Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time; and as we speak, we are undertaking the largest redeployment of troops since World War II right now. We have the 101st Airborne now moving out of theater in Iraq, and they are being replaced by the 1st Striker Division up in the north part of Iraq. We have the 1st Armored Division being replaced by the 1st Cav in the Suni Triangle in the Baghdad area. We have the 4th Infantry Division moving out in the northern part of that triangle and being replaced by the Big Red One, 1st Infantry Division, and we have the 1st Marine Division replacing the All American Division, the 82nd Airborne to the west of Baghdad. A massive redeployment is just now coming into place or is set for the new soldiers coming in and replacing those who are rotating out, and with that rotation comes the need to continue to supply armor and ammunition and all the technical support and the technological support that is necessary to not only defeat the enemy but also to provide for our men and women in uniform. We have a similar situation in the Afghanistan theater, and this budget meets the Commander in Chief's request to give him the tools to get the job done, to supply our military forces. It does what it has to do, and I would simply thank the chairman of the Committee on the Budget for putting together a budget that does just that. Let me just say about the budget on the other side of the aisle, and if I am wrong, I want to be corrected on this, but my understanding is that dollars are moved from what one would call the discretionary side of the defense budget, this means the operational military, money that is spent on weapons systems, on personnel, on readiness, and some of the money is moved over to the mandatory side to go into programs, good programs but nonetheless programs that are not available to the operational military. If it does that, then it provides less to the operational military that is now engaged in a shooting war than the budget that has been put together by the chairman of the Committee on the Budget. So I wanted to thank my colleagues and all the Members who worked together to put together this budget that gives the fighting forces of the United States the tools to get the job done, and I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I am concerned that the budget resolution before the House does not address the statutory ceiling on the military housing privatization program. That is a program that was spoken to by my good colleague, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). Would the gentleman from Iowa clarify the Committee on the Budget's intentions regarding this important program?

Mr. HUNTER

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

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. This is a picture that Mr. Stavenas of our staff took of a reenlistment ceremony at Saddam Hussein's spider hole in Iraq. It symbolizes the willingness of our military, our soldiers, our people in uniform, to come back under very difficult circumstances and reenlist and continue to fight this wonderful fight for the United States and for freedom. And our soldiers have done a great job for us, and this resolution is commending those soldiers. All those people who wore the uniform of the United States supported our country at a time of need and are continuing to undertake the biggest deployment right now, redeployment, since World War II. Let us all stand behind them, Republicans and Democrats, cast off the partisan positions that have been taken today on the House floor, and let them know that we support them. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), a most distinguished member of the committee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, it was a frontline troop that moved into the major assault, going up through, leaving Kuwait, last year starting on this anniversary, moving up through Iraq.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I just have to remind the distinguished minority leader that, in fact, every troop who is in country now and every civil servant has body armor in the fight, in the fight. Every frontline troop moving up to Baghdad had body armor, and I would say further to the gentlewoman that the Humvees, the jeeps that we have, have never been manufactured with body armor until very recently to meet the new challenge of the IEDs, and we are armoring them in rapid fashion, and many Members on her side voted against the supplemental appropriation that provided both body armor and armor for the Humvees.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I proudly yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner), a member of our committee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), who provides all those quality-of-life issues to our uniformed services.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I would just take a minute to remind my colleague that every single soldier in Iraq has body armor as does every single civilian worker in Iraq and that the gentleman who just spoke voted against the very supplemental that sent that body armor to Iraq. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes), who has spent so much time with the troops and is home to the 82nd Airborne, the All-American Division.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach). (Mr. LEACH asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), a very distinguished member of the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller).

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, who spends more time with the troops than he does with us.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the idea that you do not armor vehicles because it is not done already at the factory makes no logic to me. I would urge the gentleman to work with me to continue to armor them, because we are shipping steel in there now. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would just remind my colleagues if I am reading the same resolution they are, this resolution and I quote, commends the Members of the United States Armed Forces and Coalition forces for liberating Iraq and expresses its gratitude for their valiant service to our country. That is not a political statement, that is a commendation, and it should be from all of us, Democrats and Republicans. I do not read politics into that, and nobody else should. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this is the opportunity for Members of the Committee on Armed Services to talk about our piece of this important resolution, and that is, I think, the most gratifying part of this resolution, which I think we can all join together on and that is commending our great troops who have been carrying out this effort in Iraq. Mr. Speaker, from the time when they spearheaded this drive up from Kuwait up through the choke points in Nasarea with the Marines out to the east and the Army, the 101st Airborne and the 3rd Infantry Division further to the west and worked up to those choke points at some places where RPGs were coming like volleys of high-tech arrows at those convoys of Humvees and trucks and tanks, to where they got up and went past the bridges before they could be blown, took the positions in the dams before the electronics could be executed to blow those places, and launched one of the most rapid-moving attacks in the history of warfare, with great heroism and great accomplishment, from those days to today when our troops are in this AO, this area of operation, not as much as attackers but in this case defenders of the new freedom of the Iraqi people, and hooking up pipelines and sanitary systems and getting children to school and opening up medical clinics, our people in uniform have performed heroically. The most important message we can send from the United States House of Representatives is, you did a great job, America's people in uniform. You did a wonderful job for our country. And what you are doing has great value and will enure to our freedom over the coming decades as well as the freedom of the world. So, Mr. Speaker, we stand together and even united in commending our troops. I am glad that my colleague, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), is here as my partner on this committee to also commend the troops for the great job that they have done.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to let my colleagues know that all Humvees are manufactured unarmored. They are basically big Jeeps, and this Congress has been rushing to armor Humvees in the wake of the new threat known as the IED, the remotely detonated device. We put some $400 million in the last supplemental to pay for that armor. I just would say to my colleagues, it would have been great if they could have voted with us on that one because that is the funding supplemental that paid for the arming of the Humvees.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me just make a point to the gentleman who just spoke, that every Member in this House received a personal invitation from me for classified briefings dealing directly with our intelligence agencies with the opportunity to ask any question they wanted to ask so that when they made the vote on whether or not we should go into Iraq, they could make an informed vote. I presume that the gentleman accepted that opportunity and made an informed vote based on his own understanding of what the situation was. Let me just reiterate that every person in uniform in Iraq has full body armor, as does every civil servant. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson).