Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. That happened on the East Coast, I think at Oceana.

Mr. HUNTER. That was an F-14B model crashed today.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I convened a panel of the procurement subcommittee of the Committee on National Security to investigate the series of tragic mishaps with respect to F-14 crashed and Aviate B Harrier Marine Corps fighter aircraft crashes that have occurred since the beginning of the year, and, Mr. Speaker, it is very clear to us and to my friend, Mr. Dornan. who has quite a bit of time in an Air Force cockpit, and my good friend, Mr. Cunningham, my seatmate from San Diego, that it is dangerous to be a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps; it is more dangerous to be a pilot when you have a government that will not pay the money that has to be paid to make that aircraft as safe as it can possibly be made. The testimony from the U.S. Marine Corps yesterday was that Harriers are tough aircraft to fly. Almost one-third of the entire Harrier air inventory, aircraft inventory, has crashed since its inception, and we have had three tragic crashes this year of these Harrier Jumpjets. The Marine Corps told us yesterday that we could make that plane 50 percent more safe than it is right now, and we do that by remanufacturing the aircraft and adding safety features. They told us that the Clinton administration has decided not to make 24 of those aircraft as safe as they can be, and when we asked why, we were told because of budgetary constraints. So, Mr. Speaker, for the first time, we are seeing the Clinton defense budget come apart at the seams. We are seeing a defense budget which is costing us; it has been cut so drastically. by 72 percent in the area of modernization, that we are not able to make these aircraft, these Harrier aircraft, as safe as they can be for Marine pilots. Well, Mr. Speaker, the Republicans are coming to their rescue. I have talked with the chairman of the full committee, our good friend, Floyd Spence, and he concurs that we will fix all 24 of those aircraft that right now the Clinton administration does not plan to upgrade with safety upgrades so that the pilots will be more secure than they are flying the aircraft right now. So I want to announce, as the chairman of the procurement subcommittee, that the Republican markup will reflect upgrades, it will cost about $26 million per plane for all 24 of the Harrier aircraft that the Clinton administration has decided, in their infinite wisdom, not to fund. Additionally, on the F-14, and an F-14 crashed today, the Republicans are going to be adding about $83 million for several items that will make that aircraft safer. We are going to come up with a digital flight control system; we are going to install that. We are also going to come up with a system that indicates when the engine is getting overloaded and will advise people in the cockpit that they have to take action fairly quickly. Those are two safety upgrades that we will be funding in the procurement subcommittee for the F-14. So, Mr. Speaker, the Republicans are riding to the rescue in national defense, and Mr. Perry, Secretary Perry, has come down to the House Armed Services Committee and told us that everything is fine with defense. These massive cuts that the Clinton administration has been making according to Dr. Perry have not harmed national defense at all. Well, Mr. Speaker, the Clinton defense budget is coming apart at the seams, and these recent crashes and the lack of initiative on the part of the Clinton administration to make these planes as safe as they can be is only the tip of the iceberg, but the Republicans are going to fix these aircraft. We are going to be making these Harriers as safe as they can possibly be, and we will be funding upgrades to the F-14's to make them as safe as they can be. I am happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I do not want to take much time from my friend.

Mr. HUNTER. In that case, I feel better. But let me just thank him, thank Bob Dornan, for all the great work that he has done on behalf of unborn children and the fact that you are carrying this fight, as you have carried it for many, many years on the House floor, and I agree with you that the President has gone too far, that he stepped too far even for people who are able to look the other way on this issue in his party, and I hope that it is going to pull people off of this bandwagon that the President is putting together for his 1996 presidential campaign.

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about a couple of Republican Presidential candidates who are not leading the polls and have not just won in California and other States. Of course, the gentleman who has done that is Bob Dole. But I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about two friends, because I think that they have a great deal to offer the Republican Party and to the Nation, and I think it would be very unwise for our party and for the leadership that will be emerging from the convention in my hometown in San Diego to ignore either these candidates or the many millions of people whom they represent. Mr. Speaker, those two candidates are my great friend and near-seat mate from California [Mr. Dornan], who sits on the Armed Services Committee with me and whom I have endorsed for President, and another good friend, Pat Buchanan who has made a very spirited run at the Presidential nomination and not quite made it, but, nonetheless, has, I think, touched a nerve with many, many Americans and attracted many Americans to his agenda. Let me start off by saying, Mr. Speaker, that I listened to my father in the past talk to me about political smear campaigns and how people were denigrated by the press, by the liberal media, to the point where they had no chance of winning an election. I remember him first showing me those evidences of such campaigns back in the Barry Goldwater days when Barry was denounced as someone who would get us into nuclear war, and was unfit to serve in the White House, and was supposed to be a very dangerous person. After he concluded an excellent career in the Senate, he was then regarded by the same pundits and liberal media people as a, quote, conservative statesman, but in those days he was bashed a lot. And I noticed that Pat Buchanan has taken a lot of bashing, and I think very unfairly, because I look at his positions with respect to free trade. He opposes President Clinton's NAFTA, so there is something wrong with that position from the liberal media standpoint. He supports the right to life of unborn children, a traditional Republican opinion and position, and of course that is opposed by the liberal media. He supports a strong military, and of course that is opposed by the liberal media which watched with dismay as President Reagan's strong military posture dismantled the Soviet Union and ended the cold war. Mr. Speaker, on a personal note Pat and Shelly are wonderful people. They are fine people, they care about the Nation, they have great compassion for their fellow Americans. And to see the media come out and imply that Pat Buchanan was anti-Semitic, and when you ask why they thought that, they said, well, it is the way he pronounces terms like Goldman Sachs. I thought, my gosh, we live in an age where the media can denounce somebody and call them names because of the way they pronounce a word. I have not seen McCarthyism, but I guess that is probably as close as we will come in these times. So, Pat Buchanan has a great deal to offer the Republican Party. He really has the traditional Republican positions of fair trade, not free trade. Remember that, when John Kennedy offered one of the first free trade bills back in 1962, it was opposed mainly by three Senators: Barry Goldwater, Strom Thurmond, and a Senator named Prescott Bush, the father of the future President, George Bush. Conservatives opposed free trade because we thought that, if you gave away pieces of the American market and did not get anything in return, you were disserving millions of American working people and small businesses, and that is exactly the case today. And Pat Buchanan has been exactly right about NAFTA, and President Clinton, who fathered NAFTA, has been exactly wrong. There was a $3 billion trade surplus over Mexico before NAFTA. Today there is a $15 billion trade deficit. That means billions of dollars gone that would have been coming to Americans who are working in America making those components and those products that now are made in Mexico. We have now a $30 billion trade deficit with Communist China, which even now is building short-range and long-range missiles, has a big weapons market in the Third World, selling weapons to Libya and Iraq and other nations. So Pat Buchanan has traditional Republican principles, and I think it is a tragedy that he was smeared so thoroughly by the American media. I hope that Bob Dole will open wide his party door and the door to the convention to Pat and to my other great friend, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan].

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the extraordinary service and dedication of a constituent in my district, Mr. Robert T. Acker of El Cajon, CA. Robert is a devoted member of this community serving the city of El Cajon for the past 30 years, 14 of these as city manager. He is soon retiring and I would like to take a moment to commend his dedicated service in local government and community programs. A Holtville native, Robert is a graduate of San Diego State University [SDSU] with a master's degree in economics. After service in the U.S. Army, he went to work as an appraiser for the San Diego County Assessor's Office and in 1966, was hired as an administrative analyst for the city of El Cajon where he was promoted to city manager in 1982. During his tenure as city manager, Robert has enthusiastically participated in dedications of public buildings including the El Cajon Fire Headquarters, the El Cajon Community Center, and the El Cajon Library. He is spirited and has always strongly advocated city improvements and prosperity. Robert's involvement and accomplishments extend well beyond serving as the city manager of El Cajon. Aside from working as an assistant professor in public administration at SDSU, he also served as a member of the San Diego Transit Corporation Board of Directors, the City/ County Managers Association, the Ducks Unlimited Steering Committee, the International City Management Association, the National Rifle Association, and the El Cajon Lions Club. This involvement in community service has assisted in raising funds for projects such as Canine Companions, El Cajon Boys and Girls Club, San Diego Service for the Blind, Home of Guiding Hands, Drug Awareness Resistance Education, Tijuana Orphanage Support, and Christmas Baskets for Needy Families. Robert is a symbol of commitment and dedication to his fellow citizens and community. He has pledged a great share of his life to the service of others and he has surely made El Cajon a better place to live. Today, let us honor him for his unwavering contributions. I hope retirement can afford him the enjoyment of his hobbies hunting, fishing, gun collecting, and spending time with his wife and daughter, Susan and Kathryn. Mr. Robert Acker is well-deserving and I wish him great happiness in his future endeavors.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I can understand now why the amendment was offered, because there are a number of mistakes with respect to the facts. The gentleman mentioned that Chief Reyes, Silvester Reyes, who is by far the most famous Border Patrol chief in this country because he actually did something in terms of stemming the tide and holding the line in El Paso, was represented by a San Diego Union editorial writer as being opposed to the fence. After he testified before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims of the Committee on the Judiciary, he stated that, if you had sufficient agencies and you had a triple fence, you could indeed stop illegal immigration. When I sent the editorial that the gentleman just read and another editorial to Silvester Reyes, he responded with a corrective letter to the newspaper admonishing them not to misrepresent his position. His position just a couple of days ago was this: As a former chief of the El Paso Border Patrol sector, I testified last year before Congress on our efforts to control illegal immigration in the El Paso area. I might add that he testified with Mrs. Meissner, head of the INS, who opposed the fence, sitting right next to him and glaring at him as he testified. He said: Representative Duncan Hunter asked me if triple fencing along the border and additional staffing would provide us with the proper resources to control illegal immigration. I replied that it would. Mr. Chairman, now, that is the word from Silvester Reyes. We can cable him, we can pass him on the street, we can phone him, but he has repudiated the statement by the San Diego Union that he really did not mean it when he said that the border fence would stop illegal immigration if it was erected and if it had sufficient staffing. Now, the gentleman has talked about safety. I have had a number of Border Patrol agents to my town meetings, and they like the triple fence and the INS, which has tried to scare its agents, has not told them about the provision in this lengthy Sandia analysis that engineers the fence, which is dedicated to safety, and it said we are going to do a number of things for safety. It said we are going to make sure that the cars are armored that go in between. We are going to give them plenty of turn-around room. And most importantly, we are going to have safety gates that they can exit from on a moment's notice and that backup can proceed into if they are in-between these fences. Mr. Chairman, the border is still out of control, despite the resources that we voted in this Congress. We need to have a secure barrier. The most famous and most knowledgeable and I think one of the Border Patrol chiefs with the best safety record supports this fence. We need to build it. It is in the bill. I would ask all Members to support it.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to give this gentleman more time. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me and also thank him for his leadership and statesmanship in putting together what has been a very difficult bill but nonetheless a very necessary bill, perhaps the most important piece of legislation we will pass this year. Mr. Chairman, I have got the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray], my friend, a fellow San Diegan, with me today. I am reminded that Mr. Bilbray lives just a mile or two from the border, and I am going to talk about border control because that dimension of handling the illegal immigration problem is a very important dimension. This bill doubles the number of Border Patrol. To gain control of a border, we need a couple of things. We need an impediment which in this case is going to be a triple fence that the committee is building. It is a fence that was designed by Sandia Laboratories and a $600,000 study that was done for the INS by the department of drug policy. It has been endorsed by Sylvester Reyes, the most successful Border Patrol Chief in the United States who successfully held the line in El Paso. This triple fence, along with forward deployed 10,000 Border Patrolmen, will help to cut off those 12 smugglers' corridors across the Southwest. Each place where we have an urban population on each side of the border, whether it is San Diego, Tijuana or El Paso or Brownsville, TX, in Juarez or Matamoros, Mexico, we have hotbeds of smuggling that is taking place right now. This bill addresses border control and does it in a very, very effective manner.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray].

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

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, let me join with him in thanking the gentleman from California [Mr. Gallegly] for his great work on helping to put together this package. If he is not here to offer his amendments, I know a number of us will be carrying the torch for him. We also owe a great deal of thanks to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith] who had a very difficult job of putting together in a very statesmanlike way a package that involved not only a lot of figures and a lot of issues, but a lot of passions. We have put together a package here, and I think we should pass this rule and pass this bill, that brings some degree of order to illegal immigration and to legal immigration. The illegal immigration we deal with by adding Border Patrol, by forward deploying those Border Patrolmen to the border, by putting in roads, and by putting in a triple fence, that will make it more difficult for smugglers to move people across the southern border of the United States. The legal immigration we bring some degree of order to by bringing in accountability. That means when people sponsor other people, immigrants, to come to this country, the sponsor has to give some fiscal accountability. That person cannot just come in and get on welfare and bog our system down to the degree of $28 billion a year which the present legal immigrants are costing the system. So it is important that we deal with these two questions together. It is important that we bring order to illegal immigration and to legal immigration. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith] has done an excellent job of balancing these competing interests and giving us an excellent package. We should vote for the rule and for the bill.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, Presidents Bush and Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall with a defense policy that was called peace through strength. They built up our military, rebuilt declining forces, and they forced the Soviet Union to the bargaining table, and they, by doing that, brought stability to the world. Mr. Speaker, despite President Clinton's own Joint Chiefs of Staff recommending that he spend more money on defense to give the right kind of equipment to these young troops that he is deploying all over the world, he has refused to do that. His new defense budget has come down. It drastically cuts the new equipment that his own people recommended he give to his troops, and this President apparently follows a policy of instability through weakness.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. The B-52 is still our Nation's most capable and only dual-role bomber and provides substantial conventional firepower and a strong nuclear deterrent. The committee believes that maintaining the current inventory of 94 B-52's is a cost-effective investment in our Nation's defense. Accordingly, the committee report directs the Air Force to retain in attrition reserve the 28 B-52's programmed for retirement in the Department of Defense budget request. With the funds authorized under the bill, the committee expects the Air Force to keep the 28 attrition reserve aircraft at their current operational B-52 bases, maintained ready to fly and cycled through the active squadrons.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to state, so my colleagues will understand very clearly, and I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] made the point, that this President does not want to defend the United States against incoming ballistic missiles. That was his major objection to this bill, along with the idea that he also wants to have the right to delegate to foreign commanders the command of U.S. troops. We are now going to enter a period in which it is important for Members of this House who feel that defense is important to enter a full-court press this year to develop defenses against incoming ballistic missiles, both for the people of the United States and for our troops in theater. We are going to do this. The President has given up his most solemn responsibility, and that is to defend the people of the United States of America, and he is denied that responsibility in this bill.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman of the committee for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, the fact that we were able to take this bill after it had been vetoed by the President and run it back through a limited conference and get it back on the floor and, hopefully, get it back to the President's desk for signature, is a tribute to our chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence]. I also want to thank the ranking member, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums]. When we put this abbreviated conference together to get the bill back through, the gentleman from California worked equally hard to see to it that we had a Defense authorization bill. It is important that we have this bill. This bill is about $8 billion more than the President's initial suggestion. On the other hand, the President's own vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Owens, has said that we need to spend $20 billion more per year on procurement. In this bill we not only have the pay raise and the increased housing allowance for the troops, but we have modernization. We have increased airlift, increased sealift, more ammunition, more precision guided munitions, and such very basic things as trucks and other transportation equipment, so we are giving the troops the equipment that they need to do the job. Mr. Speaker, let me just conclude by saying we did strip out missile defense from this bill. We said in our bill that we would defend the United States against missile attack and we would have that system, that defense system, ready by the year 2003. The President said, ``I object to defending the United States of America against missile attack,'' and that was his primary reason for a veto. Mr. Speaker, on this date we should launch a campaign to overturn the decision by President Clinton to leave this country defenseless against missile attack. We live in an age of missiles. It is something the President has resisted. We are going to start the campaign as of this day and, hopefully, at the end of this year we will have a defense authorization bill that builds a defense against ballistic missiles.

Mr. HUNTER

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for the great work that he did as chairman of personnel. You know, I think all of us owe a real debt to our chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence], a person totally without guile, a straightforward guy who really presided over some pretty contentious sessions of the Committee on National Security and put this bill together and brought it around, at least for the first run, with his colleague from South Carolina, the chairman of the committee in the other body. He really pulled us all together, and I think did a great job as the first Republican chairman of the Committee on National Security since Dewey Short of Missouri in, what, 1953.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the ranking member, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], for his cooperation in this effort to have another shot at the authorization bill, and also the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Skelton]. Let me just tell my colleagues that when we put this bill together and when we do anything with respect to armed services, as the gentleman from California, Mr. Cunningham has said, we have as many meetings in the Democrat offices--in this case in Ike Skelton's office--on our procurement subcommittee as we have in my office in trying to ascertain, after the hearings are over, what our military needs to protect the country are. Obviously the White House has some very specific objections--a laundry list, if you will--of very specific objections to this bill and we have to work around those objections. The gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] has laid them out fairly thoroughly in the debate that we had in the effort to override the President's veto. Let me just say in a couple of areas that the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Hefley] is right and the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is right. We have the pay raise, which is absolutely important to our people. We have the increased housing allowance. We have a number of other quality of life issues that we need to get passed. We owe them to our people in uniform. That is the real vote to support the troops in Bosnia, is to support their families and support their standard of living, and Members can do that by helping us get this bill back the second time around. With respect to missile defense, the President has some problems with the missile defense provisions that we placed in the bill the first time around. We need to work on those provisions, to try to accommodate the White House. On the other hand, let me just remind my colleagues that we live in an age of missiles. Immediately after Desert Storm, this House rose as a body and established that we should have a defense, a national defense against ballistic missiles. We were sensitive to it because we saw the Scuds coming in and hitting our troops in Saudi Arabia and causing the greatest distress that was caused in that war with respect to American personnel. So we rose as a body. The Senate rose as a body and in 1991 we said we are going to have a missile defense by 1996. It is now 1996 and we have nothing. A few months after the war was over, we forgot about it and we went on with business as usual. We need to remind this President that this is a very, very sensitive and very, very serious area that we must address. So as we move into these negotiations, I know it is going to be important that we have the cooperation--and I know we will have it, and I know he has pledged to do it and he is a fair individual--of the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], working along with his other members to see to it that the administration communicates with us in a very clear and concise way, and that they remember that even the President of the United States has an interest in missile defense. He has got troops in theaters all over the world now, and some of those troops are going to be exposed at least to short-range ballistic missiles and to date, ladies and gentlemen, we have no effective defense against incoming ballistic missiles shot at our troops in theater or shot at any of the United States. Second, the U.N. command and control is going to be an area of consternation, I think, in this second attempt that we are going to have to pass the bill, and I know it is an area the President has problems with. The gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] has talked about that. But under the leadership of our chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence], I think we laid out some very commonsense constraints that every family that has a young man or woman in uniform is interested in getting passed. That is, to see to it that there is a clear chain of command and accountability from every young person in uniform to their commander. I would simply say let us work in conference. We look to the White House to be cooperative with us and I hope it can get through the second time.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman of the committee for yielding time to me. Let me tell my colleagues, this is a basic difference between the President of the United States and the Republican majority in the House, the full House, and the American people whom they represent, because we do want to have a defense against incoming ballistic missiles. The President does not want to have a defense against incoming ballistic missiles. In 1991 in the wake of Desert Storm, after we saw those Scud missiles come in and do damage against our troops, we rose as a body in both bodies, the House and the Senate, and we passed a mandate that we should build a defense, a national defense, against incoming ballistic missiles, and that we should have that defense completed by, guess when? 1996. Well, folks, it is 1996, the Berlin Wall was down at that time when we made that mandate, so this was not in consideration of the cold war, and we have not done a thing toward that goal that both Houses set in motion. In fact, some of the leaders on the Democratic side who have urged the President to veto this bill on the basis that it defends America were authors of that initial legislation that says, we should defend America. Now, on a couple of specifics. We had three basic elements in our plan to defend this country against ballistic missiles. One was that we shall deploy a system, we shall deploy a system; No. 2, it shall be at multiple sites, not just one site; and No. 3, that it shall be by the year 2003. To pacify the President on this issue, we took out the second element, the multiple sites. We took that out. I objected to taking that out, and a number of other Members did, but we took it out to get a bill. Now the President says that it implies that we shall likely require multiple sites, so it is still not quite good enough. We want to defend America; the President does not. Let us override his veto.