C. Young

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. If the gentleman will yield, again I would respond in the affirmative that we do support this program and we did add money over and above the President's budget request. We will do the best we can in conference, and I will be honest with my colleague and say that is the best commitment I can give him now. We will do the best we can. But understand that going into conference, we are going to be several billion dollars apart. We will do the very best we can to achieve what the gentleman would like to achieve.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. The gentleman is correct, and that happens a lot.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I would respond to the gentleman and thank the chairman for raising this issue. As he knows because of our numerous conversations about this, I want to assure him that we will do everything we can to guarantee that the Navy does what it is supposed to do and what the report of this subcommittee tells it to do, and that is to follow all the procedural requirements for an open and fair competition.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. If the gentleman from Vermont will yield further, I would respond to the gentleman from South Dakota and thank him for his interest in this program and say yes, I am committed to working with both gentlemen to secure funding for the program. I would also like to thank the gentleman from South Dakota for his attention to defense of our Nation and also for his efforts in working with the gentleman from Vermont to bring this matter to the attention of the committee.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. If the gentleman will yield further, again I thank the gentleman from Vermont for his efforts to secure funding for this program and assure the gentleman that I will do my best to match the level appropriated in the Senate.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I would say to the gentleman that yes, I am aware of the program, and the gentleman from Vermont is correct that the committee was not able to fund the Starbase program in this bill, due to the lack of authorization.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I think we will be prepared to do that very shortly. I think it would be in order to advise the Members of some of the highlights of the bill. Before I do that, I want to recognize two members of this subcommittee. This will be the last time that they will serve on this subcommittee and be part of this bill, and that is our colleagues the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. McDade) and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hefner). Mr. Chairman, these two gentlemen have served on this subcommittee for a long, long time, and many things have happened during their time here. The Berlin Wall came down during the time they were here, and we are going to give them credit for helping to make that happen. The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hefner) wanted to know if he was going to get anything special in this bill. I said no; we would get together and buy him a watch or something, but he was not going to get anything special in the bill just because he was leaving. Mr. Chairman, both the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hefner) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. McDade) have been true patriots, they have been very strong on national defense, they have not been bashful in presenting their views on matters that came before the committee, and I think the House and their country owe a lot to the contributions they have made to the national security as members of this important subcommittee. All of the members on this subcommittee, Mr. Chairman, have been extremely diligent and have worked many, many long hours, days and weeks, to prepare this bill, to go over the issues that we have to go over, the thousands of items that we have responsibility for. Mr. Chairman, I would like to compliment the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the ranking member, and I want to say that as we present this bill, this is a bipartisan bill. It has been for many, many years, and it is for fiscal year 1999. I would say to the Members that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) deserves a lot of credit as the leader on the minority side and former chairman. We have worked together in a partnership to make sure that the decisions that were made were in the interests of the security of our Nation, that they had a direct defense application and that there was a requirement for them. So we bring a bill today that is slightly under the President's budget, and when we adjust for inflation, we are $2.5 billion under where we were for fiscal year 1998. But we have been able to go through the various accounts. I would encourage Members to take a look at this report. Mr. Chairman, we have talked so many times about waste, fraud and abuse in Federal agencies. In this report you will find page after page, example after example, of where we have gone through every contract and every program and we have found places where there was waste that we eliminated; we have found places where we can save money because of contract slips, and we did that. Because we did that, we were able to provide most of the things that the President asked for in his budget, and, at the same time, we were able to make some additions. Mr. Chairman, I would like to tell the House what those additions are. I would like to say that we did fund the pay raise for members of the military and the civilian workers in the Department of Defense. We have been able to increase substantially real property maintenance so that we could do something about the poor living conditions that some of our soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen have to live in. We have provided additional money for the spare parts and flying hours so that we do not go directly to a hollow force. But one thing we did not do, Mr. Chairman, we did not provide enough money to adequately provide for the security of this Nation today and in the years to come. We are on a down slope. This will be the 14th year in a row that our investment in our own national security has been less than it was the year before, when inflation is considered. We have ships at sea that are undermanned. We have men and women who are deployed more often than they should be. The deployments are excessive, the OPTEMPO is excessive, and you just cannot continue to do more with less. The worst part about this bill is it does not meet the requirements of the services. The services themselves and the Reserve components have identified approximately $12 billion in unbudgeted requirements for this year alone that they need to just maintain the infrastructure, not create some new weapons system, not to create something new and glamorous and dramatic, but just to do the day-to-day things that are required to keep the military functioning and to keep readiness up. So that is a major problem in this bill. It just does not have enough to take care of those problems. Mr. Chairman, we will debate many of these issues as we go through some of the amendments. At this point, however, I would like to insert in the Record a table which summarizes the overall funding in this bill as it currently stands before the House. [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JN98.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JN98.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JN98.009 Mr. Chairman, I yield two minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International Relations. (Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, we are happy to present the defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 1999. I believe we can expedite the program this evening and be out of here before it gets too late. It is an important piece of legislation that I think most Members will want to support. There will be several amendments that we would anticipate, but I think we can move rather expeditiously.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) for a colloquy.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I agree with the gentleman from New Jersey that this important funding should and will be renewed. To that end, I will try to work during the conference and negotiations on this to ensure that it will contain the necessary resources to enable the Department of Defense, as well as the United States Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine, to continue their work in the area of Lyme disease. I also want to commend the gentleman for raising this issue with me and with the committee. The gentleman is correct that Lyme disease and tick-borne illnesses are a significant problem for our troops in many areas of our country. I want to make sure that we do everything we can to make sure American military personnel are protected against the risks of Lyme disease when they are deployed or training in endemic areas.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on the bill (H.R. 4103) making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1999, and for other purposes, and that I may be permitted to include tabular and extraneous material.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, for those of us who recognize the constitutional responsibility of the Congress, to protect ourselves against things like India's nuclear capability, Pakistan's nuclear capability, China's ability, not only with nuclear but the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon or weapon of mass destruction, we say to them today, and they will be hearing from most of us who have that specific responsibility, the Neumann substitute is the only proposal before us today that even helps us keep our head level with the water. It does not get us out of the water where we ought to be. Just yesterday my subcommittee completed the markup on the defense appropriations committee. As we went through that markup, I was convinced more and more of this one thought, that when we talk about national defense, if we have enough national defense, if we have what we need and do not have to use it, that is good. That is deterrence. But if we do not have enough, that is bad. That is disaster. I can tell my colleagues that the President's budget does not provide enough, and the only measure before us today is the Neumann substitute because it does give us enough to at least try to keep level with inflation. We cannot do more with less. I do not care how good we are, we cannot do more with less. We have had more deployments in the last 5 years, other than war, than any other President. It has cost us a lot of money. We are wearing out our troops. We are wearing out our equipment. We are cutting down the size of the force but extending their deployments more and more. We just cannot continue to do more with less. The Neumann substitute gives us the opportunity to have more, to do more things that we need to do. In 2 minutes it is difficult to talk about this entire problem. Today, the size of our active duty force has been cut by 36 percent in the last 10 years. Army overseas deployments are up 300 percent from the rates that we sustained during the Cold War. For the Navy today, on any given day 57 percent of our ships are at sea on deployment. In 1992 the figure was only 37 percent. The list goes on and on. If we have enough, that is good. If we do not have enough, that is disaster. Mr. Chairman, this member of Congress takes a back seat to no one when it comes to casting the tough votes to balance our federal budget and reduce the size of our federal government. However, this member of Congress also knows that each and every member of this House takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States. One of the principle responsibilities given Congress under our Constitution is to provide for our common defense, to raise and support armies and to maintain a navy. Today I am here to tell you that we are on the verge of abrogating this Constitutional responsibility because we are on the verge of returning to a hollow military. As the Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on National Security, I visit on a regular basis with officers and enlisted personnel from all branches of the service. From four star flag officers to new recruits, there is widespread concern that we are overextending our troops and wearing out our equipment to the point that our readiness could soon be compromised. For 13 years in a row, our national security budget has declined in terms of the what we can buy for each dollar we spend. During that time, real spending on our national security has declined by 40 percent. The budget President Clinton has sent Congress for our national security in Fiscal Year 1999, which is reflected in the budget resolution reported to this House by the Budget Committee, provides for the lowest level of spending in constant dollars in more than 40 years. And over the next five years, the President's budget reduces spending on our national security by $54 billion. Already there are 700,000 fewer troops in the field, in the air, and at sea than there were 10 years ago. This is a 36 percent cut in our active duty forces. Not only are the number of uniformed personnel falling, but so is their morale. Every service chief tells us that they are finding it difficult to retain the best and brightest of our officers and enlisted men and women. The reasons are many. Military pay is not keeping pace with pay in the private sector and as a result I am ashamed to say that we have members of our all volunteer force who need food stamps to try and make ends meet for their families. Base housing is aging to the point where some is virtually uninhabitable. And we are asking our troops, during a time of peace, to deploy more often and for longer periods of time than at any other peaceful period in our nation's history. Since taking office in 1992, President Clinton has sent our troops on more overseas deployments than any other president. Many of these deployment are for reasons of questionable national importance. Army overseas deployments are up 300 percent from those rates sustained during the Cold War. This year, on any given day one of every three Army soldiers is deployed abroad. For the Navy today, on any given day 57 percent of its ships are at sea. This is 25 percent higher than 1992. For the Air Force, the number of Air Force personnel deployed away from home today is four times higher than in 1989--yet the Air Force is \1/3\ smaller. For too many years now, we have been asking our men and women in uniform to do more with less. Well guess what--the Secretary of Defense estimates the President's five year budget proposal, which further shrinks our nation's defense, will require a reduction in end strength of 54,000 active duty personnel and 49,000 reservists. So while this President continues to deploy our troops on more missions around the world, he continues to shrink the size of our forces, and jeopardizes our overall readiness. Is it any wonder that pilot retention in the Air Force is down significantly. Just a few years ago, the re-enlistment rate for pilots was 75 percent. Today it is 36 percent, well below the Air Force's target of 58 percent. Both the Navy and Air Force tell me that they are well below their reenlistment targets for first term sailors and airmen. The Air Force is 18 percent below its re-enlistment goal and the Navy 7 percent. The Navy Times newspaper recently reported that 75 percent of the sailors surveyed plan on leaving the service as early as possible. Not only are we wearing out our troops and their families, but we are wearing out our equipment. Mission capable rates for our Air Force and Navy aircraft have fallen every year since 1991. There are increasing shortages of spare parts and cannibalization of existing aircraft is on the rise. Remember the hanger queens of the Carter Administration? Well they're back in the Clinton Administration and the situation will only become worse. Last year my committee had to add $600 million to the President's budget to pay for the additional need for spare parts. Still, the Commander in Chief for the Pacific region tells me cannibalization rates have doubled in just the past two years. Stop to consider tat our principal Air Force fighter aircraft were designed in the early 1970's. The President's budget calls for the procurement of only two fighters this year. This would be the lowest number in the history of the Air Force. Stop to consider that the average age of the Army's medium truck fleet is 25 years old. More than half of those trucks qualify for antique plates. Under the President's budget, this fleet will not be replaced for another 30 years. Stop to consider that under the President's budget, the Navy proposes to build only six new ships next year. This is far below the 10 ships per year that would be required to sustain the current fleet of 326 ships. Since Desert Storm, we have cut our active-duty Army from 18 divisions to 10, our combat tactical aircraft by 40 percent, our bomber fleet by 59 percent, and our combat ships by 35 percent. Don't just take my word for it. Listen to our service chiefs. The Commandant of the Marine Corps told me he is $500 million, or half a billion dollars, short of what he needs in the 1999 budget for equipment procurement alone. He said the cumulative effect of year after year of these shortages will be devastating to the Corps. The Chief of Staff of the Army told me just a few weeks ago that under the current budget scenarios the Army could go under. A frustrated Navy Commander told a newspaper reporter that his F-14 squadron was a hazard to operations because the unit has only averaged two mission capable aircraft instead of the usual 14. And Secretary Cohen, who is President Clinton's top civilian adviser on national defense matters, just testified before Congress saying with regard to readiness that ``We are starting to see signs of some erosion, certainly on the edges of things.'' Mr. Speaker, this past weekend, my wife Beverly and I had the honor of participating in commissioning ceremonies for U.S.S. Pearl Harbor (LSD 52). More than 1,500 Pearl Harbor survivors came from all over the nation to be a part of these ceremonies. As I told all those veterans gathered there in San Diego, as well as the first crew to bring U.S.S. Pearl Harbor to life, we can never repay our debt of gratitude to those who have served our nation in uniform and to those who have paid the ultimate price. We can however, dedicate ourselves to ensuring that in their honor and memory we do all within our power as members of Congress to maintain the strongest, most ready national defense. Mr. Speaker, I close with this thought. When dealing with national defense, to have it and not need it is good. That is deterrence. But to need it and not have it is a disaster. Every one of us in this Congress today should decide it's time to stop the decline in our commitment to a strong national defense and begin the steady progress to modernize our force, boost the morale of our troops, and prepare for whatever threat may present itself to our nation and our national interests in the coming century. That is our sworn Constitutional responsibility.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I am going to support with enthusiasm the Traficant amendment. To lose the war against drugs is tragic, but to surrender to the war on drugs without even launching a fight is just inexcusable. I think that while it might be different than the policies that we have used in the past, I think that the gentleman's approach to this could certainly be one of the major efforts in stopping the terrible influx of drugs into the Nation and into the bodies of Americans.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I would have to say this is an exciting moment. This legislation, we have worked long and hard to get it in a condition that everybody could support. The basic idea here is that it extends the authorization for the National Marrow Donor Program, which, as my distinguished friends the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) have said, is a lifesaver. It is actually a miracle. This process allows people who really had no chance for life, there was no outlook, they were not going to survive, but when the opportunity to have a bone marrow transplant came about and we were able to find enough donors to create a registry, peoples' lives have been saved. People have had a second chance for life where none existed before. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) as the ranking minority member, and every Member of this Congress. This program, from when we began in 1985, we began to try to create this program, and we hit a lot of doors that were not open to us. We were told by people high up in the realm of medical research that this would never work. In fact, one of our committees was told in testimony, well, you will be lucky if you could ever get 50,000 people willing to be a bone marrow donor. Mr. Speaker, as we speak today, there are more than 3 million Americans who are in that registry with their marrow typed and ready to be a donor. In addition, as the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) has pointed out, we have agreements with many other nations, and we are exchanging patients and exchanging bone marrow across the ocean itself, saving lives around the world. I want to thank the many people in the Congress who have made it possible to keep this program going. I want to thank the many people in the medical community who have been heroes in this effort. I want to thank the millions of donors who have been willing to give another person a second chance for life. This Nation of ours is full of heroes, and the list is lengthy. I wish we had time to mention all of them by name, but obviously we do not.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I just wanted to express to the Speaker and the Members, Mr. Speaker, my appreciation for the really hard work that the gentlewoman has done in this effort. We introduced the bill almost a year ago, as the gentlewoman is well aware, and because of the bureaucracy involved, it has taken a while, but the gentlewoman has stayed right there on track and helped keep it moving. I mentioned many of the heroes, and the gentlewoman is one of the heroes at the top of the list.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, the previous speaker talked about a lot of complaints that he had about our intelligence community and I think we would all admit they are not perfect. As he was speaking, it reminded me of a trip that I made driving home to Florida one time. I came upon a group of young kids that were on a hay ride. And the hay ride wagon had red, white, and blue bunting and American flags and the kids were having a good time packed up on the bales of hay. It had this big banner across the back of the wagon, and it said ``America, we ain't perfect, but we ain't through yet.'' I would apply that to the argument that the gentleman just made. Our intelligence community is not perfect. There are problems. This bill directs itself to many of those problems, to solve many of those solutions. That is what we intend to do with this bill. What I really wanted to mention is that I listened to the comment of my friend, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) about senior citizens. He listed a lot of things that we could do if we did not do something else. You could make that argument about anything that we do in here. Let me tell you this. I represent one of the largest groups of senior citizens of anybody in this body. And those senior citizens are old enough to remember a time in our history that was devastating to us, that was devastating to our morale, and that killed an awful lot of young Americans. I am talking about a lack of intelligence, poor preparation for intelligence, lack of information that we needed when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. That was a long time ago, and a lot of people do not remember that, but those senior citizens that the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) talks about, they remember that. I hear it on a regular basis when I am home in my district talking about defense issues and veterans issues; and that is, let us do not ever get ourselves in a position where we are not prepared to either know about an attack of that type or be prepared to do something about it. The world is different today in 1998 than it was in 1941. In 1941, we did not have intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at each other across the oceans. We did not have submarines carrying nuclear warheads within range of the United States of America, any city in the United States of America. We did not have satellites, and we did not have space shuttles and things of this nature. In 1941, we had a little time to put it back together. Although we lost thousands and thousands of young Americans, we lost in the beaches of the Pacific and the frozen battle grounds of Europe; and, finally, we turned the tide, and we came back to life, and we defeated the enemy, and we prevailed, and freedom prevailed. Just think, had our intelligence been adequate then, we might not have had to suffer the terrible tragedy of Pearl Harbor. Let us not let that happen again. Let us keep our eyes and ears as sharp as they can possibly be. Let us be prepared in the event someone is determined to do something that would be adverse to us and our national interest and, more importantly, the people of our great Nation.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.