Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank him for the spirit in which this debate is conducted. The gentleman from Wisconsin and I do have similar expression in welcoming religious expression at the academy. Where we do differ is that in our amendment we do not prejudge that officials are abusively proselytizing; and with the IG report coming in from DOD, not just the Air Force, but the IG report coming in from DOD and the Air Force IG report coming in, I think we need to get those reports and then take congressional action.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would just respond, that is not the Secretary of the Air Force; and if the gentleman is holding this up as something that justifies a condemnatory statement by the United States House of Representatives, then it has to be something that is representative of the actions of the officials of the Air Force Academy; and no one has used language as strong as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) who states, and I am going to state this one more time because we keep moving off it, the gentleman's statement is that ``SEC Air Force shall develop a plan to ensure that Air Force Academy maintains a climate free from coercive and religious intimidation and inappropriate proselytizing by Air Force officials and others in the chain of command.'' The amendment does not even say ``some Air Force officials.'' He is holding that out as representative of what is going on in the chain of command in the academy.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) said we are angry because this has come up. That is not so. We were offered under the Army provision in our conference that this provision not be protected and simply strike it on the floor. I was advised that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) wanted to have a full discussion on this, and I said let us do it. So that is why we are doing this. The reason we did not act on this is laid out and validated by the Secretary of the Air Force's letter where he says: ``As this work progresses, I ask you to reserve your opinions on this matter until I can get to ground truth through the objective processes now ongoing.'' If something is this serious, and I have never seen any statement by the Secretary of the Air Force that said abusive and coercive proselytizing has occurred, but that is the language that the gentleman has in his bill. So we have a difference of opinion on this. I think we should wait until the reports come in, until the DOD IG comes back with his report on the captain that the gentleman has referred to, and until, in the words of the Secretary of the Air Force, we get to ground truth. And we require in my amendment a report back to Congress within 90 days on the findings that the Secretary of the Air Force comes to and recommendations for action. Let me say one other thing. The gentleman said he is not accusing anybody of proselytizing. I am reading his plan. It says: ``The Secretary of the Air Force shall develop a plan to ensure that the Air Force Academy maintains a climate free from coercive intimidation and inappropriate proselytizing by Air Force officials and others in the chain of command at the Air Force Academy.'' That is a heck of a strong dose of preventive maintenance. The gentleman's position, what he has read in the Los Angeles Times is good enough for him, and it is now time for us to take remedial action even before the Secretary of the Air Force comes back with his recommendations.

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

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and pay tribute to a leading San Diego citizen who, on this day, is celebrating his 90th birthday. Walter J. Zable, the founder of Cubic Corporation, has served as the chairman, president and CEO of the corporation for five decades. Walt Zable formed Cubic in 1951 with just one product and plenty of grit and determination. Today, Cubic Corporation is a $722 million company that employs 1,200 in the San Diego area and nearly 6,000 employees worldwide. Prior to forming Cubic in 1951, Mr. Zable was project supervisor in charge of electronics for the Atlas and Terrier missiles, and the microwave and antenna development sections at General Dynamics Convair. His background includes engineering and management posts with Sperry Gyroscope Company, where he directed development of fire control, guidance, communications, and command and control systems. He also held key technical, scientific and administrative positions with Federal Telecommunications Laboratories of ITT, Flight Research Company, and Newport News Shipyard and Drydock Company. Before launching his engineering career, Mr. Zable was a professional football player for the Richmond Arrows and the New York Giants. He went on to receive numerous sports honors, including the 1962 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Silver Anniversary All-American Team and induction into William and Mary's Hall of Fame in 1969. In 1971, he established the Walter J. Zable/San Diego Chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame (NFFCHF) to help preserve the genuine sportsmanship and integrity exhibited in high school and college football. He credits the Boston school system for his success in business, because ``if it weren't for athletics during the depression years, it would have been difficult to go to college,'' said Mr. Zable, who received a full football scholarship from the College of William and Mary. Today, he's still dedicated to helping other young student- athletes realize their dreams and reach their full academic and athletic potential through the NFFCHF local chapter, which is among more than 100 chapters in the country. Recognized as Cubic's largest and most visible community relations project, the Walter J. Zable/San Diego Chapter has helped further the careers of the hundreds of honorees, including sports giants such as former San Diego Charger Junior Seau and Mark Malone, a sports broadcaster and former Pittsburgh Stealers quarterback. In 1987, the NCAA acknowledged his contribution to athletics by naming Walter Zable a winner of the Teddy Roosevelt Award, its most prestigious honor. Other winners of this award have included President George Bush, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Leverett Saltonstall. In addition to his work in helping young student-athletes, Walter Zable and his company give generously to charitable causes, most of them benefiting children. He has also set up a $10 million endowment that will become effective for the College of William and Mary upon the deaths of Walter and his wife, Betty. Walter Zable is a humble man who eschews the limelight and would rather see the focus be on his company and its hardworking employees. However, I think even he would be willing to make an exception for this special recognition for reaching his 90th birthday. I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Walter J. Zable on attaining this significant milestone and wish him many more years in the company of his loving wife and family.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelly).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, and my colleagues, we have an exit strategy, and that exit strategy is a free Iraq and a free government in Iraq and a military which is strong enough to protect that government. And that is the military that we are standing up right now, and that is the mission, and that is the timetable. And I would hope that the gentlewoman's amendment would be defeated.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, my good colleague from Mississippi has spoken of our great Guardsmen and Reservists a number of times in his very eloquent statement and talked about their deployment, their imminent deployment, or the deployment they are involved in right now or the one they are returning from in Afghanistan, Iraq, or other places around the world. We, in fact, do provide TRICARE. It is medical care for every one of them and every one of their dependents, for 90 days before mobilization and 180 days after mobilization. So this body, starting with the Committee on Armed Services and then the full House, moving and working with the Senate and with the President, have done that. Now, let me just tell you, there is a major problem from my perspective and I have looked at this during the last session and you have a major, major problem, because all of these people have jobs, they have employers who are carrying health care in the private sector right now. If you give an opportunity to employers, to the private sector, to terminate the health care that they are providing right now to their employees, once they understand that the government will pick up that health care pursuant to that status in the Guard, across the board, you are going to see that 18 percent of Guardsmen who right now do not have that health care, you are going to see that number go way up in the private sector and you are going to see, very simply, a large displacement of that burden from the private sector on to the DOD budget. That gets to another responsibility that everyone here has. We have a responsibility to replace those 18-year-old helicopters. We have a responsibility to replace those jet aircraft that average now in the Navy about 17\1/2\ years old. We have a responsibility to replace those tanks, those trucks, those ships. If we take that $5.8 billion that this will amount to over 5 years, much of which will be the shifting of this burden from the private sector to DOD, we may think we have served that Guardsman very well in one way, but we will disserve him in another way because he will not have the best equipment. Let me get to the issue at hand. We have a $500 billion bill which provides the tools to get the job done in this war against terror. The war really started when Todd Beamer, when that United flight was over Pennsylvania and he took on the terrorists and the last words we heard from him were, Let's roll. Let's roll echoed across the mountains of Afghanistan, through those dark canyons and those caves, across the sands of Iraq; and right now it is being carried in units like the 10th Mountain Division, the First Marine Division out to the western AO in Iraq, the First Armored Division in Baghdad, and all those great Guardsmen and Reservists who are fighting in this war against terror. We have provided in this bill the tools to get the job done. Let us pass this bill. Let's roll.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), a veteran of Desert Storm and the chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the gentlewoman's amendment. Make no mistake about it. This amendment is a message-sender. It is a message-sender to people like Al Sadr who are considering even now continuing to foment rebellion against the elected government in Iraq. It is a message-sender to Zarqawi and his followers, who think that perhaps the United States does not have the stomach to continue to oppose them. It is a message-sender to our troops, who might, in seeing if this amendment should pass, feel that the resolve of the American people is fading away. This is precisely the kind of a message we do not want to send to friend and foe alike, and certainly not to the 140,000 Americans serving presently in Iraq, who feel that the country is strongly behind them. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 13 offered by the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) and amendment No. 28 offered by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and printed in House Report 109-96 be modified in the form I have placed at the desk.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from San Diego, California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Schwarz).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would like to engage my colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), in a colloquy.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Reichert).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, this place and our accomplishments all depend on great staff people. And that is what we had in Mr. Robert Rangel, who has been the staff director over these last several terms on the Committee on Armed Services. He was a staff leader for some 18 years, heading up our great bipartisan staff, and he is now leaving. I thought of all of the great descriptions of people who serve this Nation in uniform, that adherence to duty and honor and country, and I think those are the metrics by which Mr. Rangel has worked to serve our interests and serve the interests of the people of this country and to serve the interests of the people who wear the uniform of the United States.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this is a manager's amendment which has several components. One component is cruise missile funding for the supersonic cruise missile; another is a USS Oklahoma memorial; another is veterans' preference. But the heart of this manager's amendment is the amendment on women in combat, and that is not women in uniform as the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) likes to describe it, but women in combat and the exclusion from direct ground combat in the United States Department of Defense. Mr. Chairman, let us make it clear to everyone, because clarity is what we all want, there is presently a policy, a DOD policy, put forth by then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, that has been adhered to, that continues the American policy and tradition of not having women in direct ground combat. That means manning machine guns, assaulting enemy positions at close range with rifle and bayonet, with tanks, with Bradley fighting vehicles, engaging in firefights; in short, doing all the things that we know now that we have elements of the Marine Special Operations and Army doing in the war against terror. Now, the committee in asking, in inquiring of the Army as to what their position was on this as they go into the development of the new Army, it became clear that they were not sure. There were three separate briefing teams sent to the Hill, each of whom had a different position within 3 days as to exactly what the policy would be of excluding women from direct ground combat. As a result of that, we had a provision in the bill that would statutorily take the Army policy, the present policy, and Xerox it, exactly the same policy, but would make it law. We have had a number of people who have expressed concern about that. We have had also a number of people who want to make sure we maintain that policy and, as a result of that, we have, I think, an excellent compromise, an excellent provision in the bill which says this: if DOD wants to change the existing policy that excludes women from direct ground combat, they have to give Congress 60 continuous legislative days' notice. Now, what that means is we have now injected ourselves, as we should, being people who under the Constitution have the obligation of regulating the Armed Forces, we have injected ourselves into any change of this long-standing DOD policy. We will have 60 legislative days, continuous legislative days, in which we can change that policy. We direct the Secretary of Defense to come back to us and tell us how he is going to implement that policy and specifically how he is going to reshape the Army and the Army modularity and comply with that 1994 policy which excludes women from direct ground combat. This is an excellent provision, Mr. Chairman. And for all the women out there who are concerned about the possibility of being moved into direct ground combat, certainly we make it very clear they will not be, by action of the U.S. Congress.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of the bill, H.R. 1815, the Clerk be authorized to correct section numbers, punctuation, cross-references, and the table of contents, and to make such other technical and conforming changes as may be necessary to reflect the actions of the House in amending the bill, and that the Clerk be authorized to make the additional technical corrections which are at the desk.