Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague for yielding me this time, and let me just rise to oppose what I think is a very dangerous amendment.

Historically, companies do not have to have a license to transmit marketing information to foreign customers. A couple of years ago, when we strengthened export controls on satellite exports, foreign customers started increasing their demands for what they called technical information as part of a marketing pitch. The foreign customers were not looking for the kind of information that the public can get. They were after proprietary design, integration, and operational information that could be used for a variety of purposes, including improvements in their own capabilities.

So while the Tauscher amendment purports to prevent that information from being sent abroad, it leaves the definition of marketing information up to the prospective foreign customer.

And let me just say, Mr. Chairman, that this technology, this technology of separation of a payload from a booster that puts a satellite up is very much akin to the technology that accompanies a separation of a MIRV'd nuclear warhead from its booster. This is dangerous technology, and I would ask everyone to vote against the Tauscher amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

I wanted to speak in support of the amendment which expresses a sense of the Congress that the International Boundary and Water Commission should move forward with a program that is intended to eliminate the flow of Mexican sewage across the international border in the Pacific region into waters that end up polluting the Southern California coastline and requiring a quarantine of that coastline.

Mr. Chairman, we have been urging the International Boundary and Water Commission to make treaty negotiations with Mexico on establishing a public-private partnership to construct and operate a wastewater treatment facility in Mexico as outlined in existing Public Law 106-457. To date, they have shown insignificant progress. They have shown no inclination to move forward on this important mandate which is in law, and this is a sense of Congress to urge them to get moving.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to give recognition to the extraordinary life of Dr. Tom Taylor who passed away in late May of this year. Tom was the chief scientist and director of special projects in the Expeditionary Warfare Department at the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research. Not only did Tom have great strategic vision and scientific expertise but he was a great friend.

Tom, who was part American Indian, was born in Waco, Texas, and grew up in Oklahoma City. He earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of Oklahoma and his Ph.D in chemical and aeronautical engineering at the University of California Berkeley. He was commissioned in the Army through ROTC and participated in research and development programs at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal. Tom often credited his days at Picatinny with making him a successful scientific program manager.

Dr. Eli Zimet, an old friend, remembers that ``Tom could visualize concepts, and see them through development to completion. He knew how to get things done--to get funding, find the right performer for a program, and sit on the performer until he produced.''

Tom defined a new model for public service with a career path that included a mix of work

for corporations, not for profit organizations, and the Government. At Northrop, Ford, and the Aerospace Corporation he worked on re-entry physics research and aircraft development. While at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Tom worked on submarine detection concepts. This work took him to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as the codirector of the Naval Technology Office and the Advanced Submarine Technology (SUBTECH) program.

As a senior fellow and director of technology systems development at the Center for Naval Analyses, Tom carried out a highly respected and well-received study of design concepts for future aircraft carriers, and a second highly regarded study of air-traffic management for the Federal Aviation Administration.

He co-authored a book, ``Computational Methods for Fluid Flow,'' and wrote numerous papers on computational fluid dynamics and other topics. Just two years ago Tom was one of a handful of experts to testify before the House Science Committee Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Review of Vertical Takeoff and Landing Technology in the National Airspace System.

At the Office of Naval Research, Tom started as the director of strike technology for the Special Programs department. Later, he was the chief scientist and director of special projects in the Expeditionary Warfare department. The Affordable Weapon program was his ``crowning achievement.'' Tom's science and technology prototype proved that an effective cruise missile could be made from commercial and government parts without costing a fortune.

In addition to his numerous scientific and management accomplishments, Tom was a tremendous guy--a lot of fun to be around. He had lived in Paris, drove a fast car, was a sharp dresser, and owned a vacation home on the coast of Morocco. He made friends wherever he went. His passing leaves all of us sad but filled with happy memories.

Tom leaves a wife, Francoise, of Paris, a son, Scot, of San Francisco, a daughter, Cynthia, who lives in London, a granddaughter, and a sister, Sandra.

Mr. Speaker, the briefing by Secretary Rumsfeld that was to take place on the floor at 4 p.m. will take place at 4 p.m. in Rayburn 2118.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 177) recognizing and commending the members of the United States Armed Forces and their leaders, and the allies of the United States and their armed forces, who participated in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq and recognizing the continuing dedication of military families and employers and defense civilians and contractors and the countless communities and patriotic organizations that lent their support to the Armed Forces during those operations, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H. Con. Res. 177, the concurrent resolution under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Con. Res. 177, a resolution commending the members of the Armed Forces and our allies, their armed forces and all those who were involved in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As we stand here today, U.S. forces are deployed around the world engaged in the global war on terrorism. The first two campaigns in that war, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, proved our resolve in taking the fight to anyone, anywhere, who wishes to do us harm. The results showed that the United States military remains the most powerful and effective military in the history of mankind.

The after-action reports will show many reasons for our success. However, I believe that the most important factor is the simplest one: our people. The United States is blessed to have the most highly trained, equipped and motivated force in the world. It is through the dedication, creativity and ability of our young men and women in uniform that we were able to prevail. I, and all my colleagues, commend them for their service.

Through both these operations, our forces stood shoulder to shoulder with 21 allied nations in Afghanistan and 49 coalition members in Iraq. And I might mention specifically the 40,000-plus troops of Great Britain and the 2,000-plus troops from Australia and the 200 Special Operators from Poland, who aided us in this fight. And without the help of these allies who contributed so much, we would not have enjoyed the success that we have had at this point.

Neither could we have succeeded without the support of the civilian employees of the DOD, industry employees and leadership. Of course, we had lots of contractors working our systems, helping out in that operation and, of course, we had community organizations and employers. Very importantly, Mr. Speaker, employers who made their Guardsmen and Reservists available for these endeavors and those employers who accommodated their absence to go out and defend our country. Their support to the men and women in the field made these operations possible.

H. Con. Res. 177 commends the bravery, dedication and resolve of all those who contributed to the success of these two operations. In particular, however, I want to express the condolences and thanks of a grateful Nation and a grateful Congress to the families of those American service personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice during these operations. Nothing we do here today can adequately express our sorrow at the loss of these brave men and women. The sole consolation that we can offer is that it is our conviction that they did not die in vain. Our country and the entire world is safer and freer today because of their sacrifice. We honor their service and we mourn their loss.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, just one last point. I was in Iraq a couple of days ago. And in talking at our last visit in Kirkuk, in getting our briefings from the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, I asked him the inevitable question. That is, of the 26,000 folks you have in theater right now, how many incidents have you had of mistreatment of Iraqi citizens? Of course, these things happen when you have hundreds of thousands of people deployed, you now and again have incidents like that. But he looked surprised when I asked the question, and he answered not one, not one incident of mistreatment of Iraqi civilians by our military forces.

Mr. Speaker, that reflection on the professionalism and the goodness of our people during this occupation following the war is itself another reason for us to commend our troops and commend their service to our country.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank the gentlewoman and assure her that her and the gentleman from California's (Mr. Cunningham) resolution is very much embodied in what the committee produced and thank her for her great efforts.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to say to my colleague who just spoke, and I would like to get his attention, because when the gentleman gets up on these resolutions and implies that there is somehow a political agenda behind them, it tends, I think, to do a disservice to the resolutions.

This resolution came about because lots of Members, like the gentlewoman from the party of the gentleman who just spoke, have asked to put resolutions forward commending our troops and recognizing their sacrifice. The Committee on Armed Services, seeing all these resolutions being put out, with Members on the Democrat and Republican side wanting to commend this unit or that unit coming back to their country, we took all of those and we looked at them and we decided to do one large resolution that commended everyone in these operations. And we have, literally, at the end of this resolution, we have named every single American unit that participated in the operation.

There is no political agenda here. This is a consolidating of all of the efforts and the input from Members of this body, Democrat and Republican, some of them for the war, presumably some against the war, who wanted to commend the people who participated in it. It is that and it is nothing more. And by implying a political agenda, the gentleman, in fact, injects a political agenda into the debate.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to my friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), who is so closely associated with that great aircraft carrier which steamed into San Diego a couple of days ago at the end of its career, the Constellation, America's Navy, along with Willy Driscoll from the Vietnam War.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have left?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I will be happy to yield some time to my colleague in a minute.

But I want to say to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), before he leaves the floor, that he mentioned this important issue, that I know he had taken up with me and he feels is very important, to try to give what I think we could call pay parity to folks in the Guard and the Reserve. I think there is merit in his proposal. But I did want to mention that we do some meaningful things in this Defense bill in which we marked up this particular resolution.

Mr. Speaker, it was not just commendations that we gave our troops. We also marked up a 4.1 percent pay raise, decreased the out-of-pocket expenses for our folks, increased the amount of money for family housing, and we did a number of things that will accrue to the benefit of our troops, both active Guard and Reserve.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I thought one thing that I might do at this point is yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) to close, and then I wanted to read the units that participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom and put on the record the folks who participated in these operations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who is my partner on the Committee on Armed Services who has done so much great work.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let me just conclude this resolution by reciting the units that participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom. From the Army: Army Forces Central Command--3rd United States Army; V Corps Command Element; 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized); 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault); 82nd Airborne Division; 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized); Elements of the 1st Infantry Division; 10th Mountain Division, and 1st Armored Division; 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment; 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment; 173rd Airborne Brigade (Sep); 11th Aviation Group.

From the Marine Corps: Marine Forces Central Command; 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade; 1st Marine Division; 3rd Marine Air Wing; 1st Force Service Support Group; 2nd Force Service Support Group/Marine Logistics Command; 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (Task Force Tarawa); 15th, 24th, and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units.

From the Navy: Naval Forces Central Command--United States 5th Fleet; Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Force; Nimitz Carrier Strike Force; Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Force; Constellation Carrier Strike Force; Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Force; Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Force; Amphibious Task Force East; Amphibious Task Force West; Nassau Amphibious Ready Group; Tarawa Amphibious Ready Group; Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group; Amphibious Group 3; Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons 1, 2, and 4.

From the Air Force: Air Forces Central Command--9th Air Force; 9th Air Expeditionary Task Force; 16th Air Expeditionary Task Force; and the following air expeditionary wings: 39th, 40th, 64th, 320th, 321st, 332nd, 363rd, 376th, 379th, 380th, 384th, 386th, 401st, 405th, 410th, 484th, 485th, 486th, and 487th Air Expeditionary Wing. And the following Air Expeditionary groups: 387th, 398th, 407th, 409th, 444th, 447th, 449th, 457th, 449th, 457th, 458th, and 506th.

The following Expeditionary Air Support Operations Groups: 3rd, 4th, 18th, 1st Expeditionary RED HORSE Group, the 86th Contingency Response Group, 15th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.

From the United States Special Operations Command: Special Operations Command Central; 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne); 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne); 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne); 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; 75th Ranger Regiment; 352nd Civil Affairs Command; 350th Civil Affairs Command; 304th, 308th, and 358th Civil Affairs Brigades.

From the Naval Special Warfare Command: Naval Special Warfare Group One; Naval Special Warfare Group Three.

From the Air Force Special Operations Command: 16th Special Operations Wing; 919th Special Operations Wing; 193rd Special Operations Wing; 720th Special Operations Group; 352nd Special Operations Group; 123rd Special Tactics Squadron; 280th Command Control Squadron.

From the Coast Guard: U.S. Coast Guard Cutters Boutwell, Dallas, Walnut, Aquidneck, Adak, Wrangell, Baranof, Bainbridge Island, Grande Isle, Knight Island, Pea Island, and Sapelo.

The following port security units: Port Security Units 313, 311, 309, 305.

Law Enforcement Detachments 101, 202, 204, 205, 404, 406, and 411; Atlantic Strike Team Detachment; Law Enforcement Attachment; Harbor Defense Command Units 114 and 206.

Operation Enduring Freedom--

From the Army: Army Forces Central Command, Combined Joint Task Force 180; 10th Mountain Division; 101st Airborne Division; and 82d Airborne Division.

From the Marine Corps: Marine Forces Central Command; Commander Joint Task Force--Horn of Africa; Combined Joint Task Force 58; and the following Marine Expeditionary Units: 11th, 13th, 15th, 22nd, 26th.

Detachments: 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

From the Navy: Navy Forces Central Command--U.S. 5th Fleet; Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Force; Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Force; Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Force; Enterprise Carrier Strike Force; Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Force; John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Force; John F. Kennedy Carrier Strike Force; George Washington Carrier Strike Force; Bonhomme Richard Amphibious Ready Group; Bataan Amphibious Ready Group; Peleliu Amphibious Ready Group; Wasp Amphibious Ready Group.

From the Air Force: Air Forces Central Command--9th Air Force. The following Air Expeditionary task forces: the 9th and the 13th. The following Air Expeditionary Wings: 28th, 40th, 64th, 320th, 321st, 322nd, 363rd, 366th, 376th, 379th, 380th, 384th, 386th, 405th, and the 455th.

The following Air Expeditionary Groups: 416th, 438th, 451st, the First Expeditionary RED HORSE Group.

From the United States Special Operations Command: 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne); 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne); 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne); 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne); 2nd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne); 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; 75th Ranger Regiment; 350th Civil Affairs Command; 354th, 360th, and 403rd Civil Affairs Brigades; 310th Psychological Operations Brigade.

From the Naval Special Warfare Command: Group 1 and Naval Special Warfare Group Three; 16th Special Operations Wing; 352nd Special Operations Group; 919th Special Operations Wing; 193rd Special Operations Wing; 720th Special Operations Group; and 123rd Special Tactics Squadron.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing us to, in the words of the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), give this thanks from a grateful Nation to the people who carried freedom to very difficult and remote parts of the world in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for his participation.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I agree with the gentleman. I think that this bill is going to provide for more jobs for civil service employees because it is easier when we have a job to do under this massive bureaucracy we have now and the SECDEF says, I need that job done, can we have a civil servant do it? And the answer is, we can in 6 months. So the Secretary then does one of two things: He says, okay, let us get a contractor to do it, if we cannot get one of our own guys to do it the other alternative is let us get a sergeant to do it. The sergeant salutes and says, yes, sir, and he goes and gets the information he needs to do the job and he does it.

So the idea that we are going to be contracting the civil service force as a result of this is absolutely not accurate. In my opinion, we are going to have more people. Secretary Rumsfeld said there are, right now, under his estimate, some 300,000 uniformed people, people in the military, doing jobs that civil service folks could do if we could get the bureaucracy out of the way.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, let me just say that the distinguished whip on the other side has made a point that more time should be given to this issue.

We are doing a $400 billion bill; and arguably the decisions on hundreds of weapons system that we are approving, both whether we are talking about the high-tech stuff or the low-tech stuff that we are bolstering in this bill, those decisions could have life and death impact, and yet we moved this bill through.

I want to assure the gentleman that we gave more time to this issue. We did a 10-hour hearing on this issue, largely at the insistence of the distinguished ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), but we did a 10-hour hearing. That is more time than we gave any single weapons system in the entire DOD bill. So the argument can be made that we should have 10 times as many hearings as we have, and the gentleman knows that in this House and on this floor we have a myriad of responsibilities. We spent more time on this than any single weapons system in the entire DOD bill, and we had a 25-hour markup. I would say a very substantial portion of that markup, without limitation to debate, was afforded all of the Members.

Lastly, the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform makes a good point. I listened to the concerns. I listened early on to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) and the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis). We sat down and put together this independent appeals board that is going to be afforded anyone and everyone. So we spent a lot of time on this. This was not hastily thrown together.

Lastly, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) made a good point. He said we are putting a major entrustment to the Secretary of Defense to build a new system, and we all agree in many ways it is broken. I am looking at this union dispute over whether they should have cancelled the annual picnic, and it ended up costing $750,000 of taxpayer money to decide whether or not you should cancel the picnic. There are changes that need to be made.

Lots of good people involved themselves on this and worked on this; and

this is an excellent, excellent product. I want to thank everybody who had suggestions because a number of the concerns from Democrats and Republicans were addressed. We are entrusting the Secretary of Defense, who with his team took 300,000 American lives into a very dangerous military theater, and answered to us and did a good job with that entrustment. He deserves some degree of respect, and he has merited the empowerment to move forward and build a new system under our guidance.

We are going to be reviewing everything he has done in a few months. We can change things that he does that we do not like; but certainly giving him an opportunity to revamp his shop to make it better, not just for DOD and the taxpayers but also for the folks that live and work in this system, the Federal employees.

Mr. Speaker, I think we did a good job of working this. We can always spend more time, and I would say to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) that could be said about every single weapons system that comes up here.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is aware of the map that I put up of Camp Pendleton that showed the overlays on the various environmental restrictions. I have gone through that a number of times. It has got the areas for the gnatcatcher, it has got the estuarine sanctuary, it has got the closeout for the beach. The gentleman is aware that there is about 17 miles of beach there where the Marines practice their amphibious landings. Is it the gentleman's claim that that beach is now open for use for the United States Marines?

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

Let me ask the gentleman further, because we are going to have this thing sorted out before this bill is over. Is it the gentleman's contention that the Marine Corps' position is they understand that they can use that beach and they simply have not used it, that that beach is available for amphibious landings?

Did the gentleman ask the Marines? That is my question, I guess.

Let me just tell the gentleman that if you have these agreements that they put in place, those agreements are made by several parties: one, Fish and Wildlife; one, State resources, in California that is Fish and Game; and, lastly, the Service. Since we want to make sure we are all on the same playing field here before this debate is over, I would ask the gentleman, we have got a couple of hours here, to check with the U.S. Marine Corps. I will be happy to be with him when we check on it and we can come to the floor and give together an opinion on how much land is ruled off-limits.

My information from the Marine Corps is that they cannot use that beach. That is not the small part of the beach that is up in the north that they use for the nuclear power plant. Nobody has claimed you want to make amphibious landings at a nuclear power plant.

I would ask the gentleman, since he did not have a direct communication with the Marine Corps, if he could get that, and I will work with him, and we will try to come in with the same sheet of music.

Let me just finish by saying that my information from DOD as of last week is that, currently, of that 17 miles, only roughly one- fifth of a mile, that is roughly one one-hundred-and-fiftieth or one one-hundredth of this shoreline where the Marines practice their amphibious landings is available for use. So we have got totally disparate views. The gentleman says the beach is open. The Marines tell me that the beach is closed. We will be happy to work with him and get a communication from the Marine Corps.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an en bloc amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), chairman of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, and the vice-chairman of the full committee.

(Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I would pledge to work to see that we have a balanced result coming out of the conference and that we work with the gentleman and the other gentlemen who have spoken of this.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from the great State of Michigan (Mr. Upton).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons), who is a member of the committee and has a great defense background.

(Mr. SIMMONS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter).

(Mr. PORTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. Chairman, I yield a challenging 15 seconds to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers), who has a presentation he wants to make.

Mr. Chairman, how much time do we have left under the striking request?

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have under my regular time?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

(Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I wish to assure the gentlewoman that we will work to see to it that small businesses participate robustly in rebuilding Iraq.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time to reciprocate to my partner, the ranking member of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), and thank him for his great work on this bill, and I want to thank all the Members for their great work on this en bloc package.

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, we have a system today which makes a great deal of sense. It says if we sell a supercomputer, and the President has a right to define what a supercomputer is, he can raise the number of millions of theoretical operations per second that define a supercomputer, but once he makes that determination, then if someone sells to what is known as a Tier III country, and that is a country that we may have great problems with, and I will ask the staff to bring down a poster that has those countries. I am talking about countries like China, India, Djibouti, other countries like that; and if you sell a supercomputer to those countries, you have to do something very simple, you just give notice.

You just send a notice to the Department of Commerce; and under our law that we worked out very studiously, the Department of Commerce gives within 24 hours that notice to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, and they are able to scrub their list and say wait a minute, have we got a bad guy who is an end user here? Have we got a company that wants to kill Americans? Do we have somebody who is going to aid terrorists?

If that is not the case and we come up with a benign end user, okay, go ahead and sell it. All we have to do is give notice 10 days before the transfer is made. And if the bureaucracy fails to act in 10 days, the trade under our present law is authorized.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), and I have great respect for him and he is a great friend and he is right on many defense issues, is wrong on this one because this takes away the notice. We are a Nation that now understands that fighting terrorism means knowing things. It means intelligence. We are the country that is going to get information off driver's licenses and visas and background checks because we need information; and yet if this passes, there is no notice requirement.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) says some notice requirement may be built in in the future; but when we strike title B, it takes away the notice requirement.

The other thing that it takes away, it takes away what is known as end-use verification. That means when we sell a supercomputer to Communist China, and they say we are not using this for our nuclear weapons development, we are going to use this for our weather laboratories, that means we have a right to go over and check in that weather laboratory and make sure that they have not transferred it over to nuclear weapons development. The Dreier amendment strikes this, and we no longer can check on how this equipment is being used.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, let me just say, the playtop system that the gentlewoman from California held up and said this would be licensed, that is not the case today. Today the case is 19,000 million theoretical operations per second. That is about 2,000. Nobody is asking for a report on that. We have taken care of that.

Secondly, the heart of this is the report. If you sell to one of these controlled countries like China, you have to let the Secretary of Defense know you did it. He only has 10 days to review it. If he does not do anything, you make the sale. But the idea that we do not want to bother ourselves with knowing what we are doing makes no sense.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities.

(Mr. SAXTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment guts a very important aspect of national security, and that aspect is knowledge. The idea that we want to take away notice when a supercomputer is sold to one of these third-tier countries, and once again I would ask the floor staff to put up that list of so-called third-tier countries, including Communist China and a number of others which may at some point be our adversary, the idea that we want to take away our notice so that we do not know if we are transferring a supercomputer to the Osama bin Laden Construction Corporation, we want to divest ourselves of that knowledge, that makes no sense.

We have a system in place which is very practical. It is a 10-day system. You simply tell, by notice, the Department of Commerce if you are going to sell a supercomputer. The President decides what a supercomputer consists of; and if you are going to sell a supercomputer to China or Pakistan or Vietnam or Algeria, you give them a 10-day notice. He sends a copy within 24 hours to the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State. If nobody objects, you make the sale. If 10 days expires, you go ahead and transfer this supercomputer.

The other thing we have is in-use verification. We want to make sure when a supercomputer goes to China it is being used by their weather bureau, for example, not by their nuclear facilities. The only way one can tell is by sending a team and saying is that supercomputer where they said it would be? That is called in-use verification. The gentleman from California's (Mr. Dreier) amendment strikes in-use verification.

The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) joins me in opposing this amendment very strongly. I would ask the Members to look at the handout that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) and I put out together.

Please vote this amendment down and please retain notice.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent for the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank the gentleman for bringing this amendment and thank him for working with the committee, and we have no objection to the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right when he went over the litany of rights and protections that are in this bill. And we had a 25-hour mark up in which members on the Committee on Armed Services had lots of time, Democrat and Republican, to look at this bill. And let me just say, this bill passed 58 to 2 out of the Committee on Armed Services. And I think if folks really thought that this totally stripped due process away from 700,000 Americans, they would not have voted for that. And it does not strip away due process.

You know something, we are asking the Secretary of Defense to rebuild a system, and I think it is a system that is going to end up employing more people in the civil service because those 300,000 people in uniform who are doing the job now, because of bureaucracy, it is too tough to get through to appoint a civil servant, so it is easier to tell a sergeant, Sergeant, you go to it. The sergeant salutes, he goes and does it, and a civil service job is taken away.

This is going to be a great new reform package.

Now, let us get to the big picture. Just a couple of weeks ago American military folks, people coming from the air and the great Air Force, people projecting power from the sea in our Navy, people making combined arms operations with the Marines and the Army, people parachuting in with the 173rd Airborne coming into northern Iraq, the Third Armored Division moving up like a spear point up through the throat of Iraq going straight to Saddam Hussein's hideout, the great First Marine Division, the First Cav., all those Special Operators, those Special Forces, all the great men and women who supported this operation, went out and took what this Congress has given them over the last many years in terms of equipment and training and they carried out America's foreign policy, and they fought for freedom and they did a great job.

This bill does our job. It replaces that equipment. It raises that pay of 4.1 percent average across the board. It helps us to fight the battle of today if we have to engage by bolstering heavy armor and bringing in new precision-guided munitions; and it also looks over the horizon to the battle we might have to fight tomorrow.

Those great men and women in uniform did their job. This bill is our job. Please vote down the motion to recommit, and let us pass this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of the bill, H.R. 1588, the Clerk be authorized to correct section numbers, punctuation, cross-references, and the table of contents, and to make such other technical and conforming changes as may be necessary to reflect the actions of the House in amending the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 1588, the bill just passed.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time.

Let me say to all my colleagues, this is a great defense bill that is coming to the floor, and I hope everybody supports it. It does a lot of things for America's troops. They have just finished this extraordinary operation where they pushed up through Iraq in very dangerous circumstances, engaged in many conflicts at very close ranges and secured their objective and carried out their mission with extraordinary talent and capable and courage.

Now it is our turn. It is our turn to support the troops. It is our turn to provide the readiness capability. It is our turn to provide for modernization of old platforms, and it is our turn to not only fix what we need to win now but to look beyond the horizon and fix and create and produce what we are going to need tomorrow, and this bill does this.

It provides for many of the very important enablers. And I call enablers things like tankers, tanker aircraft, that allow us to maintain that aircraft bridge between the United States or a base that we have overseas and a potential point of conflict where we can keep aircraft going back and forth, whether those aircraft are cargo aircraft to supply the troops or strike aircraft that are putting rounds on target. And because of that we have got provisions in this bill to provide for tankers. We have a tanker fund that allows us to go forward on either a buy or a lease. We have got that provision in.

We have got provisions in for more of our airlift with C-17 aircraft, these great aircraft that are providing the centerpiece of our airlift today along with our older C-5s and our in-theater C-130s.

We worked on other so-called enablers. We have ramped up this stock of precision-guided munitions we need, those munitions that allow you to go in and hit one strut on a bridge and knock it down, instead of having to carpet bomb the entire bridge with hundreds of bombs. We have a so-called deep strike package that allows us to spend $100 million on a new system to replace these bomber aircraft that we are using today. And the newest B-52 was made in July of 1962, so it is more than 40 years old. We have 21 B-1s, and we now have a small batch of 21 B-2 aircraft, our stealth aircraft. We now have a very small fleet of B-1 aircraft, because we had pulled 23 B-1 aircraft out of the fleet because we could not

afford the spare parts to keep all of those aircraft running. We put those 23 aircraft back in the fleets, or as many of them that can be retrieved, and we provide for the spare parts and the sustainability to keep that part of our important deep strike fleet going.

We provide for the 4.1 pay increase. That is the average pay increase, and we do target parts of that to various aspects of the service where we need critical skills.

We do a good job with respect to housing for our troops, for our families. Today you do not just bring a troop, a uniformed person into the services. You bring a family into the services, and you have to provide for those families. We do that in this bill.

This bill has many good things; and our great subcommittee chairman and subcommittee ranking members and my colleague, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), my great partner who himself is home to the B-2 fleet in America, have done I think an excellent job on putting a great package together.

I want to speak to one aspect of this package that has been talked about a little this morning because people have said, are you killing the environment? Are you hurting the environment? Are you revamping the environment? The answer is no.

What we are doing is providing for freedom to train for our troops. What we have heard over the last many years now is that our bases around the country where these great troops that you saw in Iraq have an opportunity to train, whether they are hitting a beachhead or firing on a range or going through some type of amphibious warfare, those troops need to have places to train and those training grounds are becoming more and more constricted and more and more off-limits to our troops because of application, and I think wrongful application, of our environmental laws.

Let me show you a case in point.

This is a picture of the Marine base at Camp Pendleton in California. There is some 17 miles of beach here, and this is the beach on which the United States Marine Corps practices Iwo Jima. That is where they practice going ashore under heavy fire, where they know they will take substantial casualty for us, for freedom. And guess what we have done with our environmental laws? We have closed them out where they cannot practice.

This is a 17-mile beach. This is a base that is in excess of 100,000 acres. And I want to show my colleagues the various overlays, how the environmental applications have crept in and closed down more and more of this critical training base, and then I want to relate it to bases across this Nation.

Let us turn over to that first overlay. This is your 100,000-acre base. Here is the first overlay where training is now locked out. It is called the estuarine sanctuary. So training is locked out at Camp Pendleton. No Marines can go inside that estuarine sanctuary.

Now we have another restriction. These are the gnatcatcher restrictions. We found a small bird that is considered to be endangered; and because of that these huge areas and, remember, this is a 100,000-plus acre base, these huge areas are now restricted.

Now we have another restriction at Camp Pendleton. Let us turn the third page over. This is the rare plants restriction. It looks to me approximately another 10, 20,000 acres are now restricted from training activity.

Let us turn the next page. These are the riparian areas and the vernal pools which are now also restrictions.

So my point is, the United States Marines came in and talked to the Committee on Armed Services and they said, we used to try to work around these restrictions when we had just a couple of them. Now we can no longer work around them. And, incidentally, there is a lawsuit pending right now and there is an injunction in place for the Marines being able to practice amphibious operations on the vast majority of this beach that we put in place to allow them to practice Iwo Jima for the United States of America. So we have to do something.

So what did we do? Did we do something radical? No, we did not do anything radical. We simply said we want to balance conservation requirements and training requirements.

So what we are going to do is put together a process. It is called an inramp, which is a fancy term for saying if the Fish and Wildlife Department of the United States makes an agreement with the U.S. Marine Corps or the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Army or the U.S. Air Force and they also make an agreement with State Fish and Wildlife in the State, so if it is California, New Jersey, New York or whatever, everybody gets together and you take an area and you make a decision that allows you to balance these two important priorities, conservation and training, and you say, for example, we will allow the rifle range to be here. We will allow the gnatcatcher environment to be here. And maybe if the gnatcatchers migrate in the fall and they leave this area, we will let you have training in this area until they come back. It allows you to make a flexibility adjustment that takes care of both priorities, both conservation of endangered species and training.

Once Fish and Wildlife and State Fish and Game and the military makes this agreement, you cannot come on in after the agreement is made and place another critical habitat over the top of it and paralyze the training operation. That is what we do.

I think it is a very reasonable thing. This was passed first out of Resources with a bipartisan vote, and we passed it in the Committee on Armed Services. And the final vote on the Committee on Armed Services, I might add, when all the smoke cleared and all the dust settled and we had our final vote, I want to thank my ranking member from Missouri for his great leadership here, we had a vote of 58 to 2 in favor of this bill.

So this bill has really good stuff in it for the United States of America, and it balances some very important competing interests the American people have. I do not think any American, if you stopped them on the street and you went over this diagram of how training has been cut back further and further and further, at places like Camp Pendleton, where those Marines that went up the An Nasiriya Corridor trained, I do not think any American would disagree with the idea that you get together Fish and Wildlife and the Marine Corps, you make an arrangement, you set some land aside for the birds, set some land aside for the Marines, and let them both go through their operations.

So I want to thank the gentlewoman for letting me get up and explain this important aspect of the defense bill; and let me urge all Members, Republican and Democrat, to vote for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman's understanding is correct.

Let me just say to my good colleague and the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and a guy who has a great dedication to the Armed Forces, we appreciate all his support and all of the hard work that his committee has done in this area. He has my assurance that we will work with him as this bill walks down through the process.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services have permission to file a supplemental report on the bill (H.R. 1588) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2004 for military activities of the Department of Defense, to prescribe military personnel strengths for fiscal year 2004, and for other purposes.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We have an excellent defense bill before us today. We have learned a number of lessons from the conflict we just concluded in Iraq. I think the lessons of the last 15 years are that we must have in this country broad military capabilities, and that means we have got to be able to handle a conventional armored attack or conventional warfare. We must be able to handle guerilla warfare. We must be able, at the same time, to conduct the war against terrorism, and we have to prepare for the eventuality that ballistic missiles may at some point be launched against the United States.

Mr. Chairman, this bill addresses America's military issues. We address all of the issues that are brought up with respect to personnel. We have a 4.1 percent average pay increase in this bill. We have targeted bonuses where we have critical skills requirements and critical grade requirements. We provide for family housing. We do all the things that are important for people. At the same time, we modernize and we have more money for modernization than we have in years past, Mr. Chairman.

We have lots of old platforms. We know that our Army helicopters average 18.6 years of age. Two-thirds of the Naval aircraft are over 15 years. And if you go down the line you even come up with some antiquities. You come up with B-52 bombers, the youngest of which was built in 1962. So we have many years where modernization is required, and we have embarked on this first step of modernization with this bill that provides a little over $70 billion for modernization.

Mr. Chairman, we have learned lessons in Iraq, and this committee, which worked very hard, Democrats and Republicans on all of our subcommittees listened to our military after the operation in Iraq, and we asked them what their lessons learned were, what new systems, what new capabilities could we work on to give them even more effectiveness on the battlefield. They talked to us, and we have embedded some of these requests, Mr. Chairman, in this bill.

So this bill reflects not just recommendations from the administration over the last several years, but it reflects what war- fighting leaders need on the battlefields and what they have learned is required as a result of this most recent conflict. So this is a very up-to-date bill.

Mr. Chairman, we need a number of what I would call so-called enablers to continue to fight today's wars and also prepare for tomorrow's wars. We need airlifts. You have to have the ability to move that air bridge and move across that air bridge either from the United States to a military operation around the world, or to move from foreign-based troops, troops in Germany or other places, move them into the battlefields and not only move troops in but move equipment in and provide that bridge of tankers to be able to move strike aircraft in, long-range strike aircraft or short-range tactical aircraft which, combined with precision munitions, can hit those targets, whether it is an al Qaeda cave in Afghanistan or a leadership bunker in

Iraq or in some other part of the world. We have supplied more money for that very important area, Mr. Chairman.

We also need to bolster precision-guided munitions which have provided us with so much leverage in this operation. We do that here.

We also provide for more robust missile defense because we know that Scud missiles launched in a theater can paralyze our tactical airfields. Until we can take care of those airfields and bring people in and bring aircraft in, we know we have to have the ability to pull down Scud-class ballistic missiles and increasingly effective ballistic missiles that are actually more high-powered, more capable than Scuds. For that reason, Mr. Chairman, we have money in this bill for Patriot missile systems, for more procurement of our missile systems, so we can protect our troops in theater and project American power around the world. That is another enabler.

We also put money in for the deep strike program, Mr. Chairman. That is important. That will follow on and bolster this fleet of B-1s, B-2s and B-52s that carried the war to the enemy so effectively in this last theater.

So we do a number of things, Mr. Chairman, that will enable us to not only fight today's wars but also look beyond the horizon and will help us fight tomorrow's wars.

Let me tell you, Mr. Chairman, you will be listening to the reports of our subcommittee chairman and the ranking members of those subcommittees and you will see that this bill is a product of a lot of hard work, a lot of folks who sat in those chairs and listened not only to the daily briefings on the Iraq operation but listened very intently to our people in uniform when they told us what we are going to need to protect this country. Our folks have done a great job.

So, finally, let me commend our commander-in-chief, President Bush, for the blueprint that he laid out for us, for Secretary Rumsfeld, our military leaders, but, lastly, everybody who projected American power in this last conflict, who went out, right down to that 19-year-old kid carrying an M-16 trying to go through the choke point at Nasiriya in Iraq.

America's military team has performed brilliantly for us. Now it is time for us to perform for them.

I want to thank my ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), for his great partnership in putting this bill together. We have had a few contentious moments and we may have a few more as we go through this bill. There are a few items that do not come up very often in the defense bill but will come up. But after the arm wrestling is over, Mr. Chairman, you will see a united Committee on Armed Services and hopefully a united House of Representatives standing tall behind the uniformed people in the United States military. So I am very grateful to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for his work.

I want to also say I am very grateful to our subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Everett), and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett), and also all of their ranking members on their subcommittees for the hard work they have put in.

Mr. Chairman, we will start presenting our subcommittee reports momentarily.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the vice chairman of the committee, who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.

(Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) has been a champion of the idea of utilizing Stealth bombers and Stealth aircraft and coupling them with precision munitions and being able to give enormous leverage to American air power.

If we look at our array of deep-strike platforms, we have the 21 B-2s that are based in the gentleman's district, which are extremely valuable assets. We have a few, over 60 now, B-1 bombers, now that 23 are being retrieved or taken out of the force; and we are retrieving a number of those 23 bombers, bringing those back to the force. They worked very effectively in Iraq. And the balance of our 130 or so combat-coded bombers are made up of the old B-52s, the youngest one of which was built in July of 1962, so the newest B-52 is over 40 years old.

We need to strike out and to design and build a new deep-strike platform. So we put $100 million in this bill to commence pursuit of a new deep-strike platform, which may be manned or on the advice of some people may be unmanned. We could certainly have what I call the B-2 Chevy. That is the new variant of the B-2 that does not have some of the Cold War components but nonetheless would be excellent for conventional missions, and that would be somewhat less in terms of cost than the B-2s that were built for strategic delivery.

So it could be a manned system, it could be an unmanned system, but the point is we better start now because it is going to be years before we have new platforms for deep strike.

At the same time, we plussed up the purchases of precision munitions, those joint direct attack munitions that are used to eliminate the need for literally thousands of bombs, hundreds of bombs to one in terms of ratio where again, instead of carpet bombing a bridge to knock it out, you hit that one strut and bring that entire bridge down.

The gentleman is talking about our two most important systems, that is deep-strike platforms and precision munitions. When those two leveraged systems are coupled together, the United States has enormous capability, and I thank the gentleman for his efforts along these lines.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I thank the gentleman for his work; and if I could just mention, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) just spoke. One of his comments was to the effect that he knew that we were retrieving some of these B-1 bombers that the Air Force decided last year to shelve, and he hoped that the cost of maintaining those bombers would not be drawn from the spare parts accounts of the 60 or so bombers that we have right now.

Let me just say in response to the gentleman, who is a great friend of mine, the intent of the committee is to try to get a high mission- capable rate with our entire bomber force, all of the B-1s, and that means spending what it takes to keep those birds in the air, to give them the ability to deliver their platforms with deep ranges, with good protection to the crew. So we want to see higher maintenance dollars expended on that entire force because it is such an important leverage force.

We saw the B-1s being extremely flexible in its pursuit of targets in the Iraq theater. That was appreciated by the committee. I did not get a chance to respond to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), but I want to assure him that we are going to try to make sure that entire bomber force has a high mission-capable rate, both B-2s that the gentleman is so proud of, and home bases in his district, B-1s, and of course those ancient B-52s.

I know the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson) talked about looking out his prison window in Hanoi in 1972 during Operation Linebacker and watching a B-52 explode in midair as it was hit by a Sand missile. Those planes were shot down over 40 years ago, and by the aircraft, anti-aircraft and Sand capability being delivered to North Vietnam by Russia. That means that we need to move along and develop this new technology as quickly as possible and get new birds in the air as quickly as possible. I know the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and I share that goal.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This amendment makes a number of technical corrections that were provided by the Office of Legislative Counsel. It also clarifies several technical points that were raised after the report was filed. For example, on page 290, I have added language to make it clear that the re-leasing of office space will continue to be handled by GSA.

Beyond those corrections that I have described, the amendment also contains the walkback that the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) just described with respect to the Endangered Species Act on DOD bases, saying simply that the Endangered Species Act changes are limited to the Department of Defense and that, in fact, the definition of endangered species is walked back to the language that was described by DOD when it was sent to us.

Mr. Chairman, I think it is eminently reasonable. I just pointed out a few minutes ago, with the four overlaps for the Pendleton Marine base, where American Marines practice dying for this country and they can only utilize at this time a very small portion of that 17-mile red beach because there are animals that need to be protected on that beach. Once you overlay the estuarine areas, the gnatcatcher areas and a number of other areas that have now been designated for lockout to the military or controlled use, you have an extremely diminished base in terms of training. So those very fine people that we have sent to the Middle East to carry out American foreign policy are seeing a diminished training area in the United States.

And that is across the board, Mr. Chairman. You can go to Camp Lejeune, where they now have to employ 80 biologists just to try to move these areas around, or any of the other bases, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and you will see that some of them are diminished up to 70, 80 percent, locked out, where the military is locked out of their own base and cannot use it for training.

This is a balance, Mr. Chairman. It is a balance that passed on a bipartisan basis, in fact, in fuller measure than what we have here out of the Committee on Resources. So I think it is absolutely appropriate that this walkback, where now only the Department of Defense is going to be able to receive this treatment, is manifested.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would just say this. With respect to Marine Mammal, I think the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) described it best. This is a commonsense amendment. I have not met a single environmentalist who does not agree with this. That says that if you have a seal sitting on a buoy and a Navy ship goes by, if the seal even looks up, he is, according to at least one biologist in the Department of Fish and Wildlife, potentially disturbed. If you potentially disturb a seal, you cannot undertake that particular military activity.

What we are losing, Mr. Chairman, is our ability to practice our sonar capability and our new sonar equipment. That means life and death for the kids who are underneath the water in those submarines whose lives depend on being able to hear the enemy submarine before it hears them and destroys them.

So I would just say to my colleague and to all my colleagues, most of this language is what we passed with a big vote last year on a bipartisan basis. It is absolutely reasonable. It has been walked back to DOD. I would just recommend, take ``yes'' for an answer.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, there is no exemption for the Marine Mammal Act, so that is one reason why it has not been sought. I would just say there is one endangered species that this provision protects and that is the 19-year-old Marine or soldier or airman who needs adequate training and right now is seeing his training areas diminished by conservationism and environmentalism. Let us give conservation and environmentalism a good name and let us balance those two important goals with another goal which is keeping our men and women in uniform alive when they are in combat.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, let me say that I am so glad that the distinguished chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has brought this amendment, because this goes to the very heart of the purpose of our operation in Iraq, the honor with which we conducted this operation, the integrity of our leadership, and what I would call perhaps a backbiting response from certain elements in the international community, and, lastly, an appropriate response from the United States, which is suggested by the gentleman.

So I think that the gentleman's amendment is right on point, and I will work with my partner, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), to see to it that this amendment becomes law.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman bringing this amendment to the floor. I think his question is right on point: Are we getting the best bang for the buck in Brussels? We are getting something in Brussels, but it is not effective leadership. I think he has asked a question that has to be answered.

In fact, I have an amendment coming up here shortly that asks the President to evaluate our total footprint in Europe with an eye towards perhaps replacing that footprint.

I have been looking at some of the cost of living and also the hospitality of other nations. One of those new nations is a nation that helped the United States in Iraq, Poland. Poland has a cost of living that is much lower than that in Brussels, so presumably our people, uniformed and nonuniformed, who live there will be able to live better on military pay than they do in Brussels. It would not be bad, I think, for military folks to be in an environment, which they would be in Poland, with a nation that has just stood side by side with us on a battlefield in the world.

There are no words as eloquent as actions. The actions of that force, and it was not a big force, but it was about 200 special operators that participated in Iraq, impressed me greatly and I think would impress the President.

The other aspect of this, since the gentleman has opened this debate and this issue, is I am going to bring up the fact in my amendment that we have 72,400 American uniformed personnel in Germany. We did an entire hearing on this footprint. There is nobody on the other side of the Fulda Gap with a tank. In the old days, there were dozens of divisions of Warsaw Pact military units on the other side of the Fulda Gap. That is why we had a heavy military presence in Germany. That presence is not there now.

So this is a second question, but not totally unlike the question the gentleman is asking, because whereas we might want to move out of Brussels for altogether different purposes than moving out of Germany, the receptivity of other nations at alternate sites is a major issue with both amendments.

Once again, we are putting some money in the bill for doing some preliminary military work, things like runways and things like that, in Poland and Bulgaria and Romania, three of the nations from what Don Rumsfeld called, maybe with justification, the new Europe.

I want to thank the gentleman for his contribution. Let me tell the gentleman, I would certainly, and I want to hear what my ranking member has to say, because he is such an expert in these areas, but I think this is an excellent amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I want to add my commendations to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), one of the absolute finest members of this great Committee on Armed Services and a guy who cares a lot about the fighting forces of the United States and also cares a lot about countries who stand with us in times of difficulty; and I think his amendment is right on point.

I understand this amendment has a message beyond the message of conforming with similar situations in other countries around the world. There is perhaps a message to Paris here. I think it is an appropriate one as I add my commendation to the gentleman and I strongly support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to ask my colleagues to support this amendment.

As we stand here, the strategic landscape facing the United States is a lot different than it was just a couple of years ago. After September 11, 2001, we embarked on a global war on terrorism, and since that day we have engaged in two successful campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. In doing so, we removed one of the major contingencies that served as a basis for force planning during most of the 1990s.

In the wake of these events, it is clear that we need to evaluate our military posture. Across the globe, and particularly in Europe, we remain deployed much as we were at the end of the Cold War and, in some instances, much the same as at the end of World War II. The time has come to adapt our global posture in order to meet the challenges of new era, not to meet those of an era gone by.

Earlier this year, General Jones, the commanding general of U.S. European command, outlined his thoughts regarding the change of our nature and presence in Europe from a garrison force to what he called an expeditionary force. Under this concept, U.S. military units would rotate overseas on a periodic basis, rather than be permanently stationed in Europe. Our bases in Europe would become in General Jones' words ``lily pads,'' bases from which our forces would deploy to crisis areas around the world.

Based on this idea, the committee held a hearing in February to explore this changing nature of our posture in NATO. It became clear that NATO will continue to change. No longer postured to defend Western Europe against the Soviet threat, NATO is evolving to a force that will undertake contingency operations both inside and outside Europe. At the same time, NATO's membership continues to grow and the admission of many former Warsaw Pact nations has moved the borders of the alliance further east and south. We have to recognize those changes within NATO and take appropriate action to ensure our contribution remains relevant.

As a result of that hearing and General Jones' initiative, I offer this amendment today. It simply states it is the sense of Congress, in light of the changing nature of NATO and the strategic landscape worldwide, that the President should reevaluate our posture in Europe and take maximum advantage of any basing and training opportunities among NATO's newly joined and invitee states in Eastern Europe.

I urge my colleagues to send a message to the administration and to our current and future NATO allies that we understand the changing nature of the alliance and stand in strong support of the alliance as it faces the challenges of the 21st century.

Mr. Chairman, in the previous amendments we have talked about this a little. My partner on this committee, the ranking member, the distinguished

gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), has some very eloquent and wise thoughts on this issue.

We have had a hearing on our footprint in Germany, the 72,400 uniformed personnel in Germany, about 55,000 of whom are Army personnel; and we have also looked at the fact that American personnel can live much less expensively in places like Poland.

Mr. Chairman, from my own perspective, I will never forget that at a time when we had a dwindling list of allies who wanted to participate side by side with our young Americans who were laying their lives on the line in the Iraq conflicts, Poland sent a contingent of some 200 special operators into that theater and served with us in battle. I think it would be very appropriate, in fact, this committee has seen fit to place some money for military expenditures, for some early preliminary work in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania; and I think that we should certainly look at this Europe, this new Europe that Secretary Rumsfeld talks about in terms of the changing requirements that we have and the resultant changing strategic posture of the United States in Europe.

Mr. Chairman, I would offer this amendment. I look forward to comments from the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the action of the House adopting Senate Concurrent Resolution 46 be vacated to the end that the House hereby amend the concurrent resolution by striking ``Secretary of the Senate'' and inserting in lieu thereof ``Clerk of the House'' and adopt the concurrent resolution, as so amended.