Jane Harman: “I would point out to our last speaker that the DOD appropriations bill is a $400 billion bill, a small fraction of which…”

“I would point out to our last speaker that the DOD appropriations bill is a $400 billion bill, a small fraction of which is for intelligence. In my view, that is not the place for this debate about fully funding counterterrorism intelligence. The intelligence bill is where we should make our stand. And I do appreciate the gentleman from California's (Mr. Hunter) clarification, as he just said, that the additional counterterrorism funding in his bill is only for a couple of months. That is the point we are trying to make, Mr. Chairman. We all are patriots. We all support the troops. We all support our intelligence personnel. We just think that the primary mission of the intelligence community ought to be funded in the base bill, the one we are voting on today. Mr. Chairman, the Intelligence Authorization bill represents the culmination of many months of work by our community to provide the intelligence community with the resources it needs to safeguard our national security. It also presents an opportunity to lay down important oversight markers so that we can fulfill our constitutionally mandated duty to provide oversight of the intelligence community. The Intelligence Committees were created for precisely this reason, and if we simply become a rubber stamp for the administration, then we might as well cease to exist.”