[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 87 (Thursday, June 11, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H6545-H6550]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON H.R. 2346, SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS 
                               ACT, 2009

  Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 2346) making supplemental appropriations 
for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes, 
with a Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and 
agree to the conference asked by the Senate.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Mr. Lewis of California moves that the managers on the part 
     of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of 
     the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2346 
     be instructed as follows:
       (1) To agree, within the scope of conference, to funding 
     levels that will result in a total funding level in the 
     conference report that does not exceed the total funding 
     level provided in the Senate amendment.
       (2) To insist on the House funding levels for each account 
     under title I of the House bill (related to defense matters).
       (3) To insist on the House funding levels for each account 
     under chapter 9 of title II of the House bill (related to 
     military construction).
       (4) To recede to section 1305 of the Senate amendment 
     (related to detainee photographic records protection).
       (5) To not record their approval of the final conference 
     agreement (within the meaning of clause 12(a)(4) of House 
     rule XXII) unless the text of such agreement has been 
     available to the managers in an electronic, searchable, and 
     downloadable form for at least 48 hours prior to the time 
     described in such clause.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 7 of rule XXII, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I 
might consume.
  Madam Speaker, let me begin my remarks by saying that I'm pleased 
that until last week, we appeared to be following regular order by 
actually having an open meeting of House and Senate conferees.
  As I and the vast majority of Republicans have suggested several 
times through this process, we want this troop funding bill to be an 
up-and-down vote and, ideally, a bipartisan vote.
  I want to commend my colleagues, Chairman Obey and Chairman Murtha, 
for producing a bill that accurately reflected the real needs and 
priorities of the troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the 
House-passed bill wasn't perfect, it did garner bipartisan support, 
including that of 168 Republican Members.
  Unfortunately, what I'm hearing and reading about, the final ``deal'' 
that was struck between Chairman Obey and Senator Inouye leads me to 
believe that the final package will not enjoy the same bipartisan 
support. As reported, the deal struck by the two Appropriations 
chairmen would do the following:
  First, cut over $4.6 billion from Defense and MilCon from the House-
passed levels.
  Further, it would increase foreign operations funding by $5.2 billion 
over the House-passed levels, and $2.6 billion over the Senate-passed 
bill.
  Further, it would include $5 billion in funding for the IMF to secure 
a whopping $108 billion of loans; in essence, the IMF would be funded 
at levels some $30 billion above the troop funding level. So we have 
troop funding, on the one hand, that has been reduced, and we've got a 
sizable expansion of foreign aid.
  Further, the bill includes $1 billion of new spending for what we 
have been calling ``Cash for Clunkers'' on the floor. That amount was 
not in the bill as it passed the House either.
  Now, let me shift gears and briefly explain the motion before us. 
It's a straightforward motion that insists on the House funding levels 
of $84.5 billion for the defense and military construction portions of 
the supplemental.
  Further, it also insists on the lower top line for overall funding 
levels of $91.3 billion contained in the Senate-passed bill for the 
entire supplemental.
  Further, it requires the text of the conference agreement be 
available in an electronic, downloadable and searchable form for 48 
hours prior to consideration by the House. This language is identical 
to the motion unanimously adopted and subsequently ignored by my 
friends in the majority

[[Page H6546]]

when considering our massive stimulus bill.
  Finally, this motion insists on the Senate position regarding 
prohibition on the release of detainee photos sponsored by Senators 
Graham and Lieberman.
  Clearly, the focus of this supplemental funding bill should be on the 
troops, not IMF, not foreign aid funding, not Cash for Clunkers, or 
just using the emergency circumstances to buy down fiscal year 2010 
spending.
  Madam Speaker, I urge the adoption of the motion.
  I reserve my time.
  Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.
  Madam Speaker, I don't particularly care how people vote on this 
motion. Motions to instruct conferees are notorious, and they have been 
for many years, for simply being a device by which we either make 
political statements around here or express first preferences. I don't 
really have any objection to either. I think it's a legitimate thing to 
do in a legislative body.
  I intend to vote ``no'' on the amendment, but I don't have any 
problem with any Member who decides that there are certain pieces of 
this motion that they would like to send a message to the conferees on. 
And so, as far as I'm concerned, people can vote any way they want.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OBEY. Sure.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. In view of your delightful mood today, we 
could probably bypass all this discussion and, as you've said, expedite 
the schedule. I do want to recognize my friend, Mr. Lungren, but if you 
want to, you know----
  Mr. OBEY. I think that would be a very good idea. It would give us 
more time to do our real work, which is to prepare for the conference 
this afternoon.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. You've got the floor, Mr. Chairman.
  Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for his very wise comments.
  Let me simply say that I don't have any objection to several 
provisions in this motion. I do have to say one thing, however. The 
effect of this motion would be to substantially increase the likely 
amount of money approved by the conference for the Defense Department, 
and to substantially reduce the amount of money provided for the State 
Department.
  I have always had difficulty understanding why people are willing to 
spend hundreds of billions of dollars to wage war but are resistant to 
spending a tiny amount in comparison in order to prevent war or to 
extricate ourselves from war. In fact, the conference report that is 
likely to come back will probably exceed the numbers in this motion for 
bringing State Department personnel more immediately into Iraq, into 
Afghanistan and into Pakistan. We are trying to convert that operation 
from, essentially, a military operation to a much more balanced 
operation, which includes much greater effort on the diplomatic side to 
extricate ourselves from that war. That requires money. It requires 
facilities. As many military experts have said, you cannot win this if 
you just deal with it militarily.
  So, with that one point, I would simply say, Madam Speaker, that I 
would reserve the balance of my time until the gentleman is ready to 
close.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the 
gentleman from California, Dan Lungren, for 4 minutes.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. I thank my ranking member.
  Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this motion to instruct for the 
reasons articulated by the gentleman from California.

                              {time}  1045

  But let me talk about another subject that is covered in this bill 
and one that is of extreme importance. It goes to the question of how 
we handle those who are at Guantanamo at the present time.
  This issue has erupted around this country because people are 
beginning to understand the ramifications of closing Guantanamo and 
bringing people here to the United States whose only connection to the 
United States is that they were caught on the battlefield with the 
intention of killing Americans. Now, why is it important whether or not 
we keep Guantanamo open or whether we bring these people to the United 
States?
  We got a little bit of an insight into why it's important by the 
report by a colleague of ours, Mr. Rogers from Michigan, who, when he 
was in Afghanistan recently and visited our base there, went to the 
prison there where we are holding people who we actually captured on 
the battlefield. He observed the fact that now we have FBI agents 
Mirandizing, that is, giving Miranda rights statements to those we have 
found on the battlefield.
  In other words, Madam Speaker, what we have done is we have 
transposed the universe in which these people are being detained from 
one of a combat atmosphere to one of a criminal proceeding in the 
United States.
  Now, why is that important? It's important because this is happening 
for the first time in the history of the United States. We did not do 
this, obviously, during the Revolutionary War. We did not do it during 
any war we fought, not the Civil War, not World War I, not World War 
II. If we had followed this same thinking in World War II, our courts 
would have been overwhelmed. People forget we have had 2 million POWs 
that we held during World War II, over 400,000 of them in the United 
States. Never was it thought that they had all of the rights under the 
Constitution.
  But this question has basically been treated by Federal courts in the 
past with this perspective: the connection you have to the United 
States is what determines your coverage under the Constitution. That's 
why someone coming over the border illegally doesn't have the right to 
all of the constitutional protections because the only connection to 
the United States is trying to get in illegally.
  Here we have people sitting at Guantanamo whose only connection to 
the United States is that we have reason to believe that they wanted to 
kill Americans anywhere in the world. So now what we're saying is if we 
take them from Guantanamo and put them in the United States, they have 
a connection to the United States. They were brought here 
involuntarily. And the legal arguments that for years have presented a 
barrier from their obtaining all constitutional rights, that barrier is 
pulled down.
  So while this bill has language in it, this conference report, as 
it's being worked on, has language in it with respect to Guantanamo, I 
don't think we have focused in on what this means. Yes, there's a 
concern about the threat they may pose to Americans, and that arises 
out of the fact that some say, well, they could escape from the prisons 
and then we're told, oh, we've got these prisons they can't escape 
from.
  But it is more than that. It is that they may be released at the 
direction of Federal judges, and the only reason they would be released 
is that they somehow now have access to all of our constitutional 
rights.
  So the American people need to understand that we may have a 
President who says, no, we don't want to release them. We have an 
Attorney General who testified, no, we're going to make sure they're 
not released based on everything we do.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman another 
2 minutes.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. The Attorney General can testify 
before our committee, as he did 2 weeks ago, that they're going to take 
all steps to make sure people aren't released in the United States who 
are suspected terrorists. They cannot promise that. Once they bring 
them to the United States and the judgment of the Federal courts is 
they are now under the protection of all constitutional rights, we are 
no longer talking about them as illegal enemy combatants, who never 
before have gotten the protection of the Geneva Convention. The Geneva 
Convention, in part, says you will have these protections so long as 
you act under the laws that have been recognized for warfare. One of 
them is wear a uniform. One of them is don't attack innocent civilians 
as a particular strategy and tactic.
  So what we're doing is we're turning it all upside down and we're 
saying somehow we are protecting our values by doing something we have 
never done

[[Page H6547]]

before. We are jeopardizing the national security interests of the 
United States. We are putting Americans, innocent Americans, at risk by 
doing this.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. I very much appreciate the point that the 
gentleman is making. It's an important one. The issue, per se, has 
almost been denied by the other side when we had these discussions in 
committee and otherwise.
  It should be known by your public and my public that four of these 
people were released to Bermuda just this morning, we've learned. Now, 
that's a British entity. But, indeed, what's next? Our territories? And 
indeed further, we know that Ghailani was sent to New York for trial. 
So these people, very dangerous people, could be in serial released in 
the United States.
  Madam Speaker, I would be glad to yield the gentleman 1 additional 
minute.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. I appreciate that.
  And here's what people have to understand. There is a difference 
between holding someone to try them for war crimes or any other crime, 
and then you do have them within a criminal justice system. In the past 
it's been a military tribunal. Remember what happened when Abraham 
Lincoln was assassinated. We established a military tribunal here in 
the District of Columbia that actually tried those individuals, and 
they were executed. That was a military tribunal. For what? Murdering a 
President of the United States in time of war. Now what we are saying 
is those rights were not sufficient. If that were to happen today, 
suddenly we would say we have to do it now within the context of the 
full panoply of constitutional rights, and we are directing that by 
voluntarily saying we're going to close down Guantanamo.
  If anybody has looked at the prisons and jail systems across the 
United States and compared it with Guantanamo, it is of the highest 
standard of any of our incarceration units there is. Guantanamo happens 
to be a place that is not sovereign American territory. That's the 
important distinction.
  I thank the gentleman for his time.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, it's my intention to yield to 
Mr. Frelinghuysen, but I would like to make this point to the Speaker 
as well as to the Members: the words just spoken were the words of the 
former Attorney General of California, Dan Lungren. I would suggest 
that all of us read them with care in the Congressional Record.
  Madam Speaker, I am proud to yield 4 minutes to my colleague Rodney 
Frelinghuysen of New Jersey.
  Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the motion to instruct 
conferees providing for supplemental appropriations for ongoing 
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  I support the portion of these instructions that would require the 
Secretary of Defense to certify if the release of photographs of 
detainees would endanger citizens of the U.S. or members of the armed 
services. We send our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen abroad to 
protect our security. We owe it to them to make sure that we do not do 
anything that puts them in needless jeopardy.
  And I also strongly support the notion that we need to endorse the 
higher House funding levels for defense and military construction. 
Absolutely needed. If we are going to believe the administration and 
congressional leadership, this will be the last supplemental bill to 
fund the needs of our soldiers in Iraq and, may I add, their mission, 
those soldiers' mission, expanded mission, in Afghanistan. Personally, 
I find that hard to believe.
  This supplemental should not be considered in a vacuum. What should 
not be lost in all of this is that our President is proposing a defense 
budget that barely keeps up with inflation and specifically contains a 
significant cut in our ballistic missile program, at a time when North 
Korea and Iran are testing their capabilities and, quite honestly, 
testing our resolve.
  And, lastly, Madam Speaker, I have concerns about the expanded 
spending authority of the International Monetary Fund, who would be 
eligible to tap that fund in terms of drawing rights. And what's more 
bizarre is that under the recent agreements that we've been reading 
about, the United States of America now is eligible, shall we say, like 
other Third World countries, to have its own drawing rights, which is 
totally bizarre and inappropriate.
  Madam Speaker, our first responsibility as Members is to protect our 
constituents, including those in the military. This motion to instruct 
helps achieve that mission and other important missions.
  Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 
minutes to my colleague from the committee, Jack Kingston.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I stand in support of this amendment and certainly 
appreciate the gentleman for introducing it. But I wanted to talk 
specifically about the Guantanamo Bay prison and why that's important 
because I strongly believe that if we did not have it, we would need to 
invent it. It is that important to American security. Mr. Lungren has 
talked about it a little bit.
  We have had about 500 prisoners there who have been processed and 
released and sent back to their countries either to be detained in 
their countries or to be watched by host countries. Twelve percent of 
those have actually gone back into combat, which is disturbing. But we 
have had 500 prisoners move in and out. We have got about 240 left, and 
they're the worst of the worst. These are folks who were basically 
caught in an act of war trying to kill American citizens.
  Our foreign allies, particularly those in Europe, who have given so 
much criticism about closing Guantanamo Bay, none of them have opened 
up their doors and said, hey, we'll take these Sunday school teachers 
and Boy Scouts, because they know that they're not Sunday school 
teachers and Boy Scouts. So I think that not closing down Guantanamo 
Bay is the right thing to do. But I also wanted to talk about the 
points Mr. Lungren made about the Miranda rights of prisoners.
  Prior to 9/11, America generally treated acts of terrorism as 
breaking the law. Case in point: the 1993 bombing of the World Trade 
Center and the USS Cole. These were not seen as acts of war. Therefore, 
the perpetrators of those crimes got lawyers. They had Miranda rights. 
They had all the courtesies of the U.S. Government, the U.S. justice 
system. That is not what we need to be doing right now. After 9/11 we 
realized that these acts of terrorism weren't just tactical but 
strategic acts of war, and therefore we have moved over to let's treat 
soldiers as they are, war criminals.
  Mr. Lungren had mentioned that the assassins of Abraham Lincoln were 
tried by a military tribunal. It's the same situation when President 
Roosevelt was President: we found six Nazi spies on Long Island, and I 
believe five of them were actually executed, the sixth one cooperated, 
but it was all through a military tribunal. So what is it that 
President Obama sees that President Lincoln and President Roosevelt and 
really all our entire U.S. judicial history, all the judges have signed 
off on it? Why is it that suddenly we want to go over to Afghanistan 
and Iraq and give Miranda rights to prisoners of war?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am glad to yield the 
gentleman 1 additional minute.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the chairman.
  Therefore, the first thing they're going to be trying to say is, I am 
not going to say anything until you give me a lawyer. And then they're 
going to come home to America and they're going to be all lawyered up. 
It's going to cost taxpayers money. It's going to hurt our 
investigations and interrogations. We're not going to be able to get 
the intelligence that we need, the background information that will 
prevent future terrorist attacks.
  There was a lot of criticism by this administration about the Bush-
Cheney administration, but I will say one thing about it: during 9/11, 
and I think those of us on the floor, most of us, were here then, we 
felt assured that we

[[Page H6548]]

would have another attack on American soil. That did not happen. And I 
remember those dark days. We all felt like there would be another 
domestic attack. That was prevented, in part, because of what we were 
able to find out from prisoners who were being held and detainees at 
Guantanamo Bay.
  So I wanted to make those points, Madam Speaker, and I thank the 
gentleman for yielding the floor.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am proud to yield 3 minutes 
to my colleague from Missouri, Roy Blunt.

                              {time}  1100

  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I certainly want to talk about the comments that have 
already been made on Guantanamo. It's a facility that should be kept 
open. Clearly, a campaign promise is easier to make than is the reality 
of the world we live in. Nobody wants these people. Nobody in my State, 
nobody in any neighboring State. Other countries don't want these 
people. They are dangerous. They are enemies of the United States. They 
are not people who have a right, with the actions they've taken, to 
have the protections that have already been so well-discussed by Mr. 
Kingston, by Mr. Lungren and by others. Frankly, the fact that there is 
not money in this supplemental, at least as I understand at this point, 
to close that facility is a good thing. I'm glad the chairman and the 
others worked to see that that was not in there. This is a debate that 
suddenly is a lot harder, from the administration's point of view, than 
it was during the campaign.
  Troops in the field need our support. The House acted quickly. It was 
a large bipartisan vote to support the troops in the field. Where is 
that bill now? That bill is in a committee somewhere. They're trying to 
figure out what else can be added to a bill designed to support our 
troops. People talking on those topics understand that Members of 
Congress have a history of supporting our troops in the field--our 
troops in Iraq, our troops in Afghanistan.
  So, suddenly, well, maybe, we could also put more money in the 
International Monetary Fund, a fund in which we would put that money by 
increasing our debt. We all know that one of the sources of that debt 
right now is foreign borrowing, borrowing from foreign countries. Some 
of those countries we borrow from, like China, actually would then 
qualify to get the money back under the IMF. To borrow money from China 
to give it to China is not what we ought to be doing. If we were even 
going to talk about that, it shouldn't be in a military supplemental. 
It should be in a bill focused on that specific promise that the 
President apparently has recently made, and it deserves a debate of its 
own.
  I hope it does not come back to the floor as part of this bill. I 
hope we get the job done of supporting our troops.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 
minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway).
  Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you. I appreciate that.
  Madam Speaker, I want to speak briefly about the narrow aspect of the 
motion to instruct that would require us to recede to the Senate 
language in the Senate amendment that would restrict access to the 
photographs of detainees that have been swept up in the field of battle 
since 2001. These photographs are of a sensational nature. They will be 
used to spur actions by radical jihadists that will be dangerous to our 
troops.
  If you will remember back recently, there was a cartoon that was very 
disrespectful to Mohammed. The reaction to that cartoon was irrational 
given the nature of what went on. How much worse would the reaction be 
to these actual photographs of the detainees and of their being treated 
however they were treated? Our own commanders on the ground, General 
Petraeus and General Odierno, have both said, in their professional 
judgment, that the release of these photographs will help recruit 
additional terrorists--additional jihadists--to the team and that the 
release of these photographs will be used to spur actions against our 
military and against our troops in the field, who might not otherwise 
be there. So I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the 
release of these photographs, in all likelihood, will result in 
additional deaths and injuries to American troops that don't have to 
occur.
  The Senate language would restrict access to these photographs, which 
is the right issue, and the White House has agreed that these 
photographs should not be released. I encourage my colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle to support our motion to instruct because it does 
make sense not to release these photographs.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I would like to touch on the issue of 
Gitmo as well. I've been there a couple of times. Those people are 
well-treated, particularly when you consider that they are enemy 
combatants, that they are part of a group that has declared war on this 
country. Throughout the history of mankind, when a group declares war 
on another group and the group on which they've declared war is humane 
enough to take prisoners, then they are held until the group of which 
they're a part says that we're no longer at war.
  Here, there are people in this country and in the administration who 
do not understand that these people still want to kill us. Look at the 
pleading of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In his words: We are terrorists to 
the bone.
  You release those people. You bring them into the United States. 
We've already heard that the Supreme Court majority is wanting to give 
them rights to which they're not or should not be entitled. That is why 
Justice Scalia said in his dissent, This opinion will cost American 
lives. That was a bold statement by Scalia, but he is right. We should 
not allow this to hurt American soldiers and American people and put 
innocent lives at risk even though it may get some applause overseas 
from people who would not mind seeing America disappear.
  I want to touch very quickly on the photographs. We believe in 
America that guilty people should be punished and that people who 
torture prisoners inhumanely have been punished and are being punished; 
but if those photographs are released, there will be blood on this 
administration's hands for punishing innocent soldiers who had nothing 
to do with it, and we should not have or allow this administration to 
hurt innocent soldiers.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to a member 
of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. 
Akin).
  Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the 
supplemental. It's actually something that I voted on not so long ago, 
but things have changed. Things have changed radically. In fact, it 
seems that the Obama administration has included in this supplemental a 
request for $108 billion, taking money away from defense and putting it 
into the International Monetary Fund. Now, they call that the IMF. A 
lot of people don't know what the IMF is, but here we are taking money 
away from our defense spending, away from our soldiers and away from 
our taxpayers, and we're going to put it into this International 
Monetary Fund.
  Exactly what does that do?
  Well, that allows some of our good friends, like Iran and Venezuela, 
to access this money to build their country and their programs and to 
use it according to the dictates of the way they run their countries. 
These are not only our competitors, but they are the countries that do 
the most they can to cause us trouble. So why in the world do we want 
to levy more taxes on our taxpayers, take the money that was for 
defense and give it away to our enemies? It doesn't make any sense.
  This should not be included in the defense supplemental. This should 
be about taking care of our men and women in uniform. It should be 
about taking care of their equipment, their needs, their education, and 
the training that they need, not about giving money away to the 
international community to be used in who knows what way by who knows 
what country.
  So as strong as I am on defense--and I've always been a strong 
defender. I've been on the Armed Services Committee for 9 years. I have 
three sons who've graduated from the Naval Academy. This will not 
stand. I will not vote for a supplemental that is giving money to some 
foreign country, money that should go to our soldiers.

[[Page H6549]]

                             General Leave

  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that 
all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend 
their remarks and to include extraneous material on the motion to 
instruct.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from California?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, if I could inquire of my 
colleague: Do you have any additional speakers?
  Mr. OBEY. Just one briefly, myself.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. OBEY. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Madam Speaker, I had not wanted to take a lot of time here today, but 
I am moved to take a couple of minutes to respond to a couple of things 
that I've heard on the floor today.
  We have heard several lectures about the President's fiscal policy 
and about his economic policy and about his international economic 
policy. I find it kind of difficult to take economic lectures from the 
same folks who have driven this country's economy into the ditch.
  The President has inherited a very dicey situation both 
internationally and domestically. It is always hard in life to clean up 
other people's messes. It is especially hard to do that when you have 
the responsibilities as heavy as those that weigh on the shoulders of 
the President of the United States.
  I don't understand why he should be expected to take lectures from 
the people who helped put the economy into the ditch or, for that 
matter, to take lectures from the same people who brought us the most 
unnecessary war in America's history, the people who took $6 trillion 
in projected budget surpluses and turned them into the largest deficits 
in the history of the Republic, the people who are now sniping at 
virtually everything that the President does to try to deal with both 
his international challenges and his domestic challenges.
  I don't think anybody wants to see any of those prisoners at 
Guantanamo ``released'' into the United States. I do think we have a 
legitimate question about where they should be tried and about where 
they should be imprisoned after they are found guilty. Because we 
wanted to have more specific answers from the administration on that 
score, this committee has already removed all of the money that could 
be used to close Guantanamo until we do get a specific plan from the 
administration.
  Having said that, I would suggest that the average American family is 
much more in danger of being hit by the flu pandemic than they are of 
actually being hit by any person who would be imprisoned in a maximum 
security prison here in the United States. I, frankly, would be kind of 
interested to see some of those terrorists exposed to the wonderful 
``charms'' of some of our prison inmates in our own prisons. I don't 
think they would like the experience very much; but nonetheless, that 
is not what is at issue here.
  What is at issue is simply whether or not we will go about our 
business of going to conference and of producing a supplemental 
appropriation bill that will meet the basic needs of our troops and 
that will meet our basic diplomatic necessities as well. That's why I 
think there is a problem with this motion.
  This motion, by the time it sets aside money for military 
construction and defense, would not leave us with enough money on the 
table to respond sufficiently to the pandemic flu problem. It would not 
leave us with enough money on the table to deal with the necessity to 
provide assistance to Mexico in order to deal with the drug problem 
there, which is certainly a national security threat to us, and it 
certainly would not leave us with sufficient funds to strengthen and 
buttress our political and diplomatic activities in Afghanistan and in 
Pakistan. It would not leave us with enough money, for instance, to 
fully fund the funding for the new Embassy in Pakistan, which is 
desperately needed given the fact that we just had a bombing in 
Peshawar of the Pearl Hotel where most of the American diplomats 
stayed. We need to protect diplomats just as much as we need to protect 
soldiers. That's what the conference will try to do if we can ever get 
to it.
  So I would simply say, Madam Speaker, as I said earlier, I intend to 
vote against this motion, but I am not going to be particularly 
bothered if other people want to vote for it because they supported one 
piece or another of this proposal. I, myself, would probably support 
two of the provisions in here but not all of them. So Members are 
certainly free to vote however they prefer. This is a place where we 
like to state our first preferences as often as possible, but sooner or 
later, we have to compromise. That means most of us, including the 
ranking member and the Chair, will not be able to get all of the first 
preferences that we would prefer.
  So, if the gentleman is prepared to close, I will yield back my time.

                              {time}  1115

  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I, for one, am looking 
forward to a number of celebrations. One of those celebrations that I 
hope to very much participate in in the near future will involve the 
gentlelady who happens to be the Speaker at this moment.
  But having talked about celebrations, I think it would be most 
interesting when we reach the point where the leadership on the other 
side of the aisle, including my own committee, would stop presuming 
that every problem in the world can easily be set aside because you can 
blame the past President about this. As I remember, I think we had a 
vote in the House in which there was broadly based bipartisan support, 
for example, for the incursion of Iraq in support of the then-
President.
  I must say we have had a lot of conversation about items that are not 
directly in this bill today having to do with Guantanamo. If I'm not 
mistaken, that issue would not be before us if the current President 
had not decided that he was going, and publicly committed, to his 
closing of Guantanamo. That's creating this horrendous problem.
  Setting all that aside as I close, Madam Speaker, the bill before us 
or the item before us is an item that involves the conference that's 
about to take place between the Senate and the House having to do with 
the supplemental funding that was designed originally to give support 
for our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and, indeed, a very bipartisan 
support here in the House.
  My consternation is that it appears as though we've set aside that 
bipartisan support for the convenience of the leadership and, indeed, 
will have a conference with the Senate that involves two things: a 
significant reduction of about $5 billion in the money available to 
support our troops; and, above and beyond that, for all intents and 
purposes, about that sum of money is transferred for foreign aid, for 
funding for IMF, for providing access to all kinds of countries who are 
not friendly to the United States by way of funding that would be 
supported by our taxpayers.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of the 
President's decision not to make these photographs public for the 
reasons he has already expressed. Namely, the publication of these 
photos would not provide us with any additional benefit and may inflame 
anti-American sentiment and endanger our troops. However, the proper 
mechanism for this is through the courts or by issuing a Presidential 
Executive order, not through Congress.
  The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has been an essential tool for 
promoting a more open, transparent, and accountable government. The 
Congress should not be addressing each separate FOIA request on an ad 
hoc basis. Amending FOIA through the legislative process sets an unwise 
precedent. I would urge my colleagues to allow the courts to rule on 
this very important matter.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the 
balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the previous question is 
ordered on the motion to instruct.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct 
offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis).
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the noes appeared to have it.
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I object to the vote on the 
ground that a quorum is not present

[[Page H6550]]

and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this motion will be postponed.
  The point of no quorum is considered withdrawn.

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