The Hill Report

This week, I joined three of my colleagues in establishing the House Missile Defense Caucus, which will provide Congress with an organized and committed effort to support fully the development and operations of a robust and layered ballistic missile defense. I am pleased to co-chair the Missile Defense Caucus alongside Representatives Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jim Marshall (D-GA), and Doug Lamborn (R-CO).

Missile Defense Caucus Members share a commitment to emphasizing the urgency of funding and building a robust missile defense to address the threats posed by rogue nations’ development of ballistic missile capabilities.

While America prevailed in the Cold War, the principal military threat from this struggle unfortunately did not vanish along with the Soviet Union – ballistic missile capable of delivering extraordinary damage to the United States.

Between November 2006 and January 2007, Iran tested its long-range ballistic missile capabilities twice. In July 2006, North Korea also test-launched a number of its ballistic missiles, including one of its long-range Taepodong missiles that has a range of 9,000 miles and could hit the United States. The U.S. Northern Command made nearly a dozen U.S. missiles “operational” – or ready for use to defend the United States against an imminent danger posed by ballistic missiles.

North Korea’s long-range missile launch was detected by U.S. satellites within seconds, and it failed after 42 seconds and only a few hundred miles of flight. However, North Korea, Iran, and other strategic rivals and enemies of the U.S. continue to improve their missile capabilities.

As you know, I have long supported a strong missile defense policy. More recently, in May I introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2008, clarifying language in the bill which would have prevented missile defense funds from being used for “operations and support activities.” My amendment, which passed by voice vote, stated that the legislation would in no way prevent the United States’ missile defense capabilities from being placed on operational alert in response to any immediate threat to our security posed by ballistic missiles.

We cannot allow countries like North Korea to believe they can take a free shot at the United States because we are unwilling to stand up our current missile defense capabilities. Now is not the time for America to advertise an unwillingness to put its missile defenses on operational alert in the face of an imminent threat.

I look forward to working with Congressman Franks, Congressman Marshall, Congressman Lamborn, and the other Members of the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus to ensure that our nation has a robust defense in place to combat the threat of ballistic missile attack.


Government Spending Update
This week, the House continued its work on appropriations bills for fiscal year 2008 by passing the Interior and Environment Appropriations bill and the Financial Services Appropriations bills.

Similar to previous spending bills passed this month, the Interior and Environment Appropriations bill spends $27.6 billion - $1.9 billion more than what the President requested, and $1.2 billion more than fiscal year 2007. This makes the bill’s 9.5 percent funding increase over last year more than three times the rate of inflation.

Unfortunately, the House Democrats’ Financial Services Appropriations bill contained an even greater increase in government spending. The bill provides an increase of $1.9 billion – which translates to a 9.8 percent funding increase over last year and more than three-and-a-half times the rate of inflation.

Once again, House Democrats are seeking to gut competitive sourcing programs, thereby preventing taxpayer savings through government contracts. Like the Democrats’ previous attempts to undermine competitive sourcing through the appropriations process, Section 738 of the 2008 Financial Services Appropriations bill ties the hands of government agencies by unnecessarily delaying and complicating public-private competition in determining the most efficient performance of commercial activities.

Additionally, this language creates new and uneven protest rights and intrusive data requirements concerning fringe benefits while marginalizing the consideration of quality in determining the best source of commercial services for the taxpayer.

In response, this week I co-authored an amendment along with Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) to once again address the issue of government contracting. Our amendment would eliminate the anti-competitive sourcing language from the Financial Services Appropriations bill. Unfortunately, our amendment was defeated by a vote of 158 – 268.

As you know, competitive sourcing has already demonstrated the ability to help federal agencies spend funds more efficiently on their stated missions and reduce the size of government by using the private sector to perform jobs that are commonly found in the Yellow Pages.

In 2006, federal agencies “competed” only 1.7% of their commercial workforce – which makes up less than ½ of 1% of the entire civilian workforce. This very small use of competition for services is expected to generate savings of $1.3 billion over the next 5-10 years.

I will continue to support taxpayer savings by bringing the efficiency and expertise of the private sector to the federal government, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to promote conservative principles of smaller government and fiscal responsibility. The American people deserve better.