Jeff Bingaman

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, this is in some ways a companion amendment to the one that I just offered a few minutes ago. The lines 21 through 23 on page 81, which I am proposing to strike, read as follows: Section 8083. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Department of Defense shall execute payment in not more than 24 days after receipt of a proper invoice. Mr. President, to the uninitiated that seems like a very apple pie kind of a proposal. Who could argue with that? The problem with that proposal, Mr. President, is that it will cost the American taxpayers, in fiscal year 1996, $750 million to advance payment by 6 days from what has been the custom in government and in industry throughout the Western World. So, Mr. President, this is a concern. Let me go to the bottom line here. We are requiring the Department of Defense to spend an extra $750 million next year by paying its bills in 24 days rather than in 30 days. We are saying by the language that I am trying to strike out of the bill here--if the language stays in there, we are saying that paying our bills 6 days earlier is a higher priority than providing funds for education, even funds for education of military personnel, such as the Senator from Vermont was talking about just a few minutes ago. We are saying that paying these bills a few days early is a higher priority than funding health care. We are saying that this is a better use of funds than anything else we have been able to come up with. Mr. President, the simple fact is, the provision in the bill that I am trying to strike out, it is not a serious provision to try to speed up payment of Government bills. If the Appropriations Committee wanted to speed up payment of Government bills by the Department of Defense and require the Department of Defense to pay its bills more quickly than any other agency of Government, then clearly what they would do is provide additional funds, additional staffing to our various contracting centers so they could gear up to do this. If this became law, this would put a significant burden on those contracting centers which no other agency of the Federal Government has to deal with and, in fact, which no private firm has to deal with. I do not believe there is a private firm in this country that has a policy of paying its bills in 24 days rather than 30 days. Let me explain to my colleagues what, with this requirement of paying bills within 24 days rather than 30 days, really is going on here. Earlier this year, much of the discussion about our defense spending was that the problem we had in our defense spending was inadequate funds for readiness. We had hearings in the Armed Services Committee, and we had speeches given saying that we had neglected readiness; the Clinton administration had neglected readiness. So the Budget Committee added both budget authority and outlays for the defense accounts, assuming that some of that [[Page S 12158]] would go to operations and maintenance, which is what we use to fund our readiness accounts. Instead, all of the additional funds that we are adding to this bill, this $7 billion, in fact, and in the authorization bill, all goes to procurement and R&D instead of to readiness. So they have $1.238 billion in outlays left over. These two provisions, the one that my previous amendment addressed and the one that this amendment is addressing, are provisions that are simply put in this bill to soak up those outlays and to preserve those until they get to conference, so that they can go to conference and have those available to be spent by the conferees on other activities. Obviously, they are not going to keep this provision in law. There is no intention to do so. I believe this is not good policy. It would be much better to strike these out and admit that the budget resolution made a mistake. If we are not going to put the money into readiness, as we originally thought we would at the time the budget resolution was written, if the problem now is weapons modernization, what we see reflected in the defense bill, the defense appropriations bill as well, then let us shift these outlays to the domestic subcommittees. We can use these funds in the Labor-HHS Subcommittee, we can use them in the VA-HUD Subcommittee, we can use them in the Interior Subcommittee, which we had a very difficult time with yesterday when we were considering it on the floor because of the drastic cuts which were required to be made in the accounts that are under the jurisdiction of those subcommittees. So, Mr. President, that is what is really going on here. There is no legitimate effort to try to speed up the payment of bills by the Department of Defense. What we are doing is we have some provisions in here--this one that I am trying to deal with in this amendment will cost the Department of Defense $750 million. So if it is dropped in conference, then there will be $750 million of outlays available for use somewhere else by the committee conferees. I think we are much better off, the American people are much better off, if we recognize we do not need these outlays, given our change in the situation as we see it. We do not need these outlays in the Department of Defense for these purposes and, accordingly, they should be spent elsewhere, or they should be applied to the deficit. There are a lot of people out there in the country who figure if you do not need to be spending that $750 million, you should not spend it. That is a hard thing for me to argue with, Mr. President. I do think the better part of valor would be for us to adopt this amendment and that way not have to explain to people in our home States why it was worth $750 million to them for the Department of Defense to pay its bills 6 days early. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I know others wish to debate the amendment. Mr. STEVENS addressed the Chair.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I thank the Chair. [[Page S 12166]] Mr. President, this amendment is sponsored by myself, Senator Lautenberg, Senator Exon, and Senator Kerrey from Nebraska. The purpose of this amendment is to provide in this bill funds for the highest priority that the Secretary of Defense has identified if we are in a position to provide any additional funds in this defense bill. As everybody here knows, the administration asked for a certain level of funding, and this body is adding $7 billion to that pursuant to the budget resolution. The Secretary told us in the Armed Services Committee that if we had any additional money--not if we had $7 billion, but if we had anything extra--we should fund what he considered ongoing operations. Those are the two operations going on in Iraq--one in northern Iraq and one in southern Iraq--we should fund the refugee support at Guantanamo, which is ongoing, and we should fund the humanitarian support and the deny-flight activities in Bosnia. He said at a very minimum next year he is going to have to spend a total of $1.188 billion on those activities. We did not in this bill fund that, and what I am proposing in this amendment is that we go ahead and fund that as he requested. In addition, we reduce the outlays in the total bill by $111 million. Now, the offset is to cancel, at least for this year, or put off, I should say, the funding of an amphibious assault ship, the LHD-7. This is a ship which the Department of Defense said they would like to come to Congress and request funds for 6 years from now, in the year 2001-- not 1996, the year 2001. The appropriators have taken the request for the 6th year and moved it forward into this next year. We do not need this ship next year. This would be the 12th LHD amphibious assault ship that we are buying. There are two under construction now. We just christened one in February of this year. Mr. President, it is not a priority for the Pentagon. It was not requested by the Pentagon in this year's budget, and it was added by the appropriators. We should delete the funding for that and spend it on the top priority of the Department of Defense. That is what the amendment does. I hope my colleagues will support the amendment.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Let me just respond very briefly. I am not arguing we should not pay our bills promptly. I pay my bills promptly. I am sure the Senator from Alaska pays his bills promptly. All of the commercial practice that I am aware of calls for people to pay their bills within 30 days. That is the practice in the Department of Defense; that is the practice in the Department of Commerce; that is the practice in the Senate; that is the practice of VISA, Mastercard, and anyplace else you look. I think there is no problem with that. I am not trying to disturb that. All I am saying is that we can save $750 million in outlay for use somewhere else in the budget by not having this provision in here that artificially says let us speed up the payments in the Department of Defense. There is not a serious effort to speed up payments in the Department of Defense. If there was a serious effort, if it was really a priority for the Congress to get these bills paid in the Department of Defense in 24 days rather than 30, like everybody else in the Western World--and maybe the Eastern World, too--I would say put some money into these contracting centers; give them additional people. Let us tell them to get these things out the door. I have heard no complaints in my office about them not paying their bills on time. I am just saying, here is $750 million in outlays that can be better used somewhere [[Page S 12159]] else in the Federal budget. We cannot get the smallest amounts of funding added to for these activities. The Senator from Vermont was here talking about the importance of education. I have heard so many speeches about the importance of education. You ask your colleagues to support adding $20 million to education and you would think you asked for Fort Knox. Here we have $750 million of budget authority--$750 million that is in this bill simply to speed up the payment of our bills out of the Department of Defense. It is not a priority, Mr. President. It is something we ought to strike out of here. I hope my colleagues will support the efforts to do so. As I understand it from the earlier statements of the Senator from Alaska, he intends to move to table this amendment. We will have 2 minutes of debate on each side prior to the final vote, is that correct? Mr. INOUYE addressed the Chair.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, if it is appropriate at this time, I will send another amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I have no objection to that.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate that clarification. The language I am trying to strike out is limited to large business concerns, and there may be some provision elsewhere that applies to smaller businesses and their progress payments. But let me again make the point that I was making initially. That is, we do not have a problem with the profitability of our large defense contractors. They are all profitable today. They are all reporting record profits today. Their stocks reflect that. In all respects they are doing extremely well. And I wish them well. I have no problem with that. I think the suggestion that the Senator from Alaska made that the normal practice is to make 100 percent progress payments is just not in my recollection of how business is done. I have been in Government a while. But I can remember before I got in the Government hiring contractors to do some simple things like building an office building for me. I had a contract where I made progress payments as that office building was completed. There was no suggestion by any contractor that I should make 100 percent progress payments as we went forward. The understanding was we would keep back some of the money until the project was completed, and that was an incentive to the contractor to complete the project on time and to my specifications. So I can remember building an office project or an office building in Santa Fe, NM, and the progress payments there were 75 percent. I cannot believe that these various defense contractors whose names I read off before, which are some of the largest, most successful, most profitable corporations in the country, are not used to doing business on the same basis. So the argument that we have to raise these progress payments this year in order to look out for the financial well-being of these large defense contractors is somewhat hard for me to believe. I strongly believe that we have here $488 million that we could save in this bill. I think the simple truth is, this bill as it came out of the committee has in it nearly $1.3 billion of outlays; that the budget resolution, as I understand it, has about $1.3 billion of outlays that are not needed, and, therefore, we have provisions like this in the bill to try to soak up some of those outlays. Mr. President, I do not believe it is reasonable to tell the American people we are going to charge them $488 million next year in order that we can advance these progress payments or increase them to 85 percent for major defense contractors. We have other needs in this country for some of this money. Clearly, if we have an extra $488 million, we ought to spend it on some of those other needs and not be spending it on this kind of provision. [[Page S 12155]] So I do hope that my colleagues will support the effort to strike the provision when it comes to a vote later.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, this is a very straightforward amendment to cut $90 million from the bill. This was added to fund three antiarmor munitions. There is $20 million for the TOW 2B antiarmor missile, $40 million for the Hellfire II, and $30 million for the CBU- 87 combined-effect munitions bomb. These three munitions have one thing in common, Mr. President. That is: There was no money requested for them in this 1996 defense budget; there was no money requested for them in any of the next 6 years or any time, to our knowledge. The inspector general has issued a report and sent us a letter indicating that they are not needed; and they are excess. Let me read one short paragraph from the report. It says: Based on . . . the requirements data, the Army and Air Force inventories of TOW 2B's missiles and CBU-87 bombs significantly exceed the amounts of those two munitions that the services project they would use in two major regional contingencies. The same thing is said down here about the Hellfire II. Mr. President, this is a very clear choice. People are choosing between the taxpayers of the country and a few defense contractors. There is no need for these weapons. In some of the earlier amendments we have dealt with, the argument has been made that maybe they are not asked for next year, but sometime, 5, 6 years from now, the Department would like to have them. These are not requested at any time. They are excess. We do not need them. We have enough. If there has ever been an amendment where people have a clear choice between the taxpayer and a few defense contractors, this is the amendment. I hope the Senate will not table this amendment and will vote to save this $90 million. I yield the floor, Mr. President.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just take another few minutes to conclude my argument in favor of this amendment, which I do think is a very straightforward amendment. The Senator from Arizona says he has been contacted by acquisition people in the Army who favor procurement of more of these weapons. I am not familiar with who might have contacted him. All I know is the Department of Defense did not request them; the Inspector General of the Department of Defense says they are not needed. There is no indication that we received in the Armed Services Committee that they are in any way needed. I grant you they are authorized in the authorization bill, and that is just as egregious a mistake as appropriating the money for them is in this bill. I think there is really no argument that I know of that any of the Services feel they have an insufficient quantity of the TOW 2B or the Hellfire or this bomb. So I think, clearly, the need is not there. Let me also say, I do not disagree with anything that the Senator from Alaska or the Senator from Arizona said about the value of these weapons. There is no dispute about that. They are excellent missiles. They are excellent bombs. The only question is, when are we going to quit buying them? How many do we have to have in excess? How big does the inventory have to be before we finally say, ``Fine, we have plenty, we have enough to fight two regional conflicts at the same time,'' which is a fairly major statement in and of itself. Mr. President, at some point, we have to be honest with the American people and say, ``As stewards of your tax money, we are going to only spend that money on things that are needed.'' These are not needed. That is the simple fact of it. They are not requested. They are not needed. They are not anywhere in this 6-year defense plan that the Department of Defense has sent to us. As I say, I cannot go into much more detail about what is in the classified report that we have on this issue from the Inspector General. Quite frankly, I think it is classified because the facts contained in it would probably be an embarrassment to the Department. For whatever reason, it is classified. We do have one page which is unclassified from the report. Let me just make reference to that. It says in here: The Services' processes for determining quantitative requirements for munitions to defeat armored targets needed improvement. There is a euphemism if you ever heard a euphemism, Mr. President. Defense Week says that the IG report says that they have overestimated their need by $15 billion. This unclassified page from the report says that their ways of determining quantitative requirements needed improvement. I agree, they do need improvement. They say here that the Services' processes needed improvement because * * * the Services used incorrect quantities of threat systems that were in the hands of potential enemies. That is, they have misassessed potential threats. They say that their processes need improvement because of their uncoordinated shares of threat systems that each Service would be responsible for defeating. To put that in plain English, Mr. President, we had each of the Services preparing to fight the war by themselves. When the Department of Defense finally stepped in and said, ``Let's audit this situation, let's look at what the whole inventory is,'' they said, ``We do not need the Army to have enough to fight the next war, and the Air Force enough to fight the next war, and the Navy enough to fight the next war. We just need enough to fight the next war.'' So that is basically the conclusion. I will cite one other statement in this unclassified page from the classified report. It says: As reported in our separate audit reports to the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps, the above conditions resulted in the Services overstating their quantitative requirements for antiarmor munitions by more than $15.5 billion. Mr. President, it is unconscionable for us to sit here and add more money for munitions that are not requested, that are not needed, that we have excess inventories of already. And that is precisely what this bill calls for today. My amendment will correct that. It will save the taxpayers of the country $90 million. I know $90 million does not sound like a lot of money in Washington, but it is a reasonable amount of money for most Americans. And most Americans would say, ``If you don't need to spend that $90 million for additional missiles and bombs of this type, then why should you spend it?'' And that is basically the point of my amendment. I hope very much my colleagues will support the amendment. If the Senator from Alaska is ready to yield back his time, then I will yield back mine. Mr. President, I address a question, if I can, to the Senator from Alaska and ask if we can have the same agreement with regard to the 2 minutes of explanation on both sides, once we do have a few Senators, if he is to stack the votes.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me reserve the remainder of my time and allow the Senator from Alaska, or anybody else, to respond, if they would like.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, the purpose, as it is stated here in the amendment, is to reduce funding for the TOW 2B by $20 million; the Hellfire II by $40 million; and the CBU-87 by $30 million, which are munitions that have been determined by the inspector general of the Department of Defense as being excess to the requirements of the Armed Forces. Mr. President, this issue first came to our attention because Ed McGaffigan, who works on defense issues for me, was reading Defense Week, the July 17 edition of Defense Week. There is an article on the front page of that publication. By way of compliment to them, I think they do good work in keeping us apprised of defense issues. This headline says, ``IG''--or inspector general--says ``Services Miscount Future Munitions Needs by $15 Billion.'' The first sentence of the article says: The Army, Navy and Air Force have overstated by $15.5 billion their respective requirements for anti-armor munitions planned for purchase between fiscal years 1996 and beyond 2001, the Pentagon's Inspector General has concluded in a new classified report. Mr. President, obviously that report, since it is classified, I am not in a position to go into the detail of that report, except to recount what the press has reported. But the simple fact is, we have got three types of munitions, two types of missiles, and then in addition to the two types of missiles, we have got the bombs. So let me just say very briefly the TOW 2B is a ground-to-ground missile which is intended to target tanks. The Hellfire is an air-to- ground missile that is shot from helicopters, again targeting tanks. And then the CBU-87, of course, is a bomb. It is a combined-effect munitions bomb. The simple fact is, Mr. President, that none of these items were requested by the Department of Defense in the budget they sent to us. None of these items are in the so-called future-year defense plan. Always before in the earlier amendments that I have heard offered here on this bill, people say, well, maybe it is not requested for next year but it is requested for a future year. None of these are requested for any future year, even 6 years out. None of these are needed, according to the inspector general of the Department of Defense. So, let me just briefly say that the inspector general has done a study of this in depth. Congress received that study on June 29. And the report summarizes a whole series of ongoing work that the inspector general has done. The report essentially says that each of the Services, especially the Army, but each of them, has or is planning to have more munitions than it needs to carry out its responsibilities under the two-major-regional-contingency scenario which is presently what we are planning for in the Bottom-Up Review. The reason is that the Army was planning to fight the war by itself and planning to kill every piece of armor in both theaters in these two regional contingencies. Other Services were also planning to fight the war essentially by themselves. When the capabilities of the other Services are taken into account, we are planning to buy much more in munitions than we need. But even the Department of Defense is not planning to buy these. They did not request them. Once we saw this article, we wrote a letter to the inspector general, on July 27, to ask whether the add-ons in the bill, which, as I said before several times, were not requested, whether those add-ons were consistent with the inspector general's findings. I received an answer on the 2d of August. Let me read the second paragraph of that letter to you, Mr. President. This is the inspector general of the Department of Defense saying--this is a quotation: Based on use of the fiscal year 1996 requirements data, the Army and Air Force inventories of TOW 2B missiles and CBU-87 bombs significantly exceed the amounts of those two munitions that the Services project they would use in two major regional contingencies. The Army inventory of Hellfire II missiles will equal the amount of munitions that would be expended in the contingencies after the Army received the missiles currently on contract. Further, the Services have significant quantities of previous configurations of the TOW and Hellfire missile systems, as well as significant quantities of cluster bombs that were replaced by CBU-87 bombs. We are not aware of any compelling need to procure more of those weapons than the Department requested for fiscal year 1996. Mr. President, the inspector general says they are not aware of any compelling need to procure what is in this bill and what my amendment would propose to delete. Mr. President, I cannot think of a clearer example for this Senate to deal with than the one that is presented by this amendment. It is a question of whether the Senate is willing to save $90 million of taxpayer money by refusing to spend it on excess munitions that the Pentagon says they do not need, that the inspector general of the Pentagon says they do not need, that nobody has requested, and that have been added into this bill by the subcommittee as they marked up the bill. I think the only responsible course is to adopt the amendment which I am offering here and to cancel the planned expenditure of this $90 million, Mr. President. The defense bill cannot be seen by the American people as a jobs bill. We cannot just look to which Senator has some defense contractor that they want to do a favor for. We do not need these munitions. There is no justification for buying them. We should not use hard-earned taxpayer dollars to purchase these munitions. And I know of no argument to the contrary. Mr. President, I ask how much of my time remains?

Mr. BINGAMAN. We can indicate it will take no more than 30 minutes equally divided. Is that reasonable? That would get us to 9.

Mr. BINGAMAN. There is no time agreement. I advise the Senator from Alaska it will take 10 to 15 minutes on my part and whatever time the Senator would ask. I do not need a time agreement.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just state for my colleagues the purpose for this amendment, and it is stated here on the amendment that I submitted. The purpose is---- Let me first clarify, Mr. President. Is there any time agreement on this?

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I earlier sent an amendment to the desk. I ask that it be called up at this time.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside until after completion of the presentation by the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I also ask if the Senator from Minnesota [[Page S 12171]] will allow me to send an amendment to the desk for consideration, and then I will lay it aside so he can proceed with his own amendment.

Mr. BINGAMAN. My own view would be it is reasonable to request they be filed or sent to the managers by 8:30, and it is probably not reasonable to ask us to actually call them up for debate here in the Senate.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, is the unanimous-consent request that the amendments be offered or that the amendments be filed? It has been stated both ways.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I will yield it back.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, do I have remaining time?

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield myself 3 of the 4 minutes. If I can be notified at the end of that time, then I will yield the last minute to the Senator from Ohio. Mr. President, these two provisions, which are the subject of the next two amendments, are provisions which are hard to understand unless you understand the context. The first of these amendments strikes a provision that is in the bill that increases progress payments to defense contractors from 75 percent to 85 percent. It is for large defense contractors. There is clearly no need for us to do this. All of these contractors are profitable. There has been no complaint about the current procedure where we pay 75 percent in progress payments. This provision is in the bill not to address a need. It is in the bill simply to soak up $488 million in outlays which the Defense Subcommittee did not want to leave unused. This provision would also deny all discretion to contracting officers on whether or not to make these payments, even if the contractor is not performing. They would have to make 85 percent progress payments if this provision remained in the bill, which it will not. This provision will be dropped in conference, and the funds that are protected here, as outlays, will be used for other purposes. That is the whole idea of having this provision in the bill. There are better uses for this $488 million in outlays. We could use it for deficit reduction, we could use it for some domestic accounts. Clearly, I urge my colleagues to vote to strike the provision. [[Page S 12167]] Let me also address the second of these. The second provision is also designed to soak up outlays in the bill--$750 million of outlays, to be specific. It requires the Pentagon to pay its bills in 24 days instead of in 30 days like everybody else in the commercial world and in Government. There is not a serious effort to speed up payment. When added to the previous provision, what it does is it protects in this defense appropriations bill $1.238 billion in outlays. Mr. President, what happened here, very simply, is that this bill was marked up, it was sent to CBO; CBO came back to the committee and said, ``You have not spent all your money.'' And they said, ``OK, in order to spend the rest, we will put these provisions in and we will drop them in conference and spend it on something else.'' That is exactly what is going on here. I think we ought to strike these provisions and use this money--keep this money for future needs. It will certainly be needed after this famous train wreck we are all expecting to occur around here in October. I yield the remaining minute to the Senator from Ohio.