Rep. Rob Bishop on Iran and Military Readiness

Congressman Rob Bishop discussed topics relating to sequestration and American military readiness on today’s Secure Freedom Radio, with host Frank Gaffney. The interview audio can be listened to here.

Frank Gaffney: I couldn’t be more pleased to have with us, I believe for the first time, Congressman Rob Bishop of Utah. He represents with great distinction the people of the first district there. He’s now in his seventh term in the House of Representatives, serving as a member of the House Armed Services Committee and also as the Chairman of the House Resources Committee. Congressman, welcome. It’s great to have you with us, sir.

Rep. Rob Bishop: Thank you for the invitation. I’m happy to be with you.

FG: You have been working on a broad front, it seems to me, and I’m anxious to get your thoughts on a couple of different things. One is kind of where we find ourselves at the moment in terms of the readiness and capabilities of the United States military. We’ve just had announced another 40,000-person reduction in the Amy. It seems as though this is an inopportune time to be doing it. The justification, of course, is sequestration. Tell us how you see this and what the prospects are for release from the sequestration-imposed cuts.

RB: Like everything we do here, nothing is simple and everything is convoluted. Sequestration, in and of itself, is not a bad issue. If you remember the very first year that President Obama came into power, they passed the stimulus bill, and we ended up $17 trillion in debt. There has to be something to get that under control. What happened though is massive increases in everything except for the military. The military actually had cuts rather than increases, and so when sequestration hit–supposedly equally on domestic as well as on the military side–all you’re doing is curving the growth on the domestic side, but you’re making even worse, more deep cuts in the military. That’s why it’s so devastating to the military. Sequestration for the military side must stop.

On the other side, it still has some kind of value, but what we are seeing is exactly what you mentioned. We are seeing a situation in which we are hollowing out our forces. As far as personnel, we are smaller than we were since before World War II. The Navy is smaller than World War I. The Air Force is the smallest it has ever been. But more importantly we are not replacing our military equipment. We are not upgrading. We’re not even restoring or restocking what we already have. And that’s the biggest problem. Research and development has been almost stopped, as well as making sure we modernize our weapon systems. That’s where it becomes really dangerous for us.

FG: Do you see any prospect for the kind of relief that you basically just laid out, that you keep controls on these various domestic spending priorities and allow some real growth to return to the military?

RB: The House and Senate budget plans have. We haven’t done the actual approach yet, but the actual plan we have going forward is. The Defense Authorization Act clearly gives numbers that are a little bit higher than what the President says, $650 billion. We have to play around with kind of a little effort as smoke and mirrors to get the money there, but the military realizes it will have the money. So we have recognized that situation and we are moving in that direction. As long as the President is willing to sign these laws and go forward with this, we can make some changes to try and stop the bleeding in our military.

FG: I gather that he is not playing ball at the moment though, signaling that he will veto the kind of efforts you are making. I pray that will not be the case and that if it is, that you will find the votes to override it because this is really a critical moment. Especially, as you know so well, Congressman Rob Bishop, when the world seems to be getting more dangerous by the day.

RB: Let me just say, there are a lot of people who threaten vetoes around this place or say there will be a veto. I cannot imagine a President actually vetoing a national Defense Authorization Act or a Budget Act. It is so essential to our security and, let’s face it, if we don’t have a strong national defense policy, we don’t have a foreign policy either. At the end of the day, I cannot see him actually vetoing that stuff. I think that’s more bluff than reality.

FG: Well, I hope so and needless to say I appreciate your efforts to press the test as they say and hope it will succeed.

Congressman, just one of your other committee responsibilities is with the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, as I understand it, and an issue that is of course arising is this Iran deal and the threats that are present if Iran does get a nuclear weapon. Notably, as your colleague Congressman Trent Franks has pointed out, that they keep talking about and seem to be beavering towards the capability to attack us in a way that would be catastrophic truly through our electric grid, using something called electromagnetic pulse. How do you see this deal at the moment and the prospect for Congress going along with the President on it?

RB: No deal is better than a bad deal. Any deal which does, not just in the short term but in the long term, stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon actually brings us closer to some kind of military confrontation in the Middle East, either started by us or by somebody else. It makes it much more difficult.

I also had one analysis, which I thought was very bright: We have negotiated with Iran with other western European countries. One of the things we didn’t do is include a Sunni Middle East country in those negotiations. So one of the PR processes we’ve lost in all this is ISIS is able to go to Sunni areas and say, “Look, the West is negotiating with the Shiite Iran. They are going to give Iran everything they want. If you want to defend yourselves or protect yourselves against the Shiite forces, you’ve got to help ISIS.” You’ve given them a PR victory that we should never have that and all we needed to do was actually include some of the key players in the Middle East in those discussions. We could have avoided that.

FG: Well, of course that probably would have avoided this deal, which I think is the reason the President didn’t do it, but you’re so right. It’s not just a PR victory of course for the Islamic State, it’s enabled them to do much of the damage that they’ve been doing.

Congressman, let me switch gears; you are also the Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. You represent a state that is very much under the thumb of the Bureau of Land management. You led the charge to try to get relief for the Defense Department from one of the predations of this outfit that involves a bird called the “sage grouse.” I dare say that most of us have never heard of it. What was at stake with respect to your amendment and how does it stand now?

RB: We knew that any kind of listing or change in the management plans by the Department of Interior with the sage grouse would be devastating for the economy of the west, but what we found when we went into it is it also may be devastating for the readiness of our military. There was an exact nexus between that. Places like Yakmont Proving Range up in Washington, they’re already spending a million and a half a year trying to manage 250 birds that they imported from Idaho. So it’s costing them. We’re cutting back military operations, we are taking places in our reserve and range areas off the grid so they cannot be used because of this bird.

The sad part is, even though the Department of Interior and Fish and Wildlife specifically when they started down this process of talking about listing the birds, even though they are required to consult with other agencies of government, they did not talk to the Defense Department. So the Defense is actually waiting and because of bureaucracy back here, they can’t actually initiate a whole lot of this stuff. They are waiting for some kind of consultation, and they were never asked. We kind of fell into the process of finding out how devastating this could be and the military was grateful that the House actually started looking into this issue because they were hoping that they could actually mitigate it in some way.

The nice part is that there is a solution. If you go with plans the states have developed, not only are they rational, they do not harm our economy, but they also would take into account the military situation as well as improving the habitat and the viability of that bird. So if you really want to solve the problem, go with the states’ plans and that’s exactly what we have put into the house version of the NDAA and I certainly hope it remains because it’s significant for our military.

FG: I’ve been hearing about this for years, Congressman. Not just the sage grouse, but other examples where training operations–as you say so critical to the readiness of our military–are really impaired by efforts to ensure that, whether it’s tortoise egg-laying areas or other things, are not disturbed. At some point–and it really seems to me we’re at that point–we’ve got to say “Wait a minute,” ensuring that the military is able to provide, as you say, not just for the security of the country but our foreign policy and indeed more broadly our economic interests as well, by being fit, by being capable of doing the nations business. If there is a win-win solution, hats off to you for engineering it and I hope that, as you say, it will survive the conferencing process and be enacted into law.

RB: Very quickly, also, the Secretary of Interior does have the power to wave military areas. They have done so in the past. The problem was in this one, they weren’t even talking to the military, let alone were they talking about waving those areas. We had to bring it up to them. The issue is it shouldn’t be at the discretion of the Department of Interior. The Department of Defense should be able to say something about it ahead of time, not just have to hope that the whims of the Secretary of Interior are on their side.

FG: Absolutely. Congressman, we have to let you go. Rob Bishop, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing in the United States Congress and Armed Services and Natural Resources, among other places. Keep it up and come back to us, I hope you will, very soon.

RB: It’s a pleasure to talk to you and your listeners. I thank you.

FG: Thank you.