Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, on July 18, the House Committee on Armed Services reported out the bill presently before the House, H.R. 4547, on a near unanimous vote of 50 to 1. To understand what this bill does, allow me to first provide a bit of background. The President's budget request for fiscal year 2003 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 expanding these funds to prosecute the war on terrorism. In response, the House adopted a budget resolution in March that set aside $10 billion of the defense budget in a special reserve fund for this purpose. 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 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.”