To prohibit excessive deployments overseas of members of the Guard and Reserves.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004--Continued

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, Senator Byrd is still occupied in the
caucus. It has not terminated yet. I don't think this will in any way
offend the two managers of the bill. I ask unanimous consent that the
Senator from South Dakota be recognized for 20 minutes and following
that Senator Byrd will be recognized. The order now in effect would
have Senator Byrd recognized at 2:15. He will be recognized at 2:35;
Senator Johnson will speak now for 20 minutes. I ask unanimous consent
that that be the case.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I approach the current Department of
Defense appropriations bill and our current status in Iraq and the
Middle East from somewhat of a unique circumstance: as a Senator but
also the father of a soldier who has served in Iraq. My oldest son
Brooks, a staff sergeant with the 101st Airborne Infantry over the past
roughly 5 years, has now served in four wars--in Bosnia, Kosovo,
Afghanistan, and most recently Iraq. I appreciate profoundly how much
our Nation owes to our military. These young men and women are
professional. They are skilled. They are courageous. They are taking on
a job few other Americans would want to do for any amount of
compensation. We can take great pride in America that our military is
the finest in the world.

[[Page S9370]]

In that context, no one is more supportive of our military personnel
and their families than I am. The deployment tempo has been enormous.
Many families have seen the absence of their husbands and wives,
brothers and sisters, sons and daughters for a great amount of time,
and the tension and stress of the families has been great. We owe
gratitude to the families of our military as well.
I voted for a resolution authorizing force. I think the world is a
better place without Saddam Hussein. But that resolution was based on
two major pillars. One was that there was an imminent threat to the
security of the region and to America because of the presence of
weaponized weapons of mass destruction and, secondly, that the
President was to go to the United Nations and our allies and try to
internationalize a strategy relative to Iraq to the best degree
possible.
Now we find ourselves in a circumstance where there is great doubt
about the quality, the credibility of the intelligence the President
shared with the American public. He was quoted in the paper this
morning saying, our intelligence is ``darn good.''
What is at stake is not just the presence of weapons of mass
destruction. It is possible that perhaps some will ultimately be found.
But what is at stake is the credibility of America in the world
community. It turns out that the statements about nuclear weapons were
simply false. The CIA knew that. It turns out that ties between Saddam
Hussein and al-Qaida at 9/11 were nonexistent. Yet over half of America
to this day thinks there is some connection between Saddam Hussein and
9/11, when there was none--zero.
Well, this is particularly troubling at a time when this
administration has enunciated a radically new approach to military
affairs abroad, saying that we will from now on be willing to take on
preemptive war--preemptive war, of course, is based on the quality of
intelligence--and that we will do it unilaterally if need be; the rest
of the world community doesn't count.
Thirdly, that if we so choose, we will use nuclear weapons in a
first-strike capacity. This new Bush doctrine is intended, apparently,
to make the United States sound like the toughest country on the block.
To the contrary, it should not be a surprise to anyone that this kind
of strategy, coupled with faulty intelligence and perhaps a
manipulation of what intelligence was there in a false, misleading way,
has in fact lost the support of our allies around the world when, after
9/11, the United States had the near unanimous support of the world
community. Now that has been largely lost, and even our allies express
contempt for the American policy abroad and our role in the world.
It should come as no surprise to anybody that this unilateralist,
first-strike capability, all premised on faulty and shaky intelligence
and manipulation of intelligence, actually puts America at greater risk
than before. It leads to--and it should come as no surprise--an arms
race greater than before, where other countries may believe that the
only way to defend themselves against a unilateral, preemptive nuclear
attack from the United States is to arm themselves to the hilt, perhaps
with their own nuclear weapons--certainly weapons of mass destruction.
Now we find that this strategy will lead to a less secure, more
troubled world. It is something this Congress and this Senate need to
rethink.
With the contempt toward the United States this spurs, like
internationalism, greater terrorism, more people willing to join
terrorist groups, I think it is fair to say there is a greater threat
of terror applied to the United States and our allies today than there
was before.
Secondly, the lack of international concern, the lack of diplomacy,
and the failure of American diplomacy to pull together a greater
alliance and cohesion--certainly in the Western World, but in the world
in general--have led to America being even more targeted than before by
the powers of hate around the world.
We were told at the time that there was great urgency for this
conflict and that we would be in and we would be out and we would
restore democracy. How foolish and naive that looks today. Now we are
being told that this conflict and our presence in Iraq could easily
last 4 years, perhaps 10 years, at a cost of $100 billion, conceivably,
over the coming year, while our men and women in uniform, who are doing
courageous work, find themselves in a near shooting gallery environment
in Iraq, with very little contribution from our allies. Some of those
contributions are even discouraged by the United States.
To put some context on this--because our troops are on the ground and
our troops are being killed daily, because our taxpayers are paying
virtually 100 percent of the cost of this--we now find ourselves with
an administration telling us we cannot afford full funding for VA
health care so our veterans can get the medical services they need
because we don't have the $2 billion extra. We are spending $4 billion
a month in Iraq, and we are going to do that for years, perhaps for a
decade. We are being told we don't have enough money for Amtrak because
it costs a half billion dollars more. We are going to spend $100
billion in the coming year in this faraway place, but we don't have the
funding for education or health care. And the reason the prescription
drug plan is so faulty and viewed with dissatisfaction by American
seniors is that the funds are not there to fund a decent plan. Yet all
of those costs are a tiny fraction of what we are committed to send
into the far distant future in the Middle East.

We have 200,000 troops abroad total, with some 140,000 to 150,000 in
the Middle East; we have 1,000 in Saudi Arabia; we have 1,300 in
Bahrain; we have 4,000 in Qatar; we have 145,000 in Iraq; we have
11,000 in Pakistan; we have 14,000 in Turkey; we have 1,000 in Egypt;
and we have over 1,000 in Djibouti.
We have troops scattered all over the world. Their families want to
know when they are coming home. Employers want to know when they are
coming home. Nobody can say. Nobody has a timeframe, other than to know
that our military is going to be under tremendous stress for a long,
unforeseeable time.
At the same time, we have budding conflicts in North Korea, Liberia,
Iran, and the existing conflict in Afghanistan. It doesn't take a
genius to figure out that this is going to lead to enormously difficult
problems in terms of recruiting and retaining military active-duty
Guard and Reserve. My son confides in me, after 4 wars in 5 years, in
talking to his colleagues in the U.S. Army, there are more and more of
them saying: I thought this would be a career, but frankly this is
destroying my family, my future. We cannot be deployed at this kind of
tempo forever.
It appears that that will be the case because the United States has
taken such a unilateral approach--to become the policeman for the
entire world without the participation of our allies, without the U.N.,
without the regional groups. When will this President learn that we are
the world's major military power but we cannot be the policeman for the
world, we cannot be doing all this ourselves? We need to bring together
our allies, and we need the diplomacy to make that happen.
So while we are asking our military to be deployed at an enormous
tempo, while we are losing men and women daily in Afghanistan and
Iraq--and we have another conflict on the near horizon in Liberia--the
President says we cannot afford the full combat pay increase that the
Senate requested. How many of you would go live in a hole in the wall
in Iraq and be fired at from every angle as you walk down the street,
and your President says we won't give you that extra $100 a month. One
hundred dollars a month? How many in this Chamber would encourage their
children to serve in that environment?
We are being told by the White House we cannot afford the full
funding for health care. Our vets are going to have to wait in line for
another year to get the access to health care that they deserve and
that they are owed because we don't have the funding. The President
says he will veto any legislation we pass in the Senate to expand
access to health care for our National Guard and our Reserve troops. He
will veto it. There is plenty of money to go around for an enormous tax
cut to enrich the wealthiest families in this Nation, but when it comes
time to do modest things for our own soldiers, the President is not
there. We need to hold him accountable for this irresponsibility.

[[Page S9371]]

There is enormous damage being done to the credibility of our Nation
by what has transpired over these past months. We can be proud of our
military, proud of our troops. We know Saddam Hussein was a thug and
the world is better without him. But when we see what has happened due
to the lack of an international alliance, due to our unilateralism, due
to faulty intelligence, or the manipulation of our intelligence, when
we see what happened to world opinion relative to the United States,
and now the unwillingness of the rest of the world to work with us to
stabilize the world military situation, we find ourselves in a terrible
hole and how a $450 billion deficit reported just today--a record
deficit, where we are going to borrow from the Social Security trust
fund for the remainder of the decade in order to pay for all of this--
we need to regroup.
Our U.S. troops, our men and women in uniform, deserve better. We
American citizens deserve better as well. I simply have to share my
frustration and, yes, my anger, at the circumstances we find ourselves
in today due to profound failings of this administration in the conduct
of our military strategy in the Middle East and all that portends for
the future of this country and our role in the world, all that means
for the taxpayers of this country, all that means in the inability to
fund our schools, our health care, our environment, and all the needs
of infrastructure we need to get our economy going again. Our country
deserves better.

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, before the Senator from South Dakota leaves
the floor, I wish to say that many of us speak about the conflict in
Iraq and Afghanistan from a distance. The Senator from South Dakota
does not speak from a distance. His son has been involved in both
conflicts, carrying a rifle for the U.S. Army and being shot at.
I was with, as many of us were, Senator Johnson during the height of
the military conflict in Iraq when every day he was happy the day ended
without getting a message that his son had been injured or killed in
Iraq. I was here when Senator Johnson received a letter from his son
written on a K-ration wrapper from a foxhole in Iraq. So Senator
Johnson has a right to be upset, to speak with indignation because he
looks at it differently than all the rest of us because he was the only
Senator with a son in combat in Iraq.
His son has come home. He is one of the lucky ones. As we see on the
front of the Washington Post today, large contingencies which were
expecting to come home next month have been ordered to stay in Iraq.
They do not know when they will be home.
I extend my appreciation to Senator and Mrs. Johnson for being the
parents of a stalwart American hero, someone who has fought over the
last 5 years in four American wars.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, may I respond to my colleague and my
friend from Nevada. There are hundreds of thousands of parents all
across America who do daily, as my wife Barbara and I have done, and
that is to watch the news, follow the news as closely as possible with
both pride in our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, but dread as
well.
As we did, there are hundreds of thousands of parents and loved ones
across this country who follow with great intensity the daily reports
about deaths and injuries. There are families all across our country as
we speak who know that at any moment there could be a catastrophic,
life-shattering report of the loss or injury of their loved ones.
When people talk about acceptable levels of casualties, I hope more
and more Americans understand there are real families, real faces
involved, and that we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our
military. They are the greatest in the world. They do as they are
ordered to serve, and I hope we stand not only with these men and women
in uniform but with their families who have no idea, in most cases,
when they are coming back, many suffering great financial hardship but
also emotional hardship, the loss of parenting, the loss of key
employers as a great consequence.
While we follow this war and the aftermath of the war with great
concern, we also should remember this is not just numbers. This is not
a game. This is a very real situation that is going on in the lives of
very real American families, and all of these issues need to be
approached with that kind of somber awareness and commitment that we do
the best we can for our troops and their families.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I wish to join with my colleague from
Nevada in commending the distinguished Senator from South Dakota for
his powerful statement, for the eloquence and the passion he has
demonstrated in expressing himself this afternoon.
I have said on countless occasions that no one could be more proud to
call him a colleague than I. We have heard yet another demonstration of
the reason I am so confident in my ability to say that as we heard him
this afternoon.
I will never forget my colleague sharing with me a postcard his son
sent while he was in Iraq. It was on the back of an MRE, one of these
meals the military eats every day. He had carved it out, writing on the
back, put the address on the front, and sent it to his father and
mother to report that he was well, to report that he believed in what
he was doing.
It has to be an emotional moment to receive that from your son. He
invoked that emotion again today in speaking for all families who have
members of the military in Iraq; that it is wrong to minimize these
losses; that it is wrong to, in some way, depersonalize the
extraordinary impact it has when one of these sons or daughters is
lost.
Hans Gukeisen was one of those who did lose his life. He was from
Lead, SD. He was a helicopter pilot. He lost his life rescuing an Iraqi
child. He is now buried in the Black Hills National Cemetery. I just
received a message from his father a couple of days ago lamenting,
expressing the sense of loss that only a father can.
As we face these questions, as we struggle to ensure we have the
information this Congress deserves, let us also be appreciative of the
extraordinary sacrifice made by those who are there; those who are no
longer living as a result of having been there; and those, hopefully,
who will never have to go but are prepared to do so today.
I was disappointed to learn just within the last week that the
Secretary of Defense indicated that he could not support an amendment
we adopted 82 to 10, I believe, which would have provided health
insurance to National Guard personnel once they come home. They are
eligible for it now. They are not when they come home. That is a
disparity, an inequity, a problem I cannot fully appreciate, but they
can, and it is yet another indication of the sacrifice they made to be
there for their country.
As others have noted, they have been there for months and months. We
owe it to them to give them some better understanding of the length of
time they will stay. We owe it to them to send as clear a message as we
can that we have a plan and that they can put their lives on a similar
plan once they know what the plan for the country will be. But it
appears there is no plan today. We do not know how long we will stay,
and I think it is imperative that we find out.
These and other questions, as I said earlier today, Mr. President,
are ones that have to be addressed during this debate and consideration
of this bill. I am hopeful we can put in place legislatively the
assurances that we will require before we vote on this bill later on,
whenever that may be.
So again, let me thank the distinguished Senator from South Dakota
for his eloquence, for his passion, and for his partnership.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
West Virginia is to be recognized for the purposes of an amendment.

Amendment No. 1244

(Purpose: To prohibit excessive deployments overseas of
members of the Guard and Reserves)

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for his consideration and
courtesy.
Our National Guard and the Reserves of each of our military services
have

[[Page S9372]]

become more than a source of manpower during times of national crisis.
Members of the Reserve components have become an indispensable tool to
carry out military operations and homeland security missions.
As of last week, there were 204,100 Guard and Reserve personnel on
active duty. Some are stationed within the United States, performing
homeland security missions. Many are deployed overseas, in foreign
lands, thousands of miles from home, to places such as Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Since September 11, 2001, we have activated more Guard and Reserve
personnel than at any time since the Korean war but countless
reservists, especially those who are now serving in Iraq, have not even
been told when their deployment will end. Nobody knows when they will
return home to their families, their friends, and their home
communities.
Adding to the uncertainty, some Reserve units that are now being
activated are simply being told to prepare to deploy for 1 to 2 years.
This is no way to treat our National Guard and Reserve forces. How
would Senators like to be treated like that? Are we keeping our citizen
soldiers away from their jobs and their homes for too long? Are we?
There are a growing number of West Virginians who say yes.
My office has received an increasing number of letters, phone calls,
and e-mails from West Virginians asking when their loved ones who serve
in the Reserve components will be coming home. How long? How long will
that vacant chair be at the dinner table? How long will that husband,
that father, be away from home, unable to carry that child to bed and
tuck it under the cover at night? How long, Mr. Rumsfeld, I ask?
Some of the reports in these communications are very alarming.
Senators read their mail as I read mine. Other Senators, I am sure, are
getting the same question from those who are living there in the face
of danger every second of every minute of every hour of every day, in
the hot sands, 130 degrees, 120 degrees, 110 degrees. There they are.
All of these letters express a deep frustration with the length of
deployment of National Guard men and women and other Reserve units.
A number of troops and their families have expressed desperation at
trying to get any sort of information about when their units will be
returning to the United States, and it is about the same frustration
that we as their elected representatives are getting when we ask
questions of this administration to appear before our committee.
After reviewing what some of these units have gone through, I can see
why people are frustrated. Let us take the case of one engineering unit
from West Virginia. After shipping out in January 2003, this unit
advanced deep into Iraq, along with front-line fighting forces. During
the war, they bridged a river under heavy Iraqi fire. I have several
reports that members of this unit are able to call home only once every
several weeks, and that now they are only helping to haul Iraqi
ammunition. This unit has not been given a date to return to the United
States, and rumors are now circling that they will remain in Iraq until
January 2004, until the snow falls in West Virginia.
Another National Guard unit has struggled through back-to-back-to-
back deployments. This unit was mobilized for State duty in response to
flooding in West Virginia in the summer of 2001. After September 11,
this unit spent 1 year in Federal duty performing homeland security
missions. After 3 months' rest, the unit was again called to duty and
this time sent to the Persian Gulf region in February 2003, where they
remain to this day. There has been no word, none, on when this unit
will return home. Hear me, Senators.
One of my constituents wrote about her husband who was deployed to
the Persian Gulf in December 2002, told he would return as soon as the
war was over. After the President made his visit to the aircraft
carrier Abraham Lincoln and gave his speech under the giant banner
which read ``Mission Accomplished,'' this reservist still has not been
sent home. In fact, he was given five different dates to return to West
Virginia and then sent to another country in the region with the
possibility of extending his deployment to September. To add insult to
injury, this reservist had to pay for his own food and lodging while he
was awaiting new orders after the war.
Hear me. Hear me, Mr. President. These stories should not come as a
complete surprise to my colleagues. I am confident every Senator has
been receiving mail with similar reports of deployments with no end,
unclear missions, shortages in supplies, and countless other problems.
I have read similar problems in the newspaper about members of the
Active-Duty Forces. This morning, there is an article in the Los
Angeles Times about another delay in the homecoming of the war-weary
3rd Infantry Division. Less than a week after Secretary Rumsfeld
announced to the Armed Services Committee that this division would be
home by September, 10,000 of these soldiers have now been told to
prepare to stay in Iraq indefinitely, an equal number of that army of
Greeks which was led by Xenophon back home after the war, after the
Battle of Cunaxa. Ten thousand have now been told to prepare to stay in
Iraq indefinitely. These troops ought to have the chance to come home,
too.
There are two reasons why I am particularly concerned about the long
deployments of the Guard and Reserve. First, the National Guard has
important responsibilities to their own States. Right now, this very
minute, West Virginia has all of its Guard and Reserve engineer units
deployed overseas, along with all of their earthmovers, their dump
trucks, their equipment. If the summer storms cause more flooding and
mudslides in the West Virginia hills, who is Governor Wise going to go
to for help?
We have watched those storms sweep over the mountains of West
Virginia and come down those rugged, ragged, steep slopes into the
valleys and cause terrible floods to come rushing down, wiping out
lives and property. Who is Governor Wise going to go to for help? The
engineers of the West Virginia National Guard cannot answer the call
from the hot sands of Iraq. My State would either have to rely on
expensive contractors to recover from the storms or wait 2 or 3 days
for National Guard units from neighboring States to respond. West
Virginians need our National Guard in West Virginia.
Second, members of the Guard and Reserve are part-time soldiers. They
are proud to serve their country but they did not sign up to serve
full-time duty. We must exercise greater discretion when mobilizing the
reserves just as we did decades ago.
According to the Congressional Research Service, from 1945 to 1989,
there were only four involuntary callups of Reserve Forces. In 1945, I
was in Florida, welding in the shipyard to the end of World War II.
According to the Congressional Research Service, from that date 1945 to
1989, there were only four involuntary callups of reservists. Since
then, there have been six involuntary deployments. It is unreasonable
to dip into the Guard and Reserve so frequently, to pull those men and
women away from their civilian careers and away from their families and
expect them to serve overseas with no indication of when their mission
will end.
There are serious defects from protracted deployments of the National
Guard and the Reserve. There is growing frustration, I am telling you.
It is growing. The frustration is there and it is growing.
Hear me, Mr. President, down at the other end of the avenue. Hear me,
Mr. Rumsfeld. Hear me, Senators. That frustration is growing. Growing
frustration among members of the Guard and Reserves mean that many
troops may finally elect to take their hard-earned retirement. Many
junior personnel are likely to decide they do not want to put their
families through months or even years of hardship again and they will
choose not to reenlist once their duty has been completed.
As we speak, unit commanders are bracing for a heavy loss of
personnel once the deployed units are rotated home. The time has come
for Congress to say: Enough is enough. Let us put an end to open-ended
and back-to-back deployments of the National Guard and Reserve. Our
part-time troops need to get back to their homes. They need to get back
to their families.
They need to get back to their full-time jobs.
That is why I offer an amendment to limit the involuntary deployment
of

[[Page S9373]]

National Guard and Reserve personnel to 6 months for any single
overseas deployment and not more than 1 deployment in any 12-month
period.
When we send the National Guard to peacekeeping missions in the
Balkans, they are overseas for 6 months. Why should we ask our
reservists to serve longer in Iraq or Afghanistan? Why should we ask
our reservists to put up with back-to-back deployment?
Secretary Rumsfeld announced this week that he is seeking long-term
changes to reduce dependence on the involuntary mobilization of
National Guard and Reserves for not more than 1 year out of every 6
years. This is a commendable action, and we need to take a look at the
long-term structure of our Armed Forces. But Secretary Rumsfeld's
proposed changes do nothing to address the problems our reservists and
their families are facing today.
My amendment will make an immediate impact on the problem of open-
ended deployments for the National Guard and the Reserves. My amendment
will make the Defense Department tell our reservists when they will be
coming home because no funds in this bill may be spent to keep a Guard
or Reserve unit overseas for more than 6 months.
We need to start rotating our Reserve Forces back home. Right now,
there are 204,100 Reserve personnel who are not at their civilian jobs.
These absences are leaving huge gaps in private businesses and
essential government services.
In West Virginia, 10 percent of the State police have been called to
active duty. Countless employers across the country are working
shorthanded, waiting for the day that one of their employees will
return home from their service to our country. Families are struggling
to make up the income lost by having a provider receive modest
paychecks from the Pentagon as opposed to the good pay of civilian
careers, such as doctors, lawyers, coal miners, teachers, or even
plumbers.
One can only wonder how much the endless cycle of deployments has
affected our economy over the last 2 years. But it is clear that we
need these part-time members of the military back in our communities.
My amendment would allow us to tell the members of the National Guard
and the Reserve that they will return home within 6 months of being
sent overseas. Congress should act in order to provide a measure of
stability to the deployment our reservists are facing. We should give
the same measure of stability to their families and their employers.
I urge my colleagues to support the amendment. I send it to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Byrd] proposes an
amendment numbered 1244:
Insert after section 8123 the following:
Sec. 8124. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no
funds appropriated or otherwise made available for the
Department of Defense, including funds appropriated for the
Department before the date of the enactment of this Act that
remain available for obligation as of that date, may be
available for the involuntary call or order to active duty of
any member of the National Guard or other Reserve component
for purposes of the deployment of the member overseas as
follows:
(1) A single deployment overseas of 180 days or more.
(2) More than one deployment overseas in any 360-day
period.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator from West Virginia has
touched on a subject that many of us believe should be explored. I
think in order to look at it, we have to look at a little bit of
history. That history, as far as the Department of Defense is
concerned, is not too pleasant.
In the Clinton administration, I remember distinctly being down at
the White House when the President showed us his plan for defense
expenditures. He showed us a chart that showed a constant decline in
defense expenditures. At the end of 6 or 7 years, it started to go back
up. He was going to use that money to reorder priorities of the
country. That was his plan, and that is what he executed.
As a consequence, the military people of this country had to figure
out how to defend the country. Many of us who worked in matters
relating to defense here in the Congress worked with them. The concept
that was developed by the Defense Department and approved by Congress
was the total force concept. The total force is those who are regularly
in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. And it was augmented by the
National Guard and by the Reserve.
When we deploy forces now overseas, almost every unit of the regular
military has, along with it, portions of its personnel who come from
the Guard or Reserve. They are already identified before deployments
take place. This is the total force going out into these operations.
This happened during the Clinton administration in Bosnia, and it
happened in Kosovo. There were National Guard as well as Reserves
deployed with the regular units. The concept of deployment is one that
people in the services understand.
The problem the Senator from West Virginia has correctly identified
is the repeated deployments that have taken place. When we think about
it, starting in Haiti, starting in Bosnia and in Kosovo, we had a
series of deployments, and then in this administration in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Those have all taken place in a continuum of a lifetime of the
current force. It is an evolving force. People enter and others leave.
But we are still dealing with a total force. You are not dealing with
the kind of forces that were in place when I first came to the Senate
or when we served in in World War II. There were massive divisions
called up. They had a cadre of permanent people in the U.S. Army. Back
then, we were in the Army of the United States. That was the draftee
portion that was added to the Army. Each section of the military had
that in days gone by. But they were temporary people. They were
drafted. They were not involved in a citizen-soldier-citizen military
concept.
When we evolved into this picture that we are in right now, we
developed recruiting techniques to recruit people.
The Senator from West Virginia mentions the police of West Virginia.
I am sure the same thing happens in almost every State in the Union.
The police are encouraged to join the National Guard and the Reserve so
they can be part of the military police forces as they are deployed.
They may even have expertise that they got in the military services
before they became policemen. And they agreed to come back and fulfill
that same expertise as a member of the service when their unit was
deployed. The Reserve and Guard units are called up because they have
expertise in particular areas. They are part of a function that is
included in the total force.
The problem isn't the duration of the deployment; it is the frequency
of the deployments, as far as I am concerned.
The Senator from Hawaii will recall that he and I went to Prince
Sultan several years ago and talked to the pilots who were not
reenlisting. This was occurring during the Clinton administration. They
were not reenlisting because they had been deployed to Italy; they had
been deployed to Bosnia; they had been deployed to fly what we call the
``continuous air patrol''--the cap over Iraq. Once they finished the
cap over Iraq, they were back in Bosnia again or they were deployed to
do some special activities in the Korean area.
Several times when forces were built up as tensions increased, we
deployed some forces. They were brought back later. But it wasn't the
duration of any one of the deployments, in my judgment; it was the
frequency of several deployments.
I remember talking to one pilot who was not going to reenlist because
he had been away from his family I think 10 months out of the year.
This was something that was just not contemplated by the total force,
whether they were Regular or Guard or Reserve. It is not just the Guard
and Reserve. It is the total force in terms of the number of
deployments and the length and duration of the rotations that are
taking place. Those I think have to be studied, and they have to be
studied very carefully to determine where we are going.
Unfortunately, I must disagree with my friend from West Virginia. If
we followed his suggestion, we would put down just a blanket rule
concerning the time of the deployment period or the number of
deployments in any 360-day period. And this would be not more than one.

[[Page S9374]]

President Clinton could not have fought in Bosnia and Kosovo and
maintained the blockade of Iraq, as he did as Commander in Chief, under
this kind of a law. In fact, I do not think any Commander in Chief
could command our total force with that kind of a law. But what we have
to look at is the number of times that you are deployed in any one
period of your service. There are people who still enlist for a period
of time. If they enlist in the Guard or the Reserve or the regular
forces, I think we ought to assure them, if they are in each category,
there ought to be a different standard. In the regular services, those
are 365-day-a-year deployments, period.
This concept of applying this policy only to the Reserve component, I
think--and I assume by that the Senator includes the National Guard--is
not proper, in my judgment. We have to look at the total force and say,
if you are a part of that force, this is what will apply to you.
I think there should be some distinctions between the regular
services and the Guard and the Reserve so that a person could make a
choice based on his or her circumstance as to how often and for what
duration deployments might take place.
We developed, in World War II, a concept of points. Again, my friend
from Hawaii and I probably are of the few people in the Senate who can
remember that. But you got points for the number of months you were
deployed overseas. You might have been deployed to France or Italy or
England but you built up points. As you reached the zenith on points,
you were eligible then to be rotated back home, back to the continental
U.S.
That system is almost implied in what the Senator is raising because
if you have been deployed more than once in a 360-day period, you could
not go again, I take it, until that period was exhausted. But the
concept of when a person should be entitled to be returned to the
continental U.S., and how many times they can be deployed overseas in
any one--we used to call them ``hitches''--enlistment period I think
has to be explored.
I have just reviewed this, and I want to find a way to raise this so
the Senate will understand the issues as we see them with regard to
this policy. We need to establish a review by people who are decidedly
interested in addressing the problems that Senator Byrd has outlined to
give us some judgment, as quickly as possible, on what we should do.
One of the basic questions, in my mind, is, should it be a law, or
should we mandate there be regulations issued that encompass certain
criteria that must be met by those regulations, or should we direct the
Commander in Chief to issue an Executive order?
There are several ways this could be changed. I take it one of the
questions that should be addressed in this amendment, too, is the
question of whether the rules should be the same during a period such
as we are in now--this is a period of engagement overseas, at the
direction of the President, approved by the Congress, by the way, but
it is not in response to a declaration of war. I think once we get into
a period of total war, as in terms of a declaration of war passed by
Congress, then all bets are off. In fact, that triggers, once again, if
that happens, as I understand the law, the draft again. We go into
entirely different circumstances in terms of manpower and encouraging
people to come. We will have to address that sometime.

Just parenthetically, I remember offering the amendment, once in my
youth, on the floor, to extend the draft to cover women. Maybe the
Senators do not remember that but I did, and it was defeated. We
thought it would be defeated but we then went ahead to defeat the
draft. We eliminated the draft. Once we agreed we would not draft
women, we eliminated the discrimination in being able to draft men. I
think, should we ever get into total war again, God forbid, we will
have to look into the concept of a draft and how we execute it.
But, very clearly, what we are talking about now, being deployed for
more than one 360-day period--I would have been able to come back from
China very quickly if we only had 360 days. There were many people who
served overseas for more than 2 to 3 years during World War II. By the
way, they did not build up the points that were necessary to come home
because those points primarily arose, as I recall, in periods of
combat--at least you got greater credit while you were in combat.
I never had to worry about points, Mr. President. I enjoyed what I
was doing, and maybe I didn't want to quit flying, so I was very
pleased to stay where I was.
What we are trying to do is develop a policy that comprehensively
examines the issue of overseas deployments and analyzes any resulting
personnel readiness or operation tempo strains on the Active Guard and
Reserve Forces, and to apply this concept to the total force.
We want to examine overseas rotation policies and practices and
determine how those policies--for the whole force--impact military
readiness, individual and unit training, the quality of life for
military service members and their families, their dependents, the
retention of career and noncareer military service members, and the
impact on reenlistments of the policies that are pursued.
We want to specifically get some recommendations on ways to reduce
the burden of overseas military deployments while maintaining military
readiness, overseas presence, and supporting the national military
strategy and the ability to respond to the President's orders as
Commander in Chief.
I particularly think we ought to find some way to recognize that
there has to be times when the Commander in Chief has the right to
obtain the forces that he and his military advisers believe are
necessary to maintain our national defense.
Again, parenthetically, I am reading a novel now. I believe I told
Senator Byrd and others about it. It is about the Revolutionary War.
During that period, the Washington Army was a national army but there
still was not a national government and they did not have permanent
enlistments. They had enlistments for periods of days or weeks or
months. Often Washington found he did not have the forces in one week
that he had the week before, and he had to wait until he was augmented
by further forces that came to him from the State militias.
What are the State militias today? They are the National Guards. Our
history of militias in the United States has given us the National
Guards.
This amendment offered by Senator Byrd really applies to the National
Guard, too. The National Guard has another commander in chief, unless
they are, in fact, mobilized by the President; and that is the Governor
of each State. It is only when they are mobilized that they would come
under this proposal of Senator Byrd.
What I am saying is, we have many problems out there that have now
been perceived because of the multiple deployments of our forces in the
last 10 to 12 years. One of them became apparent to me as I talked to
military people in my home State of Alaska; that is, we now have, in
many instances, couples who are both in the military. Sometimes they
are actually in different units, at different bases, but they are
married and they have families. We have the problem of units being
deployed and finding that both parents might be deployed at the same
time, with minor children involved. That is something that ought to be
looked at. We ought to have some limits on overseas deployment, period.
Now, for instance, I believe about half of our marines today are in
Okinawa. They are stationed there almost permanently. The Marines have
fewer married people, I understand, but they do have some problems with
regard to family deployments, and I think that concept ought to be
looked at.
We ought to look at the question of unaccompanied tours, the reverse
side of that. How long should the marines or any of these individuals
be stationed overseas when they are not accompanied by their spouse or
their families?
I distinctly remember the time Senator Hollings and I were asked to
go to Europe by Senator Stennis. We went to study a problem that was
coming because in those days, this is back in the 1970s, we had
unaccompanied tours in terms of our basic force assigned to the
protection of Europe and NATO. When these young people got a leave,
they came home. They got married. And pretty soon the wives and younger
children would follow the father, and they

[[Page S9375]]

were living in these really sad circumstances.
Senator Hollings and I went to what we called a walkup, cold-water
flat in Germany, where a young woman and her children were living. They
had one little burner, and they had cold water. This young woman had to
care for those children, and the husband was not allowed any funds for
that deployment because he was unaccompanied. They had to literally
live off the local economy and somehow survive.
I have to tell you, these young people, who were then draftees still
going to Germany, weren't very well paid at all. They had a tough life.
I still give much credit to Senator John Stennis for what he did for
the military people because we followed through on every single issue
he raised. And one by one we tried to solve the question of the quality
of life of these young people. We increased the rotation with families.
We increased the allowances for housing and various other quality-of-
life items. Senator Stennis rightly has been credited as one of those
who brought about a great deal of that change.
This is another change, however. This is a change of a rapid number
of deployments on various issues where we have been involved--Somalia,
Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They all happened during
our watch. And in many instances they involved the same people.
I congratulate Senator Byrd for raising the issue, but I respectfully
say his amendment is not the way to do it. I didn't see the Senator's
amendment until just a few minutes ago. I am drafting an amendment
which I will offer to the Senator's amendment.
There is a great deal of interest in what is going on. I have just
been notified that the Enlisted Association of the National Guard, the
Reserve Officers Association, and the National Guard association has
asked me to oppose the Senator's amendment. We believe Senator Byrd has
good intentions but that the way this is done, if this would become
law, would be too abrupt and would not really alleviate the pressures.
We believe there should be much more consideration going into how these
limitations on deployment will be brought about. We particularly do not
want to take the risk that passing a very strict limitation on either
the number of deployments or the time for the deployments would have on
our national security.
We are about ready to enter into another deployment. We all know the
Commander in Chief has decided that some of our forces will go to
Liberia. This again is going to raise the issue. But we have tried to
deal with some of these issues by increasing compensation, by doing the
things we think we should do to ease the burden on National Guard and
Reserve personnel when they serve and to increase the amount they get
towards credit for retirement and for promotion and for an increase in
eligibility for pay.
I do think we are dealing with something that everyone is talking
about restructuring and everybody is talking about revamping the
policies. Secretary Rumsfeld has told us he intends to issue a draft of
a plan for a sweeping restructuring of the 900,000 National Guard and
Reserve forces. He wants to deal with the question in a way that would
bring about a reduction in the need for calling up large numbers of
reservists in a war and do away with the concept in some instances.
He considered it to be, according to the clipping I have just
received, a matter of utmost urgency. I believe it is of utmost
urgency, too. I would like the opportunity to review the plans the
Secretary wants to put into effect. I think if they are plans that
would be counter to the goals we currently are trying to achieve, we
should find a way to work together.
The Secretary issued a statement on July 9. I ask unanimous consent
that it be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Secretary of Defense,

Washington, DC, July 9, 2003.
Memorandum for Secretaries of the Military Departments,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Under
Secretaries of Defense.
Subject: Rebalancing forces.

The balance of capabilities in the Active and Reserve
components today is not the best for the future. We need to
promote judicious and prudent use of the Reserve components
with force rebalancing initiatives that reduce strain through
the efficient application of manpower and technological
solutions based on a disciplined force requirements process.
To that end there are three principal objectives that I
want to achieve. They are:
Structure active and reserve forces to reduce the need for
involuntary mobilization of the Guard and Reserve. Eliminate
the need for involuntary mobilization during the first 15
days of a rapid response operation (or for any alerts to
mobilize prior to the operation). Structure forces in order
to limit involuntary mobilization to not more than one year
every 6 years.
Establish a more rigorous process for reviewing joint
requirements, which ensures that force structure is designed
appropriately and which validates requests for forces in time
to provide timely notice of mobilization.
Make the mobilization and demobilization process more
efficient. When Reservists are used, ensure that they are
given meaningful work and work for which alternative manpower
is not readily available. Retain on active duty only as long
as absolutely necessary.
I consider this a matter of the utmost urgency. I expect
each of you to tailor the actions in the attachment to your
specific organization and report back to USD (P&R) by memo on
your assessment and plan for implementation NLT July 31,
2003. Follow up actions may be reviewed at a future SROC as
necessary.
Donald Rumsfeld.

Mr. STEVENS. It reads:

. . . there are three principal objectives that I want to
achieve. They are:
Structure active and reserve forces to reduce the need for
involuntary mobilization of the Guard and Reserves. Eliminate
the need for involuntary mobilization during the first 15
days of a rapid response operation (or for any alerts to
mobilize prior to the operation). Structure forces in order
to limit involuntary mobilization to not more than one every
6 years.
Establish a more rigorous process for reviewing joint
requirements.

I am just picking portions of this statement. It will be in the
Record.

Make the mobilization and demobilization process more
efficient.

We agree with that. We ought to agree that there should be a review
of that. I hope, however, the Secretary also would undertake some
review of the impact of what he is talking about in terms of looking at
what it will do to our enlistment rates, our retention rates and, in
particular, into the viewpoints of the individual Governors who, after
all, have a basic responsibility for the National Guard itself.
I would like to introduce the amendment. I don't have it ready.
Does Senator Inouye have any comment on this? I need to get the draft
of the amendment. Would the Senator wish me to yield the floor?
I yield the floor.
Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I just want to say I support my chairman
on this matter. I congratulate Senator Byrd for bringing this to our
attention because it is an important matter that concerns all
Americans. I hope this proposal by Chairman Stevens will be acceptable
to all Members of the Senate.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, while the Senate is awaiting Mr. Stevens'
amendment, let me read some excerpts from some of my constituents. I
referred to letters from my constituents during my comments on the
amendment which I offered. Here is a constituent who writes as follows:

I am writing to express some of my concerns with so many of
our West Virginia guardsmen and women deployed.
I am under the impression that the duty of the National
Guard and Air National Guard is to fill in and help the
active duty in times of need. Many of our West Virginia Guard
have been deployed for quite a while now, but it seems as
though very few have come home yet. The combat portion of the
war seems to be nearing an end, and a couple of months have
passed for supplies and human aid to reach the people of
Iraq. It seems to me that our Guards men and women have
fulfilled their duty and should be sent home soon. A recent
severe flooding in our State could use the help of service
men and women here at home. I feel that our West Virginia
Guards men and women have contributed their portion of duty
to this war for the time being and deserve to come home now
and begin rotations with other units to cover the needs of
our active duty overseas. I do not want to see our State
suffer during this time of need for their services here.
I am very proud of our service members within our State
because I believe they do an excellent job for us as a State
and for the Nation. They are always prepared to perform any
tasks they are called to do. I personally

[[Page S9376]]

believe that we can use their services here at home for the
time being and that they have accomplished their duties
overseas. I wanted to explain my concerns to you about the
need for our Guard men and women to return home soon.

From another letter I present these excerpts:

I am writing asking for your intervention and help in the
swift return to the United States for my son's unit serving
in Iraq. His unit has had no real mission since it was sent
to Iraq.

He mentions his unit, which I will not mention here. He says:

They have been pumping fuel which is not fit for use in
trucks or planes. Most of the time, they end up pumping it on
the ground just to settle the dust. They have been in the
very dangerous sections of Iraq, north and east of Baghdad.
At a family support meeting, we were told that the soldiers
are now being rationed water--one 20-ounce bottle a day. They
have no way of communicating with us back home. Their food is
limited and they are living in extremely miserable
conditions. We were urged to contact you for help. Mail is
not getting to them and we rarely receive mail from them.
They are not part of the rebuilding of the country. They are
not involved in any constructive activity--only the danger of
being in convoys and the sniper fire which has been
reportedly happening regularly.
This war is not over, as our President continuously tells
the Nation. Our soldiers are not home. Please help. My son
chose to serve his country and for this I am very proud. But
this mission has gone into some bizarre and impossible
conditions for our sons and daughters. Please help bring them
home soon.

Another letter is as follows, and I will excerpt certain paragraphs:

As you are aware from my last letter that these men have
been deployed for quite a long time, they were gone for a
year with the last deployment, as well as State duty for
floods and now this deployment. For this deployment, these
men have been deployed since February of this year, and here
we are already in the middle of May. They were sent overseas
without any real kind of indication as to when they will
return home. I have gotten some form of answer [from a
certain office in the service] that the current policy is
for the men to be deployed for 6 months overseas. However,
that is not any guarantee either. We are still looking at
2 years of deployment for these men. I just find it so
hard to believe that there is no one out there that can
help get these men home before that timeframe. I don't
understand why it can't be a total of 6 months.
There are many family members, including mothers and
fathers, of these soldiers who would be very grateful to you
if you can make this happen for us.

Another letter:

On December 1, 2002, my husband [she writes his name, which
I shall not divulge] was deployed for the war in Iraq, and he
was told that he would return to continue in his normal
career when the war was over. Since then, he has been
scheduled to return to the United States on five occasions.

She gives the dates.

He is still in Germany. He is having to pay for his meals
and a hotel room, while awaiting a flight somewhere in
Africa, as directed by his commander, although there are no
legal or valid orders to do so. As of today, my husband has
been deployed, mobilized, 200 days. His orders state his
deployment is not to exceed 179 days. . . . My husband is a
West Virginia National Guard soldier who has been deployed
over 6 months, who by regulation should have been redeployed
to his home station before being assigned to a new theater,
as stated in his orders. . . . Morale is at an all-time low
for my husband, myself, and our family, and all the soldiers
and families I have spoken to.
Anything you could do to make this situation right would be
so greatly appreciated than I could possibly let you know.
Please help me get my soldier home.

It was signed by his wife.
Mr. President, I will not go further in reading letters, but I have
many of them.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this is a very complex issue.
I wish to remind the Senate that in this bill, we have added $2
million for employer support for Guard and Reserve to help address
problems with recent deployments. I was just informed there was a Rand
study of deployments. The authors looked at the issue in the wake of
the high rate of military deployments through the nineties, and the
prospect that deployment will rise even more.
The authors found, paraphrasing part of this report, that
reenlistment was higher among members who deployed compared with those
who did not, and sizable increases in deployment all appeared unlikely
to reduce reenlistment rates. Research suggested past deployment
influences current reenlistment behavior because it enables members to
learn about their preferences of deployment and about its frequency and
duration, which may revise members' previously held, more naive
expectations.
I have had some letters similar to what Senator Byrd has just read. I
do think there are individual problems, and that is our job as Members
of the Congress, this body in particular, to look into those and try to
remedy them and see they do not happen again. I again commend the
Senator for addressing the problem.
There are existing provisions of the United States Code, specifically
sections 12301, 12302, and 12304, that detail the varying levels of
mobilization, the number of forces the President can call up and the
amount of time those forces can be activated and actions required with
respect to Congress.
There is no question there is already a law concerning this
situation, and by law the President of the United States has the
authority to deploy members of the Guard and Reserve overseas as
appropriate and within the context of the laws I just mentioned.
This amendment would obviously change those laws, and if nothing
else, before we change those laws, we should give the legislative
committees, the Armed Services Committee, the opportunity to look at
the subject. I think their review should be based upon a review of
people with competence who have had experience in the problem of
assisting the Commander in Chief to deal with the Reserve components of
our military.
I am told the standard rotation is a deployment of 180 days. Those
deployment days do not include preparation or recovery time, and
typically the units may be mobilized for 230 days in order to complete
the 180-day deployment. This would put a restriction on that past
policy as it has been carried out.
We should have some in-depth review of the relationships of these
policies of rotation, deployment, and mobilization days, as well as the
impact on families and upon their employers, as the Senator has
mentioned.
Without question, employers are affected and without question small
cities and towns, such as exist in my State and I know exist in West
Virginia, are impaired if these durations are for too long.
Clearly, we have come through a period which now I think we ought to
review a little bit, and I will speak later today about the reliance of
the Department of Defense on supplemental appropriations for
contingency and peacekeeping operations in the past two decades. That
is something that has to be addressed, and the Senator from Nevada
addressed it earlier today, and I will discuss those.
For now, though, again coming back to this basic problem of this
amendment, do you think we can say the Secretary of Defense has already
issued a statement of intent to devise a plan to deal with a portion of
these problems? There is no question we have a difficult future to deal
with because we still have forces in Kosovo; we still have forces in
Haiti; we still have forces in Bosnia; we still have forces in Korea;
we still have forces in Okinawa; we still have forces in Diego Garcia;
we have forces at King Sultan Airfield in Saudi Arabia.

The Senator from Hawaii and I represent two areas that have what they
call forward-deployed forces. I say to the Senator from West Virginia,
often when we have forces deployed from Alaska and Hawaii to go
overseas, we then get replacements who are really people who have been
called up, Guard and Reserve units, to come to our forward-deployed
areas to fill in those spots. They are not considered deployed
overseas. If they were from West Virginia, they would be away from West
Virginia for a substantial period of time. The Senator's amendment
would not cover those people.
In terms of review, I hope, if we are successful in establishing a
commission to bring this about, that there will be a basic review of
the overall concept of deployment, whether it is overseas or otherwise,
when it takes members of the armed services away from their home duty
station and their families and particularly those who have multiple
family members of the military who could be affected by deployment at
the same time.

[[Page S9377]]

One of the difficulties I have is now looking at Africa and what is
going to happen in Africa. We have had repeated demands for the
President to deploy forces there, increased demand to look at more than
one nation that is going through a period of rebellion and riotous
conduct. I think that may be one of the worst deployment problems we
will have in the future, is to find forces to undertake those
objectives, fulfill the objectives of the Commander in Chief's orders
if we are at the same time still in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Korea, Kosovo,
and Iraq.
It is mind-boggling, to say the least, to deal with the concept of
deployment at the present time, the requirements overseas to maintain
the policies of the United States.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. STEVENS. Yes.
Mr. BYRD. The distinguished Senator speaks of our forces being
deployed in various and sundry continents, countries, and climes. Are
these guardsmen and reservists whom the Senator is talking about?
Mr. STEVENS. Under the total force concept, there could be National
Guardsmen and Reserve in any of the units deployed overseas.
Mr. BYRD. He speaks of Kosovo. Are those National Guardsmen and
Reserve deployed there?
Mr. STEVENS. I do not know the current component, Mr. President, but
we did see some reservists and Guard people in Kosovo when we were
there. We visited Fort Bonnsteel. We saw them in Bosnia, and we saw
them in Afghanistan. I am specifically told the National Guard
currently has a mission in Bosnia.
Mr. BYRD. Are they limited to 6 months?
Mr. STEVENS. Currently, I believe there is a 6-month deployment
limit, but they do not charge against that deployment period the time
necessary to get them ready to go over, or the time they use in
demobilization when they get back.
Mr. BYRD. But the time there, are they limited to 6 months?
Mr. STEVENS. That is my understanding.
Mr. BYRD. Then why shouldn't the people in the hot sands of Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq be likewise?
Mr. STEVENS. They are. I just read that law. They are subject to the
same law. I am told the standard rotation period is 180 days. Those
days do not include any preparation or recovery time. The units are
typically mobilized for 230 days or more to complete the 180-day
requirement, but it applies to all forces. It does apply to our forces
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo--they are all subject to coming back after
180 days.
Mr. BYRD. Is the Senator aware of any complaints from his National
Guard in Alaska or other Reserve units there that they are being held
longer than the 180 days and being redeployed for a longer period?
Mr. STEVENS. The Senator used the word ``redeployment,'' which is
another matter. Deployment is limited to 180 days. There is currently
no limit on the number of deployments, as I understand it. The problem
that I and the Senator from Hawaii discussed with various members of
the armed services Regular Guard and Reserve has been the problem of
successive deployments. Active duty tours are limited to 180 days under
most circumstances when they are not considered to be a home station,
such as Korea and Okinawa.
For the deployment into these areas, as I understand it, like the
Balkans, Afghanistan, or Iraq, the limitation on the deployment is 180
days, but there is no limitation on the number of rotations that one
could take to another place overseas when they are brought back.
Mr. BYRD. I am trying to get some predictability worked into the
equation. That is the reason I have offered this amendment. I am
getting these letters from the men and women from West Virginia who are
in Iraq. They want to come home. They think they have served the time
that was indicated to them they would serve and yet they are serving
longer.
Mr. REID. Will the distinguished Senator yield for a question?
Mr. BYRD. Do I have the floor, Mr. President?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia has the floor.
Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair.
Yes, I am glad to yield to the Senator.
Mr. REID. It is my understanding this amendment does two things. I
wonder if the Senator from West Virginia would indicate if my
understanding of the amendment is correct. First, that Guard and
Reserve Forces could be deployed for no longer than 180 days. That is 6
months, is that right?
Mr. BYRD. Right.
Mr. REID. And the second part of the amendment says they cannot be
deployed twice during a 1-year period of time, is that right?
Mr. BYRD. In essence, the Senator is precisely correct.
Mr. REID. I say to my friend from West Virginia that the people of
Nevada are like the people of West Virginia. We get inquiries all the
time about when their sons or daughters are going to be able to come
home. The Senator from Alaska said they not only are overseas for a
long period of time but they have training outside the State of Nevada
getting ready to go for long periods of time.
Mr. BYRD. Yes.
Mr. REID. So I hope my colleagues will listen very closely to this
debate and approve the amendment of the Senator from West Virginia. It
is very simple. If someone is a guard or reservist, they will be
deployed no more than 180 days, and if they are a guard or reservist
they cannot be deployed overseas twice in any 1-year period of time?
Mr. BYRD. They are entitled to know. They are employed and they are
entitled to have their expectations met. Here we are with our men and
women in Iraq. They are there like sitting ducks. It is like a shooting
gallery. They are in an area I am sure we would find very difficult to
live in. We will be talking more about reasons why they were told they
were going and about the problems with certain intelligence that had an
impression, I am sure, a persuasive impression on some of the Members
of Congress who voted to give this President the power to send our men
and women into harm's way, but we will save that for another day.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for another question?
Mr. BYRD. What I am trying to do is make it possible for these men
and women who are in the Guard and Reserve units to return home to
their children, their families, their wives, their mothers, their
fathers, their jobs, their communities. Communities have been hit hard
in this country. Communities have been hit hard in West Virginia. These
men and women answered the call. They have served well. They
have demonstrated great courage, bravery, and patriotism. Why should we
not keep our word to these people? Why should we not be up front with
them?

Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for another question?
Mr. BYRD. Yes.
Mr. REID. One of the concerns I have and the reason we need some
definition for the obligations of these men and women in the Guard and
Reserve is that we are having trouble in Nevada recruiting new people
for the Guard and Reserve. These weekend soldiers are becoming year-
long soldiers and we in Nevada, I think, are no different than any
other State. I believe we need a definite period of time they can be
obligated to go overseas and how many times they have to go overseas,
are obligated to go overseas, or we are not going to get people to join
the Guard and Reserve.
Will the Senator agree with that statement?
Mr. BYRD. I agree with that statement, and I think the administration
ought to tell these people how long they are going to stay over there.
They are not told they are going to be over there just 6 months. They
are not told they will be there 9 months or a year. This administration
has failed to tell our people, who are put in harm's way by this
administration's policy of preemptive strikes, what this administration
intends. Congress has not been told how long these people are going to
be there, what are the costs.
We hear every day--the President spoke on the Abraham Lincoln with a
sign, a banner, fluttering overhead, ``mission accomplished.'' The
mission has not been accomplished. What was the mission? I am not sure
we know what the mission was.

[[Page S9378]]

I appreciate the statements and the questions by the Senator from
Nevada. I appreciate also the words of the distinguished Senator from
Alaska. He is a very reasonable man and a reasonable legislator.
We talk about a study, but we study things to death around here. We
need to act, and that is what I am trying to do. I am trying to bring
some succor, comfort, relief, and satisfaction to the families of our
Guard and reservists who are waiting the return of those men and women.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. STEVENS. There may be some misunderstanding in the minds of those
who have been called up, or the dependents of those who have been
called up, concerning existing law. The existing law does limit the
deployment for overseas to 180 days. They must be rotated in that
period of time. As I have said, it takes 230 days to complete that
because of the time to call them up. They have to give them notice.
They report. They then are put into units and then they are sent
overseas.
When they come back, they come into the units where they are going to
be really demobilized and it takes some time then, too. I do not think
we have a disagreement with the Senator from West Virginia about the
need to ease the pressure on these continuing forces caused by the
concept of total force, but there seems to be one misunderstanding. It
is the unit that is deployed for the 180 days--in some instances
members are deployed individually to fill in units. They would be
subject to the same limitation, but the basic concept of the law deals
with being able to deploy members of the Guard and Reserve as
appropriate within the context of the law I have mentioned.

Amendment No. 1255 to Amendment No. 1244

Mr. President, I have my amendment, which I send to the desk, and I
will give a copy to my friend from West Virginia. I submit this
amendment on behalf of myself and the Senator from Hawaii as a
bipartisan approach to deal with the issues and try to bring them
together.
The Secretary of Defense has a group going ahead on this. We
obviously believe the Congress should be involved in some way. I ask
that that amendment be in order to be called up at this time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
Mr. STEVENS. I apologize. I am offering this amendment in the second
degree to the Byrd amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator wants his amendment to be a
second-degree amendment, is that correct?
Mr. STEVENS. That is correct, as an amendment to the Byrd amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will withhold while we evaluate the
amendment and make the necessary changes.
The amendment is being revised to be a second-degree amendment to the
Byrd amendment. Is that the Senator's intent?
Mr. STEVENS. That is my intention.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens], for himself and Mr.
Inouye, proposes an amendment numbered 1255 to amendment No.
1244.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading
of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To establish a commission to study overseas deployments)

Strike all after the word sec. and insert:
8124 (a) There is established a Commission on Overseas
Deployments.
(b)(1) The Commission shall be composed of 11 members of
whom--
(A) three shall be appointed the President;
(B) two shall be appointed by the Speaker of the House of
Representatives;
(C) two shall be appointed by the Majority Leader of the
Senate, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense;
(D) two shall be appointed by the Minority Leader of the
Senate, in consultation with any person who served as
Secretary of Defense pursuant to an appointment to such
position by President Jimmy Carter or President Bill Clinton;
and
(E) two shall be appointed by the Minority Leader of the
House of Representatives.
(2) Members shall be appointed for the life of the
Commission. Any vacancy in the Commission shall not affect
its powers, but shall be filled in the same manner as the
original appointment.
(3) The Commission shall meet at the call of the Chairman.
The Commission shall hold its first meeting not later than 30
days after the date on which all members of the Commission
have been appointed.
(4) A majority of the members of the Commission shall
constitute a quorum, but a lesser number of members may hold
hearings.
(5) The Commission shall select a Chairman and Vice
Chairman from among its members.
(c) The Commission shall--
(1) conduct a comprehensive examination of overseas
deployments of members of the Armed Forces, and analyze the
resulting adverse effects on personnel, readiness, and
operation tempos on members of the active and reserve
components of the Armed Forces;
(2) examine current overseas rotation policies and
practices for active and reserve component forces and how
those policies and practices affect military readiness, unit
and individual training, quality-of-life for members and
their dependents, and retention of career and noncareer
members.
(d)(1) Not later than 120 days after the date of the
enactment of this Act, the Commission shall submit to the
congressional defense committees a report on the results of
the examination and analysis under subsection (c).
(2) The report shall include recommendations on ways to
reduce the burden of overseas deployments while maintaining
readiness, overseas presence, and support for the National
Military Strategy.
(3) The report and recommendations shall also address the
overall size, structure, and sufficiency of the Armed Forces
in relation to current requirements for overseas deployments
and presence, the adequacy of the current balance and mix of
active and reserve component forces, and the adequacy of the
current balance and mix of critical, high-demand low-density
units the rotation and assignment of members of the Armed
Forces married to each other, limitations on the periods of
overseas tours, and unaccompanied tours in hardship
locations.
(e) The Commission shall consult with the congressional
defense committees in carrying out its duties under this
section.
(f) The Commission shall terminate 90 days after the
submission of the report under subsection (d).
(g) Of the amount appropriated by title II under the
heading ``Operation and Maintenance, Defense-Wide'', up to
$3,000,000 may be used for carrying out this section.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CHAFEE). The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. STEVENS. If I could explain this proposal, it would create a
commission on overseas deployments to have 11 members: 3 appointed by
the President, 2 appointed by the Speaker, 2 appointed by the minority
leader of the House, 2 appointed by the majority leader of the Senate,
and 2 by the minority leader of the Senate. They would be appointed the
term of the commission. We ask for the commission to hold its first
meeting not later than 30 days after they have been appointed. They
have the duty to give us a report within 120 days after enactment of
the act--obviously, that would be a period of 90 days for their basic
work--and they would recommend ways to reduce the burden of overseas
deployments while maintaining readiness, overseas presence, and support
of the national military strategy.
The report and recommendations shall address the overall side,
structure, and sufficiency of the Armed Forces in relation to current
requirements for overseas deployment and presence, and the adequacy of
the current balance and mix of Active and Reserve component forces, and
the adequacy of the current balance and mix of critical, high-demand
low-density units the rotation and assignment of members of the Armed
Forces married to each other, limitations on the periods for overseas
tours and unaccompanied tours and hardship locations.
I believe this commission would have a duty to give us some basic
information to address the problem raised by the Senator from West
Virginia.
Incidentally, I now have the numbers the Senator from West Virginia
asked. There were Reserve and Guard organizations deployed. They were
in Operation Noble Eagle, which was Afghanistan, Kosovo, Iraqi crisis,
Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, Kuwait, and Iraq. We have had a sizable
deployment of Guard and Reserve personnel--the Reserve component is
what they refer to--in all of those instances. I do have the numbers
and the duration.
As I indicated, the rotation schedule was that which I mentioned,
which is 180 days for deployment overseas. I urge the Senator from West
Virginia to consider supporting the amendment we have offered to his
amendment to assure we have the right mix of Active-Duty and Reserve
components and that

[[Page S9379]]

we devise means to reduce our forces with the least disruption on the
lives of the service members involved.
Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. STEVENS. Yes.
Mr. BYRD. The distinguished Senator said the reservists should be
deployed for 180 days.
Mr. STEVENS. That is the current law.
Mr. BYRD. That is what my amendment says.
Mr. STEVENS. Not quite. We do not interpret it that way. It goes
further than existing law.
Existing law says the units can be deployed for no more than 180 days
but under the current law, the time and preparing for that deployment
and the time after that deployment to be redeployed, say, another place
such as england or somewhere, to be put together so they can be brought
home, those times don't count against the 180 days.
The Senator's amendment adds a dimension not included in existing
law, not more than one deployment in any 360-day period.
Mr. BYRD. Is there a final deadline for this commission to report?

Mr. STEVENS. One hundred and twenty days from enactment of the basic
appropriations bills, yes, sir.
Mr. BYRD. I am afraid our guards men and women will have to serve a
long time. Many of them have already been serving a long time, in their
estimation. They will have to serve a much longer time if they wait the
appointment of the commission and then the rendering by that
commission. I see its first meeting will not be later than 30 days
after the date on which all members of the commission have been
appointed.
Mr. STEVENS. The Senator is correct in many ways. The difficulty is
the current practice is 180 days but none of these people, to my
knowledge, have been over there 180 days yet. This operation has not
been ongoing for 180 days. There may, however, be people deployed
previously in this current timeframe who were deployed to one place,
brought home, and then deployed again in the same year. That is true.
That is what the Secretary of Defense has said he is trying to address.
That is what this commission is trying to address, some way to provide
some guidelines so members of the Active-Duty and Reserve components
can determine how long they will be deployed away from their homes in
any period.
Mr. BYRD. The Senator gave me this amendment, a 4-page amendment but
page 3 is missing.
I thank the Senator. The third page which was missing is the page
that had on it the provision:

Not later than 120 days after the date of enactment of this
Act, the Commission shall submit to the congressional defense
committees a report on the results of the examination and
analysis under subsection (c).

So that is 120 days, so that is 4 months, not later than 4 months, by
the time this commission is created, is established and has its first
meeting and then reports back to the appropriate committees. I hope
surely our young men and women will be home by then without any such
report. This is going to be a long time.
That is what I see with this. We need to act. We can study this to
death. This is kind of like questioning Secretary Rumsfeld. When I
asked him a question in the Armed Services Committee the other day, my
question was, How much has our country been spending on the average per
month in Iraq?
And he says to me: Well, I'm sorry, Senator, we don't have that
information at hand. We will get it for you. We don't have that
information at hand.

I asked, How much have we been spending per month in Afghanistan? I
got the same answer. Senator, we don't have that information. We will
be glad to get it for you.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. BYRD. In a moment, if I may.
I am referring to the cavalier treatment that we peons on the Armed
Services Committee get from this great Secretary of Defense that we
have downtown. He says, Well, Senator, we don't have that information.
Here we are with the top man--the man at the Pentagon, the greatest
defense department in the world, the most expensive one, the one that
handles more money than any other defense department in the world. As a
matter of fact, we are spending more money each year than all of the
other 18 NATO nations combined, plus the six remaining rogue nations,
plus China, plus Russia. That is almost half of the total moneys that
the world spends for defense. We are treated like children by this
Secretary of Defense: Well, Senator we don't have that information.
It would seem to me that would be elemental. It would seem to me that
a Secretary of Defense would know how much money we spend on national
defense; that he would know how much money we are spending on average
in Iraq per month. He would know that. He should know that would be one
of the first questions he would be asked by the Armed Services
Committee when he comes before it. I would think so. You are the
Secretary of Defense. How much are we spending in Iraq monthly? Then to
have to turn and say, Well, Senator, I don't have that information. It
would take us a while to assemble it. That is the way it is here. It is
going to take quite a while.
It is going to take quite a while to get this commission started, if
we follow the recommendations of the distinguished Senator from Alaska.
I ascribe to him a far greater degree of appreciation for what we are
doing and a far greater degree of understanding of the need for us to
act than I do some of the people downtown. But here we are being asked
for a study.
What I am saying is that way of dealing with Members of Congress and
committees, saying, Well, we don't have that information; we will get
it for you--by the time we get that information, the time is long past
for the committee to ask the next question, if we need the answer to
the first question in order to ask the second question. We are going to
have to wait to be able to ask the second question. That is a cavalier
way of handling people. I have been around here 50 years. I am on to
that kind of game.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. BYRD. Not yet. I am not talking about the Senator. I am talking
about our distinguished Secretary of Defense and the way he handles us
children on the Armed Services Committee.
Mr. STEVENS. I would like to tell the Senate about the way the last
administration treated this Senate.
Mr. BYRD. The Senator can wait a minute.
Mr. President, I have the floor. I have the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia has the floor.
Mr. BYRD. Now I yield to the Senator for whatever he wishes to say.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I think the Senator from West Virginia is
well aware of what the last administration did. They just spent money.
They didn't even tell us where they were taking it from. Twice in 1999,
we had to have supplementals. They didn't even tell us in the
supplementals what funds they used. They deployed forces, and they took
money from the accounts we had already appropriated for other purposes.
Every time President Clinton deployed forces, that is what he did.
This time, this President came and asked for a supplemental. He has
money he is spending, but he cannot tell us precisely day by day what
they are spending. They asked for money in advance. They got money in
advance.
He did not disturb the individual accounts of the various services.
He did not cause the chaos in terms of defense that the last
administration did.
I will defend my friend, this Secretary of Defense. If the Senator
wants to defend the last Secretary of Defense, I will let him do it.
But I know what happened. In 1998, 1999, and 2000--we had 2
supplementals in 1999. That represented money that was used under the
food and farm act concept of ancient law of the United States. The
President took money from other accounts and just spent it. He didn't
ask us for it. He didn't tell us what he was using it for. He never
would account for it. Even when he asked for a supplemental, he didn't
tell us what unit he took it from. We had to look for the unit and put
the money back where it belonged.
This administration is doing it right. When they ask for money in
advance, they are spending money and accounting for it as they account
for their bills normally in their normal reports. But they did not take
money from the individual units.
They took money from the Air Force and Army and spent it somewhere
else without telling anybody.

[[Page S9380]]

You want to get me excited about something, I will get excited about
the way the last administration handled the Department of Defense. They
decreased funding and used the money in a manner totally unheard of in
the history of the United States. It would have ruined the military had
it not been for the concept of the consolidated force structure. The
military saved itself by using Reserve and Guard units in the proper
way.
But their funding came from moneys that were for entirely different
purposes. I believe they took money from the procurement account from
time to time. Normally, they took the operation and maintenance money.
That is the steaming money. That is money for flying hours. That is
money for drilling. That is money for equipment. That is money for
munitions. They just depleted money, and deployed forces to Bosnia and
Kosovo without asking at all. There was no advance request. There was
no notice given.
If the Senator wants to get excited about the way funding is being
used now, they are using the funds which they asked Congress for. I was
the one who presented the bill. Congress approved it. The President
signed the law. And the Secretary of Defense has the right to use that
money according to laws that we pass. And he is following those laws,
to the best of my knowledge.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, may I say to my distinguished friend, I
don't worry. He can get excited as many times as he wishes. I have
excited many people in my time around here, before the Senator from
Alaska came here. He can get excited all he wishes. I will be glad to
wait while he gets excited again, if he would like.
He reminds me of the pharisee and the publican who went up into the
tower. The publican said, ``Oh, Lord, I don't do what this man does. I
don't do as he does. I give my tithes. I give one-tenth of all I
earn.'' And he went on to talk about his attributes. The other poor man
in the tower said, ``Oh, Lord. Forgive me. I am a sinner.''
So don't point to Clinton, when the Senator talks to me--or to any
other President. I am talking about this administration. We can't
excuse this administration because of something some other
administration may have done. The people on that side are good at that.
Many of them are always pointing out what we did, what Clinton did, or
what this one did, or what that one did. That time is past. We can't
excuse our own sins on the basis of the sins of others.
I am talking about this President, this administration, your
administration, your Secretary of Defense. You can stand up and defend
him all you wish, my friend. And I shouldn't say ``you.'' I shouldn't
speak in the second person under the Senate rules. Maybe I got a little
excited also.
But the Senator isn't going to run that old fish along the side of
me. He can get excited all he wants. He is noted for his temper. Temper
is a good thing. We all have some of it.
But I am saying here that when we ask questions of his friend, the
Senator from Alaska's friend, Mr. Rumsfeld, we get treated cavalierly,
and many times get a lecture. It is about time we get rid of that kind
of treatment. Secretary Rumsfeld, with all due respect to him, wasn't
elected by the American people to that job he has today. He was
appointed to it. He was confirmed in it by this Senate. I was not
appointed to anything.

So let's don't attempt to respond to what I hope were sincere
questions here by pointing to what a previous administration may have
done. I did not agree with everything that happened in the previous
administration. The supplemental requested by the Clinton
administration is in no way appropriate to the cost of Iraq. Bosnia and
Kosovo were minuscule in comparison to the cost of Iraq.
Let's talk about Iraq, and let's talk about this administration. We
have to deal with the problems that confront the Senate today. I am not
going to ask my constituents to settle for a study. We need to act. And
we Senators have a duty to vote on my amendment. When we talk about a
supplemental, that is a way to--and I speak always with great reverence
to my friend, Senator Stevens; and he is my friend, he is going to be
my friend, and I am his, but this is a way to hide costs from the
American people, huge costs that can be anticipated, and that are
driven by policy decisions made in this White House.
There is no reason for a supplemental request in this instance.
Congress is not an ATM machine. This White House wants to be
accountable to no one. We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to
exercise oversight over these monies.
I have nothing else I wish to say at this point. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I do agree to a great extent with the
Senator from West Virginia, except that I reiterate I am proud to
defend this administration. This administration asked for the money,
told us what it was for. As a matter of fact, in one instance, the
President asked for $10 billion for the global war on terrorism as a
contingency fund and, together with the Senator from West Virginia, I
helped deny that request. The Congress asked that the administration
define the costs and contingencies, and they did. And that money was
included in the big supplemental we passed for defense. We asked for it
and received the statement of what the money was to be spent for.
We asked them to tell us what they were going to spend the money on
in Iraq. It was detailed. It was in the fund that was given to them.
Again, I defend this administration because, to their credit, they
agreed we have rescinded in this bill $3.1 billion of that supplemental
we gave to the Department and took the money back and put it for other
functions in the Department. Now, the last administration would have
taken that money and put it there, anyway. They agreed we should take
it back, and now we are going through the process of reappropriating
the same money in this bill for 2004 because it is not going to be used
according to what they told us they were going to use it for in terms
of the Iraq supplemental.
But, Mr. President, a friend in the House, watching this event, has
sent to me a statement that was made in the House Armed Services
Committee on April 3 of this year by Sergeant First Class Steven Davis
of the U.S. Army Reserve. I think it is significant to have this
comment at this time, and I am pleased that my friends are listening. I
am going to read the statement word for word.
Sergeant First Class Steven Davis said:

Mr. Chairman, members of this distinguished subcommittee,
thank you for the opportunity to be here today and for
allowing me to be a participant in this panel.
My name is Sergeant First Class Steven Davis and I am a
Military Policeman in the Army Reserve. I have been serving
in the United States Army for 15 years, seven of which have
been in the Army Reserve. I am assigned to the Military
Police Port Security Detachment in Pocahontas, Iowa. I have
been mobilized once since I have been in the Army Reserve. I
was mobilized on September 23, 2001, for Operation Noble
Eagle, and I served one year state side in North Carolina.
In my experience, with both the regular Army and the Army
Reserve, I believe that the two are very much integrated. I
had positive contacts with reserve soldiers when I was on
active duty, and I have also had positive contact with the
active Army since I have been a reserve soldier. Most
recently during our deployment to Sunny Point, North
Carolina, we were directly assigned to the 597th
Transportation Group. From the moment we arrived, I felt as
though we belonged there. I remember during a welcome
meeting, COL Heiter, the Commander of the 597th, made it very
clear to everyone in the room that the members of my unit
would be treated as any other soldier at Sunny Point. The
Command emphasis set the tone for our one-year star. Our
forces integrated flawlessly with the existing Department of
Defense forces, which is what we were trained to do. We were
able to work together as a cohesive team, and everyone's
moral was high.
As for the question, did the recent deployment change or
affect the reservist's intention to continue to serve. I
believe the deployment made our unit stronger and more
willing. From month to month we go ask ourselves, are we
really needed?? Why are we doing this? Then September 11th
came and all our questions were answered. Yes, we were
needed, and yes, we were important. On September 12, 2001, we
had 24 soldiers, myself included, volunteer to go on a
security mission to an unknown place. The 24 volunteers left
for Beaumont, Texas, on September 13th, 2001. Ten days later,
on September 23rd, the remainder of our unit was mobilized
and sent to North Carolina, where we spent our tour of duty.
When our year was up, and we all got the word that we were
going home, we were told the New York unit was going to take
our place, but that they did not have

[[Page S9381]]

enough people. Twenty-two soldiers from my unit volunteered
to stay with them, not for 3 or 6 months, but for another
year. Some of the soldiers were married and some were college
students. Why did they stay when they did not have to? I
would say it was because they knew they had a job to do, and
they weren't going to leave until it was finished.
The one problem that we encountered during our deployment
was medical benefits. The Army did a great job of providing
the coverage, and teaching the soldiers how to use the
coverage. However, our family members did not have the
advantage of having a representative available to inform
them. This created many headaches for the soldiers, who would
try to trouble shoot the problems long distance. I believe a
local representative, available for family members would have
been very helpful and would have saved the soldiers a lot of
time on the telephone.

I read that because it is indicative of the feeling of our young
people. We talked at one of our hearings to the Guard and Reserve
members, and we found that as the deployments increased, enlistments
increased; and as deployments increased, reenlistments increased.
We are having complaints from some people who believe they should
have come home sooner, but none have been over there a year yet. None
of them have been over there 6 months yet. Even under the current,
existing law, the Senator's amendment will not affect them. Well, I am
told some in Kuwait have been there 6 months by now, and they should be
rotating home. But, as a practical matter, the existing law provides
for the deployment limitation, the existing regulations and practice
for rotation in deployment every 180 days.
However, again, I come back and ask my friend from West Virginia to
support us in this effort to have this reviewed. I hope the Senator has
read the composition of the commission we would like to create: people
appointed by the President, people appointed by the leaders of the two
bodies. I do believe an 11-member commission is sufficient. I envision
that they would call on former Secretaries of Defense and their
assistants, former commanding officers, generals, and members of the
Guard and Reserve from the enlisted area. So we would have a
representative group to give us their advice.
Respectfully, I think we need their advice on how to deal with the
complex problems of dealing with rotation and deployment limitations in
this day of a very complex total force that our military defense units
face today.
I urge my friend to reflect and let us adopt our amendment and create
this commission, and we will be back here in 5 months. That, I think,
would be sufficient to deal with this problem. And it will give us a
forward-looking concept as far as deployment strategy, rotation
strategy, and benefit strategy for members of our Armed Forces.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I rise today to address the amendment
offered by the distinguished Senator from West Virginia and the second-
degree amendment offered by Chairman Stevens.
I think we all realize the tremendous strain that the deployments,
the call-ups have placed on our Guard and Reserve and actually the
continuing deployments place upon the active members of the military.
That is a well-deserved concern. We must take into account how calling
upon our troops, whether active or reserve, puts stress on them and
their families.
I believe very strongly that Senator Stevens has in his amendment
adopted the appropriate approach--appointing a commission to examine
the overseas deployments of members of the Armed Forces, the overseas
rotation policies and practices for Active and Reserve component
forces, and how these policies and practices affect military readiness,
unit and individual training, quality of life for members and their
dependents, and retention of career and noncareer members.
In examining this issue, as cochairman of the National Guard caucus,
we sent out a request, an urgent request, for information from the
Guard on their views on these policies. MG Richard Alexander, retired
major general, president of the National Guard Association, has written
me a letter--which I will, at the end of my remarks, ask to include in
the Record--noting and commending the efforts of Senator Byrd to bring
this issue to the forefront but saying that the National Guard
Association is opposed to the amendment. Understanding the intent
behind the amendment, it does, unfortunately, reduce the ability of the
President to utilize the National Guard and Reserve and places a large,
unnecessary restriction on the Department of Defense.
He writes:

The National Guard, as part of the Total Force, shoulders
the burdens of our nation. Senior level members of the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of Defense
have iterated the importance of the Guard and Reserve to be
able to carry out this nation's will.

The members of the National Guard and Reserve with whom I am most
familiar take very highly their obligation and responsibility to be
available when the President must mobilize them in the national
interest. They wish to be considered an active part of the military
when we are at war. The single deployment limitation of 180 days or
more, for example, may unnecessarily restrict the effectiveness of the
Guard if they are called into service.
They say you can only be there 6 months and then you are gone. That
really ties the hands of the Secretary of Defense and makes the Guard
less likely to be called upon. In those circumstances, the missions for
which our Guard members in Missouri and around the Nation train so
assiduously may be lost.
The Reserve Officers Association of the United States says, in
reference to the amendment of the Senator from West Virginia:

Although we understand the amendment is well intentioned,
these restrictions are not needed and such determinations are
best left with the Military Departments and services.
In today's security environment we must ensure that our
military commanders have flexibility to execute their mission
with all available forces.

Finally, the Enlisted Association of the National Guard, EANGUS, the
executive director, MSG Michael Cline, Retired, writes that there is
clearly concern about the pressures of frequent deployment on National
Guard and Reserve members. But much more consideration needs to go into
how that will be accomplished. Limiting deployment of National Guard
and Reserve members could negatively impact our national security
during an overseas operation.

These are the reasons that I believe the amendment offered by the
Senator from Alaska is the preferred means of dealing with this
question. Clearly, it is of concern to all of us because while we all
recognize and acknowledge that the National Guard and Reserves have
been called upon more and more over the last several years in various
conflicts, our citizen soldiers have answered those calls to duty with
a forbearance and spirit of service to their Nation that we all admire.
I will reference a book authored by a good friend, former chief of
the National Guard Bureau, General John Conoway, ``Call Out the
Guard.'' He underscores the commitment of our citizen soldiers. He
said:

As we saw during Desert Storm, the readiness of the
individual Reservists was generally high in Operation Desert
Storm/Shield. An amazing 99.9 percent of Army National Guard
personnel who were called reported for active duty. Ninety-
four percent were ready for deployment; the remaining 5.9
percent were either waiting for initial duty training, high
school students, members attending officer candidate, missing
pantographic x-rays, or were medical personnel willing to go
anyway, but prevented from doing so due to critical civilian
jobs.

My question is, why would we want to limit or restrict those who sign
up to serve their country and defend freedom when their country needs
them?
If you ask any guards man or woman, he or she would not stand down
when his or her country needed them. Whether the defense of freedom
merits a two-week deployment or a 180-day deployment, our guards men
and women stand ready to contribute to the fight. The fact is, today
our dedicated soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in

[[Page S9382]]

the Active Duty rely on and recognize the tremendous value the National
Guard brings to the fight and the seamless interoperability that exists
between the Guard, Reserve, and Active Duty. Again, to quote from GEN
Conoway, he quotes General Charles Horner, stating:

The Guard and Reserve performed very well.

He went on further to say that he ``couldn't even tell the difference
between the active, Guard, and Reserve; and that's the way it is
supposed to be.''
That is what we found wherever the National Guard has been called--
Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Kosovo, et cetera. They have been
excellent members of the team. It is a validation of the total force
policy that ensures the National Guard and Reserves are a ready,
relevant, and reliable fighting force, capable of responding to any
mission they are called upon to conduct. I fear that limiting the role
arbitrarily to a 180-day deployment would be a limitation that would
reduce the very real direct impact and connection our Guard has with
the citizens of this Nation and with their obligation for our national
security.
Just as we saw by calling up the National Guard and Reserves from
over 6,000 communities during Desert Storm, community support was
assured as their loved ones marched off to defend freedom. We all want
our service men and women to return home as soon as possible. But under
this circumstance, I feel the original amendment is too restrictive on
our military services by limiting the amount of time our Guard and
Reserve can be deployed. I urge my colleagues to support the
alternative. There is a real question here, and I commend the Senator
from West Virginia for raising these concerns. But I think they should
be studied, as the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee
and the full committee has suggested.
I urge we support the Stevens amendment. I ask unanimous consent that
the letters from the National Guard Association, Reserve Officers
Association of the United States, and the Enlisted Association of the
National Guard be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

EANGUS,

Alexandria, VA, July 15, 2003.
Hon. Christopher S. ``Kit'' Bond,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Bond: EANGUS understands that Senator Byrd has
introduced an amendment to the FY2004 Defense Appropriations
bill which would prohibit excessive overseas deployments of
members of the Guard and Reserves. EANGUS is strongly opposed
to this action.
This amendment would limit overseas deployments to less
than 180 days and prohibit more than one deployment per year.
This legislation is too restrictive.
Many believe that something must be done to alleviate the
pressures of frequent deployments of National Guard and
Reserve members, but much more consideration needs to go into
how that will be accomplished. Limiting deployment of
National Guard and Reserve members could negatively impact
our national security during an overseas operation.
Thank you for your diligence and efforts on behalf of the
Enlisted men and women of the National Guard.
Respectfully,
MSG (Ret) Michael P. Cline AUS,
Executive Director.
____

Reserve Officers Association

of the United States,

Washington, DC, July 15, 2003.
Ref. S. 1382--Mr. Byrd's political amendment ``To prohibit
excessive deployment overseas of members of the Guard and
Reserve.''
Although we understand the amendment is well intentioned,
these restrictions are not needed and such determinations are
best left with the Military Departments and Services.
In today's security environment we must ensure that our
military commanders have flexibility to execute their mission
with all available forces.

Robert A. McIntosh,

Major General, USAFR (Ret.),
Executive Director.
____

National Guard Association

of the United States,

Washington, DC, July 15, 2003.
Hon. Christopher ``Kit'' Bond,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Bond: It is on behalf of the men and women of
the National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS),
I am writing to express our concern about Senator Byrd's
amendment limiting the involuntary call up of the National
Guard and Reserve component to:
1. A single deployment overseas of 180 days or more.
2. More than one deployment overseas in any 360-day period.
The NGAUS is opposed to this amendment. While we understand
the intent behind the amendment, reducing the ability of the
President to utilize the National Guard and Reserves places a
large unnecessary restriction on the Department of Defense.
The National Guard, as part of the Total Force, shoulders the
burdens of our nation. Senior level members of the Office of
the Secretary of Defense and the Department of Defense have
iterated the importance of the Guard and Reserve to be able
to carry out this nation's will.
We applaud the efforts of Senator Byrd in bringing this
issue to the forefront. However, while judicious utilization
of the Guard is prudent, the Byrd amendment is not in the
best interest of the National Guard.
Respectfully,
Richard C. Alexander,
Major General (Ret), AUS, President.

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, first of all, I want to congratulate my
friend and colleague, the Senator from West Virginia, for his constancy
in terms of ensuring to the best of his ability and the best of this
institution's ability that we were going to meet our constitutional
responsibilities some months ago, and understanding the Constitution,
and that the issue of making war is something that was reserved to the
Congress of the United States, and the extraordinary service he
provided for our country in reminding us of our responsibilities in the
United States to make a judgment and decision about sending and
committing our men and women overseas in this conflict.
I welcomed the opportunity to join with him at that time. His
eloquence, passion, and knowledge of this institution and the history
of the Constitution still ring in my ears from that experience. I think
history will show that even though he did not at that time persuade the
majority of the Members of the Senate, when history evaluates that
effort it will be one of the important contributions he has made, and
he has made many to this institution.
As we all understand, he is a person who has placed the interests of
this institution at the forefront of his agenda on many occasions, and
it is a better institution and it is living up to its historic role as
our Founding Fathers wanted it to be because of his contribution.
So I thank him for what he has done and particularly in terms of the
whole issue of policy toward Iraq. I welcomed again his comments
earlier today. I was unable to catch all of them, but I will study them
closely during the evening time, and I know as we are considering the
Defense appropriations, we will hear more from him about the issue of
American troops overseas, the National Guard and Reserve here at home--
the importance of them, and also about what we as a country are going
to do in terms of funding this commitment that has been made in terms
of Iraq as well as Afghanistan.
The issue of the Guard and Reserve comes to us in a very clear way
because of the number of troops we have over in Iraq at the present
time. As the Senator knows full well, we have effectively half of all
of the Army divisions tied up either in Iraq or Afghanistan. Eighteen
out of the 35 or 36 combat divisions are in Iraq. So even when we talk
to 148,000 troops, and 22 percent or 23 percent of our Army over there,
when you are talking about the combat arms of the United States and the
location of those service men and women, we are talking about in Iraq.
And when we are talking about the Reserve and the Guard, in my State of
Massachusetts, it is the fastest tempo that we have had, I believe,
since the end of World War II--13 times higher today than the average
over the previous years.
I know he has spelled this out in great detail about what this has
meant. What we do know is that it has meant really a stronger military
because of the Guard and the Reserve in my own State, having known
those individuals and visited those facilities and met those leaders.
They are as committed as any military men and women who have served in
our country. They provide indispensable services. But as has been
pointed out, we are straining these individuals.

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Mr. President, last fall, many of us emphasized in the Senate that 9/
11 had not nullified the long-standing basic principle that war should
be the last resort. We felt that America should not go to war against
Iraq unless and until all other reasonable alternatives for a peaceful
solution had been exhausted.
Then--as now--I believed that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was
not serious enough or imminent enough to justify a rush to war, and
that we were going to war under false pretenses. Then--as now--I
believed that war would distract from our broader war against terrorism
and that we should not go to war with Iraq without the clear support of
the international community. Then--as now--I believed that without a
systematic re-examination, with dubious and even false rationalization,
and without the informed consent of the American people, the Bush
administration was drastically altering our long-standing foreign
policy against preventive war, in order to justify its preconceived
determination to invade Iraq.
Supporters and opponents of the war alike were enormously proud of
the way our troops performed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The speed and
success of their mission demonstrated the outstanding strength of the
Nation's armed forces. As a citizen of Massachusetts and a member of
the Armed Services Committee in the Senate, it never ceases to amaze me
how far we have come in the two centuries since the embattled farmers
at Concord Bridge fired the shot heard around the world.
In the past decade alone, technology has put vast changes in warfare
on fast-forward. We redefined the nature of modern warfare in the
Persian Gulf war, we redefined it again in Afghanistan, and yet again
in Iraq. We have by far the world's best military on the ground, on the
sea, and in the air. It is no accident that so few paid the ultimate
sacrifice during those 3 tumultuous weeks in March and April in Iraq.
It was a foregone conclusion that we would win the war. But pride
goes before a fall, and the all-important question now is whether we
can win the peace. In fact, we are at serious risk of losing it.
Our policy toward Iraq is adrift. Each day, our troops and their
families are paying the price. Our clear national interest in the
emergence of a peaceful, stable, democratic Iraq is being undermined.
Since May 1, when President Bush announced aboard the USS Abraham
Lincoln aircraft carrier that ``major combat operations'' in Iraq had
ended, 81 more American troops have died. For the men and women of our
Armed Forces who are dodging bullets in the streets and alleys of
Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, the battle is far from over. President
Bush says of the attackers, ``Bring `em on.'' But how do you console a
family by telling them that their son or daughter is a casualty of the
post-war period?
The debate may go on for many months or even years about our
intelligence failures before the war began. As we now know, despite the
claim made in the State of the Union Address, Saddam was not purchasing
uranium from Africa to build nuclear weapons.
Despite all the intelligence we were shown in the months leading up
to war, despite the additional intelligence they said was there but
could not be shared, we have yet to uncover any evidence that Iraq was
stockpiling chemical or biological weapons. There was and is no
evidence that Saddam was conspiring with al-Qaida. What was the
imminent threat to the United States that required us to launch a
preventive war in Iraq with very little international support? It is a
disgrace that the case for war seems to have been based on shoddy
intelligence, hyped intelligence, and even false intelligence. We have
undermined America's prestige and credibility in the world and
undermined the trust that Americans should and must have in what their
nation tells them. How many will doubt a future claim of danger even if
it is real?
The failures of intelligence were bad enough. But the real failure of
intelligence was our failure to understand Iraq.
There is no question that long before the war began, a serious issue
was raised about the danger of winning the war and losing the peace. In
fact, it was one of the principal arguments against going to war.
Before the war began, 11 separate agencies of the United States
Government worked with 280 Iraqi citizens in the State Department's so-
called ``Future of Iraq'' working groups.
In numerous briefings, Pentagon officials assured us on the Senate
Armed Services Committee that firm plans were in place to secure and
rebuild Iraq. But the reality is that the administration had no
realistic plan. We knew the post-war rebuilding of Iraq would be
difficult. Based on our experience in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and
Afghanistan, we knew that security could be a profound problem, and
that there would be challenges from a restless population. We knew that
building a national police force and a credible new government would be
complicated tasks. These are not new issues. But rather than learning
from past experience in these previous conflicts, the administration
was blinded by its own ideological bravado. It rushed ahead without
planning for contingencies or raising even basic questions about likely
events.
The foundation of our post-war policy was built on a quicksand of
false assumptions, and the result has been chaos for the Iraqi people,
and continuing mortal danger for our troops. The truth, as our
colleague Senator John Kerry starkly stated last week, is clearer with
each passing day and each new casualty: ``The administration went to
war without a thorough plan to win the peace.''
The Pentagon assumed that we would be able to draw on thousands of
Saddam's police force to protect security--but in the critical early
weeks that followed the war, they were nowhere to be found, and too
many of their officers turned out to be thugs and torturers.
The Pentagon assumed that the bulk of the Iraqi Armed Forces could be
used to supplement our forces--but those soldiers did not join us.
The Pentagon assumed that some Iraqi exile leaders could return to
Iraq to rally the population and lead the new government--but they were
resented by the Iraqi people and the exiles were put on hold.
The Pentagon assumed that after a few hundred of Saddam's top
advisers were removed from power, large numbers of local officials
would remain to run the government--but the government crumbled.
The Pentagon assumed that Americans would be welcomed as liberators--
but for large numbers of Iraqis, we went from liberators to occupiers
in a few short weeks. The dancing in the streets after the fall of the
statue of Saddam was accompanied by an orgy of massive looting and
chaos and was followed by growing frustration even from those who first
saw us as liberators.
There was egg on the face of the administration and its peace plan
from Day 1. Plan A was so obviously the wrong plan that GEN Garner, the
man sent to oversee it, was abruptly replaced on Day 21, and Paul
Bremer was rushed in to make up Plan B as he went along.
Today, Paul Bremer rules the country from Saddam's palace, while the
Iraqi people too often sit in the dark without adequate water or
electricity.
Hospital equipment and medical supplies have been stolen. Power grids
in major cities are being sabotaged.
Cynicism and anger toward America are growing. Many Iraqis believe
that we are unwilling--rather than unable--to restore basic services.
They are losing faith and trust in our promise of a reconstructed,
stable, peaceful future. They fear that Saddam may still be alive.
Under fire from guerrillas determined to see America fail, our
soldiers are now performing police functions for which they have little
training. They are building schools and hospitals--a task for which
they are ill prepared. We are straining their endurance, and they want
to know how long they will have to stay in Iraq.
That America would be seen as occupier should have come as no
surprise. Former Secretary of State James Baker wrote in the New York
Times last August, ``If we are to change the regime in Iraq, we will
have to occupy the country militarily.''
Retired four-star Marine Corps General and former Central Command
Commander Anthony Zinni said last

[[Page S9384]]

August that we would ``inherit the country of Iraq'' and ``put soldiers
that are already stretched so thin all around the world into a security
force there forever.''
James Webb, an Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the
Navy in the Reagan administration, warned last September that we could
occupy Iraq ``for the next 30 to 50 years.''
We knew--or should have known--that if we went into Iraq without the
genuine support of the international community, there would be no easy
way out. As James Webb also warned, ``Those who are pushing for a
unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if
we invade and stay.''
The White House is only just beginning to face the truth. On July 3,
President Bush finally agreed that rebuilding Iraq would be a ``massive
and long-term undertaking.''
But that undertaking cannot be sustained--and no foreign policy in
this free society can succeed--unless it is supported by our people.
With the administration's credibility frayed, and distrust rising here
at home, it is time for President Bush to level with America. It is
time for him to hear and heed the words of the great World War II
general and great post-war Secretary of State George Marshall in his
historic commencement address at Harvard in 1947:

An essential part of any successful action on the part of
the United States is an understanding on the part of the
people of America of the character of the problem and the
remedies to be applied.

The Marshall Plan proposed in that address became one of the great
achievements of the 20th century. It succeeded because it involved a
coordinated effort by the United States and many nations of Europe to
advance the recovery of the continent after the war, and Marshall won
the Nobel Peace Prize. Is it too much to ask that we now be guided by
that example?
President Bush should face the truth and level with the American
people about the cost of stabilization and reconstruction in Iraq--both
financial and human. We need a plan--a real plan, to which we are truly
committed--to share the burden with the international community,
including old allies who can be enlisted if we make a genuine effort to
heal the divisive past.
Our troops are now sent overseas for longer stretches than ever--
because we rely on their skill and talents to meet commitments on a
global scale. More than 150,000 of our troops are in Iraq, and many
have been deployed in the region for close to a year. Half of our Army
divisions are in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of 33 Army combat brigades, 18
are in Iraq.
The strain is also great for citizens serving in the Guard and
Reserves because we must depend upon them with greater frequency, ever
since we reduced our forces after the cold war.
More than 150,000 Guard and Reserve soldiers have been mobilized;
13,000 have been on active duty for at least a year. Others return home
from deployments, only to be turned around and sent overseas for
another tour. In fact, today our Reservists are spending 13 times
longer in active duty than they did a decade ago, forced to put their
lives on hold, missing births of their children, dealing with family
crises by phone and e-mail.
Open-ended missions are a serious strain on our forces and their
families. It is difficult to continue to put these patriotic men and
women through the deployment grinder year after year and expect them to
hold up indefinitely.
It is also difficult to sustain the cost of such missions. We are now
spending $3.9 billion a month in Iraq. With the ongoing cost of the war
on terrorism, our operations in Afghanistan, and our potential new
responsibilities around the globe, in places such as West Africa, let
alone Iran and North Korea, we are creating an unsustainable financial
burden at a time of exploding budget deficits, soaring demands for
homeland security, and mounting needs for health care, education, and
other domestic priorities.
Despite the escalating cost of the military operation in Iraq, not
one cent of its cost is included in the defense-spending legislation
being considered this very week in the Senate. Not one penny. How will
we pay the bill? To this question, there is only resounding silence at
the White House, another refusal to level with the American people.
As a Nation with honor, responsibility, and the vision of a better
world, America cannot invade and then cut and run from Iraq. But we
also can't afford the continuing cost--in dollars or in blood--of
stubbornly continuing to go-it-alone. If our national security is at
stake, we will spare no cost. But we have options here that reach
beyond the checkbook of the American people.
Working with the international community, we can develop and
implement an effective strategy to change a failed course, reduce the
burden and risk to our soldiers, stabilize Iraq, and deliver on the
promise of a better future for the Iraqi people.
As we all know, a number of countries supported our military action
against Saddam Hussein. Many others did not. But if the administration
is willing to put the national interest ahead of its own ideological
pride, I believe that we can secure broad international support and
participation in the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq. After
all, so much is clearly at stake for the rest of the world.
At issue are the stability and the future of the entire highly
volatile region. None would be immune from the dangers that a disunited
and disorganized Iraq could present for its neighbors and for nations
everywhere.
These are not just American or British concerns. They are true
international concerns. America cannot be effective in its mission in
Iraq if old wounds don't heal and bitterness continues to fester. We
need to take the chip off our shoulder, mend fences with France and
with Germany, and stop the divisiveness.
As we seek to stabilize and democratize Iraq, we do not need to go it
alone and should not try to. If we diversify the faces of the security
force, it is far less likely that Iraqis will see us as the enemy,
oppressor, and occupier. We want the 25 million citizens of Iraq to see
the forces that are there as friends and partners in their pursuit of
freedom.
We need to bring regional forces into Iraq--especially Muslim ones.
Countries like Jordan, Pakistan, and Egypt could transform this mission
with both their diversity and their expertise. The United Arab Emirates
have contributed to the effort in Kosovo. Morocco and Albania and
Turkey have worked with us in Bosnia. Countries such as France,
Germany, Italy, Argentina, and Spain could provide well-trained police.
Reaching out to other countries and bringing them into the post-war
process is the surest path to a stable Iraq. But most other nations are
unlikely to send troops to serve in what is perceived as an American
occupation. They will be more likely to do their part if an
international mission is approved by the United Nations and organized
by NATO.
Secretary Rumsfeld insists that we are reaching out to the
international community and that we are working with NATO. But the
Secretary General of NATO, Lord Robertson, says that the alliance as an
institution has never been asked to play the formal role in Iraq that
it plays in Bosnia and Kosovo, and soon will play in Afghanistan. Nor
has the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, been asked
to seek international consent for a truly multilateral force. The
United States insists on a coalition of the few, dominated and
controlled by our Nation.
Instead of asking our Armed Forces to carry out a mission for which
they are not trained and to do so alone, we need to rely on the
expertise and resources of the international community. The United
Nations has assumed that responsibility in other countries in the past.
It is one of the major reasons why the U.N. was created--to bring
international vision and strength to the difficult issues of peace
keeping and nationbuilding after the Second World War. Necessity is the
mother of invention. In the case of Iraq, President Bush has at last
been persuaded to abandon his strong opposition to nationbuilding. The
challenge now is to persuade him to move beyond unilateral
nationbuilding.
The new Iraqi council announced on Sunday was a step in the right
direction. But it would have been much

[[Page S9385]]

more effective if the U.N. Special Representative--and not the U.S.
Government--was seen as sponsoring its creation.
If America alone sets up a new government in Baghdad, it may fail--if
not now, later; if not while our forces are there, as soon as they are
gone. Those who join such a government run the risk of being dismissed
by the Iraqi people as American puppets. And for as long as America
alone is calling the tune, Iraqi moderates may remain in the
background, and possibly even oppose us.
Our interests in the emergence of a true democracy in Iraq are best
fulfilled by involving the world community and especially other Arab
nations as partners in helping the Iraqis themselves shape a new Iraq.
Only then will a new Iraqi government be viewed as legitimate by the
Iraqi people.
So it is time for the administration to stop giving lip service to
international participation and start genuinely seeking and accepting
it--on reasonable terms, and with a real commitment to it. President
Bush's meeting with U.N Secretary General Kofi Annan at the White House
yesterday should be the beginning of a renewed relationship and a shift
in attitude at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue about the rightness and the
practical imperative of working with others.
The U.N. has a mandate for humanitarian issues. But it has only an
advisory role in the civil administration of Iraq. That has to change.
The U.N. should have a formal role in overseeing the establishment of a
political process. The U.N.--rather than the United States and
Britain--should preside over the evolution of the new Iraqi government.
Doing so will win international legitimacy and marshal international
support for this challenge, minimizing the danger that Iraqis will
regard their government as a puppet of ours.
With Arab-speaking spokesmen, the U.N. could also convey a different
image and a different message to the people of that country, a sense of
reassurance that an overwhelmingly American occupation never can.
NATO, as an institution, should clearly be in Iraq as well. Military
experts believe it will take at least 200,000 troops to stabilize Iraq.
Our goal should be to include NATO and some of its 2-million-member
pool of armed forces in military operations as soon as possible.
America would provide a majority of the troops, but over time the
overall number of forces would decrease.
As in Kosovo and Bosnia, we should ask the United Nations Security
Council to authorize NATO to organize an international security force
to demilitarize and stabilize Iraq. Doing so does not mean that the
United States should or must relinquish all military control. On the
contrary, we would have a significant role in the NATO force, and could
continue to have the defining role in Iraq. An American commander was
in charge of American troops in Bosnia, and the head of NATO forces in
Europe is--and always has been--an American.
Secretary Rumsfeld told the Armed Services Committee last week that
except for the area around Baghdad, most of Iraq is already secure. If
that is so--and we have to hope this estimate is more accurate than
others we have heard--then why not reduce the burden on our military
and decide that this large area of Iraq, which needs police forces as
well as combat troops, should be turned over as soon as possible to a
United Nations-approved and NATO-led force? Why not allow American and
coalition forces to secure the area around Baghdad, and allow other
nations to provide security for the rest of Iraq?
Finally, as long as Iraq continues to dominate our attention, we
cannot give other aspects of the war against terrorism the focus they
deserve.
Has the American occupation of Iraq defeated Osama bin Laden and al-
Qaida? No.
Has it increased our security against the continuing al-Qaida threats
in Afghanistan and other terrorist sanctuaries? No.
Has our action in Iraq led Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to lay aside
their sworn purpose of killing Americans and destroying our way of
life? No.
It is not just what happens in Iraq itself, as important as that
issue is, but the continuing urgency of the ongoing fight against
terrorism that should compel this administration to enlist allies in an
international plan for a peaceful Iraq. Otherwise, we run the grave
risk of exposing our Nation to more terrorist attacks.
America won the war in Iraq, as we knew we would, but if our present
policy continues, we may lose the peace. We must rise to the challenge
of international co-operation. Saddam Hussein may no longer be in
power, but the people of Iraq will not truly be liberated until they
live in a secure country. And the war will not be over until the
fighting stops on the ground, democracy takes hold, and the people of
Iraq are able to govern themselves.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Dole). The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for
his statement in support of the amendment and also for his overly
gracious and charitable statement at the beginning of his remarks
concerning my previous efforts in regard to the whole question of Iraq.
I am hoping other Senators will speak on the amendment, but in the
meantime I say that soldiers whom we are using in our National Guard
and Reserve are entitled to fairness. They are entitled to know how
long their tour of duty will extend. After all, we were told that our
men and women would be welcomed not as occupiers but as liberators. We
were told that our men and women would be welcomed with flowers and
smiles.
Our men and women in the Reserve components are beginning to wonder
if they were misled. We are using our National Guard and Reserve in a
way which is unfair to them and to their families. We cannot ask them
to wait for some study now while they bide their time. It is not their
fault that the White House decided to wage a war without considering
the aftermath in Iraq. It is not their fault that a policy of
preemption may demand many more troops than we can muster. We need to
give our Guard and Reserve some relief from the turmoil of being
constantly deployed. We owe them more than a study. We owe them action.
If this amendment were accepted, it would push the administration to
internationalize the peacekeeping in Iraq. I hope other nations will
join in keeping the peace in Iraq so that our own guardsmen and
reservists will be relieved and will be able to come home.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, my understanding is that there is a
first-degree amendment by my distinguished ranking member, the former
chairman of our Budget Committee, that I very vigorously favor with
respect to the National Guard and the Reserve. I know that the Reserve
officers at the C-17 unit under General Black at the field in
Charleston, SC, were alerted on September 12, the day after 9/11, and
they are still flying. Now, that is quite a burden. Many are straining
to make their rent payments and their house payments.
When we had a hearing about 2 months ago and the distinguished
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, came, after listening, I said:
Mr. Secretary, what you need is not a money supplement but a manpower
supplement.
In that vein, I want to say as much as I can in support of my
chairman, but I deter for the simple reason that the money is not in
this particular Defense appropriations bill for Iraq, and there is a
good reason for it.
Now, there should be gratitude for little things that happen. I first
express my gratitude to the distinguished editor and publisher of the
Washington Post, Mr. Donald Graham. I complained in an op-ed piece some
weeks ago that they were not covering the budget amounts and that we
ought to have truth in budgeting, and because we have come to the
highest budget deficit in the history of the U.S. Government, that
ought to be covered as front-page news. Today it is. We have moved from
page A4 to page 1. I have my copy of today's Post, and front and center
on page one are the articles:

[[Page S9386]]

``The Budget Deficit May Surpass $450 Billion'' and ``Budget Woes
Trickle Down.''
I happened to be a State Governor, and I received a AAA rating from
Standard&Poors and Moody's, and we have maintained that in South
Carolina. We have to have a balanced budget.
I coauthored Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, which happened under President
Reagan. I have been in the vineyard. But the headline here states:
``The Budget Deficit May Surpass $450 Billion,'' and I want to thank
Jonathan Weisman, the author of this particular story, and Fred Hiatt,
the editorial page editor, for including this.
I said we just move up in inches. Let's look at the Mid-Session
Review of the Budget of the United States Government by the Office of
Management and Budget, the Executive Office of the President, signed by
Joshua Bolton, Director, as of yesterday, July 15.
We find out why Mitch left town. Mitch Daniels is gone. Now we know
why Ari Fleischer is gone. Both Mitch and Ari skipped town. Why? Just
look at this document. They have no tricky answers for this one. This
is the Administration's writing, and I am reading on page 1 their
statement:

The deficit for 2003 is now estimated at $455 billion.

That is on page 1. One learns, after years up here, how to read these
things. So on page 57, you get to the actual deficit, how much we get
in revenues and how much we spend, and if spending exceeds revenues,
then there is a deficit. If we look at table 20 on page 57, we will
find the total gross Federal debt for 2002 was $6,198,000,000,000 and
it will go up to $6,896,000,000,000 this year. That is why Mitch left
town. Compute that and the deficit will not be an estimated $455
billion; it will be $698 billion. They estimate a $698 billion deficit
for the year 2003.

But, wait, we have actual numbers as of this minute. As of July 14th,
yesterday, the Treasury says the debt to the penny is $478 billion. So
it is already more than the $455 billion they say it will be at the end
of the year. I guess that is why Paul O'Neill left town, too. They are
all leaving if they have anything to do with fiscal matters, and so now
we have John Snow as Treasury Secretary.
What did President Bush say when he came to town? I have the exact
quote, taken from his first address to a Joint Session of Congress in
2001:

To make sure the retirement savings of America's seniors
are not diverted in any other program, my budget protects all
$2.6 trillion of the Social Security surplus for Social
Security and for Social Security alone.

Well, he is spending the trust funds when he says on page 1, $455
billion. He is spending $163 billion of Social Security, plus another
$30 billion of other trust funds.
What we have is a Social Security trust fund, the Medicare trust
fund, the military retirees trust fund, the civil service retirees
trust fund, the highway, the airport, the railway trust fund, the
unemployment compensation trust fund--which will be drained,
incidentally; we will have to fill that back up. We are spending it on
any and everything but unemployment. This is Enron bookkeeping. We are
spending Social Security moneys on any and everything but Social
Security.
But the President, when he was speaking when he was speaking right
after he took office in February 2001, said that wasn't all he was
going to do.
He goes on and says:

We should approach our Nation's budget as any prudent
family would, with a contingency fund for emergencies. We are
going to have a contingency fund for emergencies or
additional spending needs. My budget sets aside $1 trillion
over 10 years for additional needs. That is 1 trillion
additional reasons you can feel comfortable supporting this
budget.

Now, Iraq and Afghanistan and the whole kit and kaboodle, put in
Liberia and whatever country he wants to run to, we have 14
peacekeeping missions, then we have Kuwait, then we have Afghanistan,
then we have Iraq, and now he is looking for another country to send
the military to. We don't have enough National Guard or anybody in
uniform to get to that country, I can tell you that right now.
But that has not cost $1 trillion. It has not cost $1 trillion. But
he had $1 trillion set aside before September 11, so why can't he pay
for this out of that?
Now, let's find out what he said last year in the State of the Union:

Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-
term so long as Congress restrains spending and acts in a
fiscally responsible manner.

Well, all the spending bills were signed by President George W. Bush.
So I take it since that was his admonition to us, he must have had that
in mind for himself. And he signed only fiscally responsible budgets.
He also said:

The way out of this recession, the way to create jobs, is
to grow the economy by encouraging investment in factories
and equipment and by speeding up tax relief so people will
have more money to spend.

There were plenty of tax cuts, but he hasn't created any jobs.
One more--let's go to January of 2003, to what he said in his State
of the Union then:

We will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to
other presidents and other generations. Tax relief will help
our economy immediately.

Immediately? He got yet more tax cuts, and we still have 3.8 million
Americans, the highest in 20 years, receiving unemployment
compensation. There have been over 3 million Americans who have lost
their jobs since President Bush took office.
I think of President Clinton. He created 20 million jobs, and
President Bush already has lost 3 million. Where is the immediacy that
his budget is going to take care of?

We will not pass along our problems to other Congresses,
other presidents and other generations.

That is exactly what we are doing--$698 billion in bills. Mark it
down. Poor Mitch, he got free. Mitch Daniels escaped to Indiana. He did
not want to come before the Budget Committee and answer any questions,
I tell you, and Ari Fleischer says: This is enough for me, I'm gone.
Everybody is going to run--out of Washington.
I have worked with the Senator from West Virginia and my chairman,
Senator Inouye, who is most responsible on budget matters and we
balanced the budget. They want to forget that. Eight years under
William Jefferson Clinton and we came from a $403 billion deficit in
1992 to finally getting in the black. We gradually got it down. I voted
to increase taxes on Social Security. I voted to increase gas taxes. I
voted for all of those tax increases and we acted responsibly.
George W. Bush comes to town and what does he do? He says: Tomorrow,
don't worry about it. He has some fellow hidden out in the Pacific, he
is far enough from Washington, out in California and Boston who says,
don't worry about deficits and all. The youngsters are keeping IRA
savings accounts and when their IRA savings accounts trigger you will
not have to worry about deficits. There is no conscience with this
charade. This is the best off-Broadway show you will find going on in
the National Government, the National Congress.
I hope we can sober up and pull in our horns. We have so much
manpower. We do not have the manpower of the Chinese. We have to
maintain our security on the superiority of technology, and Iraq proved
that. We had the superior technology. But we have been cutting back on
that.
I have a hearing tomorrow morning where we are going to be cutting
back the advanced technology. We are cutting back on education
programs. We are cutting back on all the important investments.
I ask unanimous consent to print page 1 and page 57 of the Midsession
Review for the fiscal year 2004 of the budget of the U.S. Government in
the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Summary

The President's Budget, released in February, focuses on
the challenges posed by three overriding national priorities:
winning the war against terrorism, securing the homeland, and
restoring strong economic growth and job creation.
Significant program has been made in all three areas.
This Mid-Session Review of the Budget revises the estimates
of receipts, outlays, and the deficit to reflect economic,
legislative, and other developments since February. The
deficit for 2003 is now estimated at $455 billion, up from
the $304 billion deficit estimated in February, for the
following reasons:
Economic and Other Reestimates. The economic assumptions
for this review, discussed

[[Page S9387]]

later in the chapter ``Economic Assumptions,'' reflect
weaker-than-anticipated economic growth since February.
Slower growth, lower estimates of wage and salary income, and
other economic factors have reduced receipts from the levels
estimated in the budget. In the interest of cautious and
prudent forecasting, the revised estimates also include a
downward adjustment for revenue uncertainty of $15 billion in
2003, $30 billion in 2004, and $15 billion in 2005. These
reestimates in receipts are partially offset by lower outlays
due to revised economic and technical assumptions. The net
effect of all economic and other reestimates is to raise the
projected deficit by $66 billion in 2003 and $95 billion in
2004.
Iraq War. Funding for Operation Iraqi Freedom in
supplemental appropriations enacted in April, including costs
for military action and reconstruction assistance, increases
spending by $47 billion in 2003 and $20 billion in 2004.
These estimates do not reflect what the Administration has
previously indicated are expected but undermined additional
costs arising from ongoing operations in Iraq, extending
beyond 2003.
Jobs and Growth Act. Enactment of a jobs and growth bill
that was larger for 2003 and 2004 than proposed in the
February Budget raises the projected deficit by $13 billion
in 2003 and $36 billion in 2004. Of this increase, $9 billion
in 2003 and $11 billion in 2004 is due to temporary state
fiscal assistance included in the final enacted bill. In
later years, the enacted tax relief is smaller than proposed
in the Budget, which reduces the deficit projected in those
years relative to the February estimates.
Other Legislation and Policy Changes. Final 2003
appropriations action, non-war related costs in the April
supplemental, extension of the program to help unemployed
Americans by providing an additional 13 weeks of unemployment
benefits, and other policy changes raise spending by $26
billion in 2003, $17 billion in 2004, and smaller amounts in
subsequent years.
The reasons for changes in receipts and spending from the
February Budget are discussed further in the ``Receipts'' and
``Spending'' chapters of this Review.
The deficit is projected to increase slightly from $455
billion in 2003 to $475 billion in 2004. As a share of the
economy, the projected deficit remains steady in these two
years, at 4.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These
deficit levels are well below the postwar deficit peak of 6.0
percent of GDP in 1983, and are lower than in six of the last
twenty years.

TABLE 20.--FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FINANCING AND DEBT
[In billions of dollars]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimate
2002 actual -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2003         2004         2005         2006         2007         2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Financing:
Unified budget deficit (-)...............................         -158         -455         -475         -304         -238         -213         -226
Financing other than the change in debt held by the
public:
Premiums paid (-) on buybacks of Treasury securities.           -4  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........
Net purchases (-) of non-Federal securities by the              -2          -18            1            1            1            1            1
National Railroad Retirement Investment Trust.......
Changes in:\1\
Treasury operating cash balance..................          -17           16  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........
Compensating balances\2\.........................          -14          -25           52  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........
Checks outstanding, etc.\3\......................          -12           -3  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........
Seigniorage on coins.................................            1            1            1            1            1            1            1
Less: Net financing disbursements:
Direct loan financing accounts...................          -15          -13          -19          -15          -20          -21          -21
Guaranteed loan financing accounts...............           -2            2            3            2            3            1            1
Total, financing other than the change in debt           -63          -40           38          -12          -16          -17          -18
held by the public............................
Total, requirement to borrow from the public...         -221         -496         -437         -316         -254         -230         -244
Change in debt held by the public........................          221          496          437          316          254          230          244
Changes in Debt Subject to Limitation:
Change in debt held by the public........................          221          496          437          316          254          230          244
Change in debt held by Government accounts...............          208          202          253          275          280          294          307
Change in other factors..................................            *           16            *            *            *            *            1
Total, change in debt subject to statutory limitation..          429          713          690          591          534          524          551
Debt Subject to Statutory Limitation, End of Year:
Debt issued by Treasury..................................        6,171        6,869        7,560        8,151        8,685        9,209        9,760
Adjustment for Treasury debt not subject to limitation             -15           -*           -*           -*           -*           -*           -*
and agency debt subject to limitation \4\...............
Adjustment for discount and premium \5\..................            6            6            6            6            6            6            6
Total, debt subject to statutory limitation \6\........        6,161        6,875        7,565        8,156        8,690        9,215        9,766
Debt Outstanding, End of Year:
Gross Federal debt: \7\
Debt issued by Treasury..............................        6,171        6,869        7,560        8,151        8,685        9,209        9,760
Debt issued by other agencies........................           27           27           27           26           26           26           25
Total, gross Federal debt..........................        6,198        6,896        7,586        8,177        8,711        9,235        9,785
Held by:
Debt held by Government accounts.....................        2,658        2,860        3,113        3,388        3,668        3,962        4,269
Debt held by the public \8\..........................        3,540        4,036        4,473        4,789        5,043        5,272        5,516
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* $500 million or less.
\1\ A decrease in the Treasury operating cash balance or compensating balances (which are assets) would be a means of financing a deficit and therefore
has a positive sign. An increase in checks outstanding (which is a liability) would also be a means of financing a deficit and therefore also has a
positive sign.
\2\ Compensating balances are non-interest bearing Treasury bank deposits that Treasury mainly uses to compensate banks for collecting tax and non-tax
receipts under financial agency agreements. Most of the balances estimated at the end of 2003 are required to be invested in nonmarketable Depository
Compensation Securities issued by the Treasury; the rest of the balances, and the entire amount in previous years, is invested in the way that the
banks decide. The Administration has proposed legislation that would allow Treasury to replace compensating balances by an appropriation.
\3\ Besides checks outstanding, includes accrued interest payable on Treasury debt, miscellaneous liability accounts, allocations of special drawing
rights; and, as an offset, cash and monetary assets (other than the Treasury operating cash balance and compensating balances), miscellaneous asset
accounts, and profit on sale of gold.
\4\ Consists primarily of Federal Financing Bank debt in 2002.
\5\ Consists of unamortized discount (less premium) on public issues of Treasury notes and bonds (other than zero-coupon bonds) and unrealized discount
on Government account series securities.
\6\ The statutory debt limit is $7,384 billion.
\7\ Treasury securities held by the public and zero-coupon bonds held by Government accounts are almost all measured at sales price plus amortized
discount or less amortized premium. Agency debt securities are almost all measured at face value. Treasury securities in the Government account series
are measured at face value less unrealized discount (if any).
\8\ At the end of 2002, the Federal Reserve Banks held $604.2 billion of Federal securities and the rest of the public held $2,936.2 billion. Debt held
by the Federal Reserve Banks is not estimated for future years.

Mr. HOLLINGS. There you go. Instead of $455 billion in deficits, we
are running right this minute, according to the Secretary of the
Treasury, in excess of $455 billion. We do not have to wait until the
end of September. We are already up to $470 billion.
The ``Public Debt to the Penny,'' I ask unanimous consent to have
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

THE DEBT TO THE PENNY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amount
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current:
07/14/2003...............................      $6,705,859,055,894.83
Current Month:
07/11/2003...............................      $6,659,621,392,684.00
07/10/2003...............................       6,659,226,260,487.87
07/09/2003...............................       6,660,190,974,044.60
07/08/2003...............................       6,661,139,880,068.78
07/07/2003...............................       6,656,880,050,796.69
07/03/2003...............................       6,656,271,436,016.11
07/02/2003...............................       6,664,585,450,219.34
07/01/2003...............................       6,661,149,640,189.12
Prior Months:
06/30/2003...............................       6,670,121,155,027.26
05/30/2003...............................       6,558,146,735,285.55
04/30/2003...............................       6,460,380,745,789.28
03/31/2003...............................       6,460,776,256,578.16
02/28/2003...............................       6,445,790,102,794.08
01/31/2003...............................       6,401,376,662,047.32
12/31/2002...............................       6,405,707,456,847.53
11/29/2002...............................       6,343,460,146,781.79
10/31/2002...............................       6,282,527,974,378.50
Prior Fiscal Years:
09/30/2002...............................       6,228,235,965,597.16
09/28/2001...............................       5,807,463,412,200.06
09/29/2000...............................       5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/1999...............................       5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998...............................       5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997...............................       5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996...............................       5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995...............................       4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994...............................       4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993...............................       4,411,488,883,139.38
09/30/1992...............................       4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991...............................       3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990...............................       3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989...............................       2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988...............................       2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987...............................   2,350,276,890,953.000634

[[Page S9388]]

Current:
07/14/2003...............................      $3,866,723,997,104.30
Current Month:
07/11/2003...............................       3,820,773,321,549.88
07/10/2003...............................       3,820,833,957,669.25
07/09/2003...............................       3,820,333,904,766.11
07/08/2003...............................       3,818,105,259,943.75
07/07/2003...............................       3,817,909,677,373.27
07/03/2003...............................       3,817,524,856,163.49
07/02/2003...............................       3,813,751,975,812.24
07/01/2003...............................       3,813,425,178,154.99
Prior Months:
06/30/2003...............................       3,816,831,315,563.84
05/30/2003...............................       3,776,621,896,107.35
04/30/2003...............................       3,702,844,997,678.07
03/31/2003...............................       3,711,311,962,399.17
02/28/2003...............................       3,683,881,032,284.53
01/31/2003...............................       3,636,978,106,813.83
12/31/2002...............................       3,647,939,770,383.73
11/29/2002...............................       3,649,352,539,575.36
10/31/2002...............................       3,586,523,556,148.57
Prior Fiscal Years:
09/30/2002...............................       3,553,180,247,874.74
09/28/2001...............................       3,339,310,176,094.74
09/29/2000...............................       3,405,303,490,221.20
09/30/1999...............................       3,636,104,594,501.81
09/30/1998...............................       3,733,864,472,163.53
09/30/1997...............................       3,789,667,546,849.60
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. HOLLINGS. Otherwise, you have heard the comments. It is going up

to $698 billion, and it will probably be even more than that. They are

trying to be as conservative as they can, I take it.

I appreciate the distinguished author of the amendment yielding me

time to talk on a peripheral matter. But it goes right to the heart of

why they do not include money for Iraq in the Defense appropriations

bills.

Mr. BYRD. That is right. What the Senator has been quoting isn't

included either. They don't include the cost of the war.

Mr. HOLLINGS. No, they don't put in the cost of the war.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. I would be delighted to yield to the Senator.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I think the point just made by the Senator

from West Virginia and the Senator from South Carolina is most

important. With this misinformation about the budget, isn't it curious

that it comes at a time when we are discussing the Defense

appropriations bill? There is not one penny in this bill, as pointed

out by the Senator from West Virginia, for the war in Iraq. Just in

Iraq, the war is costing $1 billion a week--$4 billion a month. That

doesn't include all of the other necessary military expenditures, such

as in Afghanistan and in Bosnia. Yet we are considering a Defense

appropriations bill that does not have any money in here for the war in

Iraq.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield right there?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. The Senator from South Carolina controls the

time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I have the floor. I would be glad to yield to the

distinguished Senator from Alaska for a comment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina has the floor.

Mr. STEVENS. The money to pay the salaries for everyone in Iraq is in

this bill. The money to pay for operations is in this bill. The problem

is the special money for the deployment costs were in the supplemental

which we already passed. There was more than was necessary. We have

already taken $3 billion out of that. They are operating on what is

left. We appropriated $60-plus billion before.

Let me assure the Senator that there is money in this bill for Iraq.

There is money to pay the salaries and support for the military

personnel. Some 60 percent of the money in this bill is support for

them. It is there. No matter where they are in the world, they are paid

from money in this bill.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Let me yield the floor so the Senator from West

Virginia can straighten the point out.

Mr. BYRD. The men and women are being paid their salaries, even if

they are from West Virginia. If they were all from West Virginia, they

would be paid their salaries. We are talking about the additional

costs, the incremental costs, and how much it costs this country to

wage war in Iraq per month. We are not talking about the salaries. They

get paid no matter where they are. We are talking about the additional

costs of Iraq. Let us be clear about that. Additional costs are almost

$1 billion a day for Iraq.

Mr. STEVENS. No.

Mr. BYRD. One billion dollars a week. That was a misstatement. I know

better than that--$1 billion a week.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator from West Virginia yield?

Mr. BYRD. Yes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, this Senator would like for

the Senator from West Virginia to clarify, since the Senator from South

Carolina has pointed out that we are talking about an annual deficit

not close to $500 billion but now it might be approaching a $700

billion annual deficit, is that not all the more the responsibility of

the Senate, which is part of the legislative branch? Under the

Constitution, it is supposed to control the purse strings. Would that

not make it all the more incumbent upon us to insist on what is going

to be the supplemental bill to pay for the war so that we exercise our

constitutional duty?

Mr. BYRD. Absolutely. The American people are entitled to know that.

They are going to pay the bill.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Will the distinguished Senator yield so I can bring

this into focus?

Mr. BYRD. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, if you took the cumulative deficits

from President Truman, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy,

President Johnson, President Nixon, and President Ford--if you took the

deficits for all of the 30 some years which these six President's ran

up--it would add up to $358 billion. The deficit this year, according

to this President, is going to be almost at $700 billion.

Look at page 57 from the Mid-Session Review released today. See where

the gross debt from 2002 to September 30, 2003, is in black and white;

that is almost $700 billion. We are doubling the 30 plus-year deficit

of Republican and Democratic Presidents--paying for the cost of World

War II, all the costs of Korea, all the costs of 10 years in Vietnam.

We always paid our way.

Abraham Lincoln, the father of the party over there on the other side

of the aisle, put a tax on dividends and on estates in order to pay for

the Civil War.

Now you folks come and want to take the tax off dividends, saying

there is no tomorrow.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. I would be delighted to yield.

Mr. INHOFE. I know it is a difficult thing to deal with when you talk

about the benefits of reducing taxes and giving people more choices to

do with it what they wish. A great Democrat President, John F. Kennedy,

back in

[[Page S9389]]

the 1960s, said: We need to have more money to put these programs

together, and the best way to increase revenues is to decrease marginal

rates. He did that, and increased revenues nearly a third.

In 1980, the total amount of money that was raised from marginal

rates was $244 billion. In 1990, it was $466 billion. It almost doubled

in the period of time that the greatest reduction in rates took place.

Every time since World War I, this has happened when we did that.

This Senator doesn't like to sit here and hear somebody talking about

reducing rates and, therefore, that is the reason for the deficit.

Mr. HOLLINGS. According to the Concord Coalition--let me refer first

to them--you have diminished revenues $3.12 trillion in 3 years and

three tax cuts.

I know the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma doesn't want to refer

to the loss of all those revenues. But when the market sees that, they

say: Well, wait a minute. Yes, you can cut the interest rate a quarter

of a point under Alan Greenspan. But that means the Government will be

crowding the financial market with its sharp elbows crowding out

corporate finance, and they freeze in place. And we run huge deficits

in the balance of trade. We are running trade deficits of $500 billion,

that is $1.5 billion a day. The foreign investors who helped cause that

bubble are frozen in place. Then the poor worker finds as he opens his

mouth that his job has gone overseas, so he gets lockjaw and freezes in

place.

This is not like Jack Kennedy who inherited almost a balanced budget.

We started this fiscal year with $428 billion in budget deficits from

last year. This year, it is $698 billion, according to the President of

the United States.

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator will yield on that point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. INHOFE. This Senator wants to bring up the point that there is no

reason to come in here and talk about which party was responsible. We

all know, and the Senator from South Carolina knows, that the recession

we are in right now began in March of 2000.

Mr. HOLLINGS. It only lasted for 3 years.

Mr. INHOFE. Not under a Republican administration. If the Senator

feels strongly about believing the Concord Coalition over that great

former President John Kennedy, it is his option to do that.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right. It is bipartisan. Kennedy wasn't

bipartisan. He was a Democrat. This is bipartisan.

Mr. INHOFE. I didn't say he was bipartisan. He said he advocated a

reduction in tax rates to increase revenue, and it worked. Look at the

Democrat Governor out in New Mexico who did the same thing. It is one

of the very few States that is increasing revenue right now. He is the

only Governor I know--Democrat or Republican--who is reducing marginal

rates.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I am sure these other nine Republican

Governors quoted in this ``Budget Woes Trickle Down''--I am sure they

would love to be able to reduce rates. I know my Republican Governor of

South Carolina would love to reduce rates. They are not given that

option. This ``Budget Woes Trickle Down'' and those nine Republican

Governors are having to raise taxes. Kentucky let the prisoners out.

They are cutting back all the programs. Higher education is decimated.

Every college president is increasing tuition.

``Budget Woes Trickle Down.'' They are not cutting taxes.

Let's get right to where we are.

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator will yield, I agree they are not cutting

taxes. One of the Democrat Governors is cutting taxes and look what is

happening to the revenues out in the State of New Mexico. They are

going up.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Bill Richardson is the only exception I have been able

to find.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I want to ask the Senator, when this Senator

was assigned to the Budget Committee and the administration came forth

with a budget, I questioned the figures because what was expressed was

that we were not going to raid the Social Security trust fund to pay

the normal expenditures of Government. Clearly, that is what the people

in the country do not want. They do not want the Social Security trust

fund raided to pay for expenses.

Now, the Senator has come up with a new budget document that is

saying the annual deficit could be as high as $500 billion but it could

also be, by the words on the paper, $700 billion?

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right, $698 billion--spending Social Security

tax moneys. That is the revenues. That is how they get to the $455

billion on page 1.

But let me point this out because we were here in 1983, and the

distinguished Chair remembers this, we had the Greenspan commission.

That really started over on the House side with our good friend Wilbur

Mills, who had been chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He upped

the ante along with President Nixon, decimating the trust fund.

So by the end of the 1970s we appointed the Greenspan commission.

After a 3-year study, they came with section 21. It says we are going

to have an inordinate increase in payroll taxes, graduated up so as to

take care of the baby boomers in the next generation. Section 21 says:

And put this money in trust and don't spend it on anything but Social

Security.

Now my friend from Florida, what happens is, it took us from 1983 to

1990, I think it was. It was on November 5, 1990, George Walker Herbert

Bush, President Bush's father, he signed into law section 13301.

Section 13301 of the Budget Act, says: You shall not report a budget,

either the President or the Congress, spending Social Security trust

funds on anything other than Social Security. We put that into law and

they continued to violate it. They continued to spend it. That is

13301.

The vote in the Senate was 98 to 2 for that particular provision. It

is in the law today, in the Budget Act. But that is what they are

doing. That is when the distinguished President started off and he took

office in 2001 and he said: I am setting aside $2.3 trillion to take

care of the needs of Social Security.

He was following through on a pledge that he made in the campaign.

But we spend Social Security moneys on any and everything but Social

Security, and run around like a dog chasing his tail saying we have to

fix Social Security, we have to fix Social Security, we have to fix it,

and they have all kinds of plans: invest in the stock market, get an

IRA, take this percent, that percent, retire early, don't retire--you

know, on and on.

All they need do is obey section 13301 of the law, the Budget Act,

and not spend Social Security revenues on anything and everything but

Social Security. That is all they have to do.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, since we are on the Defense

Appropriations subcommittee bill, I want to follow up on the remarks of

the Senator from South Carolina. I thank him for his comments.

I say this Senator is quite concerned about the legislated budgetary

sleight of hand that has been apparent throughout this budgetary

process. I don't like it. I don't think it is instructive to the

country. I think it is budget fakery and that, although it has

certainly been employed on both sides of the aisle over the years in

the history of this Republic, particularly at a time now where the

numbers are getting so large, where the annual deficit--that is

spending more than we have coming in in revenue--is getting so large,

if you believe the figures the Senator from South Carolina has just

spoken about from a budget document that was just released--upwards of

$500 billion on one page and upwards of $700 billion on another page--

that is spending that much more in this fiscal year than we have coming

in in revenue--that is not a way to get our economic engine purring

again. That is not a way of stopping the economic recession. Because if

there are more people chasing the available dollars that we need to

borrow, then there is more demand on the money. What is going to be the

result on the cost of the money? The cost of the money is going to go

up. That is going to be the interest rates that are going to go up, and

that is all the more going to stall us trying to get out of the

recession.

[[Page S9390]]

It is perplexing to me, to say it in the mildest terms that I can, as

to why we have all this budgetary sleight of hand, why we have this

budgetary fakery. Why can't we just be up straight, aboveboard: this is

what it is and this is the plan to get out from under it. But there

seems to be an agenda to try to mask, to obscure what is the real

situation.

Since we are on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee bill, I want

to bring up a matter of grave concern that I have. That is, as we

continue to battle, as we continue to prosecute the war against

terrorists--be that in Afghanistan, be that in Iraq, be that in

America--we have to have timely and accurate intelligence. That has to

be a given. There can't be any fudging or fakery or sleight of hand. It

has to be the best estimate of all the intelligence agencies. So I get

quite concerned.

Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I yield to the Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. BYRD. And it should not be based on unsubstantiated----

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Unsubstantiated.

Mr. BYRD. So-called evidence that is produced by the intelligence

agencies of another country, another state.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. That is precisely the point I want to make. I

thank the Senator from West Virginia for underscoring that. Because I

get a little concerned, I got a little upset when I read in Sunday's

Washington Post:

CIA director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with

White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking

uranium from Niger removed from a Presidential speech last

October. . . .

Continuing:

Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including

deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the

allegation should not be used because it came from only a

single source, according to one senior official.

That was in October. Three months later, in the President's State of

the Union speech, the very reference that was exorcised from the speech

in October was inserted.

I want the Senator from West Virginia to hear this reference. I want

the Senator from West Virginia to verify what I am saying because,

according to the Washington Post, when the Director of the CIA removed

that reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger in October, the very

same reference was inserted 3 months later in the President's State of

the Union speech but with a qualifier, and the qualifier was: according

to British intelligence, even though 3 months earlier the CIA Director

had that reference stricken because it was not true.

Mr. BYRD. Yes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. What does that suggest is going on with regard

to accurate, timely, and truthful intelligence?

Mr. BYRD. Well, it suggests we are going down the wrong path when the

President of the United States leads our country into war, leads our

men and women into war, based on evidence that is supposed to have been

developed by another country's agencies, that evidence not being

substantiated by our own intelligence agencies.

So it is very evident we were just grasping for a straw to hang our

hats on. I happen to believe that this administration intended from the

beginning to go to war in Iraq, that this administration intended from

the beginning to invade Iraq.

How many times has the Senator from Florida heard the President say,

with reference to the U.N., ``If you don't do it, we will. If you don't

do it, we will''? They were not waiting on the U.N. to come along. We

already had our minds made up to go into Iraq.

And anybody who heard Karl Rove or read about Karl Rove's statement

to the National Republican Committee--in January of last year, I

believe it was, yes--when he indicated to the National Republican

Committee that: this homeland security horse was the one we could ride

to victory politically on, and that the national Republican efforts

should make, as its center strategy, the subject of homeland security--

it was evident to me they were going to ride that horse to the utmost

until the horse dropped or got across the victory goal line in the

election.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Senator for his response.

Mr. BYRD. And I think it was a misuse. It is a misuse. It is just an

effort now, as they look back, to cover their skirts because it is

clear, so far as the evidence thus far is concerned, that there was no

such uranium coming from Africa. That was virtually a fictitious thing,

and our people knew it. They knew it in October of last year, as the

Senator has pointed out.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I was in Iraq last week, as

the blood of a Florida soldier was still soaking into the parched sands

of Baghdad. I still feel that we have sufficient security interests of

the United States for us to be in Iraq, and, clearly, we better draw

this to a successful conclusion to politically and economically

stabilize that country.

But I can tell you, when I read this kind of information that

suggests that the American people and their Representatives in the

Congress were being fed information that was not accurate--and it was

intentional--then I get very concerned for this country's ability to

conduct our war against terrorists, for we are only going to be

successful in a war against terrorists from timely and accurate and

truthful intelligence.

Mr. BYRD. The administration misled the American people when it tried

to leave the impression that the war on terrorism is engaged in by--in

other words, that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida could be linked. That has

not been shown to be a fact. And the American people, according to the

polls I read some time ago, seemed to be half of the belief that those

who took the planes into the Twin Towers were Iraqis. The truth is, not

one of those hijackers of planes flown into the Twin Towers on 9/11--

not one of those hijackers was an Iraqi, not one. Not one was from

Iraq.

So where is the link? Where is the link?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Senator from West Virginia. I will

have more to say about this as the debate continues on Defense

appropriations. I will speak to this issue that I have raised here. It

is of grave concern to me.

I want, in the course of this debate, for us to be told in this

debate a satisfactory explanation of why we are not planning for the

supplemental on the Defense appropriations for the war in Iraq, why we

are not planning for that and stating that in this Defense

appropriations bill. I think that should be a part of the debate for

all of the Senators to engage in.

I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I support the amendment offered by Senator

Byrd to assure that the deployments of National Guard and Reservists do

not exceed 180 days. The amendment further mandates that Guard and

Reservists are not deployed more than once in a 60-day period.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I asked many

questions of the administration as it made its case for war. Two of the

questions that were never answered involved the length of our

deployment and the ability of the international community to share the

burden of rebuilding Iraq.

Because of the failure of the administration to answer these

questions, some of our troops face the possibility of spending more

time than expected in Iraq. Our Guard and Reservists have fought

bravely. We have to see that they are rotated home and replaced with

other troops on a timely basis.

I want to read part of a letter I received from one Californian

asking that a Marine Reserve Unit return to the United States:

The members of the Marine Reserve unit ANGLICO are

important members of our society. They are hard working

citizens who contribute to our economy. Their families are

feeling the financial strain of their continued and

unnecessary absence. These Marines are eager to come home to

contribute to the continued success of our surrounding

communities. I am asking you to please look into this matter

and help facilitate the homecoming of our Marines.

Because of security concerns, the DoD was unable to shed any light on

when this particular unit was to return home. But it highlights the

sacrifice our communities are making to support this action in Iraq.

I believe the U.S. should fulfill its duty and provide for the

reconstruction of Iraq. However, I call on the President to ask our

allies to help share the burden and I ask him to ensure that

[[Page S9391]]

our Guard and Reservists are rotated out of Iraq on a regular basis.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, this has been an interesting debate,

but in the course of the debate we found that we have agreement that we

have to do something about the basic subject of rotation and deployment

as it applies to the Guard and Reserve as well as the active portions

of our total force.

I think, in the interest of all concerned, it would be best to put

aside both Senator Byrd's amendment and the one that Senator Inouye and

I have offered and see if we cannot get further information from the

Department and try to work with the Department in terms of this new

policy that is projected.

So on that basis and the debate that has taken place so far, I move

to table Senator Byrd's amendment, which would take with it my second-

degree amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?

There appears to be a sufficient second.

The question is on agreeing to the motion to table amendment No.

1244.

The clerk will call the roll.

The bill clerk called the roll.

Mr. McCONNELL. I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr.

Sununu) is necessarily absent.

Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.

Edwards), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Graham), the Senator from

Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry), and the Senator from Connecticut (Mr.

Lieberman) are necessarily absent.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. (Mr. Alexander). Are there any other Senators

in the Chamber desiring to vote?

The result was announced--yeas 64, nays 31, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 277 Leg.]

YEAS--64

Akaka

Alexander

Allard

Allen

Baucus

Bayh

Bennett

Biden

Bond

Brownback

Bunning

Burns

Campbell

Carper

Chafee

Chambliss

Cochran

Coleman

Collins

Conrad

Cornyn

Craig

Crapo

DeWine

Dodd

Dole

Domenici

Ensign

Enzi

Feingold

Fitzgerald

Frist

Graham (SC)

Grassley

Gregg

Hagel

Hatch

Hutchison

Inhofe

Inouye

Kohl

Kyl

Landrieu

Leahy

Lott

Lugar

McCain

McConnell

Miller

Murkowski

Nelson (NE)

Nickles

Roberts

Santorum

Sessions

Shelby

Smith

Snowe

Specter

Stevens

Talent

Thomas

Voinovich

Warner

NAYS--31

Bingaman

Boxer

Breaux

Byrd

Cantwell

Clinton

Corzine

Daschle

Dayton

Dorgan

Durbin

Feinstein

Harkin

Hollings

Jeffords

Johnson

Kennedy

Lautenberg

Levin

Lincoln

Mikulski

Murray

Nelson (FL)

Pryor

Reed

Reid

Rockefeller

Sarbanes

Schumer

Stabenow

Wyden

NOT VOTING--5

Edwards

Graham (FL)

Kerry

Lieberman

Sununu

The motion was agreed to.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. INOUYE. I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendments Nos. 1257 Through 1259, En Bloc

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have three amendments which have been

cleared. Senator Inouye has similar ones for his side. Right after

that, we will have a consent agreement that we will present, and if we

are successful in getting that consent agreement, we would not have any

further votes tonight but we will have to wait until we present that

agreement.

I send to the desk three amendments en bloc, one from Senator

Voinovich to make available from amounts available for research,

development, test, and evaluation, defensewide, $3 million for the

long-range biometric target identification system; an amendment on

behalf of myself and Senator Inouye for Senator Roberts which earmarks

$2,500,000 for the study of geospatial visualization technologies; and

a third amendment by Senator Allen to make available from amounts

available for research, development, test, and evaluation, Navy, $4

million for the high speed antiradiation demonstration airframe/

propulsion section.

I send those to the desk and ask that they be considered en bloc.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the clerk will report.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens] proposes amendments

numbered 1257, 1258, and 1259.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading

of the amendments be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The amendments are as follows:

amendment no. 1257

(Purpose: To make available from amounts available for Research,

Development, Test, and Evaluation, Defense-Wide, $3,000,000 for the

Long Range Biometric Target Identification System)

Insert after section 8123 the following:

Sec. 8124. Of the amount appropriated by title IV of this

Act under the heading ``Research, Development, Test, and

Evaluation, Defense-Wide'', up to $3,000,000 may be available

for the Long Range Biometric Target Identification System.

amendment no. 1258

On page 120, between lines 17 and 18, insert the following:

Sec.   . Of the total amount appropriated by title IV under

the heading ``Research, Development, Test and Evaluation,

Defense-Wide'', up to $2,500,000 may be used for the study of

geospatial visualization technologies.

amendment no. 1259

(Purpose: To make available from amounts available for Research,

Development, Test, and Evaluation, Navy $4,000,000 for High Speed Anti-

Radiation Demonstration Airframe/Propulsion Section)

Insert after section 8123 the following:

Sec. 8124. Of the amount appropriated by title IV of this

Act under the heading ``Research, Development, Test, and

Evaluation, Navy'', up to $4,000,000 may be available for

High Speed Anti-Radiation Demonstration Airframe/Propulsion

Section (PE#0603114N).

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendments?

If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendments en bloc.

The amendments (Nos. 1257, 1258, and 1259) were agreed to en bloc.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. INOUYE. I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendments Nos. 1260 Through 1263, En Bloc

Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I have four amendments I ask to have

considered en bloc. The first is submitted by Senators Bingaman and

Domenici providing for $3,500,000 for the National Consortia on MASINT

research; the second by Senator Conrad for research, development, test,

and evaluation for the Army, $3,500,000 for the Medical Vanguard

Project; third, submitted by Senator Breaux to make available from

amounts available for research, development, test, and evaluation,

$800,000 for the Tulane Center for Missile Defense, Louisiana; and the

final and fourth from Senator Reed of Rhode Island to make available

from amounts available for Defense Production Act purchases $3,000,000

for a flexible aerogel material supplier initiative.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the amendments will be

considered en bloc. The clerk will report.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye] proposes amendments

numbered 1260 through 1263, en bloc.

Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading

of the amendments be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The amendments are as follows:

Amendment No. 1260

On page 120, between lines 17 and 18, insert the following:

Sec. 8124. Of the total amount appropriated by title IV

under the heading ``Research and Development Defense Wide'',

up to $3,500,000 may be used for National Consortia on Masins

Research For Program Element Number 0305884L.

Amendment No. 1261

(Purpose: To make available from amounts available for Research,

Development, Test, and Evaluation for the Army $3,500,000 for the

Medical Vanguard Project to expand the clinical trial of the Internet-

based diabetes management system under that project)

Insert after section 8123 the following:

[[Page S9392]]

Sec. 8124. Of the amount appropriated by title IV of this

Act under the heading ``Research, Development, Test, and

Evaluation, Army'', up to $3,500,000 may be available for the

Medical Vanguard Project to expand the clinical trial of the

Internet-based diabetes management system under that project.

amendment no. 1262

(Purpose: To make available from amounts available for Research,

Development, Test, and Evaluation, Defense-Wide, $800,000 for the

Tulane Center for Missile Defense, Louisiana)

Insert after section 8123 the following:

Sec. 8124. Of the amount appropriated by title IV of this

Act under the heading ``Research, Development, Test, and

Evaluation, Defense-Wide'', up to $800,000 may be available

for the Tulane Center for Missile Defense, Louisiana.

amendment no. 1263

(Purpose: To make available from amounts available for Defense

Production Act Purchases, ($3,000,000) for a Flexible Aerogel material

Supplier Initiative to develop affordable methods and a domestic

supplier of military and commercial aerogels)

Insert after section 8123 the following:

Sec. 8124. Of the amount appropriated by title III of this

Act under the heading ``Defense Production Act Purchases'',

up to $3,000,000 may be available for Flexible Aerogel

Material Supplier Initiative to develop affordable methods

and a domestic supplier of military and commercial aerogels.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendments?

If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendments en bloc.

The amendments (Nos. 1260 through 1263) were agreed to en bloc.

Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator from Missouri has a statement

I would like to respond to, and I ask unanimous consent that I be

allowed to yield to him for his portion of the statement.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The Senator from Missouri.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I rise in support of the bill in general,

and second, I thank the chairman for his support of hypersonics funding

in the bill. The bill increases funding above last year's appropriated

level. I do have a couple of concerns and I appreciate the chairman's

willingness to address them with me in a colloquy.

Hypersonics are the future of aerospace. Later this year NASA will

carry out a further test of the X43-A. This will be done as part of

NASA's hyper-X project, a program devoted to the study and creation of

vehicles that use air-breathing engines at hypersonic speed. If this

test is successful, the aerospace industry will prove that the physics

of hypersonics are correct and our engineers can begin creating the

models that will become the future of the aerospace industry.

This technology will yield unprecedented results, opening up new

commercial markets for industry, furthering human and robotic

exploration in the solar system, and significantly improving national

security. This transformational technology holds great promise for the

development of missiles, unmanned combat air vehicles, manned flight

and next-generation space shuttles. I thank the chairman for his

support, and I ask him for his comments about hypersonics.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I appreciate the advocacy of our

colleague from Missouri on the issue of hypersonics, and I know, as a

member of the Armed Services Committee, he has been a champion of this

issue and raised it several times.

I agree with the Senator on hypersonics technology. It is very

important for the future of the aerospace industry. Over the next 10

years or more, the U.S. will develop and test a series of ground and

flight demonstrators that will be powered by air-breathing rocket or

turbine-based engines or ram/scramjets. It is a very interesting

technology. I agree with Senator Talent that this technology has the

potential to revolutionize our commercial transport industry, space

travel, as well as the military capabilities.

I look forward to working with the Senator from Missouri on this

important issue as the chairman of the Defense Subcommittee and

generally. I think it is a very interesting subject.

Mr. TALENT. I close by thanking the chairman again and look forward

to continuing to work with him and the committee to advance the

technology and research necessary to ensure a strong hypersonics

program. I thank the chairman for the colloquy.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Dorgan be

recognized to offer an amendment on budget costs. I further ask consent

that when the Senate resumes consideration of the amendment on

Wednesday, there be an additional 30 minutes equally divided in

relation to the Dorgan amendment; provided further that at the

expiration of that time Senator Bingaman be recognized to offer an

amendment regarding detainees; provided further that there then be a

40-minute period equally divided in the usual form; further, that

following that time the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the

Dorgan amendment to be followed by a vote in relation to the Bingaman

amendment with no amendments in order to the amendments prior to the

votes, and with 2 minutes for debate equally divided prior to each

vote.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

The Senator from Nevada.

Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object, at 10 a.m, the Secretary of

State will be in the building for a briefing. The debate on the Burma

amendment should not involve all Senators. I thought originally we

would have a recess during that period of time but the majority leader

has decided not to do that. I understand why. But that is still

available.

Mr. STEVENS. I have a further consent agreement. Does the

distinguished leader wish to have that set forth before he agrees for

the first unanimous consent?

I reoffer the first request.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, on behalf of the leader, I ask unanimous

consent that at 10 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, the Senate proceed to the

immediate consideration of House bill 2330, the Burma sanctions bill,

under the following conditions: One hour of debate equally divided in

the usual form; Then upon the use or yielding back of time, the bill be

read the third time and the Senate proceed to a vote with no amendments

in order to the bill, at a time to be determined by the majority leader

after consultation with the Democratic leader, with particular

reference to the prior agreement we have already entered into.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am now authorized by the majority

leader to say there will be no more record votes tonight.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.

Amendment No. 1264

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I offer an amendment and ask for its

immediate consideration.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan] proposes an

amendment numbered 1264.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading

of the amendment be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To require from the President a budget amendment for the

budget for fiscal year 2004 on the amounts requested for military

operations in Iraq in fiscal year 2004)

Insert after section 8123 the following:

Sec. 8124. Not later than July 29, 2003, the President

shall submit to Congress a budget amendment to the budget of

the President for fiscal year 2004, as submitted to Congress

in 2003 under section 1105(a) of title 31, United States

Code, setting forth in full the amounts required for fiscal

year 2004 for United States military operations in Iraq and

Afghanistan in fiscal year 2004.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will speak briefly. I will speak further

tomorrow on this subject. This relates to something I spoke about

yesterday. It may well be that the Congress--in this case, the Senate--

feels it is appropriate to ignore the added costs of Afghanistan and

Iraq in next year's budget, but

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I happen to think that makes no sense at all. If we know, reasonably,

that we are going to spend an additional $1 billion a month in

Afghanistan and perhaps $4 billion a month in Iraq--that is perhaps a

$50 or $60 billion additional expenditure--it seems to me we ought to

address that question now; not only address what are the additional

costs with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan but where we will find the

money.

What will likely happen is what happened last year. The President

made the case he did not know what the costs might be in Iraq and

therefore did not include anything in the budget for it, but we have

been through now at least an initial phase of the war, with continuing

violence in Iraq. We know from Secretary Rumsfeld's position earlier

this week we may well see an increase of troop strength in the area. We

know the comptroller of the Pentagon says they have a pretty good sense

of what will be on the ground for the next fiscal year--referring both

to Afghanistan and Iraq.

If that is the case, and if we are now appropriating money for the

Department of Defense, why not try to learn from the administration

what figures they are using for additional costs in the coming year and

what they recommend we appropriate and how they recommend we find the

money.

My amendment is very simple. It asks the President to submit an

amended budget to the Congress within the next 2 weeks setting out what

he thinks the costs will be in Iraq and Afghanistan above that which is

already in the Department of Defense budget, and then recommending how

we would cover that, how we would pay for it. That, after all, is a

starting point that comes from the executive budget, and then to be

considered by the Congress.

This is a very incomplete picture and an incomplete process if we are

staring anywhere from $50 to $60 billion in additional costs right

square in the face and pretending it does not exist.

My amendment is very simple. I deeply appreciate the work that

Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye have done on this bill. I happen to

be on that subcommittee. These two are some remarkable men in this

Senate and have distinguished war records and have a distinguished

record of service to our entire country. I appreciate very much their

work on this bill. But I do think it is important for the Congress to

answer this question: Is this the way we should continue to handle

these extra costs?

Now these extra costs are becoming very large, $5 billion a month. It

is quite clear from statements this week that the Pentagon knows or has

some notion of what these extra costs will be. It makes no sense to

pass an appropriations bill and pretend they do not exist.

I will speak at greater length tomorrow morning on this subject, but

I really believe we need to address this as a Congress.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, unless there is a unanimous consent

request to proceed to another matter, I would like to speak for a few

moments in support of Senator Dorgan's amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.

Mr. DURBIN. I know the Senator from North Dakota has to leave and

will be back tomorrow to discuss his amendment, but doesn't it strike

those following this debate as strange that we are considering the

appropriation for the Department of Defense for the next year and it

includes everything except Iraq and Afghanistan?

If this is truly an appropriations bill, if the Senate is meeting its

responsibility in reviewing the requests of the administration to make

certain they are reasonable, how can we, in good conscience, pass a

bill without any reference to the costs of the war? That, of course, is

a good turn of events for the administration because they do not have

to explain how they will pay for it.

This morning's newspapers across America disclosed we are facing a

record-breaking budget deficit. We have gone, over the span of 3 years,

from over $200 billion in surplus each year to over $450 billion in

deficit. That does not count the Social Security portion which is about

another $160 billion. We are facing record-breaking budget deficits.

And now as we debate appropriations bills, these bills are not speaking

to the reality of official spending under the Bush administration.

To think we would consider this Department of Defense bill and not

include the money necessary for the war in Iraq is to suggest that this

bill does not tell the whole story.

Just last week in the Armed Services Committee, Secretary Rumsfeld,

our Secretary of Defense, appeared before the committee and was asked

by Senator Byrd of West Virginia, what is the cost of the war in Iraq?

Secretary Rumsfeld, in charge of the largest military operation on the

face of the Earth, said, I don't know. Senator Byrd said, you better

find out. These are questions asked by Congress of Secretaries of

Defense through history. So there was a break in the action and

Senators came over for a vote and when we returned, Secretary Rumsfeld

said, I have been told it will be about $3.9 billion per month, roughly

$1 billion a week for Iraq. When asked about Afghanistan, he suggested

it would be somewhere in the range of $1 billion a month.

That means we are going to spend roughly $5 billion a month that is

not accounted for in this bill. So we know we are going to spend the

money. We are never going to shortchange our men and women in uniform.

Why isn't this Bush administration, in all candor and honesty, coming

to us with a bill that includes the costs of the war?

Senator Dorgan, my colleague from North Dakota, asked that obvious

question and asked the Senate to vote on it. It will be interesting

tomorrow to see if those who believe the Senate has a responsibility

for oversight and also believe this administration has a responsibility

to be honest about the costs of the war, will, in fact, support the

Dorgan amendment. I certainly will. I hope my colleagues on both sides

of the aisle will, as well.

This is a tough amendment because it puts the administration on the

spot. They have to explain where they are going to come up with a

substantial amount of money, but I think that is the burden they asked

for when they assumed office. We need to face it squarely, as do they.

I also say, despite the obvious monetary costs of the war, what I

find in traveling back to Illinois is the people are less concerned

about the monetary costs than the human costs of this war. It is tough

to calculate how many of our great men and women have died since

President Bush declared military victory in the first part of May. But

we know almost on a daily basis that we are losing some of our finest

soldiers, men and women, well trained for military combat, who are now

in the position of maintaining peace in Iraq, trying to establish a

civil society. It is not an easy task. These men and women, trained

with the highest technology, so successful on the battlefield, now find

themselves on patrol, guarding college campuses, guarding museums,

enforcing curfews, dealing with scuffles and fights in public

marketplaces. As they go in to try to quell this violence and bring

peace to the situation, sadly, many of them are being attacked by

Iraqis. Some are being killed.

To those who follow this debate, I say we can try in this bill to

ignore the dollar costs of this war but, trust me, families across

America, the people of this country, know the human costs on a daily

basis. They are asking us the hard questions.

Senator Lugar of Indiana, whom I respect very much, visited Iraq. He

came back and said, in all candor, he believed we would be in that

country for 5 years. He said he felt that was a minimum. I hope he is

wrong. But I respect his judgment and his insight. If we are to be

there for 5 years, if 150,000 troops or any portion of those troops

will remain for that period of time, it is a massive investment by the

United States in Iraq. It calls into question our basic strategy in

trying to establish civil order.

I cannot for the life of me understand why this administration has

not gone to the United Nations and asked them to assume responsibility

with us for the future of Iraq. Why hasn't this government come to the

Senate and asked the same thing? If we could replace American troops in

the field, guardsmen and reserves who have been there for long periods

of time away from their family, if we could replace them

[[Page S9394]]

and bring them home by bringing in troops from other countries, that

would certainly be very positive.

In this morning's newspapers Prime Minister Vajpayee of India said

the United States requested 17,000 Indian troops and he declined the

invitation. He said he might join an effort sponsored by the United

Nations. Those are his conditions. I don't know the conditions of other

countries.

What is clear to me now is that though the coalition of the willing

was enough to win the military end of the war, the coalition of the

willing is incapable of meeting the responsibility today of

establishing and maintaining order in Iraq. That coalition has really

come down to two major countries, Great Britain and the United States.

We are shouldering this burden, not just on the monetary side but on

the side of human cost.

I think this administration should be conscious of the fact that many

Americans, supportive of the invasion of Iraq, supportive of

eliminating Saddam Hussein, are now raising serious questions about the

duration and cost of our occupation of Iraq.

The same thing can be said, obviously, of Afghanistan. I am a big

supporter of Hamid Karzai. I think he has done a remarkable job as the

leader in Afghanistan, bringing some order to a country which has known

chaos for too many years. But we know he needs help. Too many tribal

warlords control portions of the country that should be controlled by

some central authority coming out of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.

That is not the case.

The President of Pakistan recently visited the United States.

President Musharraf said to President Bush: If you want one piece of

advice, send more troops to Afghanistan. We don't have enough people

there to maintain order. Our troop strength is estimated to be between

8,500 and 10,000. That points to the need for this bill to be more

inclusive on the real cost of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. We need

to face this head on.

For the Department of Defense appropriations bill to speak to

national security and ignore 150,000 men and women in uniform in Iraq

and the cost to our country, as well as another 8,500 or so in

Afghanistan, really misses the point. We need a bill that is complete.

The Dorgan amendment will move us in that direction. I will support it

tomorrow, and I hope my colleagues will join me.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, no one regrets the deaths that are

occurring in Iraq any more than I, or anyone else here, particularly

those of us who served in the uniform of our country. We know the

seriousness of being involved in Iraq.

The offensive operations in Iraq started in March. I believe it was

March 19. This budget was presented to us long before that. It did not

have money for Iraq. As a matter of fact, we have handled this concept

of the war in Iraq on the same basis as Bosnia, Kosovo, et cetera--with

one exception. The President came to us and asked for a supplemental

for Iraq, and we passed it. The money is there. He asked for the money;

we gave it to him. I don't understand this demand, now, for another

supplemental. We do not need any more money right now. We are

continuing to spend the money Congress provided, over $60 billion.

I have a little sense of politics in this. I don't quite understand.

Politics are never raised on the floor of the Senate, obviously. But

clearly the political implication is, somehow or other, the deaths are

related to the fact that the President has not asked for any money. We

have plenty of money right now to run this war. The costs of the war

are coming down. As I pointed out previously here this afternoon, all

of the costs of the manpower for fighting in Iraq are in this bill. The

costs that are not in this bill, that are being paid from the

supplemental, are the incremental costs of moving forces to Iraq,

moving materiel to Iraq, moving people back from Iraq, taking care of

our global expenses, and conducting the war in Iraq.

The President came in and asked for a $10 billion contingency fund. I

joined in saying no, you can't have a contingency fund. We gave him the

money he requested, the money whose use they detailed. But we didn't

put up $10 billion as a contingency fund because we didn't think it was

necessary, and I still don't think it is necessary. But we do

understand if the cost of the war in Iraq will somehow exceed what we

have already provided, the President will come for a supplemental in

time. He has done that.

We are funding the war in Iraq on an incremental basis from a

supplemental fund we gave the President. Again, we gave him so much

money, we rescinded $3 billion in this bill. Three billion dollars of

the previous supplemental have been rescinded and spread around in

other areas of the Department of Defense.

I think we ought to get back into some historical context here. We

have had a series of peacekeeping operations, so-called peacekeeping

operations. There were people killed in Bosnia. There was a war in

Bosnia. There is a war in Kosovo. There is a war in Afghanistan. This

administration has asked for the money, and we have given it to them.

The money we gave them, by the way, the $60 billion-plus, was for the

whole area that was commanded by General Franks. It was the war zone.

That included Afghanistan as well as Iraq.

We have had, unfortunately, in the past--and I also mentioned this

today--we had in connection with Bosnia and Kosovo a policy of the

administration, the previous administration, to not ask for money at

all. They took the money from the O&M accounts of the Departments, the

various forces--Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines--and spent it. They

never told us where they were spending it. When they came up and asked

for a supplemental to replace it, they asked us for the money to

replace the accounts. We never really got detailed descriptions of how

much money was spent per day in Bosnia or Kosovo. I don't know where

this is coming from.

As a matter of fact, Senator Inouye and I have been involved in

managing this bill, now, since 1981. We can tell the Senate the way we

are handling the bill now is the way we should handle a bill for

defense. We pay the money for the regular costs, and the Department

asks us for the extraordinary costs. The last administration had the

money for the personnel and regular costs in the bill, but they took

some of that money and fought the war in Bosnia and fought the war in

Kosovo and then came up for a supplemental. This administration came

for the supplemental first.

They have the money. It is in the bank. They are spending it. And

somehow they are being criticized for not asking for a supplemental.

I oppose this amendment. I intend to oppose it. I intend, as a matter

of fact, to make a motion to table it in the future.

There is an agreement for debate. We are in a situation where, as far

as I am concerned, we should not ask the Department to come and ask for

moneys on a contingency basis. That is really what the Senator is

suggesting--ask for money, what you might spend in the future, beyond

what we have already given you. There is a bank over there. They have

the money.

To ask for a budget amendment for the fiscal year 2004, to be

submitted this year, I don't understand at all. It wasn't required by

the congressional budget resolution, by the way. If this was so

important, why didn't someone raise it in connection with the

congressional budget resolution that passed after we went to war? And

we are at war.

I really believe it is time we understand what is going on. I do not

want to see us get another supplemental request this year. We have 13

appropriations bills to pass. They have plenty of money. Why tie us up

in another supplemental? Everyone knows a supplemental this time of

year would become a Christmas tree. Everyone is going to offer

amendments to do things they didn't get in the other bills, and every

one would be a demand for an emergency.

As long as I am chairman, we are going to try to have some discipline

with regard to dealing with money. The discipline is, we follow the

budget. I have committed to follow the budget. We are following the

congressional budget. In order to do so, we had to ask the President's

permission. Chairman Young, chairman of the House Appropriations

Committee, and I asked for

[[Page S9395]]

permission to take $3 billion off the President's request that is in

this bill for defense. We admit we took $3.1 billion from what the

President asked for in his budget request and put it in other

subcommittees. Because of the fact the congressional budget resolution

was $2.6 billion below the President's budget, we needed to find money

to fund operations of those other departments that would not fit within

that bill.

We are proceeding on a basis that I think makes sense. I hope we will

have bipartisan support for it. But one thing we don't need is another

supplemental at this time dealing with Defense when Defense has money

to continue to operate in Iraq. When they run out of money or come

close to it, I assume they will come and ask for more. I presume the

cost per week is going to go down. It has been fairly high. The

incremental cost was over $34 billion last month, as I understand it.

Under the circumstances, if it continues to wind down, I believe the

monthly cost will decline and the Department will be able to get

through this fiscal year with the money they have. If they need more

money in the calendar year 2004, they can come in and ask for it. But I

predict--I hope I am right--they are not going to need any more money

in calendar year 2003 for either fiscal year 2003 or the first quarter

of 2004. If they do, and that could happen--God forbid this thing could

blow up over there and we would have to send more forces back in. I

don't know. No one can predict what happens in a situation like we have

now. We want to as rapidly as possible cease being an occupation force.

This reminds me of some of harassment that took place during World

War II when we had operating forces in areas where part of the enemy

was not subdued and there were sniper attacks. There were bombing

attacks. It was a disaster for people in uniform, who suffered even

after the war was over. There were some deaths in World War II. I think

this is a sad thing.

I hear a call to bring the troops home. One of the reasons the troops

are there is to protect one another and protect the people we just

freed. I thought the price of freedom was in fact doing what our people

are doing; that is, following the commands of the Commander in Chief.

It is a very tough thing to say, but once we undertake action such as

this, our national image would be absolutely tarred if we brought these

people home before there was security for the people who have been

liberated from that regime, the Baath party of Saddam Hussein. We can't

leave them exposed, nor can we leave exposed our people who are trying

to bring about reconstruction. I think we have to use common sense.

To say the President shall submit a budget amendment--by the way, I

don't know of any requirement anywhere in the law that the President

has to submit a budget resolution before. I don't know that Congress

has ever said the President shall present a budget amendment for a

specific amendment of money or a specific item. I have been here 35

years. I can't remember such a requirement before in my life. For no

other reason, I would oppose that because he is the President. The

Constitution gives him some powers. It gives us powers. One of the

powers is to exercise the power of the purse. But we are not the ones

who can command the President to ask for the money. He is the

President. If he wants the money, he should ask for it. If he doesn't

need it, we should not compel him to ask for it. I am sure if he needs

it, he will be the first one to ask for it.

As a matter of fact, I have heard comments about our President on

this floor lately that are sort of derogatory. I think he is a fine

man. He is a great President. He is doing a good job. He is honest. He

is forthcoming. He admits if he makes mistakes, and then he gets highly

criticized for having made the mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes from

time to time. It takes a real man to say he has made one.

That is why I came to the floor yesterday and congratulated George

Tenet for having taken the step of admitting he bore the responsibility

for the error in handling the reference in the President's State of the

Union message.

But this President is doing a good job. This Secretary of Defense is

doing a good job. I think the American people should be proud of them.

In my home State, they are certainly proud of them. And they are proud

of the young men and women in uniform representing our country over

there.

I think the very thought that somehow something is going wrong here

and because something is going wrong here people are dying in Iraq is

just a terrible thing. People are dying in Iraq, unfortunately, because

there are snipers. There are terrorists loose in Iraq. I thought we

were conducting a global war against terrorism. What is going on in

Iraq is terrorism. There has been a regime change. There are people

opposed to that change, and they are trying to kill our people over

there. They are trying to protect their own brothers and sisters in

their own country.

I hope the Senate settles down a little bit. In the past, we have

handled this bill very expeditiously because of our respect for men and

women in uniform. This is the money to pay those people who represent

our country throughout the world. They are deployed in many countries.

They read about what goes on here. They listen to it. They have it on

C-SPAN.

By the way, it is a very interesting thing for this generation to go

overseas compared to my time overseas. I never got a phone call after I

left my home until I got back. These young people have phone calls

every day. They have e-mail. They use the Web. They conduct their

classes when they are deployed overseas and continue their studies. It

is a different world. They know what is going on here.

I hope they understand what we are trying to do is get this bill

passed and make sure they get their pay raise; make sure everything is

in place in time so when September 30 comes, this bill will have passed

and become law and be there for the protection of our men and women in

uniform.

I regret deeply that we have to handle an amendment like this. We

know the amounts required for the fiscal year 2004 military operations

in Iraq and Afghanistan. We already put the money up. They are

reporting monthly on what they spend.

Now we want to predict how much they are going to spend. I really do

not see the relevancy of this amendment. Tomorrow, I hope to end the

debate by moving to table. I hope the Senate will support that motion.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order

for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Talent). Without objection, it is so

ordered.

Joint Air to Surface Stand-off Missile (JASSM)

Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I am reminded that both the distinguished

chairman and the ranking member have been strong proponents of the

JASSM program in the past.

The JASSM program is less than 30 days from completing operational

test and is scheduled for a full rate production decision in November

of this year. Both DOD and the Air Force have sufficient confidence in

JASSM that they have proposed to use fiscal year 2003 Iraqi freedom

funds to procure additional missiles. In addition, I would note that

the Navy is scheduled to join the Air Force in future JASSM

procurements and this production ramp is critical to meeting both the

Navy and Air Force inventory requirements.

I hope that we can work in conference to find a path that will

protect the existing contract while at the same time provide the Air

Force these vitally needed ``go-to-war'' assets.

Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senator for bringing this matter to my

attention. He has my assurance that we will consider this matter in

conference.

Mr. INOUYE. I agree with the chairman and will join him in reviewing

this matter for conference.

digitization of department of defense manuals

Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, beginning in fiscal year 2003 and

continuing this year, the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has

included funds for the digitization of Department of Defense, DoD,

manuals and has directed that the work be performed by information

technology firms owned and operated by Native Americans located in

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impoverished Native communities. These Native firms came together and

formed a corporation, the Intertribal Information Technology

Corporation, that could serve as the prime contractor in an effort to

facilitate the contracting relationship with the Department of Defense.

This consortium of firms has been working with mentoring information

technology companies who already have existing contracts with the

Department of Defense. I have had two briefings on the progress that is

being made by the Native firms and their mentoring companies on

existing DoD contract work, and have been advised that the performance

of the Native firms is both exemplary and highly efficient. A few

months ago, I had the opportunity to attend the dedication of the

Native Hawaiian information technology firm that is part of this

consortium, and was further impressed with the capacity of these Native

firms to carry out the digitization work.

Mr. STEVENS. I agree. The war in Iraq demonstrated the important of

having the highly-mobile maintenance capability that the digitization

of DoD manuals enabled our forces to employ. For many years, the

Senator and I have shared a concern about the high unemployment rates

in Native communities. This program serves as one effective means of

addressing those high unemployment rates while also providing the

Defense Department with new sources of supply for digitization

services.

Mr. INOUYE. As the Senator knows, the ten Native-owned firms that

came together to establish a new Small Business Act 8(a) firm is

composed of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian

information technology companies. To my knowledge, this is the first

business enterprise to be jointly owned by the three indigenous

populations of the United States.

This new jointly-owned firm was established so that DoD would only

have to award a single contract rather than having to award ten

separate contracts to each of the ten participating firms. In

establishing the jointly-owned firm, it was well understood that the

jointly-owned firm would subcontract the digitization work to the ten

participating Native-owned firms, and that the jointly-owned firm would

assume administrative responsibilities and provide technical support to

the ten Native Firms to ensure the highest quality production.

This innovative approach reflects the intent of the Congress that the

digitization work be performed by Native firms that can not only

produce quality products for the Government, but that in the process of

doing so, can also generate jobs in the economically-disadvantaged

communities that they serve.

Mr. STEVENS. It is my understanding that the contract with the

jointly-owned firm was to have been awarded on June 2 of this year, but

that DoD officials are now expressing some reluctance to allow the

jointly-owned firm to pass the digitization work through to the Native

firms because the customary practice is to have the prime contractor

perform the majority of the work. I am also told, however, that there

is an exception to this practice provided for in regulation,

particularly when the Government had directed or identified a specific

source for the provision of services, as we did in the fiscal year 2003

Department of Defense Appropriations Act.

Mr. INOUYE. Yes, that is my understanding as well. I am advised that

the exception can be applied while still assuring full compliance with

all procurement requirements. So I would ask, is it the intent and

directive of the Appropriations Committee that the Department of

Defense employ all legal measures available under the law to accomplish

the intent of the Congress in having the digitization work performed by

the ten participating Native-owned firms through a single DoD contract

with the jointly-owned firms?

Mr. STEVENS. This is the intent. This new program is already proving

to be a highly-efficient means of addressing the Department's needs for

the digitization of DoD manuals, and we would expect the Defense

Department to employ every legal authority at its disposal to implement

the program as Congress intended it to be implemented

air force advanced power transformation office

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for

the mission of the U.S. Air Force, USAF, Advanced Power Transformation

Office, APTO, at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. This transformation

office was established to advise and assist military installations all

over the world in their development of alternative fueled vehicles.

Mr. STEVENS. If the Senator from Georgia would yield for a question,

I have learned that the Energy Policy Act authorizes the APTO to enter

into public-private collaborative agreements to encourage the

development and deployment of alternative fuel vehicles and alternative

hydrogen fueling infrastructures. Does the Senator know whether the

transformation office in Georgia has taken advantage of this

opportunity?

Mr. CHAMBLISS. As my colleague from Alaska has suggested, the APTO

has entered a public-private collaborative project with the Southern

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Research Partnership, which has then entered into a

further agreement with the Georgia Tech Research Institute. This

Georgia-based collaborative advances the national interest in the study

of hydrogen-powered vehicles and fueling system designs. The APTO also

hopes to accelerate the development of hydrogen power technology to

determine whether it is feasible for both military and commercial use.

Because of the importance of this project, I urge the Air Force to

continue to support this important initiative.

Mr. STEVENS. The committee also notes the importance and value of the

efforts of the Advanced Power Transformation Office and encourages the

Air Force to continue funding and support for this important

initiative.

Mr. CHAMBLISS. I thank the distinguished Senator from Alaska, and I

yield the floor.

SAC Position on Objective Force Cannon

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 1382, the

Department of Defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 2004, as

reported by the Senate Committee on Appropriations. I take a moment to

talk about the urgent need for the non-line of sight cannon and to

commend the actions the Senate Appropriations Committee has taken to

meet this key need.

We have heard testimony from the most senior members of the Army

uniformed and civilian leadership that organic Army indirect fire is

one of the most urgent needs in today's military environment.

When Congress agreed to allow the Department of Defense to terminate

the Crusader program last year, it did so with the explicit

understanding the Crusader technology would be used to form the basis

of a new lighter, more easily deployable non-line of sight cannon,

which would be ready no later than 2008.

Indeed, during the last session we enacted law to that effect, and

also stipulated that development of the non-line of sight cannon would

be undertaken as part of the Army's Artillery Systems Demonstration and

Validation program element, which is the only place within the budget

that cannon artillery research and development is funded.

The designation of the non-line of sight cannon as a congressional

special interest by the Senate Appropriations Committee goes even

further than last year's legislation to ensure that this need is met. I

ask the chairman to comment on the need for this further step.

Mr. STEVENS. In an effort to ensure full compliance with Congress's

intent to fully fund the non-line of sight cannon program, the Senate

Appropriations Committee has designated the program as a congressional

special interest and appropriated funding in a separate program element

devoted to the advanced development of artillery systems.

Mr. INHOFE. With limited resources available for the competing needs

of modernization and force sustainment, it is imperative that crucial

programs like non-line of sight cannon receive the requisite

congressional oversight to ensure their timely development and fielding

in accordance with the priority they enjoy.

I thank the Senator, and my other colleagues on the Appropriations

Committee for their efforts to ensure that this vital program receives

the funding it needs.

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supplies of meals ready to eat

Mr. BAYH. Would the chairman yield for an inquiry on the subject of

MRE supplies?

Mr. STEVENS. I would yield to the Senator from Indiana for a

question.

Mr. BAYH. Mr. President, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, our military

relied upon MREs to an extent never before seen in the history of

modern combat. Due to concerns about the safety of the local food

supply, Operation Iraqi Freedom and the subsequent mission has relief

almost entirely on MREs to feed our soldiers. It is my understanding at

the height of the operation, the Department of Defense was consuming

roughly 300,000 cases of MREs per week. Is the chairman aware of this

unprecedented use of MREs?

Mr. STEVENS. I was aware of the reliance on MREs, yes.

Mr. BAYH. I would further point out at the height of the operation,

some estimate that DOD was down to a worldwide reserve of some 400,000

cases. To summarize, DOD was within a week of running out of food for

our soldiers in the field. Thanks to a surge in production by MRE

producers on very little notice, DOD managed to stave off a logistical

and potential military disaster. Is the chairman aware of how close we

came to literally running out of food?

Mr. STEVENS. I was not. But I certainly believe the committee should

look into it.

Mr. BAYH. Surprisingly, the Defense Logistics Agency, DLA, has still

not chosen to replenish an adequate was reserve of MREs. In additions,

DLA has cut MRE production despite the fact that our troops in Iraq are

still consuming MREs at an unprecedented rate. Would the chairman

consider this matter in conference and have the managers address it if

the committee finds the problem to be as grave as it would appear?

Mr. STEVENS. We would be willing to look at that possibility.

Mr. LOTT. Would the chairman yield for me to add further to the

discussion at hand?

Mr. STEVENS. I yield to the Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. LOTT. Part of any military exercise or experience is an

afteraction review to learn what went right and wrong and how to

improve on things in future situations. It would seem that the MRE

supply issue is just such an issue. Obviously DLA did not have reserve

stocks of food on hand going into this operation. Obviously no one

anticipated the consumption rate we have experienced in the past few

months. But it seems apparent that the reliance upon MREs isn't going

to change in the foreseeable future.

I can think of a number of things that could go wrong during a

military operation, but running out of food has to be one of the worst.

So I can't imagine why DLA is cutting production when we haven't even

started to replenish our reserves. It would seem simple enough that if

anything DLA should be increasing production and increasing reserves so

that we never face this potential disaster again.

I am informed that an adequate reserve based upon the new realities

we have discovered in the past few months would ultimately be 10.5

million cases. Well, we are about 10 million cases away from that goal

so we better get started on meeting that target. I too would certainly

welcome anything the chairman could do to address this problem in

conference and compel DLA to up the reserve stocks of MREs to an

adequate level. I yield back of the chairman.

Mr. STEVENS. We are going to take a close look at this problem and

see what is or isn't being done to address it and take corrective

action if necessary.

cost-sharing of defense medical research

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I would like to take this chance to thank

Chairman Stevens for his leadership in funding the Army Peer-Reviewed

Breast Cancer Research Program at $150 million in this bill. I would

also like to take a moment to enter into a colloquy with the

distinguished chair of the Appropriations Committee about the report

language in the committee report on cost-sharing in such medical

research. Mr. Chairman, when I read this report language, it seems

clear that the intent of the language is to determine if there is some

way to contain medical research costs within the defense budget.

We all know that the Army Peer-Reviewed Breast Cancer Research

Program, BCRP, has proven to be efficient and highly effective, and the

committee has supported its efforts strongly. The flexibility of this

program allows the Army to administer it in such a way as to maximize

its limited resources. The BCRP is able to quickly respond to current

scientific advances, and is able to fill gaps by focusing on research

that is traditionally underfunded. It is also responsive, not just to

the scientific community, but also to the public.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, the Senator from Vermont is correct. The committee

is seeking to determine alternative ways to fund increases in these

kinds of projects, but not undermine the effectiveness of ongoing

programs. The committee has received numerous requests to start up new

medical research programs. In many cases these requests cannot be met

when trying to meet other valid military requirements with limited

resources. The language is certainly not specifically designed to

undermine the integrity of the existing DOD BCRP, and the committee

recognizes it as innovative, extremely accountable and transparent in

its approach to medical research.

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the chairman. I would also like to clarify the

language in this provision about the agencies to perform the study. Am

I right in reading the word ``consultation,'' in reference to the

offices, institutes, and bureaus performing the study, to mean a

continual process of discussion and collaboration? Consultation almost

always involves more than simple briefings, but a consistent, mutual

back-and-forth designed to ensure the objectivity, soundness, and

fairness of a research process.

I personally hope that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health

Affairs will go even beyond that notion and rely heavily on the

expertise of the Institute of Medicine, which has reviewed programs

like the Army Peer-Reviewed Breast Cancer Research Programs on several

occasions.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, that is right. The language clearly foresees that

the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs will work closely

with the service Surgeons General and the Institute of Medicine to

develop and conduct a sensible, objective, and fair analysis of cost-

sharing options for future medical research programs.

Mr. LEAHY. I thank my good friend from Alaska for his support of

programs like the Army Peer-Reviewed Breast Cancer Research Program.

Recently one of the staunch advocates of this program in my home State

of Vermont, Patt Barr, passed away. One of my lasting memories of Pat

is seeing her standing in the hallway here in the Capitol, well past

midnight, patiently explaining to individual Senators why the

Department of Defense should include funds for breast cancer research

in its medical budget. Mr. Chairman, your support and spirit has keep

her legacy living on.

laser peening

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss an important

matter with my friend, the distinguished committee chairman.

I have been a long-time supporter of laser peening technology. Laser

peening is a revolutionary materials processing technology that has

proven very effective in solving many of the fatigue problems currently

plaguing military engines, such as the F101 engine in the B-1 bomber.

Laser peening has been scientifically and battlefield proven to extend

fatigue life and fatigue strength of metal parts.

In recognition of the benefits of laser peening, the Army has

initiated an effort to establish a technology insertion program that

would employ laser peening in support of major Army helicopter

programs. Congress provided $1 million to begin this effort in fiscal

year 2002.

Laser peening technology is being evaluated to extend the life of

flight critical components on Army helicopters--including the CH-47

Chinook, AH-64 Apache, and UH-60 Black Hawk. These components are

subject to fretting fatigue, wear that results when two metal

components rub against each other. Without laser peening, fretting

produces cracks that penetrate

[[Page S9398]]

deep into the component surface, causing fracture, failure, and

ultimately requiring part replacement. Laser peening will be applied to

families of components such as integrally bladed rotors, gears, and

bearing raceways to significantly increase service life and

reliability. These components are used in all of the Army's helicopters

and ground vehicles with turbine engines, including the Comanche, Black

Hawk, and Apache helicopters and the M2 Abrams tank.

Stated simply, laser peening will improve the performance, extend the

service life and reduce the cost of these critical systems. Without

continued support for laser peening technology, this program will halt

and these savings and improvements will never be realized.

In recognition of the tremendous potential for laser peening for the

Army, I would ask the chairman's assistance in allowing the funds

available for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation for the Army

to be used for laser peening for Army aircraft and ground equipment.

Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senator for his interest in this issue. I

recognize the importance of laser peening technology, and I promise the

Senator that I will be certain to give his request careful

consideration as we proceed with action on the Department of Defense

Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2004.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President I rise today to discuss the defense

appropriations bill before us this week and the excellent work the

chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Stevens, and the

ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee, Senator Inouye, have done

to bring a very good bill before the Senate under a tight budget.

Additionally, we are engaged in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,

which make it critical that we approve a bill that gives the men and

women in the field the tools they need. Senator Stevens and Senator

Inouye have crafted a bill to benefit our armed forces in a time of

war. Additionally, the bill is forward looking and meets our

transformational goals to modernize the U.S. military.

On Saturday, LPD-17, USS San Antonio, will be christened at Avondale

Shipyard in Louisiana. The San Antonio will move from dry-dock into the

Mississippi River, where she will undergo final preparations before she

can be delivered to the United States Navy and the Marines. It will be

a day to celebrate. There can be no doubt about America's need for the

LPD class of ships. The LPD is designed to bring the fight to our

enemy.

But the LPD program has suffered bumps and bruises along the way. She

has experienced delays and cost-overruns. Some tough love was needed to

bring efficiency to the program. Today, however, the LPD program is

back on track. It is on time and on budget. It is a fitting coincidence

that we will christen the San Antonio at a time when the LPD program is

healthy.

The LPD program could not have been brought back to even keel without

the guidance and support of Senators Stevens and Inouye. They have been

long-time advocates of the LPD program. I cannot thank them enough for

keeping faith in a program that is absolutely vital to our Marines.

In this bill, Senators Stevens and Inouye helped the LPD overcome yet

another hurdle. When the President's budget for shipbuilding came out

in February, the President recommended the construction of LPD-23 to

begin in fiscal year 2006, not fiscal year 2005 as originally planned.

The Department of Defense sought to push back the production rate of

the LPD program, which, if enacted, will only cause the LPD program to

experience price increases, once again. Moreover, if the recommendation

holds, over 2,000 lay-offs of highly skilled workers could occur at

Avondale and Ingalls in Mississippi. Fortunately, the chair and ranking

member support keeping LPD-23 on schedule for fiscal year 2005. I am

appreciative, and I know the Marine Corps and people of Louisiana are

appreciative.

During the debate on the budget resolution, I offered a resolution to

increase spending for the National Guard and Reserve forces by $1.1

billion to meet unfunded equipment requirements. Our Guard and Reserve

forces make up over 40 percent of our armed forces personnel, yet for

years they barely received 8 percent of the funds in the defense

budgets. Our Armed Forces could not have performed as brilliantly as

they did in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom

without our reliance on our National Guard and Reserve. Over 320,000

guardsmen and reservists have been activated since September 11, 2001.

Many have been called up two and three times, which places tremendous

stresses on the lives of our troops and their loved ones. Our citizen

soldiers are being asked to perform the same tasks as our active

forces, and they are doing so with expertise. But, they often have

hand-me-down equipment. There are people near and dear to me stationed

right now in Iraq in the Reserves. When their lives are on the line, I

do not want them wondering if their Vietnam era equipment will work.

Again, I am pleased Senators Stevens and Inouye have made a strong

commitment to bolstering our National Guard and Reserve. They funded

the National Guard and Reserve equipment account at $750 million. This

will allow our Guard and Reserve forces to purchase key equipment for

modernization, such as laser targeting pods. The Senate also commits

key funds to the modernization and long-term sustainment of the

National Guard: $175 million for upgrades to National Guard Bradley

fighting vehicles; $50 million and pledge for full funding for a

Stryker Brigade for the National Guard, $70 million for Black Hawk

helicopters, and $17 million to stand up 12 additional weapons of mass

destruction civil support teams. This money will be well invested, and

I know the men in women in our National Guard and Reserve will put this

equipment to good use.

I also wish to thank Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye for their

continued support of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, LA. Last

year, we were saddened by the death of one of America's greatest

historians, Dr. Stephen Ambrose. His works have chronicled, for

perpetuity, the lives of Lewis and Clark, Dwight Eisenhower, and the

millions of brave Americans who took up a call to arms in World War II

in order to protect the United States and liberate the world.

In 1991, Dr. Ambrose embarked on a mission to create a museum to

honor America's war heroes. He wanted to place the Museum in New

Orleans because Andrew Jackson Higgins was a New Orleanian. Most people

in the U.S. do not know who Andrew Jackson Higgins is, but we owe a

great debt to Mr. Higgins. He created the landing crafts, or Higgins

boats, used to carry U.S. G.I.s to the shores of northern France for

the D-day invasion of 1944. In Dr. Ambrose's interviews with President

Eisenhower, President Eisenhower stated that Andrew Jackson Higgins'

boats were the reason America won World War II.

In June of 2000, on the 56th anniversary of D-day, the National D-Day

Museum opened its doors and fulfilled the realization of Dr. Ambrose's

dream. The museum has been a run-away success. When you walk through

its exhibits, you cannot keep from being immersed in the history. To

see a veteran explaining to his grand-children what life was like in

World War II is truly remarkable.

Just last week, on July 7, the 1 millionth visitor walked through the

doors of the D-Day Museum. It is an extraordinary accomplishment for a

museum to welcome 1 million visitors in 37 months. Visitors to the

Museum are saying they traveled to New Orleans just to tour the

National D-Day Museum. Usually, people say they visit New Orleans for

the food or the music. It is a true testament to the D-Day Museum that

people are now thinking of the D-Day Museum before they think of creole

food and jazz as reasons to vacation in New Orleans. Again, we might

not be celebrating the millionth visitor if it were not for the

commitments of Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye to help Dr. Ambrose

make his dream a reality. The people of Louisiana and all one million

visitors are grateful.

In closing, I look forward to approving the Defense appropriations

bill and hope we can move to conference quickly so that we can best

provide for our troops. I would be remiss if I did not commend the

Defense Appropriations Subcommittee staff members their

[[Page S9399]]

diligence, too. Senators Stevens and Inouye navigated difficult waters

and came up with a good bill, and for that I am appreciative.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am very pleased we were able to maintain

continued strong funding for the Army Peer-Reviewed Breast Cancer

Research Program, BCRP, and for a number of other medical research

programs in this bill. The BCRP has made a real difference in

supporting innovative, effective research to help the many women and

men who get breast cancer in this country. Because of its success,

other medical research programs have been added, and there is always

interest in adding more. The chairman has expressed concern about the

potential effect of these new requests on the Defense budget, and the

committee report includes language requesting the Department to look at

possible additional sources of funding. I look forward to working with

the Department, the Institute of Medicine, and others to ensure that

this review strengthens the medical research programs and does not

undermine or bias them, and I look forward to working with the chairman

to ensure continued strong funding for these important programs.

____________________