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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 just wanted, as we wind down the defense authorization conference, and I think we are going to have a bill very shortly for the country, I just wanted to talk a little bit about what we have done with that bill.

You know, our chairman, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence], who is the first Republican chairman of the Committee on National Security in 40 years, put together an excellent bill this year, and he worked hand in glove with the chairman of the defense appropriation, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young], to see to it that we had side-by-side packages that addressed a number of concerns of both the people who were the uniform in the armed services, and of course all Americans who are concerned about national security, and I just wanted to go over a couple of the things that we did.

One thing that we did, and very basically, was we plused up the budget. We added money for equipment in very basic areas that is important to all uniformed people. I call it readiness spending. We spent money on ammunition. In my estimation we have about half the ammo that we need if we are going to fight two regional conflicts, and that means that the Marines, or the Army, or other services who are engaged in land conflict might find themselves running out of ammo about halfway through that fight. So, one thing that we did with this budget under the leadership of the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] is to put in about $1 billion extra for ammunition, all the way from M-16 rounds to those so-called precision guided munitions that we saw on television during Desert Storm where the world's luckiest Iraqi taxicab driver just made it across the bridge before that one precision guided bomb went in and hit that one strut on the bridge and blew it up. We added those extra dollars for ammo because that is the best service you can do for your uniformed people because that is what keeps them alive in a fight, in a conflict.

Another thing we did was increase sealift and airlift. We do not have enough ships and enough airlift to get our people to the battle in time, and because of that in the last war we had to actually go out and rent a bunch of ships. It is kind of a well-kept secret, but if our allies had not agreed with our purpose in Desert Storm, we might have been very much hurting for sealift, but the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] saw to it that we plused up sealift, plused up airlift, and we are now on our way to developing an excellent C-17 aircraft that will be able to take big cargo into very short airstrips in troubled spots around the world.

Another area that we involved ourselves in was missile defense, and I think, if there is any hallmark to this chairman's position, his tenure as chairman of the Committee on National Security, his hallmark is that he recognizes that we live in an age of missiles and that this Nation, the people of this Nation, have a right to be defended against incoming ballistic missiles , and our troops in theater should also be defended against some of those slower moving missiles like the Scuds that hit our troops in Desert Storm. So we have undertaken an aggressive program to provide what we call theater missile defenses. Those are short-range defenses against a slower moving ballistic missile so, if our troops are in Saudi Arabia, or on the Korean Peninsula, or other places around the world, and they are shot at by slow-moving ballistic missiles , we will be able to destroy those missiles before they reach our troops. The Republican leadership and the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] have been the architects of that program.

We also initiated a national missile defense, and the interesting thing is most Americans think we have one already, but, as you know, Mr. Speaker, we do not. We have no defenses against incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles , but we directed this administration to develop and deploy a national missile defense, and I think it is a step we should have taken a long time ago. Under this chairman Floyd Spence, our Republican chairman of the Committee on National Security, for the first time in 40 years we have taken that very important step.

So we have an excellent package, Mr. Speaker, and I wish I had time to tell you about all of the things and the provisions that we have in this particular bill, but I think we can say to the American people that they will be more secure because of the chairmanship of the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spence] of the Committee on National Security and because of the extra dollars that we are putting in defense and that insurance policy for the American people.

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