Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery, 2006

EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT FOR DEFENSE, THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR, AND HURRICANE RECOVERY, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - March 15, 2006)

Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, this bill is here because of a massive failure of American leadership, which goes right to the very top in the White House.

We are going to be spending $90 billion in this bill, most of which goes for Iraq, a war which was engaged in by our country, initiated by our country on the basis of bad information and manipulated intelligence. After we were in the war, we were told by the administration that Iraqi reconstruction would cost between $1 and $2 billion and could be financed by Iraqi oil revenues.

After the administration submitted its reconstruction request for over $18 billion, Secretary Rumsfeld told us, "We just had no idea of how bad the Iraqi economy was."

That certainly is an understatement.

The administration then claimed that we would be greeted as liberators and that 6 months after the invasion, we could begin withdrawing troops. Since then, the insurgency has exploded. We have lost over 2,300 U.S. troops who have been killed. Thousands have been injured. Many more Iraqis have been killed and a continuing U.S. troop deployment in Iraq of around 130,000, down only slightly from the 150,000 in the year before.

We have had a failure to plan for adequately equipping our troops with armor. And as a result, our troops have been rummaging for scrap metal from garbage dumps and they have had to deal with a myriad of other equipment shortages.

Then we have seen the disgraceful stories about Abu Ghraib. We have seen stories about torture all being done in the name of the United States, in the name of every citizen of this country. We have reports that more than 100 people have died in custody, and then we have reports that the administration is spying on Americans and eavesdropping on Americans. I want to make it clear, I want our government to eavesdrop on every person that it needs to eavesdrop on in order to protect this country, but I want it done in a way which is constitutional, and in a way which is in conformance with the law, not outside the law, and right now that is not the case.

So this bill comes before us with the United States divided and with the American people confused about what our mission is, what our purpose is, and what our plans are. And now we are asked to provide this additional money.

I will vote for this bill because, while I have grave misgivings about the war, and while I believe that Mr. Rumsfeld should have resigned a long time ago, I intend to support whatever money is necessary in order to support our troops. But having said that, let me just make another observation. We are going to be spending $91 billion. $19 billion is for Katrina. Over almost $70 billion is for Iraq. And I am told that those funds will be expended at a rate of about $6.8 billion a month. And yet we are going to be squabbling over the next 2 days over a fraction of that amount that some of us believe should be used to provide heating for our elderly, education for our kids, and medical care for our veterans.

Three years after this war began, does anybody here really believe the President of the United States when he tells us that this is all about bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq? $400 billion and then some later, does anybody believe that Congress did the right thing when this Congress handed a blank check to the administration? After more than 17,000 Americans wounded in Iraq, does anyone think Congress was right to sit on its hands when it was clear that this White House and the civilian leadership at the Pentagon did not have the first clue about what they were doing?

Mr. Chairman, in addition to the divisions which we face on Iraq, we face some other problems with this bill.

This bill, for instance, contains Mr. Lewis' amendment shutting off and shutting down the ports transaction involving Dubai. At the same time, however, the committee blocked the Sabo amendment which would have created a process which would have guaranteed that our government would know each and every time such a transaction was being contemplated. Without the Sabo amendment, we are still in a position where notice to the American government of any such transaction is optional. We do not believe on this side of the aisle it ought to be optional.

Secondly, the committee blocked efforts, again by Mr. Sabo, to add $3.4 billion for crucially needed funding to strengthen port security and border security.

The committee cut back my amendment to provide $1 billion to help low-income Americans pay for higher energy prices which are in large measure arising today because of our misadventures in Iraq. The committee cut back that effort to $750 million with no guarantee that a single dollar of that will be provided to people who need it this year.

Then the committee declined to support a provision by Mr. Berry which would have repaired the prescription drug plan that has now gone into effect and which would have at least given seniors more time to sort out their confusion before they have to commit themselves to signing up for one plan or another.

The committee also refused to adopt, well, to save time, I will skip the other three points that I think were important to discuss, but let me simply say this, Mr. Chairman. There will be a lot of debate on this bill over the next 2 days, and a lot of it will be focused on Iraq. But I think it is important for each and every American to understand and it is important for each and every man and woman representing this country in uniform to understand that our divisions about the advisability of the war and about what ought to happen next in that war have nothing whatsoever to do with our feelings for those who wear the uniform of the United States and are presently engaged in this contest. They have done every possible thing that could be asked of them. We owe them our gratitude for their sense of sacrifice, their willingness to answer the call of their country, and I do not think that turmoil over the advisability of the war ought to be mistaken for disagreement that we owe a debt of obligation to each and every person who is fighting in that war.

I wish we had a similar sense of self-sacrifice on the part of persons who are not participating in that war. It sometimes seems that the only people who are being asked to sacrifice are military families. We are telling the rest of the country, while some folks are off to war, "Do not worry, folks, we are going to give you a nice fat tax cut, and people who make $1 million a year are going to get $110,000 tax cut." No sense of self-sacrifice there.

So, Mr. Speaker, I intend to vote for this bill in the end, but we could have adopted a number of amendments which would have made this a much more balanced product, and I would hope that as we go through the debate that we will find a way to at least address some of the issues which we failed to address when the committee dealt with the bill last week.

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