Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions. I appreciate the gentleman's yielding to me.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) and I work very closely on defense issues. Here is one issue that bothers me in this discussion. I know I had a study done of Region 6, which is Washington and Oregon. I do not think Northern California is in Region 6.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I also want to thank the gentleman for his work and look forward to working with him on this issue. I realize how difficult this issue is in his area and complicating this, as he mentioned, is a drought that has affected the entire region. So I know how difficult this is. We all want to protect the wildlife, the waterfowl, the salmon, all of which are affected by this. So this is an important issue, and the gentleman deserves our cooperation on this.

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

Mr. DICKS. I want to commend the gentleman for his amendment and I want to bring this to the attention of all the Members of the House, because I made a speech earlier today on the rule to point out the fact that the number of people that are working at the parks is going down because, in many cases, 90 percent of the operation account is personnel. Therefore, when you do not have enough of a budget increase to cover the COLAs, to cover these emergencies, then they have to eat it out of their existing budget. In fact, at Olympic National Park in my district, they 3 years ago had 130 summer employees they brought in for temporary work. This summer they have 25 because they cannot afford more. They have lost so much money. They are about $6 million short of what they need to operate the park this year. This has got to be dealt with. This year with the increases that we gave, still 241 parks out of 388 will have less money to operate than they did in 2003. The amendment that I proposed and that the gentleman proposes, the $45 million, would have given every park, all 388, an 8 percent increase. If we could get $25 million in conference, it would be a 6 percent increase. This is the way we have got to do this. We have got to get this thing turned around. The committee has done a good job but we have got to do better because it is not good enough. That is the problem we are faced with. We are working hard. We are trying to work with the department.

Mr. DICKS. The National Parks Conservation Association also has done a lot of good work on this that really lays out what the problem is. The chairman has been very tough on the director and the staff down there trying to get them to cut out wasteful expenditures, but we can only go so far with that approach. Some travel is justified, some travel is necessary because of these emergencies. It is just the foreign travel that has been basically stopped. I hope that we can continue to work with the chairman and his staff so that we can find an answer to this and maybe we can get a little more allocation. But this is a real, serious problem that must be dealt with. I congratulate the gentleman for raising it here on the floor.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor) and the staff of the subcommittee, both majority and minority, for a very good bill and a hard-working effort. Obviously there are deficiencies in the bill. The chairman mentioned the fact that we are below last year's level and that our allocation was a couple of hundred million dollars below the President's budget request. So obviously we had limitations on what we could do in this bill. I do think that adding $500 million in 2004 for fire fighting, assuming we get the bill signed, and also for 2005, was an important step. We have also increased the overall funding for fire fighting by a significant amount of money. There are some deficiencies. The majority decided not to fund the request of the President for the $41 million increase for the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. We were unable to come up with the money to fund the conservation amendment. But in other areas we were able to come up with funding to increase the money for the parks. As I spoke on the rule, I talked about this problem we have with our national parks. We do not have enough money to cover the fixed costs. Therefore, their operating budgets are not able to cover the number of people necessary. I used the example of the Olympic National Park. Three years ago, they had 130 temporary workers during the summer. That has been reduced down to 25. That is unbelievable. They had, I think, 3 years ago 146 employees, full-time; now it is down to 120, and they are supposed to have 202 employees. So my colleagues can see that this lack of funding is causing serious problems in the operations of the parks themselves. We are just not going to have the same number of rangers out there. This is a problem that I hope we can continue to deal with. So I want to thank the chairman for all of his kindness and his willingness to work with the minority party here in the House on this important bill, and we will continue to work together until we get this bill finished. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall).

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, Catherine May Bedell was an outstanding member of the House of Representatives. She came from our great State of Washington, from Yakima. She was a graduate of the Yakima Valley Junior College and the University of Washington. She was a noted writer, teacher, journalist and radio broadcaster. In fact, she had the first Betty Crocker radio show in the country. She was elected, as mentioned, to the legislature in 1952, served to 1958, and then won her first campaign for Congress in the 86th Congress. She served very well on the House Committee on Agriculture, where she was a strong voice for farming, irrigation, hydroelectric power generation across the State's expansive 4th Congressional District. She served very capably in the House from 1959 through 1970; and, after that, President Nixon appointed her to the U.S. International Trade Commission on which she served for 10 years. She was a great role model. In fact, she was the first woman elected to the House from the State of Washington. Many of us in this Chamber today know her son, Jim, who served as the Executive Vice President of the National Association of Broadcasters and today is the President and CEO of the Air Transport Association. Congresswoman Catherine May Bedell was also survived by a daughter, Melinda May Mazzetti, of San Francisco. I had the honor, when serving on Senator Magnuson's staff as an assistant, to work with her. She was a delight. She was a hard worker. She was a credit to this institution. We are very sad to learn of her passing. I had a chance to talk to Jim, her son, today; and, of course, the family was very pleased to hear that she would be remembered today on the floor of the House of Representatives. [From the Yakima-Herald-Republic, Jun. 2, 2004] Catherine May, Political Pioneer and Mentor to Women, Dies (By Leah Beth Ward) Yakima native Catherine Dean May, the first woman elected to Congress from Washington, died of natural causes Friday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. She was 90. May was first elected to the 4th Congressional District in 1958 when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom she greatly admired, was president. Scholars have noted that she was one of the few women in national politics at the time to win office on her own. Many others were appointed to replace their husbands. ``She was very much a pioneer,'' her son, James C. May, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. Described as strong and articulate by those who knew her, May inspired and personally encouraged other women to run for political office. ``When I first saw her, she was standing in a group of men and they were listening to her. She could hold her own,'' said Rep. Mary Skinner, R-Yakima, recalling a Republican Party luncheon more than 30 years ago. ``I was a great admirer.'' May's political career began in 1952 in the state Legislature, where she served as a representative until the Republican Party nominated her to run for the congressional seat of Otis Halbert, who was retiring. In what was called an upset, she beat Democrat Frank LeRoux of Walla Walla. May was re-elected to Congress six times until 1970, when she lost to Democrat Mike McCormack, a research scientist at Hanford. That year she remarried, taking Donald W. Bedell's last name. Born Catherine Dean Barnes on May 18, 1914, she graduated from Yakima High School in 1932 and attended Yakima Valley Junior College through 1934 before earning a bachelor of science degree in 1936 from the University of Washington. May's parents ran a Yakima clothing store. In 1937 she received a teaching certificate and taught English for three years at Chehalis High School. She interrupted that stint in 1939 to study speech at the University of Southern California, according to her congressional biography. Her son remembered his mother as very much the English teacher, correcting grammar whenever necessary. ``In my household you grew up watching your language,'' James May said. After teaching, May parlayed her language skills into radio broadcasting, first with station KMO in Tacoma, and later stations KOMO and KJR in Seattle. From 1942 to 1944, she worked in advertising for the Strange and Prosser Advertising Agency and the Federal Insurance Co., both of Seattle. NBC radio of New York City hired her between 1944 and 1946 to produce the first Betty Crocker show, sponsored by General Mills. May returned to Yakima and continued in radio journalism as ``women's editor'' at KIT in Yakima from 1948 to 1957. According to research of her congressional record by Washington State University, upon her election, May was the first representative from the state in six years to win a seat on the House Agriculture Committee. She held the assignment throughout her tenure and used it to fight for dams. In her last term in office, she received a second committee assignment, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, where she fought an attempt to close Hanford. Though she never touted herself as a woman's rights activist, May was a quiet champion for the cause. She supported the Equal Rights Amendment and worked to include the prohibition against discrimination based on sex in the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. Political defeat far from ended May's career in public service. President Nixon appointed her to the U.S. International Trade Commission, where she served from 1971- 81. In 1982, President Reagan named her special consultant to the president on the 50 States Project. She was president of her own firm, Bedell Associates, in Palm Desert, Calif. May's survivors include her son of Washington, DC, and her daughter, Melinda May Mazzetti of San Francisco. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Catherine May Bedell Scholarship Fund at Yakima Valley Community College.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Tauscher amendment for two reasons. Conventional precision-guided munitions are a better technical solution than the Robust Earth Penetrator for hardened and deeply buried targets; and because the fallout, both figurative and literal, from the use of nuclear weapons will make the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator an extensive showpiece rather than a usable weapon. We have the B-2. We have the means of delivering a JDAM missile, a 5,000-pound bunker buster, and the EGBU-28. All of these are a better approach than a nuclear option. Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, says that nuclear weapons are for deterrence, that we are not entering an era of nuclear war-fighting; and so if we are going to have to use something, then we want to make sure it is a conventional weapon to go after these deep underground targets. We have seen the fallout from what has happened in Iraq in this prison. Did the United States use tactics that were questionable? Think of what the fallout politically would be if we were using nuclear weapons in a war-fighting context. Conventional weapons are a much better choice. Let us approve the Tauscher amendment. Let us improve our intelligence. Let us improve the conventional capabilities. Why? Because they are usable. Nuclear weapons are not usable; conventional weapons are.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to compliment the gentleman from California (Chairman Hunter) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and their outstanding staffs on both sides for working with us on this tanker amendment. One of the things that I am convinced of, and I am even more convinced today, is we need to start a program of tanker replacement. Every single airplane that bombed in Afghanistan and in Iraq had to be refueled multiple times. One of the reasons we are a superpower is because we have got these tankers. All of the original planes were built between 1957 and 1963. I have been to Tinker Air Force Base, I have seen the condition of these planes. The corrosion is significant and the cost of maintenance is going right through the roof. It is time to move out on this program. The people who made mistakes in the contracting are being disciplined in the process, in the criminal process, and we should look at this on the merits. The chairman's amendment lays out a process whereby we can go forward. If the chairman wants to explain it, I would be glad to yield to him. But basically we are going to have an analysis of alternatives, then we are going to have a negotiation session on the contract, then we are going to have a panel review with the Secretary of Defense; and we hope that by March 1, we will be able to finalize this and enter into an agreement to go forward with the 767 tanker.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I think the point that the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) was making and that I am making is that we think there are conventional alternatives to a nuclear weapon that are usable. So my concern is if we have a conventional approach with JDAMs, with the 5,000-pound bunker buster, EGBU-28, three very good conventional approaches to go after deeper targets, we should keep working and spending our money on those options. My concern is his concern. We will not use this weapon. Even if we build it, we will not use it, because nuclear weapons are the weapon of last resort for deterence. We have improved our military capability by having developed our conventional capability with the B-2, with the B-1s, the B-52s, with JDAMs, with the small diameter bomb, because they are usable; and that is more of a deterrent. When the enemy knows we can use that weapon and it will be effective, it is more of a deterrent than a nuclear weapon. We just will not use it. That is the problem, and it is a waste of money.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the key thing here is, we are buying an off-the-shelf aircraft. That means no development costs whatsoever. I asked the chairman of the Boeing Company today what it would cost if we had to develop a new airplane, just in development before we got into production. He said $15 billion to $18 billion, and it would take a number of years to do that. So that option is not good. I do not believe this House wants to buy this airplane from AirBus, so therefore before the 767 line goes down next year, we have got to enter into this agreement, militarize that line, and use it for tankers, which are so critical to our national security.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, this is a point we want to make. If we can get this done, we can do this for a lot less money than any of the other options, and we can do it with an American airplane; and we have blocked obsolescence before in the C-141s. If we had that problem, we will undermine our military capabilities. So this amendment in this en bloc is very important for us to move forward. And I commend the chairman and ranking member for their leadership on this issue.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the passing of Phil Lelli, a good friend of mine and a great leader of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union from Tacoma, Washington. Philip M. Lelli was a born longshoreman; he began his career on the Tacoma, Washington waterfront in 1949 and retired in 1993. He was President of the Tacoma Longshore Union Local 23 from 1966 to 1993, and I recall quite well the advice and counsel he freely gave to me and to other political leaders throughout his tenure of Union leadership. Afterward, he remained deeply engaged in community affairs in the Puget Sound area, serving as a Port of Tacoma Commissioner and the Harry Bridges History Chair Trustee at the University of Washington. Today in the House of Representatives, I would like to express my sincere wishes of sympathy to the Lelli Family, Mr. Speaker, and to extend my thanks and the appreciation of a grateful community for the many contributions that Phil has made. I would also like to include in the Record the notice that was printed in today's News Tribune newspaper from Tacoma, Washington. [From the News Tribune, Apr. 28, 2004] (By Philip Lelli) Hangs His Hook Longshore leader Philip Martin Lelli was born December 4, 1929, in Edgewood and passed away April 25, 2004, in Puyallup. He was the son of Martin and Mary (Baller) Lelli and attended Fife schools and Pacific Lutheran University. He married Joanne Williams April 18, 1953, in Fife. Phil and Joanne were the proud parents of five sons: Jay (Judith E. Peterson), Marty, Dean (Susan), Vance (Kimberlie) and Ross, and grandparents of Janelle, Jayson A. (Jennifer), Paula, Rori, Scott, Mathew, and Marina. There are three great- grandchildren, MacKenzie, Kailee and Ryan. Also surviving is his brother Tom (Phyllis) Lelli. One son, Ross, and a sister, Jeanne Retallick, preceded him. Phil Lelli was a dominant figure on the Tacoma waterfront from the moment he lifted his first 180-pound sack of wheat in 1949 until he retired as a gearman in 1993. He was a born longshoreman: a practical physicist who could come up with the most effective method of moving any size or weight of cargo; a leader of men in times of great technological change; and a stalwart ally who won hundreds of friends in ports all over the world. His mentor was T. A. ``Tiny'' Thronson, a veteran of the Great Strike of 1934. Thronson's advice, ``Do a hard day's work and you'll get rewarded with more opportunity,'' was Phil's guiding principle as President of Tacoma Longshore Union 23 from 1966 until 1983. He never abandoned his belief that port-union cooperation would result in a Golden Age. He teamed with Port Executive Director E. L. Roy Perry, Union Business Agent George Ginnis, and Port Commissioner Robert Earley to raise Tacoma from a backwater log port to become the fifth largest container port in North America. During his 55 years on the waterfront, Phil served as Port of Tacoma commissioner, Propeller Club president, Tacoma Longshore pension club president, and University of Washington Harry Bridges History Chair trustee. The Propeller Club awarded Philip its highest honor, Master Mariner, in 1982. The Harry Bridges Chair designated him its Distinguished Supporter in 2003. After Phil and Joanne's youngest son died in a waterfront accident in 1989, the Propeller Club created the Ross E. Lelli Memorial Scholarship Fund. Phil Lelli learned the meaning of community service from his father, Martin, who taught his son to care for other people, especially the poor. In the 1980s Phil and Father William Bischel S.J. organized the Hospitality Kitchen to serve hot lunches to the Tacoma homeless. Phil rescued a stove from the old Knights of Pythias Temple. Longshore workers trucked the stove to the Kitchen, took out a wall, installed the stove, and rebuilt the wall. The longshore union continues its support of the Kitchen, which serves 450 meals a day. Visitation will be from 8 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. Saturday, May 1 (International Workers Day), followed by the Funeral Mass at 10:00 a.m. at St. Andrews Catholic Church, 1401 Valley Ave., Sumner. Rosary services will be at 7 p.m. Friday at St. Martin of Tours Church 2303-54th Avenue East, Fife. Graveside services will be at Gethsemane Cemetery, 37600 Pacific Highway, at noon May 1. The Longshore Union will honor brother Phil with an open house from 1 to 4 p.m. There is an online guest book at www.mountainviewtacoma.com Arrangements are by Mountain View Funeral Home, 253-564- 0252. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in the name of Philip Lelli to the Ross E. Lelli Memorial Scholarship, PO Box 453, Tacoma, WA 98401, or the Hospitality Kitchen, 1323 S. Yakima Ave., Tacoma, WA 98405.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to salute one of the many brave men and women who serve all of us in our great military. I would especially like to pay tribute today and offer my personal thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Don ``BoBo'' Schilpp, of the United States Air Force, for a job well done. Many of us in Congress know Lieutenant Colonel Schilpp because of his dedicated service during the past four years as the Appropriations/ Budget Liaison for the Air Force. This is an important role, at a time when many significant national security decisions were being made in the Congress, affecting the Air Force as well as our nation's ability to fulfill our constitutional role of ``provid(ing) for the national defense.'' The Air Force, through Colonel Schilpp's leadership during the past four years, has given us timely and thorough responses to our requests for information, and I want to take this opportunity as he retires from active duty to express our appreciation to him for all of his efforts. I have also had the pleasure of traveling with BoBo on several occasions, and each time his professionalism and personal attention to detail were the keys to a smooth and successful congressional delegation mission. Before this assignment, Lieutenant Colonel Schilpp was an accomplished leader and combat pilot with more than 3,400 hours in the F-15 and T-37 aircraft. He served overseas during Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Southern Watch accruing more than 260 combat hours. While I have relied upon Lieutenant Colonel Schilpp's military advice, I have valued his friendship even more, and I know many of my colleagues on defense related committees in the House share in that sentiment. In this regard, I wanted Colonel Schilpp to know that all of us in Congress who have known him and worked with him wish him the very best of luck in all his future endeavors.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to make a comment. I served with Joe Skeen on the Interior Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. He was our chairman, did an outstanding job. We worked together on a very bipartisan basis. And even though he was struggling somewhat, he was there every day, worked hard, did a great job on the Interior bill. Every member of the committee on both sides of the aisle, all the staff, loved Joe Skeen because he was such a decent warm human being, and he will be missed. But his work will be remembered, and he did a lot of great things for our country as chairman of the Interior Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. We will miss Joe Skeen.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I want to correct the gentlewoman from California. I wanted to be chairman, but never quite made it. I was the ranking Democratic member and did serve for 8 years, and it was the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), our distinguished chairman, who I miss seeing almost every day for hours, as we did for a few years. I want to compliment him for accepting the motion and compliment the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman) for offering this instruction. I would say, based on my experience, the sooner we get lessons learned to the Congress, the better off we are going to be in terms of getting the fixes that we need in terms of our equipment. I can remember General Schwarzkopf coming to the committee and laying out the problems we had in Desert Storm, Desert Shield, in the intelligence area. He said, I want to be able to look over that battlefield and know what the enemy is doing. That led us to push forward UAVs like Predator, like Global Hawk. We also had problems with denial and deception. This time we did so much better out in the West controlling any opportunity they had to bring up Scud missiles, et cetera, et cetera. But those were because there was a lessons learned process where the Congress got information and we could help get the resources and the programs necessary to help improve our overall military capability. And intelligence lessons learned are also critical. And my colleagues, many of them here have already spoken, and there is a question of the credibility of the intelligence that was presented to the American people, presented to the Congress, presented to members at the White House. So I think the sooner we clear this up, the sooner we get this information out in the open, and the sooner we can work together on a bipartisan basis to make the fixes necessary. There is a lot of talk about the necessity for additional human intelligence. The chairman has been a leader. I can remember the chairman's efforts to add additional HUMINT resources to our intelligence capability, to build back the HUMINT capability. We are finding out that right now we may not have as much of that capability as necessary to deal with the problem that we are facing in this country. Languages was mentioned by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt). That is still a problem. We do not have enough people who speak the various languages that are necessary here. So again, I want to compliment the chairman for accepting the instruction, and I think we will all be better off getting this information up here as soon as possible to help the Congress next year in the authorization and appropriations process, both the Committee on Armed Services, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to make some of these fixes that are necessary to improve our overall intelligence capability.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from Missouri, who is a classmate, for yielding me this time. I want to compliment him and Chairman Hunter on this bill. We have worked for 2 years on the tanker provisions in this legislation. I am convinced that modernizing our tankers is absolutely crucial to national security. The gentleman from Missouri and I have worked for many years to implement and upgrade the B-2 bombers which fly out of Whiteman, Missouri. We have found that in all of these deployments that tankers are absolutely crucial. I must tell the House that the condition of our tankers today is not good. The KC-135-Es have significant corrosion. They were all built between 1957 and 1963 in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. I have been on them. I have talked to the pilots who fly them. I have talked to General Handy, General Jumper and they are convinced that replacing these tankers is one of the most important things we can do to preserve our military capability. When you think about it, every time we deploy, we have to have tankers. We have to have EA-6-Bs, those jammers. Both of them are very, very old and both of them need to be replaced and we need get on with it. One of the things that I am concerned about that we still have not addressed since the Bush administration took office is the fact that we are short in procurement still 30 to $40 billion. The big argument in the tanker issue is lease versus buy. The only reason we had to do a lease is the Air Force did not have the money to buy these airplanes. That is why we have got to get the procurement account up, General Myers says somewhere between 100 and $110 billion. We are at $72 billion. We have got work yet to be done here. I am also very concerned about the provisions in this bill that deal with worker rights. We are going to continue to work on that. I hope that down the road we can exempt shipyards from those new restrictions. Parliamentary Inquiry

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter into a colloquy with the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services. Mr. Chairman, the conference report on H.R. 1588, the Fiscal Year 2004 Defense Authorization Act, contains a provision, section 135, which authorizes the Air Force to enter into a contract for 100 tanker aircraft under the terms and conditions of section 8159 of the Fiscal Year 2002 Defense Appropriations Act.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the conference report and this rule. I have concerns about this bill, too. I represent the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Keyport, Bangor. Many of these work rules are very much deplored by the workers there, and I regret that they have been attached to this legislation, but we will continue to work to try and deal with them as we proceed in this session of Congress. I want to rise in very strong support of the provision my friend the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) talked about earlier, the question of tankers. I became interested in this issue several years ago with a visit to Tinker Air Force Base where we saw the condition of our KC- 135-Es. I believe that this is a crucial national priority, to get a new tanker replacement program started. The Air Force has chosen the 767. We have had a lot of controversy about whether we should buy or lease. We have come up with a combination here. The Secretary of Defense's office, led by Mr. Wolfowitz, sent a letter on Thursday, which has brought us together. I want to commend the Speaker, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), for his dedicated leadership on this issue. Without his tremendous effort and tenacity, we would not have gotten this far. I intend to have a colloquy later with the chairman of the committee when we get to the authorization bill on this matter, but I just want to say that I want to compliment everyone who has worked on this. For 2 years, we had to get an effort under way to get this replacement effort going. Not to understate it, every single plane that flew into Afghanistan and into Iraq had to be refueled multiple times. Our whole effort to improve our bomber capability with the B-2 and smart weapons and all of the aircraft coming off of our carriers, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, all of them had to be refueled multiple times. So you do not get anything done without tankers. We have planes now, 544 of them, that were built between 1957 and 1963. These are very old aircraft. We have serious corrosion problems, and I am glad that this conference committee was able to come together and put together a package and that the administration has said they will make it work. I believe this is one of the most important things we can do. If you think about it, tankers and the EA-6-Bs, which are also old and in terrible condition, are two weapons systems that have become absolutely fundamental to our U.S. ability to project power around the world. I am glad we can get this tanker thing moving forward and that it is in this bill. I appreciate the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for their leadership on this issue.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, it is my further understanding that section 135 was written after extensive negotiation with the Department of Defense and the administration and that that section represents a common understanding between the conferees and the administration on the terms under which this tanker program will be executed.