Joe Cunningham: “I rise in support of the rule. But let me address some of the things my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost)…”

“I rise in support of the rule. But let me address some of the things my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost), said about the bill being pulled last week. First of all, this House had a vote and voted not to let any of the emergency supplemental spending go for the expansion of the war in Kosovo. When the President heard that we had that vote in the House, he threatened to veto the bill if that provision was in there. Many of us feel very, very strongly that emergency spending should not be used to expand the involvement in Kosovo. We are flying 86 percent of all the sorties in Kosovo. And 90 percent of the weapons that are being dropped by NATO are from the United States of America. And when I talked to General Clark, he said, ``Well, Duke, our allies don't have the standoff weapons.'' Then they need to pay for part of this war. With regard to the emergency spending dollars, the Joint Chiefs testified that we need $148 billion more over several years even to bring us up to the levels recommended by the QDR, or the bottom-up review. That is $22 billion a year, and when we add $6 billion more per year for Kosovo, that is $28 billion. And now let us look where we are. The President wants to pull away more dollars in the emergency spending to support Kosovo. Yes, we had a problem with that. We are still spending $25 million a year in Haiti building infrastructure and roads. How about the infrastructure of the United States?”