Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Fiscal Year 2004 National Defense Authorization Act. As ranking member on the Readiness Subcommittee, I have greatly enjoyed working with the new Subcommittee chairman, Senator Ensign, and I especially appreciate the efforts that the Senator from Nevada has made to work through some this year's very difficult issues in a balanced and fair manner.

The Readiness Subcommittee is responsible for two areas that have the potential to be extremely controversial, and I believe both have been handled well.

First, we spent a fair amount of time in our committee reviewing Department of Defense outsourcing policies. I continue to be troubled by the Administration's insistence on outsourcing quotas, arbitrary timelines for conducting public-private competitions, and the use of direct conversions in place of competitive processes.

Nonetheless, I support the provision in the bill which would authorize a pilot program under which the Department of Defense could test a new approach to public-private competition. The provision would also require that any deadlines for public-private competitions conducted by the Department of Defense be based on the resources actually available to the Department to conduct such competitions. I believe that this provision strikes an appropriate balance.

Second, our Subcommittee held two hearings on environmental issues impacting military training and readiness. The Administration has offered a series of legislative proposals to exempt the Department of Defense from some of our most important environmental statutes. I believe that these proposals go much farther than is needed to address the legitimate concerns of the military, and could do some real harm to the environment.

The bill includes one provision on these issues, which would exempt military lands from critical habitat designation if those lands are covered by an Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan (or INRMP). I am disappointed that the majority of the Committee rejected my amendment to this provision, which would have established a more workable and precise test for the adequacy of INRMPs to address endangered species. Nonetheless, I appreciate the thoughtful manner in which Senator Ensign considered this issue and attempted to address my concerns. While I do not support the provision that was included in the bill, I believe that it is a significant improvement over the Administration's proposal.

I also have some reservations about the reductions that we have taken in the operation and maintenance accounts, especially in the working capital funds. I am particularly concerned about the changes we have made within the Air Force Working Capital Fund - as I understand it, the transfer of funds included in the markup package may actually create shortfalls of spare parts and harm readiness. I obviously hope that this does not come to pass, and I hope that we may be able to reverse some of these reductions as the bill progresses.

As always, this bill continues to support military construction and family housing needs that are so critical to quality of life for our service men and women. I believe that the package we have before us today is a positive step toward this goal. I am concerned, however, that our actions with respect to overseas facilities in particular may be out of step with ongoing initiatives by the Department of Defense. The reductions in this bill, which go beyond those that the Department itself recently proposed, undermine planned efficiencies that would improve both quality of life and training for Army forces who will remain in Germany. Currently, the Department and the combatant commanders are working closely to create a comprehensive, integrated presence and basing strategy and to identify a new set of military construction requirements for the next decade. Moving forward, we must ensure that our decisions regarding military construction overseas support these future requirements so that we continue to support our servicemen and women to the best of our abilities.

Mr. President, I believe that the bill we have before us makes some positive steps toward improving the readiness of our armed forces, and I commend it to my colleagues. Thank you, Mr. President.