Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. In conclusion, Mr. President, right now I think we are facing a very serious threat. I know there are people in this Chamber who would like to believe that the cold war is over and that there is no longer any real serious threat out there when, in fact, as I have said several times before, I am not the only one who looks back wistfully at the days of the cold war; at least then we had two superpowers and we had an idea of what the Soviet Union at that time had. We could predict what they were going to do. They have a more predictable type of personality. Our intelligence knew more about what their capabilities were. Today we have 25 or 30 nations out there, run by the type of people who murder their own grandchildren, and here we are in a position where we could very easily be challenged in two geographic areas. So, Mr. President, I hope as we progress here and as we follow through the rest of the year we can change some of the attitudes in this Chamber and over in the other Chamber and in the White House as concerns our ability to defend America. Exhibit 1 Air Force Leaders Lose Pilots' Faith--Pentagon Memo Details Low Morale, Shoddy Work (By Rowan Scarborough) The Air Force is suffering from pilots who have lost faith in their generals, jet engines that still don't work after repairs and maintenance depots with ``little quality or quantity of work being produced,'' according to an internal Defense Department memorandum. The draft memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Times, paints a troubling picture of the state of American air power. It says Air Force pilots are in the dumps, fleeing the service at a rate higher than aviators in the Army, Navy or Marines. ``Many pilots expressed great distrust of the senior leadership,'' said the memo prepared for Louis Finch, deputy undersecretary of defense for readiness. The memo calls the Air Force cadre of instructor pilots ``a very disgruntled group.'' The memo didn't spell out why the senior leadership, including Air Force Secretary Shelia Widnall and Gen. Ronald Engleman, the chief of staff, has failed in the eyes of pilots. But the service has been hit by a series of public- relations disasters, including the Khobar Towers terrorist bombing that killed 19 service members and the attempted court-martial of Lt. Kelly Flinn. Pilots complain of poorly equipped fighter wings, too much time away from their families and air patrol-type missions that do little to hone air-combat skills. ``Discussions with fighter pilots reveal a great deal of dissatisfaction with the ongoing deployments,'' the memo says. ``There is no training, they are not doing what they are trained to do, they are simply `boring holes in the sky.' Combining this lack of mission satisfaction with increased airline hiring makes civilian life much more attractive.'' In what should be a troubling finding for safety officials, the memo states that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of engines for the giant C-5 cargo jet are returning from repair shops still malfunctioning. It says two major depots in California and Texas are caught up in the battle between Congress and President Clinton over whether they should stay open. A nonpartisan base-closure commission recommended closing the air-logistics centers in Sacramento, Calif., and San Antonio and transferring the work elsewhere. But last year Mr. Clinton, making what critics say was a political decision to garner votes in two large states, said the bases would be handed over to civilian companies. Said the Pentagon memo, ``Due to the ongoing political contest regarding privatization, there is little quality or quantity of work being produced. Both workers and plants are underutilized. Further, the operational units are not satisfied with the products received from the depots.'' It is the San Antonio depot that is sending out malfunctioning C-5 jet engines, the memo states. ``Currently, there is a 65 percent reject rate of the engines coming back from [San Antonio],'' it states. ``The quality is getting better though.'' Dated yesterday, the memo seems to bolster complaints from pro-defense conservatives in Congress. They contend the Clinton administration is underfunding the armed forces at the same time it deploys troops at a high rate around the world. Robert Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said the report shows the negative effects of cutting defense spending by more than 30 percent the past five years. ``The sad state of Air Force readiness can be blamed on the Clinton administration, which treats the military as a toy to be deployed for meals-on-wheels-type missions without due consideration for its impact on readiness,'' said Mr. Maginnis, an analyst at the conservative Family Research Council. ``Depots are caught in never-never land between privatization, base closures and status quo,'' he said. ``The results are devastating.'' Maj. Monica Aloisio, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the memo is a ``trip report'' periodically done on all four branches. The Pentagon readiness office uses such reports in making budget recommendations. The Air Force declined comment, saying the report is still in draft form. The report was based on site visits by defense officials in June to warplane squadrons, repair depots, the Air Force entry-level pilot school and an air-refueling unit. It draws a particularly negative portrait of pilot morale at the Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. The inspection report calls Randolph a ``poor training ground for future pilots.'' ``The instructor pilots at Randolph are sick of high `OPTEMPO' [operational tempo],'' says the memo. ``Most said that they came to Randolph as a three-year break from being gone from home too much on deployment. Most of the pilots also said that they will be getting out of the Air Force as soon as their commitment is over. ``The pilots liked the quality of the mid-level leadership, but totally disliked their senior leadership. They stated that they did not trust senior leadership and that things are getting worse. In general they felt they were lied to, betrayed and treated very poorly.'' Officers at the 940th Air Refueling Squadron complained of excessive training. ``Everyone complained that the number of days of mandatory training per year should be capped and purged of everything that is not mission essential or job critical,'' the memo said. ``All of the politically correct, brainwashing, propaganda and white laboratory mouse training should be purged from the curriculum.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I observe the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Could I have 1 more minute?

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for up to 15 minutes as if in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. The second reason is the administration has not been honest on this, as well as the ambient air, when they come along and they say, as Mary Nichols, Deputy Secretary, said yesterday, that the cost to the American people for the changes in the ambient air would be $9.1 billion when the President's own Council of Economic Advisers puts the price tag at something over $60 billion and the Reason Foundation out in California has it somewhere between $90 and $150 billion. So anyway, Mr. President, it is not realistic to do this. I would also observe I can't imagine that anyone who would be opposed to the ratification of this treaty wouldn't also be opposed to the changes in the ambient air standards. We will be introducing legislation next week. It will be bipartisan. Senator Breaux and I will be introducing legislation to reject these changes.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, as chairman of the Clean Air Subcommittee, we have had about 40 hours of hearings on this subject, on global warming as well as ambient air quality standard changes that have been proposed by this administration. I think it is unrealistic to try to condense that into 2 minutes. There is not any way it can be done. I will just say, Mr. President, that as 1 of the 66 cosponsors of this resolution, I support it, although I would say also it doesn't go far enough. And I would also say that regardless of what happens--this is going to pass, but regardless of that, I am still going to oppose the ratification of this treaty. I am going to do so for two reasons. First, is that the science is not there. This is analogous to the proposal by the administration to lower the ambient air standards in both particulate matter and in ozone, unrealistically costing the American people billions and billions of dollars a year without any science to back it up. Mr. President, I am going to read real quickly and enter the entire statement in the Record, but before my committee, Dr. John Christy of the Department of Atmospheric Science and Earth System Science Laboratory, University of Alabama, Huntsville, said--I don't think there is anyone who is considered to be a greater authority than he is-- The satellite data show that catastrophic warming is not now occurring. The detection of human effects on climate has not been convincingly proven because the variations we have observed are not outside of the natural variations of the climate system.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I am not sure what else can be said concerning the dilemma we find ourselves in right now. I think the distinguished junior Senator from Texas has really said it all. It was just last week that we had our defense authorization bill up before this body. We talked at that time about the desirability of putting some type of amendment on to stop the funding for the Bosnia operation for any time after June 30, 1998. Of course, I think we decided that it wasn't going to work out that way because if that happened, it might jeopardize not just the bill but would probably have caused a filibuster, and we didn't want that. We wanted to keep it moving. We need to have our authorization bill. It is imperative to our Nation's defense that we have it. So I think against the better judgment of several people we agreed to not have that position in. But that is the way it is going to have to be. I don't know any other way we are going to be able to bring our troops back. Clearly, the President has us over a political barrel right now because any time our troops get out of there--I don't care if it is tomorrow, if it is June 30, 1998, or if it is 10 years from now-- the fighting will start again, and anyone with any common sense, with any knowledge of history, knows it has happened that way, and it is going to continue to happen that way. And so the question is do you do it sooner or later. Those of us who were concerned about mission creep back when they made the decision to send troops over to Bosnia back in December of 1995, they were to be there for, of course, 1 year. They kept saying, ``They will be home for Christmas December 1996.'' And all of us knew they would not be home for Christmas in December of 1996. It just didn't make any sense that that promise was made. So they went over there to provide safety for the corridors, to keep people from crossing over them, and supposedly that was going to take care of the problems that existed. Well, this is not the first time in history that this has happened. Here it is now. We have made a commitment of 2\1/2\ years instead of 12 months. Now the President is trying to renege on that and go beyond to an undetermined period of time. I can remember in history when we sent our Marines into Nicaragua in 1909, and that was supposed to be for a 6-month period in 1909 because there were some problems with the government down there and they felt our intervention would stabilize things, and we did have some national security interests at that time, not as great as they were in other parts of the world, but nevertheless we sent our troops in for that short period of time and they were still there 13 years later. In fact, they never really came back until 1933. That is 24 years. As to Haiti, the Senator from Texas was talking about the fact that we still have troops in Haiti. People forget about that. We did not have any mission over there in the first place that was strategic to any of our problems in this country and yet we sent troops over to Haiti to supposedly try to clean up their government and run it better than they can run it. And now we have the same problems over there as we had before and we still have troops over there. We sent Marines to Haiti in 1915 and the same problems existed at that time. They were going to help with some of the stability there in Haiti and they stayed there until 1934. So now we see that we are in the middle of a classic case of mission creep. We are enlarging the mission. We are exposing U.S. troops to a whole new set of risks, and it is all without the permission of the American people or the permission of the Senate, but they are going to do it. Let's review for a minute the timeline in Bosnia. The President and administration officials pledged on numerous occasions in 1995 and 1996 that the United States military forces would be out of Bosnia by 1996 in the hearings that we had in the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Secretaries of Defense and the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, all of them said that the IFOR mission would be concluded in 1 year and that there were no plans to extend United States presence in Bosnia beyond a 1-year timeframe. And they kept repeating it. I can remember, since I serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a meeting we had October 17, 1995, Madam President, and that was when General Shalikashvili said, and I am going to quote his words, not my words--this is General Shalikashvili, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said on October 17, 1995: From a military perspective, as I evaluated the tasks we wished this force to accomplish, it was my judgment that it in fact can be done in 12 months or less. Secondly, when tied to the equipping and training issue, it was my judgment that that, too, can be accomplished in less than a year. And so I felt it was important that we, therefore, set a target of one year and then bring the force back. In the absence of that, you just find yourself staying there, and that's how very often mission creep comes in. The force needs to be brought home and they need to resume normal training and be ready for other operations. And I just think one year-- I saw no military justification for that force to stay longer than one year, and that is why that was my recommendation. This is a guy who is supposed to be running the military, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I was over in Bosnia several times, but the last time I talked to Gen. Monte Miggs up in that northeast sector and it is his job--he is doing a great job, by the way, of trying to carry on some type of training during the time that those troops are stationed over there. You have two big problems that exist when you have, when you are leaving troops in an area. One is in the case we are in right now where we have just decimated the military budget, our defense budget, we are spending all of this money. I can remember standing on this floor in November 1995 when the President had made the statement that the cost of the deployment to Bosnia would be somewhere between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. It is now going through $7.3 billion, and where does that money come from? It comes from readiness, it comes from modernization, it comes from force strength, and it comes from quality of life. That's the only four places it can come from. Now we have an optempo rate, where our troops are being asked to do things that human beings really can't do. Instead of being deployed for the normal 115 to 120 days a year, in some cases it is twice that. And we keep hearing stories from the field that it is even worse, because with the depleted budget we are now having to cannibalize perfectly good F-15 engines, that's F-100 engines, to get spare parts to keep the ones running that are in planes right now. Of course, that is very labor intensive. So from the field we hear these guys are working, some of them, 15 and 16 hours a day. They cannot keep that up for a period of time. But I think General Miggs up there, if there is ever anyone who can do it, up in the Brcko area, near the Posavina corridor, he is carrying on training. Of course, to carry on training and perform these humanitarian or peacekeeping or peacemaking missions, whatever they are supposed to be doing over there, it means longer and longer hours. So they are trying to do it. But there is not one general I have talked to who has not said that, if we should need our troops, if something should happen in North Korea at the same time something happened in Iran--not totally inconceivable--or Iraq or anyplace else, but if we were challenged in two regional fronts, we would have to take those people, withdraw them and retrain them, before we could send them into combat. So it's a real serious problem. In that same Senate Armed Services Committee meeting of October 17, 1995, I might add, Secretary Bill Perry said: I cannot conceive of the circumstances which would motivate me to come back and ask an extension of that time. This is an extension, he's talking about, beyond Christmas of 1996. . . . 12 months is sufficient to do the job we're describing. And I believe there is a great value, a great management value to putting a definite time scale on it and sticking to that time period. Again, he said later, in December, this is 6 weeks later, he said: We believe the mission can be accomplished in 1 year, so we have built our plan based on that timeline. This schedule is realistic because the specific militarily tasks [which are changing all the time, and that's the justification they are making for leaving them over there] in the agreement can be completed in the first 6 months, and thereafter IFOR's role will be to maintain the climate of stability that will permit civil work to go forward. We expect these civil functions will be successfully initiated in 1 year. But, even if some of them are not, we must not be drawn into a posture of indefinite garrison. Madam President, we are in a posture of indefinite garrison. Look at this in yesterday's paper, ``Clinton keeps door open to extending U.S. role in Bosnia.'' Here's the problem we have. I was disturbed we had to go beyond 12 months. Now they say we will make it 2\1/2\ years and we will be out of there on June 30, 1998. I went over to the NATO meeting in Brussels and found we had Members of Congress, Members of the other body, who were walking around telling our NATO friends, whispering to them, ``Don't worry, we won't leave you. We'll be there.'' There is plenty of time, adequate time now to make this as the policy, which is the accepted policy, that is we are getting out on June 30, 1998. Because there is a lot of time between now and then. I was watching the Senator from Texas and remembering what happened when we had a resolution of disapproval back in October 1995. Because we knew, once they went over there, it was going to be very difficult to bring them back. Sure enough, we lost that by four votes. It was interesting, because the main argument that was used by the other side was that our troops will be back in 12 months. So who can object to 12 months? I heard Senator after Senator say to me, and say privately, ``Well, I was going to support the resolution of disapproval and not send troops over there, not agree to that, but after all, the President has promised it will be 12 months. He's promised it would not exceed on the outside $2 billion.'' I made a speech on the floor at that time and stated it would be closer to $8 billion. And sure enough, we are creeping through right now $7.3 billion. Looking back, I remember what I stated on the floor. And I will repeat that now, because I think it is appropriate now, 18 months later. This is quoting myself in the Congressional Record, December 13, 1995. My conviction that the administration's intention to put troops in harm's way in Bosnia is a huge mistake rests on three broad arguments. First and above all, the conflict in Bosnia imposes no real threat to vital American interests. Simply put there is nothing in Bosnia that Americans should die for. Second, the Dayton talks have produced a false peace, that is inherently unstable and politically doomed. Here I was talking about the fact we go to Dayton and we have all these factions in there, supposedly coming to a peace agreement, but who wasn't at Dayton? Karadzic was not in Dayton, that's the Bosnian Serbs. Sure, Milosevic was there. That's Serbia. But that wasn't where the problem was. Those individuals who were creating the problem were not there. The Bosnian Serbs were not represented. Not only were they not represented, but none of the rogue elements were represented. We still had the mujahidin, the Arkan Tigers, the Black Swans, and the rest of them, who are still over there right now. So you have a flawed meeting with a flawed attendance making an agreement that we cannot live with. Finally, quoting from my statement on the floor on December 13, 1995: The Implementation Force [that's IFOR] plan is self- contradictory, and hopelessly optimistic and will expose our soldiers to unreasonable risk even as they diligently pursue its unrealistic objectives. So, that is where we are today. I think, if you look and see what they agreed to and what was supposed to have happened in the first 12 months in the Dayton accords, they talked about ``we were going to have the elections.'' They have not had the elections. They had flawed elections. They said, ``The refugees would all be able to go home before 12 months.'' Guess what, the refugees haven't gone home and it's 18 months. We keep finding violations of arms agreements, in the 18 months into the 1-year agreement, and we can't pull out. I am very thankful we have not suffered precious casualties at this time, but I tell you, we predicted on the floor if we continue this mission creep we may not be so fortunate in the future. I would conclude, Madam President, that we have a responsibility to be responsible. If this were a time when we didn't have the distinguished Senator from Alaska, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, having a very difficult time coming up with the money to keep America strong enough to meet the minimum expectations of the American people, which we can't, that is to be able to defend America on two regional fronts--if that weren't the case, maybe we could afford to be sending troops around the world on humanitarian missions, on peacekeeping missions. But we can't afford to do that, Madam President. So I conclude by saying we need to make it very clear that we are going to be out of there, and give a date certain that is still 12 months from now. There is still plenty of time for our allies to make time to make that happen. I have been agonizing with this concern. This is not a partisan thing, by the way, Madam President. Because when we sent troops into Somalia, George Bush was President. That was in December. After he had been defeated but while he was still in office, we sent troops over there, if you'll remember, for a period of some 3 months to 6 months. Then, once President Clinton got in, he kept extending it. So we sent resolutions and resolutions, ``We want to bring the troops back.'' Month after month, every month we sent resolutions, and the years started going by, and it was not until 18 of our rangers were brutally murdered and their naked corpses were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu before the American people got concerned enough to force the administration to bring the troops home from Somalia. Madam President, I don't want that to happen in Bosnia. I don't want our troops to be dragged through the streets of Sarajevo or Tuzla or Brcko or any of the rest of them. We have experienced mission creep. We are now in a situation where our troops are there for an indeterminate period of time. Now is the time to draw the line and say that June 30, 1998, is our time that our troops will be coming home. Are they going to be safe over there when that happens? No. If we brought them home tomorrow, there would still be fighting once our troops were out, or June 30, or 10 years from now. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Thank you, Senator Torricelli, for bringing this issue to the attention of the subcommittee. I am sympathetic to the plight of so many of our communities which have had to essentially re-build in the wake of base closings and you have my assurance and that of this subcommittee that we will give every consideration of this proposed conveyance when it is discussed in the conference.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment No. 423.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator for yielding. It would be awful difficult to try to express my beliefs on this in 2 minutes. I would only say that this euphoria that we seem to enjoy around here that there is no threat is one that is of more concern to me than anything else we talk about. When you say, can we afford it, I often wonder can we afford not to do it. The whole argument that has been made on this space-based amendment by the distinguished Senator from New Mexico has been that right now there is nothing targeted at the United States. And I know the President has said in his State of the Union Message that there is nothing targeted at the United States for the first time in contemporary history when in fact we do not have any way of knowing that. I suggest you might remember the hearings on Anthony Lake when he was trying to become the Director of Central Intelligence. We made a very conclusive point that right now there is no way of telling. There is no verification. I would suggest you remember what Gen. John Shalikashvili said. He said there is no verification process. Then he went on to say, ``But I can tell you we don't have missiles pointed at Russia.'' That is really comforting, isn't it, to think it is just kind of a gentleman's agreement that you do not aim at us and we will not aim at you. But let us assume that we could verify today or at the beginning of this debate that there is nothing aimed at the United States. It can be retargeted in a matter of minutes. I would like to quote from Gen. Igor Sergeyev, the Commander in chief of the Russian Strategic Forces. He said, ``Missiles can be retargeted and launched from this war room mostly in a matter of minutes.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I agree wholeheartedly with the distinguished junior Senator from Texas. I would like, for a moment, to put this in historic perspective, because it was Senator Hutchison and I who had a resolution of disapproval in November 1995. We lost that by four votes. I remember so well why we lost that by four votes. We lost it because there were several Members who said, ``Well, the President and the Secretary of Defense have promised that we are going to be out of Bosnia in 12 months, that will be Christmas of 1996.'' So a few of them said, ``I guess that it's all right to go over if we can accomplish whatever mission we thought we were going to accomplish by that time.'' In preparation for that, I went over to Bosnia in the northeast sector. I can remember so well going into the Tuzla area when no Americans were up there, no Americans had been up there, and those who would go ahead to see what we were getting into had not been there yet. I talked with General Haukland from Norway who was in charge of the northeast sector for the United Nations in Bosnia. That was the area we were assuming responsibility for. When I told them we were going to be out in 12 months, they all started laughing. They said we were not going to be out in 12 months. He said, ``You must mean 12 years.'' That is the situation we are in now. It is like putting your hand in water and leaving it in there for 12 months, taking it out and nothing has changed, it is the same as it was. We have made that commitment. We went in there and didn't come out as we promised. This was not just a projection by saying by December 1996, things should be done and we should be out. It wasn't that at all. The President said we will be out. In fact, I have statements from our Senate Armed Services Committee where the Secretary of Defense said it is an absolute. General Shalikashvili said it was an absolute, we will be out of Bosnia by Christmas 1996. Now we are debating about whether to be out, not in 12 months, but 2\1/2\ years after this thing started. The one thing that the distinguished Senator from Delaware did not mention is, what are our national security interests that we are there for? It would be nice, it would be wonderful, and it would be compassionate of us if we had the money and the resources to go around the world and go to Ethiopia and go to all these places where they would like to have our help, but we do not have those resources. Now, the problem we have is this. We have a political problem--I recognize that--that anyone who is opposed to getting out on June 30, 1998, is going to say, ``If we pull out, they're going to start fighting again.'' You know what? They are right. But the same argument could be used, Mr. President, if it is 10 years from now. So how long is this commitment going to go on? You know what they said in November 1995? They said the cost is going to be between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. Now it is passing through $6.5 billion. Where is the money going to come from? The money is going to come from the defense budget, a defense budget that right now, while our distinguished chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has put together a very good authorization bill that we have to pass, it is still inadequate, still does not adequately arm America for the threats that face us out there. People who say the cold war is over and there is no threat anymore, I can assure you the threat is much greater than it was then during the cold war when we could identify who the enemy was and our intelligence knew something about that enemy. So here we are now making a commitment. And how long is it going to take? I can tell you right now, if we do not adhere to the June 30, 1998 deadline, we are not going to get out until something very bad happens. I suspect that we would still be in Somalia today if it were not for the fact that 18 of our Rangers were brutally murdered and their nude corpses dragged through the streets in Mogadishu. I do not want that to happen anywhere in the streets of Bosnia. So it was not long ago I was in Brussels. I found there were many Members of Congress that were going around whispering to our NATO allies, ``Don't worry about it. We won't leave at that time.'' That is the most dangerous thing we could do at this time. We need to draw that line and say we are going to be out by that time. We made a mistake. We should have been out by December 1996, as we promised, as the President promised, as the Secretary of Defense promised, as we promised the American people. We have to keep the promise this time and make it June 30. What we do in terms of a commitment for June 30, 1998, right now I am not real sure. But I can tell you right now, with every fiber of my being I will fight to make sure that our troops are home after June 30 of 1998. Mr. WYDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am very honored to be serving as the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Today at 11 o'clock we will begin again the discussion on the passage of the defense authorization bill. As chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, I have jurisdiction over the readiness of our forces to defend America: Such things as military construction, such things as military pay, such things as training, and the like. In carrying out my responsibilities, I have visited many, many bases throughout the world and here in the United States. I have had occasion to be recently in Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base; Fort Hood, TX; Corpus Christi Naval Base; and the Dyess Air Force Base. My concern is that with all the people we have talked about and talked to in the committee meetings that we have had in the Readiness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, we keep getting assurances from the administration that we are in a state of readiness that would meet the minimum expectations of the American people, and yet the information that we get as we go around certainly contradicts that. We have statements made by a number of people who are in the field. When you get past the top brass here in Washington, we find that we have very, very serious problems. Mr. President, I plan to make several statements concerning this as the development of and discussion on this bill takes place after 11 o'clock, but I would just suggest that we have not found ourselves and put ourselves in a state of readiness that meets the minimum expectations of the American people. The administration has said many times we are in a position to defend America on two regional fronts, and I can assure you that is not the case. In fact, as we watched the Persian Gulf war, I regret to say that we are not in a state of readiness today to be able to defend America against that type of aggression. With that, I will yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Chafee and his staff for the willingness to work in a cooperative manner with myself and the staff of the Subcommittee on Readiness. The Sikes Act Amendment is a significant item of legislation that will directly impact the Department of Defense management of the 25 million acres of land it controls. While Senator Chafee has highlighted some of the positive environmental aspects of this legislation, I would like to stress the need to ensure the preservation of the military mission, readiness and training. The Sikes Act Amendment makes the preparation of integrated natural resource management plans mandatory for the military departments. I have reluctantly agreed to the mandatory language of this provision because the Department of Defense and military departments support it and have insisted that this new environmental requirement will not undermine the military mission and will not increase funding for such planning activities. It should be made clear that: The Sikes Act Amendment is not intended to enlarge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or State fish and wildlife agency authority over the management of military lands. Natural resource management plans should be prepared to assist installation commanders in conservation and rehabilitation efforts that are consistent with the use of military lands for the readiness and training of the U.S. Armed Forces. It is understood that many installations, about 80 percent, have already completed integrated natural resource management plans in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and appropriate State fish and game agencies. Given the level of agency cooperation, the time, the personnel, and funds involved in the completion of existing natural resource management plans, it is expected that most of these plans will satisfy the requirements of the Sikes Act Amendment and will not have to be redone. I want to close with an emphasis on the need to ensure that the amendment will not result in an increased funding level for natural resource management plans and will not undermine military readiness and training. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness, I intend to follow the implementation of this amendment, and its impact on military readiness, very carefully. Senator Chafee, I want to thank you again and express my appreciation for our ability to work together on the Sikes Act Amendment and other environmental issues.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have been in the chair for the last few minutes listening to some of the comments that have been made. I would like to read one paragraph that I saw in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. I would like to ask everyone, Mr. President, to listen very carefully, because we are only talking about three of a long list of things that are being investigated right now as far as the alleged transgression of the President. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal has the editorial of which this is just one paragraph: Travelgate, trumped-up Billy Dale prosecution, the secret health-care task force, the 900 FBI files and bouncer/ security chief Craig Livingstone, alerts to the White House from high Treasury officials on Resolution Trust Corporation investigations, the guy who told the congressional committee he lied to his diary, the brightest minds in the Democratic Party suffering massive memory loss at congressional hearings, the ``lost'' Rose Law Firm billing records, Webster Hubbell's passage of the Justice to jail, Vince Foster's torment, the Lincoln Bedroom rented out, Charlie Trie on the run, John Huang taking the fifth, Jim and Susan McDougal convicted, the Buddhist monastery/money laundry, the drug dealers let in for the White House photo-ops, the routinely cavalier treatment of legal and judicial procedures, and independent counsels appointed for three members of the Cabinet, one sitting American President and, for the first time in history, one First Lady. Everyone does it? We don't think so. At least up to now. In this long list of alleged transgressions, the investigation right now is really only dealing with three things. It is interesting for me that every time something comes up concerning campaign contributions that have been taken illegally, the President comes out and says we need campaign finance reform. I would only comment, as did the Senator from Alaska, Senator Murkowski. How do we know that we need reform of campaign contributions until we live under the laws that we have today? Currently it is illegal--under our current law--to accept foreign money from foreigners. It is illegal to launder money. It is illegal to solicit or accept money on Federal property. That is what this is all about. So I just hope as the debate goes on about campaign finance reform that we adopt an attitude that we should comply with the laws that are on the books right now and see how far that goes to resolving the problems. Mr. President, I see that there is no other Senator seeking time, so I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized as if in morning business on another matter.

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, I wish to thank you and those who are participating in this discussion for bringing this up. This is a very difficult and frustrating time for all of us, and I think the Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Hagel, gave a pretty good outline of what this is all about, what we want to accomplish, and what we have offered. And when I say ``we,'' I am not talking about the Republican Party. I am talking about Congress. To put it in perspective, the House passed the tax cut bill on June 26--just June 26--and it passed by a fairly substantial margin, 253 to 179. There was a substitute that was offered by Congressman Rangel that has come in the nature of what the President is announcing now, and it was rejected by 197 to 235. Then the Senate, on the following day, June 27, passed a tax cut bill 80 to 18. When the minority leader, Senator Daschle, offered a substitute, it was rejected 38 to 61. So we went through a long and arduous process of having 29 amendments. We finally came up with a product, and we went out for the Fourth of July recess. And after we were out, the President announced a different, totally different tax cut plan while Congress was out of town, when we did not have any chance to react to it, and now he is saying that he wants his plan. His plan doesn't really provide tax cuts that are meaningful and will have a positive effect on our economy. I have to ask the question, Mr. President, what has happened to the Democrats in their philosophy? The whole idea that we can cut taxes and increase revenue is not a Republican idea, and yet it is totally rejected by this administration. I can remember when President Clinton was first elected. His chief financial adviser, Laura Tyson, was quoted as having said there is no relationship between the level of taxes that a country pays and its economic productivity. I suggest that if that is true, if you carry that to its logical extreme, you could tax everybody 100 percent and they will work just as hard, but we know that does not happen. And up until this administration, the Democrats knew that that could not happen. I have to credit a Democrat with the whole idea that you can increase revenue by cutting taxes, exactly what we are trying to do, looking at taxes in general. President Kennedy said in 1962, and this is a direct quote: It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut rates now. The soundest way to raise revenues is to cut rates now. That is exactly what we are trying to do. And we remember what happened during the Kennedy administration. The first year he was in office, the total revenues that came in to support government, that we used to spend on government, amounted to $79 billion. After he went through his series of tax reductions, it had grown to $112 billion. We remember what happened during the Reagan administration. And we always hear from the other side that the Reagan administration came up with tax cuts and the deficits went up. Well, sure, the deficits went up--not because of the tax cuts but because the liberals who dominated the Congress at that time voted for more government spending. And so in 1980, the total revenues that came in to run Government amounted to $517 billion. In 1990, the total revenues that came in were $1.03 trillion. It exactly doubled during that 10-year period. Now, what happened during that 10-year period? During that 10-year period, we had the largest tax reductions in contemporary history. It has been shown--in fact, if you look at marginal tax rates, the revenues developed in 1980 were $244 billion; in 1990, it was $466 billion. And that happened during the time the tax rates were cut. So we know that we can increase revenues by reducing taxes and also relieve the burden on the American people to allow them to have more money--and not the rich. We know better than that. We have been playing that game and demagoging it for so long now that I think the American people are aware we are not talking about the rich. With just a couple minutes remaining, I want to be more specific as to one of the particular tax cuts I feel very strongly about. In fact, Mr. President, you had made a comment about some of the farms in Wyoming. I had the same experience over the break. I was down in Lawton, OK, and I had a guy come up to me saying they were selling their family farm to a corporate farm because they could not get the price for some of their acreage in order to pay the estate taxes, and that's happening all over the country. They say, what is happening to the family-owned farm? That is what is happening. I remember in our history, when this country was first founded and the pilgrims came over here and risked their lives--half of them did die--they came over for economic and for religious freedom. When they got over here, they established a system where each one had a plot of land to do with as he wanted and to be able to pass that wealth on from generation to generation. And it was so great, the wealth that was accumulated as a result of that, that in one of his letters back home John Smith said, now 1 farmer can grow more corn than 10 could before-- because of that freedom that they had to be able to pass it on. It is called productivity, motivation, knowing the Government is not going to come in and take the money away from you that you have worked so hard to pass on to future generations. Mr. President, I have six grandchildren, four children. I quit working for me. The motivation is for the future generations. When the estate tax was first formed, it was formed as a temporary tax. The maximum rate was 10 percent, and it was supposed to be dropped down. I conclude by reading something that I found, an excerpt from a 1996 Heritage Foundation study that said if the estate tax were repealed, over the next 9 years the Nation's economy would average as much as $1.1 billion per year in extra output and an average of 145,000 additional jobs would be created, personal income would rise by an average of $8 billion per year above current projections, and the deficit would actually decline due to the growth generated by its abolishment. So I think we need to reject the failed notion that has been proposed and stated over and over again by members of this administration, including Laura Tyson and the President himself, that we need to raise taxes and not lower taxes. We could actually raise revenues by lowering tax rates, and that is exactly what we intend to do and should do for ourselves, for the American people and for our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, throughout each year we address a number of Medicare issues. This year, we have a Medicare issue within the reconciliation bill which is related to military health care, specifically, Medicare subvention. Without Medicare subvention, military treatment facilities cannot receive reimbursement from Medicare for care the facilities provide to military retirees who are also eligible for Medicare. With Medicare subvention, we can continue to improve the quality of life for military personnel, their families, and retired service members and their families by providing them with alternative access to treatment. Because health care is such an important aspect of quality of life in the military, it is imperative that we continue to provide our military personnel and retirees with the access which they were promised. Currently, because the access of military retirees age 65 and over is on a space-available basis and due to overcrowding of military treatment facilities, finding adequate medical care has proven increasingly difficult if not impossible. Clearly, this is not a trend we want to continue if we hope to retain and recruit the quality and quantity of men and women needed to fight and win wars in the future. Medicare subvention would fulfill the commitment made to our former service members by allowing Medicare to reimburse the Department of Defense [DOD] for care provided to members who are Medicare-eligible beneficiaries. I believe that Medicare subvention would be fiscally beneficial to Medicare and would make available an important revenue source that will enable and encourage DOD to provide care to over-65 retirees. Further, Medicare will save money because DOD can provide care less expensively than civilian providers. This is clearly a win- win situation for both the DOD and Medicare. Clearly, ending access to military medical facilities when beneficiaries reach an age when they will most need it is fundamentally unfair. Our veterans have earned our support, and they deserve the best access to medical care that we can make available. I believe that Medicare subvention is a necessary step in the right direction, and I fully support the Medicare subvention provisions found in the reconciliation bill. Food Stamp Nutrition Education

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jeff Severs be given floor privileges for the DOD bill.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous-consent request?

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, let me thank the very distinguished chairman of our committee, Senator Thurmond, for the hours and hours that he put in and the way he ran the meetings. He was very fair and open. I appreciate personally very much his remarks that he just made. Thank you, Senator Thurmond. As chairman of the readiness subcommittee I want to thank Senator Robb who is the ranking minority member. We took care of a lot of the problems out there. I must say, Mr. President, that I think that our readiness is desperately underfunded. We did the very best we could in this bill with the resources we had but we are not going to be able to continue on the course we are on right now. We have problems. As I go around the Nation, and around the world, actually, and visit bases, I have been in bases in the State of Alabama, and throughout the Nation, as well as some of the foreign bases, and I can tell you we are in an OPTEMPO rate which is unacceptable. Our divorce rates are going up, our retention rates are going down, and we need to do a better job of funding not just readiness but modernization and quality of life. I am very concerned about quality of life. As I go around I find that some of these kids are working about double the normal tempo that we have found to be acceptable. While they can sustain it for a while, and while the troops can sustain it, the spouses cannot. There will come a point in time where they will have to have more time with their families and have a more civil type of existence. We cannot do that with the way this administration has not allocated the proper amount of money to keep our system going to meet the minimum expectations of the American people. That is, to be able to defend America on two regional fronts. Having said that, I say again that we did the very best that can be done, and in our readiness subcommittee we were able to reinstate money for flying hours. We are losing pilots on a daily basis to the airlines. So we will have to do a lot more than we have done, but we have done the very best that we can. Let me make one comment about the depot issue. I know it is a difficult issue. A few years ago when one of the House Members, Congressman Armey, I believe, originally came up with the whole idea of the Base Realignment and Closing Commission concept, which means we know we cannot reduce excess infrastructure by doing it through the normal political process because everybody is concerned about jobs in their States. So they appointed an independent commission to be totally free from political influence to make recommendations and they went through, with round one in 1991, in 1993 another round, in 1995 a third round, and in doing this there is hardly a Senator in this Chamber that did not have major installations that have closed in their States. Certainly the State of Alabama lost a major one, and there were two major installations in the very State from which our chairman comes from, South Carolina, and virtually all the other States. So, we all bit the bullet. However, it appears there is an effort now to disregard that and leave air logistic centers in California as well as in Texas open. While it is a difficult thing to go through we have to accept the fact, sooner or later, that you cannot have in the case of any specialty area, and specifically in this case, air logistic centers where you have five operating at 50 percent capacity. You cannot continue to do that. So they recommended closing two of them that they determined to be the least efficient of the five and transferring that workload to the remainder which would be around 75 to 80 percent capacity. That makes a lot of sense. According to the GAO, that would save $468 million a year, and over 5 years, Mr. President, that is $2.34 billion. When I think about that and think about where those dollars are desperately needed in quality of life, in readiness, in force strength, in modernization, it breaks my heart to think we are maybe willing to just throw it away. So I did make the gesture that the chairman referred to and no one asked me to do it. I felt it was the right thing to do because we have to have an authorization bill. Under the rules of the Senate, it is very possible for one Senator to keep a bill from coming up. I did not want that to happen to Senator Thurmond's bill. I did not want that to happen to our defense establishment. So I pulled the objectionable portions of how we treat depot maintenance out of the bill, but at the same time I announced I have every intention of reestablishing language that will accomplish what we want to get accomplished, and that is to be able to save that money that the GAO states is at risk. So I do not know whether it will be an amendment on the floor by which I will try to do this or in conference but I think everyone understands clearly there will be an effort to reinstate language that we have had to take out. With that, I will say this is a good bill and I want to move forward with it. I want to get a chance to really consider these amendments, and I know there will be a lot of amendments. As the new chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, I have a devoted a significant amount of time during the past few months traveling to military bases to discuss issues that impact the readiness of the Armed Forces and their ability to carry out assigned missions: European theater, including installations in England, Italy, Bosnia, Hungary; Camp Lejuene, NC; Fort Hood, TX; Corpus Christi Naval Base, Texas; Dyess Air Force Base; and Fort Drum. We have also received testimony from the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the service chiefs, the unified commander-in-chief, and several other high ranking military and civilian officials from the Department of Defense. While the administration claims to have provided strong support for training, maintenance, supplies and other essentials needed to keep U.S. Forces ready to fight and win decisively, its budget request reduced real funding for these areas by $1.4 billion. Nothing I've heard during my base visits has made me feel like we are as ready as the administration asserts. At each unit, maintenance personnel have resorted to cannibalizing good equipment to keep other equipment operating. These additional maintenance actions result in 12-hour average work days for our young troops--only because of a lack of good spares. If readiness truly remains the administration's highest priority, then I have to wonder about the shape of the other accounts-- modernization, quality of life, research and development--are they even more seriously underfunded? Military units and the personnel within them, are being overused and underfunded to the point that I am afraid we are returning to the days of the hollow force. And the military personnel with whom I've spoken agree. It is also apparent to me that our Forces are being stretched to the limit to support humanitarian and contingency operations such as the deployment of IFOR/SFOR in Bosnia. Our high OPTEMPO is particularly troubling, since it results in more than just time away from home for the troops--it results in more equipment wear and tear; higher than planned consumption of spares; and canceled training. At every base visited, I heard concerns about the quality of equipment. Our lack of spares has caused us to cannibalize perfectly good engines to keep others operating, requiring my maintenance troops to work even more hours to keep our planes flying. Our normal work week is now 50--56 hours/week.-- Lakenheath, AF Maintenance Officer. Letter to Senator Thurmond from a non-commissioned officer: We have old, worn out equipment that is difficult to maintain because we cannot always get the parts needed to repair them. It is the same way wherever we go; outdated, broken equipment, a lack of spare parts, overworked and underpaid GIs, resulting in an inability to perform our mission. I do not question the fact that our military forces are the finest in the world. They are clearly performing their assigned missions superbly and they are capable of defeating any potential enemy of today. But what about tomorrow? If this trend continues, I am concerned about how long we can maintain the present pace of operations. I am not alone in my concerns--they were echoed by many of the military personnel I had the pleasure of meeting. One officer summed it up nicely when he said ``the storm clouds are on the horizon.'' The Pentagon continues to omit these concerns from official reports we receive from the Committee--to the contrary, their reports reports indicate readiness levels are at an all time high. I find the remarkable discrepancy between what I see in the field and the official statements coming from the administration and the Pentagon very troubling. And I am concerned that unless we take the necessary steps to correct these problems now, our military capability will erode as we enter the 21st century. The most troubling challenge is the need for additional modernization funding, for lack of new procurement has dramatic affects across all the other accounts: As our military equipment ages, it requires increased maintenance and thus more operations and maintenance [O&M] funding; since additional funding is not available to increase the O&M accounts, dollars are often robbed from training accounts; unfortunately, as the equipment ages, the problem will only get worse, and we will find ourselves in a death spiral. The funding crisis is further aggravated by the continual deployment of forces to contingency operations such as Southern Watch and Provide Comfort. I have spoken many times, about the huge cost of these operations--between $6.5 and $8 billion for Bosnia alone--and the fact these expenditures will come at the expense of our defense budget. While dollars are the most obvious issue in defense, I suggest that what we often overlook is the huge burden we are placing on our people and our equipment. We are wearing out our equipment and pushing our people so hard they no longer have time to train. I heard comment after comment during my visits: The high OPTEMPO at which our personnel are operating is definitely causing a strain on our people's families. Ultimately, this strain also affects my pilots' job performance.--Marine F--18 Squadron Commander. ``The number of days we fly to support Bosnia doesn't leave us with enough time to train. The only areas where we get training from our Bosnia missions is in reconnaissance and close air support. The rest of our training areas are suffering.''--Air Force F-16 Squadron Commander. ``Our average crew goes TDY 150--160 days per year--the Air Force goal is 120 days. These excessive taskings are straining my peoples' families as well as impacting the ability of my crews to receive adequate training.''--Air Force C--130 Squadron Commander. Clearly, there are situations when the deployment of the U.S. military is necessary to protect America's vital interests. Unfortunately, it appears the Clinton administration will continue to keep a very low threshold for determining the need to commit our forces. My friends, the United States cannot force its military to expend more resources than we are willing to provide and still expect it to remain a viable force for the future when it may be called upon to defend American interests. I am concerned, the committee is concerned, our military personnel are concerned, and the American people should be concerned. If we are to avoid losing our military edge, we must act decisively and begin providing the resources necessary to support the missions we continue to ask of our Armed Forces.

Mr. INHOFE. That is correct.

Mr. INHOFE. That is my intent.

Mr. INHOFE. I do agree with that. I want to give my assurance to the Senator from Georgia I have been living with this problem for a long period of time. We need an ultimate solution. In the interim, we need to make sure the recommendations of the BRAC Commission--that we protect the integrity of that system and they be acted upon--that we go ahead and fulfill the expectations. Again, it is not just the money involved here. I think about all of the Senators who had closures, and if we start making exceptions now I think it is very unfair to every Member of this Senate body who has had a closure to now say for political reasons we can take exceptions. I know it is controversial when you say this, but if you just read the statements that the President made in August of 1996 right before the election, saying we will make sure those jobs do not leave, so what does that mean? It means regardless of what they do, whether it is competition or anything else, if the jobs stay in those areas we will still have five air logistic centers, so you have the same problem operating at 50 percent capacity.