mr. chairman , this is truly a bipartisan bill , the defense part of it in particular . 
chairman young and i have worked very closely together . 
he visited some places ; i visited three bases . 
we found shortages . 
we found problems . 
we tried to rectify those problems . 
we tried to put in what the people in the field asked us and what needed to be done . 
we realized that insurance payments needed to be changed . 
we realized that the death benefits needed to be changed . 
we also realized there is a jurisdictional problem , but we felt like it could not wait . 
i have had 12 people killed in my district , and there is no question in my mind for the need for that to be changed . 
but the thing that is the most important in my estimation is accountability . 
chairman young and i sat in his office not long ago and talked about the bill , and he got his copy of the constitution out and it talked about accountability . 
it talked about congressional accountability . 
and i thought how unaccountable the defense department seems to be at this stage . 
they do not seem to realize we are not here to hurt them , we are here to help them . 
we believe that if you do not have the confidence of the people , if you do not have confidence in the way the money is being spent , you are going to lose confidence in the overall project , the overall philosophy , the overall direction we are trying to go . 
we put language in the bill last year , and we said , you have got to give us a report . 
that report is 3 or 4 months late . 
no reason for that to happen . 
they had plenty of notice . 
and it should have been on our desk before this bill was up so that if there was something that needed to be rectified , we could rectify it . 
there are two reports . 
i do not know if the second one is late yet or not . 
of course that takes us to the next step and that is the thing with the intelligence which we have read in the newspaper and which i can neither confirm nor not confirm has happened . 
but i worry that things are getting out of control that we do not know about . 
we sit and try to help them every way we can . 
many of the things we put in this bill they did not ask for because they did not know about it . 
we found out about it , and we made sure that was part of the presentation , part of this bill . 
i have to say that when i meet with the secretary of defense , when we listen to his presentation , we always say to him , chairman of the full committee , chairman lewis , chairman of the defense subcommittee the last time , chairman young , we always say , look , we 're here to help you . 
give us these reports . 
tell us how you 're spending this money . 
when i saw there was a $ 9 billion fund that was not accounted for according to the auditors , and , of course , this is not appropriated money , this is money provided for the oil , but still we should know where it goes because it can replace some of the money that we are appropriating for these resources . 
