[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 8759-8760]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           KEEP NETHERCUTT-KENNEDY AMENDMENT ON SUPPLEMENTAL

  (Mr. KINGSTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, this week we will be voting on our 
supplemental appropriations bill to help partially fund the war in 
Iraq. An important amendment, which was unanimously agreed to by the 
House that is on that bill, was called the Nethercutt-Kennedy 
amendment, and it has to do with the fact that the Congress has voted 
not to allow Germany, France, Syria and Russia to share in American 
taxpayer-funded reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
  The idea behind this is that Russia, France, Syria and Germany have 
not been on our side and, in many ways, helped accelerate the war in 
Iraq by seeming to side with Saddam Hussein. We believe that if the 
U.N. Security Council and these members were unified against the 
weapons of mass destruction and the regime of Saddam Hussein, perhaps 
we would be at peace today in trying to find diplomatic solutions; but 
now, it seems these very countries who are against U.S. action, who 
have made a 4-month national pastime of bashing the U.S., now they

[[Page 8760]]

want to get U.S. tax dollars and help rebuild Iraq.
  The Nethercutt amendment speaks to this, and I hope that the 
conference committee will keep that in the legislation.

                          ____________________