  In those days, we had 1,000 petty officers a month leaving the U.S. 
Navy because they couldn't afford to take care of their families on the 
pay they were making; we had 50 percent of our aircraft or more which 
were not combat mission capable; we had what was called a hollow Army, 
that is, an Army within which skilled people were leaving at an 
enormous rate. And, under Ronald Reagan's leadership and Bill 
Dickinson's hard work as the ranking member of the Armed Services 
Committee, along with lots of right-thinking Republicans and Democrats, 
we reversed that trend. We rebuilt national security.
  I will always remember Bill working the budgets that Ronald Reagan 
brought in his early years, that 12.6 percent pay raise that we brought 
in early to start moving military families up to scale, the new 
equipment budgets that we brought in. The decision that we were going 
to stand up to the Soviet Union, and those decisions that the President 
made like the one that he made to move ground launch cruise missiles 
and Pershing 2s into Europe as the Russians were then ringing our 
allies with SS-20 missiles, and the fact that that helped to bring them 
to the table, helped to bring them to the point where they picked up 
the phone and said, ``We want to talk.''
  I can remember Bill Dickinson standing tall and supporting the 
President very strongly when, in Central America, we saw the FMLN in El 
Salvador, the Communist group that was taking arms and materiel from 
the Soviet Union and trying to establish a Communist beachhead in El 
Salvador.

                              {time}  1645

  I remember the United States moving in to provide a shield around 
that fragile new government that was standing up, a democratically 
elected government. I remember Bill Dickinson, as a ranking member of 
the Armed Services Committee, spearheading support in Congress for that 
very important initiative.
  Time after time, Bill Dickinson moved to the fore to make sure that 
we rebuilt America's forces, that we operated under a policy of peace 
through strength. And he was, indeed, Ronald Reagan's strongest ally 
with respect to national security in the House of Representatives.
  Bill was a wonderful guy, a great guy with a sense of humor, a guy 
who was elected in a district in Alabama that until 1964 had not been 
Republican for 100 years. But he kept that district with a good sense 
of humor, a good sense of touch with the people, being approachable, 
and having a very strong, conservative peace-through-strength 
philosophy that resonated not only with his constituents but with the 
American people.
  To Barbara and the children, we express our greatest condolences. We 
have lost a great former representative, and I have lost a great 
friend.

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