Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this is the largest supplemental appropriation bill ever voted on by the Congress of the United States. And I think that it is a shame that it is being debated under these circumstances at this time of night. The only reason for the martial law rule is so that Members will not be given the courtesy of having this bill lay over one day so that they can examine what the details of the bill are.

We are going to be held accountable for this vote for a long time. Our constituents are going to ask us every time we are home how we voted, what it contained. They are going to be asking us about the loans. They will be asking us whether or not there is adequate protection for taxpayers' money. And I venture to say that 90 percent of the Members of this Congress have not had an opportunity to dig deeply enough into this in order to be able to answer these questions.

There were a few of us on the conference committee, and so we have been able to form our judgments. But I have to tell you that conference committee in which we participated the last 2 days is one of the most chaotic, and at some moments the most laughable, conference that I have ever participated in. And I think that in terms of the details of this bill, that will be demonstrated over time, because over time, regardless of whether or not the average Member in this House knows what is in this bill tonight, over time there will be a lot of good reporters who dig deeply enough into it to discover what is in this bill. They will be able to form a judgment about whether or not, for instance, the Inspector General provision is something with teeth or something that is nothing short of a sham.

I happen to think that there are loopholes in the Inspector General provision of this bill big enough to drive a 65-foot truck through.

I also would point out that that provision was adopted as a way to sandbag the GAO accounting procedures that Senator Byrd wanted attached in the conference. So I think there are a lot of detailed questions that Members ought to know the answers to. They will not by the time they vote, and that is the purpose of this rule. Our constituents will learn over time what is in this bill even if a lot of Members have not learned tonight, and that is why if I were a Member who feels any responsibility at all to my constituents, I would not vote for this martial law rule regardless of how you vote on the final bill.

The Members owe it to the country to have taken the time to review this. This proposal will provide per capita aid to the citizens of Iraq that is more than 10 times as large as the per capita aid that was provided during the Marshall Plan to all of Western Europe. Under those circumstances, we ought to take a bit more time than this rule will allow us to take tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Defense.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on both sides?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey),

the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez).

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman needs it, I will be happy to yield him 1\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. YOUNG OF Florida. That would be very appreciated.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read the following words from a very distinguished American statesman written 5 years ago: ``Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. There was no viable exit strategy we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we had hoped to achieve. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.''

The man who said that was George Herbert Walker Bush 5 years ago. Now, his advice was not taken, and we now are facing the question of what to do next.

Frankly, how we voted on going to war in the first place is, in my view, in considering this legislation, irrelevant. The question, to me, is not whether we are going to vote for or against this package tonight. I think in many ways how we cast our individual votes on this package is secondary.

The issue is whether the policy which is now being followed in the war's aftermath is the right policy, whether it is wired together well enough in the details in order to achieve the success that every single Member of this body wants to see the President achieve. After all, he is our President, regardless of party. And after all, these are our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts wearing our uniform and representing our country in that very difficult circumstance tonight.

But the policy is the issue. If the policy is the right policy, then it probably will not matter whether we appropriate $20 billion more or less than we are appropriating tonight. We will have a good chance of succeeding. And if the policy is not wired together right, then all the money that we can provide will not produce a happy ending.

I want to explain why under these circumstances I will be voting ``no'' tonight. As the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) said earlier, we have previously appropriated well over $60 billion, and we provided maximum flexibility to the Defense Department in spending that money. Yet with that flexibility we saw the shortages of inserts in the Kevlar vests, we saw the shortage of jammers, we saw the shortage of adequate protection for the unarmored Humvees, all of which have put our troops at risk. We have seen inadequate supplies of drinking water for our troops. And the very general in charge of the operation has told us in our hearings that he still does not know how it happened. And now we are being asked to provide $87 billion more.

The question is not whether the administration will get this money. They will get this money, and they will get a whole lot more because this is just the downpayment. The question is whether or not in the providing of this money we will use our leverage and use our power of the purse to force the agencies and the administration to think through more clearly how it is that they are going to accomplish the goals which they have stated. That, to me, is the detailed question.

Now, we do not have any idea, and the administration has given us no idea, of what their range of expectation is in terms of cost over the next 5 years. We should have some idea so that we can prepare our own constituents to support this over the long haul. We do not have that information. But we do know, at least I am convinced of the unpleasant truth, and I very much agree with Senator McCain on this, I am convinced that if we are to accomplish this job, we do not have enough troops on the ground in Iraq right now. We either need more troops from our allies, or we need more help from the Iraqi remnants that can be reasonably relied upon; or we are going to need more U.S. troops, or our troops will unnecessarily suffer higher casualties than they would otherwise suffer.

Now, it is not pleasant to tell the American people that we may need more troops rather than less before this is over; but talking to the experts whom I trust, that is what I believe.

We also do know that the agencies involved in running this policy so far have managed to find the single most

expensive way to deliver this aid, because they are following a high- tech strategy that involves deep involvement by these huge multinational corporations, like Bechtel and Halliburton and a dozen others, instead of relying on a more indigenous low-tech approach that can put more Iraqis to work so they have something more productive to do than shoot Americans.

I also think that we do know that at this point the administration has given us not a clue about how or how soon they expect to repair the Army. We have equipment from over five divisions that at this point needs reconstitution; it needs refurbishing. We have been told by the Army that that alone is going to cost above $17 billion, and the administration has asked for less than $2 billion.

The American public needs to know the facts, and they need to know the costs; and they do not need to have it revealed to them on the installment plan. It should be provided up front so that we can take the case to our public.

We also have the other problem, that this package does not pay for itself. We borrow it all. And so that means that just the interest payments alone will amount to about $4 billion more than we would be paying if we paid for this cash on the barrel head. And that is $4 billion on interest payments that will shove out money that would otherwise be available for education, for health care, and for other needed domestic efforts, including infrastructure.

I will be offering a motion to recommit. It will not allow us, because of the restraint of the rules, to get at the basic problems in the policy; but it will allow us to at least try to improve it around the edges. First, we will try to restore the funding for veterans health care that was taken out of the bill. Because while we have been told that that will be taken care of in the VA HUD bill, we have been given no idea of how. So that has yet to become a reality.

Second, the recommittal motion would ask that we accept the Senate provision which would convert $10 billion of this reconstruction program to loans, with the proviso that if our allies in fact forgive prior loans to Iraq, then we will forgive this loan as well.

Now, there are those who say Iraq cannot afford that. Let me point out Iraq is a country of 23 million people. They are getting $20 billion in reconstruction. That is $872 per capita, 10 times as much as the annual per capita aid under the Marshall Plan to all of Europe.

Mr. Speaker, let me simply ask for an ``aye'' vote on the recommittal motion.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Yes, I am, in its present form.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker, my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), has talked about all of the vaunted increases in the Labor, HHS appropriation bill. But the fact is that if we take into account inflation, and if we take into account increases in student population, what we are talking about for most programs in real terms is a freeze, and in per capita student terms what we are talking about in many of these programs is, in fact, a per-child cut. And that comes at the same time that States are experiencing excruciating budget problems, which ought to require the Federal Government to provide more help, not less, and yet that is not what we are getting.

Now, the gentleman can talk all he wants about the increases we have had over the past few years in education funding. The fact is that over the last 9 years, $20 billion in additional funding was put into education above and beyond the amount that would have been provided by Republican bills in this House because of the negotiating insistence of Members on this side of the aisle, and in some of those years the Clinton administration.

Now we have a different picture. This fall, some 22,000 students in 44 States and the District of Columbia have been notified that they failed to meet their academic targets set by States under the No Child Left Behind Act, that is, they have failed to make adequate yearly progress under the terms of that act. That is nearly one in four public schools across the country that will need additional teachers, tutors, books and curricula, and up-to-date technology to improve their academic performance and to meet the No Child Left Behind mandates. They include 576 schools in Illinois, 1,000 in Texas, 1,033 in Missouri, 2,770 schools in Florida, and 829 schools in Ohio, according to their State education departments. And some of these States are in the midst of a huge financial crisis.

This motion to instruct is, at best, a modest effort to prevent some of these 22,000 schools from being left behind. It is a modest instruction because the procedural constraints facing us limit us in what we can ask. We instruct the House conferees to go to the highest possible funding levels for No Child Left Behind programs that would roughly double the modest increase in the House bill if each program were funded at the higher of the House or Senate level. We should be doing much more.

Mr. Speaker, when the President came to office, he said that education would be a top priority, but that there would be no new money until we reformed the programs. So we took a flyer. We took the President at his word. We gave him the benefit of the doubt, and a lot of us voted for No Child Left Behind. That act imposed all kinds of accountability measures and mandates. Now, 2 years after the enactment of that legislation, we have the smallest new Federal investment in education in almost a decade under both the House and the Senate bills. The Labor, HHS bill adopted by the majority barely provides an inflation increase for No Child Left Behind, a freeze in real terms. It falls a whopping $8 billion short of the funding schedule that was promised in No Child Left Behind.

Because the majority has chosen to put so much of its money in super- sized

tax cuts, there is very little money left to fulfill the majority's own promises made in their own budget resolution. Let us inventory those promises:

It was the Republican budget resolution that promised to provide $3 billion more for education compared to last year; yet the Republican Labor, HHS bill falls $700 million short of their own promise. It was the Republican budget resolution that promised to provide a $1 billion increase for title I grants to low-income schools; yet the Republican bill falls $334 million short of their own promises. And it is the majority Labor, HHS bill that falls short in other areas as well.

The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that every school in America have a highly qualified teacher in the subjects of english, reading, math, science, foreign language, civics, government, economics, art, history, and geography. Yet the Republican Labor, HHS freezes funding for teacher training at $2.9 billion, $244 million short of the $3.2 billion promised 2 years ago. There is no more money for teacher quality at a time when the Department of Education says that 46 percent of the Nation's secondary schoolteachers do not meet the No Child Left Behind highly qualified criteria.

More than one million disadvantaged children could be helped if the after-school program was fully funded at the No Child Left Behind level of $1.75 billion; yet the Republican Labor, HHS bill freezes funding for after-school centers when communities across the country are struggling to provide safe places where kids can learn and play between the hours of 3 and 6 p.m. One million at-risk children will be left behind.

Recently, I received a letter from a dedicated school principal at the Colwyn Elementary School in Pennsylvania who wrote this: ``I am left wondering how is it that schools can be labeled as failures when so many of our children enter schools already left behind. And if schools are to fix all the societal ills that haunt our students, why is the funding not there for our schools, especially the urban schools, where our most needy students are?''

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, we are at a place where we will not be able to answer that dedicated school principal's call for more funding because of the policies of the majority party. These policies say that we can afford super-sized tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, but cannot afford $3 billion more to educate America's children. Faced with the choice between tax breaks for millionaires and making sure that all children have an opportunity for a quality education, the majority has made it clear where it stands. As a result, millions of children will be left behind.

Now, I know the gentleman from Ohio does not like the fact that we do not buy into his bill. We have never criticized the gentleman or the committee for the priority choices they have made. What we have said is that the limitations imposed on the gentleman are unacceptable to us, and we have a right, and indeed an obligation, to follow our consciences to try to get more money in this bill, just as we did every year for the last 9 years.

If we had rolled over the last 9 years to the argument that, oh, this is all the budget allocation will allow us, we would not have that $19 billion that the gentleman so anxiously voted for after we leveraged it into the bills over the objection of the gentleman's own party leadership in this House.

So I think the gentleman needs to recognize that, and the House needs not only to pass this motion, which does not begin to cover the need; the House needs to provide substantially more resources for this bill if we are to meet the needs and to meet the promise that so many of us signed on to when we voted for No Child Left Behind just a few months ago.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), a member of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy), a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), ranking member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

(Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I will include at the end of my remarks two chronologies.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio has just said that we did the best job that we could in funding these education programs within the context of the budget resolution. I do not deny that. The important part of that sentence, however, is ``within the confines of the budget resolution.''

Our target has never been this bill; our target has been the constraints on our committee imposed by the budget that mean that we will be providing an ever-smaller increase in funding for education at a time when we need to be providing more.

I must say, I am a little bit confused by some of the rhetoric I have heard today. We heard three Republican speakers in a row try to suggest that it was the Republican Party that in fact had done a better job than Democrats in terms of funding education. Then we heard the gentlewoman from Kentucky get up and take the opposite end of the same argument and bemoan and decry the fact that we had the temerity on one occasion to ask for a $10 billion increase in investments in our children.

That is absolutely right. We did, and I make no apology for it. I think we should have done more.

The gentlewoman from Kentucky mentioned people's concern about red tape. The mother-of-all-red-tape programs in the education area is No Child Left Behind.

We gave the President the benefit of the doubt, because he said he wanted the programs reformed before we put more money in. They have been reformed. Now the question is, where is the money?

The fact is that what is happening is that, whether it is denied or not, this Congress, under the policies dictated by the Republican budget resolution, this Congress is walking away from the policies of No Child Left Behind.

For 1 year after that program passed, this Congress had a bipartisan position in support of meeting the goals of that act. But now we see that it was evidently a 1-year promise. We are $8 billion short of where we promised the country we would be if we passed those reforms. In education, we are $3 billion short of where the budget resolution, the Republican budget resolution, promised we would be.

We are, for title I, $131 million short of where the Republican budget resolution promised we would be. We are $1.2 billion short of where the Republican budget resolution promised us we would be for special education. Those numbers are undeniable.

I would like to close by reading a greater portion of the letter that I received from a Michelle Cinciripino, a

principal in Philadelphia. In part, here is what her letter reads: ``On September 2 we opened a new school year in a brand-new school building and we were off and running, despite the lack of books and other needed supplies. And then Friday came. A second grader ran screaming from her classroom and had to be restrained until she finally broke down in tears and told us she was worried about her mom, a known drug dealer in trouble again with the law. I assured her we loved her and that she was safe at school, and off she went for the weekend. Monday came and this time she came screaming from the building. Several hours and a sound breakfast later, we finally got her back to class. Tuesday and Wednesday followed the same pattern, until Thursday when she came in having been beaten with a belt. I spent Thursday with the police and Child Protective Services. She is now safe with her dad. But I am left wondering, how is it that schools can be labeled as failures when so many of our children enter school already left behind? And if schools are to fix all of the societal ills that haunt our students, why is the funding not there for our schools, especially our urban schools where our most needy students are?''

Then she goes on to say, ``The second grader I mentioned is but one of many hurting, angry children who enter my school on a daily basis. They lack what we take for granted: a safe, loving, nurturing home where their basic needs are met. For these students, my staff and I provide the only consistent safe place these kids know. We want desperately to teach them; but before we can do that, we must feed them and love them. We must gain their trust and we must teach them the social skills that no one has ever shared with them or modeled for them. I hope you will share my story with your colleagues who say that educators `just don't want to be accountable.' I would be happy to share my story with them in person and can be reached at the above address and phone number.''

I think we ought to take the concerns of that principal to heart.

This motion in and of itself is not the issue. The amount of money that we can provide through this motion in added funding for education is small indeed.

The real issue is whether or not the House, having had an opportunity to once again hear concerns expressed about the problem, whether the House, in fact, will find a way to do more for education than we have done in this bill.

One of the previous speakers said that he resented it because we said that Republicans do not love education. I do not believe that. I think Republicans like education. I just do not think, based on their records, that they happen to like it as much as they like preserving $88,000 tax cuts for millionaires. That is our only objection. And when we have a change in those priorities, we will, once again, have a bill we can both agree on.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 7(c) of House rule XXII, I hereby notify the House of my intention tomorrow to offer the following motion to instruct House conferees on the bill (H.R. 2660) making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and for other purposes.

The form of the motion is as follows:

I move that the managers on the part of the House at the

conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the

bill H.R. 2660 be instructed to insist on the highest funding

levels possible for programs authorized by the No Child Left

Behind Act.

Mr. Speaker, once again we are being asked to pass a resolution that keeps the government open because Congress has not finished its work on appropriation bills. That is not unprecedented. Many times in the past we have faced this situation. But I do think that it is harder to understand when we have one party in control of all of the tools of government. When one party is in control of the Presidency and both the House and the Senate, it ought to be somewhat easier to get the work done on time. Over the past 34 years, one party has been in control of all three of those power centers, the Presidency, the Senate and the House, 6 years. The average number of appropriation bills that had been passed by the time the fiscal year ended in those 6 years was twice as high as it is today. Today we have only three appropriation bills passed. That, in my view, is no reflection whatsoever on the majority leadership of the Appropriations Committee. I think if things were left to the committee, we would be much further along the road. The reason that we have not completed our work is largely because the majority party leadership in this House has determined that they only want to pass appropriation bills on the majority party's side of the aisle.

The majority party has a right to define itself and lay out what its first preferences are. The minority party has a similar right and obligation. But then both parties, in the end, are supposed to seek a way to resolve those differences. I recognize, being a member of the minority, that the majority party is likely to, and under our system is entitled to, win most of those fights. That is the way the system works. But for the good of the system and for the good of both parties, there

are some occasions where the issues are so tight that you can use a little help across the aisle.

And it is the obligation of the minority party to try to do that if and when some legitimate compromises are made, not so that the minority party wins the argument on those bills but so that the minority party can at least feel that some of its concerns have been modestly attended to. That has not been the case in this Congress on appropriation bills and outside of the appropriation realm.

I, for the life of me, do not understand why we do not have bills on energy and water before us, why we do not have the military construction bill before us. On bills like that, those are relatively simple bills. They are normally fairly noncontroversial, and on bills like that what we have today is the majority in a fight with itself, and so far it has not been able to triumph. So we are stuck with those bills in limbo. On the labor, health, education bill, which I had hoped would be passed on a bipartisan basis eventually, we are stuck because the majority party is insisting on a fairly extreme approach to that bill.

The administration asked the Congress to vote for No Child Left Behind. We did. But now the funding for No Child Left Behind is being left behind.

The bill that we have on labor-H is some $7 billion short of where it ought to be in order to meet those promises.

And then we have similar problems with respect to the Commerce- Justice-State bill where efforts are being made to pretend that more money is being provided to local law enforcement than in fact is being provided because to understand what is being provided, we have to compare both homeland security and regular crime funding.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that we could be a lot further along if there was any indication whatsoever that there would be a conciliatory approach coming on any of these bills from the majority side of the aisle. Even outside of the appropriations process, we see efforts made to really radically change Medicare in the prescription drug bill, whereas if people were to back off of that, we could easily pass a decent prescription drug bill.

So I would say, I used to think we had a good shot at getting out of here by November 1. It is obvious we are going to be very lucky, Mr. Speaker, to get out of here by Thanksgiving. I regret that because I think the longer the Congress is in session, the more damage is being done to the Republic. But because of these disagreements we will be here next week with another continuing resolution. The Members can bet on it. I just hope that sooner or later the majority party recognizes that in the minority they have a willing partner in passing some of these if they are willing to compromise in the slightest on some of these issues before us.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I think Members need to understand where this CR fits in the scheme of things. As the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), has indicated, this continuing resolution when it moves to the Senate will become the vehicle by which the committee deals with the omnibus appropriations bills or the bills that will be included in the omnibus bill.

That will mean that the real CR will have to be brought up next week. And at that time we will see a continuing resolution that keeps the government open to a date somewhere between November 15 and Thanksgiving, I presume. I sincerely hope that by Thanksgiving there will be no need for additional CRs, but I am very skeptical that that will be the case. I am afraid that it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. I hope that that is not true, but I suspect it may be.

So having already said everything that needs to be said on the CR, I am prepared to yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to observe, as I think the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) indicated this morning, that last year when we had so many appropriation bills not passed until the next session of Congress, the cry we frequently heard on the majority side of the aisle was that ``The Senate made me do it.'' And they were all too eager to blame the Senate for the fact that most appropriation bills had gone nowhere.

As the saying goes, this year they do not have Senator Daschle to kick around anymore with the Democrats being in the minority. And so I think it will be interesting to see whether or not the majority sooner or later can either end its debate with itself or else on several of these bills reach across the aisle and try to work out a more bipartisan solution.

I know the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has certainly tried, and I believe I have tried; but sometimes things are settled at a level above our pay grade. That is the way life is, and that is the way this institution is.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 9\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, we are about to go to conference on a bill which spends $87 billion. It is the second installment of what will be many installment payments to deal with the consequences of the war in Iraq. This motion to instruct attempts to put the House on record in favor of three provisions which the Senate passed earlier last week.

First, with respect to the issue of loans versus grants, this motion would provide that after $5.1 billion is set aside for military and security operations, and after $5.1 billion is set aside for Ambassador Bremer to deal with other costs associated with the effort in Iraq, that the remaining $10 billion of the reconstruction portion of the package be provided in the form of a loan, unless the President certifies that 90 percent of the bilateral debt owed by Iraq to other countries is forgiven.

The purpose of this first provision is to recognize that, over the next 5 years, the per capita foreign debt of the United States will be larger than is the per capita debt of Iraq, and since foreign debts can only be paid off by a country running trade surpluses, that means that, in effect, over the next 5 years Iraq will be in a better position to repay their foreign debts than we will be.

Secondly, we ask the House to go on record in support of two provisions that relate to quality-of-life measures for our troops. The first is to provide medical screening and dental screening for Guard and Reserve personnel prior to their being mobilized; and, second, to extend the transitional health care coverage to servicemembers who have been on active duty in Iraq and are now returning home, to extend that transitional health care coverage from the existing 60 days to 180 days. Certainly, that is the least we can do for these returning servicemen and women.

Thirdly, we ask the House to go on record in support of $1.3 billion in additional funds for veterans health care so that Priority 7 and Priority 8 veterans can make better use of veterans health care facilities without having to pay a $250 deductible and without seeing the cost of their prescriptions virtually doubled. This is, in essence, the content of the Bond-Mikulski amendment adopted in the other body.

That is what this does, and I would ask Members to support it.

I would also ask that if they do support it, they recognize that they have an obligation to then insist that these provisions be contained in the conference report, because they are already in the Senate bill. As Members know, conference committees are supposed to deal only with those matters which are in dispute between the two bodies. So I would urge any veteran or any other interested American citizen watching this debate to keep close track of how Members vote today, and compare that vote with how they vote when this conference report comes back. I think in that way it will in effect mean that they will be acting as a ``hypocrisy detector,'' which is always good for this body, when someone is looking over our shoulders.

I want to say one other thing. I know that the President of the United States is a powerful man. I know that in this town he is probably the biggest man on campus that you can find. But the fact is that I have never yet met a White House who did not think that Article I of the Constitution was a drafting error by the Founding Fathers. And I think that we need to remind all Presidents that we represent the same citizens that they do. We owe every President our respect, we owe every President a respectful hearing, but he also owes us the same thing, and that means that we need to work with each other.

Checks and balances: Mr. Speaker, in my view checks and balances is not simply an ornamental concept of democracy; it is a core element. It is the heart of our democratic system, and we have a right to expect the same respectful hearing from the President if we have an opinion that differs from his, as we have an obligation to give his views a respectful hearing.

But I note in today's article by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post that the President, in a meeting last week, appears to have provided something other than that respectful hearing to Members of Congress.

Now, I know that the President is a business school graduate of a distinguished university, and I know that he regards himself in many ways as being an MBA President. He wants to bring business practices to the White House. Fine. But I would say that if that is the case, then even under the model that he sees, that means we are the Board of Directors.

We owe it to the country, it seems to me, to approach issues like this with great deliberation and great care. When we rubber-stamp the desires of any President, we, in essence, do not behave like the greatest deliberative body in the world; we behave instead like a poor imitation of the Board of Directors at Enron.

I do not think we ought to do that. Yet I notice in Mr. Dionne's column of today, he is describing a discussion that took place at the White House between the President and a number of Senators, and he is quoted by one Senator as saying, ``I'm here to tell you that this is what we have to do and this is how we have to do it,'' one Senator quoted the President as saying.

Then that Senator went on to say that after she had asked a question of the President, ``He looked at me and said, `it is not negotiable, and I don't want to debate it.' ''

Now, I would suggest that that might be a proper attitude if a parent is dealing with a minor child. It is not a proper approach when we are dealing with co-equal branches of government.

So I ask every Member today to use their own judgment and think through what they think is in the best interests not just of this country, but of the Guard and Reserve forces who we are asking to fight our battles over in Iraq and our veterans who have done their duty and who are looking for some help with health care problems that they incur along the way.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge support for the motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans), the ranking Democrat of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. Speaker, could I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), the ranking Democrat on the Military Construction Subcommittee on Appropriations.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, who has the right to close?

Does the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) have any other speakers?

Mr. Speaker, since I have the right to close, I will let the gentleman proceed. I have only one speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this motion has nothing to do with the question of whether the troops will come home sooner or not; but it has a whole lot to do with how we will treat those troops before they go to Iraq and after they return home. That is why we provide in this motion that the House ought to accept the Senate provision providing for premobilization health care and dental screening for Guard and Reserve forces and why we extend health coverage, the military health coverage to them for 4 additional months after they return home, above and beyond that to which they now are entitled.

This amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with making it harder for Iraq to repay its debts. In fact, this provision has a huge incentive for all other countries in the world to forgive their debts, just as they did with Poland when Poland became a democracy. Because this says that 50 percent of the reconstruction money to Iraq will be in the form of a loan unless the rest of the world forgives their debts. And then if the rest of the world forgives their debts, then we will too.

If we are looking for a way to put Iraq in the strongest possible position and to make sure that Uncle Sam's

taxpayers are not the only ones stuck with the bad deal, you need to vote for this amendment.

I would also say that we have heard the argument that somehow this proposal might slow down consideration of the bill; just the opposite. All this motion does is to accept three items that the Senate has already agreed to. The Senate has already determined that half of the reconstruction funds ought to be in the form of loans. The Senate has already determined that we ought to provide the additional health care to our military personnel that I have just described. The Senate has already determined that veterans deserve the additional $1.3 billion in veterans health care that we are trying to provide. So all we are doing is narrowing the differences between the two Chambers, which ought to make it faster in terms of the time it takes to deal with there bill.

I do hope, however, that particularly veterans groups, I hope veterans groups will put out a very large ``Beware'' sign on this vote, Mr. Speaker, because I am afraid that there will be a number of Members who will vote for this motion in the belief that it is merely symbolic, fully intending to support efforts by the Senate and House Republican leadership to then jettison these provisions as soon as they get to conference. That would be the ultimate act of insincerity.

And I hope that veterans groups will not let Members of this House pose for political holy pictures on this vote and then bug out of their responsibilities to stick to that vote when the bill goes to conference and comes back from conference.

I also would like to say one other thing. The President, as I said earlier, deserves the respect of every Member of this House, if for no other reason than by virtue of the office that he holds. But I want to say that the President is our leader; he is not a one-man band.

This Congress has an obligation also to weigh in with its own best judgments. I think this President, rather than telling Members of Congress that items like this are nonnegotiable, I think, as teachers often say to parents, he needs to learn to ``work well with others''. And I think that applies to how well he needs to be able to work with the Congress, and I think it also applies to how well he needs to work with our allies. And I would hope that, I would hope that that would happen.

After all, this is the same administration that did not provide the needed Kevlar linings for body armor for over 40,000 American troops.

This is the same administration that did not provide enough jammers, electronic jammers, to our troops in Iraq. And as a consequence, we have had American servicemen and women killed or maimed because they could not prevent the remote detonation of bombs and mines.

This is, after all, the same administration that did not see to it that we had enough armor for the Humvees so that they would not be vulnerable to explosions from the roadbed.

And this is the same administration that asked for so little money for clean water for our troops that 80 percent of our troops in Iraq, right now, are still drinking putrid water.

So I would say, with all due respect, no one is perfect. This administration certainly does not have a monopoly on wisdom. Neither do we on this end of Capitol Hill; but we ought to be able to work together in an effort to reach reasonable compromises. I think this recommit motion is, in fact, an effort at a reasonable compromise; and with that, I would ask for an ``aye'' vote, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I simply would say that we certainly have no objection to this amendment on this side. We have had several other amendments, so it is about time it is accepted.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I was amazed to hear a Member of the other body on radio yesterday say despite all of the discussion about this problem, that he had not yet heard about the shortage of body armor. I think that when the American public understands what has not been provided, they are going to be very, very angry.

Announcement by the Chairman

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman.

As the gentleman knows, I have taken the position that we should not be providing all grants. I have taken the position we should not be providing all loans. We ought to have an intelligent and balanced mix. I certainly would like to see changes in the reconstruction program; but clearly to eliminate all funding for reconstruction, especially recognizing the fact that we did attack Iraq and did cause certain damage, I think is clearly unacceptable.

Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, in light of all the vote switching that just occurred on the last amendment, has everybody who needed to gotten to the well on that vote yet?

Mr. Speaker, this legislation before us provides $87 billion to pay for the consequences of our war against Iraq, and the $20 billion reconstruction section provides $872 per capita aid to every single person in Iraq; 872 bucks. That is the size of this package. That ought to merit a lot more debate than we have had.

The bill before us got to the floor only because the majority went to the Committee on Rules and made a number of exceptions to the House rules so that this bill could come to the floor. And then the leadership guarantees that they are not going to lose any votes, the Republican leadership, by denying to the alternative to their proposal, those same exceptions to the rule.

That is what you did yesterday. Then yesterday you said any Member who had a germane amendment was given the grand total of 5 minutes to discuss it before the hammer came down. And now today, you are saying that the rest of the Members, who have not yet been able to even offer an amendment for consideration, are going to be denied the opportunity to do so.

Now, this happens in this Chamber, in Washington D.C., the capital of the greatest democracy in the world, supposedly, at the same time we are all supposed to swoon at the thought of how quickly Iraq is going to become a beacon of democracy and the second imitation of New Hampshire on the Presidential primary circuit.

Well, I am sorry, I agree with the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), what a lousy example you are setting for the Iraqis. You got a rigged game in this House. And any time you see an amendment you cannot beat, you solve it the easy way. You say we cannot even vote on it. Incredible. Where is your fairness? Where is your guts? If you cannot beat us fair and square, you should not be in this Chamber at all.

Now, last night eight of your Republican colleagues in the Senate voted for a proposal that provided a good portion of this aid in the form of loans. It does not matter whether you agree with that or not, we ought to be able to vote on that same proposition. But you do not think you can beat it, and so you are denying us the opportunity to even vote on it. Where is your guts?

So, Mr. Speaker, the only way we have a chance of a snowball in you know where of getting a vote on an amendment to protect the interest of the taxpayers is for us to vote down this antidemocratic rule so that we have an opportunity to change it. And that is why you need to vote against the previous question on this rule so that while we are prattling on about how much democracy we are going to bring to Iraq, we occasionally provide a little in this Chamber.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, we have previously appropriated almost $80 billion to deal with the problems in Iraq and now we are being asked to provide $87 billion more. We have had no real accounting of how that previously appropriated money has been spent, and we certainly have no line item information about how the next $87 billion is going to be spent. If that is not a blank check, it is certainly a malleable one.

It seems to me that if the administration wants us to consider their aid package today, that we have a right to see to it that we can offer on the House floor a responsible, comprehensive alternative. But under this rule before us, we are being denied that opportunity. The majority Members of this House will say the rule gives us an open rule. That is a meaningless comment. Because the key to understanding our problem is to understand that the rule waives several of the House rules to enable the committee to bring its bill to the floor but then when we want to bring a parallel substitute to the floor, they say, ``oh, no, no, no, you can't waive those same rules to allow your package to come to the floor.'' So that is the way that the majority leadership funnels us into a situation where it is either their way or no way. That is not the way to unite people in fighting a war.

What we are asking is to give the minority the same right to offer a comprehensive amendment that was given to the minority in the Senate. Here is what the amendment would say. The amendment would essentially say if this House is hellbent on providing $87 billion, then there is a better way to do it.

If any Member of this House votes for the previous question without allowing our amendment to be made in order, that Member will be voting to block our efforts to transfer about $4.5 billion of badly-thought- out reconstruction plans to categories in the budget that would do us a whole lot more good.

Example. We want to do something about the fact that 80 percent of American troops in Iraq right now are drinking putrid water, getting dysentary. There is absolutely no reason that we should not provide clean water to 100 percent of American troops in Iraq. If you vote for the previous question, you will be denying us the opportunity to correct that. If you vote for the previous question, you will denying us the opportunity to provide predeployment health and dental services to Guard and Reserve forces who right now have to pay those expenses on their own. If you vote for the previous question, you will be blocking us from extending postduty health care coverage from the 60 days which Guard and Reserve people now have when they are coming off duty to 6 months. That is what you will be doing. You will also be preventing us from providing the money that the Army and the other services asked for to refurbish equipment which was worn out or used up in Iraq.

The Services asked for the full amount that they could spend on that over the rest of the year, but the Department slashed those recommendations, in my view, in order to hide from the public the full cost of reconstituting that equipment which will approach $20 billion by the time it is done rather than about the $2 billion asked for by the administration.

If Members vote for the previous question, they will be voting against our efforts to relieve pressure on Guard and Reserve forces, many of whom have now been told they are going to have to serve an extra year. You will prevent us from correcting the mess that we now have in our troop rotation schedules. What we try to do to correct those items is to recognize the validity of General Shinseki's warning when he warned us that we should not follow a 12-division strategy if we only had a 10-division Army. So what we do is face up to the need to create another division so that you can restore order to the lives of Guard and Reserve forces and restore order to the rotation schedule for our regular troops.

If Members vote for the previous question, they will also be swallowing, swallowing whole, the administration plans to rely on huge contracts with politically well-connected multinational corporations rather than relying on more appropriate low-technology contracts with indigenous groups within Iraq so that we can put Iraqis to work doing something constructive besides shooting Americans.

If you vote for the previous question, you will be blocking our efforts to convert one-half of the reconstruction funds in our package to loans by running that portion through the World Bank and having it matched by other international contributors. You will also be preventing us from insulating those contracts against cronyism if you have an agency administering these contracts that is responsive to the political appointees at the White House. And, most importantly, if you vote for the previous question, you will be blocking our efforts to meet our responsibilities to our taxpayers by paying for this adventure rather than putting it on the cuff.

We have got two choices on that score. We can either charge this bill to our kids or we can pay for it now.

There is a whole lot of talk about shared sacrifice on this floor. We heard a lot of it last night. I would like to ask who on earth in this country is being asked to share the sacrifice except the troops and their families? The Guard and Reserve forces right now face a total discombobulation of their life. Our regular troops face the same thing. They are sacrificing in spades. Yet, if you vote for this previous question motion, you will be denying our effort to say there is a better way to achieve self-sacrifice.

What is wrong with asking a millionaire to settle for a $53,000 tax cut rather than the $130,000 tax cut they will get absent our amendment? Persons in the $50,000 to $75,000 range will get on average from all sources perhaps $1,000 if they are lucky under the tax cuts now in effect. Persons in the $200,000 to $500,000 range will get $2,200. Why shouldn't millionaires be happy with 25 times that amount?

I ask Members to vote against the previous question to give us a chance to offer an amendment that is a truly balanced, comprehensive alternative.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman), the ranking member on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

(Ms. Harman asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, could I inquire how much time is remaining on each side?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall).

(Mr. Rahall asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens).

(Mr. Owens asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, my remarks are directed to the staffers of all of those Members on the Democratic side of the aisle who have asked us for time on this bill. Our dilemma is we now have about 40 people on the list. Only two of them are in the Chamber. If they do not want to lose their time, I would suggest that some of them come to the Chamber now or they are going to lose their time forever.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Pastor).

(Mr. PASTOR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Government Reform who has done considerable work on the need for accountability in contracting on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), a ranking member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), who can speak in this Chamber, even though, unfortunately, she is not allowed to vote.

(Ms. NORTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes and 15 seconds to my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kleczka).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, once again I would attempt to notify any Members who are watching that if they are on the Democratic list for speaking on this matter, they need to get to the House floor pronto or they will lose their opportunity.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?

Mr. Chairman, because we are in search of absent speakers, I will yield myself 5 minutes until some of them arrive.

Mr. Chairman, I want to take this time to address one issue that I have seen appear in the newspapers on almost a daily basis. There is somehow an impression on the part of a number of Members of this House and a number of members of the press that somehow we will endanger our ability to provide a responsible reconstruction package in Iraq if we scale back the reconstruction package now before us. I would like to suggest why that is not true, and to do so, I am simply going to read several paragraphs from the dissenting views that I filed with the committee in the report accompanying this bill, and here is what I wrote for that purpose.

``While the Committee wisely pared back some of the more outlandish projects proposed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the bill the committee is sending to the House does little to alter the underlying approach to reconstruction envisaged by the CPA. That approach relies on huge contracts with large, multinational corporations to provide high tech and capital-intensive construction, training and services to Iraq requiring the importation of heavy equipment, highly-paid consultants and the payment of corporate overhead and profits.

``The consequence of this approach is that the American taxpayer will pay much more than he or she should; the amount of construction or reconstruction that can be performed within available funds will be significantly less than might otherwise be accomplished; the development of Iraqi businesses and institutions to deal with such problems will be negligible and the number of Iraqis who will be employed will be far fewer than could be productively used if less capital-intensive and lower-tech approaches were followed. In short, we will be paying more for smaller results and particularly smaller results with respect to employment and other economic changes necessary to bring about greater political stability.''

Then I go on to cite one example. After U.S. engineers had told Major General Patraeus that it would cost $15 million to bring a concrete factory up to Western standards, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division gave the contract to local Iraqis who were able to get that cement plant running for just $80,000.

It seems to me that the message that Congress ought to be sending the administration is that we need to focus more on low tech, indigenous strategies for development rather than simply getting in the old habit of going to the big multinationals like Halliburton and others and saying, okay, boys, what can you do for us with your high-paid consultants and high fees.

So that is why it seems to me that the responsible thing to do is to scale back this package until the administration revisits its approach. In the end, if they do that, we will provide better benefits to Iraq and better benefits to the American taxpayer.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time remains on this side.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner).

Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Chairman, how much time do we have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

It is my understanding that after this leg, we will still have an hour of general debate remaining under the rule that was adopted; is that not correct?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall).

(Mr. UDALL of New Mexico asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ford).

Mr. Chairman, I know that that 15 seconds has been bugging you all day. I am going to yield it back.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I would like the gentleman to make clear that the adoption of this unanimous consent request in no way changes the consideration of any other amendment, that Members who have other amendments will still be able to offer those amendments and they will be disposed of precisely in the same manner in which they would be disposed of under the rule.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 8 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, my grandmother was a salty woman who originally came from Maine and settled in Wisconsin. She said once to my sister, ``Look, Kathy, just because you want to get married, doesn't mean you have to say yes to the first idiot who walks through the door.'' I think we all know that is true.

That is the same principle that we ought to apply when we review administration requests to spend money. Just because we want to do something, does not mean that the Congress has to just swallow willy- nilly the first slap-dash, sloppy, naive package that is sent down to us. The Congress has the right and an obligation to use its judgment and to be selective.

It was suggested a couple of moments ago by one of the speakers that, in essence, whether you vote yes or no on this package is a measure of whether or not you want to oppose terrorism or not. Absolute baloney. There is not a Member of this House who does not want to fight terrorism.

Less than a week after 9/11, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and I pushed through this House a $40 billion package to respond to terrorism, and, if I recall, that package passed virtually unanimously. We then went on to try to get the White House to increase its budget for homeland security items so we could strengthen protection in our ports, strengthen protection of the airways and strengthen protection afforded by our first responders in our local communities all across this country. The President threatened to veto that extra money. Nobody suggested he was soft on terrorism when he did that. He had a different view of how that money should be used than we did. He wanted to use it for tax cuts instead of homeland security. That is his right. I did not happen to agree with it.

We spent $60 billion on a package directed at our activities against Iraq just a few months ago, and yet, in spite of the maximum flexibility we gave the administration, we still find out today that there are 40,000 soldiers who were not given the Kevlar linings to their flak jackets. So, in other words, they did not have the body armor that they needed when they went into combat.

We also find out that the Pentagon, the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, in its infinite wisdom, did not manage affairs in such a way that would deliver all of the electronic jammers that were necessary so that our troops would stop being blown up by remotely detonated bombs.

We also discovered that, despite all of that money that we gave them, they did not provide the Kevlar blankets for the Humvees, so they were getting blown up on the roadbeds.

Now, we discover that 80 percent of American troops in Iraq still do not have access to anything but putrid water, so whole units get dysentery.

So with all due respect to one of the previous speakers, we have a right, and indeed an obligation, to exercise our judgment.

Every dollar that we spend on this request is a dollar that will not be spent on education, will not be spent on health care, will not be spent to modernize our own electrical grid, will not be spent on community development, will not be spent for any other domestic purpose. So if we are going to deny funding for those programs, we had doggone well better know that this money is going to be used for the best possible purpose, in the wisest and smartest possible way.

That is the issue here, not a measure of someone's patriotism or their judgment or their dedication to the antiterrorist fight. If someone were to suggest otherwise on this floor today, that would be demagoguery not worthy of institution. So I hope that does not happen.

What we have an obligation to do today is to ask whether this package, as presented, does as much as it should to support our troops and allow them to return home safely. I do not believe it does.

Does it do as much as it should to restore the readiness of U.S. military to respond to future crises in the Middle East, or any other part of the world? In my view, it does not.

Does it provide Iraq with the right kind of assistance, or will the principal beneficiaries be the large multinational corporations who charge an arm and a leg for services that can be delivered for a dime on the dollar in Iraq by other people? I do not think it does provide enough protections.

Does this package place a fair share of burden on American taxpayers vis-a-vis taxpayers from other countries? I do not believe it does.

Most of all, is it not gutless for this institution to refuse to pay for this package, rather than charging the bill to our kids?

Before we prattle on about ``shared sacrifice,'' I think we ought to see whether we are really willing to ask anybody to sacrifice, except the people in the military, who are stuck with discombobulated lives because of mixed up troop rotations, the Reserve and Guard being told they have to serve another year.

What is wrong with asking that at least we pay for this package, so that we can save $4 billion a year in interest payments that can be used on deserving and needy programs here at home? Nothing is wrong with that, and yet the majority will not grant us the right to even offer that amendment so we can get a vote on it.

That is what is wrong with this House, that is what is wrong with this package. And that is why I intend to vote no, until the administration does come to us and tell us two things: (1) Gives us an accounting of the $60 billion they have already spent, they have not done so; and (2) gives us a clear understanding of what their plans are for spending on this operation for the next 5 years. They have steadfastly refused to provide that, and, until they do, this Congress has a responsibility to exercise the only power that our Founding Fathers gave us that means a whit, the power of the purse.

We have an obligation to our taxpayers and our constituents to know what we are doing and to know what the government is going to be doing with their tax dollars. We do not know enough at this point to provide this money carte blanche. When we do, I will be happy to vote for it, but not until.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the minority whip.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), a member of the Subcommittee on Defense of the House Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/4\ minutes.

Mr. Chairman, once you fire the bullet, you do have an obligation to clean up the mess; and that is why I certainly agree with virtually every task in Iraq that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) just described.

I do not agree with those who believe that we should just provide a military package and not provide a reconstruction package. That would be, in my view, irresponsible. But having said that, I think the problem is that the package that is being proposed is insufficient in terms of what it does to help the troops; and it is wasteful in terms of what it does in Iraq, and badly through out to boot. That is why we have been asking questions of the administration about their future plans.

The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) says we need to finance an exit strategy. The problem is we have no exit strategy. Until we do, we are going to be floundering and we will have a tremendous number of American lives disrupted. So that is why I have come to a different conclusion on this specific package than the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young). I know that the gentleman inadvertently used some of his time, and I will be happy to yield him 1 minute so that the gentleman could add to his time for closing.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the remainder of my time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. Chairman, I offer a splendid amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, the administration has asked us to approve $87 billion in the second installment for Iraq. I understand the necessity for military appropriations and for a reconstruction package. I understand the necessity that they be tied together. But the majority has set up the debate in this House so that a single Member will be able to prevent a comprehensive amendment from being voted upon. That is the way they ensure a victory for their approach.

We are offering this amendment in hopes that the majority will not exercise its right to strike it from the floor, because we believe that if the Congress is going to spend $87 billion on this operation, that this amendment represents a better way to do it. It does more to support our troops. It does more to protect the taxpayers. It does more to restore balance between obligations on us and our allies.

First, it would scale back reconstruction funding by roughly one- third in order to force the administration to redesign its approach in Iraq so that more contracts will go to small indigenous companies and fewer to huge multinational corporations. I have already told the story about General Patreas who, when told by his own engineers that it would take $15 million to build a cement plant in Iraq, managed to get that plant built for $80,000 by using local ideas and local approaches. That is what we ought to be looking for.

Second, we convert half of the remaining funds from grants to loans by running them through the World Bank. This has three advantages. It internationalizes the burden because it will be matched with contributions from other countries on a two-to-one basis. Secondly, it insulates the contracting process from cronyism that can result if it is run by an agency that is responsive to political appointees in the executive branch. And thirdly, because of the way the World Bank can capitalize it, it will, in fact, deliver more assistance to Iraq on the ground at less cost to the taxpayers. It is patterned after a Senate amendment that has been promoted by Senator Hutchison.

We transfer $4.5 billion to support our troops. First, we add money to provide U.S. troops in Iraq with clean drinking water. Eighty percent of them now do not have it. That is a shame. It is a shameful indictment of the poor planning associated with this operation.

Secondly, we provide predeployment health and dental screening for Guard and Reserve forces. Right now, they have to pay it.

Thirdly, we extend health coverage for returning Guard and Reserve personnel from the existing 60-days that they are now entitled to, to 6 months.

Fourthly, we provide the full amount that the Services have requested to be used this year to refurbish military equipment that has been used and used up in Iraq. Without it, that equipment will be unusable for 2 years and our readiness to deal with other problems around the world will be substantially inhibited.

Fifth, we face up to General Shinseki's warning that we should not have a 12-division strategy if we only have a 10-division Army. The administration ignored that warning, and as a result, we are at least a division short. That is why Guard and Reserve forces have effectively been drafted for an extra year of service, and that is why regular Army troops have seen their rotation schedules obliterated. This amendment helps to fix that over time.

Most importantly, we try to pay for this operation. In the spirit of shared sacrifice, what we are asking is that we do not limit the sacrifice only to the troops in the field and their families. We are asking that we pay for it in the most fair way possible, by saying to the most prosperous of all Americans, the top 1 percent of the population, that we want to scale back the tax cut that they have just been given by the President and the Congress so that they will only get a $52,000 tax cut rather than $130,000 tax cut they would otherwise receive.

I would point out that if we follow that approach, we would also be able to save $4 billion a year in interest costs. That $4 billion is larger than all of the money that we will spend this year for Alzheimer's research, research on autism, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's disease and all kidney diseases combined.

It is a responsible amendment. I am amazed that, once again, the majority feels that the only way that they can win the debate is by denying us the opportunity to waive the same rules that they waived in bringing their approach to the floor.

This is an attempt to be more prudent with the taxpayers' money, more balanced in terms of responsibilities between us and our allies, and more responsive in terms of meeting the needs of the troops. It can neither be called a liberal nor a conservative amendment. It is a hard- headed approach to real problems; and I would urge the majority to, despite the fenced-in rule which they adopted, to allow us to at least have a vote on this proposition. If it does not have the merits to beat the majority party approach, then it will be defeated. If it does, it should be adopted. All we ask is for the opportunity to put this issue to a vote, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time, and I will simply say two things.

We have heard a lot of talk about supporting the troops today. I would urge Members to simply put their vote where their mouths are. This amendment gives far more support to the troops before, during, and after their service than the committee bill or the administration plan.

Secondly, I would note the gentleman from Arizona said that he disagreed with the approach that I take in this amendment. That is his right. That is perfectly appropriate. All we are asking is at least let us vote on it.

For years, whenever spending propositions hit the floor, people would say, ``How are you going to pay for it?'' Well, we are showing you how we will pay for it. We are trying to pay for it. You are denying us the ability to pay for it if you object to our ability to bring this to a vote.

So I would ask the majority to forego the opportunity that it has given itself under the rules to wipe out this amendment without a vote, and at least let the House face this issue squarely and vote on it. This is, after all, supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. This is a democracy. Let us act like it.

Point of Order

Mr. Chairman, I would simply say the minority leader said it was ironic that the rules of the House could be used in order to deny Members an opportunity to pay for whatever it was they were suggesting. I regret that. We could have faced this, if the Committee on Rules had given us the same courtesy in waiving rules that they gave to themselves. However, they did not; and so I, unfortunately, must concede the point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I would simply say that I know the chairman and Mrs. Chairman, as well, have spent considerable time focusing on this issue, and I appreciate that. We agree with the amendment and would urge support.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, we have heard a lot of talk today about supporting the troops. This is an opportunity to do so. What this amendment does is increase by $3.6 billion funds that are not provided in the committee mark for quality-of-life items for the troops as well as other items reconstituting the force.

What we try to do, for instance, is first of all to correct the problem that we face with our troops not having clean water. Eighty percent of our troops in Iraq have to drink bad water. They get dysentery. The President's request contains only $15 million for such purposes. We try to provide an amount consistent with meeting the needs of all of the troops in that country. Secondly, we provide funding to allow Reservists to obtain medical and dental screening prior to activation. Right now, they have to pay for that themselves. Thirdly, we say that for troops returning from theater and returning to a normal, back-home life, that we will extend their coverage under the military health care program from the existing 60 days to 180 days. We also provide additional funding, $50 million, to cover the cost of increasing support for Reserve family assistance centers

to address domestic problems resulting from extended deployments. We also provide additional funds for prepaid phone cards for the troops in theater, $65 million. And we provide funds to fully cover service members' transportation while on R&R. Finally, we provide additional case managers for the VA and DOD joint Disabled Transition Assistance Program to enhance transition assistance for disabled service members.

In addition to that, as I indicated earlier, we have about a $20 billion task facing us to reconstitute and refurbish and replace the equipment that was used or used up in Iraq. We have almost half of our Army divisions with, at this point, equipment which is not up to full readiness standards. We need to correct that as soon as possible. The services asked for the full amount necessary for this year. The Department denied them a good share of the funds. We provide the full funding levels that were requested by the services.

Basically, Mr. Chairman, that is it. If you are for the troops, I, for the life of me, do not understand why people would not support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt).

(Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, we have been told that we cannot afford to cut back the reconstruction package, the $20 billion reconstruction package in Iraq, in order to fund these few additional services for our troops and to restore the readiness of our military units around the world.

Let me point out we are taking $3.6 billion out of the reconstruction program in order to fund these efforts. That still leaves us with $15 billion. That means that it still leaves us with a reconstruction package that will spend $650 for every Iraqi, $650. That means that we will be spending seven times as much per Iraqi as we spent on a per capita basis for the entire population of Europe in the Marshall Plan.

It is also a dead letter fact that Mr. Bremer is not going to be able to obligate $15 billion in the time frame that this bill envisages, and it is a fact that some of those contracts would not be finished for 5 years. Surely we recognize that even with this reduction, this assistance package on a per capita basis would be the most generous aid program in the history of the world.

What are we trying to use that money for? We are trying to provide water for the troops that will not make them sick. Is that too much to ask? Is there something wrong with our dedication to the war against terrorism if we are for that?

We also are trying to provide health and dental screening for Guard and Reserve personnel before they go into active service to do their duty, and what we are trying to say is just in case that when they were on active duty and got a health problem that is not going to show up for a few months, we are going to give them 6 months of coverage after they have done their duty and they are back home. Is that too much to ask? I know this Congress will not help provide health coverage for the 42 million Americans who do not have it, but can we not at least do it for these?

And then, lastly, we are asking for a little bit of money so that our soldiers can pick up a cell phone, so that they can pick up one of these, open it up, it is against the rules to use this on the House floor, but we want them to be able to pick up one of these, open up a cell phone and dial their family when they are lonely. That is what we are asking.

I think this amendment represents a far better balance of priorities than does the administration request or the committee package, and I respectfully and urgently ask for an ``aye'' vote for the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I also reserve a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, first of all, let me say that I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe). He is standing here tonight doing his duty. That is what we are supposed to do. And even though I disagree with his position, we ought to be able to debate these issues. I think the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) should have been able to debate and get a vote on his amendment, and I am happy that we have figured out a way to accomplish the same thing. I would invite the support of those gentlemen who supported the previous amendment.

I think often we have in this place what I would call compulsive statesmanship, a tendency for people to want to do the right thing so badly that they sometimes lean overboard in taking into consideration the interests of other countries and in the process miss opportunities to take into account the interests of our own. I am not so afflicted, at least not on this issue.

I want to make clear I am an internationalist. I believe that it would be irresponsible for us to convert this entire package to loans. I believe that the administration is going to need some money available immediately in order to transact the business associated with trying to restart the Iraqi economy and rebuild the Iraqi society. But I think we have to get past the cliches and past the stereotypes and get into the actual details, into the specifics in assessing our obligation.

What this amendment does, very simply, is to, within the rules of the House, provide that, of the $18.6 billion in the bill available for reconstruction purposes in Iraq, that half of that be provided as a loan. We wanted to also provide that that half would run through the World Bank so that we could specifically require matching by other countries and then use the bank's ability to capitalize in order to expand the amount of aid available in Iraq by a factor of four. We cannot, under the House rules, do that directly; but this amount would still allow the administration to do that. They could still negotiate an international fund. Second, they could still run it through the World Bank with that matching requirement.

Now, I would simply like to say that I know that there are some people who will look at this in stereotypical fashion and assume that because the United States is a wealthy country and Iraq is not, (they are not poor, they are a middle income country) but I think that they will assume that because we are wealthy and Iraq is not, that somehow it is unfair for us to require any portion of this to come back as loans. The reason that people say that we cannot do this to Iraq is because they say Iraq has huge foreign debts. I want to point out that foreign debts cannot be paid off with domestic production. So it is misleading to assume that because the United States is a rich country and Iraq is a somewhat poorer country that we are in a better position to pay off foreign debts than they are. We are not.

This country has run such large trade deficits for so long, and we are going to be running such huge trade deficits in the future, that our country has no realistic possibility anytime in the next decade to be paying off any significant portion of our own foreign debt. And the only way foreign debt can be paid off is by running trade surpluses. So what that means is that the United States' foreign debt on a per capita basis roughly equals Iraq's, and next year Iraq's will probably be somewhat smaller than ours.

The fact is that because Iraq has a long-term prospect of multi- billion dollar benefits from the oil they have in the ground, it in fact means that the United States has less of an ability to pay off foreign debt in the future than Iraq does. And that is why I think it is absolutely legitimate to consider requiring 50 percent of the money that we spend in this reconstruction operation to be provided in the form of loans.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) and I are offering this amendment. There are a lot of other Members who I know wanted to do it. I know the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick) also has demonstrated a great deal of leadership in this. But what we are trying to do is to provide a way to deliver more assistance on the ground for Iraq at less burden to our taxpayers.

For all the reasons cited by all of the gentlemen who supported the previous amendment, Mr. Chairman, I would urge an ``aye'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), who is a cosponsor of the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remaining time.

Mr. Chairman, it is very simple. This aid package is the largest aid package this country will have ever given to any country with whom it was at war. It is the largest aid package we have provided in the history of the world. I think that is doing something. All we are saying is that we should recognize that because of the oil reserves in the ground, that Iraq, by next year, is expected to have a better ability to pay back its foreign debt on a per capita basis than the United States does; and in 5 years, they will have a substantially better opportunity to pay that debt back than we do.

We face no prospects of trade surpluses over the next 10 years, so we are not going to be paying back our foreign debt. Iraq, with that oil in the ground, if we have any management ability at all in this situation, Iraq will wind up being able to pay back a significant portion of their debt as soon as that oil starts being pumped again.

We are simply asking for a decent balance between long-term burdens placed on their taxpayers and long-term burdens placed on ours. The House would not put the troops first today on the previous amendment, at least a lot of folks do not appear to be comfortable doing that; they would prefer to stay with the committee position. I would ask at least to put the taxpayers first.

This is a balanced amendment. It is fair. It is not in any way punitive. It does not in any way inhibit Mr. Bremer's ability to get the job done. It simply indicates that we are sensitive to the needs of our taxpayers as well as our need to provide leadership in the world in restoring the Iraqi society and the Iraqi country.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.