Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate that counsel, and I think it is very wise counsel. If I could count the votes, and I knew I could defeat the Corzine amendment and have mine, I would do it, but I think we would be in far worse shape if we had that language. For that reason, I am down to two choices: one to go ahead and withdraw my amendment, and the other to lay it aside so we can talk to see if something can happen. I think I will choose the latter and ask at this time to lay aside amendment No. 1595 for a period of time.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, at this time, I withdraw my amendment No. 1595 from consideration.

Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Yes.

Mr. INHOFE. The amendment I will not bring up is the amendment having to do with incorporating the language of our energy policy in this bill. The question could be asked, Is this an issue that should be put into the Defense authorization bill? I served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee for 5 years. I can assure Members there is no time in our history that should be more clear that we will have to do something about our dependency on the Middle East for our ability to fight a war. Right now, we are 56.6-percent dependent upon foreign sources for our ability to fight a war. That is not acceptable. I remember back in the early 1980s during the Reagan administration I criticized the Republicans and Democrats alike. We have been trying to get an energy policy since the Reagan administration. We tried at that time. We introduced one. We were unable to get it done. We tried during the Bush administration, certainly thinking that a President coming out of the oil patch would understand why we cannot be dependent upon foreign sources for our ability to fight a war. We were unsuccessful. We were unsuccessful during the Clinton administration. We started during the Carter administration. I have an amendment that will put a policy into effect. I have two amendments. One adopts the House language and the other is to adopt the language of the energy bill that is proposed in the Senate. I will not bring it up and debate it tonight because I want to do it when everybody is here. This is very significant. Right now, on a daily basis, we are becoming more and more dependent upon foreign sources for our energy supply. By the end of this decade it is projected to be in excess of 60 percent. We will become 60- percent dependent upon foreign sources for our ability to fight a war. I remember a few years ago Don Hodel, Secretary of the Interior, and I used to go to consumption states and make speeches as to how the outcome of every war--back to and including the First World War--has been who controlled the energy supplies. We have gone through the 1990 war, the Persian Gulf war. In 1991, we remember the words of Saddam Hussein who said, ``if we had waited for 10 years to go into Kuwait, the Americans would not have intervened because we would have a missile we could shoot over at them.'' And now we are dependent upon the Iraqis for our imported oil. It is very much an issue. There has been a lot of things floating around, including letters saying they are saying this has to do with ANWR. It doesn't. I only say this is an issue that should be addressed on this bill, and sometime tomorrow or the next day I will debate this and call for a vote on this. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. I am happy to respond to any questions, and if there are no questions, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. INHOFE. First, I will read the last paragraph: Senator Inhofe's amendment, SA 1595, supports the Defense Department's request to repeal the local referendum and provides for transfer of the eastern property to the Department of Interior, following cessation of training. Unlike the Department's proposed legislation on Vieques, however, the amendment does not provide for a date certain departure. Nonetheless, the Department believes that the amendment does not constrain the Department's ability to define and meet its training needs and the target departure date may still be achieved. To the extent that the amendment offered by Senator Inhofe, SA 1595, is not inconsistent with the Department's legislative proposal and underlying intent, we interpose no objection. I ask unanimous consent this entire letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. INHOFE. This amendment is one further that there may be some opposition to and it is going to require the yeas and nays, but I will briefly say what we are doing with this. The issue of the Vieques training range has been a contentious one now for a number of years. We did resolve this in such a way that there would be a referendum that would take place on November 6, where the eligible voters among the population of 9,300 people on the Island of Vieques would vote as to whether or not the Navy should continue naval training operations on the range. A lot of things have happened since then. I agreed with that. That was my language in the Defense authorization bill last year. However, since that time we have found we are deploying east coast deployments to the Persian Gulf. A lot of these battle groups have not been able to have adequate training. Since that time we had the war declared upon us by the terrorists on the 11th of September. That has changed everything. Since that time we have had Puerto Rico come and say they want to support the training of our troops. We currently have, being debated now, a resolution in the legislature in Puerto Rico that is going to say: ``We Puerto Ricans, as proud American citizens with the same responsibilities as our brethren in the continental United States, have the obligation of contributing to this fight, allowing and supporting military training and exercises on the island municipality of Vieques.'' Vieques is a municipality of Puerto Rico. What we believe is a solution to this now and should be put on this bill as an amendment is language that would do away with the referendum of November 6. There are several reasons why. One reason is the policy is not a good policy. I never believed it was. Prior to the events of September 11, we thought this was something that would resolve that issue. This amendment would do two things. It would do away with the referendum of the 6th of November; two, it would say we would continue to do as the law provides today, until such time as both the CNO of the Navy and the Commandant of the Marine Corps sign a certificate saying that training is no longer needed. I cannot think of a worse time to force our military to stop training than right now. Right now we should be enhancing training. That is a very simple amendment, one to which there may be some opposition. However, it merely says that, at least in the time being, do not have a referendum, but continue to train our troops as they are deployed in these battle group deployments, from the east coast and elsewhere, until such time as the CNO and the Commandant agree that training is no longer necessary.

Mr. INHOFE. I do concur in that. In fact, I will go along with a UC to that effect, whatever the Senator wishes.

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the distinguished assistant majority leader. And I will say this: I started out with 16 amendments, and I have 3. I think if everyone did this, we would be able to complete this bill. It is very important we have the Defense authorization bill and we act on it. So I will do my part.

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate this, I say to both the Senator from Alabama and the Senator from Nevada. It is very important. We must get to a point where we can vote on it. I do have three amendments I want to take up. I will just stick it through until such time as I can bring them up. Let me make a couple comments on some of the debate that has been going on. As far as prison labor is concerned, I assure the Senator from Alabama, who has been concerned about it, expressing his desire to have prisoners work, I can assure him that prisoners can work. I can also assure him that the language, in my opinion--I have been on this committee now since 1994, and I have heard this debate every year since 1994--in the bill is good language. We need to be able to have quality work done on the work we are talking about in conjunction with this prison labor debate. Let me assure the Senator from Alabama that we can go ahead and keep the language that is in our bill and still have a lot for the prisoners to do. I know a lot about this. I was mayor of Tulsa for three, four terms. During that time, we had a prostitution ring that hit Oklahoma and hit my city of Tulsa. It was a very serious problem. Of course, we would throw them in jail. They would get out about 10 minutes later, when their attorneys would come up. What I did was, instead of putting them in jail and incarcerating them, I put them in work details. We had them out there--it worked out really well--cleaning up our parks. Because they had spiked heels, they could kind of go out there and pick up the trash, and it worked out very well. That program actually stopped that ring. It was because it was hard work. They didn't want to do it. I can remember once I got a call from someone from Sidney, Australia, on a live radio show. I don't know what time it was there, but it was the middle of the night in Tulsa. He said: Mr. Mayor, how cruel can you be, making those poor women go out and work hard in the hot sun and do all that labor. I said: I'll tell what you I will do. We will just package them all up and send them to Sidney, and then it will be your problem. Then he said: By jove, I think you have a good program there. There is a lot of work that can be done by prisoners. Anyone who has worked in this area, which I have in Oklahoma with our State penitentiary, knows that can happen. That is not the issue. There is going to be work. They are going to get work anyway that is not as enjoyable as the work we are talking about. I support the language in the bill. Under the debate right now, we have been talking about the proposed fifth round of the BRAC, base realignment and closure round. I have to say this: I am opposed to it, but for a different reason than the Senator from Maine who spoke before me. It is not that I don't believe in the process. I was elected to the House of Representatives in 1986. Dick Armey put out this problem. He said: As it is, we are never going to be able to close installations and get rid of infrastructure that is no longer something we need if we leave it up to the political process. Each one is an economic base. There is not a Member of the House or the Senate who is not going to protect his own turf. That had been true. So I strongly supported Dick Armey, and in 1987 we passed the BRAC process. We went through four rounds. Until the last round came up, it worked beautifully. It wasn't to everyone's satisfaction. A lot of people were mad about it. But a lot of bases, in New York and other places, were closed down and everyone cooperated. In the fourth round, politics entered into it. It was a partisan thing because it was Democrats and Republicans who did it. That has taken care of where it can't happen again. The system is good. I far prefer the system of having BRAC rounds over the system that we used before then. Here is why I am opposed to it. It is a totally different reason. I heard Senator Bunning ask: Can anyone show me the amount of money that has been saved? We all have opinions as to what is projected into the future. I will say this: One thing we know for sure, we have closed 97 installations. I would suggest we wouldn't have closed one of them if it had not been for this process. We closed them. And in that time that we actually closed those, there wasn't one that didn't lose money for the first 3 or 4 years afterwards. I think there probably is infrastructure out there that we are going to have to address at some time. We have two things that are going on right now: No. 1, we are bleeding. Everything is hemorrhaging right now. We know we are having problems in our force structure, problems with retention, problems with modernization. We need to have a missile defense system. All these things have top priority in the bill, and I agree that they should be done. So if we postpone the consideration--I know it doesn't take place until 2003--if we postpone it until a later date, then we will not have to forgo that money that it is going to cost to close bases at a time that we need to go into rebuilding our defense structure. We are repeating something right now like it was in 1981. We have a hollow force. So this is not the time. I might seriously consider it later on. The second reason is this: We know we are going to change the force structure. We know we are right now at one-half of the force structure we were in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. That can be documented. That is one-half the Army divisions, one-half the tactical Air Force, one-half the ships, down from 600 to 300. We know we are going to have to start building that force structure back up. As we do it, we may be needing some of the infrastructure that right now, if it were looked at by a committee that were appointed now or next year, they might think is not necessary. Let's wait. To artificially lower the infrastructure down to here, when our force structure is too low and we are going to have to raise it up--we don't know what we are going to be needing at the time. The time is not right. I believe in the system. I will support it at the appropriate time. But we need every dollar we can get to rebuild our defenses today. That is what this bill is all about. That is why this is one of the few parts of this bill with which I disagree. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Let me reclaim my time.

Mr. INHOFE. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. INHOFE. I call up amendment No. 1594 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes, the amendment is at the desk. It has been there since last week.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, in an effort to try to get this bill through, which America desperately needs now, I had about 16 amendments on which I worked out arrangements and understandings with other people so that I am down to only three amendments. Of these three amendments, as was suggested by the Senator from Michigan, one is without controversy, I thought, until about 5 minutes ago. My understanding is one Republican Senator is going to object to it. That being the case, we will have to have a rollcall on that amendment. I would like to explain that amendment and hopefully that one Senator would be available and tell us if she is not going to object to it. Mr. President, for quite a number of years we have had a debate, when we do our defense authorization bills, on an issue that is in place in order to keep an internal ability to handle depot maintenance in areas where it might be considered to be core maintenance; in other words, areas where it is necessary to have that ability in order to fight a war. The concern has been this: With the decreasing number of defense contractors and the decreasing number of people who are able to perform certain maintenance functions, if we are in a war, we would not want to be held hostage by a single contractor who would be able to keep us from being able to do it internally. For that reason, some time ago we passed a law that said under that 60/40 bill, which is now 50/50 in our statute, simply this, that 50 percent of the maintenance has to be performed in-house by a depot capable of doing it without outside help. For that reason--and I agree with those who disagree with the 50/50 concept, that this is merely an arbitrary figure, but there has to be some type of a figure and we have not been able to come up with anything since then that is any better than this. So the law now says that 50 percent of the maintenance has to be done internally by a public depot. There is a way they have been able to get around 50/50, and that is if any of the service secretaries say that within their service they could declare there is a national security reason that for 1 year or one period of time we are not going to be able to do 50 percent of the maintenance work in a public depot, if they do that, they do not have to give any reason for it, but they merely say this is for national security. This has happened a few times so we have gone back to the service secretaries and we have said to them: Tell us why it is as much as 50 percent of the maintenance in a public depot. We have never gotten any good answers, and then we have also asked them afterwards: What are you going to do to ensure that we are going to be able to meet this 50 percent in the next fiscal year? And we have not been able to do that. I am not saying this critically of any particular service secretary. We need to know why, if we are going to find a loophole around one of our existing laws, this being the 50/50, it is necessary, and what we are going to do in the future to prevent that from being invoked. So my amendment does simply two things: One, it takes that jurisdiction away from the service secretary and puts it with the President of the United States. He then can delegate it back to the Secretary of Defense. If he is going to say that there is a national security reason that we cannot do 50 percent of the work at a public depot, he has to say why that is and what they are planning to do to correct that in the next fiscal year. That is all it does. So if people are opposed to the 50/50 concept, fine. Let us pass a bill or try to pass a bill to do away with 50/50. That is not the issue. The issue is if we are going to use a national security waiver to waive 50/50 for a given year, we need to make sure we know why we are doing it and what can be done for the next year to keep from having to do that. So that is simply it. I was hoping we might have a note from the Senator. We do, and there will be apparently one vote against this. So that is an explanation, and I am going to ask that this be voted on tomorrow. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. INHOFE. The amendment on the waiver process.

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I send Senate amendment No. 1595 to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, I would like to make an inquiry and then I have a couple comments to make. When are we going to be taking up amendments that have been on the list for quite some time? Has that been decided yet? Or may I ask the manager of the bill, are we going to be disposing of the Bunning amendment before we go to other amendments? Is that going to be the order?

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is hard to hear. I would like to know what kind of agreement we are coming to concerning amendments.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that a military fellow, Dave Teal, be given privileges of the floor during this debate.