Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. That is correct. In responding to the Senator from Georgia, we had a committee meeting on this with the GAO and we looked at how much that has cost so far. That has been 2 years ago. And still, almost the same number are there. Now, there are other problems that come in, as the junior Senator from Utah brought up yesterday, that we are having a flight of expertise out of these areas, getting into other occupations, and if we do not do something quickly we are not going to be able to ever solve this problem. I think for that reason we need to address this, address it in this bill. But again, to protect the bill so that we would have an authorization bill, I, personally, was willing, as you were willing, to take that out so we could come to the floor and take it up and work in a different work form--it may be the same form or a different form--but take it up as a floor amendment or in conference.

Mr. INHOFE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we are going to be taking up hopefully today our DOD authorization bill, I believe at 1 o'clock. Sometimes it is important to look beyond the bill itself. There are several provisions of this bill that were very critical which were taken out, and one of them was taken out because I think it is certain that the President would have vetoed it, and it has to do with Bosnia and with our withdrawal from Bosnia. I think it is important that we talk about that a little bit because, while we are taking up our Department of Defense reauthorization bill, I can tell you right now it is not adequate. It is the very best that we could come up with, with the resources we had to work with, but as chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I can assure you that it is not adequate. We are really at a critical time right now, and, quite frankly, I hang this one on the administration. This has been a very nonmilitary, nondefense administration. We have had a difficult time getting any attention to our military, for the duties that they are trained to perform. I would like just for a moment to cover a couple of things and how this is going to affect our DOD authorization bill for this year and probably next year, too. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness, we have jurisdiction over training, over military construction, over all readiness issues including the BRAC process. As I have traveled around to various installations, I have found that we are really in serious trouble. I have never been so proud of our troops for doing what they are doing under adverse conditions. I was a product of the draft many years ago. I came here believing in compulsory service, and I still think it is a good idea for our Nation. However, I am so impressed with the quality of troops we have in this all-voluntary military. However, I wonder how long they can hold on the way they are going right now with this ``Optempo'' rate. ``Optempo'' is a term that is used in the military that refers to the number of deployment days, the number of days that these troops are away from their wives, husbands, and families, and it has gone up now in some areas double the amount that is considered to be the optimum. For example, we normally talk about approximately 115 days a year, and it is up now to well over 200 in many areas. While seemingly they are holding on, they are dedicated, you cannot expect it to continue indefinitely because our divorce rate is starting to go up right now and our retention rate is starting to drop right now. The quality-of-life issues are really a very serious problem. I think both the chairman and the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Personnel--Senator Dirk Kempthorne and Senator Max Cleland--are doing a great job, but I assure you when you are talking about readiness, the personnel issues and the quality-of-life issues are very, very significant. Going back in time just a little bit, I can remember being here on the Senate floor back in November 1995 when we found out that the President of our country, Bill Clinton, was proposing to send troops over to Bosnia. I got to thinking at that time, are we going to go through this same exercise again? Right now, we have more troops deployed in more parts of the world than we have had at any time since World War II, and yet they are not over there for any purposes that relate to our Nation's security. Our strategic security interests are not being served. They call them peacekeeping missions. They call them peacemaking missions. They call them humanitarian missions. Mr. President, with the scarce resources that we have right now--and, of course, you know because you serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee--we cannot continue to do this. I can remember the debate that took place on this floor in November 1995 when the President was suggesting that we send troops over to the northeastern sector of Bosnia, and I remember going over there and seeing what it was like and seeing what our mission would be like, and supposedly we were going to go over there to make peace, to draw the lines out so that we would have these lines of demarcation where the Serbs had to be over here and the Croats had to be here and the Muslims had to be here, forgetting all about the fact that there are many other factions there. I do not think it is even a remote possibility we could the stop the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims from fighting with each other. They have been doing it for 500 years. Let us assume we could. If we could, we still have the Mujaheddin, Arkan Tigers, Black Swans--we have all these rogue elements, and the only thing they have in common is they hate us. Here we are sending troops, proposing at that time in 1995 to send troops over when we have been sending them other places. I remember--and I am not hanging this one on President Clinton because it was President Bush who initially sent troops into Somalia, and he sent them over in September, before he was defeated and before the new Clinton administration took over. They originally were sent over for 45 days. Each month--and you and I were both serving in the other body at that time. We passed a resolution calling for the withdrawal of our troops from Somalia because they were spending our precious defense dollars and they were endangering their lives. And month after month after month President Clinton said, we are going to leave them over there indefinitely. And it wasn't until 18 of our Rangers were brutally murdered and their nude corpses dragged through the streets of Mogadishu that finally the American people woke up and applied enough pressure, and we were able to bring back our troops. I do not want that to happen in the streets of Sarajevo. I do not want that to happen in Bosnia. But if you will remember, Mr. President, it was in November when they were trying to sell the idea of having the support of Congress to send our troops over there, we had a resolution of disapproval saying we can't afford to do it. We were not without compassion. We were not unconcerned about the plight of those poor people over there. But that has been going on for many, many years. The problem was we just could not afford another mission like that, and so we had a resolution of disapproval. And the President and the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili, said that they would be over there for only 12 months. They go over in December, come back in December of the following year. That was 1996. Well, anyway, this was not just approximately 12 months. This was not simply a suggestion that maybe we can get our mission, whatever our mission was--I still don't know what our mission was over here--maybe we can get that mission accomplished in 12 months. It was an absolute promise by this administration, and I have it down in the words of Secretary of Defense Bill Perry that they said this is an absolute, there are no conditions under which our troops will be there beyond 12 months. I knew it wasn't true. They lied to the American people. We missed passing a resolution of disapproval, Mr. President, by four votes--four votes. I can remember several, at least four people standing on the floor of the Senate saying, well, it is only for 12 months, because that was an absolute at that time. We said it was not going to be 12 months. I went to Bosnia. Nobody had been over there at that time. Sure, they were firing guns and all of that, and I wanted to go up to the northeast sector because the northeast sector of Bosnia is where we were going to send our troops, we were proposing to do it at that time. That's where Tuzla is, Brcko, up in that northeastern sector. I went up there. In fact, I wasn't able to get up there any other way, so I borrowed a British helicopter and went up to the Tuzla area and landed up there only to find that there were some troops up there that were U.N. troops, not American troops, and the commanding general of the northeast sector was a guy named Haukland from Norway, a great guy. So I went in there. I said, ``I hear gunfire out there.'' ``Yeah, it's been going on for a long time. It's still going on.'' I said, ``Well, you know, we are proposing to send troops over here and have this joint effort to cause the divisions to stop the fighting up here.'' I said, ``Of course, it is only going to be 12 months.'' And he started laughing. He said, ``Twelve months. You mean 12 years.'' He said, ``It is different here than it is most other places.'' This is the analogy that he drew. I have mentioned it in this Chamber before, but it is so accurate today to remember. We knew this in November 1995. He said, ``It's like putting your hand in water and leaving it for there 12 months. Then you take it out and nothing has changed. It is the same.'' I would suggest to you, Mr. President, that when we pull out ultimately--and I hope we can do it safely, I hope that we can have a minimum of terrorist activity at that time, but we know that they are just in a period of rest right now and they will go right back. This is the dilemma we find ourselves in. The President promised we would be out in 12 months. He broke his promise, and we were not out. Then he said we are not going to stay 18 months beyond the 12 months, so June 30, 1998, would be the withdrawal date. I have to say that the President has us, those of us who are conservatives, those of us who are for a strong national defense--and I have to say in a not too charitable way that we have a lot of Members of this body that sincerely in their hearts are not all that concerned about our Nation's defense because they don't think there is a significant threat out there. How many times have you heard from this administration that the cold war is over and so there is no longer a threat. And I said before, I look back wistfully at the days of the cold war when we had one opposition, we had two superpowers, and the other one was the U.S.S.R. and intelligence knew pretty much what they had, what kind of resources they had; they were predictable in what they were doing. They were people you could predict. Now, we are faced with a world environment where we have, admittedly, and it is not even classified, over 25 nations that currently, today, have weapons of mass destruction, either biological, chemical or nuclear. And they are working on the means to deliver them. Just in yesterday's Washington Times there was an article about how now China is working on a joint project on a missile with Iran. Is Iran a friend? No. All these people talking about how friendly China is, yet we know that both China and Russia have a missile that would deliver a weapon of mass destruction from any place in the world to the continental United States. That is there today. We know that. It is logical, if we also know--again, it is not even classified--that both Russia and China are selling and have sold both systems and technology to countries like Iran and other countries, then why would they stop at this fine line, this bright line, you might say, and say they are not going to sell them a missile that would reach the continental United States? That does not do anything for my comfort level. Nonetheless, we are involved in a situation in Bosnia right now where the President has said we are going to extend it to June of 1999. Then I keep hearing whispers from these people who do not see any threat out there, ``That's all right, when that time comes, when June gets here, we are going to go ahead and extend it for another 6 months, and another 6 months.'' I can tell you right now, Mr. President, there are people in this Chamber and people in the White House who have no intentions of any kind of withdrawal from Bosnia. So I serve notice, as I have many times and as have other Members, when that date gets here you better be ready because we are going to be pulling out. I think it is going to be necessary to be talking about this between now and through the entire next year, so they can be prepared. We do have NATO allies. We do not want to be insensitive to the fact that a lot of our NATO allies have strategic interests in keeping troops in Bosnia. Those people in the Balkans, those in the eastern part of Europe that are our allies in NATO, they certainly have reason to want to have peace in Bosnia because it serves their strategic interests. We are across an ocean. It does not serve ours. While we would like to have the luxury, we are faced with a depleted, almost a decimated, military in this country. We are in a position where we cannot meet the minimum expectations of the American people, which is to be able to defend America on two regional fronts. We know we cannot do that. Let's not kid anybody, we know we could not fight the Persian Gulf war again, even if we wanted to today. We do not have the resources to do that. It is not just that we do not have a national missile defense system, it is conventional forces, too. We have approximately one half the force strength that we had in 1991. I am talking about one half the Army divisions, one half the Air Force wings, one half the boats that are floating around out there. Yet people think we are in a position to adequately defend ourselves. So, I think we need to think of this problem that we have around the world and specifically in Bosnia in terms of, No. 1, what it is doing to our overall defense system in terms of money and personnel. If we should have to call our troops in for something in North Korea and simultaneously for something perhaps in Iran or the Middle East, we would be in a position of having to retrain these troops that have been sent to Somalia or Haiti or Bosnia or one of the other places, all these missions we are sending them on, because the rules of combat are different. There is not a general out there who would not tell you we would have to retrain our troops. That would take time, that would cost money, and that directly affects our state of readiness. But what else? There was another promise that was made back in November 1995, and that is we would send our troops over there and this whole mission, this 12-month mission, would cost between $1.5 and $2 billion. It is all in the Record. That is what they said. It was repeated here on the Senate floor. ``It is not going to be that expensive. It's going to be between $1.5 and $2 billion.'' At that time, on the Senate floor --and it is in the Record--I said it is going to end up costing $8 billion before it is over. And guess what, we are now going through $6.5 billion. There are four elements of a defense system that we can control. We cannot control these missions because the White House has control over these missions. But what we can control are readiness, troop force strength, quality of life, and modernization. Those are the four elements that we can control. When we now are down to the point where we have an optempo of almost double what is considered to be the acceptable level and we have the troops that are deployed in all these places where there are no strategic interests at risk, we are spending that money over there for these missions that has to come out of the defense budget. The other day we had a committee meeting. We had all four chiefs of the services. I asked each one of them, one at a time, I said, ``We are going to come in for an emergency supplemental. We are going to have to nickel and dime this thing and pay for all this fun we are having over in these areas and all this good we are supposedly doing. It is going to have to come out of defense somewhere. You have four choices: readiness, troop strength, modernization, or quality of life. Where is it going to come from?'' Not one--finally the Marine general said, ``I'd say quality of life, because we are tough.'' So maybe that was the only answer that we got. But there is no way we can take it out of quality of life and still retain people. Right now in this authorization bill, by the way, we have money that is in there for flight hours, which is very critical because we are losing our trained pilots. It costs $87,000 just to go through primary training for one of these pilots. What we are doing is training them for the airlines, because we are losing them. We cannot compete. We don't have to be able to pay the same money the airlines pay, but we have to be able at least to have a respectable level of optempo and be competitive, so we do have some money for flight hours in this authorization bill. Again, to do that we have to take it from someplace else. I, as chairman of the readiness subcommittee, can tell you I am not at all comfortable with our state of readiness as it is right now. I believe we should have in the authorization bill--and I had an amendment ready but decided, since it would be certain it would draw a veto, that we would handle this as a separate issue--but we need actually to have a resolution of withdrawal, giving our commitment to make sure our NATO allies know and can prepare today for our withdrawal on June 30, 1998. I went to Brussels where they had the last NATO meeting and made a speech there making it abundantly clear. I found at the same time I made a statement which I feel I can make on behalf of the U.S. Senate, there were other people who were walking around whispering, saying, ``Don't worry, we will not leave you high and dry.'' I am very much concerned. Normally we do not address these things until it gets hysterical around here. But rather than to wait to that point, I am going to say right now, a year ahead of time, that we have enough people in this body and the body down the hall who are going to stop the effort to extend beyond the June 30 deadline for our troops remaining in the former Yugoslavia. As I say, there are two reasons for it. One is our state of readiness that is suffering as a result of it. And the second thing is the risk of the people and the cost of that risk. That cost, that $6.5 to $8 billion it is going to cost us, is going to have to come out of somewhere, out of our defense budget. The last thing I would say that is impaired by this, this issue we have talked about many times, is the fact we need to finish our national missile defense system that we started in 1983. In 1983--of course, that was the Reagan administration. There were a lot of people at that time who were very, very--they were very concerned over what was going to happen. They had the foresight to say we are going to have to have a system to defend America against a missile that would come in, an ICBM, by the year 2000. So we set up a system whereby we would have something deployable by 1999. Up until 1992, when the Clinton administration went in, we were right on schedule. We had an investment. We have a $50 billion investment in the Aegis fleet of 22 ships right now that have rocket-launching capabilities. You can stand on the floor and talk about the four different types of potential systems that we now have an investment in that would offer us a defense against a missile attack from overseas, but perhaps the Aegis system is the best one because it is a matter of protecting an investment, a $50 billion investment. It would only cost $5 billion more to be able to take the launching capability and go out of the atmosphere. Why is that important? Because if a missile is launched from China or from North Korea or from Russia--and certainly don't assume something couldn't come from Russia. It could be an accidental launch. We know that. We went through that. When we had the hearings not too long ago, we talked about how long it took to retarget over there and what the risk was of an accidental launch or an unintentional launch from Russia. But if that happened, if we have this system in place where we can go up beyond the atmosphere, we would have about 30 minutes to shoot down a missile that is coming in our direction. We know it works. There is not anyone in America who did not watch on CNN what was going on in the Persian Gulf war. We know that rockets can knock down missiles. So it is a matter of getting it out of the atmosphere. If you wait until it comes into the atmosphere, you have about 2 minutes. So the choice there is 30 minutes or 2 minutes. When you have a system that is 90 percent paid for and it takes about $5 billion more and we are spending $6 or $8 billion over in Bosnia, we have to get our priorities straight. Unfortunately, we have a very biased media in this country that does not allow a lot of this stuff to get out. We can say it on the floor of the U.S. Senate and we know that we have the facts. But by the time it gets reported, it shifts through the beltway media and people do not realize that risk is out there. So I will just say, Mr. President, since we are dealing with the DOD authorization bill today, I would like to serve warning we are going to have a resolution, well in advance, so our allies will know that when June 30, 1998, comes, we are going to be out of Bosnia. I think it is better to go ahead and serve notice early rather than to wait to the last minute. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that I be shown as an original cosponsor of S. 923.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I think we all know certain things are true and incontrovertible. One is that a base closing is a very difficult thing to do politically and a very difficult thing to endure as a Member of the U.S. Senate or a Member of the other body, because people look to us and they look to us and say, ``You are responsible for saving what we have here.'' I am not eloquent enough to describe the anguish that people go through, that cities go through, that counties and the States go through during a BRAC process. They go out and they hire consultant after consultant and they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. They go through all of this and, finally, the recommendations come down. We have gone through that in 1991, 1993 and 1995, and it was necessary. It was, I guess, the Army that came up with the initial idea that we try to eliminate excess capacity and infrastructure. But we haven't been able to do it because politically it can't be done. There is no better evidence of that than what is happening today. They established a process that was to be totally free from political interference. Seemingly, it worked for a while. I don't have the exact number of installations that have been closed down, but we all understand that we are going through a difficult time with our defense. We all understand that we have a President of the United States who is not strong on defense. He would like to have us think there is no threat out there, that the cold war is over, so we can start reducing down to the point where we cannot begin to defend America on two regional fronts. We all know that is true today. The bottom line is that we had too much infrastructure. It was up here. So we brought it down, in 1991, 1993 and 1995, to a level that is down now and still a little bit above our force strength. As far as future BRACs are concerned, I contend that I don't want to get this infrastructure down so artificially low so that when we rebuild, we will not have the infrastructure to accommodate that. I agree with the Senator from Georgia, who says that we have to position ourselves so that we know if we go through all of this anguish again, we will not have political interference. Anyway, I am going to tell you a story, Mr. President, and you may not believe me. I think you know me well enough to know that I do tell the truth. I was in a very tough election when I was in the other body, and I ran for the Senate in 1994. I ran against a guy who is young, articulate, and a very smart young man. He was a Member of the House of Representatives, a member of the other party. He was on the House defense committee at that time, which was called the House Armed Services Committee, now called the House National Security Committee. He said, ``Elect me and I will use political influence to make sure that none of the bases are damaged in the BRAC processes.'' We have five installations in the State of Oklahoma. I made a public statement in the newspaper. I said, ``I will not use political influence because I know we have to do something about this infrastructure. What I will do is I will stay out of it until the recommendations are made, and when they are made, I will walk through fire to defend the recommendations of the BRAC committee, because the system has to work. We can't allow this to become a politicized system.'' So we did that pretty well. I have a list here of various States and Senators that cooperated when they came through in 1991, 1993, and 1995 and said they wanted to close certain bases. They said, well, it is going to hurt at home, hurt me politically, but we are going to have to do it. They bit the bullet. Now we are asked to make two exceptions. I agree with the Senator from Georgia when, certainly, the Senator from Texas is put in a very awkward situation by our President because, in August of 1996, right before the election, when President Clinton was campaigning out in California with a huge number of electoral votes, he said this to them and made a commitment that ``I will see to it that no jobs are lost in California and no jobs are lost in Texas, and we will privatize.'' He grabbed that out of the air. So that commitment had to be--I don't think there is anybody in America today that doesn't know that that was a highly politically charged commitment and statement he made. He made that statement. Then that puts everybody in the position that, wait a minute, if you have the President agreeing that we are not going to close those installations, McClellan and Kelly, in California and Texas, what about you Senators, aren't you going to stand behind the President? You have that leverage. That is where we are today. So we went through this process. I find myself in the situation now that the recommendations have been made that we are going to have to stand behind the recommendations. I want to suggest to you, Mr. President, we have made some compromises. Senator McCain from Arizona had some objections and concerns in our committee. I am chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. We went through this and debated these issues for hours and hours on how to protect the integrity of the BRAC system because it became a dollar decision. We were going through the marking up of an authorization bill where we are trying to rebuild our defenses and sustain a level that will adequately protect America. We have considerations on modernization programs that cost money. We have barracks out there needing replacement. There are quality-of-life issues and modernization issues. These things are maybe $100,000 or maybe $1 million a lick. We have had to turn them down. Now we have an opportunity to follow the recommendations of the BRAC committee and save the defense system approximately $468 million a year. Now, if you carry that out to 5 years, you are talking about $2.34 billion. If you don't do that, where is the money going to come from? If they are successfully able to compete and end up with the jobs in Texas or California, or privatize in place, it is the same thing. We don't want to confuse people. Those people advocating competition realize that they want competition because they want to protect the jobs there. I understand this. Just because it is dealing in semantics, privatization in place, or competition, where they will be able to leave the jobs there, it doesn't make a difference. The bottom line, as the Senator from Georgia said, is that we will still have five air logistic centers. So it came out with the recommendations. GAO said that if we don't do it, it is going to cost $2.34 billion over a 5-year period. That is money that has to, realistically, come out of the defense system. I don't know where it is going to come from. Mr. President, we had several hearings where we had the chiefs of services. So I asked each of the four chiefs of services, ``Where are you going to come up with this money?'' If we end up having to violate the BRAC and it ends up costing us $2 billion, where are you going to come up with the money? It can only come from four areas: Modernization, quality of life, force strength, and readiness. So I asked each one. They said, ``We can't take it out of any of those because we are underfunded if all four areas.'' They said at one time that it was going to cost another $2 billion in 1 year to bring us up to meeting the minimum of the expectations of the American people to protect America on two regional fronts. So we have the recommendations. They said, ``All right. If you have five ALC's located in Georgia, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas, and California, we will select two of those to close.'' And they used the criteria to operate more efficiently. And we could get into 2 or 3 hours of discussion on how this process works, and how they used the criteria in evaluating the effectiveness of various installations. They came up with the conclusion that we are going to have to close two, and those two should be McClellan and Kelly in California and in Texas. When you do that, you redistribute that so that workload goes on to the remaining ALC's. Of course, that will increase the number of jobs in other States. I understand that. But, if you do not do that, you will still be operating five ALC's at 50 percent capacity. The only difference is they will be owned--two of them--by the private sector. You still have the same problem that existed. So, if you look at what the alternatives are and look at what we have gone through in the committee process, you will see that we have really given in a lot. I suggested to the Senator from Texas that it was the QDR--Quadrennial Review Defense--review that we went through, and the Secretary of Defense came in, and said, ``We think that we should change 60-40 to 50-50.'' He made some other recommendations. He said, ``We also need to have two more BRAC.'' It so happens that the Senator from Arizona, Senator McCain, said, ``I think we ought to change it to 50-50.'' So we sat down, and worked it out. And we agreed to do that. So there have been compromises during this process. We debated this. We went through the whole committee system. We came out, and finally said that even though as individuals it is going to be politically very difficult as it is, and every time you shut down a military installation--we have done over 100 of them so far--it is always difficult to do. It is difficult for the local House and Senate Members. But it has to be done. So the committee voted unanimously to do that. Some people have suggested that the GAO report is not accurate. We actually had the committee meeting where we had the GAO people there. We said, ``We want you to be sure that we understand you correctly. You are saying this is going to cost $468 million. Do you still stand by that today?'' They said, ``The data, as near as we can determine, indicates that that is what the cost will be.'' I said, ``Have you considered everything; privatization in place?'' They said, ``Yes, we have considered that. That is part of the report.'' So we have an extensive report right here by the GAO that comes up with these conclusions. Some people have suggested that perhaps it was not a part of that report. I will quote something from the report. According to GAO, ``The cost to operate the other depots at 50-percent capacity will far exceed any projected savings through public-private competition, $468 million. This fact begs the question: What is the real objective of public-private competition? The only feasible answer is to save jobs, and Texas and California are to appease the private sector appetite for new business. Neither is an acceptable answer.'' So we did this. We went through this thing. We looked at what the GAO was recommending, and decided that we were going to have to do that. This hearing that we had lasted about 3 hours. They said there is no question about the fact that we are going to have to do something to build the others up to a reasonable respectable capacity. So that gets into the next issue. ``What is the respectable capacity of the remaining ALC's in order to have this logistics system function in a prudent manner in the United States?'' GAO said somewhere between 75 and 85 percent. You might ask. Why not get them up to 95 or 100 percent? The reason is very clear. If something should happen that we should have to go to war, we are going to have to have that excess capacity to take care of the needs to meet the new threat that is out there. That sounds very reasonable. So we have left it there. It is not exactly the same in the House bill as the Senate bill. In the House bill it was 80 percent, and in the Senate bill it was 75 percent--75 percent because Senator McCain thought that 75 percent would be a better number. So again, we caved in a little bit on that. So we are now talking about what to do with this and whether or not we should allow this process to be violated for the first time. I would just suggest to you that almost every State has had to undergo the closure of some type of installation. It would be very difficult. I saw Senator Sessions walking through here just a minute ago. For him to go back to the State of Alabama and say that we now are going to go ahead and make an exception, and they would say, ``Wait a minute. Why wasn't the exception made in Alabama, in fact, where we really wanted to keep our bases open?'' So it is difficult when you lose jobs. We have had to bite the bullet and go through this. A majority of the Members of this U.S. Senate have had to go through with that. Mr. President, there has also been some discussion that perhaps they left an option open. I know several people who for political reasons would like to believe that there is another option that is out there, and they clearly said they had been closed out. Let me read a couple of the things that I think are necessary for us to understand. If it had been the intent of the BRAC Commission to leave an option to privatize in place, they would have said there is an option to privatize in place. In the case of 1993 BRAC round in Newark, the Newark Air Force Base, they said, ``The workload can either be contracted out to one or more of several existing manufacturers, or privatize in place.'' They said in the 1995 Naval Service Warfare Center in Louisville, ``Transfer workload equipment and facilities to the private sector for local jurisdiction, as appropriate, if the private sector can accommodate the workload on-site.'' That is privatization in place on- site. But what they clearly intended in this case was not to have privatization in place--not to leave the jobs on site because they want to consolidate them. Last, I want to mention that this should not be a jobs issue. This is a national security issue. The whole reason, Mr. President, that we came up initially on this 60-40, which was a ratio--it was arbitrary, and I am the first one to say that it is arbitrary and needs to be changed at a date when we can correct the national security ramifications of this issue. But until then we are trying to keep some type of a ratio in place that would allow the public sector to be able to know that in case of war we are not going to be held hostage by one supplier. That is the big issue. Should that be 60 percent? I was willing to go 50 percent. But I think a better solution is to do what we did in this bill. We have a good bill. In this bill for the first time we have defined what core is. Core is for those functions that are performed that are necessary for us to defend America. That is a fairly simple definition. But that is it. So, if we define core, then we say that we are going to have to do the core work on site. That would solve the problem. We wouldn't be talking about 60-40 or 50-50. So I made a commitment to Senator McCain that, if we can go ahead and drop the 50-50, let's give it a couple of years. Let's allow them to see how this works with our new definition of core, and see if we can't solve it that way and get away from this somewhat arbitrary type of a formula. So the real issue here is twofold, I would say. One is we have involved a lot of money, and, if we do not do this, we are going to have to come up with it somewhere. It is going to be a very costly process if we agree that we are going to violate the intent and the letter of the BRAC. No. 2, this is even more important than just the money; that is, we are talking about defending America. We are talking about having a capability in the public sector to be able to have air logistics centers. That will keep our airplanes in the air, and will keep our soldiers fighting in the event that war comes up. People would like to say there is not that threat out there. I am not going to go into my normal speech that I make when we talk about this. I have to tell you. I look wistfully back to the days of the cold war when we had one other superpower, and our intelligence knew pretty well where they were. We knew what threat was out there, and we defined that threat. We could predict how the Soviets were going to act. That is not true anymore. We have some 25 nations that have weapons of mass destruction. We have a country that was just written about in yesterday's newspaper in the Washington Times that the Chinese now are selling more and more technology in systems to deliver those weapons of mass destruction to countries like Iran. So we are faced not with just one single predictable superpower who poses a threat to us but also to many, many powers out there. So as a member of the Armed Services Committee, as chairman of the Readiness Committee, I can say that the big issue here is we have a country to defend and as difficult as the process is, as difficult as it is to go through, as upset as I am with the President for politicizing this in August 1996, nonetheless, we are going to have to try to stay as close to the recommendations as possible. Because, if we violate it just one time, I can tell you right now it is not only going to be the Senator from Georgia who said, ``If we do not go ahead and carry out the recommendations of the 1995 round, I am going to oppose any future BRAC recommendations.'' I can assure you that I will do the same thing. I imagine the majority of the Members of this Senate are going to come up with the position that if we do not carry out the recommendations that were clearly identified in the 1995 round that we are not going to have any more base closure rounds. So for the time being, I yield the floor, and will stay engaged here.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield on that point.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield on that point.

Mr. INHOFE. I would ask the Senator from Texas to read the next sentence in that report. If she does not have it, I have it. If she does, I would appreciate it.

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have some comments to make in response to the very eloquent comments of the Senator from Texas, but first I ask if she would answer one question that I have. I think it is probably the most important question that could be asked, in these terms. We all understand. Although the Senator is not on the Armed Services Committee now as she was last year, she knows the significance of an authorization bill. I think we all agree that this, the defense authorization bill, which the Senator presiding right now was a very important part of, is a very significant bill. While she gives a compelling case--and I know it comes from the heart--on privatization, on changing what our interpretation of what the BRAC recommendations are, would she be willing, in order to protect the authorization bill, to go ahead, let's take the bill up in the form that it is and offer an amendment to strike that provision that she finds objectionable so we can then isolate that one problem and still have an authorization bill, not hold the entire authorization bill hostage, which I am sure she would agree would not be in the best interests of the country? Would the Senator be willing to do that?

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator from Texas for that answer, but it is really a shorter answer I was looking for. That is, would the Senator be willing to take up her issue, that which she finds objectionable about the defense authorization bill, and debate that thoroughly on the floor--and if she is more persuasive or has a better case, then, of course, she would prevail on that--instead of blocking the entire authorization bill? This is my concern. The Senate is different than the other body that I served in for 8 years. Over there, you cannot do that. But in the Senate I guess one person can just block a bill from being passed. I hope the Senator from Texas would consider offering her position as an amendment to strike the language that was put in by the committee. I will not ask for a response now, but I hope she would consider doing that.

Mr. INHOFE. Of course.

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator from Texas. She brings up a very good point, and that is we are in the middle of a process now that is very complicated. First of all, we have our defense authorization bill. It is very, very significant that we get this passed because we have pay raises for those people who are serving right now in Bosnia and other places. We have military construction projects that, if we do not pass this authorization bill, can be in jeopardy. This goes far beyond depot maintenance. I just hope, instead of holding up the entire authorization bill, that we could address this in a way where an amendment could be crafted by the Senator from Texas that would take out the offensive language and then debate it openly, for hours and hours. Because these are critical decisions. I have to respond to a few things that were said. First of all, the idea of privatization in place--no one is going to exceed my efforts for the past 30 years for privatization in place. I can remember when I was mayor of the city of Tulsa, I was privatizing everything that would not move. I remember our trash system--we privatized it in place. Of course, people do not like change. I can remember they ended up dumping in my front yard. However, now it is the greatest system we could have had--privatization in place. There is a big difference between privatizing a trash system and privatizing a core responsibility of the military. So here we are trying to defend America and putting ourselves in a posture where, if we follow all the way through with the privatization argument and privatize everything in the military, then we would not have a core capability within the public sector to defend America. That is clearly what this issue is all about. I would also like to talk a little bit about the committee process that we have gone through. The Senator from Texas talks about the committee perhaps not coming out with the right conclusions. We have been going through this every year. Certainly I, when I was in the other body, sat through this process. Am I happy with it? No. I would like to have a better process. The committee process is a very difficult one and it is one of compromise. We have compromised. In this process our committee--first of all, in the Subcommittee on Readiness we discussed this issue, we aired it. It was not partisan. It was not Republicans versus Democrats. It was how can we address the issue of having enough of the critical workload, core workload in the public sector so we know if a war comes up we will not be in a hostage situation by one supplier or one contractor who might be in a position to undercut the public sector a little bit at the present time. That is really what it is about. So we discussed this and we aired this in committee. I see now that Senator Thurmond, the chairman of the committee, is here in the Chamber. I am just reminded that, back when it was very difficult for the Senator from South Carolina to comply with it, they came along and closed, in the 1993 BRAC round, the Charleston naval shipyard. He does not have to answer this question, but I can tell you right now he was not very happy about that. But he bit the bullet and said we have to eliminate excess capacity. I can say the Senator who is presiding right now, Senator Coats--Mr. President, you can remember when you had to close Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana. Was that fun? No, it was not fun. But you were very strong at that point and said we have to protect the integrity of this nonpoliticized process and close excess capacity. There is hardly a Senator in here who did not have to bite the bullet. All of a sudden, we are saying the system is not good and we are going to have to ignore the BRAC process for facilities in two States. There are 50 States. There are still 50 States. This is just two States we are talking about. So we went from the subcommittee into the committee, and Senator Thurmond will remember that we debated this hour after hour. We had amendments that were offered that would strike the language that we put in, saying in order to protect the integrity of the BRAC system, we have to close two of the ALC's and move that workload so others are going to have at least 75 percent capacity. The House said 80 percent, the Senate said 75 percent, and we debated that. We had some votes that were really close votes. If you remember, Mr. President, we debated these and had the votes, and then there were amendments that were offered, and in the final analysis, we came out and said this bill is a good bill. This bill does things we have been trying to do for a long time. We have been trying to define what is core. Always before we have had a very loose definition that the DOD has used, and that has been acceptable, and we took their definition and put it into this bill so we will have a definition of what is core, what is necessary to be performed by the public sector in order to protect us in times of war so we do not become dependent upon some outside contractor. So we have that definition in there. We also have another compromise that I made, and that is, one of the reasons--in a minute I am going to talk about the bidding process--we can't have any kind of bidding on this thing that is fair to the public sector is because they cannot do the same things the private sector can do. So we put in a teaming provision. That is to say that the public sector can do what the private sector can do. Let's take Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma City. If Tinker Air Force base wants to compete for some of the workload that private contractors in Texas are currently trying to hold, they cannot subcontract out or have teaming arrangements with other subcontractors on work that they would like. In this bill, when we pass this authorization bill, we put a provision in here that says, yes, they can go ahead and contract out. So, if they find the private sector can do one particular function or one product more efficiently than the public sector can, then they can go ahead and do that and that work will be counted as public work in any formula. That is a great concession, and it is one I don't mind making, because in that situation, the private sector could do the work, but we could not be held hostage because the public sector would control the contracting out of that work. They want to do it. There is not an ALC in America that doesn't want to have the capability of contracting out small parcels that might be better done while they can still protect the core condition or concern that is there. We have things such as bundling in a package. I can tell you right now that if they continue the way they are doing it right now in trying to induce competition for these core responsibilities, that they are going to win. You cannot compete when you are operating on a playing field that isn't level. Right now they can bundle it, and they have bundled these projects, for example, in Texas, so that only those in Texas could come out realistically and win this thing. In our statutes, we have depreciation schedules, where the private sector can use a different schedule than the public sector. We have another provision, which I don't disapprove of, which is one that I, as mayor of Tulsa, actually had the opportunity at one time to participate in, and that is when they decided that Air Force Plant No. 3 in Tulsa, OK, was no longer inventory that the Air Force wanted and wanted to have to keep up, we went through this process, the process of divesting ourselves of inventory we do not want: First, we let the Federal agencies look at it to see if they want it. If they want it, it is taken up there. If not, it goes to the State, and if not there, it goes to the local communities and counties. In the case of Air Force Plant No. 3, the city of Tulsa ended up with it. What can we do now? We can take that and, at no cost, offer it to a contractor to go out there and compete. This is, I suggest, exactly what can happen and will happen if they are successful in what they call competition down at Kelly for some of the ALC work. They would be able to pick up that base that is closed, that resource worth many, many, many millions of dollars, give it, for all practical purposes, to a contractor. That contractor can submit a bid and bid against any of the remaining ALCs at no cost for overhead. So here we are in Utah or Georgia or in Oklahoma saying we are going to have to pay for all of this overhead in our bid, we have to account for that some way, and they get something free. No, we can't bid. I don't care if we gave them a 20-percent advantage, there is no way we could do that, and we shouldn't be talking about that anyway because the issue here is national defense. Are we going to be capable, Mr. President, of defending America, of handling those core issues and concerns within the public sector? I have to share something, because the very eloquent Senator from Texas quoted a number of people, and I would like to suggest to you, Mr. President, that of the eight members of the BRAC committee, only one who came out for privatization in place as something that is reasonable. I would like to read to you what some of the other Commissioners said. This comes from Commissioner Steele. She said: The Commission was, in general, supportive of privatization of DOD industrial activities where appropriate. However, privatization as a concept and forced privatization in place of what is clearly excess depot capacity are two very different issues. In the specific case of Sacramento and San Antonio ALCs, the Commission was very aware that we were recommending the closure of two very large industrial activities. The Commission's recommendation to consolidate these workloads, other than common-use ground-communication and electronics work, ``to other DOD depots or to private sector commercial activities as determined by the Defense Depot Maintenance Council. Move the required equipment * * * to the receiving locations''-- ``To the receiving locations,'' that means a location other than Kelly Air Force Base and other than McClellan out in California, because you still don't resolve the problem, if you merely privatize in place and end up with five, so to say, ALCs all operating at 50-percent capacity. Forced privatization in place of all of the workload is contrary to the intent of Report language. She says, further reading toward the end of the letter: The Commission clearly did not intend to privatize in place all of the workload from the 2 ALCs we voted to close, as noted in our Findings, ``closure * * * permits significantly improved utilization of the remaining depots and reduces DOD operating costs.'' Where the Commission encourages privatization in place, our Report addresses it directly * * * And she cites the page numbers. Such was not the case with the ALCs. Finally: If any Commissioner had offered a motion-- Listen, Mr. President-- If any Commissioner had offered a motion to privatize in place, as the President proposes, I am 100-percent certain that such a motion would have been defeated handily. This is Wendi Steele, a Commissioner who went through all the processes. I won't go through the whole letter from Commissioner Lee Kling, but I will read the last paragraph of his letter. Now keep in mind, these are two of the eight Commissioners. We have letters from all but former Senator Dixon. He says: The Commission's review clearly documented significant excess capacity in the five Air Force Air Logistic Centers. Privatization in place of all of the workload of Sacramento and San Antonio Air Logistic Centers could result in little or no savings to the Air Force by the closures. Further, it might result in privatizing excess capacity rather than eliminating it and could also miss the opportunity to improve the efficiency of other DOD depots by increasing their utilization. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have these letters from Commissioner Wendi Steele and Commissioner Kling printed in the Record.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, this is taken directly out of the BRAC language. It is critical that we find ourselves in a situation where we are going to be able to actively interpret the intent of the BRAC Commissioners. Eight Commissioners, and they used the same criteria everywhere they went. They visited all the installations. They were in Oklahoma. It was very tense. We have five installations in Oklahoma. They went to all of them. These people worked for years to try to come up with conclusions, so I am going to read some of the conclusions they have, and then I would like to yield to the Senator from Georgia, if it is his desire to be heard on this subject.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes, I will yield for a question, and then I do want to hold the floor so I can conclude my remarks.

Mr. INHOFE. Where did she work?

Mr. INHOFE. Maybe you can tell me. I know she lived in Texas.

Mr. INHOFE. I think she is from Houston.

Mr. INHOFE. Can I ask a question of the Senator from Texas? During the time that we approved the appointments by the President of the eight Commissioners, we went through long hearings. You, at the time, were a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I believe, and I was there, too. I ask, did you have any objection to the appointment of Wendi Steele as one of the Commissioners during those hearings?

Mr. INHOFE. Let me reclaim my time. Thank you very much, I say to Senator Hutchison.

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate you calling that to our attention. I also, Mr. President, call to your attention the Commissioner in question is a resident--was a resident, I assume is still a resident--of Houston, TX, and she had not been on the staff of Senator Nickles for some time. I think when we went through this process of determining whether or not anyone was prejudiced on that Commission, I asked every Commissioner questions. I asked them: ``Are you going to use the criteria in an unprejudiced manner?'' And they all responded yes. There is not one person who objected to Wendi Steele. I will also say, I also quoted extensively Lee Kling. I don't believe Lee Kling was ever on Senator Nickles' staff. I want to yield to the Senator from Georgia, but since it is so critical we know what the intent was, not just by reading the reports from the Commissioners, let me just go ahead and read a few things that actually came from the BRAC commission report. These are quotes, Mr. President, if you will bear with me for just a moment. . . . significant excess capacity and infrastructure in the Air Force depot system requires closure of the San Antonio

Mr. INHOFE. That is my understanding. Before the Senator from Georgia got in here, I commented on several of the States. For example, Indiana, where the presiding office is from, he lost, and did so with grace, as much grace as he could, a major installation in Indiana. Our own chairman, Senator Thurmond, I mean, no one, no one can have more political influence to stop the closing of a base in his home State than the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. And Senator Thurmond was willing to say, all right we have to bite the bullet. The big issue here is, we need to use the money that is used on excess capacity to be spent on such things as modernization, quality of life, on readiness, on force strength. These are the things that we need to be talking about. So, yes, the whole thing on privatization in place, it was anticipated someone might bring it up. So the GAO in their report, when they came to the conclusion that if you privatize that excess capacity in place in Sacramento and in San Antonio, it is going to cost the taxpayers, and I say cost the defense system, because that is what it is going to come out of--$468 million a year. Over the 5 years, they said that is $2.34 billion. In further responding to the Senator's question, I would say, you sat there in those committee meetings when we had the service chiefs in there and said, ``Where are we going to come up with the money if we don't carry out the recommendations of the BRAC system?'' We have to come up with several hundred million dollars. Is it going to kill the force stream and quality of life and come out of modernization. ``Where is it going to come from?'' What did they say? They said, ``We don't have anything for it to come out of.''

Mr. INHOFE. That is a very good point. In fact, several people, who would like to have us believe that-- referring to the privatization in place--very conveniently leave out one sentence when they talk about realigning Kelly Air Force Base, including the air logistics center. The last sentence says, ``Move the required equipment * * * [and any required personnel] to the receiving locations * * *.'' That means not there. Do not privatize excess capacity where you maintain the problem of having five locations, each operating at 50- percent capacity. It is very, very clear.

Mr. INHOFE. You know, that is one of the three bottom lines here. It is just so logical that if you have five operating at 50-percent capacity--as they said in this overdraft quoted out of their report; they said it over and over again--you have to close two and transfer the workload. Now, the whole idea of privatization came up--and I hate to say it, but it was highly political. We all get political right before an election. This is what happened right before the election. And it happened out in California. There are a lot of electoral votes in California. The administration said: ``We want to privatize in place.'' But clearly you are right. The Senator from Georgia is exactly right. That does not resolve the problems. A minute ago I said there are three bottom lines. That is one bottom line. Another bottom line is the fact that this is a national defense issue. How can we be sure that if there is a war, if Iran decides they are going to use some of that technology and the systems they are getting out of China or Russia and go to war with us, that we are going to be in a position to fight that war? It is a national security issue so that if we do get in a war, we will not become dependent, for those core activities, on a private contractor. You know, I am all for privatization in place. But that is the other issue. The third, of course, is cost. Those who say that GAO did not consider privatization in place, they did. The GAO was before our committee. You were there with me. We sat there for several hours. We cross-examined this gentleman. He said, and repeated over and over again, ``Yes, the costs. It is going to be to the taxpayers or to the defense system. We proximate $468 million a year.'' Then I said, ``Is that old information? Is that new?'' ``No; we brought it up to date.'' So that is their current position. That is their past position. The GAO was set up to be an independent agency to evaluate these things free of political interference. They came out with this, that third- cost thing. The Senator from Georgia knows the problems that we are suffering from right now in our defense system. He knows that we cannot come up with $2 or $3 billion and take it out of something that is existing. So the Senator from Georgia is exactly right.