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The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I will attempt to not take the entire hour, but I did want to rise this evening first of all to commend my colleagues for the excellent work they did in discussing the message of the Republican Party, and not just the Republican Party but, as evidenced by the vote on the welfare reform bill today, the overwhelming majority of Members of this institution. In fact, on the final vote there were 98 Democrats who voted for the bill and 98 who opposed it. So it truly was a bipartisan effort.

While there is much perceptual criticism of the Republicans in the Congress this year, the fact is that most of our initiatives have passed with bipartisan support and our colleagues on the other side have joined us.

That leads me to my point of discussion tonight, which is also bipartisan and which I expect to hit the House floor tomorrow, and that is the final conference report on the defense authorization bill for 1997.

Mr. Speaker, I rise as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Research and Development for the House Committee on National Security and one of the conferees who chaired two of the panels with the Senate in deliberating the final conference report that will come before us tomorrow.

Let me start out by saying, Mr. Speaker, that I think it is a good bill. It is not everything that I had wanted. I will talk about some of the weaknesses that I think we did not get in this bill, but all in all it is a good piece of legislation that deserves the support from a bipartisan standpoint of the majority of the Members of this institution.

But I want to start off by clearing up some misconceptions. The President and certain members of his administration and some on the other side in the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party have gone around the country talking about the Republicans wanting to have massive plus-ups in defense spending and that in fact the Republicans are giving the Pentagon programs that they really do not want, that we are just about buying more weapons systems and that we really are not concerned about the human problems that people in this country face.

Let me start out by saying, Mr. Speaker, that I come to this body as a public school teacher. I taught for 7 years in the public schools of Pennsylvania. I ran a chapter 1 program for 3 years in one of my depressed communities like West Philadelphia, then worked for a corporation running their training department and ran for office as the mayor of my hometown. All of those things I did to try to help people and to try to make a difference.

In my 10 years in Washington, I have tried to exercise in every possible way through my votes and my actions support and compassion for those needs that ordinary people have. In fact, I take great pride this year in the fact that, working with my colleague the gentleman from New York, Rick Lazio, after Speaker Gingrich had asked Rick and I to cochair an effort dealing with anti-poverty initiatives, that we were able to plus-up the funding for the community services block grant program in the appropriate appropriations bill on the House floor by $100 million.

This money goes directly to a network of 1100 community action agencies nationwide that basically is totally consistent with the Republican philosophy of empowering people locally to solve the problems of the poor. This plus-up in funding did not get much play in the national media. It was the single largest plus-up in the community services block grant program in the history of that program, which dates back to prior to the 1980's.

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In fact, these CAA's nationwide leverage, on average, $2 to $3 of private money for every $1 of public money we put in. So it is a tremendous investment in helping local folks through the nonprofit CAA's nationwide solve the problems of poverty and ways that we can work to empower people who have the greatest needs.

That is just one example of the kinds of things that this Congress has done that have largely been ignored by the American media in its rush to embrace the liberal wing of the Democrat Party and this President, who talk a good game but do not seem to follow through with the deeds that match their rhetoric.

I say that, Mr. Speaker, because we have also heard the rhetoric coming out of both the White House and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that somehow we have dramatically increased defense spending. I want to get to that point because that is the topic of my special order tonight. Again, the facts do not bear that out.

The analysis that I use, Mr. Speaker, is to take defense spending and compare it today versus what we were spending back in the 1960's. I pick the time period of the 1960's because we were at relative peace in the world. It was after Korea and it was before Vietnam. John Kennedy, a Democrat, was our President. He believed in a strong defense for our country and worked hard to maintain our national security interests.

During John Kennedy's tenure, Mr. Speaker, we were spending about 9 percent of our country's gross national product on the military. We were spending about 55 cents of every Federal dollar that we take in in terms of taxes on the defense of this country--55 cents of every Federal dollar and 9 percent of our total gross national product.

This year's defense budget that will be finally approved tomorrow, in the final conference report that we will vote on, will see us spend less than 3 percent of our gross national product on the military and about 16 cents of the total Federal dollar that we take in this year.

Now, those are glaring differences, Mr. Speaker; 9 percent of our GNP in the 1960's versus 3 percent of our GNP today; 55 cents of every Federal dollar in the 1960s versus 16 cents of the Federal dollar that we take in today.

In addition to those numbers, Mr. Speaker, we have to let the American people know that there are some differences in today's environment. First of all, we have an all-volunteer military. We no longer have the draft. We pay those people who join the services a much higher salary and, in fact, a much larger percentage of our military personnel today are married and they have kids. So we have added housing costs, we have cost-of-living increases, we have a much larger health care system.

The quality of life for our service personnel today is dramatically improved over what it was back in the 1960's and, in fact, a much larger percentage of that lesser amount of Federal money is going for the quality of life for those men and women who serve in the various branches of our Armed Services.

So, in fact, while we have decreased the percentage of Federal spending on our national defense , we in fact, Mr. Speaker, are spending more of today's defense dollar on the quality-of-life issues for our men and women who serve in the military.

We have over the past 8 and 9 years made dramatic cuts in defense spending. Now, these were not all done at the suggestion of President Clinton. I am not here to say that tonight. In fact, some of these cuts were proposed under the Bush administration because the world was changing. And, in fact, many of those cuts I supported, but nowhere near the draconian cuts that are taking place today.

Those cuts, Mr. Speaker, that were proposed during the Bush administration were based on threat assessments that we were given from the situations that existed around the world that threatened American Security Interests and our allies' security interests. Today's dollars that we spend on the military are largely not spent based on threat assessments, they are largely determined by numbers pulled out of the air.

The Clinton administration, in fact, just pulled a number out of the air and said this is what we are going to spend on defense , in spite of the fact that when Les Aspin served as Secretary of Defense and completed his bottom-up review, he said we would need enough money to be able to fund the support for two simultaneous conflicts.

The General Accounting Office has said on the record that there is no way, given the Clinton administration numbers, that we could ever come close to funding up two simultaneous operations.

So, in fact, Mr. Speaker, the numbers that we are basing our defense budget on today are not based on reality, they are not even based on the philosophy that this administration established for our military leaders, and that was established in the bottom-up review headed up by then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin.

What is more ironic, Mr. Speaker, with where we are today is that in dramatically cutting defense spending over the past 3 years, by the most significant cuts in the last 50 years in this country in terms of our military, we have seen 1 million men and women lose their jobs.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the defense budget is not a jobs bill. It is not like public works projects and it is not designed to ultimately just employ people, but we have to understand the irony of what is occurring in the country today, Mr. Speaker, and I want to point it out.

We have the Clinton administration over the past 3 years cutting defense spending by draconian amounts, resulting in the forced layoffs and cutbacks in defense industries and subcontractors that have caused 1 million men and women to lose their jobs in America.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the irony here is that most of those 1 million men and women were union employees. They were members of the United Auto Workers, the International Association of Machinists, the IUE, the electrical workers. They were involved in the building trades who worked in our bases and in our facilities.

So the bulk of the 1 million men and women who lost their jobs over the past 3 years, caused by this administration's actions, were union personnel. Not only did they lose their jobs, and all across this country, Mr. Speaker, we know of hundreds of thousands of our constituents who are out of work today who were employed at defense plants and subcontracting machine shops and subcontracting companies, but the irony is that the national AFL-CIO this year is forcing from every union employee in this country a $39 assessment. That $39 assessment is being taken out of the pockets of union personnel who work in defense plants to defeat Republican Members who have supported the dollars to fund their jobs.

Now, that has to be the ultimate irony. I look particularly at one plant, McDonnell-Douglas. My understanding is they have 8,000 union employees. Mr. Speaker, if we look at the amount of assessment that the AFL-CIO has levied on those defense workers working for McDonnell-Douglas, it amounts to over $300,000, and that money is being targeted not to people who are voting against their jobs, but it is being targeted to support the ideals of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and only to target freshmen Republican Members, most of whom supported a more robust defense budget which in effect provided the dollars for those very jobs.

That is the ultimate irony, Mr. Speaker. And all of this money is being taken from those rank-and-file union workers without their support and without their ability to determine where that money should be spent, in spite of the fact that in the 1994 elections, 40 percent of the rank-and-file union workers in this country voted for Republican candidates.

Mr. Speaker, that is outrageous; yet we have not heard one national labor leader in Washington talk about the Clinton elimination of 1 million union jobs in this country.

We are now in the process, Mr. Speaker, of taking that message to every plant in this Nation. And why are we going to do that? Because this President will go to every one of those plants and stand up on the podium next to the CEO and the union leader and talk about the jobs that are there, and he will talk about what his administration is doing to keep those workers employed.

Yet this administration, in concert with the national AFL-CIO leadership, is in fact targeting, through forced contributions, funds to eliminate those freshman Members who have largely voted for the defense funding level that we are going to have on this floor tomorrow. To me, Mr. Speaker, that is outrageous.

Now, the further hypocrisy of this administration, Mr. Speaker, is that last year the Congress, bipartisan support, plussed up defense spending by about $5.5 billion above the President's mark. We did not pull that number out of the air, Mr. Speaker, we took it from the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They are not political appointees, they are career servants of the military, whose command responsibilities are to protect the lives of our troops.

We met with them and, based upon their advice, we funded the Defense Department funding levels to the requests that they gave us. Actually they wanted more money than we could provide.

This year, Mr. Speaker, when the President again chose in a draconian way to cut defense spending, we brought in the service chiefs, and the service chiefs were very candid. They said the budget proposed was unacceptable.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, when the House Committee on National Security had the four service chiefs in front of us, it was the late Admiral Boorda, the CNO of the Navy, and a very fine leader of our naval forces who said publicly, when asked if he had the ability to provide a wish list for additional funds, where would he put those dollars, and he replied back to us, Congressmen, there is no wish list. These priorities that I will give you are absolutely essential to protect the sailors under my command.

We then went to the Commandant of the Marine Corps and when the Commandant, General Krulak, had his chance to respond, he likewise said, look Congressmen and Congresswomen, I am not going to make any bones about what we need here. My warriors need additional funding, and the request I give you is going to be real.

To every last one of the four service chiefs, they gave us the dollar amounts that they need to support the internationalist escapades of this administration around the world; to fund the operations in Somalia, to fund the $3 to $4 billion we are currently spending in Bosnia, the $2 to $3 billion we are spending in Haiti, the escapades that the President is committing our men and women all over the world. These four leaders told us the dollar amounts that they felt were absolutely necessary to meet the requirements of quality of life and protection of these troops.

Mr. Speaker, the bill that we will provide tomorrow will begin to do that. It will not completely provide the support they requested from us, because we cannot get additional dollars in this budget environment where we are committed to balancing the budget over a set period of time. We do not have additional money to put into the military. Therefore, we have to make do with this plus-up that we are providing.

Now, here is the outrage again, Mr. Speaker, the outrage that I feel every day I serve in this body. This President criticized this Congress last year for plussing up defense spending over his request. When Secretary Perry came before our committee this year, he had a chart showing the amount of defense spending that the Clinton administration would provide.

In that chart, it was a line graph, he showed a flattening out of the cuts in the acquisition programs to buy new equipment and he said that the Clinton administration was taking steps to stop the decline and that decline, in fact, stopped in 1996.

I said to the Secretary of Defense , this is an outrage. It is the most outrageous presentation I have seen from a Secretary of Defense . Why? Because here we had the Secretary of Defense , who last year joined with President Clinton in criticizing us for plussing up defense spending, now this year taking credit for what they criticized us for doing last year.

That same thing will happen this year, Mr. Speaker. My prediction is that with all the criticisms from the White House and from the Secretary of Defense , they in fact will accept the final bill that we pass, the funding will be provided, and then this President will go to every one of those plants and every one of those bases, and this President will take credit for those items that we funded through a bipartisan action of this Congress that he opposed and criticized us for.

It even gets worse than that, Mr. Speaker. The hypocrisy coming from the White House is unbelievable. The B-2 bomber is a perfect case in point. Let me say, Mr. Speaker, that some would say you are just down here as a Republican hawk who supports every defense weapon system and that is why you are mad at President Clinton.

That is not the case. Let me give the example of the B-2. I have opposed the B-2 bomber for the last 3 years, Mr. Speaker, even though I chair the National Security Research and Development Subcommittee. My party leadership, as you know, has supported the B-2 bomber; in fact, the majority of my colleagues on the Republican side support the B-2 bomber.

I felt it was great technology, but we cannot afford it. Given the budget numbers that we have to work with, we cannot afford to spend money on a program that we cannot continue. Therefore, over the past 3 years I have consistently, in committee and on the House floor, opposed money for the B-2.

Now this President, Mr. Speaker, has said that he too opposes the B-2 bomber, just like he has criticized us for plussing up defense spending. But after the President signed the defense appropriation bill last year, which had B-2 funding in it, what did this President do? He went out to southern California and he went to the plant where the B-2 bomber is manufactured and he gave a speech with the head of the union and the head of the company standing on both sides of him and what did he say? He said to those workers, I am here to support building one more B-2 bomber. And then he went on to say, and I have authorized the commission of a study that is going to be done that will determine whether or not we need more deep strike bombing capabilities.

Now, there is the President, who supposedly was against the B-2, had criticized this Congress for funding it, now out at the plant where the program is under way taking credit for it and, furthermore, leaving all of these workers in southern California believing that somehow this President is having a change of heart and leaving the option out there that perhaps there will be a change, and after the election is over, somehow will reverse and we will start building more B-2's.

In fact, the President told these workers that that study will be released at end of November. Which oh, by the way, Mr. Speaker, is a couple of weeks after the Presidential election.

All of those B-2 workers, Mr. Speaker, are union employees. Where is the outrage from the national leadership? There is none.

The hypocrisy of this administration on defense programs is mind boggling.

One final example, Mr. Speaker, this President went before AIPAC, a national association of Jews in America who support Israel as much as I do. He went before AIPAC, they had a thousand or so people here in the Capital, and he gave a very commanding speech about our relationship with Israel and especially Israel's national security. And during that speech, he pledged publicly that he would move forward with a bold new defense program called Nautilus.

This new missile defense technology would protect the Israeli people from the threat of a Russian Katyusha rocket being launched into Israel, like we saw the Scuds launched in there during Desert Storm. That speech was met with thunderous applause as the AIPAC members stood up and applauded President Clinton for his bold words of support for protecting the Israeli people.

But again, Mr. Speaker, we have to look beyond the rhetoric and the words. In fact, Mr. Speaker, as I said the next day after I read the text of the President's speech, the Clinton administration for the past 3 years has zeroed out funding for the high energy laser program each year. In fact, this year they put $3 million in their budget request to kill the program totally. That was in January.

Mr. Speaker, the high energy laser program is Nautilus. So here we had a President standing before thousands of supporters of Israel's protection and freedom, getting rave reviews and cheers, not telling these same people that he has tried to kill that program 3 straight years. Only because of the Congress' action, Democrats and Republicans alike, was the high energy laser program kept intact and can we now fully fund that tomorrow in the bill that we will bring before this body.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, there was no request by this administration for funding for the Nautilus program at all this year. Now that is outrageous. The President gave a speech; the President said he was for the program. There was never a request given to this body or our committee for funding the Nautilus program.

We funded it. Democrats and Republicans working together made sure the full funding for Nautilus is in this bill. And tomorrow we vote on it and it will be there.

My bill, Mr. Speaker, in fact, is a good bill. It provides for the quality-of-life issues that are important for our service people. It provides for a pay raise. The first year of the Clinton administration he did not even request a pay raise for our troops. He wanted them to forgo a pay raise; send them to Somalia or Bosnia or Haiti, but do not give them a pay raise. Extend the deployments. Have them go 6, 8, 9, 12 months, but do not give them a pay raise. We found the money in the Congress to fully fund the pay raise the first couple of years of the Clinton administration.

In this year's bill, Mr. Speaker, that we will vote on tomorrow, a pay raise for our troops is consistent with other Federal employees. We have also provided funds for a COLA for our retired military employees.

We have also, Mr. Speaker, taken aggressive steps to deal with those human issues of impact aid to affect those school districts where kids of people who are in the military go to school to make sure we take care of those extra costs associated with the sons and daughters of our enlisted personnel.

We have also, Mr. Speaker, gone to great lengths to provide for the quality-of-life support for our men and women in the military. And much of the increase that we provide, over the President's request that he has criticized us for, will go for day care centers, will go for family housing, will go for cost-of-living adjustments for those men and women serving this country around the world.

They are justified. They are right, and they are supported by an overwhelmingly bipartisan group of this body and the other body. I am happy to say they are in the bill.

Mr. Speaker, our defense bill that we will finally enact tomorrow with the help of our colleagues also does some other things. In my particular area of concern, there are some new initiatives. For instance, we fully fund our laboratories. The laboratories allow us to maintain state-of-the-art research on new technologies. That, in fact, is a key part of the R&D portion of our conference report tomorrow. We fund our national science and technology initiative to make sure that our universities are continuing to do research in new technologies, in new materials, to make sure that we are always on the cutting edge.

The bill that we enact tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, and we will vote on tomorrow, does some other things that are very important. It provides a whole new oceans partnership initiative that Congress and Pat Kennedy and I offer. This new initiative, Mr. Speaker, again bipartisan, allows the Navy to take the lead in bringing together all of our Federal agencies that do oceanographic research to better coordinate the dollars that we spend and provide new partnerships with the private sector with academic institutions like Woods Hole and Scripps and those other facilities around the country that are looking at the environmental impact of our oceans and what needs to be done to protect coral reefs and our ocean ecosystems.

Much of the work that we are seeing off the coast of New York in searching for those remains of TWA flight 800 are being done with the Navy, because of the extensive capabilities the Navy has. And there is a whole new initiative in tomorrow's bill to further enhance the Navy's capability in the area of oceanographic work, oceanographic mapping, and ocean partnership activities.

Mr. Speaker, we have also taken great steps forward to keep in place a dual-use initiative so that we encourage the military to use dual use wherever possible, so it is not just benefitting the military but it is also benefitting civilian life so that wherever we can take a technology, use it for the military, but also have civilian benefit, that we provide the dollars to make those kinds of things happen. That is a major part of our bill that we will be voting on tomorrow.

But, Mr. Speaker, the real purpose of my special order tonight is to focus on what I think are the two major threats that we face as a Nation, both of which are addressed in this bill and both of which the leadership has come not from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but rather from this body.

Democrats and Republicans working together have crafted a bill that has allowed us to address the two major threats that we face as a Nation. These threats are critical, they are real, and we see evidence of them as we just look around the world today.

The first is terrorism, and we see it every day in every possible aspect of our society and our lives, whether it be in the air, on the ground, or whatever. It is a major problem and a major concern. The other is missile proliferation.

Those are the two major threats, Mr. Speaker, that we see emerging around the world which this bill directly addresses and they both involve weapons of mass destruction, whether they be the use of chemical, biological, nuclear or conventional arms.

How did we address that, Mr. Speaker? Despite, again, the words and the rhetoric coming out of the White House because of the downing of the TWA and because of the bombing of our troops in Saudi Arabia, it was this Congress, Mr. Speaker, that in the last 2 years plussed up funding under Republican leadership for chemical and biological research and development.

My subcommittee and our full committee and the final conference in last year's bill and this year's bill plussed up funding in that area so that our military spends more money and more focus on the threat from chemical, biological, nuclear and conventional weapons of mass destruction. It is money that has been in the bill since we started this process last January; not money that we put in because of the TWA incident or because of the Saudi Arabia bombing. Money that we put in because the hearings that we held last fall and this winter showed that the administration was not requesting enough dollars. Well, we met the shortfall and we put the money in.

We put the money in another area where the President was quick to criticize our actions. Now though, changing his course, he wants to have a huge meeting at the White House about what can we do about the threat of terrorism and chemical and biological weapons. Again, because the media's focus is there, the President is there. Well, this Congress has been there long before the media was focused on these kinds of incidents.

Mr. Speaker, we also provide additional funding for what is being called Nunn-Lugar Two. We did not accept everything that Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar wanted in the other body, but we took their recommendations dealing with terrorism and disposal of nuclear weapons in Russia and other former Soviet States and we modified and changed it and we modified the domestic side, so that we have a robust program to assist our towns and cities in dealing with terrorist acts around the country.

Now, again, Mr. Speaker, these are not new issues. I introduced a piece of legislation three sessions ago that would have required FEMA to establish a computerize inventory of every possible resource that a city mayor, a fire chief, or an incident command scene coordinator could have at his or her disposal if a mass incident occurred, whether it be the World Trade Center bombing or the Oklahoma City bombing or some other incident. FEMA has still not acted on that request. That is in our bill tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, that will be part of the requirement; that FEMA working with the DOD and other Federal agencies has to computerize every resource that this Federal Government provides that could be brought to use in the case of a disaster in our cities, our towns, our rural areas, wherever it might be. And it is about time that took place. That did not come about because the White House said it was important; it came about because this Congress took the action.

Mr. Speaker, we also provide a new thrust for local emergency response personnel. Our portion that we forced through the conference process on the House side and agreed to by the other body provides dollars to train local emergency response personnel, firefighters, EMT's, paramedics, police officers, so that when they are called upon to respond to disasters involving terrorist acts and terrorist weapons, they know what they are dealing with and they can respond accordingly. Those plus-ups are in this bill. They are valid and they are worthy of our support tomorrow.

Last week in one of our other appropriation bills we plussed up money, $5 million, for a local emergency responder, so it adds to that effort that we have already approved in this body.

Mr. Speaker, we go a long way to addressing the issue of responding to terrorist acts and to better equip not just our military, but to better equip those civilian entities around the country that are the first responders in these types of situations.

The bill also, Mr. Speaker, addresses the second major threat that we face as a Nation, and that is the threat of missile proliferation. Mr. Speaker, around the world, there is a mad rush by scores of countries to develop new capabilities in terms of missile technology and these new capabilities, Mr. Speaker, present real challenges for the United States and our allies.

We, to look at Israel and see the concern of just those very antiquated Scuds being fired and the damage they caused during the Desert Storm. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the only major loss of life from one single incident in Desert Storm to American troops was caused by an Iraqi Scud missile being fired into one of our barracks.

If we would have developed and deployed systems that we know we have the capability of putting into place today, perhaps we could have prevented those kinds of incidents from ever occurring.

The threat of missile proliferation is more real than it has ever been and countries around the world today are developing capabilities that we have never seen before.

This Congress, Mr. Speaker, has taken the effort to plus up funding in the area of defending our country against a missile attack. There has been a lot of misinformation, Mr. Speaker. The liberal media and the White House basically rails against missile spending, saying we should not be spending this money. We have not been talking about building new offensive weapons. We are not talking about building MX missiles . What we are talking about, Mr. Speaker, is defense , protecting the American people, our troops and our allies against an accidental or deliberate launch by one or two missiles .

Today, Mr. Speaker, we have no such capability. Our troops are vulnerable and our people are vulnerable. What we want to do in this Congress is, we want to deploy those technologies that we know are available today and will be available over the next several years.

It is the single biggest area of disagreement with this administration, how fast and how much we should be developing and deploying missile defense systems for the troops, for our allies and for the people of this country.

The Clinton administration would have us believe that the world is rosy. Again, the President has misinformed the American people. Remember what we heard earlier about words. Words seem to be everything in this White House. Actions and facts seem to fall by the wayside.

On two occasions, Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States has stood at this podium right behind me in the State of the Union speech and he has said to the American people, as he bit his lip, that the children of America can sleep well tonight because for the first time in 20 or 30 years, there are no Russian offensive missiles pointed at America's children.

During the past year, Mr. Speaker, we have totally refuted what the President said, not by Republican experts but by his own personnel working in the military.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, during a series of 14 hearings we held in this session of the Congress, we had the experts from the Air Force, from the intelligence community come in and tell us on the record there is no way for us to verify whether or not the Russians have retargeted their offensive weapons. We have no way of verifying that. The President has no way of verifying it because our intelligence community cannot verify it. But the President made the statement.

The second thing is, Mr. Speaker, if we even could verify that, our targeting experts have said on the record that we can retarget an offensive missile in less than 30 seconds. Why then would the President say this? Because the President wants to create this impression that somehow all is so well and somehow the American people do not have to worry.

Let me make a point here, Mr. Speaker, I am not a reactionary alarmist. In fact, I probably do more work with the Russians that any other Member of the Congress. I will talk about those initiatives again tonight.

Since my undergraduate degree in Russian studies and since my days in speaking the Russian language and in my numerous visits to Russia, I have worked in helping them with their energy needs, their environmental needs, and, in fact, I am right now setting up a new initiative that the Speaker has tasked me to do with Mr. Vladimir Lukin, chairman of the International Affairs Committee for the Russian Duma, that will have Members of this Congress and the Russian Duma come together for the first time in a real way on an ongoing basis. It will be an institutional process that will last beyond Members.

Right now I am working with the ambassador of Russia to help develop a new technology transfer center in America for Russian technology. I put money in the defense bill, Mr. Speaker, this year for $20 million of joint Russian-American missile defense technology so that we work with the Russians, so that we do not try to squirrel one up on them.

I was the one last year who opposed those in my party who wanted to offer an amendment on the defense bill last year that would have forced the President to abrogate the ABM treaty. Mr. Speaker, I am not some rabid conservative who thinks that perhaps the Russian government is still the evil empire.

I want the same ultimate objective that I think Bill Clinton wants. I want the same ultimate objective that I think Strobe Talbott wants; that is, a free, democratic Russia to succeed with free markets and security and less of a threat to America and the rest of the world.

But there is one key difference, Mr. Speaker. I am willing to go to the Russians when there are problems that we have to confront them with and confront them openly. This administration's pattern has been to ignore reality and in effect to try to bury or brush over or create a perception that there are no problems there.

We all know that Russia is going through problems of severe internal turmoil. We were all happy that Boris Yeltsin won the presidential election a few short weeks ago. And we are all happy the Duma is committed to working with him.

Mr. Speaker, there is one very important fact we have to keep in mind. The leadership in the Russian military today is the same leadership that was there during the Soviet Communist domination. Perestroika and glasnost has not come with the Russian military. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I obtained a document earlier this year that was published by one of the leading Russian think tanks, the Institute for Defense Analysis, it was published by a gentleman of the name of Anton Surikov. It is called the Surikov document.

This document, which was briefed to the former defense minister Pavel Grazhdye and the current chief of command for the Russian military, General Kalesnakov, has some very interesting material in it that every American and every one of our colleagues should read.

It says in it that in the end America is always going to be an enemy of Russia. In the end America is always going to be a threat to Russia's sovereignty. In the the end, the Russian government should look to establish linkages with emerging rogue Islamic nations and it names them. It names Libya. It names Iraq, Syria as those allies of Russia that should be nurtured and where technology should be transferred to benefit a mutual relationship.

This is not put out by some American think tank. This is an internal document published within Russia.

Mr. Speaker, I am not here to say that every Russian believes this because they do not. Boris Yeltsin does not believe this, I firmly believe. But there are people in the Russian military who still believe this, and this President and this administration do not want to call them on that. That is what is so outrageous.

Mr. Speaker, we have seen some evidence of that. Last year about this time there was a transfer of accelerometers and gyroscopes that went from Russia to Iraq. Why is that so important? Mr. Speaker, gyroscopes and the accelerometers and the gyroscopes that were retrieved by the Jordanian intelligence agency and the Israeli intelligence agency could only be used for one purpose: They are so sophisticated that their only purpose is to be used in long range missiles ; that is, short range Scuds, long range missiles , long range missiles that ultimately could pose a threat to the U.S.

Now these missiles , these devices, the accelerometers and the gyroscopes were going from Russia to Iraq. The Washington Post, in December, reported the story on the front page, that the Jordanians and Israelis had intercepted these devices.

I asked the administration to give me a briefing on it. I got some remark that it was too early.

I was in Moscow in January, and I met with our ambassador at the time, Ambassador Pickering, who is a fine gentleman and I think doing a great job in Moscow. I said to him, Mr. Ambassador, what is the response of the Russian government to the fact that we have intercepted these devices being transferred to Iraq, because it is a direct violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime. The MTCR, which is very complicated, is basically an arms control agreement that we brought Russia into that says they will not transfer technology involving missiles to another rogue Nation. This is a clear violation.

When I asked the ambassador what the Russian response was, he said, Congressman, we have not asked them yet. I said, What do you mean you have not asked them yet. We have not requested them yet. We have not officially asked the Russians why and how these materials were being transferred from Russia to Iraq.

I came back to the U.S. and I asked the question again and again. In fact, I wrote to the President in late February. I did not get a response until April 3. The President's response to me was, Mr. Congressman, we have asked the Russians for a full explanation and they have promised us they will get it to us. I have asked when and we have no answer.

But the important point, Mr. Speaker, is, that is a violation of an arms control agreement that this administration maintains is the cornerstone of our relationship with Russia.

Now, if we are not going to hold nations accountable when they violate arms control agreements that this President feels are the cornerstone of our relationship, how can we expect the Russian people to have any respect for us? We cannot, because they do not. Missile technology is being transferred around the world.

I am not saying it is being done openly by the Russian government, because I do not think they would do that. But it is happening. The rise of the Mafia in Russia that has stolen nuclear material, nuclear fissile material, that has transferred technology, that has gained control of certain elements of the arms control system in Russia, is spreading around the world and this administration is not taking aggressive steps to deal with that. This Congress is. This Congress is dealing in reality, Mr. Speaker.

And we are not doing it in such a way to tweak the Russians. Everything I have talked about is to do it holding the leadership's hands in Russia, to show them that we want to work with them. We want Russia to succeed. We are not about getting an edge up on that. We do not want to gain an advantage over Russia. But we do want to provide a protection for our people that we do not have that the Russian people have had for the past 15 years.

Mr. Speaker, under the ABM treaty, each country is allowed to have one missile defense system. The Russians have one. They have had it for 15 years. They have upgraded it four times. We have none.

We have none because the liberals in this city have never wanted the U.S. to be able to achieve its rightful place in providing a defensive system to protect the people of America.

Mr. Speaker, that is outrageous. We are not talking about offensive missiles. We are not talking about killing people. We are talking about a defensive system that Russia already has.

Mr. Speaker, I hope this becomes a major issue in this year's presidential race because this President is totally and completely vulnerable on the issue of arms control and our relations with not just Russia but those nations developing missile technology. This Congress is doing something about that. This Congress does not wait until Israel gets hit by some Scuds and it goes before AIPAC and makes a big speech and then tries to put money in. This Congress looks at the facts.

This Congress has deliberated, Democrats and Republicans, and based on the threat as we understand it, has said we are not doing enough to protect the American people and our troops.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, it has become somewhat outrageous. Last year the commanding officer for our troops in South Korea wrote to General Shalikashvili, the commander's name is General Luck. General Luck is charged by the people of this country with the responsibility of protecting the lives of our sons and daughters who are in South Korea today. General Luck wrote to General Shalikashvili and he said, I need to have a theater missile defense system as soon as possible, because I feel that my troops are vulnerable and I need you to give me a deployment as soon as you can give it to me. The system he is talking about, Mr. Speaker, is not national missile defense . It is not the new variation of protecting our own country. It is theater missile defense , which this President has said publicly he supports.

It is called THAAD. The Navy version is called Navy Upper Tier. Now this President has come out and said he supports theater missile defense . This Congress supports theater missile defense . But in this year's defense bill, Mr. Speaker, that we are now implementing, the 1996 defense bill, we put two specific dates in that bill for deploying THAAD and Navy Upper Tier.

Never once did this President or the Secretary of Defense or any general come to us and tell us those dates were unattainable. Never once did they say, do not put them in there, we cannot meet them. The dates were 2000 and 2001, the earliest possible dates for having systems in place to protect our troops.

This President signed that bill into law in February of this year. Within a week of signing that bill into law, his people came before the Congress and said: We are going to restructure the program, we are not going to be able to meet those dates, we are not going to obey the law. We are going to slip the THAAD program until 2006. We are going to slip the program requested by the general in charge of our troops in South Korea by 6 years, even though it is law and even though this President signed that bill into law, and even though this President never objected to that date, and even though the commander in chief of our troops over there says it is vitally important we have them in place.

We have no recourse, Mr. Speaker. We are suing the President in Federal court right now to get him to abide like the law like we all have to do.

There are major areas of disagreement, Mr. Speaker, between this Congress and that White House in terms of national missile defense , theater missile defense , and cruise missile defense . Unfortunately, we have an administration that waits until the right media opportunity, the APAC speech, the Scud attack, the Saudi attack, the TWA bombing, and then raises its hands, calls a press conference, invites people to stand behind the President, and then all of a sudden there is concern that we are going to do something to solve the problem.

Yet all along while this Congress is in a very deliberate way providing the dollars to meet those very threats and needs, this President and his people are criticizing this Congress and attempting to make the case to the American people of providing funds to meet threats that do not exist.

Mr. Speaker, to me as someone who devotes the bulk of my time to both national security and Russian relations, it is outrageous, and I am not going to stand for it. I am going to use every possible opportunity I have for the next 3 months to expose this administration for the hypocrisy that occurs every day. Whether it is the lack of enforcement of arms control agreements, whether it is the lack of calling the Chinese on the transfer of ring magnets to Pakistan, or whether it is the M-11 missile technology transfers, or whether it is the accelerometers and gyroscopes going from Russia to Iraq, we are going to call this administration.

But that is not enough, Mr. Speaker, because the world is dangerous. The Russians are hurting for cash right now. In our bill tomorrow we are going to provide some dollars to help them dismantle nuclear weapons, and I will stand up and I will support that on the floor, as I have done repeatedly, but that is not enough.

In the rush of the Russians to try to find new markets, they are now offering for market sale their most sophisticated offensive strategic weapons. These are long-range weapons. The SS-25 is what they are technically referred to: These missiles have a range of 10,000 kilometers, which means that these missiles can hit any city in the United States from any place in Russia.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I am not here to say tonight that I think Russia is going to launch a SS-25 at America, so I do not want my liberal friends to go out saying, `There goes Weldon, scaring the American people.' I am not saying that. There is a possibility of a rogue event occurring. The Russian military has tremendous problems with morale--underpaid, finding proper housing. They have got problems with crime. But I still have some degree of confidence in the Russian military's control of their systems.

We are not talking about that, Mr. Speaker. What we are talking about is taking a SS-25 launcher, and we know the Russians have over 400 of them, they are all mobile, they are on the back of a truck, you can drive them any place. They are on rubber tires. You can drive them through the country, and the CIA has said on the record it would be possible to move one of those launchers out of Russia without our surveillance camera detecting it.

Here is the rub, Mr. Speaker, I do not really think that the threat comes from Iraq developing its own long-range missile . I do not think it is going to come from Libya developing its own long-range missile . What I think is going to happen is one of those nations will pay the right price to buy one of those mobile launched SS-25 systems that is currently being marketed for space launch purposes.

Now the Russians tell us that they are controlling the launches, that they are all going to occur on their soil, even though they originally wanted to have a launch capacity in both Brazil and South Africa until we objected. But the point is, at some point in time in the future, mark my works, Mr. Speaker, there will be an incident involving a transfer of one of those launch systems, and when that occurs, we have no protection.

Mr. Speaker, we have no system in this country today to protect the American people. If we are threatened, we have nothing we can do except offensively go in and attempt to take that missile launcher out, if we know in advance it is going to occur.

That is where the threat is, Mr. Speaker, and that does not even include the threat coming from North Korea and China. The Chinese are now on their latest variation of the CSS-5A. This missile has a range of 13,000 kilometers. We know it can hit any city in America.

Now the Clinton administration tells us we do not need missile defense because we have the ABM Treaty and therefore, since Russia is part of the ABM Treaty, we do not have to worry about Russia attacking us.

China is not and never was a signatory to the ABM Treaty. There is no prohibition in China, and their offensive weapons today have the capacity to hit any city in the United States. North Korea is developing the Tae Po Dong and the Tae Po Dong II. These missiles will eventually have the range, very shortly, in a matter of years, of hitting Hawaii and Alaska.

Again the outrage, Mr. Speaker. Instead of this President talking honestly to the American people about the threat, what did he have the intelligence community do? In a threat assessment that was leaked to two Democrats last December before it was done, even though General O'Neill was the customer for that threat assessment, this administration said in their intelligence report there is no threat to the continental United States that we have to worry about for the next 10 to 15 years.

Now the intelligence community is going back now and kind of rethinking what they said there, but here is the important thing. Here is an administration that would go to this length, in terms of disagreeing between the Congress and the White House over missile defense initiatives, to say no threat to the continental United States. In other words, forget about Alaska and Hawaii. Because they are not a part of the continental United States, we are not going to worry about the North Koreans having the capability of hitting Hawaii or parts of Alaska.

Mr. Speaker, that is outrageous. This administration said that, and this administration has sold that to Members of Congress and the American people. Thank goodness this Congress has not bought it.

Mr. Speaker, our bill tomorrow provides full funding for missile defense in response to what the President's own ballistic missile defense organization said it could use. We did not go out and put money into programs just because we felt they are important, and I have no programs anywhere near my district in this area at all. We went to General O'Neill, who ran the President's own operation up until he retired last month, and said where would you put the dollars, and that is where we put the money.

But this President, Mr. Speaker, is not providing honest information to the American people about reality today, reality in terms of the threat and reality in terms of what we should be doing to protect the American people and our troops. Here we are putting our troops around the world, yet not giving them the protection they need through capabilities that we have technically available today.

There are two major provisions that were deleted from the final conference bill that I am very disappointed with. The first would have prevented the administration from making any changes to the ABM Treaty in terms of adding in other nations without the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. To me that is outrageous.

This administration right now is over in Geneva negotiating changes to the ABM Treaty. They want to bring in other former Soviet states. Why is that so significant? Because when we want to modify that treaty, we do not just have to get Russia's approval, we have got to get Belorussia's approval, Ukraine's approval, Kazakhstan's approval, Tadzhikistan's approval, none of whom have offensive nuclear weapons.

When I was over in Geneva as the only Member of Congress to visit the discussions and the negotiations taking place this year, for 2 1/2 hours I sat across from the chief Russian negotiator General Kotunov. He is a hard-liner, but a decent person. We had a frank discussion. Sitting next to me was our chief American negotiator, Stanley Riveles. I looked General Kotunov right in the eye and I said:

`General, tell me, why does Russia want to amend the treaty to bring in all of these other countries? They do not have offensive weapons, they do not have offensive missiles.'

He said, `Congressman, you are asking that question of the wrong person. I have not raised the issue of multilateralizing the treaty. You should be asking that of the person sitting next to you.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that our administration would be so beholden to an arms control treaty that they would want to involve other countries so it would be more difficult for us to amend that treaty down the road. That is what I feel this administration is doing, and I feel that is wrong. It is also certainly wrong without the advice and consent of the Senate. We had to remove that language from the bill because this President threatened to veto it, and the Senate would not go along with us.

The second thing we had to remove from this bill was on further discussions in Geneva relative to demarcation. Now there are not many people who understand the demarcation issue because, to be honest with you, I cannot understand it fully myself. But I can tell you what is going on.

This administration, unlike the previous 12 years of administrations dealing with Russia, has interpreted the ABM Treaty in such a way to require us to go in and negotiate systems that we have never before felt came under the terms of the ABM Treaty. This administration is right now about to give us an agreement, probably in October, that will limit our ability to fully develop our Navy upper-tier theater missile defense system. We call it dumbing-down our technology. There is no reason for it, Mr. Speaker.

The previous two administrations set a standard that this Congress, Democrats and Republicans, agreed to. It is called the demonstrated standard in terms of where the ABM Treaty applies. This administration went over to Geneva and opened up a whole new can of worms, and so we are going to negotiate an agreement with the Russians on what is or is not allowed in terms of theater missile defense systems; the bottom line being, we are going to further limit, self-limit and self-impose, limitations on our own capabilities.

It reminds me of what we did with the Patriot system. A lot of us saw the Patriot used during Desert Storm and we thought what a great system. Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that system was dumbed-down? That system was originally designed to take out planes and not missiles. We had a change at the eleventh hour because of the missiles coming into Israel.

Is that what is going to happen here? Are we going to wait until something happens, and then let the President have a major national press conference and pound the table and talk about his commitment to missile defense for our troops? Are we going to wait until we have a missile land in South Korea and then say that we are working hard on this new initiative? Are we going to wait until we have a Third World nation get a capability that threatens our sovereignty and then say we are going to move ahead?

That is not what this Congress is doing. This Congress is taking steps to protect our troops and to protect our American people in spite of this administration. I just hope that as this year goes on our colleagues join with us in telling the message of truth about what is happening to our national security.