Jim Kolbe

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by commending the work of our chairman and ranking member and all the other subcommittee chairmen that worked so hard to bring this bill together. I think it has been truly a work that has brought about an outstanding piece of legislation. I am going to describe some of the elements of the legislation in just its bare outline, so people do know what is actually in this bill. The amount as we have already heard is the total amount of the appropriation bill, $87\1/2\ billion. The foreign operations chapter is $21.21 billion, which is just a bit less than the President had requested. Let me begin, Mr. Speaker, by saying that I strongly support the objectives President Bush and our leadership seek to achieve with this supplemental request for Iraq and Afghanistan. The supplemental bill supports our men and women in uniform, and it provides the reconstruction resources to stabilize and improve conditions in those countries. These resources are essential to achieving victory and to enabling our troops to come home. Let me cover a few of those highlights. First, there is $18.6 billion for the Iraq relief and reconstruction account. That is $1.7 billion below the request, but $200 million more than the Senate-passed bill. It includes $3.24 billion for security and law enforcement, $1.32 billion for justice and civil society, $5.5 billion for the electric sector, almost $1.9 billion for the oil infrastructure, $4.3 billion for water resources and sanitation, and $793 million for health care, among many of the other things that are included in there. The point is that I think these, Mr. Speaker, are the right types of investments. They comprehensively support both the Iraqi people and the physical infrastructure to modernize that country and put it on the path to economic development, security, and stability. These funds are essential investments in the welfare of our troops. The conference agreement does not provide funds for trash trucks, for $50,000-per-bed prisons, or for ZIP code systems and what we regard as other low projects. The House took the lead on these issues, and we were pleased to see the Senate's support for this approach. On the other hand, we have added funding for a few programs where we saw gaps in the strategy. For example, there is $100 million included for the development of an Iraqi constitution, building democratic institutions and to prepare for holding free and open elections. It is important to note that this conference agreement also makes a number of management improvements, including the submission of financial plans projecting project by project details on this Iraq reconstruction account. The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader, talked about where is the plan. We have a plan and we specifically require a spending plan to be submitted by the administrator and OMB so that we have an opportunity to see that and have that updated every 3 months. The conferees agreed with the House position to create a new appropriation account entitled ``Operating Expenses of the Coalition Provisional Authority'' rather than leave this activity buried within the Army's $24 billion operation maintenance appropriations account. The CPA will have an operating budget of some $983 million, and we have agreed with the Senate to provide an Inspector General for this organization. Further, we have included language requiring the Office of Management and Budget to transmit to Congress real financial budget and personnel data on the CPA. I am pleased we were able to work out an agreement on competition and contracting. The agreement strongly supports full and open competition. We require Ambassador Bremer and the head of any Federal agency providing contracting service for Iraq reconstruction to jointly certify to Congress if other than full and open competition is being pursued. Mr. Speaker, this agreement is not about Iraq alone. The conference agreement does provide almost $1.2 billion for our reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and that is $350 million above the President's request. The agreement provides an additional $287 million to support the training, equipping, and operations of the new Afghan Army. Also included is $60 million to improve economic opportunity and the standard of living of women in Afghanistan. These resources support technical and vocational education and will fight against abuse of women. They support education for young women who have been denied all of these decades the opportunity to even learn to read. The conference report includes $181 million to repair and reconstruct roads in Afghanistan and to provide that nation with transportation infrastructure linking its cities as well as its rural areas. Mr. Speaker, I have sought to briefly provide a few of the highlights of this conference agreement. Any conference means compromise, and there are clearly issues which we would have wanted to come out differently; but on the whole, this conference agreement resembles closely the bill that was overwhelmingly supported here in the House a couple of weeks ago. Let me say that this bill supports our President, our men and women in uniform, and our Nation. This agreement is about American foreign policy objectives, and it is about our leadership in the world. This conference agreement is about completing the job, not just destroying the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein, but also building a stable Iraq at peace with its neighbors in the Middle East. This conference is about remembering that much needs to be done to build a new Afghanistan, one secure and free from the Taliban. This conference agreement is about continuing the war on terrorism and not giving in to the vicious and cowardly attacks against not only our Armed Forces but against the Iraqi, the Afghan and, yes, the American people. This conference agreement is about maintaining our national security. It is a good conference agreement. I urge its adoption.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I do rise in opposition to this amendment. We already had a full debate on this issue last night, as a matter of fact. The bill that we have before us has provisions, rather extensive provisions, dealing with competition and providing for full and open competition. These were provisions that were worked out with the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and the staff and, I believe, ranking members as well. Those provisions were amended last night here on this floor in the House. A perfecting amendment was added to it, which struck a particular exception on the notification. If it was a sole-source contract, it struck the exceptions for that. So notification has to be given before those contracts are awarded. This sets up a separate procedure that has no exception at all for it, even for an urgent situation. I am not sure if the gentleman has thought about what happens if there is a break in an oil line, what happens if there is a fire. They cannot go through a long bidding process for that. They have to take the money that is available and do an immediate contract. But even under those circumstances, there are procedures for competitive bidding and for open bidding, for making sure it is done in an open manner; and that is basically what the law that the Committee on Government Reform has the responsibility for is all about. That legislation, which is quite extensive, provides for open competition, provides for the bidding process, and it provides for the exceptions which are in there. And as I said last night on this floor, this body decided to eliminate at least one of those particular exceptions. So I think we have thoroughly debated this issue, and I might say that the language as it is drafted here is not really, it seems to me, in legislative or legal form where it says ``enter into any contract using procedures other than competitive procedures.'' That ``other than competitive procedures'' is not a term which appears in the law anyplace, so we do not know exactly what ``competitive'' means there. ``Fully competitive'' is something that does appear in the law, but ``competitive'' does not. So it is not at all clear what really the impact of this would be. Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment and urge its rejection. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, as the designee of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo).

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would urge the Members to reject this amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I do rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, let me begin with noting my disappointment in the remarks of the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) that Democratic amendments have not been accepted or not been listened to. We are now in our third day of debate on this bill. We have had a large number of amendments, most of which have come from the minority side, and a number of Democratic amendments have been accepted. When the gentlewoman said it is not done in a collegial way, let me just note specifically in the area she is talking about, education in Iraq, that there is $90 million specifically set aside for education in Iraq that was not requested by the President, because the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, came to me and talked to me about this issue. So we have these funds in there at the request of the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), at the request of the minority, not because of the President's request, but because this body, this subcommittee, has worked in a collegial fashion. Now, what the gentlewoman is suggesting is putting more money into that and more money into Afghanistan. But our committee, again not at the President's request, but recognizing the need for us to follow through with our commitment in Afghanistan and recognizing the deteriorating security conditions in Afghanistan, our subcommittee has increased the amount of assistance for Afghanistan by almost $400 million. I have already noted that we specifically set aside $90 million for education in Iraq that was not requested by the administration. As far as the areas where this would come out of, $100 million out of the IRRF fund, $300 million out of restoring the oil production in Iraq which, by the way, is the only way Iraq is ever going to generate enough funds that they can do their own reconstruction, that they can stand on their own feet, to take that $300 million out of there is to not only harm the infrastructure, the effort to reconstruct the infrastructure, but harm the immediate needs of Iraqi citizens to have heating oil and kerosene for cooking, the cooking and heating oil that is absolutely vital as we go into the winter months there in Iraq. It has to do not just with comfort for the people in Iraq but in many cases the very livelihoods, the very survival, particularly when children are involved. I think the gentlewoman's intentions are good, but that is why we discussed this issue at length in the subcommittee and that is why we discussed it at the full committee level too. I think we have come with what, I think, is a fair and a balanced division of the funds as it is going to the various accounts in Iraq. And so, Mr. Chairman, I think that this would upset that balance. I do not think it is the right way to go, though I respect the gentlewoman's intentions.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition. I will not take 5 minutes. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I agree with most everything the gentleman from Oregon has said. I certainly do not believe the taxpayers of the United States should be paying for Iraq when there is a newly constituted government there to be participating in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, known as OPEC. The fact is they most certainly, almost certainly, will continue to be a member of that organization; and, in fact, they have already attended meetings in kind of an observer status. But none of our funds should be used to do that, since they are generating a fair amount of oil funds now that are paying for much of their internal costs of government, although not enough to do the reconstruction, which is what we are having the discussions today about. That would be the funds that they would use to do that, but I quite agree that funds from the United States taxpayers should not be used for that. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to accept this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I will not oppose this amendment. This perfects some language that was adopted in the committee offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) on requiring quarterly reports to be made and placing some additional requirements in that report which, I think, is useful information for us to have. This substitutes some language in three of the paragraphs and adds to it, tightens that up, and, for the most part, I do not have any objection to it. I do find a problem, and I just want the gentleman to know this because that is really an issue, I think, in the conference. I do have a problem with one issue in paragraph nine where it requires that the administration give the Congress an estimate of the period of time for which such forces will be deployed. That is probably not possible for them to do, to actually tell how long the forces are going to be deployed because we do not know the circumstances of what is going to happen in Iraq either with the democracy there or with external circumstances that might require them to be there longer than we would like. But other than that, I would think the language here is helpful, and we can deal with that issue in the conference. And so, Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to accept the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin) for the purposes of colloquy.

Mr. KOLBE. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in opposition to the amendment, and would like to point out that this is a little different amendment than we originally thought we would be looking at today. This issue was debated twice yesterday on this floor, once with the Obey amendment which would have cut the amount by half and put some in loans, the other time during debate on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) which would have done the same thing. We have had a lot of discussion about the idea of how much we should have and whether we should reduce it, and whether some should be in the form of a loan or not. I believe that issue has been dispensed with. I have just heard a couple of arguments from the other side that this amendment will require more scrutiny. Where in the words here does it require any more scrutiny? It just says it will cut it by 50 percent. It says that we think that the Committee on Appropriations' work is insufficient, we are just going to cut it in half. Where does it say that it is going to require some repayment by the Iraqis? There is nothing in here about repayment or loans. It just says we are going to take the aid and the assistance we are going to provide to the Iraqis, and we are going to slice it exactly in half because we think that they do not really need that money for reconstruction. Mr. Chairman, what we have heard over the last several days, and I know I am sounding like a broken record by repeating this, as General Abizaid, Ambassador Bremer, and many others have told us over and over again, every dollar for reconstruction is just as important as every dollar we provide to our men and women in uniform in Iraq. It is just as important. If we are going to get our men and women home from Iraq, we have to turn the security of the country over to the Iraqis, and that means we have to train the Iraqis. We have to train the police force and the national army. If we are going to get our men and women home, we have to restore the Iraq economy and put Iraq back on its feet. Cutting the assistance to Iraq in half is not the way to accomplish that. If we want to be sure that our men and women in uniform stay in Iraq a lot longer, this is the amendment Members want to vote for. I have great respect for the gentlemen who have offered this amendment, they are very thoughtful people, but I must say this amendment is absolutely the wrong direction. It does not accomplish what they want. It does not accomplish the kind of scrutiny they want, which is what we will find in the general provisions of the bill. We have a lot of oversight. We have more reporting, we have more oversight requirements, we have requirements that if there are changes in the amount of the funds, if it is moved from one to the other, there has to be notification to the Congress. We are doing that oversight. That is the responsibility of Congress. But cutting the amount of assistance to Iraq in half is not the way to proceed. I urge my colleagues to reject this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition. I do oppose this amendment, and I will have some comments at the end. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. KOLBE. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. KOLBE. Reclaiming my time, I understand what the gentleman is after. As I said, there is not a clue in reading this amendment that that is his intent, other than what the gentleman has just told us here, because that is not, of course, what the impact of this amendment will be. We ought to pay attention to the impact, not just the words. The impact is to stop all reconstruction. Let me repeat that. All reconstruction would cease from now until next September. That is the only thing it says. It does not say anything unless they do not participate in OPEC. It does not say anything about that, so it would not have any effect actually on Iraqi membership or participation or expenditure of funds in OPEC. Mr. Chairman, nothing could be worse for us than to do that. Whether or not Iraq decides to participate in OPEC with their own dollars is going to be something the Governing Council is going to have to do. And that will be done out of their oil revenues that they generate and goes into an account which is controlled by the Iraqi Governing Council. So that is not something that we are going to make that decision. I do agree that our dollars certainly should not go to support Iraq's participation in that oil cartel. But again, Mr. Chairman, to close, let me say this amendment has nothing to do with that. It does not have anything to do with Iraqi participation in OPEC. The effect of this amendment is to stop all reconstruction, to cease all reconstruction, all money spent on reconstruction in Iraq. Everything that would be spent on humanitarian needs, everything spent to rebuild the water systems, the sewage systems, the education, to start the constitution, to develop those groups that will be writing the constitution, all of that would cease from now, when the current amounts of money run out, until September 30 of next year. It would be catastrophic to our forces and national security policy. It would be absolutely disastrous for our national security. Mr. Chairman, I urge the rejection of this amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for his comments.

Mr. KOLBE. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. KOLBE. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. KOLBE. Reclaiming my time, if that indeed is what the gentleman is after, which is certainly not apparent at all in reading this amendment here, we have already dealt with that in an amendment that was accepted. The DeFazio amendment prohibits any of U.S. funds being used to support OPEC membership by Iraq.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I intend to accept this amendment. We just saw it for the first time this morning, and it is problematic. It raises some concerns in that it requires everybody that is a contractor in Iraq to comply with all sections of the Small Business Act. That would mean that a subcontractor in Iraq has to have a small business plan. I think there are some real problems with this, but we have not had a chance to really examine it that closely. And, Mr. Chairman, in the interest of expediting the business of the House, my intention would be to accept this and review it in conference and review it with the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez) in conference. So I am prepared to accept the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, as we come to the end of this debate, as the gentleman from Florida pointed out, we have debated this issue many times. Let me, once more, reiterate why this is a bad idea to do this through a motion to recommit. First of all, there are, of course, the technical reasons. The amendment states that 50 percent of the obligations from the Iraq reconstruction funds must go in the form of loans, but there is no authority to provide those loans. There is an implication, but there is no actual authority provided in this recommittal motion. It is not clear whether the amendment intends the loans to be guaranteed, whether it is mixed financing, what form of loans they would be in. The terms of the loans are not at all clear. Are we talking about no interest for 50 years? Are we talking about repayment over 25 years? How would they be repaid? There are a lot of the questions that remain on the technical issues. It puts a lot of faith, frankly, Mr. Speaker, in the Office of Management and Budget and the President to interpret what the Congress would do here with this very simple, very broad loan authority and to make a determination as to what that actually means. But there are the substantive arguments that I think are more important, and I know my colleagues have listened to me say this several times here in the last 3 days on the floor, but, again, let me point out, in testimony before the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs, General Abizaid, the Central Command commander, when asked how important are the dollars for the troops as opposed to the dollars for reconstruction, he said in very clear terms, every dollar that we spend on reconstruction is just as important as what we spend on our troops, that if we really want to have our troops come home, if we really want to protect them, if we really want to have them carry out their mission, then the dollars for reconstruction are an absolute, vital part of it. Mr. Speaker, you cannot separate what we are doing militarily in Iraq in that region, you cannot separate it from the dollars that we are spending on reconstruction. They are both a part of our national security objectives. They must go together. Mr. Speaker, in closing, let me say there is only one thing we really ask from Iraq in terms of repayment. We ask for them to give us a stable, a free, a democratic government, a people committed to peace and security in the region that will help to bring about peace and security for all the peoples of that region and for the United States. What more repayment could we wish than that? And how can we achieve that better than by helping to speed the reconstruction process forward?