Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I think the gentleman is absolutely right, Mr. Chairman. Once again, we made more bombers in one day in San Diego in 1943 than the entire B-2 fleet, and expecting that small fleet of 21 aircraft to do the job they are going to have to do in future years I think is a strain. I thank the gentleman for his remarks. I would hope that we would continue to build that fleet.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to, and I notice my good friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) has just arrived, who is also an expert on long-range strike and deep strike. Very simply, if we look at the experience of Desert Storm, I think that carries out not only the importance of having deep strike aircraft but also deep strike aircraft with stealth. We analyzed at the time the two B-2 bombers, for example, which do not have to have flight cover. Because they are able to avoid and evade radar, they do not have as much air-to-air refueling or suppression of SAM missile systems, and they can hit as many targets, two aircraft can hit as many targets as 75 conventional aircraft. At a time when we have cut our air wings from 24 to 13, our tactical air wings, it is important to have that leverage capability. We saw this in Kosovo, where we hit multiple targets with a single B-2 mission, hit multiple targets and destroyed a much larger percentage of the target availability than other conventional planes. So this is a leverage capability. It leverages the thing Americans are greatest at, which is technology. If we couple that with precision munitions, where, for example, into that bridge we send that one precision munition into a strut and knock that entire bridge out, because we are able to hit one precise spot, that is better than dropping 2,000 bombs on it with older conventional aircraft. So leverage, technology, and precision munitions leverage is what we get from deep strike fighter capability like the B-2. I would be happy to hear the comments of the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Chairman, I just want to mention that with respect to the ranking member who was just talking about the need for a bilateral policy and working with our allies, obviously that system has now been energized, in light of the strike on the United States. I think one other aspect of missile defense has been addressed by that, because one of the arguments of the Bush Administration to the Russians has been that while we did sign the ABM agreement with them and we promised not to defend ourselves against incoming missiles and they did the same thing with respect to the United States, our argument has been that this world is a very dangerous place external to that relationship between the Russians and the United States; that there are other states out there that would attack the United States that we should be worried about and who are developing missiles and developing those systems that could harm us. I think that this strike on the United States has given a great deal of credibility to this message that we have been sending to the Russians, that we have not only a real threat, but we have obviously the supreme national interest of defending ourselves against that threat. I think there is going to be a new tone taken by the Russians post-strike.

Mr. HUNTER. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton); and you know, we are working with the administration right now, and I know he joins this effort to try to make sure that this package that is being worked up now through the Pentagon includes a lot of ammo, not only for Marines but for the Army.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, this is a bill in which we generally have some fairly hotly contested issues. It is a bill in which Members voice strong opinions because national security issues evoke strong opinions. But all of us understand now that we have a major mission which predominates over all other missions with respect to this bill; and that is to give the President the tools that he needs to pursue the terrorists who struck America. Because of that, Mr. Chairman, I think we are all going to be working together here as we walk through the floor with this bill and go to conference and try to keep our controversy to a minimum, try to compromise on packages, and try to move to the point where we are actually procuring for the President, for our armed services, the resources that they need. So let me thank my colleagues, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan), my partner on the Subcommittee on Research and Development; the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton); all the other fine Members on the Democrat side of the aisle; and all my fine colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, who make up this great committee called the Committee on Armed Services. In R&D, let me tell Members where we have been moving. We have been trying to do everything we can to leverage America's technology, both militarily developed technology and commercially developed technology, to give our smaller forces which we now have today the capability to be extremely effective, extremely mobile, and extremely flexible. This is a long, difficult challenge, and it is going to take years to make this change; but in a number of areas, we are making great strides with this bill. We are putting quite a bit of money into precision munitions, to upgrade our capability to use a single munition to do the job. Where, heretofore, you needed to use lots of dumb bombs, for example, to knock down a bridge or something of that nature and the ability to go in with a precision munition and make a single hit and do effective damage with that one hit, it is a great advantage that comes out of our technology; and that is something that we are trying to manifest in our munitions programs. Stealth, Madam Chairman, the ability to fly aircraft through heavy enemy air protection to avoid and evade radar, so we can move our planes into position to strike and move them back out without losing pilots. That is an area manifested in the Joint Strike Fighter program, the F-22 program, and other programs which we are developing or are devoting a lot of resources to in R&D. In the Army, the ability to move our forces quickly and to make sure that they are mobile enough and flexible enough to get into very small, tight, parts of the world, the problem that we discovered in the campaign in Kosovo. We are trying to rectify that with some changes in the makeup of our military forces and the armor forces that accompany those forces. Madam Chairman, in the Subcommittee on Research and Development, we are devoting a large amount of dollars to help the Army change to a position where it is more mobile, more responsive, and especially more air mobile, because we have to get a lot of this equipment around the world in a very short period of time. With respect to missile defense, we all understand we live in an age of missiles. That was revealed to us in the early 1990s when 26 Americans were killed in the Gulf War by ballistic missiles. Across- the-board, Democrats and Republicans are working on a whole family of anti-ballistic missile systems, some of which are deployable now, like PAC-3, which can handle some of the basic Scuds, right up to the testing range that the President needs for national missile defense. We think we are going to have a package on that a little later, Madam Chairman, that Democrats and Republicans can agree to. So, across-the-board, Madam Chairman, on R&D we are doing everything we can to give our country broad capability against military threats. As we walk through this package, we are going to want to add things as we go into the conference with the other body to focus especially on new requirements as a result of the strike on America.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the extraordinary service and dedication of Mr. Wilton ``Curly'' Collier of Alpine, California, who will be honored by his community this Saturday, September 22, 2001. Curly was born in Vernon, Texas on April 19, 1921. His family moved to Colorado where he attended high school before moving to California to enroll at the University of California, Los Angeles. In his professional life, Curly began his career as a parts manager and retired 30 yeas later as a sales manager in Alpine. Curly joined the International Kiwanis Club with the sponsorship of fellow Alpine resident Bob Wilson on October 6, 1967. In the Kiwanis, Curly spent his time volunteering for the many activities and fund- raisers the Kiwanis sponsor, including the Worldwide Service Project, disaster-relief efforts, worldwide charities, and the Kiwanis family youth programs. Curly became the president of the Alpine Kiwanis Club in 1970 and he used this position to help raise money to purchase radio equipment for the Alpine Fire Station. He was also responsible for a 346% membership increase at the Alpine Chapter, which went from 15 to 52 members in just his first year of office. In recognition of his outstanding efforts and achievements, he was elected to the office of Lt. Governor of Kiwanis Division 31 in 1976. In 1985, Curly started the Endowment Fund for Children's Hospitals and the Miracle Mile of Quarters Project. In the first year of its existence, the Miracle Mile of Quarters Project raised and donated $56 to the Children's Hospital. Last year, the project awarded the hospital's single largest donation of $42,500. During his tenure as a member of the Kiwanis Club, Curly has not only held high-ranking offices, but has been the recipient of many awards, including the Kiwanian of the Year in 1987 and the distinguished Hexson Award in 1996. This award was established by the Kiwanis International Foundation in honor of the first Kiwanis International President, George F. Hexson. The recipients are honored each year during a special reception at the Kiwanis International and District Conventions and are listed in the annual publication of the Kiwanis Honors Booklet, as well as on a permanent donor recognition electronic accolade at the Kiwanis International Office. In 1998, Curly received the Tablet of Honor, the most prestigious honor available from the Kiwanis International Foundation. This award is given to recipients on behalf of individuals, Kiwanis Clubs, corporations, or organizations to honor their accomplishments and recognize their service. Besides the prestige that comes with the award, recipients are pleased to know that contributions made in their names are helping the Kiwanis organization provide assistance to children around the world. Each recipient has their name added to the Tablet of Honor accolade in the lobby of the International Office in Indianapolis, IN, and all are honored at a special Kiwanis reception at each year's international convention. Mr. Speaker, Curly is a symbol of commitment and dedication to his fellow citizens and community. He has dedicated his life to helping the Kiwanis serve both his community and children across the world. Today, let us all honor and thank Curly for his remarkable contributions and for serving as an example of placing others before yourself.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, we are giving the President the power to conduct a war. We need to also give him, along with that power, the resources to conduct not only a war that could take a short period of time, but a war that could be enduring. Right now, our military forces badly need equipment, spare parts, munitions and intelligence resources to win this war. So along with this resolution, Mr. Speaker, let us resolve that, over the coming months and years, we will give our troops and our commander in chief what it takes to get the job done.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. That is absolutely right. I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is going to speak later on on this trip that he took across the bases in this country and reviewing all of the deferred maintenance, the potholes on the runways, the repair on aircraft, but also the infrastructure maintenance, just keeping our buildings in good shape, keeping military housing in good shape. When we would have to go to a mission, let us say to a Bosnia or another place, another operations area, instead of the administration, then the Clinton administration, asking for more money from Congress, they would simply reach into the cash register and take out money that was going to be used for maintenance. So having used that money and not replaced it, when the services looked for money to be able to repair their old buildings, repair their runways, furnish spare parts, it was not there.

Mr. HUNTER. I hope the administration works with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction in the Committee on Armed Services to come up with some new ways to buy military housing for military families, because, as the gentleman knows, a lot of that housing is 20, 30, 40, 50 years old; and in a lot of places around the country our young families do not have housing available on the bases. There is not housing. They have to go out on the economy, and in places like San Diego you are looking at $1,000, $1,200 a month for the smallest amounts. So we have some major problems to fix, and that means money.

Mr. HUNTER. We are going to try to do a lot of things with what we have, with the $18 billion in extra spending that we anticipate this year above and beyond what we call the ``Clinton baseline.'' But that $18 billion, once again, does not come close to solving the equipment problem, which is about a $30-billion-per-year problem, solving the ammunition problems, the people problems, the other problems we have across the board. We are going to do as much as we can.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk for just a couple of minutes following the eulogy and the little memorial discussion that we had with respect to our old friend Floyd Spence who really represented the idea that you needed to have a strong national defense to maintain all of our other freedoms and who dedicated his career as a member of the Committee on Armed Services and ultimately the chairman of the committee to national defense. I thought that the best service we could render to Floyd right now would be to remind our colleagues that we still have a lot of work to do with respect to national defense. We are still short on ammunition, measurably short. We are $3 billion short in terms of the Army's requirements and several hundred million dollars short with respect to the Marine Corps. We are still vastly short on ammunition. Spare parts, we have now cannibalization taking place across the array of front line aircraft, the front line fighter. I am talking about F-15s, F-15Es and F-16s. Their mission-capable rates are dropping off the cliff, meaning that they now are not as ready as they used to be to be able to go out and do their mission and come back. We still have personnel problems. We are still some 800-plus pilots short in the United States Air Force and across the services. We have lots of personnel shortages. So we have a need, Mr. Speaker, to spend about an additional $50 billion per year on top of what we are spending right now. I would remind my colleagues we are spending roughly $125 billion a year less than the Reagan administration did in the mid-1980s in real dollars. So I think that the best service we can do to Floyd's memory is to carry the flag that he carried, which is to remind our colleagues that we need to preserve a strong national defense. I would yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), a good friend, a former member of the Committee on Armed Services, a veteran, and a veteran of the Gulf War, and a person who believes in defense.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I am glad the gentleman is speaking today, because he is one of our Desert Storm veterans and was over in the Gulf and watched what then was an overwhelming use of force against Saddam Hussein. I believe you have to be prepared. I think ``be prepared'' is the key position that the U.S. should take, because if you look at the forces that we used against Saddam Hussein, many of those forces came out of Europe. Those were forces that were lined up initially in Germany and other parts of Europe to offset what we thought then would be a conflict perhaps with the Warsaw Pact, that is, with Russians and Russian allies, the Soviet Union. But that did not happen. In the end, we moved those forces into that theater in the Middle East, and we used them with devastating effect against Saddam Hussein's own military, which was much touted as the fourth largest army in the world. So I think the lesson there is that unusual things happen. If we had gone back over the last century and the 619,000 Americans who died in the 20th century in conflicts, most of those conflicts arose in ways that we in no way anticipated, whether it was December 7, 1941, or this last event with Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait. The gentleman and I sat there on the Committee on Armed Services and asked our intelligence people, Which of you anticipated this invasion of Kuwait? One of the gentleman actually said, Before or after the armor started moving? We said, No, before. And none of them had anticipated it. So the key here is to be prepared. If you have force, you can move it, just as we did the forces out of Europe. If you have the air power, you can move it around the world. That is what that gentleman illustrated when he fought in Desert Storm.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I recall when a number of us went down a few days ago to the memorial service in South Carolina, I thought one of the great parts of the eulogy when Floyd's doctor who did the double lung transplant read the nurses' notes that were transcribed the day that Floyd got married, shortly after the operation. He read the nurses' notes saying, ``It appears now people are filing into the hospital room for a marriage.'' She seemed to be somewhat surprised by that, and later on it said in fact the marriage ceremony had taken place; and she concluded, ``The patient has tolerated the marriage well so far.'' I thought that was a great remark and reflection on Floyd Spence's life because Floyd Spence tolerated a lot of things well. He tolerated discord and disharmony and tough times and times when it seemed like all of political opinion was going against you very well. But he was a man of steel. It has been mentioned he was a man of great civility. He also had literally an absolute iron backbone. I can remember watching Floyd Spence tell a Speaker of the House in no uncertain terms no, something that is pretty difficult to do. I recall his days talking to Strom Thurmond back in the early 1960s, and he said, I think I am going to change parties and become a Republican. Strom Thurmond said, I do not think the district is ready for that. The district was not ready for it. I think he lost his first election but later on was sent to a seat in the House of Representatives. He talked about that day, and whether you are a Democrat or a Republican you have to admire the absolute iron will of this guy who walked down the streets of his hometown having changed parties in a State that still remembered the War between the States, and where lots of folks had lots of ancestors who lost parts of their bodies in the Civil War and lost lots of other things and was still a place where there was feelings about that war and about Mr. Lincoln's armies. Floyd Spence walked down the streets of his hometown and had people, friends and neighbors, who had known him for years turn their backs on him. I recall he said he walked into the post office and an old friend who had been with him for years walked up to him, turned his back up to him deliberately and said, I used to have a great friend but now he is dead, and walked away. I thought, what a remarkable resolution and resolve and strength this guy had to have to do that at a time when it was very, very difficult politically. Yet, with this great strength and determination and resolve that resided in Floyd Spence's heart, we never heard him brag. The only people he talked about, if he was talking about his family, were his grandkids and his kids and all of his wonderful daughters-in- law. Floyd Spence left us with a legacy of civility. If we follow that legacy of civility, along with the resolve to follow our principles as strongly as he did, we will continue to be a great Nation.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing legislation that, if passed, will once and for all protect our unborn children from harm. Over 1.3 million abortions are performed in the United States each year and over 38 million have been performed since abortion was legalized in 1973. This is a national tragedy. It is the duty of all Americans to protect our children--born and unborn. This bill, the Right to Life Act, would provide blanket protection to all unborn children from the moment of conception. In 1973, the United States Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, refused to determine when human life begins and therefore found nothing to indicate that the unborn are persons protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. In the decision, however, the Court did concede that, ``If the suggestion of personhood is established, the appellants'' case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.'' Considering Congress has the constitutional authority to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment, coupled by the fact that the Court admitted that if personhood were to be established, the unborn would be protected, it can be concluded that we have the authority to determine when life begins. The Right to Life Act does what the Supreme Court refused to do in Roe v. Wade and recognizes the personhood of the unborn for the purpose of enforcing four important provisions in the Constitution: (1) Sec. I of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibiting states from depriving any person of life; (2) Sec. 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment providing Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provision of this amendment; (3) the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which concurrently prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life; and (4) Article 1, Section 8, giving Congress the power to make laws necessary and proper to enforce all powers in the Constitution. This legislation will protect millions of future children by prohibiting any state or federal law that denies the personhood of the unborn, thereby effectively overturning Roe v. Wade. We have had some recent successes in protecting our preborn including the passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, as well as the introduction of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. These bills recognize the unborn child as a human and provide protection to the fetus. Because I firmly believe that life begins at conception and that the preborn child deserves all the rights and protections afforded an American citizen, I support these pieces of legislation. The Right to Life Act will finally put our unborn children on the same legal footing as all other persons. I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this important effort.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, as you know, the story of the American West is one of a relentless quest for our most precious resource: water. Hundreds of rivers have been diverted and dammed, and thousands have lost their lives over this precious resource. Many of these battles continue today as our Western population rapidly grows, environmental regulations increase, and farmers find themselves in the outrageous predicament of arguing over what should have a priority during water shortages: the livelihood of their families and communities--or fish. Today I am proud to introduce the Colorado River Quantification Settlement Facilitation Act. This legislation will enable California to avoid future water conflicts by establishing the means for new conservation measures. In addition, it will ensure a reliable source of water for Southern California's many agricultural and urban users. For decades, California has been using approximately 800,000 acre feet per year more from the Colorado River than its 4.4 million acre feet water right. Understandably, the other river basin states, with many of their communities growing rapidly, have long expressed concern. They feel our continued use of their surplus water, with no plan to wean ourselves from such use, will come into conflict with their inevitable need to utilize their full water rights. In recent months, the California Colorado River water agencies and the other basin states came to an important agreement. This agreement established a time-line for California to gradually, over fifteen years, decrease its dependency on the Colorado River and live within its 4.4 million acre feet annual allotment. The agreement establishes new operating procedures that allow California to continue to use excess river water, while they develop ways to establish agricultural conservation measures. This will make possible increased transfers of water to urban areas and ensure our future compliance. Further, the agreement mandates that California adhere to specific benchmark conservation goals, which if go unmet, California would immediately be forced to live within the 4.4 million acre feet allotment. Such a scenario would prove disastrous to our state. My legislation will help California avert such a crisis by providing a degree of certainty in completing the agreement's required benchmarks, funding off-stream reservoirs to store surplus water, and insuring compliance with the Endangered Species Act by funding environmental mitigation in and around the Salton Sea. The Sea, in my district, is the largest lake in California and habitat for hundreds of species of birds and fish, which I aim to protect against the effects of any water conservation measures. Again, I introduce the Colorado River Quantification Settlement Facilitation Act. This bill will promote conservation and enable reliable water supplies for California for decades to come. I urge my colleagues' thoughtful consideration.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, I had a personal experience with my chief of staff who had what was diagnosed as incurable cancer, had a gatekeeper problem, and I became one of the first cosponsors of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) when he initiated his initial legislation. We talked about the Norwood amendment today. We went over the fact that one is going to have accountability, and yet, they are not going to have so much exposure that small businesses will be denied coverage. The key element in this entire debate has been balance. This approach is well-balanced. It is going to enable small businesses to have coverage. It is going to have accountability. It is going to move us forward. My old friend and I had a good discussion this morning, the gentleman who was most concerned about this who had incurable cancer. He looked at this thing and he says, this is what we need. Support the Norwood amendment.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I have taken the floor a number of times over the last 8 years during the Clinton administration strongly criticizing the Clinton administration for what I consider to be a weakening of our national security. We had budgets that annually were short in terms of equipment being replaced, low pay for our military personnel, substandard housing for our military families, a lack of readiness, spare parts and training for our forces that might have to move around the world on a moment's notice, and overall shortchanging of national security by substantial amounts each year in the budget. I want to go through the facts that I have laid out over the last several years with respect to what was then the Clinton administration's defense budget. First I pointed out that we have cut our military forces since 1991- 1992, the days of Desert Storm, by about 50 percent, and I pointed out that we had gone from 18 Army divisions to 10, we had gone from 24 fighter air wings to only 13 active air wings, we had gone from 546 Navy ships to 316, now down to less than that and going toward a 300 ship Navy. I pointed out that we had declining mission-capable rates for our frontline aircraft. A mission-capable rate is if I called up a neighbor who has two cars and I ask him what his mission-capable rate was, and he said wait a minute, Duncan, and he went out to try to start them and only one started, he would say 50 percent; one out of two. The mission-capable rate is the ability of an airplane, whether it is a fighter plane from a Navy carrier deck or an Air Force aircraft from an air base, to be able to fly out, take off, go do its mission, whether it is reconnaissance or escort or fighter duties, and return back to that base and land. Can it do its job? That is a mission- capable rate. The mission-capable rates of all of our front-line fighters have been dropping dramatically during the last 8 years of the Clinton administration. I pointed out that they have gone down, and this chart represents that fall in mission-capable rates. They have gone down from an average of about 83 percent to 88 percent back in the early nineties to only about 73 percent today. So that means that this small Air Force that we now have, these 13 air wings, actually are less than that, because each of those air wings has fewer aircraft that are ready to go than the air wings of the force of 1992. I pointed out during the last 8 years of the Clinton administration that our shipbuilding rate was falling; that instead of building the 9 to 10 to 11 ships that we needed each year to maintain at least a 300- ship Navy, we were consistently building only four or five or six or seven ships, building toward a 200-ship Navy. That is compared to Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy of the 1980s. I criticized that strongly. I criticized the fact that the Army, by their own admission, by their own statement from the Chief of Staff of the Army, was $3 billion short of basic ammunition. One thing you do not want to run out of in a war is ammunition; yet we were $3 billion short. I criticized the fact that the Marine Corps was $200 million short of basic ammunition. At the same time, we criticized the fact that the U.S. Air Force was at one point 700 pilots short. That got up in the Clinton administration to as high as 1,200 pilots short. The last time I talked to Secretary Peters, then-Air Force Secretary under the Clinton administration, right at the end of the administration, at that point it had gone from 700 pilots short to 1,300 pilots short. It had gone back a little bit. We were still 1,200 pilots short in the U.S. Air force. So, Mr. Speaker, I strongly criticized the Clinton administration as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Procurement of the Committee on Armed Services for what I consider to be an inadequate budget that did a disservice to our men and women in uniform, and, more importantly, did a disservice to national security. Well, today we have a new administration. It is the Bush administration, and it is headed by George W. Bush, a President whom I admire, a President of great personality, great vision, good common sense, and a President whom I think most Members of this House, whether they are Republican or Democrat, have a deep respect for. But, Mr. Speaker, facts are stubborn things, and if we are going to maintain intellectual honesty in this body, and I think all of us try to do that as much as we possibly can, we have to be consistent. I have looked at this budget that this President has sent over to Congress, and this budget, which is seeking right now to plus-up defense, to add to defense $18 billion, which would take it up to a level $18 billion ahead of the last Clinton budget that was submitted and voted on and increased by this Congress, I find that that budget is still totally inadequate. Facts are facts. We still have only 10 Army divisions, down from 18. We still have only 13 Air Force divisions, Air Force air wings, down from 24. This year, under this administration's budget, we are only going to build five ships, which is building at a rate that would lower the U.S. Navy to less than 200 ships. We still have the $3 billion ammo shortage in the U.S. Army. We still have the $200 million ammo shortage in the U.S. Marine Corps. We still have a major gap in pay between our military personnel and the civilian sector. I checked the other day, Mr. Speaker. I asked the Air Force, where is the pilot shortage now? Are we down from the 1,200 in the Clinton administration? The answer was no, we are still at 1,200, and we might even be shorter over the next several months. Spare parts, have we got the spare parts that we need? The answer is no. We started something in the Clinton administration, Mr. Speaker, that I thought was an important tool of accountability, and that is that our great chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), always asked the military to give their honest answer after we had the Clinton budget. He would say, what do you really need? What is your unfunded requirement? What is that you need in terms of ammo, spare parts, pay, training, that your budget did not give you? They would send over a list. Well, this year we have continued that practice with my President in the White House, George Bush; and the answer this year is close to $30 billion short from the military. We had GAO do a report for us, and we asked them if you take all of our ships and tanks and trucks and planes and you figure out about how old they are and how old they will be when they have to retire, figure out how many we have to replace each year so we have a fairly modern force. Could you do that for us? That is like telling a guy that owns 100 taxicabs, figure out how many taxicabs you have to buy each year. If each of your taxicabs has a 10-year life, how many taxicabs do you have to buy each year so your taxicabs average about 5 years old, so they are not too old, so you do not end up with a bunch of '56 Chevys. The answer is you have to buy about 10 each year to keep that taxicab force fairly modern. So we asked the GAO, do the same things for our tanks, trucks, ships and planes; and they came back with an answer, and their answer to us was the United States of America needs to spend an additional $30 billion a year to have modern equipment for the people that wear the uniform of the United States to operate in training and in war. We also asked them to tell us how much more money they thought we needed to spend on training if we wanted our pilots to have enough flying time and our people that operate our ground equipment to get enough training time. They came back with an answer of about $5 billion more a year we have to spend. We said what is it going to take if we full up our personnel and give them pay that is commensurate with the civilian sector? The answer was it is going to average about $10 billion a year. We said how much more do we need for missile defense if we really want to have a robust missile defense? We asked a lot of experts that. We figured out we need to have between $2 and $5 billion a year more. We asked how much for ammunition, because we are about 50 percent short. Along with the Army $3 billion shortage and the Marine Corps $200 million shortage, all the services are short in what we call precision munitions. That is what Americans watched in the Desert Storm war against Saddam Hussein when they watched the guy that the news stations called the world's luckiest taxicab driver, the car going across a strategic bridge, and we were coming with an aircraft to knock that bridge out, and we launched not a lot of bombs like we had to in the old days, the carpet bombs, and hoped to knock the bridge out; we launched one bomb at one of the struts under that bridge, and we could see on a camera that bomb going in, a laser-guided bomb, hit precisely at that strut just as the taxicab driver got to the end of the bridge, and it blew up that bridge. That is called a precision munition. It is very important in warfighting. We used it in the Kosovo campaign. So instead of having to carpet bomb with a lot of dumb bombs, you send one in that hits precisely the right point, and you get the same capability. Well, we are about 50 percent short in those precision munitions across the board. So if you add money for the ammunition account and the munitions account, that is about another $5 billion a year we have to spend. Mr. Speaker, that adds up to over $50 billion for equipment, for people, for training, for spare parts, for ammunition. I wanted to be able to stand here today and say my President, George Bush, provided that, just like my President Ronald Reagan came in in 1980 and rebuilt national defense and brought down the Russian empire under a motto, under a program that was called Peace Through Strength. If you are strong, you can help the weaker nations in the world. If you are strong, you can help people to become free. If you are strong, you can protect your own people. If you are strong, you may be able to convince your adversary, which was then the Soviet Union, that the right way in this world is to go to the bargaining table with the United States and make a peace agreement. That happened under Ronald Reagan. This budget this year submitted by this administration is more than $100 billion less than Ronald Reagan's budget in real dollars in 1985, $100 billion less. Now, it is true we do not need as much money as we needed in 1985, when the Soviets were ringing our allies in Europe with SS-20 missiles, when they were developing high combat-efficient capability in the air and on the land, and when they had a massive ICBM force threatening the United States. We needed to spend more, but we have cut too much. We cut too much in the Clinton administration, and I am sad to say that this defense budget does not do much above the Clinton administration's level. It does a little, but it does not do much. That takes me, Mr. Speaker, to my next subject, which is China. I spoke yesterday during the vote to give China Most Favored Nation trading status. That means we are going to give them the same privileges in trade with the United States that we give our best friends around the world. I argued that, in 1941, we were sending American steel to Japan to build the Japanese fleet, we were sending petroleum to Japan to fuel that fleet, and we had one Congressman, Carl Anderson, who said 6 months before Pearl Harbor: If we have to fight the Japanese fleet, we are going to fight a fleet that is built with American steel and powered with American petroleum. Six months later, we had thousands of Americans dead, lots of planes shot down, lots of ships destroyed by a Japanese fleet fueled with American petroleum and built with American steel. I analogize that to China. We are sending $80 billion a year more in China than they are sending to us, so they end up with $80 billion more American dollars than we end up with dollars from them. They are taking those dollars, Mr. Speaker, and they are buying and building a war machine that one day may kill Americans on the battlefield. They bought the Sovremenny class missile destroyers from Russia. Those were designed with Sunburn missiles for one purpose: to kill American aircraft carriers. And they bought those after they had been embarrassed over the Taiwan issue by the United States, and they vowed never to be embarrassed again. So they bought the Sovremenny class missile destroyers. They are buying air-to-air refueling capability from the Russians. They are buying high-performance SU-27 fighter aircraft from the Russians; and, yesterday, as we walked out of the vote giving China Most Favored Nation trading status and guaranteeing this flow of American dollars to China, we walked out to look at a headline in the Washington Post and the newspapers around the country saying China completes $2 billion deal with Russia to now buy 38 SU-30 aircraft. Those are attack aircraft, from Russia. And we also noted that they are now Russia's biggest customer for Russia's war machine. So we spent trillions of dollars offsetting Russia's war machine during the Cold War, and now we are rebuilding that war machine with American trade dollars in China. Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to close on a good note. Hopefully, there is a good note here. One hope, and I think this is the hope of all Members who understand the plight of America's military today, Democrat and Republican, I think certainly all members of the Committee on Armed Services, we need that $18 billion. We are told we might not even get the $18 billion above the Clinton budget that we thought we were going to get and which we made a place for in the budget a few months ago. If we do not get that $18 billion, Mr. Speaker, we are going to see more planes that cannot get off the ground; we are going to see more empty ammo pouches with the Army and Marine Corps personnel who have to defend this country; we are going to see more spare parts shortages throughout the services; we are going to see more substandard housing for military families; and we are going to see a continued decline of America's military strength. Now, we did do something very phenomenal last week; and we recognized this in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. That was that we did shoot down a bullet with a bullet in a national missile defense test. Now, I have put up here, Mr. Speaker, the results of the last eight Patriot 3 tests. That is our smaller defensive system that handles Scud-type missiles, and I put it up here to show that, in fact, we are now hitting a bullet with a bullet with missile defense. We can shoot a Scud missile that goes faster than a .30-06 bullet, that is a high- powered rifle bullet with a Patriot 3 missile that also goes faster than a .30-06 bullet. We have had now eight out of nine successful intercepts. Mr. Speaker, at about 11:09 on Saturday night last Saturday, 148 miles above the earth in the mid-Pacific, we hit a Minuteman missile launched out of Vandenberg, California, going some 11,000 feet per second. That is about four times the speed of a .30-06 bullet. We hit it with an Interceptor from Kwajalein Island, 4,800 miles from the west. We launched that Interceptor, and it also had a speed about four times faster than a .30-06 bullet, and they collided 148 miles above the earth. That utilized radar capability, the Beal Air Force station in California, also our ex-band radar on Kwajalein, also radar at Hawaii with hundreds and hundreds of Navy and Air Force assets monitoring that test. And with some 35,000 Americans, whether they were members of the Army that helped develop the radar or the Air Force team that launched the missile from Vandenberg Air Base or the Navy and Coast Guard that provided security, some 35,000 plus Americans, engineers, scientists, technicians, blue collar workers, participated in making that test a success. It was a great day for the United States, but it was a chart along a very difficult road of trying to achieve missile defense. The Bush administration has the right idea about missile defense. They know it is necessary because we live in an age of missiles. We found that out when we had a number of our personnel killed in Desert Storm by a ballistic missile launched by Saddam Hussein at an American force concentration. We can defend today, even though we have a weakened defense, we still have defenses against ships, tanks, aircraft. We have no defense against an incoming ICBM coming into this country. So that is why the administration is working with the Russians to try to develop a cooperation that will allow us to deploy defenses, and it is why also the Bush administration has the right idea, that if we cannot make an agreement with the Russian, it is in our national interests to build a missile defense system, because it is the United States Government that has a constitutional responsibility to its people to provide for national security. National security must now and forever on include defense against incoming ballistic missiles. So, Mr. Speaker, I would hope that the administration would work overtime to try to increase this defense budget. Let us not look back on this era of relative prosperity when the American people are doing well as an era that was similar to the era immediately preceding Korea, when we decided that there would not be any more wars and that we did not need to have a military that was ready to go. Then, on June 6 of 1950, we found ourselves pushed down the Korean peninsula by a third- rate military; and when the dust had cleared, over 30,000 Americans lay dead because we had underestimated the danger of the world; and we had also underestimated the drawdown of the American military that took place after World War II. Mr. Speaker, we must keep a strong military. That is the underpinnings of our foreign policy, which is ultimately the underpinnings of our economic policy. So let us try to get that $18 billion, Mr. Speaker. It is crucial to everybody that wears a uniform in the United States, and it is crucial to every American.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, in 1941, about 6 months before Pearl Harbor, our former colleague Carl Andersen said that at some point in the near future we might be engaged in battle with a Japanese fleet. And if that occurred, we would be fighting a Navy whose ships were built with American steel and that were powered with American fuel. A few months after he made that statement, in fact, we were engaged at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, losing hundreds of ships and aircraft and thousands of lives to a Japanese fleet that was built with American steel and powered with American petroleum. Today, we are sending $80 billion more to China than they are sending to us. They are using those hard American trade dollars to build a military machine. A part of that military machine is the Sovremenny- class missile destroyers that they have now bought from the Soviet Union complete with Sunburn missiles that were designed for one thing and that is to kill American aircraft carriers. They are building coproduction plants for Su-27 aircraft, high performance fighters with the ability to take on American fighters very effectively. And with American trade dollars they are building a nuclear force, intercontinental ballistic missile force, aimed at American cities. Mr. Speaker, we are leaving a century in which 619,000 Americans died on the battlefield. It is a century in which a great Democrat President, FDR, joined early on with Winston Churchill to face down Hitler and save the world for democracy. And it is also a century in which a great Republican President, Ronald Reagan, faced down the Soviet Union, brought down the Berlin Wall, and disassembled the Soviet military machine. Let us not replace that Soviet military machine with another military superpower built with American trade dollars. Vote ``yes'' on Rohrabacher. Vote ``no'' on MFN for China.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 195) commending the United States military and defense contractor personnel responsible for a successful in-flight ballistic missile defense interceptor test on July 14, 2001, and for other purposes.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, Americans sometimes do great things. At 11:09 p.m. Eastern Standard Time last Saturday, the work of some 35,000 Americans, including service personnel from the Air Force, the Navy, the Coast Guard, and the Army combined to produce a wondrous success in our missile defense testing program. It was extraordinary, Mr. Speaker. We had an interceptor that was launched from Vanderbilt Air Force Base in California, heading west, achieving a speed of some 11,000 feet per second, or more than three times faster than a high powered rifle bullet; and an interceptor was launched from Kwajalein Island, also achieving a speed of close to 11,000 feet per second, also going much faster than a rifle bullet; and at 11:09 eastern time that interceptor successfully hit the target vehicle and destroyed it 148 miles above the Earth over the Western Pacific. Mr. Speaker, I think Americans need to draw a number of conclusions from this very successful test. First, it is absolutely appropriate that we in the House of Representatives commend all the great people who worked on this program, and we intend to do that fully. Of course, the Army developed the radar and the kill vehicle working from their missile defense headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama. The Air Force in this case launched the Minuteman missile, which was the target missile, from Vanderbilt Air Force Base. We had Navy and Coast Guard monitoring and providing security in the Pacific. So we had thousands and thousands of men and women in uniform supporting these tests, all the way from folks who were doing basic security work to folks who were doing some very high-level physics work. Along with that, we had lots of Americans, scientists, engineers, blue-collar workers, some working for major contractors and others working for small business. One thing we have learned in this missile defense business is that the innovators, sometimes the smartest guys, are in the companies with 20, 30, 40, 50 people, and all of these people combined to produce a success that was stupendous. It was remarkable. The idea that people, you could raise two high-powered rifles, so to speak, farther apart than Los Angeles and New York, and shoot at a point toward the center of the country, and those two high-powered rifle bullets would hit precisely together at a point over the Midwest, is an extraordinary thing. It is something that many people thought was impossible. So I think it is entirely appropriate for the full House, on both sides of the aisle, regardless of what your position is on the ABM treaty or missile defense, to commend the wondrous efforts of the men and women of our uniformed services, and also all the folks working in business to make this thing work, all the contractor personnel who made it go. Secondly, I think we have to acknowledge we have got a long road ahead in this program. As our resolution states, we are going to have lots of successes; we are going to have lots of failures. I am reminded that with Polaris, the Polaris tests numbered over 120, and it failed more than 50 percent of the time. The first time we put up surveillance satellite capability, our first 11 launches failed before we succeeded. Yet that was a very important capability to achieve. So you have to have lots of failures. In fact, if you test rigorously, if you make these tests as difficult as you possibly can, while still learning a lot, you are going to have failures. I think we will have failures in the future, just as we are going to have failures with our other theater missile defense systems. But, nonetheless, Mr. Speaker, we have proven that not only can you hit a bullet with a bullet, but you can hit something going three times as fast as a bullet with an interceptor going three times as fast as a bullet, and that is truly extraordinary. Mr. Speaker, this is a good day for America. It is a great milestone in this missile defense program that we have. We have a lot of hard work ahead. We have got lots of challenges, these tests will get tougher and tougher; and in the future, of course, we will have failures as well as successes. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I think one aspect of this resolution that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and I have coauthored is that it does not speak to the politics of missile defense or the ABM Treaty or the relationship of the Soviet Union and the United States. What it does speak to is a technological challenge that we gave lots of people, many of whom make great sacrifices to work in the uniform of the United States or who go to work everyday in various places around this country, working either for the government or for private business, whether they are physicists or engineers or blue collar workers, working on a program that I would state again is monumental in its success. Once again, both of these systems were going three times faster than a high-powered rifle bullet, and they collided 148 miles above the earth, some 4,800 miles off into the Pacific, an extraordinary thing. It is like having somebody stand in San Diego with a high-powered rifle shooting to the center of the country and somebody standing in New York doing the same thing, except the high-powered rifles really went three times as fast as an ordinary high-powered rifle, and having those little bullets collide in midair. Now, I think that is an extraordinary thing. Indeed, it is something that a lot of critics of this system said was impossible: hitting a bullet with a bullet. But I think if we look at the resolution that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and I have cosponsored, it does not say that this is the end of the line and that somehow we have now achieved absolute defense against incoming ballistic missiles. What it does say, and I quote: ``The House of Representatives understands that testing of ballistic missile defenses will involve many failures as well as successes in the future. The House of Representatives, nonetheless, commends the effort and ingenuity of those who worked so hard to make the test a success.'' Mr. Speaker, when Billy Mitchell came back to the Coolidge administration in the 1920s, one of his messages was that we had entered the age of air power, whether Americans liked it or not. He recommended to a then Republican administration that they spend a lot of money developing air power. Well, we had a number of budget hawks who did not want to do that, and we did not do as much as we should have. As a result of that, we were not as ready as we should have been for World War II. Well, today, Mr. Speaker, and particularly since the Gulf War when Americans were killed for the first time with ballistic missiles fired by Saddam Hussein, we realize that we live now not in the age of air power but in the age of missiles. When we look at the array of military systems across the board that we have, and the gentleman from South Carolina and I work on a daily basis with lots of other great Democrat and Republican members of the Committee on Armed Services, we know that we build systems to stop ships. We build systems to detect submarines. We build systems to handle tactical aircraft, fighter aircraft. We build systems to take down bombers. We build systems to handle and that can handle capably just about every type of offensive weapon that an enemy could throw at us, except one. So the one question I have always asked the Secretary of Defense when he appears before myself and the other members of the Committee on Armed Services is: Could you today, could you today stop a single incoming ICBM, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, coming into an American city? And the answer always is, whether it is a Democrat or Republican administration: No; today we cannot do that. Well, that is what we are working toward, Democrats and Republicans, people in uniform and people out of uniform, is to achieve that capability. I think that it is very important for us to understand, and the reason the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and I put this language in, acknowledging that there are going to be failures in this testing program as well as successes and the difficulty of this program. We are going to have decoys. That is, when the offensive missile puts its warhead, projects its warhead off of the booster system, it is going to have perhaps decoys that would attract the interceptor missile; and the interceptor missile would end up hitting decoys, not being able to discriminate between a decoy and a real warhead. We have to work that problem. We have to be able to handle that problem. We are going to have, in some cases, perhaps evasive maneuvers. We are going to have lots of problems. We are going to have in some cases multiple shots; that is, a number of warheads coming in that we have to handle at one time. We may have to handle the effects of a nuclear burst at some point. On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, the alternative is for us to do nothing. The old saying is, ``You don't do anything until you can do everything, so you do nothing;'' and I think that is an inappropriate position for the United States to take. If we do not try to build a defense and do not try to develop this interception capability, this will be the first time in this century that the United States has looked at a weapon, at an offensive weapon, and decided that they are not going to try to learn how to defend against it. I think that would be a mistake. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.