Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. What I see in his bill is essentially what I offered, I think, with respect to Japan back in 1982, which is a two-way street bill, that we let the other side control the level of tariffs, and if they want to raise the wall, they raise it; if they want to lower it, they lower it. So they are motivated to be free traders or to be open traders with the United States and develop a two-way street with a Nation that enjoys a $30 billion trade surplus over the United States and that rather arrogantly insists on their 30 percent barriers while we pull our barriers down to zero. I support the gentleman's initiative.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, let me just say to my friend who just spoke, 60 percent of the votes that were counted that were registered by one organization had been found to be fraudulent by the Secretary of State. We have not got all the votes. There is not a single Member in this House who, if that happened to them and one of the organizations registering and voting people had 60 percent of their voters found to be fraudulent, would say, let us drop the investigation. Let us leave it. Mr. Dornan is having just as tough a time with this delay and the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Sanchez] is. We want to have it over, but we owe it to the people to finish the investigation.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, let me just say that I support what he is trying to do for the simple reason that I have heard the notices read over and over again protesting the fact that we do not have a result yet in the election contest, and I just say to my friends that the notices are written in such a way that they are totally one-sided, there is no time for debate, and I sit there looking at the newspaper headlines in California saying that the secretary of state has found that 60 percent of the registrations by one group of people who were registered and voted manipulated--it says that 60 percent of these registrations were illegal. And yet the idea, if my colleagues listen to the text of the privileged resolutions, which, in essence, are arguments themselves, they talk about Marine barracks being questioned and nuns being questioned. And of course those may be in the huge universe of tens of thousands of people, but the fact that one group alone was found to have had 60 percent of their registrations being fraudulent, and the idea that this House should not investigate that, and that there is no chance for a debate on these privileged motions, they are simply read over and over again in rote. They were obviously written in such a way as to make the argument in the resolution itself.

Mr. HUNTER. I am not going to yield until I am able to finish my sentence. That, I think, offers no value to this deliberative body, because there is absolutely no time given on the other side, and it gives the impression to the people out in the countryside that there is not a group that had 60 percent fraudulent registrations, which in fact has been the finding of the secretary of state, which would justify any deliberative body in the world at least the idea that we should go forward and at least have a further investigation until we find all the information.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time and for her leadership and all my colleagues who have worked so hard to see that we not only export goods from this country, but that we export goodness and morality. De Tocqueville said America is great because America is good. Somewhere in China, there are people just like the person that the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith] just described who are in cramped prison quarters, some of whom have been tortured, some of whom are right now undergoing physical pain. The administration said we should engage with China to see to it that we move China from this repressive situation to one in which people are allowed to dissent without being incarcerated, without being hurt, without being subdued by the military force. This is engagement. It is not right to ask a businessman who is about ready to close a business deal at the same time to bring up the problem that a dissident has in a particular prison. He is not going to do that. He needs to close a deal, he needs to get the check, he needs to get the money. It is important to have personnel who are assigned to this monitoring task solely, who can really focus and really specify. This is an excellent bill. I support it fully.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I learned a lot in this particular conference. I want to thank the chairman for his great leadership in trying to get these things through this conference, which is often like pushing a wheelbarrow full of frogs. Your issues continue to jump out or get pulled out by the other side, and you do the best you can to keep as many of the issues that you think are important for national security in that particular wheelbarrow. Let me say to the fine gentleman from South Carolina, Chairman Spence, he did a great job of protecting our interests. We did not get a full loaf on everything, but that is what happens when you go into conference. But we have emerged in the modernization area with more modern equipment, with more money for modernization, both in fixed-wing and rotary aircraft. Also, with respect to our shipbuilding budget, we got a few extra dollars in that shipbuilding budget. With respect to ammunition and other items that reflect on readiness, we did increase that budget to some degree. It was largely because of his efforts. I also want to thank the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Skelton], my ranking member, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Military Procurement. He and I worked together. We put a lot of hearings on. We are going to put more hearings on before this session adjourns. I want to thank him for his great work and the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], who did a particularly excellent job working with the chairman and others on a very important aspect of security, which is, do not let the bad guys have high technology when it might come back to bite you. That is manifested in the provisions on the supercomputer bill. That was one of the most important things we did was put in the supercomputer provision that says, if you are going to sell high-tech to countries that might use it against you at some point on the battlefield, run it by the Secretary of Defense before you do that, run it by the administration, let them see what you are doing, and when necessary, hold up that particular sale. So my commendations to all of our colleagues. Everybody worked hard. We did a lot of hearings on this bill, and I would recommend passage of the bill.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my great friend on national security, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] for yielding me this time. Let me say a couple things about this bill. First, we are on a downswing with respect to defense spending. The force structure that we have now has gone down from 18 Army divisions that we had during Desert Storm to 10. We have gone down from 24 fighter airwings to only 13, roughly half the air power that we had. We have gone down from 546 naval vessels to 346. We are at what I would call the bottom of a dangerous downswing. In this bill, we have tried to pull up the modernization levels a little bit and we have done that. We have not done it as much as we would like to. I think we have been too constrained by the budget. I think we are going to pay for that in later conflicts. But this bill is better than what we had before. With respect to supercomputers, the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Gejdenson] talked about this saying it was just totally off base. We have had about 80 supercomputer transactions in which the Chinese and the Russians have received American high performance supercomputers over the last couple of years. Right now we allow American companies to engage in a fiction. If they are told that the supercomputer is going to go to the Agriculture Department in China, they can ship it. If they are told it is going to go to the People's Liberation Army, the military complex, nuclear weapons complex, they cannot ship it. So the bad guys have caught on. They simply stamp ``agriculture'' on the invoices and our people ship it off to them. All we did, this was a well-reasoned provision that the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], and the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] put in this thing, almost unanimously supported by the committee. It simply says if you trust the Secretary of Defense and you want to make a supercomputer sale, show it to him. Let the Secretary of Defense look at your supercomputer sale and review it and make sure it is going to a benign use. It is not going to a nuclear weapons complex. It is not going to military use, and it is not going to accrue later to the detriment of our men and women in uniform. This is a well-thought- out provision. I would hope that Members would support this bill and nobody would vote against this bill because of the supercomputer provisions that are in it.

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to speak to my colleagues who have asked us to have consideration for Ms. Sanchez. There have been a number of debates on this issue, lots of speakers on both sides, and one thing that I think has been consistent on the Republican side is that nobody has spoken derogatorily about Ms. Sanchez. Nobody has spoken in a mean way, nobody has attempted to personalize this with respect to Ms. Sanchez. I think we have all attempted to be polite and attempted to look at the major issue, which is the voting issue. I cannot say that with respect to what people who do not like Mr. Dornan have said on the other side. My friend, Mr. Fazio, I am pretty disturbed that you have gotten up and simply made a personal attack on Mr. Dornan. Both of the principals have been through a lot here for a lot of months. We should give consideration to both of these principals; not just Ms. Sanchez, but to Mr. Dornan. Let us decide this case on the facts, and see that the person with the most votes wins this thing.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Neumann) would continue to yield, I think he is absolutely right. I thank him for yielding.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Neumann) yielding to me. I intended to do a 5-minute special order a little later on on the U.S. Marine Corps and the commandant, Chuck Krulak, one of our great commandants. But I am very interested in the expertise of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Neumann) in this area. I think that particularly the homeowners' or home sellers' exclusion from taxation that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Neumann) talked about is a real release and a relief for literally hundreds of thousands of homeowners in this country, because over the years they have traded up as inflation increased, especially in areas like California and, I am sure, the home State of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Neumann) too; and they are now at the point where, if they sell that home, they have a very low basis and they are going to pay massive taxes. And now this $500 exclusion, up to $500 exclusion, has come in the nick of time. They can use that money for their kids' education and, incidentally, for buying houses for their children. And most children today need some help from their parents to buy a house.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago I submitted an article for the prestigious military magazine on military affairs, ``Proceedings.'' In that article, I outlined the slippery slope that we are presently on with respect to our deteriorating national defense and where I think we should be going, what I think we should be doing, my opinion, and what future actions should be taken. Mr. Speaker, my staff mentioned to me tonight when they read the article, and I had mentioned service leaders who had not spoken up over the past several years, ``Do you think people will think you are referring to Chuck Krulak, the Commandant of the Marine Corps?'' And I said, ``Absolutely not.'' Mr. Speaker, I am down here on the floor tonight to make sure that folks understand that that is not the case, because Chuck Krulak is one of the finest Marine Corps Commandants and one of the finest Marine warriors of this century. I think of Chuck in the great tradition and legend of guys like Chesty Puller and Gimlet I. Butler, great Marines, and Chuck's own father, Brute Krulak, who is one of the great Marine warriors of all time. I talked, Mr. Speaker, about the deteriorating infrastructure of national security and the fact that just a few years ago, when we won Desert Storm, we had 18 Army divisions. We are now down to 10. We had 24 fighter air wings. We are now down to 13. We had 546 naval ships. We are now down to 346. And as this decline continues, very few Americans understand what is going on. I am reminded also that it was General Krulak who spoke up and put down in writing the fact that the Marines are about 93 million M-16 bullets short of what they need to fight and win two regional conflicts; that is, two regional wars and have enough money to continue to keep their training rotations going and keep the troops coming in. If you look at those two regional wars, we have actually fought both of the wars that we think we might have to have. We fought the war in the Middle East, in Iraq, and we fought the war in Korea. We only have 10 Army divisions today, but when we fought the war in the Middle East, we used some 8 Army divisions. That only leaves 2. And yet when we fought the war in Korea, when the North Koreans, on June 25, 1950 invaded the southern part of the peninsula, we used 7 Army divisions in that war along with a large contingency of Marines. So we used 8 in the Middle East, 7 in the Korean peninsula. That is 15 Army divisions. And yet today we only have 10 Army divisions. Similarly, we have slashed our air power, almost slashed it in half, from 24 fighter air wings to only 13. So, Mr. Speaker, we are continuing with this low level defense budget to go down the slippery slope. That means that when we have a war which surprises us, where the enemy comes at us with better preparation than we expected, which usually is the case, with higher technology than we expected, which is usually the case, and with surprise which, yes, is usually the case, as was the Tet offensive in Vietnam, as was Pearl Harbor, as was the invasion of Kuwait, we are going to be in trouble and we are probably going to have more young Americans come home in body bags because of our rush to cut government spending. We are cutting the one area where you have to remain strong. That is national security. Once again, Mr. Speaker, let me applaud my good friend, Chuck Krulak, and all the great service he has given this country. And to everybody who has spoken up similarly, even though they have taken some hits for it, let us try to make the case again to the American people in this new year and bring that defense budget up.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. The rule of law, my colleagues, it is the most precious thing that we have, and perhaps the most precious rule is that we vote and the person with the most votes wins. And sometimes it means for us, in fact, at times during all of our careers, we have agonizing defeats. The winner that has a victory sometimes goes on from that victory to a defeat fairly shortly thereafter, but it is the central part of our democracy. It is the heart of our democracy. We had a group which took immigrants who were trying to become naturalized citizens and registered and voted those immigrants knowing that they had not yet raised their hands and become citizens of the United States. And from that group we want to get more information. That is absolutely appropriate. I remember during the Contra wars of the 1980's, when we tried to export this precious thing called democracy to El Salvador and the guerrillas tried to stop the elections, we had one woman waiting in line who actually had a bullet wound in her arm, and she would not leave the line to get medical aid because she said, ``I must vote. I must participate in this democracy.'' All we want to see is who got the most votes. We can do no more and we should do no less for our country.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this time to do something that I was not allowed to do, because I was given no time in the debate concerning our friend Bob Dornan and the banning of Bob Dornan from the House floor under what I would consider, in the least, a very flawed hearing, if you could call it that, a gathering of Members who heard the prosecutorial statement, heard the statement by the gentleman who claimed that he was wronged, with absolutely no defense allowed to be given, no time for a defense, and then a vote and a punishment. Mr. Speaker, all we can do is give our own perspective of events from our own experience. I want to do that right now. Bob Dornan came in here the other day, a couple of days ago, walked over to a bunch of us right here at the majority leadership table, and had small talk with us. He did not lobby for any cause, much less for his cause. He chatted with us. In fact, he said at one point, ``I know I can't lobby here. I just want to see how you guys are doing.'' After a few minutes, we walked back to the cloakroom. As we sat down in the cloakroom, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Menendez] came rushing out on the floor and proceeded in a very pointed way to attack Mr. Dornan. He did not attack him by name. He asked the Speaker to tell him what the rules were with respect to whether or not a former Member could lobby Members of Congress on the House floor, come out here and lobby. Of course, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Menendez] being an old hand at this, knows you cannot lobby. He also knows that Mr. Dornan had just been on the House floor and was the only person there, and it was a very pointed attempt to embarrass Mr. Dornan, and it worked. So Mr. Dornan rushed back on the House floor and talked to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Menendez] right over here and told him what he thought of him. Maybe he should not have told him what he thought of him. Maybe he should not have used harsh words, but on the other hand, Mr. Speaker, we have had Members of Congress grab each other, mug each other, put each other in headlocks, punch each other, do all kinds of things, and that includes members of the leadership, Mr. Speaker, and we have never banned any of them from the House floor. I just want you to consider that when a former Member comes out here, he cannot defend himself. The one thing all of us can do if another Member takes us on, especially if they take us on personally, is we can get time at the mike and we can get up and defend ourselves. But a former Member who comes out here, who is embarrassed and humiliated by a sitting Member who stands up and starts to imply that he is out there lobbying, which is not legal or against our rules on the House floor, that former Member can do nothing. He has to sit there and take it and be humiliated. Interestingly, in all of these other cases that have come before us when Members have grappled, punched, and done other things to each other, we have always looked at the full context of the case. We have never just taken a snapshot and said, ``You shouldn't have done that.'' We have said, ``What happened? What provoked it?'' Was there a provocation? In my assessment, Mr. Speaker, there was absolutely a provocation. Mr. Dornan was provoked to do this. The other Member did this simply to embarrass him. He knew what the rules were. He did not have to learn the rules anew. He knew darned well you cannot lobby on the House floor. He also knew that everybody who had seen Mr. Dornan on the House floor would realize that those pointed remarks were directed to him. He knew it would embarrass Mr. Dornan, and he did it, and then he proceeded to say, look what has happened to me, and to reap the benefit of that, which is this precipitous move to ban a former Member from the House floor based totally on what the prosecutorial side says happened. None of us who wanted to defend Mr. Dornan had a chance to defend him. We did not have any time. I got up to make my statement, and we were out of time, because we were only given 20 minutes apiece. So, Mr. Speaker, this has been a sad chapter in the House of Representatives, a sad chapter for people who talk about due process, talk about letting everybody have a fair hearing, talk about people being able to present their part of the evidence, present their views, their opinions. There was none of that. There was a self-serving statement by the prosecution, and then we all voted. It was a mistake, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the gentleman that I agree with him with respect to fast track and the fact that when Americans buy especially agricultural goods now that are grown in other countries, they are really buying a pig in a poke. We have a number of countries that still allow the use of DDT-like pesticides, pesticides and chemicals that this country banned long ago due to the experience of our researchers who found that they had a very unhealthy effect on America's populace. It is interesting, Mr. Speaker. My kids do a farmer's market every week, and the farmer's markets in San Diego County, in fact in all of California and I am sure in the gentleman's State, generally in farmer's markets one can only sell produce that is grown in the State. We have so many people who ask us, ``Can you prove to us this does not come from Mexico, because we know that they can use DDT and other pesticides in Mexico and other places.'' We can assure them, because there is a certificate there that shows that in fact it is grown in the State of California, that it does not come from those places where some very dangerous substances are placed on the agricultural produce that our population ultimately buys. So I think there is a real value in slowing down the so-called fast track. I can remember my friend was not a fan of NAFTA, at least I believe he was not a fan of NAFTA, and we were told when NAFTA was before us as an issue that since we had approximately in those days a $3 billion trade surplus with Mexico, that we were going to build on that surplus by passing NAFTA. I glanced at the figures today, and the Clinton administration admits that this year we had a $17 billion trade loss with Mexico. I just wonder what kind of a track record that is to justify a new fast track for other countries that have not yet been able to take advantage of the United States and drive us into such a trade loss. I appreciate the gentleman for his remarks. I think it would be good, because we have so much produce now that comes from other countries, to at least allow the American people to see by some sort of a labeling system what in fact is grown in America, so that they know that that produce grown in America has protections that we afford it. I know the gentleman, and I think the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] is offering legislation to that effect, and perhaps the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Stupak] is as well. So I want to add my support for what has been said and tell the gentleman that I will work with him to see that we slow down this fast track.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I think I can do it all in 11 minutes, Mr. Speaker. I thought I would just come to the floor tonight and talk about several issues. I was late to the special order of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] where he spoke about his bill which would disallow automatic citizenship to the children of people who have come into the United States illegally. He went through a fairly lengthy litany of court cases and legal precedent behind the rule of law, the idea that coming to this country and achieving citizenship requires certain accountability and certain responsibilities and that that status should not be conferred; that is, citizenship should not be conferred on people who have come into the country using trickery or deceit or simply forcing their way in or simply walking across a land border. The theme I think of the gentleman's special order, and I thought it was an excellent special order, was that when an individual comes to the United States that they should use the front door; do not come in through the back door. And it is only appropriate that we reserve citizenship for people who have used the front door. I applaud him for that and wish I could have been here earlier, and I apologize to him for missing his special order. I think it was excellent and I think his legislation is very timely. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk about another person tonight who is a very important person to many of us in Congress who fought in what I call the contra wars in the 1980's. Those were the legislative debates that drove, to a large degree, American policy in the 1980's during the Reagan administration with respect to Central America, and particularly with respect to the Soviet Union's attempt to transfer a terroristic guerilla operation from the Soviet Union and from its client states into the guerilla operations in El Salvador, Guatemala, and in Nicaragua, manifested there by the Sandinistan Government. We saw the Soviets, then Soviets, moving in with tons of munitions, automatic weapons, all kinds of explosives, and fostering the guerilla movements in El Salvador that threatened to overthrow that very fragile government which even then had the makings of democracy. It is interesting, when I came in in 1980, as a freshman, Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, and Nicaragua all had some form of military dictatorship. None of them had, when Ronald Reagan arrived on the scene as President of the United States, none of them had democracies. Today, they all have democracies, albeit fragile. It was important for us at that point, when they were struggling to achieve those democracies and to put off the terrorism, I can remember in El Salvador when the FMLN, the guerilla operations supported by the Communists, were blowing up electrical plants and were massacring people trying to engage in a harvest, were regularly assassinating state officials, and I remember when Ronald Reagan enunciated the idea that we need to provide a shield, a military shield for these governments like El Salvador and also for the freedom fighter movement in Nicaragua, where a few very brave souls were fighting the Sandinistas, the Communist Sandinistas, which were strongly supported by the Soviet Union. There was enormous debate at that time in the United States, and a number of citizen groups were engaged on both sides trying to persuade the Congress either to stay out of Central America and let the Russians have their way or to engage in Central America and provide the shield that I talked about. Bill Blakemore of Texas was a Texas businessman who wanted to engage in supporting the Reagan doctrine in Central America, and he put together a group of business people in Texas who came to the Hill and lobbied and did everything they could to see to it that people understood what was at stake in having democracies rather than tyranny in Central America in our own hemisphere. Bill Blakemore did a great job at that. He did not ask for anything in return. He did not get any money for it. He did not make any contracts. He simply did that work because he thought it was important to be a leader as an American citizen and to fight for and persuade people to do what was right. He is very ill today in Texas. He is down at his ranch, an Iron Mountain ranch near Marathon, TX. So I want to say to Bill Blakemore and all the people that helped him, thank you for what you did for this country. Because partly because of your efforts, we now have democracies, fragile democracies in that part of the hemisphere, and that has accrued to the benefit of the United States. Lastly, Mr. Speaker, before I end my time, I wanted to say that my friend Bob Dornan has taken a lot of flak from Members on the other side of the aisle, Democrat Members, for the simple fact that after his election, which he won on Election Day by several hundred votes and then lost later when they counted absentee ballots, when they discovered that one group had fraudulently registered and voted a number over 300, that number of illegal voters, Mr. Dornan raised a question ``Were there more?'' And he raised a question as to whether or not he had really lost that election. In fact, the question was who had gotten the most votes, the most legal votes. He had every right to do that. And we, as a House of Representatives, should be very concerned when we see one group that fraudulently votes 300 illegal voters on Election Day, telling them, manipulating them and telling them as non-citizens that they not only had the right but the duty as non-citizens to vote in an American election. So we are now undergoing a very thorough review of that voting situation to validate or to follow through on a very simple principle, and that is the person with the most votes wins in a democracy. Now why is that anathema to the other side? Why do they not want to see the votes counted? So we are almost at the end of that situation. And I just wanted to say that I think Mr. Dornan has comported himself in an absolutely fine manner. He has raised the question. He has every right to raise it. I think we have as much interest as he has and as the gentlewoman from Californian [Ms. Sanchez] has in seeing who got the most votes in that election. So the House administration committee is going to be coming up with the results of that analysis fairly soon, and I look forward to it. On a personal note, nobody fought for the pro-life cause as hard, as energetically, as compassionately and as passionately as Bob Dornan. And I thought it was kind of appropriate here just a few days after Mother Theresa's untimely death to remind our colleagues how valiantly Bob Dornan fought for people who did not have big political action committees and did not have enormous clout on the House floor, and were not CEOs and did not have all the things that generally drive and manifest influence in the city of Washington, DC. He fought for the most helpless of individuals, that is, unborn children. He never wavered. He always came up with the right amendments at the right time, standing side-by-side with guys like the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] and the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith]. We miss Bob Dornan. We miss that passion that he brought to the debate. As a member of the Committee on National Security, I can remember when our Rangers were killed in Somalia. And Bob Dornan, the only member of the committee who had the nerve and energy to do it, flew all the way to Somalia and debriefed all of the people or many of the people who had been involved in that combat, and came back and contacted the families of every Ranger who was killed in Somalia and talked to them about the incident and thanked them for the service of their loved one to this country. Bob Dornan was a great, great member of the Committee on National Security. He was also one of the few guys that actually flew all the planes, went out and looked at all the equipment, had a great analysis of what worked and what did not work, and brought great energy and great expertise to that committee. Lastly, Bob Dornan was a guy when I was a freshman who gave up his seat that he could have had on the Committee on National Security, then the old Armed Services Committee, to a new freshman from San Diego. That freshman was myself. I am very grateful to Bob for the friendship that he has shown me and many other Members of the House over the years. So, Mr. Speaker, I would simply conclude my remarks by saying that I wish Bob Dornan the very best and his wonderful family the very best, and I think that the results of this research and this analysis will be out before the House in the next several weeks.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, a contested election is a very difficult thing. It strains friendships, often friendships between Republicans and Democrats because we all have our political alliances and those are legitimate alliances, and we have our friends and we have our party loyalties and it makes sometimes for a difficult time when we have to decide who won a particular election. Sometimes these things become bitter and sometimes things are said that Members wish later they could have been left unsaid or have been retracted. The contest between former Congressman, my friend, Bob Dornan and our gentlewoman from California [Ms. Sanchez] is not about those two individuals. It is not about Bob Dornan. It is not about Loretta Sanchez. It is about something that is very near and dear to our Nation, to the basis for our democracy, and that is the principle of free and fair elections. Unfortunately in this election, as newspaper reporters uncovered, one organization registered to vote over 300 people. That one organization registered to vote over 300 people who did not have the legal right to vote. Those people who voted did not realize they were committing a felony when they voted. They were urged by political activists to do that, to vote. I would submit to my friends on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican, including our leadership, Hispanic American leadership in this country, that the real victims of this fraud in that particular part of Orange County were the people who were urged to vote, who were not yet citizens of the United States and who believed these proctors who came around and handed out ballot registration forms to them and said, it is your duty if you want to become an American citizen. I am citing, I am paraphrasing what they gave back to investigators when asked why they registered to vote when it was illegal to vote. I would offer to my colleagues that they were the victims of this. They were exploited. They were demeaned. Everybody, every community in America should have an interest in having free and fair elections where fraud does not occur. What happened following that was that a criminal investigation was started, is under way by criminal, by law enforcement authorities in California. A challenge was filed by Mr. Dornan. I want to go over very briefly what the litany of the chronology of actions by this House has been. On May 14, the Committee on House Oversight subpoenaed the Immigration and Naturalization Service after months of failed attempts to receive information. House oversight asked the INS to perform a match between INS databases and the Orange County voter list. May 21, the Committee on House Oversight receives the INS computer matches. This constitutes a partial compliance with the committee subpoena. June 13, the Committee on House Oversight receives a list of 4,119 potential matches identified by a computer review by the INS. June 23, the Committee on House Oversight requests that INS check an additional 1,349 persons identified by a manual review by House Oversight staff of INS documents. June 24, the INS delivers to the committee 3,257 of 4,119 worksheets, summarizing their files. July 3, the INS delivers to the committee 503 more worksheets. July 9, House Oversight receives a list of over 3,000 potential matches between individuals who voted in the 46th Congressional District and individuals that declared that they were not citizens when summoned for jury duty. That means these people said, made written statements saying I am not a U.S. citizen and it appears that they voted. It appears that they voted in the election, and we are checking on that. I think that is a legitimate question. July 18, INS delivers 500 more of the 4,119 worksheets; 100 remain outstanding. July 30, INS produces 300 of the 1,349 worksheets. This investigation is ongoing. It is going to be completed hopefully over the break. Everybody wants to see it end so we can figure out what happened in that congressional district. But one thing is very clear, enough of a criminal investigation has been done and enough good reporting has been done to show us that there has been some fraud in that district and at least enough to warrant an analysis of who won that election. Only one thing should dominate our thoughts in this Chamber: That the person who got the most votes in this election from legal voters should win the election and should be seated in the House of Representatives. The gentlewoman from California [Ms. Sanchez] wants to see this thing over and done with. I talked with Mr. Dornan a few days ago. He is tired of seeing himself smeared in the newspapers regularly by people who have brought the race card into this. He wants to see it over with. I think we can handle this in an evenhanded manner and make a term determination within a few weeks. Let us calm down this rhetoric. Let us do the analysis. Let us see who won the election.

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I think the point that we need to be able to have a large inventory of long-range aircraft is very, very essential in this debate. In 1962, we had 81 major overseas air bases that we could fly short-range aircraft out of. That 81 major overseas air base inventory is now down to 14. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Japanese diplomats were hedging on whether they would allow us to use Japanese air bases for a second Korea contingency. Now if we overlay that fact, the shrinking bases overseas, with the fact that we are going to spend $350 billion on short-range aircraft, and the administration zeroing B-2 has not a dime for long-range aircraft, it does not make any sense. We have got to have the ability to strike from the United States. And last, I would say to my colleague I thought the most dramatic speech in the debate, the lengthy debate we had in the authorization process, was when Sam Johnson, POW in Hanoi, looked out through the Hanoi Hilton and saw three B-52's in Operation Linebacker. That is when we struck the North Vietnamese in 11 days and brought them to the negotiating table; he watched three B-52's destroyed, blown up in midair. Those are the planes that the administration is going to rely on for the next 40 years. According to their plan, they are going to use aircraft that were vulnerable 30 years ago. So we have to ask the question what is the alternative. There is not an alternative to the B-2.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to start by thanking the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee and thank him for the way he has conducted this debate. Mr. Chairman, let me issue my dissent, my objection, to what I think is one of the cruelest tradeoffs that can ever been offered on the House floor, and it has been offered here, and that is the idea that if we do not build B-2's, somehow we are going to spend the money on a lot of happy areas like breast cancer research and other attractive areas that all of us, as Members of Congress, want to fund. That is a tradeoff of guns for butter. As my colleagues know, I am reminded, when I visit my aunt and uncle's house in Fort Worth, TX; there is a picture on the mantle, and that picture is one of my second cousins who was killed in Korea, Son Stillwell. He was killed in Korea, one of some 50,000 KIA there in a war that we were not prepared to fight because a previous Congress, a Congress after World War II, did not want to spend the money for a strong national defense, and we had all the same answers that have been given here today as to why we do not need a robust B-2 force. Things are going well. No enemy on the horizon. In those days we said we have a nuclear weapon, we will never see another military take us on, certainly the North Koreans and the Chinese would not take us on. If my colleagues read the then Secretary of Defense's testimony a few months before the North Koreans invaded, we had all of the happy talk about a smaller downsized force; only Omar Bradley had the guts to come before Congress and say, ``We can't win a major war.'' Mr. Chairman, as my colleagues know, we do not serve our people well, all those people who are interested in breast cancer research, and a good life and educational opportunities, unless we defend them.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his point, and it is a good point. We have taken care of many of these other areas that have been discussed that have been offered up as an attractive alternative to having some bomber power. But as my colleagues know, General Fogleman is going out. One of his sins in Washington, DC, I think, was being extremely candid. I asked him in a hearing whether the B-2 was valuable because the word coming from the other side, from the political side, of the administration was we do not want B-2's, and being good soldiers, all of our chiefs then go down the line, they sit in front of us at the dais, and they stand behind the administration's political position on any particular weapon system. And he said this. He said: ``I didn't say the B-2 wasn't valuable. The B-2 is extremely valuable, especially in the halt phase of a war, that you stop the enemy before you have a lot of casualties, before you send home a lot of your people in body bags.'' And then he hesitated, and he said: ``In fact it is valuable in all phases of the war.'' And I said, ``General Fogleman, would it save American lives to have a robust B-2 force?'' And he said, ``Yes.'' So the point is there is not a body of military opinion over there that says this is not a valuable system. It is a valuable system. We need to support this important program.