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OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN BOB STUMP
ON MARK-UP OF HR 4547,
THE COST OF WAR AUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2002 |
The
committee meets this morning to consider two
bills --
·
H.R. 4547, the Cost of War
Authorization Act of 2002; and
·
H.R. 5132, expressing the sense
of the Congress concerning fiscal year 2003
end strengths.
The first matter
under consideration is a bill to provide
authorization for the remaining piece of the
President's defense budget request for
fiscal year 2003.
Members will
recall that the President's budget contained
an unprecedented request for the Congress to
establish a $10 billion "war contingency"
fund that would allow the Department of
Defense maximum flexibility in expending these
funds to prosecute the war on terrorism.
In response, and
I might add, with the strong reservations of a
number of us on this committee, the House
adopted a budget resolution in March that set
aside $10 billion of the defense budget in a
reserve fund.
Members have in
front of them a copy of the operative language
of the budget resolution establishing the
procedure by which the House would be able to
consider authorizing or appropriating the $10
billion fund.
In sum, it requires that only
legislation that provides new budget authority
for "operations of the Department of Defense
to prosecute the war on terrorism" will
qualify to use this fund.
On July 3rd,
the President submitted to Congress a request
to amend his budget to provide a bit more
detail on how they propose to expend these
funds, but it would still essentially remain
one large $10 billion contingency fund.
Members will
also recall, that when the committee and the
House acted on the defense authorization bill
earlier this year, we recognized that this
approach would require that we split the
defense authorization bill into two pieces.
One would involve the requested defense
program minus the $10 billion, and the other
would be the $10 billion, which would follow
at some later point.
In passing the
base defense bill, we also took preliminary
action on the $10 billion bill by authorizing
about $3.5 billion worth of programs that we
judged to be more appropriately considered as
part of the so-called "cost of war" fund.
Since then, the
Senate has passed its version of the defense
authorization bill and chose to include the
$10 billion unlike the House.
So, at this point, we are disconnected
with the Senate over this $10 billion as we
contemplate going to conference.
So all this
background brings us to today.
The objectives
of this mark-up are twofold.
First, to preserve the prerogative of
the Congress and the authorizing process by
considering and issuing our recommendation on
this remaining piece of the defense budget.
And second, to move this bill through
the process so that we can go to conference
with the Senate with both sides having acted
on the totality of the defense budget for
fiscal year 2003.
I think it is
fair to say that there is a wide variance of
opinion as to the wisdom and merit of the
Administration's proposal for a contingency
fund. It
is also fair to say that the Administration
does face a significant challenge in figuring
out how best to finance an unprecedented and
difficult to define war on terrorism.
In a few
moments, when we turn to consideration of the
bill, I will offer a manager's amendment
that attempts to bridge these disparate views
and I believe provides a reasonable compromise
among the competing concerns.
A copy of this
amendment was provided to all committee
members yesterday.
I will cover the
contents of this amendment in greater detail
when we get to that point in the mark-up.
Let me conclude with a couple of
administrative notes.
First,
as I pointed out earlier, the nature of how we
got to this mark-up requires that we pay
careful attention to the unique requirements
of the budget resolution.
Thus, any amendments involving
additional funding must comply with section
201 of the budget resolution or else the bill
is placed in procedural jeopardy.
Second, while as a committee we are
normally accustomed to considering broad
ranging defense legislation, the bill before
us today is very narrowly focused on one
purpose - authorizing funds for the DOD war
on terrorism.
Accordingly, members need to ensure
that any amendments offered are germane to
this purpose as amendments that go beyond this
fundamental purpose will not be considered in
keeping with the Rules and practices of the
House.
Before
proceeding further, let me now recognize Mr.
Skelton for any opening remarks that he may
wish to make.
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