[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9715-9716]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     DEFENSE SUPPLEMENTAL SPENDING

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the supplemental spending request that 
was sent to Congress last year by the President was unambiguous: the 
funds were to be spent on forces in the field, on the men and women 
fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and on their families here at home.
  Last week, the Democratic leadership of the House showed us what they 
thought of that request. They took it up, hollowed it out, and filled 
the shell with a raft of unrelated domestic spending projects and 
policy proposals that did not include a dime for the troops in the 
field. House Democrats took a request meant for the troops and used it 
to fuel their own domestic spending habits. Then they sent this piece 
of legislation over to the Senate on the eve of Memorial Day and told 
us to vote for it. The Senate was being asked to vote not on troop 
funding but on two other amendments. One included unemployment benefits 
and a Medicaid proposal. The other sought to undermine the 
constitutional powers of the Commander in Chief by proposing a 
withdrawal date from Iraq.
  Unfortunately, our Democratic friends in the Senate made it even 
worse. Taking up what they got from the House, they added even more 
unrelated policy proposals. In the name of combat readiness, Senate 
Democrats also sought to restrict the ability of our military 
commanders to deploy forces, ignoring the fact that the surest way to 
degrade troop readiness is to delay the delivery of funds that are used 
to prepare and train our forces in the first place.
  Taken together, it seems the only issue unaddressed by the Democratic 
leadership in the House and Senate is the only one that matters: how 
and when we will fund our forces in the field.
  The bottom line is this: Tasked with the responsibility of funding 
our forces in the field, Democrats in the House and Senate neglected 
that task in favor of domestic spending and freelance policy proposals 
that we know in the end will not be signed into law--this despite the 
fact that the House will soon take up the Defense authorization bill, 
which is ordinarily the vehicle for the kind of policy proposals our 
friends on the other side have included in the supplemental spending 
request. The House has failed in its basic responsibility. It is my 
hope the Senate will do better.
  While some of our friends on the other side seem to be counting on 
the fact that most Americans are distracted by the ongoing Presidential 
contest, the families and friends of U.S. soldiers and marines who are 
fighting overseas are, indeed, paying attention.
  The President sent a request to fund these men and women. As long as 
they remain in harm's way, we have a strict obligation to give them 
what they need. On this point, there really should not even be a 
debate. The Senate must pass a bill funding our troops free of 
restrictions on their ability to win and free of spending unrelated to 
their mission. And we must try to do it by Memorial Day. In less than a 
month, the Defense Department will be unable to make payroll for our 
uniformed Army unless Congress approves the President's supplemental 
spending request. Less than a month after that, funds for operations 
and maintenance will also run dry. It may be convenient for those 
focused on the political calendar to ignore these pressing needs, but 
ignoring them really does not make them go away.
  I hope the Senate will do its duty this week. The majority leader 
just indicated it is challenging. Of course, it is always challenging 
to do that. But we need to do our duty this week. Our forces in Baghdad 
and Ramadi will not be taking a week off for a recess.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say respectfully to my friend that the 
logic of his statement is really without foundation. Keep in mind, the 
complaint he has is the House sent us a bill that did not have war 
funding in it. Bingo. Why? Because 132 Republicans walked out--did not 
vote. One hundred thirty-two Republicans in the House did not vote for 
war funding. Don't blame it on the Democrats. Had 132 Republicans 
voted, there would have been war funding. But they decided not to vote.
  So don't blame the House for sending us only conditional aspects of 
the war and sending us some other things, like the GI bill of rights. 
We have funded this war on borrowed money, spending $5,000 a second on 
this war--borrowed money. The House made a decision. They said: Well, 
don't you think it is a good idea we spend some money on the troops 
coming home, as we did in World War II, so they can get an education? 
This bill, written by Jim Webb, was adopted by the House 
overwhelmingly. And they did something else: It is paid for, not like 
the war. The war is not paid for. The GI bill of rights is paid for, as 
we have it.
  So, Mr. President, I know we have a difficult road ahead of us 
because we do not have war funding in this bill because the Republicans 
in the House did not vote for it. Don't blame it on the House 
Democrats. There were enough of them to get a majority to do it. The 
Republicans walked out.
  But I say, Mr. President, is it any wonder that the House Republicans 
have lost three special elections in districts that are overwhelmingly 
Republican? In Illinois, the former Speaker of the House, Dennis 
Hastert's district--they lost that. They lost a seat in a special 
election in Louisiana that was a slam dunk Republican district. And 
then in Mississippi, they lost one. Is it any wonder when they do 
tricks like this: ``Democrats didn't fund the war''? ``Well, don't 
check too closely because 132 of us just walked out and didn't vote.''
  So I am here, Mr. President. We are going to go to this bill this 
afternoon. I spoke briefly to the distinguished Republican leader 
yesterday. We are going to have to try to figure out some way to work 
together to get votes. At the end of the day, we will see what happens. 
In the past, war funding has been--after a lot of arm-twisting and 
cajoling, there have been enough votes to get that. I don't know if the 
votes are here this time, but we certainly recognize that we have an 
issue, and we are going to do the best we can with my friend, the 
distinguished senior Senator from Kentucky, to see what we can do to 
get to a point where we have this war funding over with until sometime 
next June. If we can't get it done, then we are going to have to worry 
about what we do in the next month, as he said, but hopefully we can 
complete it this week.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, one additional word. The process for 
doing this has been offensive, I know, both in the House and in the 
Senate. It is my understanding that what will happen later this week is 
the tree will be filled and cloture will be filed. If any amendments 
are allowed on the floor of the Senate, it will be because my good 
friend, the majority leader, decided to let us have a vote. The whole 
process is one that doesn't immediately engender a great level of 
cooperation.
  Having said that, the underlying legislation is important, and 
hopefully somehow we will find our way through this process this week, 
but I think it is pretty safe to say that 49 Republicans of the U.S. 
Senate are going to insist on being an important part of the process. 
Hopefully, we will be able to sort all that out and work our way 
through it and get this important piece of legislation out of the 
Senate and on the way, at least, back to the House or, hopefully, if we 
are lucky, back to the President for signature.

[[Page 9716]]

  I yield the floor.

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