Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I hope that that same average does not apply to landings.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has made a great and eloquent statement, as usual. Let me ask the gentleman, who specializes, and incidentally, we really value the gentleman's membership on the Committee on National Security, and especially the work that he has done in terms of the task force on terrorism and the fact that the gentleman recognizes, perhaps more than any other Members, although Sonny Bono, our good buddy, was one of the people that recognized that we were entering this era of terrorists with high technology. Let me ask the gentleman, though, about airlift capability. Where are we going with airlift, and what kind of job is the C-17 doing, for example, the newest addition to our airlift fleet, and how much more work do we have to do?

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my good friend, the gentleman from North Carolina for the question. I want to say, also, that the gentleman from South Carolina is one of the finest members of our committee. We really appreciate him and all the hard work that he does on the subcommittee. He is always there and stays late. He is usually there with the other gentleman who is here right now, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).

Mr. HUNTER. I meant North Carolina.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, yes. In fact, our good colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Research and Development, has developed these facts. In the last 5 years or so, we have deployed over 25 times. And that corresponds or can be compared to about 10 deployments, major deployments, in the previous 10 years. So the ironic facts are that, while Ronald Reagan and George Bush stood up to the Soviet Union and brought down the Soviet Union with the policy of peace through strength, this President has cut defense almost in half and yet, with a series of operations, so-called peacekeeping operations, in Somalia and Haiti and Bosnia and other places, has stretched our forces to the limit. And the price tag that I have seen on the total of all these deployments is in excess of $13 billion. That is the information that I have on it. And, yes, there have been 25 major deployments. The other thing that the gentleman needs to know is this: We put together a defense budget that was based on what it would take for us to maintain our Armed Forces and we did not count the deployments. So it is like having a family put together their yearly budget and they say, okay, we are going to spend so much for our house mortgage, so much for our car payments, so much for gas, and we are going to eat at home, so, so much for groceries each month; and then they have a death in the family or sickness in the family and they have to travel halfway across the country and they have got to stay at grandma's, and they have got to help somebody out on a trip that takes 5 weeks or 2 months. They will notice that their family budget goes far beyond what they had programmed it for because they have an emergency or a contingency they did not plan for. All of those 25 deployments that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) talks about and that the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, Committee on National Security Committee, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), our great chairman, talks about, all of those deployments were taken out of our budget. We were not given any extra money to do that. So what happened? We said, okay, the President says we are going to go to Bosnia. He says, ``You go find the money,'' to the military leadership. So they go to the aircraft repair commands. ``You guys cannot repair as many aircraft as you thought you were going to have to repair.'' And the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Fowler) brought this up today. We have over 100 aircraft awaiting repair. We have over 100 engines that are in repair that are backlogged on depot level maintenance. So the President's military leadership goes and says stop repairing those planes. We need the money to pay for fuel and to pay for the other necessities to take our forces halfway around the world to Bosnia, and we are going to take it out of your repair budget. Then they go to the Marines, perhaps; and they say, hold up. Do not buy that ammunition you were going to buy with the money that Congress gave you. We are going to use that money to fly you across the world to Somalia. You are going to run an operation there or to Bosnia. So what happens is, that money is taken out of our hide. It is taken out of the military forces accounts that they were going to use to modernize. So we now have what is known as a supplemental coming up. That means, when you have an emergency, you try to pay for it. We cannot afford to take that out of the military's own hide right now, because they already have a shortage of spare parts. They have got a shortage of ammunition. They have got a shortage of personnel incentives to keep those pilots in the service. If we rob them of this money to pay for this commitment in Bosnia that they did not ask for, but we placed on them, then we are disservicing those people.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss an issue that is extremely important to the health of millions of American families, the labeling of imported produce. We were reminded just how critical of an issue this is twice last year when a breakout of Cyclospora bacteria occurred in imported Guatemalan raspberries and when the Hepatitis A virus was found in strawberries which were imported from Mexico. In this particular case, these strawberries were illegally used in our nation's school lunch program and more than 150 students in Michigan were infected. When you take into consideration that shipments were sent to as many as 15 other states, thousands more could have been at risk. What is perhaps more frightening than the presence of these strawberries in our nation's school lunch program, is the fact that these children are in just as much danger eating dinner at home. Every day, millions of Americans buy produce without knowing where it was grown. Though nearly every consumer product we purchase has origin labeling, the fruits and vegetables we eat do not. Taking into consideration that foreign countries do not adhere to the same phytosanitary and labor standards as American growners and handlers, it is very likely that harmful fruits and vegetables are being stocked on the shelves of our local grocery stores. Mr. Speaker, this is simply unconscionable. Many of these countries are using pesticides that are currently banned in the United States or using irrigated water that is contaminated with raw sewage. it is also not uncommon to find young children being forced to work up to 12 hours a day picking and sorting these products. It is for many of these reasons that 80% of those asked in a recent survey believe that produce should have a label indicating its country of origin I, along with many of my colleagues, have already become a cosponsor of H.R. 1232, the Imported Produce Labeling Act of 1997, introduced by our good friend, the late Sonny Bono. This legislation will extend our current labeling laws, under the Tariff Act of 1930, to require country of origin labeling on imported produce at the final point of sale, the grocery stores. This requirement is neither complicated nor burdensome to farmers and retailers. H.R. 1232 will simply require that the country of origin of imported produce be displayed in a clear and visible manner if the produce package is not already labeled. For example, a grocer could place a sign above the food bin or include the information on or next to the price sign. This action not only promotes safety awareness, but is good trade policy as well. Many of our major trading partners, including Canada, Japan, Australia and various European nations, require country of origin labeling for imported produce, including the fruits and vegetables they buy from the United States. H.R. 1232 will place American farmers and consumers on a level playing field with out trading partners by harmonizing our labeling polices. Most importantly, however, this action will provide American consumers with the opportunity to decide for themselves what fruits and vegetables they wish to buy, I firmly believe that it is not only a parent's right to know where the food they are feeding their family originated, but is also our responsibility to provide safe food to our nation's children. It is my understanding that Congressman Condit has recently requested to become the first sponsor of H.R. 1232 for the propose of adding cosponsors and working for its consideration. I applaud this action and urge all my colleagues, who have not already done so, to strongly consider cosponsoring this important legislation and support its passage when it reaches the Floor.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. The General Accounting Office is an official agency of the United States Government, nonpartisan in nature?

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, 748 illegal votes were found by clear and convincing evidence. Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues that this investigation was not driven by revelations that Bob Dornan produced. It was driven by the Los Angeles Times' report by a Hispanic reporter who reported that the Hermandad office had been raided and that 227 illegal voters, nonlegal voters, had been identified by authorities. That is what started driving this investigation, a Hispanic reporter. Mr. Speaker, let me go to my second point. The Hispanic community is not against this investigation. At least the Hispanic community that I know. The Hispanic community that I served with in Vietnam. The Hispanic community in Southern California that believes in having free and fair elections. Mr. Dornan, is a colleague and a friend who I traveled with to Central America when the democracy of Salvador was in question, the democracy of Honduras, the proposed democracy in Nicaragua was in question. I met with him in one of the last meetings with Jose Duarte, that great democrat of Salvador who brought them to freedom and democracy, and Bob Dornan said, ``This is one of the great people in our hemisphere. He is going to bring free elections to this country.'' Bob Dornan did exactly what every one of us would have done. If we had had a narrow election in which we thought we had won on Election Day, we were ahead in the votes, the absentee ballots came in when we were behind. And then we had a story come out and tell us that raids were being made and over 227 illegal voters had been found, which Member in this Chamber would not have rightly contested that election? The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson) spoke and said there should have been no contest. The gentleman from Connecticut won one of his elections by 23 votes. Now, what if he had been told by the major newspaper in his town that 227 Republicans had been illegally registered? Would he have pursued that? Let us clear away the political baloney. Of course he would have pursued it. Of course we had a right to do this. Of course Mr. Dornan did what every single other Member would have done. Now, he did not get the 900-plus votes that was the margin in the election, according to the committee's report and its analysis. But that was an incomplete report, in my view, for this reason: It did not review any of the illegal aliens who voted. It only reviewed people, the 10,000 or so people who had signed up with the system. So if they never signed up with the system and if they were registered by one of these bounty hunters who got 10 bucks for registering and voting them for the party, like the bounty hunters who registered and voted the guy who assassinated the Presidential contender, Mr. Colosio in Tijuana, he was assassinated by a guy who had been registered twice by the Democrat Party in Los Angeles, of all places. So those people who were registered, who were illegal aliens and who were not citizens, who had not signed up to be naturalized, were not identified. There is only one way to identify them. And the way to identify them is very difficult, very hard, very expensive. It costs about $5 million. We must go door to door and qualify every voter, once a prima facie proof of fraud has been found of illegal voters. We go door to door and we start with Adams and go to Ziegler and see if a person is a legal voter. It costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. That is the other 90 percent of voters in this district. We did not do it. Mr. Speaker, Bill Jones, secretary of state of California said, I want to do it. He announced he was going to do it in March of 1997, and he did not do it. He said, and I quote, Given the current state of the law, my hands are for all legal purposes tied. I am prevented from undertaking a large- scale citizenship qualification check of the Orange County voter file as I initially requested in March of 1997. So, Mr. Speaker, put me down as feeling that this investigation is incomplete. I am going to vote ``no'' because I think it is incomplete, because once we made the prima facia showing of illegal voters we should have taken the time and taken the expense of $5 million to check the qualifications of every voter in the district.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, the forest almost gets lost for the trees. Seven hundred forty-eight illegal votes were found by clear and convincing evidence. Now I, like a number of other Members, sat down and got debriefed by the committee and that was my question: When the smoke cleared, were there illegal votes cast? Were there illegal voters involved? The answer on both counts was yes. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), chairman of the committee, to ask: Does this accurately represent the finding of the committee?

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I think if Bob was here, he would say to us, ``You ain't seen nothing yet,'' because Bob Dornan still possesses all those great talents and that great heart for America. He has a lot of wonderful kids and grandkids, and I am privileged to know some of them and have spent a lot of great time with them. Robin and Kathy, and Mark and Bobby, Jr., and Terry; and the grandkids, Ricky and Para, and Kevin and Collin, and Anna and Haley, and, incidentally, that Haley is named after I think Uncle Jack Haley, who was the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. That is where Bob got some of the show business blood in his veins. Erin, Robbie, Liam, Molly and Morgan. Incidentally, Bobby Dornan, Jr., is a great buddy of mine, lives out in Virginia. We were out working on a log cabin together, and he had this little tiny baby in his arms, and I said, ``Who is this?'' And he said, ``This is little Molly Dornan.'' I tell you, if you have ever seen Bob Dornan with little Molly and the all the rest of them, and you have seen them on this bobsled run, I mean, this thing is like the Olympics. I would not get on this run, but Bob Dornan puts all these fearless grandkids together, bundles them all down around him, and goes whipping down this bobsled run at about 100 miles per hour. Bob Dornan is one of the great grandfathers in American history. He also lets them pelt him with water balloons, and he showed an extraordinary amount of restraint when all of these grandkids started giving him the water balloon barrage. Here is a great guy, great family man, great American. We are going to see a lot more of him.

Mr. HUNTER. God bless Bob Dornan and all those little Dornans.

Mr. HUNTER. Let's hold up on that one. Some Members of the media have accused Bob of believing in ethnic differences and in oppressing ethnic groups who want to register and vote. So here is a guy who went to Mississippi when it was not very popular to go to Mississippi, to help the black community to register and vote, and who also marched with Martin Luther King, being accused of not believing in the community of America. Bob Dornan believed in the community of America probably more than anybody else who has ever walked out on this House floor.

Mr. HUNTER. While he represented his people and his constituency, he never let his principals be pushed aside by a poll. We have the media always telling us polls are a bad thing in this country, and you should not always stick your finger up in the wind to see which way it is blowing before you make a decision as to what your principals are. Bob Dornan never made a major decision based on which way the wind was blowing. He had the principals, had that compass right inside him. Incidentally, one thing we have not mentioned is that he was the Chairman of the Personnel Subcommittee on the Committee on National Security. He was the guy, when he was a chairman of that subcommittee, who authored the pay raise for every single man and woman who wears a uniform and who put in literally dozens and dozens of incentives to be in the military, incentives to stay, that helped retention, and all kinds of things that were good for quality of life for our military families. Military families never had a better friend in the House of Representatives than Bob Dornan.

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will further yield, and among those people were some of the people who were the most defenseless and the most without representation; and those, of course, are unborn children. Today, when we have the awareness, this growing awareness, by America that this late-term abortion, or partial-birth abortion, where a baby is actually partially born and then killed by the abortionist, that is waking America up to the horrors of abortion. Bob Dornan was the advocate for a lot of little human beings who could not vote, could not campaign for him, did not have PAC money. But they were important for him because he had a big heart and because of his religion. You know, we used to have a lot of fun with Bob. I mean, Bob was a guy who was an Irishman with a great sense of humor and a great sense of fun, and he was great to be with. But I will tell you, when he was a first sponsor of the right to life, the fundamental right to life bill that was introduced here in the House of Representatives, when you had a right to life issue on the House floor, Bob Dornan was by far the most professional, most serious legislator I have ever seen. He, together with the great Henry Hyde and Chris Smith from New Jersey and a lot of the rest of us who are kind of spear carriers in the battle, he led that battle. He did such a great job, because when Bob spoke from the heart, everybody heard him loud and clear.

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman would yield further, that reminds me there was in the last year or so a lot of talk about ethnic conflict and who Bob Dornan likes and who he does not like. I was just reminded when I was in Salvador with him, that little country, we were in Salvador during the time when Jose Napoleon Duarte, that great leader, democratic leader, in Salvador was trying to move that country from its past of military dictatorships to democracy. What a great scene that was, the one when they finally had the election. There was a lot of activity on the part of the communist guerillas, who were supplied by the then Soviet Union, and they were trying to disrupt the election. A lady stood in line, and she had blood dripping from her arm. She had a bullet wound in the arm; and somebody said, ``Do you want to go to the infirmary?'' She said, ``No, I never had a chance to vote and I am going to vote.'' I am reminded of that. I am reminded of Jose Duarte, one of Bob Dornan's real heroes. Bob had a number of us over to Jose's house, the leader of El Salvador, at a time when he was starting to make that democracy work and he had all these great hopes for the people of El Salvador. If my colleagues could have seen and all the Americans could have seen and the Hispanic- Americans could have seen Bob Dornan sitting there with that great leader, Jose Duarte, and encouraging him to continue his fight for democracy and telling him how much he admired him and everyone who loved freedom in that small country that was beset by so many troubles, I mean, your hearts would have gone out to Bob Dornan. Of course, his other idol, his other hero, was Cardinal Obando y Bravo, that brave Catholic leader in Nicaragua who dared to stand up to the communist Sandinistas. He was always being oppressed by that group, but he hung in there, and Bob Dornan loved him for that. Bob Dornan loved our freedom, and that is one reason he went to Vietnam eight times. He went there as a combat photographer on five different occasions. Nobody else has done that. My colleague mentioned that Bracelet, that POW bracelet that so many people wore. What a great idea that was. Think of all the hope that that gave people over the years and comfort that it gave them. It gave them a feeling, whenever they saw another person wearing the bracelet, they knew that this American was in solidarity with them, that they appreciated their people that had been left, the POWs and MIAs. I know that bureaucracy came to the conclusion when the Clinton administration felt like it had to recognize communist Vietnam and they felt like they had to do that and so they pushed aside the 800-and-some odd sightings of POWs that had been reported by boat people and other folks that had fled that country. But Bob Dornan, even when that became an uncomfortable position for a person in Washington, D.C., a Washington that wanted to move over, on to other issues and move on to the issues of big business doing business in communist Vietnam, Bob Dornan held tough. We can lose a lot of things in this life and in this political life, but he never lost his loyalty to an issue or his loyalty to his friends. That loyalty was something that every Member of Congress who walks onto the House floor should take a lesson from.

Mr. HUNTER. And I say to my friend, he cared not only about what kind of equipment our military people used, but he also really cared about those people. When we lost the Rangers in Somalia a couple of years ago, there was one member of the Committee on National Security who went out and got into an aircraft and flew about 20 hours to get over to Somalia and looked at all the facts, all the things that had happened, got debriefed on that tragedy, and then flew all the way back here and contacted every single member of the families of those Rangers who had been killed in Somalia. That was Bob Dornan. And I felt so proud when I heard that Bob had done that, because that reflected so well on us as a Committee on National Security, the old Committee on Armed Services, because it is filled with people who really care about people in uniform and Bob had kept that tradition and kept that legacy going on. So while the rest of us were going on trips to our district and trips overseas and were doing the work that we do here when we are in a break and have a chance to spend time with our families and maybe go out and catch up with a little relaxation time, Bob Dornan was flying in an aircraft for 20 hours straight so that he could get over to Somalia and let those people know that wear our uniform and let their families know that we cared about them. When we stand here, we can think of all these great Bob Dornan stories. I remember one of the great stories of the Contra wars, when Ronald Reagan brought freedom to Guatemala, and Honduras, and Salvador, and Nicaragua, Congressman Jack Buechner was getting arrested in Nicaragua by the Sandinistas. I remember, from what I heard, Bob Dornan went up and said, listen, if you arrest this Member of Congress, you have to arrest me, too. And that is how he was. I remember there was a fight one time, a little match-up between two of our Members one time, just off the House floor. Both of them were about twice as big as Bob. But it was Bob who got in between and broke them up. Of course, the press hated that role for Bob Dornan because he was a peacemaker. He was not B-2 Bob; he was a peacemaker. But when you flew into a foreign country and you flew into a place where a military conflict was taking place, Bob Dornan had a memory, an analytic capability with respect to facts that nobody on this floor has had before or since. He can give you population, he can give you all the various armed services that that country possessed, all the weaponry they possessed. And, similarly, he could totally analyze the adversary of that particular country so he could give you, basically, the match-up on both sides. What a great asset for this House.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and Bob Dornan is a guy who deserves more than 15 or 20 minutes of discussion. He is a guy who deserves days of discussion, because he brought to this House of Representatives unique qualities that we had not seen before he got here and we are not going to see again for years. I am a Member of the Committee on National Security, and I have to tell my colleagues a story about myself and Bob Dornan. When I came here as a freshman and I was competing with a lot of other people to get on the Committee on Armed Services, we had one seat we thought was from California, from a senior Member retiring. Everybody who wanted that seat, including Bob, got up to make their presentation and tell why they should get that very coveted committee seat. When Bob got up, he started to talk in his own favor. And then he stopped and he said, you know, actually, we have this young guy down from San Diego who was in the military, who loves the military and loves national security issues, and I think we should give this thing to Duncan Hunter. And he did that when I was a freshman. I had never seen such an act of generosity, such an act of goodness coming from a senior member, and I have never seen it since. And that was Bob Dornan, a guy who had just an absolutely great heart. But beyond that, and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) knows this well, Bob Dornan probably had the best background in terms of all the military aircraft and all the military equipment that we look at and analyze in the Committee on National Security because he flew everything from the B-2 bomber to the newest Navy trainer. Bob Dornan was in the cockpit. And when we had authorization bills coming up, deciding how we would spend billions of dollars, it was Bob Dornan who had the hands-on experience with those pieces of equipment, who was able to give us little insights into whether or not these were really good buys.

Mr. HUNTER. Sally.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I think the interesting point of this is that the very point of criticism that the Clinton administration official made about the Marine Corps is really in essence their strength. The Marine Corps is a service that did not bend to the winds of political correctness when this mixed gender training was requested by the Clinton administration. Today, my service, the U.S. Army, has representatives around the country in courts-martial trying to explain what happened to young women who were injected into basic training with young men in very close quarters, and all of the tragedies that resulted from that. The Marine Corps is one service that perhaps, more than all of the others, has kept its tradition of duty, honor and country, and Chuck Krulak, the Commandant, is one of the very, very best. So I think we will come out of this with a stronger Marine Corps, more adherence to tradition, and a stronger America.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the extraordinary service and dedication of a constituent in my district, Mr. Dan Bledsoe. Dan is a great American who has spent many years of his life defending and honoring our country with selfless service and dedication. In 1948, Dan enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve until 1950 when the Korean war began and his unit was called into active duty. Assigned as a scout-sniper, Dan served in several military campaigns during the war, including battles at Inchon, Seoul, and the Reservoir Campaign where 120,000 Chinese Communist troops surrounded an 18,000 U.N. troop location in North Korea. After serving his final campaign in central Korea, Dan left the Marine Corps, being promoted to Sergeant and receiving six battle decorations for his service and outstanding performance. Dan went on to enroll in the University of San Francisco and, after graduating with a bachelor of science degree in 1955, he entered the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] Academy. Dan went on to serve 25 years as a special agent with the FBI working all across the country and receiving 33 awards that stemmed from successful investigations that resulted not only with the recovery of valuable property and millions of dollars, but lives being saved as well. During this time, Dan also found the time to graduate from Pepperdine University with a master in arts degree in management. Dan retired from the FBI in 1980 and went to work in the private sector where he continued to serve his community as a member of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and then marketing director for the Public Safety Training Association in San Diego until 1989. Married for 42 years and father of two children, Dan currently works as a management consultant and remains active as a member of several athletic and social clubs. Mr. Speaker, Dan is a symbol of commitment and dedication to his fellow citizens and community. He has pledged a great share of his life to the service of others and as a distinguished soldier, law enforcement officer, and businessman, he was provided his peers with a great example of what it means to be an American. Today, let us congratulate and thank Dan for his unwavering contributions, he is well deserving and I wish him great happiness in his future endeavors.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, as we stand on the eve of the debate on fast track that is the giving of a major part of our constitutional power to the President and the Vice President and his negotiating team to negotiate trade arrangements with other nations, I think it is important for us to look at what the Founding Fathers said about the unfettered use of so-called free trade. In short, Mr. Speaker, they were not for it. I want to start with James Madison. James Madison said it should never be forgotten that the great object of the Convention was to provide by a new Constitution a remedy for the defects of the existing one and that among these defects was out of a power to regulate foreign commerce, that in all nations this regulating power embraced the protection of domestic manufacturers by duties and restrictions on imports. That means that James Madison believed that it was important for a nation, particularly the United States, to have the right to regulate goods coming into the United States and to establish tariffs so that American companies and American workers would not be hurt. Thomas Jefferson, who was a free trader before 1812, after he became a President became a pragmatist, and he said, ``The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence requires us to establish at home, with a patriotic determination to use no foreign articles which can be made within ourselves without regard to difference in price, secure us against a relapse into foreign dependency.'' Thomas Jefferson realized that we could become dependent on foreign products. And what would he say today to look at this $3 billion balance of trade deficit that we have each week that we have to either borrow or sell capital goods to pay for, this massive foreign debt that we have accumulated as a function of our trade deficit? Daniel Webster said, ``My object is and has been with the protective policy, the true policy of the United States that the labor of the country is properly provided for. I am looking not for such a law as will benefit capitalists, they can take care of themselves, but for a law that will induce capitalists to invest their capital in such a way as to occupy and employ American labor.'' That meant that Daniel Webster wanted to have tariffs and regulate trade so that American companies would invest in the United States instead of moving to Guadalajara or moving to other places that are offshore and using other workers from other countries to make goods that then would be sold back into the United States. And our own Abraham Lincoln, the founder of my party, the Republican Party, said in the platform, ``We commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the working man liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise and to the Nation commercial prosperity and independence.'' And that other great Republican who, with Abraham Lincoln, is on Mount Rushmore, Teddy Roosevelt, said in 1911, ``I can put my position on the tariff in a nutshell. I believe in such measure of protection as will equalize the cost of production here and abroad, that is, will equalize the cost of labor here and abroad. I believe in such supervision of the workings of the law as to make it certain that protection is given to the man we are most anxious to protect, the laboring man.'' Mr. Speaker, I am a Republican, I am a capitalist, I think I have got a 13 percent AFL-CIO rating, but I understand that it is important for Americans to make good wages. We have driven wages down, and the record of NAFTA, the trade agreement that we allowed President Clinton to make with Mexico and Canada, has been disastrous for us. We had a $3 billion trade surplus over Mexico when we negotiated NAFTA. Today we have got a $19 billion annual loss. Today we have a $20 billion annual loss with Canada. That same bright team that President Clinton has sent forth through the world to negotiate trade treaties has given us this year with China a $52 billion trade loss. This team is a losing team, Mr. Speaker, and the idea that this Congress is going to give away the constitutional duty that was given to us by the Founding Fathers to a losing team which will negotiate us down the drain to the point where we have American industry having to move offshore to compete with the other industries that are employing people at $2.38 an hour, $1.50 an hour, $1.75 an hour to displace Americans, the Americans who carry our flag in wartime, the Americans that pay our taxes, the Americans that pay our wages, that idea is not consistent with the classic idea of being a good Republican. We should defeat this fast track, Mr. Speaker. We should keep that duty, that obligation to regulate trade within this House of Representatives where as Alexander Hamilton said, the people govern.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the extraordinary service and dedication of a constituent in my district, Mr. Henry ``Hank'' Kuiper of El Centro, CA. Hank is a devoted member of this community serving the city of El Centro for the past 12 years, 3 of these as mayor. He is soon retiring and I would like to take a moment to commend his dedicated service in local government and community programs. Hank's involvement and accomplishments extend well beyond his 12 year tenure with the city council. Aside from being a member of the small business community, he also served as a member of the Joint Powers Insurance Authority, Air Pollution Control Board, Citizens Advisory Committee--Centinela State Prison, Border Trade Alliance, Free Trade Commission, and was appointed by Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt to the Colorado River Flood Way Task Force. Hank is a symbol of commitment and dedication to his fellow citizens and community. He has pledged a great share of his life to the service of others and he has surely made El Centro a better place to live. Today, let us honor him for his unwavering contributions. Mr. Hank Kuiper is well deserving and I wish him great happiness in his future endeavors.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, so this makes absolute sense to have a track that you are following that starts us working with Taiwan to develop that system, so that when we have it, it is mature, it is in place, and it takes over for the PAC-2 and the PAC-3, which cannot handle the M-9.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from New York [Mr. Gilman], the chairman of the committee, for helping to shepherd this bill through the process and get it to the House floor and for all the work that he has done and other members of the committee, including the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Deutsch], have done with respect to the contents of the bill. The bill is logical, it is reasonable, it is prudent and it is in total accord with the Taiwan Relations Act. There is no faulty logic that I can see, internal logic flaw that the gentleman from Indiana says there is. Reading the part of the bill that I think he is talking about, and that is the part of the bill that, following the study, says: ``It is the sense of the Congress that the President, if requested by the Government of Taiwan and in accordance with the results of the study conducted under section 3, should transfer to the Government of Taiwan appropriate defense articles under the foreign military sales program under chapter 2 of the Arms Export Control Act for the purpose of establishing and operating a local-area defense ballistic missile defense system to protect Taiwan.'' That says in accordance with the results of the study. That obviously infers that the study has to be completed. We cannot transfer the articles until we have results, and so I think that is a reasonable, logical sequence that is manifest in the bill and I do not see any problem there. I think it is important, Mr. Speaker, to send an unmistakable signal to friends and foes alike. I think that that is the lesson we learned in the Middle East with respect to the invasion of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein claims that he was under the notion that we did not care if there was an invasion of Kuwait. Maybe he is lying, maybe he is misbehaving. He does that often. But certainly the statements of our representatives were not clear, were not unambiguous. It is important if you are going to defend an ally and you are going to offer that defense umbrella and that defense umbrella was unmistakably offered in the recent incident when China lobbed missiles, M-9 missiles over the bow of Taiwan and we came to the aid of Taiwan with American ships and American force projection, it is obvious that Taiwan is under our defense umbrella. We have demonstrated that. It is also obvious that missiles are the weapon of choice for China. They are building missiles at a rapid rate. The administration tells us that by the year 2010, there will be over 2,000 missiles, many of them fast missiles, ballistic missiles, in the Chinese armory. If we are going to defend Taiwan and hopefully if we are going to give Taiwan the ability to defend itself so that American troops do not always have to be rushed into that area of the world and American navies do not always have to be projected into that area of the world, it is important to meet the weapon of the day. The weapon of the day clearly and the weapon of the future for China is missiles, theater ballistic missiles, some of them fairly fast, some of them faster than the PAC-II missiles that we are currently developing. All this bill does is request that DOD, that the President and DOD commence a study to evaluate an architecture that could be deployed in this area of Asia. And upon completing that study and if requested by the government of Taiwan and in accord with the Taiwan Relations Act, which incidentally says that the United States will provide articles of defense for Taiwan, then it is the sense of Congress that we should put together a defense system that includes in its area the defense of Taiwan. Mr. Speaker, I would say simply this is something that we are doing with our allies around the world. We are working on theater missile defense with our European allies right now. We are developing a partnership program in cooperation with Israel with development of the TMD system, the Arrow, which is an antitheater missile defense system, and it is absolutely appropriate, reasonable and logical and in the interest of the United States to have this study and ask the Clinton administration to report back to us and then take further action if the study, the results of the study and the request of Taiwan is in that direction. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend everybody who has worked on this language and put it together. I think this is an important part of our China package. It says that we stand with our friends and that we continue, as we do under the Taiwan Relations Act, to support our friends with defense articles and that we realize that defending against M-9 missiles and their successors is an important part of that duty.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, it is the understanding I have, and I have asked some of our experts on this, the missiles that China is evolving right now outstrip the capability of PAC-2 and PAC-3.