Providing for Consideration of H.R.2863, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2863, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 16, 2005)
Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 315 and ask for its immediate consideration.
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Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
GENERAL LEAVE
Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H. Res. 315.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Oklahoma?
There was no objection.
Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for consideration of the House Report for H.R. 2863, the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2006.
Mr. Speaker, when the Rules Committee met, it granted an open rule, providing 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations. This rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill. For the purposes of amendment, the bill shall be read by paragraph. Additionally, this rule waives all points of order against provisions in the bill which fail to comply with clause 2 of rule XXI, and it authorizes the Chair to accord priority in recognition to Members who have pre-printed their amendments in the RECORD. It provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions.
Mr. Speaker, the committee believes this rule will provide ample opportunity for Members to fully debate the funding of our national defense.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule for H.R. 2863 and the underlying bill. This important legislation takes dramatic steps to further prosecute the global war on terror, enhance our security, and improve the lives of our servicemen and women. It is a bill that fundamentally addresses many of the transformative challenges faced by our military in the future and implements many measures needed to meet those challenges.
Mr. Speaker, the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and the full Appropriations Committee have presented us with an excellent bill. This bill provides us with a way to meet many of the current challenges that we face by addressing the immediate requirements of our forces as well as the ongoing need to transform our military through the adoption of new technology, advanced methods of warfare, and innovative changes in military doctrine.
To fully appreciate the significance of H.R. 2863, one must understand the four long-term challenges that we seek to address in this legislation.
The first long-term challenge is a direct result of the procurement holiday that was taken by our country in the 1990s. To understand the consequences of shortchanging our military during this era, one need only to recall the ammunition accounts as they were funded, or perhaps better described as not funded, during this period. The failure to maintain adequate stocks of ammunition is a shortcoming we are only now beginning to overcome. Additionally, one can see the adverse effects that a constant surge in deployments in the 1990s had upon the maintenance levels of our hardware. This bill takes important steps to rectify that problem associated with the procurement holiday.
Mr. Speaker, the second long-term challenge we must address on a continual basis is related to the transformation of our military forces. The famous Goldwater-Nichols legislation of 1986 altered the manner in which we organize to fight wars and committed us to transforming the nature of our forces, transformation demands an ongoing strategic, operational, and tactical review of our needs in relation to technology, procurement and the development of joint warfighting capabilities.
Each service, all our units and all our equipment must complement one another and contribute to the increased effectiveness of our forces. Transformation is not a goal in and of itself. It is a process of continuous change and adaptation that makes our forces more effective. This is an issue we must address on an ongoing basis. H.R. 2863 does just that.
Mr. Speaker, the third long-term challenge we face is related to our force structure and manpower requirements. This legislation, while meeting the request of the President's budget, also continues to fund additional forces required to prosecute the global war on terror. This is a good start. In future years, we will need to closely examine and, I believe, increase the size of our forces. There is no short-term easy solution to recruiting and maintaining the larger forces I personally believe we will need in the dangerous world in which we live. Still, H.R. 2863 is a good interim step and one which we should take and support and build on in the coming years.
The fourth long-term challenge faced by the military results from the global war on terror. This is not a conventional war. We are not fighting a nation state. We are fighting the adherents of a fanatical ideology that transcends national borders and takes root whenever and wherever it can. We are involved in a generational war against these fanatics that will last for decades. It will require a wide range of diplomatic, developmental, intelligence, communications, and civil affairs tools and activities to win.
The military component of this effort will be expensive and ever-changing. Hence, I believe we took a wise and important step when we added $45.3 billion in bridge funding in "Emergency Wartime Appropriations" to this defense bill. It is something that indicates our understanding of the long-term nature of the challenge we face and our determination to commit the resources needed to be successful.
Today, some Members may wish to have a broad discussion on the situation in Iraq. I welcome that debate, and the open rule attached to this legislation will allow that discussion. However, in the end, this bill is not about Iraq. It is about providing the men and women who defend our country with the tools they need to prevail against those who would do harm to the United States. After the collapse of the old Soviet Union, we took our security for granted and we underfunded the military for a decade. September 11, 2001, taught us the folly of our assumptions in this regard.
Since that time, the administration and the Congress have made the tough decisions needed to rebuild our military and expand its capabilities while waging a war on terror. This bill is another step in that process. It is well crafted, essentially bipartisan, and moves us in the proper direction. Once passed, this legislation will enhance our security, enable us to fight the war on terror, and improve the quality of life for our servicemen and women.
Mr. Speaker, to that end, I urge support for the rule and the underlying bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. My main purpose here, obviously, was to focus on the bill and the rule for the bill, but I want to discuss some of the concerns that my good friends on the other side of the aisle have.
Frankly, I do not doubt their patriotism for a minute, and I welcome the discussion and debate. I think it is a very good one and a very important one for the national purpose. But I think we ought to go back and recall a little bit the situation in Iraq. We ought to remember who and what Saddam Hussein was. This was brought home to me very dramatically on my first visit to Iraq in October 2003. I have since gone back on three additional occasions, plus to Afghanistan.
I was talking with a young American soldier. At that point we, like every other intelligence service in the world and most people in the world, thought there were WMDs in significant quantities in Iraq, although I do hasten to point out the capacity to acquire and to develop those was still very much there and Mr. Hussein was still working himself out of U.N. sanctions and placing himself in a position to do that.
So I still think we were right to have acted early. But this young soldier that I was visiting with, I asked him: We've been here a considerable amount of time. We've not found the quantities of WMDs we expected. Do you think it was a wise decision to come?
He was quiet for a moment and looked at me and he said: Yes, sir, I will tell you regardless, and I still think they had the capacity, but regardless I think it was a good decision to come.
I said: Why?
And he answered my question with a question of his own. He said: Sir, have you ever been to a mass grave site?
I said: No, I haven't.
He said: I have. He said, Until you've seen hundreds of wailing women as bodies are coming out, one after another, trying to identify, is that a father, is that a son, is that a husband, is that a brother, you don't know what terror really is. He said: My question is why the whole world wasn't here 10 years ago.
That is a very interesting question to ask. Because we of all people had the ability 10 years previously to have done that. We had just won a war with Saddam Hussein, we stopped at the border, and we actually urged people on the other side to rise up, and they did. And 50,000 of them were killed by Saddam Hussein and neither we nor our coalition allies did anything to help.
So I think looking at what was going on in Iraq, looking at the 400,000 deaths, looking at the 263 identified mass grave sites and looking, frankly, at our responsibility to have done something when, indeed, for a decade we did nothing is something that we ought to think about and, frankly, something that the whole world ought to think about.
Just 2 weeks ago, or last week, actually, the New York Times ran an article on another mass grave site that had been located, was being frankly explored, if that is even the appropriate term, in preparation for Saddam Hussein's trial, and in that there were 2,500 people, almost all of them women or children, some of them as young as 3 or 4 years of age. That is the type of thing that American intervention in Iraq stopped. My friends on the other side say, Well, are there any signposts? Any hope?
I think that is a very legitimate question to raise, too, because there is no doubt this has been a rough road that we have walked down and no doubt, and I think my friends are appropriate when they raise this, that it has not gone as predicted and as planned and it has been a very, very difficult process.
But I think we ought to stop and look at the Iraqis on the ground and see what they are doing, the fact that a constitutional government has been established or is being established, the fact that 8 million people came out to vote under the most difficult of circumstances, the fact that we have elections scheduled for October and again for December of this year, an extraordinary achievement by very brave Iraqis under very difficult circumstances to set up what we most need in that part of the world, which is a functioning democracy.
That would not be possible without the sacrifice and the service of the brave men and women of the United States military. That is one of the things they are accomplishing. Their first accomplishment, of course, is to make us more secure. I think it is always legitimate to ask, are we more secure or less secure as a result of the war in Iraq? I would argue we are more secure. I would argue that anybody that believes somebody like Zakawi would not be busy trying to kill Americans someplace in the region or in the world probably is missing the point. Our troops are engaged there and are engaging an enemy that, left otherwise free to operate, would be busy trying to kill other Americans as they demonstrated pretty dramatically on 9/11.
I would also argue that over time the best way to transform the region is exactly the one that the President suggests, that is, to establish a functioning democracy. I have a lot of faith in the Iraqi people. I have met the political leaders there. I saw the courage of people going out. I talked to a young soldier on the way back just after the elections actually in March of this year who had been wounded at Mosul.
I asked him: Were you there for the elections?
He said: Yes, sir, I was. It was the proudest moment in my 15 years of service to my country. I was never so proud of my unit, my Army or my country for what we accomplished. And, frankly, I was enormously proud and impressed with the Iraqi people who came out and demonstrated their determination with our help to establish a free society.
So I think we should have this discussion. I think it is a good discussion for us to have. But I think we should remember the horror that was there before the Americans intervened, the process that is under way that will not only improve the lives of the people in Iraq but is essentially the manner in which we hope someday to be able to leave a self-governing and free country.
It is not going to be an easy task. It is not going to be a simple task, but it is a noble task and it is one I think that the men and women engaged in it that wear the uniform of the United States can be extraordinarily proud of and, frankly, something that all of us can be grateful to them for accomplishing and running such great risks to achieve.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I have great respect, Mr. Speaker, for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for their passion and their commitment, but I think they are make a fundamental mistake in their argument about Iraq. I think what they want is a timetable, not a strategy.
We have a strategy. It is called getting an elected government up and operational that can defend itself. We have made important steps along the way in succeeding in that strategy. We have turned over power to the Iraqis. The Iraqis have had an election. They have an elected government that, as we debate here, is debating there about the constitution that they want to have, that they want to live under, that they want to put in front of their people to approve of in October, followed by scheduled elections in December for a government.
I remind my friends that while they call for an exit strategy and a date certain, our friends in Iraq want exactly the opposite of a date certain. Repeatedly, the elected leaders, the elected leaders in Iraq, the people who have the voice, the mandate of the people behind them, have said, Our biggest fear about the United States is that they will not stay the course, that they will quit and run.
I tell the Members that some of the most surprised people that I met when I was in Iraq came in two categories when I was there in March after the elections. First, I met with a group of the newly formed United Iraqi Alliance, basically a group of Shia and other people who are now the majority. And we were visiting about the political process there, and one of the individuals I was visiting with, now a leader in the government, made the point that, We were not sure that you would actually allow free elections to occur, and you did, and we are astonished and pleased and committed to staying the course. So our next question is, will you stay here and help us against the people that want to take us back to the era of Saddam Hussein, back to that regime, because we are going to need your help in this transition process?
That is a very legitimate question. Do we have the political will to stay while the people that are elected put together the government that they need to succeed? So we are going to see that in the course of the coming time. But I think we should be more understanding that there is a strategy and that there is a process under way that is producing good results for the Iraqi people, that is giving them actually a government for the first time that they choose.
I also met with a group of Sunnis who were dissidents, who were not particularly supportive of the process, and in the course of our discussion, a number of them made the point, We made a big mistake. We should have participated in the last elections. The situation in the country would be different. We would be at the political table. We would be in a position to affect what is happening. But we also did not have faith that the United States was serious about democracy. But we look at the outcome of the election, and we understand that indeed you were, and we intend to participate as we move forward.
I think the gentleman from Florida made a very good point. We need to recognize that most people in Iraq are on the same side we are. Most people in Iraq want a democracy, and most people believe that our presence there is important in ensuring that that process take root and actually succeed. I think if we stay the course, frankly, in time we will be very pleased with the result, but, more importantly, we will have restored faith.
My friends on the other side of the aisle say people question our intention about staying long term. I can tell them from my personal experience it is exactly the opposite. They doubt our willingness to stay. I would suggest that setting dates certain would sound more like a surrender strategy than an exit strategy, more like we can count on at this particular point that the Americans will not be here anymore. That is a nice thing to know if one happens to be in the insurgency. It is also a pretty worrisome thing if one happens to be part of the forces of democracy. At that point whether we have succeeded or not, whether or not the government is able to deal with the insurgency on its own, the Americans are saying, sayonara, we are out of here, good-bye. That is a catastrophic mistake. That, in my opinion, would undermine the sacrifice, the effort, and the service so far.
So, again, I welcome the debate. And I hope at some point in the discussion on the rule we can get back to this excellent piece of legislation, which I think really is important, and where, frankly, there is bipartisan unity in terms of the things we need to do to move our military forward.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to differ with an underlying assumption that has been made by a number of my friends on the other side of the aisle, which is that we are somehow paying an extraordinary amount of our national wealth for defense. I would actually argue quite the opposite.
In 1959 and 1960, at the height of the Cold War, this country spent 50 percent, 50 percent, of the entire Federal budget on defense, almost 9 percent of the gross national product, an enormous sum of money.
1980, fast forward, Ronald Reagan, we are spending about 6 percent of the Gross National Product and about one-third of the Federal budget on defense.
1990, 4.8 percent of the gross national product and a significantly lower percentage of the Federal budget.
Today, about 3.7 percent of the national wealth and about 18 to 19 percent of the total Federal budget.
I could make a pretty good argument that either, one, we are very efficient because we are actually defending the country for considerably less of its national wealth than we have done at any period in the postwar period; or we need to be doing more. I would argue toward the latter, actually. I think we should be doing more, and I think this bill is a step in that direction.
The second assumption that I want to disagree with is that we are somehow less safe today because of the Iraqi war. That is asserted, never demonstrated.
The reality is, I think, if you asked most Americans on September 12, 2001, did they expect other incidents inside the domestic confines of the United States, they would have said yes, and they would have expected them in rather short order. It is a little short of miraculous that we have not had that horrific incident occur again. It could occur at any moment. As the President has said repeatedly in recent months, America is safer; America is certainly not safe.
But I would argue, again, the engagement of the enemy a far distance away from the United States and in a method that keeps them tied down has actually contributed to the security of our country. This excellent piece of legislation will enable our military to continue to do the outstanding job it is doing. Again, on that piece of legislation, at least, I am delighted there is bipartisan unity.
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Mr. COLE of Oklahoma. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time.
We have had an excellent and interesting discussion here this morning on the issue of Iraq, and we will continue to have those discussions undoubtedly as we move forward.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I want to again draw the attention of Members to the strength of this piece of legislation. Unfortunately, it was not discussed very much during the course of our exchange.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2863 takes many important steps forward in reforming the procurement and acquisition systems of the United States military, and increasing its end strength, and providing $45.3 billion in supplemental "bridge funding" for the war on terror.
Mr. Speaker, it must also be noted that this legislation would not have been possible without much hard work on the part of the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young), the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), and the members of the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations and the members of the full committee. As evidenced by their hard work, this is a bipartisan bill that the vast majority of the House will undoubtedly agree is a good product.
Mr. Speaker, no legislation is perfect, and, as I said in my opening statement, the defense appropriation bill takes important steps in an ongoing process that does not end; that is, the defense of our country. However frustrated some may be with particular aspects of H.R. 2863, it undoubtedly moves our military in the direction it needs to evolve and enhances the security of our country and the well-being of our men and women in uniform.
Therefore, I, once again, urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying concurrent resolution.
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