Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, let us make this very clear. The Montgomery amendment is the exact opposite of the Spence amendment that we just voted on. It essentially guts the Spence amendment. It cuts national missile defense by 80 percent below the baseline that was set by Secretary Chaney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell. As much as we love our friend from Mississippi, this would absolutely gut what we have just done. So if you voted ``yes'' on Spence, vote ``no'' on this amendment, the Montgomery amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. HUNTER. I want to tell the general that the cavalry has arrived. It is a Republican majority and we are going to increase the defense budget as well as national defense.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let me offer my general a lieutenant's perspective. It is very important to have the security of your loved ones at home in good shape because you have a national missile defense. That is important to the Israelis, it is important to the British, and it should be important to American soldiers. There are a lot of aspects of readiness. One aspect of morale is having good protection of your family at home in their community. I think most American service people would feel good about their family in Mississippi or their family in San Diego or Chicago being protected against a rogue missile attack, and I think they would be very upset about the idea that somehow the defense budget had that aspect of defense cut out of it so we could have more money for readiness.

Mr. HUNTER. I am happy to yield to my great friend and general.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Spence amendment and against the other pending amendments. Mr. Chairman, it is important to understand what we are doing here. I agree with the gentleman, if he wants a straight shot on his amendment, because I think his amendment is fatally defective in the same way that the Edwards amendment was fatally defective. It removes balance from our defense structure. I want to tell the Members what we are doing here. The Bush administration, including Dick Cheney and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, put together before President Bush left office an outline of the defense spending pattern they would have followed, that they thought was prudent. The Clinton administration has cut 80 percent of the national missile defense money out of the Bush baseline. They have cut it by 80 percent. That is not adequate to continue with decent funding for research and development. It is not adequate to bring the scientists from our National Laboratories and from DOD and ask them what we can do. If Members vote yes on the Skelton amendment, on basis that Members want to help readiness, they have done exactly what President Clinton wants them to do. He is forcing us to shop off two important aspects of national defense against each other. He has done that by cutting $127 billion out of the defense budget. Let me just say, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Procurement, I am going to be voting and putting together a Chairman's mark that is much higher than President Clinton's, so don't worry, I would say to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer] who I respect greatly, he will have a higher modernization budget. The gentleman from Virginia I feel surely will present a better readiness budget than what President Clinton has offered us, so do not let them shop off two important aspects of defense against each other. Vote against the amendment of the gentleman from Missouri, and vote for the amendment of the chairman, and Members will be offering a balanced defense budget.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, we need balance. The key is balance. In 1987, a number of members of this committee wrote to the Israeli Defense Minister and said, you can defend against air attacks. You can defend against land attacks. But you have no defense against missiles. Their response has been to build the Arrow missile that will shoot down incoming ballistic missiles coming into Israel. They did not hesitate, because they knew that was an important part of national security. We have the ability to repel land attacks. We have the ability to repel naval attacks. We have the ability to repel bomber attacks. We have no defense at all against incoming ballistic missiles. I say to my friend, who is on the Procurement Subcommittee with me, that this subcommittee will pass out a bigger, better, more efficient modernization budget than the President has proposed us. So modernization will not go begging. I know readiness will not go begging. I know research and development will not go begging. We need a balanced approach. That is why the chairman's amendment is appropriate.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I continue to yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let me say to the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on International Relations, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton], that I listened to his statements about the possible destabilization of our armed situation with the Soviet Union, and let me just remind my colleagues that this amendment eliminates some possibilities of working together with the Soviet Union. Mr. Yeltsin said in two speeches, January 29 and January 31, 1992, that the strong possibility existed of the Soviet Union teaming up with the United States and using Soviet technology and U.S. SDI technology to develop what Mr. Yeltsin, not President Reagan and not President Bush, but what Mr. Yeltsin described as a global protection system. Now we are giving up that possibility. We are giving up that opportunity, if we adopt this amendment, that we are not going to hear any evidence about anything except the system that the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Edwards] thinks will work. That is a ground-based system. It does not make sense to give up not only the possibilities that our technicians offer us and our scientists say they want to testify about, but also to give up the possibilities that have been offered to us by the Soviet Union. Since Mr. Yeltsin made that statement, Mr. Chairman, a number of our technical people have been working with Soviet scientists, Soviet diplomats, and talking about the opportunity to have a partnership. I say to my colleagues, ``You give that up, you limit yourself, you limit the United States, if you go with this Edwards amendment.'' Let me tell my colleagues what else they give up. As my colleagues know, it has been suggested by all of our experts that we might want to have a layered defense. I say to my colleagues, ``That means, if you have a ballistic missile coming in, you try to shoot it down first when it launches. That's the best time to get it, before all of the multiple warheads, if it has multiple warheads, break away from the bus, and then you have 10 problems instead of 1 problem. So you try to get it when it boosts up. Second, if it survives, that you might want to get it when it's up high in space. If you can get it then, you don't have to worry about it coming down and having to deal with it with your terminal defense. Last, if everything fails and that missile is coming into San Diego, CA, or New York, or Mr. Edwards' district in Texas, then you have one last shot at it, and that's with this ground-based system.'' I would suggest it does not make much sense for us as Members of the House to limit our technical experts and say we have adopted the idea of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Edwards] of the best technology, and he says the only thing that works is the stuff that is launched from the ground. We are not going to try to shoot that missile down when it first boosts up, and we sure do not want to shoot it down in space because that would be a war in the heavens. But we will go with that good old six-gun that the gentleman from Texas says we have got. We can shoot it as it is coming in on our cities. Mr. Chairman, I say to my colleagues, ``So you give up, my colleagues, the chance to have a layered defense, and all we are asking here is not that you choose one. We are asking that you let the committee process take its course, and you listen to our scientists, and experts, and military leaders as they come in and testify as to the cheapest, most cost effective way to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.'' I think that the Edwards amendment, as much as I respect my friend from Texas, is one that limits us in a way that we should not be limited.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Let me take back my time one more time and say the gentleman is wrong. When President Kennedy said, ``We're going to put somebody on the Moon,'' he did not go through all the hearings first. He said, ``That's our goal, that's our policy.'' Then he convened his scientists to tell him how to most effectively do that. We are saying let's defend against incoming ballistic missiles and let's convene our scientists in the Capitol in these hearings and decide the most effective way to do it.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Let me take back my time and remind the gentleman, you can buy about a million times as much computing power today as you could in the 1960's for the same amount of money. Now, when we have experts from our national laboratories that we put there to come up with ideas on defending the country and they come to us and say we would at least like to be heard on the issue of how we have made it a lot more effective and a lot less expensive to shoot down this incoming missile with a different idea, I think we should listen to them. And I would just say to the gentleman, I go back to my Billy Mitchell argument. You had a lot of people saying you cannot sink ships with planes and we do not even want to This is a democracy. These Members who are representatives want to hear the evidence. I say let's let the evidence be put out there. And if the gentleman sits with me in Armed Services hearings and hears the evidence and then says, ``I'm not going to change my mind,'' then fair is fair. But let's hear the evidence. This amendment precludes us from even hearing the evidence.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, Secretary Perry came before us a few weeks ago and he asked us not to micromanage his programs and he asked us to give him a chance to bring forth his programs and explain them, explain the options, and then we would make some decisions on exactly what we would do with our spending authority. We are cutting out options with this amendment by the gentleman from Texas. What he is saying is this: It is okay to shoot down an incoming ballistic missile with a missile that is launched from the ground. I want everybody to understand the collision takes place in space. So you do not stay out of space. So if your objection is doing something in space, you cannot do that with any system. Because the collision between the incoming ballistic missile and the defensive missile takes place in space. It is above the Earth's atmosphere. So if you believe, like Walter Mondale, that there should be ``war in the heavens,'' then nothing fits your pistol on this particular amendment. Let me just say this to the gentleman from Texas, whom I respect greatly. We are on the cutting edge of technology in many areas, miniaturization of electronics, capability of our systems in space. We had several experts from two of our national laboratories come and tell us about a week ago that they could make space-based interceptors very inexpensively. What the gentleman from Texas is saying is, ``I don't even want to hear your arguments. I don't even want to have a scientist come up and testify to me as to what he can do with technology today.'' That is like President Kennedy saying, ``We are going to shoot a missile to the Moon, we're going to land people on the Moon, but I don't think we should use solid rocket fuel. I've been told that's very expensive so I'm going to put in a prohibition against using solid rocket fuel to go to the Moon.'' It does not make any sense. It does not make any sense to limit our options. We are asking Secretary Perry to come out and testify to us. We are also going to ask people from our national laboratories. We are going to ask these very intelligent people, who are a national resource, ``What's new in technology? How can you shoot down an incoming missile better and cheaper than the guy who just testified?'' What the gentleman from Texas is saying is, ``I've seen it all. I don't want to have anything in space because I heard that `War in the Heavens' speech and it makes sense to me, and the only thing that I'll go with is the old 6-gun shot from the ground. That's the only thing I believe in.'' He is asking 435 of us to accept his judgment and not even allow testimony on any other system before we make a decision.

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

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me just respond to my friend, if you accepted his numbers, and once again we have representatives from the two laboratories saying we can now do a brilliant pebbles deployment for about $7.5 billion. But if you accept that, we spend more money in the defense budget for the environment, for environmental compliance, than the total number that the gentleman just put together. I would say to you that I think this is a Republican position that has been manifested ultimately in this contract that the American people consider putting a missile defense up being more important than spending environmental money in the Department of Defense bill.

Mr. HUNTER. No, I am asking a question.

Mr. HUNTER. Let me just ask my friend, if he relies on a policy of deterrence based on the idea that we are going to destroy anyone who launches a ballistic missile against the United States, why wouldn't he use the same rationale and rely on the policy of deterrence against anyone who would shoot a slow-moving missile, and say to Iraq, ``If you shoot a slow-moving missile at Rijadh, we are going to use a nuclear weapon against you?''

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. The gentleman, I think, supports theater defenses. That is the capability in theater to shoot down slow-moving ballistic missiles, Scud type ballistic missiles that are coming into troop concentrations.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, the one thing is manifested in two words, ``shall deploy.'' I would say to the gentleman, once we have made the policy decision to deploy, at that point we then go through the process of what type of deployment will take place. I think that is reasonable and logical. I would offer to my friend that when President Kennedy said ``We are going to go to the moon,'' he did not first try to decide what kind of rocket it was going to take, he did not have the analysts come in and try to cost the thing out for 20 years. He set that as a policy, and we fleshed the policy out. I do think it is relevant that the Secretary of Defense said ``You can fulfill this thing for $5 billion if you do it against a thin attack,'' so once we have made the policy judgment to deploy, and this is a very important amendment, because the Republican bill, the House bill, the Armed Services bill, does say ``shall deploy,'' and we then flesh that out.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend for yielding. Mr. Chairman, the one place where I disagree with the gentleman in his statement is this. It was a judgment, a political judgment, I think of this Nation, I think it is the will of this Nation, and it was I think a major referendum in the election. It is the will of the Republican Party in putting the contract together and I think the will of Republicans and Democrats across the country to do one thing that does not require hundreds of hearings and does not require our participation in the process, and that is this.

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let me say to the gentleman from South Carolina, I think when Governor Wilson looks at what this member of the committee has done with defense funding and in the defense bill, he is going to be very disappointed on an environmental basis. He is going to be very happy on a strategic defense basis.