Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HUNTER. That's right.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to Mr. Castle, the gentleman from Delaware, 2 minutes.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlelady from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito) 2 minutes.

Mr. HUNTER. Sure.

Mr. HUNTER. Reserving the right to object, Madam Chairman, I will not object, except I want to talk to my friend about what he calls earmarks. A couple of years ago when our guys started to get hurt with roadside bombs in Iraq, we realized that there were no jammers to jam those electronic signals that detonate the 155 rounds that were blowing up American Marines and soldiers, no portable jammers. That means while we had the big jammers we carry in the trucks to protect convoys, there were no jammers to protect that squad of Marines or soldiers working through a courtyard in Ramadi or Fallujah. This committee put in $10 million for 10,000, jammers which we researched and developed, manufactured and deployed in the field in 70 days. Those were earmarks. Now, if the gentleman's assertation is true, and the whole theme of his argument here is if the Pentagon doesn't request it, it's not needed, I disagree with it. This is what the Pentagon had for portable jammers for our troops: zero. I can tell the gentleman about the system that we put in that has had a very salutary effect on the ability of the enemy to hurt our troops with mortars, also so-called earmarks. I can tell the gentleman about our surveillance programs that we added to, also so-called earmarks. I could tell the gentleman that I put in the defense budget a couple of years ago, along with my good friend Ike Skelton, an increase in U.S. Marine Corps, taking them up at that point to 180,000. Today nobody suggests that we should somehow discharge those Marines because we added them above and beyond the President's budget. In fact, the President now has come back and said, you know, you guys in the Armed Services Committee were right, and because of that, they put in a request this year for 7,000 more Army troops and 5,000 more Marines. So I would just say to the gentleman it's our job, our responsibility under the Constitution, to build this defense budget. It's not the Pentagon's. In fact, the Constitution doesn't mention the Pentagon. Now, what I do with the initiatives that I put in, I put them on the Internet. How's that for disclosure? I think at least a couple hundred people see that. Now, with respect to how many people see these, we put out the directive report language. Everybody sees that. But you mark up your subcommittees only a few days, sometimes as much as a week but rarely longer, before you go to full committee. And so the tables that have all of the numbers in them, and it's got hundreds and hundreds of entries, are available to any Member that wants to come by and ask for them. But we're not going to put those out to the press and cause a massive circus of contractors and media people swarming the committee when we're trying to get our job done. We have never done it like that. But the disparaging way in which the gentleman talks about things that we put in, some of which are crucial to the survival of your constituents, the young men and women who joined the Marine Corps and the Army from your district, I think is misplaced. The building of the defense budget is a very important thing. It's a thing that we do often in disagreement with the Pentagon. We have put in additional aircraft carriers when you had Presidents who didn't want to put them in because we thought they were important to the survival of this country, and we turned out to be right. We have increased end strength in the Army and Marine Corps. We have done most of the work on UAVs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. That means you don't get pilots shot down. That means you're able to disperse many more platforms that can gather information. The things that we put in the defense budget are generally done after a lot of thought, a lot of analysis and, generally speaking, they have been very good for our troops.

Mr. HUNTER. I'd be happy to yield.

Mr. HUNTER. We did authorize them.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to my friend.

Mr. HUNTER. Let me take back my time and explain to the gentleman why it's important to have report language. You start programs and you also put policies in place. If you put those in the bill and those are locked into law and then you get a call from the administration and they say, You know, we looked at this thing and there's not enough long-lead materials to build this. You are strait-jacketed. The administration can't come back and say, We want to reprogram. At that point, you have to change the law. If you have a policy, and here you have wars in two theaters, if you have a policy you have to change, you can't just call up and you can't work the policy out with the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps. You now have to go back and change the law. If you have looked at the reprogramming requests that are made by the Pentagon, they are usually made with respect to some factor that has changed. You would have hundreds of changes that now require changes in the law, and in a very real way, having report language that gives flexibility to the administration, is for their benefit. Now we can put all this stuff in the law if that is the requirement to do it. But it doesn't make sense, either for us or for the administration. That is why you have it, because you have changing situations and you have got to have the flexibility for people to call up and say, You know, we just developed another system that is better than that one. Let's not continue to fund that in a straitjacket. Let's go ahead and reprogram and go to the other one. Or maybe we have a priority. Maybe we need ammunition, maybe we need more ammunition. So we want you to take money from this program and put it into ammunition. You can't do that if everything is in statute.

Mr. HUNTER. Be happy to.

Mr. HUNTER. If you take the gentleman's argument to its ultimate conclusion, that means the portable jammers, the ones that only weigh a couple of pounds that we gave to our marines to save their lives so they can carry them, because you can't carry the 150-pounders on your back when you're on a patrol, they would not have gotten those because they weren't in the Pentagon's budget. The point that I am making is that the Pentagon often misses things. They don't have always the best judgment in this world. I point to guys like the chairman of the Defense Appropriations in the full committee, Mr. Lewis, who, by many people, is considered one of the fathers of the Predator. The Predator aircraft has saved lives because it's allowed us to do recon and striking without having to have a pilot out there who may be shot down and have to be recovered. That was a program that required a lot of pushing against the will of the Pentagon. So I disagree with the gentleman's argument that somehow anything the Pentagon disagrees with is illegitimate. We've had, in many cases, a better idea than the Pentagon, and the increases in the Army and Marine Corps are two of the great examples. This committee said you have to increase it, and we increased it. You call that an earmark. Today, the administration calls it the right thing to do.

Mr. HUNTER. Be happy to yield.

Mr. HUNTER. Let me just say to my friend, I believe in disclosure. That is why I put every initiative on the Internet. I think you have got to disclose things and you have got to be able to be accountable for those things. I think that's absolutely true.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. And I do want to say there is a gentleman here who's got more knowledge than I have on this defense bill, and he just spoke. I want to give my thanks to Chairman Skelton for doing a great job of putting together an excellent bill which passed unanimously out of the Armed Services Committee. He followed very strongly what I call the two tracks that we're on. The first track is to provide for the warfighters in the theaters that are currently in progress in Afghanistan and Iraq and around the world, where we're fighting the global war against terror. We do so very well in this bill in terms of putting in lots of extra money for MRAPs, for force protection, for defense against mortars, against roadside bombs, and all the other things that are important aspects and dimensions of force protection. Then we also provide for what I call over the horizon. That means that we've provided, with the very able chairmen of the subcommittees and the ranking members, for continued equipment buys in critical areas and put in extra money for submarines, which we will have low numbers in the next 5 to 10 years, but are a very important part of American leverage in foreign policy and a very important component of warfighting. Putting in extra money for C-17s, for that airlift that is so critical, for giving a good solid buy on F-22s this year and Joint Strike Fighter. Also the report that I've received back from the Marines is that the first V-22s are now in theater in Iraq and that they're working very well. The Marines like that doubling of speeds that they now have over the CH-46 helicopters. That's accruing to their benefit in lots and lots of operations. The chairman and the chairmen of the subcommittees and the ranking members I think have done a great job of filling out both tracks of both the near term and the long term in this bill. I thank Mr. Skelton for his kind words. Let me tell you, one of the real blessings in serving in this body is to be able to serve with a great partner, whether you're the chairman or the ranking member. The chairman has done a wonderful job in putting this bill together. The man from Missouri is an outstanding leader in national security, and I applaud him for his great career. I know we also have two members retiring, Mr. Saxton, who for many years chaired the Special Operations Subcommittee, very important subcommittee, is now ranking on Air Land. And Mr. Everett, who is ranking on Strategic. Jim Saxton, I have watched him go around the world visiting with our special operators, ensuring that they had what they needed.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his great service on the Armed Services Committee. You can trade up anytime you want to and come back off that old Rules Committee and come back to Armed Services. But Mr. Saxton has done yeomen's work in providing for special operations, for operations that aren't given ticker-tape parades in which a number of people know about and are briefed on, but which are crucial to our Nation's security. Those men and women who serve in those very important positions in special operations can be thankful they had Jim Saxton over these years to be supportive of them. And he is still supportive of them in his job as ranking member to Mr. Abercrombie on Air Land. Similarly, Mr. Everett has an insight and understanding of matters relating to space and missile defense that I think are matched by very few people in this country. And Terry Everett is the master of the closed briefing. He makes very few speeches. Terry Everett is not a guy you look to for long speeches, he's a guy you look to for hard work, for thoughtful analysis, and for doing the right thing when it comes to making sure that as we move into the next 5 to 10 years, we have what it takes in missile defense and in space to ensure America's security. I want to applaud those retiring members of the committee and once again thank my chairman and all the members of the Armed Services Committee who make this such a great bipartisan committee. I think we need to support this rule and move this great package down the road.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. To my great friend, I don't deserve this honor that he has recommended here of naming the bill. I'm just an ordinary American, but I get to serve with lots of extraordinary Americans, and the gentleman from Missouri is one of those extraordinary Americans. He talked about the jointness that he's trying to bring over from his great work on the Goldwater-Nichols bill, of bringing our services together to act jointly, and extend that to the other agencies which are so crucial in this operation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to bring them in also in a way that they act as a member of the team led, most of the time, by the Department of Defense, but nonetheless, one that requires cohesion and jointness and a culture of working together as a team. I want to commend the gentleman for the fact that he has been the corporate historian, if you will, for the House of Representatives and for the Armed Services Committee, who often brings us back in debate or in hearings to events that transpired in conflicts 100 years ago sometimes, or World War II or Korea or Vietnam, and reminds us that we shouldn't have to learn the lesson a second time. So I want to give my great thanks to this great American, Ike Skelton, and to all of the members of the great Armed Services Committee and the chairmen and ranking members of the subcommittees who put together such a great bill. A couple of them are sitting here next to me. I know Jim Saxton is leaving. He was the first chairman of the Special Operations Subcommittee, the Terrorism Subcommittee, and traveled the world and the country and every base where we had SOCOM people stationed, talking to the teams, talking, whether they were Green Berets or Rangers or SEALs or other operators, trying to understand what they needed from Congress in order to be effective. He worked to get them that equipment, and now, as the ranking member of Air, Land, he continues that mission. And, of course, Terry Everett, that guy who doesn't make long speeches but spends a lot of time in classified sessions working and understanding on the issues surrounding space, and how those issues relate to national security. Probably nobody else in the country knows as much as he does on those issues. And, of course, we've got a couple of members, as the chairman said, moving on to other offices, Rob Andrews and Mark Udall, and we wish them the very best. Mr. Chairman, this is an excellent defense bill, and I concur with the gentleman from Missouri that we should have a unanimous vote in the House of Representatives, just as we had under his leadership in the Armed Services Committee. It does a couple of things that are important for us. It works toward the warfighting theaters, which are very important, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places in the world where the global war on terror is taking place. But, at the same time, and in those, in that category, we put in extra money for MRAPs for these armored vehicles, for protection for our troops, for jammers, for all the things, for new surveillance capability, new anti-mortar capability, all the things that would go to force protection, and also make our troops more effective in those theaters. But beyond that, we pay a lot of attention and put a great deal of focus on modernizing the military and looking over the horizon to challenges that may go far beyond the current theaters. We continue to fund the F-22, which the reports now coming back from the operators are to the effect that the F-22 is doing extremely well, a high performance fighter aircraft with lots of capability, lots of legs, lots of firepower, but especially lots of sensor capability, which we're finding to be extremely valuable. The V-22, which is this platform that the Marines wanted for years because it goes roughly twice as fast as the CH-46s that it's replacing, are working extremely well in theater. The Marines are getting from point A to point B in half the time. They're able to carry out their mission more efficiently and effectively. They like that particular platform. And across the board, we are replacing and modernizing our military equipment. Now there are some things that we need to do in this bill, and I would hope we could do on the floor. We did cut some $300 million out of missile defense. Mr. Chairman, we live in an era of missiles. This is an era in which we will see, in the coming years, the Iranians continuing to improve on the Shahab missile classes, which already can reach parts of Europe, at some point will be able to reach all of Europe, and will be followed by missile classes that, at some point, will be able to reach the United States. We also have seen North Korea throw a pod of missiles into the North China Sea, and the Sea of Japan; some of which have capability, if they put more sections on those missiles, ultimately, to reach American allies and the United States itself. So we're entering the middle of what I would call the era of missiles. And having defense against missiles is a key part of the American defense system. We've had these wonderful successes where we've shot down missiles that are traveling, where the interceptor and the missile it shoots down 148 miles above the surface of the Earth are traveling roughly three times the speed of a 30-06 bullet, and we've had collisions in mid flight. We saw a great demonstration when we took down the rogue satellite that had to be destroyed to avoid possible collateral damage. We took that down with a sea-based missile system that worked very well. We clearly are moving along in the right direction in trying to put up defenses as the offensive systems become more sophisticated. But I think we need to continue to move down that path. We did cut money out of the European-based missile systems and other systems, and I would hope that we could restore some of the missile defense money in this particular bill. I know Mr. Franks will be offering that. Similarly, the FCS program, I think, is an area we need to restore dollars. Mr. Chairman, we have a number of en bloc amendments and amendments that will be offered by members that I think will, in fact, make this bill even a little bit better than it is. I want to finish by thanking the chairman for putting together a great bill in the Armed Services Committee, for moving it down the road very quickly, and getting it to the House floor. This is the bill that provides our troops with the tools that they need to get the job done. And that's why it's important, that's why this committee acts in such a bipartisan fashion, and we follow the bipartisan model of the gentleman from Missouri, Ike Skelton. I would reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the gentlelady in putting this bill together and recognize the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) who, every time I talked to him over the last 4 or 5 years, he was meeting with a different group of special operators trying to figure out what they needed and where they needed to go and tireless in pouring himself into an airplane to get to yet another base and meet with more troops. He's done a wonderful job as the ranking member of the Air and Land Subcommittee. We're going to miss the gentleman from New Jersey. I would like to yield him 5 minutes.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland who is the ranking member on the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee, Mr. Bartlett.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman who just spoke for his great work on this bill, and I yield for 4 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama, who is the ranking member on the Strategic Subcommittee, formerly the chairman, and again a guy who has spent thousands of hours in closed-door sessions, with no press releases attached and no cameras present. He's a guy that's pretty easy to elbow out of the way at a press conference because he usually isn't there. But he has served countless hours in the service of this country, understanding some pretty complex things about space and national security, and he is the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Terry Everett, and the country needs more people like this gentleman.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield the gentleman another minute.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. HUNTER. I want to thank the gentleman who chairs the Seapower Subcommittee for the great work that he has done and turn to another gentleman, the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), who has served for many years, first as chairman, and then ranking member of this very important Personnel Subcommittee which oversees the policies of those 2.5 million Americans who serve in uniform. The gentleman from New York has done a great job, and I would like to yield 4 minutes to Mr. McHugh.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to add my thanks to the gentleman from Hawaii for his excellent work, and I want to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes), who is the ranking member of the Readiness Subcommittee.