Charles Skelton: “Madam Speaker, if I may, let me add to the comments today the importance of this legislation. Under our Constitution, it…”

“Madam Speaker, if I may, let me add to the comments today the importance of this legislation. Under our Constitution, it is up to the Congress of the United States to raise and maintain the military and provide the rules and regulations therefore. We do that by means of a defense authorization bill that comes from the Armed Services Committee. We worked long and hard, and we were able to pass such a bill from our committee back in May and the Senate passed one back in September. And we, of course, had conference with the Senate, and we were finally able to reach an agreement on a conference report that is a piece of legislation that embodies both the House and the Senate provisions. The people at the White House had the opportunity to look at it and give comments on various sections of the proposed legislation, which they did. We looked at them and worked with them and passed a good piece of legislation. Like I said before, 370 Members of this House and 90 Members of the other body voted for it. However, the President chose to veto over this provision--that to me was a surprise--that it rose to the level of a veto.”