Hal Rogers: “Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. This is a motion that we can agree to. It is not controversial, at least on this side of…”

“Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. This is a motion that we can agree to. It is not controversial, at least on this side of the Capitol. But the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) is correct. After the embassy bombings in Africa, the administration made announcements that they were going to pursue embassy security around the world in a much more vigorous way, something that we agree with here in this subcommittee and I think the full Congress. But then when the administration sent their budget to the Hill, we looked very quickly to the section dealing with embassy security and maintenance of U.S. missions abroad, and found that there was an absolutely inadequate request. When the Secretary came to testify before the subcommittee, the request, I think, was for $36 million. We told the Secretary that the request was absolutely inadequate, that we had to pay attention to the problems that were being presented to us around the world in the way of threats to our personnel, and we asked her to go back to the White House and to come up with an amended request. In due course of time, they did just that. And so the request, then, from the administration was amended. They requested an additional $264 million, for a total of $300 million for a security capital construction program.”