[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6453-6455]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from Texas putting 
a personal face on this war. Our young men and women are making 
tremendous sacrifices. We here in the Congress should be willing to do 
our part to ensure they succeed in their mission. Hearing a story like 
Justin's simply confirms that we should redouble our efforts to fund 
what they need to carry out their mission.
  The majority leader talked a little bit earlier about delays with the 
legislation that is currently pending before the Senate. It is going to 
take us 2 or 3 days, presumably, to complete this legislation that is 
currently pending--2 or 3 days. That is not a big delay in the Senate. 
But 14 months is a big delay, and that is the time since the President 
first asked for the supplemental appropriations to help fund our troops 
fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan--14 months ago. That is a real delay. 
It is because I believe the majority party believed they could delay 
and delay and thereby apply pressure to accomplish one of two 
objectives--either put pressure on the administration to back off of 
the war effort or, knowing we are now really up against a funding 
crunch, put pressure on the President to accept a lot of unrelated 
spending, spending that has to do with our pet projects here at home. 
That is on the theory that the President would have to sign a bill 
because our troops are so desperate for the funding they need, even if 
that bill includes a lot of unrelated spending Members of Congress want 
for their folks back home. We should not submit to what I would refer 
to as legislative blackmail, to hold our troops hostage, in effect, for 
this domestic spending. Nothing else explains this 14-month delay.

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  We have already been told by the Secretary of Defense that it is 
critical that this supplemental funding be provided to the troops to 
prevent a slowdown in daily efforts in training and equipping, the 
halting of military operations and enabling us to replace lost or 
damaged equipment for ongoing operations. All of these are implicated 
by this delay.
  General Petraeus, when he was back here, added another reason. He 
stressed the importance of this supplemental appropriations to further 
progress in Iraq. Here is what he said:

       The Commander's Emergency Response Program, the State 
     Department's Quick Response Fund, and the USAID programs 
     enable us to help Iraq deal with its challenges. To that end, 
     I respectfully ask that you provide us by June the additional 
     CERP funds requested in the supplemental. These funds have an 
     enormous impact.

  In other words, it is not just the funds to buy the equipment and 
support our troops for their mission there but also to enable our 
military to provide what is necessary to enable the Iraqi people and 
the Iraqi Government there to succeed.
  All of these are reasons for acting with speed. Yet for 14 months 
Congress has delayed the supplemental funding.
  The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jim Nussle, 
stated during his testimony last week to the Senate Appropriations 
Committee that if the supplemental request is not provided to the DOD 
by Memorial Day, then the Army and Marine Corps will be forced to take 
funding from other areas of their operations budget and will even have 
to start laying off civilians and contractor personnel. It will 
certainly force the Pentagon to use short-term expedients which are 
very costly. In other words, instead of having the ability to spread 
out their contracts over time, which is a much more economical way of 
acquiring services and equipment, the Pentagon is forced to pay a 
premium for short-term contracting, and it is forced to move funds from 
general accounts to support priority expenditures specifically related 
to the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is already adversely 
impacting the Department of Defense.
  Clearly, military planners are leery of engaging in a new operation 
when they do not even know that the material assets they are going to 
need for that operation are going to be available or that what they 
have available today is not going to be replaced in the future because 
this supplemental funding has not been provided.
  We have no more important obligation as Members of the Senate than 
funding our troops when they are in the middle of a battle. That is 
precisely the situation right now.
  In fact, let me just quote something that was said just a couple of 
days ago by Ayman al-Zawahiri, currently the leader of al-Qaida. Here 
is what he said in a long audio message, among other things:

       Iraq today is now the most important arena in which our 
     Muslim nation is waging the battle against the forces of the 
     Crusader-Zionist campaign. Therefore, backing the Mujahidin 
     in Iraq, led by the Islamic State of Iraq, is the most 
     important task of the Islamic nation today.

  We are in a war, and what Zawahiri said in one sense is right. This 
is the most important arena in which this conflict is currently playing 
itself out. We have a choice: to leave in defeat or to continue to 
assure victory.
  We have sent our troops in harm's way to achieve their mission. They 
are accomplishing it. The surge General Petraeus has implemented is 
working. It is up to us to do our part in this effort. All we have to 
do is have a brief debate and a vote, and the vote is to send money the 
troops need to sustain their operation. We have known this now for 14 
months, yet Congress continues to dither. Now we have run out of time.
  There has been a suggestion that in this effort to fund our troops, 
we should combine all of the spending into one massive appropriations 
bill. It would be well over $100 billion. If all it does is fund the 
troops, then that is fine. But if it is used, as I said before, as a 
way for the majority to sneak through either unrequested defense 
spending or our favorite other domestic pet projects, that would be a 
grave injustice to our troops.
  I note the distinguished chairman of one of the subcommittees in the 
House of Representatives on the Appropriations Committee has revealed 
that he is ready to move the particular bill here because he is going 
to use it as a way to add other items to the Pentagon, including 
additional Navy warships and the procurement of new C-17s and F-22 
fighter planes beyond what the Defense Department has budgeted. Maybe 
those are good defense expenditures, maybe not, but the reality is that 
they should stand on their own two feet as part of a general 
authorization and appropriations process and not be put on the backs of 
this supplemental appropriations bill which is what is needed to fund 
our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  Others have been looking at the supplemental as an opportunity to 
increase funding for their favorite nondefense programs. It has been 
suggested by members of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week 
that some $24 billion in nondefense spending might be added for that 
purpose.
  As I said, Congress should not be extorted into supplying nonwar 
spending on this supplemental appropriations bill, the emergency bill 
to fund our war effort. Any effort to do that I suggest should be 
rejected--among other things, because we know the President has said he 
will veto a war supplemental funding bill that contains nonwar-related 
items or strings attached such as some kind of a timetable for troop 
withdrawal from Iraq. Knowing that is going to be vetoed, it would be 
irresponsible for the Congress to go ahead and send him a bill and take 
additional time to get the bill back and redo it in a way that will be 
not vetoed.
  The bottom line is that we have to take care of our troops. We have 
to support them in the mission we have sent them to achieve. It is time 
that we get about that, and I urge my colleagues, when the war 
supplemental comes to this body--hopefully next week--to act with 
alacrity, we will pass it and not hold it hostage to our other spending 
priorities that do not relate to our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a minute talking about 
what a supplemental is because oftentimes the words we use up here do 
not have the clarity for the American public as to what they really 
mean. A supplemental appropriation is an appropriation that is outside 
the budget. What does that mean and what does that mean to the average 
taxpayer? That means all the money that is used to pay for the 
supplemental will be borrowed. It is not coming from taxes today. It 
does not fit inside the pay-go rules. It purely and simply is borrowed 
from our children.
  I have significant problems with that. If you look back at our 
history, President Roosevelt cut 29 percent out of his favorite 
domestic programs during World War II. President Truman cut 26 percent 
out of domestic programs to pay for the Korean war. We routinely, year 
after year, charge the war to our children.
  I raise the issue for two points. No. 1 is that is the way the 
President has chosen to do it, and I fault him as well as the Congress. 
But No. 2 is this great propensity of ``legislators'' who add 
everything including the kitchen sink to it because it is a free pass 
and it is outside the budget.
  The last appropriations bill that we did that was a supplemental had 
$17 billion added to it that did not have anything to do with the war, 
didn't have anything to do with priorities in this country, didn't have 
anything to do with that other than adding things on because it was 
outside the budget so they could spend more inside the budget.
  I am in my fourth year in the Senate. One of the things we have done 
ever since I have been here is try to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. 
There is no question right now that in the Federal budget--almost $3 
trillion--over $300 billion right now that is in the appropriated 
programs and in the mandatory

[[Page 6455]]

programs is lost to fraud, waste, and abuse. So we are going to be 
bringing a bill to the floor for $120 or $107 billion, plus probably 
another $10 or $15 billion that the porkers will add to it and oink all 
the way, and nobody is going to offer anything to offset it out of the 
fraud, waste, and abuse--the waste we have because we are not paying 
attention to the running of the Government. We hear this big debate 
about earmarks, the prerogative to make sure that we point to things. 
The fact is, the way you point out things is to do oversight on the 
waste, fraud, and abuse.
  If you think this is not accurate, let me give you a list of where 
the waste is. There is $90 billion worth of fraud in Medicare right 
now, and there is $10 billion that we pay that we inherently pay 
wrongly. So that comes to over $100 billion in Medicare alone that 
should not be going out the door. We are not doing a thing about it. 
Nobody is going to offer an amendment. It will not even be judged as in 
order with the rules, to get rid of the fraud in Medicare. Medicaid is 
same thing--$30 billion in fraud, $15 billion in overpayments for 
people that we just made a mistake in paying. No, there is not going to 
be anything offered during the supplemental to fix that, so right there 
you have $125, $130 billion that would pay--just in fixing Medicare and 
Medicaid fraud.
  There will not be a rule that will allow us to vote on that. There 
will not be a way for us to do it because that is hard work, and we do 
not want to do the hard work.
  Social Security disability fraud, $2.5 billion; the governmentwide 
overpayments, improper payments, overpayments for other things, $15 
billion. These are not my numbers, these are documented numbers by 
either the GAO, the Congressional Budget Office or the IGs; $8 billion 
that the Defense Department pays out for bonuses for companies that did 
not earn the bonus or performance awards.
  There is not going to be anything in this to fix that. It is not even 
going to be made in order. And $4 billion that we are being defrauded 
on a crop insurance modernization program, where we allow for crop 
insurance a higher rate of return than any other casualty or insurance 
company could earn.
  No bid contracts, $5 billion. U.N. contributions that are purely 
waste, that get defrauded and wasted, $2 billion. We buy $64 billion 
worth of IT projects a year, and at least 20 percent of it is wasted. 
That is another $12.8 billion.
  Nobody is going to fix that on this. No, we are going to borrow the 
money from our children. So I raise the issue that we are going to pass 
a supplemental, and the games are going to be played on it like they 
are every year. People are going to add things that are not a priority; 
they are going to add them in--they are not in the budget--knowing they 
are going to go straight to the debt. Is it in our interest for us to 
consider, as we do the supplemental, what we are spending right now per 
American family on different things?
  Let me spend a minute to outline that every American family is paying 
$8,668 for Medicare and Social Security every year; every American 
family is paying over $5,000 a year to defend this country; we are 
spending $3,752 for antipoverty programs every year; we are spending 
$2,000 a family for interest on the national debt, which is going to be 
higher next year because we are going to borrow all the supplemental 
and add that to our debt.
  Federal employee retirement benefits cost every family in this 
country $1,000 a year--$1,000 a year for every family. Veterans' 
benefits, $750 per family; health research and regulations, $692; 
education, $578; highway mass transit, $455; unemployment benefits, 
$320; international affairs, $300.
  We have a deficit that is going to be $800 billion this year. While 
Congress sits on its heels and has debates about legislating or not 
legislating, we are going to continue the same bad habits of not 
holding agencies accountable, not being transparent about what we are 
doing, and we are going to say we funded the war, but we are not going 
to make any of the hard choices about it.
  When this bill comes to the floor, it is going to have $17 to $20 
billion that does not have anything to do with the war but has 
everything to do with political directives outside the budget so we can 
spend more money.
  Washington does not need a raise, it needs a cut. It is time for us 
to pay for the war by getting rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse in 
this Federal Government. Unfortunately, there is not the character or 
the courage in either the House or the Senate to take on that fight 
because it might impact political careers.
  So as you listen to the debate when we come up with the supplemental, 
we need to fund our troops, there is no question about it, but we 
should not be funding our troops on the backs of our children. We 
should be funding our troops on the backs of us, and we ought to be 
doing that every time.
  So I am going to do all in my power to try to offer amendments to 
offset the funds in this war supplemental. I know the rules will 
prohibit me from doing many of them. But I am not going to stop 
talking. I am not going to stop talking about the $350 billion that 
goes down the drain and steals the future and opportunity from our 
children.
  That is exactly what we are going to be doing. And we are going to be 
smiling all the way through and patting ourselves on the back that we 
funded the war. But we did it on the backs of those who do not have the 
same opportunities we were given. We are going to steal those 
opportunities from the next two generations.
  It is time for Congress to start doing its job. That means tough, 
rigorous oversight and staying within the budget guidelines and 
spending the money like it was ours, not like we had an unending credit 
card that never comes due.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.

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