Statement on the House Iraq Supplemental Funding Bill

Statement

Statement on the House Iraq Supplemental Funding Bill

"The matter before us today, the Iraq Supplemental, is before us for the first time. However, this is not the last time that we will vote on this bill. This bill will go to the Senate and from the Senate to a Conference Committee and from there back to the floor of this house. If the President exercises his veto power, we may ultimately vote on this matter as many as three or four times.

Today, I make no commitments about what I will do or how I will vote when this matter comes back to this house. How could I? I don't know what this bill will look like when it comes back … I don't know what it will say. Rather, I rise to explain how I will vote today, as this bill comes before this house for the first time.

It is clear to me that today, we have only two options. We can send to the Senate the bill before us, with binding language to end the war or, should this bill fail, we will send a bill that gives the President unchecked power to continue his misguided, mismanaged war without end.

That is the choice today. And my vote will be ‘yes' to advance the bill which begins to end the war.

Reaching this decision has been difficult. My deliberation has been long and thoughtful. The difficulty of the decision may seem somewhat surprising given the rather stark description I just provided of the choice before us. However there are several reasons why this decision has been hard.

First, the bill before us, despite its binding language to end the war, is far from perfect. It does not end the war soon enough. It mishandles the issue of Iraqi oil. It fails to address necessary safeguards to prevent this President from taking military action in Iran without Congressional authorization. The bill's shortcomings are reason enough for a no vote.

Second, until today ... until this vote ... I have played a different role. My job yesterday, and the day before (like so many war opponents) was to fight to make the language in this bill stronger and to make this legislation better. And having failed to accomplish all I sought to achieve provides me with another reason to vote no.

Third, until this day I have voted against all of the Iraqi war spending bills. I strongly favor using the power of the purse to end the war. That this binding language to end the war is attached to a war funding bill provided me with yet another reason to vote no.

Many on the left have invoked the words of Saul Alinsky in describing today's vote. ‘... I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be,' he says in his book Rules for Radicals. ‘That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be - it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be,' Alinsky continues. So today we start where this Congressional world is, with this imperfect bill as the vehicle to begin to end the war.
The choice is clear, today we can begin to end the war, or we can stand in the way of doing so. I will vote to end the war."

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