John Murtha

Mr. MURTHA

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde].

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me explain what I am trying to do, so Members will understand the thrust of the amendment that I am offering. What I am concerned about, having been before the Ethics Committee and having been cleared by the Ethics Committee in a unanimous vote, a lot of people said they were on the Ethics Committee. I was before the Ethics Committee, and the process, I thought, worked very well. I was cleared with a bipartisan vote, overwhelming vote, that cleared my charges. I went through a long process. Naturally, anybody that is accused goes through a difficult process. But I was also on the Ethics Committee for a period of time, and we had a number of cases. As some people have said in the past, most of those cases were handled in a bipartisan manner. It took a lot of argument, it took a lot of back and forth, but they were all handled fairly expeditiously. What I worry about is frivolous complaints offered by outside groups. I am not talking about responsible outside groups. We have a lot of groups that call themselves watchdogs and so forth, and they have a legitimate status. I do not think those particular organizations would offer a frivolous complaint. But there are partisan organizations on both sides of the aisle that would offer an amendment right during an election cycle that could be very harmful to the Member. We do not notice the publicity in Washington in most cases. There is one story about a complaint being filed, and we do not see much more about it. But that person that is accused goes through a tremendous process of news, as if the person has been indicted and convicted. As soon as there is a newspaper report that a charge has been made, the hometown newspapers focus on that individual, and they do not say the individual is guilty, but they intimidate people and they make people believe he is guilty, and it costs tremendous amounts of money to defend yourself, because you are portrayed as the guilty person. What I would like to see is, a Member would have to make the complaint. Now, we established the Ethics Committee for one reason. That is to police ourselves. We should police ourselves. But a Member should be convinced to offer the complaint. It is an information until the two, the chairman and vice chairman, cochairman, whatever we call the ethics top leaders now, decide on them. I believe that one more process, due process, is important. I believe somebody on the outside should be forced to go to a Member and convince that Member. I thought it was a sham before, when you go to three Members and they do not sign a complaint. They say, I will not sign a complaint. I believe that we have a responsibility to bring a complaint forward if we have knowledge of something that is wrong. I think Members of the House will take that responsibility. There is no question in my mind that the Members can police themselves under every circumstance. The rules of the House are very complicated. I think a Member should take the responsibility if there is any problem, if there is information found. Too many times, a person takes a newspaper report, they take information they know nothing about, and they send it in as a frivolous report, and it means all kinds of problems for that elected official. We have to run every 2 years. Nobody asks us to run, but our reputation is on the line. I absolutely believe it is important that, to give an individual due process, we should have to convince a Member of Congress to offer the information or the complaint. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Thomas].

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Utah [Mr. Hansen], the chairman of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. (Mr. HANSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie]. (Mr. ABERCROMBIE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close?

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield the remaining time to the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin].

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 2.

Mr. MURTHA

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take this opportunity before the House to pay tribute to an historic church community in the 12th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. There were only 15 houses in the village of Portage, PA, when the Reverend Mr. Samuel Croft of Wilmore, MD, arrived to begin his missionary work in 1872. On August 21 of that year, 125 years ago next month, Luther's Monumental Lutheran Church was chartered with 10 members. Two months later, on October 20, a small frame building, 28'- 45', was dedicated. It now stands as the oldest church in Portage, PA. In 1892, under the direction of the Reverend Mr. B.B. Collins, the congregation sought and was granted admission into the Allegheny Evangelical Lutheran Synod. One of the conditions for admittance to the synod was the forming of a parish relationship with another church nearby, St. Luke Lutheran Church in Lilly, PA. These two churches today are known as the Lilly Portage Lutheran Parish. In 1916, the Reverend Mr. B.R. Sheeder and the congregation had the frame building moved to its present site where a narthex and larger sanctuary was built and the entire building was bricked. Stained glass windows were installed. The original building now contains the nursery- primary Sunday school rooms. The original roof beams can be seen in the loft. Luther's Monumental Lutheran Church became the First Evangelical Lutheran Church and is now known as the First Lutheran Church of Portage, PA. The longest pastorate, of 23 years, was served by the Reverend Mr. George I. Uhler (1925-48). Serving as the church's pianist, choir director, and organist for over 50 years, Ms. Viola Hess is fondly remembered for her lifelong dedication. She passed away in the church while doing the work she loved. Notably, the Reverend Ms. Karen Stiles was the first female pastor to serve the church, from 1987-89, followed by the Reverend Ms. Rochelle Melander. Currently, under the Reverend Mr. Steven Claycomb, the church registry lists over 300 members and is continuing to grow. The membership is active in both the religious and the civic secular activities of the area. An array of church artifacts is displayed at the Portage Station Museum and will later be returned for display at the church. Portage is located less than 20 miles from Johnstown, legendary for its tragic floods. The First Lutheran Church of Portage has endured through the horrible flood of 1889 in which over 2,000 lives were lost; since then it has helped to see its community through many types of hardship--from the hardscrabble days of the Industrial Revolution, when the area's miners and steelworkers endured long work hours, low pay, and abysmal working conditions, to the Great Depression. It has held its community together through the Nation's wars and seen it through more modern harship--the decline of the steel industry that brought lasting economic hard times and crippling unemployment. It also saw another devastating flood, in 1977. Through it all, the First Lutheran Church has been a source of support and sustenance, spiritually and otherwise, to generations. On Sunday, August 31, 1997, a dinner and mass of celebration commemorating the church's 125th anniversary will be held. I'd like to congratulate the First Lutheran Church of Portage, its pastor and his congregation as they celebrate a 125 year tradition of serving God and their community. May the church grow and prosper for another 125 years.

Mr. MURTHA

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

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, we have no problem on this side with the amendment.

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

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] who wishes that I would have had to yield more time to the gentleman so I could have changed my vote on the B-2.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman came to us with this amendment today. We talked to the staff and we know there has been an injustice here. If the gentlewoman will withdraw her amendment, we will do everything we can to work this thing out in conference.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, we will work out something that will force the Defense Department to adhere to what we suggested last year and what the gentlewoman is suggesting here. They should come up with figures which are reasonable. We will certainly try to work something out.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is a bipartisan bill. We did not have a vote in subcommittee, a few votes in full committee, but the results of this bill are very closely aligned to the authorization bill which also, as I understand it, was a bipartisan bill, as it should be. Our defense of this Nation should be bipartisan. A couple of things that we concentrated on. Quality of life is always something that we work on, trying to make sure that the medical care of the dependents of the families is taken care of. We try to stress extra things that the services have not thought of or do not think they have enough money for. One of the things we have stressed is chemical and biological attack and the fact that we are vulnerable to that in this Nation and we need to set up a system. We have suggested to the Defense Department they use the National Guard for this system, so that if anything like that were to happen, a terrorist attack using either of these weapons, the National Guard would be prepared to respond to that. Right now we have responses by local government, we have responses by one team of Marines, but it is not nearly enough to really respond to the ultimate problem. Overall, we feel we do not have enough money for defense. Procurement has come down from $120 to $40 billion and it has been a very, very delicate balance to make sure we modernize the forces, we keep the readiness up, we increase the O&M. The Senate has taken money out of O&M. We have increased O&M. We hope we will be able to convince them that readiness is absolutely essential. The quality of our forces is the best I have ever seen. We continue to visit them. But when we start cutting back, when we start having a heavy tempo of operations as we do, we have to get the money from someplace. The Bosnia operation has hurt us as far as the amount of money goes for modernization. It has also hurt us in some of the problems we have had in the recruit depots. At the recruit depots, at some of them they have less training time, they have less supervisors, they have less people to do the training. Consequently, we are going to run into a substantial problem. We hope that the services have changed that. We hope that the Army in particular has addressed that and that in the end this problem will go away. Mr. Chairman, I join the gentleman in saying that this is a bipartisan bill and look forward to passing the bill and addressing the amendments. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks].

Mr. MURTHA. I may have to change my vote on the B-2.

Mr. MURTHA. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to make a couple comments since we are talking about the changes, and I have to say to the gentleman who is a gentleman that I do not reluctantly oppose, I strongly oppose the gentleman's amendment. But in review of the Department of Defense program on breast cancer research, an advance copy that we received from the Institute of Medicine; now, as the Soviet Union declined, we in the defense subcommittee, the Subcommittee on National Security, tried to change the emphasis in the Defense Department. We tried to initiate programs which were important to quality of life. One of them was breast cancer. I personally started the breast cancer research program with $35 million several years ago. It must have been 5 years ago. Since that time, we have spent $500 million in breast cancer research. There have been questions on both sides of the aisle whether this was a good program, whether NIH should be handling the program and not the Defense Department. Here are the conclusions of the National Academy of Sciences: The committee concluded that USAMRMC has succeeded in establishing a fair peer review system, a broad-based research portfolio, by stimulating scientists from a wide range of disciplines to participate as applicants, reviewers, and advisors. We are talking about the cancer program in the Department of Defense. The committee commends the Army for developing such a program under the serious time constraints and fluctuations in funding that have characterized the program to date. Moreover, the program fills a unique niche among public and private funding sources for cancer research. It is not duplicative of other programs and is a promising vehicle for forging new ideas and scientific breakthroughs in the Nation's fight against breast cancer. Among the most outstanding features of the program are the flexible approaches for setting priorities annually, the involvement of breast cancer advocates and the consumers in the giant peer review process, and the level of commitment and diligence of the individuals who serve the program in various capacities. Mr. Chairman, this program started because of women, spouses, dependents in the Defense Department who came to me. I presented the program to the subcommittee. They agreed wholeheartedly something ought to be done. When we first presented it to the Department of the Army, they could not figure out what to do with the money. Finally, they started the program, which has received these rave reviews. We have started also an ovarian cancer program. We started a program on ovarian cancer, on prostate cancer. The chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Bill Young], started a bone marrow program which has had a phenomenal success in indexing people who have had the possibility of being able to transfer bone marrow from one person to another. We have tried over the years to expand the programs away from the past and to take care of quality of life, because the tempo of operations has been so high and because we know quality of life is so important. We have troops that have spent three or four Christmases away from home. We have troops that have to get out of the service because the families have been left alone so much. We have a real recruitment problem. We have tried to put money in those resources. Mr. Chairman, there is no question in my mind, the cuts that have been made in defense have been so severe with the tempo of operations that we are talking about, that we are having a real problem with attracting the kind of people we want into the service. A couple of years ago I reported to the committee that I did not have the number of people applying to the academies that I had had in the past. As a matter of fact, we had to have a couple hundred. Now it is down to 40 or 50. That is disappointing and discouraging. I realize the economy is in competition. I recognize the fact that many, many people can make more money on the outside but are not willing to make the sacrifices. The quality of the troops is absolutely essential to the success of the military and the success of these deployments. I would hope the Members of Congress would oppose this amendment to cut 1 percent, or $4 billion, out of the defense budget. I would hope they would have confidence that we have already passed a distribution which we do not think is enough but which we are abiding by, and that they will support the committee in our transition, in moving away. We cut procurement from $120 to $40 billion over the last few years. We have a problem in modernization, so we are trying to keep readiness up. We ask the support of the House so we can go forward with these quality-of-life programs.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, my original thought was, and the gentleman from Texas Mr. Martin Frost was quite concerned about this amendment, but actually when we look at the facts, it really would not have any impact because this is a 1-year bill. Certainly we have to send a message that when we have a technological superiority, it is something we want to look at very closely. Mr. Chairman, I would, with reservations, accept this amendment, and hope we could work something out in conference.

Mr. MURTHA. The chairman and I have discussed this at length, and we will fall on our sword trying to get what the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] wants. We will do everything we can to take care of the gentleman from Ohio. Is that not right, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. MURTHA

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a dedicated U.S. Air Force officer as he departs from his post as the legislative assistant for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to become the Principal Deputy Secretary of Energy, and U.S. Military Representative for Defense Programs. Col. Thomas F. Gioconda deserves our tribute. He has been connected with the Congress in one position or another for over 8 years of his distinguished 27 year Air Force career. His career accomplishments reflect the type of leader this Nation has depended upon for over 200 years during peace and conflict. I would like to take a moment to highlight Tom's career milestones. A native of Philadelphia, PA, Colonel Gioconda is a graduate of St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA, class of 1970. Colonel Gioconda also earned a master's degree in school administration from Seton Hall University, and a masters degree in business administration from the University of Montana. His military career began in 1970 with his first assignment to Malstrom AFB, MT, where he served as a missile launch officer. After 4 years as a wing missile operations crew instructor, he served as an AFROTC instructor at his alma mater for 2 years, followed by another 2 years at New Jersey Institute of Technology. He then served as a missile operations instructor and section chief at the 4315th Combat Crew Training Squadron, Vandenberg AFB, CA. Recognizing his leadership skills, he was assigned to headquarters, Strategic Air Command, as a plans and programs officer, and later became the Congressional Liaison Branch Chief. His exceptional performance in this assignment lead to a follow on tour to headquarters, U.S. Air Force at the Pentagon where he served as a Congressional Affairs Action Officer for the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations. During this tour he was selected for squadron command. Colonel Gioconda assumed command of the 510th Strategic Missile Squadron at Whiteman AFB, MO. His squadron was charged with the one-of-a-kind Emergency Rocket Communication System [ECRS] mission. While in command, Colonel Gioconda and his unit hosted the first visit of the Commander in Chief of the Soviet Rocket Forces to an operational U.S. missile launch control center. After successfully completing his command tour, Colonel Gioconda was hand picked to be a legislative assistant to the chairman and vice-chairman. He has been the principal liaison officer to Congress for both General Powell and General Shalikashvili during momentous times in our Nation's history--the end of the cold war, Operations Desert Storm, Provide Promise, Provide Hope, Provide Comfort, Southern Watch, Deny Flight, and Restore Democracy, Joint Endeavor, as well as countless other military operations and deployments. Tom has accompanied me on factfinding visits to the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Tom was always on top of the issues of the day. I and many others of this body have depended on him for complete, timely, sound, and accurate information and advice. Colonel Gioconda has been awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (four oak leaf clusters), three Air Force Commendation Medals, the Air Force Achievement Medal, the Combat Readiness Medal, the Outstanding Voluntary Service Medal, and the Command Missile Badge. He is married to the former Anita Pamenter of Great Falls, MT, and has three sons, Thomas, Tony, and T.J. In December 1995, Colonel Gioconda was selected for promotion to brigadier general. He will be promoted on August 1, 1997. Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor and personal privilege for me to present his credentials and this tribute to Col. Thomas F. Gioconda before the Congress today. It is clear, through his record of accomplishment and his command assignments, that he is someone dedicated to the peace and freedom this Nation enjoys today. All his actions reflect a professional Air Force officer with the clear sense of honor, integrity, and purpose found in the finest military officers of this Nation. We wish him every success in what I know will be a bright future. May he always have fair winds and blue skies.