Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding me the time and taking out this time to talk about Bill. Steve Horn just left and spoke about the picture. I would ask all colleagues who have not seen it to take a look at that picture of Bill Emerson carrying the stretcher on which resided a Congressman who was shot up in, I believe it was, the 1954 shooting in the House Chamber when several Members were hit. The picture of Bill Emerson in that picture, I think, is representative of what we saw in our association with him in the House as a Member of Congress, because there was Bill Emerson, the lead carrier on that stretcher. He was pointing out the direction in which they should go with that thing. As usual, he was big, he was fearless, he had a lot of courage. Just as he was in his career in Congress, he was right in the middle of things and that represented Bill. Bill was a real fighter, and when he took on a cause, whether he had two people on his side or a majority, it did not make any difference. He believed in the good fight and yet he was also very forgiving. He was forgiving to us, his colleagues, when we disagreed with him on issues. On a personal basis, he was very forgiving, too. We were sworn in in 1980, and as the Speaker knows, I was holding my son in my arms, little Dunk. Bill had his daughters on the floor. Incidentally, little Dunk held me in his arms the other day and would not put me down and it upset me. But Bill decided to buy firewood from the Hunter firewood organization. My boys would go up to the Blue Ridge Mountains with me. We would cut firewood, load it in a horse trailer and find victims, I mean customers, for that firewood in Washington, DC. I see the gentleman from Texas, Larry Combest, back here is one of our victim purchasers. I asked Bill after I delivered him about three loads of firewood, most of which daddy cut and the boys handled a little bit, but after I delivered that wood to him for several weeks and he had paid my sons, I asked him how it was burning. He said it is wonderful. He said, ``If you will just reimburse me for the gasoline I am having to put on it, everything will be fine, Hunter. But that represented Bill Emerson, big hearted, forgiving to his friends and all of his colleagues. The Founding Fathers, in putting together this great structure for a government, for a democracy, needed one important ingredient, and that was to have people in this Chamber who were compassionate, who had courage, and were forgiving and would relentlessly represent the ideas and the philosophies of their constituents. Bill Emerson was such a man.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula] for his support for the building of roads and fences to assist our border patrol agents in California.

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

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise for the purpose of engaging the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula] in a colloquy. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman knows, smuggling in the border region of eastern San Diego County has reached epidemic proportions. A large portion of the border region consists of lands managed by the BLM and National Forest System. To stem this tide of smuggling, the Border Patrol needs additional border fencing and access to roads on these Federal lands. I know the gentleman is familiar with the committee's report, which identifies this border region as an area of high priority. It is my hope that it is the chairman's intention to urge strong measures to help stem the massive flow of illegal aliens and narcotics plaguing this area.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce legislation to protect a small business industry from unfair Government competition. These small businesses exist in every congressional district and employ tens of thousands of people. The Government agency which is competing with them is one of the largest organizations in the world--the U.S. Postal Service [USPS]. My bill will insure that the Postal Service does not compete with these small businesses, while still maintaining the viability of the Postal Service to maintain its core business: the delivery of mail. Over the last 15 years, the American marketplace has fostered many new industries; one of these is the commercial mail receiving agent [CMRA]. The average American knows these businesses by their brand names: MailBoxes, Etc; Postal Annex; PostNet; Pakmail; and Parcel Plus. Together these franchise organizations represent over 4,000 store owners in all parts of the country, with an additional 6,000 stores which are not affiliated with any franchise organization. The CMRA industry is about 10,000 strong. What are CMRA's? This industry provides value added and ancillary services to postal customers and serve as mini-offices for many home- based businesses and sales people. Specifically, CMRA's provide the materials and help their customers safely pack parcels to ensure safe delivery; they help customers identify the most efficient and cost effective manner to send their packages; they oversee mailboxes and offer personalized postal services to their customers; and these are just to name a few. Over 15 years ago, Tony DeSio saw the need for these services within his community of San Diego County, and he opened the first Mailboxes Etc. The rest, as they say, is history. These services simply were not provided at the USPS, however, given the rate by which this industry has exploded in less than two decades, there were clearly a need within our communities. This new kind of postal store provided these services and provided them quickly and efficiently. In a very short time, this one small store has grown into an industry of nearly 10,000 small business men and women who every day provide these services to their friends, neighbors, and customers. So what is the problem here, Mr. Speaker. So far, this story sounds like the American dream. Every day, American small business owners invest their own capital and work to achieve the American dream. That would be the case in this instance if it were not for one major problem: the Postal Service which has enormous taxpayer supported advantages, has decided to directly compete with this industry. Mr. Speaker, that is simply wrong. I am a big supporter of the U.S. Postal Service. Like every other Member of this body and every American, I depend upon the hard work and dedication of the Postal Service employees for the timely delivery of my mail 6 days a week, and I want a strong USPS. I do not think it is fair, however, that the Postal Service should start targeting small businesses for its revenue. This CMRA industry is home grown, and it should not be preyed upon by the U.S. Government. After all the USPS is a government industry with the following enormous advantages: The USPS does not charge tax on its retail items--that is a 5-10 percent advantage right there. The USPS is self-insured as an agency of the U.S. Government--these small business CMRA's have to purchase insurance. The USPS does not have to make a profit--there is nothing that requires them to be profitable as far as I know. When they are under threat of not breaking even, they request a postal rate increase. The USPS borrows money from the U.S. Federal Reserve at the most favorable rates--CMRA's have to borrow money at market rates. The USPS has a statutory monopoly on the delivery of first class mail, the revenue of which can be used to subsidize other services. Perhaps the biggest advantage of all is its size. If the Postal Service was a private business, it would be ranked as the 12th largest business in the Nation, and 33d largest in the world. Is it right that the Postal Service should enter into competition with small businesses with all of these inherent advantages? Would the Congress stand by and allow Ford to maintain a monopoly, while letting them use their profits to compete against small businesses on a different front? Would the Congress let Exxon compete with small businesses if it had limited sovereign immunity and was represented by the Department of Justice? The answer is a resounding no. Mr. Speaker, the Postal Service has a job to do--deliver the mail and sell postage. That is what it was designed to do by the Founding Fathers. These core services are what the Postal Service is good at, and what it should continue to do. Offering ancillary services only detracts from their core mission. My bill, the Postal Service Core Business Act, specifically prohibits the USPS from getting into the CMRA business. It addresses the question of what is the proper role for the Postal Service in areas where private industries already provide the service. That role is to stay out of private businesses way and let the marketplace work. My bill is remarkably simple. The Postal Service is prohibited from competing with private industry, like the CMRA's, unless the Postal Service was offering the service nationwide as of January 1, 1994. The purpose of the bill is to draw a clear line as to what the USPS can and cannot do. Such a line is necessary. I am familiar with reports of postal executives stating that they need to get into retail businesses to protect the Postal Service. That is simply not true. This is an agency which made $1.5 billion last year and has stated that it expects to make in excess $500 million this year. This is not a suffering agency. Furthermore, the USPS is an agency which does not seem to understand its mission. Representatives of the Postal Service have lauded the organization as the country's largest retail distribution system with 50,000-plus outlets, and announced their intention to increase its retail revenue by $1 to $1.5 billion in the next few years. This is wrong. All of those outlets were built with taxpayer money and stamp revenue. The U.S. Government and the taxpayer built this system, but not to be a competitor with the private sector. Mr. Speaker, this is a vital bill. I again voice my strong support for the Postal Service, I want to help it remain strong and vital. Competing in industries which the private sector has created is not the way to meet their goal. My bill would redirect the Postal Service to its core mission: Mail delivery and stamp sales. That's why I call the bill the Postal Service Core Business Act of 1996. American corporations have learned that to be successful, they must concentrate on their core business. The Postal Service needs to understand this too. Congress has the ultimate authority over the Postal Service. The House Postal Service Subcommittee, chaired by my friend and colleague, John McHugh, is beginning to craft postal reform legislation. I hope that the subcommittee will give my bill serious consideration. This issue needs to be addressed. A vital Postal Service is critical to our Nation's future, but Congress must not stand by and let a giant Government agency destroy a whole industry of small private businesses. It is interesting to note that all of these CMRA's stores are independently owned and operated. There is not one franchise organization which runs stores as a corporation. This makes the industry very unique, and has directly contributed to their profitability. Mr. Speaker, there is not a single congressional district without at least one of these CMRA stores within its borders. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to join me in this legislation, which will most assuredly effect a small business within their hometown. This bill is pro-Postal Service and pro-competition. Every American has the right to the American Dream. These small business owners look to us to insure that their dream is not taken from them.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Florida for his point, and he makes it so well. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman from Minnesota who was just talking would just listen for 1 minute, we added in procurement about $6 billion to the request that was made by the services. Now, the entire approximately $40 billion in request that was made by the services, that is about a 70-percent cut under what we used to spend in the Reagan years. That was all requested by the services. So, the base budget that was requested by the services was approved. We then asked the services, after Mr. Perry said we really need an additional $20 billion in modernization spending, we then added $6 billion after we asked the services what they wanted. They came up with a list of $15 billion. The increased $6 billion that we added was 95 percent requested by the services. So if my friend looks at the total procurement bill that we have before us right now, less than 1 percent of that bill is congressional initiatives that were not requested by the services. And I would just ask the gentleman if he listened to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young], he listens to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha] and other leaders on the committee. The gentleman says he trusts the Pentagon. Fine. The Pentagon has 99 percent of this budget, 1 percent, like the smart guys in Congress who kept the F-117 Stealth program going when the Pentagon said stop; those were people like Mr. Murtha, Mr. Young, and other people. Don't you trust your own leadership in the committee and in the Congress to even add or even participate in 1 percent of the defense damage, or do you want to take a total veto from the Pentagon? What is the answer to that? Do you trust them?

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, first, here is what is appropriate to this gentleman. What is appropriate to this gentleman is to put in the Armed Services bill what we need to defend the country. That means we hold hearings like the ones we had on aircraft safety, on Army and Marine ammo, on the needs of the Navy, on the needs of the bomber force, and we put together a bill that we think does that. And sometimes, as in the case of the F- 117, Congress is right and the Pentagon is wrong. When we said we need F-117's, they said, no, you can kill the program now. We said, no, we need them. So we do not always agree. But the idea the gentleman has put forth that the Pentagon is always right and that Congress cannot have any different idea about a weapon system, so if we are off 1 percent, we are wrong, I think the idea the gentleman puts forth is highly invalid. I am telling the gentleman again, the increases we put together were 95 percent requested by the Army, the Air Force, and the Marines.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, absolutely.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for getting this time for me. Let me just say that under the formula that the gentleman from Wisconsin has offered, that if a job, if a particular defense job amounts to $100,000 or more per job, and if it is not requested by the services that it should not be authorized and appropriated, let me just suggest that under the formula he has offered the F-117 stealth aircraft would not be with us in the numbers it is with us today because of the fact that program was put forth by Congress over the objections of the administration and because it is such a high-tech program it cost a lot per job. But that aircraft did much more work in the Desert Storm operation than any of the conventional aircraft. It had stealth capability. It was highly valuable. So we have a very arbitrary equation that the gentleman has tried to stick in in an attempt to embarrass the Committee on National Security, and I am just here to tell the gentleman we took requests from all the services. We had $15 billion in requests on system; over 95 percent commonality of the additional spending was in fact spending that was requested by the services, and ultimately we only put in about $6 billion in additional funds in modernization. So the services requested $15 billion, far more than we put in, we put in about $6 billion, and our budget was put together before that analysis was done. We put the budget together and we said we want to do the same thing the President does, we want you to tell us how many jobs are in our budget just like he goes out and talks about how many jobs are in his budget.

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

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

Mr. HUNTER. If I could take back my time, I agree with the gentleman, but I think it is also important to have the facts on the table. The facts on the table, according to the report I have gotten back, is the increase in defense expenditures we put in this year, along with making the country more secure, provides an additional 200,000 plus jobs above and beyond the level that the President was talking about in California. I think it is important to have a complete record, and I might remind my friend that the President did not make that speech to the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to a security group. He made it to workers who were concerned about their jobs. He was plainly making a pitch to aerospace workers to the effect that the Clinton administration is going to maintain aerospace jobs. We say fine. We would also like to put on the record exactly how many jobs are created by this defense bill.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and let me say from the national security side and the procurement subcommittee we also asked the Air Force what they needed, and they, in fact, sent these aircraft over to us on a list. They do want it, and we are having that list sent over here and we will supply it to the gentleman from Wisconsin whenever he wants it. It is requested and it is very important to the Air Force.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let me say to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey], my friend, it is not the shelf life of the aircraft that is important; it is the survival time and the survivability of the pilot who is flying the aircraft who may happen to be in a kill zone, meaning that he is being tracked by a SAM system with a missile at the end of that SAM system. Now, the F-22 has a stealth capability. That means if we have people with SAM's down on the ground aiming at our aircraft with an American pilot, they have a much smaller chance of being able to hit that American airplane than they do with the F-15's which have more shelf life. We preserved the F-117 program, we in Congress preserved it. It served us well in Desert Storm. We should preserve the F-22 program because that will save the lives of American pilots and project our air power.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to get the same courtesy I gave the gentleman when he did not want to yield. We have a budget that is 99 percent put together by the Pentagon, 1 percent put together by the members of the defense committees and the Members of Congress. I think that is a pretty good balance, and I think the good judgment and wisdom of Members like the ones who wanted to see the changes in the aircraft that would bring about greater safety, like those who wanted to see greater ammunition accounts should be listened to and relied on by our fellow Members of Congress. I thank the gentleman. modification to amendment offered by mrs. schroeder

Mr. HUNTER. And I would ask the gentleman, and I have yielded to the gentleman a lot more than he yielded to me.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time. If the gentleman will listen carefully to me, I am talking about 90 percent of the add-on. The add-on is approximately $6 billion. But that is not the $39 billion that the Pentagon sent over to us under the Clinton budget. If the gentleman would add all of that together, take 95 percent of the add-on of the total procurement bill, that is, everything we buy in the modernization accounts, roughly 1 percent or less is done purely by congressional initiative. All of the rest of the items have been requested by the services.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words and rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I want to address my friend from Wisconsin who has held that list up, which incidentally I have not seen yet, but I as the chairman of the procurement subcommittee in National Security requested the information from DOD that the gentleman has in that book. I am the guy that asked for that information. Although I have not yet received my copy of the book, I am glad he has got it. But let me just say, Mr. Chairman, that we put a request together after we had held extensive hearings, after all the services had come in, after the services made their requests for what they needed, and the chiefs of the services requested some $15 billion in additional modernization above and beyond what President Clinton presented for them in his budget. When they did that, we held extensive hearings. We had 3 major themes. One of our themes was first to give enough ammo to the troops so they could carry out the two-MRC scenario. We plused up the ammo accounts with the Marines and with the Army. We put in precisely, in those ammunition accounts, what they asked for. Second, we wanted to arm the bombers with precision-guided munitions because we have no precision-guided munitions to speak of in our bomber force today. We put that together. Third, we had hearings on aviation safety. After the crashes of the F-14s and the AV-8Bs, we said to the Navy and the Marine Corps, ``What do you need to make your planes safer?'' They said, ``Here it is'' and we went down from there and asked the services to give us their request. When they gave us their requests, the bill that we built was 95 percent, in the additions, 95 percent consistent with what was requested by the services. In some cases, I believe the Navy, it was as high as 99 percent requested. Having said that, at the same time I thought that it was important, since our President was going to places like California and standing before all the McDonnell Douglas workers and saying, ``My defense bill means jobs,'' that they should have additional information, the rest of the story. The rest of the story is that while the President's bill might mean jobs, so did the bill that we were putting together in the Armed Services Committee. So I asked our staff to put together the number of businesses and the number of jobs that would be increased in the defense plus-up that is manifest in the bill before us today. We wanted that to be put together by the same gentlemen who put together the President's brag sheet that he was using at McDonnell Douglas in California and other places. That is a fact. It is a fact that defense spending is different from foreign aid spending, for example, in that it does produce jobs in the defense industrial base and the Members of this House have a right to know what that is. But if the gentleman is implying that somehow we put together a list after we had gone through and analyzed districts, that is absolutely wrong. The chairman of the full committee said the most important thing we have got here is what the services want. He asked the services to go on record. They went on record. We gave them what they asked for. For example, in the ammunition account, and the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] mentioned a few items himself to me that were important items, we looked at some of those items, and some of them we were responsive to the request because he was right, the services did not need them. So we did precisely what the services needed. In the ammo account, for example, every single ``T'' that was crossed and ``I'' that was dotted in type of munition was given that was requested by the Marine Corps or by the Army. There is nothing inappropriate about that list. I would be happy to take a look at it.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to make a couple of closing remarks, first to my friend, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Crane], a dear friend and one of the real leaders in this Congress with respect to trade. I know that the President's, the Clinton administration's appointees in the Pentagon have said there is no threat to national security. They also told us the other day and repeated in a statement there is no threat to this country in terms of incoming ballistic missiles. Both of us disagree with the second statement that they made, and I think we should both disagree with the first statement they have made. Mr. Chairman, I want to remind my colleagues that all of the nations which are signatories to this agreement, all the major nations that are asking us to give up our national shipbuilding program, are nations that in this century have been saved militarily or protected militarily by America's national shipbuilding program. They will wait for us to work this agreement and make it right before they sign it. Second, my colleagues, this is a sovereignty issue. We are doing the same thing we did in the World Trade Organization, where we are giving up the right to a foreign judge to decide what is a military program. And I would just remind Members that the latest World Trade Organization ruling under WTO, in which foreign judges said Brazil and Venezuela can send dirty gas into the United States and, in the absence of that, retaliate against Americans, because they said that our environmental laws were in conflict with the World Trade Organization's ideas of what those laws should be. We will see exactly the same thing here because these foreign tribunals reserve to themselves the definition of what is an American military shipbuilding program. This is a sovereignty issue. Every single conservative should vote against the bill and for the Bateman amendment because it fixes some of those sovereignty problems on that basis. This is also predominantly a national security issue. I would hope that when national security goes head to head with economic considerations, national security with respect to maritime power should predominate. Please vote for the Bateman amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from Virginia for yielding to me. I want to note to my colleagues in the full committee and all the Members that this is one of those occasions, as you can see with respect to this substitute amendment, there is solidarity in the Committee on National Security, on the Democrat side, on the Republican side, on all shades of the political spectrum. This is the reason: No matter how much we disagree about weapons systems and about strategies and about budget numbers, we all agree on one thing, one fact that comes home to us every time we have a conflict. When we move out to project American power, we carry that power, whether it is marines or soldiers or ammunition or aircraft and all the logistics that you have to take to a foreign place to fight a war on ships. In Desert Storm we carried 95 percent of our war materiel on ships, not on airplanes, and everybody knows that. The gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] knows that. The gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] knows that. Every member of the committee knows that. Every Member of the House knows that. With respect to our ability to move to change this amendment, all of our allies know that. All of the signatories of this agreement know that. South Korea is not going to complain because we want to maintain our shipbuilding base. South Korea exists because we had a shipbuilding base. We saved them as the North Koreans were driving down the Korean Peninsula and the Chinese shortly thereafter because we were able to move an American blocking force in there, hold the line and gradually push it back. Our European allies are not going to complain because two times in this century we have saved Europe with American ships carrying American personnel and war materiel. Our allies who depended on the lifeline in the Gulf war understand that, while we had to rely on rent-a-ships in that case, 95 percent of the American equipment that was carried to that war was carried on ships. Now, this bill, if it is not amended by the national security substitute, is going to do some bad things because theoretically it excludes military construction but it reserves for foreign judges the definition of what is a military program. It warns us against ``disguising commercial shipbuilding in military programs.'' That means somebody else is going to be interpreting what is an American military program. Is a prepositioning ship an American military program or just another way to have commercial cargo or to have logistics that you might be taking on a rent-a-ship? Is that an American military program? In the WTO we are now seeing these decisions come home where they have enforced Brazil's right to send dirty gas into the United States because foreign judges have said American environmental laws are invalid. We have seen the problem with giving to foreign judges the right to arbitrate and to determine what is an American military program. Let me urge all of my colleagues to support the national security position on this and vote against the full bill on final passage.