Floyd Spence: “The problem is, getting back to the point I was making, that the funds were not requested for. This provision is nothing…”

“The problem is, getting back to the point I was making, that the funds were not requested for. This provision is nothing new. It has been in other bills before now. Nothing unforeseen has happened because of them. As a matter of fact, as I just stated, the President came to us for a supplemental for funds up until the end of this fiscal year, it was passed and things keep on going. I suspect the same thing is going to happen again. This provision was put in the bill just like it has in the ones before, thinking no problem would arise because of it, and then this came up. Now, we are in the position where we have to assume that the President is going to come back to us, as a matter of fact, he has said so before, that he will come to us with an additional request for funds for Kosovo for the year 2000, and that is where we are today. Nothing has changed. This provision in the law, as I said, is in the law right now and it is just repeating it again. I will say something else again. The people here today in this body who are arguing on the other side of this issue have voted for this provision in other bills. As a matter of fact, they have voted for this provision in the context of a bill that we reported out of the Committee on Armed Services by a vote of 55-1. This issue came up in our committee, we voted on it, it was disposed of, and then when we voted a bill out of committee, those members by a vote of 55-1 voted for the bill with this provision in it.”