Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005

INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005 -- (House of Representatives - June 23, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 686 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 4548.

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Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding, and I appreciate the comments of the ranking member as well.

It was my privilege to serve on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for some years, and I have great respect for the work you are about.

I must say that while the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) and I have discussed this amendment and I know of his concerns and I am very supportive of his concerns, in the meantime, I really asked for the time because I am a bit disconcerted about what I sensed from the general debate as I was watching it over C-SPAN from my office.

There appears to be developing here a level of kind of partisanship that I am not used to seeing when we discuss intelligence. There is absolutely no question that intelligence work does not know a partisan divide, if things are happening as they should, and to see that developing in the committee is most disconcerting to this Member.

Over the years, we all know that intelligence funding was way, way below where it should be. The development of that lack of funding took place as the Congress some years ago was radically reducing defense spending. In those days, I used to say as defense spending is coming down, intelligence spending should go up, because the Commander-in-Chief needs better and more information at such a time, rather than less.

In the meantime, there is little doubt that during the 1990s, there were significant impacts that were negatively affecting our intelligence programming. In recent years, we have seen a movement in the other direction.

In the bill that came off the floor yesterday, there was a reflection of all of our concern. Indeed, within the base bill, the appropriations for defense, we spent more than was in the President's budget. And in the Committee's action on the amendment that came from the administration for some $25 billion, we provided substantial amounts of additional funding for intelligence work.

There is little doubt of the priority of this president, this administration, in making sure we have adequate funding, and
I feel very strongly that we should know that especially the Commander-in-Chief does not see partisan value in this work.

The committee is a great committee, but there is a divide here that, I must say, reflects more than normally membership divide. If, at the staff level, we have people who are reacting for purely partisan purposes or their own biases, that is disconcerting to me. It is not healthy for the community, it is not healthy for our national defense, it clearly is not healthy for our intelligence community.