Bruce L. Braley: “One of the things that we face every year is something called an emergency supplemental, which is a request from the…”

“One of the things that we face every year is something called an emergency supplemental, which is a request from the President for billions of dollars of additional funding to fund the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, I would just ask my colleagues, and I'll pose this first to you, Mr. Hall. Where I come from in Iowa, an emergency is something that is unexpected and unanticipated that you can't plan for. But I am at a loss to understand why, after being in Iraq longer than we were engaged in the Civil War, after being in Iraq longer than we were engaged in World War II, we continue to face emergency supplemental funding requests for these wars, when the Department of Defense and the Pentagon and the President have to know how much they anticipate when they send their budget down for us to consider.”