Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Mississippi on two counts, first for his offering the amendment on behalf of Sonny Montgomery, and secondly, for this IED amendment. I just want to tell the gentleman that we have just tested today a new equipment package that has great potential, that we should be able to move into theater that hopefully will be able to be used in dismounted form and mounted form and that could be used on virtually every vehicle that moves out of base camp or out of forward bases. I think this is absolutely the number one causation of casualties in the theater in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that the IED has become the weapon of choice for insurgents, it is going to be used in other battlefields around the world. So our ability, our agility to move new technology through the process quickly and get it fielded is paramount, and this amendment helps to do that. I want to thank the gentleman for the value he has added to the bill by offering this amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman and the gentlewoman for their contribution here, and just assure them we are very interested in making sure that this equipment, some of which has been wearing out pretty quickly in the desert sand in the warfighting theaters, is maintained in excellent condition, both with our great in- house resources and our depots and with the private sector, so we use all of our resources in the U.S. to make sure we have got good, sound platforms. The committee has no objection to the amendment. We thank you for adding it to the base bill.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I have a colloquy with the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave). I would yield to the gentlewoman for purposes of the colloquy.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I submit the following letters for the Congressional Record. House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Washington, DC, May 9, 2006. Hon. Duncan Hunter, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Hunter: On May 5, 2006, the Committee on Armed Services ordered reported H.R. 5122, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. As ordered reported by the Committee on Armed Services, this legislation contains a number of provisions that fall within the, jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. These provisions include the following: Sec. 312. Munitions Disposal in Ocean Waters Sec. 313. Reimbursement for Moses Lake Sec. 314. Funding of Cooperative Agreements Sec. 2917. [Now Sec 2822]--Restrictive Easements Sec. 3111. Plan for transformation of National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapons complex Sec. 3112. Extension of Facilities and Infrastructure Recapitalization Program Sec. 3115. Two-year extension of authority for appointment of certain scientific, engineering, and technical personnel Sec. 3117. Consolidation of counterintelligence programs of Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration Recognizing your interest in bringing this legislation before the House expeditiously, the Committee on Energy and Commerce agrees not to seek a sequential referral of the bill. By the being not to seek a sequential referral, the Committee on Energy and Commerce does not waive its jurisdiction over these provisions or any other provisions of the bill that may fall within its jurisdiction. In addition, the Committee on Energy and Commerce reserves its right to seek conferees on any provisions within its jurisdiction which are considered in the House-Senate conference, and asks for your support in being accorded such conferees. I request that you include this letter and your response as part of the report on H.R. 5122 and as part of the Congressional Record during consideration of this bill by the House. Sincerely, Joe Barton, Chairman.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, it is especially appropriate to be able to follow the gentleman from El Paso, Mr. Reyes, who was in my estimation the greatest Border Patrol chief in the history of our country. He did a tremendous job under very challenging odds. I remember working with him long before he became a Representative in the most southern areas of Texas and then ultimately up in the El Paso area. One thing that challenged him and challenged us in San Diego in more recent times was tunneling. Of course, detection of tunnels is something that the military engages in every now and then, and that is a good example of candidate technologies for sharing of technology between DOD and the Department of Homeland Security. Likewise, surveillance sensors, it has always been a pleasure to go down with the gentleman from El Paso, go down to his district with Joint Task Force 6 and look at that interaction. And I really appreciate Mr. Dent coming up with this amendment that will move to mesh these technologies and make sure that when the American taxpayers pay for the development of something that will accrue to the benefit of our security, that it gets shared and gets moved across what is sometimes kind of a bright line between the military and the Department of Homeland Security. You have done a great job and thank you for bringing this amendment to our attention. We support it fully.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for bringing this to our attention. There are no more important citizens than those who defend our freedom and carry our flag; and right there with them are their family members. I think this is an excellent amendment, and the committee supports it fully.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Pickering).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me offer the description of the amendments. Mr. Chabot's amendment expresses a sense of Congress that the spouses of armed services members who have died between October 7, 2001, and November 23, 2003, should be permitted to have the option of assigning their SBP payments, their survivor payments, to their children. Mr. Davis' amendment is another defense access road amendment. This amendment would allow DOD to consider transit projects, as well, as part of the DAR, the Defense Access Road program. Mr. Ryan of Ohio's amendment authorizes $5 million for the High Altitude Airship program. The HAA is designed to be an uninhabited, long-endurance, platform for carrying forward-based sensors and a wide range of other BMD payloads that will enable continuous over-horizon communication. It would also provide wide-area surveillance and protection without interruption or the risk associated with manned aircraft. The offsets are $5 million from the Space Based Space Surveillance program, and this is another tool for sensor and surveillance capability. The amendment offered by Ms. Slaughter requires the Department of Defense to include the number of disciplinary actions as part of the annual report on sexual assault in the military. So those are brief definitions or descriptions of these amendments. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of our time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman for his contribution, and let me just lay out some of things that we are doing because I think this area is so important for us. Included in the base bill, the gentleman from Missouri and myself and our great members of the committee on both sides of the aisle worked out, we added $109.7 million for jammers. Jammers are very important in this IED business because these improvised explosive devices are largely detonated remotely. As the gentleman knows, few of them, some of them, are detonated by wires that are connected to detonators, and you may have an insurgent hiding 20, 30, 40, 50 yards from the roadside or from the dismounted U.S. military unit and he detonates it with a clacker or a detonation device in the style that has been utilized by militaries up to the last several years ago. The other detonation device, and one that is now the device of choice, is a remote detonation, and that detonation allows a person, the insurgent, to be many yards away, far away from the particular avenue that he is ambushing. In many cases, he does not even need to have a weapon. He may be lost in a crowd, and he waits for a convoy to line up on a particular lamp post or other object, and he blows this device, which may be a 152-millimeter artillery round by using this remote detonation capability. Without getting into the classified areas, there are a number of remote detonation capabilities, and what we are trying to do is to direct our countermeasures to be able to jam those detonations. So we have put a lot of extra money in. The administration has a lot of money in, but we have put in more. We have been working on equipment packages with them, and the key is to move this stuff through the training ranges here, the testing ranges, quickly into the field; and I can assure the gentleman we are really going to be working on this. So I thank him so much for his focus on this important area, and we will work together. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of our time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendments en bloc.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say to my colleague from California that he has brought an excellent amendment to the floor here, and this is certainly something that does require action, justifies action by the Federal Government, and we totally support his amendment on this side.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Baca's amendment requires the Department of Defense to study the scope of perchlorate contamination at formerly utilized defense sites. Mr. Castle's amendment implements GAO's recommendations to cut down and award an incentive fee spending waste by requiring the Department to develop a strategy for linking incentives to specific outcomes such as meeting costs, schedule and capability goals. It also establishes guidance for improving the effectiveness of award and incentive fees, and ensures that appropriate approving officials are overseeing these decisions. The Department would be required to report to Congress on the status and effectiveness of these new standards. The amendment offered by Mr. Davis is the defense access road amendment; and this program, which is known as the DAR program, currently allows DOD to pay for road projects made necessary by DOD actions, and this amendment would allow DOD to consider transit projects as part of DAR as well. Mr. Schiff's amendment directs the Secretary of Defense to submit to Congress a series of regular reports on the threat to American personnel posed by IEDs, improvised explosive devices, as well as action being taken to interdict IEDs and to develop more effective active and passive countermeasures. The first report would be due 30 days after enactment, the subsequent reports every 90 days thereafter. Reports would be unclassified, with a classified annex if necessary. Mr. Chairman, the committee supports these amendments, and let me just say with respect to the last amendment, that the committee works every day on the IED issue, and we communicate with DOD every day on operations and on the development of the countermeasure systems that we are currently undertaking to rush to the battlefield. So I very much appreciate the gentleman's concern. I think that IEDs, and I am sure he shares this concern, are an instrument of choice now by terrorists, and this is probably the most compelling challenge facing us in the warfighting theaters and in the global war against terror right now. We work this issue every single day. We have got a new package of equipment that we are moving out, and we have added $109 million to this countermeasure fund this year. We are going to try to move that up, even if we have to move money out of the various services, and we are going to work this problem every day. So I invite the gentleman to work with us and work with our staff, and I think these reports will be value added to the process. I thank the gentleman from California for his work. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. No one has more respect for the gentleman from New York than I. I just want to remind my colleagues that we had a vote on the gentleman's amendment in committee, and we did put it in, and it was an amendment to a provision that we put into the bill that was, I thought, an excellent provision; I think, most members of the committee agreed. I think that is reflected by the 60-1 vote that ultimately discharged the bill, agreed with, that was what it said, that chaplains of all faiths, all faiths, would be allowed to pray according to the dictates of their own conscience. Now, I know you can add a word or two or a comma or a change of phrase, and the effect of a small group of words can have 60 different interpretations by various members of the committee. But the provision that we left with, because I think there has been a concern that we have commanders, I think there is concern that chaplains be allowed to pray according to the dictates of their own conscience. We asserted in a positive statement that they would be able to do that. That was something I think most members agreed with. In fact, they did agree with it on a bipartisan basis. The gentleman offered a change to that, and that was rejected. So I just want my colleagues to know that we thought, and I think today, that a statement that says that all chaplains, no matter what faith, are able to pray according to the dictates of their own conscience. It is a statement of fairness and serves the military well.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think that is a thoughtful statement. I think that what we have seen, regrettably, from the gentleman's party, from the Democrat side, has been a series of ``noes'' to initiatives that would have increased the supply of petroleum. The amount of increase in petroleum that we have undertaken in the last 4 or 5 years would have, by the projections I have seen, have been made up by oil which could have come from, for example, Alaska which is a third of the size of the United States. So when the gentleman's party effectively closed down Alaska for supplying petroleum, a large piece of Alaska for supplying petroleum from the northern sector, that deprived us of an enormous supply of petroleum which would have had a direct effect on the price at the pump. Further, the gentleman knows it takes about 10 years to permit a refinery. The gentleman is an expert in this. The gentleman knows the way we get low prices in this country for any commodity is competition. That means if you are baking bread on one side of the street for $2 a loaf, and I come across from the other side of the street and I can bake it for a buck a loaf, I win and the consumers win. If you takes you 10 years to get a permit for your bakery, you never get into the competition and the price of bread never comes down. And if it takes you 10 years to permit a refinery because of environmental restrictions that the Democratic Party will not let go of, you never see that oil coming on line and you never see that competition from another refinery. It is a debate. But on the point of funding, the idea that you can just harvest a third of a billion dollars out of missile defense and that is not going to have any effect on the program because you think that money is not needed right now, we will have other parts of the program, the missile defense program, that needs more money. As the gentleman knows, when you have hundreds of programs, some of them need money, some of them can give up money at any given time. The idea that this missile defense, which is necessary to protect both our troops in theater, who have been fired upon and killed in some cases by low-end ballistic missiles, like the Scuds that were used against us in the first Gulf War, and countries like Israel that need to have defense that see their neighbors right now developing ballistic missiles that will come in high and fast into those countries; the idea of forcing our Members to choose between defending their troops and having a new technological program on petroleum innovations, in my estimation, this is something that is a subject for judgment. We have exercised our judgment. I think we have done a good job in the committee. I think we have put together a good bill in the committee. It passed out 60-1. I think that is testament to the fact that we have a balanced package and we need to move forward.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to, once again, echo my great respect for my partner on this committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), and just offer that one thing we have done in this package is to take down the cost of pharmaceutical drugs to zero for those enlisted families if they simply get them through the mail; and they can now get a 90-day supply rather than a 30-day supply, and that is what we are trying to incentivize them to do. It is better for them. They have got no cost of transportation to go pick up their medicine, and it is better for the taxpayers. And that is the direction that we are trying to take our military families.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 4 of House Resolution 811, as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, I request that during further consideration of H.R. 5122 in the Committee of the Whole, and following consideration of en bloc packages numbers one and two, the following amendments be considered in the following order: Amendment No. 8 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 15 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 16 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 6 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 7 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 9 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 13 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 10 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 22 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 18 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 11 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 12 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 14 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 23 printed in House Report 109-461; Amendment No. 21 printed in House Report 109-461.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 5122.