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Ashville Citizen-Times - Emergency funding bill is the right thing to do
By Rep. Heath Shuler
There’s a saying in the mountains, “When you realize you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.” By passing the Iraq emergency funding bill,
the House of Representatives stopped digging. We provided the president with all the resources needed to wage this war, while at the same time correcting the egregious lack of oversight from previous Congresses.
We had a choice to vote to fund our troops or not. We had a choice to vote for increased funding for veterans’ health care or not.
After four years of no congressional oversight and blank check spending over the war in Iraq, we had a choice to vote for defined benchmarks of success and accountability or not.
This bill funded our troops in harm’s way and provided training, armor, ammunition, vehicles, food and gasoline — everything they need to stay safe and accomplish their mission. A vote against the emergency funding bill was a vote against all of that.
The National Journal has reported that the Pentagon is already looking at what measures will have to be taken if the emergency funding bill is not passed. The first will be to postpone repairs on equipment not scheduled for the war zones. Delaying these repairs would result in a worsening of the readiness problems already facing nondeployed units. These units are already reporting equipment shortfalls that have hampered training and raised questions about whether they could respond to another crisis.
I have heard of platoons deploying at only 70 percent readiness — without needed equipment, Kevlar or armored Humvees. It is immoral to send under-trained and underequipped troops into battle, and this bill corrects that.
This bill requires that the troops are “fully mission capable” and able to meet the readiness standards set by the Department of Defense. The bill also requires the Department of Defense to abide by its current policies governing length and frequency of deployments.
The emergency funding bill also provides billions of dollars in funding above the president’s request to address critical priorities such as military and veterans’ health care. Specifically, the bill adds $1.7 billion for upgrades at Walter Reed and other military hospitals;
$1.7 billion for veterans’ health care; $1.4 billion for military housing; and $2.5 billion for improving the readiness of our stateside troops. The bill also increased funding for aviation security by $1.25 billion, for port security by $1.25 billion, and to secure our nuclear facilities by $150 million.
Some have criticized this bill for what they call wasteful spending. I do not believe that any of the programs I just mentioned are “wasteful.”
While there are a few programs that I, too, would have like to have seen funded elsewhere, funding for our active duty and veterans’ health care and improving homeland security were too important to ignore.
The bill also demands that the Iraqi government start taking ownership of its country. On Jan. 10, President Bush laid out clear benchmarks that the Iraqi government needed to meet if they wanted continued U.S. assistance. This bill uses those benchmarks to tell the Iraqis that the American commitment is not open-ended.
The time has come for the Iraqis to get off the sidelines.
I was sent to Congress to ask the tough questions and demand accountability. Over the last three months, I have attended briefings at the White House and the Pentagon, spoken to generals and troops on the ground, veterans and the families of those fighting. I have listened to my constituents, and I have prayed. I am confident that supporting this bill is the proper course of action.
This is the opinion of Rep. Heath Shuler, who serves District 11, encompassing 14 Western North Carolina counties.
