Congress Should Focus on Fixing our Problems Here at Home

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, the recent news about Afghanistan is, at best, distressing. Soon Congress will be debating an increase in the debt ceiling so we can borrow more money to pay our bills. The sad part is that some of that money will go to Afghanistan.

Three recent headlines are most discouraging:

One from the Fiscal Times, September 23, ``U.S. Wasted Billions of Dollars Rebuilding Afghanistan.''

The second headline from the New York Times, October 1, ``Afghan Forces on the Run.''

The third headline, ``U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Military Leaders.''

I am so outraged about the third headline story that I am demanding answers on the Pentagon's policy of permitting Afghan men to rape young boys on U.S. military bases. I have written a letter to the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and asked him to hold hearings on this issue. We need to get to the bottom of this.

Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. We are headed to the graveyard. We need to borrow money just to carry on the needless war. We need to borrow money just to pay our bills.

We are over $18 trillion in debt, and President Obama signed us up for 8 more years in Afghanistan, 8 more years of wasted money. No one even listens to John Sopko, the Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, who has testified before Congress many times. He releases report after report detailing the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan, and no one in Congress seems to care.

According to Sopko, we have spent more in 14 years trying to shape Afghanistan into a functional country, which is a fool's errand, at best, than we did on the entire Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II.

In the next fiscal year, we will spend $42.5 billion in Afghanistan, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that we will spend $30 billion a year for the next 8 years. We are committed to staying in Afghanistan. This is the longest war in the history of America.

History has proven that we will never change this tribal nation and we should stop trying. Instead, let's focus on fixing our problems here in America.

The little girls beside me, Mr. Speaker, Eden and Stephanie Balduf, their daddy was training Afghanistan citizens to be policemen, and they were shot and killed by the man they were training. Poor little girls represent so many families whose loved ones have died in Afghanistan for nothing but a waste.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I ask God to please bless our men and women in uniform, please bless America, and, God, please wake up the Congress before it is too late on Afghanistan.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source