Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Speaker. And coming from his background and as a marine officer, I think that his description of the importance of our national security posture and especially his description of the people who gave their lives for us in Somalia in Mogadishu is especially fitting. I thank the gentleman for his expertise, and I look forward to working with him this year, because he is on the Committee on Armed Services. And we are all going to listen to him, junior member and senior members will listen to the gentleman from Maine. Let me just add that we passed, in the Committee on Armed Services, a few days ago H.R. 7, that is the bill to revitalize the National Security Act of the United States. And that was referred by some people as a campaign promise that Republicans made and a lot of words but lacking in substance and somehow something that did not justify a serious debate and serious action. Let me just say that in going over all of the findings and recommendations and provisions of H.R. 7, I feel that the Republican leadership and now a bipartisan majority of the House Committee on Armed Services, which endorsed this bill, has taken a step in the right direction. For those people that said that this was not a factual set of findings, that somehow we were overblown with respect to the crash in national security, let me just go through a few of the statistics. We said that there have been, between 1993 and 1999, budget plans for American defense that has cut defense spending by $156 billion. That is absolutely accurate. President Bush cut defense spending by in excess of $50 billion, conferring then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, and others. President Clinton came along and cut national security $127 billion below the level that President Bush cut. So the facts that are laid out in H.R. 7, the National Security Revitalization Act, are absolutely accurate on that point. It also states that during the fiscal year 1995, we are reducing DOD by about 182,000 people. That is a rate of over 15,000 per month or over 500 people per day. That is absolutely accurate. And further the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 1.2 million defense-related private sector jobs will be lost by 1997. That is accurate. The bill goes on to state and define that in missions involving U.S. peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts involved in the fiscal year of 1994, over 70,000 U.S. personnel--I think it was mentioned by one of our experts that the Bosnian airlift has gone on for longer than the Berlin airlift--United Nations' assessments to the United States for peacekeeping missions totaled $1.5 billion. We pay 31.7 percent of all the peacekeeping costs that the United Nations incurs. At the same time the United States of America undertakes unilaterally its own military missions like airlift missions in Africa, in Bosnia, and other places. And we pay for that ourselves. The French do not help us. The British do not help us. We know the Japanese do not help us. They are tight with their dollars. So we pay for our unilateral efforts and then we also pay the lion's share of the contribution to the United Nations operations. Let me tell you what happens. The gentleman well knows that when we are involved in these pacekeeping efforts, we do what people in the military call ``taking expenses out of hide.'' Taking expenses out of hide means that because we are paying for these peacekeeping operations in Rwanda, Haiti, Bosnia, and other places, troops are going untrained. That means, as the gentleman from San Diego, my seat mate, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham], says, top gun does not get to go through its exercises. As he says, pilots fight like they train. The way you keep your pilots alive in combat is to train them well. But they do not get that training because we are taking those readiness dollars, those dollars that maintain their combat readiness, and we are spending those on peacekeeping operations. I would challenge any Member of the House who wants to utter derogatory words with respect to the facts that are in H.R. 7, I would challenge any of them, as I challenged the Secretary of Defense to find any factual mistakes in the findings that we made in this bill. Further, the bill goes on to say that a return to the hollow forces of the 1970's has already begun. The Secretary of Defense took issue with that. He said, that is not true. We are by far the most ready and the best military in the world. Well, that is true. We are, as of right now, the most ready military in the world. But we say that a return to the hollow forces has begun. And let me tell you some of the symptoms. In 1994, one third of the units in the Army contingency force and all of the forward-deployed and follow-on Army divisions were reporting a reduced state of military readiness. During fiscal year 1994, training readiness declined for the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. Funding shortfalls for that fiscal year resulted in grounding of Navy and Marine Corps aircraft squadrons and cancellation and curtailment of Army training exercises. Those are symptoms of a return to a hollow military. As of January 1, 1995, military pay is approximately 12.8 percent below comparable civilian levels. As a result, it is estimated that close to 17,000 junior enlisted personnel are having to take food stamps. The Secretary of Defense may not like that fact, but that is the fact. They came out of his Pentagon. Mr. Speaker, farther, and one factor that really influenced at least the Republican leadership's decision to sponsor H.R. 7, the National Security Revitalization Act, we looked at what President Clinton wanted in terms of force structure. He decided he wanted to take our Army divisions from 18 to 10. He decided he wanted to take our air wings from 24 to 14. He decided on our reductions in Navy ships that were fairly massive. He decided on making a number of cancellations of weapon systems. But even to support that constrained, reduced force structure, the General Accounting Office found that the President's budget, the amount of money that he made available to us to support the forces of Army and Navy and Marines that we wanted, was $150 billion short. He did not give us enough money to do what he told us to do. That is according to the General Accounting Office. The Congressional Budget Office came up with a figure that was less than $150 billion, but nonetheless a very substantial figure, many tens of billions of dollars. So we were faced with a situation in which the President apparently, according to our analysts, is not giving enough money so that the people that the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Longley] spoke about so poignantly, our fighting soldiers, will have the right equipment, the best equipment to carry out very dangerous missions.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I also want to talk about the bailout, the new Clinton unilateral, nonparticipation by the legislative branch bailout. And I was just speaking with my friend the gentlewoman from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur, who has really been a leader in trade and leader on this issue, about what is happening to our country and what is happening to American workers. And I hope that there is a silver lining to the cloud of this bailout issue which hovers over Americans right now, which the President is attempting to dismiss with this use of the Exchange Stabilization Fund, if he is to bail out Mexico without requiring Congress to vote up or down. The silver lining that I am looking for is a realization in this body, in the House of Representatives, of the fact that our blind adherence to free trade, that is leveling all borders, all tariffs between us and the rest of the world, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of whether or not they let us into their borders, regardless of the displacement of American workers, relying on the blind adherence on the Republican side and the Democrat side in some cases. Let us talk a little bit about the peso bailout and some of the conservative Republicans who recently have testified in our forums. Bill Seidman is a conservative Republican renowned economic leader, former chairman of the FSLIC, a guy who knows bailouts, and he made a couple of good points in his speech to our forum when he said, ``Do not bail out Mexico.'' First, he does believe in the free market and he could not understand why people who believe in a free market and who believed in NAFTA would now believe that somehow the politics and the economics of subsidies to Mexico now make sense. He pointed out that Mexico has gone through in the last 10 or 20 years a number of devaluations, and they have not had these disastrous apocalyptic effects that all of the deep breathers tell us are going to happen now if we do not bail out Mexico with a $40-billion-plus package. Here is Bill Seidman, a renowned conservative economic expert relied on by this Nation in very difficult times saying we do not have to do it, let the market adjust it. He made a great statement. He said this issue should be resolved between Mexico and her creditors, let us resolve this between creditor and debtor. Let us stay out of this as the United States of America. In listening to witness after witness on the Democrat side and the Republican side across the political spectrum coming up and testifying against the bailout, it occurred to me that this has revealed another aspect of national policy that should be looked at very closely. If this is free trade, this is the result of free trade where a tiny nation economically like Mexico, which has approximately the economy the size of New Jersey's, can be in a position to pull the United States down because it a free-trade policy for the United States supposedly with a deep intellectual base really been right when the effect of their policy is to handcuff the United States to Third World nations in deep water that do not know how to swim? That is what we have done. If we have lost our independence and if we now are committed to bail out every nation which becomes inextricably linked with our economic well-being through our trade policies, is that smart? Regardless of whether or not you like the trend lines on the exports and the imports, is it right for us to give up our independence and link ourselves with these nations? Does that mean we are now going to link ourselves with Argentina, we are so linked that we now have to bail them out if they have a problem, or any of the other dozens and dozens of Third World nations which now will call on the United States to help bail them out because we have a substantial trade relationship? Now, let me just conclude by giving one ``I told you so'' and ``Let's look at this thing in the future,'' to all of my colleagues, my good friends, who supported NAFTA. The claim by the pro-NAFTA advocates on this floor was that Mexican workers were going to achieve a larger standard of living, go above that $1,900 per capita per year income, and they were going to get up there to the point where they were making enough money to buy large amounts of American consumer goods and increase our exports. This devaluation has decreased the capability to buy by about 30 percent. This proves that NAFTA was wrong.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friends for continuing to discuss this issue. I think there is an even greater issue now that I hope all of Congress will start looking at and the American people will look at, and that is the whole underpinning of this blind adherence to free trade that those in the executive branch and many of our colleagues and friends in Congress have adhered to over the last 10 years or so. If it is true, if these apocalyptic claims by the Goldman-Sachs representatives of the world are true, if you want to have a poor person Mazatlan send me a thousand dollars, if that is true that we really have tied the United States and the well-being of our people to the fortunes of a Third World nation which we cannot control, then there is a fundamental flaw in our free trade philosophy. What that means is we have handcuffed ourselves pursuant to the deep breathers, the free trade advocates, to a drowning swimmer, somebody who cannot swim. I am talking about Mexico and other Third World markets, so-called emerging markets that our investors have put billions of dollars into. That is not a fundamentally sound economic policy for the United States to follow. So the people that helped engineer NAFTA I think have to answer a couple of questions. First, they have to prove that this is an apocalyptic situation--and I do not think it is--and I think Bill Siederman and other responsible conservatives, moderates, and liberals in the economic world have made good statements with respect to that. But if our free trade philosophy has handcuffed us to these nations that cannot swim, has put us in the deep water and said ``Have a nice day,'' then that is fundamentally unsound and fundamentally flawed and we should rethink free trade for that reason. I think the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] the lady with the rose, who has always had such an articulate viewpoint on this very important issue and keeps coming and coming and coming on this issue on the House floor, trying to persuade our colleagues to take a seek look at this blind adherence to free trade. I think in the aftermath of NAFTA and this debacle a lot of Members are starting to disengage themselves from their idealistic philosophy and look at the real world. I thank the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] also for his work because he has been here night after night working on this issue. I thank the gentleman for what he is doing.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, Lee Echols, who served our country in a number of hazardous positions, died recently at age 87 at a hospital near his home in Bonita, CA. His life proved that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, since no fiction has ever emerged that combined Lee's true life adventures which included service in the OSS; the CIA; special Customs agent for undercover narcotics work; a Navy officer in New York City and special State Department operative in Guatemala, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. Along the way, Lee became a member of the U.S. Treasury Pistol Team and won the National Pistol Championship in 1941 at the Camp Perry Shoot. He served as western field director for the National Rifle Association for several years. After retirement from 38 years of government service, Lee helped organize the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, which had been started by his old friend, Dave Phillips, who had been Chief of the western hemisphere section of the CIA. Lee became California State chairman of AFIO. ``Hilarious High Jinks & Dangerous Assignments,'' the autobiography of Lee Echols, was published in 1990, and recounts his amazing career as well as outlining some of the many practical jokes he and his associates played on each other. In addition to the autobiography, Lee wrote a book, ``Dead Aim'' about the various shooting matches in which he participated over the years, a book of fiction, and numerous magazines articles. In his adventuresome career, Lee encountered various smugglers, dealers in narcotics, Communists, revolutionaries, corrupt officials of Latin American countries and Mexico, and others who would have killed him had they discovered his true identity. The amazing thing is that he could operate undercover for our Government for many years and still survive. One factor that sustained him was his great sense of humor, which led him to organize and take part in various hoaxes of his fellow workers, and for that matter, anyone who came along. It was this facet of Lee's life that attracted men of action to him, including the famous Marine general, Hollands M. ``Howlin' Mad'' Smith. At one of the international pistol shoots, Lee staged a scene where he appeared to have been accidentally shot and killed by another contestant. In the Dominican Republic, where he worked undercover for our State Department, he obtained information from the revolutionaries that was of great help in protecting American dependents until the United States Government could send in the 82d Airborne and the Marines to evacuate them to United States ships. He also later ran a school for Spanish- speaking countries interested in training efficient national security forces. His life story, ``Hilarious High Jinks & Dangerous Assignments'' not only tells an incredible true story of his life, but also gives an idea of the efficiency of our undercover operations, of the CIA, the OSS, Customs, and other Government agencies. Having grown up in Calexico, in Imperial County, and worked 10 years for Customs along the border, Lee spoke Spanish fluently and also understood how to get along with our neighbors to the south. His work lives on in the lives of the young men, Americans and those from Latin America, whom he trained in law enforcement and respect for democracy. Like many others who have helped build America, Lee was a product of his times and his environment, and an inspiration to all who knew him.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, so many of those who are against H.R. 5 have talked about regulatory empires as we in Washington would like them to be. I want to tell you about our regulatory empires as they really are. I have an irrigation district in my district in southern California which waters about 500,000 acres of the Imperial Valley. The EPA discovered it a couple of years ago and they told our irrigation district that although less than one-half of 1 percent of their water goes to domestic users, and those are little ranch houses out in the boondocks, that they were going to have to build between $5,000 and $10,000 systems, filtration systems, for each and every one of those houses or spend up to $100 million building filtration plants in the surrounding communities. We ultimately had to go to court and the court of appeals in California found that the EPA does not even have jurisdiction in this case. Our regulatory kingdoms, following human nature, have tried to acquire power, and I would say that the regulations we see today are more about power than they are about safety. Let's pass H.R. 5.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, a friend of the Congress and a staunch advocate of U.S. national security is retiring from the U.S. Air Force on February 28 of this year. His name is Lt. Col. Randy Rihner, USAF. Colonel Rihner has had a distinguished 22-year military career, which included service as a rated navigator and electronic warfare officer with operational experience in the B-52 heavy bomber. He also taught at the Electronic Warfare School at Mather Air Force Base, in my home State of California, and is a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Instructor School. He was selected for career broadening in the much sought after Education With Industry Program and worked acquisition programs for the Air Force. For the last 4 years, Colonel Rihner has served in the Secretary of the Air Force's Office of Legislative Liaison, with primary responsibility for long-range power projection forces. Colonel Rihner was tireless in his efforts to ensure the Congress received timely and accurate information on which to base its decisions about the future of various major defense programs, including the B-2 Stealth bomber and other weapon systems. Colonel Rihner has received numerous awards and commendations, including most recently the Meritorious Service Medal, second Oak Leaf Cluster, which is reprinted below. Randy plans to remain in the Washington area in order to teach science to elementary and middle school students. On behalf of my colleagues and the staff on the House National Security Committee, we wish Randy and his wife Roberta the very best. Citation To Accompany the Award of Meritorious Service Medal, Second Oak Leaf Cluster, to Randolph R. Rihner Lieutenant Colonel Randolph R. Rihner distinguished himself in the performance of outstanding service to the United States as Chief, Strategic Air Branch, and Chief, Long Range Power Projection Branch, Weapons Systems Liaison Division, Office of Legislative Liaison, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, the Pentagon, Washington, District of Columbia, from 28 August 1989 to 28 February 1995. During this period, he made major contributions to the Air Force Long Range Power Projection Programs. Colonel Rihner planned and executed Air Force Stealth Week, a highly successful static display attended by the President and Members of Congress, enhancing support for stealth technology. He ensured the Congressionally directed B-1 Operational Readiness Assessment was drafted with reasonable terms setting the stage for the aircraft's outstanding test results and promising future. Due to Colonel Rihner's personal involvement in legislative activity, Air Force bomber programs remained on track. The singularly distinctive accomplishments of Lieutenant Colonel Rihner culminate a distinguished career in the service of his country and reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.