Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Chairman, I would just say to my colleague, I have great respect for him and I agree with the purpose of this amendment. I disagree to some degree with the offset, which is from missile defense. You may have heard a number of us here making the case for the importance of missile defense. So I would hope as we move along to conference, we can find another offset for this. I do support very strongly your purpose. What I would like to do is find another offset for this. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Taking my time back, I would just say to the gentleman, I put my initiatives, and I don't call them earmarks because I don't think they are illegitimate, I put them on the Internet. As I learned in my ill-fated national campaign, people aren't paying a lot of attention to my Internet site. But I had it there for millions of people to see. And I think that is the appropriate thing to do. I just want to assure the gentleman of something so that he rests easy, to some degree. The people of this committee are really hardworking people. I think we have got one member who's been to Afghanistan and Iraq something like 13 times. I haven't been there that much, but I have been there a lot. They spend a ton of time working for the uniformed people of the United States. They make lots of notes and they do lots of analysis. Let me tell you, the way you put together a defense budget is you have got somebody sitting in the Pentagon, and somebody comes over and sits next to him and says, You know, here's a system that the company I am working for would like to have in the defense budget. And they make a case for it. None of this stuff is derived through a stainless process. We are all people. The only thing that really makes this government go is accountability, and people should be held accountable for the things that they put in the bill. The vast number of folks that put things in the defense bill put out press releases with respect to what they put in. They don't hide that. People put in provisions that have a value to the military. If you go down the line and analyze them, I think that you would concur with that. So I want you to know this is a committee that really does its homework. It's got a great staff that works very hard, and we have done a lot of things that have saved soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines on the battlefield, who would not have been saved if we just rubber-stamped the President's budget. I guess that is my point. I thank the gentleman. I withdraw my reservation.

Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely.

Mr. HUNTER. Taking back my time, I don't think we are going to be appropriating any melting shirts, or authorizing any melting shirts. We do serious stuff. And when you have a defense bill which is over $500 billion and it has thousands and thousands of provisions in it, I would say that the number of changes we make actually is fairly minimal. If you look at the massive amount of money that is spent on defense, the change that we make in scoping the defense bill, which is not only our prerogative, it's our mandate, it doesn't say: You shall accept and rubber-stamp what the Pentagon puts out there. And experience has shown us. And, thankfully, we have followed our mandate because we have put in systems that have saved lives, that the Pentagon didn't think about, and we have put in more systems that have made us more effective at fighting the Nation's war that the Pentagon didn't think about. We have got members on the committee, I would say to my friend, who have taken five, six, seven, eight trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. They see things. They write down notes. We have our professional staff with us. We were out there looking at the Fourth Division and we saw some of their trucks whose armor consisted of two layers of plywood, with sandbags in between. That is why we went back and on an initiative we put together double-hulled trucks. To my knowledge, none of those double-hulled trucks has yet been penetrated by any enemy shrapnel from a roadside bomb. We do things in response to what we think the solders and sailors and airmen and marines need. So I agree with the gentleman that we should all be accountable for what we put in a bill, whether it's a defense bill or something else, and you have got to stand up. If it's a bad one, you take the heat for it. But just saying anything that doesn't come out of the administration is, by definition, illegitimate, is absolutely not accurate. I can just tell you this. If you end up with an administration that you don't agree with, like some Republicans who didn't agree with what President Carter did with defense spending in the last part of his term, when we put in, along with some pretty discerning Democrats, an extra aircraft carrier, and if you want to straitjacket this body, where a President that you don't agree with, who you feel is cutting defense spending to the bone, and maybe beyond the bone, where, as a rule, if he or she doesn't agree or doesn't put that out as a defense budget, you consider it your duty to not add a single cent, then I think we are putting ourselves in a position where we are disserving the people that we represent, because our job is to put together a defense budget.

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

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

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield myself 3 minutes. My colleagues, we are in a race against those who would build offensive missiles and in fact have built missiles. I remember, I think it was 1987 when members of this committee, the Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to the leadership of Israel, and we said this--and I know this because I drafted that letter. We said, at some point in the future--and this was 1987, before the Gulf War. We said, you will be attacked at some point in the future by probably Russian-made missiles coming from a neighboring country. And even though you could defend against an aircraft attack, just as you did in the Bekaa Valley with your F-16s, you will not be able to stop a single incoming ballistic missile coming into Israel. A few years later in the Gulf War, we saw just that. In fact, we saw ballistic missiles kill Americans. Some of them were shot down by deployed Patriots, but we saw missiles coming into Israel totally unprotected. We saw people being rushed to the hospital not from the effects of the missiles, but because they were so afraid that poison gas would be on the head of those missiles launched by Saddam Hussein, that many people went into the hospital with heart problems. We are in a race, my friends, my colleagues, and we have seen the manifestations of that race on the other side. We have seen those TD-2s and those NoDong missiles and SCUD missiles launched by the North Koreans that fell into the Sea of Japan, the TD-2 having the ability now to reach some parts of the United States. We have seen the tests of the Iranian Shahab-3s. We have seen now the complicity of North Korea and Syria in developing nuclear weapons capability, which was stopped short by a strike that was made by our allies. We know that that throat through which the Iranian missiles might one day travel going into Western Europe could be defended by the missile sites that we have now proposed to be established in Czechoslovakia and Poland. We are in a race. Our combatant commanders tell us that we need to double the number of THAAD missiles and Aegis missiles. Incidentally, those sea-based missile system are testing out very, very well. We have had a series of successes. The idea that we cut back on this one massive area of vulnerability, that we cut back on defenses against this massive area of vulnerability--and for my friends that said we want to use this money for quality of life for our troops, ladies and gentleman, I am the father of one of our marines who has been deployed, and let me tell you quality of life. It is when that family that is sitting there in Pendleton or in Savannah, Georgia, or at Fort Bragg or in Camp Lejeune knows that their family member, their servicemember is not going to be vulnerable to a short-range or ballistic missile attack. That gives you quality of life, because that gives you assurance that they are going to be able to survive that very, very real threat which is now being developed. This is a misplaced amendment, and I would urge everyone to vote against it.

Mr. HUNTER. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. We've obviously cleared this on our side, and we totally support the distinguished gentleman from Missouri's amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would yield to myself such time as I might consume.

Mr. HUNTER. I would simply say that this is an important amendment and one that I support strongly, and I think most of the members of the committee support strongly. This is a joint effort. It's not just a DOD effort, when we discussed the two warfighting theaters and the standing up of a government that will be an ally of the United States and will have a modicum of democracy. It's important to have the other agencies that are so critical to this effort, to the coordination of this effort, that is, the Department of State and the USAID administrator, to be involved to ensure that we do have coordination and cooperation. At this time, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to yield to Mr. Forbes, the gentleman from Virginia, 3 minutes.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, we have one more speaker who I think is on his way. So if the gentleman from Missouri has another speaker, if we could pass and see if we can get our other speaker down here.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, at this time, I yield back the balance of my time unless the gentleman from Missouri needs it. I would yield it to his side.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, my speaker did just arrive. If I could impose on the gentleman, he is ready to go. I would ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to retrieve my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that the gentleman from Tennessee had it right in that the chairman has been a prime mover in forcing jointness with the military services. And it's only appropriate that, because this is an effort that requires other agencies, besides DOD, that we have a mechanism to get them together, move them together in a true jointness. I want to commend the chairman for his authorship of this. At this point, Mr. Chairman, we have no more requests for time on this side. Unless the gentleman needs our time, I yield back our time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana, distinguished ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee (Mr. Buyer). (Mr. BUYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, we have no more speakers, and we would yield back the balance of our time.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my great colleague for yielding to me. My friends, this is the age of missiles. The people that we listen to so carefully in our hearings are the combatant commanders. Those are the guys who are in charge of running military operations in the case of an attack on the United States or a military operation or a contingency. Our combatant commanders have reported to us that we are short missile defense. Specifically, they have said that we should nearly double the inventory of THAAD and Aegis Standard Missile Interceptors. And I quote from Admiral Keating. He said increased inventories are needed, and he goes through these short-range BMD systems that are so key to countering this emerging threat, like the one that is coming from North Korea, like the Shahab-3 being developed now by Iran, and by the increasing short-range and medium-range ballistic missile inventories around the world. This is crucial to the survival of our troops in theater and to the survival of the United States in wars that are going to occur in the future, and in the least we should listen to the combatant commanders and plus these inventories up. That is what the gentleman from Arizona's amendment does, and I would recommend it to all Members. Vote ``yes'' on Franks.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. You know, one aspect of this that I thought was troubling also was the fact that private contractors will have to disclose the amounts of money that their particular people make. That's going to go out, presumably, to others; competitors will see that. These aren't publicly held companies. I think that that's an intrusion we don't necessarily need to make.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my great friend from Washington for his kind remarks, and also thank the Rules Committee and the gentleman from California for his work on this bill too. We have had a great opening session on the Armed Services bill. Our chairman, Mr. Skelton, who brought this bill up and brought it through the committee with a unanimous vote, I think is to be greatly commended. But let me register my objection to the Rules Committee's determination that one of the amendments that I had offered was not made in order, and that is the amendment that goes to the so-called tanker deal. Let me just explain to my colleagues that this tanker deal involves hundreds of thousands of American jobs. The Air Force has determined that the European competitor has won the tanker contest. This buy could ultimately be in excess of some $30 billion, so there are enormous numbers of American jobs at stake. As we went through the markup process, the Members on both sides indicated that they didn't want to try to pass something that would in some way prejudice the GAO protest which is being undertaken right now. But let me tell you as a guy who has looked at the industrial base and the fact that big pieces of our industrial base are moving offshore at a rapid rate, at some point that is going to affect our ability to defend this country. This is a huge deal. It is a huge transfer of high-paying aerospace jobs, basically a massive economic stimulus package for Europe. Even with the 58 percent of the tanker work that is stated by the European company will be built in the United States, that still is 42 percent of the work that will not be built in the United States, and that is compared to the American company, which does about an 85-15 split. Now Cap Weinberger talked about this formula that he used, that for every $1 billion you create of defense spending, you create 30,000 jobs. That means that the number of jobs at stake here, the difference between going with the European competitor or the American competitor, is well over 100,000 American high-paying aerospace jobs. All my amendment said was this: It said that no matter who won, 85 percent of the work had to be done in the United States. That is important to keep our industrial base intact. For those folks that like the European competitor and the American company that was marrying up with it, that is Northrop Grumman, a great company that would be building the European aircraft, that would have been good for them, because they would then, instead of having 58 percent of the work done in the United States, they would have had, if my amendment had been offered and passed, that would have allowed them to get 85 percent of the work done in the United States.

Mr. HUNTER. That would have meant jobs for the American workers, and it would have meant that we kept a lot of that talent pool, that industrial base capability, in the United States. This would have been a huge win for American workers and it would not have prejudiced the present GAO protest that is underway right now. So I am disappointed that this amendment was not allowed, and I hope at some point down the line the Democrat leadership will allow us to put this amendment up, which will help American workers, help the industrial base, and help to secure the defense of the United States.