[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 33 (Thursday, March 17, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E511]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT FOR DEFENSE, THE GLOBAL WAR 
                  ON TERROR, AND TSUNAMI RELIEF, 2005

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                           HON. RUSH D. HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 16, 2005

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 1268) making 
     emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year 
     ending September 30, 2005, and for other purposes:

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to passage of this bill.
  There are large amounts of funding in this bill that I support for 
pressing commitments and to meet urgent national and international 
needs. For example, I absolutely support getting our troops in Iraq, 
Afghanistan and elsewhere all that they need and deserve in order to 
protect themselves and carry out their very difficult and dangerous 
missions. I was among the first to speak out and support legislation in 
2003, when it became apparent that Secretary Rumsfeld and his advisors 
had seriously underestimated the types of body armor, up-armored 
Humvees and other equipment that would be needed by our forces in Iraq. 
I have voted for the additional funding in prior measures to correct 
for these miscalculations, as a matter of the utmost urgency, and I 
will continue to do so.
  Similarly, I support the additional funding in this bill for 
enhancing nuclear nonproliferation efforts to help prevent weapons of 
mass destruction from getting into the wrong hands. I also support the 
additional funds for tsunami relief. There is also another down payment 
in this bill toward improving homeland security efforts in the Coast 
Guard, FBI, and other front-line agencies, but we need to be doing much 
more in this regard.
  However, on balance I must oppose this legislation.
  I've talked to many executive branch officials, civilian and 
military, and the simple reality is that they cannot plan in a coherent 
fashion when they are forced to deal with the uncertainty over how much 
money they will get and when they will get it. This bill denies them 
the ability to plan and the result is that our servicemen and women in 
the filed are put in greater jeopardy. This is not a bill to support 
our troops.
  By way of illustration, I serve on the House Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence. A substantial portion of the annual 
intelligence budget is now funded through supplemental and/or so-called 
``emergency'' appropriations. Both civilian and military intelligence 
officials have told me and my colleagues on the committee that this 
process wreaks havoc with their ability to plan and execute their 
assigned responsibilities. There is simply no excuse for this state of 
affairs.
  We have soldiers in the field, and we know that we'll be continuing 
military operations against al Qaeda and its surrogates for the 
foreseeable future. We know that as long as we're in Iraq at our 
current force level, we'll be spending about $7 billion a month for the 
effort. That's not unforeseen. We should not be funding these 
operations through emergency supplemental appropriations. It certainly 
appears that the only reason the Bush Administration continues to try 
to fund current operations through supplementals is to avoid any kind 
of substantive review of its budgetary and procurement policies. The 
entire Haliburton episode is a prime example of how dysfunctional this 
process has become, and it's also why we must force the administration 
to provide us with honest budgets and honest estimates on what current 
and future operations are likely to cost. In fact, the leadership here 
turned down a bipartisan amendment that would simply have formed a 
commission to look at the awarding and carrying out of Government 
contracts to conduct military and reconstruction activities in Iraq and 
Afghanistan.

  It has become painfully apparent that the path toward a free, 
democratic and fully reconstructed Iraq will be long and treacherous. 
If and when this bill is enacted, the cost for the war in Iraq and the 
ongoing military occupation of that country will exceed $220 billion. 
In fact, the true costs of this effort are underestimated and masked, 
as evidenced by the fact that they are not accounted for in the new 
Fiscal Year 2006 budget that President Bush submitted to Congress last 
month. Some projections suggest that the cost will top $300 billion 
before the end of this year. And as far as taking care of the wounds of 
war--physical and psychological--of our latest generation of veterans, 
neither this supplemental nor the administration's FY06 VA budget 
request come remotely close to meeting the expected need . . . 
undoubtedly one of the many reasons that most of the military services 
are falling short of their recruiting targets this year.
  Rather than continue the status quo on an open-ended, costly basis 
and to vote ever-increasing amounts in ``emergency spending,'' Congress 
must demand much greater transparency in the management and spending 
for ongoing U.S. military operations in Iraq. Even more important, we 
need a thorough policy review that will help bring internal stability 
and security throughout Iraq and create the conditions under which the 
long-suffering people of Iraq can regain full control of their own 
affairs and make rapid progress in rebuilding their war-torn nation in 
a new era of peace, security, and democratic self-government. This 
supplemental request does not achieve that, and I urge my colleagues to 
work with me to craft one that does.

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