Steny Hoyer: “Mr. Speaker, I will vote no on this supplemental. I voted yes the first time, hoping that it would be fixed in…”

“Mr. Speaker, I will vote no on this supplemental. I voted yes the first time, hoping that it would be fixed in conference frankly. The ravages of rain and flood have victimized hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. Yet we are holding them hostage, very frankly, holding them hostage so that we can get some special issues addressed and to try to hold the President of the United States in a position of being hostage himself. That is not what this body ought to do. We should have long before this passed a clean supplemental appropriation for the victims of the floods and to supplement our troops keeping peace in Bosnia. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the chairman of our committee who would have tried to do that and who wanted to do that, in my opinion. His leadership was sound, it should have been followed. Mr. Speaker, I will not support this supplemental. I rise in opposition to this conference report. We are simply continuing the delay in getting much-needed aid out to the Midwest. The President has made it clear that he will veto this bill based on provisions that have nothing to do with providing disaster relief to our fellow Americans.”