C. Young

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that the answer is yes, the President has tremendous leeway in how to use these funds for the immediate response to whatever the attack was or will be. The Congress will play a very important constitutional role in whatever that effort might be; but yes, the President does have the ability to use those funds for that purpose. Mr. Speaker, once again, I would like to express on behalf of the House, as we close this debate, sympathy for the families of those who lost their lives in the airplanes in New York City, in Pennsylvania, at the Department of Defense and to let them know that this Congress is going to be supportive in any way that we can. Mr. Speaker, I do not have adequate words to express the pride that I feel today for the Members of this Congress. We have a lot of political differences which have been obvious in the past, which will be obvious in the future; but in this time of triumph those differences have been set aside to be addressed at another time. Today, we unify our Nation. We unify our government and we say to the world, Americans will not live in fear. We will not allow attacks upon our people or our places. Despite the political differences that we may have from time to time, and there are many, as there should be, we will never be divided as a Nation, as a people, as a government, as a Congress on the issue of defending our people, defending our Nation. And if one American is attacked, if a group of Americans are attacked, if one of our places is attacked, then as far as I am concerned, our entire Nation has been attacked; and we are not going to stand for it. We will do whatever it takes to support our President, who is strong in his determination to lead this effort, to support our President as we move towards victory over those who would perpetrate terrorism and bring fear and tyranny to the world; and we are just not going to allow that to happen. I urge the passage of the bill.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield the gentleman from New York an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I do so because I have some questions that I would like to have answered by my friend and colleague from Alaska.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. That is the reason why I am down here rather than beside him. I do not want there to be any confusion which one is which.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to compliment him and the ranking member and the chairman of the committee for having introduced this resolution. It is important that the Congress, the House, the Senate, the President of the United States speak in one solid voice that we will not now or ever tolerate the type of terrorist activities that we saw brought upon our shores yesterday. Today, I have had numerous visits with those dealing with this tragedy. One of the visits I made today was to the Pentagon. I visited there last night. The Pentagon was still burning, and there are still some electrical fires today in the Pentagon. But standing there in the rubble and recognizing what happened there, recognizing how many bodies were still entombed somewhere in that building, I might tell my colleagues that it causes a great emotional effect on this Member, and I think anyone there. I would like to say that the firefighters, the rescue people who are out there, the Red Cross, just everybody involved have done a magnificent job in trying to deal with this terrible, terrible tragedy. It is going to be fairly expensive to rebuild that section of the Pentagon that is going to have to be rebuilt, and Congress has to realize that. As I listened today to all of our Members, Member after Member standing here in the well condemning terrorism and standing strong for our country, because our country was attacked, this Congress to a man and to a woman, Republican and Democrat, have made a declaration that we are not going to allow this to go by without some immediate reaction from us. The President has asked for some funding to deal with the immediate issues, the immediate damages that have been done here at our Pentagon and in New York, where the terrible tragedy was unbelievable. And I would announce to the Members that, after having worked with the President's budget office today, the President's office, and with the appropriation leaders of the House and the Senate in both parties, tomorrow I will introduce a supplemental appropriations bill that would give the President authority to move strongly, quickly, and swiftly. To not only begin to rebuild and recover from the damages that have been done to our people, our friends and our neighbors, but also to give him additional funding for airport security, which obviously was violated by these hijackers being able to take over four of our major airline aircraft. He would have additional funds for counterterrorism activities, and he would have the money to add additional assets to hunt down, to search out, to find, to discover and to punish those who were responsible for this dastardly act. It is my intention, Mr. Speaker, that on tomorrow morning we will introduce this bill, and I believe that we will be able to actually consider it on the floor tomorrow before we adjourn for the day. I would hope that, and as I listen to the Members who are speaking out so strongly today, that we will again speak out strongly as we pass this resolution to guarantee the world that we as the Congress, the President, all of our people, are together in this determination; that we are not going to take this sitting down, and we are going to protect our country and our people from terrorists acts.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I only do so to commend the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) for bringing a good bill to the floor and having done a good job. In addition, I want to announce to Members that this is the tenth appropriations bill that we have passed this year; and despite the fact that we got off to a very late start, not receiving our justifications and specific numbers actually until April, when we normally get them in February, the House has done a great job in coming together to pass these appropriations bills, one supplemental that is already signed into law and nine of the regular appropriations bills. That is all the appropriations business we will have for the balance of this week and until we return from our summer work period in our districts. When we get back, we will take up very soon upon our arrival the Military Construction bill, the Defense appropriations bill, the District of Columbia bill and the Labor Health and Education bill. So we had a very busy month in June and an extremely busy month in July as far as appropriations go. September will be no different. It will be an intense time for all of us as we approach the end of the fiscal year. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) for his determined dedication to this issue of providing support for those men and women who serve on the front line in guaranteeing the safety and security of our communities, along with police officers. Without our firefighters, I am not sure where we would be going as a Nation or as a community. I would say the gentleman was very kind in his remarks directed to this chairman, but I must tell my colleagues that he, in fact, is the most dedicated, most persistent, most determined Member of this House to see that this type of assistance is made available for those brave men and women who do support the security of our Nation in fighting the fires, protecting our properties, and protecting our lives. Again, I would say thanks to him for the determination and the strong effort that he has made in this respect.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the gentleman is correct. However, as we proceed through the bill, I think the gentleman and I both agree that Members that have amendments at a particular place in the bill should be here to offer them, because, as we announced several days ago, we are not going to be able to go back to the bill once we have passed that point.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I reserve the right to object only to explain the purpose for this unanimous consent request is to try to help us get an organized schedule today so we can move along expeditiously. This would simply allow these three amendments to be taken up early in the day. They will tend to be the more controversial amendments. We would like to get this process organized. In addition, I would like to suggest that Members that have amendments that they wish to offer really should let us know what they are quickly, so that we can try to organize the balance of the day so we can complete this legislation.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. The gentleman is correct. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that I do appreciate his comments and I do appreciate the way we have been able to cooperate on the previous appropriations bills to have the time limit agreements so that no Member would be denied an opportunity to say what they have to say, but that we would try to do it in an expeditious manner. As our former colleague and dear friend, Moe Udall, used to say on many of these debates, anything that needs to be said has already been said. The problem is not everyone has said it yet. So with the cooperation of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and both sides, we would be able to expedite the consideration of this and get done today.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Chair for allowing me this time to advise the Members that we will do the best we can to expedite the conclusion of this bill today, if possible. It is a lengthy bill, and there are a lot of amendments. If the Members will cooperate and help us in assembling a list of all the amendments we will have to consider, we ask the Members who have amendments to offer to the VA-HUD bill to please present them at least by the close of the general debate on the bill. Hopefully, we would be able to finish this bill tonight. I would also say that our leadership has made the decision that if we cannot finish the bill tonight that we would come back tomorrow to finish this bill, but we need to finish it before the beginning of next week.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Members for the bipartisan support on this rule. It was somewhat contentious, but we are prepared to take up the rule.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I appreciate what the gentleman has said in response to what we have already done by increasing the President's budget request for these extremely important issues. I know that we would like to do more. But we are doing the best we can to keep all of our bills within our budget number. We cannot go over that budget number. What I wanted to say to our colleagues is that the Obey amendment might have been more acceptable except for one little problem, which I will refer to in a minute. All of our committees in the House, jealously guard their areas of responsibility and their areas of jurisdiction. The gentleman from Wisconsin is one of the outstanding leaders in doing that for the Committee on Appropriations, to preserve our prerogatives, and our responsibilities. The problem with the amendment that the gentleman from Wisconsin wanted to have made in order and he offered in the full committee, relates to two sentences: ``Paragraph 2 of section 1 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 relating to reduction in rates after June 30, 2001 . . .'', This is the tax bill, ``. . . is amended by adding after the table the following: in the case of taxable years beginning during calendar year 2002, the preceding table shall be applied by substituting 39.1 percent for 38.6 percent.'' That would change the tax law. The Committee on Ways and Means rightfully is protecting their responsibility and their prerogatives, in being opposed to this. I think it is incumbent upon us if we intend to maintain the integrity of all of our committee structures, that this is the reason we were not able to accept this amendment. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I also appreciate the good work that he and the gentleman from West Virginia have done to produce a really good bill.

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

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook), distinguished subcommittee chairman.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the ranking member of the subcommittee.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).