Investing In Smart Security

Floor Speech

Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, President Obama is certainly doing the right thing when it comes to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. He's responded quickly, he's responded effectively, and he's pledged that the United States will do all that we can do to alleviate the suffering of the Haitian people and to help them rebuild their lives. President Obama has shown that America stands for hope, decency, and human rights, which is, of course, the kind of moral leadership that the President of the United States must always show. But while the administration is getting it right in Haiti, we still have a lot of work to do in Afghanistan, where the President plans to ask Congress for $33 billion in emergency funding to pay for the escalation of the war there.

Madam Speaker, we do need to appropriate more funds for Afghanistan, but not for more troops, because there is no military solution to the problem there. Sending more troops makes us look like occupiers, which will surely help the Taliban recruit more violent extremists, who will attack their own Afghani neighbors and the United States. So instead of investing in the military in Afghanistan, we need to invest in SMART security, which means investing in economic development, health, infrastructure, humanitarian aid, better law enforcement and governance. SMART security also includes helping the Afghan people to build schools so girls and women can be offered an education as well as the boys.

Madam Speaker, General McChrystal, our commander in Afghanistan, recently said that the Taliban looks for young people with no education when they are looking for new recruits. That's why I believe that investing in books, not bombs, is the way to stop violent extremism in Afghanistan and actually in every other part of the world as well. We also need to invest in our own economy and our own people right here at home, because we can't keep our country safe unless we have a strong economy, well educated, and with everybody having jobs that they can afford to support their families on.

So that's why we must invest in jobs. We must invest in housing. We must invest in child care and health care. And we must especially be concerned about those facing their own humanitarian crisis in our communities.

So just consider some of these facts, Madam Speaker: one in every 50 Americans is living in a household where food stamps are the only source of income. The effective unemployment rate today is really over 17 percent. And middle class families are now earning less than they did a decade ago, adjusted for inflation.

The economic disaster right here in our own country is unprecedented in American history. Unfortunately, the Congress will soon be presented with a record Pentagon budget, however, for the next fiscal year. I would suggest that instead of increasing the Pentagon budget, we should reduce it by cutting out funds for useless Cold War weapons, which would slash the defense budget by 25 percent. Isn't that amazing? We could slash the defense budget by 25 percent if we would just stop building useless Cold War weapons. We can make those dollars available to invest right here at home to put SMART security to work in Afghanistan as well.

Madam Speaker, the best way to keep our country safe is to stick to our fundamental American values of peace and compassion for the people of the world. We must put these values to work in Haiti, in Afghanistan, and right here at home. I urge all of us and our President to do just that.

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