WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman Jim Saxton announced today that the House Armed Services Committee has added a pair of his provisions to the 2004 defense authorization, which passed the full House today.

The bill now includes $1 million in the budget to help develop a major U.S. air and trade show during the same years as the Paris Air Show.

“We have the largest most powerful air force in the world and our civilian airliners are the industry standard,” Saxton said. “Frankly, we need a showcase for U.S. aircraft in North America, the birthplace of the airplane.” 

The House also passed an amendment, 302-123, that lowers the minimum requirement of the top American military attache to France from its current brigadier general to the rank of colonel.

“The language would return the required rank of the top military attache to France to what it was in 1998, when only China and Russia merited an attache of general or rear admiral,” Saxton said. “China and Russia are powerful nations each representing hundreds of millions of people and are major players on the world scene. France is not in their league.”
 
Saxton noted that even the Chinese and Russian military attaches are not required by U.S. law to be generals or admirals- only the French attaches.

“Currently, France is afforded by law a higher officer than England, China or Russia or any of our many allies,” Saxton said.

Saxton, author of a bill to block the Pentagon from participating in the 2003 Paris Air Show, said that local matching funds of $1 million are required to plan a study U.S. international air show, which would be held on the same odd-years that the Paris Air Show is planned, starting in 2005. France and England alternate international air shows every other year. Saxton said he does not want to see a U.S. air show that would compete with the air shows in Britain, which he called “a strong, reliable U.S. ally and friend” of international freedom.

“It is hard to justify American military planes and military personnel participating in the Paris Air Show, when one considers the anti-American positions repeatedly taken by the French government,” he said. “Americans paid in blood to liberate France twice in the 20th Century, and then spent uncounted billions during the Cold War to protect French freedom. Now France has enthusiastically taken up an international role of organizing anti-U.S. sentiment? France is a free nation and the government can act as it chooses. But it must know the United States will react accordingly.”

Earlier this month Saxton praised Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense for their decision to sharply scale back DoD presence at the prestigious Paris event. The U.S. government will limit aircraft to six this year, none of which may fly. Each aircraft will be flown in from Operation Iraqi Freedom– an “unmistakable message” to the government of France, Saxton said.

Saxton introduced an earlier resolution discouraging such participation by the Air Force and -U.S. companies and citizens in the French event. Provisions of a third bill, H.R. 1072, which blocks France from receiving U.S. funding in the reconstruction of Iraq, were passed by the House April 4, but were not included by the Senate.

Saxton said that prior to the military conflict in Iraq, the French actively undermined the coalition’s efforts pressing for disarmament. As a result, the U.S. Dept. of Defense, which subsequently saw more than 150 American lives lost and 500 more injured, should not participate in the show business-as-usual.

“I do not want to punish the French,” Saxton said. “I do not support a boycott of French products. But I think it’s imperative that they realize the United States will respond to their brazen anti-American actions on the world stage. These provisions are largely symbolic responses to French actions over the past several months.”