Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right when he went over the litany of rights and protections that are in this bill. And we had a 25-hour mark up in which members on the Committee on Armed Services had lots of time, Democrat and Republican, to look at this bill. And let me just say, this bill passed 58 to 2 out of the Committee on Armed Services. And I think if folks really thought that this totally stripped due process away from 700,000 Americans, they would not have voted for that. And it does not strip away due process. You know something, we are asking the Secretary of Defense to rebuild a system, and I think it is a system that is going to end up employing more people in the civil service because those 300,000 people in uniform who are doing the job now, because of bureaucracy, it is too tough to get through to appoint a civil servant, so it is easier to tell a sergeant, Sergeant, you go to it. The sergeant salutes, he goes and does it, and a civil service job is taken away. This is going to be a great new reform package. Now, let us get to the big picture. Just a couple of weeks ago American military folks, people coming from the air and the great Air Force, people projecting power from the sea in our Navy, people making combined arms operations with the Marines and the Army, people parachuting in with the 173rd Airborne coming into northern Iraq, the Third Armored Division moving up like a spear point up through the throat of Iraq going straight to Saddam Hussein's hideout, the great First Marine Division, the First Cav., all those Special Operators, those Special Forces, all the great men and women who supported this operation, went out and took what this Congress has given them over the last many years in terms of equipment and training and they carried out America's foreign policy, and they fought for freedom and they did a great job. This bill does our job. It replaces that equipment. It raises that pay of 4.1 percent average across the board. It helps us to fight the battle of today if we have to engage by bolstering heavy armor and bringing in new precision-guided munitions; and it also looks over the horizon to the battle we might have to fight tomorrow. Those great men and women in uniform did their job. This bill is our job. Please vote down the motion to recommit, and let us pass this bill.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman bringing this amendment to the floor. I think his question is right on point: Are we getting the best bang for the buck in Brussels? We are getting something in Brussels, but it is not effective leadership. I think he has asked a question that has to be answered. In fact, I have an amendment coming up here shortly that asks the President to evaluate our total footprint in Europe with an eye towards perhaps replacing that footprint. I have been looking at some of the cost of living and also the hospitality of other nations. One of those new nations is a nation that helped the United States in Iraq, Poland. Poland has a cost of living that is much lower than that in Brussels, so presumably our people, uniformed and nonuniformed, who live there will be able to live better on military pay than they do in Brussels. It would not be bad, I think, for military folks to be in an environment, which they would be in Poland, with a nation that has just stood side by side with us on a battlefield in the world. There are no words as eloquent as actions. The actions of that force, and it was not a big force, but it was about 200 special operators that participated in Iraq, impressed me greatly and I think would impress the President. The other aspect of this, since the gentleman has opened this debate and this issue, is I am going to bring up the fact in my amendment that we have 72,400 American uniformed personnel in Germany. We did an entire hearing on this footprint. There is nobody on the other side of the Fulda Gap with a tank. In the old days, there were dozens of divisions of Warsaw Pact military units on the other side of the Fulda Gap. That is why we had a heavy military presence in Germany. That presence is not there now. So this is a second question, but not totally unlike the question the gentleman is asking, because whereas we might want to move out of Brussels for altogether different purposes than moving out of Germany, the receptivity of other nations at alternate sites is a major issue with both amendments. Once again, we are putting some money in the bill for doing some preliminary military work, things like runways and things like that, in Poland and Bulgaria and Romania, three of the nations from what Don Rumsfeld called, maybe with justification, the new Europe. I want to thank the gentleman for his contribution. Let me tell the gentleman, I would certainly, and I want to hear what my ranking member has to say, because he is such an expert in these areas, but I think this is an excellent amendment.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, there is no exemption for the Marine Mammal Act, so that is one reason why it has not been sought. I would just say there is one endangered species that this provision protects and that is the 19-year-old Marine or soldier or airman who needs adequate training and right now is seeing his training areas diminished by conservationism and environmentalism. Let us give conservation and environmentalism a good name and let us balance those two important goals with another goal which is keeping our men and women in uniform alive when they are in combat.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the vice chairman of the committee, who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land 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 Ohio (Mr. Turner).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We have an excellent defense bill before us today. We have learned a number of lessons from the conflict we just concluded in Iraq. I think the lessons of the last 15 years are that we must have in this country broad military capabilities, and that means we have got to be able to handle a conventional armored attack or conventional warfare. We must be able to handle guerilla warfare. We must be able, at the same time, to conduct the war against terrorism, and we have to prepare for the eventuality that ballistic missiles may at some point be launched against the United States. Mr. Chairman, this bill addresses America's military issues. We address all of the issues that are brought up with respect to personnel. We have a 4.1 percent average pay increase in this bill. We have targeted bonuses where we have critical skills requirements and critical grade requirements. We provide for family housing. We do all the things that are important for people. At the same time, we modernize and we have more money for modernization than we have in years past, Mr. Chairman. We have lots of old platforms. We know that our Army helicopters average 18.6 years of age. Two-thirds of the Naval aircraft are over 15 years. And if you go down the line you even come up with some antiquities. You come up with B-52 bombers, the youngest of which was built in 1962. So we have many years where modernization is required, and we have embarked on this first step of modernization with this bill that provides a little over $70 billion for modernization. Mr. Chairman, we have learned lessons in Iraq, and this committee, which worked very hard, Democrats and Republicans on all of our subcommittees listened to our military after the operation in Iraq, and we asked them what their lessons learned were, what new systems, what new capabilities could we work on to give them even more effectiveness on the battlefield. They talked to us, and we have embedded some of these requests, Mr. Chairman, in this bill. So this bill reflects not just recommendations from the administration over the last several years, but it reflects what war- fighting leaders need on the battlefields and what they have learned is required as a result of this most recent conflict. So this is a very up-to-date bill. Mr. Chairman, we need a number of what I would call so-called enablers to continue to fight today's wars and also prepare for tomorrow's wars. We need airlifts. You have to have the ability to move that air bridge and move across that air bridge either from the United States to a military operation around the world, or to move from foreign-based troops, troops in Germany or other places, move them into the battlefields and not only move troops in but move equipment in and provide that bridge of tankers to be able to move strike aircraft in, long-range strike aircraft or short-range tactical aircraft which, combined with precision munitions, can hit those targets, whether it is an al Qaeda cave in Afghanistan or a leadership bunker in Iraq or in some other part of the world. We have supplied more money for that very important area, Mr. Chairman. We also need to bolster precision-guided munitions which have provided us with so much leverage in this operation. We do that here. We also provide for more robust missile defense because we know that Scud missiles launched in a theater can paralyze our tactical airfields. Until we can take care of those airfields and bring people in and bring aircraft in, we know we have to have the ability to pull down Scud-class ballistic missiles and increasingly effective ballistic missiles that are actually more high-powered, more capable than Scuds. For that reason, Mr. Chairman, we have money in this bill for Patriot missile systems, for more procurement of our missile systems, so we can protect our troops in theater and project American power around the world. That is another enabler. We also put money in for the deep strike program, Mr. Chairman. That is important. That will follow on and bolster this fleet of B-1s, B-2s and B-52s that carried the war to the enemy so effectively in this last theater. So we do a number of things, Mr. Chairman, that will enable us to not only fight today's wars but also look beyond the horizon and will help us fight tomorrow's wars. Let me tell you, Mr. Chairman, you will be listening to the reports of our subcommittee chairman and the ranking members of those subcommittees and you will see that this bill is a product of a lot of hard work, a lot of folks who sat in those chairs and listened not only to the daily briefings on the Iraq operation but listened very intently to our people in uniform when they told us what we are going to need to protect this country. Our folks have done a great job. So, finally, let me commend our commander-in-chief, President Bush, for the blueprint that he laid out for us, for Secretary Rumsfeld, our military leaders, but, lastly, everybody who projected American power in this last conflict, who went out, right down to that 19-year-old kid carrying an M-16 trying to go through the choke point at Nasiriya in Iraq. America's military team has performed brilliantly for us. Now it is time for us to perform for them. I want to thank my ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), for his great partnership in putting this bill together. We have had a few contentious moments and we may have a few more as we go through this bill. There are a few items that do not come up very often in the defense bill but will come up. But after the arm wrestling is over, Mr. Chairman, you will see a united Committee on Armed Services and hopefully a united House of Representatives standing tall behind the uniformed people in the United States military. So I am very grateful to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for his work. I want to also say I am very grateful to our subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Everett), and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett), and also all of their ranking members on their subcommittees for the hard work they have put in. Mr. Chairman, we will start presenting our subcommittee reports momentarily. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to add my commendations to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), one of the absolute finest members of this great Committee on Armed Services and a guy who cares a lot about the fighting forces of the United States and also cares a lot about countries who stand with us in times of difficulty; and I think his amendment is right on point. I understand this amendment has a message beyond the message of conforming with similar situations in other countries around the world. There is perhaps a message to Paris here. I think it is an appropriate one as I add my commendation to the gentleman and I strongly support this amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to ask my colleagues to support this amendment. As we stand here, the strategic landscape facing the United States is a lot different than it was just a couple of years ago. After September 11, 2001, we embarked on a global war on terrorism, and since that day we have engaged in two successful campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. In doing so, we removed one of the major contingencies that served as a basis for force planning during most of the 1990s. In the wake of these events, it is clear that we need to evaluate our military posture. Across the globe, and particularly in Europe, we remain deployed much as we were at the end of the Cold War and, in some instances, much the same as at the end of World War II. The time has come to adapt our global posture in order to meet the challenges of new era, not to meet those of an era gone by. Earlier this year, General Jones, the commanding general of U.S. European command, outlined his thoughts regarding the change of our nature and presence in Europe from a garrison force to what he called an expeditionary force. Under this concept, U.S. military units would rotate overseas on a periodic basis, rather than be permanently stationed in Europe. Our bases in Europe would become in General Jones' words ``lily pads,'' bases from which our forces would deploy to crisis areas around the world. Based on this idea, the committee held a hearing in February to explore this changing nature of our posture in NATO. It became clear that NATO will continue to change. No longer postured to defend Western Europe against the Soviet threat, NATO is evolving to a force that will undertake contingency operations both inside and outside Europe. At the same time, NATO's membership continues to grow and the admission of many former Warsaw Pact nations has moved the borders of the alliance further east and south. We have to recognize those changes within NATO and take appropriate action to ensure our contribution remains relevant. As a result of that hearing and General Jones' initiative, I offer this amendment today. It simply states it is the sense of Congress, in light of the changing nature of NATO and the strategic landscape worldwide, that the President should reevaluate our posture in Europe and take maximum advantage of any basing and training opportunities among NATO's newly joined and invitee states in Eastern Europe. I urge my colleagues to send a message to the administration and to our current and future NATO allies that we understand the changing nature of the alliance and stand in strong support of the alliance as it faces the challenges of the 21st century. Mr. Chairman, in the previous amendments we have talked about this a little. My partner on this committee, the ranking member, the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), has some very eloquent and wise thoughts on this issue. We have had a hearing on our footprint in Germany, the 72,400 uniformed personnel in Germany, about 55,000 of whom are Army personnel; and we have also looked at the fact that American personnel can live much less expensively in places like Poland. Mr. Chairman, from my own perspective, I will never forget that at a time when we had a dwindling list of allies who wanted to participate side by side with our young Americans who were laying their lives on the line in the Iraq conflicts, Poland sent a contingent of some 200 special operators into that theater and served with us in battle. I think it would be very appropriate, in fact, this committee has seen fit to place some money for military expenditures, for some early preliminary work in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania; and I think that we should certainly look at this Europe, this new Europe that Secretary Rumsfeld talks about in terms of the changing requirements that we have and the resultant changing strategic posture of the United States in Europe. Mr. Chairman, I would offer this amendment. I look forward to comments from the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let me say that I am so glad that the distinguished chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has brought this amendment, because this goes to the very heart of the purpose of our operation in Iraq, the honor with which we conducted this operation, the integrity of our leadership, and what I would call perhaps a backbiting response from certain elements in the international community, and, lastly, an appropriate response from the United States, which is suggested by the gentleman. So I think that the gentleman's amendment is right on point, and I will work with my partner, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), to see to it that this amendment becomes law.

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

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

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

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) has been a champion of the idea of utilizing Stealth bombers and Stealth aircraft and coupling them with precision munitions and being able to give enormous leverage to American air power. If we look at our array of deep-strike platforms, we have the 21 B-2s that are based in the gentleman's district, which are extremely valuable assets. We have a few, over 60 now, B-1 bombers, now that 23 are being retrieved or taken out of the force; and we are retrieving a number of those 23 bombers, bringing those back to the force. They worked very effectively in Iraq. And the balance of our 130 or so combat-coded bombers are made up of the old B-52s, the youngest one of which was built in July of 1962, so the newest B-52 is over 40 years old. We need to strike out and to design and build a new deep-strike platform. So we put $100 million in this bill to commence pursuit of a new deep-strike platform, which may be manned or on the advice of some people may be unmanned. We could certainly have what I call the B-2 Chevy. That is the new variant of the B-2 that does not have some of the Cold War components but nonetheless would be excellent for conventional missions, and that would be somewhat less in terms of cost than the B-2s that were built for strategic delivery. So it could be a manned system, it could be an unmanned system, but the point is we better start now because it is going to be years before we have new platforms for deep strike. At the same time, we plussed up the purchases of precision munitions, those joint direct attack munitions that are used to eliminate the need for literally thousands of bombs, hundreds of bombs to one in terms of ratio where again, instead of carpet bombing a bridge to knock it out, you hit that one strut and bring that entire bridge down. The gentleman is talking about our two most important systems, that is deep-strike platforms and precision munitions. When those two leveraged systems are coupled together, the United States has enormous capability, and I thank the gentleman for his efforts along these lines.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I thank the gentleman for his work; and if I could just mention, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) just spoke. One of his comments was to the effect that he knew that we were retrieving some of these B-1 bombers that the Air Force decided last year to shelve, and he hoped that the cost of maintaining those bombers would not be drawn from the spare parts accounts of the 60 or so bombers that we have right now. Let me just say in response to the gentleman, who is a great friend of mine, the intent of the committee is to try to get a high mission- capable rate with our entire bomber force, all of the B-1s, and that means spending what it takes to keep those birds in the air, to give them the ability to deliver their platforms with deep ranges, with good protection to the crew. So we want to see higher maintenance dollars expended on that entire force because it is such an important leverage force. We saw the B-1s being extremely flexible in its pursuit of targets in the Iraq theater. That was appreciated by the committee. I did not get a chance to respond to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), but I want to assure him that we are going to try to make sure that entire bomber force has a high mission-capable rate, both B-2s that the gentleman is so proud of, and home bases in his district, B-1s, and of course those ancient B-52s. I know the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson) talked about looking out his prison window in Hanoi in 1972 during Operation Linebacker and watching a B-52 explode in midair as it was hit by a Sand missile. Those planes were shot down over 40 years ago, and by the aircraft, anti-aircraft and Sand capability being delivered to North Vietnam by Russia. That means that we need to move along and develop this new technology as quickly as possible and get new birds in the air as quickly as possible. I know the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and I share that goal.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services have permission to file a supplemental report on the bill (H.R. 1588) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2004 for military activities of the Department of Defense, to prescribe military personnel strengths for fiscal year 2004, and for other purposes.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the action of the House adopting Senate Concurrent Resolution 46 be vacated to the end that the House hereby amend the concurrent resolution by striking ``Secretary of the Senate'' and inserting in lieu thereof ``Clerk of the House'' and adopt the concurrent resolution, as so amended.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Let me just say to my good colleague and the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and a guy who has a great dedication to the Armed Forces, we appreciate all his support and all of the hard work that his committee has done in this area. He has my assurance that we will work with him as this bill walks down through the process.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman's understanding is correct.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Let me say to all my colleagues, this is a great defense bill that is coming to the floor, and I hope everybody supports it. It does a lot of things for America's troops. They have just finished this extraordinary operation where they pushed up through Iraq in very dangerous circumstances, engaged in many conflicts at very close ranges and secured their objective and carried out their mission with extraordinary talent and capable and courage. Now it is our turn. It is our turn to support the troops. It is our turn to provide the readiness capability. It is our turn to provide for modernization of old platforms, and it is our turn to not only fix what we need to win now but to look beyond the horizon and fix and create and produce what we are going to need tomorrow, and this bill does this. It provides for many of the very important enablers. And I call enablers things like tankers, tanker aircraft, that allow us to maintain that aircraft bridge between the United States or a base that we have overseas and a potential point of conflict where we can keep aircraft going back and forth, whether those aircraft are cargo aircraft to supply the troops or strike aircraft that are putting rounds on target. And because of that we have got provisions in this bill to provide for tankers. We have a tanker fund that allows us to go forward on either a buy or a lease. We have got that provision in. We have got provisions in for more of our airlift with C-17 aircraft, these great aircraft that are providing the centerpiece of our airlift today along with our older C-5s and our in-theater C-130s. We worked on other so-called enablers. We have ramped up this stock of precision-guided munitions we need, those munitions that allow you to go in and hit one strut on a bridge and knock it down, instead of having to carpet bomb the entire bridge with hundreds of bombs. We have a so-called deep strike package that allows us to spend $100 million on a new system to replace these bomber aircraft that we are using today. And the newest B-52 was made in July of 1962, so it is more than 40 years old. We have 21 B-1s, and we now have a small batch of 21 B-2 aircraft, our stealth aircraft. We now have a very small fleet of B-1 aircraft, because we had pulled 23 B-1 aircraft out of the fleet because we could not afford the spare parts to keep all of those aircraft running. We put those 23 aircraft back in the fleets, or as many of them that can be retrieved, and we provide for the spare parts and the sustainability to keep that part of our important deep strike fleet going. We provide for the 4.1 pay increase. That is the average pay increase, and we do target parts of that to various aspects of the service where we need critical skills. We do a good job with respect to housing for our troops, for our families. Today you do not just bring a troop, a uniformed person into the services. You bring a family into the services, and you have to provide for those families. We do that in this bill. This bill has many good things; and our great subcommittee chairman and subcommittee ranking members and my colleague, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), my great partner who himself is home to the B-2 fleet in America, have done I think an excellent job on putting a great package together. I want to speak to one aspect of this package that has been talked about a little this morning because people have said, are you killing the environment? Are you hurting the environment? Are you revamping the environment? The answer is no. What we are doing is providing for freedom to train for our troops. What we have heard over the last many years now is that our bases around the country where these great troops that you saw in Iraq have an opportunity to train, whether they are hitting a beachhead or firing on a range or going through some type of amphibious warfare, those troops need to have places to train and those training grounds are becoming more and more constricted and more and more off-limits to our troops because of application, and I think wrongful application, of our environmental laws. Let me show you a case in point. This is a picture of the Marine base at Camp Pendleton in California. There is some 17 miles of beach here, and this is the beach on which the United States Marine Corps practices Iwo Jima. That is where they practice going ashore under heavy fire, where they know they will take substantial casualty for us, for freedom. And guess what we have done with our environmental laws? We have closed them out where they cannot practice. This is a 17-mile beach. This is a base that is in excess of 100,000 acres. And I want to show my colleagues the various overlays, how the environmental applications have crept in and closed down more and more of this critical training base, and then I want to relate it to bases across this Nation. Let us turn over to that first overlay. This is your 100,000-acre base. Here is the first overlay where training is now locked out. It is called the estuarine sanctuary. So training is locked out at Camp Pendleton. No Marines can go inside that estuarine sanctuary. Now we have another restriction. These are the gnatcatcher restrictions. We found a small bird that is considered to be endangered; and because of that these huge areas and, remember, this is a 100,000-plus acre base, these huge areas are now restricted. Now we have another restriction at Camp Pendleton. Let us turn the third page over. This is the rare plants restriction. It looks to me approximately another 10, 20,000 acres are now restricted from training activity. Let us turn the next page. These are the riparian areas and the vernal pools which are now also restrictions. So my point is, the United States Marines came in and talked to the Committee on Armed Services and they said, we used to try to work around these restrictions when we had just a couple of them. Now we can no longer work around them. And, incidentally, there is a lawsuit pending right now and there is an injunction in place for the Marines being able to practice amphibious operations on the vast majority of this beach that we put in place to allow them to practice Iwo Jima for the United States of America. So we have to do something. So what did we do? Did we do something radical? No, we did not do anything radical. We simply said we want to balance conservation requirements and training requirements. So what we are going to do is put together a process. It is called an inramp, which is a fancy term for saying if the Fish and Wildlife Department of the United States makes an agreement with the U.S. Marine Corps or the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Army or the U.S. Air Force and they also make an agreement with State Fish and Wildlife in the State, so if it is California, New Jersey, New York or whatever, everybody gets together and you take an area and you make a decision that allows you to balance these two important priorities, conservation and training, and you say, for example, we will allow the rifle range to be here. We will allow the gnatcatcher environment to be here. And maybe if the gnatcatchers migrate in the fall and they leave this area, we will let you have training in this area until they come back. It allows you to make a flexibility adjustment that takes care of both priorities, both conservation of endangered species and training. Once Fish and Wildlife and State Fish and Game and the military makes this agreement, you cannot come on in after the agreement is made and place another critical habitat over the top of it and paralyze the training operation. That is what we do. I think it is a very reasonable thing. This was passed first out of Resources with a bipartisan vote, and we passed it in the Committee on Armed Services. And the final vote on the Committee on Armed Services, I might add, when all the smoke cleared and all the dust settled and we had our final vote, I want to thank my ranking member from Missouri for his great leadership here, we had a vote of 58 to 2 in favor of this bill. So this bill has really good stuff in it for the United States of America, and it balances some very important competing interests the American people have. I do not think any American, if you stopped them on the street and you went over this diagram of how training has been cut back further and further and further, at places like Camp Pendleton, where those Marines that went up the An Nasiriya Corridor trained, I do not think any American would disagree with the idea that you get together Fish and Wildlife and the Marine Corps, you make an arrangement, you set some land aside for the birds, set some land aside for the Marines, and let them both go through their operations. So I want to thank the gentlewoman for letting me get up and explain this important aspect of the defense bill; and let me urge all Members, Republican and Democrat, to vote for this bill.