Secretary RUMSFELD. The answer is that there are additional troops going in continuously and they are flowing in in a steady flow every day. The number of troops in Iraq is increasing, number

one.

Number two, a plan is a plan. It is possible that at some point General Franks could draw a conclusion that he wanted to change the plan in one way or another, up or down. He may decide he does not need the force.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Secretary, all I am asking is do you need more money? I understand the flexibility of a commander, but do you have enough money in this budget to take care of the contingencies that you may face?

Secretary RUMSFELD. The budget was designed and planned to take care of the force flows that are incorporated in General Franks's plan. Is it conceivable there could be a contingency down the road between now and the end? Sure. But nothing we could foresee when this was put together.

Mr. MURTHA. And the last time the coalition came up with $60 billion. The most I have heard was a few billion. Dr. Zakheim pointed out a few things in a closed hearing the other day. When you talk about that $10 to $12 billion, does that not have to go through the U.N., and will that not be a problem? Did you anticipate being able to actually use that for anything except rehabilitation?

Secretary RUMSFELD. The money belongs to the Iraqis, the $10 to $12 billion that I am told that is in the Oil for Food account, of which some $7 billion are for committed contracts. That belongs to the Iraqis. The only thing the U.N. can or will do is decide what mechanism do they want to have to make the decisions as to how those funds are used.

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES

Mr. MURTHA. But what I am asking you, you will not be able to use that for military purposes. I am trying to think if there is any reimbursement we will get for our military expenditures.

Secretary RUMSFELD. Oh, no. I doubt that you will get reimbursements from Iraqi funds for that activity. We are getting contributions from other countries. You will recall last time in 1991, the bulk of the funds came from Kuwait, Japan. Three countries I think supplied an overwhelming fraction.

FLEXIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Mr. MURTHA. Japan, Kuwait and Saudi, I think it was $40 billion they provided.

The only other thing we talked at great length about is flexibility, and we have accountability responsibilities. We always argue about that, so we understand your position and we know our position.

Secretary RUMSFELD. Well, Congressman, let me make sure that you fully understand our position; because I, as a former Congressman, certainly understand your responsibilities. But the reality is that it is not possible to know the kind of things that are going to be required. And you cannot wait 3, 4, or 5 months to get authority to do something.

For example, in Afghanistan, we were not able to pay anything to begin the development of an Afghan National Army. It took months before we got a dime for that. You know that is unhelpful. It is much better to be funding that army than to be funding our people. We owed the Pakistan Government something like $450 million for months. How long, Dov, 6 months?

Mr. ZAKHEIM. More than that, sir. About 8 months.

Secretary RUMSFELD. About 8 months. They were supplying gas, apron space, assistance of all kinds, while this war in Afghanistan was going on, and we did not have any authority to pay them a nickel. That is not right. We need some flexibility to be able to do that kind of thing.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Secretary, now just think how short a time we will have on the supplemental which is substantially larger, and we are talking about a $70 billion supplemental which will be passed in 10 days from here, and maybe the Senate in another 10 days, so we will have it hopefully before we go home, in plenty of time to pay the bills.

Secretary RUMSFELD. That is a good thing. We appreciate it. We hope that happens. The reality is that when we come up for reprogramming, sometimes it takes weeks and weeks and weeks to do that. You know that. We have to go to a number of committees. It is not your fault, but the reality is the way the rules and the understandings are, we have gone months and months and months without being able to do things that are very much in the national interest.

Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Secretary, let me interpose. We had a rather thorough discussion on this matter in a closed session yesterday. We reviewed with care that which was the congressional process during Desert Storm. The Committee then expressed, and they did yesterday, their concern about not setting precedent here that becomes the way of doing business in a common way at the Department; in the meantime, fully realize and support not just the funding but the flexibility that you are going to need to carry forward this war. We just do not want to have people to presume that that means from this point forward there will be no effective oversight as well as control. And I think that is what you are suggesting, and that will be the intention of the Committee.

Secretary RUMSFELD. Absolutely.

Mr. LEWIS. And I really think we need to get to the heart of some of your challenges immediately, and we will get the money there as quickly as we can. In the meantime, I would not want the whole session to swirl around this particular point.

Mr. Young.

Mr. YOUNG. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. Secretary, one of the issues that we will hear a lot of debate about is the flexibility. And the other night at the meeting with the President, I asked the Director of the OMB would he explain his term, which was "unusual flexibility." he did not explain it all that well. But anyway, I think we know what it means and I have no problem with that, by the way. I agree with you. You have got to have the flexibility to do what you have to do when you have to do it. But if we do not have a problem with the flexibility, can we

get you to agree that you will not have any problem with accountability?

Secretary RUMSFELD. Absolutely. You ought to hold us accountable for the things—the decisions we make, and we have an obligation to notify you of what we are doing. You need to have good visibility into it, and I do not disagree with that at all.

Mr YOUNG. I really appreciate that.

Mr. Obey and I were very successful in moving a $40 billion supplemental following September 11, 2001. In fact, we had it out of here, through both houses on the 14th of September and we did that by working together. And we included a lot of flexibility in that and accountability. The trouble is, there are still a lot of questions we have asked about that fund that we have never gotten answers to. But I know that working directly with your Department, you have always been willing to let us know, let us do what our job is under the Constitution.

Secretary RUMSFELD. I do not think you still have questions about the defense portion of that fund, do you?

Mr. YOUNG. I am not sure.

Secretary RUMSFELD. I hope not. I know there are some questions about the nondefense portions of the fund.

END STRENGTH OF THE MILITARY SERVICES

Mr. YOUNG. Basically the nondefense portions, exactly. Because you know that we dealt with a lot of defense issues in a later supplemental which worked out okay. And the problem has never been with your Department. OMB is not always the most forthcoming with answers to questions.

Now, I want to ask a policy issue. For a number of years most of us on this Committee objected to the reduction in end strength of our military services, and I know we have all heard Congressman Hunter's speech on the number of divisions we had in the Army in Desert Storm and how many we have left today; the number of surface combatant ships; the number of Marines. We held the end strength better on the Marines than we did the other services, but the Marines being a smaller unit, I understand that almost all of the Marine Corps is in over the region right now.

Is it time to start talking about increasing end strength? Secretary RUMSFELD. I do not think so, Mr. Chairman. We still have a lot of people in uniform who are doing tasks that are not military tasks. We still have not gotten the full flexibility we believe we would benefit from by being able to go out and hire contractors to do things that are not core competencies of the Department of Defense. And third, I would say that I feel it is important that we continue to have pressure for the Department of Defense to end activities when they ought to be ended. I am putting a lot of pressure on bringing folks home from the Sinai who have been there for 22 years.

We are looking at our force deployments around the world right now. General Ralston, when he was CINC, did a good job of bringing down the NATO forces in Bosnia and Kosovo. Those numbers have been coming down. And I think that at the moment, while you are right, there is a lot going on in the world and we have had to activate a lot of Reserves. In my view, I think that the pressure

to run this place better, the Department better, and make better use of people in uniform than we have been doing in the past is a good thing, not a bad thing. And if at any point we think we need more, we will sure come up and say so.

Mr. YOUNG. I cannot disagree with that, by the way. I think you are exactly right.

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the time, and I hope you know we are here in partnership with you to protect our American soldiers who are fighting the war, to provide them with an improved quality of life every chance that we get, to provide them with whatever they need to accomplish their mission and protect themselves while they are doing it. And I think you all are doing a really good job here.

Secretary RUMSFELD. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Chairman Young.

Mr. Obey.

LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITIES REQUESTED

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Secretary, let me say certainly that there is not a Member of the Congress who is not going to vote to provide whatever money is necessary to bring this war to a completion. I think everybody understands that. In that sense this vote will be a nonevent. But I have got a problem because I have been in Congress since the same month that you left it, and so I remember things. Secretary RUMSFELD. That is a long time.

Mr. OBEY. Yes. But one of the virtues of that service is that I remember things, and some of them are even useful. And I just want to express to you my disquiet about the various authorities that the administration has asked for. If you run down the kind of authorities that you would like, in addition to putting $59 billion into a very broadly defined account, the administration requests authority to use DoD funds for undetermined military construction projects anywhere in the world. As I read that, that could have been used in the old days to fund that airstrip that was used by the Contras, for instance.

You are requesting $150 million for indigenous forces to fight the war on terrorism anywhere in the world without Congress receiving quarterly reports, or with the Congress receiving quarterly reports after the fact. In the foreign operations section, the emergency fund for complex foreign crises could go to any country, in any amount, for any purpose, notwithstanding any provision of law. At least that is what we are told.

The administration is asking for authority to borrow unlimited amounts from any account in the bill, including DoD accounts or any prior foreign operations bill, in any amounts, for reconstruction and relief of Iraq, notwithstanding any other provision of law.

And then authority is requested to transfer up to $200 million between accounts in the foreign operations section without notice as many times as the administration wishes.

And to make a long story short, the way I read that is that the administration would have, through the mixing of authorities, they would have authority and resources to put U.S. resources and U.S. troops, for that matter, into almost any country in the world, at any time, in any capacity, with the national security interests of

the United States therefore being defined almost solely by the President. That is a considerable reach.

Now you might say well, nothing that you are worried about is going to happen. But the Chairman has referred to accountability. And I recall that after September 11 when we provided three etss of funds to the administration, that we provided one $20 billion amount to the administration with the provision they could spend it any way they wanted, provided that they contacted the Committee ahead of time and consulted with us about how they intended to spend the money.

As I recall, the net consultation that we got was an e-mail after the fact telling us how they had spent the $20 billion. Now, given that track record

Secretary RUMSFELD. I do not think that is true of the Defense Department portion.

Mr. OBEY. Well, most of it was not in defense.
Secretary RUMSFELD. I understand.

Mr. OBEY. Whether it is defense, whether it is TSA, or whether it is State, or you name it, when Congress says spend $20 billion and but talk to us ahead of time, and then we are told afterwards, oh, by the way, boys and girls, here is what we did, you can understand why we are not interesting in playing kissy-face with these authorities.

Every Member wants to provide you-certainly we are willing to look at providing some additional flexibility if that is needed. But flexibility is one thing, and being able to turn the Constitution into a pretzel is another thing. And frankly I have not yet ever met a President of either party who thought that Article I of the Constitution was a mistake.

Secretary RUMSFELD. Mr. Congressman, let me make a couple of comments. First, I agree with Chairman Young that the Congress has that obligation, and that to the extent that any flexibility is provided, the individuals given flexibility need to be held accountable and they need to report to the Congress and they need to notify the Congress, and the Congress needs to understand the logic of what they are doing in close proximity to the time it is done.

Now, in this case, some 50 percent, close to 50 percent of the requests for the Department of Defense, is either already spent or committed. That seems to me to reduce the concern that one ought to have.

Let me give you an example of a situation, and I do not want to pick on any one country, but it is an interesting example. We had the 4th Infantry Division in the Mediterranean, hoping to bring it in through Turkey and put it in the North. And it would have come in by boat and rail across Turkey into northern Iraq. We waited and we waited and we waited. It did not happen. It was not approved by the Turkish Parliament, ultimately.

There is an airfield in northern Iraq, I think it is called Bashir. And you mentioned military construction. So at the last minute what are we doing, we are flying aircraft in there, and engineers and construction people, trying to fix that airport so that we can bring, like we just did from the north, we brought in the 173rd, and they came in yesterday and they will be coming in over a period of time. There was not time to come and go through a process