30-Something Working Group
Floor Speech
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - April 25, 2007)
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Mr. HODES. Well, I thank my friend from Connecticut and my friend from Pennsylvania for being here. You know, I'm on the something side of 30, but we are all new Members here tonight. And we came here, in large part, because the American people are way ahead of the politicians in this country. And the American people have had it with this exercise in Iraq. In overwhelming numbers, they, in their wisdom, have had it, and they spoke loud and clear to that in November of this year and that, in large part, is why we, and many of our colleagues, are now privileged to serve in the House of Representatives.
And what we have done today in passing the Iraq accountability bill is truly historic. And it started here in the House; it went to the Senate through the wisdom of our founders. There was a conference of House and Senate leaders. The bill came back here in slightly altered form. And now, as we sit here tonight, speaking about this bill, it's on its way to the desk of the President of the United States. And the President of the United States has a choice to make about the direction of this country. He, now, has a choice to make. He has a choice to make about supporting the troops. He has a choice to make about holding the Iraqis accountable, as he said he was going to do. He has a choice to make about supporting our veterans. He has a choice to make about supporting our wounded, whose care has been a disgrace, as many of us have seen. The President of the United States has these choices to make.
Now, we have had a lot of rhetoric in the chamber today, and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle called this shameful. They accused us of weakening America. They essentially questioned our patriotism. They said we didn't support the troops, and that is poppycock. It's disinformation. It's not true.
We all, whether we are Democrats or Republicans, and I know this is true of the people in this country, care deeply about this country. And what we want to see is an America with real strength that is protecting the real security of the American people, and that is leading the world, as we once did, as the most credible of nations, as the nation which, in World War II, stood up to lead the fight against fascism, and then had the courage to put Nazis on public trial in the Nuremberg war trials because we were strong enough to have a transparent due process system. We weren't afraid. And we shouldn't be afraid in resolving this conflict in Iraq, in acting with the real strength that means real security.
Now, our brave troops have done everything that we've asked of them. They fought through an invasion, and after that, it was an ill advised invasion, but then, through the incompetence and mismanagement of this administration, they have been left in the quagmire of a civil war.
And I want to turn now to the words of somebody with far more military experience than me, to talk about the effect of what we have done here in the Congress tonight. Major General John Batiste, United States Army Retired, said, this important legislation sets a new direction for Iraq. It acknowledges that America went to war without mobilizing the Nation, that our strategy in Iraq has been tragically flawed since the invasion in March 2003, that our Army and Marine Corps are at the breaking point with little to show for it, and that our military, alone, will never establish representative government in Iraq. And Major General John Batiste said, the administration got it terribly wrong. And I applaud our Congress for stepping up to their constitutional responsibilities because this Congress, as Major General John Batiste has recognized, unlike the rubber stamp Congresses that have preceded us for years now, is finally the accountability Congress. We are holding our government accountable by passing the Iraq accountability act, which forces the Iraqi government to take responsibility for their own stability.
We are into the fifth year of this war. Hundreds of billions of dollars, and still, no progress on reforming the Constitution.
What about reconciliation? What about all the ministries in the Iraqi government fighting amongst themselves? What about the Sunni/Shia divide that al-Maliki does not seem to want to face and deal with? The Sunnis and Shiites killing each other, and our troops in the middle of it.
So we hold our government accountable to our troops, to our returning soldiers and our veterans. This accountability Congress has held oversight hearings to investigate government mismanagement and corruption in Iraq. We found, for instance, in oversight hearings, that this administration shipped $12 billion of cash over to Iraq without accounting for it, and gave it away to Iraqi ministries to use as they would, without ever asking for a single shred of accounting. No paper trail, no nothing. We're restoring accountability to contracting, ending the massive waste caused by no bid contracts.
And the contractors in Iraq, just so we are clear, on this, we now know that, in addition to the 150,000 troops, give or take, currently in Iraq, there are 126,000 private contractors. And as John Murtha so eloquently talked about the floor tonight, we've got a situation where our brave soldiers are standing there, they are making $25,000 a year, let's say they are pumping gas and doing some security details. And next to them there's a private contractor making $80,000 a year doing the same job. Some of these private contractors, we heard, are making $300,000 a year. That's more than any government official in the United States government. And you want to know where our billions and billions of dollars have gone.
So we're restoring some accountability to government with the Iraq Accountability Act tonight. We're restoring openness and transparency to government, to repair the fabric of our democracy that has been undermined in the course of this administration.
So this President does have a choice to make tonight. And I think of the
words of Zbigniew Brzinski, the former National Security Adviser, who called this war an increasingly immoral, futile exercise in presidential hubris, because, my friends, I'm sorry to say that the President of the United States has said that he's going to veto what Congress has passed. He is going to essentially turn his back on the will of the American people. He's going to go against the advice of retired generals in droves who've come out to talk about the reality. And I believe the American people are going to be disappointed in that veto because they want a new direction in Iraq. And that is the course we have set tonight. I'll kick it back now to Mr. Murphy.
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Mr. HODES. Madam Speaker, the interesting thing about what this bill does, I mean the reality of what it does, is it gives this President an opportunity, it gives him a fabulous opportunity, to face reality, as a leader should, and understand that he is being given the opportunity for a new direction, for a new direction that is tough and smart, and smart about our security, because it is designed to make sure that our interests in the Middle East are taken care of in a responsible way. The American people know that. They want us to be responsible in the way we resolve the situation in Iraq.
Major General Paul Eaton addressed the notion of why this is so responsible when he said, ``This bill gives General Petraeus great leverage for moving the Iraqi Government down the more disciplined path laid out by the Iraq Study Group. The real audience for the timeline language is Prime Minister al-Maliki and the elected Government of Iraq.'' Because it gives the general, it gives the President, the leverage to say, folks, it is time that you stepped up, to say to Prime Minister al-Maliki it is time you stepped up. Are you serious about reconciliation? Are you serious about the political stability that Iraq needs? Are you serious about the economic stability Iraq needs? Are you serious about it, or are you just waiting because we are going to be there forever? Because right now, the President has made an open-ended commitment, and this bill responsibly puts an end to that open-ended commitment.
Now, the folks on the other side of the aisle have said, time and time again, that this somehow weakens us because it gives notice to our enemy, whoever that may be. They say it is al Qaeda. We are in the middle of a civil war. There is some al Qaeda there to be sure. What Major General Paul Eaton said is, ``The argument that this bill aids the enemy is simply not mature. Nobody on the Earth underestimates the United States' capacity for unpredictability. It may further create some sense of urgency in the rest of our government, beginning with the State Department.''
Because we have got to ask, where are the diplomats? Where are the diplomats? There are some provincial reconciliation teams on the ground, working around the country and they are talking about more. But where have been the diplomats? Where has been the diplomatic effort that everybody acknowledges is really what is necessary to bring some stability in the Middle East?
Why did it take Speaker Pelosi to go to Syria to begin some dialogue? Because everybody recognizes that we have got to talk to people, even those who are our enemies in this complex world in the 21st century.
So this bill gives the President, it gives the generals, the leverage to forge a new direction.
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Mr. HODES. I thank the gentleman.
You know, I was hopeful that we could bring both sides of this House together on this bill because our goal is a common goal, to achieve real strength and real security for America.
We all honor our troops. We have a difference in opinion, apparently along party lines primarily, about how best to achieve that. Our friends on the other side of the aisle, and the President, apparently, think that an open-ended commitment and putting more troops into a city of 7 million people into a civil war is the way to do it. We believe that there is a smarter way to help the Iraqis step up and to achieve that security.
Let me just talk briefly about what this bill does, because it really does three important things. First, it adopts the military's own guidelines for troop readiness, training and equipment. We've been sending our soldiers without the right equipment, without adequate training, and without enough rest between deployments. They're stretched. They've been deployed two times, three times, four times. The length of their deployments have been stretched. And we've adopted the military's own guidelines to say that before troops are sent to Iraq they must be properly equipped, they've got to be trained, they've got to be ready to go.
I can't understand why the President would veto a bill that adopts the military's own guidelines for troop readiness. Because by his veto, he will therefore be rejecting the military's guidelines for troop readiness. He will be saying to the American people, I am perfectly satisfied with sending troops that aren't ready into combat.
The second thing this does is it fully funds the troops, as we have said. In fact, it provides $4 billion more than the President asked directly to the troops. So if he vetoes the bill, he will essentially be saying I'm vetoing, I'm rejecting funding for our troops. I am rejecting the funding that he asked for. I don't understand how he will do that, but that's what his veto will mean.
And finally, we provide a responsible way to redeploy that actually answers the concerns that people had about flexibility for our military commanders on the ground. Because what we do is we set a date based on benchmarks for the Iraqis that the President himself set out in a January 10 speech for the beginning of a strategic redeployment, and we give the military commanders the flexibility on the other end to reach the target goals. So if the President vetoes his own announced benchmarks for the Iraqis, I just don't understand it because he will be vetoing what he said in a speech to the American people on January 10 as his idea about what the Iraqis ought to be doing for themselves. He set the benchmarks, and now he said that he intends to veto his own benchmarks. It's beyond me to understand why he's going to veto what he said he wants to do.
If I can just go on for one more moment. I want to talk about some of the other money in this bill because this is really important. People have complained, I've heard it at home, about what they think is excess domestic spending in this bill. But here's what this bill does in terms of funding that is related to supporting our troops.
This bill provides $3 billion more for mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles for troops in Iraq.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That doesn't sound like pork.
Mr. HODES. That's not pork. This bill provides $2 billion more for a Strategic Reserve Readiness Fund to meet the troops' readiness needs.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That doesn't sound like pork either.
Mr. HODES. That's not pork either.
It provides $1.1 billion more for needed military housing. Does that sound like pork?
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That doesn't sound like pork to me, Mr. Hodes.
Mr. HODES. The bill honors our returning veterans by providing $2.1 billion more for military health care than the President requested, including $900 million for post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury care and research, and $661 million to prevent health care fee increases for our troops. Because what they are now facing under this President's policies is getting sent off to war to fight for their country and coming home to find that their health insurance costs more, that the military health system is too overloaded to take care of them, and that the veterans' system has been overloaded beyond capacity.
Now, if the President vetoes these increases for the veterans and wounded warriors that his policies have created, it will be something that I don't understand and I don't think the American people are going to understand. And so he has a challenge in front of him. He has a challenge and a choice to make. And maybe between now and when this bill hits his desk, he will have one of those moments on the road to Damascus and decide that he will face the reality and do right by our troops, do right by the American people, do right by this country and set a new direction in Iraq.
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Mr. HODES. Well, as I said at the beginning of the hour, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Altmire, I'm on the ``something'' side of 30, but I am glad to be with you because I am hoping that we, together, have brought an energy to this Congress that really has set a new tone and will help us set a new direction for this country, not just on the war on Iraq, but on health care, on energy, on education and all the policies that the American people want us to get to work on and we've been working hard on.
Before we go, I do want to say that Speaker Pelosi's 30-Something Working Group can be e-mailed at 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. The 30-Somethings, whom I am now a proud guest, being on the something side, can be visited, and here is the Web site address on this chart, www.speaker.gov/30something/index.html.
So I invite everybody who has been working tonight to visit the 30-Something Web site for information on what the agenda for America is that Democrats have been working on. And I thank you for the opportunity to be with you.
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