Emergency Supplemental

Statement

Emergency Supplemental

This past week, Congress debated a $183 billion supplemental-spending bill designed to fund the military as our brave citizen soldiers continue to fight for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bill is long overdue and recently Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Congress the Pentagon is dangerously close to running out of money.

"We need (the supplemental appropriations bill) very badly before the Memorial Day recess. We stop paying soldiers on the 15th of June and we have precious little flexibility with respect to that," said Adm. Mullen. "Clearly that creates incredible constraints and difficulties for us."

Put another way, without this bill being signed into law, we could see furloughs for as many as 200,000 civilian defense workers.

The maddening aspect to this issue is the simple fact this partisan rancor is completely unnecessary.

The $183.6 billion supplemental funding package includes $96.6 billion in Defense Department funding for fiscal year 2008.

Leaders in the majority party included $3.4 billion to be used to pay for other domestic programs and items unrelated to the war. While I oppose using a critical troop funding bill to pass billions of dollars of unrelated government spending, what is most upsetting is how this bill came to the House floor.

During the run-up to the 2006 elections, the Democrats promised the American people legislative bills would come to the floor under an open, full, and fair debate consisting of a full amendment process which grants the minority the right to offer its alternatives and that bills "should be developed following full hearings and open subcommittee markups."

Instead, House leaders decided to skip the House Appropriations Committee, the committee with jurisdiction over this bill, and instead opted to take the bill directly to the floor, altering longstanding processes meant to ensure an open and honest debate.

In the past 20 years, there have been only a handful of emergency spending bills passed without input from the House Appropriations Committee, notably aid after Hurricane Katrina and the attacks on September 11, 2001 - measures brought to a vote under bipartisan agreements.

Members on both sides of the aisle have been locked out of any meaningful, thoughtful participation in the formation of this bill.

I was extremely disappointed the majority leadership chose this method of bringing this legislation to the floor.

It has now been more than 440 days since the original supplemental was sent to Congress by President Bush - and while some parts of the original request have been passed, the entire bill has sat idle.

I understand the need to move expeditiously on this critical war funding. However, this should not be used as an excuse to thumb our noses at the legislative process.

By following the rules, the Democrat majority could have avoided a partisan fight on an extremely necessary bill. Instead, we are faced once again with gridlock and partisan politics. All this, while our troops battle terrorist and insurgents. Certainly, they deserve better.

Short-circuiting the open committee process is no way to pass vital funding measures for our troops, and in fact flies in the face of the very ideals for which our brave men and women in uniform are fighting.

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