Curt Weldon

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, Congress authorized the original National Defense Features (NDF) program in the mid-1990s in response to a report by the Department of Defense describing a shortage of sealift capacity during military contingencies. The NDF program was considered to be the most cost-effective way to augment the substantial investment that was being made in new sealift ships by the Navy. Since then, Congress has authorized and appropriated funds to install special defense features in new commercial vessels to be built in the shipyards of the United States. Last year, for example, at my request and as a result of the leadership of our colleague from New Jersey, Mr. Frelinghuysen, the House included in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2001 a provision that would expand the Secretary of Defense's ability to fund militarily useful projects under the NDF program. I am pleased to report that our amendment was included in the final legislation signed into law by the President. When the NDF program was launched, Congress expected that our allies, particularly Japan, would find mutual defense benefits in promoting the program. Under one project that has received considerable attention in the press and has the support of domestic maritime labor, ten commercial vessels would be built in the United States based on a design funded and approved by DARPA's Maritime Technology Program. These vessels would normally operate in the Japan-United States vehicle trade, which is at present entirely dominated by Japanese carriers. Quite importantly, the vessels would be crewed by American merchant seamen, a group vital to maintaining the readiness of our military to handle contingencies abroad. Nothwithstanding expressions of support by very senior officials in our government, this expectation has not been realized. As a result, the hopes of our commercial shipbuilders and merchant mariners have not been realized, and our military planners have not been able to rely upon NDF vessels to support their contingencies operations. Much to my disappointment, the Government of Japan apparently continues to take the position that the decision to employ NDF ships is strictly a matter for the commercial judgment of Japanese vehicle manufacturing and shipping companies. The vehicle manufacturers, which operate under closely inter-locking relationships with the Japanese vehicle carriers, continue to insist that the NDF program is a matter between the two respective governments since it addresses defense. In view of the U.S. role in providing security for our Far East allies, it hardly seems appropriate that defense concerns expressed by our government should not have been met with a more positive response. Our government's repeated representations to the Japanese government have fallen to the ground as if the NDF program was without military value, a position that is contradicted by two U.S. Navy reports on the NDF program. Taking note of the extensive military collaboration of our two governments, which it is safe to say has conferred material benefits on Japan, this is not the position that Congress should have expected. The position that this matter is purely commercial in nature rather than governmental in character is not defensible. Japan, like other nations, supports its merchant marine with financial assistance, including direct construction loans at artificially low rates of interest. This is not the mark of a purely private industry operating under purely commercial conditions. Based on all the evidence gathered to date, it would appear that the real reason our carriers are effectively being excluded from this market is the Japanese kereitsu system of doing business. In short, a fleet of U.S.-built and operated ships, commercially competitive and having significant defense value to both nations, has apparently no chance to break through the economic fence encircling the Japanese vehicle trade. As I explained to my colleagues last year, I continue to hope that the Government of Japan and the vehicle manufacturers will ultimately see the merit of supporting the NDF program, especially given the longstanding support of the Department of Defense. But if the past is any guide, we may anticipate further intransigence. Therefore, I am joining today with my colleague from New Jersey, Mr. Frelinghuysen, in introducing a bill that we intend to push later this year if we do not see any movement on the part of the Government of Japan. The bill-- which is identical to the bill we introduced late last year in the form of H.R. 5488--is very straightforward. It says: If the Federal Maritime Commission finds that vessels built under the NDF program are unable to obtain employment in a particular trade route in the foreign commerce of the United States for which they are designed to operate, and if that sector of the trade route has been dominated historically by citizens of an allied nation, then the Commission shall take action to counteract the restrictive trade practices that have led to this situation. As I pointed out last year, it should not be necessary to enact legislation to encourage support for a program so self-evidently in the mutual security interests of our two nations. I trust that the Government of Japan will support the new consultative mechanism so that the NDF program can begin the much needed recapitalization of our aging Ready Reserve Force.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to make some announcements to our colleagues. First of all, our colleagues can call my office today to cosponsor a Declaration of War Resolution that I have prepared which will be introduced within the next several days. This Declaration of War gives the White House the authority and the ability to declare to specific terrorist groups that in fact we are at war with. Number two, our colleagues can call my office and cosponsor a joint resolution creating a joint task force between the U.S. and Russia to combat terrorism. This comes about because of communications I have received from the Russian Duma offering to work with us. The Russians have the same threat that we do, and this is an opportunity for us to work together. Number three, our colleagues can join next week in State Farm's announcement of several hundreds of thousands of dollars going to the Police and Fire Foundation to benefit the families of those police and firefighters who are currently missing in New York. And, number four, our colleagues can join the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and I as we announce next week the creation of a multimillion dollar fund to support the Police and Firefighters Hero Scholarship Fund in New York so that we can provide for full college scholarships for every son and daughter of every police officer and firefighter in New York City who is determined to have been killed in this terrible tragedy. I urge my colleagues to join with us in these efforts.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think first tonight about the quiet efforts of thousands of ordinary people yesterday who were called upon to do extraordinary things: the firefighters and EMS personnel who climbed up the stairs of the World Trade Center towers while thousands of their fellow citizens were going down. Why did they do that, knowing full well that they would likely perish? Because they could save people, strangers who were trapped inside. How many did they save we will never know. Those brave heroes are no longer here to tell us their stories. They perished, sadly, when the towers collapsed. Who will tell their story now? We have only the testimony of those they helped, those who did not make it out, and, of course, we have the thanks and prayers of a grateful Nation. How about the workers at our airports who were called upon to land hundreds of planes all across America at airports large and small? They landed them all safely. That is a story that did not make the news. And the people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, just folks who work a job day by day, just like the rest us. They got up, went to work, kissed their spouse and their kids, and never came home. And of the passengers and crews of the four hijacked planes, innocent people just trying to get from place to place on a busy day. They were going to business meetings, family outings or vacations. And so we ask as we take stock of our loss, what cowards could perpetrate such acts? Who would kill innocent people on such a massive scale? Dozens of our colleagues have said it correctly. We are at war. So let us today prepare for a war. A Declaration of War has been drafted. I will circulate it tomorrow for my colleagues to cosponsor. We have a unique responsibility here in this House, for the Constitution, Article 1, section 8, gives the Congress, and the Congress alone, the power to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, and to make rules for the government and regulation of the Armed Forces. That is our job, my colleagues, our job alone. Let us do our job, the most important function of the Federal Government, to provide for the common defense. My friends, this war will not be won quickly, and it will not be won in a very cheap manner. It will require nothing less than a complete rethinking about what constitutes national security and intelligence. So I ask my friends in good faith to join together to give our President the tools he needs to win the war and finish the job. My friends, we will infiltrate and decimate the ranks of these terrorist groups. We will seek out and destroy their base camps and training grounds. We will punish their clients and host states. And we will eliminate their leaders once and for all. This must be our goal. Nothing less will do the job. Let us give our families the security they deserve. Let us make our streets safe again. Let us send our enemies into retreat.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I want to start off by commending the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for his very appropriate and very logical comments which I will follow up on in a few moments. Before doing so, however, Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay my personal tribute to one of our colleagues who passed away over the break, the Honorable Floyd Spence. I had known Floyd Spence as many of our colleagues did in a very personal way over the past 15 years that I have served in the Congress. He was a leader on national security issues when I came to the Congress. He was one of those individuals that I looked up to for guidance and for early orientation to fully understand the role of the Congress in making sure that our military was being properly supported. Congressman Spence, Chairman Spence, was one of those very unique individuals who had severe health problems, in fact had a major double lung transplant, and had gone through turmoil in his life from the health standpoint. I can remember the days when they wheeled him to the floor of the House in a wheelchair with a ventilator, yet he came back and rose to become the full chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and for 6 years he led this body in issues affecting our national security. He was a quiet man, a gentleman, someone that never had a cross word for anyone, even those he disagreed with and was someone who would be a role model for someone aspiring to become a Member of this body. He had a profound influence. During a time of difficulty in the 1990s when defense budgets were not what they should have been, it was Chairman Floyd Spence who rose above the political fray and led this Congress in a very bipartisan way to increase defense spending by approximately $43 billion over President Clinton's request for defense over a 6-year time period. If it had not been for Chairman Spence fighting tirelessly for our military, for the quality of life for our troops, if it had not been for Chairman Spence fighting for modernization and fighting for the basic dignity of our military, I do not know where we would be today, Mr. Speaker, because the summary I am going to give following this tribute to Chairman Spence will outline some very severe problems in our military. Thank goodness Chairman Spence was here. Thank goodness he was fighting the battle. Thank goodness he was building bipartisan coalitions on behalf of the sons and daughters of America serving in uniform. He did a fantastic job in this body. He was someone who had many friends on both sides of the aisle and someone who will be terribly missed. I could not attend the funeral of Chairman Spence because I was in Huntsville, Alabama, giving a major speech to 800 people on missile defense. It was only because of Chairman Spence's leadership that we have moved missile defense along as far as it has gone. As a tribute to him on that opening day of the conference, the entire group joined in a prayer together, a prayer of sympathy for the family of Floyd, for his wife and his sons, and to let all of America know that Floyd Spence has been a true champion, one of our real patriots. It was just last April, Mr. Speaker, where I had the pleasure of recognizing Chairman Floyd Spence at our annual national fire and emergency services dinner. We have two types of defenders that we support in America: Our international defenders, our military, and Floyd Spence was definitely their champion. That night as we have for the past 14 years, we honored our domestic defenders. Our domestic defenders are the men and women who serve in the 32,000 organized fire and EMS departments all across the country. We honored Floyd Spence that night because 6 months prior, in last year's defense authorization bill, it was Floyd Spence as chairman working with the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who just left this Chamber, who allowed me to move forward legislation that created a grant program to provide matching funds for local fire and EMS departments so that they can better equip themselves to be America's domestic defenders. On that night, 2,000 leaders of the fire and emergency services from all over America gave Floyd Spence a standing ovation for the work that he had done on behalf of our domestic defenders. So Floyd Spence's legacy is a legacy that all of us could look up to and hope to achieve, one of supporting those people who wear the uniform, the uniform to protect America overseas, and the uniform to protect America at home. To Floyd's family, his wife, his sons, we say thank you for giving us a tireless public servant whose legacy will live on forever, who did so much in such a short period of time and who will be so sorely missed in this body and in the minds and hearts of military leaders across this country and around the world where our troops are stationed. Floyd Spence was a true American hero. Mr. Speaker, it is appropriate that following this brief tribute to Floyd Spence, that I highlight a trip that took place the last week of August by myself and several of our colleagues. We are going to go into more detail next week in a 2-hour special order where I will be joined by my ranking Democrat colleague the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ortiz), a good friend of mine, as he and I along with the other Members of our delegation go through in very great detail the findings of our trip around the country, a trip that I think was a first of its kind in the history of Congress, a trip that was designed to assess the status of our military's problems. Mr. Speaker, most of the times when we in Congress take trips to military bases, they roll out the red carpet. They invite us to lunch with the base commander or the admiral. They sit us down and give us nice slide presentations, feed us well, give us a windshield tour of the facility and tell us how well everything is going. Those kinds of trips usually last an hour to an hour and a half. We wear suits and ties and the military personnel are all in their best garb and we see the best but we do not see the worst. That is not what this trip was about, Mr. Speaker. As the chairman of the Readiness Committee, the committee that oversees the readiness of our troops, approximately one-third of our defense budget, my challenge to our staff and to the services over 5 weeks ago was to put together a trip that would for the first time allow our colleagues in Congress to see the real story of the status of our military. I called the service reps in; and in my office 5 weeks ago, I outlined my vision for this trip. I said it was going to be a whirlwind trip that would go basically around the clock, have us engage directly with the troops, not pre-positioned people that would know we were coming with prestaged answers but, rather, a very candid and openhanded method of assessing the real problems that our military is encountering today. We challenged each of the services to come up with bases that we could visit that would give us a real glimpse into problems that we know are there, problems of declining readiness, problems of the lack of ammunition, problems of the lack of ability of spare parts to keep our planes in the air, problems of infrastructure, airfields that were not being maintained, buildings, housing, both barracks and multifamily units, problems with child care and schools and health care, so we would come back and be able to give to our colleagues in this body a full, detailed, accurate assessment as to whether or not we are living up to the requirement that is given to us as our first priority in the Constitution. Mr. Speaker, as I was sitting in my office, I heard some of my colleagues talk for an hour about the President's tax cuts and how they are going to wreak havoc in America. I heard them talk about the need for more money for education, more money for a prescription drug program, more money for domestic spending, more money for foreign aid, but I did not hear much debate about the need for more funding for our military. I pulled out my copy of the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence which is the governing authority for our power in this country, and I looked up article 1, section 8, which defines the role and powers of the Congress. Mr. Speaker, as I assess article 1, section 8 and I see the powers of the Congress, I do not see anything there talking about raising the money to fund education in America, even though I am a teacher by profession and support the role of helping improve our quality of education. But it is not in the Constitution. I do not see any mention in article I, section 8, of the Constitution establishing a program of prescription drugs for our seniors, although I support the effort to provide prescription drug coverage for those seniors who cannot afford it. I do not see any provision in article I, section 8, covering many of the programs that we fund in this institution. But, Mr. Speaker, I do see six separate parts of article I, section 8, that deal with our national security. This is not something that we have interpreted in the Constitution. These provisions are in the Constitution. Mr. Speaker, under our Federal system, under our Constitution, one of the mandates, the primary mandates of this body, is to provide for our national defense, to raise an army, to raise a navy, to provide for the operation of our military. It is right there in the Constitution. Most every other thing that we do now is not in the Constitution by definition. In this case, our responsibility to our military is defined by the founders of our country in very clear terms. So with all the other rhetoric about all the other programs we want to fund, what bothers me is we are not hearing Members of Congress talk about our support for the military. Now, in my own estimation, Federal funding for national security has gone down dramatically as a percentage of total Federal revenues taken in. In fact, when I give speeches around my district and around the country, when I compare today's budget to the budget of a previous administration, and I usually pick John Kennedy, because it was a similar period of time of relative peace. It was after Korea, but before Vietnam, when John Kennedy was the President. We were spending 52 cents of every Federal tax dollar on the military. We were spending 9 percent of our Nation's gross national product on defense. In this year's budget, Mr. Speaker, we are spending approximately 15 cents of the Federal tax dollar on the military, about 2.5 percent of our GNP on defense. I would agree that after the cold war ended there was a need for us to make some cutbacks. In fact, I supported many of those cutbacks. But, Mr. Speaker, many of us feel that we have gone too far. Many of us feel that over the past 10 years two major problems have occurred simultaneously. I say 10 years, because this did not start with a Democrat administration and having me come up and just rail against a Democrat President. This first problem actually started with the end of a Republican administration, 10 years ago, because that is when the cuts in defense spending started to occur dramatically. That is when we began those cuts that brought us down to a 15 cents on the dollar expenditure for national security, 2.5 percent of our GNP. Many would argue it is the largest continual decrease in defense spending in the history of America. Now, granted, the dollar amounts that we are spending today are more than they were 10 and 20 years ago, but the actual percentage of available dollars and the percentage of our gross national product has decreased dramatically. But at the same time that defense spending was going down, something else occurred, and that was the commanders-in-chief of our country, the Presidents, as allowed under our Constitution, decided in their wisdom they would deploy our troops. If you take the period of time from the end of World War II until 1991 and look at all of the administrations during that period, from Democrat Harry Truman to Republican George Bush, Sr., they could have deployed our troops any time they wanted. They deployed our troops a total of 10 times in major deployments over a 40-year time period. In the previous 10 years, starting in 1991 up until 2001, we have had no less than 37 major deployments, a massive increase in the use of our troops. Mr. Speaker, none of those deployments, except for Desert Storm in 1991, was paid for. In each case when our troops were inserted into harm's way by the President, we in the Congress were left to try to find a way to pay for the cost of those deployments. Bosnia, we were told, would end 5 years ago when President Clinton promised the troops would be home by Christmas. We are still in Bosnia today; and we have spent approximately $18 billion of our DOD budget, unfunded, taking it out of other programs, to pay for the Bosnian operation. Add in Haiti, Somalia, East Timor, Macedonia, Colombia, and every other one of those 37 deployments, and you see that while our defense budget was going down and deployments were going up, as our troops were deployed, the Congress had to find a way to pay the bill. What the Congress did over the past 10 years, Democrats and Republicans together, was to take money out of that already-decreasing defense budget. That meant that we did not make the repairs on our military bases. That meant that we cut back on reordering spare parts. That meant that we did not build new base housing, that we did not modernize our barracks, that we did not build new child care centers. That meant that we did not build new schools. Today, Mr. Speaker, we are in the midst of a train wreck. We do not have enough dollars to pay for the cost of our military's operations. We are overcommitted overseas. So this trip was to give us a chance to see what problems have been created at our bases here in the continental United States because of a lack of appropriate funding for infrastructure and for what we call readiness. Mr. Speaker, what we found on our trip was outrageous and was immoral. We have an all-volunteer force today, risking their lives, giving their entire lives up to guaranteeing our freedom and security, which is the basis of our Constitution and our free democracy. We saw living conditions worse than public housing in our inner- cities. We saw raw sewage leaking out of barracks, with a stench so bad you could not stay in the building, where the military had to completely excavate under the building because a pipe had been leaking for years raw sewage. We saw showers on the first floor of barracks where our voluntarily enlisted military personnel had to take their showers with 3 to 4 inches of sewage water around their feet coming from the upper floors of that barracks because of improper drainage. We saw drinking water taken out of taps that was so dirty and cloudy you would not give it to an animal, let alone a human being or a member of our military. Mr. Speaker, I have been in Congress for 15 years. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ortiz), who was my cochair of this trip, has been in Congress longer than I. We were joined by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes), a newer Member, and a brand new freshman Member, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock). We were also joined by four leaders of the Pentagon, representatives of the Secretary of Defense and Secretaries of the services. All of us were appalled. All of us were shocked. None of us believed that things were as bad as they are. Now, on this trip, Mr. Speaker, it was unique, because we traveled over 8,000 miles in military aircraft, a plane that took off from Andrews Air Force Base. As we traveled around the country, because our crew could not continue to fly around the clock as we wanted, we transferred off to helicopters. We transferred off to P-3s. We kept moving from 7 in the morning until midnight each night, and we interacted with the troops on a continual basis. When we arrived at a base, they knew we were coming; and they knew we were not going to be dressed in suits and we were not looking for fancy meals. We had told our base commanders that we wanted to see the worst conditions that existed on that base and we wanted to see when we arrived examples of what was happening, because of the lack of support by the Congress and the White House to deal with the ongoing maintenance of our facilities. That is what they showed us. Each trip to each base lasted for approximately 1\1/2\ to 2 hours, and was filled with very real and visual examples that we documented and of which photographs will be presented to Members of this Congress in a written report, hopefully next week. Throughout the entire trip, we took the media with us. Every step of the way, nothing was off base, no conversation was off limits. We had the media traveling with us to document what we saw. The Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times, and Marine Times next week will come out with a massive report on what we found, for starters. Mr. Speaker, the way that you maintain a building or a property is to invest a certain percentage of the value of that property in maintenance each year. That maintenance prevents that building from deteriorating and from collapsing before its scheduled lifetime. The industry standard for maintaining what is called real maintenance is approximately 4 to 6 percent of the value of the replacement cost of that building, that structure or that complex. In the military, we could never achieve a 4 to 6 percent rate, so our standard is 1.75 percent. The standard for the Defense Department is that we put 1.75 percent of the replacement cost value of our military bases in a budget each year, which is used to repair broken pipes, fix bad electrical outlets, take care of problems with housing and maintaining roadways and bridges and runways. In our travels across America in 15 states, in 4 days, at 24 installations, no base that we went to in any of the services came within one-half of that 1.75 percent figure. The highest amount was 0.8 percent. Most bases were funding their real property maintenance at between 0.1 and 0.4 percent of the replacement cost value. Now, what does that mean? That means that to pay for all those deployments that we got ourselves involved in in the nineties, we took money away from keeping the quality of life for our troops healthy, and we used that money to pay those unpaid bills. It was great while it lasted. The last administration was able to use money for the other purposes. Members of Congress were able to claim that we were balancing the budget. All during that time period less and less money was spent on maintaining our infrastructure. We saw the results. Let me go through the results briefly. Later this week and next week in a 2-hour Special Order we will detail with a bipartisan task force in very great detail what we found at our military bases. We started out at the Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts; and there we found out, among other things, that we cannibalize one C-5A aircraft for every launch we make. What does cannibalize mean? That means because we have not bought enough spare parts, we have to take apart other planes and take parts off of them to keep a certain few planes flying in the air. Cannibalization of our military aircraft and equipment is now the standard. So to keep our military operational, we have maintenance people all across America at every base taking apart perfectly good aircraft to use those parts to keep other aircraft operational. At McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey we learned that one half of the entire fleet of vehicles, 1,000 vehicles, need immediate replacement. What does that mean? That means that we do not have the vehicles to perform emergency services, that we do not have vehicles to maintain the integrity of the boundary lines of the base, because we have not replaced those vehicles, maintained them, changed the oil, because the money to do that went to pay for these deployments overseas out of a rapidly decreasing defense budget. The airfield lighting system was inadequate. The underground heating and air conditioning infrastructure was breaking down and had severe problems because of a lack of maintenance. At the Naval Air Station in Oceana where we visited in Virginia, we saw encroachment, where local towns were being built right up to the boundary line of the facility, causing us problems in allowing our troops to train, with people that knew there was a base there buying houses and developers building complexes, and then the people who moved next to the base say we do not want the noise; we do not want the planes flying over. So the military has to curtail the flights, the pads and the abilities of our troops to prepare. We had a fighter wing command at Oceana in temporary buildings that you would not house your worst enemy in. At Norfolk, we had a pier recently collapse. The entire pier just collapsed, where we station our supreme naval vehicles. In fact, the majority of our piers at Norfolk were built prior to World War II or during World War II. They cannot handle our new aircraft carriers. They cannot handle our larger ships. They are not equipped. They do not have the electrical outlets, they do not have the supplies to maintain the water and power needed to take care of America's fleet, even though it is much smaller in the 21st century. We are working on those piers, but the work is not going fast enough. In our air station in Norfolk, we saw nine World War II hangars that are still being used, but they all have serious deficiencies. The naval air station in Newark does not meet our antiterrorism guidelines, nor our force protection standards, and most of the barracks at the naval air station do not meet our criteria to have a one-plus-one standard of two soldiers with one bathroom in one living unit. At Fort Riley, our next stop in Kansas, we saw old, inadequate motor pools. We saw military personnel being asked to change engines out in the driving heat, the drenching rain, and the freezing cold, because we have not put the money on the table to build new motor pools, because they are not sexy like an aircraft carrier or a B-1 or a B-2 bomber. I mean, who can crow about having built a motor pool? So the people we are asking to maintain our fleet and our tanks and our artillery are having to work under impossible conditions, outside, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, because we have not given them the facilities with which to repair this equipment that we spend tons of money on. Then, at Fort Riley, we have a provision that makes no sense at all. We allow the State governments to tell our military what buildings they can or cannot repair. If a building is old on a military base, instead of the base commander deciding where to spend the money, the State historic commission comes in and says, oh, no, you are not going to tear that building down; you are not going to leave that building unattended; you are going to repair that building. Mr. Speaker, that is ridiculous that we have a State historic commission determining for our base commanders what buildings can or cannot be fixed up. If a State historic commission wants to repair an old building, let them use State money, but they should not have the power to take money away from the vital improvements needed for our troops to be put into historic preservation. We traveled to Fort Lewis. At Fort Lewis we saw that 60 percent of our barracks are nowhere near standard. We have a major spare parts problem for every piece of equipment, urban encroachment issues and major problems with Army Reserve spare parts for helicopters. At Whidbey Island out in Washington State, there is earthquake damage to a flight simulator building that occurred months ago that is still not repaired because we have no money, no money for upgrading and improving these earthquake problems. Now, we can spend billions of dollars to reimburse local towns for earthquakes, but we did not spend the money for the military to fix the earthquake damage that they had from earthquakes and wildland fires and other natural disasters that have hit their facilities. We have no wash rack for the P-3 aircraft. It all must be done outside in the freezing cold weather. A 50-year-old control tower does not even have a view of the entire runway. In fact, we heard about a child care facility on Whidbey Island where there has been a recurring problem of mold, where there is a lack of fire protection systems that would otherwise close that complex down if it was not on the military base; and at one point in time, they had the child care center closed down for a 30-day time period. Mr. Speaker, these are people that volunteer their lives to serve our country. These are people who did nothing wrong. These are people who are working for our government who are providing a number one service required by our Constitution to provide for our national security, and we have let them down. Democrats and Republicans, White House and Congress, we have let them down. We traveled along to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, the home of our B-1s, and as we arrived there and we were in the hangar looking at a B-1B bomber that had just been fixed, the commanding officer introduced us to a young mechanic. We were told that mechanic had just worked 6 straight days, 12 hours a day. Now, in the military you do not get overtime. We basically own you when you are in the military. This young mechanic left his family, including leaving and ignoring personal commitments he had with his kids, to work 6 straight days, 12 hours a day, to take parts off another B-1 to put this B-1 back in the air. Of the six planes in the B-1 squadron at Mountain Home Air Force Base, three are operational. The others are either inoperable or have been cannibalized, because the backlog for some spare parts for the B-1 is over 360 days. Mr. Speaker, that B-1 mechanic did not join the military voluntarily to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week because we did not supply enough spare parts. We have one F-15, one of our top tactical fighters in our fleet, on the ground for 43 straight days being used to cannibalize it to keep other planes in the air. Mr. Speaker, this is not the story at Mountain Home alone. I am giving highlights of each base. These problems are occurring at every military base we visited. We went on to Edwards Air Force Base in California. There we have lost some frequency spectrum so they cannot conduct their normal routines where our high-tech work is being done all the time. The training and testing of our newest equipment is done at Edwards, yet we cannot do it because we have lost frequency spectrum. We have the oldest fleet of aircraft at the most state-of-the-art test facility in our national inventory at Edwards. The oldest fleet of aircraft for test purposes at a facility that gives us the most cutting-edge testing capability that our military owns. We have a major problem at Edwards in keeping engineers. They no longer want to stay and work for the government. Even though our military has to maintain its cutting-edge leadership, they are leaving. We cannot get new engineers to come in. We have crumbling runways and water problems in the housing area. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we brought back a jar of water that looks like it was colored with a kind of water coloring one uses to dye one's Easter eggs at Easter time. We took it right out of the tap and it was brown, because our water system does not have the proper treatment capabilities to drive out the solids and the heavy minerals that are located in the facilities at Edwards. We went down to Miramar, the headquarters of our Navy and Marine Corps cutting-edge flight operations for the West Coast, and there we have a severe shortage of housing. Our young Marines cannot find a place to stay because housing in southern California is out of sight and there is not enough housing on the bases. We had parts shortages for our C-8-46s. We cannot keep our basic helicopters in the air because we cannot get spare parts to repair them. In fact, we visited North Island in Coronado while we were there, and there we saw our major runway. This runway handles 300,000 takeoffs and landings a year, 300,000. The runway is in such bad shape that when they drove us out, we saw potholes in the runway. We saw pieces of macadam and concrete, they call it FOD in the military, that could fly up and if it got in an engine would destroy an engine, a million-dollar engine, destroy it, or could cause a plane to crash. Yet this is our premier facility for naval and Marine Corps aviation on the West Coast. In fact, it was at the same site that we were looking at a terrible problem of a shortage of adequate facilities to house spare parts, inventory and equipment. They took us by a bunch of temporary buildings, buildings that no one would work in in this country if you were in the private sector because OSHA would shut you down, yet all of our military personnel were working in these buildings. And we stopped at this one complex which was basically a steel cargo facility that would normally be used to transfer port cargo on a vessel at sea, on a cargo ship. And there inside of this steel-enclosed cargo container was a Navy sailor who had been working in this facility for a year and a half. No electricity, no lights, no water, no ventilation, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, young sailors finding spare parts with flashlights in what is basically a metal storage container to be used on cargo ships. Mr. Speaker, that is not the world-class military that America is supposed to have. Imagine the morale of somebody who goes to work every day in a metal building with no light, having to use a flashlight to look for expensive spare parts. Camp Pendleton, our showcase facility for the Marine Corps. We have allowed the environmental radicals in California to basically take over Camp Pendleton, a monstrous base on the coast of Southern California. As we flew the helicopter up and down the coast, we saw city after city along the California coastline built up to such an extent that one could not see open land. Therefore, the wildlife and the endangered species have no place to go, not because of anything our military did, but because the city leaders and the planners and the State of California ignored the planning process and allowed families and buildings to be built side by side all along the coastline. The only open area on the coast of Southern California is Camp Pendleton. The military then becomes the haven for endangered species. So what does the Fish and Wildlife Service say? You at Camp Pendleton cannot do any training if it infringes on endangered species. What about the rest of the coast of California that caused the endangered species to have to go to Camp Pendleton, the only open area on the coast of Southern California? But no, what we are going to do instead of penalizing the towns is we are going to tell the Marines, ``You cannot train here,'' So Marines, when they do amphibious assault training off the coast, believe it or not, Mr. Speaker, they have to put them on buses and take them under highways to get to the other side of the training area. Our most widely used and best beach for amphibious training is called Red Beach. I am going to provide an overlay for every Member of Congress. Almost 80 percent of Red Beach, the number one spot for Marine amphibious training, cannot be used because of endangered species. And heaven forbid that a Marine come close to an endangered species, which California ignored while they massively built up their coastline. That is the way we treat our Marines, those men and women that we send in first to secure the front line capabilities that our military has to have? Forty percent of the buildings at Camp Pendleton were built during the 1940s and 1950s. The utility system is grossly outdated and marginally capable. They are making some progress, but again, brown water comes out of our taps because of a lack of improvement to our water systems. We went on to Fort Bliss, where the barracks are below standard. Advanced training facilities are rated as unacceptable. Two new water towers are needed. They are so old they are ready to collapse. They have low water pressure. Hospital and medical facilities are rated as unacceptable. So here we have young people going into the service being told if they serve their country, we will give them and their family health care, we will give the family child care. We worry about child care for those people in public housing, but we do not hear Members get on the floor and talk about decent child care, decent health care for the men and women who serve in uniform. We went on to Fort Sill, where our motor pools were too small to handle the modern equipment we are giving them. We had a roof collapse in a major storage facility where the entire truss beam fell in. The entire beam, this monstrous beam, just collapsed. They cannot use the whole building now. It is condemned until we get the money, who knows when that will come, to replace that truss. There are 15-year-old barracks falling apart, with leaking roofs, leaking walls. There we saw something that is just unbelievable. We saw three-story dormitories or what we call barracks where the sewage system is so inadequate that when soldiers on the second and third floor take their showers, the water backs up in the first floor showers, so the soldiers taking their showers on the first floor are standing in ankle deep water that has just come off the soldiers that have showered on the second and third floors. Mr. Speaker, if this occurred in any building anyplace in America, we would raise Cain. If this happened in a public housing unit, we would have Members screaming on the floor. These are the men and women who serve our country. Where is the outrage? Where is the demanding to hold accountable the fact that we have not provided the decent funding to repair these facilities? We went down to Kelly Air Force Base, where that base has just been privatized and the other half has been transferred over to Lackland. There we saw F-16 aircraft at best 71 percent mission capable. That means 29 percent of the time they cannot fly the F-16. We saw part shortages for the C-5 and the F-60, not enough spare parts to keep the planes in the air. At Lackland we saw an unbelievable situation. A sewage line under a barrack leaked. Because there was no maintenance money to repair it, the leak got worse and worse, so they had to go under the building and excavate it to find the leak. We went under the building. The smell of raw sewage was so bad one would never want one's worst enemy to be stationed there, let alone living there. If American parents knew that their sons and daughters would be put into barracks where raw sewage would be leaking underneath those barracks, they would demand our heads. That is what is happening at Lackland. We had one technical training dorm that was so bad the entire dorm was evacuated and could not be used anymore. Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems were so old they were breaking. They had to move a fleet of portable chillers from one building to another so the soldiers and sailors and Air Corpsmen could continue their work, continue to eat in the heat, because the chillers had broken down because they had not been maintained and repaired. We went on to Fort Hood. In Fort Hood, we saw something unusual, a couple of things unusual. We had a young female, and we happened to visit her dorm because as we went around the bases and they took us to housing, we would stop the bus and get out and go talk to ordinary people. We talked to some wives that were standing out in front of their moldy family housing at one site. We talked to recruits. We talked to young servicepeople. Whoever we saw, we went over and grabbed them to get some anecdotal feedback. In this case, we went to a dorm or a barracks and a young woman was there. She let us see her room. This young woman went out with her own money that she makes, whatever that meager amount of money is, and bought a caulking gun, caulk, and tile because the holes and the cracks in her room were so bad that she decided that rather than wait for months and months and never get it fixed, she would take it upon herself to spend her own money, seal up the cracks, put new tiles in the bathroom, and try to make her living unit more comfortable. Mr. Speaker, that is not what we asked of these young people when they volunteered to serve our country. Then, Mr. Speaker, at Fort Hood, as we interviewed some more individuals, we met a young colonel who had just gotten back from Bosnia. He gave me a statement that I think should make this entire body, the White House, and the other body, feel a sense of shame upon all of us. He said, ``Congressman, I just returned from 9 months in Bosnia. I am a career military person, and I joined voluntarily to serve my country. But let me tell you, Congressman, we had better facilities in Bosnia than here in the U.S. That is why our morale is a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, because of work conditions and housing conditions.'' That was a young colonel, and I have his name, just returning from Bosnia, who tells a group of Members of Congress that he had it better in Bosnia, with our tax dollars, by the way, than he does at his own base here in America at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia. We also met someone else at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia. We were in a building where they maintain our fleet of helicopters. Hunter is important because that is our primary staging area for the Army of the future to move out quickly to respond to any situation worldwide. They have to be ready to go in 22 hours. That is their mandate, so they are our cutting edge. In the facility where this equipment is maintained, there was no air conditioning. Yet down in Hunter Army Air Station where this place is, it gets very hot in the summer. So a young private first class, new to the military, realizing the working conditions were intolerable, went out with his own money and bought an air conditioner so that everyone in his unit could have a cooler working environment while they did the job of preparing and maintaining the cutting-edge force for America's first- response worldwide. We saw inadequate sewage treatment. We saw all housing facilities at Hunter declared unacceptable. Our final stop was Fort Bragg, limited training ranges, only 60 percent of what is needed; 600,000 square feet of storage vehicle maintenance facilities not available to maintain this cutting-edge complex. Our supply and storage buildings are World War II. The largest barracks deficiency in the Army is at Fort Bragg. We went into one barracks at the end of the night. It was about eleven o'clock on our last night before we came home. In this one barracks it was like a scene from a World War II movie. I thought we had gotten rid of these years ago. An actual barracks, not for new recruits, but for people being trained at Fort Bragg, open with about 24 beds and little individual storage lockers. No privacy, everybody out in the open in one common living area. Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong here. There is something wrong when the men and women who wear the uniform to serve the country have it worse than some of the people in public housing in our cities. We have to bear the responsibility, Democrats and Republicans, White House and the Congress. We have failed our military miserably. In my eulogy to Floyd Spence, I credit him with leading the Congress with bipartisan votes to plus-up $43 billion over Clinton's request, our defense budgets over 6 years. I do not know where we would be if we had not done that. Mr. Speaker, we have got problems. To fix up every backlog of repair and maintenance today, the estimates by the Pentagon are $150 billion. We could never meet that need. In a report that was mandated by last year's defense bill, the Pentagon said that we need $4.9 billion just to catch up on basic maintenance and repair. So, Mr. Speaker, as a final response to our trip we are going to recommend that this body take action. This is a disaster as bad as any flood. It is a disaster as bad as any hurricane. It is a disaster as bad as any wildlands fire. It is a disaster as bad as any building collapse. These are the young men and women in uniform who volunteer to do the one thing that our Constitution mandates, and that is provide for our national security; and they are doing it in substandard facilities. They are doing it without spare parts. They are doing it without adequate training. They are doing it where they risk their lives, not from their duty but in training and living. That is unacceptable. I challenge this body and the other body and the White House to come together in an emergency situation because that is what this is, and pass a special one-shot funding package that I am preparing right now, separate from our defense request by the President, to take care of these immediate needs. If we have to declare it off budget, so be it. If there are others in this body that say, wait a minute, you will take this from some other source, so be it. This is an emergency. These troops deserve better. Mr. Speaker, let me say to our men and women in uniform what I said to them in each of our stops, our 24 stops around the country. By the way, many of our colleagues joined with us. We had about 20 Members of Congress from both parties come out and meet us as we stopped at each site. This is what I told our military personnel: you have got to stop being taken for granted. It is amazing, Mr. Speaker, I asked some of our troops at the bases, How many of you are registered to vote? In some cases less than half of them raised their hands. We in Congress have taken aggressive steps to have Motor Voter, where we register people when they go to get their car license renewed. We have taken steps to have people register to vote at welfare offices. Yet we do not do anything to encourage our military personnel to register at military bases. I am challenging our military leaders to have a massive voter registration drive so that when a young recruit comes to a base, he or she is automatically registered to vote, I do not care what party they are, so they can start to have an influence on how we spend their money, so they are no longer disenfranchised, so they have a right to vote. I also encourage this body to pass a waiver so they can choose to register at their place of residence or military base, whatever is most convenient for them. So they can vote as college students do, where they work. College students can register at the college campus where they go to school. Why should not military personnel be able to register at the base where they are stationed and still keep the benefits that would accrue from living back in their original home while they are serving their country? If we empower the military, if the military speaks out, then our colleagues in this body will stop taking them for granted. Mr. Speaker, some will say that yes, you are right. We should spend some money; and, therefore, we should take it from the President's request for missile defense. No. It does not work that way, Mr. Speaker. The President has made the case based on threat assessments, that we have a new threat we have to deal with and that requires a significant new amount of dollars. To blame this shortfall on the President's tax cut or the President's request for missile defense is looking at and denying the fact that for 10 years we have not given the military the money they need. We allowed the previous two administrations to cut defense spending too low and not provide the support for real property maintenance and upgrades in spare parts and housing to support the quality of life for our troops. We need missile defense as much as we need to support our troops, and the tax cut just occurred this year. It did not cause the shortfalls that should have been corrected over the past 10 years that my colleagues on the other side will now try to blame on President Bush. That does not work, Mr. Speaker. It is time for us to come together as we did on this trip, Democrats and Republicans, House Members and Senators along with the President and demand that we deal with this emergency. In dealing with this emergency, it is going to cost us money. We have to replace the dollars that were taken away from maintaining the quality of life that our troops deserve, the spare parts that our military equipment needs, the improvements to runways and housing and hospitals and child care to keep our military's morale up. If we do not do that, then we will have failed our military personnel, and we will have failed the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Speaker, next week we will do an in-depth bipartisan summary of the trip. Our colleagues will join us, hopefully, the 20 or so that were a part of this whirlwind trip; and together we will move forward to pass a supplemental piece of legislation dealing with the emergency needs that we have now evidenced in a firsthand way that our military has across the country, across all services.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 234, I move the House do now adjourn in memory of the late Honorable Floyd Spence.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to offer congratulations to Radnor Township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, which is celebrating its centennial this year. Founded in 1682 by 40 Quakers from Radnorshire, Wales, Radnor Township is a thriving community with a rich history. The land that is now Radnor was purchased as a 5,000-acre parcel from William Penn at a cost of one British pound per 50-acre lot. Prior to settlement by the Welsh, the Lenni Lenape Indians made their home here. By 1717, the Welsh Friends society began to establish a government in the township. They erected a meetinghouse on a former Conestoga Indian trail, now known as Conestoga Road. The meetinghouse served as the center of the population of the Township for the next 200 years, with Radnorville growing rapidly around it. The power of Darby and Ithan creeks helped the settlers establish tanneries, gristmills, and sawmills, and allowed them to clear nearby fields for farming. Land that is now preserved as open space at The Willows was once the Township's busiest commercial area. Thanks to its fortuitous location between Lancaster and Philadelphia, Radnor quickly became a favorite passageway for travelers. At one time, four inns operated in the town. One of these inns, the Sorrel Horse, is believed to have accommodated General Lafayette and George Washington during the encampment at Valley Forge. Today, this is the location of the Agnes Irwin Lower School. The development of America's first toll road in 1794, Lancaster Turnpike, brought more development and traffic to the town. Additional traffic to the township came when the Columbia (later Pennsylvania) Railroad laid tracks through the township in 1832. In 1842, the Brothers of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine established the Catholic College of St. Thomas of Villanova on one of the first great estates in Radnor. Today, Villanova University is a valued neighbor in the community, and just one of several well-known and respected educational institutions located within the township. The history of the village of Wayne began in 1865 when banker J. Henry Askin bought a 300-acre parcel along the railroad. He named this parcel Louella, for two of his daughters, and built a mansion, a Presbyterian Church, Lyceum Hall, and an avenue (Bloomingdale) of mansard-roofed villas on this property. In the 1880's, Louella changed hands and was renamed Anthony Wayne after a local Revolutionary War figure. Wayne became one of the country's first suburban communities to be served by a central heating system, a public water supply, sewers, and electricity. The development of such a high-quality public works system led the township's population to double to 3,800 between 1880 and 1890. By the early 1900's Radnor Township Commissioners knew that the township needed a more elaborate governmental structure. On March 12, 1901, they elected to adopt the status of a First Class Township. This new form of government provided representation to both the suburban villages of Wayne, Rosemont, and Bryn Mawr, as well as the more pastoral districts of Villanova, Newtown Square, St. David's, and Radnor. Today, Radnor Township is a culturally, ethnically, and economically diverse community. With its status as one of the best places to live in the Philadelphia region and continued high standard of living and education, Radnor Township is a community that residents can be proud to call home. Mr. Speaker, I urge you and my colleagues to join me in congratulating Radnor Township during its centennial year as the citizens of Radnor begin an exciting new century.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment on behalf of myself, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman). I offer this amendment in full support and adulation for the chairman and ranking members of the subcommittee, recognizing their ongoing cooperation in this effort. And I offer this in complete support of the full committee chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), without whose efforts last year would not allow us to be here today. Mr. Chairman, the number is 102, and the number in 1999 was 112. That was the number of U.S. citizens, most of them volunteers, who were killed in the line of duty in protecting our towns. If we lost that many soldiers, it would be a national scandal. If we lost that many teachers, it would be a national disgrace. Yet every year, on average, America loses over 100 men and women who are simply protecting their towns. Last year, for the first time, with the leadership of the good chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), we appropriated $100 million on the competitive grant program to help our Nation's 32,000 fire and EMS departments leverage their money to help them better train and better equip themselves. The response was overwhelming. Thirty thousand applications came in within 1 month. Twenty thousand individual fire and EMS departments in every district in America applied. And now it is time for us to increase that funding. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, without whose efforts this would not have happened.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), a cosponsor of this amendment and one who has been a real leader in this effort. (Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith), who is a senior member of the Committee on Science and who has been an advocate for the fire service. (Mr. SMITH of Michigan asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Grucci), one of our freshmen Members who was a leader of the fire service in Brookhaven in Long Island. (Mr. GRUCCI asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), one of the champions of our national security and one of the champions of the fire service in America, who along with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) has been there, along with the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan).

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, the group of people we are talking about are our domestic defenders. People ask why we should fund the fire service, are we trying to federalize the Nation's fire service? The answer is absolutely no. But in today's climate we are asking these domestic defenders to deal more with weapons of mass destruction and terrorist incidents. In fact, for every major disaster in America, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, they are the first responder. It is not the FEMA bureaucrat, it is not the National Guard, it is not the Marine Corps CBIRF teams, it is the men and women of the American Fire Service. We have responsibility to help them. We spend over $300 billion on our international defenders, and I support that and more. We spend $4 billion a year on our police officers, and I support that. Imagine asking our police officers to go out and have a chicken dinner or tag day to raise the funds to buy their police car or their crime incident vehicle. Every day across this country our paid and volunteer fire EMS people are asked to do more with less. This is a small effort for us to assist them, to give them seed money, to help them use their very limited dollars to help leverage that money to buy the equipment they need. Is this program a success? The first round of grants are now going out. Let me read just one. The smallest grant award to date was $757 to buy a smoke machine for training fire fighters in the Paisley Volunteer Fire Department in southeastern Oregon. That may save one life, and if we save one life out of those hundreds that are killed each year, it is well worth the funding. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my colleagues for working together on this effort. It would not have happened without the bipartisan support of the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), along with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), and all of the others who have spoken, are the reason we are here today. Mr. Chairman, to our fire and EMS leaders, we are only just beginning. I thank my colleagues and ask them to support this amendment.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes to enter into a colloquy with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) and with the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan). Mr. Chairman, first of all, I thank the gentleman from New York for his leadership last year, and ask the gentleman if he can work with us in conference to help move toward this goal?

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank our colleagues for their comments. The gentleman from Maryland has an additional comment to make, and then I will make my unanimous-consent request.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I thank all of my colleagues for speaking. It is pretty evident that this is something we want to do. Working with the other body, hopefully we can get there.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague for yielding time to me. I want to praise both the chairman and the ranking member of this subcommittee for their outstanding work in a very difficult budget environment. I know the tough decisions they had to make were not easy, and I support the effort they have put forth. I want to speak about one very small part of this bill we are going to be voting on today that impacts one very large group of people in America. We talked about the FEMA budget and how we need to help resolve those problems created by disasters and reimburse towns and cities for the expenses they have lost, the debts they have in incurred. But we have not heard anything about FEMA's commitment to the 1.2 million men and women in this country who are the fire and EMS personnel. Under the chairman's leadership, with the strong support of the full committee chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), this past year the Congress for the first time established a grant program to support the Nation's domestic defenders. The $100 million that was allocated was requested by 30,000 fire and EMS departments across this country to the tune of $2.9 billion. We will only be able to fund a very small portion of that request. I am pleased that this bill has an additional $100 million, and I am going to ask at a later point in time, when I offer an amendment, that my colleagues and the leadership of this subcommittee support the Senate position, which is $150 million. We talk about the needs that we have in this bill, but Mr. Chairman, each year 100, on average, fire and EMS personnel die in the line of duty protecting our communities, and 85 percent of them are volunteers. The right thing for us to do is to support a program that will help prevent and protect these individuals from the loss of life and injuries that they assume on a regular and annual basis.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to congratulate an extremely accomplished high school athlete from my congressional district, in Upper Darby, PA. Joel Edwards, a recent graduate of Upper Darby High School, recently won the Pennsylvania State wrestling championship in his weight class. Joel Edwards has proven himself to be one of the best, if not the best, wrestler, Upper Darby High has ever had. Joel has a long list of accomplishments: a two-time Sectional champion, two-time District champion, two time Regional champion, and the 2001 State Champion. In addition, Joel recently placed eighth in the nation in the National High School Senior Wrestling Championship, earning him All-American honors. These accomplishments are but a few, but show Joel's remarkable wrestling talent. Numerous honors and awards have been bestowed on Joel for his accomplishments. The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Delaware County Daily Times named him ``Wrestler of the Year'', and he was also a three-time All-League and All-County selection. His career record was a phenomenal 116-23. Joel is now on his way to a great institution of higher learning, Penn State University, where he has been given a full scholarship to pursue his wrestling career for the Nittany Lions. It is my pleasure to represent Joel Edwards in Congress and to see his accomplishments. He has been a great source of community spirit and pride in the entire Upper Darby area. I wish Joel continued success at Penn State and again wish to congratulate him on his remarkable achievements.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, I would not be in this body, I would not be in politics, were it not for the fire service. I grew up in a firehouse family, and I became president and chief of my fire company, went back and got a degree in fire protection and helped train the firefighters from 80 companies before I came here. It is tragic that we have to come to talk about the fire service when we have funerals. I have been to hundreds of firefighter funerals in this city, in New York, and around the country. Each year we lose over 100 firefighters. Many of them are volunteers. Because we have 1.2 million firefighters in the country out of 32,000 departments, each year 100 of them die. We come today to pay the respects for three more heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice, three ordinary people doing extraordinary things, who left behind children, who had dreams. In fact, John Downing was about to go on his vacation the day after he was killed in that tragic fire. Harry Ford and Brian Fahey were outstanding professionals in every sense of the word. We come today to honor them, and I want to give my highest respect to their families and to the work they have done. But that is not enough. We in this body must now recognize that these brave individuals need our support. We fund $300 billion a year for international defenders, our military, and I am in the forefront of that support. We fund $4 billion a year in this body for support of our law enforcement professionals, even paying for half the cost of their police vests. The total funding for the fire service up until last year was zero, nada, even though we are now asking them to deal with international incidents, like terrorism. The World Trade Center bombing, which I attended, was handled with Fire Department firefighters from New York City. So I say the highest honor that we can bestow upon these three individuals is to renew our efforts to increase funding to give the proper technology to these heroes nationwide. They deserve thermal- imaging protection. They deserve turnout suits. They deserve the kind of GPS systems to allow their chiefs to know where they are in the building, so they are not trapped by toxic gasses, so they know what floor they are on. All of these are within our capability; and as a tribute to these three people, we should renew our efforts to make sure that happens. In working with my good friend, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Grucci), who has been a tireless advocate for the fire service on Long Island, I pledge my continued support to make sure we never forget the legacy of these three brave American heroes.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to provide some information from the standpoint of one Member of Congress following President Bush's recent meeting with European leaders, and in particular with his historic meeting with Russian President Putin. I wanted to take out this special order for a number of reasons; first of all, to follow up on the discussions that were held by our President and the Russian president, and talk about the substance of those discussions; and also, on the eve of the visit of the first elected delegation to arrive in Washington following that summit, which I will host tomorrow with my colleagues, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and members of the Duma Congressional Study Group here in Washington. In fact we have the First Deputy Speaker of the Russian Duma, the highest elected official in the Duma, representing President Putin's party. And as the number two person of the Duma, she is the leader of the delegation here in Washington tonight. Mr. Speaker, the delegation of elected Russian leaders includes representation of political factions in the Duma, and are here to have formal discussions with us as a part of our ongoing dialogue. Over the past 9 years since forming the study group, we have had scores of meetings both in Washington and Moscow and throughout each of our respective countries trying to find common ground on key issues which face America and Russia. First, Mr. Speaker, let me follow the meeting that was held between our two Presidents. There were many who said American and Russian relations were in fact becoming sour; that because of actions, especially President Bush's speech on missile defense, that perhaps Russia was no longer willing to be a friend of ours. There was a lot of speculation that perhaps President Bush did not have a sensitivity relative to our relations with Russia; that perhaps President Putin was taking Russia in a different direction; that in fact America and Russia were doomed to become enemies again; and that Russia in fact was moving to become a closer ally with China and enemies of Russia as opposed to being our friend. All during the past year in meeting with our new President, I was convinced that he understood what it would take to bring back a normalization of our relations. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that President Putin felt the same way. In fact, last summer I was contacted by the then chairman of President Putin's political party in the Duma, Boris Grislov. He contacted me because he wanted to come over and observe the Republican convention and build relationships between the Republican Party, and in particular our candidate, and the party of President Putin, the ``Edinstvo'' Faction or Unity Faction. I extended an invitation to Boris Grislov. He came to Philadelphia and spent the week with Members of Congress observing our convention, speaking to the Russian people through a media source that had come with him and understanding how our democracy worked and building ties with Republicans who were in Philadelphia. He came back again in January of this year, again at my invitation, to visit and to observe the inauguration of our new President. We got him special passes and he observed and witnessed the inauguration of George W. Bush. Then he hosted a delegation that I took along with the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) to Moscow approximately 10 weeks ago. The gentleman from Maryland and the delegation that traveled with us and I did an extensive 1-hour summary of that trip when we returned. The point is that President Putin and his party wanted to reach out and establish a new relationship. Even though the media was reporting a souring of relations between Russia and the U.S., I was convinced that in the end once President Bush met face to face with President Putin, we would have a new beginning. In fact, when I was on Air Force One with President Bush right before my trip to Moscow 9 weeks ago, I said to President Bush on the plane, Mr. President, if I have a chance to meet with President Putin, which I may, and I certainly will meet with his leaders, what do you want me to tell him? He said, Curt, you tell President Putin that I am looking forward to meeting him, that we have no quarrel with Russia, we want to be their friend. We have some differences, but we can work those out. That is exactly what happened in the meeting between President Putin and President Bush this past weekend. I think they have struck a relationship that is good for both countries and good for the world. Now, there are problems. In fact, there is a great deal of lack of trust on the part of the Russian side. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I would call the attention of my colleagues to this collage of photographs that I assembled from news sources of street scenes in downtown Moscow a little over a year ago. The scenes are not very positive. You see Russians throwing rocks at the American embassy in Moscow. You see young Russians holding up anti-USA signs. You see Russians putting a swastika on the American flag. And you see Russians burning the American flag. This was a part of a major demonstration of over 10,000 Russians against America. Why did they do this? Was this because of President Bush's announcement about missile defense? No, Mr. Speaker. This demonstration occurred during the previous administration. Well, then why were they protesting so aggressively in the streets, because we have been led to believe that the Russian problem is with missile defense which President Bush announced we were moving aggressively into? That is not the problem that has caused a lack of trust in Russia, Mr. Speaker. It is a combination of several factors, the results of which President Bush has inherited. First of all, the Russians were not properly briefed when we expanded NATO a few short years ago to get the full picture that NATO was not the natural enemy of Russia any longer. Now, President Bush went to great lengths on this recent trip to explain to the Russian people and the Russian leaders that NATO was not meant to be the enemy of Russia any longer and that in fact NATO expansion was meant to provide a more secure Europe. In fact, President Bush left the door open that, one day, if Russia chose and if she met the criteria, she too could become a member of NATO. But when we expanded NATO a few years ago, that was not the case. The Russian people were given the feeling by the way we mishandled it that perhaps it was an attempt to bring in those former Soviet allies and now make them enemies of Russia. The second reason why the people in Moscow were demonstrating is because of the war in Kosovo. Russians were convinced that that war caused a tremendous loss of innocent lives, of innocent Serbs. Mr. Speaker, as you well know, myself and a group of our colleagues also disagree with the way that we got involved in the Kosovo conflict. It was not that we liked Milosevic. It was not that we thought Milosevic was some kind of a person that we should respect and honor. We felt that he was as much of a thug and a corrupt individual and leader as everyone else did in this body. But our reason for disagreeing with the leadership of President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain in going in and attacking the former Yugoslavia was that we had not given Russia a chance to use its influence in getting Milosevic out of power peacefully. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I was the one that led an 11-member delegation of five Democrats and five Republicans and myself to Vienna where we met with leaders of the Russian Duma from all the factions along with those who support Milosevic, and we were able to work out the framework that became the basis of the G-8 agreement that eventually ended that conflict peacefully. The Russians, and myself included, believe we could have ended that war and should have ended it much earlier, in fact should never have begun it in the first place and should have allowed and actually should have encouraged Russia, should have forced Russia to play a more aggressive role in peacefully removing Milosevic from power, not one year after we began the bombing but a matter of weeks after the allied nations would have worked with Russia. That was a second reason that the Russian people lost confidence in us. But I think perhaps the most important reason the Russian people lost confidence in us is because over the past 5 years, they know that we saw billions of dollars of IMF money, International Monetary Fund money, World Bank money and in some cases U.S. taxpayer dollars going into Russia for legitimate purposes but ending up being siphoned off by corrupt leaders who in fact were friends of Boris Yeltsin, by corrupt institutions that were led by the oligarchs that had been hand-selected by Boris Yeltsin. In fact, Mr. Speaker, 4 and 5 years ago, we were aware that corruption was running rampant in Moscow. We were made aware as Members of Congress that those people hand picked by Yeltsin to run the banking system in Russia were corruptly taking money that was supposed to benefit Russia's people and instead putting it in U.S. real estate investments and Swiss bank accounts. The problem was, Mr. Speaker, that our policy for the past 8 years under the previous administration with Russia was based on a personal friendship between President Clinton and President Yeltsin. Now, I am not against personal friendships. In fact, I think it is helpful; and hopefully President Bush and President Putin will become close friends. But President Clinton had become such a close friend of Boris Yeltsin that our whole policy for 8 years was based on keeping Yeltsin in power. When we had evidence that there was rampant corruption around Yeltsin, we should have done the right thing. We should have questioned Yeltsin directly, and we should have called him into a public accounting for the billions of dollars of money, much of it backed by the U.S. government and U.S. taxpayers, that was supposed to help the Russian people reform their economy and society but instead was benefiting Boris' personal friends. But we did not do that. We pretended we did not see it. We pretended that we did not know about it. That is why, Mr. Speaker, in the 2 months before Boris Yeltsin resigned his position, the popularity polls in Moscow and throughout Russia showed that Yeltsin's popularity was only 2 percent. Only 2 percent of the Russian people supported him. But guess who else supported him, the President and Vice President of the United States. We were still supporting a man that almost every Russian believed was corrupt and had a severe alcohol problem. And as we all know, Mr. Speaker, when Yeltsin finally resigned, one of the conditions for his resignation was that the new President, President Putin, in his first official act would have to give a blanket pardon to Boris Yeltsin and his entire family. That is exactly what President Putin did. His first official act was to pardon President Yeltsin and his family, because the Russian people and leaders in the Duma wanted to go after Yeltsin and those oligarchs for stealing billions of dollars of money that should have gone to help the Russian people. Further evidence of this were the indictments handed down by the Justice Department in New York just 2 years ago, in the Bank of New York scandal, where the Justice Department has alleged in public documents that individuals in Russia and the U.S. were involved in siphoning off up to $5 billion of IMF money that should have gone to the Russian people. So a third reason why these Russians were rampaging in the streets against America was because they felt that America let them down. Now, if you believe the national news media and some of the liberals in this city, including my colleagues in this body and some in the other body, they would have you believe that our problem with Russia today is all about missile defense. Tonight I want to talk about missile defense, Mr. Speaker, because that is not a problem with Russia. It is not a problem at least the way President Bush wants to move forward with missile defense. Some will say, Well, the Russians do not want us to move forward on missile defense. The Russians do not want us to have that capability. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that Russia has had a missile defense system protecting Moscow and 75 percent of the Russian people for the last 25 years. In fact, they have upgraded that system at least three times and have improved it in terms of accuracy and guidance systems. We have no such missile defense system. Why would we not have one, Mr. Speaker? Well, the ABM treaty which was negotiated back in 1972 was based on mutually assured deterrence, also called mutually assured destruction. At that time there were only two major superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. We each had offensive missiles with nuclear warheads on top. And so we dared each other. You attack us and we will wipe you out with a counterattack. And if we attack you, we know that you will wipe us out with a counterattack. So deterrence was the strategic relationship between two superpowers from 1972 on. But that ABM treaty allowed one missile defense system in each country. The original treaty allowed two, but it was modified after a short period of time to only allow each country to build one missile defense system. That one system could only protect one city. Russia, because of its geography and because of its control by a Communist dictatorship picked Moscow. It just so happened in the former Soviet Union that Moscow and the environment around Moscow has about 75 percent of the Russian people. So it was fairly easy politically for the Communists in the Soviet Union to decide to protect Moscow with an ABM system, an antiballistic missile system. The people in the far east in the Soviet Union were not happy because they were left vulnerable. But if you are controlled by a Communist dictatorship, it does not matter what the people in the far east think. The Communist leadership determines which city will be protected. So Moscow was protected. Now, over here in America we are a democracy. Our leaders could not politically pick one city. Which city would we pick? New York? Dallas? Los Angeles? Seattle? If we picked one city to protect, every other part of America would say, wait a minute. This is a democracy, a representative government where all of us are equal. You cannot pick one city and only protect one group of people. And besides, our population is not based in one area. So the ABM treaty, even though it did call and did allow for security through deterrence, did not allow America to provide a level of protection that Russian people have had for the past 25 years. The difference is that today we no longer live in a world with two superpowers. The Soviet Union does not even consider itself to be a superpower today, even though they have major offensive weapons. So there is one superpower left, and that is us. The problem with the ABM treaty is that today we have other nations that have the same offensive capability that perhaps the U.S. and Russia have had over the past 30 years. On August 30 of 1998, North Korea did something that even the CIA was not aware they had the capability to do. They launched a three-stage missile up into the atmosphere over Japan. The CIA has acknowledged publicly that they were not aware that North Korea had a three-stage rocket potential. Even though that test did not go to completion, when the CIA analysts projected how far that missile could have traveled they have now said publicly it could reach the shores of the western part of the U.S. It could not carry a very heavy payload and it might not be very accurate, but if one of those North Korean missiles had a small chemical biological or small nuclear warhead, it could hit the western part of the United States. That is the first time in the history of North Korea that a rogue state has had the capability to hit our country directly, and we have no defense against that. Now it is not that we think that North Korea will attack us, because most of us do not. But let us imagine a scenario where North Korea might not be on friendly terms with South Korea, and we have seen evidence of that over the past several decades, and perhaps North Korea would attack South Korea. Whereupon, America would come in to help defend South Korea because of treaty relations. What if North Korea's leaders then said to our President, if you do not remove your troops from the Korean Peninsula we are going to nuke one of your western cities? For the first time in the history of the existence of North Korea, we now know they have that capability. It might not be a very accurate missile. They might aim for Los Angeles and hit Portland, but it does not matter. They have that capability. What would be our President's response? Would we go in preemptively and nuke North Korea and wipe out all their capabilities and kill innocent people, even though they had not attacked us? Or would we wait until they launched the missile, which we could not defend against, and then counterattack and wipe out North Korea? Which course would our President take, Mr. Speaker? It presents a kind of dilemma that we never want our President to be in. But it is not just a rogue state like North Korea. Iran has now been working on a system, the Shahab-III, Shahab-IV and Shahab-V, which now possesses a capability of sending a missile about 2,500 kilometers. That covers a good part of Europe. Iran is also working on a missile system called the Shahab-V. That system will have a range, we think, of 5,000 kilometers. Iran's goal is to develop a long-range missile to eventually hit the U.S. Iraq has a similar goal, and they have improved their SCUD missile three or four times. They eventually want to have a capability to use against America. So we now have other nations that are unstable nations building missiles that within 5 to 10 years will be able to hit the U.S. for which we have no defense. But it is not just those unstable nations, Mr. Speaker, that we are concerned about. President Bush and Members of Congress who support missile defense do not for a minute believe that Russia will attack us. That is not the case. Our colleagues do not believe that China will attack us for that matter. Let me say what is a concern, Mr. Speaker, and it deals with a missile that I am going to put up on the easel right now. This photograph, Mr. Speaker, is a Russian SS-25 long-range missile. You can see it is carried on what basically is a tractor-trailer with a number of wheels and tires. This missile, when put in the launch position, when the launch codes are entered, is pre-programmed to an American city and can travel 10,000 kilometers at an approximate time of 25 minutes from the time it is launched to landing on that American city which it has been pre-programmed to strike. Now, the exact number is classified, but I can say unclassified that Russia has over 400 of these mobile launched SS-25s. Part of their doctrine is to drive them all over their territory so that we do not know where those missiles are at any given time, so there is an act of surprise there, an element of surprise if Russia would need to attack us. It is a basic part of their ICBM fleet. Now we do not think that Russia will launch these against us deliberately, but let me give you, Mr. Speaker, an incident that did occur in Moscow and in Russia in 1995. Norway, in January of 1995, was going to launch a weather rocket into the atmosphere to sample weather conditions. So the Norwegian government notified the Russian government right next door, do not worry; this missile we are launching is not in any way offensive to you. It is simply a scientific experiment for us to sample upper atmospheric conditions for proper weather reporting. Because of Russia's economic problems, Mr. Speaker, and because of Russia's lack of improving its sensing systems, when the Norwegians launched that rocket they misread it in Russia. The Russian military thought it was an attack from an American nuclear submarine. So when Norway launched their rocket for weather purposes, the Russian military misread that launch and thought it was an attack from a nuclear submarine off their coast. So the Russian leadership did what they would do if they were being attacked. They put their ICBM fleet on alert, which meant they were within a matter of minutes to launching one missile pre-programmed against an American city. That was their response. The week after this incident occurred, President Yeltsin was asked by the Russian media, what happened, President Yeltsin? He acknowledged that this took place. He said, yes, it was only one of two times that ICBMs were put on full alert, but it worked; our system worked. I overruled, he said, our defense minister Pavel Grachev and I overruled the general in terms of our command staff, General Kalisnikov, and I called off the launch. Mr. Speaker, estimates are that Russia was within 7 minutes of accidentally launching a 10,000 kilometer ICBM that would have hit an American city. Now, Mr. Speaker, let us think for a moment. What if that launch would have occurred and what if it occurred under President Putin? Let us imagine a White House conversation between the two presidents. President Putin picks up the red phone, linking him directly up with Washington, and he gets President Bush on the phone and he says, Mr. President, we have had a terrible accident. One of our long-range missiles has been launched accidentally. Please forgive us. What does President Bush then do? Well, he has two choices. He can then issue a launch code for one of our missiles to take out one of Russia's cities in retaliation. That would end up in perhaps a half million people being killed in both countries, or he could perhaps go on national TV and tell the American people in the city where that missile was heading that they have 25 minutes to move. The fact is, Mr. Speaker, today America has no system to shoot down an incoming missile. We have no capability to shoot down a missile once it has been launched. If, likewise, one of these units controlling an SS-25 were to somehow get the launch codes for that missile and launch that missile, again we have no defense against that accident. Mr. Speaker, that is why President Bush has said America must deploy missile defense. That is why this Congress voted with a veto-proof margin 2 years ago in favor of my bill, H.R. 4, to declare it our national law that we will deploy missile defense. It was not to back Russia into a corner. It was not to escalate an arms race. It was to give us protection against a threat that we do not now have. Now, the liberal opponents of missile defense will say, well, wait a minute, Congressman Weldon, the threat, and I heard the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee say this on Sunday, there is a more likely threat of a truck bomb coming into our cities. That is a little bit disingenuous, Mr. Speaker, because the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee knows full well that over the past 6 years the Congress has plussed up funding for dealing with weapons of mass destruction more than what the President asked for each year. We are spending hundred of millions of dollars on new detection systems, new intelligence systems, on dealing with weapons of mass destruction that could be brought in by terrorist groups. We are not ignoring that threat, but, Mr. Speaker, the facts are there. The largest loss of American military life in the past 10 years was when a low complexity SCUD missile was fired by Saddam Hussein into an American military barracks in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia. America let down our sons and daughters. Twenty-eight young Americans came home in body bags because we could not defend against a low complexity SCUD missile. When Saddam Hussein chose to destroy American lives, he did not pick a truck bomb. He did not pick a chemical agent. He picked a SCUD missile, which he has now enhanced four times. When Saddam Hussein chose to kill innocent Jews in Israel, he did not pick truck bombs. He did not pick biological weapons. He sent SCUD missiles into Israel, and killed and injured hundreds of innocent Jews. The facts are easily understood, Mr. Speaker. The weapon of choice is the missile. Today throughout the world, over 70 nations possess cruise, medium- and long-range missiles. Twenty-two nations today around the world are building these missiles. All the major unstable nations are building missile systems today because they want to use them and threaten to use them against America, our allies and our troops. Now others will say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. This system will not work. Mr. Speaker, facts again do not support that notion. There have been 31 major tests of missile defense systems by our military over the past 5 years, 31 tests. These tests were with our Army program called THAAD, our PAC III program, the Enhanced Patriot, our Navy program, called Navy Area Wide Navy Upper Tier, and our national missile defense program, 31 tests. Now we had failures, I will acknowledge that, but, Mr. Speaker, the failures were not of hitting a bullet with a bullet. The failures were when we could not get the rocket into the atmosphere. Now, that problem was solved by Wernher von Braun 40 years ago. If we use that as a reason to stop missile defense, then we better shut down our space program, because the same rocket technology that launches our satellites and our astronauts into outer space is the exact same technology we use for missile defense. So if we think that those failures should stop missile defense, then we should shut down Cape Kennedy, because it is the same rocket science. The fact is, Mr. Speaker, of the 16 times of the 31 tests, where the seeker reached a level where it could see the target up in the atmosphere, 16 times, 14 of those times we hit a missile with a missile. We hit a bullet with a bullet. So our success rate has been 14 out of 16 times we have been able to hit a bullet with a bullet, proving that the technology is, in fact, at hand. Last week, Mr. Speaker, General Kadish, the head of our Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, a three-star general, testified, and I asked the question, general, is the technology here today? He said, absolutely, Congressman. We understand and have the technology worked out. I said, is it an engineering challenge now? He said, that is the challenge. It is engineering, a group of systems, the queuing system, the radar system, the Seeker itself, to work together to take out that missile when it is on the ascent phase heading toward our country or our troops. So it is not a technology problem, it is an engineering challenge. Now, Mr. Speaker, some of the opponents of missile defense will say, well, wait a minute. You can defeat missile defense by having decoys. Any nation that we would try to defend against would simply build decoys. These would be balloons so that you would not be able to tell the warhead from the balloon. That is an easy argument for people to make, but it does not hold water, Mr. Speaker. It is disingenuous. Because if we have countries that the liberals say cannot build missile systems because they do not have the capability, how can we expect those same countries to be able to build technologies that would allow them to have decoys? We tried to build decoys ourselves, and we are the most equipped nation in the world technologically. We have had problems building decoys. So you cannot say a foreign nation can build decoys that we cannot even build as a reason not to move forward with missile defense. Now, we understand the challenge of being able to differentiate the actual warhead from a decoy. It is a challenge we have not yet totally solved. But, Mr. Speaker, even if we move for aggressive deployment today, we will not have a system in place for at least 5 years. We are on a time frame to solve the challenge of decoys during that time frame of deployment. Now, some say the system would cost too much money. Mr. Speaker, the cost for missile defense is approximately 1 percent of our defense budget. One percent. Not our total budget, of our defense budget. Now, we are building new airplanes to replace older ones, we are building new ships to replace older ships. We are building all kinds of new tanks and ammunition to replace older ones. But missile defense does not exist today. One percent of our defense budget to build defenses against missile systems is not too much to ask. I would say to my colleagues, if you believe cost is a factor, then what price do you put on Philadelphia, or on Los Angeles, or on Washington, D.C.? Is it worth $1 billion? Is it worth $100 million? What price do we put on a city that could be wiped out from one missile launched into our country? So price is not an issue. Technology is not an issue. Well, then what is the issue? Is it the Russians? Yes, we want to reassure Russia that this is not meant to threaten them. Do the Russians not trust us today on missile defense? Mr. Speaker, the answer is yes. But, you know, Mr. Speaker, if I were a Russian today, I would not trust America on missile defense either. That is a pretty strong statement. Why would I say that? Why would I not trust America on missile defense if I were a Russian? Because three times in the last 8 years under President Clinton we slapped Russia across the face on missile defense. Let me review the actual incidents one at a time. In 1992, the new President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, challenged former President George Bush to work together on missile defense. He said let us have our two countries cooperate. President Bush said, I agree. So our State Department began high level talks with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Those talks were given a name, Ross- Manedov talks, named after the two people leading the discussions. We had several meetings, quiet meetings, but very successful meetings. The two governments were looking at ways to cooperate back in 1992 on missile defense. Things changed in 1993. A new President came in, a President who ran against missile defense. What was one of the first acts that President Clinton did? With no advance warnings to the Russian side, he abruptly canceled the Ross-Manedov talks. So we sent our first signal to Russia back in 1993, we do not want to work with you on missile defense. We will work alone. For the support of Congress, we kept one joint missile defense program operational with the Russians. It was the construction of two satellites, one controlled by Russia and one controlled by the U.S., to sense rocket launches around the world, so we could build confidence. The program is called RAMOS, Russian American program for space observations. In 1996, with no advance warning to the Russians or the Congress, the Clinton administration canceled the program. I got frantic calls in my office from my Russian friends. They said, Congressman Weldon, what is going on? You have told us you are trying to work with us. Your government just announced they are cancelling the funds for the RAMOS program? Democrats and Republicans in the Congress came together. Carl Levin in the Senate, myself in the House, joined by a number of other Members, said this cannot stand. We overturned the Clinton administration's decision to cancel the RAMOS program, and it is still being funded today. But, you know what Mr. Speaker? That was the second time that Russia got a signal from us. Our administration canceled the program. It was the Congress who restarted it. There was a third incident. In the late 1990s, with the ending of the two superpowers, the common thought in America was that the ABM Treaty, if it was kept in place, had to become more flexible to allow America to deal with new threats that were emerging. What did the Clinton administration do? It sent its negotiators to Geneva to negotiate with the Russians two new amendments to the ABM Treaty. At a time when almost everyone in America was saying let us relax the treaty so America can defend herself, what did the Clinton administration do? They negotiated with Russia two new tightening amendments that made the ABM Treaty tighter than it had been back in 1972. Most of us in the Congress had no idea what the President was up to. We knew the amendments were dealing with multilateralizing the treaty, and the other dealt with something called demarcation. So, Mr. Speaker, I called the State Department in 1997 and I obtained permission to go to Geneva. I think I am the only Member of either body that went over there during the discussions. I sat down at the negotiating table, alongside of me was our chief negotiator, Stanley Rivalos. Across from me at the table was the chief Russian negotiator, General Koltunov. We met for 2\1/2\ hours. The first question I asked General Koltunov was, General, tell me, why do you want to multilateralize the ABM Treaty, meaning bring other nations in? It was only a treaty between two countries, the Soviet Union and the U.S. Why do you want to bring in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan? They do not have nuclear warheads nor long-range missiles. If you want to bring in former Soviet states, why did not you propose bringing them all in, all 15? He looked at me. He said, Congressman, you are asking that question of the wrong person. We did not propose multilateralizing the ABM Treaty. Your side did. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, Mr. Speaker. The Clinton administration went over to Geneva to negotiate a change in the treaty that brought in three former Soviet states to be equal signatories. Now, why would you do that, Mr. Speaker, unless, unless you wanted to make it tougher down the road to amend the treaty, because then you had to get four nations to agree as opposed to just Russia and the U.S. The second issue was demarcation. I could not understand how we differentiated between a theater missile defense system and national missile defense. If you are in Israel, our THAAD program would be national missile defense, because it protects your whole country. You are a small country. So I said to General Koltunov on the Russian side, tell me, how do you make the difference between theater and national? How do you determine the speed and range that makes one system theater and one system national? He said, Congressman, they are very delicate negotiations. I cannot explain it here. You have to go back and ask your scientists. So I came back home to America, not satisfied with the answers I got. About a year later, Mr. Speaker, I got my answer. I was reading a press account in a Tel Aviv newspaper that Russia was trying to sell Israel its brand new latest missile defense system called the ANTEI- 2500, A-N-T-E-I. They were also trying to sell the same system to Greece. I never heard of this system, and I know pretty much all of Russia's missile defense systems. I study them. So I called the CIA and asked them to send an analyst over. The analyst came over to my office and brought a color brochure with him, in English. He handed me the brochure when he walked in my office and said Congressman, this is the ANTEI-2500. I said, what is it? He said it is a brand new system that Russia is just now marketing. They are trying to sell it to Israel, Greece and other countries. He said I picked up this brochure at the air show in Abu Dhabi. The Russians were handing it out. It is in English. It is in color. So I looked through the brochure, I still have the brochure in my office, and I turned through it to see all the pictures. And on the back page were all the technical capabilities of this new Russian system, including speed, intercept range and capabilities. I looked at those figures and looked at the analyst and said, wait a minute. I have a hunch here that this system is right below the threshold of the demarcation that we got sucked into in Geneva, am I correct? He said yes, Congressman, you are correct. That is where the figure came from. Well, we were in Geneva negotiating a definition of what is a theater system. The Russians knew they would be marketing the system a year later, so they wanted that demarcation to allow them to market that system, but deny us from going any better than that system. So we agreed to it. President Clinton agreed to both of those changes in the ABM Treaty. So for the third time, we sent a signal to Russia. This third time the signal was we are going to tighten up the ABM Treaty. That is the policy of America. Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? In our country we do live under a Constitution, and our Constitution says that no President can in fact negotiate a treaty without the advice and consent of the Senate. Now, President Clinton knows our Constitution very well, and he knew that when he negotiated those two changes in 1997, he had to submit them to the Senate for their advice and consent. But, do you know what, Mr. Speaker? The President knew he could not get the votes to pass either one of them, even from his own party. So from 1997 until Bill Clinton left office, neither of those two changes to the ABM Treaty were submitted as required by our Constitution to the Senate. Yet the President convinced the Russians that that was our policy. So the Russians last year, when they were ratifying START II, a very important treaty, the Duma attached those two treaty changes to the START II treaty itself. They had nothing to do with START II, but the Russians added those two protocols on. The Clinton administration, figuring they would tie the hands of the Senate, because if they could not submit those two changes separately by attaching them to START II, which the Russians ratified, they would force the Senate into a corner and they would have to ratify them as a part of START II reratification. That is why last summer the Senate said it would not take up START II. So, for the third time, the Clinton administration sent the wrong signal to Russia. That is why the Russians do not trust us, Mr. Speaker, because they got terribly mixed signals during the past 8 years. That is all changing now. President Bush has said we want to work with Russia. We want to work with Europe. We will do missile defense together. The Russians believe in missile defense. They have the SA-10, SA-12. They have the ANTEI-2500. They have the S-300, the S-400, S-500; and they have national missile defense. They have an ABM system. They have all of those systems, some of the best systems in the world. Is it wrong then for America to want to defend ourselves? Now, there is one additional problem and reason why the Russians do not trust us, Mr. Speaker, and this is going to be a pretty provocative statement. It is actually caused by the very arms control groups in this city who claim to be the advocates of peace. Do I have any proof to back that up? Let me give you an example, Mr. Speaker. In the midst of the national missile defense debate in 1999, this article ran in Time Magazine, about Star Wars, the new version of missile defense, a two-page spread. The story is supposed to be about missile defense, defending our people and defending Russia's people. Up here in the corner is this chart, which you cannot see, so I have had it blown up. What is the title of this chart, Mr. Speaker? ``Destroying Russia. Arms control advocates map the Pentagon's top secret plan for waging war, 1,200 warheads hitting 80 targets, and they have the targets throughout Russia.'' Down at the bottom, ``Killing zones, the vast spread of radiation wipe out more than 20 million Russian people.'' Mr. Speaker, one of my best friends from Moscow was in my office and brought me this magazine. He threw it on my table and he said, Curt, I know what you are doing with missile defense, and I support you, but this is what the Russian people think you want. They see this story on missile defense in Time magazine, which is printed all over Russia; and they see a picture of a map destroying our country and killing 20 million people. Who produced this chart, Mr. Speaker? The Natural Resources Defense Council. So the fear in Russia was not caused by missile defense. It was caused by the hate-mongering people in those arms control groups that have scared the Russian people into believing somehow we want to wipe out 20 million of their citizens. And guess what, Mr. Speaker? They did it again. In this week's Newsweek magazine, there is another chart showing a nuclear hit in Russia. Again, it is attributed to Natural Resources Defense Council. This will be on every news stand in Russia and will be the talk of the Russian people; and they will say to themselves, this is what America really wants, because their arms control people are telling this to their people; they want to destroy Russia. They want to kill tens of millions of innocent Russian citizens. That is why Russians distrust us, Mr. Speaker. It is not because of what George Bush wants to do. It is not because of what I want to do. Tomorrow, I will lead discussions with Russia's leaders. We have 12 of their top Duma deputies in town, the first deputy speaker; and we will have discussions all day. I have been to Russia 26 times, Mr. Speaker. I consider myself to be Russia's best friend in Congress, sometimes their toughest critic; but that is what good friends are for. This is not about backing Russia into a corner. This is not about starting an arms race. This is not about bankrupting America. This is about protecting the American people. Mr. Speaker, if I wanted to hurt Russians, I would not have worked for the past 5 years on this project with the Russian Duma, which is to provide Russia for the first time with the Western-style mortgage program so that Russians can have houses like our middle-class people have in this country. The program is called Houses for Our People. Almost every governor of every republic in Russia has given their stamp of approval for a program that we negotiated together to help Russian people buy homes. We do not want to be Russia's enemy, but we sent the wrong signals to Russia over the past 8 years. We had an administration whose foreign policy toward Russia was like a roller coaster. We backed them into a corner on the first NATO expansion. We went into Kosovo like wild people, trying to go in like cowboys from the Wild West, killing innocent Serbs instead of requiring Russia to help us. We denied the fact that their Russian leaders were stealing billions of dollars of money that was supposed to help the Russian people, and we sent the wrong signals on missile defense. All of that is changing now, Mr. Speaker, because we have a President who will treat the Russians with honesty and dignity. He has told the Russian leader face to face, eye to eye, we want to be your friend. We want to be your partner. We want to work with you economically. We want to help you with your environmental problems. We want to work with you on a mortgage program for your people. We want to help you grow your economy so that you become an aggressive trading partner with America. All of us in this body and the other body should rally behind our President, and we should denounce those arms control groups in this city who use the distasteful practice of trying to convince the Russian people that somehow we are their enemy. They are the warmonger, the people who put charts up who say that we somehow want to create a war that would wipe out 20 million Russians. They are the very warmongers, and we will not accept that. There is a place for arms control, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am not against treaties, as long as they are enforced, and that means we have to have the accountability; and we have to have the enabling capability to observe in both countries with candor whether or not we are adhering to treaties. If we use the three simple requirements that Ronald Reagan laid out in dealing with both Russia and China, strength, consistency and candor, we will not have a problem in this century. We want the same thing for the Russian people that President Putin wants; we want them to have a better life then they had. We want their kids to have better education. We want them to have homes for family. We want their Duma to become a strong part of governing their country. We want the Russian people to eventually realize the same kind of dreams that we realize in America, but we are not going to allow the American people to remain vulnerable. We are not going to deny the reality of what is happening in rogue and terrorist states. When Members of the other body, like the Senate Foreign Relations chairman, are disingenuous and say our real concern are weapons of mass destruction, we have to counter that, because we do not have a corner on that. All of us understand that threat, just as we do the threat from cyberterrorism and narcodrug trafficking, but the fact is we cannot ignore the threat of missile proliferation. We must work on arms control agreements. We must work on stabilization and building confidence and trust, and we must build limited systems that give us that protection that we do not now have. I am convinced, Mr. Speaker, that in the end, Russia and America will be prime partners together. We will work on technology together. The Russians have expertise that we do not have. Together we can protect our children and our children's children, and we can deny those rogue states the chance of harming Russians or Americans or others of our allies by working together. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join President Bush in this effort; and I applaud him for his meeting with President Putin, and I look forward to our meeting tomorrow with the leaders of the Russian Duma.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.