SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS -- (Senate - April 26, 2007)
Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I stand today in strong support of H.R. 1591, the congressional supplemental bill. In casting our votes on this important measure, all of us must ask a fundamental question: Do we support a change in course in Iraq or do we want more of the same?
This supplemental bill delivers over $100 billion in necessary funding, an increase of $4 billion over the President's request for our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, fully meeting the President's request. More important, the bill establishes a change in course for our policy in Iraq by transitioning the mission of American troops away from involvement in a growing civil war to a more targeted mission, one focused on counterterrorism, training and equipping Iraqi forces, and force protection for American troops.
The supplemental bill that was voted on today offers a path away from the current quagmire in Iraq, a state of bloodshed and chaos which is straining the U.S. Army, diverting our attention from a resurgent al-Qaida in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and finally sacrificing too many of our finest men and women.
We must never forget the enormous personal sacrifices our troops are asked to make every day. As of today, 162 Pennsylvanians and more than 3,300 Americans as a whole have given their lives in Iraq, with tens of thousands more suffering lifelong injuries, including amputations, severe burns, and traumatic brain injuries. On Monday, nine members of the 82nd Airborne Division gave their lives when a suicide bomber infiltrated their outpost in Diyala Province, the deadliest single attack on U.S. forces in Iraq since December 2005.
We pray today for our fallen heroes--today and always--but we also pray for ourselves that we may be worthy of their valor.
Our troops have done all they can. They have deposed Saddam, and they fought insurgents and foreign terrorists. They spent the last 4 years partnering with their Iraqi counterparts in a courageous effort to establish the foundation for democracy and a free society. They have been asked to mediate disputes and protect innocent civilians as targets in a crossfire of a civil war.
So our troops have done their part. Now it is time for the Congress and the White House to do their part. As retired military generals, experienced diplomats, and scholars with intimate knowledge of Iraq have declared and as a bipartisan Iraq Study Group concluded just last winter, any success in Iraq requires a political and diplomatic solution and cannot be achieved through military might alone.
Just ask General Petraeus, who, upon assuming his new command in March, declared:
There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency of Iraq ..... A political resolution of various differences ..... will determine, in the long run, the success of that effort.
GEN Barry McCaffrey recently returned from his latest trip to Iraq. One of our most widely respected former military officers, General McCaffrey fought in Vietnam with distinction, commanded a division in the gulf war in 1991, and led U.S. operations in Latin America. He submitted a formal report on his trip, which is very sober reading. One line stands out for me, and I quote from General McCaffrey's report:
No Iraqi Government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign nongovernmental organization, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection.
This supplemental bill provides the Congress and the White House a chance to do their part to ensure success in our mission in Iraq. It brings to an end the ``stay the course'' mentality that defined our approach for the past 4 years in at least three ways.
First, the supplemental revises our mission in Iraq away from policing a civil war toward training and equipping Iraqi security forces, protecting U.S. forces, and conducting targeted counterterror operations.
Second, it initiates a phased redeployment of our troops no later than October 1 of this year, with a goal of removing all combat troops by April 1 of next year. These steps were called for in the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and represent the will of the American people. I am pleased that the Congress is finally following suit.
Third, the supplemental at least holds the Iraqi Government accountable by setting measurable and achievable benchmarks on the Iraqi Government for ending the sectarian conflict, political reconciliation, and improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis.
If the Iraqi Government refuses to meet these benchmarks, they will put at risk future U.S. assistance and the continued presence of U.S. troops. We have repeatedly seen past benchmarks established by the Bush administration and the Iraqi Government come and go without progress and without consequence. Just this week, a revealing article in USA Today highlighted the growing lack of confidence among Iraqi Parliamentarians in the al-Maliki government, and one legislator was quoted as saying:
This government hasn't delivered and is not capable of doing the job.
This bill, once and for all, establishes a series of accountable benchmarks.
Finally, the supplemental recognizes the toll this war has taken on our uniformed military, especially the Army and Marine Corps. It establishes a set of troop-readiness standards that establish minimum levels between deployments for our troops and limits the duration of those deployments.
The legislation includes a Presidential waiver authority, but it would require the President to certify that the continued strain on our military forces is in our national interest. These provisions will force the President to think long and hard about the impact of the Iraq war on the readiness of our military to handle other pressing challenges, including the need to fight and kill al-Qaida terrorists wherever we find them.
The congressional debate that has helped produce this supplemental bill has been attacked by the President and his supporters. However, our Secretary of Defense last week described our debate as helpful in ``communicating to the Iraqis that this is not an open-ended commitment.''
Two of my distinguished colleagues, on a recent visit to Baghdad, explicitly
informed Iraqi leaders that growing congressional pressure on the need for a phased redeployment signified that it was time for the Iraqi Government to get serious and start taking the hard steps needed for political reconciliation, including a fair distribution of oil revenues. Without the steps this Congress has taken, without the pressure it has applied, the Maliki regime would continue to be receiving an open-ended blank check from the White House, with our soldiers paying the ultimate price.
The President has regrettably chosen to distort and malign our intentions in sending him the bill that is before us today. I wish to take a few minutes to briefly address those charges and demonstrate why it is the President--the President--and not the Congress who has cynically held hostage the funding and well-being of our troops.
First, the President has repeatedly charged that our military forces needed the supplemental funding immediately and any delay to pass the supplemental in his exact specifications would harm their readiness. A number of my colleagues already cited authoritative research from the Congressional Research Service that demonstrates that the needed funding is available to the U.S. Army from mid to late July--let me say that again, mid to late July--without jeopardizing the war effort. However, there is a much larger cynicism at play here. There would be no need for a supplemental bill at all if this President had submitted an honest, regular budget request for this fiscal year.
Four years into the war, this administration should be able to tell the American people how much the war in Iraq cost. Yet the administration has refused to incorporate wartime costs into his regular budget request, instead seeking to finance our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through a series of supplemental bills. Of course, the President doesn't want to do that because regular appropriations requests are subject to greater public and congressional scrutiny.
Financing the war through supplemental bills also allows the President to better hide the impact of the war on our Federal budget. It is not surprising that a President who has run up the largest deficits in modern history would want to hide that fact. Doing so on the backs of our troops is outrageous.
So the President is plain wrong when he attacks the Congress on supplemental funding for our troops in Iraq. The reality is that we have exceeded the President's request and on a timetable which is quicker than that of the previous Congress controlled by the President's party.
If the President chooses to veto this bill, it is he--it is he--who is prolonging this process and denying necessary funds to our young men and women in uniform.
If the President had been honest with the Congress and the American people on the true cost of this war from the very beginning, we would not have needed this supplemental bill.
The second claim the President has made over and over again in recent weeks is that this supplemental bill is larded up with porkbarrel spending that is unrelated to our military operation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, once again, the President is distorting both his own actions and those of Congress for crude political gain. We should not forget that the President's original request for supplemental funding also included funds not related to the war in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The President's request included money for debt relief in Kosovo, cultural exchanges, and assistance to refugees in Burundi. The President keeps calling for a clean bill, yet his own request to the Congress included extra items with no connection to Iraq or Afghanistan. In light of the President's request, the Congress, acting as an independent and equal branch of Government, engaged in its own deliberations and determined other emergency priorities that required funding through this supplemental bill.
This President seems to think that the Congress exists merely to follow his orders and that it should not exercise any independent judgment. This may have been the case with our predecessors but not with this Congress and not with this Senator. We were elected by the people of our States, and we report to them, not the President and not the Vice President. So the Congress acted to ensure additional funding for a number of key priorities.
The President has broadly tarred these projects as ``egregious porkbarrel.'' Does the President believe that label applies to the $1.2 billion in funds for accelerated production of mine-resistent vehicles so our soldiers have a better chance of surviving IED attacks? Does he believe that label applies to $2.1 billion to better provide health care for our veterans? Does he believe that $650 million to help with the children's health insurance shortfall in 14 States is frivolous spending? I could also talk about the funding for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and our farmers and on and on.
This supplemental bill, agreed upon by the House and the Senate, is a responsible effort that guarantees the funds our troops need, provides funding for other critical emergency priorities, and sets a badly needed change in course in Iraq.
In conclusion, our policy in Iraq is not working, and it must change if we are to salvage our mission and seek to leave behind a functioning government in Baghdad that can defend its national borders and contain internal violence. It is time to recognize the reality of Iraq as it is today, get our mission right, and allow our troops to begin coming home with the honor they deserve.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.