Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007
Floor Speech
CHILDREN'S HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - November 01, 2007)
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Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I rise to speak once again about the cost of the war in Iraq here at home. This is the third speech I have stood up to give in the series that I intend to continue to give about what the Iraq war is costing us here at home, beyond the immeasurable cost of lives. Over 3,839 American lives have been lost--those are priceless--and 28,327 Americans have been seriously injured in the service of their country.
Since I started giving these speeches 2 weeks ago, $5 billion more has gone from the Treasury and has been spent in Iraq. It brings the total amount taken from the American people's pockets to $455 billion. Next month, another $10 billion will be sent over to Iraq, and it will be gone forever.
Americans trusted the Government with that money. When the numbers are that outrageously high, we all have to constantly be asking ourselves a simple question: What is going to make a bigger difference in our lives--using the money to fix the major problems we have facing the Nation every day or fighting a war that has achieved nothing for any of us? Could America have achieved more out of that money spending it on hospitals or lifesaving cancer research, schools and universities, food for the needy, roads, train tracks, bridges and airports, or the catastrophe that is the war in Iraq?
President Bush likes to use the line that ``we are fighting them over there
so that we don't have to fight them here.'' I think Americans have figured out that what he really means is we are spending all of our money over there, and therefore we have none to spend here.
I have already spoken out about the massive holes in our homeland security that the war funding in Iraq could have closed being used here at home. I have spoken about the difference that funding could have made for millions of Americans who have to play Russian roulette with their lives because they simply don't have health insurance, including millions of children who would be covered under the bill which is currently before the Senate, a bill the President threatens once again to veto while asking for $200 billion more in war funds this year alone--funds which, by the way, he doesn't even pay for. He wants to make his fiscal bones on the backs of children who have no health care coverage. They are the most important asset we have in our Nation and also the most fragile asset we have in our Nation. He says: Well, this bill is not fiscally acceptable. Yet he can, at the same time, send a request to us for $200 billion, which he doesn't pay for.
Not only does he not give children their health insurance, he adds a mountain of debt on their backs for the future. That is totally irresponsible.
I have talked many times about children's health insurance. I note, too, as we move to this vote, I don't know why there are still some advocating knocking parents off children's health insurance. Children and parents together successfully brought in more children to the program. Why is it that there are those Members of Congress who want to push more Americans into the vast number of the uninsured in this country? Because that is what they are advocating at the end of the day.
Today I wish to talk about what America would look like if we spent the money George Bush is spending on failing to rebuild Iraq to repair our own battered infrastructure at home. Yes, we are spending a lot of money, billions of dollars in Iraq, with which we fail even to rebuild Iraq. Not only are we failing to rebuild Iraq, we certainly do not have the resources at home.
Is it the Iraq war or better transportation in our country? There is no way to put a price tag on the immense frustration we feel with our systems of transportation. If you have ever slammed your hands on the steering wheel because traffic is unbearable so you are going to miss your meeting or be late to pick up your child at school, if you ever had your train delayed or have been jammed inside a subway car that was not built to carry the number of people who are stuffed in there, if you have ever been stuck waiting in an airport terminal or trapped on a plane sitting on a tarmac waiting to take off hour after hour, then you know our transportation systems are stretched to the limit, and sometimes they break.
Thirteen people paid the ultimate price and 100 more were injured at the terrible, tragic collapse of the bridge in Minnesota a few months ago. It is scary how easily that could happen again. Here is a truly shocking statistic. The number of bridges that are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete in this country is enormous. It is about 160,000 bridges, 25 percent of all the bridges in the country. That means if you have driven over four bridges, the odds are that one of them is not in particularly great shape, and that is incredibly scary.
What does it cost to stop another tragedy such as the one in Minneapolis from happening? The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the cost of maintaining and replacing obsolete or deteriorating bridges is about $7.4 billion a year. That is the cost of staying even, not allowing the overall quality of our bridges to further deteriorate.
If we spent on transportation what we spend on the Iraq war, we could pay off the entire cost of what the Society of Civil Engineers estimates would be the cost of maintaining and replacing all those obsolete or deteriorating bridges in 22 days. We could take care of every bridge in America and make everybody safer in 22 days for the cost of the war in Iraq--22 days. That is another example of what the war costs: bridges you can feel confident about, that you will get home safely to your family versus less than a month in Iraq.
Today construction is beginning on the Minneapolis bridge that will replace the one that collapsed. The cost: $234 million. We spend that money in Iraq in less than 1 day.
Americans are also feeling the hassle of commuting by car or plane, especially for long distances. Oil prices are hitting record highs. Many feel that petroleum production is reaching a peak. Burning oil thickens our air with smog and stokes the fires of the global climate crisis, threatening to drown buildings on our coastlines under water and create massive droughts inland. If we don't create viable transportation options that will end our dependence on oil, America is going to be in big trouble.
With all this in mind, yesterday the Senate passed a bill to boost funding for Amtrak. We passed that bill so the great American relationship with the railroad could be restored and brought to new peaks of excellence. Funding for the Amtrak bill will be $19.2 billion over 6 years. That money would make passenger transportation easier, it would improve rail security, it would make our air cleaner, and it would be a boost to the economy. But like every appropriations bill that has come or is on its way to the President's desk under the Democratic Congress, the administration has argued that we don't have money for good public transportation systems.
While President Bush's mouth is moving, his hand is signing checks for other items. What the Amtrak bill would spend in 6 years, the President spends in Iraq in 2 months while we are trying to have a national rail transportation system that gets sales forces from small and mid-size companies to work with intercity travel to sell their products or services, to get people to great institutions of research and also great institutions of healing and hospitals, to get people maybe to the Nation's Capital or to other major cities along the Northeast corridor, to have the opportunity after a post-September 11 world to understand that multiple modes of transportation are critical--if we have a terrorist incident in one part of the country, we can move people along, as on that fateful day. What was open for intercity travel when every airplane was grounded? It was Amtrak. Yet the President says: Oh, no, I am going to veto that bill.
What we are going to spend in 6 years to make Amtrak a world-class rail system, the President spends in Iraq in under 2 months. That is what the war costs: vastly improved American railroads versus 2 months of bloody chaos in Iraq.
The costs of this war, in my mind, are unimaginable. The Congressional Budget Office put out a report projecting that the Iraq war will cost, at the rate we are going, $1.9 trillion, nearly $2 trillion. It is incredibly hard to put that money into perspective, but so we can get an idea of how vast that sum is, paving the entire Interstate Highway System over the course of 3 1/2 decades only costs $425 billion. Some estimates say the Interstate Highway System returns $6 for every $1 we spend in economic opportunity and growth. The Iraq war has returned zero dollars for every billion dollars spent.
So we can get an idea of how vast that sum is with the money spent in Iraq, we could pave a four-lane American highway from Chicago to Milwaukee with an entire inch of solid gold. We could pave a four-lane American highway from
Chicago to Milwaukee with an entire inch of solid gold. And if you made the thickness less than an inch of solid gold, you could easily gild a highway from sea to shining sea. That is what the war costs. It costs so much, the amount of money starts to exceed what it would cost to pay even for our most ludicrous dreams.
We have to use our imaginations as to where that money could go because for a lot of it, we don't know where it is going. Billions of dollars have gone missing in Iraq. According to a report released by the special inspector general for Iraq earlier this week, the rest has largely failed to build Iraq's infrastructure. Meanwhile, infrastructure in America still needs serious help. We don't have money accounted for in Iraq that we are sending to rebuild the Iraq infrastructure. The rest that we do account for, the inspector general says it is largely failing to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, and we don't have the resources to meet our challenges at home.
It is time for us to make a choice: Will we put this country on a track to recovery or watch it barrel down the rails to deterioration? Will we pave the highway to success for our people or leave that road to rust and rot? Will we watch our economy take off, the aspirations and dreams of our people soar to new heights, or will we ground our Nation, leaving thousands to face the congestion that gridlocks so many forms of transportation in so many places, leaving thousands waiting in the terminals of frustration, waiting for something to change, for something finally to change?
Thinking about our transportation needs is another way to think about what we want the United States of America to look like as a nation. As someone who travels quite a bit across the landscape of the country, I have experienced all these frustrations with all of these different modes of transportation. And transportation is about more than getting from one place to another. It is about economic opportunity and commerce. It is about getting products to market. It is about getting people to service. It is about getting people to important institutions so they can be healed. It is about creating economic opportunity. It is about uniting families from coast to coast. It is about the quality of air and the environment we collectively enjoy by getting more people out of cars. It is about, by the same token, the opportunity to have multiple modes of security. It has so many dimensions to it, but all those dimensions go unresponded to because we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the war in Iraq.
Those needs are yet another reason it is time to end this war because when it comes to the failed war in Iraq, American families are being taken for a ride.
It is time to soar again, it is time to reinforce with the strongest iron and steel the bridges to safety and success, time to clear off the barricades of the road to opportunity, time to put America on the highest speed track we can, and to make sure we are always first in flight high above the clouds. Those goals are not imaginary or unattainable. They are very much within our reach. But for that, we have to change the course in Iraq and invest in America at home.
I will continue to come to the floor to speak about different dimensions of the cost of this war in Iraq. It is a cost the American people can no longer suffer.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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