Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2004-Continued

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004—CONTINUED

IRAQ

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I rise today to voice my concern about the disastrous turn which the fortunes of this Nation have taken. The Bush administration, in a scant 2½ years, has imperiled our country in the gravest of ways, and set us up for a possible crisis of mammoth proportions. The crisis may not occur tomorrow in these proportions, or the next day, but it is coming.

Instead of linking arms with a world which offered its heart in sympathy after the brutality of the terrorist attacks in September of 2001, this White House, the Bush White House, through hubris and false bravado, has slapped away the hand of assistance. This administration has insulted our allies and our friends with its bullying and go-it-alone frenzy to attack the nation of Iraq.

In order to justify such an attack, it was decided somewhere in the White House to blur the images of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Blurred images notwithstanding, what is becoming increasingly clear to many Americans is that they are going to be asked to carry a heavy, heavy load for a long, long time.

Let me be clear. We are presently engaged in not one war but two wars: The war begun by Osama bin Laden, who attacked
this Nation on the September 11, 2001, and then there is the war begun by President George W. Bush when he directed
U.S. forces to attack Iraq on March 19, 2003. The first war was thrust upon us. The bombing of Afghanistan was a just retaliation against that attack. The second war, on the other hand, was a war of our choosing. We chose it. It was an unnecessary attack upon a sovereign nation. This President and this administration have tried mightily to convince the people of America that attacking Iraq was critical to protecting them, the people of this country, from terrorism. The case that the administration makes is false, it is flimsy, and the war, I believe, was unwise and was unnecessary and was without ample justification.

The war against Iraq has crippled the global effort to counter terrorism. The war in Iraq has made a peace agreement between Israel and its adversaries harder to obtain. The obsession with Iraq has served to downplay the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The focus on Saddam Hussein has diverted attention from bin Laden, who is apparently still on the loose and threatening to attack again. The war in Iraq has alienated our traditional allies and fractured the cohesive alliance against terrorism which existed after 9/11. It has made the United States appear to the world to be a bellicose invader of another country. It has called our motives into question. It has galvanized the worldwide terrorism movement against us.
The war in Iraq has cost us lives and treasure. Yet this President will shortly request $87 billion more for his ill-fated adventure.

He says we will spend whatever it takes. So he says your money—it is your money. We have heard that many times. It is your money, and he says your money we will spend, whatever it takes.

Prudence dictates that we consider the risks. This Nation has suffered massive job losses amounting to 93,000 in August alone and approximately 600,000 since January of this year. Job losses of this magnitude mean less money coming into the
Treasury and more money going out. U.S. manufacturing jobs continue to disappear overseas as companies relocate operations on other shores. There seems to be no end, thus far—there seems to be no end to the job hemorrhage. The manufacturing sector has lost jobs for 37 months in a row. The weak job market threatens to sap our strength from our domestic economy. Should inflation begin to creep up, as some worry that it will, higher energy costs and lower consumer confidence may slow the economy further.

Suppose another massive al-Qaida attack were to occur here at home, killing hundreds or thousands and delivering another devastating blow to the U.S. economy? Could we still afford to continue to send billions of taxpayer dollars to Iraq? At best, our future economic growth is uncertain. There are too many unknowns. Our deficit is growing. When the $87 billion 2004 Iraq Supplemental is included, as it probably will be, the deficit for 2004 alone is expected to total $535 billion.

That is $530 for every minute since Jesus Christ was born. That number will only grow, if we continue to experience massive job losses and the economy takes a turn for the worse.

We can ill afford to finance the rebuilding of Iraq alone. Yet President Bush steadfastly resists doing what it takes to involve the international community.

It should be obvious that we need assistance. The United States cannot even continue to supply the troops to secure Iraq without more help. A recent Congressional Budget Office study, which I requested, makes it clear that maintaining the level of troops we now have in Iraq will stretch us very thin should something happen in Korea or elsewhere on this troubled globe. Our National Guard is being asked to stay longer and longer in Iraq to help backfill the shortage in regular troops.
These are men and women with jobs and families and key roles to play in their own communities. We cannot continue to utilize their skills in Iraq without suffering the consequences at home.

Even now, as a hurricane lurks off our shores, there are worries about shortages of emergency personnel because so many National Guard men and women are serving in Iraq.

But the Bush administration continues to spend our treasure and our troop strength in a single-focusd obsession with the fiasco in Iraq. Are we to mortgage the future of our Nation to years of financing this unwise adventure? Surely we cannot ask American families for sacrifice indefinitely, especially when their sacrifices are made to advance a war we do not need to fight, that we ought not to have gone overseas to fight. We chose to attack another country.

We must come to grips with our limits. We must acknowledge risks and reality.

Yet on last Sunday, Vice President Cheney dug his heels in at the suggestion of rethinking our policy in Iraq. In a television interview, Vice President Cheney said he saw no reason to "think that the strategy is flawed or needs to be changed."

He went on to try to convince the American public that Iraq was "the geographic base" for the perpetrators of 9/11. Think of that—a claim that this humble Senator has never heard before, and that flies in the face of U.S. intelligence agencies which repeatedly have said they have found no links—none—between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein or Iraq. We may come to rue the day when we took our eyes off bin Laden and sapped our energies and our credibility in this quagmire in Iraq. We chose to attack that country. Yet there seems to be no soul searching in this White House about the consequences of this war.

While Bush's aides talk of "generational commitment" and the President talks of "sacrifice," I wonder if the American people fully comprehend what they are being urged to forego. They have already sacrificed loved ones with 158 troops killed and 856 wounded just since President Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1. How many more families must sacrifice? How many more families must sacrifice while we occupy Iraq?

The President says we will do whatever it takes. Mr. Rumsfeld says we will do whatever it takes. How many more families must sacrifice while we occupy Iraq?

A generation of "sacrifice" may also mean a slow sapping of key national priorities, including repairing the infrastructure which fuels our economic engine and funding the institutions and programs which benefit all Americans. Compare the latest request for the Iraq supplemental with the commitment in dollars to other vital programs, and the picture becomes more clear. President Bush is asking for $87 billion for Iraq but only $34.6 billion for Homeland Security—$29-plus billion—which will come to the Senate soon in a bill which was marked up today. The President wants $87 billion for Iraq but only $66.2 billion for the discretionary programs for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The President seeks $87 billion to secure Iraq but only $52.1 billion for the U.S. Department of Education. The President wants $87 billion to shore up Iraq but only $29.3 billion for America's highways and road construction.

For the State Department and foreign aid for the entire world, President Bush sees a need for only $27.4 billion. Yet Iraq is worth over three times that much to this White House.

Remember that $87 billion is just for 2004 alone. Does anyone really believe it will be the last request we will receive for Iraq? No. This is just the tip of the iceberg, in all likelihood.

The President asked America for a generation of "sacrifice," but that noble-sounding word does not reveal the true nature of what the President demands from the American people. He asks them to supply the fighting men and women to prosecute his war.

Yes, he asked them, the American people, to supply the fighting men and women to prosecute his war. I am not talking about the war that began on September 11, 2001. That was an attack upon us by al-Qaida. I am talking about his war, the President's war in Iraq, which began in March of this year in which he, the Commander in Chief, ordered the attack on Iraq, a sovereign country that had not attacked us and which did not represent an imminent threat to the security of our country.

He implores our people to sacrifice adequate health care. He asks our people to settle for less than the best education for their children. Think about it. He asks our people, the American people, to sacrifice medical research that could prolong and save lives. He asks the American people to put up with unsafe highways and dangerous bridges. He asks them to live with substandard housing and foul water. He asks the American people to forego better public transportation and not just for now but for generations. And all of it for his folly in Iraq.

Most puzzling to this Senator is this President's stubborn refusal to guard against the terror threat at home by adequately funding Homeland Security. Is he asking us all to risk the safety of our homeland, too?

And to further insult the hard-working people of this Nation, George Walker Bush proposes to lay this sacrifice not only on the adult population of this great country but on their children and their grandchildren by increasing the deficit with nary a thought to the consequences.

Yet not a peep can be heard from this White House about paying for some of this sacrifice of which the President speaks by foregoing a portion of future tax cuts, tax cuts that mainly benefit those citizens who do not need so many of the services the Government has to provide.

Our reputation around the globe, America's reputation around the globe, has already been seriously damaged by this administration. Are the dreams and hopes of millions of Americans to be "sacrificed" as well on the altar, on the bloody altar, of Iraq?

I urge my colleagues to think long and hard about the growing quagmire in Iraq. I urge members of the President's own party to warn him about the quicksand he asks America to wade in. We need a long and thorough debate about the future of our country. We need a serious discussion about the kind of America we will leave to our children and grandchildren. We need to renew our efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Are we fighting a war in Iraq when pushing the peace might better serve our cause? We must think again about world-wide terrorism—and it comes in many forms and shapes—and the best way to combat it. Let us not continue to simply wage the wrong war, Mr. Bush's war in Iraq.

ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIGNING OF THE CONSTITUTION

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, September 17 is a day of history in American calendar. On this day in 1630, the city of Boston was founded. On September 17, 1947, James V. Forrestal was sworn in as this Nation's first Secretary of Defense.

On September 17, 1920, the National Football league was formed in Canton, OH. On September 17, 1954, Ernie Banks became the first Black baseball player to wear a Chicago Cubs uniform. He was voted "best player ever" by Chicago fans when he retired in 1971. On September 17, 1984, Reggie Jackson hit his 500th career homer, seventeen years to the day after he hit his first major league home run.

On this day in 1911, the first transcontinental airplane flight took place between New York City and Pasadena, CA. It took pilot C.P. Rogers 82 hours to cover that distance. Just 65 years later, on September 17, 1976, the Space Shuttle was revealed to the public for the first time, ready to take men into the heavens. Such a lot of change in such a short period of time.

Last week, in another airplane related piece of history, the nation sadly observed the second anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. It was a terrible, terrible day, marked by the awful, abrupt end of too many innocent lives. September 17, 1862, was another terrible, terrible day. On that beautiful September day, over 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing in action after the Battle of Antietam, outside Sharpsburg, MD—just over the line from the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. That battle was a turning point in the Civil War.

But by far, one of the most important events in this Nation's history happened on the 17th of September, 1787. On that memorable day, the members of the Constitutional Convention signed the document that has led this Nation safely through the shoals of history for the past 216 years, surviving even the devastation of the Civil War. It was this document that I hold in my hand: the Constitution of the United States of America.

That Constitution was not our first attempt at self-governance. It followed on the heels of the Articles of Confederation, which was the first Constitution, correcting the failures of that weak Government by establishing a stronger central
Government to manage the differences between the States and to provide for the common good. And then, to assuage the concerns of those citizens who feared that a strong central Government would trample on the rights of the individual, the
Constitution was amended after ratification with the first 10 constitutional amendments, guaranteeing individual freedoms in what has become known as the American Bill of Rights.

The Constitution of the United States has, sadly, been overlooked by many in the public over the years. It is not a lofty piece of rhetoric like the better known Declaration of Independence. But the Constitution is the strongest piece of armor protecting the rights and the freedoms of each and every citizen—your rights, your rights, your rights, yes, your rights, and yours, and yours, and mine. It deserves to be better known. It is, after all, our manual for governance, our handbook of
Government, the tech manual for our national operating system. And unlike many technical manuals, it is easy to read and to understand, even 216 years later.

This short document is blunt and straightforward. It starts with only a preamble and then gets right to the heart. In Article
I, it sets forth the domain of the legislative branch and the qualifying requirements for us legislators. It does the same for the executive branch in Article II, laying out the procedure for selecting a President and stating what his domain and powers shall be. Then the judicial branch gets the same treatment, short and sweet, in Article III. Article IV sets out the States' rights and duties to the central Government and provides for the addition of new States. Article V, in a single paragraph, lays out the procedure for amending the Constitution. Article VI provides for the transfer of power from the Articles of
Confederation to the new Constitution and makes the Constitution and the Federal laws the supreme law—together with treaties—the supreme law of the land. Article VII provides the procedure for ratifying the Constitution.

There it is. There it is—a new Government in only seven articles. It takes more verbiage than that just to buy a house in these days.

The Constitution is an amazing product of compromise and balance, created by just a handful of delegates—55—in under 4 months. Many of the delegates' names should be familiar to most Americans, names such as George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention, and James Madison, George Mason, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. Other famous names were not present, such as Thomas Jefferson. He was not there. He was serving at the time as the Ambassador to France. Then there was John Adams, who was in London as the U.S. Ambassador. The details of the Convention of 1787 make fascinating reading.

The Convention met in closed session, but James Madison obtained permission to take notes on the debates. His notes, supplemented by the outlines or drafts of other delegates, were not published until 1840—4 years after his death. They outline the evolution of the document, showing competing alternatives and the compromises that allowed the large and small States, and all of the other conflicting interests, to reach agreement on a final document that all agreed could be ratified by the States.

The body in which I speak, and to which I have been elected time and time again by the people of West Virginia, the Senate, is the result of one such contentious debate that almost caused the Convention to adjourn.

I was talking with the pages just the other day, and we talked about the Great Compromise. I talk with these pages, the
Republican pages and the Democratic pages. They change from time to time. They will be here perhaps for half a semester or a full semester or a few days. When we are out for a break, there will be a different group of pages. And we talk about history. These fine pages and I were just commenting the other day about the Great Compromise. I said, What do we mean by the phrase the "Great Compromise"? Well, that is what I am referring to now.

At one point during the Convention, the Virginia plan called for the creation of a bicameral legislature, with each House's representation apportioned by population. This suited Virginia and other large States well but was opposed by small States that feared joining a Union so dominated by the larger States. The delegations from the small States argued that their citizens would never ratify a Constitution that did not recognize some form of State equality.

After 3 weeks of increasingly bitter debate, the delegates agreed to what has come to be known as the Great Compromise.
The result of that compromise is the Congress that we know today—a lower House, chosen according to population, and with the sole authority to originate revenue bills; and an upper House, the Senate, in which each State has an equal vote.

Other compromises were necessary for the Convention to reach agreement, some less successful than that which led to the composition of the Congress, some positively inspired. The delegates deliberated over the power of the executive; they deliberated over interstate commerce; they deliberated over the subject of slavery—these among other topics.

A small but inspired compromise is contained in the Preamble. The Preamble to the Articles of Confederation named the States in geographic order from north to south. Without knowing which States would ratify the Constitution, and in what order, the delegates in Philadelphia were uncertain how to list the participating States.

So the answer was a graceful new opening: "We the people of the United States .    .    . do ordain and establish this Constitution .    .    ." without ever mentioning the States by name.

Every citizen should be familiar with the Constitution. We should each have a little radar system, an intuitive raising of the hairs along the back of one's neck, when attempts are made to flout the Constitution, either by design or out of misguided good intentions. I fear that this radar system is not functioning as well as it should be. When it fails, the checks and balances contained in our Constitution begin to rust and then begin to grind to a halt. When the Congress does not jealously guard its prerogatives against an overreaching executive, the executive branch gains strength from power that it should not have.

The Founders of this Nation worried about creating too strong an executive. They worried about creating a tyrant such as the one, George III, against whom they had fought a war for freedom. So they created a system where the people's direct representatives called the shots the Congress writes the laws, controls the funds, and approves the nominees for key executive posts. If all of those restraints failed, the President was subject to impeachment and trial by Congress.

But today, in our fears about national security and our national political system dominated by political party considerations, we face a situation in which Congress is being pressured to act as a rubber stamp for a strong-willed Executive. We have seen this happen with respect to various and sundry executives some Democratic, some Republican.
But in this instance, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, there was a stampede to do something, anything, to avenge this vile attack on our citizens. The Congress did not seriously debate or consider the long term consequences of the call to action, and apparently, neither did the White House. We rushed into war without a real declaration of war. Instead,
Congress passed a resolution giving the President sweeping powers to take such action as he saw fit, including military action, in that region. As a result, our military is over-extended and committed to long-term nation-building efforts in Iraq and, to a degree, in Afghanistan. Members of Congress are labeled "unpatriotic" if Members question—even question—any request for additional funds for those efforts.

At the same time, political party pressures were applied to pass expensive "temporary" tax cuts theoretically aimed at restarting a sluggish economy. The long-term impact on the deficit will hamstring the Nation for years to come. Congress should know better. This Senate should know better. Those of us who have been around for a while can recall the tremendous effort—and compromise—needed to achieve deficit control in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We can recall all of the hard, hard decisions that had to be made to bring the deficit under control. Did we really forget all of that in those few short years of surplus? Well, if we did forget that lesson from history, I fear we are doomed to repeat it, and we struggle to bring these even larger deficits under control.

The time is long past for Members of Congress to reassert the authorities granted to them in the Constitution. A citizenry familiar with their Constitution should demand it. We are, after all, ".    .    . bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution .    .    ." in Article VI, if we take the time to read it that far.

In his Farewell Address, delivered to his cabinet on, fortuitously enough, September 17, 1796, George Washington made this observation:

.    .    . [Y]ou have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a Constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of your own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence with its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty.

Our Constitution is the foundation of our liberties, and we must be its guardians.

I would like to close with a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, entitled "O Ship of State."

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,

What anvils rang, what hammers beat,

In what a forge and what a heat

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!

Fear not each sudden sound and shock,

'Tis of the wave and not the rock;

'Tis but the flapping of the sail,

And not a rent made by the gale!

In spite of rock and tempest's roar,

In spite of false lights on the shore,

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee, -are all with thee!

I yield the floor and suggest absence of a quorum.