John Murtha

Every administration has not had enough money for veterans' affairs, so I would urge the Members to vote against this amendment.

This is an interesting thing. The ranking member on our side actually realizes there is a shortage in defense, and it may have something to do with his laryngitis that he cannot get the words out.

I would hope the House would be very careful in not adopting something that could be very detrimental to our flexibility in the long run, hurt our national security and I am sure have the same impact on any other bill that we take before…

The gentleman is missing my point. We have two ways to stop it, reducing readiness by reducing money available or having a two-thirds vote, or allowing Milosevic to see we are divided. That is the point I am making.

Mr. Speaker, the chairman and I this year have visited a number of installations throughout the country. We found shortages over the last 2 or 3 years, and the list that the chairman put in the Record, I hope Members will pay attention to…

I know the gentleman may think that, but we are over 50 percent dependent today. Then we were 34 percent dependent. So it is all relative, in how dependent we are. In the short term the gentleman may be right. But, long-term, we could have…

Even though that company was sold off with less than 50 percent to Seimans, it will still be run by an American company. Of course, that research ties in. We are continually trying to work with fossil fuel, oil research and so forth to…

I do not mean to mislead the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. I am not saying if they do not have the money. I am saying that they had no way of knowing what the supplemental was going to agree with. Until last week, all of us…

She says that she was not the one that made the comment about the uniform. She says absolutely it was the woman who was on the panel, and she did not say one word about the uniform. That is what I am saying, there was some confusion. That…

We will work out something that will force the Defense Department to adhere to what we suggested last year and what the gentlewoman is suggesting here. They should come up with figures which are reasonable. We will certainly try to work…

The gentlewoman came to us with this amendment today. We talked to the staff and we know there has been an injustice here. If the gentlewoman will withdraw her amendment, we will do everything we can to work this thing out in conference.

Let me just state to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns], President Bush did not ask for authorization. As a matter of fact, he did not think he needed authorization. The Congress forced that on the President.

I know the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young] and I have looked at this. This is, I think, an important safeguard that is necessary. It may need to be cleaned up, but I certainly have no problem with it.

I have been in the forefront of health care all these years. I do not think anybody has done any more than I have for the military health care.

What I am doing here is trying to make sure that in extreme, rare circumstances the President could waive the rules or waive the law so that a journalist in acts of terrorism or something like that would be able to allow a journalist to be…

The problem, as I see it, is, we had over 2000 suggestions and recommendations to the bill. Obviously, we had to make a judgment on each of those recommendations as we went through the bill. Certainly, it would be a problem because as it…

I think we have gotten the message across to the White House. I think the compromise we have made on this issue they recognize, and I think the Congress will have a very important role. The fact they are meeting right now to consult with…

Let me just say there is $12 billion in backlog of real property maintenance. There is a backlog in depot maintenance. We have put it off for years. The military has put it off for what they think are other priorities. The across-the-board…

I have talked to the gentleman at great length about this amendment, and I have a substitute to the amendment which I think would satisfy certainly me and, I hope, would satisfy the chairman, which would eliminate the extraction part of it…

This amendment takes care of a problem which for 2 years the Committee on Appropriations has worked out. There was a perception it saved a lot of money by changing the formula for retirement of the military. We find that it has not saved a…