Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let us start with stealth because, that is an important part of the B-2 story. In Vietnam, we lost 2,300 aircraft. In fact, in the last phases of the war, when we threw B-52's against surface-to-air missile systems from Russia, then the Soviet Union, we lost 10 percent of our B-52 force that was used in that theater in 11 days. And America turned to her scientists and said, we may be on the verge of having our Air Force become obsolete if you do not figure out a way to beat those Soviet-made radar systems and surface-to-air missile systems. And our scientists, the great scientists that we have in this country, responded. They came up with something developed by Democrat and Republican administrations, announced first by President Jimmy Carter, with what was known as stealth. Stealth is the ability to avoid enemy radar. That means very simply that a guy like the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Sam Johnson, who is sitting right here, who was a POW for a number of years in Hanoi, could fly an aircraft through a SAM missile battery without it acquiring him, without it seeing him and shooting him down. It gave survivability to American pilots. So we started developing stealth. And that is what the B-2 is. My colleagues have talked about these wonderful ways to give quality of life to the people who serve in the Armed Forces. The way to give quality of life to the people who serve in the Armed Forces is to bring them back. And the way you bring them back is by letting them fly the best equipment. Let me just put this argument in perspective in terms of cost. President Clinton has a program to buy short range aircraft over the next 20 years for $350 billion. Many Members here who are arguing on the other side have signed on at least initially to that program. We need those aircraft. That is short range theater aircraft. President Clinton says we need $35 billion for short range aircraft and for long range aircraft, for bomber aircraft that can go from the United States to stop an armored invasion in another country thousands of miles away. He put down zero. Not a dime for long range aircraft. That is why the study that I think is the best study, the independent study, not a budget-driven study but the independent study by General Scowcroft recommends that we continue to build the B-2 line. So here is what we are recommending today, what is in our budget, one thirty-fifth of the amount of money that is spent on short range aircraft of that $350 billion, that is about $12 billion for the construction, according to CBO, of B-2 bombers, one thirty-fifth of what we are spending for short range aircraft, let us spend it for long range aircraft so you have the ability to move from the United States to stop an armor attack halfway around the world. I am a Navy guy. I come from a Navy town, San Diego. I am an advocate of carrier air power. However, it takes a long time to steam a carrier someplace. You cannot count on an enemy like Saddam Hussein being right out of central casting and waiting for you to build up in theater with these 200- and 300 mile airfields that are just a couple hundred miles away from your targets. You have to stop armor early. Does the military want it? My colleagues, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Foley], have said the military does not want that. Here is what President Clinton's chief of staff, General Fogleman says, at a hearing just a few weeks ago: More B-2's would be extremely valuable in the halt phase, that is when you stop his armor attack, and in fact in all phases, as we would go. My question back, and would they save lives? General Fogleman, yes. So to my friend the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Foley], if we want to give the best quality of life to a person in uniform, that is, to save his life, then you want to have B-2's. Let us go back to the Clinton administration's proposal if this Congress does not act, does not keep our package intact. President Clinton had a problem. The problem is, how are we going to maintain our long range bomber force if we are spending $350 billion for short range aircraft and not a dime over the next 20, 30 years for long range aircraft. The answer was, we are going to fly B-52's. Those are the planes that were shot down easily by SAM batteries in 1968. We are going to fly them for 80 years. So the pilot that the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Foley] cares so much about is going to be flying an airplane that is older than his great grandfather. We have talked about cost a little bit. Let us talk about bases. We had 81 bases for our short range aircraft in 1961. As the years went by, we lost those bases, sometimes because of political action, sometimes because we just could not afford to operate them. We have gone from 81 major overseas U.S. air bases to 14. Let me tell you what is going to happen on the Korean peninsula. We all know this. It is in all the open reports. The North Koreans have the capability to put nerve gas on every single short range airfield on the Korean peninsula. Limited detoxification capability. The first crew that dies because of nerve gas on the runway at one of those tactical air bases is going to eliminate us as a tactical presence on the Korean peninsula. Last week the Japanese started to hedge on our ability to base our fighter aircraft in Japan in a second Korean war. We Americans have to be able to rely on our technology to stop an enemy, to deter an enemy with a flight that comes out of the United States and goes to that particular area, wherever it is around the world. So the Air Force does not want it. That is not what the Air Force says. General Fogleman says, more B-2's would be extremely valuable in the halt phase and in fact in all phases as we would go. Last part of the cost argument, every Member of this House has voted just a few days ago on the reform package that reforms the Pentagon, that cuts the bureaucracy. CBO's estimate of that reform package is that we save in 5 years $15 billion. That means in 5 years we have saved $3 billion more than CBO says we would need to build this entire tranche of nine B-2's. So, no, we are not going to take it out of Geo sales in America. We are not going to take it out of pay. We can afford to get by spending one thirty-fifth of what we are spending on short range aircraft by spending that $12 billion on long range aircraft and taking that from the reform package. Mr. Chairman, let me just say that this will be the first time, if we do not keep the B-2 in the budget, this is going to be the first time that this Nation has had the technology to allow our pilots to survive in an adverse environment and we have not given it to them. Let us give it to them. Let us give them the very best.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I have great respect for both proponents of this amendment, but I have to tell my colleagues that this amendment is not grounded in common sense, for a couple of reasons. There are a lot of things with respect to arms control that we disagree with, conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, arms control proponents, and people who are very skeptical of the arms control process. But there are certain cornerstones of our deterrent force and our overall strategy of deterrents that we all agree on. When I say, ``we all agree on,'' I am speaking of not only of the majority in the Congress but also the President of the United States, whether he is a Democrat or Republican, and his respective military leaders in the Pentagon. I have a lot of disagreements with President Clinton on security, but this is not one of them. The President, and I have several letters, one from his CNO and one from his director of the Commander in Chief, the U.S. Strategic Command, President Clinton does not want to see our strategic force, and the most important part of our triad, which is our submarine force, upon which we are going to rely for 50 percent of our deterrent counterstrike force under START II, he does not want to see that force reduced, and especially to reduce it unilaterally. So let us review the bidding here. We have three legs of the triad. We have our missiles based on land. We have our bomber force. But the most survivable forces of our triad, our deterrent system that has worked for so many years, is undersea. It is difficult to target. It is difficult to preempt. And that deterrent force will become more and more important under START II if the Russians ever approve START II. Now here is what my colleagues should reflect upon: START II has not yet been approved by the Russian Duma. Our friends who are offering this amendment are proposing to cut back on the number of ballistic missile submarines, in anticipation that at some point in the future there will be a START III and the Russians will give us reciprocity on this cut and will somehow come through with cuts of their own. That is a very dangerous thing to do. Let us leave all the chips on the side of our negotiators so that, as we work down our strategic forces, they give a chip, we give a chip, they give a chip, we give a chip, and we still guard or act to detour not only the Russians but others who are now developing nuclear systems around the world. And there are others developing those systems. The Chinese, for example, are not a part of the START II agreements. They are developing nuclear systems aimed at American cities. So it is a very dangerous thing to try to get a jump-start on arms negotiations and start unilaterally to pull down our strategic forces, especially the underwater part of our strategic forces. All of our military experts, the White House leadership, the Pentagon, and the majority in Congress, agree the undersea part of our ballistic missile submarines are the most survivable part of our triad. And to do away with the large portion of those in anticipation of some future concession on the part of our negotiating partners makes no sense. Mr. Chairman, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks]. (Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums]. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums]. Let me just say personally, as the gentleman who has engaged the gentleman in these major arms control issues and the B-2 bomber issue for a number of years, I too look forward to a robust debate on the B-2 bomber, and I think it is our duty to force as many colleagues as we can to listen to us one more time on that issue, and I think we will be able to do that. I understand that the reason that we are trying to keep this thing out of Tuesday's schedule as much as possible, that the chairman has that desire; it is because we have got another issue coming up that is supposed to be engaged on Tuesday. So we may be bumping up against the schedule. I want to assure my colleague that it is my desire to have a robust debate, especially on the B-2 issue, and I know the depot issue is one that has a lot of claimants and will have a great deal of debate offered, and the chairman of the full committee is a very gracious individual, and I am sure if the gentleman talks to him, if we can get an extra hour or two on Tuesday morning from the leadership and maybe push that other issue up a little bit, we can have a more robust debate on B-2, Bosnia and the depot issue. So the gentleman has got my assurance that I will sit with him and the chairman, and my desire is to have as big a debate and as full a debate as possible. So that is what I would offer to the gentleman, but I understand that the chairman of the full committee had the problem of bumping up against the next bill, and that is why he is trying to get our amendments finished and get the bill finished by Tuesday morning.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let me just announce on behalf of the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] what his intent is for the schedule for debate of amendments next week with respect to the rest of the National Security bill. On Monday afternoon, after doing suspensions and any other necessary business, it is his desire to continue with the consideration of amendments to H.R. 1119; and it is further his intent to have the following amendments debated during Monday afternoon with the votes rolled until after 5 p.m. Monday afternoon. That is the Frank amendment on NATO expansion, amendment No. 10 offered by Mr. Gilman on POW-MIA issues, amendment No. 11 offered by Mr. Buyer and Mr. Kennedy of Rhode Island on Persian Gulf illness, and possibly an en bloc package of amendments from part 2 of the rule that have been worked out and are acceptable to the committee. Then, after voting, around the 5 p.m. time frame, it is further his intent to resume the consideration of amendments from part 1 of the rule as late into Monday evening as the schedule will permit; and it is his hope to finish consideration of amendments on Monday evening, and that would mean considering the following amendments on Monday evening after the 5 p.m. votes. That is amendment No. 7, offered by the gentleman from California, the ranking member, Mr. Dellums, on the B-2 bomber; amendment No. 8, offered by Mr. Buyer; and No. 9, offered by Mr. Hilleary, on Bosnia. And under the rule these 20-minute amendments would be preceded by 1 hour of general debate, and the amendment made in order yesterday in the amended rule offered by Mr. Everett on depot policy and any remaining part 2 amendments, either in an en bloc package or consideration individually, as 10-minute amendments under the rule. So it is his desire to dispose of all amendments on Monday evening so that we can finish consideration of the bill sometime in the Tuesday morning timeframe.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant]. We have had more shootings on the southwest border in the last several weeks. In fact, we had two attempted shootings yesterday from across the border. One border patrolman has been hit so far. We have had more violence there and more gunfire exchanged than we have had in Bosnia in the same period of time. What this allows us to do is, on request of the Attorney General, in the case where you have a national security problem for the Attorney General to request up to 10,000 military personnel at the southwest border. I think it is prudent. It requires a request of the Attorney General. Obviously, it is at the discretion of the Commander in Chief. I strongly support the Traficant amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I will explain what I think is the wisdom there. We are going to a smaller and smaller strategic triad. Both sides have agreed that part of the triad that remains is going to be as modern and effective and as reliable as possible. Now our experts have determined that the most reliable part of the strategic triad is the undersea part; it is certainly the most invulnerable part, and that the D-5 missile is an important component of that part of the strategic triad. It is the most modern, the most accurate, the most effective, the most reliable. So when we are going to build down and we are going to get down to a smaller number of units, carrying that very important American deterrent, we want to have the best. Now the Russians, I would offer to my friend, have done exactly the same thing. They have not thrown away their modern stuff and left their old stuff. They have kept the most modern part of their own strategic triad in place. It is our right under the arms control agreement to stay strong in that respect. I think we owe it to the American people to stay strong in that respect. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums].

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to take this time to engage with my colleague and with the other side, and I just want to go over the points that have been made earlier and the points that he spoke to. First, according to the Navy, and if we are going to save money, we have got to put a pencil to the balance sheet and we have to try to figure out whether extending the life of the C-4 is going to be cheaper or more expensive than buying the rest of the D-5. If money, and I would submit there is a lot more to this debate than just money, but if money is the object, we have got to put a pencil to it and see if it works. According to the Navy it does not work, and we end up spending $60 million more extending the life of the C-4 missile then completing the program on D-5. Now that is the fact. Second, let me just say to my friend, as my colleagues know, this is a long debate that we have been in; he and I have debated arms control for 16 years now, and I can recall the early days of the 1980's when Ronald Reagan was building a stronger strategic deterrent. My friend answered ``No, that is not the way to go, and you are driving the Russians away from the bargaining table,'' and when the Russians were lining our European allies' borders with SS-20 missiles and Ronald Reagan said we are going to put in ground-launched cruise missiles and Pershings to meet them, and there was enormous debate in Europe in the mid 1980's, there were many people on this side of the ocean, many pundits, many journalists, many Members of Congress who said, ``You are driving the Russians away from the negotiating table,'' but by being strong and by establishing a reinforced strategic triad, and that included our land based systems, going with the B-1 bomber on our air breathing systems and putting more capability into our undersea systems we brought the Russians to the negotiating table, and one day the phone rang and all of a sudden the Russians wanted to talk, and we started down this trail of arms negotiations. But the genius of our side in the arms negotiations and reductions has been that we have gotten a quid pro quo for everything we have given up, we have gotten something in return. The President of the United States said ``Trust but verify.'' We do not unilaterally make concessions. That has worked, Mr. Chairman. We are now walking the Russians down on arms control. So the gentleman's ascertation that this is a brilliant thing for Congress to unilaterally start giving up pieces of the strategic triad in anticipation of a third arms control agreement when the second arms control agreement has not even been ratified by the Russian Duma does not make any sense in that it is totally inconsistent with our history. And I think my friend wants to talk, and I am going to yield to him. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums].

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to exercise the authority to strike the last word.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] for his very articulate statement. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time and urge a no vote on this amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I think this is an example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. We have an arms control process that is walking down the line that has taken us to the point where we are waiting for the Soviet Union to ratify the second arms agreement. We have got a situation where we can get a quid pro quo; that means when we take down a weapons system, the Soviet Union, now Russia, will take down a weapons system, and I want to answer just a couple of things that the proponents of this amendment made that are just not the case, a couple of their arguments. First, this does not save any money. According to the Navy it is $2.3 billion to upgrade the C-4 missile. If we are not going to have the D- 5, we are going to have to upgraded the C-4. That is $2.3 billion. According to the Navy, if we add all the termination costs, we are actually going to pay, the taxpayers will pay, 60 million more dollars to maintain the old C-4 missile then to complete the project on the D-5 missile. So we do not save money for the taxpayers according to the Navy. We spend an extra $60 million. But second and most importantly, there have been no experts here that have said that we should unilaterally eliminate this program without getting anything from the Soviet Union. The assembled admirals and generals who were quoted here simply said we should eventually do away with nuclear weapons. Well, the best way to eventually do away with nuclear weapons is to have something to negotiate with to get the Soviets to and the Russians to walk down on their inventory. This is giving up something unilaterally that means we will not get a concession from Russia for it, we will not get an SS-18 removed, we will not get one of their strategic boats removed, we will simply make a unilateral concession. So we get nothing for it economically, we get nothing for it in terms of arms control; it is not an amendment of value, it is a dangerous amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks].

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Gejdenson].

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes to respond briefly to the gentleman from Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Minnesota cited a taxpayer group and their decision, their unilateral decision to disarm approximately one- third of America's most important leg of the strategic triad on the basis that they think it is a good deal and it makes sense. I might remind my colleagues that of all of the hundreds of arms control experts and military experts and deterrent experts that we rely on, including our scientists and our policy-makers, whether they are liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, in the administration or in the Congress, none of those people have been cited as justifying or backing up this unilateral decision to jump start or prejump the negotiators by sacrificing one-third of our underwater deterrent. No experts have been cited. It just looks like it is a good deal for a taxpayers group. I would suggest that the reason this defense budget today is $140 billion less than the defense budget in 1985 is because we were strong, and we built lots of Tridents and we put them in the water. That brought the Russians to the negotiating table. The Russians were never brought to the negotiating table by us making unilateral concessions. They were brought to the negotiating table by us being strong and then doing one for one, under Ronald Reagan and George Bush and now under Bill Clinton. That means they give a chip, we give a chip. We do not unilaterally pull the rug out from under our negotiators by giving up big pieces of our triad. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks].

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield as much time as he may consume to my friend, the gentleman from Utah [Mr. Hansen].

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material in the Record on H.R. 1119.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me, and I want to thank the gentleman for his extraordinary leadership of this subcommittee and just echo his feelings here and those that have been given by many Members who are against allowing abortions to take place in military hospitals. Mr. Chairman, let us not involve the military in abortion. Is that a double standard? Yes, it is a double standard, and the military has a double standard in a number of areas with respect to marital fidelity, with respect to pornography on base, and yes, with respect to abortion. We have our young people focused on duty, honor and country, and that involves a higher standard sometimes than the general public. But do my colleagues know something? The general public likes that. They respect the military more than any other institution because they have the higher standard. Let us keep that higher standard, and let us stick with the committee's position, and I thank the gentleman for his extraordinary leadership on this issue.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. As the chairman who held the hearing serving the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] and the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] on this supercomputer transfer issue, let me say that they are absolutely right. The gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Gejdenson] and others who have spoken in a number of areas are absolutely wrong. Let us just walk through these. First, it was stated that these sales have been made carefully. They have not been made carefully. The first sales to the Soviet Union, the individuals who made the sales have been, according to the briefings that I have gotten, have been fired for making the sales. There are potential criminal actions for making the sales. So these were not prudent private people making sales. In interviewing the CEO's who were involved with these companies, there are two things here. First, they say they are confused by our supercomputer policy. Because as the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] points out, if we are selling the supercomputer to the agriculture department in China, ostensibly that is OK. But we all know that is a fiction because the military in China accesses everything. So we have to presume conclusively it is going to the military. If they put military on the shipping order, then it is illegal. If they put Agriculture Department on the shipping order, then it is okay. Second, these sales damaged American security. We have talked to the experts, to our best scientists at our weapons laboratories, and they said two things. They said the sales to the Soviet Union that the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McHale] held a press conference on, he was so proud about getting this American supercomputer, he did not get a Bulgarian computer or a French computer or Japanese computer. The Japanese have been pretty good about this. He got an American computer, and he was so proud about it that he held a press conference on having that particular computer. Our scientists said that helped the Russians only marginally because they have fairly sophisticated nuclear weapons capability. They said further, however, that the sales of the 47 supercomputers to China have helped China substantially in their military efforts and their nuclear weapons efforts. The gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] and the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] are absolutely right with this amendment. Please vote for this amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence], the great chairman of our full committee, for his wonderful leadership. I want to compliment the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], the ranking member, for his tireless energy on the other side and his great attendance at our marathon hearings that went in some cases into 7, 8 o'clock at night. He had good endurance. And to my great friend the gentleman from Missouri from [Mr. Skelton], I thank the gentleman for working as a partner on this very important committee and to all of my colleagues who are a part of this committee, I think it is the most bipartisan committee in the House, and I think we did good work. Mr. Chairman, I want to engage with some of the propositions that the previous speaker put out. Let us review the bidding. Where are we on the big scale? This century we have undertaken a series of cycles that America, this great democracy, tends to go through. After World War I, we referred to that war as the war to end all wars. We hear that phrase recurring now after the cold war is over. We call it the post cold war period. The implication is there is not going to be any more wars. But my colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], mentioned something that I think hits the heart of the matter. He said, ``These are uncertain times.'' If we follow history, we should meet uncertain times with preparedness. It has been mentioned that every capital ship that was used in World War II had the keel laid before World War II, before the attack on Pearl Harbor. That means that we have to be prepared for war, and the best way to deter war is to be prepared for it, and the best way to win one when we have it is to be prepared for it. I do not think we are any smarter today in terms of intelligence than we were in the 1920's when we did not see World War II coming, than we were right after World War II, we had an army of 9.8 million people, and a few years later on the Korean peninsula we were pushed down the peninsula by a third-rate military. That is because we did not know what was going to happen. I have reviewed the words of Louis Johnson, then Secretary of Defense, and they sound a lot like President Clinton's leadership in the military now. They talked about a small core, changing fat into muscle, getting people out of their desk jobs and into the field. Only Omar Bradley really told it like it was in 1950, 4 months before the Korean war started when he said that we could not win a major war with what we have right now. Here is what we have done, Mr. Chairman. We have cut the Army since Desert Storm from 18 Army divisions to 10. We have cut our Air Force from 24 fighter air wings to 13. We have cut our air power almost in half. And we have cut the Navy from 546 Navy ships to 346 ships. Even President Clinton says we have to modernize and increase the modernization budget to $60 billion. That is not the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence], the chairman, that is not me, that is not other members of the committee. That is the President of the United States. And he had that on his blueprint; this year we were going to spend $60 billion giving good equipment to our troops. But we did not go into it. As we walked down and got closer to and closer this fiscal year we went from $60 billion to about $55 billion. Then it was $48 billion, then $46, and when the rubber meets the road it is $42 billion, meaning that our men and women in the military do not have the right equipment, they do not have the best equipment they could possibly have because we have short changed them. And, Mr. Chairman, let me tell my colleagues in 1985 we spent $404 billion in today's dollars, in 1997 dollars, on defense. Today we are spending about $258 billion. That means we have cut on an annual basis $140 billion out of the defense budget. That is where most of the cuts have come for the Clinton administration. But we did the best we could do with very little resources to try to bolster the military. We asked military leaders, we asked President Clinton's leaders to come in and tell us what their unfunded priorities were. They used to tell us that in private sessions in back rooms, but our great chairman, our great chairman, said we are not going to do that any more, we are not going to let editors call this pork and say it is stuff that the military did not want because it is not on the record. So he made them go on the record. He said ``You come tell us what you need in written form that's not funded,'' and they did that to the tune, this year, in excess of $10 billion that the President did not put in the budget for them and that the budget deal did not include. So in fixed wing aircraft and helicopters and track vehicles and ammunition, in small arms, we have tried to provide more, about $2.9 billion more in the procurement budget, $3.9 billion more in the procurement budget than the President had. I think we did a pretty good job with limited resources, and our motto should be, be strong, be prepared, these are uncertain times. This is a good bill, and I hope everybody will support it.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, everybody agrees, even the proponents of this amendment, that we have to have a national defense, and the question is how much? They have cited that we outspend other countries in the world for defense, and therefore, we should be able to take a $13 billion cut without pain and without effect on our military readiness. But there is another Congress that thought the same thing. It was a Congress that voted to put together a defense budget just a few months before South Korea was invaded on June 25, 1950. I have read the transcripts from the testimony that came before that Congress. In fact, the Senate was so convinced that we were on top of the world, that we were so powerful, that we had nuclear weapons, high-tech, like the gentleman speaks of, that nobody would mess with us. So on June 25, 1950, we were invaded by North Korea, and within 3 days they had taken Seoul and were driving south until we met them at the Puchon perimeter right at the tip of the Peninsula and gradually started to push them back up. We were unready for Korea. We committed 7 army divisions to Korea, but we were unready for it, and 50,000 of those working Americans that the gentleman from Vermont who has propounded this amendment cares about so much came home in body bags. The folks that fight the wars are the working people of this country, and the greatest benefit we can give them is their return home. We give them a return home when we have overwhelming force, which is what we had in Desert Storm. We were too strong in Desert Storm. That was the argument. We were too powerful. We had come up with all of these weapons systems that received daily criticism in the Washington Post, like the Apache attack helicopter, the M-1 tank that did not get enough gas mileage, the Patriot missile system that took too long to develop. But when we put those systems in the field, we came home with a minimum of American casualties because we were ready. We used seven divisions in Korea. We used eight divisions in Desert Storm. So we fought these two regional contingencies. That makes 15 army divisions. We only have 10 today. We have cut from 18 to 10 since Desert Storm. We have cut from 24 to 13 fighter air wings. We have cut from 545 Navy ships to 345. The President of the United States thinks that our procurement modernization budget should go to $60 billion. I can tell the Members what it was this year, it was $42.6. It was almost $18 billion less than President Clinton thought it should be, and his military advisors. Let us do what Hallmark Cards says about sending thanks to your friends with respect to our young people in the military. Because we care about them, let us send them the very best, the very best in equipment, and that means that we have to keep this defense budget at a minimum at the level that we have right now. We have really cut too deep. ``Peace through strength'' was a motto that we had all the way through the cold war, and it worked. We brought the Soviet Union to the bargaining table because we were strong. We are going to be able to maintain the peace in the future because we are strong. Please vote against this amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to thank our great chairman for putting this package together, and the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman] who has worked so hard on it and all the Members on both sides of the aisle. I think one theme that we have heard this year on the floor with this national security bill is bipartisanship. We have had to have that because we have had very tough times, the dollars are very scarce, and we have had to come together and find ways to save money so that we can modernize and buy the equipment that everybody, including the Clinton administration, says we need for our people in uniform. I just wanted to mention one thing that I know Ms. Harman has an interest in, and I do. It is the fact that while we have pulled our Army down from 18 divisions to 10 divisions, and almost nobody knows about it, we did it almost under the cover of darkness, we pulled our fighter air wings down from 24 fighter air wings to 13, and our Navy ships from 546 to 346. We have kept an army, literally two Marine Corps of shoppers, of professional acquisition folks, in DOD, and we thought it was prudent and reasonable to have the professional shopping corps in DOD no bigger than the United States Marine Corps. And this reform bill does that. It brings it down to the same force level as the U.S. Marine Corps. I think that is going to be beneficial, and I think when those end strength cuts come to the tail part of the Pentagon just like they have already come to the tooth part of the Pentagon; that is, the guys that actually carry the weapons and fight the wars, when we pare down the bureaucracy the same way we have pared down the people that are in the field, they are going to get together, and they are going to figure out ways to handle the contract with less than 15 people working that contract. Maybe they can handle it with five, to use computerization, to use simulation to do a lot of things that will bring about efficiencies so that when we have an extra defense dollar, we buy some ammo for that guy in the front lines, we buy that extra piece of equipment, we buy that high-technology equipment that all my colleagues are concerned about. I thank the gentleman for the time, and I thank the gentlewoman for all the work she has done.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, today we are going to have a vote on the B-2 amendment. That is a question of whether or not we are going to have this tremendous aircraft in our inventory in numbers in excess of 20. As my colleagues know, during Vietnam we lost about 2,300 fixed-wing aircraft to SAM missiles. Those were the surface-to-air missiles that the Russians were proliferating to their friends around the world and are still proliferating to their friends. A SAM missile took down Scot O'Grady a few months ago in Bosnia when he was flying his high- performance F-16 aircraft. If we turn down the B-2 today, it is going to be the first time the American people have decided to send their young pilots out in aircraft that are not the very, very best that this Nation can provide. Support the B-2. Our troops need it.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would hold for a second, that complex is bigger, as I understand it, than the District of Columbia.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon], so much for his words. I hope they will be well taken on the floor tomorrow. Let me go back to what we actually have in terms of a defense apparatus that he spoke so eloquently about. As I have said, we have gone from 18 to 10 Army divisions, 24 to 13 fighter air wings, 546 Navy ships to 346, all since Desert Storm. Now what does Congress and what does the President owe to the American people in terms of national security? According to the Constitution, the President is the Commander in Chief. The Congress is charged with raising the navies and the armies necessary to defend America. Well, what is that? Well, over the years, we have come to the conclusion that we have to be prepared to fight two wars almost at the same time. The reason we have to be prepared for that is because if we get in a conflict in Korea or in the Middle East and we get our military tied down in that area, there is a chance that somebody else on the other side of the globe is going to look at that as an opportunity to do something, like invade South Korea, for example, or do something else along that line. So we have to be prepared to fight two wars at about the same time. Now, we have folks in the Pentagon, great folks, great minds, civilian and military, doing war games all the time and trying to figure out what it is going to take, how many people do we need, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, how many planes, tanks, ships do we need, what type, how much ammo do we need to fight that two-war scenario. They are supposed to put that all together and come up to us with a bill for it and say, here is what it is going to cost, Mr. Congressman, Mr. Representative, Mr. Senator, Mr. President. Here is what it is going to cost to defend the American people, our number one obligation. So we have said, well, it has got to be a two-war requirement. We have to have the ability to fight those two fights at the same time. Well, what are those two fights? It is interesting because two of the wars that we think are the most possible, the most probable, are wars we have already fought. We fought on the Korean peninsula starting June 25, 1950. We fought Desert Storm on the sands of Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. We fought that war. I want to tell my colleagues what it took to fight both those wars. First, in Korea we used seven Army divisions. That is seven. In Desert Storm, we used eight Army divisions. That is eight. Eight and seven is 15. The Clinton administration has cut our Army divisions from 18 to 10. So we have the prospect of fighting two wars that used a combined 15 Army divisions, and we only have two-thirds of that strength. We can go right down the list with respect to air power and with respect to U.S. Navy requirements and we are short. We are short of fighting the two-war scenario. I looked at Louis Johnson's testimony. He was then the Secretary of Defense in 1950, just a couple months before North Korea invaded the South. And I see a lot of the same words that we see coming from this President's administration back then. Louis Johnson did not seen very alarmed. He had no idea that a bloody war would start in about 4 months. He said things like, ``We are turning fat into muscle. We are getting a lot of people from behind their desks and putting then in the field. We are creative. We are innovative.'' He had a very pleasant and, I think, a very optimistic view that he presented to the U.S. Congress. We asked Omar Bradley, then General of the Army, five-star General Omar Bradley, to comment on the state of the defense budget. One thing Bradley was known for, even though he went along with what his President requested, he did give us one warning that we did not heed. He said, ``We cannot win a major war with the size of the military we have now.'' He said that he did go along with the budget because it provided a core around which we could build in times of an emergency, But Omar Bradley knew that we could not fight a major war. And, unfortunately, within a few months we were in a major war. Now, a lot of folks back then had the same idea that the Clinton administration has today. They said, you know, we are never going to have to fight the Chinese or the Koreans or anybody else because we have, guess what, the atom bomb, and nobody wants to mess with a country that has the atom bomb. But nonetheless, after the North Koreans pushed us down the peninsula, we finally got a foothold in the Pusan perimeter, we pushed them back up, we started to win. The Chinese sent in hundreds of thousands of troops, surprising us by getting involved in this war we never thought they would get involved in. The Secretary of Defense who is a fine gentleman, Secretary Cohen, a man I really like and respect, had somewhat of the same description about Desert Storm. I pointed out that we did not have as many Army divisions as we had then and we used up almost all of them, 8 of them, in Desert Storm. We only have 10 today. And he talked about Saddam Hussein being weaker now than he was in the old days. But remember, we were worried that other nations in that area would come to Saddam Hussein's assistance, would help him, and he was out shopping around trying to get his neighbors to support him against the United States. But every time he got to one of those countries, George Bush had been there in front of him and had lined that country up solidly on our side, countries like Egypt, that Saddam Hussein thought he might be able to bring over. So Saddam Hussein had to fight Desert Storm alone. That might not happen in the future. We cannot make all of our war plans based on Saddam Hussein acting alone the next time. We have to be prepared for him to act with some allies. Similarly when the Chinese had no problem with getting involved in Korea when we had nuclear weapons and they did not, today they have nuclear weapons aimed at American cities, and they have that leverage and we have nuclear weapons also. They are much stronger in a relative sense than they were in 1950. They had no problem with sending their hordes of people south to kill Americans on the Korean Peninsula in 1951. They will not have any qualms about doing that today. So we are weak. We have undertaken this drawdown that is a historic cycle in America. After we got involved in World War I, we lost a lot of people, our people came home and wanted to do other things, Americans had no taste for a large defense budget, we cut our budget dramatically. The justification for cutting it was we said, ``We have already fought the war to end all wars.'' For folks that are studying history, that was a well-known phrase in the 1920s because World War I was so bloody and so tough and so rugged on people that we did not contemplate there would ever be another war. Well, a war to end all wars was followed by what, another war to end all wars. That was World War II which once again caught us without the industrial base that we needed and without the defense forces that we needed to deter Japan, that means keep Japan from attacking the United States. So we had a bloody war. We lost a ton of good Americans. Once again we came home after the war, we had about 9 million people under arms in 1945, we came home after the war, we threw away our weapons, General Marshall was asked how is the demobilization going, he said, ``It's not a demobilization.'' He said, ``This is a rout. People are just throwing their weapons away.'' We need to stay strong but we did not stay strong and we only had 10 Army divisions when Korea started. That is the number of Army divisions we have today. We kidded ourselves about not having to have those people. In fact, in that year in 1950 just before Korea was invaded, the other body, the Senate, tried to pull the defense numbers down by $100 million. The House of Representatives stood up to them and would not let them make that reduction. We have now won the cold war. But the ambitions of Russia can be reconstituted just as fast as they were dissipated. Russia has turned and within just a few months' time actually changed their intentions with respect to the United States from being an extremely aggressive nation, an extremely ambitious nation that was working hard in Africa, they were working hard in our own hemisphere in running supplies into Central American nations, they had met us on battlefields around the world where they met us with Russian-made equipment in Vietnam, in Korea, and in Afghanistan we met them with American help for the Afghan freedom fighters. We had fought in proxy wars around the world during this cold war. Their intent toward the United States changed so quickly that none of our intelligence people, at least the ones I talked to, the presumably really smart ones, none of them predicted the falling of the Berlin Wall. People laughed at the idea that President Ronald Reagan went to the Berlin Wall and said, ``Mr. Gorbachev, bring this wall down,'' and yet within a few months it happened. Their intent can go from a benign intent toward the United States to an aggressive intent toward the United States just as quickly. They have the apparatus, they have the nuclear weapons still. As the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] said so eloquently, if they are not aimed at the United States it takes 30 seconds to retarget them. That means that a Soviet missile specialist sitting in a silo can re-aim those nuclear weapons at cities in the United States as quickly as the average rifle shot at the Olympic rifle marksmanship trials can lift his rifle up and aim it at a bull's-eye. That is how fast the Russians can retarget. We have China trying to step into the superpower shoes that were left by the Soviet Union and their military is on the ascendancy. They are adding things like this missile destroyer. This missile destroyer has only one enemy in the entire world. It is designed specifically to destroy American ships and kill American sailors. They are doing that incidentally with the toy money and the other money that we send to the tune of $40 billion a year in surplus to Communist China. Mr. Speaker, we live in a very dangerous world. The last thing that I think it is important for my colleagues to know is that while we are short on Marines, we are short on Army, we are short on Air Force, we are short on Navy in terms of force structure, we are also short on ammunition. The Army has certified to myself and to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Skelton], who is the minority ranking member on the Subcommittee on Procurement, that they are $1.6 billion short of what it takes in ammo to fight those two wars that we talked about. The Marine Corps has said in their letter that they are $300 million short in ammo. They are 93 million M-16 bullets short of what it takes to fight those two wars we talked about. The point is we have entered a trough, a time of weakness, it is a historic cycle, a cycle down in this case for America in terms of defense spending. We need to boost it back up. I guess what I would ask all of my colleagues is to stick with us, stick with the few extra dollars that we put into this defense budget to give some modicum of support to the men and women who serve in our Armed Forces. Mr. Speaker, I think it is clear that our motto with respect to national security should be, ``Be prepared.'' We are not prepared now if the intent of other nations around the world changes dramatically and suddenly. We owe it to the American people not to be ready to build a strong defense but to be ready with a strong defense already built in case we should have a war.