Jim Kolbe

Mr. KOLBE

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

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

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, if we were to take the Deutsch amendment, we could just finish today and come back a year from now or 10 months from now and we could have this debate again because that is exactly what the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) would have us do. The gentleman would say that none of the funds in here for the reconstruction are available until September 30 of next year, which is more than 11 months away. Now, we have already had confirmation from Ambassador Bremer in the hearings that the funds that are existing now for reconstruction in Iraq will expire in January, roughly January, December to January, that is, all the contracts that are under way now will run out of money in January. That means there will be nothing for clean water. There will be nothing for the sewers, sewage systems. There will be nothing for the food programs. None of this will be there. The gentleman is suggesting that we should have this gap from roughly just January to next September of 9 months where no reconstruction is done. Now, if you really want to make sure that people start throwing rocks and shooting bullets at our troops, I guess that is the surest way to make sure that happens is by cutting off all the reconstruction for the next year. I cannot imagine what the thought or the idea behind it is, but I cannot imagine anything that would be worse for us.

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. 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

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, we have had some very general discussion about this issue of loans. I just want to go through this amendment kind of piece by piece so that people understand what we are talking about were this amendment to be adopted. And I believe we will sustain our point of order against it. But this deals with, let us make it clear, it is dealing only with that part, and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) has made this clear, that is the reconstruction for the IRRF money, as it is called, in Iraq. And it says that 50 percent of the total amounts of the roughly $20 billion, 50 percent of the amounts appropriated under this heading ``shall be withheld from obligation and expenditure until,'' and then there are several conditions. The first condition is the money will be withheld until the initial 50 percent of the funds appropriated has been obligated--giving priority consideration to emergency purposes of security, electric sector infrastructure, oil infrastructure, public works, water resources, transportation and telecommunications infrastructures, and other emergency needs. Well, Mr. Chairman, 80 percent of the total amount of $20 billion is for those items. So the question legitimately raised, I think, here is which 50 percent of that is a priority and which part is not a priority? The second condition is the money will be withheld, until the President prepares and transmits to the Committees on Appropriations of the House and of the Senate a report that describes the programs, projects, and activities that have been financed by the initial funds and includes a detail analysis of the extent to which such programs, projects, and activities are, or have been, successful. Mr. Chairman, that means that we have to have a, basically, a completion of the project. You cannot tell us immediately when you start a project whether it has been successful. You have to have a completion of that project. Then you prepare an analysis of it. And then you can release the second half of the money. So there is necessarily a very large gap in here. All of the 50 percent has to be done and all of it has to be analyzed before you can release the second half. And the third condition, Mr. Chairman, is the 50 percent is withheld until the President determines and certifies to Congress that a democratically-elected government in Iraq has been established. So, Mr. Chairman, we are going to say that our ability to finish this job in Iraq and our ability to get the security forces in place in Iraq is going to depend, and the ability therefore, to get our troops home from Iraq, is going to depend on whether or not we are successful in getting a democratically-elected government there. Mr. Chairman, I just would suggest to you that I think this is not the right approach, that we ought to be doing everything we can as quickly as possible to get Iraqi security forces in place so that American troops can come home. And that means spending the money that is necessary to build the Iraqi Army, to build the Iraqi national police, to build the oil and the electric infrastructure, to put the security forces that guard those facilities in place. All of that has to be done as quickly as possible so that American military forces can get out of those duties that every day puts them in harm's way as they are in the inner sections of Baghdad, as they are beside these facilities around the country. That ought to be the responsibility of the Iraqi people to do that, but it cannot be done until we spend the money to train the people, to equip them, to arm them and to get them out there to do this. Mr. Chairman, I retain the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt), a distinguished member of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Chocola).

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).

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

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), a distinguished member of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the amendment as I understand it here is designed to improve the quality of life for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody can dispute the need to do so. However, my concern is obviously where the funds come from. The amounts that are taken here are all from various accounts that are devoted to the reconstruction in Afghanistan. One can argue it is relatively small amounts here and there, it is a couple of hundred million in this account, a couple of hundred million in that account, but when it comes to the reconstruction which is only 25 percent of the total amount of this supplemental bill, the amounts that are taken out of here are rather substantial. The amounts that are added in on the military side are not that large. But this cuts very deeply into what Ambassador Bremer and this administration and this United States and the Coalition Authority is trying very hard to do in Iraq, which is not only to make sure that the quality of life for our Armed Forces is adequate, but to improve the quality of life for the Iraqi citizens, to improve not just the material quality of life for the Iraqi citizens, but to improve the quality of governance life under which they live. That is, to make sure that the institutions of democracy begin to take root in Iraq, that there is freedom for people to speak out, that there is freedom for those who are Shiites to practice their religion freely. That there is the ability of people to have electricity and water that is essential not only for their livelihoods but, in many cases, for their very lives. To be able to have the health care that they need. These items, where these reductions come from, would come from those accounts. It also comes out of the security. A very large part of this comes out of the security within Iraq. Mr. Chairman, it is important to have the security for the United States military forces, but if we are going to bring our forces home as rapidly as possible, it is very important that we provide for the security within Iraq. That is, that the forces, the army and the national police forces in Iraq are able to be constituted as quickly as possible, stand on their own two feet and that they can substitute for the United States forces the security needs of Iraq. That is the only way in which we are going to be able to bring our troops home in a timely fashion. And so this amendment, I think, is misdirected. On the one hand, it says we want to improve the quality of life for our forces in Iraq, but on the other hand, it cuts in a disproportionate way from the accounts that are necessary to get them out of there and to get them back with their families, in the United States with their families. Mr. Chairman, I think that this is unfortunate, because on the one hand, it looks like it is a good thing to do to help the quality of life for our troops, and no one disputes that motive. But on the other hand by disproportionately taking from these categories, security, health care, electricity, the water and sanitation, the constitutional reconstruction needs in Iraq, by disproportionately taking from those accounts, we damage the ability of the Coalition Provisional Authority. We damage the ability of the United States. We damage the ability of our Armed Forces in Iraq to carry out the foreign policy objectives that we are trying to achieve and for our forces to be removed from Iraq as quickly as possible. We damage our ability to help the Iraqis take the responsibility for their own security and for running their own country. This is the wrong approach, Mr. Chairman, and I hope that we will reject this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I rise in opposition to the Obey substitute amendment. I have the greatest respect for the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey). He does very serious work not only in the full committee but also with the Foreign Operations subcommittee. His devotion to our international posture in the world and to foreign affairs is genuine. Having said that, I do disagree with the approach of this amendment. This amendment aims to be a complete substitute. But, it really completely turns, I think, what we are trying to do in terms of our foreign policy direction in Iraq on its head. At the end of my remarks in the opening part of this general debate, I quoted General Abizaid, who made it clear in testimony before our subcommittee that the work of the reconstruction is every bit as important as what we do for the military. The Obey amendment would take and convert much of the reconstruction money and would put some of it into additional funds for the military. Mr. Chairman, we can argue whether or not there should be additional funds there or not, whether or not we were adequate in the efforts that we made in terms of giving the right support to our troops there or not. I think that this legislation today, this supplemental bill that is before us today, does address that issue, however, on the military side of the equation. What we have attempted to do here is to balance that with roughly one-fifth of this total amount, $20 billion, going to reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq. I think that that amount is a relatively small amount and a very much-needed amount. Now, let me turn to the issue of whether or not this money, or even half of it, as the gentleman's amendment suggests, whether this amount should be done in the form of a grant or whether it should be done in the form of a loan. We have heard, and we will continue to hear today, a very extensive debate on an amendment that deals with the issue of whether or not the funds that we provide under this heading should be in the form of a grant or a loan. But let me just say that for the purposes of this debate here on this substitute, in my view, the arguments against the loan are very persuasive. We do not have a legal government that exists in Iraq now. By doing it through the World Bank, we may get around that, although the World Bank and the president of the World Bank made clear in a meeting with me that the World Bank is not in any position to loan the amount of money we are talking about here today at any time in the near future. So we would really be saying that we are not going to make this money available at all for reconstruction to Iraq. And I think it is very clear this money is needed and it is needed within the next year. Now, will it all be spent in the next 12 months? No. But can most of it be obligated? I believe it can. And that is why our subcommittee worked hard to go through this line by line, to take out those items we did not think could be obligated in the course of the next year. I think what we have come up with is a carefully crafted bill that covers those items which are most needed and which can be used. The second reason that we ought to oppose a loan agreement is that it sends the wrong signal to our allies as well as sending the wrong signal to Iraq and to the Middle East. It says to our allies who are going to the donors conference in Madrid next week, it says to them that while we are asking you to give cash, we are giving ours in the form of a loan. It is the wrong signal to send. To the Iraqis it says we came into this country, and now we are going to loan you money that is going to go to hire American contractors and you are going to pay them back. It is the wrong signal to send. Mr. Chairman, I just believe this is not the right approach to dealing with what is a very complicated, complex issue. We need to give the maximum flexibility to the President of the United States to carry out the purpose of the Foreign Assistance Act and our foreign policy, consistent, I might add, with our obligations as a Congress to make sure that we provide proper oversight of the spending of these funds. The bill that we have before us today does do that. It does require reporting. It requires regular reporting. It requires there be notification of changes. It gives some flexibility to move money from one account to the other, but requires notification in order to accomplish that. So we have, I think, balanced the needs of the President to be able to carry out the foreign policy of the United States with the need of Congress to provide the oversight that is its responsibility under article one of the Constitution. The amendment offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin is indeed a comprehensive amendment; and it is given, I know, with the best of ideas in mind of the gentleman from Wisconsin, but I think it is simply the wrong approach. It robs the President of his responsibility as well as the flexibility that he needs to carry out the purposes of the Foreign Assistance Act, and I think it would needlessly tie the President's hands in carrying out those responsibilities. I urge my colleagues to reject this amendment, if it is indeed voted on, though I believe a point of order lies against it. I think this is the wrong approach, and I would hope that we would not adopt this approach to this very important legislation.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, those of us who have served in the military know the meaning of the old term ``hurry up and wait.'' Well, that is what we have got here, a hurry up and wait amendment. It says we are going to withhold 50 percent of the money that the President seeks on an urgent basis until we know how the first 50 percent worked out. If between $18 billion and $20 billion in reconstruction aid is needed to get our troops back from Iraq, to put Iraq on its feet, to be able to get our troops out of there, and I believe that a majority of this House is prepared to provide that much money, this amendment says to our troops over there in Iraq, do not plan on coming home for a while, because we are going to see how this first half works out. We will see whether or not we get a democratically-elected government, how it gets established in Iraq. I guess if we want to be facetious, we could say what happens if they decide to have a recall election, if there are some hanging chads over there? But the reality is, not speaking facetiously, that the return of our troops and the utilization of the urgently needed second $9 billion to $10 billion for reconstruction under this amendment would be put on hold until there is a democratically-elected government. So we are, in other words, putting ourselves in the hands of the Iraqis to decide when our forces are going to be able to come home. The amendment gives priority consideration to various sectors of reconstruction in the first half that it allows to be spent as a grant. It says it gives priority consideration to uses for security, for power, for oil, for public works, for water, for transportation and telecommunication. Well, those items are 80 percent of what is in the $20 billion that we have got in this bill. So which of those priority items are going to be done and which ones really are not priority items, or how much of them are not really priority items? Which of these things do we decide are really not priorities until we have a democratically-elected government in Iraq? The fact is, these are important, and we need to move these things forward now, and we need to do it on an orderly basis. While not all of this money is going to be spent during this first year, the vast majority will be. That is what our subcommittee looked at very carefully, how much of this money can be obligated in the next 15 months, and I believe the vast majority of it can be obligated during that time. That provides for an orderly flow of the contracts. One of the reasons we are considering this supplemental bill now is because many of us pushed with the administration to get it up here so that in January when the contracts run out of the existing funds that were in the last supplemental bill, we will not have a break in the construction process. What would happen if we were not able to go forward with the water projects, the sanitation projects, the electric projects, the projects to restore the oil production in Iraq. The worst thing we could have is to have a break in the reconstruction process. And yet this is exactly what this amendment would do. ``Once we see what happens with the first half, then we will decide how to proceed with the second half.'' The supplemental bill that you have before you, talking about the reconstruction part of this, is comprehensive. It addresses security, such as border enhancement. It is needed to get the oil industry up, to get the industry operating, and all the aspects of long-term recovery are dependent on whether or not the Iraqis are able to get their oil production up so they will have the funds they need to do these things themselves. It fixes the transportation infrastructure in the Port of Umm Qasr. It addresses education, and helps the Iraqis deal with investigating the crimes of Saddam Hussein against humanity. Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate as to what the supplemental package is all about. It is about the strategic interests of the United States. It is about creating a peaceful and stable Iraq. It is about creating a more peaceful Middle East. It is very much about fighting terrorism. But, most of all, this is about winning the war, winning the war against terrorism, and it is about the safety of our troops, the men and women in uniform. I know I have said it several times on this floor, and I have quoted him and paraphrased him several times, but I think it is worth repeating, and I am sure I will do it more times today. General Abizaid in testimony before our subcommittee said that you can pay the U.S. military, but you will be paying them to stay in Iraq forever without fully providing the direct assistance for reconstruction. What this supplemental appropriation is designed to do is not keep our forces there forever, but to find a way to get them home, by saying to the Iraqis we are going to train your security forces, your military forces, your police forces, so that you can take over those responsibilities from us. If we say that we are not going to do those responsibilities now, we are saying to ourselves that we are going to keep our military forces there for a longer period of time, and the longer we delay with the construction, the longer our troops will be there. If you want to bring our troops home, let us move on with the reconstruction, and let us oppose this amendment.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, as I listened to the debate and the arguments that were made by the gentleman from South Carolina and the gentleman from Virginia and the gentleman from Wisconsin, it occurs to me that the problem in this debate is it is as though it was taking place in some kind of vacuum, that the only thing we were talking about here was the amount of money that is in this bill for the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is as if the assertion is that we are not doing anything for our troops that are over there. Let us not neglect the fact that three-fourths of all the dollars that are in here, or the $67 billion, is for the military forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan. It is to replenish those accounts. It is to do exactly some of the things that the gentleman from Wisconsin just described to us a minute ago. It is not as though we were not cognizant of that, that we were not thinking about that when this bill was crafted by the administration and worked on in the Committee on Appropriations. But what the gentleman is suggesting is that more of the money should be going there. So as I said earlier, we are adding a relatively small amount to the military to help the quality of life there and taking a very large amount out of what is necessary for the reconstruction of Iraq. Let me just give a few of the figures. Out of security and law enforcement, these are the people that we are asking to train them to replace our security forces. The amendment would take almost $900 million out of that account. For justice and public safety, the amendment would reduce about $180 million. Out of electricity, the gentleman from Wisconsin suggests that we would reduce that by $1,530,000,000. When we were in Iraq in August and we were in Basra, we had a briefing by the commanding general, the British commanding general, who talked about how the temperature had gotten up in August to 130 degrees. The electricity system just simply collapsed under those circumstances. They were without any electricity in Basra for 4 days, and that is when the riots took place. People went out in the street and started throwing rocks out of sheer frustration. I would be doing that. You would be doing that. And that put the safety, in this case of British soldiers, and the same is true in Baghdad and elsewhere where American soldiers are located, put the safety of those soldiers at risk. We need to get that electric system up, and we need to get it running. Let me repeat this again. General Abizaid said we cannot separate the reconstruction dollars from what we are doing for the military. They are just as important. It is just as much a part of the security of the forces that we have in Iraq as is every dime that we give for ammunition or for any weapons or for clothing or for food for our troops over there. The reconstruction dollars are part and parcel of the security of our forces over there. I am paraphrasing what General Abizaid said. I quoted it directly a few minutes ago in my general remarks. Let me just close with this statement, Mr. Chairman: If we are concerned about the quality of life of our American forces that are in Iraq, we do no favors to the quality of life of those troops by keeping them there longer and by denying the reconstruction effort and the constitution of the security forces in Iraq that will get our troops out of Iraq. If the Members want to improve the quality of life of our troops, bring them home; and the fastest way to do that is to improve the security of the Iraqis to allow them to take back the country and allow our forces to leave. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the point of order and I reserve my time.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Chairman, I want to begin by thanking the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) for bringing this amendment because I think the debate here has been an important debate and a very worthy debate of this House. I also want to commend him and many others who have spoken for their attention to the fiscal responsibility of this body. I think all of us feel very strongly about the need for us to exercise fiscal caution, fiscal prudence when American taxpayer dollars are at stake here. I certainly feel very strongly that way myself. I have never said that I did not believe that in the future that loans could be made available in Iraq, that indeed, in fact, that I believe in the year 2005 in the fiscal year 2005 that moneys there probably should be made available as loans. By then I expect we will have a constituted legal government in the country, but I think, at this moment, it would be the wrong approach, it would be the wrong thing to do. So I would say, Mr. Chairman, this is simply premature to be talking about loans at this very moment. The last point, Mr. Chairman, I would like to make is in response to what many have said: Listen to what people are telling you back in your districts. I think we should listen to what people are telling us back in our districts, but this is also about leadership. It was about leadership when we said yes to the President when we gave him the authority to take action, military action in Iraq. We stood up and took that kind of action even though there was opposition at home. So, Mr. Chairman, this is about leadership, and I think we, as Members of this body, have a responsibility to exercise leadership. With that, Mr. Chairman, under my reservation, I would make a point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law and constitutes legislation in an appropriation bill, and, therefore, violates clause two of rule XXI. The rule states in pertinent part: ``An amendment to a general appropriation bill shall not be in order if changing existing law.'' The amendment, in item four, imposes additional duties. I ask for a ruling.

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), a member of the committee.

Mr. KOLBE

Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This amendment, as the gentlewoman from New York has described, modifies our competition and contracting provisions and adds some additional reporting items. This one, unlike the one we debated earlier, is not opposed by the Committee on Government Reform. Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to accept this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.