C. Young

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Yes, the answer is exactly correct. The same response that I made to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran]. Page 205 of our committee report, there is a page devoted to that issue, and let me add to this further. This is just one of the reasons that we added the $475 million over the President's budget for medical health care, for members of the military and their family, and, by the way, that is one of the items that can very likely be cut by the amendment offered by our colleague, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder], or the amendment that will be offered by our colleague, the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays], and the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank]. We have to be careful. We do not want to give anybody the opportunity to take those moneys out of this bill.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate the effort that he has put into this effort, and I would say to him, as I have in private, that I probably have the privilege of representing more retired military who fall into this situation than anybody in this House, and I made a commitment to my constituents, and I made a commitment to the members of the military coalition who I met with just last week to discuss this. We have sent the proposal for a demonstration program to the Congressional Budget Office. The numbers are being juggled at this point. What I would say to the gentleman is that we are going to do everything we can to solve this problem. We have a shared jurisdiction situation with the Committee on Ways and Means and also with the subcommittee of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica], but we are going to work together. When we go into our conference, we would like to address this, do whatever we can because I have the same commitment that the gentleman from Virginia has, and we are going to make this happen because it has to happen, it is only fair. It keeps our commitment that we have made a long time ago to those who served us in the military for a lifetime.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I would like to thank him for raising this issue and respond to the gentleman by saying that in the fiscal year 1996 appropriation bill we reduced funding for this type of travel by $50 million. The bill that we have before us today reduces last year's level by an additional $68 million. I would also have to advise the gentleman that getting information on the specifics that he is asking about is not really easy, but we are trying, and we have some reviews ongoing. But I certainly expect to continue to work with him and others who are interested in this issue and continue to do what we can to make sure that whatever is done in the way of military transportation is done properly.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that the effect of this amendment is to take this from a $6 million cut to a $6 billion cut. And I would rather deal with a $6 million cut. But to extend the courtesies that the gentlewoman will extend to us throughout the day, I will not object.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I think this might be a good time to address this issue that we heard all last year, and we are hearing it again now, that we are talking about things that the Pentagon does not want. That is not true. I want to unroll this scroll sometime during the debate, and I am going to show you several thousand items that the Pentagon said they really needed but could not be included in the budget because they had a political number that said they could not go beyond that number. Here is what Secretary Perry said when he presented the fiscal year 1997 budget. He said: If there's more money put into the defense budget, I would urge that it be done the same as they did last year, which is not add new program * * * but rather move forward programs that are already in the budget. That is what I asked them to do last year, when they were putting more money in. And by and large, they did that. And that is what we did this year. So do not come on the floor and try to tell our colleagues that the military does not need these things or does not want them. They were given an artificial political dollar amount and they had to abide by that. We do not have to abide by that.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I did not want anyone to misunderstand. This did not exempt anything. This could be across the board. What would it cut? How about the $475 million that we had to add for medical care that was identified by the Surgeon General, a serious addition that we made that the President did not ask for; the billion dollars that we added for barracks renovation and real property at bases; $125 million for breast cancer research and treatment? Mr. Chairman, all of these things would be gone, because what we would do under her amendment was to allow the Pentagon officials to decide where to make these cuts. The items that I just mentioned were not on the Pentagon's list, so obviously would be on the top of their list to cut. So I say we should not spend any time on this amendment. We ought to go to a vote and defeat it soundly because it is not workable.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I have a question to begin with. The gentlewoman said that her amendment would exempt this cut applying to the pay for military. I have read the amendment three or four times now and I do not see any exemption in this amendment to exempt pay for military.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield, as I told the gentlewoman earlier in the discussion of this on the rule, we would not attempt to deny anyone the opportunity to speak, but we would hope that we would get cooperation to continue to expedite the bill as well as we have. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my unanimous-consent request.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, first off, I thought there had been an agreement reached on the 20-minute time limit, is the reason I made the request. If the gentlewoman would like me to withdraw it, I will do so, but we are attempting, as diligently as we can, to complete this bill this evening, because I know that Members have commitments for tomorrow. Again, I thought we had an agreement on the 20 minutes.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that all debate on this amendment and all amendments thereto close in 20 minutes and that the time be equally divided.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to give one example of why I am concerned about this amendment, since we really have not had a chance to totally understand its effect: The tragedy of Secretary Ron Brown flying in an OSA aircraft into Croatia, losing his life and that of the crew and those with him, because the aircraft did not have certain types of safety equipment, including global positioning systems. Now, in this bill we provide money to outfit that fleet with GPS, a safety upgrade. Now, is that documented by something in the service? Did the Air Force ask for it? No. But we put it in and we think it is a good add. I just think we really need to know who would do the documentation, how will they do the documentation. I think there are too many questions unanswered in this, and I am like the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha], I would like to move along. Maybe we can address this in conference.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I do so mainly because we are having a hard time figuring out what the amendment would really do or what the effect of this amendment would be. The way it is written, it is hard to figure that out. I do not know what this means, who establishes what, whether he is talking about by law, by regulation, by policy. We have no idea what the list is that he is waving around over there, the list of projects that are so-called pork projects. This could be very disruptive of this entire legislation which has been crafted with great sensitivity. But I want to make this point, and I wish the gentleman would listen. I have discussed it with him before. When the members of this committee sat down to prepare this bill to present to the committee, the full committee and to the House, we were extremely cautious. We applied a number of tests. One is, does whatever is gong into this bill have an application to our national defense, national security or quality of life for our military forces? No. 2, is there a requirement for it? And, No. 3, how do we do it, if it should be done, in the most cost- effective way? I can assure the gentleman from Wisconsin that nothing in the bill that we present today is going to fall into any category of being a political addition for some Member of Congress or for some contractor. We have been extremely careful not to do that. I say that to the gentleman with all sincerity. He has waved this little booklet around before. I do not know what is in it and I do not know where it came from. We certainly never asked for any information of this type. I would have to oppose the amendment at this time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of the point of order.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, one of the many responsibilities that members of this subcommittee have is to look out for the taxpayer and make sure that their tax dollars are spent wisely, and at the same time make sure that we provide enough money to ensure our national security. On this particular program, the F-22, previous program stretchouts have delayed completing the F-22 by nearly 3 years with a cost growth of $1.8 billion. We could have used that $1.8 billion somewhere else. Additional slowdowns or growth time involved in the program will cost additional money. The gentleman's reduction, as recommended by the Obey amendment, would postpone indefinitely the deployment of the F-22 at the time we are now beginning to build the airplane. Any reduction in this program could be very costly, in fact it could lead to as much as a 40-percent increase in the cost of the balance of this program. This subcommittee is trying to play catchup. We are trying to pay off some credit card bills that developed over the years. Mr. Chairman, we are trying to make sure we conduct defense procurement on a very strict, businesslike basis. This amendment will upset all of those plans. Let us defeat this amendment, as we did in the full committee, on a strong bipartisan vote and guarantee that the flyers, the pilots, the aviators, the warriors of just a few years from now will have the best equipment possible should they be required to risk their life in the defense of our Nation. I oppose the amendment and ask for a no vote.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] a distinguished member of the subcommittee.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, might I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?