Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Reclaiming my time, even in the Committee on Appropriations, we are not that brazen, I would assure my friend from Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, the point is here, there is not a taking, because the company can come in, they can get a habitat conservation plan. They can work out this problem with the Fish and Wildlife Service. They do not need to be exempted.

Mr. DICKS

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the only thing I would say to the gentleman is that the President went out to California, but what he was out there talking about is a program that enjoys bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, and that is the C-17, unquestioned military value. They had some problems producing it for several years, but they finally got their act together and it is now a very good aircraft. I think we have got to be careful here in trying to justify defense expenditures based on companies and jobs. If we start doing that, I think we get into the public works scam.

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

Mr. DICKS. I concur with the gentleman. I think we should try to work with the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey]. But the one think I do worry about is sometimes there are occasions when Congress says we want them to build something or buy something. I remember the SL-7 incident where the Navy steadfastly said, ``We don't need to have these fast sealift ships'' and Congress said, ``Yes, you must buy them.'' They probably did not have a mission statement or something like that. Therefore, we would have not gotten the ships that were absolutely essential to moving the forces out to the gulf. I worry that without knowing the implications of this or having talked to the Pentagon about this, and I do not believe this amendment was offered either in the subcommittee or in the full committee where we would have had an opportunity to really take a look at it. I would not forgo the opportunity of trying to work something out with the gentleman, but I think this is very dangerous when we do not know the full implications.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that both the F- 15E and the F-16 are not stealthy aircraft, and there has been a proliferation of surface-to-air missiles, including the SA-10, which is a threat to any nonstealthy aircraft that flies today. So if we are going to send our young men and women into combat in these aircraft, we need to have a stealthy airplane. I have been a major advocate for stealth because it saves money and it saves lives. We can send them into the most heavily defended areas and with standoff weapons take out the surface-to-air missiles where conventional planes would be shot down.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief, and I appreciate the gentleman from Florida yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, the F-22 is the Air Force's No. 1 priority. I think this has been an outstanding program. My only concern about it, frankly, is quite the contrary of my good friend from Wisconsin. I think we are going at this program too slowly and we are going to wind up spending more money on it because we are dragging it out. Mr. Chairman, to cut this program this significantly this year would delay it even further and completely disrupt this R&D program. This plane will give us stealth capability and the highest military capability for the future. Our committee is just as concerned as anyone about long-range power projection and tac air, and we have ordered a study to look at these two issues. I am prepared to wait and see what the outcome of the study is, but I urge my colleagues to stay with the committee, support the F- 22. This is an outstanding program and the Air Force's No. 1 priority.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman for his work on this thing, and I have great sympathy for what the gentleman from Vermont, Congressman Sanders, and the gentleman from New Jersey, Congressman Smith, are doing, but I think there is one other point that needs to be made here. When we go from $135 billion a year in procurement down to $38.5 billion a year in procurement, we need less infrastructure, less industrial base to handle those things, and it will require some downsizing. I think one of the things I have been committed to, I know the gentleman from Virginia has too, is to help when these Government workers, and other workers, private sector workers, get dislocated, to try to have funds to help them get retrained and back into some new endeavor. But to think we can completely avoid any downsizing when we go from $135 billion a year in procurement down to $38 billion, I think we have to think about that.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, the other thing is, our first priority has to be theater missile defense and CorpsSAM. When we deploy troops, we have to be able to defend those troops, and I think the priorities the administration has are correct on this.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, it is an amendment to the amendment.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to make it perfectly clear that what we are talking about in this amendment is the deployment of a space- based system, not that we are stopping the obligation of money for an R&D approach. There are legitimate R&D programs that should go forward, and I would urge the chairman and the ranking member to accept the amendment, and my colleague from Oregon.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, as I said, that would violate the ABM agreement and would be a very serious mistake. I appreciate the gentleman, all his hard work and his effort and expertise on this matter, and, in my judgment, a ground-based system could be effective; and, frankly, I think the real threat to America is terrorism and, in my judgment, we should be doing more about that. I think that is more of a threat than a ballistic missile attack from an enemy.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to explain my amendment for 1 minute.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the question is, what are we going to deploy? What is there to deploy? Are we going to fly before we have done the technology and worked it out and proven it will work? That is a prescription for throwing money at the problem in a ideological overreaction. Mr. Chairman, let us try to go with technology that we know something about that will work, that will give us limited protection, because that is all we are going to get.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding. I just want to associate myself with the gentleman's remarks. I believe that we should move forward with a treaty compliant ground- based system. I am not at all opposed to doing research on advanced systems, but I think any effort to procure them or to move ahead rapidly to a space-based system violates----

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman if it is true if there was such an expenditure, that the administration, the Defense Department, could seek a rescission on it under current law. Is that not correct?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. The gentleman from Wisconsin is correct, Mr. Perry changed the requirement just a few days ago, but up to that point they said they do not need this equipment and they did not put it on these planes because of monetary considerations. If we had the Obey amendment in place, if that had been the policy and Congress had added the money, to fix the problem it might not have been spent. And what bothers me the most is this looks like a line-item veto. Giving the Defense Department the ability to go in and pick out items it does not want and strike them out without Congress having a chance to reconsider it. That is why I think DOD should send up a rescission. If it is as bad as the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] points out, they should send up a rescission and we should consider it.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to make sure my colleagues have not forgotten a little history here. I have heard a lot of talk about the defense budget not having been cut. I want to say that is the most ridiculous thing I have heard all night tonight. Mr. Chairman, we have cut the defense budget by $100 billion a year since 1985. When we take today's budget, it would have been $350 billion. Today, it is $250 billion. We have cut procurement by 70 percent. The Joint Chiefs have just written a letter to Secretary Perry saying that we are short annually $20 billion in procurement. We have downsized the military since the gulf war dramatically. In the gulf war we had 1 million men in the U.S. Army. Today we are down at 495,000. And we are operating at a higher op tempo than at any point between the Vietnam war and the gulf war. We are sending these kids, these young men and women in the military, out more often to more places. The op tempo has never been higher. To say in the face of that evidence that we do not need to do more for defense is simply incorrect. We are operating in a very fragile situation here. We added about $6 billion to procurement. That takes us up to $44 billion. The Joint Chiefs say that we need to be at $60 billion, and Secretary Perry has admitted the fact that we have got a major shortfall in procurement. This budget does not really come close to meeting the legitimate requirement. Now, I understand my colleagues who say we should be doing more on domestic priorities. I wish we could do more in domestic priorities. But if you cut the money out of this defense budget, it is not going to go over and help HEW or other bills. It is going to go to deficit reduction, which is a very important issue. And I do not favor tax cuts, other things that are part of the other side's budget that will make the deficit situation worse. But to say that we have not cut defense, we have cut defense more than any other discretionary spending issue in the budget. Nothing has been cut more than defense over the last decade. The requirements today on the military are major. So I urge my colleagues not to forget history here. We have leveled this off for the last couple years. We have not really done what is necessary. I just urge Members not to take this amendment, because it will make the job even more difficult to try and have adequate procurement funding for the equipment that our services need. We are going to have a major problem out there in the future if we do not have adequate funding for procurement. I urge Members to stay with this budget. It is not perfect, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. And to say that we have not cut defense is just ludicrous.

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