30-Something Working Group
Floor Speech
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - June 06, 2007)
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Mr. PATRICK J. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding.
You know, it is funny. This is my first time as a member of the 30-Something Group, and I know I am the puppy of the group because I am only 33 years old. So when I ran for Congress, I had tremendous support from the network community, those bloggers out there all across America. But there are bloggers, especially in Philadelphia and greater Philadelphia and the suburbs that blog every day, and they got so excited when the 30-Something Group was their voice when you were in the minority. Your voice in talking about progressive values, talking about the things in the New Direction, that if we were just given the chance, we would lead. And when we got that chance just a few months ago in the 110th Congress, those bloggers, that network community, are just so proud of their efforts. And it is neat for me to be here to think that when we had a rebirth in our country and Philadelphia, the city of Philadelphia was part of that rebirth and to know that six of the ten biggest bloggers in our country are from Philadelphia and the Philadelphia suburbs. People like Chris Bowers of MyDD and Duncan Black of Atrios and how they are following the 30-Something Group every day and to be part of this group now is just a really proud moment.
And another proud moment that the gentleman from Florida mentioned is the fact that today is the 20th anniversary of the public service of the Speaker of the House, Ms. Nancy Pelosi from California. And when I was in this body just a few months ago speaking and taking that oath of office, taking that oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States as a Member of Congress, and when I was there with my wife, Jenni, and my 6-month old, at that time a month old, daughter, Maggie Murphy, and I know, Mr. Speaker, that they are watching at home on C-SPAN because I am down here trying to work on behalf of our great country, I know that I was thinking of not just the folks that are over in Iraq, those men that I served with or those men that I had taught when I was a professor at West Point, but I thought about my month-old daughter, Maggie, and I thought about what an incredible story it is that when she was born into this great country, the third most powerful person is a woman, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
And I thought about a role model. Here is this Italian Catholic woman originally from Baltimore, now in San Francisco, and the criticism about the Speaker before she got in here was that she wasn't going to do a good job or she was going to lead from the left. She has really made this a House united. She has reached across the aisle to the Republicans. She has tried to lead in a moderate fashion, and I think we have to give her a lot of credit. I know the analysts have said that she is getting high marks as the Speaker, and I know that I am proud that she is our Speaker and I am proud to serve under her leadership.
I will keep my remarks relatively brief. It is my maiden voyage here with the 30-Something Group, and I am joined as well with one of my brothers, the other MURPHY, CHRIS MURPHY, who is the elder statesman from Connecticut, who is a whole, I think, 30 some days older than I am, and I know tonight the Speaker Pro Tempore is the gentleman from the great State of Indiana, the sheriff, but tonight I want to speak about the New Direction that we are bringing about.
Finally, the rubber stamp Congress of the past is gone and the do something Congress is here. And we all campaigned in saying that we were going to hold President Bush accountable. And I had served in Baghdad as a captain with the 82nd Airborne Division, and I am so proud of my military service. My father served during Vietnam in the Navy. My grandfather served. My brother is still serving in the Air Force. And I think back to those times and what you come to expect of the Congress. And our men and women who are serving so honorably fight for our country. They fight to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and they execute the public policy as it is drafted and implemented here in Washington.
And I know that I get e-mails from Iraq and Afghanistan and those heroes talk about sometimes they don't know what the policy necessarily should be, but what they do appreciate is the fact that we are actually having a debate, that we are actually asking the tough questions necessary. So when we talk about a New Direction in this 110th Congress, when we talk about accountability, part of that is what we just passed out of the Armed Services Committee with the defense appropriations bill. Talking about in Iraq when we give the Iraqis support, why is it that 4 years later they are still, for the most part, sitting on the sidelines? Why is it that we gave them pallets and pallets, crates and crates of literally U.S. money and pallets stacked this high, shipped it over to Baghdad, gave it out, and billions and billions of dollars are simply missing?
When we talk about accountability, we have to talk about the weapons that we have given the Iraqis. In the United States military, and I joined it back in 1993, we are taught pretty early that your weapon is your best friend. There was even a cadence that I used to sing when I would jog in the morning and run troops, ``I used to date a beauty queen; now I date my M-16.'' And it is kind of funny, but it is true in that you are always around your weapon. It is part of that accountability.
If you lose your weapon, that is the end of your career. You will be lucky if you don't get court-martialed.
But how that relates to Iraq is we have given the Iraqis 14,000 weapons, AK-47s, M-16s, that are now missing. Think about that. We have given 14,000 weapons to the Iraqis that are completely missing, unaccounted for. That is not the accountability that our taxpayers are expecting. That is not the accountability that we should be expecting when we fight the war on terror because when you give billions of dollars over in Iraq, when you give 14,000 weapons to Iraq that are now just missing, that affects the lives of our soldiers. And we cannot stand for that.
I would also like to talk about accountability when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Almost 6 years ago,
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our Nation was attacked by Osama bin Laden. Thousands of innocent civilians, innocent Americans were murdered on September 11 of 2001. The culprit: Osama bin Laden. He was in Afghanistan. He trained al Qaeda, and al Qaeda was really given a free pass by the government there, the Taliban. And we made a decision. We got a coalition. We got Canada and all these other countries going in there in Afghanistan to do the job. And then a short time later, President Bush said, no, let's change our focus to Iraq. Well, we have ten times more troops now in Iraq now than in Afghanistan. And when we talk about accountability, you have to ask the question, what are we doing to get Osama bin Laden? Why is it that we give Pakistan billions of dollars? We actually give Pakistan $80 million a month because we have intelligence that is unclassified that we can talk about here in this setting that Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan and possibly on the border of Pakistan. So we need Pakistan's help as an ally.
Why is it that President Musharraf has outsourced the hunt for Osama bin Laden to his regional warlords?
Years ago we learned that we outsourced the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora and he slipped through our fingers when we had a chance. We can't repeat the same mistakes. So if we are giving support to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which we should, they are our allies, we need to demand accountability. We need to demand the accountability that the American taxpayers, that the American families, and that the American soldiers deserve.
And the last point I would like to bring up on my maiden voyage here in the 30-something Group is education. One of the greatest jobs I ever had was being a professor at West Point teaching constitutional military law. And it was the Constitution that those young cadets who were about to become second lieutenants were going to take an oath to support and defend. And education is vital for Americans and our students to be more and more competitive in a global economy.
I joke with the gentleman from Florida we are not competing in my district in Bucks County for jobs against Florida. As I look at Mr. Altmire, we are not competing with the folks in Pittsburgh in Bucks County. I look at the congressman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy). We are not competing with jobs necessarily against the folks in Connecticut. We are competing for jobs with people in China and South Korea and Japan and in Europe. And we need to have high investment in education so we remain more competitive.
And this gets me into our national debt. Right now our debt is over $9 trillion. So that means every man, woman, and child in America owes over $29,000 to our national debt. So that means when my daughter, Maggie, was born 6 months ago at Lower Bucks Hospital in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, she was born in that hospital and she owed $29,000 to our national debt. That is a debt that we owe to foreign countries like communist China, like Japan, like South Korea, like Mexico. We keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and borrowing.
Now, when I am back home, people say to me, Patrick, we are at war. Of course it is going to cost money.
And I say, $9 trillion we have in debt, $9 trillion; yet this war in Iraq has only cost at this point about $450 billion. That is a huge difference.
And how it relates to education is just in March of 2007, we paid $21 billion just that month on the interest rate to this debt, just paying off the interest rate that we owe, $21 billion. But that same month we only paid $5 billion in education. So what we spend on education, $5 billion, we spend four times that much that same month on our interest rate on our debt.
We need a change and we are making that change happen here in the 110th Congress. And I am proud to be part of it. I am proud to be part of the leadership to make sure we do what is necessary, establishing a pay-as-you-go system, doing the things necessary to hold all of us accountable and this government accountable.
So I would say to the gentleman of Florida, thank you for giving me the opportunity on this maiden voyage. I look forward to many more times back here with the 30-something Group, and I am proud of all those supporters not just back home in Bucks County and northeast Philadelphia and Montgomery County and the network community. I am proud, on this 20th anniversary, of the public service of our leader, Speaker Pelosi, to be here amongst the 30-something Group. Thank you so much.
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