Military Construction Appropriations Act, 2005

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (House of Representatives - July 21, 2004)

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Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

I thank the gentleman for having produced an excellent bill with limited funds available; and I appreciate the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), the ranking member, for his partnership in making this a very good bill. It is a good bill.

We are focusing on one part of the bill, and I think that is appropriate. We should focus on that one part of the bill, but all of the items included in this appropriations bill for military construction are needed. They are cost effective and they are very good projects. But the one that we are vitally concerned about today, the one that we fear might have a point of order raised against it, is the military family housing issue.

I have not found anybody, Mr. Chairman, that is opposed to doing what we want to do. We want to provide decent housing for the members of our military and their families. We do not want a soldier or a Marine to be in Iraq or Afghanistan and have in the back of his mind that his family is living in a rat-trap condition back home. That soldier, that Marine, has to be paying full attention to the mission and to accomplishing the mission, and also to providing some protection for himself or herself while they do this mission.

Congress needs to be totally supportive of the troops; and Congress has done a really good job. I am proud to say that we have identified, just during this year alone, many areas where the government is not taking proper care of military members and their families, and we are fixing them.

And, Mr. Chairman, we ought to do that. We need to fix these issues. We need to provide what our troops need and we need to protect them while they are doing it. And we need to have their families have a quality of life while they are out fighting that war. They do not need to be worried about what conditions the folks are living in back home.

The reason we need to do this is because this Congress voted to send them to the war. Now, maybe everybody did not vote for it, but most of us did, and we have an obligation to the men and women who protect this Nation and protect our national interests, wherever they might be, and who are on the front line in the war against terrorism and the threats of terrorists. A world that is controlled by terrorists or their threats of violence is not acceptable, and I do not know of anyone who would disagree with that except the terrorists.

This Congress has stepped up to the plate before, and we need to step up to the plate today. I am not exactly sure what the issue is on military family housing. Everybody is for it, but there are some who want to strike it from this bill and do it at a later time. What I cannot understand is, if we are going to do it at a later time, why not do it now?

There may be some other bills that could solve this same problem, but this bill is here and fixes it today. Some other bill that might solve this problem of family housing for the military, but it may not have to pass. This bill has to pass. Before this Congress can leave its business, this bill and all of the other appropriations bills have to pass.

That is an interesting point. A lot of folks do not understand that. Appropriations bills have to pass because if they do not, the government shuts down. Now, who wants to shut down the government? I do not know of anybody who wants to shut down the government. There may be some.

But this bill has to pass, and that is why we ought to solve the problem of military housing for families in this bill today, while we are here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Now, there is a scoring issue. We have had many bills come to the floor where the Committee on the Budget could have raised points of order--issues like the farm bill that exceeded the budget resolution; like the Medicare reform bill, where costs far exceeded the estimate; and this afternoon we are going to consider a highway program that exceeds the authorizing committee allocation by $400 million. And I have heard nothing about raising points of order on those bills.

I have not heard anyone from the Committee on the Budget state a concern about those bills. No points of order were raised against the farm bill or against the Medicare reform bill. It is my understanding that none are going to be raised against the highway bill today. That may change now that we put a little pressure on the issue, but as of this morning that was not intended.

But, for years, OMB and CBO have scored the military housing program the same way, 6 years. But for some reason, all of a sudden, CBO decided to score it differently. I do not know why. Maybe there is some good reason, but if there is, I do not know what it is.

I want to take just a couple of minutes to read what the President of the United States thinks about this provision in the appropriations bill. He supports this very strongly, as do most of the Members of this House and the Senate, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the chiefs of the services. They all support it. But you know who really supports it? The military troops who are defending our Nation support this because it gives their families some quality of life.

I am quoting now from the letter from the Administration. ``The administration strongly supports the provision that would increase the military housing privatization cap from $850 million to $1.35 billion. This increase will help improve the quality of life of our military families. Furthermore, without this increase, the current limit would be reached by November of 2004 and the program would be over. OMB would not score any additional costs to this provision because it does not increase the amount of budget authority available to the Department of Defense.'' And it goes on for about five more sentences expressing strong support for this provision and, expressing no concern whatsoever for the scoring.

I just think that it is so important to those Americans serving in our military, doing whatever they are asked to do, going wherever they are asked to go, making whatever sacrifice they must make. If we cannot today, in this bill that must pass, take care of their concerns for the way their families have to live, shame on us. But I would tell you that of the 435 Members of this House, I will bet if this was put to an up or down vote, there probably would not be five votes against it.

It is just too bad that a procedural situation, that is not even consistent, can derail this extremely important issue.

Let us not shoot Santa Claus on the floor of the House today.

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