[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 77 (Thursday, June 15, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5904-S5905]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, the Senate is going to be considering in 
just a few minutes the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act. I do 
want to be clear that like most of my colleagues, I will be voting for 
this bill because it does provide the funding for our troops that is 
critically needed to carry out their mission and because it supports 
recovery efforts along the coast. I do wish to express three concerns I 
have with the conference report.
  First, this bill continues the charade that this war should be funded 
off budget. Instead of including the money our troops need in the 
regular budget as requested by the President and sent to us, we keep 
getting sent emergency supplemental requests. It is clear to me, having 
been here for 13\1/2\ years, that emergency spending bills used to be 
for emergencies, things we could not foresee such as natural disasters. 
The need for funding for the war in Iraq is not a surprise. It is not 
like responding to an earthquake or tornado. By funding the war off 
budget, I fear we continue to hide the true cost of the war. It is 
imperative that the Senate and the House get a budget from the 
President that gives us the true cost of what we need to be funding.
  In addition, the administration should not have the sole authority to 
decide what is worthy of emergency funding and what is not. We have 
emergencies in our backyard as well as overseas. We should not hand 
over to the President the final authority on what deserves emergency 
funding.
  The second concern I have is that this bill leaves out very critical 
funding for areas we considered and adopted in the Senate. They were 
removed once the bill went to conference. Funding for health care, for 
port security, emergency transportation assistance in the gulf coast--
much of the progress we made in the Senate was thrown out. Why? To meet 
an arbitrary limit set by the President. That is going to hurt many of 
our communities in the coming months.
  Part of what we did in the Senate in April was to overwhelmingly pass 
the Murray-Akaka amendment that ensured our veterans would get the help 
they need. That amendment had broad bipartisan support on the Senate 
floor. It was removed in conference in the middle of the night. That is 
a huge setback for the men and women who are coming home from the war 
today and entering a VA system that is overwhelmed and underfunded. In 
March, the VA told us they are seeing 38 percent more Iraqi war 
veterans than they budgeted for. Veterans now have to wait a year to 
get the specialty care they deserve. Some are waiting more than 18 
months before they get the benefits they have been promised. On top of 
that, we have waiting lists that are thousands of names long at major 
VA hospitals. I am frustrated that the

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funding we secured for America's veterans is no longer in the bill 
before us. Our veterans deserve better.
  Funding was also removed for emergency transportation relief in the 
gulf. In the Senate, we passed $200 million in emergency assistance for 
transit authorities in the gulf region. FEMA, which is helping to fund 
transit service in New Orleans, is going to stop the funding for that 
at the end of this month. That is going to force New Orleans to cut 
back transit service even more. Cutting off transit routes is not going 
to help our gulf coast cities recover. Throwing busdrivers on 
unemployment lines is not going to help them recover.
  Another item cut from the legislation was tenant-based rental 
assistance for the gulf. That funding was intended to serve about 
44,000 families, including families that received HUD funding prior to 
Katrina and many homeless families. The bill we passed in the Senate 
expanded the purposes of that money to include the reconstruction and 
repair of HUD projects in the afflicted region, many of them damaged 
considerably. It provided vouchers for about 4,500 needy citizens in 
the region, particularly the disabled and homeless. That funding is now 
gone, and we are going to see some pretty vulnerable families in the 
gulf coast without any ability to stay in the homes in which they 
currently are trying to stay.
  Finally, this bill improperly includes a budget ceiling that is going 
to affect every single spending bill we do this year. I believe the 
supplemental emergency spending bill is the wrong place to enact a 
budget that never passed the Senate floor. It is going to be hard 
enough to produce appropriations bills this year that will get broad 
bipartisan support at the levels the Senate approved back in March. It 
will be almost impossible to do so if we ignore amendments adopted on 
the Senate floor and impose the spending ceiling proposed by the 
President that is now included in the bill.
  I am frustrated that the administration keeps funding this war off 
budget. I am frustrated that critical investments which we approved in 
the Senate were removed from the bill. I am very frustrated that this 
bill is now going to result in our hands being tied throughout the 
appropriations process. I hope in the future we can do much better.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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