Tom Carper: “in a time of war, nothing is more important than making sure that our fighting men and women have what they need to do…”

“in a time of war, nothing is more important than making sure that our fighting men and women have what they need to do their jobs well. It is with our troops in mind that I will vote in favor of this supplemental appropriations conference report. Having said that, I do have some major concerns about how this bill has been put together and how the Congress has conducted its business with respect to such emergency spending requests over the past several years. Thousands of brave Americans have been serving our country in war zones since shortly after that fateful day of September 11, 2001. But 4 years later, the President and those of us in this Congress continue to refuse to budget for these wartime expenses. Rather than incorporating the costs of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget, these important expenditures continue to be tagged as ``emergency spending.'' Emergency spending should be reserved, in my view, for unforeseen needs. We know, however, that the need for additional funding for our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan is something we should expect and be able to budget for. Unfortunately, this is not new for this Congress or for the Bush administration. This is, I believe, the fourth consecutive time that funding for military operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan have been requested outside the regular budgeting and appropriations process.…”