I cannot support this item unless there are some limitations on it, unless Congress can exercise its power over the purse, as the Constitution provides.

Why does the administration believe that the Appropriations Committee, or Congress, should have no say in how this $200 million foreign aid program should be spent?

Does the administration have any plans for attacks against Syria, either because of the assassination in Lebanon or for its supposed hand in the Iraqi insurgency?

Why has it taken nearly 2 years of fighting in Iraq before the Pentagon asked for armor for all of these supply vehicles?

I believe it was September 14, 2001, resolution might be used by the administration as a premise to attack Syria and/or Iran.

No, we're not talking about a lot of things; we're talking about this particular request for modularity.

the Congress has passed two use-of-force resolutions, one almost immediately after the September 11 attacks

Well, I have to tell you, Mr. Secretary, this seems to me to be an abuse, a serious abuse, of supplemental appropriations requests.

to start--in an appropriations supplemental, a multiyear appropriations request, strikes me to be very, very strange.

The President hasn't requested one dime of his $81.9 billion supplemental for the veterans' healthcare system.

the same situation that obtained prior to the entry of the war with Iraq might, in some respects, lend itself to a repeat in the case of Syria and/or Iran.

Will these funds be sufficient to address the complaints that we have heard, and that you heard also, Mr. Secretary, when you were visiting there, that our troops are scrounging for armor in trash dumps?