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KOSOVO AND SOUTHWEST ASIA EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999
(House of Representatives - May 06, 1999)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H2823-H2892] KOSOVO AND SOUTHWEST ASIA EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999 The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 159 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 1664. {time} 1138 In the Committee of the Whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the [[Page H2824]] consideration of the bill (H.R. 1664) making emergency supplemental appropriations for military operations, refugee relief, and humanitarian assistance relating to the conflict in Kosovo, and for military operations in Southwest Asia for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1999, and for other purposes with Mr. Thornberry in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time. Under the rule, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young). Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the bill we bring to the floor today was approved by the Committee on Appropriations just last week. The bill is designed to meet the emergency requirements of the War in Kosovo and to provide for other readiness-related items that are being exacerbated by the War in Kosovo. Mr. Chairman, this war has stretched our military resources terribly thin. Mr. Chairman, the President sent his request to the Congress, the committee reacted to that request quite expeditiously, and we made some changes. We provided the items that were identified by the President, but the committee, working in a nonpartisan way with our relative subcommittees, and I want to compliment the chairmen and ranking members of the subcommittees who were involved here in this particular bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) from the Subcommittee on Defense, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan) from the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) from the Subcommittee on Military Construction, and also the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) who had an important part of this bill relative to embassy security; and these chairmen, plus their ranking members, did really an outstanding job. I want to call special attention to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) who played such an important role in helping us put this bill together. It was a good bipartisan effort, and I hope that the vote today will reflect the bipartisanship with which we bring this bill. As we provide for the replacement of the air-launched cruise missiles, or the JDAMs munitions or the various other weapons that have been fired, bombs that have been dropped, aircraft that have been lost, we have a very clean bill that is related strictly to these issues of national defense and specifically relative to the Kosovo war, and, Mr. Chairman, it is a war. At this point it is basically an air war, it is a war, and the sorties are numerous, the targets being hit are numerous, and it is important that we move this bill quickly. Now, Mr. Chairman, one of the things that we added to this bill that has made some controversy has to do with pay, pay for those serving in our uniform who are risking their lives today in the Kosovo region and who are prepared to risk their lives in other regions of the world where they have been deployed for whatever their mission might be should something erupt, for example, in Korea with the North Koreans in southwest Asia, with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis, and the money we put in for this pay raise is subject to authorization by the authorizing committee. It was a commitment that we made to our authorizers that they could write the rules, but we wanted to make the money available today. Mr. Chairman, I was happy to see the President on TV last night from an air base in Germany telling the American military folks there that we were going to do some good things in this bill including a pay raise, so I suspect what little controversy there might have been about that issue hopefully would have gone away overnight. {time} 1145 Also, we addressed the problem of the redux having to do with retirement. We are having a real problem with retention of forces. We are having a real problem with recruiting. We think it is important to do something for the men and women who wear the uniform and who go to war, many of whom are at war today. I am going to leave the details of the bill to the subcommittee chairman. After the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) takes his time, I am going to call on our subcommittee chairman to present the details of the bill. The bill before the House includes $12.9 billion for military operations relating to Kosovo and Operation Desert Fox and for refugee assistance. In developing this bill we consulted with the authorizing committees, the minority, the Pentagon, and our military commanders in the field. The bill has four parts--the largest of which is with the Defense Subcommittee's jurisdiction. For these activities the bill includes $11.24 billion, $5.8 billion above the President's request. The increases are all in areas of identified shortages (weapons procurement, spare parts, depot maintenance, recruitment, training, and base operations). In addition, the bill includes funding for increased military pay and retirement benefits at $1.8 billion subject to authorization and a presidential emergency declaration. The bill includes $1 billion above the President for military construction; $830 million is for mission-related items, $240 million for the NATO security investment program. This funding is directly related to troop readiness. It goes to our European bases. It is executable in 1 year, and it is mission directed. It is not pork. Third, the bill fully funds the President's request for refugee assistance. These funds are redirected away from reconstruction to refugees only. There is not reconstruction money in this bill for Serbia. There is $105 million in assistance to the front line states: Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro. There is a burden-sharing requirement. Finally, the bill includes a relatively small amount of money ($70 million) for security at U.S. Balkan missions and for repairs at damaged embassies. Mr. Chairman, this is a very good bill. Some will say it's too much. Some will say it's too little. But we have developed a bill that does what I believe we should be doing: (1) We have expeditiously moved to support our troops and fund the administration's request to prosecute the war. (2) We have addressed critical shortfalls in our defense preparedness: shortfalls that hinder our security and embarrass us for not adequately supporting our military. (3) We have sent a powerful, morale-boosting signal that we want to increase pay--while giving the authorizers a major role in that decision. (4) We have met the needs of helpless women and children whose tragedy is our tragedy. (5) We have provided funds to help meet the security needs of our people in the Balkans. (6) We have sent a message of support to the front line states whose help we must have it we are to succeed. (7) Because the funds over the President's request are designated as contingent emergencies--it is the President who must make the decisions about whether or when to spend. But we have given him the tools to succeed. Mr. Chairman, this is the right bill for this situation. I urge all members to support it and send a strong signal to our troops and to Milosevic. Mr. Chairman, at this point in the Record I would like to insert a table reflecting the details of the reported bill. [[Page H2825]] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH06MY99.000 [[Page H2826]] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH06MY99.001 [[Page H2827]] Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 11 minutes. Mr. Chairman, as I said on debate on the rule, this is one of the most serious votes that we will be casting this year. If we cannot play it straight on this amendment, we cannot play it straight on anything. This amendment should not be politicized. What we should be doing with this amendment is to provide every single dollar that we need to conduct the operations now going on in Kosovo. We should not provide one dime less and neither should we try to use this to play games on the budget. I am baffled by the fact that last week this House declined to support the operation that is now going on in Kosovo and yet this week the same people largely who opposed that motion last week are now suggesting that we should double the amount of spending for the operation which last week they said we should not be conducting at all. That gives confusion and inconsistency a bad name, in my view. I did not vote for the administration's original request on Rambouillet. I did not feel that we knew enough about what the results of that discussion would be in order to cast a vote at that time, and I did not believe in giving any administration a blank check. I know that there are a lot of people in this House who do not like President Clinton, and I think a number of Members have gone overboard in trying to politicize this war because they have such intense dislike for the President. I have seen quote after quote in the newspapers saying, ``This is Clinton's war; we do not want our fingerprints on it.'' I think those kind of comments are irresponsible. This is the West's war. This is NATO's war, and in my view the President is doing the best that anybody can under very difficult circumstances. That does not mean I agree with everything the administration is doing. I agree with Senator McCain. I believe that this war needs to be prosecuted in the most aggressive way possible, and I believe that the best way to assure the success of the air war is to threaten use of a ground war. So I do not necessarily agree with the administration on the fine points, but he is our commander in chief. He is the elected leader of this country. We are also elected leaders of this country, and we ought to be behaving ourselves in a manner consistent with the honor that has been afforded to each and every one of us by our constituents. I do not think we do that when we in one week decide that this House is not going to support that operation and again then in the next week decide but, oh, by the way, we are going to use this war as an excuse to move billions of dollars from next year's appropriation into this year's appropriation, put an emergency label on it which will enable the Congress next year to spend $3 billion more on military pork that has nothing whatsoever to do with Kosovo. In my view, that is what is happening today. So I want to explain the amendment that I will be offering later in debate. The administration has asked about $6 billion to cover the cost of this war, plus they have asked for humanitarian assistance. The amount that they have requested will pay for an 800-plane war, 24 hours a day bombing of virtually every target in Yugoslavia that one could imagine anywhere. That will be sustained on a daily basis through the end of the fiscal year. In addition, the administration has asked for enough money to fund not just the 24 Apaches which are on the ground now but a contingent of 50 Apaches, over $700 million just to finance that. The administration has taken the full estimate of what it will cost to run that war for the remainder of the fiscal year and then, on top of that, just to be safe, they have tossed in an extra $850 million in a contingency fund. That is such a large operation that we will run out of targets before we run out of ammunition. We will, in the words of Winston Churchill, be ``bouncing the rubble'' if this continues that long. Now, the committee has done some other things. The committee has decided that they would raise the spending for that bill by 125 percent. They have asked for $460 million more in munitions. My amendment says, all right, we are not going to argue about that. We will accept it. They have asked for $400 million for procurement; and again we say, okay, we are not going to argue about it. We will accept it. They have asked for a billion dollars more than the President in order to avoid having to reprogram from low-priority items to high- priority items. We say, okay, I doubt that that is fully necessary, but we will accept that, too. What we do not accept are two other items in the bill. The budget rules under which we are supposed to operate say that if we want to designate something as an emergency so that it is exempted from the spending caps in our budget, it must meet two tests. It must, first of all, be an unanticipated expense; and, secondly, it has to be an expense which will be incurred immediately for an immediate purpose. There is $3 billion in the committee bill that does not meet those tests. Example: They have $2 billion in this bill for operation and maintenance, which is nothing but moving forward from next year's budget $2 billion into this emergency supplemental. There is also $1 billion added for 77 military construction projects in Europe. Thirty-seven of those items are not even on the Pentagon's 5-year plan. We do not have physical plans for them. We do not really know what they are, but the money is thrown at them. Why? The reason is very simple. There is an agenda on the part of some Members of this House which says let us throw in as much as we can, call it an emergency Kosovo supplemental, even though it is not at all related to Kosovo, and that will enable us to spend $3 billion that we would not have otherwise been able to spend on the regular bill for pork. That is what is going on, in my view. So my amendment does not accept that $3 billion. The only military construction items that we fund are those directly related to Kosovo, three key items that are fully justified, including one operation at Aviano, and the rest we simply say deal with next year in the regular course of business because they do not relate to Kosovo. In addition, we do two other things. The committee has $1.8 billion in the bill which they suggest should go for a pay raise and a retirement enrichment package for the troops. I support that. The problem with the committee amendment is that it is subject to authorization, and that means that even though the money is in the bill it cannot actually be delivered to the troops until further legislation is passed. So we remove that impediment. We remove the language that makes that subject to authorization so that this is not just a potentially empty promise. We actually deliver the money that we say we want to provide. So, in other words, we make that pay raise real. The second thing we do is to take the supplemental, which the House passed previously, which is languishing in the Senate, which the President asked for it to deal with the largest natural disaster in this hemisphere in this century, Hurricane Mitch, and to deal with the emergency facing many farmers because of weather and because of the collapse of prices, and we include that in this package as well so that we take care of the home front as well as Kosovo. If we do not deal with that, we face the prospect of 100,000 refugees trying to make their way from Central American countries through Texas, through New Mexico, and it would cost us far more than dealing with it in this bill. So what I will simply say is, this amendment is an honest effort to reach a compromise position between the administration's original request and the committee's overblown efforts to throw in everything but the kitchen sink in this bill so that they can make more room for military pork in the regular military bill. I would urge that my colleagues do the responsible thing, adopt the Obey amendment when it is offered. That will send a signal that we are, indeed, going to play this straight. We are not going to abuse the emergency power that we have in the Budget Act but we will make every dime that is necessary to the Kosovo operation available and then some. We are exceeding what the administration thinks is necessary by almost a billion dollars, just in their own request, plus the additional items that [[Page H2828]] we are accepting in this package. I would urge support for the amendment when the time comes. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I want to respond to the gentleman as I did in the meeting during the Committee on Appropriations. There is no military pork in this bill. I do not know where he comes up with that argument. There is no pork in this bill. This is as clean a national defense bill as this House has ever seen. There are no Member requests added to this bill, either when we wrote the bill or when we went to the full committee. It is just not the case. The gentleman says that the way we are spending money we are going to run out of targets before we run out of ammunition. The gentleman is not paying attention to what is happening in Kosovo. The gentleman should look closely at what General Hawley said just a few days ago when he pointed out that we were running short of not only air launch cruise missiles, we were running short of JDAMs, we were running short of all kinds of ammunition; and if they were called on to do another MRC somewhere in the world they could not do it. This is the general who has the responsibility to get there if we have to get there. Mr. Chairman, today's message is a real message. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) talks about the votes last week. Those were votes that gave Members an opportunity to voice their opinion in resolutions that were not truly binding. This is the real message. This is a message to Milosevic that we are serious. This is a message to our troops that we are serious in providing them with what they need to accomplish their mission and to give themselves a little protection while they are at it. This is a good bill. The amendment that the gentleman is talking about is not even before the House yet. It will be later. {time} 1200 It is a good bill. It is a clean bill. Just one last point, Mr. Chairman. If the President decides that the items that we have recommended in this bill are not truly emergencies, do Members know what he has to do to stop them from being spent? Nothing. Because, Mr. Chairman, unless the President determines that these items are emergencies, they do not get spent. The investment is not made. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is putting up a red herring. I did not say that there was pork in this bill. What I said was they are jamming $3 billion of nonemergency items into this bill to make room for $3 billion worth of pork in the defense bill which will follow this. The gentleman knows that is what I said. He ought to keep it straight. Secondly, with respect to the JDAMS, the gentleman says there is a shortage of JDAM missiles. I would point out that the gentleman is the chairman of the subcommittee that cut that last year by 17 percent. The gentleman cut the President's request for that item by 13 percent in dollar terms and 17 percent in missile numbers. The President's request provides full funding for the restoration of every missile they need for JDAMS. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the chairman on the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, I would first like to thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and to express my deep appreciation to my chairman for the job he has done in this bill. I must say, in spite of the protest of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), I would like to express my appreciation to him as well for a very cooperative effort on this bill. The fact is that in terms of dollar amounts both sides are relatively very close to each other, largely because we all recognize that there is urgency in moving this bill forward; that the dollars that are involved are a reflection of the President's views. Mr. Chairman, the two sides are really not that far apart on the dollar amounts that we are discussing here today. There are differences in the policy. But before going further, let me express my deep appreciation for my colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Jack Murtha), the ranking member of my subcommittee, who from the very beginning has cooperated with us in developing the defense portion of this $12.9 billion package. There is not a Member of the House who is more concerned about the men and women who are potentially in harm's way that we are attempting to respond to by way of this supplemental. In developing this bill, we have consulted and worked very closely with not just the members of our subcommittee, but the members of the authorizing committee, as well as the military commanders in the field. My colleagues, this is a clean bill. It contains no special projects. As I would react to the comments of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) regarding the pay provision of this bill, the $1.84 billion that are involved, we did not provide authorizing language because we were working very closely with the authorizers, who feel that is a centerpart of their own legislation. Indeed, their willingness to continue to work cooperatively with us in the months ahead are very important to both the committees, the authorizers as well as the appropriators, who are concerned about this matter. I would like to be very specific about one fact: That is, the vote today will send a very, very clear message to Slobodan Milosevic, who is watching our actions on the floor today. Our saying clearly that we intend to support our troops as long as they have to serve in this region and are faced with this challenge is very, very important, and Milosevic is watching the Members today. Beyond that, I would like to say to my colleagues, it is very important that while we may disagree on policy, that we come together in the final analysis on this vote. Nothing could be worse than to see sizeable numbers walk away from this very, very important bill. In the final analysis, I am convinced that there will be solid support for the $11.24 billion of this bill that is reflected in the defense portions of the bill. Like a number of my colleagues, I have had the opportunity to spend many hours at the White House in recent weeks in briefings with the Commander in Chief and his national security team. If there was one message I heard from the President last week, it was this: ``Provide the additional funds if you must, but--and this is very important--do not slow this package down.'' My colleagues, we must act and act now. Allow me to take just a minute to outline a few of the details of this $12.9 billion emergency spending package. The bill has four parts--the largest of which is within the Defense Subcommittee's jurisdiction. For these activities, we have included $11.24 billion which is $5.8 billion above the President's request. The increases are all in areas of identified shortages (spare parts, depot maintenance, training and op tempo funding shortfalls, and base operation costs). I could go on . . . and on about this package and our effort in Kosovo. In the interest of time and moving this bill forward, I want to simply urge my colleagues to support our military, send a strong signal to our troops in the field, and support this supplemental. In closing, I would like to thank the following people on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee staff, Chairman Young's staff, as well as my own personal staff, for their valuable assistance with this bill: Kevin Roper, Greg Dahlberg, Doug Gregory, Tina Jonas, Alicia Jones, Paul Juola, David Kilian, Jenny Mummert, Steve Nixon, David Norquist, Betsy Phillips, Trish Ryan, Greg Walters, Sherry Young, Harry Glenn, Brian Mabry, Arlene Willis, Leitia White, Grady Bourn, Julie Hooks, and Dave LesStrang. Mr. Chairman, as we go forward with amendments later, there will be plenty of time for discussions regarding the detail. But between now and then, it is very important that the Members recognize that the entire public is watching our response and our expression of support or lack of support for our troops as they work in harm's way. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding time to me. First let me say that I agree very much, this is an American, this is a NATO conflict. We in this House should speak with one voice and not be putting it on political terms. I feel very, very deeply about this. I support this [[Page H2829]] bill. At the end of the day, I support this bill. It is a major step toward my goal of making this the year of the troops, the year in which we recognize the needs of those who serve in uniform. I also support it because it ensures that our military has more than adequate resources to carry out the Kosovo air campaign. It bolsters the military readiness of our forces in the Balkan theater and the Armed Forces as a whole. It provides the resources to help address the tragic humanitarian situation in Kosovo. The basis of this bill was a $6 billion administration request in emergency funding. The request was based on four categories, military operations in and around Kosovo, Kosovar refugee relief, munitions and readiness munitions, and Desert Thunder and Desert Fox military operations. In addition to the administration's original request, our colleagues on the Committee on Appropriations have seen fit to add to the President's request, both to the humanitarian request and the matter request. There are some problems that our colleagues had on the Committee on Appropriations, and they have tried to address them. They have added certain categories. Mr. Chairman, allow me to comment on two major additions to the original request. First, this bill sends the right signal to our men and women in uniform by providing $1.8 billion to fund the administration's military pay and retirement package, of course, conditioned upon the enactment of authorizing legislation through our Committee on Armed Services. Second, this bill provides for $1.1 billion in unrequested funds for overseas military construction in Europe and Southeast Asia. The inclusion of these projects is similar to the inclusion of the administration's pay and retirement package. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to state that our Armed Forces have been neglected for too long. It is time we give our troops the supplies and the support that they need. Without any coherent international blueprint, the White House has bombed its way around the globe, while dropping troops far and wide for ill-defined peacemaking duties. This policy has gutted the American military, which now must be rebuilt. Last week a bipartisan Congress voted against President Clinton's undeclared war in Yugoslavia. Both Republican and Democrat members are reluctant to commit U.S. forces to a mission that has no strategic plan, no timetable, no definition of victory, and no clear national interests to defend. While there are many reasons for that vote, lack of support for our troops was not one of them. To the contrary, the leadership in this Congress supports our troops, but does not support President Clinton's frivolous deployment of them and haphazard waste of military resources. The last 6 years of focusless military use, combined with defense spending cuts, have stretched our forces to the point where serious gaps in our national security are developing. Not only have we left the Pacific without a single carrier to defend our allies and troops stationed in the region, but the carriers we are sending to combat in Yugoslavia and Iraq are drastically undermanned. For example, the Teddy Roosevelt is 418 sailors short, and the Enterprise is lacking an alarming 495 sailors. In total, the U.S. Navy is 18,000 sailors short, and those that are there are at risk because of it. Such shortfalls in recruits and equipment have reached crises level. This Congress wants to rebuild our depleted defense and make sure that our troops have the supplies they need while they are deployed wherever they are deployed. President Clinton has only proposed to cover the basic costs of his war in Yugoslavia. This Congress wants to take this opportunity to bolster our hollowed out military. This emergency spending will provide much needed munitions, spare parts, construction, training, recruiting, and pay increases for our military. Amid reports that the United States is running out of cruise missiles and cannibalizing some planes for parts, America must not forget that military weaknesses only challenge our enemies to take costly and dangerous risks. Mr. Chairman, the time is now to deter our enemies by bolstering our military. We have to send a very clear message that while we may not support the President's ill-advised war, we do support our troops wholeheartedly. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. CALLAHAN. Mr. Chairman, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs, I have the responsibility to recommend to the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) the funding level for the programs that come under the jurisdiction of our subcommittee. We have one overwhelming priority, and that is assistance to the refugees who have been driven from their homes and separated from their loved ones. The President requested a total of $566 million from our subcommittee as part of his supplemental request. We have approved the entire amount of this funding level, but we made some modifications. The funding would be allocated as follows: --$96 million for international disaster assistance; --$105 million for support of frontline States, including $5 million to document war crimes; --$75 million for Eastern Europe assistance to assist refugees within the borders of the frontline States; and --a total of $290 million for the refugee assistance accounts. Part of the original request was $170 million for an account normally used for long-term development projects. We have tried to discover how the funds would be used. We were told that $95 million of this amount would be made available for refugee assistance, but we already have separate accounts for the refugee and humanitarian services. When the administration officials were asked about that, we were told these funds could be used for such things as, and I quote, ``NGO development and microcredit activities.'' I have nothing against either of these programs, but they are part of an ongoing program in Eastern Europe. They are emphatically not part of emergency refugee and humanitarian assistance. The President and Secretary of State have also discussed plans for a Southeastern Europe initiative. I fear they could use these fund to begin such an initiative, and I do not think they should, without adequate consultation and further approval by the Congress. Therefore we moved $95 million from these vaguely defined activities and made that additional amount available for direct support for refugees and humanitarian assistance. Indeed, this money, the $566 million, may not be sufficient. The administration is constantly changing its policies. It is difficult to know when enough is enough. One day the President announces that we are going to send 20,000 refugees to Guantanamo Bay. A few days later, the Secretary of State says, no, we are not going to do that, we are going to keep the refugees there because we then would be ethnically cleansing the region. The next day the Vice President of the United States, Mr. Gore, announces that 20,000 refugees are coming to the United States. At the drop of a hat, the Vice President committed $40 million for the transport and relocation of refugees to our country. I was not consulted about this. Neither was anyone else in Congress. I'm not sure the Secretary knew. Now we're left with a $40 million bill, and we must in good conscience pay for it. It leaves a hole in the request. I strongly encourage Members to vote in favor of this bill. It does not give the Administration a pot of money to begin the reconstruction of Southeastern Europe. If they want to begin a massive new spending program in the region, they need to come back to Congress. They and we also need to win the war. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price). Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, there are only 147 days left [[Page H2830]] in this fiscal year. This ought to be a time when we come together with bipartisan resolve to deal with three urgent crises that we could not have anticipated last September: the agricultural collapse in rural America, the devastation of Central America by Hurricanes Mitch and Georges, and the need to support our troops and the allied cause in Kosovo. The Republican majority, unfortunately, has sought to politicize the NATO operation in the Balkans, withholding support for it last week, amid well-publicized arm-twisting, and now this week voting to double the funding for it! In so doing, the majority hopes to use the NATO campaign to leverage funding for unrelated military purposes. We should reject partisan gamesmanship that toys with the lives of our troops and the refugees, that trivializes the dignity of our rural citizens, and that belittles the suffering of the people in Central America. {time} 1215 We should, instead, adopt the Obey substitute. The Obey amendment is well-crafted. It is responsible. It addresses the military and humanitarian needs in the Balkans, fully funding the Department of Defense's request. It includes the most justifiable of the defense add-ons, particularly those involving military pay and readiness. It addresses the disaster in Honduras and Guatemala, a situation we ignore at our Nation's peril; for if we ignore it, we will surely face a new flood of immigration northward and greater vulnerability to drug trafficking. And the Obey amendment provides desperately needed funding to meet the collapse in the price of agricultural commodities. Mr. Chairman, the House today has an opportunity to reverse its recent history of politicizing issues that should not be politicized and defaulting on the responsibility of a great power. Support the Obey substitute. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. It is really interesting to me. This bill is not about any political gamesmanship, and it has not been politicized. This bill is a true, clean national defense bill that provides what the national defense establishment needs to protect our Nation and to protect our troops. The only partisanship that I have heard in this debate today has come from that side, accusing this side of being partisan or of politicizing or of political gamesmanship. I want to assure the gentleman that there is no politics in this at all. For speakers on the other side to try to create the atmosphere that this is somehow political is just not right. We have gone overboard to make sure over the years that national defense issues were not political and there were no political games being played on them. I want to call attention just one more time to the fact that the only issue of politicization or political gamesmanship is coming from over there. And the fact that they say it does not make it true, and I insist that it is not true. This is a clean national defense appropriations bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson), chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time; and I rise today to speak in strong support of the bill before us. Voting ``yes'' today is a vote for our troops. It says definitively that their daily sacrifices will not be downsized or neglected any more. It shows that we can transcend our differences and unite for their well-being. Our troops are in harm's way, so it is our duty and responsibility to muster the resolve to keep them safe. I worked closely with military commanders in the field to make this bill a reality. It is responsible and tightly honed to our most immediate and unanticipated needs in the Balkans and Southwest Asia. Remember that our European infrastructure is a critical staging area. It supports our mission in the Balkans and our training and pass- through for operations in the Gulf and Africa. The time for leadership is now. There simply has been a failure to support our troops living and working overseas under very dangerous conditions. Let us pass this bill and show our troops that the sacrifices they make are worthy of the support of Congress and the American people. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi). Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time; and I want to again commend him for his leadership in bringing the Obey amendment to the floor because, indeed, it is the responsible approach to the challenge that we have before us. Let me just first say that it is hard to believe that nearly 7 months ago there was the greatest natural disaster, the worst natural disaster in the history of our hemisphere since they recorded these things in Central America. I do not think the American people know that we have still not passed out of this Congress legislation for the disaster assistance that the American people in their compassion wanted us to do. The assistance is still hung up on budgetary gimmickry and offsets and the rest. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) corrects the situation in his amendment. Mr. Obey also recognizes the large number of refugees who have come out of Kosovo and puts $175 million more in for humanitarian assistance. Again, whatever we may think of the war effort and the air strikes, the American people, God bless them, want the refugees to have humanitarian assistance. It also addresses the needs of America's farmers here at home, and it is responsible in meeting the needs of our military. And how proud we are of our people in the military, both for putting themselves in harm's way and their courage, but also for the military's role in humanitarian assistance. They assisted most recently in the Balkans, and they were indeed largely responsible for our initial emergency assistance in Central America, even though we still have not paid the bill on that. So I ask my colleagues, when the time comes for amendments, to vote and support the Obey amendment and to do so with the knowledge that it is the responsible approach to meeting the needs of our military, to addressing the pay raise issue for the military, to honoring the commitment of the American people for humanitarian assistance and to do it in a fiscally sound way. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Armed Services. (Mr. SPENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to congratulate the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young); the chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis); the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha); and other members of the Committee on Appropriations for ``leaning forward'' and doing the right thing by addressing some of the most serious readiness and quality-of- life shortfalls facing our military today. Our Nation's military leaders publicly testified last fall that the President's 6-year defense plan fell about $150 billion short of meeting basic military requirements. Knowing how politics work in this town, we should assume that the Joint Chiefs' estimate of the military shortfalls is understated. The budget resolution added about $8 billion to the President's underfunded defense request. It is a small but necessary first step. This supplemental adds approximately $6 billion in additional funding to address some of the military's most critical shortfalls. Our military has the responsibility of being able to fight two multiple theatre wars and conduct multiple concurrent smaller-scale contingency operations throughout the world. We have been cutting back on our military since 1989, to the extent that we could not conduct one at the time. The Army and the Air Force has been cut back 45 percent, the Navy 36 percent, the Marines 12 percent. At the same time, our operational requirements have increased 300 percent. The problem is past being an emergency, it is critical. [[Page H2831]] These additional funds will only begin to help our military to properly defend this country with a minimum loss of American lives among our service people. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the distinguished minority whip. Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, it has been more than a month since Milosevic launched his campaign of genocide. His atrocities continue to fill us with horror and revulsion: more than a million people, driven from their homes at gunpoint; entire towns burned to the ground; men and boys forced to kneel by the side of the road and shot dead before their families; grandparents burned alive because they were too feeble to flee. In the face of such brutal and systematic slaughter, we need to send him a message, an unmistakable message of American resolve, that his campaign of genocide will not stand. We have to set partisan politics aside. We have to stand united behind our troops. Even as we speak today, our pilots are hurtling off the decks of our carriers, risking their lives to save the Kosovars and see justice done. We have to give them the support that they need in order to win. Milosevic cannot be allowed to prevail. The scale and the details of his inhumanity ignite our moral indignation. Accounts coming out of Kosovo are shocking: Serbian soldiers knock on the windows of a refugee's car as he and his family wait to cross the border, and they were bearing AK-47s. They demanded $6,000 from the driver or his two daughters in the back seat. The father empties his wallet, but it is not enough. So the soldiers pull the young women from the car, drag them to a nearby garage, where several other soldiers, also wearing masks, were waiting. The gang rape lasted hours. Last Friday, in the village of Pristina, Serbian troops murdered 44 Kosovars, shooting some and burning others alive. When relatives of the victims went to bury their loved ones, the soldiers told them that they would be shot, too, if they uttered a single prayer for the dead. And as one of the Kosovars said later, perhaps our silence helps them to deal with their shame. Well, Mr. Chairman, America cannot and we will not be silent as long as Milosevic continues his campaign of terror. As a superpower at the peak of our prosperity and our strength, America cannot look the other way and we cannot be diverted by our partisan differences. I have been troubled by the procedures that the House adopted today, and we have seen people trying to play politics with the President's funding request for these troops. I would urge my colleagues to unite behind the Obey substitute. It is clean, it is straightforward, it is a strong response to the present emergency, and by all prognostications it will be what we end up with next week on this floor. In the end, we have to move this process forward; and we have to do it today. Now is the time to accept the responsibilities of leadership. Now is the time to support our troops in the field, who are risking their lives so that this century might end better than it began. Now is the time to send Milosevic an unmistakable message: At the end of the 20th century, the world will not stand for genocide. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the Chair how much time the gentleman yielded back? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The gentleman from Wisconsin has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. OBEY. No, I asked how much time did the gentleman yield back? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The gentleman yielded back 30 seconds, and the gentleman from Wisconsin has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. OBEY. I thank the Chairman. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the Committee on Armed Services. Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, I think I probably just wasted 20 seconds of my time. I was not prepared for this. Let me be very brief now that my time has been stressed. Mr. Chairman, I would ask Members to permit the eyes of their minds to see a greater vision here and to not be so narrow to think of this as Kosovo and Kosovo only. What concerns me most is that this is about funding a national military strategy. Sure, there are discussions of politics. Frankly, I do not mind that, because it is policy that drives all of this. The President's singular responsibility is to lay out the vital national security interests, then we come up with a military strategy as the means to enforce those. The President has one that is different, and I would not go along with it, but it is for us to transition out of a posture of global engagement in over 135 countries around the world and then fight and win nearly two simultaneous major regional conflicts. The open secret is we do not have the force structure today to do that. Let me share some facts with my colleagues about the size of the military today. In the Gulf War, we had 18 Army divisions, we had 24 Air Force tactical wings, and in the Navy ships and submarines we had 546 in 1990. Today, we are down to 10 divisions in the Army, 13 tactical wings in the Air Force, and a 315 ship Navy. That is a reduction in the Army by 250,000, in the Air Force 150,000, and in the Navy 200,000. So what have we done by taking a foreign policy of global engagement? We have taken our military and we have stretched this great military of ours very thin all over the world. Now we find ourselves with depleted munitions. Depleted munitions. And not only in our ammo. When I hear individuals say, well, we are going to have to cut back or we are only going to have to replace bullet for bullet, do my colleagues realize the risks we are being placed in in other scenarios around the world? {time} 1230 Do not take it from me. Take it from General Shelton. General Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, ``Suffice it to say that what we have going on right now in Kosovo is a major theater of war with air assets. The fighting in Yugoslavia now means a much higher risk of a second regional conflict, protracted, with significant casualties.'' My colleagues, vote for this. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick). (Ms. KILPATRICK asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Ms. KILPATRICK. Mr. Chairman, I thank my ranking member for yielding me the time, a new member on the committee, for this most important discussion. It is not whether we support our troops or not. We all do. We support them because they are risking their lives for us as the greatest country in the world. What we do not support at this time is the doubling of appropriations that our President gave us. We are 2 months away from doing the 2000 budget. We ought to be using this time and the extra $6 billion to put during that time in the appropriations process. It is important that we take care of education for our children, health care for our seniors, housing for those who need it. It is unfortunate we will not be able to get to that during this budget time because of the caps, the political caps that were set. Let us not say we do not support the troops, because we do. Let us support the President, our troops, and the Obey amendment. Mr. Chairman, I rise in vehement opposition to H.R. 1664, the Kosovo Supplemental Appropriations for FY 1999. More than half of this bill's $13 billion appropriation is being used for funds that will eventually come from the budget surplus, and only illustrates the collective cowardice of the majority in refusing to consider these military construction projects under normal budgetary procedures. In essence, this bill gives to the military and takes from Social Security and Medicare. What is worse is that the doubling of the increase of this bill, from President Clinton's original request for $6 billion to $13 billion, has not seen a resulting increase in aid to the refugees or in humanitarian aid, ostensibly a key part of this bill's original purpose. As one of the newest members on the House Appropriations Committee, I know that Appropriations are about three things: what you need, what you want, and what you'd like to have. This bill [[Page H2832]] was half of what we need, some of what members want, and no increase in what the refugees would like to have. In order to accurately discuss this vote, we must first place these issues into context. After the breakdown of peace talks between Serbian and Kosovar representatives in Rambouillet, France in mid-March, Serb forces entered the Yugoslav province of Kosovo en masse. An estimated one million Kosovar Albanians have since been driven from their homes, most into Albania and Macedonia, thousands of Kosovar Albanian men remain missing, and reports of rape and murder continue to trickle out of the embattled region. In response, on March 24, 1999, NATO began a massive bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces and installations in Serbia and Kosovo. Close to 1,000 NATO warplanes are now involved in the airwar (with over 80% from the United States). President Clinton recently called up an additional 33,000 reservists to aid in the fight, and asked Congress for $6.0 billion in supplemental funds to pay for current operations. This $6 billion request more than adequately addresses the commitment of the United States to this unified effort. The Republicans on the House Appropriation Committee drafted a $12.9 billion emergency FY99 supplemental spending bill. On top of the White House's $6.05 billion spending request for the Kosovo mission, Republican appropriators included $1.8 billion to fund a pay raise and retirement package through the remainder of FY99, and the bill includes an additional $74 million in unspecified worldwide ``minor'' construction projects, provides additional funding for munitions purchases and operational readiness needs, such as recruitment, replacement of spare parts, equipment maintenance and military base operations, primarily with additional funds for operational readiness and for a military pay raise and retirement package. The bonus of this additional $6 billion in funding is that it does not have to be offset by similar reductions in spending in other programs. This is nothing but fiscal legerdemain, a sorry billion-dollar version of the old New York City street con of the three shells and the pea. Unfortunately, the elderly and the poor are the hapless victims of this con job. The majority of the Democratic members on this Committee see this for what it is: nothing but an attempt to fund defense projects that will not fit within the tight spending caps for FY00. I must reiterate one key point: there is not one thin dime of an increase in refugee assistance funding in this bill. There are certainly many items within this legislation that are probably worthy of the support of scarce taxpayer dollars. Let me make this clear: I do not oppose the hard working and brave persons in our nation's Armed Forces from getting a well deserved pay increase, better housing, a much improved retirement program, or other such items as needed. I object that my Republican colleagues do not have the collective courage to make the hard decisions and difficult choices inherent in being a member of the august House Appropriations Committee. What is becoming abundantly clear is one thing: the budgetary caps on spending will have to be increased. Only then will Congress be able to address our urgent domestic needs, preserve our vital fiscal surplus, and protect our nation's seniors who have already paid the price for the freedom that most of us enjoy but all of us take for granted. Our colleague, Congressman David Obey, will offer a sensible amendment that provides a total of $11 billion in funding. Of this sum, funds that do not have to be authorized will go toward an immediate pay increase for the military; an increase in the operations and maintenance in Kosovo, and more importantly, $175 million more for the refugees of Kosovo. If Congressman Obey's amendment is reasonable, sensible, and deserves the support of the majority of our colleagues. I would like to paraphrase a recent article in the New York Times, in closing, on this issue: This is nothing but Republican cowardice triumphing over principle; don't vote for the war, don't take responsibility for the war, don't vote to stop the war, but vote to pump more money into a policy we don't like. American taxpayers pay us a good sum of money to make difficult decisions, and it is time that we stepped up to the plate and made them. It is my hope that the wisdom of Congress will prevail in supporting the amendment of Congressman Obey. Without the adoption of the Obey amendment, this bill must be rejected by the House of Representatives. Congress must preserve the surplus for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We must increase the caps on domestic and defense spending, and do so while maintaining the integrity of our balanced budget. These issues are not mutually exclusive, but Congress must have the courage to make these tough decisions. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Interior. (Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, today I rise to pay tribute to the two brave servicemen who lost their lives this week during a training exercise in Albania, Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Reichert of Wisconsin and Chief Warrant Officer David Gibbs from my district. David Gibbs grew up in Massillon, Ohio, graduating from Washington High School in 1980. I wish to express my sympathy to David's family, his mother Dorothy, his wife and three children. Their pain can only be eased by the knowledge that his country salutes his heroic service. These two men chose to serve their country in one the noblest traditions and they made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting the principles and freedoms which the United States represents. All our men and women in uniform are to be commended for their service. We must support our troops so they can do the job they so valiantly volunteered to do when they joined the armed services. And we in Congress have a responsibility to ensure that our troops have the resources they need for the best equipment, the most reliable and advanced technology, and the needed training to make them the most respected military in the world. I will support this bill, because while we do not yet know the cause of this latest tragedy, the American people need to know that we are adequately supporting our men and women in uniform. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver). Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, the reason we are here today is that the President submitted a request for $6 billion for the Kosovo operation, which would bring us to the end of fiscal year 1999; and that was clearly an unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstance that came up because of the actions of Slobodan Milosevic. Those situations ought to be few and far between, outside the caps, without any offsets, a true emergency. The underlying bill that has come from committee more than doubles the amount from the President's request on a set of premises which are entirely different. It is operating on a premise that goes far beyond, entirely beyond the definition of ``emergency,'' which had been part of the President's request, and much of it is only partly related to Kosovo. On the other hand, we have before us an amendment that has been offered by the minority ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), which responsibly but narrowly deals with the Kosovo situation and other emergencies along the way. Who can deny that we look rather foolish in this Congress, and I really am embarrassed by it, that 7 months after what had happened in Central America and 7 months after we truly knew way back in the fall that the problems on our farms were very serious, yet we passed that legislation 3 months ago. It has not moved to a final conclusion, the emergencies relating to Central America and related to the farms, and we have not done anything about it. The Obey amendment deals with both of those issues and also makes certain that the pay increase for our military personnel is funded now, not uncertain as to when and if it will be authorized, but funded now. So it deals with the emergencies in Kosovo, on the farms, in Central America, and our military personnel. I urge support for the amendment. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays). Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, we have a world crisis and an acute national emergency. I support this $12.9 billion spending package. I have opposed past defense spending bills because we have failed, in my judgment, to take four difficult but necessary steps to realize savings and modernize our military. We failed to: cancel procurement of expensive, unnecessary weapon systems; close unnecessary military bases and depots at home and abroad; and require our allies, particularly Europeans, to pay [[Page H2833]] their fair share of stationing U.S. troops in their countries. And we are still funding a military designed to fight the Cold War, but the Cold War has ended. The world today is different, and it is a more dangerous place. The war in Kosovo costs money, and lots of money. As a fiscal conservative during my 11 years in Congress with consistently high marks from the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, and other fiscal watch dog organizations, I am on the floor to say we need to appropriate this money. The fact is that we have already spent it. Over the past 40 years, the United States has deployed troops around the world 41 times, but 33 of these 41 missions have come in just the past 8 years. We need to realize the tremendous costs we accrue when we deploy our military to troubled spots all over the world. These missions cost money and resources which we have taken from other parts of the defense budget. Today, our military has a number of acute needs that must be addressed. We need to do a better job attracting new enlistees and maintaining the necessary level of reenlistment. Our soldiers, sailors, pilots and Marines are overworked and underpaid. Our training has suffered. We do not have the necessary munitions for potential new encounters. And we are cannibalizing existing planes, tanks, and other equipment for their parts in order to make other equipment operational. Mr. Chairman, many of us have not supported the President's decision to use military force in Yugoslavia and did not vote for last week's resolution endorsing air strikes. But the fact is, there is a war in Kosovo and we need to pay for it. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the effort being undertaken by NATO in Kosovo and Serbia. I rise in agreement that we must fund our armed services at increased levels to ensure that our security and our ability to join our allies in maintaining international security and stability is maintained. Mr. Chairman, I believe the President has requested the correct sum for the war until September 30th of this year, $5.9 billion. I believe that war against Serbian genocide and ethnic cleansing is absolutely essential for us to participate in. But, Mr. Chairman, I also believe we must assist our farmers who find themselves in real crises, and the almost 1 million victims of this hemisphere's worst natural disaster in this century. I therefore, Mr. Chairman, will support the Obey amendment. I will also, I tell my good friend and the chairman, be supporting increasing the fiscal year 2000 appropriations for our military to ensure the objectives of which I have spoken and of which the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has so eloquently spoken. Our national interest, our commitment to humanitarian and moral principles, will be served by the passage of the Obey amendment and it will do so in a way more consistent, I beli

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KOSOVO AND SOUTHWEST ASIA EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999
(House of Representatives - May 06, 1999)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H2823-H2892] KOSOVO AND SOUTHWEST ASIA EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999 The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 159 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 1664. {time} 1138 In the Committee of the Whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the [[Page H2824]] consideration of the bill (H.R. 1664) making emergency supplemental appropriations for military operations, refugee relief, and humanitarian assistance relating to the conflict in Kosovo, and for military operations in Southwest Asia for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1999, and for other purposes with Mr. Thornberry in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time. Under the rule, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young). Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the bill we bring to the floor today was approved by the Committee on Appropriations just last week. The bill is designed to meet the emergency requirements of the War in Kosovo and to provide for other readiness-related items that are being exacerbated by the War in Kosovo. Mr. Chairman, this war has stretched our military resources terribly thin. Mr. Chairman, the President sent his request to the Congress, the committee reacted to that request quite expeditiously, and we made some changes. We provided the items that were identified by the President, but the committee, working in a nonpartisan way with our relative subcommittees, and I want to compliment the chairmen and ranking members of the subcommittees who were involved here in this particular bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) from the Subcommittee on Defense, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan) from the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) from the Subcommittee on Military Construction, and also the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) who had an important part of this bill relative to embassy security; and these chairmen, plus their ranking members, did really an outstanding job. I want to call special attention to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) who played such an important role in helping us put this bill together. It was a good bipartisan effort, and I hope that the vote today will reflect the bipartisanship with which we bring this bill. As we provide for the replacement of the air-launched cruise missiles, or the JDAMs munitions or the various other weapons that have been fired, bombs that have been dropped, aircraft that have been lost, we have a very clean bill that is related strictly to these issues of national defense and specifically relative to the Kosovo war, and, Mr. Chairman, it is a war. At this point it is basically an air war, it is a war, and the sorties are numerous, the targets being hit are numerous, and it is important that we move this bill quickly. Now, Mr. Chairman, one of the things that we added to this bill that has made some controversy has to do with pay, pay for those serving in our uniform who are risking their lives today in the Kosovo region and who are prepared to risk their lives in other regions of the world where they have been deployed for whatever their mission might be should something erupt, for example, in Korea with the North Koreans in southwest Asia, with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis, and the money we put in for this pay raise is subject to authorization by the authorizing committee. It was a commitment that we made to our authorizers that they could write the rules, but we wanted to make the money available today. Mr. Chairman, I was happy to see the President on TV last night from an air base in Germany telling the American military folks there that we were going to do some good things in this bill including a pay raise, so I suspect what little controversy there might have been about that issue hopefully would have gone away overnight. {time} 1145 Also, we addressed the problem of the redux having to do with retirement. We are having a real problem with retention of forces. We are having a real problem with recruiting. We think it is important to do something for the men and women who wear the uniform and who go to war, many of whom are at war today. I am going to leave the details of the bill to the subcommittee chairman. After the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) takes his time, I am going to call on our subcommittee chairman to present the details of the bill. The bill before the House includes $12.9 billion for military operations relating to Kosovo and Operation Desert Fox and for refugee assistance. In developing this bill we consulted with the authorizing committees, the minority, the Pentagon, and our military commanders in the field. The bill has four parts--the largest of which is with the Defense Subcommittee's jurisdiction. For these activities the bill includes $11.24 billion, $5.8 billion above the President's request. The increases are all in areas of identified shortages (weapons procurement, spare parts, depot maintenance, recruitment, training, and base operations). In addition, the bill includes funding for increased military pay and retirement benefits at $1.8 billion subject to authorization and a presidential emergency declaration. The bill includes $1 billion above the President for military construction; $830 million is for mission-related items, $240 million for the NATO security investment program. This funding is directly related to troop readiness. It goes to our European bases. It is executable in 1 year, and it is mission directed. It is not pork. Third, the bill fully funds the President's request for refugee assistance. These funds are redirected away from reconstruction to refugees only. There is not reconstruction money in this bill for Serbia. There is $105 million in assistance to the front line states: Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro. There is a burden-sharing requirement. Finally, the bill includes a relatively small amount of money ($70 million) for security at U.S. Balkan missions and for repairs at damaged embassies. Mr. Chairman, this is a very good bill. Some will say it's too much. Some will say it's too little. But we have developed a bill that does what I believe we should be doing: (1) We have expeditiously moved to support our troops and fund the administration's request to prosecute the war. (2) We have addressed critical shortfalls in our defense preparedness: shortfalls that hinder our security and embarrass us for not adequately supporting our military. (3) We have sent a powerful, morale-boosting signal that we want to increase pay--while giving the authorizers a major role in that decision. (4) We have met the needs of helpless women and children whose tragedy is our tragedy. (5) We have provided funds to help meet the security needs of our people in the Balkans. (6) We have sent a message of support to the front line states whose help we must have it we are to succeed. (7) Because the funds over the President's request are designated as contingent emergencies--it is the President who must make the decisions about whether or when to spend. But we have given him the tools to succeed. Mr. Chairman, this is the right bill for this situation. I urge all members to support it and send a strong signal to our troops and to Milosevic. Mr. Chairman, at this point in the Record I would like to insert a table reflecting the details of the reported bill. [[Page H2825]] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH06MY99.000 [[Page H2826]] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH06MY99.001 [[Page H2827]] Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 11 minutes. Mr. Chairman, as I said on debate on the rule, this is one of the most serious votes that we will be casting this year. If we cannot play it straight on this amendment, we cannot play it straight on anything. This amendment should not be politicized. What we should be doing with this amendment is to provide every single dollar that we need to conduct the operations now going on in Kosovo. We should not provide one dime less and neither should we try to use this to play games on the budget. I am baffled by the fact that last week this House declined to support the operation that is now going on in Kosovo and yet this week the same people largely who opposed that motion last week are now suggesting that we should double the amount of spending for the operation which last week they said we should not be conducting at all. That gives confusion and inconsistency a bad name, in my view. I did not vote for the administration's original request on Rambouillet. I did not feel that we knew enough about what the results of that discussion would be in order to cast a vote at that time, and I did not believe in giving any administration a blank check. I know that there are a lot of people in this House who do not like President Clinton, and I think a number of Members have gone overboard in trying to politicize this war because they have such intense dislike for the President. I have seen quote after quote in the newspapers saying, ``This is Clinton's war; we do not want our fingerprints on it.'' I think those kind of comments are irresponsible. This is the West's war. This is NATO's war, and in my view the President is doing the best that anybody can under very difficult circumstances. That does not mean I agree with everything the administration is doing. I agree with Senator McCain. I believe that this war needs to be prosecuted in the most aggressive way possible, and I believe that the best way to assure the success of the air war is to threaten use of a ground war. So I do not necessarily agree with the administration on the fine points, but he is our commander in chief. He is the elected leader of this country. We are also elected leaders of this country, and we ought to be behaving ourselves in a manner consistent with the honor that has been afforded to each and every one of us by our constituents. I do not think we do that when we in one week decide that this House is not going to support that operation and again then in the next week decide but, oh, by the way, we are going to use this war as an excuse to move billions of dollars from next year's appropriation into this year's appropriation, put an emergency label on it which will enable the Congress next year to spend $3 billion more on military pork that has nothing whatsoever to do with Kosovo. In my view, that is what is happening today. So I want to explain the amendment that I will be offering later in debate. The administration has asked about $6 billion to cover the cost of this war, plus they have asked for humanitarian assistance. The amount that they have requested will pay for an 800-plane war, 24 hours a day bombing of virtually every target in Yugoslavia that one could imagine anywhere. That will be sustained on a daily basis through the end of the fiscal year. In addition, the administration has asked for enough money to fund not just the 24 Apaches which are on the ground now but a contingent of 50 Apaches, over $700 million just to finance that. The administration has taken the full estimate of what it will cost to run that war for the remainder of the fiscal year and then, on top of that, just to be safe, they have tossed in an extra $850 million in a contingency fund. That is such a large operation that we will run out of targets before we run out of ammunition. We will, in the words of Winston Churchill, be ``bouncing the rubble'' if this continues that long. Now, the committee has done some other things. The committee has decided that they would raise the spending for that bill by 125 percent. They have asked for $460 million more in munitions. My amendment says, all right, we are not going to argue about that. We will accept it. They have asked for $400 million for procurement; and again we say, okay, we are not going to argue about it. We will accept it. They have asked for a billion dollars more than the President in order to avoid having to reprogram from low-priority items to high- priority items. We say, okay, I doubt that that is fully necessary, but we will accept that, too. What we do not accept are two other items in the bill. The budget rules under which we are supposed to operate say that if we want to designate something as an emergency so that it is exempted from the spending caps in our budget, it must meet two tests. It must, first of all, be an unanticipated expense; and, secondly, it has to be an expense which will be incurred immediately for an immediate purpose. There is $3 billion in the committee bill that does not meet those tests. Example: They have $2 billion in this bill for operation and maintenance, which is nothing but moving forward from next year's budget $2 billion into this emergency supplemental. There is also $1 billion added for 77 military construction projects in Europe. Thirty-seven of those items are not even on the Pentagon's 5-year plan. We do not have physical plans for them. We do not really know what they are, but the money is thrown at them. Why? The reason is very simple. There is an agenda on the part of some Members of this House which says let us throw in as much as we can, call it an emergency Kosovo supplemental, even though it is not at all related to Kosovo, and that will enable us to spend $3 billion that we would not have otherwise been able to spend on the regular bill for pork. That is what is going on, in my view. So my amendment does not accept that $3 billion. The only military construction items that we fund are those directly related to Kosovo, three key items that are fully justified, including one operation at Aviano, and the rest we simply say deal with next year in the regular course of business because they do not relate to Kosovo. In addition, we do two other things. The committee has $1.8 billion in the bill which they suggest should go for a pay raise and a retirement enrichment package for the troops. I support that. The problem with the committee amendment is that it is subject to authorization, and that means that even though the money is in the bill it cannot actually be delivered to the troops until further legislation is passed. So we remove that impediment. We remove the language that makes that subject to authorization so that this is not just a potentially empty promise. We actually deliver the money that we say we want to provide. So, in other words, we make that pay raise real. The second thing we do is to take the supplemental, which the House passed previously, which is languishing in the Senate, which the President asked for it to deal with the largest natural disaster in this hemisphere in this century, Hurricane Mitch, and to deal with the emergency facing many farmers because of weather and because of the collapse of prices, and we include that in this package as well so that we take care of the home front as well as Kosovo. If we do not deal with that, we face the prospect of 100,000 refugees trying to make their way from Central American countries through Texas, through New Mexico, and it would cost us far more than dealing with it in this bill. So what I will simply say is, this amendment is an honest effort to reach a compromise position between the administration's original request and the committee's overblown efforts to throw in everything but the kitchen sink in this bill so that they can make more room for military pork in the regular military bill. I would urge that my colleagues do the responsible thing, adopt the Obey amendment when it is offered. That will send a signal that we are, indeed, going to play this straight. We are not going to abuse the emergency power that we have in the Budget Act but we will make every dime that is necessary to the Kosovo operation available and then some. We are exceeding what the administration thinks is necessary by almost a billion dollars, just in their own request, plus the additional items that [[Page H2828]] we are accepting in this package. I would urge support for the amendment when the time comes. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I want to respond to the gentleman as I did in the meeting during the Committee on Appropriations. There is no military pork in this bill. I do not know where he comes up with that argument. There is no pork in this bill. This is as clean a national defense bill as this House has ever seen. There are no Member requests added to this bill, either when we wrote the bill or when we went to the full committee. It is just not the case. The gentleman says that the way we are spending money we are going to run out of targets before we run out of ammunition. The gentleman is not paying attention to what is happening in Kosovo. The gentleman should look closely at what General Hawley said just a few days ago when he pointed out that we were running short of not only air launch cruise missiles, we were running short of JDAMs, we were running short of all kinds of ammunition; and if they were called on to do another MRC somewhere in the world they could not do it. This is the general who has the responsibility to get there if we have to get there. Mr. Chairman, today's message is a real message. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) talks about the votes last week. Those were votes that gave Members an opportunity to voice their opinion in resolutions that were not truly binding. This is the real message. This is a message to Milosevic that we are serious. This is a message to our troops that we are serious in providing them with what they need to accomplish their mission and to give themselves a little protection while they are at it. This is a good bill. The amendment that the gentleman is talking about is not even before the House yet. It will be later. {time} 1200 It is a good bill. It is a clean bill. Just one last point, Mr. Chairman. If the President decides that the items that we have recommended in this bill are not truly emergencies, do Members know what he has to do to stop them from being spent? Nothing. Because, Mr. Chairman, unless the President determines that these items are emergencies, they do not get spent. The investment is not made. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is putting up a red herring. I did not say that there was pork in this bill. What I said was they are jamming $3 billion of nonemergency items into this bill to make room for $3 billion worth of pork in the defense bill which will follow this. The gentleman knows that is what I said. He ought to keep it straight. Secondly, with respect to the JDAMS, the gentleman says there is a shortage of JDAM missiles. I would point out that the gentleman is the chairman of the subcommittee that cut that last year by 17 percent. The gentleman cut the President's request for that item by 13 percent in dollar terms and 17 percent in missile numbers. The President's request provides full funding for the restoration of every missile they need for JDAMS. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the chairman on the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, I would first like to thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and to express my deep appreciation to my chairman for the job he has done in this bill. I must say, in spite of the protest of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), I would like to express my appreciation to him as well for a very cooperative effort on this bill. The fact is that in terms of dollar amounts both sides are relatively very close to each other, largely because we all recognize that there is urgency in moving this bill forward; that the dollars that are involved are a reflection of the President's views. Mr. Chairman, the two sides are really not that far apart on the dollar amounts that we are discussing here today. There are differences in the policy. But before going further, let me express my deep appreciation for my colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Jack Murtha), the ranking member of my subcommittee, who from the very beginning has cooperated with us in developing the defense portion of this $12.9 billion package. There is not a Member of the House who is more concerned about the men and women who are potentially in harm's way that we are attempting to respond to by way of this supplemental. In developing this bill, we have consulted and worked very closely with not just the members of our subcommittee, but the members of the authorizing committee, as well as the military commanders in the field. My colleagues, this is a clean bill. It contains no special projects. As I would react to the comments of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) regarding the pay provision of this bill, the $1.84 billion that are involved, we did not provide authorizing language because we were working very closely with the authorizers, who feel that is a centerpart of their own legislation. Indeed, their willingness to continue to work cooperatively with us in the months ahead are very important to both the committees, the authorizers as well as the appropriators, who are concerned about this matter. I would like to be very specific about one fact: That is, the vote today will send a very, very clear message to Slobodan Milosevic, who is watching our actions on the floor today. Our saying clearly that we intend to support our troops as long as they have to serve in this region and are faced with this challenge is very, very important, and Milosevic is watching the Members today. Beyond that, I would like to say to my colleagues, it is very important that while we may disagree on policy, that we come together in the final analysis on this vote. Nothing could be worse than to see sizeable numbers walk away from this very, very important bill. In the final analysis, I am convinced that there will be solid support for the $11.24 billion of this bill that is reflected in the defense portions of the bill. Like a number of my colleagues, I have had the opportunity to spend many hours at the White House in recent weeks in briefings with the Commander in Chief and his national security team. If there was one message I heard from the President last week, it was this: ``Provide the additional funds if you must, but--and this is very important--do not slow this package down.'' My colleagues, we must act and act now. Allow me to take just a minute to outline a few of the details of this $12.9 billion emergency spending package. The bill has four parts--the largest of which is within the Defense Subcommittee's jurisdiction. For these activities, we have included $11.24 billion which is $5.8 billion above the President's request. The increases are all in areas of identified shortages (spare parts, depot maintenance, training and op tempo funding shortfalls, and base operation costs). I could go on . . . and on about this package and our effort in Kosovo. In the interest of time and moving this bill forward, I want to simply urge my colleagues to support our military, send a strong signal to our troops in the field, and support this supplemental. In closing, I would like to thank the following people on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee staff, Chairman Young's staff, as well as my own personal staff, for their valuable assistance with this bill: Kevin Roper, Greg Dahlberg, Doug Gregory, Tina Jonas, Alicia Jones, Paul Juola, David Kilian, Jenny Mummert, Steve Nixon, David Norquist, Betsy Phillips, Trish Ryan, Greg Walters, Sherry Young, Harry Glenn, Brian Mabry, Arlene Willis, Leitia White, Grady Bourn, Julie Hooks, and Dave LesStrang. Mr. Chairman, as we go forward with amendments later, there will be plenty of time for discussions regarding the detail. But between now and then, it is very important that the Members recognize that the entire public is watching our response and our expression of support or lack of support for our troops as they work in harm's way. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding time to me. First let me say that I agree very much, this is an American, this is a NATO conflict. We in this House should speak with one voice and not be putting it on political terms. I feel very, very deeply about this. I support this [[Page H2829]] bill. At the end of the day, I support this bill. It is a major step toward my goal of making this the year of the troops, the year in which we recognize the needs of those who serve in uniform. I also support it because it ensures that our military has more than adequate resources to carry out the Kosovo air campaign. It bolsters the military readiness of our forces in the Balkan theater and the Armed Forces as a whole. It provides the resources to help address the tragic humanitarian situation in Kosovo. The basis of this bill was a $6 billion administration request in emergency funding. The request was based on four categories, military operations in and around Kosovo, Kosovar refugee relief, munitions and readiness munitions, and Desert Thunder and Desert Fox military operations. In addition to the administration's original request, our colleagues on the Committee on Appropriations have seen fit to add to the President's request, both to the humanitarian request and the matter request. There are some problems that our colleagues had on the Committee on Appropriations, and they have tried to address them. They have added certain categories. Mr. Chairman, allow me to comment on two major additions to the original request. First, this bill sends the right signal to our men and women in uniform by providing $1.8 billion to fund the administration's military pay and retirement package, of course, conditioned upon the enactment of authorizing legislation through our Committee on Armed Services. Second, this bill provides for $1.1 billion in unrequested funds for overseas military construction in Europe and Southeast Asia. The inclusion of these projects is similar to the inclusion of the administration's pay and retirement package. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to state that our Armed Forces have been neglected for too long. It is time we give our troops the supplies and the support that they need. Without any coherent international blueprint, the White House has bombed its way around the globe, while dropping troops far and wide for ill-defined peacemaking duties. This policy has gutted the American military, which now must be rebuilt. Last week a bipartisan Congress voted against President Clinton's undeclared war in Yugoslavia. Both Republican and Democrat members are reluctant to commit U.S. forces to a mission that has no strategic plan, no timetable, no definition of victory, and no clear national interests to defend. While there are many reasons for that vote, lack of support for our troops was not one of them. To the contrary, the leadership in this Congress supports our troops, but does not support President Clinton's frivolous deployment of them and haphazard waste of military resources. The last 6 years of focusless military use, combined with defense spending cuts, have stretched our forces to the point where serious gaps in our national security are developing. Not only have we left the Pacific without a single carrier to defend our allies and troops stationed in the region, but the carriers we are sending to combat in Yugoslavia and Iraq are drastically undermanned. For example, the Teddy Roosevelt is 418 sailors short, and the Enterprise is lacking an alarming 495 sailors. In total, the U.S. Navy is 18,000 sailors short, and those that are there are at risk because of it. Such shortfalls in recruits and equipment have reached crises level. This Congress wants to rebuild our depleted defense and make sure that our troops have the supplies they need while they are deployed wherever they are deployed. President Clinton has only proposed to cover the basic costs of his war in Yugoslavia. This Congress wants to take this opportunity to bolster our hollowed out military. This emergency spending will provide much needed munitions, spare parts, construction, training, recruiting, and pay increases for our military. Amid reports that the United States is running out of cruise missiles and cannibalizing some planes for parts, America must not forget that military weaknesses only challenge our enemies to take costly and dangerous risks. Mr. Chairman, the time is now to deter our enemies by bolstering our military. We have to send a very clear message that while we may not support the President's ill-advised war, we do support our troops wholeheartedly. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. CALLAHAN. Mr. Chairman, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs, I have the responsibility to recommend to the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) the funding level for the programs that come under the jurisdiction of our subcommittee. We have one overwhelming priority, and that is assistance to the refugees who have been driven from their homes and separated from their loved ones. The President requested a total of $566 million from our subcommittee as part of his supplemental request. We have approved the entire amount of this funding level, but we made some modifications. The funding would be allocated as follows: --$96 million for international disaster assistance; --$105 million for support of frontline States, including $5 million to document war crimes; --$75 million for Eastern Europe assistance to assist refugees within the borders of the frontline States; and --a total of $290 million for the refugee assistance accounts. Part of the original request was $170 million for an account normally used for long-term development projects. We have tried to discover how the funds would be used. We were told that $95 million of this amount would be made available for refugee assistance, but we already have separate accounts for the refugee and humanitarian services. When the administration officials were asked about that, we were told these funds could be used for such things as, and I quote, ``NGO development and microcredit activities.'' I have nothing against either of these programs, but they are part of an ongoing program in Eastern Europe. They are emphatically not part of emergency refugee and humanitarian assistance. The President and Secretary of State have also discussed plans for a Southeastern Europe initiative. I fear they could use these fund to begin such an initiative, and I do not think they should, without adequate consultation and further approval by the Congress. Therefore we moved $95 million from these vaguely defined activities and made that additional amount available for direct support for refugees and humanitarian assistance. Indeed, this money, the $566 million, may not be sufficient. The administration is constantly changing its policies. It is difficult to know when enough is enough. One day the President announces that we are going to send 20,000 refugees to Guantanamo Bay. A few days later, the Secretary of State says, no, we are not going to do that, we are going to keep the refugees there because we then would be ethnically cleansing the region. The next day the Vice President of the United States, Mr. Gore, announces that 20,000 refugees are coming to the United States. At the drop of a hat, the Vice President committed $40 million for the transport and relocation of refugees to our country. I was not consulted about this. Neither was anyone else in Congress. I'm not sure the Secretary knew. Now we're left with a $40 million bill, and we must in good conscience pay for it. It leaves a hole in the request. I strongly encourage Members to vote in favor of this bill. It does not give the Administration a pot of money to begin the reconstruction of Southeastern Europe. If they want to begin a massive new spending program in the region, they need to come back to Congress. They and we also need to win the war. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price). Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, there are only 147 days left [[Page H2830]] in this fiscal year. This ought to be a time when we come together with bipartisan resolve to deal with three urgent crises that we could not have anticipated last September: the agricultural collapse in rural America, the devastation of Central America by Hurricanes Mitch and Georges, and the need to support our troops and the allied cause in Kosovo. The Republican majority, unfortunately, has sought to politicize the NATO operation in the Balkans, withholding support for it last week, amid well-publicized arm-twisting, and now this week voting to double the funding for it! In so doing, the majority hopes to use the NATO campaign to leverage funding for unrelated military purposes. We should reject partisan gamesmanship that toys with the lives of our troops and the refugees, that trivializes the dignity of our rural citizens, and that belittles the suffering of the people in Central America. {time} 1215 We should, instead, adopt the Obey substitute. The Obey amendment is well-crafted. It is responsible. It addresses the military and humanitarian needs in the Balkans, fully funding the Department of Defense's request. It includes the most justifiable of the defense add-ons, particularly those involving military pay and readiness. It addresses the disaster in Honduras and Guatemala, a situation we ignore at our Nation's peril; for if we ignore it, we will surely face a new flood of immigration northward and greater vulnerability to drug trafficking. And the Obey amendment provides desperately needed funding to meet the collapse in the price of agricultural commodities. Mr. Chairman, the House today has an opportunity to reverse its recent history of politicizing issues that should not be politicized and defaulting on the responsibility of a great power. Support the Obey substitute. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. It is really interesting to me. This bill is not about any political gamesmanship, and it has not been politicized. This bill is a true, clean national defense bill that provides what the national defense establishment needs to protect our Nation and to protect our troops. The only partisanship that I have heard in this debate today has come from that side, accusing this side of being partisan or of politicizing or of political gamesmanship. I want to assure the gentleman that there is no politics in this at all. For speakers on the other side to try to create the atmosphere that this is somehow political is just not right. We have gone overboard to make sure over the years that national defense issues were not political and there were no political games being played on them. I want to call attention just one more time to the fact that the only issue of politicization or political gamesmanship is coming from over there. And the fact that they say it does not make it true, and I insist that it is not true. This is a clean national defense appropriations bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson), chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time; and I rise today to speak in strong support of the bill before us. Voting ``yes'' today is a vote for our troops. It says definitively that their daily sacrifices will not be downsized or neglected any more. It shows that we can transcend our differences and unite for their well-being. Our troops are in harm's way, so it is our duty and responsibility to muster the resolve to keep them safe. I worked closely with military commanders in the field to make this bill a reality. It is responsible and tightly honed to our most immediate and unanticipated needs in the Balkans and Southwest Asia. Remember that our European infrastructure is a critical staging area. It supports our mission in the Balkans and our training and pass- through for operations in the Gulf and Africa. The time for leadership is now. There simply has been a failure to support our troops living and working overseas under very dangerous conditions. Let us pass this bill and show our troops that the sacrifices they make are worthy of the support of Congress and the American people. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi). Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time; and I want to again commend him for his leadership in bringing the Obey amendment to the floor because, indeed, it is the responsible approach to the challenge that we have before us. Let me just first say that it is hard to believe that nearly 7 months ago there was the greatest natural disaster, the worst natural disaster in the history of our hemisphere since they recorded these things in Central America. I do not think the American people know that we have still not passed out of this Congress legislation for the disaster assistance that the American people in their compassion wanted us to do. The assistance is still hung up on budgetary gimmickry and offsets and the rest. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) corrects the situation in his amendment. Mr. Obey also recognizes the large number of refugees who have come out of Kosovo and puts $175 million more in for humanitarian assistance. Again, whatever we may think of the war effort and the air strikes, the American people, God bless them, want the refugees to have humanitarian assistance. It also addresses the needs of America's farmers here at home, and it is responsible in meeting the needs of our military. And how proud we are of our people in the military, both for putting themselves in harm's way and their courage, but also for the military's role in humanitarian assistance. They assisted most recently in the Balkans, and they were indeed largely responsible for our initial emergency assistance in Central America, even though we still have not paid the bill on that. So I ask my colleagues, when the time comes for amendments, to vote and support the Obey amendment and to do so with the knowledge that it is the responsible approach to meeting the needs of our military, to addressing the pay raise issue for the military, to honoring the commitment of the American people for humanitarian assistance and to do it in a fiscally sound way. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Armed Services. (Mr. SPENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to congratulate the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young); the chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis); the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha); and other members of the Committee on Appropriations for ``leaning forward'' and doing the right thing by addressing some of the most serious readiness and quality-of- life shortfalls facing our military today. Our Nation's military leaders publicly testified last fall that the President's 6-year defense plan fell about $150 billion short of meeting basic military requirements. Knowing how politics work in this town, we should assume that the Joint Chiefs' estimate of the military shortfalls is understated. The budget resolution added about $8 billion to the President's underfunded defense request. It is a small but necessary first step. This supplemental adds approximately $6 billion in additional funding to address some of the military's most critical shortfalls. Our military has the responsibility of being able to fight two multiple theatre wars and conduct multiple concurrent smaller-scale contingency operations throughout the world. We have been cutting back on our military since 1989, to the extent that we could not conduct one at the time. The Army and the Air Force has been cut back 45 percent, the Navy 36 percent, the Marines 12 percent. At the same time, our operational requirements have increased 300 percent. The problem is past being an emergency, it is critical. [[Page H2831]] These additional funds will only begin to help our military to properly defend this country with a minimum loss of American lives among our service people. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the distinguished minority whip. Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, it has been more than a month since Milosevic launched his campaign of genocide. His atrocities continue to fill us with horror and revulsion: more than a million people, driven from their homes at gunpoint; entire towns burned to the ground; men and boys forced to kneel by the side of the road and shot dead before their families; grandparents burned alive because they were too feeble to flee. In the face of such brutal and systematic slaughter, we need to send him a message, an unmistakable message of American resolve, that his campaign of genocide will not stand. We have to set partisan politics aside. We have to stand united behind our troops. Even as we speak today, our pilots are hurtling off the decks of our carriers, risking their lives to save the Kosovars and see justice done. We have to give them the support that they need in order to win. Milosevic cannot be allowed to prevail. The scale and the details of his inhumanity ignite our moral indignation. Accounts coming out of Kosovo are shocking: Serbian soldiers knock on the windows of a refugee's car as he and his family wait to cross the border, and they were bearing AK-47s. They demanded $6,000 from the driver or his two daughters in the back seat. The father empties his wallet, but it is not enough. So the soldiers pull the young women from the car, drag them to a nearby garage, where several other soldiers, also wearing masks, were waiting. The gang rape lasted hours. Last Friday, in the village of Pristina, Serbian troops murdered 44 Kosovars, shooting some and burning others alive. When relatives of the victims went to bury their loved ones, the soldiers told them that they would be shot, too, if they uttered a single prayer for the dead. And as one of the Kosovars said later, perhaps our silence helps them to deal with their shame. Well, Mr. Chairman, America cannot and we will not be silent as long as Milosevic continues his campaign of terror. As a superpower at the peak of our prosperity and our strength, America cannot look the other way and we cannot be diverted by our partisan differences. I have been troubled by the procedures that the House adopted today, and we have seen people trying to play politics with the President's funding request for these troops. I would urge my colleagues to unite behind the Obey substitute. It is clean, it is straightforward, it is a strong response to the present emergency, and by all prognostications it will be what we end up with next week on this floor. In the end, we have to move this process forward; and we have to do it today. Now is the time to accept the responsibilities of leadership. Now is the time to support our troops in the field, who are risking their lives so that this century might end better than it began. Now is the time to send Milosevic an unmistakable message: At the end of the 20th century, the world will not stand for genocide. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the Chair how much time the gentleman yielded back? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The gentleman from Wisconsin has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. OBEY. No, I asked how much time did the gentleman yield back? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The gentleman yielded back 30 seconds, and the gentleman from Wisconsin has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. OBEY. I thank the Chairman. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the Committee on Armed Services. Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, I think I probably just wasted 20 seconds of my time. I was not prepared for this. Let me be very brief now that my time has been stressed. Mr. Chairman, I would ask Members to permit the eyes of their minds to see a greater vision here and to not be so narrow to think of this as Kosovo and Kosovo only. What concerns me most is that this is about funding a national military strategy. Sure, there are discussions of politics. Frankly, I do not mind that, because it is policy that drives all of this. The President's singular responsibility is to lay out the vital national security interests, then we come up with a military strategy as the means to enforce those. The President has one that is different, and I would not go along with it, but it is for us to transition out of a posture of global engagement in over 135 countries around the world and then fight and win nearly two simultaneous major regional conflicts. The open secret is we do not have the force structure today to do that. Let me share some facts with my colleagues about the size of the military today. In the Gulf War, we had 18 Army divisions, we had 24 Air Force tactical wings, and in the Navy ships and submarines we had 546 in 1990. Today, we are down to 10 divisions in the Army, 13 tactical wings in the Air Force, and a 315 ship Navy. That is a reduction in the Army by 250,000, in the Air Force 150,000, and in the Navy 200,000. So what have we done by taking a foreign policy of global engagement? We have taken our military and we have stretched this great military of ours very thin all over the world. Now we find ourselves with depleted munitions. Depleted munitions. And not only in our ammo. When I hear individuals say, well, we are going to have to cut back or we are only going to have to replace bullet for bullet, do my colleagues realize the risks we are being placed in in other scenarios around the world? {time} 1230 Do not take it from me. Take it from General Shelton. General Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, ``Suffice it to say that what we have going on right now in Kosovo is a major theater of war with air assets. The fighting in Yugoslavia now means a much higher risk of a second regional conflict, protracted, with significant casualties.'' My colleagues, vote for this. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick). (Ms. KILPATRICK asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Ms. KILPATRICK. Mr. Chairman, I thank my ranking member for yielding me the time, a new member on the committee, for this most important discussion. It is not whether we support our troops or not. We all do. We support them because they are risking their lives for us as the greatest country in the world. What we do not support at this time is the doubling of appropriations that our President gave us. We are 2 months away from doing the 2000 budget. We ought to be using this time and the extra $6 billion to put during that time in the appropriations process. It is important that we take care of education for our children, health care for our seniors, housing for those who need it. It is unfortunate we will not be able to get to that during this budget time because of the caps, the political caps that were set. Let us not say we do not support the troops, because we do. Let us support the President, our troops, and the Obey amendment. Mr. Chairman, I rise in vehement opposition to H.R. 1664, the Kosovo Supplemental Appropriations for FY 1999. More than half of this bill's $13 billion appropriation is being used for funds that will eventually come from the budget surplus, and only illustrates the collective cowardice of the majority in refusing to consider these military construction projects under normal budgetary procedures. In essence, this bill gives to the military and takes from Social Security and Medicare. What is worse is that the doubling of the increase of this bill, from President Clinton's original request for $6 billion to $13 billion, has not seen a resulting increase in aid to the refugees or in humanitarian aid, ostensibly a key part of this bill's original purpose. As one of the newest members on the House Appropriations Committee, I know that Appropriations are about three things: what you need, what you want, and what you'd like to have. This bill [[Page H2832]] was half of what we need, some of what members want, and no increase in what the refugees would like to have. In order to accurately discuss this vote, we must first place these issues into context. After the breakdown of peace talks between Serbian and Kosovar representatives in Rambouillet, France in mid-March, Serb forces entered the Yugoslav province of Kosovo en masse. An estimated one million Kosovar Albanians have since been driven from their homes, most into Albania and Macedonia, thousands of Kosovar Albanian men remain missing, and reports of rape and murder continue to trickle out of the embattled region. In response, on March 24, 1999, NATO began a massive bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces and installations in Serbia and Kosovo. Close to 1,000 NATO warplanes are now involved in the airwar (with over 80% from the United States). President Clinton recently called up an additional 33,000 reservists to aid in the fight, and asked Congress for $6.0 billion in supplemental funds to pay for current operations. This $6 billion request more than adequately addresses the commitment of the United States to this unified effort. The Republicans on the House Appropriation Committee drafted a $12.9 billion emergency FY99 supplemental spending bill. On top of the White House's $6.05 billion spending request for the Kosovo mission, Republican appropriators included $1.8 billion to fund a pay raise and retirement package through the remainder of FY99, and the bill includes an additional $74 million in unspecified worldwide ``minor'' construction projects, provides additional funding for munitions purchases and operational readiness needs, such as recruitment, replacement of spare parts, equipment maintenance and military base operations, primarily with additional funds for operational readiness and for a military pay raise and retirement package. The bonus of this additional $6 billion in funding is that it does not have to be offset by similar reductions in spending in other programs. This is nothing but fiscal legerdemain, a sorry billion-dollar version of the old New York City street con of the three shells and the pea. Unfortunately, the elderly and the poor are the hapless victims of this con job. The majority of the Democratic members on this Committee see this for what it is: nothing but an attempt to fund defense projects that will not fit within the tight spending caps for FY00. I must reiterate one key point: there is not one thin dime of an increase in refugee assistance funding in this bill. There are certainly many items within this legislation that are probably worthy of the support of scarce taxpayer dollars. Let me make this clear: I do not oppose the hard working and brave persons in our nation's Armed Forces from getting a well deserved pay increase, better housing, a much improved retirement program, or other such items as needed. I object that my Republican colleagues do not have the collective courage to make the hard decisions and difficult choices inherent in being a member of the august House Appropriations Committee. What is becoming abundantly clear is one thing: the budgetary caps on spending will have to be increased. Only then will Congress be able to address our urgent domestic needs, preserve our vital fiscal surplus, and protect our nation's seniors who have already paid the price for the freedom that most of us enjoy but all of us take for granted. Our colleague, Congressman David Obey, will offer a sensible amendment that provides a total of $11 billion in funding. Of this sum, funds that do not have to be authorized will go toward an immediate pay increase for the military; an increase in the operations and maintenance in Kosovo, and more importantly, $175 million more for the refugees of Kosovo. If Congressman Obey's amendment is reasonable, sensible, and deserves the support of the majority of our colleagues. I would like to paraphrase a recent article in the New York Times, in closing, on this issue: This is nothing but Republican cowardice triumphing over principle; don't vote for the war, don't take responsibility for the war, don't vote to stop the war, but vote to pump more money into a policy we don't like. American taxpayers pay us a good sum of money to make difficult decisions, and it is time that we stepped up to the plate and made them. It is my hope that the wisdom of Congress will prevail in supporting the amendment of Congressman Obey. Without the adoption of the Obey amendment, this bill must be rejected by the House of Representatives. Congress must preserve the surplus for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We must increase the caps on domestic and defense spending, and do so while maintaining the integrity of our balanced budget. These issues are not mutually exclusive, but Congress must have the courage to make these tough decisions. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Interior. (Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, today I rise to pay tribute to the two brave servicemen who lost their lives this week during a training exercise in Albania, Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Reichert of Wisconsin and Chief Warrant Officer David Gibbs from my district. David Gibbs grew up in Massillon, Ohio, graduating from Washington High School in 1980. I wish to express my sympathy to David's family, his mother Dorothy, his wife and three children. Their pain can only be eased by the knowledge that his country salutes his heroic service. These two men chose to serve their country in one the noblest traditions and they made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting the principles and freedoms which the United States represents. All our men and women in uniform are to be commended for their service. We must support our troops so they can do the job they so valiantly volunteered to do when they joined the armed services. And we in Congress have a responsibility to ensure that our troops have the resources they need for the best equipment, the most reliable and advanced technology, and the needed training to make them the most respected military in the world. I will support this bill, because while we do not yet know the cause of this latest tragedy, the American people need to know that we are adequately supporting our men and women in uniform. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver). Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, the reason we are here today is that the President submitted a request for $6 billion for the Kosovo operation, which would bring us to the end of fiscal year 1999; and that was clearly an unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstance that came up because of the actions of Slobodan Milosevic. Those situations ought to be few and far between, outside the caps, without any offsets, a true emergency. The underlying bill that has come from committee more than doubles the amount from the President's request on a set of premises which are entirely different. It is operating on a premise that goes far beyond, entirely beyond the definition of ``emergency,'' which had been part of the President's request, and much of it is only partly related to Kosovo. On the other hand, we have before us an amendment that has been offered by the minority ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), which responsibly but narrowly deals with the Kosovo situation and other emergencies along the way. Who can deny that we look rather foolish in this Congress, and I really am embarrassed by it, that 7 months after what had happened in Central America and 7 months after we truly knew way back in the fall that the problems on our farms were very serious, yet we passed that legislation 3 months ago. It has not moved to a final conclusion, the emergencies relating to Central America and related to the farms, and we have not done anything about it. The Obey amendment deals with both of those issues and also makes certain that the pay increase for our military personnel is funded now, not uncertain as to when and if it will be authorized, but funded now. So it deals with the emergencies in Kosovo, on the farms, in Central America, and our military personnel. I urge support for the amendment. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays). Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, we have a world crisis and an acute national emergency. I support this $12.9 billion spending package. I have opposed past defense spending bills because we have failed, in my judgment, to take four difficult but necessary steps to realize savings and modernize our military. We failed to: cancel procurement of expensive, unnecessary weapon systems; close unnecessary military bases and depots at home and abroad; and require our allies, particularly Europeans, to pay [[Page H2833]] their fair share of stationing U.S. troops in their countries. And we are still funding a military designed to fight the Cold War, but the Cold War has ended. The world today is different, and it is a more dangerous place. The war in Kosovo costs money, and lots of money. As a fiscal conservative during my 11 years in Congress with consistently high marks from the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, and other fiscal watch dog organizations, I am on the floor to say we need to appropriate this money. The fact is that we have already spent it. Over the past 40 years, the United States has deployed troops around the world 41 times, but 33 of these 41 missions have come in just the past 8 years. We need to realize the tremendous costs we accrue when we deploy our military to troubled spots all over the world. These missions cost money and resources which we have taken from other parts of the defense budget. Today, our military has a number of acute needs that must be addressed. We need to do a better job attracting new enlistees and maintaining the necessary level of reenlistment. Our soldiers, sailors, pilots and Marines are overworked and underpaid. Our training has suffered. We do not have the necessary munitions for potential new encounters. And we are cannibalizing existing planes, tanks, and other equipment for their parts in order to make other equipment operational. Mr. Chairman, many of us have not supported the President's decision to use military force in Yugoslavia and did not vote for last week's resolution endorsing air strikes. But the fact is, there is a war in Kosovo and we need to pay for it. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the effort being undertaken by NATO in Kosovo and Serbia. I rise in agreement that we must fund our armed services at increased levels to ensure that our security and our ability to join our allies in maintaining international security and stability is maintained. Mr. Chairman, I believe the President has requested the correct sum for the war until September 30th of this year, $5.9 billion. I believe that war against Serbian genocide and ethnic cleansing is absolutely essential for us to participate in. But, Mr. Chairman, I also believe we must assist our farmers who find themselves in real crises, and the almost 1 million victims of this hemisphere's worst natural disaster in this century. I therefore, Mr. Chairman, will support the Obey amendment. I will also, I tell my good friend and the chairman, be supporting increasing the fiscal year 2000 appropriations for our military to ensure the objectives of which I have spoken and of which the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has so eloquently spoken. Our national interest, our commitment to humanitarian and moral principles, will be served by the passage of the Obey amendment and it will do so in a way more consiste

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KOSOVO AND SOUTHWEST ASIA EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999
(House of Representatives - May 06, 1999)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H2823-H2892] KOSOVO AND SOUTHWEST ASIA EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999 The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 159 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 1664. {time} 1138 In the Committee of the Whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the [[Page H2824]] consideration of the bill (H.R. 1664) making emergency supplemental appropriations for military operations, refugee relief, and humanitarian assistance relating to the conflict in Kosovo, and for military operations in Southwest Asia for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1999, and for other purposes with Mr. Thornberry in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time. Under the rule, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young). Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the bill we bring to the floor today was approved by the Committee on Appropriations just last week. The bill is designed to meet the emergency requirements of the War in Kosovo and to provide for other readiness-related items that are being exacerbated by the War in Kosovo. Mr. Chairman, this war has stretched our military resources terribly thin. Mr. Chairman, the President sent his request to the Congress, the committee reacted to that request quite expeditiously, and we made some changes. We provided the items that were identified by the President, but the committee, working in a nonpartisan way with our relative subcommittees, and I want to compliment the chairmen and ranking members of the subcommittees who were involved here in this particular bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) from the Subcommittee on Defense, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan) from the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) from the Subcommittee on Military Construction, and also the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) who had an important part of this bill relative to embassy security; and these chairmen, plus their ranking members, did really an outstanding job. I want to call special attention to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) who played such an important role in helping us put this bill together. It was a good bipartisan effort, and I hope that the vote today will reflect the bipartisanship with which we bring this bill. As we provide for the replacement of the air-launched cruise missiles, or the JDAMs munitions or the various other weapons that have been fired, bombs that have been dropped, aircraft that have been lost, we have a very clean bill that is related strictly to these issues of national defense and specifically relative to the Kosovo war, and, Mr. Chairman, it is a war. At this point it is basically an air war, it is a war, and the sorties are numerous, the targets being hit are numerous, and it is important that we move this bill quickly. Now, Mr. Chairman, one of the things that we added to this bill that has made some controversy has to do with pay, pay for those serving in our uniform who are risking their lives today in the Kosovo region and who are prepared to risk their lives in other regions of the world where they have been deployed for whatever their mission might be should something erupt, for example, in Korea with the North Koreans in southwest Asia, with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis, and the money we put in for this pay raise is subject to authorization by the authorizing committee. It was a commitment that we made to our authorizers that they could write the rules, but we wanted to make the money available today. Mr. Chairman, I was happy to see the President on TV last night from an air base in Germany telling the American military folks there that we were going to do some good things in this bill including a pay raise, so I suspect what little controversy there might have been about that issue hopefully would have gone away overnight. {time} 1145 Also, we addressed the problem of the redux having to do with retirement. We are having a real problem with retention of forces. We are having a real problem with recruiting. We think it is important to do something for the men and women who wear the uniform and who go to war, many of whom are at war today. I am going to leave the details of the bill to the subcommittee chairman. After the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) takes his time, I am going to call on our subcommittee chairman to present the details of the bill. The bill before the House includes $12.9 billion for military operations relating to Kosovo and Operation Desert Fox and for refugee assistance. In developing this bill we consulted with the authorizing committees, the minority, the Pentagon, and our military commanders in the field. The bill has four parts--the largest of which is with the Defense Subcommittee's jurisdiction. For these activities the bill includes $11.24 billion, $5.8 billion above the President's request. The increases are all in areas of identified shortages (weapons procurement, spare parts, depot maintenance, recruitment, training, and base operations). In addition, the bill includes funding for increased military pay and retirement benefits at $1.8 billion subject to authorization and a presidential emergency declaration. The bill includes $1 billion above the President for military construction; $830 million is for mission-related items, $240 million for the NATO security investment program. This funding is directly related to troop readiness. It goes to our European bases. It is executable in 1 year, and it is mission directed. It is not pork. Third, the bill fully funds the President's request for refugee assistance. These funds are redirected away from reconstruction to refugees only. There is not reconstruction money in this bill for Serbia. There is $105 million in assistance to the front line states: Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro. There is a burden-sharing requirement. Finally, the bill includes a relatively small amount of money ($70 million) for security at U.S. Balkan missions and for repairs at damaged embassies. Mr. Chairman, this is a very good bill. Some will say it's too much. Some will say it's too little. But we have developed a bill that does what I believe we should be doing: (1) We have expeditiously moved to support our troops and fund the administration's request to prosecute the war. (2) We have addressed critical shortfalls in our defense preparedness: shortfalls that hinder our security and embarrass us for not adequately supporting our military. (3) We have sent a powerful, morale-boosting signal that we want to increase pay--while giving the authorizers a major role in that decision. (4) We have met the needs of helpless women and children whose tragedy is our tragedy. (5) We have provided funds to help meet the security needs of our people in the Balkans. (6) We have sent a message of support to the front line states whose help we must have it we are to succeed. (7) Because the funds over the President's request are designated as contingent emergencies--it is the President who must make the decisions about whether or when to spend. But we have given him the tools to succeed. Mr. Chairman, this is the right bill for this situation. I urge all members to support it and send a strong signal to our troops and to Milosevic. Mr. Chairman, at this point in the Record I would like to insert a table reflecting the details of the reported bill. [[Page H2825]] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH06MY99.000 [[Page H2826]] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH06MY99.001 [[Page H2827]] Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 11 minutes. Mr. Chairman, as I said on debate on the rule, this is one of the most serious votes that we will be casting this year. If we cannot play it straight on this amendment, we cannot play it straight on anything. This amendment should not be politicized. What we should be doing with this amendment is to provide every single dollar that we need to conduct the operations now going on in Kosovo. We should not provide one dime less and neither should we try to use this to play games on the budget. I am baffled by the fact that last week this House declined to support the operation that is now going on in Kosovo and yet this week the same people largely who opposed that motion last week are now suggesting that we should double the amount of spending for the operation which last week they said we should not be conducting at all. That gives confusion and inconsistency a bad name, in my view. I did not vote for the administration's original request on Rambouillet. I did not feel that we knew enough about what the results of that discussion would be in order to cast a vote at that time, and I did not believe in giving any administration a blank check. I know that there are a lot of people in this House who do not like President Clinton, and I think a number of Members have gone overboard in trying to politicize this war because they have such intense dislike for the President. I have seen quote after quote in the newspapers saying, ``This is Clinton's war; we do not want our fingerprints on it.'' I think those kind of comments are irresponsible. This is the West's war. This is NATO's war, and in my view the President is doing the best that anybody can under very difficult circumstances. That does not mean I agree with everything the administration is doing. I agree with Senator McCain. I believe that this war needs to be prosecuted in the most aggressive way possible, and I believe that the best way to assure the success of the air war is to threaten use of a ground war. So I do not necessarily agree with the administration on the fine points, but he is our commander in chief. He is the elected leader of this country. We are also elected leaders of this country, and we ought to be behaving ourselves in a manner consistent with the honor that has been afforded to each and every one of us by our constituents. I do not think we do that when we in one week decide that this House is not going to support that operation and again then in the next week decide but, oh, by the way, we are going to use this war as an excuse to move billions of dollars from next year's appropriation into this year's appropriation, put an emergency label on it which will enable the Congress next year to spend $3 billion more on military pork that has nothing whatsoever to do with Kosovo. In my view, that is what is happening today. So I want to explain the amendment that I will be offering later in debate. The administration has asked about $6 billion to cover the cost of this war, plus they have asked for humanitarian assistance. The amount that they have requested will pay for an 800-plane war, 24 hours a day bombing of virtually every target in Yugoslavia that one could imagine anywhere. That will be sustained on a daily basis through the end of the fiscal year. In addition, the administration has asked for enough money to fund not just the 24 Apaches which are on the ground now but a contingent of 50 Apaches, over $700 million just to finance that. The administration has taken the full estimate of what it will cost to run that war for the remainder of the fiscal year and then, on top of that, just to be safe, they have tossed in an extra $850 million in a contingency fund. That is such a large operation that we will run out of targets before we run out of ammunition. We will, in the words of Winston Churchill, be ``bouncing the rubble'' if this continues that long. Now, the committee has done some other things. The committee has decided that they would raise the spending for that bill by 125 percent. They have asked for $460 million more in munitions. My amendment says, all right, we are not going to argue about that. We will accept it. They have asked for $400 million for procurement; and again we say, okay, we are not going to argue about it. We will accept it. They have asked for a billion dollars more than the President in order to avoid having to reprogram from low-priority items to high- priority items. We say, okay, I doubt that that is fully necessary, but we will accept that, too. What we do not accept are two other items in the bill. The budget rules under which we are supposed to operate say that if we want to designate something as an emergency so that it is exempted from the spending caps in our budget, it must meet two tests. It must, first of all, be an unanticipated expense; and, secondly, it has to be an expense which will be incurred immediately for an immediate purpose. There is $3 billion in the committee bill that does not meet those tests. Example: They have $2 billion in this bill for operation and maintenance, which is nothing but moving forward from next year's budget $2 billion into this emergency supplemental. There is also $1 billion added for 77 military construction projects in Europe. Thirty-seven of those items are not even on the Pentagon's 5-year plan. We do not have physical plans for them. We do not really know what they are, but the money is thrown at them. Why? The reason is very simple. There is an agenda on the part of some Members of this House which says let us throw in as much as we can, call it an emergency Kosovo supplemental, even though it is not at all related to Kosovo, and that will enable us to spend $3 billion that we would not have otherwise been able to spend on the regular bill for pork. That is what is going on, in my view. So my amendment does not accept that $3 billion. The only military construction items that we fund are those directly related to Kosovo, three key items that are fully justified, including one operation at Aviano, and the rest we simply say deal with next year in the regular course of business because they do not relate to Kosovo. In addition, we do two other things. The committee has $1.8 billion in the bill which they suggest should go for a pay raise and a retirement enrichment package for the troops. I support that. The problem with the committee amendment is that it is subject to authorization, and that means that even though the money is in the bill it cannot actually be delivered to the troops until further legislation is passed. So we remove that impediment. We remove the language that makes that subject to authorization so that this is not just a potentially empty promise. We actually deliver the money that we say we want to provide. So, in other words, we make that pay raise real. The second thing we do is to take the supplemental, which the House passed previously, which is languishing in the Senate, which the President asked for it to deal with the largest natural disaster in this hemisphere in this century, Hurricane Mitch, and to deal with the emergency facing many farmers because of weather and because of the collapse of prices, and we include that in this package as well so that we take care of the home front as well as Kosovo. If we do not deal with that, we face the prospect of 100,000 refugees trying to make their way from Central American countries through Texas, through New Mexico, and it would cost us far more than dealing with it in this bill. So what I will simply say is, this amendment is an honest effort to reach a compromise position between the administration's original request and the committee's overblown efforts to throw in everything but the kitchen sink in this bill so that they can make more room for military pork in the regular military bill. I would urge that my colleagues do the responsible thing, adopt the Obey amendment when it is offered. That will send a signal that we are, indeed, going to play this straight. We are not going to abuse the emergency power that we have in the Budget Act but we will make every dime that is necessary to the Kosovo operation available and then some. We are exceeding what the administration thinks is necessary by almost a billion dollars, just in their own request, plus the additional items that [[Page H2828]] we are accepting in this package. I would urge support for the amendment when the time comes. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I want to respond to the gentleman as I did in the meeting during the Committee on Appropriations. There is no military pork in this bill. I do not know where he comes up with that argument. There is no pork in this bill. This is as clean a national defense bill as this House has ever seen. There are no Member requests added to this bill, either when we wrote the bill or when we went to the full committee. It is just not the case. The gentleman says that the way we are spending money we are going to run out of targets before we run out of ammunition. The gentleman is not paying attention to what is happening in Kosovo. The gentleman should look closely at what General Hawley said just a few days ago when he pointed out that we were running short of not only air launch cruise missiles, we were running short of JDAMs, we were running short of all kinds of ammunition; and if they were called on to do another MRC somewhere in the world they could not do it. This is the general who has the responsibility to get there if we have to get there. Mr. Chairman, today's message is a real message. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) talks about the votes last week. Those were votes that gave Members an opportunity to voice their opinion in resolutions that were not truly binding. This is the real message. This is a message to Milosevic that we are serious. This is a message to our troops that we are serious in providing them with what they need to accomplish their mission and to give themselves a little protection while they are at it. This is a good bill. The amendment that the gentleman is talking about is not even before the House yet. It will be later. {time} 1200 It is a good bill. It is a clean bill. Just one last point, Mr. Chairman. If the President decides that the items that we have recommended in this bill are not truly emergencies, do Members know what he has to do to stop them from being spent? Nothing. Because, Mr. Chairman, unless the President determines that these items are emergencies, they do not get spent. The investment is not made. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is putting up a red herring. I did not say that there was pork in this bill. What I said was they are jamming $3 billion of nonemergency items into this bill to make room for $3 billion worth of pork in the defense bill which will follow this. The gentleman knows that is what I said. He ought to keep it straight. Secondly, with respect to the JDAMS, the gentleman says there is a shortage of JDAM missiles. I would point out that the gentleman is the chairman of the subcommittee that cut that last year by 17 percent. The gentleman cut the President's request for that item by 13 percent in dollar terms and 17 percent in missile numbers. The President's request provides full funding for the restoration of every missile they need for JDAMS. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the chairman on the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, I would first like to thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and to express my deep appreciation to my chairman for the job he has done in this bill. I must say, in spite of the protest of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), I would like to express my appreciation to him as well for a very cooperative effort on this bill. The fact is that in terms of dollar amounts both sides are relatively very close to each other, largely because we all recognize that there is urgency in moving this bill forward; that the dollars that are involved are a reflection of the President's views. Mr. Chairman, the two sides are really not that far apart on the dollar amounts that we are discussing here today. There are differences in the policy. But before going further, let me express my deep appreciation for my colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Jack Murtha), the ranking member of my subcommittee, who from the very beginning has cooperated with us in developing the defense portion of this $12.9 billion package. There is not a Member of the House who is more concerned about the men and women who are potentially in harm's way that we are attempting to respond to by way of this supplemental. In developing this bill, we have consulted and worked very closely with not just the members of our subcommittee, but the members of the authorizing committee, as well as the military commanders in the field. My colleagues, this is a clean bill. It contains no special projects. As I would react to the comments of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) regarding the pay provision of this bill, the $1.84 billion that are involved, we did not provide authorizing language because we were working very closely with the authorizers, who feel that is a centerpart of their own legislation. Indeed, their willingness to continue to work cooperatively with us in the months ahead are very important to both the committees, the authorizers as well as the appropriators, who are concerned about this matter. I would like to be very specific about one fact: That is, the vote today will send a very, very clear message to Slobodan Milosevic, who is watching our actions on the floor today. Our saying clearly that we intend to support our troops as long as they have to serve in this region and are faced with this challenge is very, very important, and Milosevic is watching the Members today. Beyond that, I would like to say to my colleagues, it is very important that while we may disagree on policy, that we come together in the final analysis on this vote. Nothing could be worse than to see sizeable numbers walk away from this very, very important bill. In the final analysis, I am convinced that there will be solid support for the $11.24 billion of this bill that is reflected in the defense portions of the bill. Like a number of my colleagues, I have had the opportunity to spend many hours at the White House in recent weeks in briefings with the Commander in Chief and his national security team. If there was one message I heard from the President last week, it was this: ``Provide the additional funds if you must, but--and this is very important--do not slow this package down.'' My colleagues, we must act and act now. Allow me to take just a minute to outline a few of the details of this $12.9 billion emergency spending package. The bill has four parts--the largest of which is within the Defense Subcommittee's jurisdiction. For these activities, we have included $11.24 billion which is $5.8 billion above the President's request. The increases are all in areas of identified shortages (spare parts, depot maintenance, training and op tempo funding shortfalls, and base operation costs). I could go on . . . and on about this package and our effort in Kosovo. In the interest of time and moving this bill forward, I want to simply urge my colleagues to support our military, send a strong signal to our troops in the field, and support this supplemental. In closing, I would like to thank the following people on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee staff, Chairman Young's staff, as well as my own personal staff, for their valuable assistance with this bill: Kevin Roper, Greg Dahlberg, Doug Gregory, Tina Jonas, Alicia Jones, Paul Juola, David Kilian, Jenny Mummert, Steve Nixon, David Norquist, Betsy Phillips, Trish Ryan, Greg Walters, Sherry Young, Harry Glenn, Brian Mabry, Arlene Willis, Leitia White, Grady Bourn, Julie Hooks, and Dave LesStrang. Mr. Chairman, as we go forward with amendments later, there will be plenty of time for discussions regarding the detail. But between now and then, it is very important that the Members recognize that the entire public is watching our response and our expression of support or lack of support for our troops as they work in harm's way. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding time to me. First let me say that I agree very much, this is an American, this is a NATO conflict. We in this House should speak with one voice and not be putting it on political terms. I feel very, very deeply about this. I support this [[Page H2829]] bill. At the end of the day, I support this bill. It is a major step toward my goal of making this the year of the troops, the year in which we recognize the needs of those who serve in uniform. I also support it because it ensures that our military has more than adequate resources to carry out the Kosovo air campaign. It bolsters the military readiness of our forces in the Balkan theater and the Armed Forces as a whole. It provides the resources to help address the tragic humanitarian situation in Kosovo. The basis of this bill was a $6 billion administration request in emergency funding. The request was based on four categories, military operations in and around Kosovo, Kosovar refugee relief, munitions and readiness munitions, and Desert Thunder and Desert Fox military operations. In addition to the administration's original request, our colleagues on the Committee on Appropriations have seen fit to add to the President's request, both to the humanitarian request and the matter request. There are some problems that our colleagues had on the Committee on Appropriations, and they have tried to address them. They have added certain categories. Mr. Chairman, allow me to comment on two major additions to the original request. First, this bill sends the right signal to our men and women in uniform by providing $1.8 billion to fund the administration's military pay and retirement package, of course, conditioned upon the enactment of authorizing legislation through our Committee on Armed Services. Second, this bill provides for $1.1 billion in unrequested funds for overseas military construction in Europe and Southeast Asia. The inclusion of these projects is similar to the inclusion of the administration's pay and retirement package. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to state that our Armed Forces have been neglected for too long. It is time we give our troops the supplies and the support that they need. Without any coherent international blueprint, the White House has bombed its way around the globe, while dropping troops far and wide for ill-defined peacemaking duties. This policy has gutted the American military, which now must be rebuilt. Last week a bipartisan Congress voted against President Clinton's undeclared war in Yugoslavia. Both Republican and Democrat members are reluctant to commit U.S. forces to a mission that has no strategic plan, no timetable, no definition of victory, and no clear national interests to defend. While there are many reasons for that vote, lack of support for our troops was not one of them. To the contrary, the leadership in this Congress supports our troops, but does not support President Clinton's frivolous deployment of them and haphazard waste of military resources. The last 6 years of focusless military use, combined with defense spending cuts, have stretched our forces to the point where serious gaps in our national security are developing. Not only have we left the Pacific without a single carrier to defend our allies and troops stationed in the region, but the carriers we are sending to combat in Yugoslavia and Iraq are drastically undermanned. For example, the Teddy Roosevelt is 418 sailors short, and the Enterprise is lacking an alarming 495 sailors. In total, the U.S. Navy is 18,000 sailors short, and those that are there are at risk because of it. Such shortfalls in recruits and equipment have reached crises level. This Congress wants to rebuild our depleted defense and make sure that our troops have the supplies they need while they are deployed wherever they are deployed. President Clinton has only proposed to cover the basic costs of his war in Yugoslavia. This Congress wants to take this opportunity to bolster our hollowed out military. This emergency spending will provide much needed munitions, spare parts, construction, training, recruiting, and pay increases for our military. Amid reports that the United States is running out of cruise missiles and cannibalizing some planes for parts, America must not forget that military weaknesses only challenge our enemies to take costly and dangerous risks. Mr. Chairman, the time is now to deter our enemies by bolstering our military. We have to send a very clear message that while we may not support the President's ill-advised war, we do support our troops wholeheartedly. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. CALLAHAN. Mr. Chairman, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs, I have the responsibility to recommend to the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) the funding level for the programs that come under the jurisdiction of our subcommittee. We have one overwhelming priority, and that is assistance to the refugees who have been driven from their homes and separated from their loved ones. The President requested a total of $566 million from our subcommittee as part of his supplemental request. We have approved the entire amount of this funding level, but we made some modifications. The funding would be allocated as follows: --$96 million for international disaster assistance; --$105 million for support of frontline States, including $5 million to document war crimes; --$75 million for Eastern Europe assistance to assist refugees within the borders of the frontline States; and --a total of $290 million for the refugee assistance accounts. Part of the original request was $170 million for an account normally used for long-term development projects. We have tried to discover how the funds would be used. We were told that $95 million of this amount would be made available for refugee assistance, but we already have separate accounts for the refugee and humanitarian services. When the administration officials were asked about that, we were told these funds could be used for such things as, and I quote, ``NGO development and microcredit activities.'' I have nothing against either of these programs, but they are part of an ongoing program in Eastern Europe. They are emphatically not part of emergency refugee and humanitarian assistance. The President and Secretary of State have also discussed plans for a Southeastern Europe initiative. I fear they could use these fund to begin such an initiative, and I do not think they should, without adequate consultation and further approval by the Congress. Therefore we moved $95 million from these vaguely defined activities and made that additional amount available for direct support for refugees and humanitarian assistance. Indeed, this money, the $566 million, may not be sufficient. The administration is constantly changing its policies. It is difficult to know when enough is enough. One day the President announces that we are going to send 20,000 refugees to Guantanamo Bay. A few days later, the Secretary of State says, no, we are not going to do that, we are going to keep the refugees there because we then would be ethnically cleansing the region. The next day the Vice President of the United States, Mr. Gore, announces that 20,000 refugees are coming to the United States. At the drop of a hat, the Vice President committed $40 million for the transport and relocation of refugees to our country. I was not consulted about this. Neither was anyone else in Congress. I'm not sure the Secretary knew. Now we're left with a $40 million bill, and we must in good conscience pay for it. It leaves a hole in the request. I strongly encourage Members to vote in favor of this bill. It does not give the Administration a pot of money to begin the reconstruction of Southeastern Europe. If they want to begin a massive new spending program in the region, they need to come back to Congress. They and we also need to win the war. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price). Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, there are only 147 days left [[Page H2830]] in this fiscal year. This ought to be a time when we come together with bipartisan resolve to deal with three urgent crises that we could not have anticipated last September: the agricultural collapse in rural America, the devastation of Central America by Hurricanes Mitch and Georges, and the need to support our troops and the allied cause in Kosovo. The Republican majority, unfortunately, has sought to politicize the NATO operation in the Balkans, withholding support for it last week, amid well-publicized arm-twisting, and now this week voting to double the funding for it! In so doing, the majority hopes to use the NATO campaign to leverage funding for unrelated military purposes. We should reject partisan gamesmanship that toys with the lives of our troops and the refugees, that trivializes the dignity of our rural citizens, and that belittles the suffering of the people in Central America. {time} 1215 We should, instead, adopt the Obey substitute. The Obey amendment is well-crafted. It is responsible. It addresses the military and humanitarian needs in the Balkans, fully funding the Department of Defense's request. It includes the most justifiable of the defense add-ons, particularly those involving military pay and readiness. It addresses the disaster in Honduras and Guatemala, a situation we ignore at our Nation's peril; for if we ignore it, we will surely face a new flood of immigration northward and greater vulnerability to drug trafficking. And the Obey amendment provides desperately needed funding to meet the collapse in the price of agricultural commodities. Mr. Chairman, the House today has an opportunity to reverse its recent history of politicizing issues that should not be politicized and defaulting on the responsibility of a great power. Support the Obey substitute. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. It is really interesting to me. This bill is not about any political gamesmanship, and it has not been politicized. This bill is a true, clean national defense bill that provides what the national defense establishment needs to protect our Nation and to protect our troops. The only partisanship that I have heard in this debate today has come from that side, accusing this side of being partisan or of politicizing or of political gamesmanship. I want to assure the gentleman that there is no politics in this at all. For speakers on the other side to try to create the atmosphere that this is somehow political is just not right. We have gone overboard to make sure over the years that national defense issues were not political and there were no political games being played on them. I want to call attention just one more time to the fact that the only issue of politicization or political gamesmanship is coming from over there. And the fact that they say it does not make it true, and I insist that it is not true. This is a clean national defense appropriations bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson), chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time; and I rise today to speak in strong support of the bill before us. Voting ``yes'' today is a vote for our troops. It says definitively that their daily sacrifices will not be downsized or neglected any more. It shows that we can transcend our differences and unite for their well-being. Our troops are in harm's way, so it is our duty and responsibility to muster the resolve to keep them safe. I worked closely with military commanders in the field to make this bill a reality. It is responsible and tightly honed to our most immediate and unanticipated needs in the Balkans and Southwest Asia. Remember that our European infrastructure is a critical staging area. It supports our mission in the Balkans and our training and pass- through for operations in the Gulf and Africa. The time for leadership is now. There simply has been a failure to support our troops living and working overseas under very dangerous conditions. Let us pass this bill and show our troops that the sacrifices they make are worthy of the support of Congress and the American people. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi). Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time; and I want to again commend him for his leadership in bringing the Obey amendment to the floor because, indeed, it is the responsible approach to the challenge that we have before us. Let me just first say that it is hard to believe that nearly 7 months ago there was the greatest natural disaster, the worst natural disaster in the history of our hemisphere since they recorded these things in Central America. I do not think the American people know that we have still not passed out of this Congress legislation for the disaster assistance that the American people in their compassion wanted us to do. The assistance is still hung up on budgetary gimmickry and offsets and the rest. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) corrects the situation in his amendment. Mr. Obey also recognizes the large number of refugees who have come out of Kosovo and puts $175 million more in for humanitarian assistance. Again, whatever we may think of the war effort and the air strikes, the American people, God bless them, want the refugees to have humanitarian assistance. It also addresses the needs of America's farmers here at home, and it is responsible in meeting the needs of our military. And how proud we are of our people in the military, both for putting themselves in harm's way and their courage, but also for the military's role in humanitarian assistance. They assisted most recently in the Balkans, and they were indeed largely responsible for our initial emergency assistance in Central America, even though we still have not paid the bill on that. So I ask my colleagues, when the time comes for amendments, to vote and support the Obey amendment and to do so with the knowledge that it is the responsible approach to meeting the needs of our military, to addressing the pay raise issue for the military, to honoring the commitment of the American people for humanitarian assistance and to do it in a fiscally sound way. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Armed Services. (Mr. SPENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to congratulate the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young); the chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis); the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha); and other members of the Committee on Appropriations for ``leaning forward'' and doing the right thing by addressing some of the most serious readiness and quality-of- life shortfalls facing our military today. Our Nation's military leaders publicly testified last fall that the President's 6-year defense plan fell about $150 billion short of meeting basic military requirements. Knowing how politics work in this town, we should assume that the Joint Chiefs' estimate of the military shortfalls is understated. The budget resolution added about $8 billion to the President's underfunded defense request. It is a small but necessary first step. This supplemental adds approximately $6 billion in additional funding to address some of the military's most critical shortfalls. Our military has the responsibility of being able to fight two multiple theatre wars and conduct multiple concurrent smaller-scale contingency operations throughout the world. We have been cutting back on our military since 1989, to the extent that we could not conduct one at the time. The Army and the Air Force has been cut back 45 percent, the Navy 36 percent, the Marines 12 percent. At the same time, our operational requirements have increased 300 percent. The problem is past being an emergency, it is critical. [[Page H2831]] These additional funds will only begin to help our military to properly defend this country with a minimum loss of American lives among our service people. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the distinguished minority whip. Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, it has been more than a month since Milosevic launched his campaign of genocide. His atrocities continue to fill us with horror and revulsion: more than a million people, driven from their homes at gunpoint; entire towns burned to the ground; men and boys forced to kneel by the side of the road and shot dead before their families; grandparents burned alive because they were too feeble to flee. In the face of such brutal and systematic slaughter, we need to send him a message, an unmistakable message of American resolve, that his campaign of genocide will not stand. We have to set partisan politics aside. We have to stand united behind our troops. Even as we speak today, our pilots are hurtling off the decks of our carriers, risking their lives to save the Kosovars and see justice done. We have to give them the support that they need in order to win. Milosevic cannot be allowed to prevail. The scale and the details of his inhumanity ignite our moral indignation. Accounts coming out of Kosovo are shocking: Serbian soldiers knock on the windows of a refugee's car as he and his family wait to cross the border, and they were bearing AK-47s. They demanded $6,000 from the driver or his two daughters in the back seat. The father empties his wallet, but it is not enough. So the soldiers pull the young women from the car, drag them to a nearby garage, where several other soldiers, also wearing masks, were waiting. The gang rape lasted hours. Last Friday, in the village of Pristina, Serbian troops murdered 44 Kosovars, shooting some and burning others alive. When relatives of the victims went to bury their loved ones, the soldiers told them that they would be shot, too, if they uttered a single prayer for the dead. And as one of the Kosovars said later, perhaps our silence helps them to deal with their shame. Well, Mr. Chairman, America cannot and we will not be silent as long as Milosevic continues his campaign of terror. As a superpower at the peak of our prosperity and our strength, America cannot look the other way and we cannot be diverted by our partisan differences. I have been troubled by the procedures that the House adopted today, and we have seen people trying to play politics with the President's funding request for these troops. I would urge my colleagues to unite behind the Obey substitute. It is clean, it is straightforward, it is a strong response to the present emergency, and by all prognostications it will be what we end up with next week on this floor. In the end, we have to move this process forward; and we have to do it today. Now is the time to accept the responsibilities of leadership. Now is the time to support our troops in the field, who are risking their lives so that this century might end better than it began. Now is the time to send Milosevic an unmistakable message: At the end of the 20th century, the world will not stand for genocide. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the Chair how much time the gentleman yielded back? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The gentleman from Wisconsin has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. OBEY. No, I asked how much time did the gentleman yield back? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The gentleman yielded back 30 seconds, and the gentleman from Wisconsin has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. OBEY. I thank the Chairman. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the Committee on Armed Services. Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, I think I probably just wasted 20 seconds of my time. I was not prepared for this. Let me be very brief now that my time has been stressed. Mr. Chairman, I would ask Members to permit the eyes of their minds to see a greater vision here and to not be so narrow to think of this as Kosovo and Kosovo only. What concerns me most is that this is about funding a national military strategy. Sure, there are discussions of politics. Frankly, I do not mind that, because it is policy that drives all of this. The President's singular responsibility is to lay out the vital national security interests, then we come up with a military strategy as the means to enforce those. The President has one that is different, and I would not go along with it, but it is for us to transition out of a posture of global engagement in over 135 countries around the world and then fight and win nearly two simultaneous major regional conflicts. The open secret is we do not have the force structure today to do that. Let me share some facts with my colleagues about the size of the military today. In the Gulf War, we had 18 Army divisions, we had 24 Air Force tactical wings, and in the Navy ships and submarines we had 546 in 1990. Today, we are down to 10 divisions in the Army, 13 tactical wings in the Air Force, and a 315 ship Navy. That is a reduction in the Army by 250,000, in the Air Force 150,000, and in the Navy 200,000. So what have we done by taking a foreign policy of global engagement? We have taken our military and we have stretched this great military of ours very thin all over the world. Now we find ourselves with depleted munitions. Depleted munitions. And not only in our ammo. When I hear individuals say, well, we are going to have to cut back or we are only going to have to replace bullet for bullet, do my colleagues realize the risks we are being placed in in other scenarios around the world? {time} 1230 Do not take it from me. Take it from General Shelton. General Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, ``Suffice it to say that what we have going on right now in Kosovo is a major theater of war with air assets. The fighting in Yugoslavia now means a much higher risk of a second regional conflict, protracted, with significant casualties.'' My colleagues, vote for this. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick). (Ms. KILPATRICK asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Ms. KILPATRICK. Mr. Chairman, I thank my ranking member for yielding me the time, a new member on the committee, for this most important discussion. It is not whether we support our troops or not. We all do. We support them because they are risking their lives for us as the greatest country in the world. What we do not support at this time is the doubling of appropriations that our President gave us. We are 2 months away from doing the 2000 budget. We ought to be using this time and the extra $6 billion to put during that time in the appropriations process. It is important that we take care of education for our children, health care for our seniors, housing for those who need it. It is unfortunate we will not be able to get to that during this budget time because of the caps, the political caps that were set. Let us not say we do not support the troops, because we do. Let us support the President, our troops, and the Obey amendment. Mr. Chairman, I rise in vehement opposition to H.R. 1664, the Kosovo Supplemental Appropriations for FY 1999. More than half of this bill's $13 billion appropriation is being used for funds that will eventually come from the budget surplus, and only illustrates the collective cowardice of the majority in refusing to consider these military construction projects under normal budgetary procedures. In essence, this bill gives to the military and takes from Social Security and Medicare. What is worse is that the doubling of the increase of this bill, from President Clinton's original request for $6 billion to $13 billion, has not seen a resulting increase in aid to the refugees or in humanitarian aid, ostensibly a key part of this bill's original purpose. As one of the newest members on the House Appropriations Committee, I know that Appropriations are about three things: what you need, what you want, and what you'd like to have. This bill [[Page H2832]] was half of what we need, some of what members want, and no increase in what the refugees would like to have. In order to accurately discuss this vote, we must first place these issues into context. After the breakdown of peace talks between Serbian and Kosovar representatives in Rambouillet, France in mid-March, Serb forces entered the Yugoslav province of Kosovo en masse. An estimated one million Kosovar Albanians have since been driven from their homes, most into Albania and Macedonia, thousands of Kosovar Albanian men remain missing, and reports of rape and murder continue to trickle out of the embattled region. In response, on March 24, 1999, NATO began a massive bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces and installations in Serbia and Kosovo. Close to 1,000 NATO warplanes are now involved in the airwar (with over 80% from the United States). President Clinton recently called up an additional 33,000 reservists to aid in the fight, and asked Congress for $6.0 billion in supplemental funds to pay for current operations. This $6 billion request more than adequately addresses the commitment of the United States to this unified effort. The Republicans on the House Appropriation Committee drafted a $12.9 billion emergency FY99 supplemental spending bill. On top of the White House's $6.05 billion spending request for the Kosovo mission, Republican appropriators included $1.8 billion to fund a pay raise and retirement package through the remainder of FY99, and the bill includes an additional $74 million in unspecified worldwide ``minor'' construction projects, provides additional funding for munitions purchases and operational readiness needs, such as recruitment, replacement of spare parts, equipment maintenance and military base operations, primarily with additional funds for operational readiness and for a military pay raise and retirement package. The bonus of this additional $6 billion in funding is that it does not have to be offset by similar reductions in spending in other programs. This is nothing but fiscal legerdemain, a sorry billion-dollar version of the old New York City street con of the three shells and the pea. Unfortunately, the elderly and the poor are the hapless victims of this con job. The majority of the Democratic members on this Committee see this for what it is: nothing but an attempt to fund defense projects that will not fit within the tight spending caps for FY00. I must reiterate one key point: there is not one thin dime of an increase in refugee assistance funding in this bill. There are certainly many items within this legislation that are probably worthy of the support of scarce taxpayer dollars. Let me make this clear: I do not oppose the hard working and brave persons in our nation's Armed Forces from getting a well deserved pay increase, better housing, a much improved retirement program, or other such items as needed. I object that my Republican colleagues do not have the collective courage to make the hard decisions and difficult choices inherent in being a member of the august House Appropriations Committee. What is becoming abundantly clear is one thing: the budgetary caps on spending will have to be increased. Only then will Congress be able to address our urgent domestic needs, preserve our vital fiscal surplus, and protect our nation's seniors who have already paid the price for the freedom that most of us enjoy but all of us take for granted. Our colleague, Congressman David Obey, will offer a sensible amendment that provides a total of $11 billion in funding. Of this sum, funds that do not have to be authorized will go toward an immediate pay increase for the military; an increase in the operations and maintenance in Kosovo, and more importantly, $175 million more for the refugees of Kosovo. If Congressman Obey's amendment is reasonable, sensible, and deserves the support of the majority of our colleagues. I would like to paraphrase a recent article in the New York Times, in closing, on this issue: This is nothing but Republican cowardice triumphing over principle; don't vote for the war, don't take responsibility for the war, don't vote to stop the war, but vote to pump more money into a policy we don't like. American taxpayers pay us a good sum of money to make difficult decisions, and it is time that we stepped up to the plate and made them. It is my hope that the wisdom of Congress will prevail in supporting the amendment of Congressman Obey. Without the adoption of the Obey amendment, this bill must be rejected by the House of Representatives. Congress must preserve the surplus for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We must increase the caps on domestic and defense spending, and do so while maintaining the integrity of our balanced budget. These issues are not mutually exclusive, but Congress must have the courage to make these tough decisions. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Interior. (Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, today I rise to pay tribute to the two brave servicemen who lost their lives this week during a training exercise in Albania, Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Reichert of Wisconsin and Chief Warrant Officer David Gibbs from my district. David Gibbs grew up in Massillon, Ohio, graduating from Washington High School in 1980. I wish to express my sympathy to David's family, his mother Dorothy, his wife and three children. Their pain can only be eased by the knowledge that his country salutes his heroic service. These two men chose to serve their country in one the noblest traditions and they made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting the principles and freedoms which the United States represents. All our men and women in uniform are to be commended for their service. We must support our troops so they can do the job they so valiantly volunteered to do when they joined the armed services. And we in Congress have a responsibility to ensure that our troops have the resources they need for the best equipment, the most reliable and advanced technology, and the needed training to make them the most respected military in the world. I will support this bill, because while we do not yet know the cause of this latest tragedy, the American people need to know that we are adequately supporting our men and women in uniform. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver). Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, the reason we are here today is that the President submitted a request for $6 billion for the Kosovo operation, which would bring us to the end of fiscal year 1999; and that was clearly an unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstance that came up because of the actions of Slobodan Milosevic. Those situations ought to be few and far between, outside the caps, without any offsets, a true emergency. The underlying bill that has come from committee more than doubles the amount from the President's request on a set of premises which are entirely different. It is operating on a premise that goes far beyond, entirely beyond the definition of ``emergency,'' which had been part of the President's request, and much of it is only partly related to Kosovo. On the other hand, we have before us an amendment that has been offered by the minority ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), which responsibly but narrowly deals with the Kosovo situation and other emergencies along the way. Who can deny that we look rather foolish in this Congress, and I really am embarrassed by it, that 7 months after what had happened in Central America and 7 months after we truly knew way back in the fall that the problems on our farms were very serious, yet we passed that legislation 3 months ago. It has not moved to a final conclusion, the emergencies relating to Central America and related to the farms, and we have not done anything about it. The Obey amendment deals with both of those issues and also makes certain that the pay increase for our military personnel is funded now, not uncertain as to when and if it will be authorized, but funded now. So it deals with the emergencies in Kosovo, on the farms, in Central America, and our military personnel. I urge support for the amendment. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays). Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, we have a world crisis and an acute national emergency. I support this $12.9 billion spending package. I have opposed past defense spending bills because we have failed, in my judgment, to take four difficult but necessary steps to realize savings and modernize our military. We failed to: cancel procurement of expensive, unnecessary weapon systems; close unnecessary military bases and depots at home and abroad; and require our allies, particularly Europeans, to pay [[Page H2833]] their fair share of stationing U.S. troops in their countries. And we are still funding a military designed to fight the Cold War, but the Cold War has ended. The world today is different, and it is a more dangerous place. The war in Kosovo costs money, and lots of money. As a fiscal conservative during my 11 years in Congress with consistently high marks from the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, and other fiscal watch dog organizations, I am on the floor to say we need to appropriate this money. The fact is that we have already spent it. Over the past 40 years, the United States has deployed troops around the world 41 times, but 33 of these 41 missions have come in just the past 8 years. We need to realize the tremendous costs we accrue when we deploy our military to troubled spots all over the world. These missions cost money and resources which we have taken from other parts of the defense budget. Today, our military has a number of acute needs that must be addressed. We need to do a better job attracting new enlistees and maintaining the necessary level of reenlistment. Our soldiers, sailors, pilots and Marines are overworked and underpaid. Our training has suffered. We do not have the necessary munitions for potential new encounters. And we are cannibalizing existing planes, tanks, and other equipment for their parts in order to make other equipment operational. Mr. Chairman, many of us have not supported the President's decision to use military force in Yugoslavia and did not vote for last week's resolution endorsing air strikes. But the fact is, there is a war in Kosovo and we need to pay for it. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the effort being undertaken by NATO in Kosovo and Serbia. I rise in agreement that we must fund our armed services at increased levels to ensure that our security and our ability to join our allies in maintaining international security and stability is maintained. Mr. Chairman, I believe the President has requested the correct sum for the war until September 30th of this year, $5.9 billion. I believe that war against Serbian genocide and ethnic cleansing is absolutely essential for us to participate in. But, Mr. Chairman, I also believe we must assist our farmers who find themselves in real crises, and the almost 1 million victims of this hemisphere's worst natural disaster in this century. I therefore, Mr. Chairman, will support the Obey amendment. I will also, I tell my good friend and the chairman, be supporting increasing the fiscal year 2000 appropriations for our military to ensure the objectives of which I have spoken and of which the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has so eloquently spoken. Our national interest, our commitment to humanitarian and moral principles, will be served by the passage of the Obey amendment and it will do so in a way more consistent, I beli

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KOSOVO AND SOUTHWEST ASIA EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999
(House of Representatives - May 06, 1999)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H2823-H2892] KOSOVO AND SOUTHWEST ASIA EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999 The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 159 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 1664. {time} 1138 In the Committee of the Whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the [[Page H2824]] consideration of the bill (H.R. 1664) making emergency supplemental appropriations for military operations, refugee relief, and humanitarian assistance relating to the conflict in Kosovo, and for military operations in Southwest Asia for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1999, and for other purposes with Mr. Thornberry in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time. Under the rule, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young). Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the bill we bring to the floor today was approved by the Committee on Appropriations just last week. The bill is designed to meet the emergency requirements of the War in Kosovo and to provide for other readiness-related items that are being exacerbated by the War in Kosovo. Mr. Chairman, this war has stretched our military resources terribly thin. Mr. Chairman, the President sent his request to the Congress, the committee reacted to that request quite expeditiously, and we made some changes. We provided the items that were identified by the President, but the committee, working in a nonpartisan way with our relative subcommittees, and I want to compliment the chairmen and ranking members of the subcommittees who were involved here in this particular bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) from the Subcommittee on Defense, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan) from the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) from the Subcommittee on Military Construction, and also the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) who had an important part of this bill relative to embassy security; and these chairmen, plus their ranking members, did really an outstanding job. I want to call special attention to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) who played such an important role in helping us put this bill together. It was a good bipartisan effort, and I hope that the vote today will reflect the bipartisanship with which we bring this bill. As we provide for the replacement of the air-launched cruise missiles, or the JDAMs munitions or the various other weapons that have been fired, bombs that have been dropped, aircraft that have been lost, we have a very clean bill that is related strictly to these issues of national defense and specifically relative to the Kosovo war, and, Mr. Chairman, it is a war. At this point it is basically an air war, it is a war, and the sorties are numerous, the targets being hit are numerous, and it is important that we move this bill quickly. Now, Mr. Chairman, one of the things that we added to this bill that has made some controversy has to do with pay, pay for those serving in our uniform who are risking their lives today in the Kosovo region and who are prepared to risk their lives in other regions of the world where they have been deployed for whatever their mission might be should something erupt, for example, in Korea with the North Koreans in southwest Asia, with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis, and the money we put in for this pay raise is subject to authorization by the authorizing committee. It was a commitment that we made to our authorizers that they could write the rules, but we wanted to make the money available today. Mr. Chairman, I was happy to see the President on TV last night from an air base in Germany telling the American military folks there that we were going to do some good things in this bill including a pay raise, so I suspect what little controversy there might have been about that issue hopefully would have gone away overnight. {time} 1145 Also, we addressed the problem of the redux having to do with retirement. We are having a real problem with retention of forces. We are having a real problem with recruiting. We think it is important to do something for the men and women who wear the uniform and who go to war, many of whom are at war today. I am going to leave the details of the bill to the subcommittee chairman. After the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) takes his time, I am going to call on our subcommittee chairman to present the details of the bill. The bill before the House includes $12.9 billion for military operations relating to Kosovo and Operation Desert Fox and for refugee assistance. In developing this bill we consulted with the authorizing committees, the minority, the Pentagon, and our military commanders in the field. The bill has four parts--the largest of which is with the Defense Subcommittee's jurisdiction. For these activities the bill includes $11.24 billion, $5.8 billion above the President's request. The increases are all in areas of identified shortages (weapons procurement, spare parts, depot maintenance, recruitment, training, and base operations). In addition, the bill includes funding for increased military pay and retirement benefits at $1.8 billion subject to authorization and a presidential emergency declaration. The bill includes $1 billion above the President for military construction; $830 million is for mission-related items, $240 million for the NATO security investment program. This funding is directly related to troop readiness. It goes to our European bases. It is executable in 1 year, and it is mission directed. It is not pork. Third, the bill fully funds the President's request for refugee assistance. These funds are redirected away from reconstruction to refugees only. There is not reconstruction money in this bill for Serbia. There is $105 million in assistance to the front line states: Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro. There is a burden-sharing requirement. Finally, the bill includes a relatively small amount of money ($70 million) for security at U.S. Balkan missions and for repairs at damaged embassies. Mr. Chairman, this is a very good bill. Some will say it's too much. Some will say it's too little. But we have developed a bill that does what I believe we should be doing: (1) We have expeditiously moved to support our troops and fund the administration's request to prosecute the war. (2) We have addressed critical shortfalls in our defense preparedness: shortfalls that hinder our security and embarrass us for not adequately supporting our military. (3) We have sent a powerful, morale-boosting signal that we want to increase pay--while giving the authorizers a major role in that decision. (4) We have met the needs of helpless women and children whose tragedy is our tragedy. (5) We have provided funds to help meet the security needs of our people in the Balkans. (6) We have sent a message of support to the front line states whose help we must have it we are to succeed. (7) Because the funds over the President's request are designated as contingent emergencies--it is the President who must make the decisions about whether or when to spend. But we have given him the tools to succeed. Mr. Chairman, this is the right bill for this situation. I urge all members to support it and send a strong signal to our troops and to Milosevic. Mr. Chairman, at this point in the Record I would like to insert a table reflecting the details of the reported bill. [[Page H2825]] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH06MY99.000 [[Page H2826]] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH06MY99.001 [[Page H2827]] Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 11 minutes. Mr. Chairman, as I said on debate on the rule, this is one of the most serious votes that we will be casting this year. If we cannot play it straight on this amendment, we cannot play it straight on anything. This amendment should not be politicized. What we should be doing with this amendment is to provide every single dollar that we need to conduct the operations now going on in Kosovo. We should not provide one dime less and neither should we try to use this to play games on the budget. I am baffled by the fact that last week this House declined to support the operation that is now going on in Kosovo and yet this week the same people largely who opposed that motion last week are now suggesting that we should double the amount of spending for the operation which last week they said we should not be conducting at all. That gives confusion and inconsistency a bad name, in my view. I did not vote for the administration's original request on Rambouillet. I did not feel that we knew enough about what the results of that discussion would be in order to cast a vote at that time, and I did not believe in giving any administration a blank check. I know that there are a lot of people in this House who do not like President Clinton, and I think a number of Members have gone overboard in trying to politicize this war because they have such intense dislike for the President. I have seen quote after quote in the newspapers saying, ``This is Clinton's war; we do not want our fingerprints on it.'' I think those kind of comments are irresponsible. This is the West's war. This is NATO's war, and in my view the President is doing the best that anybody can under very difficult circumstances. That does not mean I agree with everything the administration is doing. I agree with Senator McCain. I believe that this war needs to be prosecuted in the most aggressive way possible, and I believe that the best way to assure the success of the air war is to threaten use of a ground war. So I do not necessarily agree with the administration on the fine points, but he is our commander in chief. He is the elected leader of this country. We are also elected leaders of this country, and we ought to be behaving ourselves in a manner consistent with the honor that has been afforded to each and every one of us by our constituents. I do not think we do that when we in one week decide that this House is not going to support that operation and again then in the next week decide but, oh, by the way, we are going to use this war as an excuse to move billions of dollars from next year's appropriation into this year's appropriation, put an emergency label on it which will enable the Congress next year to spend $3 billion more on military pork that has nothing whatsoever to do with Kosovo. In my view, that is what is happening today. So I want to explain the amendment that I will be offering later in debate. The administration has asked about $6 billion to cover the cost of this war, plus they have asked for humanitarian assistance. The amount that they have requested will pay for an 800-plane war, 24 hours a day bombing of virtually every target in Yugoslavia that one could imagine anywhere. That will be sustained on a daily basis through the end of the fiscal year. In addition, the administration has asked for enough money to fund not just the 24 Apaches which are on the ground now but a contingent of 50 Apaches, over $700 million just to finance that. The administration has taken the full estimate of what it will cost to run that war for the remainder of the fiscal year and then, on top of that, just to be safe, they have tossed in an extra $850 million in a contingency fund. That is such a large operation that we will run out of targets before we run out of ammunition. We will, in the words of Winston Churchill, be ``bouncing the rubble'' if this continues that long. Now, the committee has done some other things. The committee has decided that they would raise the spending for that bill by 125 percent. They have asked for $460 million more in munitions. My amendment says, all right, we are not going to argue about that. We will accept it. They have asked for $400 million for procurement; and again we say, okay, we are not going to argue about it. We will accept it. They have asked for a billion dollars more than the President in order to avoid having to reprogram from low-priority items to high- priority items. We say, okay, I doubt that that is fully necessary, but we will accept that, too. What we do not accept are two other items in the bill. The budget rules under which we are supposed to operate say that if we want to designate something as an emergency so that it is exempted from the spending caps in our budget, it must meet two tests. It must, first of all, be an unanticipated expense; and, secondly, it has to be an expense which will be incurred immediately for an immediate purpose. There is $3 billion in the committee bill that does not meet those tests. Example: They have $2 billion in this bill for operation and maintenance, which is nothing but moving forward from next year's budget $2 billion into this emergency supplemental. There is also $1 billion added for 77 military construction projects in Europe. Thirty-seven of those items are not even on the Pentagon's 5-year plan. We do not have physical plans for them. We do not really know what they are, but the money is thrown at them. Why? The reason is very simple. There is an agenda on the part of some Members of this House which says let us throw in as much as we can, call it an emergency Kosovo supplemental, even though it is not at all related to Kosovo, and that will enable us to spend $3 billion that we would not have otherwise been able to spend on the regular bill for pork. That is what is going on, in my view. So my amendment does not accept that $3 billion. The only military construction items that we fund are those directly related to Kosovo, three key items that are fully justified, including one operation at Aviano, and the rest we simply say deal with next year in the regular course of business because they do not relate to Kosovo. In addition, we do two other things. The committee has $1.8 billion in the bill which they suggest should go for a pay raise and a retirement enrichment package for the troops. I support that. The problem with the committee amendment is that it is subject to authorization, and that means that even though the money is in the bill it cannot actually be delivered to the troops until further legislation is passed. So we remove that impediment. We remove the language that makes that subject to authorization so that this is not just a potentially empty promise. We actually deliver the money that we say we want to provide. So, in other words, we make that pay raise real. The second thing we do is to take the supplemental, which the House passed previously, which is languishing in the Senate, which the President asked for it to deal with the largest natural disaster in this hemisphere in this century, Hurricane Mitch, and to deal with the emergency facing many farmers because of weather and because of the collapse of prices, and we include that in this package as well so that we take care of the home front as well as Kosovo. If we do not deal with that, we face the prospect of 100,000 refugees trying to make their way from Central American countries through Texas, through New Mexico, and it would cost us far more than dealing with it in this bill. So what I will simply say is, this amendment is an honest effort to reach a compromise position between the administration's original request and the committee's overblown efforts to throw in everything but the kitchen sink in this bill so that they can make more room for military pork in the regular military bill. I would urge that my colleagues do the responsible thing, adopt the Obey amendment when it is offered. That will send a signal that we are, indeed, going to play this straight. We are not going to abuse the emergency power that we have in the Budget Act but we will make every dime that is necessary to the Kosovo operation available and then some. We are exceeding what the administration thinks is necessary by almost a billion dollars, just in their own request, plus the additional items that [[Page H2828]] we are accepting in this package. I would urge support for the amendment when the time comes. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I want to respond to the gentleman as I did in the meeting during the Committee on Appropriations. There is no military pork in this bill. I do not know where he comes up with that argument. There is no pork in this bill. This is as clean a national defense bill as this House has ever seen. There are no Member requests added to this bill, either when we wrote the bill or when we went to the full committee. It is just not the case. The gentleman says that the way we are spending money we are going to run out of targets before we run out of ammunition. The gentleman is not paying attention to what is happening in Kosovo. The gentleman should look closely at what General Hawley said just a few days ago when he pointed out that we were running short of not only air launch cruise missiles, we were running short of JDAMs, we were running short of all kinds of ammunition; and if they were called on to do another MRC somewhere in the world they could not do it. This is the general who has the responsibility to get there if we have to get there. Mr. Chairman, today's message is a real message. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) talks about the votes last week. Those were votes that gave Members an opportunity to voice their opinion in resolutions that were not truly binding. This is the real message. This is a message to Milosevic that we are serious. This is a message to our troops that we are serious in providing them with what they need to accomplish their mission and to give themselves a little protection while they are at it. This is a good bill. The amendment that the gentleman is talking about is not even before the House yet. It will be later. {time} 1200 It is a good bill. It is a clean bill. Just one last point, Mr. Chairman. If the President decides that the items that we have recommended in this bill are not truly emergencies, do Members know what he has to do to stop them from being spent? Nothing. Because, Mr. Chairman, unless the President determines that these items are emergencies, they do not get spent. The investment is not made. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is putting up a red herring. I did not say that there was pork in this bill. What I said was they are jamming $3 billion of nonemergency items into this bill to make room for $3 billion worth of pork in the defense bill which will follow this. The gentleman knows that is what I said. He ought to keep it straight. Secondly, with respect to the JDAMS, the gentleman says there is a shortage of JDAM missiles. I would point out that the gentleman is the chairman of the subcommittee that cut that last year by 17 percent. The gentleman cut the President's request for that item by 13 percent in dollar terms and 17 percent in missile numbers. The President's request provides full funding for the restoration of every missile they need for JDAMS. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the chairman on the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, I would first like to thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and to express my deep appreciation to my chairman for the job he has done in this bill. I must say, in spite of the protest of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), I would like to express my appreciation to him as well for a very cooperative effort on this bill. The fact is that in terms of dollar amounts both sides are relatively very close to each other, largely because we all recognize that there is urgency in moving this bill forward; that the dollars that are involved are a reflection of the President's views. Mr. Chairman, the two sides are really not that far apart on the dollar amounts that we are discussing here today. There are differences in the policy. But before going further, let me express my deep appreciation for my colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Jack Murtha), the ranking member of my subcommittee, who from the very beginning has cooperated with us in developing the defense portion of this $12.9 billion package. There is not a Member of the House who is more concerned about the men and women who are potentially in harm's way that we are attempting to respond to by way of this supplemental. In developing this bill, we have consulted and worked very closely with not just the members of our subcommittee, but the members of the authorizing committee, as well as the military commanders in the field. My colleagues, this is a clean bill. It contains no special projects. As I would react to the comments of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) regarding the pay provision of this bill, the $1.84 billion that are involved, we did not provide authorizing language because we were working very closely with the authorizers, who feel that is a centerpart of their own legislation. Indeed, their willingness to continue to work cooperatively with us in the months ahead are very important to both the committees, the authorizers as well as the appropriators, who are concerned about this matter. I would like to be very specific about one fact: That is, the vote today will send a very, very clear message to Slobodan Milosevic, who is watching our actions on the floor today. Our saying clearly that we intend to support our troops as long as they have to serve in this region and are faced with this challenge is very, very important, and Milosevic is watching the Members today. Beyond that, I would like to say to my colleagues, it is very important that while we may disagree on policy, that we come together in the final analysis on this vote. Nothing could be worse than to see sizeable numbers walk away from this very, very important bill. In the final analysis, I am convinced that there will be solid support for the $11.24 billion of this bill that is reflected in the defense portions of the bill. Like a number of my colleagues, I have had the opportunity to spend many hours at the White House in recent weeks in briefings with the Commander in Chief and his national security team. If there was one message I heard from the President last week, it was this: ``Provide the additional funds if you must, but--and this is very important--do not slow this package down.'' My colleagues, we must act and act now. Allow me to take just a minute to outline a few of the details of this $12.9 billion emergency spending package. The bill has four parts--the largest of which is within the Defense Subcommittee's jurisdiction. For these activities, we have included $11.24 billion which is $5.8 billion above the President's request. The increases are all in areas of identified shortages (spare parts, depot maintenance, training and op tempo funding shortfalls, and base operation costs). I could go on . . . and on about this package and our effort in Kosovo. In the interest of time and moving this bill forward, I want to simply urge my colleagues to support our military, send a strong signal to our troops in the field, and support this supplemental. In closing, I would like to thank the following people on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee staff, Chairman Young's staff, as well as my own personal staff, for their valuable assistance with this bill: Kevin Roper, Greg Dahlberg, Doug Gregory, Tina Jonas, Alicia Jones, Paul Juola, David Kilian, Jenny Mummert, Steve Nixon, David Norquist, Betsy Phillips, Trish Ryan, Greg Walters, Sherry Young, Harry Glenn, Brian Mabry, Arlene Willis, Leitia White, Grady Bourn, Julie Hooks, and Dave LesStrang. Mr. Chairman, as we go forward with amendments later, there will be plenty of time for discussions regarding the detail. But between now and then, it is very important that the Members recognize that the entire public is watching our response and our expression of support or lack of support for our troops as they work in harm's way. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding time to me. First let me say that I agree very much, this is an American, this is a NATO conflict. We in this House should speak with one voice and not be putting it on political terms. I feel very, very deeply about this. I support this [[Page H2829]] bill. At the end of the day, I support this bill. It is a major step toward my goal of making this the year of the troops, the year in which we recognize the needs of those who serve in uniform. I also support it because it ensures that our military has more than adequate resources to carry out the Kosovo air campaign. It bolsters the military readiness of our forces in the Balkan theater and the Armed Forces as a whole. It provides the resources to help address the tragic humanitarian situation in Kosovo. The basis of this bill was a $6 billion administration request in emergency funding. The request was based on four categories, military operations in and around Kosovo, Kosovar refugee relief, munitions and readiness munitions, and Desert Thunder and Desert Fox military operations. In addition to the administration's original request, our colleagues on the Committee on Appropriations have seen fit to add to the President's request, both to the humanitarian request and the matter request. There are some problems that our colleagues had on the Committee on Appropriations, and they have tried to address them. They have added certain categories. Mr. Chairman, allow me to comment on two major additions to the original request. First, this bill sends the right signal to our men and women in uniform by providing $1.8 billion to fund the administration's military pay and retirement package, of course, conditioned upon the enactment of authorizing legislation through our Committee on Armed Services. Second, this bill provides for $1.1 billion in unrequested funds for overseas military construction in Europe and Southeast Asia. The inclusion of these projects is similar to the inclusion of the administration's pay and retirement package. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to state that our Armed Forces have been neglected for too long. It is time we give our troops the supplies and the support that they need. Without any coherent international blueprint, the White House has bombed its way around the globe, while dropping troops far and wide for ill-defined peacemaking duties. This policy has gutted the American military, which now must be rebuilt. Last week a bipartisan Congress voted against President Clinton's undeclared war in Yugoslavia. Both Republican and Democrat members are reluctant to commit U.S. forces to a mission that has no strategic plan, no timetable, no definition of victory, and no clear national interests to defend. While there are many reasons for that vote, lack of support for our troops was not one of them. To the contrary, the leadership in this Congress supports our troops, but does not support President Clinton's frivolous deployment of them and haphazard waste of military resources. The last 6 years of focusless military use, combined with defense spending cuts, have stretched our forces to the point where serious gaps in our national security are developing. Not only have we left the Pacific without a single carrier to defend our allies and troops stationed in the region, but the carriers we are sending to combat in Yugoslavia and Iraq are drastically undermanned. For example, the Teddy Roosevelt is 418 sailors short, and the Enterprise is lacking an alarming 495 sailors. In total, the U.S. Navy is 18,000 sailors short, and those that are there are at risk because of it. Such shortfalls in recruits and equipment have reached crises level. This Congress wants to rebuild our depleted defense and make sure that our troops have the supplies they need while they are deployed wherever they are deployed. President Clinton has only proposed to cover the basic costs of his war in Yugoslavia. This Congress wants to take this opportunity to bolster our hollowed out military. This emergency spending will provide much needed munitions, spare parts, construction, training, recruiting, and pay increases for our military. Amid reports that the United States is running out of cruise missiles and cannibalizing some planes for parts, America must not forget that military weaknesses only challenge our enemies to take costly and dangerous risks. Mr. Chairman, the time is now to deter our enemies by bolstering our military. We have to send a very clear message that while we may not support the President's ill-advised war, we do support our troops wholeheartedly. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. CALLAHAN. Mr. Chairman, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs, I have the responsibility to recommend to the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) the funding level for the programs that come under the jurisdiction of our subcommittee. We have one overwhelming priority, and that is assistance to the refugees who have been driven from their homes and separated from their loved ones. The President requested a total of $566 million from our subcommittee as part of his supplemental request. We have approved the entire amount of this funding level, but we made some modifications. The funding would be allocated as follows: --$96 million for international disaster assistance; --$105 million for support of frontline States, including $5 million to document war crimes; --$75 million for Eastern Europe assistance to assist refugees within the borders of the frontline States; and --a total of $290 million for the refugee assistance accounts. Part of the original request was $170 million for an account normally used for long-term development projects. We have tried to discover how the funds would be used. We were told that $95 million of this amount would be made available for refugee assistance, but we already have separate accounts for the refugee and humanitarian services. When the administration officials were asked about that, we were told these funds could be used for such things as, and I quote, ``NGO development and microcredit activities.'' I have nothing against either of these programs, but they are part of an ongoing program in Eastern Europe. They are emphatically not part of emergency refugee and humanitarian assistance. The President and Secretary of State have also discussed plans for a Southeastern Europe initiative. I fear they could use these fund to begin such an initiative, and I do not think they should, without adequate consultation and further approval by the Congress. Therefore we moved $95 million from these vaguely defined activities and made that additional amount available for direct support for refugees and humanitarian assistance. Indeed, this money, the $566 million, may not be sufficient. The administration is constantly changing its policies. It is difficult to know when enough is enough. One day the President announces that we are going to send 20,000 refugees to Guantanamo Bay. A few days later, the Secretary of State says, no, we are not going to do that, we are going to keep the refugees there because we then would be ethnically cleansing the region. The next day the Vice President of the United States, Mr. Gore, announces that 20,000 refugees are coming to the United States. At the drop of a hat, the Vice President committed $40 million for the transport and relocation of refugees to our country. I was not consulted about this. Neither was anyone else in Congress. I'm not sure the Secretary knew. Now we're left with a $40 million bill, and we must in good conscience pay for it. It leaves a hole in the request. I strongly encourage Members to vote in favor of this bill. It does not give the Administration a pot of money to begin the reconstruction of Southeastern Europe. If they want to begin a massive new spending program in the region, they need to come back to Congress. They and we also need to win the war. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price). Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, there are only 147 days left [[Page H2830]] in this fiscal year. This ought to be a time when we come together with bipartisan resolve to deal with three urgent crises that we could not have anticipated last September: the agricultural collapse in rural America, the devastation of Central America by Hurricanes Mitch and Georges, and the need to support our troops and the allied cause in Kosovo. The Republican majority, unfortunately, has sought to politicize the NATO operation in the Balkans, withholding support for it last week, amid well-publicized arm-twisting, and now this week voting to double the funding for it! In so doing, the majority hopes to use the NATO campaign to leverage funding for unrelated military purposes. We should reject partisan gamesmanship that toys with the lives of our troops and the refugees, that trivializes the dignity of our rural citizens, and that belittles the suffering of the people in Central America. {time} 1215 We should, instead, adopt the Obey substitute. The Obey amendment is well-crafted. It is responsible. It addresses the military and humanitarian needs in the Balkans, fully funding the Department of Defense's request. It includes the most justifiable of the defense add-ons, particularly those involving military pay and readiness. It addresses the disaster in Honduras and Guatemala, a situation we ignore at our Nation's peril; for if we ignore it, we will surely face a new flood of immigration northward and greater vulnerability to drug trafficking. And the Obey amendment provides desperately needed funding to meet the collapse in the price of agricultural commodities. Mr. Chairman, the House today has an opportunity to reverse its recent history of politicizing issues that should not be politicized and defaulting on the responsibility of a great power. Support the Obey substitute. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. It is really interesting to me. This bill is not about any political gamesmanship, and it has not been politicized. This bill is a true, clean national defense bill that provides what the national defense establishment needs to protect our Nation and to protect our troops. The only partisanship that I have heard in this debate today has come from that side, accusing this side of being partisan or of politicizing or of political gamesmanship. I want to assure the gentleman that there is no politics in this at all. For speakers on the other side to try to create the atmosphere that this is somehow political is just not right. We have gone overboard to make sure over the years that national defense issues were not political and there were no political games being played on them. I want to call attention just one more time to the fact that the only issue of politicization or political gamesmanship is coming from over there. And the fact that they say it does not make it true, and I insist that it is not true. This is a clean national defense appropriations bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson), chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time; and I rise today to speak in strong support of the bill before us. Voting ``yes'' today is a vote for our troops. It says definitively that their daily sacrifices will not be downsized or neglected any more. It shows that we can transcend our differences and unite for their well-being. Our troops are in harm's way, so it is our duty and responsibility to muster the resolve to keep them safe. I worked closely with military commanders in the field to make this bill a reality. It is responsible and tightly honed to our most immediate and unanticipated needs in the Balkans and Southwest Asia. Remember that our European infrastructure is a critical staging area. It supports our mission in the Balkans and our training and pass- through for operations in the Gulf and Africa. The time for leadership is now. There simply has been a failure to support our troops living and working overseas under very dangerous conditions. Let us pass this bill and show our troops that the sacrifices they make are worthy of the support of Congress and the American people. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi). Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time; and I want to again commend him for his leadership in bringing the Obey amendment to the floor because, indeed, it is the responsible approach to the challenge that we have before us. Let me just first say that it is hard to believe that nearly 7 months ago there was the greatest natural disaster, the worst natural disaster in the history of our hemisphere since they recorded these things in Central America. I do not think the American people know that we have still not passed out of this Congress legislation for the disaster assistance that the American people in their compassion wanted us to do. The assistance is still hung up on budgetary gimmickry and offsets and the rest. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) corrects the situation in his amendment. Mr. Obey also recognizes the large number of refugees who have come out of Kosovo and puts $175 million more in for humanitarian assistance. Again, whatever we may think of the war effort and the air strikes, the American people, God bless them, want the refugees to have humanitarian assistance. It also addresses the needs of America's farmers here at home, and it is responsible in meeting the needs of our military. And how proud we are of our people in the military, both for putting themselves in harm's way and their courage, but also for the military's role in humanitarian assistance. They assisted most recently in the Balkans, and they were indeed largely responsible for our initial emergency assistance in Central America, even though we still have not paid the bill on that. So I ask my colleagues, when the time comes for amendments, to vote and support the Obey amendment and to do so with the knowledge that it is the responsible approach to meeting the needs of our military, to addressing the pay raise issue for the military, to honoring the commitment of the American people for humanitarian assistance and to do it in a fiscally sound way. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Armed Services. (Mr. SPENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to congratulate the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young); the chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis); the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha); and other members of the Committee on Appropriations for ``leaning forward'' and doing the right thing by addressing some of the most serious readiness and quality-of- life shortfalls facing our military today. Our Nation's military leaders publicly testified last fall that the President's 6-year defense plan fell about $150 billion short of meeting basic military requirements. Knowing how politics work in this town, we should assume that the Joint Chiefs' estimate of the military shortfalls is understated. The budget resolution added about $8 billion to the President's underfunded defense request. It is a small but necessary first step. This supplemental adds approximately $6 billion in additional funding to address some of the military's most critical shortfalls. Our military has the responsibility of being able to fight two multiple theatre wars and conduct multiple concurrent smaller-scale contingency operations throughout the world. We have been cutting back on our military since 1989, to the extent that we could not conduct one at the time. The Army and the Air Force has been cut back 45 percent, the Navy 36 percent, the Marines 12 percent. At the same time, our operational requirements have increased 300 percent. The problem is past being an emergency, it is critical. [[Page H2831]] These additional funds will only begin to help our military to properly defend this country with a minimum loss of American lives among our service people. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the distinguished minority whip. Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, it has been more than a month since Milosevic launched his campaign of genocide. His atrocities continue to fill us with horror and revulsion: more than a million people, driven from their homes at gunpoint; entire towns burned to the ground; men and boys forced to kneel by the side of the road and shot dead before their families; grandparents burned alive because they were too feeble to flee. In the face of such brutal and systematic slaughter, we need to send him a message, an unmistakable message of American resolve, that his campaign of genocide will not stand. We have to set partisan politics aside. We have to stand united behind our troops. Even as we speak today, our pilots are hurtling off the decks of our carriers, risking their lives to save the Kosovars and see justice done. We have to give them the support that they need in order to win. Milosevic cannot be allowed to prevail. The scale and the details of his inhumanity ignite our moral indignation. Accounts coming out of Kosovo are shocking: Serbian soldiers knock on the windows of a refugee's car as he and his family wait to cross the border, and they were bearing AK-47s. They demanded $6,000 from the driver or his two daughters in the back seat. The father empties his wallet, but it is not enough. So the soldiers pull the young women from the car, drag them to a nearby garage, where several other soldiers, also wearing masks, were waiting. The gang rape lasted hours. Last Friday, in the village of Pristina, Serbian troops murdered 44 Kosovars, shooting some and burning others alive. When relatives of the victims went to bury their loved ones, the soldiers told them that they would be shot, too, if they uttered a single prayer for the dead. And as one of the Kosovars said later, perhaps our silence helps them to deal with their shame. Well, Mr. Chairman, America cannot and we will not be silent as long as Milosevic continues his campaign of terror. As a superpower at the peak of our prosperity and our strength, America cannot look the other way and we cannot be diverted by our partisan differences. I have been troubled by the procedures that the House adopted today, and we have seen people trying to play politics with the President's funding request for these troops. I would urge my colleagues to unite behind the Obey substitute. It is clean, it is straightforward, it is a strong response to the present emergency, and by all prognostications it will be what we end up with next week on this floor. In the end, we have to move this process forward; and we have to do it today. Now is the time to accept the responsibilities of leadership. Now is the time to support our troops in the field, who are risking their lives so that this century might end better than it began. Now is the time to send Milosevic an unmistakable message: At the end of the 20th century, the world will not stand for genocide. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the Chair how much time the gentleman yielded back? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The gentleman from Wisconsin has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. OBEY. No, I asked how much time did the gentleman yield back? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The gentleman yielded back 30 seconds, and the gentleman from Wisconsin has 8\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. OBEY. I thank the Chairman. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the Committee on Armed Services. Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, I think I probably just wasted 20 seconds of my time. I was not prepared for this. Let me be very brief now that my time has been stressed. Mr. Chairman, I would ask Members to permit the eyes of their minds to see a greater vision here and to not be so narrow to think of this as Kosovo and Kosovo only. What concerns me most is that this is about funding a national military strategy. Sure, there are discussions of politics. Frankly, I do not mind that, because it is policy that drives all of this. The President's singular responsibility is to lay out the vital national security interests, then we come up with a military strategy as the means to enforce those. The President has one that is different, and I would not go along with it, but it is for us to transition out of a posture of global engagement in over 135 countries around the world and then fight and win nearly two simultaneous major regional conflicts. The open secret is we do not have the force structure today to do that. Let me share some facts with my colleagues about the size of the military today. In the Gulf War, we had 18 Army divisions, we had 24 Air Force tactical wings, and in the Navy ships and submarines we had 546 in 1990. Today, we are down to 10 divisions in the Army, 13 tactical wings in the Air Force, and a 315 ship Navy. That is a reduction in the Army by 250,000, in the Air Force 150,000, and in the Navy 200,000. So what have we done by taking a foreign policy of global engagement? We have taken our military and we have stretched this great military of ours very thin all over the world. Now we find ourselves with depleted munitions. Depleted munitions. And not only in our ammo. When I hear individuals say, well, we are going to have to cut back or we are only going to have to replace bullet for bullet, do my colleagues realize the risks we are being placed in in other scenarios around the world? {time} 1230 Do not take it from me. Take it from General Shelton. General Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, ``Suffice it to say that what we have going on right now in Kosovo is a major theater of war with air assets. The fighting in Yugoslavia now means a much higher risk of a second regional conflict, protracted, with significant casualties.'' My colleagues, vote for this. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick). (Ms. KILPATRICK asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Ms. KILPATRICK. Mr. Chairman, I thank my ranking member for yielding me the time, a new member on the committee, for this most important discussion. It is not whether we support our troops or not. We all do. We support them because they are risking their lives for us as the greatest country in the world. What we do not support at this time is the doubling of appropriations that our President gave us. We are 2 months away from doing the 2000 budget. We ought to be using this time and the extra $6 billion to put during that time in the appropriations process. It is important that we take care of education for our children, health care for our seniors, housing for those who need it. It is unfortunate we will not be able to get to that during this budget time because of the caps, the political caps that were set. Let us not say we do not support the troops, because we do. Let us support the President, our troops, and the Obey amendment. Mr. Chairman, I rise in vehement opposition to H.R. 1664, the Kosovo Supplemental Appropriations for FY 1999. More than half of this bill's $13 billion appropriation is being used for funds that will eventually come from the budget surplus, and only illustrates the collective cowardice of the majority in refusing to consider these military construction projects under normal budgetary procedures. In essence, this bill gives to the military and takes from Social Security and Medicare. What is worse is that the doubling of the increase of this bill, from President Clinton's original request for $6 billion to $13 billion, has not seen a resulting increase in aid to the refugees or in humanitarian aid, ostensibly a key part of this bill's original purpose. As one of the newest members on the House Appropriations Committee, I know that Appropriations are about three things: what you need, what you want, and what you'd like to have. This bill [[Page H2832]] was half of what we need, some of what members want, and no increase in what the refugees would like to have. In order to accurately discuss this vote, we must first place these issues into context. After the breakdown of peace talks between Serbian and Kosovar representatives in Rambouillet, France in mid-March, Serb forces entered the Yugoslav province of Kosovo en masse. An estimated one million Kosovar Albanians have since been driven from their homes, most into Albania and Macedonia, thousands of Kosovar Albanian men remain missing, and reports of rape and murder continue to trickle out of the embattled region. In response, on March 24, 1999, NATO began a massive bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces and installations in Serbia and Kosovo. Close to 1,000 NATO warplanes are now involved in the airwar (with over 80% from the United States). President Clinton recently called up an additional 33,000 reservists to aid in the fight, and asked Congress for $6.0 billion in supplemental funds to pay for current operations. This $6 billion request more than adequately addresses the commitment of the United States to this unified effort. The Republicans on the House Appropriation Committee drafted a $12.9 billion emergency FY99 supplemental spending bill. On top of the White House's $6.05 billion spending request for the Kosovo mission, Republican appropriators included $1.8 billion to fund a pay raise and retirement package through the remainder of FY99, and the bill includes an additional $74 million in unspecified worldwide ``minor'' construction projects, provides additional funding for munitions purchases and operational readiness needs, such as recruitment, replacement of spare parts, equipment maintenance and military base operations, primarily with additional funds for operational readiness and for a military pay raise and retirement package. The bonus of this additional $6 billion in funding is that it does not have to be offset by similar reductions in spending in other programs. This is nothing but fiscal legerdemain, a sorry billion-dollar version of the old New York City street con of the three shells and the pea. Unfortunately, the elderly and the poor are the hapless victims of this con job. The majority of the Democratic members on this Committee see this for what it is: nothing but an attempt to fund defense projects that will not fit within the tight spending caps for FY00. I must reiterate one key point: there is not one thin dime of an increase in refugee assistance funding in this bill. There are certainly many items within this legislation that are probably worthy of the support of scarce taxpayer dollars. Let me make this clear: I do not oppose the hard working and brave persons in our nation's Armed Forces from getting a well deserved pay increase, better housing, a much improved retirement program, or other such items as needed. I object that my Republican colleagues do not have the collective courage to make the hard decisions and difficult choices inherent in being a member of the august House Appropriations Committee. What is becoming abundantly clear is one thing: the budgetary caps on spending will have to be increased. Only then will Congress be able to address our urgent domestic needs, preserve our vital fiscal surplus, and protect our nation's seniors who have already paid the price for the freedom that most of us enjoy but all of us take for granted. Our colleague, Congressman David Obey, will offer a sensible amendment that provides a total of $11 billion in funding. Of this sum, funds that do not have to be authorized will go toward an immediate pay increase for the military; an increase in the operations and maintenance in Kosovo, and more importantly, $175 million more for the refugees of Kosovo. If Congressman Obey's amendment is reasonable, sensible, and deserves the support of the majority of our colleagues. I would like to paraphrase a recent article in the New York Times, in closing, on this issue: This is nothing but Republican cowardice triumphing over principle; don't vote for the war, don't take responsibility for the war, don't vote to stop the war, but vote to pump more money into a policy we don't like. American taxpayers pay us a good sum of money to make difficult decisions, and it is time that we stepped up to the plate and made them. It is my hope that the wisdom of Congress will prevail in supporting the amendment of Congressman Obey. Without the adoption of the Obey amendment, this bill must be rejected by the House of Representatives. Congress must preserve the surplus for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We must increase the caps on domestic and defense spending, and do so while maintaining the integrity of our balanced budget. These issues are not mutually exclusive, but Congress must have the courage to make these tough decisions. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Interior. (Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, today I rise to pay tribute to the two brave servicemen who lost their lives this week during a training exercise in Albania, Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Reichert of Wisconsin and Chief Warrant Officer David Gibbs from my district. David Gibbs grew up in Massillon, Ohio, graduating from Washington High School in 1980. I wish to express my sympathy to David's family, his mother Dorothy, his wife and three children. Their pain can only be eased by the knowledge that his country salutes his heroic service. These two men chose to serve their country in one the noblest traditions and they made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting the principles and freedoms which the United States represents. All our men and women in uniform are to be commended for their service. We must support our troops so they can do the job they so valiantly volunteered to do when they joined the armed services. And we in Congress have a responsibility to ensure that our troops have the resources they need for the best equipment, the most reliable and advanced technology, and the needed training to make them the most respected military in the world. I will support this bill, because while we do not yet know the cause of this latest tragedy, the American people need to know that we are adequately supporting our men and women in uniform. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver). Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, the reason we are here today is that the President submitted a request for $6 billion for the Kosovo operation, which would bring us to the end of fiscal year 1999; and that was clearly an unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstance that came up because of the actions of Slobodan Milosevic. Those situations ought to be few and far between, outside the caps, without any offsets, a true emergency. The underlying bill that has come from committee more than doubles the amount from the President's request on a set of premises which are entirely different. It is operating on a premise that goes far beyond, entirely beyond the definition of ``emergency,'' which had been part of the President's request, and much of it is only partly related to Kosovo. On the other hand, we have before us an amendment that has been offered by the minority ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), which responsibly but narrowly deals with the Kosovo situation and other emergencies along the way. Who can deny that we look rather foolish in this Congress, and I really am embarrassed by it, that 7 months after what had happened in Central America and 7 months after we truly knew way back in the fall that the problems on our farms were very serious, yet we passed that legislation 3 months ago. It has not moved to a final conclusion, the emergencies relating to Central America and related to the farms, and we have not done anything about it. The Obey amendment deals with both of those issues and also makes certain that the pay increase for our military personnel is funded now, not uncertain as to when and if it will be authorized, but funded now. So it deals with the emergencies in Kosovo, on the farms, in Central America, and our military personnel. I urge support for the amendment. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays). Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, we have a world crisis and an acute national emergency. I support this $12.9 billion spending package. I have opposed past defense spending bills because we have failed, in my judgment, to take four difficult but necessary steps to realize savings and modernize our military. We failed to: cancel procurement of expensive, unnecessary weapon systems; close unnecessary military bases and depots at home and abroad; and require our allies, particularly Europeans, to pay [[Page H2833]] their fair share of stationing U.S. troops in their countries. And we are still funding a military designed to fight the Cold War, but the Cold War has ended. The world today is different, and it is a more dangerous place. The war in Kosovo costs money, and lots of money. As a fiscal conservative during my 11 years in Congress with consistently high marks from the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, and other fiscal watch dog organizations, I am on the floor to say we need to appropriate this money. The fact is that we have already spent it. Over the past 40 years, the United States has deployed troops around the world 41 times, but 33 of these 41 missions have come in just the past 8 years. We need to realize the tremendous costs we accrue when we deploy our military to troubled spots all over the world. These missions cost money and resources which we have taken from other parts of the defense budget. Today, our military has a number of acute needs that must be addressed. We need to do a better job attracting new enlistees and maintaining the necessary level of reenlistment. Our soldiers, sailors, pilots and Marines are overworked and underpaid. Our training has suffered. We do not have the necessary munitions for potential new encounters. And we are cannibalizing existing planes, tanks, and other equipment for their parts in order to make other equipment operational. Mr. Chairman, many of us have not supported the President's decision to use military force in Yugoslavia and did not vote for last week's resolution endorsing air strikes. But the fact is, there is a war in Kosovo and we need to pay for it. Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the effort being undertaken by NATO in Kosovo and Serbia. I rise in agreement that we must fund our armed services at increased levels to ensure that our security and our ability to join our allies in maintaining international security and stability is maintained. Mr. Chairman, I believe the President has requested the correct sum for the war until September 30th of this year, $5.9 billion. I believe that war against Serbian genocide and ethnic cleansing is absolutely essential for us to participate in. But, Mr. Chairman, I also believe we must assist our farmers who find themselves in real crises, and the almost 1 million victims of this hemisphere's worst natural disaster in this century. I therefore, Mr. Chairman, will support the Obey amendment. I will also, I tell my good friend and the chairman, be supporting increasing the fiscal year 2000 appropriations for our military to ensure the objectives of which I have spoken and of which the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has so eloquently spoken. Our national interest, our commitment to humanitarian and moral principles, will be served by the passage of the Obey amendment and it will do so in a way more consiste