Mark Souder: “Mr. Chairman, I have a series of four amendments, three I understand are in order, but this one has been ruled not to be…”

“Mr. Chairman, I have a series of four amendments, three I understand are in order, but this one has been ruled not to be in order, and I will not challenge that ruling. The intention of this amendment was to take in this section where it says $5,219,100,000 for Overseas Contingency Operations Transfer Fund and take $3,300,000,000 of that and move it to the four readiness accounts that come up under procurement, to put $825 million under weapons procurement for the Navy, $825 million under aircraft procurement for the Air Force, $825 million under missile procurement for the Air Force, and $825 million for ammunition procurement for the Air Force. The problem apparently with this is that, once we strike in one section, according to our relatively recently adopted rule in the budget agreement, when we strike it from one section, we cannot put it in another section. But I wanted to illustrate several points with this amendment, not that it likely would have passed anyway. The way the bill is written, it is hard to tell that, in fact, this bill forward funds the war in Kosovo because it is not specified particularly in the bill.”