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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 233 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 2401.

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IN THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE

Accordingly the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H.R. 2401) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 1994 for military activities of the Department of Defense, to prescribe military personnel strengths for fiscal year 1994, and for other purposes, with Mr. Rostenkowski in the chair.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time.

The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] will be recognized for 60 minutes and the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] will be recognized for 60 minutes.

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums]

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise to bring before my colleagues the bill, H.R. 2401, the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal year 1994. The overall level of budget authority recommended by the committee, $262.8 billion, is approximately that recommended by President Clinton.

Before I address the particulars of this Bill, let me take a moment to put this year's action in perspective. We are in the midst of a reorientation of the national defense budget away from the needs of the cold war. The old Soviet threat is gone. While there is a great difference of opinion concerning how big a force structure will be required in the absence of such a threat, there is general agreement that our forces can and should be cut substantially. There is also general agreement that these force reductions should be carried out in an orderly way, to ensure that the force drawdown does not impair the quality and readiness of the remaining forces.

I have circulated to my colleagues my own historical perspective on President Clinton's defense budget proposals. While it may seem surprising, the current and planned drawdown is less severe and more gradual than those following the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Those who are concerned about the ability of the Pentagon to maintain ready forces should note that President Clinton's budgets continue the high ratios of defense spending to active duty personnel that produced the high-quality force of the 1980's. Given the relatively small size of the military threats to our security that can be discerned around the world, it is reasonable to ask for a detailed justification of why we will need in 1988 to spend as much in real dollars as we did during the mid-1970's, and why we will need an active duty force fully two-thirds as large as that which we maintained in those cold war years.

While there is a broad consensus that defense should be reduced in an orderly fashion, the public record so far contains little analytic basis to determine either what the end-point of the reduction should be, or how fast a reduction can be absorbed without unacceptable disruption. Our progress in this deliberation was delayed by the length of time it has taken the new administration to get its people in place and to perform the comprehensive review of defense needs and programs promised by Secretary Aspin. I pledge to my colleagues that, with Secretary Aspin's `bottom-up review' as a starting point, the House Armed Services Committee will provide an appropriate evidentiary base for more far-reaching decisions next year. For this year, the force structure reductions in the bill only modestly accelerate those already contemplated by the Bush administration.

This bill does not come as far as I would like in adapting the military budget to the needs of the post-cold war era--including our needs at home that require a smaller defense budget and greater social spending. I have already suggested that there is a prima facie case that the defense spending and program envisioned by the Clinton administration is larger than needed to deal with the security environment as it exists today. More detailed consideration and deliberation would be required to convert this prima facie case into one that would be conclusive enough to carry the Congress.

Rep. DELLUMS: However, the bill does make significant progress that we can accelerate in the future if we can build on this year's consensus. As reported by the committee, it takes some particularly noteworthy steps away from cold war priorities:

It cuts ballistic missile defense to $3 billion--less than one-half the level planned by the Bush administration--and kills Brilliant Pebbles and other space-based systems inconsistent with the ABM treaty;

It bans developed of `mininuke' weapons, and creates a `stockpile stewardship' program to move the defense establishment further toward technical readiness for and political support of a complete nuclear test ban;

It postpones commitment to additional attack submarines until current ones are paid for, fences D-5 funds pending an administration report on options for saving money and reducing warhead levels, and maintains the previous funding cap on the B-2 Program;

It cushions the blow of the defense drawdown, strengthens the civilian economy, and improves the defense industrial base by increased funding for defense conversion, reinvestment, and transition assistance, to a total of $3 billion including dual-use technology investments, a national shipbuilding initiative, and significantly expanded community assistance funding;

It devotes a record $11.2 billion to environmental cleanup and improvement, and does so in a way that will stimulate the development of new technologies and new markets for American firms; and

It reorients civil defense programs toward disaster relief and away from an exclusive focus on nuclear war.

The committee bill also contains other element of sound defense policy:

It puts people first--and protects the quality of our military personnel--by funding a full 2.2 percent military pay raise;

It reallocates operations and maintenance spending to improve force readiness and cut defense waste and overhead;

It rationalizes and improves the affordability of tactical aircraft and other major procurement programs still relevant to the post-cold-war world;

It maintains procurement options and preserves important elements of defense industrial base by low-rate procurement and upgrades of key weapons systems;

It continues to modernize the Guard and Reserve Forces that are an increasingly important element of our overall military capability; and

It establishes a National Commission on Military Roles and Missions, to spur a more significant rationalization of the defense effort.

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The bill also contains at least one policy that, while unacceptable to this Member in substantive terms, is not as retrograde as it might have been:

It supports the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the issue of allowing gay and lesbian service members to serve their country.

Finally, without going beyond title X or embarking on comprehensive acquisition reform, the bill would make some important technical changes to defense-specific acquisition statutes. Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Perry has plainly stated that acquisition reform is essential if we are to have an affordable defense and the strong, dual-use, industrial and technology base that is needed for a strong economy. But, as my colleagues fully recognized, this issue requires the involvement of other committees, especially Small Business and Government Operations. The committee actions should not conflict with the consideration of other procurement reform legislation, notably H.R. 2238, which I have cosponsored with my good friend John Conyers. Comprehensive acquisition reform legislation is needed, and it continues to be a priority of the committee.

As noted above, I intend that the Committee will scrutinize the Pentagon's bottom-up review and conduct its own independent investigation of how much and what sorts of military forces are needed to keep the United States secure and strong, economically and socially as well as militarily. We will also continue our oversight of the defense establishment, to ensure that defense resources are efficiently managed. As a committee we have already traveled some distance down this path, Mr. Chairman, and finally, while I believe that this bill must be seen purely and simply as a transitional one, it takes needed steps, in my humble opinion, into the future, and I believe that it can be supported by the majority of my colleagues.