Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from California, the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Procurement of the Committee on National Security.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the reason they could have been destroyed in the field is because of those Scuds. With the F-22 and the B-2, we finally will have a capability using Link-16 from space, from our satellites, to immediately target those Scud launchers. We will be able to go after them and we will be able to destroy them. We still need to do theater missile defense. That is the other critical component in order to protect our troops in the field. I think this new revolution in stealth gives us an advantage. Why is 21 the wrong number? Twenty-one is the wrong number because in the early going, in that first 2 weeks of any war, it is sortie rate, it is how fast we can take that bomber, fly it in, drop those 16 smart bombs or those smart submunitions on the enemy and fly back out. With 21 we simply cannot generate enough sorties to take advantage of the capability, and utilize the potential of this stealthy, long-range bomber with smart inexpensive weapons. So getting up to a higher level gives us more capability. We would be able to commit 20 to a major regional contingency; we would have 10 in reserve for a second major regional contingency. I want to say something else. This Congress should never be ashamed to stand up to the Pentagon and say they are wrong. We did it on the F- 117's. The gentleman says the B-2's were not there. General Hoerner said if they had been there, and it was because they were not ready to be deployed yet, if they had been there, he would have used them just as he used the 117's. We had 27 additional 117's because this Congress had the guts to stand up and do what was right for the country. Under the Constitution of the United States that is our responsibility, not to just take what they give us. We have stood up to them before. We made them buy additional Sealift. They would not have had any roll-on/roll-off ships to go to the gulf if it had not been for Congress and this committee. That is why we have to from time to time stand up and do what is right for the security of this country.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman from California, who has been one of our most steadfast supporters on the B- 2 over the years. I want to point out to my colleagues in the House that there was a very positive statement in the Quadrennial Defense Review which said that in the halt phase, when you are trying to stop the enemy from coming in, like Saddam was coming into Kuwait, that there is nothing that the United States military possesses that can do what the B-2 bomber will be able to do once we get the smart conventional submunitions on it like sensor fused weapon. Going back to the gulf war, Iran did assimilation against Saddam's division moving south and with a small number of B-2 bombers, with sensor fused weapon, they destroyed 46 percent of the mechanized vehicles in that division and rendered it destroyed in the field. That is an incredible new capability. We have never had that capability before to stop a mechanized division once it is under way. I believe that this bomber is absolutely essential to our national security. I believe that this is one of the greatest mistakes ever made by a country in its history in not funding something that will give us an asymmetrical advantage over every conceivable adversary. Because a stealth bomber with these smart weapons can attack a nation's capital, all of its industrial facilities, all of its military at the same time, if you have enough of these bombers. That is the problem. Twenty-one simply does not do the job.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I ask the gentleman for 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman from Florida yield me a minute?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I ask the gentleman for 1 additional minute.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the bill and urge my colleagues as they did on the authorization bill to defeat any amendment to strike out funding for the B-2. During that debate during the authorization bill, we were told repeatedly by the Defense Department that there was no money in the out years for funding for anything in the procurement area. I want my colleagues to know that the staff of the committee, working with me, found an account, $20 billion in DOD modernization reserve. This money was characterized by the Comptroller as a bishop's fund for the new Secretary of Defense to fund things that would come out of the Quadrennial Defense Review. Mr. Chairman, in the Quadrennial Defense Review, they did not obligate all of this money. There is still a substantial amount of money, $13 billion of the $20 billion that has not been committed. I would urge my colleagues today that that $13 billion is just about the exact amount of money that we need to go ahead and procure additional B-2 bombers. For those people who got up here and said over and over again that this is a zero sum game, it is a zero sum game, plus $20 billion in funding in the out years. I want my colleagues to be aware of this. We are going to have a spirited debate later on the B-2, but there is $20 billion out there. I would also point out that in the past, Congress, this very Congress has insisted that certain things be done in the name of national defense. Our subcommittee forced the Pentagon to build 27 additional F- 117's. The F-117 stealth aircraft were the centerpiece of the success in the war in the gulf. Stealth worked and smart weapons worked. We saved American lives.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the F-117 was the star weapon in the gulf war and it was Congress that insisted that we buy it. The gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Florida were the two principal proponents of that amendment. We also added money for sealift at the urging of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha], then chairman. That turned out to be absolutely crucial. Under the Constitution of the United States, the ultimate responsibility for defense rests with the Congress. That is why today I think we again need to stand up, tell the Pentagon they are wrong, look at the modernization reserve, and keep the money in for the B-2.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman that one area we did not look at, that was not looked at in the Quadrennial Defense Review, is our nuclear weapons. I would argue we could make a reduction ourselves in nuclear weapons and use that money to fund these conventional programs which are usable. I am a believer that nuclear weapons are there for deterrence and only deterrence, and we really do not get a hell of a lot of military capability out of them.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. I rise to express my strong support for maintaining the full fleet of 94 B-52's. In the last decade, over $4 billion has been invested to thoroughly modernize the B-52 bomber. The B-52 not only supports the air-leg of the nuclear triad, but it is also a potent conventional weapon able to carry the complete inventory of smart weapons. I assure the gentleman from North Dakota that I will work to see that the necessary funding is provided in conference to keep all 94 B-52's in the active inventory. I have discussed this with the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha] as well.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to associate myself with the gentleman's remarks. The height of the Reagan buildup ended in 1985. We have cut this budget in defense every single year. We have cut it by over $100 billion. I believe that we are now down at a point if we cut it any further, we are going to cause real problems in the military which has been deployed more than any military during the cold war. These numbers are absolutely accurate and defense spending has been cut too far.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the amendment, and I just wanted to say before I will yield, and I am going to yield to my distinguished chairman; but before I yield, I just want to say that as my colleagues know, we have always had in this House a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans who have supported national defense and national security throughout the years. One of the reasons we won the cold war: Because Congress steadfastly stood behind the administration, whether it is Democrat or Republican, and we continued to fund an adequate program for national security. We have cut that budget by $100 billion since 1985. I think that is too deep. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all the Joint Chiefs, wrote a letter to Perry saying we are $60 billion short. We need to get up to a level of $60 billion a year in procurement. We are well below that still.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young], who has done a great job, he and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha], in bringing this bill to the floor.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. DICKS. Regaining my time, I would say this to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman that what we have in the Soviet Union today is in many respects a more dangerous situation than we faced before.

Mr. DICKS. I cannot yield because I want to finish my statement. I would say that when we look at their nuclear weapons, when we look at the instability in their society, when we look at the organized crime and the Mafia, I worry about the future of Russia, and they still have nuclear weapons, and those nuclear weapons are not pointed at anybody else. We may have them off target for 5 minutes. All I would say is and then we look at Iran, Iraq, we look at North Korea, look at emerging China, and I would tell the gentleman I think, and if he looks at the program we are trying to fund and sending these kids everywhere in the world, to Haiti, to Bosnia, and to everything else, we are, the military today is more deployed than it has been, and we have cut the money by $100 billion. Now we cannot have it both ways. We cannot ask these kids to go out there and not adequately train them, adequately equip them, and I think it would be a great mistake to cut this $4 billion out in a meat ax approach here on the floor when we have got people who have always been opposed to defense, who were opposed to it during the cold war.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. I thank the gentleman for his contribution.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I will not request any additional time, and I wanted to say to my colleague from California, both colleagues from California, this last statement is the most important one. What we really have here is a wonderful opportunity to save American lives in the future. Again the gentleman from California makes the case when he says it was easy with air power in the gulf to defeat the enemy once we stopped them, but Saddam stopped himself. What if he had not stopped? We need a capability to stop him which the B-2 will give us because it can react and go anywhere in the world without having to have escort aircraft. But when it gets right down to it, when those marines came in and the RPV's were there and the guys came running out to surrender to our RPV's, what it meant was they had been bombed into oblivion because we had total control of the air and we had the right bombers. The B-2's give us greater accuracy, they give us greater capability. It is a much more lethal bomber than the B-52 and the B-1 because it can operate by itself. And so my point is what this is really about is saving American lives in the future, and that is why this is so important, and that is why this Congress cannot fold under pressure from a Pentagon that simply wants to take care of the services. We need some real thinking about the future. We need to take advantage of our technological advantage-- the B-2 represents that advantage.