Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for his extraordinary, as usual, leadership in attempting to bring this amendment to the floor. I am very sad. It is a sad day for this Congress that this amendment has not been made in order, because it addresses many of the concerns that are shared by the American people and, indeed, have been shared by the President of the United States. I have great respect for our distinguished chairman of the full committee and the chairman of the subcommittee, but I object to the fact that we were not able to have this amendment made in order.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Obey amendment. It is hard to understand how the Republican leadership can argue that there is enough money to provide $100 billion in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest 25 percent of taxpayers but not enough to strengthen homeland defense, improve security for vulnerable nuclear materials, and keep our commitment to New York. They found enough money, the Republican leadership did, to provide $1.4 billion in tax breaks to IBM, $1 billion to Ford, $833 million to General Motors, and $671 million to General Electric. Why can we not find the money to strengthen State and local health departments, accelerate vaccine development, and improve security of vulnerable nuclear materials?
The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) has successfully put together a thoughtful, comprehensive package that met these and other needs for $7.1 million, less than one-twelfth of the tax package that the Republicans support.
I wish to associate myself with the concerns expressed by our colleagues from New York. I share their concern about meeting our commitment to them. But I want to focus, Mr. Chairman, in my remarks on the perspective of the prevention of nuclear terrorism, what opportunities are missed here today.
Our President, President Bush, said on November 13 on the occasion of the visit of President Putin, ``Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. We agree that it is urgent that we improve the physical protection and accounting of nuclear materials and prevent illicit nuclear trafficking.''
Earlier that week the President had said they, the al Qaeda, ``are seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually to civilization itself. We will not wait,'' the President said, ``for more innocent deaths. We will not wait for the authors of mass murders to gain the weapons of mass destruction.
We act now because we must lift this stark threat from our age and save generations to come.'' We all applauded President Bush's remarks.
How then, how can we understand, then, how this Republican majority in the House would reject the Obey amendment which would add $221 million to this bill; $191 million for securing Russian nuclear materials, $30 million to better fund programs employing former Soviet Union nuclear scientists? The President said, we act now. We cannot wait.
When they say that we are going to have a supplemental down the road, let us review that. That bill came up before Thanksgiving in the Committee on Appropriations. Now we are on our way to Christmas, and we do not even have this bill passed, but we will soon. After Christmas comes what? Let us go through. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, President's Week, it will be easily Easter before we can revisit this bill and have a supplemental that will address these nuclear issues. How then can we, as the President said we act now, do so when we reject the opportunity that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) has given us here today? We are now giving opportunity to those who would threaten our security in our country. I think that is unfortunate.