Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, let me confirm that I think this bill will be supported broadly on both sides of the aisle, and I would simply like to bring three matters to the attention of the House.

First of all, I really do believe that this institution is going to have to take a look at the number of commitments that we have worldwide and compare that to the strain that we have on the available troops for use under these many commitments. I think anyone who looks at the situation will understand that we are dangerously close to having an overextended military; and I think we ought to ask ourselves honestly if we are going to engage in these many commitments around the world, do we need to have a larger Army. In my view if we are, then we do. If we do not intend to enlarge the Army, then I think we must be much more aggressive in asking our allies to help us deal with some of the peacekeeping functions that we face, for instance, in Iraq.

Secondly, I do have some misgivings about the funding levels for SDI in the bill.

Thirdly, I want to talk about something that I think is more important than any of those considerations. This Subcommittee of Defense is perhaps the most bipartisan of all appropriations subcommittees, and the Committee on Appropriations is probably the most bipartisan committee in the House; and it is in that spirit that I raise a matter that I think every Member should be aware of because of its deadly importance. It involves intelligence, specifically the intelligence gathering and analysis used in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

What I am going to say is based on published reports purportedly based on interviews with intelligence officials and military officers. Neither I, nor I suspect anyone in the House of Representatives, knows the extent to which these reports are accurate so there is no possibility of disclosing classified material. We have had the staff of the committee look at the allegations on a bipartisan basis, and I think it is fair to say, while they do not have enough information to reach specific conclusions, they do find much of what has been said in these stories to be credible.

In addition to the CIA, which is an independent agency, there are four major intelligence organizations inside the Department of Defense. All of these entities are funded in this bill. The press stories I am referring to, and I would be glad to provide copies of them to any Member who is interested, those stories argue that a group of civilian employees in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, all of whom are political employees, have long been dissatisfied with the information produced by the established intelligence agencies both inside and outside the Department. That was particularly true, apparently, with respect to the situation in Iraq.

As a result, it is reported that they established a special operation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which was named the Office of Special Plans. That office was charged with collecting, vetting, and disseminating intelligence completely outside the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that the information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with the established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the National Security Council and the President without having been vetted with anyone other than OSD political appointees.

It is further alleged that the purpose of this operation was not only to produce intelligence more in keeping with the preheld views of those individuals, but to intimidate analysts in the established intelligence organizations to produce information that was more supportive of policy decisions which they had already decided to propose. There is considerable discussion regarding the intelligence relating to weapons of mass destruction.

I think it would be unfortunate if this issue were subsumed by the question of whether or not Saddam Hussein had such weapons. First of all, we do not know at this point. My personal suspicion has always been that he did. Secondly, measuring the quality of our intelligence apparatus requires more than determining whether the reporting was right or wrong on any single issue. Is what was reported consistent with the best information that was available? Did we reach the right conclusion based on good information or by happenstance?

These allegations, however, go well beyond the issue of WMDs. It appears that the individuals in question also challenged the consensus within the intelligence community on the number of troops that would be required for a successful invasion. The political appointees within the Office of the Secretary maintained regular contact with sources within the Iraqi National Congress, who in turn maintained contact with sources inside of Iraq.

Mr. Chairman, based on information transmitted by these sources, the political appointees argued that the conclusions of the intelligence community, the Joint Chiefs, and in particular General Shinseki, were in error and the invasion could be successfully carried out with fewer than 50,000 troops.

While the chiefs in the end got most of the troops that they requested, it appears that the invasion was both lighter than they would have desired and lighter than what was required. The inability to fully protect supply lines did in fact result in the loss of life. The shortage of available personnel did leave certain critical sites such as nuclear facilities unprotected.

We all know this is incredibly serious business. It is important not only to understand what we did or did not do with respect to Iraq, but it is far more important in terms of what we will do in the future. How will the information that the President and the Congress receive on our options in Korea be put together, for instance? Will the long- established collection mechanisms, evaluation and dissemination be used, or will we again fall back on the ad hoc efforts of this self- appointed group of experts?

It is important to note that these same individuals have established a new office with an Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. This office will have more than 100 people, and it is widely believed in the intelligence community that the office is being created for the express purpose of pressuring analysts to produce information more supportive of predetermined policy. I do not know if that is true or not, but the question remains, Will this office stand between our war fighters and the information they need? Why did they require this small group of civilians to employ this kind of a role? Will the Under Secretary compete with the Director of Central Intelligence in the coordination of these agencies? All I can say is that we are paying for all of this. We ought to have the answers.

I would like to ask Members to remember that there was a reason the National Security Act of 1946 placed all intelligence activities under the control of one man, the Director of Central Intelligence. General Hoyt Vandenberg, who himself served as the DCI, explained that decision in testimony before Congress. He said, ``The joint congressional committee to investigate the Pearl Harbor attack found failures that went to the very structure of our intelligence organizations, a failure to coordinate the collection and dissemination of intelligence, and the failure to centralize intelligence functions of common concern to more than one department of the government which could more efficiently be performed centrally.'' I think we need to remember those words, and I think the Congress needs to dig and dig hard to get to the bottom of this.

I do not, frankly, know what the right structure for gathering and dissemination of intelligence information ought to be, but I am very leery of the fact that we have a new operation which can deal with information without clearing it with anyone else. The reason the system has served us so well over the past years is because all information has been vetted with other people who are supposed to know the most about it. I think it is dangerous when we get away from that practice.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Lewis of California

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe this bill is here, and I want to make clear that while I certainly do not object to the effort to insulate Federal employees from negative retirement actions, if there is a rollcall on this bill, I would vote ``no.'' And the reason is because I think this bill demonstrates a rampant double standard.

As I understand it, last week in the prescription drug bill debate that we had on this floor, the majority party in essence told seniors, ``Have we got a deal for you. We are going to set it up so that you are going to be able to get the same benefits as your Member of Congress.'' And now what are you saying this week? You are bringing a bill up that says to your future retiring Member of Congress, ``Have we got a deal for you. It is going to be a special deal. You are going to be able to make sure that when you retire, you will have better prescription drug benefits than that poor sucker on Medicare.''

That is what you are telling people, and I do not happen to think that is a very straightforward way to deal with our constituents.

I understand what the committee wants to do to protect Federal employees. I would be very happy to vote for this bill once the majority party brings back to this floor a decent deal on prescription drugs for every other American, but not under these circumstances, not under these circumstances.

Right now, if you are a Federal employee, if you are a Member of Congress, if you belong to the Blue Cross plan, you get 80 percent of your cost paid for for prescription drugs basically. But what do you say to seniors under that turkey of a prescription drug bill you passed last week? What you say is, oh, we will help you pay up to $2,000, but, boy, if you get stuck with drug costs that are somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000, for that $3,000 hit on your wallet, sorry, you are not going to get any help from Uncle Sam.

And my colleagues think that is a square deal? I mean, with all due respect to the effort behind this bill, it does not meet the laugh test, as far as I am concerned. If the majority party in this House wants to be considered a serious legislative force on this issue, they will pull this bill from the floor and bring it back when they can also bring back to the floor a bill with a decent, sustainable, consistent, reliable, affordable benefit under Medicare for all seniors for prescription drug costs. Until that happens, do not ask me to vote for a special insider deal for Members of Congress. That is what this bill does.

Mr. Speaker, it would be so nice if the force of our rhetoric is matched by the force of our deeds. That certainly is not the case with this bill.

Just a few months ago this House passed this resolution and it said,

among other things, ``Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring, that the Congress express the unequivocal support and appreciation of the Nation to the members of the United States Armed Forces serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom who are carrying out their missions with excellence, patriotism and bravery and also to their families.''

Well, the sad news, unfortunately, is that the check is not in the mail. We have given them a resolution but we are short-sheeting them in terms of things that military families need in order to make their life better. I do not understand why we are doing that. This bill shows the House's ``support and appreciation'' by providing $1.5 billion less than we appropriated last year to provide the military with decent housing and work places.

The bill also thanks the military supposedly by cutting the President's own request for the Pentagon by $180 million. This is for hangers, offices, fitness centers and teaching facilities that even OMB and the administration said the military needed. But this bill cuts them out.

Many Members of this House have seen the problems for themselves. The Pentagon itself rates the readiness of most military facilities as marginal or worse. Over 225,000 service members and their families cannot get decent barracks or decent housing. This bill is not up to the job and we all know why. It is not the fault of the subcommittee chairman. It is the fault of every single Member of this House who voted for the budget resolution which said that the only priorities for this year was going to be tax cuts. And as you know, the lion's share of the tax cuts went into the pockets of the most wealthy 1 percent of people in this country.

So as a result of that decision by the Republican leadership to put tax cuts as the primary goal of this Congress, the budget resolution, for instance, that was passed is on track to cut $28 billion from veterans benefits. There would be, under the White House budget, $200 million in cuts to impact aid to the school districts that educate the children of military families. As many as 230,000 military families have been cut out of the low income child tax provision.

We are taking millionaires off the tax roll, but we are not giving the people who need the help the most anything but table scraps on the tax side.

The defense bill, which was marked up this morning in full committee, will cut raises for the most junior enlisted and officer personnel from the 4.1 percent they have been expecting to just 2 percent. I want to see how many of you who have cried about the fact that you have Army personnel on food stamps, I want to see how many of you vote to cut that. I want to watch that.

A realistic budget resolution has been beyond the reach of the Congress, and this is the result as we are seeing today. Now, I want to be able to offer an amendment to correct the problem. My amendment would reinstate the $160 million in cuts from the President's budget. I would like to restore all of them. I think the White House is right. We need them. I would also add $480 million for family housing. That would help at least 2,500 military families. That would be a useful first step in replacing the 134,000 inadequate units that service members and their families are forced to live in today.

Finally, the amendment would provide $318 million for new barracks that would help 5,300 single service members into decent housing. The Pentagon says we need over 83,000 units, so even this amendment goes just an inch. My amendment is an opportunity to restore the projects the President said were needed, to help about 8,000 service members and their families, and it would help Congress to keep its promise to the troops.

Now, as the gentleman from Massachusetts has indicated, I would pay for it by changing the tax package that was just passed by this Congress. What I would say is that for persons with adjusted gross incomes of more than $1 million, instead of their getting the $88,000 tax cut they will get next year, we would cut that to $83,000. That is hardly starvation wages. Now, these are not just millionaires. These are people with adjusted gross incomes of more than $1 million each year, about 200,000 people in this society. And I bet if you asked them, they would say they would happily take that reduction in order to provide a real improvement in the quality of life for our troops.

We are saying let them keep 95 percent of their tax cut but use that $5,000 difference to give people who are putting their lives on the line for this country better living conditions.

I do not know if you saw the article in the ``Army Times'' June 30, 2003. Mr. Speaker, I will insert this article in the Record immediately after my remarks.

I would also like to read you two paragraphs from a news story today out of The New York Times. It reads as follows: ``The 400 wealthiest taxpayers who accounted for more than 1 percent of all income in the United States in the year 2000 more than doubled their share from 8 years earlier, but their tax burden plummeted over that same period of time.''

The article then goes on to say why, and then it says that ``had President Bush's latest tax cuts been in effect in 2000, the average tax bill for the top 400 earners in the country would have been about $30.4 million, a savings of $8.3 million, or more than a fifth.''

Now, when we are in tough times, we have to ask, in my judgment, who needs help the most. I think that decent military housing ought to come before $88,000 tax cuts for the most comfortable people in this society. We are not saying cut them out. We are simply saying shave them back by 5 percent.

Our problem is, we will not even be able to offer this amendment on the floor today because the Committee on Rules said, ``No way, baby.'' So that means that once again, the Republican majority is able to hide behind its budget resolution which did not specify where the cuts would come from in order to pay for the tax cuts.

We have a serious problem in this House. The budget process is supposed to force the Congress to make choices, to recognize trade- offs, and explicitly make those choices in full view of the country. Instead, the budget process is being used in conjunction with the rules out of the Committee on Rules to deny the public the understanding of what the costs are from those tax cuts. So they get to think that they are cost-free.

They do not know, for instance, that they will cost the public an extra $27 billion in interest payments next year. If we could take just $10 billion of that extra interest payment, we could take care of the shortcomings in education, in health care, in military housing, and every other appropriation bill that comes before us. That is what we would do if we had any sense of common sense. That is what we would do if we had any sense of justice.

I urge you to vote against the previous question on the rule so that we can offer the amendment that I have just described.

[From the Army Times, June 30, 2003]

Nothing but Lip Service

In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-

controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly

deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap--and

getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime

treatment the troops are getting lately.

For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-

benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by

Congress are wasteful and unnecessary--including a modest

proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of

troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when

Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a

day.

Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it

wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly

imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation

allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in

combat zones.

Then there's military tax relief--or the lack thereof. As

Bush and Republican leaders in Congress preach the mantra of

tax cuts, they can't seem to find time to make progress on

minor tax provisions that would be a boon to military

homeowners, reservists who travel long distances for training

and parents deployed to combat zones, among others.

Incredibly, one of those tax provisions--easing residency

rules for service members to qualify for capital-gains

exemptions when selling a home--has been a homeless orphan in

the corridors of power for more than five years now.

The chintz even extends to basic pay. While Bush's proposed

2004 defense budget would continue higher targeted raises for

some ranks, he also proposed capping raises

for E-1s, E-2s and O-1s at 2 percent, well below the average

raise of 4.1 percent.

The Senate version of the defense bill rejects that idea,

and would provide minimum 3.7 percent raises for all and

higher targeted hikes for some. But the House version of the

bill goes along with Bush, making this an issue still to be

hashed out in upcoming negotiations.

All of which brings us to the latest indignity--Bush's $9.2

billion military construction request for 2004, which was set

a full $1.5 billion below this year's budget on the

expectation that Congress, as has become tradition in recent

years, would add funding as it drafted the construction

appropriations bill.

But Bush's tax cuts have left little elbow room in the 2004

federal budget that is taking shape, and the squeeze is on

across the board.

The result: Not only has the House Appropriations military

construction panel accepted Bush's proposed $1.5 billion cut,

it voted to reduce construction spending by an additional $41

million next year.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., senior Democrat on the House

Appropriations Committee, took a stab at restoring $1 billion

of the $1.5 billion cut in Bush's construction budget. He

proposed to cover that cost by trimming recent tax cuts for

the roughly 200,000 Americans who earn more than $1 million a

year. Instead of a tax break of $88,300, they would receive

$83,500.

The Republican majority on the construction appropriations

panel quickly shot Obey down. And so the outlook for making

progress next year in tackling the huge backlog of work that

needs to be done on crumbling military housing and other

facilities is bleak at best.

Taken piecemeal, all these corner-cutting moves might be

viewed as mere flesh wounds. But even flesh wounds are fatal

if you suffer enough of them. It adds up to a troubling

pattern that eventually will hurt morale--especially if the

current breakneck operations tempo also rolls on unchecked

and the tense situations in Iraq and Afghanistan do not ease.

Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, who notes that the House passed

a resolution in March pledging ``unequivocal support'' to

service members and their families, puts it this way:

``American military men and women don't deserve to be saluted

with our words and insulted by our actions.''

Translation: Money talks--and we all know what walks.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

I want to express my agreement with the comments made by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the distinguished chairman of this committee.

And then I want to say this: Budgets are not just presentations of numbers. Budgets really reflect and define and exhibit our priorities and our values. And that is why this bill is such a sad commentary on the nature of this House.

When President Bush came into office, thanks to the fiscal discipline demonstrated by the previous administration, we expected to see at least $6 trillion worth of surpluses over the next decade. We were in the best shape that we had been fiscally in more than a generation. So the President decided that we could afford to provide very large tax cuts, and he estimated we would still have billions left over for other purposes, and the House passed those tax cuts.

My point is that then something happened that was totally unexpected. We got hit by 9/11 and the economic downturn that followed that. Any person of prudence in my view, having seen such a shocking change, would have been careful about the next step that they took, but this Congress and this White House, alas, was not. So despite the fact that the bottom was falling out of the economy and the bottom was falling out of Government revenues, the White House and this Congress decided they were going to push on with even larger tax cuts. They said that we needed to do it in order to create jobs.

But, not a single job has been created during the tenure of the Bush administration. In fact, we have lost almost 3 million jobs since President Bush took office. Part of that is not his responsibility; part of it in my view is, and the Congress's as well. My point is that when conditions change one would think that their approach and their remedies change, but they have not. We have gotten only one answer out of the administration in terms of dealing with the economy: Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, no matter how badly they are skewed to the upper reaches of the income ladders and no matter what they cost to the other people in this society. And this bill is one of the examples of what it costs.

When this House passes these tax cuts, it pretends that there is no cost to anyone else. Let me just spell out what some of the costs are. Those tax cuts mean that we will be paying $23 billion more in interest payments next year than we would otherwise be paying. Before these tax cuts play out we will be spending more on interest payments in the Federal budget than we will be spending on all domestic appropriation items reported by this committee, and it will be a gargantuan share of the Federal budget. We ought to be able to make better judgments than that.

But there are other costs as well. We passed the ``No Child Left Behind Act'' for education, sent mandates out to the States and said we would send cash out to help pay for those mandates. I've news for you, the appropriations bill that is going to come out will short sheet those education programs by $8 billion. Nobody knows that, but that is what is going to happen. And this is happening at a time when budget crunches all over the country are going to be squeezing States and squeezing schools. We are also having to squeeze down on what we provide in health care. There are thousands and thousands of families being pushed off health care in many States in the Union. And this bill represents what is going to happen to military families, because we are cutting $1.5 billion below the deliverable amount in the previous year's budget for military families under military construction. And we wind up making only token progress in improving the housing for military families and for single enlisted people.

The cost of the estate tax elimination, which this House just passed: For the cost of that money it took to take millionaires off the tax roll when we passed that estate tax change--that is going to cost $800 billion--for that $800 billion, we could close one-third of the gap in financing that will be existing in the Social Security system. We should have done that first. But we did not. We passed another huge tax cut for the high rollers.

So there are consequences, and there are costs to those tax cuts. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) is right. He cannot perform a miracle.

Neither can the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg). Appropriations are the table scraps that are left over after this House has decided to plunge ahead, promising all of these out-sized tax cuts to the American people with a huge share of those tax cuts going to the most well off, and then we see what happens to the rest.

So that is why I am not pleased with this bill, not because of the work of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) or the staff but because this House made a basic bad judgment to begin with and it is being compounded and illustrated and demonstrated with every other bill we bring to the floor.

That is the problem. There are consequences. The budget process is being handled in this House to try to hide those consequences. It is our responsibility to try to lay out what those consequences are, and that is why we have gone through this operation this afternoon.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have already explained to the House what the intention of this amendment is. This amendment would reinstate the $160 million in cuts from the President's budget for hangers, maintenance shops, office space, physical fitness facilities for the military that even the White House thought were crucial. It adds $480 million for family housing to help at least 2,500 military families. There are 134,000 inadequate units that service those families to date. It would add $318 million for new barracks. It would help get 5,300 single service personnel into decent housing. The Pentagon says there is a need for over 83,000 unit fix-ups. And it would pay for that by reducing the expected tax cut for those with adjusted gross incomes of more than $1 million dollars annually. We would adjust their tax cuts from $88,000 to $83,000, thus enabling them to keep 95 percent of their tax cut. That would free up enough money to meet these military needs, and I would urge the House, despite the action of the Committee on Rules, to allow this amendment to go forward.

Point of Order

Mr. Chairman, I would like to be heard on the point of order.

Mr. Chairman, what has been happening in this House is that the Committee on Rules has routinely been waiving points of orders for the majority but denying those same waivers to the minority. That puts us in an uneven position on the House floor. We are in that kind of position on this amendment. I want to simply say in conceding the point of order that I will continue to make this motion on this bill. I will have it in my motion to recommit. I will try at every stage of the process to get this matter before the House so we can make these priority judgments, and it is up to the majority whether it wants to knock them off the floor or not.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Without the motion to recommit, yes.

Mr. Speaker, I will not take the 5 minutes. This is simply the same motion I offered before. If this House were operating on the basis of any degree of fairness today, it would be before the House, and I would simply ask that the majority refrain from offering the point of order against it. I know they have their marching orders. They have to do what they have to do, and I have to do what I have to do.

Point of Order

Yes, I do, Mr. Speaker.

As I said earlier, this is the same motion I made before. What is happening here is that because of a technical difference in the way the rules are being applied to the majority and the minority, we are being prevented from offering a motion which would strike a much better balance between the needs of our military and the needs of the most well-off people in this society.

With that, I concede the point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I offer a motion to recommit.

I am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, will the Chair notify me when I have used 5 minutes?

Mr. Speaker, this bill should not even be here at this time. The Committee on Appropriations chairman, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), knows his stuff. And he demonstrated that last year when he did very heavy oversight of the Transportation Security Administration, which was totally screwed up at the time.

The problem we have with this bill being before us today is that this new agency was extremely reluctant to provide useful information to this Congress so that we could make intelligent judgments about how to allocate money to this new agency. And we have a specific problem, because the reorganization bill that passed with much ballyhoo last year is not what it is cracked up to be. Before the passage of that legislation we had 133 agencies that had something to do with homeland security. And what the bill finally did was to take 22 of those agencies, not including the FBI and the CIA, the two gut agencies in our fight against terrorism, so they took 22 agencies, put them in the department that they called ``Homeland Security,'' and we are supposed to stand up and sing Hosannas. The problem is that left 111 other agencies uncoordinated, outside the tent.

So we had that basic confusion to begin with, and now we have even more confusion at the agency. This new agency, for instance, we are told still has not prepared a telephone directory for its employees so people can reach who they are supposed to reach if they have a problem.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this bill if you think it is perfectly okay to proceed on the status quo, because this bill provides a meager 1.8 percent increase over last year's budget for the agencies meant to protect us against terrorism. But because of inflation that means there will be on a per capita basis less security provided to each and every citizen of this country this year than was the case last year. And yet we hear many stories about deficiencies in securing this country.

Example, we had over 60 uncleared aircraft that flew from Canada into the United States last year. We have no assurance about what was in those planes or who was in those planes. We have $4 billion that the Coast Guard has told us that we need to provide over time to our port facilities for security purposes. We are only inspecting 2 percent of all of the cargoes that come into our national ports; and we have what was supposed to be the brain of the agency, the information analysis division, having a terrible time getting off the ground after the reorganization.

So I want to put the House on notice now. I intend to offer an amendment that would add $1 billion to key security functions. I would add $400 million for port security grants. The Coast Guard has told us that we need $4.4 billion, and this will speed up that timetable a bit. My amendment would also bring to 25 percent the Federal contribution of port facility security needs. That leaves a huge percentage of the bill still in local hands. If we do not do this, it will take close to 20 years before we are providing half the cost of meeting that security. That is a little bit too long to wait, I think.

Thirdly, we would add $100 million to the Coast Guard to effectively implement the Maritime Security Administration Act, which was created in order to improve our ability to analyze vessel threat information. And my amendment would also provide $100 million to increase the number of Customs inspectors now inspecting container ships into the United States. This would allow 1,300 additional Customs inspectors to be brought on. That is still a drop in the bucket in comparison to what they need.

We would also provide $200 million to improve security on the northern borders, some 5,500 miles long; and we have virtually no capacity to cover large sections of it. During Operation Liberty Shield, there were 10 aircraft that came across that border without a

clearance, even though that border was being patrolled by air for 30 straight days. I would say that is a problem.

People will say how do we intend to pay for this amendment. We would intend to pay for the amendment by reducing the size of the tax cut that this Congress just provided for people who make over $1 million a year. We would reduce that average tax cut from $88,300 to $83,300. That is hardly crippling the most well-off people in this country, but that tiny adjustment in their windfall would enable us to significantly enhance the security of the United States. It would inure to their benefit as well as citizens who do not get that fat a tax cut. I think it is perfectly rational.

I know some people will say, ``Oh my goodness, you must not do that because you will be invading the jurisdiction of another committee.'' I would point out that if you go back just a few months ago on the omnibus appropriation bill, we had a whole slew of proposals that the House leadership insisted that we put into that appropriation bill. Most of those items were under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means. So all we are doing is what the leadership of this House itself did last year, and it seems to me that we ought to put the welfare of the country, ahead of what Dick Bolling, my mentor from Missouri, described years ago as being jurisdictional dung hill politics. We should not worry about jurisdiction. We should worry about what kind of a job we do on the substantive level.

So basically, Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Rules did not allow my amendment to be made in order. What is happening is this: when the budget resolution process was first established by the Congress, the purpose was to make Congress face up to choices and to recognize what the trade-offs would be when you made those choices; but the way the House leadership is running the budget process today, they are guaranteeing that there is never any linkage between actions and consequences.

What this House did on the budget resolution, what this House did on the tax bill has now dictated to this committee the limitations under which we bring this bill to the floor, and that is why this bill is woefully inadequate in terms of meeting the security interests and needs of the United States.

So I make no apology for trying to do something a little different in order to try to get more resources into this area. I think any American concerned with our security would understand why we do it; and I think it is about time that we demonstrate that there are costs, there are costs to the tax action that was just taken in Congress. Those costs mean that we have less money available to make the crucial investments we need in homeland security and, for that matter, also health care, education, science, you name it.

What I am trying to do is to demonstrate what those real trade-offs are, even though it is apparent that the majority leadership in the House wants to hide those trade-offs from the American people. I think the public has a right to know what services they are going to be denied on the security front because of that tax action.

I thank the gentleman for his time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Chairman, it is difficult to know how to handle the money in this bill because in my view the reorganization which took place leaves us with still a very discombobulated set of agencies, and it also I think has confused people about what our priorities are.

I am proud of the fact that on four separate occasions this Committee on Appropriations on a bipartisan basis tried to add additional funding for key homeland security items even though on each of those four occasions the White House opposed our efforts. But I want to tell you that today I think the chairman has produced a perfectly reasonable bill provided that we think that the status quo is all right given everything that has happened.

My problem is that I and my staff and the chairman of the full committee and his staff, have had extensive conversations with virtually every one of the national securities agencies in this country. And we got from them a year ago, a year and a half ago, and we have gotten from them as recently as a few weeks ago, their honest best estimates about where we need additional support in order to increase security of people on the home front.

The problem we have today is that we cannot put the resources in this bill that we ought to be putting in because the Congress, the majority party in the Congress, has decided that instead their number one and virtually only priority is tax cuts. And those are skewed mightily to the most well-off people in this country.

And the problem is that when you decide that you are going to put a trillion dollars into tax cuts, then that means that money is not available, not even a portion of it, to use to deal with our high priority needs at home, be they education or health care or, in this case, homeland security. And so what happens is that because of the way the budget process is handled, the public never gets to understand what the linkage is between the tax cut decisions that were made by this Congress and the linkage with these funding limitations for high priority security items.

So very simply, I will be trying to offer an amendment that does a number of things. We will add about $400 million to the Coast Guard for port security grants. The Coast Guard estimates that their long-term needs are for $4.4 billion. We think we ought to do more than just add $100 million to it under those circumstances.

We would increase our share of funding, the share of the Federal contribution for port facility security needs. The problem is, if we stay with the $100 million contained in this bill, it will take about 20 years to close the need in the estimate of the Coast Guard.

We also provide $100 million to implement the Maritime Transportation Security Act to improve and analyze vessel threat information.

We also add $100 million to the Customs inspectors so we can have 1,300 additional people inspecting containers shipped into the United States. Right now only 2 percent of those containers are checked. We think that is a needlessly reckless vulnerability. We are trying to increase by 6 percent the total number of inspector personnel. I think that is hardly out of line.

Then we add $200 million to try to improve northern border security. As I pointed out in the Committee on Rules, during Operation Liberty Shield, 10 aircraft came across the border without clearance even while we were patrolling that northern border by air. We have no idea who or what would have been in those planes.

We proposed to pay for this funding by reducing the size of the tax cut that will go to those with incomes of more than a million dollars next year. We proposed to reduce the size of their tax cut by 6 percent so that instead of getting $88,000 on average, they will get $83,000 per average. That is hardly putting them in the poor house. But it would enable us to reestablish additional support for these crucial investments.

I would urge the House to allow us to consider that amendment because the public has a right to know which of us are for it and which of us are against it. They have a right to know whether we put tax cuts for wealthy people ahead of the security of this Nation.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

(during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the Record.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment attempts to do six things. It would add $400 million for port facility security grants. The Coast Guard says that we need more than $4.5 billion over time to secure those operations. At the committee rate of only an additional $100 million per year, it would take 20 years for us to get halfway to the task that is defined for us by the Coast Guard. I do not think that is fast enough. We would also add $100 million for the Coast Guard to implement the Maritime Transportation Security Act, which passed this Congress last November, which is aimed at strengthening our ability to analyze vessel threat information.

We need simply look at the newspaper headlines yesterday about explosives bound for Sudan that were picked up by the Greek government, 680 tons of explosives and 8,000 detonators in the ship Baltic Sky, which the inspectors described as being tantamount to the power of an atomic bomb. I think that makes eminently clear why we need to protect our own ports to a greater extent.

Thirdly, we would add $100 million to increase the inspections of containers that are being shipped to this country. Right now we inspect only 2 percent. We would add 1,300 more inspectors. We are just scratching the surface in terms of what we need.

Fourth, we would add $200 million to improve northern border security. That border is 5,500 miles long. It is highly vulnerable. I referred earlier to the some 60 aircraft that flew across that border unannounced and unflagged over the past year.

We would then add $150 million for aviation security to secure airport perimeters and to strengthen our ability to screen cargo on passenger planes. It is kind of strange to provide screening for passengers if we do not provide it for cargo.

Lastly, we would add $50 million for the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Division in the new agency that is supposed to be the nerve center, the brain, of that agency in targeting what our biggest vulnerabilities are. We would pay for that by reducing the size of the tax cut that was passed by this Congress. We would reduce the size of the tax cut for taxpayers who earn more than $1 million a year. They are scheduled to get an $88,000 tax cut. We would reduce that tax cut to $83,000. So instead of getting $17.7 billion next year, they would only get $16.6 billion in tax reduction. I hardly think that is laying a scratch on them.

Mr. Chairman, the purpose of the Budget Act was to try to force the Congress to recognize the choices and the trade-offs that are attendant to any budget. The problem is that the way the budget process has been used, we have a situation in which we have a huge disconnect between actions on the tax bill and the consequences that flow in terms of reduced services and reduced security for the country. So I would simply ask that we recognize that this amendment meets essential services. It provides essential services, and it also has the added feature of demonstrating that there is a price to pay for tax cuts primarily aimed at such high-income people, especially when it means and requires that by the time we finish our action on the tax side of the ledger, we have only table scraps left to provide needed services not just for homeland security for that matter but for education, health care, and a number of other crucial items.

For those who say we are invading the jurisdiction of another committee, we did that at the expressed request of the House leadership just a few months ago on the omnibus appropriations bill. So this is nothing new, and I would urge support for the amendment, Mr. Chairman.

Point of Order

Mr. Chairman, I do and I would first raise a parliamentary inquiry. Could the Chair tell us what rules were waived by the Committee on Rules for consideration of the majority committee bill and its provisions?

Mr. Chairman, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Is it not true that the selective waiving of the rules as cited by the Chair make clear that the DeLauro amendment and the Sabo amendment, which were offered in committee, were not protected by the rule? That is the practical effect of that language, as I understand it.

So my understanding is that that means that the DeLauro language on corporate expatriates and the Sabo amendment with respect to CAPPS were both precluded from being considered by the House.

Would the Chair answer one other parliamentary inquiry, please. What rules are waived to enable my amendment to be offered on behalf of the minority?

Mr. Chairman, then let me simply raise a further parliamentary inquiry.

Because what I think the Chair just said is that the Committee on Rules, in contrast to the way it handled majority provisions, that the Committee on Rules did not make in order a waiver for our side of the aisle.

But let me ask the Chair as a parliamentary inquiry, is it not correct that on the omnibus appropriations bill just a few months ago that we amended the Medicare Act not once, but in two separate areas, to provide a 6 percent increase in funding for providers under the Medicare Act, even though that was considered invading another committee's jurisdiction?

Is it also not true that on that omnibus legislation the committee was allowed to increase payments under division N, section 401(b) of the Medicare Act for rural hospitals? Is it not true that we waived the rules to allow the U.S. Customs Service to conduct vehicle inspections on the Canadian side of the U.S.-Canada border? And is it not also true that during the tumultuous debate about what to do about the dilemma of the airlines, that we waived rules again to allow the committee to include in its appropriation bill the bailout for the airlines as well as the extension of unemployment benefits to those in that industry?

Well then, Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that I would urge the Chair to uphold my right to offer this amendment, because I cannot believe that the majority leadership would want to be so unfair as to waive provisions of our rules for the majority party's bill, but to not extend the same opportunity to those of us on the minority side, and to point out that I have just recited four instances where, just a few months ago, the majority leadership insisted that we provide these waivers for these nonappropriated purposes.

Mr. Chairman, on that I most reluctantly and respectfully move to appeal the ruling of the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

I would simply like to observe one fact, Mr. Chairman. I understand that one of the reasons why so many members of the New York delegation are exercised on this issue today is because Mr. Ridge, who is the head of the Homeland Security agency, was quoted in the newspapers saying that, yes, it was absolutely true, there ought to be more money for high-threat areas. That is very nice to hear him say that.

The problem is, his budget, the budget presented by the President on behalf of his agency, had not one dime in for that purpose, and this committee put in $500 million. It was $700 million that was put in in the omnibus just a few months ago.

So I appreciate the sentiments being voiced here today, but I would point out that since this House passed a tax package which has taken away this committee's ability to provide funding that we ought to be providing for this and other high-priority areas in this bill, it seems to me that at this point, rather than asking this committee to get a double hernia trying to do something which is fiscally impossible, given the budget caps that we have been provided, it seems to me what he ought to do is march down to the White House and tell the President to amend his budget and his tax bill so we can afford his legitimate request. Without that, to me, at this point, we are just flap-jawing and we are not going to have any real opportunity to help the areas of the country you are talking about, except by hurting other areas of the country.

The Republican tax package which my colleagues voted for on that side of the aisle has put us in this position

where, if we are going to deal with problems in one section of the country, we have to beggar thy neighbor. I am not very enthused about that. I think New York and other high-impact areas deserve this money, but I think the rural areas do too; and I would simply say that short as this bill is on this item, it does a whole lot better by that part of the country than the President's recommendation.

So the first thing I would say to Mr. Ridge is, go back to Washington and lobby your President, to ask him to put in the money that you told the New York folks was necessary.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I simply want to note in the Obey amendment, which the House was not allowed to vote on today, we would have added $150 million for airline security, including an additional $50 million for this very project, doubling what the committee has in its bill.

The problem that we have is that the known-shipper system is simply a trust-the-luck system based on what we know about shippers and the people who work for them. Our concern is about what we do not know. We have just seen that TSA had a very difficult time in doing the background screening for criminal activity before they hired a number of people, and those people had to be let go. We really do not have any way of knowing what is happening within the businesses of the people who are shipping. It just seems to me that this amendment is eminently prudent and should be adopted.

Mr. Chairman, I would also reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I would simply agree with the point of order lodged by the gentleman. I do not happen to have much of a problem with the substance; but it seems to me that if the rules are to be applied around here, they ought to be applied to everybody on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. Chairman, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Chairman, is this motion debatable?

Then could I move to strike the last word?

Mr. Chairman, I would simply urge the gentleman to withdraw his motion. I know of no one who disagrees with the ruling of the Chair, and I do not see why we should impose on the House when we already have seen another amendment dealt with on the subject in a proper manner. This amendment clearly was not. Everyone knew it was not in order, and there is no doubt in my mind the Chair's ruling is correct.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Yes, I do. I think the gentleman's last words indicate the validity of the point of order.

As I understand it, under the gentleman's amendment, if States prohibit information from going to the Homeland Security agency, then the State can get no dollars under this act. My understanding of current law is that it only prohibits States from providing information to the INS. But Homeland Security, as the gentleman from Minnesota has indicated, includes TSA, it includes the Coast Guard, it includes Secret Service, FEMA, and a number of other agencies.

To me, this amendment substantially expands the scope of the coverage and, therefore, I think is legislation on an appropriations bill and not in order under the House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman who is offering this amendment has just said that what he is doing is to apply to existing law with respect to the Immigration Act as a new set of sanctions. And what that means is that none of the funds provided in this bill can go to any locality that is violating that law which means they get no fire grants, they get no port security money, they get no money for their Office of Domestic Preparedness.

It applies to FEMA. How many of you want to have a disaster and find out because of some technicality your State is not eligible for any money? How would you like that if it happened to fire funds, for instance?

So I would say that it is very clear, you are making a very big change in what localities can receive under this bill. Now, State and localities are already being short-changed and should have received far more than they did in the tax bill because of their budget crunch. This will simply add to their woes and will do so inadvertently if they were simply in violation because of a technicality.

It is obvious to me that we are going to have a vote on this bill. As far as I am concerned, we might as well get on with the vote and get out of here.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

. . .

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate our friends on the Republican side of the aisle. This day perfectly summarizes what Republican Party values are all about.

Under President Bush we have lost well more than 2 million jobs in this economy, and today we have the Republican answer. Their answer is to leave behind one million working Americans who have been out of work and cannot find work and are now no longer even eligible to receive unemployment. At the same time they are going to pass a tax bill in the dead of night which gives a huge share of the benefits in that bill to people who make over $300,000 a year. That warped and misguided and misbegotten sense of values is the major reason that I left the Republican Party a long time ago and joined the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party practices the tired old game of trickle down economics. They practice the idea that if you just give John D. Rockefeller a tax break, eventually some of it will trickle down to Jay Rockefeller. Well, that is not good enough.

My old friend Harvey Dueholm from Wisconsin used to say, ``The problem with Republican economics is that they want to give the poor and the rich the same amount of ice but they give the poor theirs in the winter time.''

That pretty much sums up what is happening today. We have seen a miserably mismanaged economy under this administration. We have seen this Congress swallow whole budget proposals that walk away from our commitments to education, walk away from our obligation to do something about the health care problems in this country, walk away from the problems of the people who have lost their jobs and are down on their luck and have nowhere to turn. And yet, oh, they have plenty of money for the top dogs in this society.

Just once be for the average dog; be for the under dog. I know that is too much to expect, but nonetheless I would like to see it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I want to express my gratification that we are, in fact, here with this legislation today. Frankly, it had many shortcomings. We fought out a lot of them on the floor earlier when the bill was first before us, and among the most serious shortcomings, in my view, would be what I consider to be still serious lack of funds for homeland security, but we fought that fight and lost.

This bill is focused on other fights which I think are institutionally just as important for the Congress.

This bill began when the administration asked for a series of blank checks totaling almost $70 billion. The bill that is here today does not provide the administration with those blank checks and, instead, reintroduces them to the concept of checks and balances, and I would like to explain how.

The administration requested total flexibility and unaccountability for roughly $59.9 billion for the Pentagon's defense emergency response fund. This conference report reduces that fund to $15.7 billion and requires 5-day prior notification to the Congress before the Pentagon can obligate any of that money. That preserves to the Congress the right to review proposals for the spending of taxpayers' money.

The reason that is important is because almost the sole reason for Congress' existence is so that somebody outside of that narrow circle of people who run any administration will have an opportunity to review the way the administration wants to spend public money and be able to say to the administration, wait a minute, we think that is a mistake, we want you to look at it again. That is why it was so important to have that 5-day prior notification requirement, and I am pleased that the conferees provided it.

Second, the administration asked for what they call an indigenous forces fund. The President requested $150 million for the Pentagon to support so-called indigenous forces, which are forces other than the formal military units of a nation, in countries where the Department of Defense felt such support would be appropriate. This conference report eliminates that $150 million.

Third, the administration asked for what they called an allied nations fund. In plain language, they wanted authority for the Department of Defense to establish a new and parallel military assistance program, parallel to that which already exists, which is under, at least initially under the authority of the State Department. This conference report reduces that request to $25 million, limits it only for military counterterrorism training and requires 15- day prior notification to Congress and requires that the Secretary of State concur in any such obligation.

Also, the administration asked for a $2.4 billion Iraqi rebuilding program. The President asked for $2.4 billion in money to rehabilitate Iraq. He asked that money be directly appropriated to him for obligation to any agency. The conference report, in contrast, provides the money to the President but restricts it to the authorities under the Foreign Assistance Act and designates specific agencies that can receive direct apportionment of funds. It also requires, again, a 5-day prior notification to Congress before that money can be obligated, which is as it should be.

Next, the administration asked for a $1.5 billion unallocated fund under the total control of the Secretary of Homeland Security. In other words, they wanted us to just give them a blank check to spend a billion and a half dollars on anything he wanted. In contrast, the conference report reduces this to $150 million instead of a billion and a half, and it appropriated the remaining $1.35 billion to specific accounts within the Department of Homeland Security so that this amounts to congressionally-determined funding rather than the agency determining it.

Next, the conference report rejected the President's request to have a $250 million fund under the control of the President, no questions asked, and I think the Congress was right to do that.

Lastly, the administration requested a $500 million fund to be under the total discretion of the Attorney General. The conference report reduces that to $20 million and requires that the Justice Department must make a reprogramming request to the Congress before disbursing any funds from this account. The remaining $480 million requested for the Justice Department, again, was specifically appropriated to other specific accounts by the Congress, not by an anonymous agency bureaucrat.

So I believe that for those Members, and I assume it is all of us, for those Members who are concerned with protecting our constitutional obligation to maintain firm control of the power of the purse, I think that this legislation lives up to that responsibility, and I think that Members of both parties can be highly pleased for that performance.

I have never yet met an administration that did not think that Article I of the Constitution was not a mistake, and I think it is helpful from time to time that the Congress remind all administrations that we have obligations which we have to meet, also.

I would also like to take just a moment to discuss the unemployment compensation provision in this bill. The bill provides $3.8 billion in assistance to airlines. As Members know, I have minimum high regard for the idea that the airline industry even constitutes an industry. In my belief, the airline industry is composed of let-us-pretend capitalists. Every couple years, they come to the Congress for another bailout, and I think that instead of pretending that they are independent business operations, I think they ought to be regulated as a publicly necessary public utility, but they are not, and in order to keep the economy functioning, the Congress had to provide something.

The problem was that the Congress took care of business, but they did not take care of the workers who were losing their jobs. So we included a provision which guarantees an additional 26 weeks in all States in the Union for workers in the airline industry and associated industries, at least upstream associated industries, and I think that that again represented the minimum of economic justice that was required.

So, in my view, this is not a perfect package. There are a number of items that we had to accept from the Senate as part of the negotiating process. When you negotiate in these circumstances, you are not dealing with an empty chair. You do have people on the other side of the table, and they do have opposite views sometimes, and we might like to not take that into account, but we have no choice.

So there are five provisions originating in the Senate that the committee had to accept, but we turned down far more, and I expect that in the end there will be far more gnashing of teeth on the Senate side of the Capitol than there will on the House side of the Capitol with respect to the committee's disposition of those provisions.

I want to say to my Republican friends on the committee that I think every Member of Congress can feel good about the way this conference proceeded because it was one of the few times in recent years when I have seen legislators able to behave like legislators rather than politicians, and that is important.

We all come here as politicians, but then we need, especially in committee, to deal with a lot of complicated issues requiring give and take, and it sometimes gets very heated. But I think we made decisions which were in the public interest. They were certainly in the interest of the Constitution.

I am sure the administration does not like the fact that we did not give them the blank check which they requested, but they have ample flexibility to meet their requirements under the Constitution, and we have maintained our prerogatives. That is not important to our egos, but it is important to the system of checks and balances that we are sent here to preserve.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, could I inquire of the chairman if he is prepared to yield back? If he is, I have just 1 minute of closing comments and I would be happy to yield back.

So the chairman has a subcommittee chairman who wants to make a comment?

In that case, we will have a subcommittee ranking member who

wants to make a comment, and then I will be prepared to yield back.

Mr. YOUNG OF Florida. And then I will reserve the balance of the time for closing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to emphasize what the majority leader said. If Members will recall that long list of projects that he referred to that the other body came to conference with, that first long list, we took them out. We did not accept them. It was quite a battle, but we took those out.

So in case there was any doubt as to what was on the list he was reading, they are gone. They are not in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), the chairman of the Subcommittee on VA, HUD and Independent Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to say thank you to the people who are really responsible for putting this package together. That would be the staff of the committee on this side of the Capitol, certainly led by Jim Dyer, the most able staff chief on the Republican side of the aisle, and led by Scott Lilly, the staff chief on our side of the aisle, and all of the staff who work with them.

It has become routine on the committee for that staff to be without sleep for one or two days in the row. I appreciate how hard they work.

I would like to say a special thank you to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), who has performed in his gracious and effective manner, helping us to balance the many equities involved, and a special thanks to the subcommittee chairs on that side, especially the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), for helping us through some very tough problems, and Senators Byrd, Stevens and Leahy.

To those Members who are unhappy about the fact that we were not able to eliminate all of the Senate proposals, let me say batting 750 percent is not bad. Even Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times, and I do not think any Member in this House comes close to Babe Ruth or pretending to be Babe Ruth.

I would also say to the Department of Defense because I know they do not like the fact that they did not get all of the authority that they wanted, I would simply say to them the Department of Defense may not get all of the money and all the power that they asked for, but they would do well to remember that every bit of money and every bit of power that they have gotten they have gotten from this institution. I think they would be well off to remember that.

Let me simply say again as I said at the beginning, this proposal came to the Congress as a blank check. It leaves here as a reaffirmation of checks and balances. That is the way it ought to be.

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

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that I think it is fair to say that there have been virtually no political differences between either side of the aisle on this side of the Capitol; and I think it is fair to say that the House conferees are virtually unanimous in their view about what has to happen in order for us to get out of here.

I do not know yet whether we are going to get the full cooperation that we are going to need from the other side of the Capitol, but it is certainly our intent on both sides that we come out of here as one. It would be very good for the House if we had a bill that had 100 percent support. We could go home with a feeling of unity, and I know that both sides are going to try to accomplish that.

Mr. Speaker, this does not belong on the House floor tonight. This budget belongs on ``Laugh In.'' This is not a budget. It is two-headed tax cuts. It is a two-headed flim flam.

The economy is in crisis. The economy has lost 70,000 jobs per month every month of the Bush Presidency, and the Republican Congress tonight abdicates its responsibility to lead.

A few years ago, the Committee on the Budget Chair came to this House floor with a bag on his head. If I brought this budget to the floor tonight, I would ask where is that bag when I really need it?

This budget is a disgrace to this institution. It fails its responsibilities to this institution, to the country, and to every person who is out of a job looking for economic leadership to put this country back together again.

Madam Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes.

Madam Speaker, American citizens often hear Members of Congress talk in terms that they do not understand. They hear us talking about Blue Dogs, Blue Dog Democrats, they hear us talking about Yellow Dog Democrats. Sometimes they see us acting like lap dogs, and today I am afraid that the House may wind up genuflecting to Top Dogs, because that has been the general pattern on the issue that I am raising this afternoon.

After 9/11, the Congress passed a $15 billion airline assistance package, $5 billion in direct cash payments and $10 billion in direct loans and loan guarantees. The Congress was asked at the same time, and a number of us have tried to get it done, but Congress had asked at the same time that we were bailing out the airline industry to also recognize workers within that same industry who were also losing their jobs and should have some help from the government. The Congress responded by saying, no, thank you.

Now, the bill that the House passed last week contained $3.2 billion in cash payments for the airline industry on this go-round and the Senate bill contained a figure of slightly over $2 billion. We are here today again to ask that if we are going to be bailing out the airline industry that we also provide some $275 million in assistance to the workers in that same industry by providing an additional 26 weeks of temporary extended unemployment benefits for displaced airline-related workers.

Now, the administration has let it be known what their position is, and essentially they are opposed to this proposal. And what they are telling Congress is that, instead, we should work with the administration to make sure that any aid package is appropriately scaled and ``appropriately based on free market principles.'' Well, I guess I am kind of new around here and naive around here, and I am not quite sure what those ``free market'' principles are when it comes to the airline industry.

To me, I think that the airline industry is a let's pretend industry, run by let's pretend capitalists who are on the public dole, and I do not mean Bob. They are out here once again asking the taxpayers to help finance their survival. Now, we have had some of those airlines go bankrupt not once, not twice, but three times. I asked on the House floor last week how many times Continental Airlines had to go bankrupt before they were bankrupt. I still have not received an answer.

Now, I will fully grant that given the serious nature of the war, given the impact of 9/11, and given the fact that the airlines are a crucial part of our economy and our transportation system, I would fully grant that some kind of cooperative relationship between us and the airlines will be necessary in order to keep this economy healthy. But it seems to me that we ought to have some systematic way to assure that when we are bailing out the airline industry and its executives, that at least some of those taxpayers' dollars wind up trickling down to the workers who keep those airlines moving in the first place.

So that is the purpose of this amendment.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

I assume that does not come out of my time, Madam Speaker.

So, as I was saying, lest anyone think that it is not needed, the airline industry itself estimates that we have had a 15 percent increase in unemployment in that industry since 9/11, and since January 1, we have seen another 15,000 layoffs.

So I would ask the Members of this House today to, for a change, let us not institutionally genuflect to the top dogs in this society. Let us keep in mind the needs of the underdogs and provide at least some modicum of assistance to the workers I am talking about.

Let me also explain that there will be a rollcall on this vote. I know that it may be possible that this motion could be adopted on a voice vote. But frankly, if we were to simply have a voice vote, it would not mean anything to anybody. It would be very easy to jettison this language in conference.

So I think to assure that this vote is a meaningful vote, let the chips fall where they may in terms of passage. To assure that it is a meaningful vote and not just a sleight of hand so Members can say, ``Well, do not worry, airline worker, I voted with you. Of course, it was not a rollcall vote, and of course the leadership made us turn around in conference so that there would not be any.'' But I would urge Members to vote for the motion.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Madam Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield to me briefly, let me explain that I thought we

had an understanding that I would explain the motion, that the gentlewoman would make her comments, and then the gentleman would close and we could yield back the balance of our time.

Fine. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

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

Madam 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 thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.

Mr. Speaker, this is a sad day for me personally. Thirty-four years ago today, I was sworn in as a new Member of this body. I was inspired by the idea that this institution was supposed to represent. This institution is supposed to be the people's House. This institution, more than any other, is supposed to reflect the public will. This institution has been known through the years as the greatest parliamentary body in the world.

Mr. Speaker, I think the rule that is bringing this crucial piece of legislation to the floor today represents a fundamental corruption of the democratic processes of this House and this country. I want to explain why.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is a $70 billion bill to try to pay for the cost of a war which, it is hoped, will bring ``democracy'' to Iraq. Yet, democracy is being fundamentally denied on this House floor this morning.

Now, we hear all of this meaningless blather about how this is an open rule and we can offer any amendment that is within the rules, but that obscures the truth. The truth is that this bill has been brought to the floor under a rule which allows this bill to avoid the rules of the House, and it does so in three fundamental ways. That enables the majority to bring a bill to the House floor which, among other things, will supplement the process by which our government intends to provide basic health care to 25 million Iraqis; our government plans to provide for the modernization of 6,000 schools in Iraq; and it plans to rebuild 100 hospitals in Iraq.

I begrudge the President none of that in his efforts to win the hearts and minds of that country. However, this rule blocks our effort to provide $2.5 billion in additional homeland security protection by protecting our ports, giving our first responders more assistance, and doing a variety of other things to keep this country safe from terrorist attack.

The way it does that is that it allows the bill itself, brought by the Republican majority, to obliterate the normal rules of the House under which bills are considered; but then it requires us to abide by the very rules that the majority party ignores in constructing its bill.

Members may call that democracy; I call it a sham. I call it a shameful sham. I do not for a moment understand why we are even having this disagreement. On a subject like homeland security there should be no ``Ds'' behind our name, there should be no ``Rs'' behind our name; there should only be an ``A'' after our name. In discussing a bill like this, we should not be Democrats or Republicans, we should be Americans.

I would ask every Member of this House whether or not anything that we are trying to propose in this amendment is not worthy of support. We are being blocked today from funding a new program that would enable us to protect America from nuclear material loaded onto ships and brought into American ports. We are being denied the opportunity to install equipment in nine ports around the world so that for at least 50 percent of the cargo which comes into this country we will know it does not have nuclear material which could cause the explosion of dirty bombs in our ports and harbors. We are being denied the right to try to fix that problem.

We are being denied the right to offer additional funds to protect the security of our own nuclear material here at home. We are being denied funds to upgrade the quality of State labs so they can detect what we are hit with if we are hit by a chemical attack. We are being denied $108 million to protect Federal dams and waterways from terrorist attacks. We are being denied $75 million so that we can conduct vulnerability assessments for chemical plants in this country. We are being denied several hundred million dollars in additional help that we want to provide to our local first responders, our police, and our firemen.

Additionally, we are being denied an effort to provide additional funds so that our Guard and Reserve forces can see to it that in every State in the Union we have backup units to help first responders respond to chemical and biological attacks. We are being denied the ability to put additional port security requirements into effect in Charleston, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Baltimore, Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Corpus Christi, San Juan, and Wilmington in order to protect this country, again, from deadly material that is brought into our harbors. We are being denied many other things.

So in my view, Mr. Speaker, this rule is a disgrace. We intend to vote against the previous question on the rule, and I would urge Members of the leadership of this House to recognize that on this, above all issues, we ought to be dealing with this in a bipartisan give-and-take manner so we can provide far more protection to each and every citizen of this country than we are providing to date.

Mr. Speaker, we have just heard a canard. The charge has been made by the Republicans for the last 3 days that there are $19 billion in unspent homeland security funds. Let me tell you how they get to that ridiculous statement.

They count all of the money that is proposed for that program for the next fiscal year. We have not even passed that bill out of the Congress yet. That is 34 percent of that so-called $19 billion in unspent money. This supplemental contains another 10 percent. You cannot spend money in localities the Congress has not yet appropriated. That accounts for another 10 percent. Then the omnibus appropriations bill that was passed in February of this year, that accounts for the other 30 percent of that so-called $19 billion in unspent money. Only 2 weeks ago, the agency made available to States the ability to apply for that money. The application period has not even been closed. That leaves 26 percent left; and of that 26 percent left, only 4 percent has been unobligated. So let us keep the facts straight.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 11 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, we have by the previous vote unfortunately short- circuited the democratic process in this House, and we have prevented us from having any really meaningful debate on this resolution today. Under the rule, we are going to be free to talk about providing additional money for homeland security. We just are not going to be able to put any amendments before the House that in any substantial way enhance homeland security, and I find that unfortunate.

I think that there is much in this bill that is good, and I wanted to congratulate the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the committee, because he has done his constitutional duty and he has seen to it that the 200-year-long responsibility of the Congress to keep a tight leash on the public purse has been maintained, and I congratulate him for it. I know that there are a lot of people in this town who do not like that, but that was his responsibility. That was his committee's responsibility, and we lived up to it; and I think the House can be proud of that.

I also think, frankly, that there are a couple of other occasions when Members of Congress wanted to unfairly intervene in executive prerogatives in this bill, and the committee correctly resisted those as well. So on that score I have no problem whatsoever with this bill.

My problem is that I think it is a missed opportunity to provide additional protection for people at home. We are engaged in a war in Iraq. The idea of that war is to make the world safer for the United States and other democracies. And it would seem to me that if we are going to engage in a war against Iraq, we ought to be battening down the hatches to the fullest extent possible here at home to protect against terrorist attacks; but we have been denied the opportunity to offer our amendment to do so. And I want to walk through with the House what it is that they have rejected because I am going to try to offer it again anyway at a later point in the process.

Perhaps the greatest challenge we face in dealing with terrorism is to monitor the more than 20,000 shipping containers that enter the United States each day. In our amendment, which we will seek to offer even though the rules sought to deny us, we tried to put $135 million in this bill so that we can institute at nine major ports around the world a system which we have now in the port of Rotterdam, which would enable us to install equipment so that we know that none of the containers in the 10 major ports in the world contain radioactive material which could be used to set off a dirty bomb within the United States. We think the House ought to support that.

We also want to put $87 million in this bill to strengthen our ability to deal with nuclear material which is stored right here in the United States. We want to provide $150 million to strengthen the capacity of State laboratories and EPA laboratories to deal with the aftermath of a chemical attack. We are better equipped to deal with a biological attack in the country at this point than we are to deal with a chemical attack.

We wanted to put sufficient funds into this bill so that we can take the vulnerability assessment that was done on Federal dams and waterways throughout the country and in fact act on that assessment and actually provide for the security upgrades that we need for those facilities. We need $108 million to do that.

Only weeks ago, the General Accounting Office completed a report indicating that there is a serious threat posed by the possibility of terrorists targeting U.S. chemical plants. We wanted to provide $75 million to initiate an assessment of that threat as recommended by the GAO. We have been denied the opportunity to do that. We also want to see to it that there is better coordination between the FDA and the USDA in determining what kinds of inspections have taken place and what inspections have not taken place with respect to a number of shipments of agricultural products and medical products that come into this country.

The Hart-Rudman report recommended the Federal Government provide funding to first responders to immediately clear the backlog of requests for protective gear for our local first responders. This legislation does not begin to lay a glove on the size of that problem.

We also have a problem in that the equipment used by our firemen and our policemen and our rescue workers at the local level are not interoperable, and so those groups cannot talk to each other.

Twenty years ago in this town when we had the Air Florida accident, we had rescue workers from Virginia, from Maryland, from the District of Columbia. They could not talk to each other on their emergency equipment because they were all on different wavelengths. That was 20 years ago. When we had that same problem at the Pentagon just about a year ago, we still had not improved the situation. No real progress in 20 years. It is about time we fix it. We want to in our amendment. We have been denied the opportunity.

We also wanted to provide $300 million in additional funding to the Office of Domestic Preparedness, which has been denied. We also wanted to provide sufficient funds to guarantee that every State in the Union has at least one National Guard Civil Support Team to back up first responders in case of terrorist attack emergencies. We have been denied the opportunity to do that. We wanted to provide $90 million to expand port and waterway safety systems. Right now the port of Norfolk has a sophisticated system and the port of San Diego is going to get that system later in the year; but we still have ports like Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Baltimore, Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Corpus Christie, San Juan, and Washington, D.C. where we need that equipment, but do not have it.

The Coast Guard indicates that in addition to all of that we have at least $900 million in needs that we ought to be helping local port authorities with and over the next 10 years those needs are estimated to be about $4.4 billion. We wanted to add $250 million to the 440 already in this bill to deal with that problem, and we have been denied that opportunity.

And we also take note of the fact that the Pentagon has identified more than $1 billion of unfunded security needs at military bases here at home, such as providing additional protection for family housing by building perimeter fencing. Our amendment wanted to put at least $200 million in here for that purpose. We have been denied the right to do so.

We wanted to increase the intelligence budget for the Department of Energy so that they can have a better surveillance operation with respect to countries like Iran and North Korea. We have been denied that opportunity. And we wanted to do a number of other things which I do not have time to discuss.

Let me simply say, despite the fact that the rule has denied us the opportunity to offer the amendment, I am going to attempt to offer that amendment anyway when we get to the 5-minute rule because I believe that this is so important for the security of this country. There is no reason for us to have a dispute on this issue. There is no reason to have a difference between Republicans and Democrats on a national security issue of this magnitude. I cannot believe that we do not have bipartisan support for this added money.

We found enough room to give $3 billion and more to the airlines, but not enough to provide $2.5 billion for homeland security. We find enough room in this bill to provide $7 billion in foreign aid to other countries including some bribe money to countries that voted with us in the United Nations who are adding virtually nothing to our security effort; and yet we are being denied the opportunity to provide $1 billion on the homeland security front. For that matter we know that our government policy is, and this is in writing, to provide health care, basic universal health care was the term, for 25 million people in Iraq.

We know that our government intends to repair 6,000 schools and 100 hospitals in Iraq. It would be nice if we could do the same thing here at home. We are not, obviously, being allowed to do that because of the majority party's lust for passing every tax cut known to man, but that is a debate for another day.

Today, as far as I am concerned, the critical hole in this bill is lack of sufficient funds for homeland security. We are going to try to do everything we can to fix that problem despite the lack of cooperation from the majority leadership. But I do want to, at the same time, thank the chairman of the committee for his personal cooperation in trying to make sure that this House at least met its constitutional responsibilities with respect to the power of the purse, and I congratulate him for that action.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

(Mrs. LOWEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to correct the impression left by the previous speaker. The previous speaker said in committee earlier this week, and he has touched on it again today, he said that we had almost $19 billion in so-called ``unspent'' homeland security funds. The fact is, that is a fictional number. I want to show the Members why.

First, 34 percent of that number is found in a bill which we have not yet even enacted. We cannot expect localities to spend money we have not yet provided them.

Second, 10 percent of that so-called $19 billion in unspent money represents money in this supplemental which we have not yet passed. We cannot count money that we have not yet passed as part of the money localities have not yet spent.

Then, in the omnibus appropriation bill which we just passed in February, and we were supposed to pass it before October 1 but we did not get around to it until February, 30 percent of that so-called $19 billion in unspent money is in that omnibus bill.

It was only 2 weeks ago that the agency invited localities to apply for that money. The application time is not even closed yet. When we get down to the real, hard facts, only 26 percent of that $19 billion represents previously enacted money before February of this year. Of that 26 percent, only 4 percent is unobligated, and 22 percent of that is obligated.

Mr. Chairman, so much for the idea that there is ``enough in the pipeline.'' There is not nearly enough in the pipeline. Ask the mayors, ask the firemen, ask the police chiefs, ask the Coast Guard, ask the Department of Defense. They know there is not enough money in the pipeline.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. Chairman, there are several Members who wanted to speak, but let me yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. Chairman, every Member of this House supports whatever is necessary to give our troops every dollar and every piece of equipment they need to come through this war successfully and unscathed, we hope; but there are other duties which this Congress has as well, and I believe that we are missing a huge opportunity to strengthen our defenses here at home.

I really believe that the people who died in the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania and the Twin Towers in New York were the last casualties from the 1991 war against Iraq. It was that war to which bin Laden responded, and it was because of his anger at the West for stationing troops on Saudi territory that he lashed out in his vicious attack on this country.

I think we have to recognize that there will be future bin Ladens, and if we are going to have an ultimately successful result from our attack on Iraq, we need to make certain that we do a much better job the next 10 years in battening down the hatches against terrorism than we did the past 10 years. That is why we wanted to offer this amendment today; and in my view, we will pay a price for not being able to provide these additional protections.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his remarks, and I could not say it better myself.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment attempts to add $2.5 billion in funding for homeland security. It seems to me that if we can undertake an effort that will provide basic health

care for Iraqis, 25 million Iraqis, if we can provide for the reconstruction of 6,000 schools in Iraq and 100 hospitals in Iraq, it seems to me that we can at least do the minimum necessary to batten down the hatches here at home and protect our communities, our ports, our first responders, our schools and our other citizens from potential terrorist attacks.

This amendment seeks to add $135 million to increase the sophistication of our anti-nuclear detection equipment in the 10 main ports around the world that ship over 50 percent of the shipping containers into the United States. We are incredibly vulnerable to the use of a dirty nuclear device in our ports, and this would be a major step forward in correcting that vulnerability.

We also want to spend $87 million to provide additional oversight of nuclear materials stored here in the United States so it is not reachable by terrorists.

We want to provide $150 million to upgrade the State public health departments and environmental laboratories in order to strengthen our ability to respond to chemical weapons attacks.

We want to provide additional funding to follow up on the site-by- site analyses of our vulnerability or of the vulnerability of our Federal dams and waterways across the country.

We want to provide $75 million to initiate assessments of the vulnerability of the U.S. chemical plants in the country.

We want to provide an additional $300 million for first responders and $150 million of that specifically for firefighter grants to raise that program up to its authorized level of $900 million.

We want to provide additional funding to our National Guard civil support team so that every State in the Union can have a qualified National Guard backup operation to supplement the actions of our first responders in case of terrorist attacks in our localities.

We want to see to it that the Coast Guard is expanded by at least 2,000 personnel beginning in October, rather than waiting until next April. The Coast Guard is stretched to the breaking point at this point.

We want to see to it that many of the other ports in the United States have the same detection equipment that is now available in Norfolk and will soon be available in San Diego.

We want to respond to the fact that the Coast Guard has estimated that we need $4.5 billion in additional funding for our local port authorities over the next 10 years. We want to provide an additional response to that.

We want to deal with the fact that today, if there were an attack on our tunnels, our Amtrak tunnels, in a number of cities across the country, that, in fact, the ability to evacuate people from those tunnels right now is extremely and dangerously limited. And I would point out that the size of this amendment is smaller than the amendment that is contained in the bill to provide aid to airlines. It is very much smaller, about a third the size of the foreign assistance that is contained in this bill for other countries.

This is the minimum that we ought to be doing. I originally submitted a list that would come up to almost $8 billion in what we regard as essential security, home front security operations that need to be undertaken. None of these ideas originate with us. They all originate with the agencies charged with the responsibility of protecting the security of the United States at home.

So, Mr. Chairman, I would urge that the Members of this House not lodge an objection to this amendment so that we can, in fact, at least have a debate on this issue. We are in the minority. We understand that we cannot expect to win on many votes around here, but at least in the people's House, we ought to be able to debate these issues. You already have 13 votes more than we have on this side of the aisle. You will most assuredly win; but at least take the gag off, and let us have the opportunity to have an up or down vote on something that ought to be a totally bipartisan effort.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, in response to the gentleman from Kentucky, let me simply say that the Coast Guard has told us very clearly that if we provide this money now, they can get

these additional 2,000 people on board by October. They have also told us if we wait until the 2004 budget year that they cannot bring them on until April. That is a fact.

Fact number two. The gentleman talks of $1 billion in ODP money that is not spent. The fact is it is not spent because the application period is open until April 22. It cannot be spent until that application period is finished.

Thirdly, the fire grants for 2002. They are virtually all out. And for the fiscal 2003, the applications are still open, so again that money cannot be expected to be out of here. The agency assures us it will be out of here by June once the application period is finished.

So I think the gentleman is using a lot of interesting numbers to make a point that does not exist.

I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman continue to yield?

With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, we have answered those statements twice, and I also answered them earlier in the debate.

The fact is if Members think there is enough money being provided to protect the homeland, vote against the amendment. If they think there is not enough money, vote for it. But at least let us have a vote.

Against a defined need of $9 billion.

It is your administration running the show, not ours.

I most certainly do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, let me state what I understand the parliamentary situation to be. My understanding is that the rule under which we are operating waives section 302(c), 302(f) and section 311 of the Budget Act against the bill as reported, and clause 2 of rule XXI.

My understanding is that the rule provides, with respect to section 302(c), my understanding is that if the gentleman's interpretation of the rule is correct, that would mean that while the majority would get a waiver for its bill, even though the committee has not filed its 302(b) suballocations, the minority would not get a corresponding waiver.

My understanding with respect to section 302(f) is that if the gentleman's interpretation is correct, that would mean that despite the fact that the bill exceeds 302(a) or (b) allocations, that the majority's bill will still be allowed to come to the House floor but our amendment would not be able to, even though we are in precisely the same situation with respect to those allocations.

With respect to section 311, which prohibits consideration of a bill or amendments that exceed total spending in the deemed fiscal year 2003 budget resolution, if the gentleman's interpretation is to prevail, that would mean that the majority would be waiving requirements on this point for their bill but not for the minority's.

I cannot believe that the majority would intentionally produce such an unfair result, and so I therefore would urge the Chair to rule that the amendment is in order.

Mr. Chairman, I am most reluctant to do this, but in my view when the rights of the minority to offer a meaningful amendment on a bill of this nature, which goes to the very heart of our national security preparation, when the minority is denied an opportunity to even have such a proposal debated, I have no choice but to move to appeal the ruling of the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.

Mr. Chairman, I have been around this institution long enough to know what an amendment looks like when it does cut off and end the war because we voted that way to end the Vietnam War. I voted for that resolution, or for that amendment.

I also voted to require the President to come back to the Congress for a second vote before he went to war if the Security Council did not agree with his decision to go to war, so I think my position is clear. I think there are going to be very bad, long-term results from this war.

But having said that, I think it is incorrect for the gentleman to say that this amendment will, in effect, bring the troops home. It does no such thing. All it does is to say that we will not reimburse the Pentagon for money which has already largely been spent. It simply does not replenish those accounts. I do not think that that is a rational thing to do.

Secondly, I would point out one of my problems with this bill is that this bill already, in my view, substantially understates, and therefore substantially hides from public view, the full cost of this war. It is going to cost a lot more than the $70 billion in this bill today.

The effect of offering this amendment, in my view, would be to further mask the real cost of that war. I do not think that is a healthy thing to do. I think we are getting into some long-term costs associated with this war far in excess of what the Pentagon, the State Department, or the White House are admitting. I think this amendment simply further would play into that game.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is not going to pass because, frankly, it does not do what it purports to do. I understand what the gentleman is trying to do; he is trying to find some way to express his views on the war, so in a sense this is a symbolic act. I respect him for that.

The fact is, Members need to be assured they understand exactly what it does and what it does not do. One thing it does not do, it does not bring the troops home.

Mr. Chairman, because she has laryngitis, I ask unanimous consent that the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey) may be permitted to insert a statement in the Record at this point.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I do not want to get into a debate on this amendment, but I do want to object to something I just saw here on the House floor. We have been trying to work out cooperatively, between both sides of the aisle, arrangements on time. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) was willing to limit his amendment, for instance, to 15 minutes. We now have a Republican amendment on which we have not yet been able to obtain time limits. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has been trying to manage the bill in a very fair way, and I have been trying to do what I can on this side as well.

I, frankly, find it offensive when an individual Member of the House objects to another Member of the House simply asking for an extension of time for a minute or so to ask a question. I want to put the House on notice that if that happens once more, I will guarantee that we will not finish this bill tonight.

Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, that arrangement as stated would provide that all of the time would be managed on that side of the aisle. Can we work it out so that some of it is assured to folks on this side of the aisle, regardless of which side of the question they are on?

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Chairman, that is agreeable. I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to speak on the amendment. I would just like to see us finish before 4 in the morning.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler).

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to propound a question to the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.

As I review the number of amendments pending, I see 39 remaining amendments on the Democratic side of the aisle and 6 on the Republican side of the aisle. As I calculate the clock, that means that if all of those amendments are only debated for 5 minutes per side, without counting the time for roll calls, that we would be here until midnight. If we then have actual votes on those amendments, I calculate that that would take us till at least 2 a.m. or 3 a.m.. If we have an additional 5 minutes per side or debate on half of those amendments, that would take us until about 5 o'clock in the morning. And if we have no time agreements on these amendments, we will be here at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. That is the reality of the clock that faces us.

So I want Members to understand why it is that we are going to be seeking time agreements. Because if we do not, and the leadership has said we were not going to be here tomorrow, which means we may not start a session tomorrow but we are certainly going to be here tomorrow approaching noon unless we get time agreements on these amendments. So I just wanted to put the House on notice that the gentleman and I are trying to reach an understanding on time limits and we need those time limits to be as tight as is reasonably possible, or else Members are going to be spending an awful lot of time tonight with each other when they would rather be spending that time with somebody else.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida for whatever comments he may wish to make.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman, and I would just ask Members to be understanding of the time problem that we face and to recognize that we have to ask them to agree to tight time limits or we are going to be here until the cows come home.