[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 205 (Wednesday, December 20, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H15268-H15269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   WELCOMING A NEW REPUBLICAN, THE BUDGET, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Chambliss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I was not aware of the situation the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] had reference to there, but I commend 
him for taking the floor to recognize this young man and all our best 
wishes for this holiday season go out to his family.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk on a couple of things here. First of all, 
I had a very special point of pride today when I received a phone call 
from my hometown advising me that in spite of all the lambasting of 
Republicans by folks on the other side, that this morning the sheriff 
of my county, the Honorable Billy Howell, a two-term Democratic 
incumbent, switched to the Republican Party.
  I commend Sheriff Howell on what I think is a very wise decision for 
him. I welcome him to the party. He is a good friend, and I know will 
continue to serve the people of my county in a Republican manner the 
same as he did in a Democratic manner.
  I cannot help but make one quick comment about my good friend, and he 
is truly my good friend, who serves on the Committee on Agriculture 
with me, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer], who was critical of 
the Republican budget, saying that our budget is not a balanced budget 
because it does not balance the budget now. Well, by golly, we could 
balance the budget now but the best way to do that is to 

[[Page H15269]]
cut out all congressional pay and send all of us home. That would 
certainly go a long way toward balancing the budget now.
  Everybody understands we cannot balance the budget now. We presented 
a budget that will balance the budget of this country in the year 2002. 
Everybody knows and understands that, I hope, and I hope the gentleman 
from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer] will better understand that. He said he has 
been here since 1981 and frankly that is part of the problem. We have 
had too many people who have been here too long, who have spent too 
much money over the years and, by golly, it is just time we stopped 
spending so much money.
  I really got up here, though, to talk about another matter that I am 
extremely excited about and something that took place on the floor of 
this House several days ago, and that is the passage of the national 
Defense authorization conference report. The report passed in the 
House, it also passed in the Senate yesterday, and it is headed to the 
White House as we speak.

  The President has given every indication that he is going to use the 
same veto pen that he used on several other authorization bills and 
veto this bill. I hope he changes his mind. I want to encourage him to 
change his mind, because in my opinion the national Defense 
authorization conference report that we passed in the House, has been 
passed in the Senate, is a good bill. It is not a perfect bill. There 
are a lot of ways that perhaps we could improve it. But it is a good 
bill, and it does a lot of things that are absolutely necessary from 
the standpoint of the national security of this country that have 
needed to be done for many years.
  First of all, one thing this bill does is give all of our active 
military personnel a pay raise. Admittedly, it is only 2.4 percent, I 
wish it could have been 24 percent, but it does give the military 
personnel of this country an immediate pay raise.
  I am very pleased, when I go on the three military bases that are 
located in my district and have an opportunity to talk to the young men 
and women, all of whom are volunteers in the military, when I talk to 
those young men and women and find out that without question they are 
absolutely the finest young men and women that America has to offer. It 
gives me a real sense of pride, and I am extremely proud of those young 
men and women. If anybody deserves a pay raise at this very difficult 
time in our budget process, it is the men and women in military 
service.
  Right now here we are at Christmastime. Here we are dealing with a 
very serious crisis in a very cold and distant land called Bosnia, a 
country which a lot of folks in this country had never heard of before 
30 or 60 days ago. We are sending 20,000 of our finest to Bosnia at 
this time of year. The President has an opportunity to give those folks 
a very special Christmas present, to say thank you for a job well done. 
That Christmas present will be a 2.4-percent increase in their pay.
  Another thing that this bill does is it provides a 5.2-percent 
increase in what we call BAQ housing allowance. What BAQ housing 
allowance is, it is a provision which pays to military personnel a 
certain amount of money to allow them to rent an apartment or rent a 
home that is off the military base where they are serving.
  If we do not have military housing on base, a lot of times our 
personnel are required to go off base, and we provide them some money 
to do that with. It is never enough to fully fund what it costs for an 
apartment or a house but it does help out. We provide an increase in 
that. Mr. President, that increase is needed. I urge you to sign it.
  Another thing we do is we equalize the retired military COLA's to 
retired civilian COLA's. That is something that is an extremely 
important aspect of this bill. Mr. President, I urge you to look at 
this bill. If for no other reason than from these standpoints, please 
sign the Defense authorization bill.

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