David Obey: “Mr. Chairman, I hope we can minimize debate on a lot of amendments, and so I would like to get something off my chest…”

“Mr. Chairman, I hope we can minimize debate on a lot of amendments, and so I would like to get something off my chest early in the process so I do not have to keep popping up and down and offering a dozen amendments to do that. We are at a watershed time in the history of this country. Internationally, our adversary, the Soviet Union, is gone. The Cold War is over. Their conventional military capability has collapsed, and we are facing a new paradigm. In the last century, over 600,000 Americans were killed in combat defending democracy. We fought two world wars and a lot of other big wars. Today, we have a new role. Today, conflicts are likely to be more regionalized, and our job will be to contain those conflicts. And our job often will be to serve as peacekeepers and peacemakers rather than warmakers. That is not going to be neat. It is going to be messy. Some Americans will die. But if we do it right, and if the executive and legislative branches of government cooperate, and if we cooperate with our allies, the price that America winds up paying for participation in world affairs will be far less than the price that we paid in the last century. In my view, this bill gets in the way of that.”