Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is a centerpiece of our strategic deterrent. The amount of money we are talking about here is less than 1 percent of the defense budget. With a growing nuclear club around the world, it is important for us to preserve the most important part of our nuclear deterrent. This amendment would gut that program and would hurt strategic stability. Please vote against this amendment offered by my friend, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Luther).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, I have a Navy document in front of me that I am reading that gives the state of play with these D5 missiles. It states, ``With no D5 production beyond FY 2000, available inventory will only support outfitting of 11 Trident 2 SSBNs. So we are stopping short three submarine-loads of SSBNs if we stop production now. It says further, we have to pull more submarines or more missiles each year out of inventory to support testing, so we are going to be going downhill in this very important part of our strategic triad. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, if one believes in strategic stability and deterrence, and I think almost every Member of the Chamber believes that deterrence has worked for the last 40 years, oppose this amendment. We have three legs to our strategic triad. We have the land-based leg, that is, our missiles that are in silos in the United States. They are extremely vulnerable. They are very obvious. They are well targeted by our adversaries. We have bomber aircraft. Those bomber aircraft are also very visible. They can be targeted on the runways very quickly. We have one type of triad, the third type, which is not visible, which is survivable, which can survive to retaliate and therefore deter an adversary from making that first strike, throwing that first rock at the United States of America. That leg of the triad is the submarine leg. Now we have 18 boats in the water, or boomers or SSBNs, missile boats. We go down under START II, if the Senate ratifies START II with the changes, which is no sure thing because the Russians changed START II when the Duma made the ratification, so we now have to ratify START II as changed, but even if that happens, we go down to 14 boats and that requires more D-5 missiles. Even if we do a START III, we are going to have 14 missile submarines, and that still requires D-5. So these accurate, stabilizing systems that are now the key and the heart of our strategic triad must be preserved. Even if my colleagues think START II, as changed, is going to be ratified by the Senate and signed, fine, go ahead and think that. We still have to have 14 submarines. We still need D-5s on all of those submarines. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend for yielding me time, and I want to thank him for his hard work in trying to put together a compromise that he feels would serve national security as well as commercial interests. Mr. Chairman, as one of the folks that believes that we fought the Cold War right, let me just reflect to my colleagues that this species of transfer of computers and supercomputers to potential adversaries is a very dangerous game. My colleague mentioned the Cold War. In fact, we won the Cold War and liberated about half a billion people from slavery. In winning the Cold War we were very careful not to transfer American militarily useful technology to adversaries and potential adversaries. Computers have a deadly potential. That is, they can help to upgrade the nuclear weapons component of a military like China's. They can upgrade their ability to throw missiles. They can upgrade those militaries in almost every category, chemical, biological weapons. One of my colleagues talked about helping American workers. American workers have another interest, and that is to see to it that their children are not killed on battlefields around the world by systems that were transferred to those countries by the United States of America. This is a compromise. It is 60 days, and the time we are out of session does not count in the review period. For that reason, those of us who want to see very, very tight controls and review went along with it. I might say to my colleagues, this is a very dangerous exercise that we are engaged in. We have to be very conservative and very careful. We have made massive mistakes in the past in transferring technology to our adversaries. We do accept this, especially because of the reservation of time that is spent out of session, so we are not going to be surprised by a transfer by the President of something that we think will be dangerous to American security. For that reason, the committee has agreed to the compromise.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, the Members of the House have already voted against the substance of this amendment. We voted almost 3-1 to add $4 billion to the emergency supplemental appropriations bill. That money was in response to a request by the services when we asked them this year, what do they have in unfunded requirements that is not in the President's budget? They gave us a list of $16 billion, including ammunition, spare parts, training, and, in some cases, replacement platforms, aircraft, and other things to fill in areas where the President had not funded the armed services. In response, we gave $4 billion on the emergency supplemental. We did not get that. The other body would not go along with that. But they did go along with an increase of our top line of $4 billion. This amendment would, basically, gut that and wipe out the will of the House that voted almost 3-1 to give more money to the military. Now, why did they do it? They did it because defense spending has been in decline for 13 years. We are spending approximately $100 billion less this year on national security than we did in 1985 in real dollars. Now, some people may say, well, we funded readiness accounts. We funded personnel accounts. Why can we not take money out the modernization accounts. I think the best reason is the 80 aircraft that have crashed in the last year and a half. For any Member that wants to know the essence of this debate, it is this list of crashes. These crashes represent almost every type of aircraft, rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, in our inventory: F-16s, F- 15s, helicopters, right on down the line. Some of them crashed because they did not have spare parts. Some of them crashed because we have inexperienced people, we are not getting enough pilots in. Some of them crashed, in my estimation, because of lack of training. Some of them crashed, my colleagues, because they are too old. And even President Clinton's own Secretary of Defense Bill Perry told us just a few weeks ago we are $10 billion to $15 billion short in procurement accounts, in modernization accounts. Here is a person that put together the blueprint that President Clinton is now operating under, and he is telling us that we are short $15 billion to $20 billion in our accounts. And he is a responsible person. He understands it is largely sparked by the fact that we are having enormous numbers of crashes, lots of operational problems. The facts are, my colleagues, that we need this money; and we cannot take this large piece of money out of the defense bill without having a major impact on our ability to have a strong national defense.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank the gentleman for his great leadership on behalf of his constituents and the U.S. Armed Forces for helping to put this thing together. He did a lot of great work on it and we appreciate it.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank our chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), for whom the bill is named, and our ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for the great bipartisan leadership that they gave us, and my great colleague and partner, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky), who worked with me on the Subcommittee on Military Procurement to try to do what was right for the troops. One thing that we derived from our hearings was that we are still badly underfunded. Whether one ascribes to the GAO recommendation or their evaluation that we are $20 billion to $30 billion per year underfunded in modernization or Bill Perry, President Clinton's own Secretary of Defense, that it is somewhere closer to $15 to $20 billion, or even former Secretary Jim Schlesinger that it may be close to $100 billion per year short, we acknowledge that we are short, that we need to modernize the force and we have a lot of programs that are aging. Now, we carried out a number of programs this year. It is a fairly vast piece of the defense bill. A couple of things that we worked on that were important were ammunition and precision munitions. We took the lessons of Kosovo and the most recent conflicts in which precision munitions, coupled with our tactical and long range aircraft and stealth aircraft that provided great power projection, so we tried to shore up the precision munition and ammunition accounts. We think that is important. We preserve the submarine option for the next President; that is, if he feels that the 50 submarines that the administration is moving toward attack submarines is not enough, that he can retain some of the 688s that were going to be decommissioned. So we left money in there for the early work on refueling for the 688s, refuelings that would allow them to continue to march, and also we left some early money in for changing the boomers, the so-called boomers, or the ballistic missile submarines, to cruise- missile carrying submarines. It gives us great power projection capability. We sustained those options for the next President, should he decide to go in that direction. We moved this extra money around and tried to solve as many of the $16 billion in shortages that the services gave us as we could with the money we had available. I want to thank again the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky) for his great partnership and help in getting that done. So I would say to my colleagues, I think we at least held the bar without slipping this year. We need to put more money in next year. We are at least treading water. We are still very short in the procurement accounts, Mr. Chairman, but we are going to keep the wheels turning with this budget. I would urge all Members to vote for this bill.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, yes. Over the last 2 weeks, largely as a result of his leadership, the Department of Energy has identified a need of $370 million in required work to keep the project on schedule in fiscal year 2001. What the gentleman from Washington basically asked us to do was to keep this thing going and make sure that the design and engineering work continued, that the procurement that was necessary was allowed to take place and that we had a contingency fund available so that we could keep the project moving forward and keep the commitments that the Federal Government has made to Washington State. As a result of the gentleman's leadership and direction, we put those numbers together and indeed did come up with the $370 million requirement that is going to be needed to keep the project going for the next 12 months.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is correct to point out the very excellent model that was created by his amendment to transfer authority back to the site. Since its inception, the Office of River Protection has effectively managed the complex problems without layers of bureaucracy that very often stymie what we are looking for, and that is cleanup. I am committed to the success of the Office of River Protection and congressional intent that the manager of the Office report directly to the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management. I would also like to commend the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) on his tireless efforts on behalf of his constituents impacted by the Hanford site. The committee values his input on how best to proceed with this cleanup project. If I might, also, I just want to thank the chairman of the full committee, too, for his support in passing the football off to us and letting us run with it and put together the best program we could. That is kind of the trademark of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), whose quiet strength has led us through this markup and floor process. But I thank the gentleman for everything he has done. There has been a lot of confusion at Hanford with the contractor that is now leaving rather abruptly from this project. There is some confusion in the Department of Energy. But there is one guy whose steady hand on the helm of this ship has been moving it steadily forward and will continue to move the Hanford site forward to successful cleanup, and that is the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings). I thank the gentleman for what he is doing.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman, first for working with us here on the floor, but, secondly, for chairing this caucus, along with the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), who have put in a lot of long hours working with the Guard and the Reserve trying to develop requirements and ultimately coming up with recommendations for the Subcommittee for Military Procurement. Let me tell my colleagues what we worked for this year. We worked for parity. We did not have a lot of money. We had right at $300 million to spend on Guard and Reserve elements. The request we got from the gentleman and lots of our colleagues was let us have parity, let us have an even distribution of this money between the Guard and the Reserve, let us not have it all for the Guard or the Reserve. I agreed to do that. I gave my word on it. And the gentleman put together, along with the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), a package of $250 million. We added the $50 million that we had available to that. So we came to a total of about $300 million. We split it down the middle. In fact, we gave a little bit more to the Guard, about $158 million to the Guard, $153 million to the Reserve, but right down the middle between the two. When we were putting the elements together in putting our bill together, our office made a mistake and we put the KC-135 reengining kits on the Guard side even though we had them in the reserve side when we put the bill together. That would have made the bill very lopsided for the Guard. It would have then gone to $218 million for the Guard, only $93 million to the Reserve. I represented to the committee and to the subcommittee and to the gentleman that we were doing an even split. I gave him my word. And, of course, when we tell somebody that we are going to do something and we have a very thick bill, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer) relied on my giving him that representation. So, in this technical amendment, we are moving that item, the KC-135 reengining, the $52 million, back into the air reserve account, which is where we started out.

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

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, absolutely we will continue to press for that figure, make sure that that amount of money is available. As the gentleman knows, there is money that is in the first $491 million that was a tranche of money that was approved initially for the BNFL contractor and that contract is now no longer with us. So there is some question in DOE as to how much is carryover and how much is not carryover, but we do agree because of the gentleman's leadership that $370 million is needed. I will work in the conference to make sure that we get that. As the gentleman knows, the Department is currently unable to give us a firm funding requirement for 2001 due to the fact that they have ongoing contract negotiations right now that resulted from this new path that they are taking. I just want to assure the gentleman I will continue to work with him in conference and we will make sure that we fully fund that $370 million required for this work. So under the steady leadership of the gentleman from Washington, these other problems notwithstanding, we are going to continue to move the Hanford cleanup forward.

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

Mr. HUNTER. I will be very happy to work with the gentleman on this issue and make sure the section is carried out as intended. Again, the gentleman from Washington's guidance and advice is very important to our committee and our subcommittee. We thank him for his leadership on this issue.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, that is right. It is two KC-135 reengining kits. So if some folks that thought they were going to get those and not are not going to get them, give me a phone call. Our office made a mistake on that. We put the items in the wrong column. But we fixed it now. For people who are proponents of both the Guard and Reserve, what we did again this year was try to give parity. We tried to give an even split on the few dollars that we have. We have lots more requirements. We are going to have to wait for another budget to get to those.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, let me start off by just saying that I think the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes) is the most successful Border Patrol chief in the history of this country, a great American, a great crew chief in Vietnam. I have been down in the contrawars with my great friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ortiz), a wonderful, wonderful member of our committee. I also respect the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant) and what he is trying to do. And I just want to point out a few things. We have already entered the drug war with the U.S. military. We entered the drug war because we realized that our Customs folks and our other folks were being overwhelmed by what essentially were military operations on the side of the people that were moving cocaine and other narcotics to our children into the U.S., so we started using American military assets, even though there was a major debate 15 years ago on this subject. This is only permissive. It requires the request of the Attorney General of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury, and even then it is not mandatory, it is discretionary with DOD. I would say if we look at the enormous effectiveness of the smugglers, people who are moving now, both people and narcotics into this country, and the prospect and possibility of terrorism, which always exists, this is not an unusual or an extreme request. It requires a request from the Attorney General of the United States, and in some cases, with this 2,000 mile border and an underfunded Border Patrol which is stretched very thin and which, even today, cannot meet its recruiting requirements, it is very obvious, it is very easy to envision a time when the United States in its interests, its preservation interests and security interests, should have the right to have American troops on the border. Mr. Chairman, I do not think it is an outrageous request, and I think it is something that we should be able to have at least in our hip pocket. I would just ask my friends, I joined with them on all of these requests for more Border Patrol funding, and I led some of those requests, the INS has not gone along with those requests, we are still short Border Patrol agents. I think this is a reasonable amendment

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I think, to a large degree, this is a historic bill. This is the first defense bill of this century, and in a bipartisan way, I believe it reflects some of the lessons of the century. After World War II, we had an enormous military, over 8 million people in arms, we rushed to throw our weapons away when General Marshall was asked how the demobilization was going. He said, this is not a demobilization, it is a rout, we are literally disarming before the world. If we look at the correspondence between the Communist Chinese and Stalin's Russia, we can see their understanding of the fact that America over just a couple of years became extremely weak, and we found ourselves in June of 1950 being driven off the Korean Peninsula by a third-rate military. And before we had regrouped and managed to push our forces back and establish the stalemate that had endured, we lost 50,000 Americans killed in action. We have seen in this last century what these bloody wars do, this enduring lesson that we achieve peace through strength. As the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), one of the great Members of this House, who came in with me in 1980, and I and a number of other people sought to do with Ronald Reagan, and I know the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), our chairman, and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), our ranking member, were members of this movement, we sought to rebuild America's defenses in 1980. And by doing that, we backed down the Soviet Union and ultimately dismantled the Soviet Union. The interesting thing about that dismantlement is that dismantlement actually led to enormous savings of money by American taxpayers. What I am talking about is the fact that this bill that we are offering today is about $125 billion less in military spending than Ronald Reagan's bill of 1985. We have saved probably $1 trillion by the Reagan dismantlement of the Soviet empire, the fact that we no longer have the requirement to meet those massive Warsaw Pact divisions in military Europe. We achieved something by being strong. I think it is important that we carry that message into the next century. This bill is a start of that. But I want to remind my colleagues, it is only a start. We still have massive problems. Our mission capable rates have dropped about 10 percent, and they are hanging there. They fell off the cliff, and they are hanging there around 70 percent throughout the services; meaning that about 30 percent of our aircraft cannot get off the carrier deck or the tarmack to go do their job and in return cannot do their mission. We still have shortages of ammunition. We have shortages of spare parts. We do have people problems; instead of 800 pilots short in the Air Force, as we had last year, we are going to have about 1,200 short this year. But we are making some improvements, and this House voted for a $4 billion increase in national defense, I think reflecting the mood of the people in this country and their understanding that we do achieve peace through strength. Mr. Speaker, we passed that in the emergency supplemental, and working with the other body, it came back as an add-on to this defense bill that we are debating today. We have started the upgrading and modernization of our forces, but I want to remind everybody what Bill Perry, President Clinton's former Secretary of Defense, said about the blueprint that he, himself, helped to put in place for defense spending: It looks like we need about $10 billion to $15 billion more per year. Jim Schlesinger, another former Secretary of Defense, said it is actually closer to $100 billion more per year that we need. So we need to increase defense spending. That is clear. Members of Congress recognize that. This bill is a start. It is only a start, but I would hope that all Members would support this bill and support this rule. And with respect to my friend from Mississippi, I think, and I have confidence in the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), that they will be able to work out the subvention issue before this bill is finished. So please support this bill. It is good for America. Peace through strength is what we want to achieve, and we are on our way at least to achieving it. And I am going to talk about him a little later, but I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky), too, our ranking member on the Subcommittee on Military Procurement of the Committee on Armed Services, for the wonderful job that he has done.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and for his patience. I just talked to former Corporal John T. Weed, who is with us today, and the gentleman who took care of our good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), when he was badly wounded in Vietnam as a Marine Corpsman. But what he said, which the gentleman from Maryland did not say, was that, in fact, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) saved his life twice. The gentleman from Maryland always manages to pass over that when he is talking about John Weed. I have just had an opportunity to talk to him, and I have to agree with my colleague he is a great American, truly. And he mentioned another thing, and that is that the platoon sergeant, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), was the most stabilizing influence on his life as an 18-year-old trooper in the Marines. So I wanted to add my two cents worth and add the rest of the story to the story told by the gentleman from Maryland.

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

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, we just passed a supplemental appropriations bill which had what a lot of folks think was a fairly sizeable chunk of defense spending. It passed by a very large vote. The vote surprised a number of Members, but I think the reason we had such a large vote, almost a three to one majority in favor of increased defense spending at this time, is because we have cut defense so drastically in the past. I think most Americans do not realize that, actually, the defense budget we passed this year was approximately $125 billion less than Ronald Reagan's defense budget of 1986. Now, this chart here shows how defense spending has fallen like a rock over the last 13 years or so. Certainly the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the fall of the Soviet Empire, which incidentally, was brought about by America having a strong national defense, but that dissolution means that we do not have to spend as much money on defense as we did in the 1980s. However, it does not mean that we can absolutely abandon our troops. I am afraid this administration has put together a blueprint for defense over the next several years that, for practical purposes, abandons the troops. Let me go through some of the problems, Mr. Speaker. Over the last 18 months or so, we have had about 80 crashes of American military aircraft. I have the crashes listed here. I know my colleagues cannot see this fine print, but that involved 90 dead pilots and crew members, and it involved almost every type of aircraft in the American inventory: helicopters, fixed wing, bombers, in some cases. There was a reason for that. If we look at another graph, this graph shows how mission capability has dropped. Mission capability means the ability to turn on your airplane just like you would turn on the car in your driveway, put it in gear, make it go, and go off and do its mission and come back. So if I ask you, if you had two cars in your driveway and I called you up and said, what is your mission capability rate, and you said, just a minute, you went out, got in both the cars and tried to start them and only one would start and go into gear, you would come back to the phone and say, it is 50 percent, one out of two. Our mission capability rate of our aircraft across the services over the last several years has been dropping because we are not spending enough money on spare parts, we are not spending enough time on training, do not have enough training money, and we have old airplanes, because we are not replacing the old airplanes with newer airplanes. So if we look at the Air Force, it has gone from 83 percent mission capability down to 74 percent. That means about 25 percent of the airplanes cannot get off the ground in the Air Force today. In the Marine Corps, it has dropped from 77 percent to 61 percent. That means about 40 percent of our marine aircraft cannot get off the ground today. In the Navy, it has gone from 69 percent to 61 percent. That means, again, about 40 percent of our Navy aircraft cannot get off the ground and go do their missions. A lot of Americans do not realize that we have cut our forces down drastically. This chart shows that since Desert Storm, we have cut our forces in America almost in half. These red tanks indicate what we had in 1991, and the blue tanks indicate what we had in 1992 with respect to the Army. So we went from 18 Army divisions to only 10, 546 Navy ships to only about 316 today, and 36 fighter airwings to only about 20. Unfortunately, the small military that we have today is not as ready to fight as the big military that we had a few years ago because we have cut funding for the military too drastically. One thing that we have to look at today is the fact that we have cut the shipbuilding budget from a budget that supported almost 600 ships in the U.S. Navy to a budget that, if we build it out by 2020, we are only going to have a 200-ship Navy. Ammo shortages, we have about a $3.5 billion ammo shortage in the Army, a $193 million shortage in the U.S. Marine Corps, and the list goes on. So we passed this supplemental today that had a $4 billion military package in it that added spare parts, it added training time, it added health care for our retirees and our active duty people that they desperately need. It added a lot of the critical things that we need to make our military work. It was absolutely necessary. I commend my colleagues for this first small step to rebuild America's defenses.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Let me give a response to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) with respect to the dollars that are in this supplemental under the defense heading. They are there simply because your Marines, your Air Force, your Army, your Navy needs them. Every time the Commandant of the Marine Corps addresses Congress in any forum, he always says, ``This is your Marine Corps.'' And in a very true sense, it is your Marine Corps and all the rest of the services. As my friend the gentleman from South Carolina knows, and I know that is the reason the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) is going to join with me and a number of other people in supporting the Lewis-Spence amendment to bring in about 4 billion extra dollars in spare parts, in safety fixes, in emergency fixes on the military health care system and a number of other areas where there truly is an emergency. That is why Democrats and Republicans have very carefully asked the services when they came before us, did the $305 billion defense budget submitted by the administration, does that take care of what your troops need, and they told us no. We said, be specific. And they outlined $15 billion worth of unfunded requirements; things we had to do. Let me tell my colleagues why they outlined them to us. They outlined them to us because our planes in many cases are not able to get off the ground and go do the mission. The mission capability is dropping like a rock. That means your plane cannot start up on the tarmac or on a carrier deck, go off, do its mission, and return. They brought them to us because, in my estimation, the safety record is going down in the services. Eighty crashes of military aircraft in 1998 and 1999, 80 crashes, 90 dead as a result of those crashes. We have got old platforms. We have got platforms without spare parts. The Air Force is 1,200 pilots short. Some of the money in this amendment, the Spence-Lewis amendment, requests extra money for recruiting, for retention, to keep skilled people in the services. This is probably our most important job, keeping our Nation secure. This amendment gives about 25 percent of what our services told us they have to have to keep the wheels turning, to keep this reduced force going, to keep the equipment repaired, to keep the spares coming. When we went to Kosovo, Air Force readiness went down 50 percent Stateside because we had to move all the spare parts and all the available mechanics because we did not have very many of them, we had to move them into theater. So we dropped mission capability 50 percent in the units that were remaining. We are stretched very thin. Please work with us. Moderates, liberals, conservatives, vote for the Spence- Lewis amendment. It helps America's people in uniform.