SEC. 123. MODIFICATION OF REQUIREMENT FOR CERTAIN NUMBER OF AIRCRAFT CARRIERS OF THE NAVY. (a) In General.--Section 5062(b) of title 10, United States Code, is amended by striking ``11'' and inserting ``10''. (b) Conforming Repeal.--Section 1023 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (Public Law 111-84; 123 Stat. 2447) is repealed. The Acting CHAIR. Pursuant to House Resolution 260, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) and a Member opposed each will control 5 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oregon. Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. I appreciate the hard work that the committee has undertaken. We have before you a bipartisan amendment also offered by my colleagues Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Bentivolio. The purpose of the amendment is simple: it will help make the naval fleet stronger and more sustainable by allowing the Navy to decide the level of aircraft carriers in the future; stay at the current level of 10 at some point in the future instead of going back to a congressionally mandated level. It does not eliminate any aircraft carriers. The entire Department of Defense is in the midst of a major reality check as budgets shrink, priorities change, and new technologies emerge. I don't pretend to be a naval expert, but our Navy is being pushed into shallow waters as a result of sequestration. And now more than ever, we should allow them to make the decisions. I have been a little concerned that some people in opposition say that this amendment would make a 10-carrier fleet permanent. Nothing could be further from the truth. It simply will allow the Navy to decide if it wants 10 aircraft carriers at some point in the next three decades. Now, if they're afraid that this will happen, then it means they think that the Navy 5 years, 10 years, 20 years from now will decide that they have higher strategic needs. The history of the 12-carrier requirement was imposed for the first time in two centuries by Congress in 2006. That number, being unsustainable, was reduced to 11 in 2007. That cap still being too high, the Navy had to seek a waiver from the Congress to temporarily drop it to 10. If the amendment passes, the Navy will still go back to 11 carriers in 2016 when the Ford is commissioned. But at that point, we should allow the Navy to decide, not people in Congress.
I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the 5 minutes in opposition. The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from California is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. McKEON. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McIntyre). Mr. McINTYRE. I rise to oppose this amendment. The Navy is already down to 11 aircraft carriers from a high of 15 during the Cold War. We clearly need these 11 aircraft carriers to maintain a continuous presence in the Middle East, the western Pacific, and wherever else we may be called upon to go. Protecting our national security interests with our allies, such as Israel and Japan, and keeping trade lanes open, require the fleet of carriers that we have today. Also, these carriers allow the U.S. to maintain influence without having a base in a foreign country. Talk about saving money; carriers are, in reality, mobile bases. This is a critical military capability for the United States, and it must be maintained. Keeping aircraft carrier production on track is also a major jobs issue. We know that tens of thousands of skilled workers support building and maintaining our aircraft carriers, and without them, we would soon lose our ability to build large ships of any kind. Mr. BLUMENAUER. I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wittman), a subcommittee chairman on the Armed Services Committee. Mr. WITTMAN. Simply put, this amendment seriously jeopardizes national security and also our ability to project power and maintain a forward presence in an ever-growing dangerous world. The backbone of our Navy is our carrier strike force. In order to have seven carriers, we need to have 11. There are carriers that are in port to be refueled, sailors that have to rest. Eleven equals seven. Today we see in the Central Command, they request two aircraft carriers. They're only provided one in the most dangerous area of the world, the Middle East. If we can't meet the requirements that our commanders are asking for, then why would we want to be reducing the number of carriers? That just doesn't make sense. There's a misconception, too, that because we're moving out of Afghanistan, that somehow there won't be a need for a presence of an aircraft carrier there in the Arabian Gulf. That is absolutely wrong. We need that presence there. The way we maintain that presence is to make sure that we have a minimum of 11 aircraft carriers.
Our forward presence is needed today, and we want to make sure that this is done, especially with the reposturing to the Asian Pacific. [Page: H3521] With that, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment. Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney). Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, you can imagine my surprise when I found out that for the last 7 years, Congress has been dictating the number of carriers that are in the Navy. For 230 years we were satisfied to let the Navy make that decision. I was just stunned to find that this was actually happening. I wish I had known. I could have offered an amendment to simply get rid of the requirement entirely, but I applaud my friend from Oregon for at least offering this small improvement. I would respectfully disagree with my friend from Virginia--this amendment has no impact at all on national security or national defense. Again, there's no impact on national security or national defense. If the amendment passes, the Navy could have 20 carriers next year if the Navy decided that that's what it wanted to do. All we're doing is taking the congressional mandate down from 11 to 10. I go back to the words of former Secretary Gates in 2010 to the Navy League. I thought it was interesting what he said. He said: Our current plan is to have 11 carrier strike groups through 2040 to be sure the need to project power across the seas will never go away, but consider the massive overmatch the U.S. already enjoys. Consider, too, the growing antiship capabilities of adversaries. Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one? Any future plans must address these realities. That's all we are doing, Mr. Chairman, is simply giving the Navy more control over how many carriers the Navy has. With all due respect to all of my colleagues here, I am perfectly willing to trust the Navy with the operations of our naval warfare, more so than I am Congress. With that, I ask my friends to support this amendment, which has no impact on national defense but gives more control to the Navy, to the experts in the field. Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).
Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Chairman, as long as we are on the subject of the Navy, the Navy actually did report to Congress in February 2013 with their force structure assessment, which called for 11 carriers to be in the force, which followed the strategic review which President Obama and Secretary Gates conducted in 2011, reported in early 2012, which talked about the repositioning to the Asian Pacific, which my friend, Mr. Wittman, talked about. And, in fact, articulated the fact that we are going to need more naval projection with that shift in strategy and focus for our country's future national security needs. Strategy should drive decisions here in Congress, both in terms of the defense bill and our budgets. The Navy has spoken, in fact, as recently as February of this year, with a report which I would be happy to share with any of my colleagues, which clearly articulated an 11-carrier force is what we need today and fits within the strategic review, which we have just exhaustively conducted under the leadership of Secretary Gates and President Obama. I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment. [Time: 14:50] Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say the Navy is going to have 11 carriers when the one under construction goes into operation. Nothing in this amendment denies them that. What it says is that, subsequently, going out 20 or 30 years, the decision about the minimum level will be left to the Navy, not Congress. I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close? The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from California has the right to close and has 2 minutes remaining. Mr. McKEON. I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of the time. The notion here that somehow, unless we impose a permanent mandate on the Navy, they are not going to do what my friends from Connecticut and Virginia say they're going to do, I think, is ludicrous. This is a symbol of Congress micromanaging, substituting its judgment for that of the command structure. It is, I think, important for us to, in a small way, express confidence in them. They will have their 11 aircraft carriers, as the Gerald Ford is commissioned. They'll be back at 11.
The question is, are we going to have a mandate in perpetuity to substitute our judgment for the realities of the Navy in 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, regardless of force structure, threats or technology? This is a small symbol of what's wrong with the process here and why we can't get control over many of the budget issues. I'd respectfully suggest support for this bipartisan amendment. I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of our time to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes), subcommittee chairman on the Armed Services Committee. Mr. FORBES. I thank the chairman. Mr. Chairman, one of the things that unites Republicans and Democrats in opposition to this amendment, that's why you've heard them take this floor, is that the Constitution of the United States mandates Congress to build strong navies. It doesn't mandate the Pentagon, it doesn't mandate the White House, it doesn't mandate anybody. It mandates us, and we will not walk away from that mandate. And if you look at every independent analysis, every QDR since 2001 says we need 11 carriers. If you really believe the Navy's going to come in here and say they don't need them, that's not the truth. What's going to happen is somebody's going to give them a budget figure and say the budget needs to drive the strategy, and that's why you need to cut it down. And we're not going to put them in that position. Three things: they talk about costs. The reality is it could cost more to have fewer carriers because they don't take into consideration the deployment times we're going to put on the backs of our sailors, or the turnaround time we're going to have, or the increased maintenance cost. The second thing they don't look at is the fact that, in 2007, we were able to meet 90 percent of our combatant commanders' needs through the Navy. This year we'll only meet 51 percent because of cuts we've placed on their backs. But the final thing, Mr. Chairman--and this is the essence of all of it--they will come in here, and the people who advocate that will say this is acceptable risk. Do you know what acceptable risk means to them?
It means how many ships we can lose, how many men and women we can lose, how much equipment we can lose in a conflict and still have the potential of winning if every other assumption we've made holds true. Mr. Chairman, we're committed to changing the definition of acceptable risk, and saying this: when one of our men and women go into battle, we're going to make sure we've done everything we can reasonably do to make sure they have the highest probability possible of returning to the country they're fighting for and the families that they love. And you can't do it with fewer than 11 carriers. That's why we're standing with this, and that's why I hope we will reject soundly this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.