Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I thank him for the dialogue that he has commenced with a lot of working people in this country to let them know how important defense is from an industrial base perspective. I might mention that about 250,000 of those aerospace workers who lost their jobs, it is real, because 250,000 of them lost their jobs in California as a result of the downsizing. But I want to take the gentleman back, because first he has been our leader in missile defense, and his subcommittee, the Subcommittee on Military Research and Development, is the place where we put our plans together for missile defense to defend this country and to defend our troops in theater, and we move out with those plans and try to build those systems over the years. I want to start the gentleman at about 1986 or 1987, when the gentleman and myself put together a letter that we sent to the defense secretary or defense minister of Israel, and we told him that at some point in the near future Israel would be attacked with ballistic missiles, made in Russia, coming from a neighboring nation. In that case I think we suggested in our letter that that might be Syria. Turned out it was another nation, it was Iraq, but in fact that happened. We urged Israel to commence a program, not of building fighter planes, because everybody builds fighter planes, to drop that Lavi fighter, but to make the centerpiece of the American-Israeli production agreement and cooperation to make that missile defense. Because nobody in the free world made missile defense, and at that time we did not do it. Partly as a result of what we did, and I think also as a result of what our Secretary of Defense did at that time, and I think some good thinking on the part of Israel's leaders, they embarked on the ARROW program, which is one of their missile defense programs, and they have a certain sense of urgency, because they know life is real, missile attacks happen. They have moved out with some urgency and are having a pretty good program with ARROW. I would like the gentleman, because he is the expert on missile defense, to walk us through our programs, our Navy programs and our Army programs, and let our folks know, the Members of Congress and the American people, where we stand on those programs. What is happening? And I yield to him.

Mr. HUNTER. It was basically the Model T of missiles.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon]. He has made an excellent statement. He gives us great leadership on the committee, and I look forward to seeing him tomorrow and seeing a lot of other folks who presumably will give us a lot of support also. I thank the gentleman for his leadership on national defense. One thing that the gentleman said, I think, should be very well taken by the people who have put together national security, and that is that we should have the Boy Scout motto, ``Be Prepared.'' Because we have a number of nations in the world that have nuclear systems right now and have missiles, and right now they may not have the political intent to do us harm, but political intent can change overnight. Political intent can change with one election, one coup, one dramatic change of direction by any of a number of countries, and we will then, right then, have to be prepared to defend ourselves. The idea that this administration says that is not so, we do not have to start preparing until it is clear that somebody intends to do us harm, is an illustration of the fact that the folks in the administration have not read history books. We were not prepared for Pearl Harbor. I asked a number of our intelligence agents, intelligence leaders to tell me the other day how many of them predicted the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina. None of them predicted that. Well, I went to something a little easier: How about the fall of the Russian empire, how many of them predicted that? None of them predicted the fall of the Russian empire. Lastly, I said, how many of them predicted the invasion of Kuwait? One said, before or after the tanks started rolling? I said, no, it has got to be after the tanks had started rolling. None of them predicted the invasion of Kuwait. So we know this: We have had a lot of wars in this century; we lost a lot of Americans killed in action; we are going to have more wars. That is human nature. That is the nature of nations. It is the nature of some of the aggressors around the world that we will have wars. The only question will be, will we be so prepared and so strong that other countries do not mess with us? We are not that strong at this point, and we need to turn it around. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].

Mr. HUNTER. All underground.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thought I would start out my discussion today, I want to talk a little bit about national security, but I thought I would start out the discussion today, since MFN, that is most-favored-nation treatment for China, trade treatment for China, is at issue and we will be discussing and debating this issue on the House floor, there is a lot of commentary on it right now, I thought I would start out today with a statement that was made, apparently by the NFIB or one of our other good groups that wants to continue this trade relationship with China, and presumably this $40 billion annual trade deficit that we suffer at the hands of China, one of their statements was, gee, if we cut off China, we are not going to get any Tickle Me Elmos because apparently Tickle Me Elmo is made in, of course, Red China. It is made in China and presumably some of the slave labor that makes some of the textiles in China also makes Tickle Me Elmos. I thought that in light of what the Chinese are doing with the $40 billion trade surplus that they enjoy over the United States, that means they get $40 billion in hard American dollars for things they sell us in excess of what we sell them, when we do all of our trading at the end of the year, they have got 40 extra billion dollars in their bank accounts that we do not have in our bank account because they enjoy a trade surplus over us. That is largely because the Chinese have a massive tariff for almost every American item. Of course, they enjoy virtually free access to the American market. But they make Tickle Me Elmo. It is made in China. One of our good trade groups said, gee, we will not have any more Tickle Me Elmos and should we not be upset about that because we want our children to have a nice life and having a Tickle Me Elmo presumably is a real illustration of quality of life now. But here is the reason why we should not care whether or not we get a lot of Tickle Me Elmos or other toys from Communist China. They are taking that $40 billion and they are going to their friends, the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, now the main player is Russia, and they are buying military hardware. They are buying a lot of this hardware and aiming it at guess who, the people that provided the dollars in the first place, the good old Americans. They are using this 40 billion extra dollars a year to arm. That means they are not only building these, this is a missile destroyer that they just purchased from Russia, it has one purpose and that is to kill American carriers. That means killing the 5,000 uniformed sailors who are on board an American carrier as well as the attending ships in the battle fleet formation. This was designed by the Russians with their surface-to-surface missiles, their N-22, their SSM, their 44 SAN-17's and their SAM's and their four point defense systems and their 130 millimeter guns and their helicopter. That has one job in mind and one purpose, and that is to destroy American surface ships. The Chinese are able to buy these now from the Russians with hard dollars. They did not used to pay hard dollars. They would give IOUs and they did not get very much of that, because they were a dollar short. They were cash strapped. We have now given them all kinds of money from these doggone Tickle Me Elmo sales and dozens of other commodities that we now purchase from them. And they are buying weapons and they are aiming them, their nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles are aimed at the guys, the American people who gave them the money in the first place. They are aimed at American cities. So as we enter into this debate over whether or not we should continue to have these Tickle Me Elmo transfers with China, I would suggest that they are in reality a Torture Me Elmo transaction, because in the end the same young Americans, the people that we are trying to give a good lifestyle to now, our children, may face American technology. And in the least they are going to face military technology that was purchased with American dollars from their own parents on the battlefield, coming back our way, the bullets will be coming back at us. So when we put together this China policy, I think we have to look at a couple of things. One thing is, by maintaining this beneficial trade relationship with China, when I say that I mean beneficial especially for China, we are making China economically strong. China is becoming very economically powerful. As they become economically powerful, it is our hope, of course, that they will have a benign leadership, a leadership which appreciates human rights, appreciates the rights of other nations on the earth to exist and will not have, not focus in the future on military exploitation and on an aggressive national security stance. We hope that but we do not know. So the point is, we are making China strong economically and militarily with our dollars and we do not know where China is going. Incidentally, that carries me to a second subpoint. We passed an amendment in the Committee on National Security. I wish the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Taylor] was here from Mississippi who was very instrumental in that debate, along with the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] and a number of other members of the Committee on National Security and the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie], and we passed an amendment that prevents an arm of the Chinese Government, it is called COSCO, COSCO is not where you go to buy your lawn chairs, COSCO is the Chinese Ocean Shipping Corporation. And they have done a pretty smart thing. They have corporatized different arms of their government on the basis that good old Americans, Republicans and Democrats, are a little bit wary of the Communist army and other agencies that are centralized agencies in part of the Beijing Government, but if you call something a corporation, that makes us feel very comfortable because we are a bunch of capitalists and we like corporations. So they have corporatized a maritime arm of their government. And that maritime arm is buying the U.S. Naval Base at Long Beach or leasing the U.S. Naval Base at Long Beach. Of course, the port reuse facility or entity, that is the Reuse Commission at Long Beach, when the Long Beach Naval Station got closed, were looking around for a beneficial use. When we put that law into place that allowed for some closing of military bases, we envisioned that there would be industrial parks and other types of development that would take the place of military activities on these bases. We never envisioned in our wildest dreams that a foreign nation, especially one that has nuclear weapons aimed at our cities, would want to lease one of our U.S. naval bases. But that is what they are doing with the 135 acre terminal at Long Beach. I think that is bad for a number of reasons. I am glad to see my friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon], the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Research and Development of the Committee on National Security, joining me. There are a number of problems with allowing a foreign government to have such a large facility at a fairly strategic location like that. First, you can do a lot more with a 135-acre facility in terms of intelligence gathering than you can if you are just trying to intercept signals coming off a ship with your own ship. You have a permanent location. You are able to have bigger physical facilities to intercept intelligence. Also presumably you have a pretty large staff of people. We know as a matter of record that the Chinese Government attends its industrial facilities around the world with intelligence agents. So unless they change course and do something that they have not done before, they will have intelligence agents at this base at Long Beach, and presumably they are going to use them to gather intelligence on U.S. military activity and presumably also on the high tech industry in California. Anyway, it is clear that China is on the rise, on the ascension in terms of its military buildup, its military apparatus, and it would be very wise for us, I think, to do two things. First, to be very wary about funding the buildup. Why pay for their arms buildup by buying a bunch of doggone Tickle Me Elmos and other things that we purchase from them? And second, let us make sure that our own national security is not on the descent. I want to tell you where we are at with respect to our security because most Americans do not know this. When we won Desert Storm, here is what we had. We had 18 Army divisions. We had 24 active fighter airwings, that was our air power. We had 546 Navy ships. Since Desert Storm, since we saw those great pictures on television of us taking care of Saddam Hussein in short order, we have gone to this buildup or this force structure because we have actually built down. We have gone from 18 Army divisions in 1991 to 10. We have cut the Army almost in half. We have gone from 24 fighter airwings to 13. So we have cut our air power almost in half. And we have gone from 546 Navy ships to 346 so we have cut the Navy by about 40 percent in terms of structure. Interestingly, we are down to the level that is just about where we were when on June 25, 1950, the North Koreans invaded South Korea. We had 10 Army divisions in those days. Within 3 days, the North Koreans had taken all of Seoul; that was the capital of South Korea. They were driving southward on the Korean peninsula. The peninsula looks a little bit like Florida. They almost pushed the Americans entirely off the peninsula. Pusan is a little port at the southern tip of South Korea. We were right at the southern tip there. And we formed the perimeter. We flew part of the 25th Infantry Division from Tokyo to try to stop them. They got torn to pieces. We flew in the rest of the division. The division commander got captured. We lost 50,000 people killed in Korea. That is just about as many as the Vietnam War. But we did that because we drew down our military strength so sharply after World War II that we were so weak that a third rate military power pushed us down in the Korean peninsula just a few years later. So we need to rebuild national security. And we are going to be having the defense bill on the floor here in just a matter of hours. I think tomorrow it will be coming up on the floor. And I want to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] who has done a tremendous job heading the Subcommittee on Military Research and Development. Let me say, before yielding to him, that our chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] has done a great job of taking a few scarce extra dollars that the Republican side of the aisle has put into the budget for defense, not enough of an increase in force structure to what I think it should be, but they have given a few extra dollars. The gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] has allocated that money with only one direction to us. Try to make our national security apparatus stronger, try to get the equipment that the men and women in uniform need and try to see to it that we have the best in terms of quality of life for those men and women. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will allow me to reclaim for a second, that means when our Marines get back from places like Bosnia, places like Somalia, they have very little money to refurbish their equipment and get ready for the war.

Mr. HUNTER. Because if they do not do the environmental cleanups on places like Camp Pendleton, the commander goes to jail if he does not comply.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let me rise briefly to support the Smith amendment and to say that the Mexico City policy that we propagated under the Reagan administration sent a moral message to the world. As I understand it, most of the organizations that heretofore had performed abortions stopped them as an effect and impact of that policy. If we still have that moral policy, and that is my feeling that we do have that and that that is exactly what we are voting on, then we should not support abortions through middlemen. We should not support organizations that support abortion. We ought to keep that message as clear as we did under the Reagan administration, under the Mexico City policy. I would urge a strong yes for the Smith amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman is right on point. The facts are that the taxpayers of the United States have a right to put conditions on money that they earn with their hard work that we send to international organizations. This has been one of the important conditions that we historically have put on, and we should put it on whether the organization indirectly supports abortion or does it directly.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the remarkable dedication and contributions of a constituent in my district, Mr. Wes Bisgaard of Holtville, CA. Wes is the manager of the Imperial County Farm Bureau, but he will soon be retiring and I would like to take a moment to commend his devoted service to his community. The Bisgaard family's move to California reads like the ``Grapes of Wrath''. After the dust bowl the family moved from their farm in North Dakota to California where they joined other family members in operating a dairy farm. Later, the family members began their own farm in Holtville, CA, where they remain today. During World War II, Wes worked for Douglas Aircraft on the new DC-3, and later became a quality control supervisor as the DC-4, the first pressurized aircraft, was developed. This plane was later appropriated by the Federal Government as a war transport plane and renamed the C- 54. During this period Wes met and married Mildred ``Millie'' Eppleman. In 1952, Wes and Millie along with their two children, Karen and Christopher, moved to Imperial Valley to join his brother and once again take up his first love: farming. The Bisgaard brothers farmed 1,000 acres in alfalfa, lettuce, cotton, sugar beets, barley, cabbage, and later wheat for seed. Agriculture is of critical importance to Imperial Valley. Since he arrived in Holtville, Wes has been a very active member of the local and State farming community, serving on a number of advisory boards and commissions. Wes has been a director of the Imperial County Farm Bureau for over 40 years. During that time he served as president of the bureau early in its history, then again from 1990 through 1994, and is now its manager. He served as director for District 1, San Diego and Imperial Counties, of the California Farm Bureau Federation for 11 years, as well as director for its Cal-Farm Insurance Bureau and the Cal-Farm Life Insurance Co. Wes is a 30-year member, and first chairman, for the Cotton Pest Control Board of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. On the international front, Wes has served for nearly 30 years as cochairman of the International Cotton Pest Work Committee, which coordinates scientific information developed by both the United States and Mexico. Salinas Lettuce Marketing Coop helped Imperial Valley farmers form the Highline Lettuce Coop with Wes as one of the founding directors. During a time when farm workers were often sacrificed in favor of increased profits, Wes successfully encourage Highline to build for the Bracero Mexicans a permanent labor camp constructed of block, with showers, a walk-in cooler, air conditioning, etc. These are just a few of Wes Bisgaard's accomplishments. Although Wes is formally resigning from the management of the Imperial County Farm Bureau, his contributions to our community and our State will be long remembered. In fact, if I know Wes, his gifts of time to and his love for our Valley are far from over. I am joined by the many families involved in the farming community of Imperial Valley when I say thank you for all that you have done, and we look forward to working with you in the future. Although the Farm Bureau will miss him, I am certain that he will continue to fight for the needs of the Valley.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I think the question everybody has to ask the committee is this: You have 2.3 million patents granted since 1973. According to the statistics that both sides have cited, there have been 670 submariners in that period of time, and about 30 percent of those were military secrets. That takes us down to less than 400 submariners. We have crafted a piece of legislation that will rip away privacy for millions of inventors so we can make one guy on the face of a magazine, we can take care of that problem.

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

Mr. HUNTER. I just got a letter from the Patent and Trademark Office. It says fully 30 percent of the patents that are going to be issued are not yet issued at 18 months. Will the gentleman agree with that?

Mr. HUNTER. Here is my answer to the gentleman. My answer is that 2 or 3 percent of royalties, if you can afford the lawyer to get them, are no substitute for getting 20 to 30 percent of the action, which is what an inventor gets when he lines up the money, the investors, and he gets to produce his product himself instead of trying after the fact to get partial payment from a company that took his invention.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his explanation.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield, certainly I have an amendment that I will be offering at the end of the other amendments and I will try to make it short and sweet and do everything I can to accommodate our friend. I would anticipate we ought to be finished by 5. I would hate to be at 4:45 or 4:50 and have one to go, but I think we can do it.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to speak just for a minute because the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Goodlatte] made several points about the European and the Japanese system and how they have a large number of high-technology start-ups. I think that goes right to the essence of this publication requirement in the amendment of the gentleman from California [Mr. Campbell]. I want to read a paragraph from a gentleman who is a patent lawyer, considered to be an authority on patents. I think it is a very excellent summary of the problem with early publication. He says: Moreover, if early stage inventions of start-ups, small businesses and individual inventors are prematurely disclosed, the innovators will quickly lose any advantage or headstart to establish financially stronger imitators. Unless start-up businesses can get a strong foothold in the marketplace before infringers appear so that they can afford to assert their patent rights, these rights become virtually worthless. He concludes by saying this, and this goes right to the gentleman's point, he says, ``These are two major reasons that Japan and Europe have virtually no high-technology start-up businesses.'' Now, I think we should all be proceeding from the same page with respect to the facts. As I understand it, and the reason I have this graph up here is because this is a factual graph. It shows that the United States has 175 Nobel laureates in science and technology; Japan has only five and that may be instructive to us here. The information I have is that there are almost no high-technology start-up companies. That is the lifeblood of the American economy. But in Europe and Japan there are almost no high-technology start-up companies, and it is because these little companies need running room. They need to be able to go out before they get a patent and start lining money up. Early publication, according to these inventors that are here, and I am quoting one of their letters, early publication will ``kill us.'' They will lose the one thing that they have, the secrecy; the one thing they can offer, the confidentiality to an investor to get him or her to invest money in their particular operation. So unless the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Goodlatte] has information to the contrary, my information is that there are almost no high- technology start-up businesses in Japan and Europe, and that is because those countries are production heavy. They are not idea heavy, they are production heavy. We have the innovators, we have the creators of ideas, and our people need that protection. Japanese businesses and European businesses, perhaps legitimately, want to aid their industrial base. And the way they aid their industrial base is by getting American ideas into the assembly line quickly and cheaply, and they can do that with early publication. Now, according to the same analyst, the reason there are not a lot of high-technology start-ups in Japan is because once a little inventor comes out with an idea, and it is not protected by patent when he has to publish early, he is immediately flood patented. That means that people patent around him by making very incremental changes in his idea, so that if he varies the slightest to the left or right from this little alley that has been left for him and his invention, he runs into Mitsubishi's or Toshiba's patent or some other large company. There is a reason why we have 175 Nobel laureates in the United States in science and technology, many of whom, as we have discussed on the floor, the inventor of the MRI, the inventor of the pacemaker, and many others who oppose this bill and support the Rohrabacher substitute, our inventors are afraid of early publication and they do not want to see it. So I would support the enlargement of the publication protection that is manifested in the amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Campbell].

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

Mr. HUNTER. The point is you have a different system. It is the publication that kills the early innovator, the entrepreneur.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would say to the gentleman that that is absolutely right. And the other thing is there are big companies that are infringers that, if they had the opportunity, would flood patent around a small entrepreneur.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I guess my point is this. We need to get some running room, some momentum, the opportunity to go out and line up investors before the patent is issued. The point that is made by this patent analyst is very good. He said unless startup businesses can get a strong foothold in the marketplace before infringers appear so that they can afford to assert their rights, that means hire lawyers, these rights will become virtually worthless. It is very easy to spend a lot of money on lawyers early in the process. This early publication takes away their running room and their ability to get a foothold in the investment community and ultimately in the marketplace. That is the problem with early publication. So I strongly endorse Mr. Campbell's amendment that to some degree enlarges publication avoidance rights.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman if he wants to complete his statement.

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

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend for yielding. Let me just say that the gentleman has made my point. My point is not that there is any ethnic difference between the Nobel Prize winners here and the ones in Japan. In fact, the gentleman was chuckling at my pronunciation of a number of these names because there are not many Smiths and Joneses on this list. The point is that these people from all over the globe came to America for a reason. The reason was they got better property rights protection in terms of intellectual property than they do in Japan.