Marty Walsh: “I regret that the gentlemen has asserted this point of order and put the House in this position. The budget resolution…”

“I regret that the gentlemen has asserted this point of order and put the House in this position. The budget resolution which the body adopted this week included a $50 billion bridge fund for the war. In this bill, we use the $507 million from that fund to pay for urgent war-related military construction projects. This leaves the remaining $49.3 billion for the Defense Subcommittee to allocate to other war-related expenditures. Every single one of these projects directly supports the war on terror. And every single one of them was included in the Defense Authorization Act that the House passed nearly unanimously last week. These projects support specialized urban warfare training, mobilization of critical assets in the gulf region, and the easing of troop rotations abroad. Mr. Chairman, what arises here is the Rules Committee did not protect that designation of emergency funding, and I regret that. But I greatly regret that the gentleman from Texas has raised this point of order. Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman not understand that we are at war? Does he not understand that we have people in harm's way across the entire southern tier of Asia, that are being fired upon as we speak; that these funds are essential to fight the global war on terror, to bring democracy to these scattered points around the world, that these are soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are in dire need of this support, of these expenditures?…”