C. Young

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise to thank the gentleman for the hard work that he has done on this amendment. I associate myself with his comments because I strongly agree with everything that he said, and I am happy to accept the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I thank the gentleman from Utah for bringing this matter to our attention, and we do share his concern for the solid rocket motor industrial base. We understand that the Air Force is considering their options, and we certainly intend that they use closeout funding from the Minuteman III mod line in a wise manner. We believe that they should seriously consider a smart closeout, as the gentleman from Utah described, and should also consider incorporating the essential elements from the Minuteman III production line into existing production lines for other defense solid rocket booster programs in order to preserve both military capabilities and to ensure the best use of taxpayer funds.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I rise in opposition to this amendment. I am one of the original budget cutters in this Congress. But I will not cut a defense budget to the point that it adversely affects our troops or adversely affects our country's readiness. And we could be getting close to that. This year, Secretary Gates made his recommendation, which resulted in the President's budget request being $13 billion less than we had anticipated for national defense. In addition to that, this committee recommended, and this Congress will pass sometime today or tomorrow, a bill that is $9 billion less than the President requested. So we have cut and saved money everywhere we could without affecting readiness and without having an adverse effect on our troops. If we start cutting too deep--and we were careful with this $9 billion reduction, very careful--we don't want to see that we have to cancel training for returning troops. We don't want to have to cancel Navy training exercises. We don't want to have to slow down or reduce Air Force flight training. We don't want to delay or cancel maintenance of aircraft, ships, and vehicles. We don't want to delay important safety and quality-of-life repairs to facilities and to military barracks. If we do those things, we are affecting our readiness. Training relates to readiness. Training is a large part of the money in the base bill, not the overseas contingency operations account, but the base bill, which is what this amendment reduces. This amendment could be getting us very close to a dangerous situation where troops and readiness are affected. And there is just no way that I can even appear to support this amendment. I rise in strong opposition to this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment. Our troops and their families are being asked to make sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. We should be at a point of trying to make things better for them, make things easier for them; and I would say that one of the things that we can do is to adopt the gentleman's amendment to at least give them some relief when they're coming back from the war that we sent them to without charging them extra money to get back home with their belongings. I applaud the gentleman for offering this amendment, and I rise in strong support.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. The gentleman is correct. In this bill, the committee has provided an additional $125 million for TBI research. It's above the fully funded budget request of $415 million. And it has been our long-standing policy that this increased funding is provided at the discretion of the Department. Historically, this subcommittee has provided increased funding for TBI research but refrained from directing how that money should be spent, allowing the Department to prioritize how best to use that funding for authorized purposes.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I'm having a hard time believing what I'm hearing in this Chamber when it comes to national defense. You don't get a bookkeeper or an accountant to make some sleight-of-hand number to come up with a defense number. That's not how you do it. The way you do it is decide what is the threat; what is threatening America, what is threatening our allies overseas, what is threatening our troops or our businesses around the world? Decide what that threat is, and then decide how we're going to meet that threat. That's how you come up with a defense number. Just imagine we are going back to the good old days of just slashing defense, gutting the victory fund, and the hangars were full of hangar queens--hangar queens being airplanes that can't fly because they don't have engines or they don't have parts. And in order to make one airplane fly, they had to cannibalize two or three others to get enough parts to make one airplane fly. Well, if you need three or four airplanes in the air but only one flies, somebody is in trouble. We don't want to go back to the days of a hangar queen, the ``hollow force'' so-called. And what about the troops out in combat facing a vicious enemy, and they get to the point where they haven't really experienced what they are about to experience because we didn't get that far in our training because the training was curtailed? When you start cutting back the money, you start cutting back the training, you start cutting back the flying hours, you start cutting back the ability of that soldier to reach out and say, hey, I know exactly how to do this because I was trained properly. Don't cut the training, don't do it. Don't cut our readiness by cutting training. Don't cut our readiness by having hangars full of hangar queens that can't fly or by having garages full of vehicles that can't run because of a lack of spare parts. This is just not good defense. You don't make your defense decisions based on some magical scheme or some solution that an accountant might come up with. You had better be very careful about what the threat is. We don't want any more Pearl Harbors; we don't want any more U.S. World Trades on 9/11; we don't want any more attacks on the Pentagon. We were not well enough prepared there with our intelligence. We need to make sure that we invest enough in intelligence to make sure that we stop those things before they happen. Defense is not something to play games with. Defense is not something to stand up and say, hey, I'm a cost-cutter. All of us are cost-cutters in our own way; some of us just have different priorities for what costs ought to be cut. Mr. Chairman, this is a very important amendment. This subcommittee did a very good job in reducing and saving over $9 billion on this bill alone. This is a terrible amendment. I hope that we overwhelmingly defeat this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I find it a little difficult to listen to the arguments about the War Powers Act, because I agree with those arguments. First of all, in 1973, I think the Congress did give Presidents a gift of power not intended by the Constitution. The Constitution is very clear. It intends that war-making decisions would be made in conjunction with the Commander-in-Chief and the Congress, not the Commander-in-Chief by himself or herself and not the Congress alone, but while working together. That's not the way it has been happening lately. There hasn't been a real declaration of war under the Constitution since World War II, but we have fought in a lot of wars, and we have killed and wounded a lot of our kids. That's not the argument, though. I agree with all of those points. I think that Congress has a serious responsibility to review the War Powers Act and to make it what we think it ought to be, and that is a partner relationship between the Congress and the executive branch. Yet, while we hear these strong arguments about the War Powers Act and the separation of powers, these amendments don't really get the job done. If you want to cut off all funding for any activities in and around Libya, you would have to introduce a separate resolution that would simply say: No funds appropriated here or anywhere else can be used in the Libya operation. In this particular bill, there is no money for Libya, and the President has made it very clear that he is not going to use any funds from the fiscal year 2012 appropriation for Libya. We'll see if that changes, but we have that in writing. We're already there. We're already in the area. We're already flying missions. If this amendment should be agreed to, here is what we would not be able to do: We could not fly search and rescue missions for a downed pilot. We could not do ISR--Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. We could not do aerial refueling for our coalition partners. We could not even be part of operational planning under this amendment. As much as I agree with what the gentleman is trying to accomplish, I can't support this amendment, because of the effect that it really has. If it could amend the War Powers Act and make the President be a partner with Congress, I'd say, Amen. Let's do it quickly. I think the Congress ought to do that, and I think we ought to be serious about doing that; but on this particular amendment, I've got to oppose it because this is what we're dealing with, not the emotional discussions about the War Powers Act. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word to express support for this good amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I thank the gentleman. I would say to the gentleman that he is correct; should the provision be carried on the final authorization bill, then the Department would have sufficient resources to fund the provisions should they decide to based on this appropriations bill.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I also believe these ports to be critical to our defense, and I will be happy to work with the gentleman from Alaska to consider the appropriate measures and funding to address the infrastructure needs of our strategic seaports.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Chairman, I 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 2 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 requires a new determination. I ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I agree with him that we should consider all options for cost savings. Should the Air Force present the committee with a study that indicates potential cost savings in the ejection seat without compromising the F-35's performance or schedule, we will certainly look hard at that.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Chairman, I 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 2 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 gives affirmative direction in effect. I ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the gentlemen, both, for their attention to this important issue. And I want to continue to work with them as we move this bill forward in the hopes that we can bring a swift end and successful end to this tragedy.