David Obey: “we have so far appropriated $277 billion for activities in Afghanistan and Iraq; $168 billion of that has been…”

“we have so far appropriated $277 billion for activities in Afghanistan and Iraq; $168 billion of that has been appropriated after the President declared an end to major conflict in the region. The budget resolution, which passed this House about a month ago, provided authority for an additional $50 billion to be spent this year for Iraq and Afghanistan. This bill spends $45 billion of that $50 billion. The problem that we will face is that this bill is only enough to pay for that war for the first 6 months of the fiscal year. That means that when a new supplemental is submitted to the Congress to pay for the last half of the fiscal year, we will wind up having to appropriate at least another $40 billion. And when we do that, it will mean that the Congress will have, in effect, busted the budget by at least $40 billion. So what this amendment says is that if and when that happens, and it will assuredly happen, if and when that happens, we are saying that the Committee on the Budget must then bring forth a new budget resolution which shows us how we can pay for that extra $40 billion without raising the deficit. {time} 1815 If we are not prepared to do that, then that means that we will simply slip in that extra $40 billion, without any notice by the public, without any attention being paid to the fact that what we are really doing is raising the deficit by another $40 billion.…”