To provide for transitional health care for members of the Armed Forces separated from active duty who agree to serve in the Selected Reserve of the Ready Reserve.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, we are in the middle of a war in which the battlefield situation changes on a daily

basis. The idea that the gentleman has given us a requirement for the administration to project until 2068, for 50, 60 years as to what is going to happen on the battlefield and what the casualties are going to be; and I believe he has laid out 23 considerations.

When you get out that far, Mr. Chairman, this becomes basically an editorial against the war, and I think there are other ways you can put that if you want to frame that particular position. But the idea that we are asking as we sit here and try to figure out what gas prices are going to be in 2 weeks, the idea that we are going to figure out how Iraq is going to be situated half a century from now, I think that is simply something that trivializes our debate on this very critical issue.

And let me tell you, 23 factors if we actually put this thing in law, the idea that we are supposed to have our people in uniform devoted to figuring out how to succeed in their mission, how to take care of our people, to have them out there trying to be seers of the future for half a century with respect to a war that is changing on a weekly basis is an enormous burden on people who wear the uniform.

So, Mr. Chairman, I think we should all vote a resounding ``no'' on this, and let's do analyses that are relevant, that can be utilized. But the idea of sending our people down the pike for a 50-year look at the future I think is not going to be good for this committee and I think it is not going to be productive for the security of the United States.

I reserve the balance of my time

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to Mr. Castle, the gentleman from Delaware, 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlelady from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito) 2 minutes.

Reserving the right to object, Madam Chairman, I will not object, except I want to talk to my friend about what he calls earmarks.

A couple of years ago when our guys started to get hurt with roadside bombs in Iraq, we realized that there were no jammers to jam those electronic signals that detonate the 155 rounds that were blowing up American Marines and soldiers, no portable jammers. That means while we had the big jammers we carry in the trucks to protect convoys, there were no jammers to protect that squad of Marines or soldiers working through a courtyard in Ramadi or Fallujah.

This committee put in $10 million for 10,000, jammers which we researched and developed, manufactured and deployed in the field in 70 days. Those were earmarks.

Now, if the gentleman's assertation is true, and the whole theme of his argument here is if the Pentagon doesn't request it, it's not needed, I disagree with it. This is what the Pentagon had for portable jammers for our troops: zero.

I can tell the gentleman about the system that we put in that has had a very salutary effect on the ability of the enemy to hurt our troops with mortars, also so-called earmarks. I can tell the gentleman about our surveillance programs that we added to, also so-called earmarks. I could tell the gentleman that I put in the defense budget a couple of years ago, along with my good friend Ike Skelton, an increase in U.S. Marine Corps, taking them up at that point to 180,000. Today nobody suggests that we should somehow discharge those Marines because we added them above and beyond the President's budget. In fact, the President now has come back and said, you know, you guys in the Armed Services Committee were right, and because of that, they put in a request this year for 7,000 more Army troops and 5,000 more Marines.

So I would just say to the gentleman it's our job, our responsibility under the Constitution, to build this defense budget. It's not the Pentagon's. In fact, the Constitution doesn't mention the Pentagon.

Now, what I do with the initiatives that I put in, I put them on the Internet. How's that for disclosure? I think at least a couple hundred people see that. Now, with respect to how many people see these, we put out the directive report language. Everybody sees that. But you mark up your subcommittees only a few days, sometimes as much as a week but rarely longer, before you go to full committee. And so the tables that have all of the numbers in them, and it's got hundreds and hundreds of entries, are available to any Member that wants to come by and ask for them. But we're not going to put those out to the press and cause a massive circus of contractors and media people swarming the committee when we're trying to get our job done. We have never done it like that.

But the disparaging way in which the gentleman talks about things that we put in, some of which are crucial to the survival of your constituents, the young men and women who joined the Marine Corps and the Army from your district, I think is misplaced.

The building of the defense budget is a very important thing. It's a thing that we do often in disagreement with the Pentagon. We have put in additional aircraft carriers when you had Presidents who didn't want to put them in because we thought they were important to the survival of this country, and we turned out to be right. We have increased end strength in the Army and Marine Corps. We have done most of the work on UAVs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. That means you don't get pilots shot down. That means you're able to disperse many more platforms that can gather information.

The things that we put in the defense budget are generally done after a lot of thought, a lot of analysis and, generally speaking, they have been very good for our troops.

I'd be happy to yield.

We did authorize them.

Let me take back my time and explain to the gentleman why it's important to have report language. You start programs and you also put policies in place. If you put those in the bill and those are locked into law and then you get a call from the administration and they say, You know, we looked at this thing and there's not enough long-lead materials to build this. You are strait-jacketed. The administration can't come back and say, We want to reprogram. At that point, you have to change the law.

If you have a policy, and here you have wars in two theaters, if you have a policy you have to change, you can't just call up and you can't work the policy out with the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps. You now have to go back and change the law. If you have looked at the reprogramming requests that are made by the Pentagon, they are usually made with respect to some factor that has changed. You would have hundreds of changes that now require changes in the law, and in a very real way, having report language that gives flexibility to the administration, is for their benefit.

Now we can put all this stuff in the law if that is the requirement to do it. But it doesn't make sense, either for us or for the administration. That is why you have it, because you have changing situations and you have got to have the flexibility for people to call up and say, You know, we just developed another system that is better than that one. Let's not continue to fund that in a straitjacket. Let's go ahead and reprogram and go to the other one. Or maybe we have a priority. Maybe we need ammunition, maybe we need more ammunition. So we want you to take money from this program and put it into ammunition. You can't do that if everything is in statute.

Be happy to.

If you take the gentleman's argument to its ultimate conclusion, that means the portable jammers, the ones that only weigh a couple of pounds that we gave to our marines to save their lives so they can carry them, because you can't carry the 150-pounders on your back when you're on a patrol, they would not have gotten those because they weren't in the Pentagon's budget.

The point that I am making is that the Pentagon often misses things. They don't have always the best judgment in this world. I point to guys like the chairman of the Defense Appropriations in the full committee, Mr. Lewis, who, by many people, is considered one of the fathers of the Predator. The Predator aircraft has saved lives because it's allowed us to do recon and striking without having to have a pilot out there who may be shot down and have to be recovered. That was a program that required a lot of pushing against the will of the Pentagon.

So I disagree with the gentleman's argument that somehow anything the Pentagon disagrees with is illegitimate. We've had, in many cases, a better idea than the Pentagon, and the increases in the Army and Marine Corps are two of the great examples. This committee said you have to increase it, and we increased it. You call that an earmark. Today, the administration calls it the right thing to do.

Be happy to yield.

Let me just say to my friend, I believe in disclosure. That is why I put every initiative on the Internet. I think you have got to disclose things and you have got to be able to be accountable for those things. I think that's absolutely true.

That's right.

Sure.

Taking back my time, I don't think we are going to be appropriating any melting shirts, or authorizing any melting shirts. We do serious stuff. And when you have a defense bill which is over $500 billion and it has thousands and thousands of provisions in it, I would say that the number of changes we make actually is fairly minimal.

If you look at the massive amount of money that is spent on defense, the change that we make in scoping the defense bill, which is not only our prerogative, it's our mandate, it doesn't say: You shall accept and rubber-stamp what the Pentagon puts out there. And experience has shown us. And, thankfully, we have followed our mandate because we have put in systems that have saved lives, that the Pentagon didn't think about, and we have put in more systems that have made us more effective at fighting the Nation's war that the Pentagon didn't think about.

We have got members on the committee, I would say to my friend, who have taken five, six, seven, eight trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. They see things. They write down notes. We have our professional staff with us. We were out there looking at the Fourth Division and we saw some of their trucks whose armor consisted of two layers of plywood, with sandbags in between. That is why we went back and on an initiative we put together double-hulled trucks. To my knowledge, none of those double-hulled trucks has yet been penetrated by any enemy shrapnel from a roadside bomb. We do things in response to what we think the solders and sailors and airmen and marines need.

So I agree with the gentleman that we should all be accountable for what we put in a bill, whether it's a defense bill or something else, and you have got to stand up. If it's a bad one, you take the heat for it. But just saying anything that doesn't come out of the administration is, by definition, illegitimate, is absolutely not accurate.

I can just tell you this. If you end up with an administration that you don't agree with, like some Republicans who didn't agree with what President Carter did with defense spending in the last part of his term, when we put in, along with some pretty discerning Democrats, an extra aircraft carrier, and if you want to straitjacket this body, where a President that you don't agree with, who you feel is cutting defense spending to the bone, and maybe beyond the bone, where, as a rule, if he or she doesn't agree or doesn't put that out as a defense budget, you consider it your duty to not add a single cent, then I think we are putting ourselves in a position where we are disserving the people that we represent, because our job is to put together a defense budget.

Absolutely.

Taking my time back, I would just say to the gentleman, I put my initiatives, and I don't call them earmarks because I don't think they are illegitimate, I put them on the Internet. As I learned in my ill-fated national campaign, people aren't paying a lot of attention to my Internet site. But I had it there for millions of people to see. And I think that is the appropriate thing to do.

I just want to assure the gentleman of something so that he rests easy, to some degree. The people of this committee are really hardworking people. I think we have got one member who's been to Afghanistan and Iraq something like 13 times. I haven't been there that much, but I have been there a lot. They spend a ton of time working for the uniformed people of the United States. They make lots of notes and they do lots of analysis.

Let me tell you, the way you put together a defense budget is you have got somebody sitting in the Pentagon, and somebody comes over and sits next to him and says, You know, here's a system that the company I am working for would like to have in the defense budget. And they make a case for it.

None of this stuff is derived through a stainless process. We are all people. The only thing that really makes this government go is accountability, and people should be held accountable for the things that they put in the bill. The vast number of folks that put things in the defense bill put out press releases with respect to what they put in. They don't hide that. People put in provisions that have a value to the military. If you go down the line and analyze them, I think that you would concur with that.

So I want you to know this is a committee that really does its homework. It's got a great staff that works very hard, and we have done a lot of things that have saved soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines on the battlefield, who

would not have been saved if we just rubber-stamped the President's budget. I guess that is my point.

I thank the gentleman.

I withdraw my reservation.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I would just say to my colleague, I have great respect for him and I agree with the purpose of this amendment. I disagree to some degree with the offset, which is from missile defense. You may have heard a number of us here making the case for the importance of missile defense.

So I would hope as we move along to conference, we can find another offset for this. I do support very strongly your purpose. What I would like to do is find another offset for this.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry), who has been a member of the committee and also the Intelligence Committee.

Madam Chairman, let me go over the adequate safeguards that are currently in place. The contract must specify the interrogation support. All support must be in accordance with applicable law and policy. They must be trained and certified, in- theater training. They must be closely supervised and monitored. They will not oversee, direct or monitor interrogations. They operate only in fixed facilities. They must submit a written interrogation plan. And, lastly, they are subject to prosecution.

Let me say to my friend from Virginia and the author of this amendment, because they are both friends and I know their hearts are in the right place, I have observed one interrogation, one of the first times I have seen an interrogation. It was an older lady reading a children's book to a detainee.

I said, ``You gotta be kidding me.'' I expected all the classic stuff like we see in the movies. And our escort said, ``Are you kidding?'' They said, ``This lady is one of the most effective people we have, and she does extremely well.'' I believe she was a contractor. She sure as heck wasn't a uniformed service person.

Now, my point is that there is a lot of psychology, that there is a lot of art to this, there is a lot of human relations. And if you have prohibitions against coercive behavior, and we have got rows of those in all of our manuals, if you have got somebody that you can contract with who can walk into a room and walk out maybe 2 days later, maybe 8 days later, maybe 6 months later with information that will save the lives of your troops and advance the mission, who cares if that is an elderly lady who happens to be a civilian and may not want to join the Army?

I yield to my friend.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I would just say to my colleagues that you do have to be certified, you do have to be trained, you have to be supervised, and you are subject to prosecution. So our special operators have laid down a pretty strict set of guidelines. And the last thing that I saw coming from the department was that this would severely hamper Special Operations' capability if it was passed.

Now, that may be because many of the things Mr. Thornberry talked about with respect to language, with respect to availability. I think we should respect what the warfighters say about this and get more information before we take a vote like this.

Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I am going to yield to Mr. Thornberry, but first let me just say this. I respect the gentleman who just made the statement who has been in Iraq. But my son was in Iraq, also, and on two missions, two tours, and Afghanistan. And one important fact that I think comes out when you talk to folks who have been there is the exigency of the battlefield. That is the

need to do things quickly, to be creative, to be able to move quickly to save the lives of your comrades and to carry out your mission.

Now, let's think about this. You have to videotape interrogations. What happens if you have got people coming in, moving in a pincer movement against a particular area, maybe some buildings, maybe you have got some machine gun fire, and you have been hitting IEDs, and you capture somebody and you have got people in movement. And you have to bring up then the video cameras to interrogate before you can have a successful interrogation. And what if you don't have video cameras? You are going to have people who are deterred from being able to do that because they are going to be worried that somehow they are going to be found in violation of the rules.

Now, we have got a letter here from the Under Secretary of Defense who says that the Defense Department very strongly opposes this requirement to video record all intelligence interrogations. They say: This requirement runs contrary to sound Defense Department policy, which relies upon careful selection and empowerment of the chain of command to execute the mission. Currently, commanders video record interrogations only after determining that the environment is conducive and the recordings will add value to the mission.

I might add that if you have interrogations, especially if you have got special operators who are out among the population and you lose one of the recordings, then you expose them to enormous risk.

So the idea of making this not discretionary and mandating it I think doesn't make a lot of sense.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman, and then I will yield to Mr. Thornberry.

I thank the gentleman for his answer. But if you have a situation where you are doing intel interrogations close to the battlefield, which you are in many places, a matter of minutes or hours could make the difference between life and death. And if you don't have video equipment available, which you wouldn't have in many of those cases, you could still have what I would call a disastrous result.

I yield such time as he might consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry).

I want to yield very quickly to Dr. Gingrey. But first, we have that list, and any Member can go look at it but it is not made available to the public. And I think there is a safety issue here. I think there is a safety issue with respect to the families, the children, the wives of the folks that attend this particular institution.

And you know something else?

We applaud our military people regularly. We acknowledge that they're some of the most honorable of citizens. We trust them with the lives of our children and in battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And yet it seems like the amendments that come up show quite a bit of distrust. We don't trust our interrogators, so now we're going to videotape them as if they were stealing candy at a 7-Eleven because we don't trust them.

And here we don't trust these great military folks that run WHINSEC who, I think, are going to have a salutary effect on the leaders that come from other countries that come to this school.

Americans are the best. Our military people are often the very best ambassadors for this country. And the idea that we continue to try to close down the best ambassadors, so that the people who will offer schools to them are people like Hugo Chavez, I think that doesn't make a lot of sense.

So as much as I respect my colleague who is offering this amendment, I would hope that my colleagues would vote against it.

I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey.

I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman.

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Madam Chairman, I would like to yield at this time to another gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) 1\1/2\ minutes.

Madam Chairwoman, I would like to yield to Dr. Gingrey such time as we have left.

I have a lot of respect for the author of this amendment, and I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to keep a corporation from basically employing through a subsidiary American citizens who are not contributing to the tax withholdings.

Is that right?

I understand that.

The way it's drafted, it appears to me that it's a flat prohibition, and any organization with even one U.S. citizen might be precluded from using this business form, which I think is a far more anticompetitive approach than the gentleman might want.

My feeling is this, that if we approve this amendment, I would hope that the gentleman would work in conference to make sure that it's narrowed to this focus on making sure that these companies pay taxes and that it doesn't have some kind of exclusionary or unintended consequence.

Will the gentleman work with us in conference?

In that case, Madam Chairman, we do not object to this amendment.

Madam Chairman, I yield back.

Madam Chairman, I would like to recognize the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Broun) for 5 minutes.

How much time do we have?

I would yield myself such time as I might consume.

Madam Chairman and my colleagues, we have general officers, flag officers who go over to Iraq, Afghanistan just as they have gone to every war theater we've fought in. They talk to their colleagues. Their colleagues give them the facts as they see the facts. They come back. They repeat those facts, the ones that they concur in, and they draw conclusions.

Now, they do that on dozens and dozens of talk shows and other media outlets throughout the United States. Some of them are for the operation and some of them are against the operation.

The idea, and this sounds like something we might want to adopt for our campaigns because I've found myself falling prey to this now and again, thinking what my opponent said was propaganda, what I said was the absolute truth. But how about the General McCaffreys who come back, having talked to their friends in theater, and they come back and give their set of facts and they say, therefore, we don't think things are going well, as opposed to the general who goes over and talks to friends in the theater, some of them the very same people, and they come back and say our conclusion is that things are going well.

The idea that we take this great resource, and I understand this is directed at general officers who go over to the theater, come back, appear in the American media, and give their take on where they think this war is going. I think that's a great asset for this country, and I say that, even though I've appeared many times opposite general officers and flag officers who have the opposite opinion from mine. But it's a great resource to have people that have that background and are able to look at the situation and come back and give their opinion freely.

The idea that the people who agree with the operation over there are giving propaganda, but the generals who have come back and said that we think there is a problem with this operation, and there are quite a few of them, that somehow their point is right on and they are precisely accurate and they are serving the public, that's nonsense.

You've got to let your general officers go over, make an evaluation, come back, give that evaluation, and we get to cross-examine them in committee, as we often do. We'll have people on both sides who have seen the same wars and the same operations and come to different conclusions.

The idea that we are going to label the people we don't agree with propagandists and the ones that agree with us are philosophers and statesmen is kind of a zany idea.

Let's let all of our general officers, let's look at them as a great resource, whether they agree with us or not. I've always said that, even about the folks that come back and have a totally opposite view from mine. I've always said this is a great resource to have retired military people with a long background, who go over, have these insights, make an evaluation and come back and give us that evaluation.

Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, we've had it on both sides on the Afghanistan and the Iraq operations. We've seen guys like General Zinni come back and give a viewpoint totally opposite the administration. Yet I listen to that gentleman. I greatly respect him. I think he's got a lot of wisdom. I disagree with him in some cases.

But the idea that we call the people who disagree with us propagandists and the other ones great seers and statesmen and philosophers doesn't make any sense.

Let's let everybody come back and exercise the right to free speech, and let's not have any of these inhibiting amendments.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, how much time do we have remaining?

Madam Chairman, let me say this: I have always greatly respected the ability of our guys, this great resource that we have of flag officers--and nonflag officers, incidentally, NCOs and company grade officers--to go over to a warfighting theater and come back and bring you the news, whether it's good or bad. In fact, I've hosted forums in the Armed Services Committee when I brought in dissenting officers who would come back and tell us what they thought was wrong with the war because you've got to listen to it. If you're going to shape good policy, you've got to hear both sides to these things.

I would just say to my colleagues who say, well, these people were hosted; they came over and they were hosted. Listen, you have respected people like General Zinni and Barry McCaffrey and other respected leaders and generals, and they go over to a warfighting theater, you can bet that they are hosted by their colleagues that they grew up with in the military, fought alongside with, and that's absolutely appropriate. And you can bet that they were given transport and they got to look at the operations, they got to give their analysis. And you know something? That has value. I always want to see the guy that thinks that the operation isn't going well and listen to his remarks and his comments.

So the idea that we're going to label the guys who we don't agree with as having been ``propagandized'' and we're going to label the guys we agree with as being seers and prophets and truth tellers, that just doesn't work.

We've all been surprised. As you look at this array of general officers, often you'll say, I would have bet that that guy likes the operation. You talk to him and he says, ``no, I don't like it, I think we're there for the wrong reason, I don't think it's going to work.'' And the guy that you thought probably is not going to support it says, you know, I've seen this, this, this and this, and I agree with the operation.

You want to listen to all of them. And the idea that we're going to crunch down on them and also the idea that somehow Don Rumsfeld got these people in a room and told them what to say, if you believe that, you don't believe in the independence of these general officers. None of them are used to having people tell them what to say. They're independent. They're a source of information to us. They're a valuable resource. And we ought to respect all of them. We ought to urge them all to go to theater, come back with their remarks and their comments.

Absolutely. I would be happy to yield to my friend.

May I ask unanimous consent that he be given an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment.

I want to say that we've looked at this on our side, we think it makes sense, and we concur with it. I want to congratulate the two gentlemen who are the cosponsors of this particular amendment. We support it.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time unless they want to use some of the time on their side.

I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

And I appreciate the gentleman's intentions with his amendment. But I do have some serious concerns, and I briefly want to outline them, Madam Chairman.

The protection of the names of WHINSEC students and staff is both a privacy and security issue, with broader implications for our international security cooperation.

Publicizing the names of WHINSEC students in their home countries, where in some cases there are active guerilla or narcotrafficking insurgencies could expose these students to threats to their personal safety and, indeed, to that of their families. This could include hostile attention from nations, organizations and individuals that may wish to do harm to the United States, its friends and its allies.

Such publication, Madam Chairman, could serve as a disincentive to foreign students who would otherwise want to attend WHINSEC, and it could discourage nations from sending their students to the institute. This would undercut the effectiveness of WHINSEC as a tool for building hemispheric security cooperation and communicating the democratic values and the respect for human rights that we champion.

A further concern I have is that cooperative training at WHINSEC does not just involve military personnel. We're also training police forces, of which more are from Colombia than any other nation. Many of these personnel are involved in counterdrug operations when they return to their country. It is incomprehensible that we would put their names out there, likely to be published on the Web sites of radical protest groups and put at risk not only their ability to participate in counternarcotic operations, but also their lives. Indeed, Madam Chairman, we would be putting a bull's-eye on their backs.

Madam Chairman, the gentleman noted that these names have been available upon request prior to 2005. That is true.

Well, Madam Chairman, the world has changed. You used to be able to drive freely around this Capitol prior to 9/11. You used to be able to get on an airplane without going through metal detectors. Obviously, you can't do that now. The security environment in the western hemisphere has also changed.

In his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Admiral Stavridis, the Commander of SOUTHCOM, testified, and I quote, ``Some trends in a few countries in SOUTHCOM's area of responsibility impede security cooperation, as their governments espouse vocal, anti-U.S. messages, and they undertake policies that portend a less stable and secure hemisphere.''

For most of the period of time when names were released, as Mr. McGovern was mentioning, Venezuela's foreign policy toward the United States was much different than it is now. We now also know that China is engaging militarily on a daily basis with the nations in our own backyard.

Madam Chairman, those who seek to close WHINSEC will attempt to take advantage of this policy to create the appearance----

Madam Chairman, they will take advantage of this policy to create the appearance of impropriety at the institute, and Venezuela and China will be the beneficiaries. Those concerned about human rights will then have to deal with these potentially hostile nations setting the human rights standard in Latin America.

As for transparency, Madam Chairman, you simply do not learn everything about any institution solely by looking at the names of those who have attended. If you followed that logic, one could contend that Harvard is an institution that trains brutal killers and human rights violators simply because the Unabomber once took a class there.

On the other hand, WHINSEC is open to visitors every working day. It invites people to sit in class, talk with the students, the faculty, review instructional material. This is perhaps the most open, transparent and welcoming organization in the Department of Defense. And it has certainly been the subject of more oversight than any other element of the Department.

Madam Chairman, unfortunately, I believe that the release of personal information has less to do with transparency and more to do with yet another effort to shut down WHINSEC.

On May 7, 2008, the Department of Defense provided to the Congress the names, country of origin, rank, courses, dates of attendance of students and instructors at WHINSEC for the years 2005, 2006, 2007 in accordance with the report language in the fiscal year 2008 Defense Appropriations Act. This information was provided in a classified format. The Department of Defense deemed that sensitive personal information must be safeguarded to protect the privacy, security and dignity of individual students, instructors and families. The fiscal year 2008 information will be provided in a similar format no later than 60 days after the beginning of the next fiscal year, as directed.

There's a working system to provide information regarding WHINSEC students, instructors and courses. This information my friend is asking for with his amendment----

This information that my friend is asking for in this amendment has therefore already been made available to Congress. He can walk over right now to the Rayburn Building and study the names to his heart's content.

So I am led to wonder, Madam Chairman, what is the McGovern amendment trying to accomplish?

I fear it will only give ammunition to radical groups who hope to ultimately shut down WHINSEC, which the Armed Services Committee and this Congress are opposed to doing.

Madam Chairman, you have heard some serious, serious concerns with this amendment. But whatever the outcome today, we must remember what is at stake when it comes to WHINSEC. If we were not to engage with the participating nations, Madam Chairman, we would be abandoning our most effective means of developing relationships with the security forces of these countries. The void created would be filled by countries with poor records on democracy and human rights, such as Venezuela and China.

Madam Chairman, the friendships fostered at WHINSEC have enabled El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras to provide well-trained forces to our endeavors in Iraq. Further, thanks to the counterdrugs civil military and medical assistance courses at WHINSEC, hemispheric military police and civilian organizations have also been capably providing counterdrugs and disaster-relief capabilities.

Madam Chairman, the success of current and foreseeable future conflicts will be highly influenced by the degree of international cooperation of allied and friendly countries. This requires engagement and building partnerships and relationships. And I certainly look forward to working with Chairman Skelton, Admiral Sestak, Mr. Bishop, my colleague from Georgia, Mr. Westmoreland, to ensure that we continue utilizing WHINSEC for this purpose.

Needless to say, Madam Chairman, since we already have a system in place where we're reviewing the names of students attending WHINSEC and because the institute is very transparent, I believe the amendment is unnecessary and could potentially do much more harm than good.

As for the brochures that the gentleman presented, I can assure him, and I'm sure he knows, that those pictures are only published with the permission of those students. So I don't think that is in any way indicative of what we're talking about here.

With that, Madam Chairman, I would urge my colleagues to defeat this amendment. It's a dangerous amendment.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, I intend to withdraw this amendment after speaking for a few minutes about the process here.

I intended to offer an amendment to strip an earmark in California. It's not that I've had any epiphany on the earmark where I think it's good now. I don't. I think it should not be in this committee report. But I'm not at all happy with the process here.

I submitted a total of five amendments to the Rules Committee. Two amendments were to target earmarks sponsored by Democrats. Two amendments were to target earmarks sponsored by Republicans. One was to uphold the President's executive order with regard to earmarks. When the rule came back from the Rules Committee, only one of the amendments was made in order, one amendment targeting a Republican earmark.

Over the past couple of years, as the Members know, I have come to the floor more than a hundred times to try to strike earmarks. I have tried never to make it a partisan issue. When Republicans were in charge of this body, I sponsored more challenges to Republican earmarks. As the Democrats have taken charge, I've probably sponsored more challenges to Democrat earmarks. But as soon as this becomes a partisan issue, then we lose something here. Earmarks are an institutional issue, an institutional problem here, and we cannot treat it in a partisan fashion. That's why I will be asking for unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment.

But the problem here is that we also didn't allow in the rule the amendment to uphold the President's executive order. The President wisely has recognized that when you don't have earmarks in the bill text, when you're allowed to put them in a committee or conference report, you don't have the scrutiny that you should have on earmarks.

Just take, for example, this bill. This bill has about 500 earmarks. It went through the committee process. The earmarks were added at the last minute. In fact, I am told, at least on the Republican side and I suppose on the Democrat side as well, the rank-and-file members on the committee didn't even know which earmarks were allowed until the markup had happened; so it was impossible to challenge the earmarks while the bill was in committee.

Now, tell me, if we are supposed to be vetting these earmarks, if we're supposed to be looking at them, where are we supposed to do it? It's not happening in the committee process. It's certainly not happening on the floor. So where do we actually look at these?

We have a former Member of this body in jail right now for basically selling earmarks to defense contractors. He used the defense bill, year after year after year, I might add, and there was never a point at which those earmarks were challenged. Nobody looked. In fact, people looked the other way. There were plenty of warning signs out there that these earmarks were untoward. But we looked the other way. I would submit we are doing the same thing today.

When you have a report come to the floor with more than 500 earmarks, none of which were even known to most members of the committee before it arrived here on the floor, and then when I offer amendments to the earmarks, I'm only told I can offer one on the floor, one targeting a Republican earmark, to try to make it a partisan issue, there's something wrong with this picture.

I don't know when we are going to wake up and recognize that earmarks are cheapening this institution, and greatly. In Congress you place value and priorities by appropriating money and authorizing money, but when you have earmarks like this that are slipped in at the last minute out of sight, then you don't get proper debate on these priorities. You basically close your eyes to other people's earmarks because you want to protect your own. And when you have more than 500 earmarks, there are enough to spread around where debate that should be happening on defense priorities or other priorities in other bills is hushed and we simply don't have the scrutiny that these bills deserve.

A lot of these earmarks are, in essence, single-source contracts to private companies. We get all over the administration, and properly so, when they give single-source contracts. Halliburton, how many times have we heard it? We should scrutinize that. We should provide oversight. Yet when one of our Members does it, we turn our backs and say we don't want to know because we might want to do it as well.

Madam Chairman, we have to stop this process.

Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be withdrawn.

Will the gentleman yield?

The gentleman has mentioned many projects. I'm sure all of those mentioned would survive the authorization, appropriation, and oversight.

Well, then there's no need to earmark it this way if it's authorized. There's no reason to put it in committee or conference report language and not have it in the bill. I think what the President has rightly recognized is that when it's not in the bill, then there are limited opportunities for other Members to see it and to scrutinize it.

There is nothing in the President's executive order that binds

the Pentagon from reprogramming funds. It simply says that the Pentagon may decide to exclude earmarks that it did not request and that aren't in the statute language. I understand the importance of report language.

Again, the President's directive doesn't relate to report language in general, it's simply the earmark. Now I just have to say, 500 earmarks in this bill. There will be more than 2,000 when the appropriation bill comes to the floor, if tradition holds. If somebody can make the argument that that is a process worthy of this institution, for more than 2,000 earmarks to come to the floor, and no time, no time--it will come to the floor probably the same day that we vote on it--for this body to appropriately scrutinize it, and for every Predator or worthy earmark that you can point to, you can probably point to a dozen where shirts were earmarked that melt on a soldier's body, but somebody in their district just wanted them.

If the gentleman will yield one more time.

I would simply say that the gentleman mentioned that he believes in disclosure, and if a person puts an earmark in, he should be able to withstand the heat that might come from it. The problem with this process is there's no opportunity for that to happen. I offered four amendments. I was given one. In an appropriations bill of more than 2,000 earmarks, how many can you really do? How many can you challenge.

That is why we have had so many problems over the last couple of years with bad earmarks, is there's simply no way to adequately vet them. There were 36,000 earmark requests before the appropriations committee last year, and no way to vet them.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment that I would like considered.

I rise today to introduce an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act which, if enacted, will provide 180 days of transitional health care for servicemembers who leave active duty and choose to join the National Guard or the Ready Reserves. The text of this amendment is H.R. 5609, which is a bipartisan measure with 51 cosponsors.

Many of our citizens, Madam Chairman, joined the Armed Forces out of a sense of duty and desire to serve our Nation. They joined with the clear understanding that we must have volunteers who are willing to serve to defend our country's freedoms and our way of life.

Our transitional health care amendment will offer the departing soldier, sailor, marine, or airman and their family a bridge of comfort for 180 days after they leave active duty if they join either the National Guard or one of the Ready Reserves.

This amendment will provide former servicemembers with additional time to find a job, to enroll in college, or relocate to another city, with the peace of mind that if a health problem arises, they will not be left without a place to turn or unmanageable medical bills. At a time when we ask so much of our all-volunteer force, this small measure is a benefit which our servicemembers really have earned.

Our veterans are not looking for a handout, they are really looking, as this amendment will provide, for a lift up. It will keep our best- trained soldiers and proven leaders in the Guard and Reserves and enable our military to continue the fight against a determined and unpredictable enemy.

Since September 11, 2001, we have had over 600,000 members of the Guard and the Reserves called to active duty. Without the Guard and Ready Reserves, our ability to defend against enemies both foreign and domestic would be greatly reduced. With the potential to retain 13,000 additional trained soldiers, sailors, marines or airmen for these forces, I believe that this amendment will save our Guard and our Ready Reserves significant cost in retraining new recruits.

This legislation is supported by the National Guard, the Army and the Air, the Army Reserve, the Navy Reserve, the Marine Corps Reserve, the Air Force Reserve, the Coast Guard Reserve. In addition, it's supported by the Guard and Reserve professional organizations, as well as the leading veterans organizations, including the National Guard Association, the Association of the United States Army, the Reserve Officers Association, Military Officers Association of America, the National Association for Uniformed Services, the VFW, and the American Legion.

So I would urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment, which demonstrates that we are serious about helping our servicemembers while keeping a trained and ready reserve force.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I'm pleased to cosponsor this amendment which would provide public access to the names of the graduates and instructors of WHINSEC, which is located at Fort Benning, where I'm privileged to represent.

I have been in this House some 16 years, and every one of those 16 years I have found myself in the position of defending this school. Throughout my years of representing Fort Benning, I've visited on many occasions this institute, and consistently I've supported the institute's efforts to provide civil and military training and leadership skills to our friends and our partners in Latin America. They do a tremendous job.

It serves as a unique, creative and a powerful tool in preserving democracy and fighting the global war on terror, promoting human rights, and facilitating international cooperation in our hemisphere.

But every fall we have hundreds of thousands of protesters who come to our city and cause millions of dollars to be spent in security because the protestors believe that some sinister activities take place at this school. Transparency is the only way to put the lie to that, and to show the wonderful work that takes place at that school.

And so I agree with my colleague, Mr. McGovern. We've been on different sides of this issue for many years. But with regard to this, I believe it's appropriate that transparency be there, and that the personnel who attend or teach at the institute should be made public as a matter of transparency. I believe that allowing information will prevent attempts to discredit the institute, will fortify the public's belief in its mission.

We must keep open the channels of information that show WHINSEC's true purpose, namely, that protecting human rights and building democratic governments requires a continued, concerted effort by friends, both at home and abroad.

Please join me in supporting this to secure that the institutions that we entrust promote democratic principles.

Please, I ask this House to join me in supporting this effort to ensure that the institution that we entrust to promote democratic principles remains open for review and discussion.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and help us put the lie to

all of these protesters that come down and pretend, or that, through misinformation, believe that some sinister activities are taking place there. Please support this amendment. It's good for the school, and it's good for American democracy.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, first I want to thank the distinguished Chair of the committee, Mr. Skelton, as well as my cosponsors on this amendment, Congresswoman DeLauro and Congressman DeFazio.

Madam Chairman, my amendment to H.R. 5658 addresses an issue of utmost importance to our Constitution and to the integrity of our government.

And it will help restore the trust of the American people in their government.

In a free and democratic society, our government should never use the public airwaves to propagandize our citizens.

Recent media reports have alleged an organized effort by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Department of Defense officials to manipulate network news military analysts to promote administration spin on the war in Iraq, even though many of those analysts knew the information not to be accurate.

Internal Pentagon documents obtained by the New York Times refer to these military analysts as message force multipliers, surrogates who can be counted on to deliver administration themes and messages to millions of Americans in the form of their own opinions.

In fact, one analyst apparently referred to the efforts by the Pentagon as brainwashing. A report conducted by media watchdog Media Matters showed that from January 2002 these military analysts, many of whom have ties to the defense industry, appeared on network and cable news stations nearly 4,500 times. That's right, 4,500 instances. Imagine the millions of people who heard those impressions 4,500 times.

The American people were spun by Bush administration message multipliers. They were fed administration talking points believing they were getting independent military analysis.

Days after the news story appeared, the Pentagon suspended the program. The news outlets who hosted the programs and analysts have been remarkably silent. The Department of Defense Inspector General has already begun an internal review of the program, but given the possibility that the public, as well as decision-makers in this Congress, were misled about the war in Iraq, both in the run-up to the war and afterwards, I believe it is absolutely critical that a public investigation happen that is transparent to this body, as well as to the American people.

Congress cannot allow an administration to manipulate the public with false propaganda on matters of war and our national security.

My amendment will ensure that no money authorized in this act will be used for any domestic propaganda program within the United States aimed at U.S. citizens. It will require a report to Congress by both the Defense Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office on whether previous restrictions on propaganda have been violated and laws broken.

It's finally time for the American people to know the truth. If we allow our government to lie to the American people, we lose the democracy and liberty on which our country was founded, and we risk becoming what generations of brave Americans have fought so hard to defeat.

Let us today on this floor in this Congress say never again will we allow this to happen in our republic.

I urge passage of this amendment, and today, we will say with one voice that the American people will not tolerate domestic propaganda. We will find the truth. We will correct any abuses of power.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, perhaps the gentleman, my colleague, does not understand that this amendment prohibits lying. ``Be all you can be'' is persuasion. A concerted program of government-directed lies is propaganda.

The amendment would simply codify language outlawing propaganda within

the United States aimed at our citizens, and perhaps the gentleman is unaware that similar language has been included in congressional appropriations bills since the 1950s. And thus, this amendment does not represent any change in U.S. policy.

Propaganda is narrowly defined as communications designed to influence the people of the United States, and it is limited to domestic programs within the United States aimed at U.S. citizens.

With that, Madam Chairman, I yield to my distinguished cosponsor Mr. DeFazio for 2 minutes.

Madam Chairman, how much time do we have remaining on this side?

Madam Chairman, at this time, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Chair of the committee, Mr. Skelton.

Madam Chairman, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished cosponsor of this amendment, the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Madam Chairman, I'm afraid that my distinguished colleagues on the other side are laboring under a misapprehension.

This amendment is very simple. First, it codifies long-standing policy prohibiting propaganda, domestic propaganda. Second, it calls for an investigation into whether or not the Pentagon had a concerted program to mislead the American public and this Congress.

This amendment deals with what strikes at the very heart of our democracy: We must trust our military. We must have the truth. We make decisions of life and death in this Chamber when we send people off to war. The American people deserve the truth. This amendment will deliver the truth to the American people.

I yield back the balance of my time.