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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] and then to my friend, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham], to ask first the gentleman from Pennsylvania about his feeling with respect to H.R. 7, th e Contract With America, regarding missile defense of the Nation and missile defense of our theater forces.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

First of all, in response to the comments of my colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] the Russians also, as we know, have been selling their submarines. They recently sold at least two submarines to Iran.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Two Kilo class.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. And Iran has been doing very well in the training of those submarines, which presents a whole new threat for us, with Iranians having capability in the seas.

The question of our colleague and friend on missile defense is an important one. This President changed our policy from the Reagan and Bush era with absolutely no warning to this Congress, to say that we no longer need to have a defensive system to protec t the American people, in spite of the ABM treaty, which allows the Russians to have the only operational ABM system in the entire world right now, which surrounds Moscow and which is in fact operational.

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What we are saying in the contract is we want the Secretary of Defense unlike what we heard from one of our colleagues on the other side today say that we want immediately a space-based system. That is not what the contract provision says. It says that we want the Secretary to come back and tell us what kind of national ballistic missile system we can deploy now.

In conversation with General O'Neill who heads ballistic missile defense last week and a follow-up meeting I am having this week, he says that at the basic we can install a program within 2 years that would cost no more than $5 billion over 5 years. So th e figures we are going to hear on Wednesday and Thursday are going to be way out of line and are going to be more rhetoric than they are substance.

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In the context of the 5-year defense plan, that is roughly .004 of the total defense numbers, .004 of the budget. So that is not a number that is going to crowd out readiness or modernizing our military. The only thing that is going to crowd those things out is the President's budget itself. And the President himself has cut $9 billion just between FY 1995 and FY 1996 in modernization. So the President is doing the cutting. One slap of the pen by the President cutting $9 billion in modernization had doubl ed the impact on the modernization budget of building what Secretary Perry himself described as doable, that is, a missile defense nationally that will defend against the thin attack.

So if we are asked would you rather have a defense that will defend against a thin attack or nothing, but absolutely naked, I think the American people say, give us something, give us some missile defense against that accidental launch or that third-world terrorist attack.

I would be happy to yield to the fine gentleman from San Diego, my seat mate, Mr. Cunningham.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I thank the gentleman from California.

I think another important factor, and gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] brought it up. When we brought this bill up in the committee, we had 41 Republicans and Democrats vote for it. Only 13 voted against it. I want to tell you, those 13, th eir politics would go good only in a small island off Florida.