Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, once again reclaiming my time, I would assume we could again take a look at this list, and I think we should try to cut these things out, if they are unnecessary, in the conference committee.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman. once again reclaiming my time, I think it is a lack of effectiveness on the part of the Air Force and the Department of Defense for not having put it on in the first place. They should have known, because the equipment is available. They just did not do it for budgetary reasons.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to say to the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston], that the gentleman from South Carolina and myself, the former chairman of the Senate Arms Services Committee, are all people who are committed to deploying a system. We think that a thin system that is treaty-compliant is the right way to go because we think it is attainable. We think it does not start an arms race with the other side, and it will be less expensive. Now, what I said, and I think the gentleman misunderstood me, is that it is crucial. First of all, if we are going to send 500,000 troops to the Gulf again, I want them to go with theater missile defense, PAC-3, THAD, and using Navy ships with the standard missile. I think that is a good approach to defending our troops in the field. To me, that should be the highest priority. Mr. Chairman, when we are sending men and women into combat, they have to have protection from scud missiles and other launchers. That should be first. And then, second, we should keep working on deploying this system. We are prepared to go in that direction, and we should continue to do the research on the other, more exotic layered systems, but I think we should not deploy them; as long as we are going to maintain the ABM agreement, I do not think they should be deployed.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, Congress thought these planes had the equipment on them. We could not believe the Air Force had not put the equipment on the planes. We gave them directives to do it. We told them to put this equipment on and they refused to do it.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I ask for a vote on my amendment.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, it is added at the end of line 2, ``for the deployment of''.

Mr. DICKS

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I take back my time, and I say to my friend, first of all, I would not characterize this as a slush fund. I would characterize it as a management reserve for each of these important programs, and the money that Congress appropriated and authorized is needed at some point for these programs. We have taken the money away. That means at some point in the future we have to restore it. I would also say to the gentleman that we are going through a period where we are reducing the number of programs that we have, we are trying to change the architecture, we are trying to, in essence, invest in more capable systems for the future so that we will be able to save some money. I would argue that all of the money would have been legally spent on the programs as required, eventually, and there is no indication of waste, fraud, or abuse.

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

Mr. DICKS. Well, we hope there will not be one, I would say to my colleague.

Mr. DICKS. That is for this year's budget.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman from Massachusetts will let me have my time back, I would appreciate that. I want to point out to the gentleman that when we named the chief financial officer, he had to go back in and go through all these accounts. I admit and agree with the gentleman that the amount here was totally out of proportion to what is needed to properly take care of these contingency purposes. What I am trying to point out is that the money has not been squandered, has not been used for unauthorized purposes; there is no waste, fraud, or abuse. What we had is lousy bookkeeping on the part of the NRO. Let me just say one thing further. The NRO has been one of the premier organizations in this Government. They are great engineers. They build incredible satellites. They may be lousy accountants, and in this case they certainly were. We should always remember what they have done. They have created the best capabilities that anybody has in the world and we should remember that this agency has been very effective for the American people.

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

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to try to see if I can provide some clarification. On most of the major weapons systems that we fund in the Defense Department, like an aircraft carrier or the F-22, which is still an R&D program, we authorize all of the budget authority at one time. Therefore we have each year tremendous amounts of unobligated funds for those programs. If we looked at the Department of Defense, we would see there are a lot of unobligated funds. In this area there was adopted a procedure when George McMahon was chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. There was a concern that at the end of the fiscal year if Congress did not pass the budget, that some of these programs would be adversely affected. These are the crown jewels of our national technical means. We have a series of satellite programs that are funded on an incremental basis. One of the things we do not want to do is have them do what some agencies do, and that is rush at the end of the fiscal year to spend all the money. We have somewhere between 7 and 12 programs that have had various levels of unspent funds which added up to this total. We have no evidence whatsoever that any of this money was wrongly spent. The money would have ultimately been spent for each of these programs. The mistake of the NRO was not keeping Congress properly informed about the total of those carryforward funds. That is what we objected to, and we were very upset about it. The Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. Deutsch, was very upset about it. He has taken steps to appoint a chief financial officer to get these accounts in order. The money is no longer there, I want to point out to my colleagues. Some of it was used in Bosnia, some of it was used for other defense purposes, the administration took part of it in terms of their budget request. So that balance has been reduced to a much smaller level, and again there is some management reason to have modest reserves in each of these line items.

Mr. DICKS. I thank the Chair.

Mr. DICKS. Does the gentleman have to restate his request for a recorded vote at a later time, or is it going to be an automatic recorded vote?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to say I strongly support the Murtha amendment to the Richardson amendment. I think it was carefully crafted. It makes clear that a voluntary effort could be undertaken. In addition, a journalist could be used only if the President certifies to Congress as to why it is necessary to do so. I think it gives us a very good safeguard. I think it is a good compromise, and I applaud the gentleman from New Mexico for accepting the Murtha amendment.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to say to my colleague from Pennsylvania that the one thing I worry about with regard to declassifying, and why it is such an important issue, if we do not do the job of looking through all these documents, we might inadvertently declassify some information that could be harmful to the country. That is why having this process is important. I do not want to cloud the issue here today. We are prepared to accept the gentleman's amendment. We compliment him on it. This is a very important program to the director and to the vice president, and I want to commend the gentleman for his amendment.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I want to commend the gentleman for his amendment.