Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me say I support him in his efforts to inject some common sense into this arbitrary application of law that defies science. The best scientists in the world have supported our situation in San Diego, where they say nature takes care of this; you do not have to spend $2 billion, EPA, we can spend it somewhere else where we desperately need it. Science also supports the gentleman from Long Beach. The point is, the gentleman says this opens the door. Let me say to my friend from New Jersey, the door should always be open to reason, common sense, and science. That is precisely what we are injecting in this argument today. With all the programs, good programs, that must take reductions because of the deficit problem, the idea that you do not use common sense to reduce spending where it does not have to be done makes no sense. So I support the gentleman.

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

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone].

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

Mr. HUNTER. As I understand it, this permanentizes our waiver. If we do not achieve it, we will be back in the same boat perhaps in a year or two begging the Federal Government not to force us to spend in San Diego several billions of dollars.

Mr. HUNTER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, the tie goes to the runner. We would rather have the local bureaucrats making decisions than those in Washington, DC.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Waxman] who has agreed that the San Diego case is a valid one.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, mentally and physically disabled people are being helped by computers in two homes for the disabled because of techniques developed by Lloyd Hartvigsen. He credits part of the success for the lab he established at the Home for Guiding Hands at Lakeside, CA, to Lorraine Barrack, now 36 years of age, who has had cerebral palsy since birth. ``It just made sense that people who can't speak might find their voice with the aid of a computer,'' said Mr. Hartvigsen, a retired printer who established a 10-terminal lab for residents of the Home for Guiding Hands. The mother of Lorraine Barrack, Mrs. Elaine Barrack, said ``It's the first time my daughter has been able to write us a note that says `I love you.' This was the first year she's been able to send out Christmas cards. You just can't know how precious these notes and letters are to me.'' Mr. Hartvigsen, working with Lorraine's family, decided that the wand and touch screen would be perfect, since she had control of her head movements. ``With a touch screen, everything you do with a keyboard can be done just by touching the screen,'' he explained. ``To use the computer, Lorraine puts on a cap with a foot-long wand attached. By leaning forward and tapping the wand on certain parts of the computer screen, she can write a note or play a game.'' Lorraine and 14 classmates at the Home for Guiding Hands use the computer system to do schoolwork, to paint and draw, and also to learn to type and send letters to relatives and friends. Mr. Hartvigsen is also employed part-time as a computer instructor at St. Madeleine Sophie's Center for the Handicapped in El Cajon, CA. He began volunteer work at the Home for Guiding Hands in 1988, but it was in the past 4 years that he realized how helpful computers could be as communication tools for the developmentally handicapped. Originally a volunteer at the Home for Guiding Hands, he was hired several months ago by the Home to operate the computer lab that he had set up. He now instructs residents of the Home in the use of computers, as well as residents of the St. Madeleine Sophie's Center. Mr. Hartvigsen is the son of Austin Hartvigsen of Santee and the late Mrs. Austin Hartvigsen, both of whom were volunteers for several years at the naturalization ceremonies in San Diego. They welcomed the new citizens, answered any questions they might have, and helped them register to vote. The family is an outstanding example of the best in volunteerism in America.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, let me just briefly answer my friends who just spoke about the defense budget numbers. From my calculations the President's defense budget cuts $127 billion below the Bush baseline. In practical terms, that means that under this President, we have reduced the Army from 18 divisions to 12 divisions. We have reduced our air wing equivalents from about 24 to 13. We have reduced the Navy from about 540 ships to about 340, almost a 40 percent cut. We are going down radically. However, Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about something else tonight, because the gentleman mentioned defense, and this happens to be the anniversary, May 10, 1972, of our colleague, the gentleman from California, Duke Cunningham, being shot down in the skies over Vietnam, having shot down five MiG aircraft, and I understand at least three of them were in the air, and being nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor for flying into a pack of MiG aircraft that were on his wingman's tail, and probably would have killed his wingman, had Duke not flown his aircraft into that enemy air formation. Duke, we commend you. While we are at it, I thought I might talk about a few other unsung heroes. Those are people who have been taking a lot of hits lately from the President. They are called talk show hosts. We have a few of them in San Diego. One of them, Roger Hedgecock, is a leader of talk radio in KSDO in San Diego. The President apparently does not like him. He criticizes the President a lot. He led a group of citizens back here a few weeks ago, when we had the balanced budget vote in the House of Representatives, and Roger Hedgecock staged his talk show, his talk radio show, from the Halls of the U.S. Capitol. He brought back in excess of 100 U.S. citizens, people from all walks of life, who walked door to door, not professional lobbyists, but people who went door to door and talked to their Congressmen and other Congressmen about voting for, of all things, a balanced budget. We have another talk show host, Peter Weisbach, in San Diego, KOGO radio, who thought that perhaps the Mexican bailout, the $20 billion of taxpayers' money that we sent to Mexico, was not a good idea; obviously, somebody else who disagreed with the President's policies. The President apparently does not like that. Mike Reagan is another talk show host who appears on KOGO, and many times I have been on Mike's show talking about American foreign policy. He has educated our listeners in areas in which most Americans do not pay a great deal of attention. I can remember listening to Stacy Taylor of KFMB, my neighbor up in Alpine, CA. Stacy is a talk show host that you might classify as liberal or moderate, except for his strong belief in the second amendment. I do not know exactly how you would classify him, but I think that the way he conducts his show is provocative. I think it is informative. He takes me on a lot, takes on a lot of the political figures, takes on the President now and then, and that is not bad. Lastly, we have Hudson and Bauer of KFMB in San Diego. They were invited by President Clinton when he thought maybe he could get talk radio on his side to come back and have their talk show located on the White House grounds. through all the talk show hosts who were located on the White House grounds, at President Clinton's invitation, giving their commentary on American politics, and this President's performance. When the President thought that he could bring these people to his side and swing opinion in his direction, he lobbied the talk show hosts. He thought they were great people. However, they listened to people, and most Americans are fairly conservative. Apparently, he has not appreciated the heat that he has taken from these people. In a couple of weeks, Mr. Speaker, we are going to celebrate and commemorate the Americans who lost their lives in battles in this country and outside of this country, from Bunker Hill to Belleau Wood to Inchon in Korea, to Khe Sanh, to the Persian Gulf, and those Americans who lost their lives fought, of course, for that broad array of freedoms that we generally describe as liberty in this great land. One of those greatest freedoms is the right to criticize your elected officials. Therefore, Mr. President, when you listen to talk show hosts and you do not like to the fact that they are criticizing you or taking you on, do not worry. Do not complain. It is the sound of freedom.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to just tell the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman], my good friend, that there are 98,000 children in her district, and their parents could certainly use this $500 per child tax deduction. Working people understand that, and let me underscore a point that the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] made so effectively when he talked about blue-collar workers and how important this bill is. Mr. Chairman, blue-collar workers cannot hire each other. They need to have somebody who has enough capital who is not giving that money to the Government, to Uncle Sam, to be able to buy that extra piece of equipment, expand that facility, put those extra 2, or 3, or 5, or 10 people on the payroll, and thereby give them some help, and help their children, help their family and also expand, ultimately, revenues to the United States. This is in many ways a blue-collar tax cut. Mr. Chairman, the smartest thing Democrats can do is vote for it; the smartest thing President Clinton can do is sign it.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I might just say to the gentlewoman who just spoke that my understanding is that this special tax break that the Democrats are complaining about was slipped in by a Democrat. So I think that is where the investigation would lead. Let us get back to something that is very important to this country. These are two models of what is known as ``brilliant eyes.'' That is important to everybody who is concerned about national security. That means that if Saddam Hussein launched a missile on our troops in theater in the Middle could relay the information back to either an American ship or American theater antimissile forces and they could launch a missile like we launched the Patriots against the Scuds that occurred in desert Storm. They could launch a missile at the incoming ballistic missile and knock it out of the sky before it damaged American troops or American equipment. These are on display in 2118 Rayburn. We have an SDI exhibit on display today. I would urge all Members to come down and look at the emerging technology we are building for missile defense.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, let me thank the chairman of the full committee and the chairman of the subcommittee and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha] who I know worked so hard to put this together. Mr. Chairman, this really is an emergency supplemental. We use the term ``emergency'' many times, but this really is an emergency. Those of us on the Committee on Armed Services just had the Joint Chiefs of Staff in front of us a few minutes ago, and we asked the chiefs what would happen in terms of training and readiness if we did not pass this thing. General Sullivan, Chief of Staff of the Army, said, ``Readiness will drop off the table.'' He expanded on that by saying all training, all army training will cease May 31. He furthered that by saying he would have to stop the purchase of spare parts. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Mundy, said under this new policy of going around the world, as the chairman has pointed out, exercised by the Clinton administration, the Marine Corps has increased what is known as personnel tempo. That means whipping personnel around the world, a few days back at home, then back out in the field, by 300 percent over what it was during the cold war. This is an absolute emergency to get this money in. Let me just say as a Member who had one of his projects taken up, canceled to pay for this, a San Diego project, I have looked at what the committee has done and I have enough faith in what they have done to accept that and to vote for the bill, anyway. But this is an emergency in the truest sense of the word. If you believe in having readiness and having the ammunition, the spare parts and the maintenance for the young men and women who operate this military, vote ``yes'' on this bill.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call the attention of the House to an article by Mr. Lewis Lehrman that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, February 10. In the spirit of President's Day, Mr. Lehrman's article on Abraham Lincoln is something I believe that we as an institution should remember about a man who has taught us so much. I submit Mr. Lehrman's article for the Record. [From the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 10, 1995] Work Is the Main Thing (By Lewis E. Lehrman) Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday we celebrate on Sunday, is generally remembered for winning the Civil War and freeing the slaves. He should be. But the great lost truth about our 16th president is that during most of his political career he focused, not on slavery, but on a policy for economic growth and equal opportunity for the new nation. As Lincoln explained over and over, slavery was an involuntary economic exchange of labor, based on coercion; and, therefore, it was theft. Slavery, in short, was the antithesis of free labor, and thus Lincoln opposed it on moral and economic principle. One of the hidden strengths of Lincoln's political philosophy was its grounding in a thorough grasp of economic theory and policy. That Mr. Lincoln had a coherent economic philosophy is one of the most obvious facts that emerges from Roy Basler's definitive 11-volume edition of the 16th president's original writings, speeches and state papers. Anyone who doubts this should read Gabor Boritt's pathbreaking book on ``Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream.'' Though Jeffersonian populist in sentiment, Mr. Lincoln's economics were, paradoxically, Hamiltonian in policy. We can see this when, on his way to Washington in early 1861, he declared in Philadelphia, ``I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.'' This idea he later vindicated at Gettysburg in 1863 by upholding ``a new birth of freedom'' in an America ``dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.'' One year later he explained to Ohio soldiers visiting the White House that the Civil War itself was a struggle to create ``an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life. ***'' equality of opportunity Lincoln's equality was equality of opportunity. He denied explicitly that American equality was equality of result. In 1857 at Springfield, he said: ``I think the authors [of the Declaration] intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal--equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'' He also opposed direct federal taxation, except by necessity of war, because, as he said, ``the land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of locusts, devouring every blade of grass. ***'' Like Alexander Hamilton, he preferred a tariff because, Lincoln suggested, customs collectors on the coast would do less harm to the people than tax collectors roaming their neighborhoods. He believed that government should be pro-labor by being pro-business; thus for 20 years, he advocated government help in creating canals, railroads, banks, turnpikes and other public institutions needed to integrate a free national market, to increase opportunity and social mobility, and to make the American economy more productive. As the economic historian Bray Hammond has noted, Lincoln was also a sophisticated student of banking and monetary policy, arguing throughout his political career that ``no duty is more imperative on government, than the duty it owes the people of furnishing them a sound and uniform currency.'' His economic philosophy, above all, was based upon ``his patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people.'' He was an authentic populist. But he saw no necessary conflict between labor and capital, believing them to be cooperative in nature. Only cooperation could, in a society of free labor, produce economic growth and increasing opportunity for all. Lincoln argued that capital was, itself, the result of the free labor of mind and muscle. People were the most important resource, not wealth. In fact this idea was so important that President Lincoln argued in his first annual message of 1861 that ``labor is prior to, and independent of capital. Capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed, Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.'' He went even further and, once and for all, defined the essence of the American dream: ``There is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. . . . The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages a while, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself; than labors on his own account for a while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just, and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way to all--gives hope to all, and . . . energy, and progress, and improvement of conditions to all.'' greatest of truly self-made men, believing that ``work, work, work is the main thing.'' His economic policy was designed not only ``to clear the path for all,'' but to spell out incentives to encourage entrepreneurs to create new products, new wealth, and new jobs. He himself had applied for and obtained a patent, declaring in 1859 the patent and copyright protection of intellectual property to be one of the greatest incentives to innovation of Western civilization. While today many Americans would dispute some of Mr. Lincoln's economic policies, it is manifestly true that his proposition--based on the right of every American to rise on his or her merits--defined the colorblind American dream of Martin Luther King. ``I want every man to have the chance,'' Lincoln announced in New Haven in March 1860. ``And I believe a black man is entitled to it . . . when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system.'' This was Lincoln's American system, where government fosters growth, where equal opportunity leads to social mobility, where intelligence and labor lead to savings and entrepreneurship. The black abolitionist Frederick Douglass pronounced a fitting tribute when he said of President Lincoln that he was ``the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference of color.'' He attributed Lincoln's open attitude to the fact that he and Lincoln were both, in Douglass's phrase, ``self-made men.'' Lincoln's economic legacy has had a powerful effect on world history. Without our 16th president there would have been separate slave states and free states; and thus no integrated North American economy in which emerged the most powerful, free-market, commercial civilization the world has ever known. Without pre-eminent American industrial power-- which Lincoln self-consciously advocated--the means would not have been available to contain Imperial Germany in 1917 as it reached for European hegemony. Neither would there have been a national power strong enough to destroy its global successor, Hitler's Nazi Reich in 1945, nor to crush the aggressions of Imperial Japan. And, in the end, there would have been no world power to oppose and overcome the Soviet Communist empire during the second half of our century. World conquest--based on the invidious distinctions of race and class, the goal of the malignant world powers of our era--was prevented by the force and leadership of a single country, the perpetual union of the American states. The Enigma Hovering over the whole of this history, there lingers still the enigma of the private man and the shadow of his personality. We scrutinize Lincoln; but we see him through a glass darkly. We mine his papers, sap the memoirs left by those who knew him, plumb his personal relationships. But he escapes us. Surely we know about his humble parents, his lack of formal education, his discreet but towering ambition. But we wonder that, unlike the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, he left no descendants to carry on his legacy of great deeds. It is as if, like a luminous comet, he thrust himself in front of our eyes, the eyes of the world--for a brief moment--then to dissolve into the vasty deep of the cosmos from which he came. This archetypal American, born poor of the South in Kentucky, elected of the North from Illinois--his professional achievement the very epitome of the American dream--this man Lincoln is the elusive inspiration we should be looking for as we commemorate his birth, 186 years ago, on Feb. 12, 1809.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, there is an enormous discrepancy between our own institution, the GAO and the Secretary of Defense's office. The GAO says the secretary of Defense has underfunded his own budget by $150 billion. The Chief of Staff of the Army has made statements to the effect that the Army is on the razor's edge of readiness, meaning they cannot cut another dime, that they are in very difficult shape. General Mundy, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, June 1994, last year, said that the Marine Corps was inadequately funded to carry out the President's own Bottom-Up Review requirements. So we have questions all over the place. If you are satisfied with the $150 billion difference in funding projections, then vote no on this commission. If you are not satisfied, vote yes. We still authorize, we still legislate. But we are not going to say we refuse to see the evidence. Let us let this commission come up and try to resolve this $150 billion difference.

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will yield further, we are going to get into this. But the Secretary of Defense has some real problems. As my friend, the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Montgomery], knows, my friend from Mississippi, who always has the interest of the troops at heart and was arguing passionately and eloquently last night for more readiness for troops, for more housing, the Secretary of Defense has to come before our committee every time and say, ``I have enough.'' And we know that he does not have enough money. We know that GAO just did this report that says he is underfunded, his own plan, by $150 billion. So we are going to get into the heart of this commission. But my suggestion is the gentleman from Mississippi has a great tradition, has established a tradition a lot of us have followed of not always accepting everything the Secretary's office tells us, and having our own ideas. I think this is going to help the Secretary to have some outside analysis on a number of these questions where there is so much difference in what the Secretary's position is and what other reliable agencies, like GAO, says. He and GAO were $150 billion apart. I think it is appropriate to figure out why they have a big difference.

Mr. HUNTER. Let me offer to my friend that his idea that this comes out of the Secretary of Defense's office, I think, is a good one, because the Secretary of Defense himself commissions literally dozens and dozens of studies from outside groups. That is where the term ``Beltway Bandit,'' I think, came into being. Those are all the thousands of consultants that live in this city that do studies, and we are going to get into the heart of this commission shortly. But $1.5 million coming out of the OSD pot is going to be less, I understand, approximately 1 percent of that money that the Secretary has to run his office and to pay for commissions. I think it is appropriate. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding to me. I think he made an interesting statement there with respect to Korean oil. It is my understanding we did make this major Korean oil purchase out of the purse, if you will, of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. It is a massive, massive pool of money. Is that right?

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman and my colleagues, Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution includes this language: ``The Congress has the power to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.'' That is to say that what we are doing in the Contract is completely consistent with the Constitution and with our right to say as Representatives of those families who are visited by Navy and Marine Corps and Army teams when they have sons who are killed in combat, that that is to say to those families, ``We will have a direct chain of accountability, you can always count on that up to an American commander and down from that American commander right down through the platoon and squad level to your son when he is in combat.'' Let me just say there has been a lot of confusion about this. The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton] talked about not being able to have D-day. D-day was not a United Nations operation. There has been confusion about Korea. The commander in Korea, General Luck, has a straight American chain of command. If we go into some type of a preemptive operation, should there be an invasion from the north then you move to a joint American-Korean command, but that is not under United Nations sanctions. So that section, that operation, is not applicable to this section with the Contract With America. This is constitutional, it is appropriate, in response to our people.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of the committee for yielding me the time and for his great work. My colleagues, let us look at this part of the Contract With America for what it is. This is a taxpayers' credit, and here is what it says: It says if you have U.N. operation going on, and we are paying almost 30 percent of that, or almost a third of that, we are helping the U.N. operation. We may be undertaking at the same time an American airlift that we are paying entirely out of U.S. taxpayer funds. We have undertaken this airlift in Bosnia now longer than the Berlin airlift, and all we are saying is that we would like to get a little credit for this in-kind contribution. We spent about $1.4 billion in DOD airlifts and incremental costs, and at worst case, if the President exercises his exemptions, the U.S. taxpayers are only going to the credited for about $240 million out of the fiscal year 1994 incremental costs for peacekeeping requirements, we are only getting a credit of 240 million. The gentleman from California [Mr. Berman] wants to cut the $240 million credit down lower. The U.S. taxpayers have a right to get this tax credit. They are paying two ways. They are paying through the United Nations and they are also paying for U.S. unilateral actions. Please reject the Berman amendment or we are going to water this doggone thing down to the point where U.S. taxpayers do not get any credit at all for American unilateral actions carried out by DOD. Please vote ``no'' on the Berman amendment.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. I will answer my friend in this way. First, we have numerous reports from the field and from some of the leadership itself in the DOD that the Clinton defense budget has slashed readiness, but second, I think that question is akin to saying ``Would you as an infantry commander want to certify that you have a perfect defense against machinegun fire before you do anything against mortars?'' We need balance. A national missile defense is an important part of that balance. I think it is foolhardy for us to foreclose missile defense until we get a certification from some other aspect of defense. Once again, we will increase the Clinton readiness budget, I assure the gentleman, so we are going to do more than the President has offered.

Mr. HUNTER. I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman from California.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis].

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