C. Young

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, and I only do so to engage the gentleman just very briefly, the gentleman and I have an understanding that I will not object to his request; I have no problem with that, but that we have an agreement that I would then ask unanimous consent to limit debate on this amendment, these amendments, to 15 minutes, 7\1/2\ minutes on each side.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that further debate on the pending amendment offered by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) and any amendments thereto be limited to 15 minutes to be equally divided and controlled by the proponent and myself, the opponent.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I thought we had amended that. But that is okay with me; if the gentleman wants to do it 15 and 15, I have no problem with that either.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I have just a brief closing statement. I reserve my time until the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) yields back his time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time. I want to say, to the Members of the House, today my colleagues are exercising one of the most basic requirements of the Constitution, and that is to provide for the defense of our Nation. We will appropriate the funds today to do just that. The situation is serious. Our young Americans are at risk on the battlefield. It is important that we provide everything that they need to conclude their mission and to replace whatever munitions have been used. Mr. Chairman, I would just ask all Americans to join in a prayer asking God's blessing on all of those men and women who are performing that mission today, wherever they might be in this world, and also to ask God's blessings on the President of the United States, President Bush, the Commander in Chief, as he leads our Nation through these very difficult times.

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

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve a point of order.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. I just want to point out that under the strong leadership of President Bush, we have developed a good coalition to fight this war against the regime of Saddam Hussein. We actually have 49 active members of the coalition, which is a larger group of countries supporting this effort than we had in Desert Storm in 1991. So with the leadership of President Bush and the strong support that he has had from Prime Minister Blair, the Prime Minister of Spain, the Prime Minister of Australia, providing the strongest leadership, we have a good, strong coalition. The next part of this bill has to do with financial support for some members of that coalition. But as I talk about the coalition, there is one group that has not had much recognition, and they really deserve it. That is Poland. Poland, a new member to NATO, an emergent country after the Soviet Union went away, actually was involved in one of the very first combat missions in this action of the Iraqi freedom. That mission was the oil platforms in the gulf. Actually, their combat team took control of and are managing and defending those platforms that were sabotaged, that were wired for explosives. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), the very distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs of the Committee on Appropriations, to discuss that part of the bill.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg), the very distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the very distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), chairman of the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished member of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham).

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I would like to respond that he is correct in his assessment of the situation, and I guarantee him that I would work as closely with him as I possibly can to accomplish what he wishes to accomplish. The National Animal Disease Center modernization project is an important initiative, both for updating these facilities and particularly in light of the threats of agro- and bioterrorism. And I thank the gentleman for calling this to our attention today.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, today H.R. 1559 is before the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union to pay for the war in Iraq, the liberation of the people of Iraq, the destruction of a regime that threatens its own people, that persecutes its own people, that threatens its neighbors with weapons of mass destruction, that is a vicious, violent regime. We are at war today, and I want to say that American people can be, and I am sure they are, tremendously proud of the members of our Armed Forces. I was paying tribute to the men and women who serve in our Armed Forces for their tremendous dedication and their courage and their commitment and their valor and the tremendous way in which they are carrying out their mission. All Americans are proud of what these young Americans are doing. The Committee on Appropriations reported the bill with a recorded vote and every Member in the Committee voted yes: number one, to bring the bill to the floor; number two, to show our complete support of our American Armed Forces. And I am very proud of that. I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), and I wanted to thank the members of both parties, on both sides of the political aisle on the Committee on Appropriations who worked together to produce this product that is very similar, Mr. Chairman, to what the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, asked us to do. The major part of the appropriations provided in this bill are for the Department of Defense, and the military services, to pay for much of the activities that have already taken place and to provide additional funding to complete this effort to rid the world of a regime as the one we have seen for the last 20 years headed by Saddam Hussein. Mr. Chairman, I am going to reserve the balance of my time at this point because I want the subcommittee chairmen who worked so hard to bring this package together to use a considerable amount of the time to explain the part of the bill on which they worked. Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the following tabular and extraneous material: [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH03AP03.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH03AP03.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH03AP03.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH03AP03.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH03AP03.005 Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. I do so to again thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) for the cooperation that we enjoyed as we prepared this bill. And this is a clean bill, by the way. And I compliment the members of the House. A lot of Members came to us and asked for consideration to do something that they felt was important to do in this supplemental, and we explained that it was a war supplemental and explained why we were not going to be able to accept Member projects. There are no Member projects in this bill. This is a clean bill. It tracks what the President asked for, and I think the House can be very proud of that. There are several major parts of the bill: the national defense part dealing with the war, the very important part of the bill dealing with homeland security, and another part of the bill that deals with support for our coalition partners. So we are going to explain those sections of the bill separately. The largest part of the bill goes to the war, of course, and for national defense and for our troops to provide what they need to carry out their important mission. Mr. Chairman, to present that part of the bill, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations' Subcommittee on Defense, who does a tremendous job in presenting and providing information that we need to put these bills together.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. I do so to say that on September 11, 2001, America's world changed. As we entered the 21st century, everything changed. Our citizens came under attack from cowardly terrorists who killed thousands of innocent, and I repeat, innocent civilians. That war against terrorism has been ongoing very effectively. Early this year, I recommended to the Committee on Appropriations a reorganizational structure that would create a subcommittee which would have the responsibility of dealing specifically with the security of our homeland. I asked the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) if he would chair that subcommittee. He is one of the outstanding leaders of our Committee on Appropriations, and he agreed to do that. They are well under way with their work. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), the chairman of that very important Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law and constitutes legislation in an appropriations 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.'' Mr. Chairman, I ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 1559, and that I may include tabular and extraneous material.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and again I thank him for the cooperation that he has shown. There is no doubt we spent a lot of time putting this bill together. But I think the gentleman and his ranking minority members on all of his subcommittees and their staff would concede the fact that we were totally open and as we went from point to point, issue to point, project to project, that we were open with the minority, the ranking members and their staff. So this should not be a big surprise to anybody that paid attention to their appropriators on either side of the aisle. That was a very open process, a difficult process, one that I hope we never have to go through again, as well as the gentleman from Wisconsin. But we did the best we could with what we had to work with. I would hope the gentleman would let us do this CR tonight to extend for merely 4 days, just to make sure that this gets to the President and he has time to at least look at it, and I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, in order to allow ample time for the House to move this bill now to the Senate and for the Senate to debate it, pass it, and to engross the bills and get them to the President and give him a little time to review this bill, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Appropriations be discharged from further consideration of the joint resolution, (H.J. Res. 23), making further appropriations for the fiscal year 2003, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding; and the purpose of my request is to make sure that the bill does not get bogged down administratively between here, the Senate, engrossing the bill, and getting it delivered. That does take some time. And the present CR runs out on February 20. The House will not be in session on February 20.