Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I just want to say to my colleague who just spoke that I saw also two young men in Walter Reed a couple of days ago, and I would recommend that he talk with them also if he thinks that everybody that is over there supports this resolution.

I would also say to my friend that if you think that the message that is going to go across thousands of Web sites and communications the day after this vote is taken on terrorist Web sites is, our message is that democracy is alive and well in the United States, I am willing to take a bet on that. I do not think you will see that. I think you will see something else.

You will see the message that they think that this resolution, if it is passed, is the first note of retreat in the war against terror by the United States. That is what you will see and I will be happy to take a bet on that one.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I heard just a couple of hours ago, as many of us have, that the Democratic leadership of the House intends to use management policies in the Department of Defense over the next year or so to keep either troops or supplies from moving to the battlefield.

Now, using management policies that will prohibit people from moving in the Marines or the United States Army if they haven't spent enough time back in CONUS before they go, I can say this to you, that is a very, very dangerous policy.

Our ability to project power around the world and to deter people who wish us ill is the ability to move men and equipment very quickly around the world. And any type of an inhibition of that capability is going to be extremely dangerous to the United States. And I will fight with every fiber of my being any attempt by this Congress through management policies by the Democratic leadership, through management policies of DOD to keep either reinforcement or supplies from reaching our troops around the world.

I will simply say once more, I said when we started this debate yesterday, that this resolution will be looked at by America's friends, by America's enemies, and I think also by America's troops; and I think they will interpret it, no matter the good faith of people in this Chamber, they will interpret it as the first notes of retreat in the war against terror, just as they interpreted actions by the Spanish Government after the domestic strike in Spain and the terrorist hit in Spain and in other countries.

They will look at what we have done, and I will be happy to stand with any of my colleagues and analyze those messages as they come off the terrorist boards after this vote is taken. This resolution, if it passes tomorrow, and it probably will, will be taken as the first note of retreat in the war against terror.

Any attempt by the Democrat leadership to cut off supplies or reinforcement by management policies in DOD, personnel policies, will be interpreted as the second note of retreat in the war against terror, and I for one will oppose them very strongly

Madam Speaker, I would yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes just to give some information that my great friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes), commented on.

I made a comment a few minutes ago that I had understood that the Democrat leadership or a member of that leadership had stated that they would use DOD management policies to cut off the sending of either reinforcements or supplies to the warfighting theater and that I would oppose that very strongly.

My friend Mr. Reyes expressed doubt that that had happened. He said he had not heard about it.

I just wanted to inform him I have the Reuters report here, and it quotes our colleague Mr. Murtha: ``A leading congressional opponent of the war in Iraq on Thursday said his plans for placing conditions on how President George W. Bush can spend $93.4 billion in new combat funds would effectively stop an American troop buildup.'' This is quoting Mr. Murtha.

Mr. Murtha says: ``They won't be able to continue. They won't be able to do the deployment. They won't have the equipment, they don't have the training, and they won't be able to do the work. There's no question in my mind.''

That is the statement upon which I based my remarks a few minutes ago. It appears that statement has been made.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

What is my friend's statement?

Let me just say to my friend that I hope that this is a misquote; but, certainly, there was a press conference, and these are the quotes that are reported in the transcript by the press. So let us hope that that is not accurate. If it is not accurate, I will be very happy. If it is accurate, that will receive enormous opposition from this Member of Congress.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding, and I just wanted to address a point that my friend from Massachusetts just made.

He said that we always need to have up-armored Humvees in any war that we enter into. We had at the end of the Clinton administration about 112, as I recall, up-armored Humvees, only for VIPs and for diplomats. We have today 15,000 up-armored 114s. This is the first war in our history since the beginning of this country in which we have had up-armored tactical vehicles.

With respect to the SAPI vests, that is, the bulletproof vests and body armor that our troops wear, we had at the end of the Clinton administration this many, zero pieces of body armor for our troops. We have today over 400,000 sets. That is enough sets for two sets for everybody who is in theater, and everybody has them.

I have said for the last several years if there is anybody who has a son or daughter who does not have body armor who is in theater, call me personally at my office. In the last 2 years, I have received zero calls.

So we have, we feel, the new equipment, not just up-armored Humvees but body armor, which incidentally is very heavy and, to some degree, does result in some degradation of mobility, but we have put in hundreds of new systems, weapons and equipment systems, since the year 2000 which have accrued to the benefit of our troops.

I just wanted to set the record straight. I appreciate the gentleman for yielding.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding. The point that I made----

I am talking about the armor issue. The point that I made is the idea of coming to the floor and implying that somehow there was bad faith in this government for not having the new body armor that our troops presently have to the tune of 400,000 sets, that somehow that was a dereliction of duty is also a disservice, not only to the former Congresses, but also to the former administrations. Because the last administration in the year 2000 had zero sets of body armor.

Body armor is a new advent, it is a new system. We now have hundreds of new systems that we have injected into the warfighting theater. So the idea that we had a ragtag military moving across the berm into Iraq is also not accurate.

And I would hope that the gentleman would admonish his colleagues who come to the floor who imply that our people went across that berm unequipped is also not accurate. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

My point is to the gentleman.

That is inaccurate if you refer to the historic amount of body armor that our troops have had.

Then I would say, yes, that is inaccurate. The way the gentleman stated and if he is not going to qualify it, then that is inaccurate, because we have never had body armor until this war.

The gentleman and I are good enough friends, if the gentleman will allow me to make a one-sentence answer.

The answer is, not since 1776 until just a few years ago have American troops in Vietnam and Korea and World War II, in any war, had what is known as ballistic body armor. It is a brand-new thing. And we have got yet new systems that we are going to be putting into the field shortly. So they don't have the newest and they didn't have the newest. They now have 400,000 sets. But to imply that that lack of having them from 1776 to 2000 made them into some type of an unequipped force is also not fully true.

Will the gentleman yield one last time?

I thank the gentleman for yielding. And let me say to my friend, and I listened to the gentlewoman's discussion. The gentlewoman is a very careful Member of Congress, and she looked at the words and she asked the question: Does this include, because it appeared that it refers, the equipage language refers to people who are presently there but does exclude,

and she is a very careful person and I have been in markups with her and committee meetings before. She is very careful about wording; words mean things. That it doesn't refer to people who are going to be deployed by the President in the future. And her worry, and I think it was a sincere concern, is that people who may be sent by the President in the future may end up seeing a cutoff of funds, of supplies, O&M dollars, as a result of this Congress.

So if the gentleman is assuring us that that is not going to happen, I think that is good news to the gentlewoman from New Mexico.

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

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, thank you, and I wanted to take this couple of minutes to expand on my conversation with the majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, it has been said a number of times that we went over the berm and went into Iraq without body armor. In fact, no American troops until just a couple of years ago, from the time that we were first a Nation and deployed military forces on our homeland or around the world, in all those years, in that entire history of the United States, we never had body armor. I never had body armor in Vietnam. Nobody ever saw it. We had no body armor in Korea. We had no body armor in World War II, except perhaps in very, very specialized operations where perhaps specialized custom-made body armor, that is, bulletproof armor would be manufactured for some special forces teams or special operations.

Now, I have in front of me a comparison. This comparison is between a soldier in 1999, at the end of the last administration and the equipment that he has, and a soldier today. Now, as you can see, this is a soldier in 1999. He has a number of accessories. In fact, he has an M-16; he has a flak jacket; he has gloves; he has load-carrying equipment; he has protective goggles. He does have a night vision device. He has also got a helmet and accessories that can be utilized when he is in combat.

Now, the soldier today has a lot more. That soldier has, for example, instead of an M-16, he has an M-4 carbine. He has now body armor, including an outer tactical vest body armor. He has enhanced small arms protective inserts, called SAPI plates. He has deltoid auxillary protection and side plates. He has knee pads. He has more sophisticated aiming equipment and night vision equipment than his counterpart of just a couple of years ago.

My point is that whenever new systems are introduced into the force, and the first thousand or so systems or several thousand systems go into the force and a battalion or even a brigade has those pieces of equipment, you can by definition say that everybody else that doesn't have them is now deficient in equipment. But, in fact, they are not deficient in equipment. This point was made by a leader in the 101st Airborne who pointed out that one of his battalions that they looked at, which was rated the top level of readiness, that is C-1 readiness, ready to go, ready to fight, in 1999. If you took all of the new equipment that troops have today and put that new equipment on as a requirement for that same battle-ready battalion in 1999, they would be rendered C-4, or unready for battle by definition because they don't have the new equipment.

So I think one thing we need to do, as we lean on the Army, the Marine Corps, and the other services to move equipment into the field quickly, let's not penalize them, and when they move the first several thousand sets into the field, let's not say, Congratulations, you've just rendered on paper the rest of your units unready because they don't have the new stuff you're moving in. That will have a chilling effect on

what is already a very cumbersome process and a very steep bureaucracy to get through in terms of moving equipment to the field.

I wanted to just make that point.

What I would like to do at this point is yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Everett).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes).

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, I understand at 4:30 we are going to break for some time for the Norwood resolution, which is absolutely appropriate. I just wanted to see if you could give us a split on the time, how much time we have left, we both have Members who are squeezed to get their remarks in, make sure we get an even split on time to half past the hour.

I would like to work with my friend from Missouri to make sure we do that.

We needed to know how much time we had before the 4:30 break, Mr. Speaker, because we have folks, but if we just have one speaker there, that is fine.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) for 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, a point of inquiry.

This is not an unfriendly request. I just want to note one of our Members has a relative's funeral he wants to go to. He has just a few minutes. I know my friend Mr. Oberstar is waiting to speak. Is there any chance you could yield to Mr. LoBiondo so he could get his 4 minutes in before the deadline?

I want to thank my friend, Mr. Oberstar, very much for that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. LoBiondo).

Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the gentleman. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding this time to Mr. LoBiondo. As this Member gets time in the coming debate, we owe you one.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution by the Democrat leadership sends a message to three parties: America's enemies, America's friends, and America's troops. And I think it is going to be received by friend and foe alike as the first sound of retreat in the world battle against extremists and terrorists.

Mr. Speaker, we are not stopping anything with this resolution. In fact, the Big Red One is already moving its first brigade toward Iraq; the 82nd Airborne, America's all-American division, is already in Iraq. In fact, the Second Brigade is already in their sector in Baghdad. As a matter of fact, in the Baghdad plan, which reinforcements are serving, all nine sectors now have American and Iraqi forces in place and operating. So you are not stopping anything; you are simply sending a message, and it is the wrong message. Because this Nation has been for the last 60 years involved in spreading freedom, and it is in America's interest to spread freedom. Nobody would say that it is in our interest or it is not in our interest, for example, to have a free Japan on that side of the Pacific, or to have a free El Salvador in our own hemisphere, or to have those nations which were behind the Iron Curtain, nations like Poland, now standing side by side with us in Iraq. It is in our interest to spread freedom.

Mr. Speaker, I have been here before. A lot of us have. I remember in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was standing up to the Russians in Europe and the USSR was ringing our allies in France and Germany with SS-20 missiles, and the President of the United States moved to offset those missiles with Pershing IIs and ground-launched cruise missiles, and you had from the left a call that this was going to start World War III. And you had pundits throughout this country, as a matter of fact somebody showed me an old headline the other day, ``Better Red Than Dead,'' which emanated from that debate and that action.

But we stood tough, we offset the Russians, we showed strength, and at some point the Russians picked up the phone and said, ``Can we talk?'' And when we talked, we talked about the disassembly of the Soviet Empire.

In our own hemisphere, when we went in and helped that fragile government in El Salvador and stood up a little shield around that government, we had people saying that is going to be the next Vietnam for the United States. Well, it wasn't a Vietnam for the United States, and Salvadorans are standing with Americans now in Iraq. In fact, I think we have got people who died of old age waiting anxiously for the next Vietnam.

Now we are in a different part of the world, and it is a tough mission, and moving freedom and spreading freedom in that part of the world is very, very difficult. And I would just say to my colleagues, my friends who have talked about the smooth road not taken, how we have made mistakes; if we just kept that Iraqi in place of Saddam Hussein's, somehow things would be better now. Saddam Hussein's army had 11,000 Sunni generals. Now, what are you going to do with an army with 11,000 Sunni generals whose mission is to stabilize a population which is in the majority Shiite?

A lot of people have said we should have had 200,000 to 300,000 troops in country. Now at the same time they would say we have got to put an Iraqi face on this occupation. How do you put an Iraqi face on the occupation with 200,000 or 300,000 Americans in country?

The facts are, there is no smooth road. This is a tough and difficult road. Our military planners have come up with a strategy. It involves nine sectors in Baghdad with Iraqi troops to the front and with backup American battalions behind them, mentoring them, giving them advice, and in many cases stiffening their spine.

Now, there is no guarantee of success. But this is a first time. I think we should check our history, and my friend, Mr. Skelton, I think you should check our history and see if this Congress has ever, after a military operation is already in place, is already moving forward, the Big Red One is already moving out. The all-American division, the 82nd Airborne, already has troops in place in combat, in the city, that we retroactively say, you know, we don't support this. The only message that can possibly send to the rest of the world is a fractured message.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to end with a comment, with a quotation from Douglas MacArthur in his farewell speech at West Point. I thought it was appropriate for these times. He talks about the American soldier, and he says this, ``Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

``His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.''

Mr. Speaker, our soldiers are engaged in combat right now. The worst disservice that we can give to them is to retroactively blast and degrade the mission that they are currently undertaking. There is no good role, there is no good purpose that is served by this.

So I would ask all my colleagues, let us get behind not only our troops, let us get behind their mission. Let us vote ``no'' on this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I understand we have until 12 o'clock to complete this part of the debate?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

Mr. Speaker, in my office I keep a photo of about a dozen Kurdish mothers whose bodies are strewn across the hillside in northern Iraq, holding their babies, killed in mid-stride where they were gassed to death by Saddam Hussein. As I listened to some folks in this debate talk about what they consider to be an immoral war, an illegal war, an occupation that is not consistent with morality, I harken back to that picture and the thousands of people that it represents, and I harken back also to the exhuming of mass graves with, again, mothers shot in the back of the head with a .45-caliber pistol by Saddam Hussein's executioners and with their little babies similarly with holes in the back of their skulls.

Mr. Speaker, this operation in Iraq is indeed a moral operation. It represents the goodness of the American people.

I am also reminded of something that lots of folks and the Vice President talked about, and that is the goodness that we have brought with the 3 million-plus babies who have been vaccinated, with the hundreds of schools and hospitals that have been built, and with all those expectant mothers that were given prenatal care by the Americans so that their children would be born in a healthy fashion.

But, Mr. Speaker, I recall that in 1984 Ronald Reagan very eloquently asked the American people to support him in bringing freedom to the people of El Salvador. I remember his speech; and in his speech, he harkened back to another American who had appealed to us in bringing freedom to another part of the world, which was at that time endangered, and that was Greece in 1947.

The communists were very close to victory in Greece, and Harry Truman appealed to the American people in a joint session of Congress. He said the free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter, we may endanger the peace of the world, and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this Nation.

Now, we have no guarantee of victory in Iraq. There is no battle plan that comes with a guarantee of victory, but I will tell one thing that is very clear: what is happening in Iraq and our efforts in Iraq are connected and are watched by every terrorist in the world, and that connection is established and travels as fast as the speed of electrons in this age of television and technology and high-paced, fast media and the Internet. They see what we are doing.

And that connection, Mr. Speaker, was made when the Beirut bombings occurred against the Marines in the Marine barracks in Beirut. In fact, I think Mr. Skelton was with me. We were over there very shortly before those bombings occurred.

They are connected and the terrorist world watched very closely when there was no response to that. They watched very closely when there was no response in the Khobar Towers, with respect to the Cole and extremely anemic response with respect to the bombings in the embassies in Africa.

Now we are undertaking an important and difficult mission; and, Mr. Speaker, I pointed out before that at least one brigade of the 82nd Airborne is already in place in Baghdad, now engaged in the operation, and we have a brigade of the Big Red One moving now toward the theater. I believe we have right at 4,000 members of the 82nd Airborne now in country in Iraq, and we have Iraqi soldiers and Americans engaged in the nine sectors of the city already undertaking this operation and this plan that has been developed by our warfighting commanders.

The idea that we are here, poised to retroactively condemn an operation that our soldiers are already carrying out, is, to my mind, remarkable. There is not going to be any force in effect with respect to this vote that will take place shortly that will do anything but send the wrong message to America's

allies, and I think you have seen comments by some of our allies over the last several weeks with respect to the message that we send out. We are interesting people are we not, Mr. Speaker. We send out messages with all the electronic gadgets in the world to convey the messages to the entire world, and then we say, you know, we really did not mean what you take our statements to mean and we really did not intend to give anybody the wrong message that we still support the troops.

Well, Mr. Speaker, we have got a number of great members of the Armed Services Committee that I want to yield to, and I want to come back later and talk a little bit later about this war against terror and the centerpiece that is Iraq and the centerpiece of that which is as planned.

You know, I was thinking there was a statement once that in a little hut in Central America when we were standing up to the Communists and we were providing a shield for El Salvador, while that fragile democracy stood up, there was a hut in El Salvador which reportedly had the writing on it, Thank God for Ronald Reagan. I am wondering if some trooper in the 82nd Airborne, in the 2nd brigade of the 82nd Airborne may write on a wall in Baghdad, maybe on Friday when we take this vote, This is the day in which the American Congress condemned the mission that we are carrying out today.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself just 30 seconds, and I would like to just make one note. That is, if we add the 21,500 troops that are already partly in Iraq, these reinforcements to the 138 who existed before the movement started, and we allow for the troops who are rotating home, we will have fewer; we will have 157,000 troops in Iraq, according to DOD. That is fewer than the number of troops that we had a year ago in December. That is the state of this so-called surge; fewer troops than we had last year.

Mr. Speaker, at this point I would yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) who, for a number of years, chaired the Terrorism Subcommittee and is now the ranking member.

Would the gentleman yield briefly?

I want to thank the gentleman for yielding briefly. I want to thank him for his statement and just clarify the record, while he has got some time, if I could.

Mr. Speaker, my good friend from California, the gentlelady, made the remark, as I understand it, that the Iraq Study Group did not agree with the President's so-called surge. I just would point to the statement that the Iraq Study Group published in their report. They said we could, however, support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad or to speed up the training and equipping mission if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective.

We also rejected the immediate withdrawal of our troops because we believe that so much is at stake. So the Iraq Study Group did state that they would support a surge to effect the stabilization of Baghdad, and it is in the nine sectors of Baghdad with Iraqi battalions to the front, American battalions backing them up, that this operation is taking right now. So it appears to me that the President is, in fact, following and is on common ground with this recommendation by the Iraq Study Group. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I would just say to my friend from California, he is consistent with the Iraq Study Group to the extent of 21,500 troops, which has been described by your side of the debate as very substantial and such an important thing and such a major thing that it should be stopped. So that, obviously, is not an inconsequential aspect of the Iraq Study Group's statement.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes to just make a brief response to a couple of statements that have been made.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Holt referred to our wounded folks in Walter Reed as tragic. They are not tragic. They are American heroes, and they are the people who have bought the freedom that allows us to have this debate today.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield some time to three unusual Americans on the Armed Services Committee who all have had sons serving in the Iraq theater. The first gentleman is the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline), whose son has been a helicopter pilot in Iraq, as much time as the gentleman wishes to consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) and note that he has a son who has served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq.

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

Mr. Speaker, to complete this triad of veterans' fathers, fathers of sons who have served in Iraq, is Joe Wilson, whose son Alan has received the Combat Action Badge for service in Iraq and the Palmetto Cross, which is a high award for the National Guard in South Carolina, and who has a son in the Signal Corps, Julian, a doctor in the Navy, and a son Hunter, a well-named son, Hunter, in the ROTC.

The reason I am going through these members of the Wilson clan, Mr. Speaker, is because inspired by his wife Roxanne, all these young men are serving in the military, and if the Wilson family does not re-up, we are in trouble.

I yield such time as he may consume to the great gentleman from South Carolina, Joe Wilson, to follow that wonderful presentation by Mr. Akin.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute just to respond to my friend from Tennessee.

Let me just point out that we are spending roughly 4 percent of GDP on defense at this point. President Ronald Reagan spent 6 percent. President John Kennedy, 9 percent. Operations in the war against terror are not bankrupting this country.

With respect to the group of allies that the gentleman called our few remaining friends, I am reminded that there is a number of them like Poland and Moldavia and Herzegovina and Georgia and Bosnia and Azerbaijan and Armenia and Albania, lots of little countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain or in the case of El Salvador, in what was called by the Democrat Party the unwinnable war in Central America in Salvador, those countries, which themselves were the beneficiaries of an American policy of expanding freedom are standing with our country in this operation in Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), who is a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to respond to my colleague, my good friend who just spoke, Mr. Israel.

Let me just make a couple of points. With respect to up-armored Humvees, when we entered this administration, the Humvee is a successor to the Jeep, it is a tactical vehicle, we had 1,200 up-armored Humvees. That was in the year 2000. Today, we have got 15,000 up-armored 114s, plus thousands of Humvees that have the so-called MAC kits which are also protective armor kits.

We had virtually no body armor in the year 2000. I don't believe we had a single set that was available for any line units in any American division in the world. Today, we have over 400,000 of those.

I just want to make a point, if there are American moms and dads, and we have had a few who have thought that their sons and daughters were going to Iraq without body armor, I have said, Call me personally at the office, and I have not had a single phone call in 2 years. So they have plenty of body armor.

And, lastly, I just want to make one other point with respect to what America has, because there has been an implication I think throughout the debate that we are stretched too thin, that others may attack us, may take advantage of the fact that we have deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the year 2000, we have more than doubled the precision firepower of this country. That means the ability of this country, and Republicans and Democrats have supported the funding that has done this; but if any country in the world should think they are going to take advantage of an America that is, in their estimation, stretched too thin, the precision firepower, that means the ability to send a smart weapon on target to thread a goal post at many, many miles, has more than doubled since the year 2000. And so no country

that feels that there is that implication in our situation in Iraq and Afghanistan should bet their life on it, because they will lose.

Madam Speaker, I yield 10 minutes to Mr. Cole, the outstanding gentleman from Fort Sill.

Madam Speaker, let me just respond to my good friend from Rhode Island, he is a great friend of mine and a former colleague on the Armed Services Committee, the estimate that has been given, that has been bandied around, that we would need some 20,000 support troops to support the 21,500 troops that are involved in the President's plan, some of whom are already in theater, has been rebutted by DOD, which said it is not 1 for 1 support to line troops, it is about 1 in 10, which in the estimate that they gave us was about 2,000 to 2,300, not 20,000 support troops.

Using that number, even with the 21,500 troops that are involved in the Baghdad plan, adding them to the 138 that we have right now, still brings us to a number that is lower than the 160,000 that we had December a year ago. I know that number has not been absolutely resolved, but I would just tell my friend that I believe it is going to be much lower than the number that has been put out there.

To my good friend from California, who talked about the Kosovo vote and the resolution to disapprove it, my recollection is that vote was undertaken before troops were moved. In this case, the 82nd Airborne is not already over the line in Iraq, but they actually have a brigade deployed in this operation, and the Baghdad operation that is being undertaken right now has a combination of Iraqi troops and American troops in each of nine sectors.

Madam Speaker, I yield as much time as he would like to take to Mr. Conaway from Texas, who is a gentleman that represents a great base at Fort Hood.

I will stipulate that the gentleman would like to represent Fort Hood.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to take a couple of minutes to answer a couple of things that my friend said.

First Mr. Weiner said, ``We aren't done.'' Madam Speaker, that is one thing that I am worried about. He said that we want more choices, more bills, more language. Not this Member. I will settle for a ``no'' on this resolution. I haven't asked for more bills, more choices, or different language.

And the problem with this resolution, the gentleman said this is a very good resolution because it is very clear, very concise, and gives us clear choices. This resolution retroactively condemns an action that has already been taken. That is the movement of reinforcements into the theater. You already have the 82nd Airborne in the theater. That is part of the reinforcing force. They are already in there. You already have a brigade from the 82nd Airborne in one of the nine sectors right now, operating, boots on the ground as we talk. So you aren't prohibiting the President from sending reinforcements.

He said that American forces are being stretched thinner and thinner and thinner.

We have 2\1/2\ million Americans in uniform. We have roughly 138,000 before the surge. Now a little more than 140,000 counting the ones that are already in country. When they are in country and the support troops are there and less the troops who will be rotating home at that point, you will have at the high point, we are told by DOD, about 157,000 troops. That is less than we had a year ago in country, I would say to the gentleman. So that is not a huge surge.

He stated that we are going to be drawn thinner, and I quote, ``thinner and thinner and thinner.''

So you have about 160,000 troops, a little less than that, max. That is not 10 percent of the 2.5 million persons who are presently wearing the uniform of the United States.

Secondly I will say to my friend, I want to say to folks who listen to this debate, because this statement about us being drawn thin and therefore being susceptible to problems and being vulnerable is a message that has come up several times in this debate.

We have more than doubled the precision firepower of this country since the last administration, that is the Clinton administration. You have more than doubled the precision firepower. That means the ability, if people should give the United States a need to respond militarily, the ability to send precision systems that can explode right straight through goalposts at long distances and handle lots of stuff.

Now, the gentleman is very concerned about Iran. I share that concern. And I share the concern the gentleman has about the centrifuge activity and the proposed centrifuge activity that Iran has discussed and may at some point develop with the aid of the Russians and the Chinese.

I would just remind the gentleman that those precision systems, that doubling of the precision firepower that we now have, is probably the right medicine if we should have to keep the military option open and on the table with respect to Iran. So we will watch them as they try to walk down this road to developing a nuclear weapon.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

We have been up as high as 40 percent National Guard and Reserve, and that is a deliberate policy of the United States. When we went to war in Vietnam, the Guard and Reserve for practical purposes stayed home. And we said from here on out, when we go to war, we go to war with what is known as a total force.

So you have a Reserve element that goes to war. If you were over in Iraq, as the gentlelady has been there a number of times, you will see Reservists flying C-130s, doing a lot of support missions, and you have National Guard units on the ground.

Certainly. I can tell the gentleman, my son has done two tours of duty. There are a number of people that have done that.

I will just tell the gentleman, in the MOSs that our folks sign up for, especially the aerial supportive MOSs, that is always out there, that they are going to have to go, because where the armed services go, where the active folks go, let me just finish my answer to the gentleman. He asked me a question. I am going to ask answer it.

If you are in a supportive service that involves things likes aerial refueling, C-130 work, which is the workhorse of the U.S. military, you understand when you go in, you are going to be making probably multiple tours. If you join the U.S. Marines right now, the recruiter tells you as you sign up, you can be guaranteed that you will go to Iraq.

I would say to the gentleman another thing: Knowing those things, we are meeting all of our enlistment goals in the Guard and Reserve. So the active duty people who are undertaking multiple tours are coming back and reenlisting. And knowing that, knowing that you are exposed to multiple tours, we have more people signing up for the Guard, for the Reserve.

And interestingly, I will tell the gentleman, the place where we have had problems with recruiting in the last year from the information I have seen is the Naval Reserve, which doesn't do tours in Iraq. But the combat arms have multiple tours.

Reclaiming my time, I will just tell the gentleman this: There is a difference between people in specialties spending more time doing multiple tours, and I will say to him again, almost all Marines know that they are going to do multiple tours, either in country or on the so-called float, which is the deployment around the world, because they are the 9/11 force for this country. So that is something that people do.

That is a far cry from not having enough firepower to respond to an Iranian crisis. We still have tons of firepower to respond to an Iranian breakout or surprise, a technological surprise, with respect to development of nuclear systems.

Madam Speaker, if the gentlewoman from California has more speakers, I will enjoy listening to them, and I will reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I have got one speaker left here, Mr. Franks of Arizona, but let me just say one thing before he speaks. I appreciate the debate. I think we have had a good discussion this evening.

I wanted to say one thing about Charlie Norwood. He passed away. He was a Member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. I was a member of that brigade. I had a very average tour, a very easy tour in Vietnam. I did nothing special. But Charlie Norwood was a real hero who won the Combat Medical Badge and two Bronze Stars in Vietnam.

I thought to commemorate Charlie, I have got my copy of General Douglas MacArthur's farewell speech that I quoted earlier, and let me just quote a paragraph about duty, honor and country that Douglas MacArthur thought so represented the fighting man in this country.

He said these of words, duty, honor and country, ``They teach to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.''

I think that largely represented our great friend Charlie Norwood.

Madam Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks).

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Georgia for letting me come in and offer something that I did not see offered by the Democrat side in this debate, which was the Army's position on this continuing resolution.

In fact, they posited this continuing resolution as motherhood, apple pie and everything that we need for a strong national defense, and they invoked the interest of American veterans. What they did not tell American veterans was that the Army sees this as a real problem and a real cut in benefits, and things that would help the active Army come in this defense realignment, this base realignment with divisions coming back to the United States, divisions like the big red one coming back to Ft. Riley, Kansas, and lots of others and lots of quality-of- life programs for the men and women of the armed services and for their families.

What we did not see coming from the Democrat side of the aisle was the fact that they reached over with one hand to give money to one group of servicemembers of veterans; they reached over and scooped money out of the cash register that would accrue to the benefit of another group, a very important people, and this is the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States.

So let me give you the Army's perspective as manifested in a letter from Lieutenant General David Melcher, United States Army, Military Deputy for Budget, Assistant Secretary of the Army, Financial Management and Comptroller. He says this:

``You recently requested a quick summary of Base Realignment and Closure impacts to the Army as proposed in the Joint Resolution, H.J. Res. 20.'' That is the resolution that the Democrat side of the aisle just passed. ``The attached information accurately portrays these impacts. The following identifies key Army concerns:

One, ``Army will not begin with approximately $2 billion of our BRAC program, which is a key enabler to grow and position the Army; this leaves more than half of our fiscal year 2007 BRAC program unexecutable.''

Number 2, ``Operational Impact on the Training, Mobilization and Deployment of Forces in support of the Global War on Terrorism.'' For some reason, the Democrat side of the aisle did not quite want to show that statement by the U.S. Army, that their bill that they passed, their continuing resolution, would, in fact, impact training, mobilization and deployment of forces in support of the global war on terrorism.

Number 3, ``Unravels the Army's synchronized stationing and BRAC plan, puts growth of the Army, stationing, and BRAC at risk.'' That means this: We are bringing back divisions from around the world. Places like Germany are now going to see movement in which American divisions are going to come back, and they are going to be repositioned in the United States. That means you got to go out and build barracks. You have got to go out and build single family housing. You have got to put a lot of construction in place. The Democrat majority reached out and took away part of that money.

Number 4, ``Delays transformation of Reserve Component, has operational consequences.'' We are involved in two shooting wars, and we have now done something that has operational consequences.

Number 5, ``Breaks the Nation's obligation to provide Soldiers and Families adequate quality of life, affects the All Volunteer Force,'' something we did not hear from the other side of the aisle.

Number 6, ``Delays capital investment and inhibits economic development, affects local jobs and growth across the U.S.'' Over 80,000 jobs affected by what they just did.

And lastly, ``Limits predictability and military construction acquisition efficiencies, results in higher construction costs.''

So, as we see costs going through the roof, the contractors can say, yep, we were going to build that single family housing for those military families but you guys reached in, took a bunch of the money out; we had to give a stop work order to our crews, and now we are going to charge you, the American taxpayers, more money.

I have got another executive summary here that goes into more detail, and I thought it might just be good to give a few of the examples of this money that was cut by the Democrat majority, which they skipped over very quickly, and tell the American people a few details about these projects that they moved off the table with one push of the hand.

Training ranges, command and control, training barracks, 19 projects, $560 million, including training facilities at Fort Bliss, Texas; maneuver training at Fort Benning, Georgia; air defense artillery at Fort Sill; and battlefield trauma lab at Fort Sam Houston. In fact, I have been to the battlefield trauma lab. That is where we train our combat medics to save lives in the war fighting theaters in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Cannot start communications/electronics, RD&E, center phase one at APG, that is Aberdeen Proving Ground, to close Fort Monmouth and support the global war on terrorism.

Cannot start on human resources command at Fort Knox, Kentucky; recruiting facilities at Redstone Arsenal; power projection platform at Ft. Riley or other operational projects at Shaw Air Force Base, Benning and Leavenworth.

Armed Forces reserve centers, 27 projects, $700 million in 16 States.

Examples of fiscal year 2007 BRAC quality of life requirements, eight projects, youth and child development centers, Benning, Riley, Bliss, Sam Houston; dental clinics, Bliss, Sam Houston; medical clinic, Ft. Riley, Kansas. That is where the big red one is returning from Europe.

All fiscal year 2007 BRAC projects and follow-on MILCON are synchronized with modular force build, operational rotations, BRAC and

No.

Let me tell you something.

The other side tried to appeal to the hearts of American veterans. I am a veteran. But you know something else? I have a son who just did 4 years of active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps, trained at some of these bases that we are talking about, witnessed and was training sometimes in facilities that were somewhat deficient, that needed to be improved.

I will bet you, if you look in the family of every American veteran that the other side was playing to, in passing the CR and saying we are doing good things for you guys, for you old guys like me, they were not doing good things for our sons. Because our sons are on active duty right now. They need to have that quality of life for our military families.

I can remember being with my son as Lynne and I would follow them around the United States, as a lot of military moms and dads do, trying desperately to get a little time with our grandchildren, and we would be often in substandard housing. We would see the efforts that had been undertaken by DOD to upgrade housing and to upgrade facilities and to make life better for families. A lot of those programs are in those cuts that the Democrats side of the aisle just made.

So if you are playing to us old veterans, remember, there is another thing that is very near and dear to us old veterans, and that is our kids who are on active duty or recently on active duty. We are concerned about them. So don't take away from them to give to us on the basis that we will then appreciate it, and we will appreciate them, and we somehow will not look at the reductions that they made to the active force. The active force and its benefits are very, very important to every veteran.

I thank the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, one of the most fascinating and popular shows on television today, In the Womb on the National Geographic Channel, provides viewers with amazingly detailed footage of unborn children growing and interacting in utero, Watching these babies suck their thumbs, smile and cry has led many to question why a nation, that can spend millions of dollars searching for life on other planets, is not able to discern life in the beating heart of an unborn child. For many years now, I have introduced an important piece of legislation that fulfills what I believe to be one of our most important obligations as elected leaders of this great Nation; protecting our unborn children from harm. I am proud to once again be introducing the Right to Life Act and I am optimistic of its future.

Unfortunately, over 1.3 million abortions are performed in the United States each year and over 38 million have been performed since abortion was legalized in 1973. Mr. Speaker, this is a national tragedy. It is the duty of all Americans to protect our children--born and unborn. This bill, the Right to Life Act, would provide blanket protection to all unborn children from the moment of conception.

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, refused to determine when human life begins and therefore found nothing to indicate that the unborn are persons protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. In the decision, however, the Court did concede that, ``If the suggestion of personhood is established, the appellants'' case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.'' Considering Congress has the constitutional authority to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment, coupled by the fact that the Court admitted that if personhood were to be established, the unborn would be protected, it can be concluded that we have the authority to determine when life begins.

The Right to Life Act does what the Supreme Court refused to do in Roe v. Wade and recognizes the personhood of the unborn for the purpose of enforcing 4 important provisions in the Constitution: (1) Sec. 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibiting States from depriving any person of life; (2) Sec. 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment providing Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provision of this amendment; (3) the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which concurrently prohibits the Federal Government from depriving any person of life; and (4) Article I, Section 8, giving Congress the power to make laws necessary and proper to enforce all powers in the Constitution.

This legislation will protect millions of future children by prohibiting any State or Federal law that denies the personhood of the unborn, thereby effectively overturning Roe v. Wade. I firmly believe that life begins at conception and that the preborn child deserves all the rights and protections afforded an American citizen. This measure will recognize the unborn child as a human being and protect the fetus from harm. The Right to Life Act will finally put our unborn children on the same legal footing as all other persons and I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this important effort.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow morning, at 7:24 a.m., the first rays of the morning sun will illuminate the markers, the crosses and Stars of David at Arlington Cemetery. And about a half hour later they will move across the oak ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains and down to the slow waters of the Shenandoah River and across the Midwest of this country.

And, Mr. Speaker, they will arrive, about an hour later, that great American sunrise, at the small towns in Texas, the hometowns of Audie Murphy, who fought with such great heroism in World War II, Sergeant Roy Benevides, who was a hero of the Vietnam War, and the hometown of Corporal Jason Dunham, who was given, a few days ago, the Medal of Honor by the President of the United States for his extreme valor in Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, these three American heroes are tied by a common thread to each other and to the American people and to our national purpose, in that they all fought for the expansion of freedom.

Now, Audie Murphy fought in a war, World War II, which was a war that, once we had gotten into it and got past that first vote for a draft, which I think passed by one vote in this body, and realized that it was make or break time for the United States, that it was a war that would involve the full commitment of our entire country and all of our energies, a war in which there was unanimous support, that it was a war in which Audie Murphy fought with such great heroism.

The war in which Roy Benevides fought was a war that didn't support, or didn't involve that unanimous support by the American people, but, nonetheless, involved a noble cause, the cause of spreading freedom in Vietnam.

And the war that Corporal Jason Dunham gave his life in to protect his buddies in the 1st Marine Division, was a war, similarly, in which the United States has entered a long established blueprint for establishing freedom around the world, that is standing up a free government, standing up a military to protect that free government. And he was involved in the dangerous conflict in Anbar Province and gave his life for his colleagues in that struggle. So all three of these heroes were involved in the greatest American purpose, which is to spread freedom.

Mr. Speaker, we have an interest in spreading freedom, not just a humanitarian interest, but a national interest. After World War II, we stood up the free government in Japan, and we stood up a military apparatus that could protect it. And who would quarrel with the idea that we have an enormous interest in having Japan, a free nation, with considerable economic and military capability, on that end of the Pacific Ocean?

We also maintained free Germany, that is, West Germany, with the Berlin airlift, which was carried out with lots of American expenses and involvement and sacrifice. But we did that and, ultimately, that resulted in the reuniting of East and West Germany, and after the wall came down, the freeing of hundreds of millions of people as a result of America's triumph in the Cold War. And nobody would quarrel with the idea that having a free Germany in that strategic location was important to the United States.

In our own hemisphere, we maintained a shield around that fragile democracy in El Salvador as we stood up that free government and allowed them to have their first elections. And nobody would quarrel with the idea that El Salvador, which now is an ally of the United States in the operation in Iraq, is an important asset for the United States in our own hemisphere, an important ally, an important partner; and that that is much preferable to the Marxist state which was where it was headed when the United States intervened.

Having free nations around the world in strategic locations especially is important to America. I think we all agree with that now, we have got a chance, if we succeed in Iraq, and having a country that is a friend, not an enemy of the United States, a country that will not be a state sponsor of terrorism in the future for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, and a country which has a modicum of freedom for its people.

Now, you know in spreading freedom around the world, incidentally, there are lots of naysayers. There are a lot of people who criticize and have criticized the American efforts.

After all, we only saved half of the Korean peninsula and none of Vietnam for freedom. People can point to the cliffs of Normandy in France and point out that the country that hosts those American gravesides for the soldiers who gave their lives for the liberation of France, that country is less than enthusiastic in supporting the United States in our efforts to expand freedom around the world.

You could probably say the same thing about the Government of Germany, seeming to have forgotten the ordeal of the Berlin airlift that the Americans endured to maintain freedom in West Germany and ultimately bring freedom to all the German people. There can be lots of criticism about the American plan. But, you know, the American plan, the idea of freedom has worked.

I want to talk just a little bit about the Baghdad plan, the plan that the President and the joint chiefs and our war fighting leadership in Iraq have put together. Now, somebody along this great tradition of critics who like to imply that somehow the road that we didn't take was a smooth road, there is lots of criticism of this plan.

This plan is not guaranteed to work because a lot of it relies on a factor that the United States doesn't control, and that is willingness, the willingness of the Iraqi military to show up with all of its units, to stand and fight, to be willing to engage in battle, and to be willing to take the burden of security that presently is carried mainly by the Americans.

But let us talk about this Baghdad plan, because the Baghdad plan could be a pattern for the handoff of the security responsibilities from the United States to the Iraqi Government.

In each of the nine sectors in Baghdad that the plan envisions, there will be an Iraqi brigade. Now, usually an Iraqi brigade will consist of two or three maneuvered battalions. A battalion can be anything from 500 to 800 people, so it consists of two or three maneuvered battalions who will be out in front. They will have some embedded American advisors and people who can do things like call in medivacs and direct precision fire and do other things that we call combat enablers, so they will have American embedded teams helping them.

Beyond that, standing as a backup to these two or three Iraqi battalions will be an American battalion, helping to shore them up, helping to give them advice, standing behind them while the Iraqis move through the neighborhoods and through the communities in the areas that are violent in Baghdad.

Now, my recommendation has been that we take some of the 27 Iraqi battalions that have been trained and equipped that are in the quiet areas of Iraq, and nine of the 18 provinces are quiet areas. They are areas that involve less than one attack a day. That means that the 27 battalions that we have trained and equipped that are in those areas aren't undertaking substantial military operations right now.

We make sure that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense saddles up those battalions and moves them into the fight, rotates them into the battle, principally in the Baghdad area, but they could do the same thing in other areas in the Sunni triangle and even out in the al Anbar province. That does a couple of things. First, it helps get the job done. It moves trained and equipped fighting personnel into a theater of battle, and it provides people and equipment to make the necessary military operations to settle down Baghdad.

But the second thing it does is train up the Iraqi Army, because the best way to train any army is to put them in military operations. Let us put them in military operations.

Now my understanding that it is, in fact, from those nine quiet provinces we are going to have some three brigades that will involve six to nine battalions moving from the north and south, from quiet areas in Iraq, into Baghdad. We will be moving Iraqi battalions into Baghdad. Those have been committed by the Iraqi Government.

Now, there is no guarantees that all Iraqi forces are going to show up. They are going to have to prove that. In the past, they haven't always shown up. Although they have battalions that have performed very, very well in combat, they have got others that haven't performed well.

Now, we could take this pattern of having two or three Iraqi battalions with an American backup battalion, and we could use that to get combat experience and operational experience for every single Iraqi unit. Presently, there are 114 Iraqi battalions extant. That means that we have trained and equipped 114 battalions.

I am sure that they are at varying levels of end strength, that is, personnel, and probably varying levels of equipage. But you only need some basic equipment for this urban fighting. You need to have weapons, you need to have ammunition, you need to have communications gear, and you need to have transportation, and you need to have

soldiers who are willing, willing to obey the chain of command. You need to have leaders who are willing and able to lead, and you need to have a plan.

This Baghdad plan, this idea of dividing it into nine sectors, saddle up Iraqi units that heretofore have not been operating in Baghdad, moving them in, putting them out front, in front of the Americans, the Americans are backup, using that basic pattern to run through all of the 114 Iraqi battalions and give them combat experience is a good way for us to start this handoff in which we hand off the full security burden to the Iraqi forces.

Now, there is no guarantee that this can be done. There is no guarantee because one element of this plan is the commitment of Iraqi political leadership and the military leadership to carry out what they say they are going to do.

This plan can be a blueprint for the handoff of the security burden. I would hope that Members understand that the troops that we are sending to Iraq right now are, indeed, reenforcements. Some of them are already arriving. They are the reinforcements that are necessary to execute this plan. Some 4,000 of them are going to al Anbar province where the Marines have requested them, and the balance are going to the Baghdad operation and other operations, presumably in the Sunni Triangle.

This is a deployment of reinforcements, and the idea that this body or any other body would attempt to cut off American reinforcements to a military which is already engaged in combat is unacceptable. I think it is unprecedented. We have already made a vote to get into this operation. Right now we have got troops engaged in combat.

When reinforcements are required, and you have troops engaged in combat, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that our policy, and our policy is directed by the Commander in Chief, it is not directed by 435 Secretaries of State, that is all the Members of Congress becoming Secretaries of State in the House and another 100 in the other body, it is not directed by 535 self-appointed Secretaries of Defense. It is directed by the Commander in Chief who was elected by all the people to lead the militaries of this country. In consultation with our military leadership, he has done that. The troops are now moving. We need to get behind them.

That leads me to another issue, and that is I talked a little bit about that American sunrise and how it shines first on these stars of David and crosses at Arlington Cemetery, and then it moves across this country, takes about 3 hours to get to my hometown in San Diego and Fort Rosecrans Cemetery there on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Mr. Speaker, in the Midwest it flows over lots and lots of old factories and plants that used to represent what we called the ``arsenal of democracy.''

When we got into World War II, our allies and our adversaries realized very quickly that America had an arsenal of democracy. We had a great industrial base. We had an industrial base in which our major auto makers were able to turn immediately to making tanks and personnel carriers and all the other equipment of war.

I know that in my own hometown in San Diego, we had an old facility you can still see if you drive down by the harbor that used to turn out a bomber aircraft every 60 minutes. That means they could have built the entire B-2 force in one day and had three hours left over.

Everywhere across this land, because we had a strong industrial base, which were able to transform that industrial base into a wartime footing, and it was with the support of that industrial base that the armies of the United States moved across Europe, that the Marine Corps and the armies moved across the Pacific, and that we brought this war to a conclusion that favored the United States of America. An arsenal of democracy is pretty important to democracies.

Today, if you want to look at a big part of the arsenal of democracy, you may have to go to some other countries. One country you may have to go to is China, because China is cheating on trade and China is acquiring hundreds of billions of American dollars, more than we are acquiring from them, and as the money piles up in China, they are using those billions of American trade dollars to buy military equipment.

That is why they are able to have some 17 submarines under production today while we have a fraction of that. That is why they are able to buy and build medium-range ballistic missiles. I predict at some point, Mr. Speaker, those ballistic missiles will have an anti-ship capability that will present a major threat to the American fleet. That is why they are able to start developing a new industrial base for the development of a modern tactical aircraft program.

So, Mr. Speaker, we see this one-way street on trade beginning to move the arsenal of democracy offshore. I can tell you in the past year on the Armed Services Committee I have looked at certain critical components of the arsenal of democracy, and I note that we only have one carbon fiber manufacturer left in the United States, and we only have, according to our research, one rocket fuel manufacturer left in the United States.

As we look at more and more of the industries that are critical to national security, we realize that in many of them we only have one or two or three businesses or companies that are left that are capable of making particular components that are critical to America's military strength.

Mr. Speaker, it is time to change and reverse this one-way street trade policy that we have acquiesced to and restore the arsenal of democracy.

It is kind of funny. When China enters a trade deal with the United States or competes against an American company, since we are all talking football at this time of the year, they start with 74 points on the scoreboard before the opening kickoff.

They give a 17 percent refund of their VAT tax, basically a 17 percent subsidy to this exporter who is sending out products to the United States. When our products arrive at China's shores, they give us a 17 percent penalty. That is now a 34 point spread. And then, just to make sure that we don't throw a Hail Mary and come from behind and win that particular competition on that particular product, they devalue their currency by 40 percent, and they increase the spread in points to 74 points.

That means that before the opening kickoff in this competition that we call world trade between the Chinese corporation and the American business and American workers, China has 74 points on the scoreboard. Then if we lose the competition, they say, what's the matter? Can't you play football?

China is cheating on trade, Mr. Speaker, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board made that clear in his preliminary speech which called this manipulation of currency an illegal subsidy. That word ``subsidy'' was subsequently removed from the speech before it was given to the Chinese leadership, but I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that that illegal subsidy and that 17 percent penalty that is given to American trade goods and the 17 percent subsidy that they give to their trade goods as they are moved for export to the United States, that 74 points on the scoreboard hurts American businesses, it hurts American workers and it erodes the arsenal of democracy.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to need the arsenal of democracy at some point in the future, and we need to have a trade policy and new trade laws that say this: We are not going to live with the 74-point disparity anymore, and you can do it the easy way or the hard way. We can all start with zero points on the scoreboard, or we will put the same taxes on your goods that you put on ours, and we will both start with 74 points on the scoreboard. But we are not going to start anymore with the score being America zero, China 74.

So, Mr. Speaker, I hope this is a year in which we pass a bill that calls the currency manipulation and devaluation by the central government of China what it is, which is an illegal subsidy.

Let me move on to another issue, Mr. Speaker, because as that American sunrise that lit up the Arlington Cemetery at 7:24 a.m. this morning moves across the United States, about 2 hours after that, it reaches the Southwest border of America. It shines on what I call the thin green line. That is the few thousand American Border Patrol men and women who defend the borders of

the United States. They have got a 2,000-mile border to defend, Mr. Speaker, all the way from San Diego, California, to Brownsville, Texas, and we owe it to them to use the best of our technology and the best of our resources to make sure that that border is defendable.

Now, we asked one of our great think tanks, the Sandia Laboratory, in fact, that is one of the laboratories that is full of scientists who design our nuclear weapons, design the warheads, we asked them once to solve a problem for us. We said, what is a good way for us to stop drugs from coming across the border from the south?

They thought about it for a while and came back and gave us a report, and the report said we are going to show you something that is not too complicated. How about a fence? In fact, how about a triple fence, which will slow down the smugglers enough so that your Border Patrolmen can catch them, which gives you a fighting chance to halt people that would come across illegally?

Now, this fence, in fact we call it the Sandia Fence because the Sandia National Laboratory designed it, is pretty simple. It consists of a steel fence. It is right on the border. Then you have a Border Patrol road that is about 50-foot wide, and then you have about a 15- foot high fence with an overhang, and then another Border Patrol fence, and then another fence that is a shorter fence. Three fences.

We built that when Republicans took control of this body in 1994 in San Diego. I can remember, because I drafted that language that went into the immigration bill that provided for that fence.

Mr. Speaker, when we built that fence, and we said it had to be built, the Clinton administration did not want to build it, and President Clinton's own INS representatives fought the fence. But they had to build it, because it was the law.

They said, do we have to build all three layers of fence? We sat down with them and said, well, we will tell you what; we will keep the three layers in the law, but let's build the first two, and if we don't need the third layer, we won't make you build it.

Mr. Speaker, we haven't needed the third layer, because that fence, the 14-mile fence in the San Diego sector, once we built the first big piece of that, we knocked down the smuggling of people and narcotics by more than 90 percent. We eliminated the drive-through drug trucks, we eliminated the 10 murders a year that were occurring on the border by the border gangs, and we eliminated the border gangs, because the border gangs needed to be able to move back and forth, north and south. If they were pursued from the north, they would go south, if they were pursued from the south, they would go north. We took away their mobility by building that fence.

Mr. Speaker, that fence works. And the new law that President Bush signed a couple of months ago mandates the extension of that fence, the San Diego fence, 854 miles across the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I drafted that bill, that fence provision that was in the bill that was offered by Homeland Security, and the first big section that I put in was the section between Calexico, California, and Douglas, Arizona. That is about 392 miles. That is the number one smugglers' corridor, now that we have closed the San Diego-Tijuana corridor by fencing it.

That 392-mile section is a section through which massive amounts of people and narcotics are being smuggled. The Department of Homeland Security has a mandate. In fact, when we wrote that law, I put in the word ``shall.'' ``Shall'' means that this is not an option, it is not a goal, it is not something that would be nice to have if you could do it. It is a mandate to the Federal Government to build that fence.

There is available now appropriated and ready to go in the bank, so- to-speak, $1.2 billion. That may not build the entire 854 miles of fence, but it gives you an awfully good big piece of it.

Something we found out about the San Diego fence was after we had built even a third of the San Diego fence, because we channelized the smugglers, especially the drug trucks and they had fewer places to go, we were able to concentrate our border agents in those channelized openings that were still unfenced and we caught lots of them, and our interdiction rate went way up, even before we completed the fence.

So, Mr. Speaker, there is nothing so compelling in this country as an idea that the people support which has been passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President and represents a law that came right from the heartland of this great country and which needs to be executed.

The Department of Homeland Security has the obligation of executing this law, and I look forward to working with my colleagues, Democrat and Republican, over the next several months and making sure that this fence gets started. We can start it concurrently in separate sections. You can have one contractor build it from mile 1 to mile 5, the next guy go from mile 5 to mile 10 and so on. We can immediately see a reduction in the amount of people and narcotics that are smuggled across this border.

Let me tell you why we have to build this border fence, Mr. Speaker: Since 9/11, it has become clear that border security is no longer primarily an immigration issue. It is a national security issue. We have to know, very simply, who is coming into our country and what they are bringing with them.

You know something else? We have got 250,000 criminal aliens right now in our Federal penitentiaries and our State and local prisons and jails, a quarter of a million criminal aliens. They cost us as much as $50,000 apiece to incarcerate for a year. That means that each year we spend around $3 billion in cash money out of our Treasury to incarcerate the people that come across this unfenced section of the southern border of the United States. We would save enough money in one year on incarceration a loan to build the entire fence. Let's build it, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 15 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, January 17, 2007, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for yielding.

In a few minutes the President will address the Nation about his plans for Baghdad and the fact that he needs reinforcements, some of them to go to Anbar Province, some of them to work on a three-to-one basis with the Iraqi forces, three Iraqi battalions in each one of these sectors in Baghdad for each American battalion standing behind them.

The President has asked for reinforcements, and it would be outrageous if the Democrat leadership in this House denied this country reinforcements for a military operation in a shooting war which continues to this minute.

Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor to talk a little bit about national security and where the Nation's defense apparatus stands as of now. But I thought I also might comment on the comments that were made by two of my wonderful colleagues, Ms. Woolsey of California and Mr. Paul of Texas, who preceded me and commented about their position to the effect that we should bring our troops home immediately from Iraq. And implicit in their comments was the message that somehow Saddam Hussein's continued rule of Iraq would have been preferable to the American intervention.

I disagree with that theme, and let me tell you why. In listening to Ms. Woolsey talk about the wounded, the KIA, the suffering in that part of the world, and the burden that has been borne by American soldiers, I think it is also important to remember the Iraq that was represented by Saddam Hussein.

And while she has, obviously, the images that have compelled her to take her philosophical position, the image that I have, and I keep in my desk drawer, is the photograph of the hundreds of mothers whose bodies are strewn across the hillside in northern Iraq, holding their children, some of them newborn babies, some of them four, five, 6 years old, dead in mid-stride where they were hit by poison chemical, poison chemical that was delivered into those villages at the order of Saddam Hussein.

And I have taken, as a guy who sometimes watches the History Channel, to tuning in when I see the History Channel reviewing the exhuming of bodies in these mass graves and putting together this story, this mosaic of Iraq history under Saddam Hussein and the story of how hundreds of people, men, women and children, would be herded across fields and they would be executed and their bodies would be pushed into mass graves. And now we are uncovering those mass graves.

And just like the mass graves that we found in Europe, especially those that were filled by bodies that had been people who had been executed by the Nazis, there are more people now in those mass graves, we find, than what we had projected.

And as I watched the exhuming of some of those bodies on the History Channel, I noticed that the anthropologist who was doing the particular work noted that the mother, in some cases, who was executed would often have a .45 bullet hole in the back of her head, and her small baby that she was holding would also have a bullet hole in the back of his or her head. So the monstrosity that was Saddam Hussein, the mass execution, the killing of people with chemical weapons, is what the American troops displaced when we moved into Iraq.

Now, it is tough to stand up a free nation and stand up a military that is able to protect it, but that is the challenge that we are meeting right now. And we are following the same basic pattern that we have followed for 60 years. Whether you are talking about Japan or the Philippines or El Salvador in our own hemisphere, first you stand up a free government. Secondly, you stand up a military that is capable of protecting that free government, and third, the Americans, not coveting anything that that country has, the Americans leave.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I thought I also might speak just a little bit, as we turn over the control of Congress to the Democrat leadership, not only in the full House, but also the committee chairmanships, and my own committee chairmanship now has been relinquished to the gentleman from Missouri, Ike Skelton, my good friend and a wonderful person and a person with a real heart for the troops. I thought that I might just comment about where we stand right now. I think it is important for the American people to know where we stand and what this Congress that is going out has accomplished for national security.

First, what have we done for the troops? Well, over the last 8 years we have increased the pay for the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines, and the National Guard by right at 40 percent, a 40 percent pay increase. We have increased family separation pay, the amount of money that we deliver to our military families when they are separated when people are deployed overseas. We have increased that from $100 a month to about $250 a month. We have increased our combat pay.

Mr. Speaker, I know I have only got 5 minutes, so I will elaborate on some of the accomplishments that occurred during this last Congress in the next hour.

I thank you. I also want to thank the gentleman for his great service on our committee. He did a wonderful job.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 4046) to extend oversight and accountability related to United States reconstruction funds and the efforts in Iraq by extending the termination date of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the legislation under consideration.

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

I want to thank my great colleague from Missouri for his wonderful service to the Armed Services Committee and the people of this country. He will be ascending to the post of chairman in just a couple of weeks or so, and we look forward to working together with him. In fact, that may be a congratulatory phone call coming in right now, Ike. Let me just say, he has been a great colleague.

Mr. Speaker, we have a number of other colleagues who are leaving, and I know we have a very limited time and Members have been coming down in the limited amount of time we have and talking about their departing colleagues.

I just want to mention that Mr. Weldon is also leaving as serving this country well. Probably no one has been a greater champion of missile defense than Mr. Weldon. And Mr. Hefley, our great readiness chairman, is leaving also. As is Mr. Gibbons. Also Mr. Rob Simmons of Connecticut, who did such a marvelous job of working undersea warfare; and Mr. Ryun who represents that great Fort Riley, Kansas district and whose heart is with our military folks so strongly, is also leaving. Other members are leaving also from the committee. I want to thank them for the great work that they have done for our country and also for this committee.

Also, I watched a Special Order being given the other night about a giant in this House of Representatives, Henry Hyde, the great Henry Hyde of Illinois who led this body in major debates in the Cold War, helping to bring down the Berlin Wall and win that war. In the struggle in Central America between the Soviet Empire and the United States which was resolved in favor of freedom, and in the arms control debates that erupted on a regular basis over the last 25 years or so, Henry Hyde has been a giant in this body. I heard several Democrat Members giving great statements about Henry Hyde. I just want to add my statements and appreciate for his wonderful leadership.

I want to say to my good colleague from Missouri, we have a very bipartisan committee, the Armed Services Committee, and I look forward to working with him to continue to do the most important thing that we are charged to do under our Constitution, and that is to protect this country. In doing that, we raise and equip the Army and Navy and Marine Corps and the Coast Guard. It has been a wonderful job being chairman of the committee, and I look forward to working as a partner with the gentleman from Missouri in continuing this work for our Nation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for letting us get a little bit off subject. I am sure that the inspector general team will be relieved to know that they are not going to be terminated on October 31 of next year, but that they will have license to continue to work for an extended period of time beyond that. I thank the gentleman for his contribution.

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

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, Joe Schwarz did a wonderful job on our committee, bringing a great intelligence background to the committee. It was wonderful value added to the many hearings and conferences and debates and considerations. We appreciate him as well. I thank the gentleman for bringing his name up.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6375) to amend title 10, United States Code, to require the Secretary of Defense to submit to Congress an annual report and to provide notice to the public on congressional initiatives in funds authorized or made available to the Department of Defense.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the legislation under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I would also ask that after I make my opening remarks, I be allowed to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder), the sponsor of this bill, and I ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control the time for purposes of debate.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation is legislation a number of Members have asked to bring to the floor in both bodies to illuminate to the world what they call congressional initiatives.

Mr. Speaker, as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, let me give you my take as one Member of this very important body on congressional initiatives that are sometimes pejoratively called earmarks.

The Constitution of the United States charges the United States Congress, not the President, not the Pentagon, not a general, not some under secretary, charges us with raising and equipping the forces of the United States of America, the Armed Forces, the armies and the navies that the Constitution refers to; and, of course, by implication the United States Marine Corps and the United States Air Force.

It is our job to build this budget, not just to work around the fringes of the defense budget, it is our job to build this budget from the ground up. From my perspective the recommendation that comes over from the President is just that: It is a recommendation. It is not charged by the Constitution. It is

not mandated by the Constitution. It is our job to build the defense budget of the United States.

Let me just say, Mr. Speaker, we do that. I think we do that very effectively. I think this great bill, this $532 billion defense bill, is a reflection of that. It was put together by my committee, the Armed Services Committee, Democrats and Republicans, and by the gentleman from Florida's Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense who do such a good job.

Let me give you one example of what we did, one thing that might pejoratively be called earmarks by people who think that somehow what the administration sends over is sacrosanct and what we add is somehow an illegitimate addition.

We had the Army and United States Marine Corps come to us this past spring after we were putting our budget together after the President's recommendation had come over, and they said we are not going to have enough money to reset the United States Army and Marine Corps, largely because of that tough, harsh theater in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that means repairing the tanks, trucks, aircraft and all of the other equipment that you need for warfighting. We need wherewithal, the additional money to fix that fire engine so it can go back in the firehouse and be ready for the next emergency, whether it is the 9/11 force of this country, the Marine Corps, special operations, United States Army, United States Navy, United States Air Force.

Mr. Young and I in our committees listened to the United States Army and to the Marine Corps. We said, come in and you lay out for us everything that you need to get our forces ready to fight again so they are reset. That ``reset'' is a term of art.

They gave us a bill, $27.7 billion for the Army, $11.7 for the Marine Corps. We looked at the President's budget which only funded a part of that; we looked at the supplemental which only funded a part of that, and we looked at the balance. We took that balance and we added every single dime that was identified by our warfighting leaders as something that they needed in combat, and we added that to the President's budget. I guess you could call that a $20 billion earmark. That was a congressional initiative that exactly described the duty that is charged to us by the United States Constitution and how we discharge that duty.

Let me give a few other congressional initiatives. One reason why I support this bill, incidentally, and it is fine with me is because I put my initiatives on the Internet and if people want to look at them and see what we add, that is great.

Let me tell you some of the initiatives that I added and I asked Mr. Young to add in his bill: jammers, jammers that would protect our Armed Forces, when they are dismounted, against roadside bombs that are electronically triggered from remote areas that were not in the administration's budget, we added those. So jammers that protect the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, we added, congressional initiatives.

Body armor, extra body armor, more Humvees that have the thick armor that can repel the fragments from these IEDs, these roadside bombs. We put in things that are important for the warfighters of this country.

Mr. Speaker, I would say that I am here to reaffirm our constitutional right, not to do just bits and pieces of the defense budget, but to do the entire budget; and what the administration recommends is the edges. If they didn't come over with a recommended budget, we could build and we are totally equipped to build this budget from the ground up. We have the expertise to do it, Democrat and Republican, and we could do it from the ground up.

Having said that, I support this bill which says that the Department of Defense is free to comment on their ratings on what congressional initiatives have requested and placed into the bill; and from my personal perspective, that is fine with me. I put mine on the Internet for the world to see.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 3759) to name the Armed Forces Readiness Center in Great Falls, Montana, in honor of Captain William Wylie Galt, a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the legislation under consideration.

I would also at this time like to yield the balance of my time, after I finish my opening remarks, to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg), who was the sponsor of this bill, and I ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control the time for purposes of debate.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this is one of these bills that it is good to go out on as we close down this session of Congress. This is an excellent initiative by my good friend from Montana to name the Armed Forces Readiness Center in Great Falls, Montana, in honor of Captain William Wylie Galt, who was a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mr. Speaker, we just had a hearing under the leadership of John McHugh, who is the outgoing chairman of the Personnel Subcommittee in Armed Services on the Medal of Honor and on the criteria for the award. And we had some initiatives, some good discussions with our service representatives on ensuring that we have the appropriate guidelines for giving this great medal. And it was an uplifting hearing, because it is a hearing in which the acts of Americans who went far beyond the call of duty were reviewed and were discussed.

Mr. Speaker, I think anytime somebody passes this, walks by the Armed Forces Readiness Center in Great Falls, Montana, and they see that it is named after Captain Galt, they are going to be reminded, perhaps inspired, of his heroism.

The Congressional Medal of Honor is a symbol of adherence to duty, honor and country; and I think it is absolutely appropriate that we name, with this dwindling pool of Medal of Honor recipients, and the gentleman, as a veteran of the United States Army knows, we now have a very small pool of living Medal of Honor winners. So I think that wherever it is possible to name our buildings and our institutions and installations after Medal of Honor recipients, it is a point of inspiration for young people that will be enduring.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order for 1 minute.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would just say to the gentlewoman who just spoke that it is appropriate when referring to the President of the United States be he Democrat or Republican to refer to him as the President. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1070) expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that Members of the House should actively engage with employers and the American public at large to encourage the hiring of members and former members of the Armed Forces who were wounded in service and are facing a transition to civilian life, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the resolution under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is really a pleasure to be down in the Chamber working this issue with the gentlewoman from Guam, for whom I have the utmost esteem. This is a very good cause we are talking about this morning.

Mr. Speaker, the Members of this House of Representatives spend a lot of time each year making recommendations and decisions that directly impact the lives of the men and women of the Armed Forces.

With the global war on terrorism, House Members have taken numerous actions as part of the annual defense authorization and defense appropriations acts to ensure that these fine men and women have the full range of resources they need to be successful in combat.

For those who are wounded and injured, and there have been more than 22,900 during this war, our colleagues have moved quickly and effectively to change laws and provide additional resources to improve the health care system. For as much as we in the House have done to support the men and women of the Armed Forces, I believe that more should be done and could be done, especially for those who have been wounded in defense of this Nation and who as a result of their wounds are leaving the service.

That is the purpose of this resolution today, to explicitly state that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that Members of the House should actively engage with employers and the American public at large to encourage the hiring of members and former members of the Armed Forces who were wounded in service and are facing a transition to civilian life.

Beyond the fact that getting involved is the right thing for Members to do, Members need to get more directly involved in helping wounded servicemembers transition to civilian life because young veterans, those aged 20 through 24, are experiencing a jobless rate three times the national average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

We have all seen too many Vietnam-era homeless veterans in our districts, a reflection that the Nation then did not fully step up to doing what was necessary for those who serve the Nation. We should not repeat that mistake.

As I began 2 years ago to work this issue of finding ways to help soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines transition to civilian life, concerns were raised to me that such activity by a Member might conflict with the rules of conduct in this House, and I was surprised to hear that, Mr. Speaker, but that was the thrust of legal opinions.

I have worked with both the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct and House Administration, as well as my good colleague, Representative Ike Skelton, and other members of the committee to shape this resolution. Thus the resolution explicitly states that in encouraging potential employers and the American public to hire veterans, Members should act in accordance with regulations promulgated by the Committee on Standards and by House Administration, and, of course, we hope that after this resolution, which I hope will pass overwhelmingly, that we will see the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct and House Administration accommodate this very important concern of ours.

Mr. Speaker, there are any number of Federal, State and local organizations and many private entities working to employ wounded servicemembers and former servicemembers. I think it is time for House Members to get involved and engaged in this effort, and therefore I strongly urge all Members to vote ``yes'' on this resolution.

Very simply, Mr. Speaker, this would allow a Member of Congress who goes down to Bethesda and Walter Reed and who meets maybe a young man or young woman getting out of the service, maybe as a diesel mechanic, to call up companies in their district and say, do you have any need for diesel mechanics? If they say yes, you marry up that member of the service and that particular business in your district, and they end up getting a job.

We all know that a lot of jobs in this country are custom made, that is, they are the result of people getting together and having a cup of coffee or making a phone call, and that often starts a career which may continue for 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

Members of Congress have great connections with the businesses in their district, and it is only appropriate that they be involved in this process of making sure that people that wear the uniform, when they get out, have a chance to get a piece of this great opportunity that we call America.

Mr. Speaker, having said that, I reserve the balance of my time. It is great to be here with the gentlewoman from Guam working on this important resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman's very articulate remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Sekula Gibbs).

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Ms. Sekula Gibbs and the gentlewoman from Guam, Ms. Bordallo, for assisting in this important resolution. This is something that I think that the membership of this House can enter into with lots of enthusiasm, with lots of energy.

Mr. Speaker, no one knows the businesses better in our districts than Representatives. The ability to connect a wounded soldier, sailor, airman or marine with a business in their particular district is something that will have a far-reaching effect, a long-lasting effect. Because of some of the qualities of our service personnel, that is the discipline, the ability to be a self-starter, the knowledge that you have to get up early and show up on time, the discipline, the talent, all those things I think will create long-lasting employment if we do one thing, and that is help to marry up these great Americans with prospective employers. We are well situated to do that and hopefully will have a good vote in the full House to emphasize that point in the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time and ask everyone to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.