Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, this amendment deals with a profoundly important issue that will be before the House of Representatives and this Nation for the next three decades at least. This is an amendment that deals with the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, and the dual capability of that fighter, basically meaning how to retrofit or make that fighter capable of handling the B-61 nuclear weapon.

This is a weapon that is principally designed for our allies, to be used in Europe. It is a weapon that is now in the process of being life-extended at a cost of several billion dollars over the next decade.

The question is, Do we need to revamp the F-35 in such a way as to be able to handle both conventional as well as nuclear weapons? This is the question before us. It is a question that involves our allies, and it is a very, very expensive issue that we must deal with.

If we just continue on, we will spend billions upon billions of dollars on a system that may or may not be desired by our allies around the world. We are just pushing our way forward here without really considering all of the issues involved.

This amendment that I brought forth on the floor today is really the wake up to this larger issue and the extraordinary expense and the ramifications that it has with not only our allies but with potential adversaries around the world.

What I really would like to do is to expand upon a study that has already been put into this legislation, a study that Mr. Quigley has successfully brought in, and expand upon it so that the report that comes back to us be more full, providing more information. We need that information in order to make a wise decision here about how we are going to proceed.

This is an issue that the Armed Services Committee is wrestling with, as well as, I am certain, the Appropriations Committee. Later in this process, when we get to the end of this bill, I will have another amendment that I will put forward that will fence off this $15 million until such time as that report comes in, and I would recommend that that report be more full and more complete.

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

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, earlier today I took up this issue by attempting to strike the $15 million that is appropriated in this bill for the initial phases of figuring out how to make the F-35 dual-capable, that is, capable of handling both conventional as well as nuclear weapons.

This is the opening of a very, very expensive process. Probably well over somewhere between 10 and $20 billion will be spent on this entire program.

The F-35 is our plane of the future. It is extremely important for the defense of this Nation. However, the issue of whether that plane should be dual-capable or not really revolves around the role that the F-35 dual-capable plane will play in the European theater.

Presently, we are deploying in Europe the B-61 bomb. That bomb is now being life-extended, rebuilt for the purposes of doing what it has done before, that is, to sit there basically unused. It will be both a tactical as well as a strategic weapon.

There is a major cost factor that will affect this budget and future budgets for years to come with this initial decision that we are now making.

What this amendment does is to simply build off a portion of the bill that is already in place. It does call for a report. This amendment fences off the $15 million, says you can't use it until such time as the details that I add to the existing language of the bill before us--those details were read by the reader a moment ago.

Let me just quickly go through them:

Until the House of Representatives has delivered--that is, until the military has delivered to the House of Representatives defense committees a report, among other matters, on the total anticipated cost of making the F-35 joint fighter nuclear-capable;

Next, the number of aircraft expected to have such capability;

Next, the total number of tactical B-61s expected to undergo the life-extension program, including the total anticipated cost specific to the tactical B-61.

This is critical information that we have. The language in the bill is okay, but it doesn't give us the specificity that we need to make the decision, and frankly, I don't think we ought to start down this path until we really have some better notion of where we are going with the expenses of this.

We also know that the European community is, at best, ambivalent about what to do with this issue, and they certainly are ambivalent about whether they are going to pay their share of the costs of the airplanes that they will eventually acquire that will have this dual capability.

So big questions out there. This is an amendment attempting to gather the specific information that we should have to make a wise and informed decision in the future.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, at the subcommittee, with great respect, I respectfully disagree with you. This does not change law. It simply writes into the law an extension of what is already in this bill, and that is, it calls for a report.

It also fences off a certain amount of money, in this case $15 million. That is really the ante, the beginning of a very expensive process. It fences it off until we have that information report from the Pentagon. I think that is the wise thing to do.

In fact, the appropriation bill in many, many respects changes laws, and I think we are all aware of that.

I am also aware that I have yet to overcome a point of order, but there is always the first time, and we can be hopeful that this might be the first.

But I draw the attention of the chair, the ranking members, and anybody else that cares to listen, be prepared to spend somewhere between $15- and $20 billion if we go forward with both the B-61 and the retrofitting to the F-35 so that it will be dual-capable--capable of both conventional as well as nuclear weapons.

I think we better know where we are going, have a good sense of the total cost, and also have a very good sense of where our European allies want this to be, and I think they ought to also pay for it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source