Stop Spending Billions in Afghanistan

Floor Speech

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Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I am on the floor again today with a prophetic political cartoon. In the cartoon, Uncle Sam is in a wheelchair, and he is at the edge of a cliff that is known as the fiscal cliff. Then, he has President Obama pushing him in the wheelchair; and then the donkey, representing the Democratic Party, is pushing Mr. Obama. And then the elephant, representing the Republican Party, is pushing the donkey and President Obama to push Uncle Sam off the cliff.

What is ironic is that Uncle Sam is yelling like he is excited: ``I can see Greece from here.'' Well, we know what has happened to the economy of Greece. It is in total collapse.

Mr. Speaker, we are $19.2 trillion in debt. I was here in the year 2000 when Bill Clinton left office. We were the majority in the House and the Senate. We were headed for a surplus. The debt in 2000 was $5.6 trillion. Now we are here 16 years later and it is $19.2 trillion.

The reason I bring this up is because we have an opportunity to stop spending billions and billions of dollars in Afghanistan. It is nothing but a waste. It is a waste of our young men and women in uniform. It is a waste of the taxpayers' money.

Recently, in an article in The Washington Post titled ``Former Afghan Leader Karzai: Military Action Cannot Resolve Conflict in Afghanistan,'' the former President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, told The Washington Post recently that he doesn't think a military effort will bring peace to Afghanistan. He said: ``We did it for the last 14 years and it didn't bring us that, so how do we know . . . military action will bring us that now?''

We are going on 15 years of being in that country--and the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan is worse now than it has ever been.

I think about the needs of our veterans, I think about the needs of our children, I think about the needs of our senior citizens, and so many other needs. We passed a bill yesterday to help with the mental health issues of America, yet it is not funded. But, yes, we will find the money to fund Afghanistan so we can continue to waste and spend the taxpayers' money and get nothing for it. It is just absolutely ridiculous.

Mr. Speaker, I voted against the Department of Defense bill last week simply because there is another $43 billion in there going to Afghanistan. This is OCO funds, it is slush funds, and it can't even be accounted for.

The taxpayers are frustrated with both parties and fed up because we are not doing our jobs. We are not doing what is necessary. We ought to be debating Afghanistan on the floor of the House and we ought to be saying, ``Is it worth it or is it not worth it,'' and have an up-or- down vote. No, we just let it continue to go down this road with no end to it.

Mr. Speaker, I close this way, because to me this tells you more about Afghanistan than anything I could say today. Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires. Well, I know one empire that is headed for the graveyard, and it happens to be the United States of America. And if we continue to fund and waste the taxpayers' money in Afghanistan, then I hope that graveyard will have a headstone, and it will one day, that says ``USA,'' because we will be in the graveyard of Afghanistan.

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