C. Young

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson), a member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, all of us think that things that we say in this House are extremely important and to all of the Members in the House. But on occasion there are things that are said in this House that are heard by a lot of people not only in the House, not only in our districts, but in other parts of the world. I understand Mr. King's amendment, and I understand how serious he considers this to be; but what I am worried about is this: if we strike this prohibition from this bill that was well thought out, what we are saying to the Iraqi people and what I am satisfied the propaganda machine of al Qaeda in Iraq are going to do is use this and say: see there, we told you so. The Americans plan to occupy us for the rest of our lives. We don't have any plan to do that, and we don't want the Iraqi people to think that we are going to do that, and we don't want the American people to think that we are going to be constantly occupying Iraq. I understand Mr. King's interest, and most of the time I agree with him, but in this case I can't agree with him because I just think it sends the wrong message not only to the people of Iraq, not only to the people of America, but to the people of other Muslim nations who might say, hey, are we next? Are we going to be occupied? Are we going to have American troops in our streets? We don't want that to happen. We don't want that message delivered across the oceans. I think that we have to defeat this amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, the gentleman makes a very good point, and it has not fallen on deaf ears.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Just a minute. It is under my reservation. Let us bring this to a close. We can repeat our arguments so many times. I withdraw my reservation.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that the other Members get their own time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, but we are talking in circles. We are not even talking about some of the main issues that are before us. The sponsor of the amendment just admitted that we are talking about an authorization. This is an appropriations bill. This should be done at an authorization committee where you all are.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise and report the bill back to the House with sundry amendments, with the recommendation that the amendments be agreed to and that the bill, as amended, do pass.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. The gentleman from Connecticut has made a strong and convincing policy argument for building two submarines each year sooner than the year 2012, and we have discussed this off and on for the last several weeks. He is very, very persuasive. So I can assure him that I will continue to work with him as we prepare to go to conference and go to conference to address the shortage of submarines in our Navy. I am a very strong advocate of our submarine capability. I think that is one of the best deterrence systems that we have, one of the best military systems, and I appreciate the work of the gentleman from Connecticut on this issue. As I said, we have had many conversations about this. I know of no better champion of submarines in the House than Congressman Simmons. But as we have discussed, the 302(b) allocation for this subcommittee was $4 billion less than the administration requested, so that made a shortage of funds. Anyway, Mr. Simmons has made a very strong case and I do intend to work with him because I also believe that we should have a larger submarine fleet. I go back to the days of President Ronald Reagan, who thought we should have a 600-ship Navy, which we don't have today, but I supported that as well. And I certainly support increasing the size of our submarine fleet. So I thank the gentleman for raising the issue and doing the good job that he has done in making this case.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I have yielded to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Well, let me reclaim my time and suggest that if you want to rewrite FISA, you don't do it on the floor on an appropriations bill. You introduce a bill, or you go to the proper committee of proper jurisdiction. This is not something you do on the floor. This is serious. It is not something you do on the floor without any real hearings or consideration. If you want to change FISA, let the authorizing committee change it. They are the ones that have the jurisdiction.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I will.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Yes, of course I would yield.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would bar all funds in this act for development, deployment, or operations for the Defense Travel System. This would put us back to millions of individual transactions that would be almost totally unaccountable and which would have no proper oversight. I admire the gentleman's goal in trying to come up with a system that is better than DTS, but I don't think he has done that. He has just done away with the DTS. We are attempting to get some integrated financial management at the Pentagon, and DTS is just one of the many programs that is trying to accomplish this integration. The program has some problems, but I don't think we ought to kill the effort and go back to ground zero and start all over again. The prohibition on spending any money to develop, deploy or operate would bar the Department from even operating the current system and would also bar the Department from continuing any improvements to DTS. This would ultimately leave the Department's 3.5 million active duty military, reserve, and civilian employees without any travel system. DTS is currently the only system that can meet the full spectrum of cost, capability, security, and savings requirements, as well as the protection of personal information so important to the Defense Department and its global travelers. Interrupting development of this important program would cause an enormous disruption, adversely affecting and, in some cases, seriously jeopardizing Defense Department mission requirements. I believe this amendment is well intended, but I believe that barring all funding would be a serious mistake, so I oppose the amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. As usual, Mr. Markey is very persuasive, as he has been in the past. It is important that the United States Congress make it very clear to anyone who would listen that we do not intend to use torture and that we do not use torture or inhumane treatment. As the gentleman suggested, the House agreed with the McCain amendment, and it was included in last year's legislation. We believe that the Markey amendment basically restates existing law, and because of that we have no objection.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I am not.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. As Mr. Murtha has suggested, there is a lot that can't be said about this amendment and about this program. But what I would like to say is, let's don't tie our hands behind our back when we are fighting a vicious, cruel enemy. Intelligence is extremely important in the war against terrorism. First of all, you don't have, in this particular war, you don't have an army against an army. You don't have a country against a country. You have terrorists attacking innocent people here in the United States on September 11, and leading up to September 11, and anywhere else in the world that they decide that they are going to attack. One of the best defenses against these attacks is the ability to know where they might be or when they might strike or what the target might be. Don't deny the people on the front lines of this intelligence war and information war and the hot war, don't deny them every tool that they can possibly have. As Mr. Murtha said, for those that have been briefed on this program on a regular basis, I am not aware of anyone who is concerned that the rights of Americans to their privacy have been violated. I certainly do not believe that the rights of Americans have been violated in this program. And so I think it is crucial to oppose this amendment; this is far beyond politics. It goes a lot deeper. This goes to the safety and the security of American people wherever they might be. And it is unfortunate that we can't reveal everything that is done, how it is done, where it is done, when it is done; but believe me, it is effective and the privacy of the American people have been protected.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, the subcommittee is well aware of the issue that the Castle amendment addresses. In fact, the subcommittee had scheduled a hearing to look into not only this issue, but a number of other acquisition issues where we believe that there can be some performance changes. Unfortunately, because of a heavy voting day on the floor, we had to postpone that hearing, which will be held sometime in July now. In view of that, I want to say that I agree with what Mr. Castle is offering, and I am certainly prepared to accept his amendment. I think it is a good amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. For those of us who have visited our wounded soldiers and marines in the hospitals understand the importance of the type of injury you are discussing. Sometimes it is very obvious, very evident, and sometimes it is not obvious at all, but it is there. I believe we can help with what you want to do here. I believe as we write our conference report that will come with the conference product. I think we can direct what it is that you want to see directed, and I am prepared to offer that as we go into the conference.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, this is not a good amendment at all. Earlier in the debate earlier in the day, I said we should not be tying our hands behind our back with a specific amendment. This amendment would disarm part of our arsenal against the enemy. If you do not like the Lincoln Group, I do not care about that because I have no idea who they are. And maybe they are amateurish, as my friend from Ohio suggested. If that is the case, maybe we ought to fire the Lincoln Group. But let us not stop the ability of the United States and our story to be told to the Arab world. You have a hard time turning on television and news stories around here that you do not see some of the propaganda from al Jazeera put out by Zarqawi, the former Zarqawi, and his cohorts. Those messages get spread all over the world. In war, psychological war is very important. Is anybody here old enough to remember Tokyo Rose? Mr. Hastings says he is, and so am I. Tokyo Rose, who broadcast radio propaganda to our troops, trying to demoralize them every day, 24 hours a day. Well, are you going to just ignore that kind of warfare, or are you going to fight back? We have a story to tell. Mr. Kucinich talked about the soldiers. Let me tell you something. I have seen and talked with a lot of wounded soldiers and marines in our hospitals right out here north of the city, and many of them complain, Why isn't our story getting told? They do not believe that our story is getting told. They hear the trash that comes out of al Qaeda on al Jazeera that spreads out to all of the Arab worlds and finds its way back here to America, as the gentleman conceded. Are we just going to sit back and take those blows, just sit back and let the enemy throw all of the lies and all of the trash that they want to at us without fighting back? Not me. Not me. Do not take away one of the tools in our arsenal: the ability to fight back in a psychological way, because fighting for the minds of the people involved are a big part of our issue. If you want to fire the Lincoln Group, do it. If this amendment should pass, and I hope that it does not, and the Lincoln Group doesn't get funded, what is to say that they do not hire some other firm to do the same thing? Specifying a particular company is not what we do in appropriations bills. We do not specify companies for contracts or projects. We just do not do that. If you want to fire the Lincoln Group, put in an amendment that says fire the Lincoln Group, but do not take away one of the tools in our arsenal of fighting the battles that we have to fight.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of the bill, H.R. 5631, the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections and conforming changes to the bill.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 5631, and that I may include tabular material on the same.