Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson) who worked very hard on putting together the compromise amendment on women in combat.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, how much time do we have?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), who chairs the Subcommittee on Readiness and does a wonderful job making sure our men and women have the facilities that they need.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), who does such an able job of presiding over the Subcommittee on Military Personnel and who takes care of all of our folks in uniform, men and women, active, Guard, and Reserve.

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 myself such time as I may consume. This year, the Committee on Armed Services has put together a bill that is a true example of bipartisan cooperation, providing the men and women of the armed services with the best equipment, best training, and a benefit package that is worthy of their service and their sacrifice. The National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2006 provides $441 billion for the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. The bill was voted out of committee by a vote of 61 to 1 and contains significant improvements in areas of military personnel, acquisition reform, responsible defense procurement strategies, and addresses a need for continuity in funding for our ongoing efforts in the global war on terror. But before I get into any details, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who has been my partner on this committee, for all the great work that he has done. I would also like to praise our subcommittee chairmen and ranking members. This bill is a culmination of their many hearings and oversight reviews. Almost every member of this full committee has been to the war fighting theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan and gathered firsthand important information that has ultimately been reflected in this bill that we have put together. I want to thank all the members of the committee and all our great leaders on both the Democrat and Republican side, the chairmen of the subcommittees and the ranking members, for their work. This year, Mr. Chairman, we have made taking care of our troops, both now and in the future, one of our top priorities. We can do all of these things in developing great weapons systems and facilities, but the only thing that really is important, the element that drives the security apparatus of the United States, is people. It is the men and women in uniform. To recognize these sacrifices, the committee has included a number of very well-deserved changes in our MILPER system, and it starts with this 3.1 percent pay raise across the board. Incidentally, that pulls down this difference in pay on the outside in the domestic world and military pay. There has always been a differential. If you were a military technician in a certain area, you have historically made less money than your counterpart in the private world. But we have pulled down that differential now to a very low rate, which is now about 4.6 percent. We have increased, in fact, military pay 25 percent over the last 4 years, and that has been the result of the great work of members of our committee, Mr. Chairman. We have also increased the death gratuity to $100,000, and understanding that there is no way we can repay those who have lost their loved ones, this helps to bridge those very difficult times when that man or woman does not come back from the warfighting theaters. We also provide additional increases in end strength. With this bill we have completed our end strength increase plan of 30,000 more soldiers for the Army and 4,000 for the Marine Corps. But we also realize that there are a lot of other things we need to do, especially in the warfighting theaters. We have increased by $572 million our inventory of Humvees, $183 million for counter-rocket and mortar systems. Those are the systems that can take down those mortars and rockets that are coming into the fire bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, inflicting in some cases egregious wounds on our personnel. And we have put in an additional $45 million for these jamming devices to jam improvised explosive devices that the insurgents are using in the warfighting theaters. That is a place where the insurgents can stand back 300 or 400 yards from a roadway, wait for that Marine or Army convoy to line up on a lamppost, and by using a low-power device like a garage door opener, detonate an improvised explosive device, which may be an artillery shell next to that road, hurting the Americans. Jamming that capability, defeating that capability, is an important thing, and we have put a lot of money into that, Mr. Chairman. These are a couple of examples I wanted to go over. But I wanted to go to another area that is very important for our Nation's future and the future of our defense apparatus. We are paying a ton of money now for single systems. The future combat system for the Army is now projected to cost almost twice what we originally projected. The cost of the new destroyer, the DD(X), is going to be, according to projections, well over $3 billion. So we see these escalating prices threatening our ability to buy enough systems, enough trucks, tanks, ships, planes, to provide the coverage that we need in power projection around the world. We are putting some very important disciplines into the acquisition process to make it more difficult for the private sector to increase these prices dramatically and for this combination of our own bureaucracy and the private sector to inadvertently allow their program costs to rise. So we are working to instill some fiscal discipline, Mr. Chairman, and that is manifested in this particular mark. Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me just say that we have extraordinary people in the warfighting theaters today. These young men and women went in initially thinking they would see poison gas on the battlefield. They did not see that poison gas, but they have come up against things like IEDs, new ways of attacking that we did not anticipate, and that will continue to evolve as the insurgents search for new ways to attack Americans. And we have to have the flexibility and the agility to provide new systems and new types of operations to counter what we are going to see not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but around the world in this global war against terrorism. So we have given the tools to our troops today, and this is just part of the process, but we have initiated, with this bill, giving to our troops the tools that they need to get the job done. It has been a bipartisan effort, and the gentleman from Missouri has been a real partner in putting this bill together. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), who is the vice chairman of the full committee and the chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, and who has done a great job in putting his package together in terms of modernizing our forces. (Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett), the gentleman who chairs the Projection Forces Subcommittee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to say, we all know one thing in this House Chamber, those who know the record of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes), he is the finest border patrol chief probably in the history of our country. He has done a wonderful job. We are on opposite sides of this vote. I think the gentleman pointed out very clearly one reason we can be on opposite sides of this vote, and that is, this is a permission which, arguably, the President already has. It is not a mandate; it is a permission. I would contemplate this would only be used in extraordinary circumstances. Nonetheless, it is a resource that the Department of Homeland Security should have at their disposal should they need it for some exigency in the future. I want to support the Goode amendment, as I have historically. I thank Members on both sides for a very high-level debate.

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

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, and oversees those wonderful people in our Special Operations Command. (Mr. SAXTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the previous speaker. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) for a unanimous consent request. (Mr. McKEON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), chairman of the Committee on Government Reform.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) for yielding me time and the Committee on Rules for their hard work on this bill, on the many amendments that they reviewed, took testimony on, and for their shaping of this package which will move the defense bill onto the floor here momentarily and allow us to do what it takes to make sure that the men and women of the Armed Forces, who are fighting in the war against terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theaters around the world, will have the tools to get the job done. Now, we have two considerations here. One consideration is to make sure that Members get their amendments heard and have their voices heard. The other consideration is to make sure we get a bill. And sometimes one of those considerations overbalances the other. The worst thing that could happen is not to move this bill expeditiously through the House, move it quickly to conference, and provide the leadership not only for the base bill this year, but for the $49 billion that we have bolted onto the base package that, at the end of this fiscal year, will give our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan the force protection, the armor, the pay, the troop levels and all the other things that we need to carry out this mission. So this is a crucial and critical bill, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate the expeditious fashion that the committee has moved in. This bill provides a 3.1 percent pay raise for our troops. We have increased pay 25 percent over the last 4 years. It provides many, many personnel benefits. It provides an expansion of family housing. It provides additional bonus flexibility for the services to continue to attract and recruit Americans to come into the armed services. And it gives our people additional warfighting capability, additional sensors, additional armor, additional munitions and weapons, all the tools that they need to get the job done. At the same time, Mr. Speaker, we have put in some very important limitations on the costs of weapons systems. We see weapons systems costs going through the roof. We see a DDX program that now says it is going to cost $3 billion a ship. In a very businesslike way, we have analyzed these costs and the increases, and we have put in limitations and mechanisms that will allow us to control these costs. If we do not start bringing down the costs per ship, per aircraft, per big unit, we are not going to have enough of these systems to provide the coverage we need around the world. Mr. Speaker, this is the most important of bills. It is a bill that goes to the very heart of our freedom, and that is the equipping and projection of our Armed Forces. I thank the Committee on Rules for doing a great job in packaging this bill in a way that we can move it expeditiously across the floor. I thank the gentleman for his great work and his great work as a former member of the Committee on Armed Services, who is going to be coming back to see us and who sits in with us regularly.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor Mr. Robert Rangel, the staff director for the House Armed Services Committee, for his 18 years of loyal and dedicated commitment to the Committee and to the United States Congress. Robert graduated from the University of Kentucky and immediately went to work for Representative Larry J. Hopkins in Lexington, Kentucky. He then moved to Washington, D.C. to be a Rep. Hopkin's Senior Legislative Assistant. In 1987, Robert joined the House Armed Services Committee as a Professional Staff Member responsible for intelligence, defense, acquisition and counter-drug policy. He also served as the lead writer of the committee's after-action report on Operation Desert Storm. By 1994, Robert assumed the role of Deputy Staff Director and was responsible for the daily operations of the committee and staff. In 2000, he was appointed Staff Director for the Committee under former Chairman Floyd Spence. Robert is a respected leader who shepherds the annual defense authorization act through the Congressional process and ultimately into public law. As such, he is a constant and trusted advisor to the Chairman, ranking member, staff, and the committee as a whole. Through his 18 years of steadfast service, Robert has bestowed onto the committee an extensive knowledge of national security issues & policy and was able to provide a clear understanding of legislative procedure. I speak for myself, past chairman, ranking minority members, and any and everyone who has had the privilege of working with Robert, in thanking him for his tireless work and dedication to the House Armed Services Committee. On behalf of the Committee and the United States Congress, I wish him, his wife Joy, and two boys Alex and John, the best of luck as he leaves the Committee and begins a new chapter of his life.

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for his response. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), a very important member of our delegation and a real advocate for this border fence and border security.