Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman, the chairman, for yielding me the time.

It's not really adequate to explain this bill, this defense bill, which is the largest part of this mini-bus, omnibus, or call it what you will, but thank you, Chairman Rogers, especially for bringing back regular order in the appropriations process, which we haven't done for a while. You've done a really great job in leading this committee in getting this job done.

To my friend, Mr. Dicks, I've already wished him personally a happy birthday, but, Mr. Speaker, we appreciate Mr. Dicks' relationship with the Congress, with our subcommittee, with the full committee. Together, they've made a great team; they've done a great job.

As I said, the defense bill is the biggest part of this bill. It is actually $21 billion less than was requested in the budget. We were given a number. We were instructed to make reductions. This subcommittee, the members and the staff, worked diligently to make sure that any reductions that we had to make would not affect the readiness of our Nation or would not adversely affect any of our troops. We successfully concluded that task. We kept our commitment to maintain readiness and to remain strong in the support of our troops.

It makes me feel good that we have an agreement that was agreed upon by the Republicans and the Democrats in the House and the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate. We won't get a unanimous vote on this package at all, but we worked together.

People have wondered, and I'm sure all of us have been asked by our constituents, Why can't you guys in Congress work together and get things done? When Congress acts as a Congress and avoids a lot of outside political influence, it's amazing what we can do. I just would call attention to the fact we just concluded the intelligence bill on a bipartisan basis.

We did the National Defense Authorization Act last week on a bipartisan basis. This omnibus bill that we will pass today on a bipartisan basis, we worked together and we got things done when we were able to work as a Congress.

I am very happy to be supportive of especially the defense part of this bill.

[Time: 12:10] Again, I want to congratulate Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Dicks for their strong leadership in getting us back to the regular order. As Mr. Dicks said, next year we're going to do all of the appropriations bills one at a time, which is just like it's supposed to be done.

Mr. Speaker, there is so much more to talk about with regard to this bill--so many details--that we have written copies of a report on what it does and what it doesn't do, and we'll be happy to provide that for any Member who asks. Other than that, let's vote for this package and let's get our job done.

I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Hopefully, I won't have to wish you a happy New Year until after we come back next year, but we'll see how that goes.