C. Young

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, there are a lot of activities that we are going to be funding through block grants and other types of programs, but a lot of those could be done by the States or the local governments. Mr. Chairman, if there is anything that the cities or the counties or the States cannot do that must be done by the Federal Government it is to protect the security of this Nation. We are talking about a national defense. We are talking about an Army, a Navy, an Air Force, a Marine Corps, a Coast Guard, an intelligence community, and all of these related activities. Those things can only be done by the Federal Government. The States cannot do them. So, we as the Federal Congress have an obligation. The Constitution gives us the obligation to provide for the common defense. That includes intelligence, knowing what is happening in the world which might affect us. Let us face it, almost everything that happens in the world affects the United States today because of the Nation that we are. We cannot afford to put blinders on our eyes or to put plugs in our ears and not be able to determine what a potential threat might be or where it might be coming from. Mr. Chairman, we cannot accept this amendment. It is just too massive a cut in a relatively small budget that is essential to providing for the protection of the security of our Nation and our interests, whatever they might be, and our people. Mr. Chairman, I emphasize our people, because intelligence not only deals with the spooky spy things that we hear about in the movies, but it deals with threats from terrorists. We deal with threats from narcotics dealers. We deal with threats from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. We are dealing with providing intelligence on a lot of threats. If we do not have that intelligence, we are blindfolded. We just cannot have this cut.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I would like to just point out that we are not slashing Medicare. There is nothing about Medicare in this bill. And I can make this commitment to you, that in any legislation that this Congress brings forth to the House there will not be any slash in Medicare. There is nothing in this bill about Head Start. There are a lot of things that were talked about during the debate that are not in this bill. And the reason I make this point is that there are 13 different appropriations bills, many agencies of Government, each one of them having their own areas of responsibility. Mr. Chairman, we do not do anybody a service by trying to play one against the other and say we cannot do this because we are going to do that. These are all important, but they are not all done in the same appropriations bill. A lot of things that have been talked about are things that could be done by the State governments. And as my colleagues know, through our block grant program we plan to do that.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, as we find ourselves in a world where there are more and more intelligence targets popping up every day, it is not a good idea to further reduce our intelligence budget. Now, I say further reduce because we have already reduced this budget by 16 percent since 1990. We have far less intelligence spending today than we did during Desert Storm. The intelligence community work force is going through a significant downsizing. In the next three fiscal years the work force will be 23 percent smaller than it was in 1990. The Sanders amendment would affect the intelligence community's ability to support policymakers, military leaders at the national, theater, and tactical levels and law enforcement officials. It could impact critical support to deployed military commanders and tactical forces such as those in Bosnia; [[Page H 8649]] critical investments in satellite collection initiatives that are intended to aid our deployed military forces, counternarcotics, international crime and counterterrorism collection, and analytical capabilities would all be affected; as well as our ability to keep pace with the telecommunications developments which are growing dramatically. We cannot afford to do this. Mr. Chairman, our intelligence budget is already, in my opinion, below the level where it should be. What are some of the targets? What are some of the areas where we have to have intelligence if we are going to protect the U.S. interests and U.S. personnel. Bosnia is the very obvious location. Iraq is very obvious. North Korea, has been in the media for months as well as Russia and the former Soviet states. Libya and Syria have terrorism groups who have threatened the United States interests. Those who would proliferate nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, and we cannot deny the fact that these are all happening. We have to know where and how. Drugs. Narcotics. The post-cold-war environment. When the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Curtain melted, we all breathed a sigh of relief and thought, hey, the world will be a beautiful place, full of peace. But while we are still applauding ourselves, up out of the sands of the desert comes Saddam Hussein. We have to have intelligence. The United States, being the Nation that we are, we have to have adequate intelligence. And I say again, in this bill, we have reduced the intelligence budget to a level actually below where I think it ought to be. A further 10 percent cut just is not acceptable. Mr. Chairman, as much as I agreed with and supported the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] on his earlier amendment, I have to oppose this one with equal fervor because this would be extremely dangerous.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against this amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, and I do not intend to object, but I would like to point out to the gentleman from Missouri, who is one of the House's leading experts in the field of national defense and our national security, that the subcommittee spent a lot of time reviewing this entire matter. I would like to call to the attention of our colleagues the fact that the bill before us has seven pages of restrictions and direction as to the proper relationship between the President and the Congress on the issue of deployments for peacekeeping or whatever other purpose. I appreciate the gentleman withdrawing his amendment, because actually the language in this bill is really very good and has been very well thought out. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment to the amendment offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha]. Mr. Chairman, in the last several years the members of our subcommittee have done everything we possibly could to keep this from becoming an American war, and the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] has been a very strong advocate of that. However, we do have to recognize, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania mentioned, our commitment to the United Nations. I would mention in addition our very strong treaty commitment to our NATO allies, and, if our NATO allies become embroiled or endangered, we do have a commitment to come to their rescue. So, Mr. Chairman, I believe the amendment offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania to the amendment offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin is a good amendment. It makes the overall legislation acceptable and certainly would, I believe, fit within the realm of the Constitution, and so I would hope also that the gentleman would be willing to accept this amendment and that we can just get on to the next item. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Before we do that, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha] was on his feet, and I think he wanted to engage in this conversation. We might want to do that before we withdraw the amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. The difference is the nonprofits that we are talking about do not have all of this law that relate to them, where the Defense Department does, and I just need to check and make sure that we have something that is not going to be flying up against another law.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I would have no problem with some assurance there. I would like to point out, these laws dealing with this subject really are legislation and not appropriations. The gentlewoman is on the authorizing committee. That might have been the place to have addressed this issue. But we began this bill in late July, early August. Here it is now September. This amendment was just filed. So we would like a little time to make sure exactly what the effect would be.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. That would be helpful.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. I do so only because I am not exactly sure what the effect would be. We were just provided this amendment today. We are trying to determine what effect it would have on title 10 of the United States Code, Armed Forces, which deals with procurement and contracting and things of this type. I am not really sure what effect that would have, and I am just wondering if the gentlewoman would be willing to defer a decision on this amendment for maybe 15 or 20 minutes to give us a chance to try to finish our research on it.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha] and we are happy to accept this amendment.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, we certainly concur with this amendment and urge that it be adopted.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, this is a technical amendment. We have, in this bill, asked the Department of Defense to provide certain reports to the defense committees of the House and the Senate. This amendment would include as recipients of those reports the Committee on International Relations in the House and the Committee on Foreign Relations in the Senate. Mr. Chairman, it is strictly a technical amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I would like to briefly point out that the President of the United States, through the Nuclear Posture Review, endorsed the need for the Trident D-2 backfit. The D-5 missile has improved military effectiveness and reliability, greater range, and twice the design life of the older C-4 missile which it replaces. Trident submarines are expected to last at least 30 years, and in today's world they might have to last twice that long. The C-4 missile will definitely not have that much of a shelf life. C-4 production actually terminated in 1987 and the C-4 will have to be replaced. The most cost-effective approach is to continue procurement of the D- 5 missile and use some of them to backfit the older Trident submarines. However, the strongest argument I can make against this amendment is that there is no money in this bill for [[Page H 8640]] the D-5 submarine backfit and hopefully the gentlewoman would withdraw the amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I would say that we have examined this amendment and discussed it with the gentleman and believe that it does promote competition and think it is a positive addition to this bill and we accept the amendment.

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

C. Young

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