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“CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 1559, EMERGENCY WARTIME SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2003” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3385-H3404 on April 12, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 1559, EMERGENCY WARTIME SUPPLEMENTAL
APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2003
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the previous order of the House, I call up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 1559) making emergency wartime supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2003, and for other purposes.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER. Pursuant to the order of the House of today, the conference report is considered as having been read.
(For conference report and statement, see prior proceedings of the House of today.)
The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume. I want to begin, Mr. Speaker, by thanking the Speaker for all of the tremendous effort that he put into this process to let us get to where we are today and also to the gentleman from Wisconsin
(Mr. Obey) and especially to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), who played an important role in the process of getting us where we are.
Mr. Speaker, we visited with the President just a little over 2 weeks ago, and we promised the President that we would deal with his supplemental request to, number one, pay for the war that has already taken place, provide additional money to fight the Iraqi Freedom operation.
In just about three weeks, we have done that, Mr. Speaker. We have produced the legislation in the House. Our colleagues in the Senate produced a similar bill, although they added some extraneous material, most of which we were able to take out in conference, but Mr. Speaker, this conference report, I have been on this Committee on Appropriations for a long, long time. This is probably the cleanest supplemental conference report that this House has seen, and so I feel pretty good about the product that we have, and we did what the President asked.
He asked for certain amounts of money for the war. He asked for certain amounts of money for homeland defense. He asked for certain amounts of money to deal with our colleagues in the coalition, and Mr. Speaker, we provided that, while at the same time preserving some of the constitutional responsibility of the Congress to be involved in the appropriation and to have some knowledge of how the appropriation was going to be used.
So, all in all, I think we have a great product here and over 400 Members voted for bill when it went through the House early on so I think that we can move this bill expeditiously, get it to the President, and then, Mr. Speaker, begin our work on the 13 regular 2004 appropriations bill.
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Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I want to express my gratification that we are, in fact, here with this legislation today. Frankly, it had many shortcomings. We fought out a lot of them on the floor earlier when the bill was first before us, and among the most serious shortcomings, in my view, would be what I consider to be still serious lack of funds for homeland security, but we fought that fight and lost.
This bill is focused on other fights which I think are institutionally just as important for the Congress.
This bill began when the administration asked for a series of blank checks totaling almost $70 billion. The bill that is here today does not provide the administration with those blank checks and, instead, reintroduces them to the concept of checks and balances, and I would like to explain how.
The administration requested total flexibility and unaccountability for roughly $59.9 billion for the Pentagon's defense emergency response fund. This conference report reduces that fund to $15.7 billion and requires 5-day prior notification to the Congress before the Pentagon can obligate any of that money. That preserves to the Congress the right to review proposals for the spending of taxpayers' money.
The reason that is important is because almost the sole reason for Congress' existence is so that somebody outside of that narrow circle of people who run any administration will have an opportunity to review the way the administration wants to spend public money and be able to say to the administration, wait a minute, we think that is a mistake, we want you to look at it again. That is why it was so important to have that 5-day prior notification requirement, and I am pleased that the conferees provided it.
Second, the administration asked for what they call an indigenous forces fund. The President requested $150 million for the Pentagon to support so-called indigenous forces, which are forces other than the formal military units of a nation, in countries where the Department of Defense felt such support would be appropriate. This conference report eliminates that $150 million.
Third, the administration asked for what they called an allied nations fund. In plain language, they wanted authority for the Department of Defense to establish a new and parallel military assistance program, parallel to that which already exists, which is under, at least initially under the authority of the State Department. This conference report reduces that request to $25 million, limits it only for military counterterrorism training and requires 15-
day prior notification to Congress and requires that the Secretary of State concur in any such obligation.
Also, the administration asked for a $2.4 billion Iraqi rebuilding program. The President asked for $2.4 billion in money to rehabilitate Iraq. He asked that money be directly appropriated to him for obligation to any agency. The conference report, in contrast, provides the money to the President but restricts it to the authorities under the Foreign Assistance Act and designates specific agencies that can receive direct apportionment of funds. It also requires, again, a 5-day prior notification to Congress before that money can be obligated, which is as it should be.
Next, the administration asked for a $1.5 billion unallocated fund under the total control of the Secretary of Homeland Security. In other words, they wanted us to just give them a blank check to spend a billion and a half dollars on anything he wanted. In contrast, the conference report reduces this to $150 million instead of a billion and a half, and it appropriated the remaining $1.35 billion to specific accounts within the Department of Homeland Security so that this amounts to congressionally-determined funding rather than the agency determining it.
Next, the conference report rejected the President's request to have a $250 million fund under the control of the President, no questions asked, and I think the Congress was right to do that.
Lastly, the administration requested a $500 million fund to be under the total discretion of the Attorney General. The conference report reduces that to $20 million and requires that the Justice Department must make a reprogramming request to the Congress before disbursing any funds from this account. The remaining $480 million requested for the Justice Department, again, was specifically appropriated to other specific accounts by the Congress, not by an anonymous agency bureaucrat.
So I believe that for those Members, and I assume it is all of us, for those Members who are concerned with protecting our constitutional obligation to maintain firm control of the power of the purse, I think that this legislation lives up to that responsibility, and I think that Members of both parties can be highly pleased for that performance.
I have never yet met an administration that did not think that Article I of the Constitution was not a mistake, and I think it is helpful from time to time that the Congress remind all administrations that we have obligations which we have to meet, also.
I would also like to take just a moment to discuss the unemployment compensation provision in this bill. The bill provides $3.8 billion in assistance to airlines. As Members know, I have minimum high regard for the idea that the airline industry even constitutes an industry. In my belief, the airline industry is composed of let-us-pretend capitalists. Every couple years, they come to the Congress for another bailout, and I think that instead of pretending that they are independent business operations, I think they ought to be regulated as a publicly necessary public utility, but they are not, and in order to keep the economy functioning, the Congress had to provide something.
The problem was that the Congress took care of business, but they did not take care of the workers who were losing their jobs. So we included a provision which guarantees an additional 26 weeks in all States in the Union for workers in the airline industry and associated industries, at least upstream associated industries, and I think that that again represented the minimum of economic justice that was required.
So, in my view, this is not a perfect package. There are a number of items that we had to accept from the Senate as part of the negotiating process. When you negotiate in these circumstances, you are not dealing with an empty chair. You do have people on the other side of the table, and they do have opposite views sometimes, and we might like to not take that into account, but we have no choice.
So there are five provisions originating in the Senate that the committee had to accept, but we turned down far more, and I expect that in the end there will be far more gnashing of teeth on the Senate side of the Capitol than there will on the House side of the Capitol with respect to the committee's disposition of those provisions.
I want to say to my Republican friends on the committee that I think every Member of Congress can feel good about the way this conference proceeded because it was one of the few times in recent years when I have seen legislators able to behave like legislators rather than politicians, and that is important.
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We all come here as politicians, but then we need, especially in committee, to deal with a lot of complicated issues requiring give and take, and it sometimes gets very heated. But I think we made decisions which were in the public interest. They were certainly in the interest of the Constitution.
I am sure the administration does not like the fact that we did not give them the blank check which they requested, but they have ample flexibility to meet their requirements under the Constitution, and we have maintained our prerogatives. That is not important to our egos, but it is important to the system of checks and balances that we are sent here to preserve.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the very distinguished majority leader, and I thank him for scheduling this bill for consideration today.
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and, Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this conference report.
I rise in support of it because I want to keep an eye on the big picture. The big picture is that we have men and women that are giving the ultimate sacrifice and dying in Iraq. We have spent an incredible amount of time and money bringing freedom to the Iraqi people, and the American people support this effort. We need to support our troops, and this bill does that. We need to support our troops and replace the ammunition, the resources that have been expended so that we do not put our Armed Forces in a vulnerable position.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this because I support the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and the ranking member. I do not think I have ever been as proud as I am now of the Committee on Appropriations and the chairman and the ranking member. The chairman and the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations understood how important this effort was. When the President of the United States sent up his request for additional moneys to fight the war, they went right to work and put together a package that we can all be proud of, kept it clean and focused on the war, on homeland security, on our responsibilities around the world in order to fight the war on terrorism, and they brought a very good bill to this floor.
This House of Representatives passed that clean bill and sent it to the other side of the rotunda. Now, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, in this town, we have people that will take advantage of even a war situation and a war supplemental. Mr. Speaker, we have people in this town that just cannot stop their appetite for spending money.
In the other body, Mr. Speaker, in the bill that they passed, they loaded the war supplemental, the bill that is to support our troops, with items such as a dairy provision in California, an item such as $5 million for a communications system in Louisville, Kentucky, an item such as a dam in Vermont, an item such as a $1 million earmark for jobs of America's graduates in Alexandria, Virginia, an item such as
$529,000 for local law enforcement costs related to the nightclub fire in Rhode Island, not exactly a Federal responsibility, an item such as a land exchange in Nevada, an item such as a provision on ginseng labeling. What does ginseng have to do with fighting the war in Iraq?
Mr. Speaker, I could go on and on, probably for the rest of the afternoon, listing the items that were put in the war supplemental. Yet our chairman and our ranking member stood up and said, this is not going to happen. We are not going to allow this to happen and we are going to try our best to send the President of the United States a supplemental appropriation that supports our troops and our homeland security. They fought into the wee hours of the night in trying to maintain not only the integrity of the work done by the House of Representatives, but also to provide the President with what he was requesting.
I have to tell the Members they did an outstanding job at getting most of this stuff out. But in the end there are two bodies and there has to be something left because the other body just insists on having little, parochial spending. So I have to inform the Members that there is a provision in this bill for a lab in Ames, Iowa, that there is a provision relating to wild seafood being deemed as organic, a provision relating to payments to State agriculture to pay catfish farmers, a provision related to Forest Service grazing, and some provision, I cannot figure out, relating to an Indian school.
But that is all that we can be upset about. And we have to really focus on what this is all about, my colleagues, and remove the appetite of some in this body, not in this body, in this town, and understand that the most important part about this is to support our troops and support the war in Iraq. So I urge my Members to vote for this bill and I urge our Members to thank the chairman and the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding me this time, and I rise on behalf of those on my side of the aisle, and I join the majority leader in urging all our Members to vote for this piece of legislation. I stand with him also in congratulating our chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.
There are no two more faithful Members to this institution than the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin
(Mr. Obey). They have worked together, they have overcome disagreements to bring to this floor a piece of legislation that deserves bipartisan support.
There are differences, deep differences, in this body, deep convictions held by Members on both sides of the aisle with respect to the war and the rectitude of our action, but that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about ensuring the support for the troops that we have sent abroad to carry out objectives of the United States of America and, indeed, of a large number of the international community.
We will be united in that support of our troops and united in support of the success of that effort. We see countless Iraqis waving and welcoming American troops to their land, and we have seen the fact that there is also distress in that land and we want to assist, assist quickly, the humanitarian relief and assist quickly in the rebuilding.
So on behalf of my side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate you, as well, for your leadership. Today is a day of bipartisanship. Today is a day when we will reflect to America that we are united in our commitment to support our troops.
There will be, Mr. Speaker, I am sure, after we pass this legislation, a number of Members who will want to make some comments, and we expect them to do so. It is right and proper that they do so in this Democratic institution. But I urge all our Members, as the majority leader has urged his Members, to support this legislation which supports our troops, supports our effort and does so in a way, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) has pointed out so eloquently, that is consistent with the Constitution of the United States.
Our Founding Fathers did not draft that document by mistake. It was their considered judgment that the collective wisdom in a democracy is what preserved freedom, is what preserved a Nation, a free people, as opposed to a people who would be overseen by one individual or one small group of individuals in the executive department.
In closing, let me say that there is a picture in the Rotunda of the Capitol of the United States. It is of particular significance to me, as the former President of the Maryland Senate. It depicts the old Senate Chamber in Annapolis. In that picture, George Washington on December 23, 1783, is resigning his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army. My colleagues will note, when they look at that picture, that the members of the legislature of the Continental Congress are seated. They are seated at the request of General Washington, so that they would indicate their superior stature to General Washington.
Of course, at that point in time, there was no superior person to General Washington, perhaps in the history of our country, but certainly at that time. But it was his conviction that it was the Representatives of the people who ought to rule. And it has been stated over and over in this House, the people rule.
This bill preserves that principle, an important principle for democracy.
I thank the chairman and the ranking member, I thank the Speaker on behalf of all the Members for bringing us to this point where we can together, as Americans, not as Democrats, not as Republicans, support our troops, support our country.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire of the chairman if he is prepared to yield back? If he is, I have just 1 minute of closing comments and I would be happy to yield back.
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I would respond to the gentleman that I have one member of the leadership, a subcommittee chairman would like a brief period, and then I would be prepared to make a final closing statement and yield back the time.
Mr. OBEY. So the chairman has a subcommittee chairman who wants to make a comment?
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Yes.
Mr. OBEY. In that case, we will have a subcommittee ranking member who wants to make a comment, and then I will be prepared to yield back.
Mr. YOUNG OF Florida. And then I will reserve the balance of the time for closing.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to emphasize what the majority leader said. If Members will recall that long list of projects that he referred to that the other body came to conference with, that first long list, we took them out. We did not accept them. It was quite a battle, but we took those out.
So in case there was any doubt as to what was on the list he was reading, they are gone. They are not in this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), the chairman of the Subcommittee on VA, HUD and Independent Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations.
Mr. WALSH. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support this emergency war supplemental and to congratulate and thank our leadership, the chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), and ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), for the way they conducted themselves in that conference last night. They brought great credit upon this House, and I think that the will of the House was ably defended in that conference.
This bill provides billions of dollars for our national defense, for the rebuilding of Iraq, and for homeland security. What a remarkable statement by a nation, a nation 227 years old and yet still altruistic, idealistic, idealistic enough to provide funds to complete the defeat of the Hussein regime, to liberate the people of Iraq, and then to provide the funds to rebuild that country. And what a great debt we owe to our soldiers and sailors who fought so brilliantly throughout.
There are funds for homeland security that will go to all States and localities, with major help for my State, New York State and New York City, $800 million to high-density, high-risk urban areas to protect critical infrastructure and to make sure an attack like September 11 never happens again.
Lastly, Mr. Speaker, an additional $100 million has been provided to the Secretary of the Veterans Administration to provide health care and disability compensation for our returning soldiers and sailors. That is the very least we can do.
And in closing, I would just like to again congratulate the House leadership, the Committee on Appropriations leadership, both parties, for the remarkable job they did in keeping this bill on course.
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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations.
Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to first thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), for the bipartisan way they approached this very critical war supplemental. We understood the urgency of getting this bill passed and getting the money out to the region, and it truly has been a privilege for me as a ranking member on one of the subcommittees working with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey). I thank them for their leadership.
I am pleased in the bill in addition to the money for humanitarian aid and reconstruction, there is over $7 billion for our critical allies in the region, and I think this is very important because they are in a hot spot, and they are very important, and I think it is important that we acknowledge their role and assistance to us.
I just want to make one point as we close out the debate. I certainly preferred the House-passed language on Iraq relief and reconstruction to what we decided on yesterday. However, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) stated, there was some compromise and I am very pleased that the role of the Congress and the oversight function of the Congress was finally acknowledged in giving us 5 days to review so many of the provisions that were included in the bill.
I felt that the House language stated more clearly that carrying out United States foreign policy is primarily the responsibility of the Secretary of State, not OMB or any other agency. That said, prosecuting the war and managing its aftermath is serious business, and the White House was explicit that it wanted the President to have flexibility in carrying out both of these important functions.
In the end, I think we did provide that flexibility to the administration. That is why at one point in the debate yesterday it really seemed nonsensical to me that the ultimate sticking point on this language was over the mere mention of the Foreign Assistance Act, the skeleton of the United States foreign assistance programs. This set of laws which has been developed and fine-tuned by Congress in consultation with various administrations since the 1960s provides the basic framework to carry out foreign aid, including relief and reconstruction. It has governed every United States relief and reconstruction effort in recent years, and the assertion that it hemmed in the President did not make any sense to me. We all acknowledge that the President is the Commander in Chief and has the ultimate authority and responsibility.
Appropriating these funds pursuant to the Foreign Assistance Act simply keeps the Secretary of State under the President, at the direction of the President, as the primary overseer of our foreign assistance program.
We have to ask, in conclusion, why the administration made such a big deal about this once they had gotten most of the concessions they wanted on the issue already. It makes no difference, frankly, one way or the other in terms of the President's ability to provide funding to any government agency he chooses. So I felt dropping the language would have been a pointed rebuke of the Secretary of State's important key role in foreign policy.
Let me conclude by saying thank you again. I think we are putting forth an excellent bill that is important to address the current situation today. I thank our chairman and our ranking member for their leadership on these issues.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to say thank you to the people who are really responsible for putting this package together. That would be the staff of the committee on this side of the Capitol, certainly led by Jim Dyer, the most able staff chief on the Republican side of the aisle, and led by Scott Lilly, the staff chief on our side of the aisle, and all of the staff who work with them.
It has become routine on the committee for that staff to be without sleep for one or two days in the row. I appreciate how hard they work.
I would like to say a special thank you to the gentleman from Florida
(Mr. Young), who has performed in his gracious and effective manner, helping us to balance the many equities involved, and a special thanks to the subcommittee chairs on that side, especially the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), for helping us through some very tough problems, and Senators Byrd, Stevens and Leahy.
To those Members who are unhappy about the fact that we were not able to eliminate all of the Senate proposals, let me say batting 750 percent is not bad. Even Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times, and I do not think any Member in this House comes close to Babe Ruth or pretending to be Babe Ruth.
I would also say to the Department of Defense because I know they do not like the fact that they did not get all of the authority that they wanted, I would simply say to them the Department of Defense may not get all of the money and all the power that they asked for, but they would do well to remember that every bit of money and every bit of power that they have gotten they have gotten from this institution. I think they would be well off to remember that.
Let me simply say again as I said at the beginning, this proposal came to the Congress as a blank check. It leaves here as a reaffirmation of checks and balances. That is the way it ought to be.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, since September 11 and our war against terrorism and the injuries to our troops coming from Afghanistan, my wife and I, and actually my wife more than I, have been regular visitors to the Army Hospital at Walter Reed and to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda to provide gifts, provide some comfort, and to do what they need and their families need in a time of real crisis in their life.
It brings tears to my eyes when I see these young kids with a leg or arm missing. One soldier was blinded. There are a lot of them out there now, sailors, soldiers, Marines, and even some Air Force folks. It is a sad time. But the sadness goes away when I talk to these kids. They are unbelievable. They are laying there with their whole life changed for the balance of their life. They love this country. They believe in the defense of this country, and they want to get back to the action, although many of them will not be able to because of their injuries.
But throughout the many, many conversations that we have through the day or on the weekends, one thing comes to the fore: How does my country feel about me? Am I going to come back and be ridiculed like some of my colleagues were from Vietnam?
Mr. Speaker, they worry about how does America feel about them. We do our best to convince them that America loves them, America appreciates them. I think a strong vote on passage of this bill is a strong message to those injured in our hospitals today and those still on the battlefield today risking their lives, a strong message to them, young Americans, young soldiers, your country loves you and respects you and appreciates you.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER. Without objection, the previous question on the conference report is ordered.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER. The question is on the conference report.
The conference report was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
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