Trent Franks

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The total missile defense budget, in total, is less than $9 billion, and the administration wants to cut it almost $2 billion more.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Those are not only fast missiles and not only do they have a very complex DACS, they call it, which essentially what we do here is we take our sensors and we run them directly into the incoming missile and the kinetic energy destroys the incoming missile. But the reality is that in many cases we would want to shoot more than one of our interceptors at an incoming missile to make sure that we have the best chance of hitting it. Sometimes it can be two or three to one or even more. So this is a capability of maybe stopping as many as 10 or 12 incoming missiles. And that's not that many. We have a limited capability against a growing threat, and GMD is the only thing that we have that will protect our homeland against ICBMs at this time.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The airborne laser program is more than one aircraft, but they're doing everything they can to decimate the budget there. It is potentially possible even under the Obama administration budget that we will be able to maintain the one aircraft, which is a 747-400B aircraft with a chemical iodine laser aboard. And it has three different lasers. One's an aiming laser, one's a compensating laser, and one is a kill laser. And this is one of the most advanced mechanisms that we have in our entire arsenal, and it will do so much to build the entire technology if we can show that it's effective.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, I appreciate, first of all, the gentleman's comments about history. Ever since mankind took up weapons against his fellow human beings, there has always been a defensive response to an offensive capability, whether it was the spear and the shield or whether it was bullets and armor; I mean, it has always happened that way. And yet there are those today that would debate whether we need a defense against the most dangerous weapon that has ever come into the arsenal of mankind, which is a ballistic nuclear missile. As Mr. Akin said, the primary divisions of missile defense are as follows; we have the boost phase, which is where potential enemy missile is coming off of the launch pad--or it doesn't have to be a launch pad, it is just where it is beginning its flight. This is the most vulnerable stage for an enemy missile. And this is, in my judgment, where we need to do everything that we can to make sure that we have the capability. One of the tragic things about the defense budget--that looks like it is going to be put forth here, Mr. Akin--is that they are cutting one of our main boost-phase systems, the airborne laser. I believe laser will some day be to missile defense what the computer chip was to the computer industry because it travels at Mach 870,000. It is very, very fast. It can reach anywhere on the globe, if the reflections are properly made, in a second.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, in all the ways in the past, what we have tried to do is to say what is the capacity of our enemy, what is the intent? When we are talking about enemies like North Korea and enemies like Iran, we're not completely clear of their intent. Some of their goals are rather irrational and sometimes they've acted very irrationally. So the only wise thing for us to do for our people is to make sure that we have the capacity to meet that threat. They are now gaining the capacity to have missiles that can range the United States, and we need to make sure that we can meet that threat. We have a limited capability now, but if we back away now, we could be in a situation in the future where we will not have the ability to meet that threat.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. But we're saying that we will build no more than----

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Right now we're scheduled to build a total of 30. We have around, I think the Congressman is correct, around 26 or 28 in the ground now.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Yes, that's the GBI.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. You mentioned two key things. Congressman Lamborn mentioned the GBI, the Ground-Based Interceptors, with our GMD, our Ground-Based Midcourse system. This was meant to have 44 interceptors. The Obama administration said we will build no more than 30. And, of course, at that point then the system could atrophy and we may not even sustain it. But it is the only system that we have. I want to emphasize this. GMD is the only system that we have in the United States capable of defending us against incoming ICBMs.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It is absolutely a different formula. Not only do we have rogue states and, really, non-state players, as you say, that don't have that risk that a nation-state does, but we have a different mindset. That is the part that frightens me the most. A terrorist that will cut someone's head off, while they are tied down in front of a television camera while the victim screams for mercy, with a hacksaw blade, we had better be very thankful that that hacksaw blade is not a nuclear capability. Because that kind of intent, that kind of a mindset that literally has been demonstrated to be willing to kill their own children in order to kill our children is the thing that frightens me the most, that intent.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. No, you are essentially correct. The budget was about $9.4 billion. It is being cut about a $1.5 billion and then some of the other systems are being moved around to where the total effective cuts are about $1.8 billion. But here's the bottom line. All of the money that we have spent on missile defense is just a little over $100 billion since we started 25 years ago. And it took almost that much just to clean up after 9/11 hit New York, and 9/11 cost our economy about $2 trillion. So if we are talking about being cost-effective here, we should remember that if that attack on New York that morning had been an ICBM with, say, 100-kilo ton warhead, it would have killed maybe 120,000 people instantaneously and half a million more within a couple or 3 weeks. I am just astonished that we are so shortsighted that now, in this kind of an age that we live in, that we would cut missile defense. And I pray that we don't have to, in some future date, look back on this debate and say how could we have forgotten? If we build a system and we don't need it, then it must have worked. And I would just say in closing that I will be glad to apologize if we build one that we don't have to use, but I don't want to stand before the Nation and have to apologize to them for failing to building a system that could have protected them.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, boost phase can be several seconds. To give you an example: Say a missile left--well, let's say Russia now, because they have the largest arsenal of missiles. I don't suggest that they are going to be our biggest danger. It would probably take somewhere between 28 and 31 minutes for that missile to arrive. And its longest stage is the boost stage. And this is the opportunity that if we have the airborne laser or if we have what we call the kinetic energy interceptor or, in some cases, in the future, where we are coming up with faster missiles that could even be shot off of our ships, so we could potentially catch those missiles in their boost phase. With airborne laser, it could get six inches off the platform and we could destroy it.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. We really are. What has changed it so dramatically the fundamental aspect that Ronald Reagan put forward, that it is much better to defend our citizens than to avenge them. But what has changed so much, Congressman Akin, is that now we are in a world where the coincidence of Jihadist terrorism and nuclear proliferation could change the concept of our freedom and of every calculation that we have made for homeland security, because they can no longer be deterred. When we were dealing with the Soviet Union, we placed our security to some degree in their sanity. We recognized that they wanted to live, they wanted their nation to continue. And that was a tremendous impetus on their part to try to work with us, to try to keep it safe.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. That's right. What you do is you use the fuel of the missile to blow it up. Of course, there are other ways. Even if you're not shooting at a fuel tank on a missile, if you hit it with laser and damage the outer casing of the missile, you can cause it to become aerodynamically unstable and fly to pieces at that speed.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Right. And the characteristics of the laser are that it has exactly parallel sides, and it can be a directed energy that you can increase almost without bound, depending on the focus of the energy.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, that is correct. I believe that there is no greater danger to the peace of the human family today than a nuclear Iran--I think they are even more dangerous than North Korea. And ironically, if North Korea was able to give Iran missile technology, how is it that we would forget that they could certainly give them warhead technology if they need it, or even a warhead? So I am really concerned that the world in general must recognize the danger that we face, both with a nuclear North Korea--which is already de facto now, this has happened--and with an Iran that is working with missile technology that, before long, they are working with solid propellants. And I believe that they can range parts of the United States even now. And I believe that an Iranian missile poses a profound threat to the country and to the world. But even more so, probably the point I would make most strenuously is that an Iranian nuclear program means that an Islamist nation now has their finger on the nuclear button. And they have that technology in their hands where they could pass it along to terrorist groups where they don't even need a missile, where all they need is a Volkswagen to carry it across our border, or a small aircraft, anything. There is a lot of danger there.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. You have got it exactly correct. One of the key technical challenges of an ICBM is the ability to keep the missile stable during staging, where one stage drops off, and the missile can become unstable in that situation. In this last test, North Korea demonstrated that capability, and that to me from a technical perspective was the most frightening aspect of it. I will say this on the floor of the House of Representatives. I believe that North Korea represents a potential threat to the homeland of the United States and that when the next missile from North Korea gets over international waters, that the United States and its allies should do what they can to shoot that missile down for a couple of reasons: To demonstrate our resolve. But, more importantly, to keep them from being able to demonstrate to their potential customers that they now have perfected missile technology that they can sell to potential nations or even rogue states or just groups like al Qaeda that could use this in a way that would be very devastating to the country. I am very concerned about that. We must not let them demonstrate to the world that kind of capacity. They have already shown that they are willing to sell this technology. They were the ones primarily who gave Iran their missile technology. Iran now has surpassed North Korea in missile capability, and yet they probably would not have been anywhere close to where they are had it not been for North Korea.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It is my honor to join you, Congressman Akin. I thank my friend from Missouri for the work that you do not only on this area but so many others. You are a man committed to doing what is right for America and making sure that future generations have a little more time to walk in the sunlight of freedom. I have a great deal of respect and appreciation for all that you do and for who you are. It is my honor to be here with you. I think that you stated so many things so effectively that it is hard for me to add to the fundamental premise. But as you said, there was once a time not so many years ago when America and the free world faced a Soviet Union that was armed with massive stockpiles of weapons that are the most dangerous weapons that have ever really entered the arsenal of mankind, ballistic missiles that can travel several thousand miles an hour and can deliver warheads that can decimate an entire city or even potentially interrupt the electrical systems of entire nations. It is a very daunting challenge indeed. And you again laid out so well that we adopted this strategy of mutually assured destruction not because we really wanted to, but because we didn't have much alternative. We really embraced this grim equation that if the Soviet Union launched their missiles and killed our men, women, and children across our cities, that we could launch a counterstrike almost simultaneously, even before their missiles landed, that would do the same thing to their nation. And that was something that was so repugnant and so horrifying to all of us that it created this grim kind of an understanding between us that we wouldn't shoot each other because we knew that it meant sudden and horrifying death to both of our nations. I suppose one could say, given the fact that we didn't blow each other to atoms, that there was some efficacy to the strategy. And, ironically, it still is the centerpiece of our own strategy to deter aggression on our homeland. A nation that knows that if they attack the United States with nuclear missiles, that we can calculate that trajectory. We know where they live and that we have a response capability second to none, and that we can respond in ways that are totally unacceptable to them. It is such an important subject.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. North Korea, in my judgment, is the least free nation on Earth. This is a nation that has just a completely inhumane mindset in their government, and I am not sure that we recognize just how dangerous that country is. Ironically, the Soviets--well, not the Soviets now. The Russians--I have to be careful; a lot has changed--the Soviet Union collapsed on itself. But there is still some remnants of that Cold War mentality. They assured America that it would be 20 years before Iran could launch an ICBM capability, and they assured us many years ago that North Korea was far from being able to produce a nuclear capability. But that happened much more quickly than we realized. And, as you know, North Korea just launched an additional test that went twice as far as their first one did. They have nuclear warheads now.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It really is, Congressman, because the reality is that this mindset cannot be deterred. This whole notion of mutually assured destruction was a deterrence strategy, and I am not sure that Jihad can be deterred. There are really two factors to every threat to individuals or to nations, and that is the intent of your enemy and the capacity of your enemy. In this case, the Soviet Union had tremendous capacity, but their intent was tempered by their desire to survive themselves. You could even say that many of the Soviet people had a desire to see people live and let live. Their government wasn't quite of that mindset. But now we face an enemy that is committed to the destruction of the western world. And if they gain the capacity to proceed, I am afraid that my children and yours will potentially see the day of nuclear terrorism.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Madam Speaker, with all of the challenges that we have in our country, the wonderful reality is that we still hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are all equal because they are all God's children. In fact, Madam Speaker, the essence of America is that all people should be treated with the same respect and should be protected completely equally under the law. To break up people into different categories and say that one group is more worthy of protection than another and then to grant special protection to some groups and not to others, it fundamentally diminishes the protection of all of the other remaining groups. Madam Speaker, a short time ago, this body voted to pass H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, and I believe that it did just that. Regardless of whether a person is white, black, handicapped, healthy, sick, old, young, homosexual, heterosexual, rich, poor, a janitor, a Senator, a veteran, a police officer, a senior, or whatever the case is, he deserves equal protection under the law. That is the foundational premise of this Nation. The legislation that we voted on today moves us all directly away from that basic foundation in a profound and dangerous way. This legislation would prosecute individuals not on the bases of their crimes but on their alleged motivations for committing those crimes. It requires law enforcement officials and prosecutors to gather evidence of the offender's thoughts rather than of his actions and his criminal intent. This should strike us all as inherently dangerous. The First Amendment of our Constitution was crafted because our Founding Fathers recognized that the freedom of thought and belief is the cornerstone of every other freedom. It is the foundation of liberty, itself, because, without it, every other freedom, including the freedom of speech, becomes meaningless. Madam Speaker, there is another insidious aspect of this legislation which, I believe, would have the most tolerant Americans up in arms if they were truly aware of it, which is, not only does this legislation require law enforcement to investigate an individual's motivations-- those are the thoughts and beliefs that seemingly motivate him or her to commit a crime--but it would expand the scope of the prosecution to include individuals or members of organizations or religious groups whose ideas or words may have influenced a person's thoughts or motivations when he committed a crime. Under such a bill, individuals who may not have even been aware of the crimes could receive the same or similar penalties as the criminal, himself, receives. It would only take some arbitrary prosecutor to construe that an individual had influenced the beliefs or thoughts of a perpetrator of a crime and, thereby, somehow caused hateful or violent acts. This raises the very real possibility that religious leaders or members of religious groups could be prosecuted criminally based on their speech, association or other activities that have been specifically protected by the First Amendment of our Constitution for the last 220 years. Madam Speaker, this would have a devastating and chilling effect on free speech in America. Who could blame pastors, educators or any other cultural leaders if they chose to cease expressing their beliefs for fear of being thrown in prison and charged with a Federal crime? This is not rhetorical speculation. It has already happened in the case of the Philadelphia 11 and in other cases. In the Philadelphia 11, 11 individuals were jailed, and they faced $90,000 in fines and 47 years in prison for simply speaking the gospel openly and publicly. One unscrupulous government entity plus this hate crimes legislation equals the perfect combination for tearing away from American citizens some of the most basic constitutional rights in our Nation's history. Advocacy groups and religious organizations will be chilled from expressing their ideas out of fear of criminal prosecution. In fact, ``chilled'' is probably a profound understatement. Many will be simply terrified or intimidated into complete silence. The fundamental purpose of this body is to protect the lives and the constitutional rights of the American people regardless of who they are or what they believe. Unfortunately, the hate crimes legislation will do just the opposite by granting unequal protections based on personal beliefs and thoughts, and it will endanger the constitutional liberties of millions of Americans.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, with all the challenges that we have in this Nation, we still hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal and that they are equal because they are all God's children. Therefore, the essence of America is that all people should be treated with the same respect and protected completely equally under the law. Whenever we begin to divide ourselves into groups and afford one group more protection than another, we necessarily diminish the protection and equality of all the remaining groups. Mr. Speaker, regardless of whether a person is white, black, handicapped, healthy, old, sick, young, homosexual, heterosexual, a veteran, a police officer, a senior, whatever the case is, they deserve equal protection under the law. That is the foundational premise of this Nation, and this legislation moves us all directly away from that basic foundation in a profound and dangerous way. This legislation would prosecute individuals, not on the basis of their crime, but on their alleged motivation for committing it. It requires law enforcement officials and prosecutors to gather evidence of the offenders' thoughts, rather than their actual actions and their criminal intent. Furthermore, under this bill, such individuals who may not even have been aware of the crime could receive the same or similar penalties as the criminal himself. It would only take some arbitrary prosecutor to construe that the individual had influenced the beliefs or thoughts of a perpetrator of a crime and thereby somehow caused hateful or violent acts. One unscrupulous government entity, plus this hate crimes legislation, equals the perfect recipe for tearing away from American citizens some of the most basic constitutional rights in our Nation. Mr. Speaker, the fundamental purpose of this body is to protect the lives and constitutional rights of the American people regardless of who they are or what they believe. Unfortunately, this legislation would do just the opposite by granting unequal protections based on personal beliefs and thoughts, and it would endanger the constitutional liberties of millions of Americans. I thank the gentlelady for the time and urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, the Salvadoran presidential elections will be held on March 15. If the FMLN wins the election, it would be devastating for the people of El Salvador as well as for the relationship between our two countries. FMLN party leadership is expected to follow the anti-U.S. agenda of Venezuela's radical president, Hugo Chavez, and join Cuba in a pro- Chavez, pro-Cuba, pro-Iran axis. Moreover, Mr. Speaker, the FMLN is a pro-terrorist party with direct ties to sponsors of terror. After the 9/11 attacks, they marched in their capital city to celebrate the attack by al Qaeda, and they burned the American flag. The leader of that march was Salvador Sanchez Ceren, who is now the FMLN's candidate for vice president. Mr. Speaker, should the pro-terrorist FMLN party replace the current government in El Salvador, the United States, in the interest of national security, would be required to re-evaluate our policy toward El Salvador, including cash remittance and immigration policies, to compensate for the fact there will no longer be a reliable counterpart in the Salvadoran government. It is my hope that the El Salvadoran people continue the history of a positive relationship between our two countries and ensure that they elect pro-freedom, pro-peace, life-loving officials to their government.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I certainly thank the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Speaker, today's resolution marks the 50th anniversary of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's visit to India and the positive influence that the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi had on Reverend King's work during the Civil Rights Movement. Likewise, later this month, we will also celebrate President Lincoln's birthday because of his work to lay the foundation for what would become the greatest of American achievements, the recognition of the God-given equal value of all individuals regardless of their race, and the consequent and natural equal protection of the law for everyone. Reverend King and President Lincoln had many things in common. But most prominently of all was their life's work to humanize the dehumanized, to give value to a human life that the law had previously regarded as being lesser than other more politically powerful persons. Reverend King reminded us in his 1963 Letter From the Birmingham Jail that ``injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.'' Like Gandhi, Reverend King looked to his faith to transform society. Reverend King ultimately paid with his life the price for working to extend the equal protection of the law to all. Mr. Speaker, those were the struggles of the past centuries. And those were the heroes of the past centuries. But their work is not done. The 21st century has its own civil rights struggle, Mr. Speaker. As Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, has said, ``The biggest struggle for civil rights today is for the civil rights of the unborn child.'' Last year I joined black activists and black mothers from around the country at the corner of 16th Street Northwest in D.C. to protest what has been the deadliest form of discrimination in our country's history, the systematic elimination of millions, fully one-half of all black Americans conceived in this country, primarily at government-funded family planning clinics placed in our inner cities. Every day, Mr. Speaker, almost 1,500 unborn black children are aborted. Black babies are aborted at between four and five times the rate of that of white babies. Mr. Speaker, this equates to a genocide against black America. And yet our U.S. Government continues to increase the annual appropriation to Planned Parenthood and to other abortion providers every year. Mr. Speaker, I have every conviction that if he were alive today, that Reverend Martin Luther King would not be silent in the face of such an outrage. Dr. King noted in his Letter From Birmingham Jail that the early church ``by their effort and example, brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide.'' He didn't know that in 1973, 10 years after he wrote those words, that the U.S. Supreme Court would revive the practice of killing the innocent and that the black community would pay a higher price in blood than any other. Abortion on demand is called sometimes the exercise of hard-won rights. But in reality, Mr. Speaker, it is the extinguishing of a legacy. The greatest failure of human government is the failure to recognize the inherent value of every human life. Unborn children in America are the greatest example of that today. It is the civil rights struggle before America in this century. Reverend King once said that ``The law cannot change a heart, but it can restrain the heartless. The law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me.'' This Congress, I will introduce the PreNDA bill, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, to end sex-selection abortion and race-selection abortion in America. It is time to reject the discriminatory disgrace of aborting a child based on race or sex. Doing so might remind us all it is also time for the equal protection clause to realize its full meaning finally, that every human being is a child of God, with the God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of their dreams. Nothing, Mr. Speaker, nothing, would honor the work of Reverend Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi or President Abraham Lincoln more.

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona

Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, today I stand here to honor the NAACP. We all honor the NAACP in this House. It has been at the forefront of the civil rights struggle in this country for 100 years, and though 100 years have passed since the founding of the NAACP, there still remains great work to be done. Mr. Speaker, last summer dozens of black pastors and black mothers attended the 99th annual NAACP conference in Cincinnati to call on the NAACP to help expose one of the least known and yet one of the most pervasive forms of racism at work still in this country, the targeting of the black community by abortion providers. Many of these advocates who gathered at the NAACP I have the privilege to call precious friends. Dr. Alveda King, who leads King for America, is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King. Bishop Harry Jackson; Reverend Johnny Hunter, the founder of LEARN, America's largest African American pro-life organization; the Reverend Clenard Childress of LEARN Northeast; Catherine Davis with the Georgia Right to Life; Lawson Lipford-Cruz, the president of Black Students for Life; and David Owens, among many, many others. Their goal was simply to fulfill the mission of the NAACP, and that is to ensure equality and, most importantly, equal protection of the law for all. Mr. Speaker, I want to quote Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, who helped lead the rally outside the NAACP conference. ``Racism lives at Planned Parenthood. I say to my fellow NAACP members: It's time to tell the government to stop funding racism. Planned Parenthood will gladly accept donations for the specific purpose of aborting only black babies,'' King said. ``It locates its clinics in or near minority neighborhoods. It has led the way in eliminating African Americans to the point where one quarter of the black population is now missing because of abortion.'' King called on the Nation's oldest civil rights organization to remember its mission statement: ``To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.'' Day Gardner, the president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, said, ``As a child, I thought the NAACP to be a superhero organization, an organization that would fight racism right down to its very core.'' She stressed that the NAACP leaders need to have their eyes opened to the agenda of government-supported abortion providers and to what she believes is their strategic marketing to the black community. According to reported statistics, Mr. Speaker, a black child is nearly five times more likely to be aborted than a white child. Gardner continued. ``We are here to rally the NAACP, to make our voices heard as we shout in unison `all across this great Nation the struggle is not yet over. The evil hand of racism is still at work.' '' Gardner also spoke about the Federal tax dollars that go to Planned Parenthood. She said it was time for Congress to end that funding. She asked, ``Why are we forced to pay well over $300 million to an organization that is overtly racist? We are calling on the NAACP to stand boldly with us to defund Planned Parenthood and even lead the way in this, the greatest struggle for civil rights.'' Mr. Speaker, I just want to echo and agree with the words of Dr. King and of Day Gardner, that for the NAACP to fully advance the cause of the black community, it must take a stand and fight on behalf of the most helpless, voiceless, politically unempowered members of the black community--those being the unborn. Today, one out of every two black babies conceived in this country is lost to abortion. That is an astonishing reality that I cannot find the words to describe. I just want to thank those courageous members of the NAACP for their fight against this unspeakable tragedy. We must all open our eyes to the racist history of abortion-on-demand movements in this country and its devastating impact on black America. It is past time to defund such a movement in this country. To that end, I will also be reintroducing the PreNDA bill, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, to end sex-selection abortion and race- selection abortion in this country. It is the duty of all of us to come together and to eliminate this deadly form of discrimination in this generation.