Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt].

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt]. (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The amendment before the House is quite simple. It says, and I can read it because it is so brief, ``None of the funds provided in this act for the national missile defense program may be obligated for space-based interceptors or space-based directed energy weapons.'' The intent of this amendment is to have the Pentagon focus on effective missile defense; that is, theater missile defense and other national missile defense initiatives which have great promise, and not to spin off back into space in the fantasy of star wars once again. As we know from our last experiences with star wars, it has an infinite capacity to consume funds. We have had much debate here today about scarce resources at the Pentagon, and I believe adopting this amendment will help the Pentagon to focus more effectively on the technologies that have the most promise to defend the United States of America and defend our allies. It will not impact theater missile defense; it will not impact the Nautilus program, which is being developed in concert with Israel; it will not impact the Navy Upper Tier program; it will not impact the three-plus-three BMDO proposal; it will not impact the LEAP proposal of the Navy; it will not impact the EKV proposal of the Army. But what it does, within the context of this bill, which will provide $3.2 billion for missile defense programs of all types, it will prevent movement and dispersal of scarce funds into space-based fantasies. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, when I discussed it earlier with the ranking member----

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, we talked about 30. Did the gentleman just say 20?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, the question before the Members of the House is quite simple. Will the Pentagon be exempt from the cuts which we are going to exact on every other part of the Government as we move toward a balanced budget in the year 2002, something that is absolutely essential to the economic security of our Nation? Is the Pentagon spending every penny and has it spent so well every penny in its whole budget that it should be exempt and not only exempt but it should get an add-on over and above that requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and the President of the United States? Should they be exempt from procurement reform, prioritization, new efficiencies? I think not. I will use a couple of examples. I mentioned one earlier. In a GAO audit of procurement by the Department of Defense over the last decade, there is $15 billion, B, billion dollars totally unaccounted for, $15 billion was spent for which no one can find a receipt, a disbursement or a purpose, $15 billion. What was it spent on? Was it spent on essential things, perhaps it could have acquired the GPS little handout units and the little laptop computers that will cost about 5,000 bucks a plane for the 500 planes in the fleet, $2.5 million. That would be a tiny fraction of the missing $15 billion, but it was not spent there. I believe if Congress begins to clamp down a little bit on the mismanagement at the Pentagon that they will spend the money more wisely and effectively and defend America even better than they have in the past, certainly more cost effectively. Fifteen billion dollars. If any other agency of the Government could not account for $15 billion of spending over the last decade, there would be an uproar like we would not believe, but here it is ho hum, give them more money. If they cannot account for $15 billion, let us increase their budget this year by $11 billion. Then there is the warehouse situation. We have done a little bit of looking at what is in the warehouses. It is essential that we must have more money this year. Well, there is $36 billion of equipment in the warehouses that exceeds the 100-year requirement of the Pentagon for operations, including wartime contingencies. This is $36 billion of wasteful acquisition, things sitting in warehouse, vacuum tubes for equipment that no longer exists. They did get rid of the leather stock, I believe, for chaps for the cavalry, but there is still other things in 10 million cubic feet of warehouses. Yet this is the same agency that we are told has to be able to write its own ticket that comes forward and tells us what additional acquisitions they need with no scrutiny. Now, I believe the original request was excessive, given these points. But certainly the request before this body which busts the budget and puts us on an upward trend in the deficit next year is not warranted nor necessary. I believe that the Pentagon, the defense of the United States and certainly the taxpayers of the United States, we would all benefit if very simply we just said no. You got a lot of money over there. Spend it a little more effectively. Figure out what you did with that $15 billion and maybe you can spend it again, or how about you figure out what to do. Let us have a garage sale with the $36 billion of equipment that exceeds the 100-year operational requirement of the military even in wartime contingency. Maybe there are some antique collectors somewhere that would like to buy some of that stuff.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote and, pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I remember the debate last year when the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Edwards] stood on this side and a Member on the other side kept saying, ``I wish you would not say star wars.'' We are not talking about star wars. We are not going back to star wars. Star wars was a failure. We are talking about ballistic missile defense and things that are workable. Mr. Chairman, here we are now a year later, and we want to open that door again. As we heard so ably discussed by the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt] and the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks], there is technology out there which exists, which can potentially defend the United States against these threats that we hear so much about, the rogue nations and the single or the few multiple missiles. But what we are talking about here, if this amendment is defeated, is opening the door again to the star wars fantasy to spend another $30 billion to $60 million, which is estimated by the majority's own Congressional Budget Office. They came up with the $30 billion to $60 billion estimate for star wars. That is why the bill was pulled about a week and a half ago from the floor of the House. So let us focus our scarce resources on something that might provide benefit for the United States of America in terms of defending our own Nation against rogue nations, which might, in fact already has defended our troops when they are deployed overseas hopefully defend some of our allies overseas in the co-development with Israel of the Nautilus program. This amendment allows the TMD, the Nautilus, the Navy Upper Tier, the 3 plus 3 BMDO, the LEAP, the EKV; all those programs can go forward. They are all technologies that have a good chance of working. What it does say is that we are not going to move ahead to deployment of a $30- to $60 billion boondoggle that will not do anything to defend our Nation.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Woolsey]. (Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, could I inquire as to the remaining time?

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate some of the points made by the gentlewoman from Colorado. There is a concern that a number of amendments that might come toward the ends of consideration as we adopt a 3- or 4-hour limit will get short shift if we spend a predominant amount of time on amendments that do not have much significance to some Members. The point is, we adopted a bill authorizing over $240 billion of expenditures for the Pentagon with not one single cutting amendment allowed. In fact, the gentlewoman from Oregon, I recall, wanted to offer an amendment, I think, to cut $1, and that was not allowed, which is to say that we are assured that this agency, this one agency of the Government is so unique. The largest agency of the Government with the largest budget that there is, not a single dollar of waste; that they could not benefit from any oversight from the Congress or any scrutiny of their programs or any active debate on some of the commitments that we are making that we will carry out for decades to come and cost tens and thousands of billions of dollars. Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that and I do not think Members on that side of the aisle believe that. There is $15 billion that has gone missing, the accountants cannot find, over the last 10 years. If we had any other agency that could not account for an average of $1.5 billion a year of expenditures without any sort of receipt, I believe we would have special investigators and special prosecutors and special hearings and special committees. But that is a fact. That has happened at the Pentagon. Mr. Speaker, we must have a full, active, and open debate here about the largest single budget, the largest single employer in the Federal Government. And I would hope that we do not find constraints being adopted. This House was scheduled to be in session today, it was scheduled to be in session tomorrow, it was scheduled to be in session on Monday. And now we are hearing we have to skate out here tonight so that the east coast Members can catch their planes. There is only one an hour. Those of us from the west coast, it is just about too late to get home tonight. Let us stay here as late as is necessary to have a full and open debate.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, we have had a lot of red herrings drug across the floor here. Rabies is not affected by this amendment. Human health and safety activities are totally exempt. Whether it is rabid animals or problem animals, those things can still be taken care of by ADC. We have heard about environmental concerns from the other side. I am pleased to finally hear environmental concerns from the other side from the gentleman from Texas, maybe not a first but definitely somewhat unprecedented. We accommodate endangered and threatened species in this amendment. It does not affect control efforts that deal with the preservation or safety of endangered or threatened species. Quite simply, the amendment goes to the heart of this issue, which is, should the U.S. taxpayers subsidize a program of poisoning, baiting, killing, shooting from airplanes and others of predator species that may or may not be a particular problem, should they continue to avoid their mandate that they use other controls, should we spend $14 million doing this? Maybe we should go out and have a Federal program to acquire dogs. We could buy Great Pyrenees, kuvasz, Komondors, Bouvier des Flandres. You can get a heck of a lot of them for $14 million, and if they live 10 years, we would not have to spend any more money. The issue is, many ranchers have become dependent upon practices that are not the most prudent practices, to have calving or birthing of lambs in areas that are problem areas without any herders present, without themselves being present. As we saw earlier, actually more of the livestock die with calving problems, 17 percent, than with the predation problems, 3 percent. But in any case, they are saying we need this program. If they need the program, they should pay for it themselves. They should go to their county or State, have the county or State pay for it. It is time to put this Federal anachronism to bed. At a time when we are cutting back on every other program here in order to get to a balanced budget, we should no longer subsidize the indiscriminate killing by the animal disease control people and we should continue in the areas of health, safety, airports, and endangered species.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman should read the amendment before he rises with such extraordinary charges that the amendment will be responsible for the collapse of American democracy and the final victory of the totalitarian Soviet state, which I think was part of the statement there. It has exceptions for human health and safety. It has exceptions for endangered or threatened species. The endangered, threatened species are often dealt with in a better manner by fish and wildlife, who has a line item in their budget. All this does is eliminate a subsidy for a ridiculous anachronistic program first implemented in 1931 that has no discernible impact. It has had an impact, and it is inadvertent, against nontarget species, poisoning of nontarget species, the destruction of predators which, like coyotes, in many cases prey on rodents or on groundhogs and gophers and things which cause problems with pastures and with horses breaking their legs. So the gentleman, by killing coyotes, is responsible for people whose horses have put their legs in gopher holes, broken them, fallen and then been killed. I will not make that charge, but his charges were equally irresponsible. This is an absurd subsidy to a selected few, a very small percentage of privileged western livestock producers. It is something that if they need, they can contract for themselves without a subsidy from the U.S. taxpayers to continue this ineffective and indiscriminate program. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The issue here is a subsidy, subsidy. That side of the aisle is consistently against government programs and subsidies except when it goes to their own parochial interests. This bill does nothing, nothing to prevent predator control by individuals, by counties, by States. As I said previously, when I was a county commissioner, we canceled the predator control program, walked away from the Federal match. They engaged in private predator control, and the losses did not go up. But that is the issue here. Will we continue a $13.4 million subsidy to a selected few of the livestock producers in the Western United States? As I stated earlier, yes, the losses are largely due to predation. Almost 3 percent of the losses last year were due to predation. The other 97 percent were due to a number of causes, some of which are not preventable, like weather, but others which could be preventable with research, like respiratory problems, 27 percent; digestive problems, 25 percent. Fifty-two percent of the losses in this industry were due to respiratory and digestive problems. Maybe we should invest this money in our veterinary schools. Maybe we should invest it in a vaccination program for livestock. I do not know. But there would be a heck of a lot better return than the 3 percent that was due to predation. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Brown]. (Mr. BROWN of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, no, I do not touch the $3,463,460 for crop control.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, yes, the Department of Agriculture's own statistics for 1995 show that 97 percent of the mortality was due to causes other than predation, the largest being respiratory problems, 27 percent; second largest, digestive; third largest, calving problems. Perhaps if we applied more money to research in these areas there would be greater gains. But we have had this animal predator control program since 1931, and we have today more coyotes in the United States than when they started the program but they are more dispersed, and there are other problems that have been a consequence, particularly inadvertent kills of nontarget species. Mr. Chairman, I had a constituent whose dog was killed, and when she ran to rescue the dog who had gotten into one of those M44 explosive devices, she also had a cyanide poisoning.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I was a county commissioner when we were in tough budget times, and despite the Federal share, we eliminated the Animal Damage Control Program in a county as large as the State of Connecticut with an extensive livestock industry, and we heard that there was going to be cataclysm, all of these deaths were going to occur of the livestock. Mr. Chairman, know what happened? Nothing. Nothing. There were no additional deaths in the livestock, the sheep, or the cattle industry, in a county the size of Connecticut, when we did away with this program with its indiscriminate killing of predators. In fact, it reduced other pest species such as rodents and things which the coyotes primarily prey upon. The gentleman talked about human health and safety. There is a line item in the ADC budget for human health and safety. If that line item at $3,197,040 is inadequate, then I would certainly join with the gentleman in a unanimous-consent request to shift some of the funds into that line item. But it has its own line item. This is only the livestock line item that is affected here.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.