Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my colleague for yielding. Mr. Chairman, let me just say about the major points of this bill, which we marked up, that we are in agreement with it. Contrary to Mr. Waxman, we did look at them before we came to the floor. We agree with the no more than 1 year for sole source, that is good; the plan to minimize use of sole source, that is good; maximize fixed- price procurement, that is good; quarterly report to Congress, good; codify the right to review unredacted copies of reports, that is good. What I think you need to be very careful about, because if you are going to penalize people, if you are going to give them $50,000 civil penalties, you need to have it clearly laid out for those people who may be professional members of our staffs, who may be good people who come in from the outside and go to work in DOD and wanting to serve this country, let's make sure that walking into a room and participating in a conversation about a contract doesn't then expose them to civil penalties later on. So I am looking at title III, and I am looking at the word on line 17, it talks about participated personally and substantially at a senior personnel level. Does that mean, and this relates, of course, to elimination of loopholes that allow former Federal officials to accept compensation from contractors or related entities? I think that is good. But I think we need to make it very clear as to whether a staff member, like one of your staff members, Mr. Waxman, going to work for DOD, who walks in a room and is asked a question about a defense system and answers that question, participates in the conversation, whether he has then violated the law. Now, if you turn, and I want you to take a look at that, that is line 18. Now, turn the next page, page 14, and go down to the bottom, and it talks about the administration of a contract, which could also be a violation of a law. So if one of your former staff members or one of mine who goes to work for DOD should participate in the administration, let me just ask you, ask the gentleman from California, if it's a defense system, and your former staff member is assigned to go out to a range to see if that piece of equipment has arrived at the range and if it's being tested, is that involving itself in administration of the contract? Is that person, that former staff member of yours, now involved in administration such as to expose him to civil penalties? That is my question. I think we need to have that clarified.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I like this motion to recommit. You know, all of us have shown our support for the troops. Almost every Member in this body has shown support by traveling to the warfighting theaters. This is a chance to show support in another way, to show that we believe that the military is an outstanding profession, one which many of our young people who are in institutions of higher education may want to engage in. And this elevates, I think, the military profession by showing that we accord it respect by putting this requirement in this motion to recommit. So I thank the gentleman for offering it. I think it is excellent. I would commend it to all the Members of this body. And I want to thank the chairman for his offering of the base bill, and for the ranking member, Mr. Davis, for their hard work.

Mr. HUNTER. Let me just take my time back. I am not making it personal. Mr. Waxman made a statement, I am talking. Mr. Waxman, I will let you respond to this. We are not making it personal. What I am telling you is that there are exigencies in the battlefield, and you got this from your own leadership, gentlemen like Mr. Murtha who said you cannot have these long delays in awarding contracts and have this vigorous oversight period; you cannot have that hold up a battlefield situation. You do have to award sole-source contracts, and you have to award them to people who can move very quickly and get things done. That is my point. The idea that we are supposed to stop that or that we have not exercised any oversight is simply not accurate. There is no personal animosity toward you as a fine Member of this body, but those statements are not accurate, and I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely. The one thing that we have learned is that when people get concussions, there may be a lasting effect on those concussions, and we talked to several concussion specialists who now are focusing on Landstuhl and when the young people come back, especially when they have been attacked by IEDs, by weapons systems that have a blast effect, to have a new focus on the after effects of having concussions, and so that is something that is being done right now. Typically, in the old days, it was done, of course, in sports medicine, for example, guys that were boxers or played football and took numerous hits, and the effect of numerous concussions was studied and was followed. What we are focusing on here is, you have been in an IED attack or you have had a mortar attack that is close and that gives a concussive effect, it is important to monitor that individual for an extended period of time, not just figure, okay, he was knocked out or she was knocked out, but now they are fine. Monitor them for a period of time. So we have a new focus there in Landstuhl and that focus, it was important to Mr. Neugebauer especially, and Dan Boren and Mr. Calvert, who were on the trip with me, were all very interested in making sure that the information that is derived from observation of a patient who newly comes in, comes in and is stabilized there, that then is sent to Walter Reed and to Bethesda so there can be follow-up work so that we can treat the entire patient, and maybe that patient has a fragment wound, making sure that you take care of that, but at the same time make sure that we monitor the effects of concussions, which can in some cases have a lasting effect. So it is just one example of new focuses and new technologies that are being placed on our wounded soldiers, and the folks there do a great job. To go to Walter Reed for a minute and this problem we have with the outpatient, the inpatient care is good at Walter Reed. In fact, I was with a wounded Marine and a wounded soldier and it was either the same day or day or two before the story in the Washington Post broke. We have great inpatient capability there. What we have got to have is we have got to have what I would call a family friendly system that is consumer friendly and consumer easy, so that that 22-year-old wife of a Marine corporal, who is undergoing therapy there at Walter Reed and doing rehab there, so that it is easy to walk through the bureaucracy. So we build these bureaucracies. We inadvertently build them, like the one we built up that says now you cannot get a job for a wounded person or you are violating an ethics rule. We get sometimes so twisted and tied up in this multiplicity of rules that we end up losing sight of the real goals of what we are here for. So I think we need to make this a consumer friendly system for a person who has got a lot of things on their mind and maybe has some kids back home and they are coming several hundred miles to get rehab treatment or therapy can easily and quickly walk through the system without having to go through a phonebook thick of regulations and sign a million dotted lines. That is something we can do, one-stop shopping that is easy and simple. That is not bad to have throughout the Federal bureaucracy, but especially when you have military families that have a lot of problems and a lot of things on their mind, we need to have a customer friendly system. That is what we need to develop.

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will yield further, nobody knows the companies and the businesses in their district better than a Member of Congress, and so I think if we can just pass this little provision in the Ethics Committee that will allow us to do it, we will be able to call up a Member of Congress from whatever district the young man or young woman has a residence in, find out what particular companies have disciplines in the area of occupation that this person specializes in. I think we can marry them up and get some jobs pretty quick.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend for yielding, and with that kind of introduction, I will just shut up and sit down. I thank him for that very kind introduction. I just got back from Iraq with Congressmen Dan Boren and Ken Calvert and Randy Neugebauer. We were at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany, which is the first place where our wounded soldiers and marines are taken after they have been wounded on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. They are stabilized and treated there, and then they are flown back to Walter Reed and Bethesda. We went over the new technologies that are being utilized right now and the new focus being put on our wounded soldiers. Let me tell you, that operation is first class. One thing, and the gentleman talked about Walter Reed and I thought it might be appropriate to bring up an issue that all Members of this body can participate in and help in, and it is this: last year I started in San Diego in Balboa Hospital, which is where a lot of our wounded marines are, and in Walter Reed. We started these forums for getting jobs for our guys and ladies who have gone through their therapy, they are being separated from the service, they have been wounded and they are going to go back into the private sector. So one thing that I thought we would do out in Balboa, and we did one of them here at Walter Reed, was to bring in people from industry and introduce them to our wounded soldiers and marines and try to help get them jobs. Hopefully, a young marine would stand up and say I am a generator mechanic from such and such a town in Vermont or Maine or California or Iowa, and we would be able to match them up with a company that might need such a talent in their company. So we started doing that, and the first session I had was in the dayroom in Balboa Hospital in San Diego, and we actually had CEOs from major corporations in the dayroom and the marines all came in and told us what they did and introduced themselves, and we immediately had a number of people hired right there at that point in time. Well, I got back, and the Armed Services staff told me you may be breaking the law. I said, What are you talking about? They said, We have talked to the ethics lawyers on the Hill and there may be a question if a Member of Congress tries to help somebody get a job with private industry. There is the implication that reciprocal treatment will be required at some point: you are getting a favor and you will give a favor back. I said, What can we do? They said, You need legislation that will end up with the Ethics Committee and House Administration Committee expressly permitting Members of Congress to help get jobs for our wounded soldiers and marines. So last year, a month or two before we broke, we passed a resolution in the full House urging the Ethics Committee and the House Administration Committee to give us express permission to get jobs for our wounded folks. Every Member of the House can help us on this. I know that Vic Snyder who heads up the Personnel Subcommittee on the great Armed Services Committee and John McHugh are very much supportive of this. Hopefully, we will get this recommendation up before the Ethics Committee and the House Administration Committee. At that point I can see this entire House of Representatives doing great work because you can take a young man or woman from a town in America who has had an injury and gone through rehab and is looking to go into the private sector. A lot are staying with the service, but the ones that aren't staying with the service, we could call up the Congressman from that particular district that young person is going back to and find out if there is a company that needs that generator mechanic or that young man or woman who is interested in law enforcement or some other profession. So I think there is a lot of opportunities here and I look forward to working with you and with the great gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes) and all of our colleagues to try to put this together.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend for yielding. This is, indeed, a sad time in our country. Five years ago we came to this floor united. We joined in sending our troops off in this war against terror. You know, Madam Speaker, for the first number of strikes that were delivered by Muslim extremists in this war, the terrorists chose the battlefields. They chose a battlefield as a Marine barracks in Beirut. And Mr. Skelton and I were there, he shortly after the explosion that killed our Marines, I shortly before that explosion. They chose the Khobar Towers, they chose the embassies in Africa, they chose the USS Cole, and then they chose New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. We chose the next two battlefields, Afghanistan and Iraq. Our Democrat colleagues say that Iraq was the wrong battlefield, and I have heard resonating through the floor over the last 4 days statements that they were tricked, hornswoggled, fooled about Saddam Hussein. From my side of the argument as to whether or not Saddam Hussein was a dangerous terrorist, I will simply offer all the statements by every Democrat leader in America during the 1990s, when there was no Bush administration to, in the words of my Democrat colleagues, ``trick them.'' I will offer their statements about Saddam Hussein. Madam Speaker, we have expanded in the last 60 years. We have been in the business of expanding freedom. We understood after World War II that if we didn't change the world, the world would change us. And that lesson was relearned after 9/11. No one would argue that it is not in our interest to have a Japan on the other side of the Pacific, where we stood up a free government, where we have a free nation, or that it is not in our interest to have a free El Salvador in our own hemisphere, or that it is not in our interest to have those dozens of nations that were behind the Berlin Wall that are now free and working for freedom. Many of them are partners in Iraq. We understand that. And now we are trying to expand freedom in a different part of the world, a very dangerous part of the world. And we are undertaking the same three-point strategy that we have had for 60 years: Number one, you stand up a free government; number two, you stand up a military capable of protecting that free government; and, number three, the Americans leave. And we can build on this Baghdad plan, which is right now in the execution phase, this plan of having two or three Iraqi battalions out front, with an American backup battalion to mentor them, and we can rotate every one of the 129 Iraqi battalions through this type of a combat rotation, stand them up, give them battlefield experience, and then the Americans can leave. Now, Madam Speaker, I have heard it said throughout this debate that there was somehow a smooth road not taken. And let me just say, that is not true. There are no smooth roads in the Middle East. There are no smooth roads to standing up new governments, especially in communities and states where people have been trained to live under dictatorships. And for those who say if we had just kept Saddam Hussein's army in place, with it is 11,000 Sunni generals, everything would have been fine and we would have had a peaceful situation in Iraq right now, that is nonsense. And for those who said if we had had 200,000 or 300,000 troops, the Shiites and Sunnis would have forgotten their ancient rivalries, that is also nonsense. What are the facts, the reality, our Democrat friends say we have to be realists here, is this is a tough, difficult road. We are on the second stage right now. Most importantly, Madam Speaker, our troops are in the field already on this plan that is now being retroactively disavowed by the Democratic leadership. You know, it was in June, I think it was 2130 hours, June 6, 1944, when the first elements of the first aircraft of the Pathfinder companies went out in front of the 82nd Airborne over Normandy, and they shortly were followed by hundreds of airplanes with American paratroopers. The 82nd Airborne going into Normandy had the full support and prayers of everybody in the United States Congress. Today, you have got an 82nd Airborne Second Brigade now operating under this plan in Baghdad already there in Baghdad. Now, is this going to be the day, I would ask my colleagues, when some trooper from the 82nd Airborne writes on the concrete wall next to his position in Baghdad, ``This is where I stood when the United States House of Representatives led by the Democrat leadership rejected my mission''? I hope that doesn't happen, Madam Speaker. Vote ``no'' on this resolution.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 5 minutes to Mr. Westmoreland, the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, let me just take 2 minutes to respond to my colleague who has just made a number of points. First, there are a number of live Democrats that I like to refer to. When somebody asks me whether or not Saddam Hussein was indeed a dangerous terrorist in and of himself, I like to take the words of all of the Democrat leadership of this country in the 1990s, when, in their words, there was no Bush administration to trick them, who made that point very, very forcefully. Secondly, the invasion of Iraq and the taking of Baghdad in record time with very low casualties has been described by most military leaders as being a remarkably efficient and effective operation. In fact, while we had people saying that our troops would be bogged down, the same talk shows would be interrupted with a news flash that Tommy Franks had taken yet another stronghold of Saddam Hussein. We took Baghdad with very low casualties, very, very quickly, in a very effective and efficient military operation. Lastly, I don't think that the gentleman can say that there have been no ripples, no ripples whatsoever in the Middle East with respect to freedom and democracy and people wanting to be free as a result of the elections in Iraq. There clearly was action in Libya where they moved lots of parts of their nuclear weapons program which are now residing in the United States, I think as a result of American actions there. Clearly actions toward freedom, toward ejecting the Syrians from Lebanon and moving toward multiparty elections in Egypt. All imperfect to be sure but nonetheless reactions from our operation in Iraq. Lastly, I would just say to my colleague let me just say to my colleague, there are no smooth roads. The smooth roads not taken, that have been held out by the armchair critics, like we should have kept Saddam Hussein's army in place, that was an army with 11,000 Sunni generals. What are you going to do with an army with 11,000 Sunni generals? Certainly not establish stability in a country in which you have a Shiite majority. The idea that we needed to have 300,000 Americans in Iraq and yet at the same time put an Iraqi face, as a number of the critics have said, on the military apparatus. So I think a number of the gentleman's points have been strongly disproven by the American operation in Iraq. We are in the second period right now of a three-phase operation: stand up a free government; stand up a military capable of protecting that free government; lastly, the Americans leave. Let's give the second phase a chance to work. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson).

Mr. HUNTER. I like a full debate. If the gentleman will hold on.

Mr. HUNTER. Let me allow the gentleman from Missouri to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes to respond to the first assertion just made by my colleague, to the effect that we sent the troops in without what he called life-saving equipment. When we finished the Clinton administration, virtually no one in any of the 10 Army divisions, which, incidentally, had been cut from 14 Army divisions when that administration went into power, none of the 10 divisions that were left, virtually none of them had any bulletproof vests, any of this body armor that we talk about that our troops have today. When we went into the first operation, we had much more than the Clinton administration had. At that point we had a number of the inserts, of the so-called Small Arms Protective Inserts. We had the outer tactical vests that incorporate those inserts with all of our Marines, with all of the infantry units going in with the U.S. Army. And very quickly after that, we developed a plan in which we fielded body armor for not only the people on the front lines, the infantry, the artillery, the armor, but also everybody that is in theater. Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely outrageous to tell the American people that the Americans were dangerously unequipped when we went into Iraq. We went in with better equipment than we have ever had in any wars that this country has ever fought. And today, we have fielded over 40,000 pieces of new equipment that we didn't have 4 years ago that makes our troops yet more efficient. I would like to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to yield myself 15 seconds to make a response to that last point. My last point wasn't that Lebanon is California or New York or Massachusetts. My last point was that the free elections in Iraq inspired the Lebanese to work to eject the Syrian influence, which I think the gentleman would agree was not a good influence in Lebanon. It inspired people to want to be free.

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman gets more time, I will be happy to engage with him. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) for 4 minutes.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. What is my friend's statement?

Mr. HUNTER. Let me just say to my friend that I hope that this is a misquote; but, certainly, there was a press conference, and these are the quotes that are reported in the transcript by the press. So let us hope that that is not accurate. If it is not accurate, I will be very happy. If it is accurate, that will receive enormous opposition from this Member of Congress. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield).

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to say to my colleague who just spoke that I saw also two young men in Walter Reed a couple of days ago, and I would recommend that he talk with them also if he thinks that everybody that is over there supports this resolution. I would also say to my friend that if you think that the message that is going to go across thousands of Web sites and communications the day after this vote is taken on terrorist Web sites is, our message is that democracy is alive and well in the United States, I am willing to take a bet on that. I do not think you will see that. I think you will see something else. You will see the message that they think that this resolution, if it is passed, is the first note of retreat in the war against terror by the United States. That is what you will see and I will be happy to take a bet on that one. Now, Mr. Speaker, I heard just a couple of hours ago, as many of us have, that the Democratic leadership of the House intends to use management policies in the Department of Defense over the next year or so to keep either troops or supplies from moving to the battlefield. Now, using management policies that will prohibit people from moving in the Marines or the United States Army if they haven't spent enough time back in CONUS before they go, I can say this to you, that is a very, very dangerous policy. Our ability to project power around the world and to deter people who wish us ill is the ability to move men and equipment very quickly around the world. And any type of an inhibition of that capability is going to be extremely dangerous to the United States. And I will fight with every fiber of my being any attempt by this Congress through management policies by the Democratic leadership, through management policies of DOD to keep either reinforcement or supplies from reaching our troops around the world. I will simply say once more, I said when we started this debate yesterday, that this resolution will be looked at by America's friends, by America's enemies, and I think also by America's troops; and I think they will interpret it, no matter the good faith of people in this Chamber, they will interpret it as the first notes of retreat in the war against terror, just as they interpreted actions by the Spanish Government after the domestic strike in Spain and the terrorist hit in Spain and in other countries. They will look at what we have done, and I will be happy to stand with any of my colleagues and analyze those messages as they come off the terrorist boards after this vote is taken. This resolution, if it passes tomorrow, and it probably will, will be taken as the first note of retreat in the war against terror. Any attempt by the Democrat leadership to cut off supplies or reinforcement by management policies in DOD, personnel policies, will be interpreted as the second note of retreat in the war against terror, and I for one will oppose them very strongly

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I would yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave).

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes just to give some information that my great friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes), commented on. I made a comment a few minutes ago that I had understood that the Democrat leadership or a member of that leadership had stated that they would use DOD management policies to cut off the sending of either reinforcements or supplies to the warfighting theater and that I would oppose that very strongly. My friend Mr. Reyes expressed doubt that that had happened. He said he had not heard about it. I just wanted to inform him I have the Reuters report here, and it quotes our colleague Mr. Murtha: ``A leading congressional opponent of the war in Iraq on Thursday said his plans for placing conditions on how President George W. Bush can spend $93.4 billion in new combat funds would effectively stop an American troop buildup.'' This is quoting Mr. Murtha. Mr. Murtha says: ``They won't be able to continue. They won't be able to do the deployment. They won't have the equipment, they don't have the training, and they won't be able to do the work. There's no question in my mind.'' That is the statement upon which I based my remarks a few minutes ago. It appears that statement has been made.

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

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the gentleman. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding this time to Mr. LoBiondo. As this Member gets time in the coming debate, we owe you one.

Mr. HUNTER. I want to thank my friend, Mr. Oberstar, very much for that. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. LoBiondo).

Mr. HUNTER. This is not an unfriendly request. I just want to note one of our Members has a relative's funeral he wants to go to. He has just a few minutes. I know my friend Mr. Oberstar is waiting to speak. Is there any chance you could yield to Mr. LoBiondo so he could get his 4 minutes in before the deadline?