Emergency Targeted Revenue Sharing Act of 2003

Mr. Speaker, most of us returning to our districts have had an inordinate amount of inquiries and complaints, I am sure, from constituents about local developments and problems. Local hardships are the first things on the minds of my constituents, and I am sure many of my colleagues have experienced the same problem.

People are concerned about the budget cuts at the city and State level, they are concerned about layoffs of people, they are concerned about the fact that there are property tax increases as a result of trying to make up for shortfalls in the budget of a State or of a city. So local hardships are on folks' minds.

I try to get them to understand that, okay, let us talk about it. You have your city councilman, you have your State officials. I certainly am concerned about the local hardships also. But I think it is important for them to understand that it is all interwoven. All politics inextricably are interwoven, and what is happening down here in Washington has an impact on what is happening at the local level, and the sooner we understand that, the better.

What we do in Washington generates a lot of local hardships and suffering. National and international blunders create pain and suffering in our neighborhoods. That is where the troops come from. That is where the soldiers who are on the frontline come from. They come out of our neighborhoods, and those blunders and things that we do, like the war in Iraq, which I consider a blunder, and the fact that the combat was successful has not made me a believer that that war was necessary. It is a blunder. Every life that was lost was lost unnecessarily, in my opinion. It will suck vitally-needed resources from the war against terrorism. We are in for a much more serious situation developing in Iraq, which I will talk about later.

The poor will bear the burden of the war in Iraq. They will bear the burden. They have already borne the burden of the combat. A study by the New York Times showed that the people who are the soldiers in our military forces now are folks from the neighborhood. Members of working families make up more than 90 percent of the forces.

We are proud of them. When there is a war that is really necessary, we are proud of the fact that they are there to fight the war. We do not want their lives to be lost unnecessarily. We do not want them to find themselves sitting in Iraq for the next 5 years. We do not want the terrible conditions to be foisted upon those who happen to be there, and there is no rotation out because we do not have troops to replace them with.

There are a number of problems which place the burden of the war on Iraq on the backs of the poor. Those are my constituents, and those of many of my colleagues. We want them to understand we are concerned and are working to relieve those burdens here in Washington.

There is a scenario shaping up for bloody guerilla warfare in Iraq. I am not a military expert, I am not on the committee, but I think there is some sophomoric knowledge, some examples of immediate history, not too far in the past, Vietnam, Chechnya, the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, the suicide bombers in Israel. There are a number of items there which should lead us to understand that we are in for serious trouble as things are developing in Iraq, and, if we do not do something quickly in Iraq more decisively, we are going to have many more unnecessary lives lost, we are going to have to spend a tremendous amount of resources. Dollars that ought to be going to make up these budget gaps in the cities and the States, those dollars will be going to fight a guerilla war in Iraq.

There is a way out of this. I was not for the war, but I certainly would like to see a successful occupation. We are there now, and we should pull out all stops and make certain we bring justice to the ordinary people of Iraq. That is the way to avoid guerrilla warfare.

Guerrilla warfare will never succeed unless it has a base in the population which is going to help hide it and nurture it and make it difficult for an occupying force to deal with. We did not have guerilla warfare to any great extent in Germany after the Second World War. We did not have it to a great extent in Japan. Yes, there was some guerilla warfare, and it is not talked about much, some holdouts, et cetera, but their efforts were quickly undercut by the way the population of Germany and Japan was treated by the occupying forces.

The same thing is true here, and we are in the process of failing in our slowness in responding to the needs of the general population in Iraq.

There is a formula for success, and I would like to see that formula carried out, because I do not want more of my constituents stuck in Iraq as an occupying power. It destroys their mental capacity after being there under such tremendous strain for a long time. The weather is 140 degrees. All kinds of things are taking place that impact on a human being, and I do not want a situation where we are stuck there with the poorest of the poor in the Armed Services having to carry out unnecessary duties.

Let us go now into a situation which will correct the situation properly and lead us to a point where we can declare success in Iraq and leave.

The Marshall Plan model is there, the Marshall Plan model we used in Europe. Why was it possible to overcome all the difficulties in Europe? Why did the Soviet Union, who at that time was given an opportunity to participate in the Marshall Plan, why did they refuse? It was because they knew that the general population would benefit in a way which would undercut their communist schemes and their own schemes for world domination, and they did not want the population to be satisfied in any way, a part of a partnership for progress and a partnership which took care of meeting the needs of ordinary people.

So the Marshall Plan model to spend money, to use our resources, our technical know-how, to improve the state of the lives of the people there, is very much necessary. We could rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq in one year. It may cost a great deal, but it will cost far less to go in to rebuild the infrastructure of the water systems and the electricity systems than it will cost us if the population becomes alienated and supportive of guerilla warfare. We have what it takes to do it.

I will come back and talk about the formula for success in the occupation of Iraq in greater detail.

There is a formula for success to relieve the suffering and the hardships in our States and our cities also, but it is all interwoven with the kinds of resources we put into places like Iraq. We do not have the money. We voted to appropriate $79 billion for the war in Iraq and related matters, and there is no money to deal with the problem of economic recession here at home. So we have to stop the blunders internationally in order to be able to deal with our problems closer to home.

All politics are inextricably interwoven. We must understand that clearly ourselves, and we should also make sure that our constituents understand.

In New York, I hear repeatedly complaints about, Congressman, why do you not do something about the fact that we just got an 18 percent property tax increase, an 18 percent property tax increase? On top of that, there is a ticket blitz. The cops are being encouraged to write tickets for everything. You drop a gum wrapper on the sidewalk, a candy wrapper, and they rush to write a ticket because they need the money. The citizens become the victims of the government to raise revenue.

Some of that is happening right here in Washington, D.C. also and some other big cities. The citizens are the targets for the people who are governing them in order to raise more revenue.

It is not funny at all. I had a lady come into my office crying because she was in an intersection and happened to be caught in the intersection when the light changed, and the policeman pulled her over and gave her a ticket for a moving violation. Under normal circumstances, that would not happen.

Layoffs are taking place in New York City and New York State, certainly New York City. People who get laid off are the last hired, so they get laid off, and inevitably they are the poorest people.

They laid off 1,200 paraprofessionals in the schools, the people who are in the classrooms with the teachers and who help to monitor the hallways and the lunchrooms. They are the people living in the neighborhood, they are the people that know the families, they are the people that know the children best. How are we going forward in our education reform and education improvement if we are going to take away that vital part as a result of budget cuts?

Budget cuts are reversing the progress that we were making in education reform. ``No Child Left Behind'' is just an empty slogan now because of the fact that the Federal Government is not following through on its promises.

Even worse, what we had going at the State and local level is being cut. You cannot talk about improving education if the budget cuts force you to lay off teachers. Therefore, the ratio of children to each teacher in the classroom inevitably gets higher.

One of the clear principles of reform that we have established is in the lower grades, you need fewer children per teacher. That reform goes out the window because of the fact you have no money to hire teachers, quality teachers.

There is an acceptance of teachers who are not certified and hiring teachers who are substitute teachers, because in many cases they are cheaper. The budget can take them, but it cannot pay for quality teachers. Quality teachers in some instances are being encouraged to retire because they are at the end of the scale in terms of salary payments and they drain more of the budget. Never mind the fact they are the ones who know how to teach the children, that they must mentor new teachers coming in, they are the ones that hold the system together. No, let us get them out, because we want to lower the cost of personnel.

So, these local hardships and cutbacks and raids on education progress doom any forward motion. We can forget about it.

Then promises, of course, are being broken for education here in Washington.

Local level problems are, in some ways, insoluble in terms of the financing. At the local level, the State level, there are constitutions, State constitutions, city charters, which say you cannot spend more money than you anticipate taking in, in revenue. They are bound by that and must operate within that stricture.

The Federal Government does not have to operate within that stricture. In fact, several speakers today, and one in particular tonight, pointed out the fact we are borrowing money on a wholesale basis. We may be borrowing about $1 trillion over the next few months. We are not bound by the revenue coming in. We are borrowing money, we are using Social Security funds.

The things that are important to the powers, the majority powers in Washington, the Republican majority, the things that are important to them are being funded. They are funding the tax cut, they are funding the war in Iraq, they are funding farm subsidies, which are far too high and unjust, they are funding the things that are important, and education happens to be one of the things not important enough.

I suppose most of our colleagues are like me. They were anticipating that if we follow the usual pattern, the Health and Human Services markup would be taking place after we come back from the July 4th recess and, in some cases, it would be one of the last of the markups. But to my surprise and shock, I have received information which states that we had the markup today, that the Health and Human Services markup has taken place, and it is over, and the education portion of the budget has been gutted in terms of promises made that are not being kept. There has been a broken promise in terms of overall education funding.

The majority party Republicans loudly proclaimed that they would provide a $3 billion increase from the previous year, over the previous year for the Department of Education. That $3 billion was cut down to $2.3 billion, or a 4.3 percent increase in education, which is the smallest dollar increase in 5 years and the smallest percentage increase of money for education in 8 years.

Let us just stop for a moment and think about the fact that education started way behind as a Federal expenditure, and over the last 8 years we have had steady increases, as the American people have made it quite clear to all of us. In every district I think it has been made clear by the constituents that they want the Federal Government to do more for education, even when ideologically, the majority of Republicans, the Republican majority did not care for the Department of Education and they tried to dismantle it, and they had to retreat. Not only did they retreat on the effort to dismantle the Department of Education, but they began to appropriate large amounts of funds for education in response to their own constituency. Everybody sees the commonsense wisdom of more support for education.

To go back to the war in Iraq for a moment, since the President declared victory in Iraq, we have lost more than 50 lives. I think 14 of those lives have been lost as a result of hostile activities, but the others have been lost as a result of accidents. What are accidents? Why are accidents killing so many of our soldiers? What is the problem? The problem is, I think, that we have a high-tech operation with respect to our military, and too few of our soldiers really know how to operate all of the equipment and the weaponry that we have. Helicopters in particular need to be investigated because a large number of accidents happen there. But just the rapid movement of vehicles and collisions on the ground seem to be a major problem. So education in our military to produce a better-equipped military is as important as education anywhere else.

Returning to our education appropriations process, the No Child Left Behind Act, which had great fanfare when the President signed it, he promised America's school would now be on a path of reform and a new path of results. Our schools now would have greater resources to meet those goals. That is what the President promised. He stated that we have accountability from all 50 States now. But the problem is, where are the resources? This bill provides, the markup today provides an increase of only $381 million, or 1.6 percent over the current funding level for the No Child Left Behind Act. That is a freeze in real terms. We can provide $1 trillion in tax cuts but, at the same time, this bill does not even come close to meeting the funding levels authorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, which would require another $8 billion in fiscal year 2004.

In the case of special education, we have made promises and have a $1.2 billion shortfall. I think it is important for all of our colleagues to wake up to the fact that this is on the table right now, it has been done, decided in the markup in the Committee on Appropriations responsible for Health and Human Services; and we should move now if we are going to have any effective counterattack before this appropriations bill hits the floor.

Title I funding, we have a shortfall there. We are $334 million short, since it provides only a $666 million increase requested by the President instead of the overall amount originally contemplated. College education, the increase there is another broken promise.

In the agencies under the Health and Human Services appropriation subcommittee, the Institutes of Health have received a great decrease after having 15 percent annual increases over the last 5 years. We recognize the need to deal with the use of science, the best

science in the world to come to grips with the more rapid-reaching of ways to contain diseases and to provide cures for the incurable items that are still on the agenda, but that 15 percent increase has now been cut to a mere 2.5 percent increase.

The health care safety net is not taken care of. Bioterrorism, a concern that the Department of Homeland Security has talked about quite a bit; bioterrorism preparedness under the Republican bill received $94 million less than they received this year.

The Department of Health and Human Services asked for $100 million to get the Nation better prepared for an influenza pandemic, and the bill provides only half of that amount.

The nursing shortage is not dealt with properly and, of course, when it comes to unemployment insurance to deal with the most important factor in our recession, a the fact that people have no money to spend, that is underfunded too.

Low-income heating assistance was greatly cut also. Promises have been broken. Why? Because when it comes to the domestic budget, we plead bankruptcy. We do not have the money. We have enough money in the domestic budget, of course, to provide the biggest tax cuts in history. We have enough money in the overall budget to provide a $79 billion special allocation for the war in Iraq and related matters. What we want to do, really, we can find the money for.

So the local hardships and the immediate problems faced by education are not unrelated to our blunders at a national and international level. The tax cut is a national blunder. It is a great economic disaster that we are going to suffer for, not only nationally, but it is going to create pain and suffering in our neighborhoods.

The war in Iraq is a blunder because it will suck a large number of vitally needed resources. Human life is sacred, and every human life lost in the war in Iraq is the first problem that I have, the first problem that anybody who believes in the sacredness of human life has. Soldiers have to die; military activities are necessary. But only when they are necessary should they be conducted, only when they are necessary. Only when they are necessary should we place the life of a soldier at risk. Only when it is necessary should soldiers have to die.

I am not a pacifist. I was in favor of immediately going to stop the Taliban in Afghanistan and to extract from them al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. They were immediate enemies. They made no effort to hide the fact that they were there in Afghanistan. So it is not a pacifist sentiment that drives me; it is a reverence for human life that only when it is necessary, as it was in that case, and as military action is in many other cases, should it happen.

Was it necessary to lose lives in Iraq? And we have lost relatively few, and we like to boast about that; but there will be more lives lost, I assure my colleagues, in Iraq. And it is not necessary.

A lot of focus has been turned in the direction of the weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction are thoroughly being analyzed, and the case for that, whether they exist or whether we deliberately oversold the existence of weapons of mass destruction or not, all that is being very well aired in the press. I think in many cases the media got in bed with the war; and ``embeddedness'' had really a double meaning. The media that got in bed with the war and praised it and covered up certain kinds of things are feeling guilty now, and they are going to extremes to examine the whole question of weapons of mass destruction. When did we know what we know, who exaggerated, how incompetent is our military intelligence? Was it the incompetence of our military intelligence, or was it the White House insisting that the facts be twisted?

I am confident that we are going to come out with some real answers there, but we are focusing so much on that, we are losing sight of the fact that there is a situation developing in Iraq which is dangerous and will engulf us in a war that is going to take a lot more lives, a lot more resources.

The war in Iraq already has pinned down, we say 150,000, of our troops; but we never give the correct figure. I am sure we have at least 200,000 there already, but we are going to need more. We cannot occupy a country of 24 million people with 150,000 or 200,000 troops if that population is hostile. We are making that population more hostile because, of course, we are zeroing in now on the neighboring nation of Iran.

Why is activity in Iran going to impact on what happens in Iraq? Because the majority of the people in Iraq are Shiite Muslims. Shiite Muslims are the predominant group in Iran. And one of the alliances that we expected to form was, with our liberating troops, was the Shiite population that had been exploited, oppressed under Saddam Hussein, because Saddam Hussein is Sunni. The Sunnis had oppressed the Shiites. Well, the Shiites, we say, did welcome us in places where there were large Shiite populations. We had the least amount of trouble in the heated combat and even now in the occupation.

But if we are going to go into a situation now where a great deal of pressure is being brought on Iran, and it may be necessary, Iran may be the real problem, and we should not be in Iraq; if we are looking for nuclear weapons, it may be that Iran is far closer to building a nuclear weapon, buying parts maybe from North Korea than is acceptable. But the Shiite population in Iraq will not be an ally. So we are going to have to worry about the guerilla warfare problem even more if we lose the loyalty and the support of the Shiites.

We are neglecting some other things, as I said before, while we pour our resources and our troops into Iraq. We are neglecting Pakistan. I have said many times that I know a little bit more about Pakistan than I do most of the Muslim nations because I have a Pakistan population in my congressional district. They are major allies of the United States. They were in the Cold War; they were in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Pakistan has always been with the U.S.

But in my opinion, we have always given Pakistan very second-class, shabby treatment. The amount of aid presently going to Pakistan from the United States is less than $500 million at this point. Yet Pakistan is a major ally of ours. Pakistan, its government, put itself on the line from the very beginning in the war against terrorism. They allowed our troops in, they have cooperated in many ways, but we still are neglecting Pakistan. We are so preoccupied with focusing on Iraq that we are ignoring a major ally.

What is the danger of this? The danger is that Pakistan's government is on our side, but Pakistan is still a Muslim nation. Pakistan is still the home of the Taliban. The Taliban were created in the religious schools of Pakistan before they marched into Afghanistan and united to take over that country. This is not a great secret. One does not need the CIA to tell us this; it is well-known. So the pressure on the Pakistan Government is enormous, and there were parts of the Pakistan military that helped to train the Taliban, the parts of the Pakistan military that is very sympathetic to al Qaeda and the final situation is Pakistan already has nuclear weapons.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and we know that. Everybody knows that. They are right there, available. If al Qaeda, the Taliban, the forces inside Pakistan were to pull a coup and take over the government of Pakistan, I think we would be forced to react militarily immediately. We would be forced into a situation which is very dangerous for a long, long time to come, with the bomb in the hands of terrorists for sure. No speculation.

So why are we so reluctant to maximize our resources in Pakistan? If ever there was a nation that deserved to have a massive Marshall Plan model, it is Pakistan. We should go in to help the economy of Pakistan, to help the education structure of Pakistan. We should see that expenditure as being far more worthwhile and productive in the fight against terrorism than many of the expenditures we are making in Iraq. In Iraq, the poor will bear the burden of the war. As I said before, people from my district, the working families, produce the soldiers.

The winds of war are blowing and we are ignoring them. We do not seem to talk very much about the fact that guerilla warfare is a possibility, because every day there are more incidents taking place of attacks on American soldiers in Iraq. More incidents

take place every day. We have decided to have some counteroperations, to sweep through certain areas and intimidate certain folks, and even round up certain operatives who probably are getting ready to launch guerilla warfare, if they are not already involved.

All of that is necessary, but I do not see any overall plan that says, look, we do not want to have guerilla warfare break out in Iraq; we do not want a guerilla warfare situation. And the worst element in a guerilla warfare situation is a population that is friendly to the guerrillas; the population that hates the liberators. That plan is not there. The understanding is not there.

I think that it is not required that you have a great deal of military experience in order to understand what is going on. A group of sophomores huddled around a table at lunch time could see the unfolding of the situation, it seems to me, and understand where it is going. A group of sophomores could say, look at the situation that took place in Afghanistan, when the Soviets tried to occupy Afghanistan. They won the comeback, then they tried to occupy the territory, and their losses were so great until they finally just gave up and pulled out because the guerilla warfare was unbearable.

Now, I mentioned to an expert 2 weeks ago, I said, do we not have to worry about the escalating guerilla activities? These incidents that are spontaneous right now, but they are probing and they are experimenting and they are finding out certain kinds of weaknesses. Do we not have to worry about something like a Tet offensive that took place in Vietnam in the City of Saigon?

For those of you too long to remember the Vietnam War, the war in Vietnam was declared a success and was moving along at a jolly pace when suddenly there was a big offensive launched by the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong are a guerilla operation, of course. And this primarily took place in the City of Saigon. From the destruction that was wrought on the day of the Tet offensive, from that day on, we know now that our military understood that the war was lost. They would not give up. They would not admit certain things. But that Tet offensive of guerilla warfare sort of sent the signal of how powerful the forces were.

I raised that issue with this expert at a meeting a couple of weeks ago and he said to me, well, the Vietnamese had jungles to hide in. The Iraqis do not have any jungles. It is wide open desert. So we do not have to worry about that kind of guerilla warfare. I did not press the point, but the Tet offensive took place mostly in the City of Saigon. In the city. And it is in the city, in urban warfare, where our high- tech weaponry and equipment has the least advantage. We are at a great disadvantage with high-tech warfare in urban warfare, in house-to-house warfare. You are so close to the enemy that blockbuster bombs do not do you any good because they will kill you as well as the enemy.

We are in a situation where the enemy knows the terrain better than we do. We are in a situation where the enemy will have the support of the local population, unless we take steps to end that. So we ought to fear and we ought to be very worried about a massive, bloody war, a guerilla war, developing in the next 6 months in Iraq. And when that develops, great amounts of human lives are going to be lost. And to restore and get back to where we should be is going to be very costly. We ought to look at it now and look for solutions now.

I believe in peace because I think human life is sacred, but I take off my hat and I salute our men and women in our Armed Forces. I think every soldier is a hero. I take exception to some people who would make these gradations and degrees. This veteran did not see combat, therefore he does not deserve the same benefits as the guy who saw combat. This veteran did not even go overseas or this veteran went overseas but he spent all his time behind the lines, he was in a unit that buried soldiers.

Anybody who puts on a uniform is a hero, because once you put the uniform on and you take the oath, your life does not belong to you. You go where you are sent. And it is only by the grace of God or by accident or whatever that you do not end up in a place where your life is more at risk than another. Nobody chooses where they go once they become a soldier. So every soldier, every person in the military ought to be saluted as a hero from the time they put the uniform on.

Let us not degrade them by saying, you did not see enough combat, or some guys saw a whole year of combat so they deserve more benefits than the guy who saw one week of combat. Everybody is a hero and ought to be treated that way. Certainly the people who see combat deserve to be treated as heroes.

I like the model established by the Vietnam Memorial Wall. For the first time, the Vietnam Memorial Wall made us look at every soldier who got killed as a hero. Their names are on the wall. I think that is a great monument, one of the greatest war monuments ever created, and I think it is a peace monument. Because when you have to look at human beings individually, then you know the horror of war. I have gone to that wall with people looking for their relatives or friends. I went with my young brother, who not so long ago was a sergeant major in the Army, 20-some years. I went with him to look for a friend of his that he went to high school with. And I saw the tears in his eyes when he found the friend's name on the wall. Just a friend.

Think of all the mothers and the fathers and the relatives who go to that wall and cry over lost loved ones, 58,000 now. But I think it is a monument that lets us know that war is hell, war is horrible, and not a single life should be put at risk and lost unnecessarily.

They used to have tombs of unknown soldiers. They still have them. All over the world you will find these tombs of unknown soldiers. Well, I hope that there will be no new tombs of unknown soldiers. Soldiers should be known. The names of all the soldiers who died should be known. All the soldiers who put on a uniform and were available to die should be known.

All human life is sacred, and until we recognize how sacred it is, we will not have the national policies or international policies which are worthy of the people who make up the Nation. The people who make up the Armed Forces, as I said before, 90 percent are from working families. Everybody should realize the importance of working families to America. If you did not realize it before, realize it now. It should have an impact on our policies.

We should look at the minimum wage that is $5.15 an hour for the last 3 or 4 years. Working families are not given an opportunity to earn a decent living. We should look at OSHA, at health and safety requirements in the workplace. There are a number of programs for poor children that we should look at.

We have been struggling this week in the Committee on Education and the Workforce with Head Start. Head Start is a successful program. They have not been able to malign Head Start or discredit Head Start. Despite the great success of Head Start, there are people who still only want to nickel and dime Head Start. They do not want to raise the amount of money we appropriate for Head Start so that Head Start can hire decent teachers and keep them.

One of the biggest problems with Head Start is they cannot keep any teachers. Because the teachers are paid so poorly, they are always moving on to some other school or education arena. So we get only new teachers in Head Start, teachers who cannot teach anywhere else. Same thing is true in poor schools.

We have had two bills in the last 10 days in the Committee on Education and the Workforce where we have tried to raise the amount of forgiveness on student loans so that people who teach in poor areas would have their loans forgiven if they teach for 5 years. We tried to raise the amount of loan forgiveness for Head Start teachers. We tried to have some Federal incentive and this would show that we have placed our priorities in the right place. But we lost. The only budging that we got, the only movement we got from the majority of Republicans was a forgiveness of the loans for math and science teachers, which is a victory still, but not nearly enough.

Math and science teachers have their loans forgiven if they teach for a 5-year period, up to $17,500. That is in the bill that will be coming to the floor, and we

would like to make another try to expand that so that at the very bottom in early childhood and Head Start so that we also try to encourage teachers with that kind of incentive. We do not have the money. Those are poor children. They need a good start in life. We forget that they are going to become the soldiers who go off to fight the wars. They are going to become the heroes whose names are listed on another Vietnam Memorial Wall, or whatever the next wall will be. I hope in the future, all our heroes are honored in a similar fashion; that somewhere their names are known.

We have a scenario for a bloody warfare about to happen in Iraq. We ought to take a hard look at it. I am concerned because I do not want the members of my district telling me that I did not do what is necessary, all that I could do to protect their relatives, their children who are over there. Many went in the National Guard not expecting ever to see combat. National Guard units have been called. Many are in the regular service because they wanted to be all that they could be and come out and get an education using the benefits promised by the services, which is great for a young person who has reached a dead end, who cannot afford to go to college, who cannot afford to pay tuition.

There are many motivations. But once they are in the situation, they certainly should be treated like the heroes that they are.

We had a rotation system in Vietnam. It was not passed by Congress, it was a matter of common sense which was finally figured out by the military in Vietnam so that the system did not leave anybody in combat for more than a year. In the last 2 years of the Vietnam War, you did a year and you were out. There was a rotation. There is no such rotation that has been established in Iraq. So we have 140 degree temperatures over there. No beds for them to sleep in.

My colleague, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), went to visit, and she talked about the horrible situation that both men and women have to live in in Iraq. Those soldiers. And the most terrible thing is that once you have a hostile population, every time you step out on the street, you do not know when a sniper is going to be shooting at you or you will confront a group of people you do not know is friendly or might be a suicide bomber.

Can you imagine how nerve-wracking that is, and how many nervous basket cases we have if people have to stay there and have no idea when they are going to be leaving because we have no rotation system? Why do we not have a rotation system? Because the administration is blundering again. They are determined not to admit we need more forces there.

We need more troops there. We need more troops, period. We may have to go into a draft to get those troops. That is the last thing that the powers that be in Washington want to admit, that we are in a war now requiring large amounts of personnel, and they may have to draft people. It is better to admit it sooner and have less deaths than to wait until later and be forced into it.

We have scenarios, as I said before. We know what happened in Vietnam. The Tet Offensive showed us how effective guerrilla warfare can be in the city, not just the jungle. And the Russian attempt to occupy Afghanistan is another obvious example of what guerrilla warfare is like and how difficult it is to handle it.

Right now Chechnya, a relatively small province in Russia, will not be subdued. Hatred can reach a level, fanaticism can reach a level which makes it almost impossible to get back to peace. And the suicide bombers in Israel are another example of a level where it is difficult to get back to establishing peace.

But what it says in those situations, great harm can be done and we are placing our personnel at great risk. We need to do whatever is necessary to establish some new security.

First, the formula for success in the occupation of Iraq has to begin with the establishment of proper security. Proper security means if more troops are needed, we need to establish proper security. Before we can do anything else, we need to block the escalation toward guerrilla warfare with the support of the population. Do I sound like a war monger? No. I was against the war in Iraq. I want to save lives. I do not want one blunder to lead to the loss of more lives than the original blunder took.

I would like to see us have more troops in Iraq to secure it. Once we secure it, let us institute a Marshall Plan. What is the element of the Marshall Plan that is the most important? Let us give people electricity. Let us give the populous water. They had electricity and water before; they do not have it now. Is it so difficult to get electricity and water? If the soldiers and the local population cannot do it, we should form a corps of plumbers and electricians. We may need to pay them double for leaving their families and traveling across the ocean and going into an area that is not secure, but pay them whatever is necessary. In less than a year, we could reestablish all of the electricity that existed before with a corps of plumbers and electricians.

It is not a great undoable task. It requires money. Spend the money that way instead of spending it fighting guerrilla warfare that is going to be endless. It is a slow period for the sheet metal workers; let them form a corps. Let us let the iron workers, the people who tore down the wreckage at the World Trade Center, let them go, organize them, and do what has to be done to restore the infrastructure in Iraq and win the hearts and minds of the civilian population. Let the workers go to the aid of their fellow workers. We have the soldiers over there; let the working families send the additional heroes to restore electricity and restore water and other systems.

The problem is the way this administration operates, they would spend a lot of time figuring who is going to get the contract, who is going to profit from it, how much knowledge can you get from your contributors, and a lot of other things that come into play. We need to do this and do it fast.

I remember that the earthquake in Oakland devastated a part of Oakland; and if the freeway and a number of things had been left that way for a year, it would have wrecked the economy of that area of California. We appropriated first $6 billion and later $8 billion, and they marshaled all of the technology, engineering skills, and in less than a year, the damage from that earthquake was restored and its impact on the economy was nil. It can be done. We do not need to have somebody come down from heaven and wave a magic wand. It is American know-how. Let us spend it up front to bring justice to Iraq instead of spending it in a bottomless pit, guerrilla warfare.

Finally, alleviating hardships here in the States does not require heavenly intervention. I want to call Members' attention to an article that appeared in The New York Times, Tuesday, June 10, issue which is very revealing. I find it very inspiring. It is about a colleague of ours, Bob Riley, before he ran for governor in Alabama. As a Republican Congressman, he had a nearly perfect record of opposing any legislation supported by liberal Americans for democratic action, or anything else that was considered liberal.

Why am I going to talk about Bob Riley? Because I think to relieve the hardships in our cities and States, to stop the budget cuts, to stop the cuts in education which force us to increase the size of classrooms, to stop the cuts which force us to push the best teachers into retirement, to stop all this, we need to marshal our revenue in a different way and change our priorities, and in order to do that you need a political base.

One of the big problems with taxes and tax policies in America is that only the majority party, the Republican Party, has ever really showed great concern about tax policy. I mean, the kind of concern that it merits. I think the Democratic Party deserves to be chastised for not really thoroughly exploring what the meaning of tax policy is in the context of American politics.

Bob Riley, forced in a situation where Alabama is starved for revenue, and he is now the governor, put aside any right wing ideology and has come out with common sense that we all should take a hard look at. Governor Riley has stunned many of his conservative supporters and enraged the State's powerful farm and lumber lobbies by pushing a tax reform plan

through the Alabama legislature that shifts a significant amount of the State's tax burden from the poor to wealthy individuals and corporations. And Governor Riley has framed the issue in starkly moral terms arguing that the current Alabama tax system violates biblical teachings because Christians are prohibited from oppressing the poor. That is Governor Bob Riley who used to sit here in this Chamber on the other side. I salute Governor Bob Riley.

If Governor Riley's tax plan becomes law, and it has to be ratified in September by the voters, it will be a major victory for the poor people of Alabama if it becomes law. But win or lose, Alabama's tax reform crusade is posing a pointed question to the Christian Coalition, focus on the family and other groups that seek to import Christian values into national policy. The question has been asked, if Jesus were active in politics today, would he be lobbying for the poor? This is from a New York Times article of Tuesday, June 10.

Alabama's tax system has long been brutally weighted against the less fortunate. The State income tax kicks in for families that earn as little as $4,600. Even Mississippi does not tax income until it is over $19,000. Alabama also relies heavily on sales tax which runs as high as 11 percent, and their sales tax applies to groceries and infant formula as well as everything else.

The upshot is wildly regressive Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in State and local taxes while those who made over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.

I would like to read that again:

Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in State and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 per year pay just 4.1 percent.

A main reason Alabama's poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The State allows big landowners to value their land using ``current use'' rules, which significantly low-ball its worth.

Governor Riley's plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in additional desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities. It would raise the income threshold at which families of four start paying taxes to more than $17,000. Instead of having to pay taxes, those who make $4,600, you would not have to pay State taxes until you get to $17,000. It would scrap the Federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies in the timber industry a great deal of money.

Alabamians are used to hearing their politicians make religious arguments, and Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system.

Let us understand what is happening here. This Governor--he must be some kind of genius--has gotten this tax package through the legislature already, but in Alabama you have to ratify it. The ratification will take place in September, which means that the poor people of Alabama will have a chance to vote to support what this Governor is doing or not. In terms of votes, they certainly outnumber the rich. It is something to watch.

Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system.

I repeat: Governor Riley thinks that he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system.

Quoting Governor Riley, ``I've spent a lot of time studying the New Testament and it has three philosophies: Love God, love each other, and take care of the least among you,'' he said. ``I don't think anyone can justify putting an income tax on someone who makes $4,600 a year.''

Religious groups could provide the margin of victory in September. Susan Pace Hamill, a University of Alabama tax professor with a theological degree from an evangelical divinity school, caused a stir recently with a law review article called ``An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics'' which makes an evangelical case for making the tax system fairer. She plans to train speakers this summer to take the theological argument to the grassroots. Kimble Forrister, the State coordinator of Alabama Arise, a coalition that advocates for poor people, expects the 100 church groups that are part of his organization to hold church-basement workshops this summer to get the word out to their congregations.

Many theologians argue that it is far easier to find support in the Bible for policies that help the poor than for any cut in the dividend taxes. If Governor Riley's crusade succeeds this summer, Alabama may offer the Nation a model for a new kind of tax system, one where the devil is not in the details.

End of quote from the New York Times article.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit the New York Times article of Tuesday, June 10, entitled ``What Would Jesus Do? Sock it to Alabama's Corporate Landowners'' for the Record in its entirety.

[From the New York Times, June 10, 2003]

What Would Jesus Do? Sock It to Alabama's Corporate Landowners

(By Adam Cohen)

Montgomery, AL.--If the religious right had called up

Central Casting last year to fill the part of governor, it

could hardly have done better than the teetotaling, Bible-

quoting businessman from rural central Alabama who now heads

up the state. As a Republican congressman, Bob Riley had a

nearly perfect record of opposing any legislation supported

by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.

But Governor Riley has stunned many of his conservative

supporters, and enraged the state's powerful farm and timber

lobbies, by pushing a tax reform plan through the Alabama

Legislature that shifts a significant amount of the state's

tax burden from the poor to wealthy individuals and

corporations. And he has framed the issue in starkly moral

terms, arguing that the current Alabama tax system violates

biblical teachings because Christians are prohibited from

oppressing the poor.

If Governor Riley's tax plan becomes law--the voters still

need to ratify it in September--it will be a major victory

for poor people, a rare thing in the current political

climate. But win or lose, Alabama's tax-reform crusade is

posing a pointed question to the Christian Coalition, Focus

on the Family and other groups that seek to import Christian

values into national policy: If Jesus were active in politics

today, wouldn't he be lobbying for the poor?

Alabama's tax system has long been brutally weighted

against the least fortunate. The state income tax kicks in

for families that earn as little as $4,600, when even

Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabama also relies

heavily on its sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent

and applies even to groceries and infant formula. The upshot

is wildly regressive: Alabamians with incomes under $13,000

pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes,

while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.

A main reason Alabama's poor pay so much is that large

timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state

allows big landowners to value their land using ``current

use'' rules, which significantly low-ball its worth.

Individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income

taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states

allow, a boon for those in the top brackets.

Governor Riley's plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in

desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities.

It would raise the income threshold at which families of four

start paying taxes to more than $17,000. It would scrap the

federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for

dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the

current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies

like Weyerhaeuser and Boise Cascade, which own hundreds of

thousands of acres, millions in taxes. Governor Riley says

that money is too tight to lift the sales tax on groceries

this time, but that he intends to work for that later.

Church and state are not as separate in Alabama as they are

in most places. (The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme

Court was in federal court last week defending his decision

to install a 2.5-ton rendering of the Ten Commandments in the

state's main judicial building.) Alabamians are used to

hearing their politicians make religious arguments, and

Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that

Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system. ``I've

spent a lot of time studying the New Testament, and it has

three philosophies: love God, love each other, and take care

of the least among you,'' he said. ``I don't think anyone can

justify putting an income tax on someone who makes $4,600 a

year.''

The state's progressive voters, including many in the

sizable African-American community, have backed tax-law

changes like these for years. And reform-minded business

leaders, who see such tax changes and improved schools as

crucial to the state's economic development, have promised to

spend millions of dollars on television ads in support of the

September referendum.

But religious groups could provide the margin of victory.

Susan Pace Hamill, a University of Alabama tax professor with

a theological degree from an evangelical divinity school,

caused a stir with a law review

article called ``An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-

Christian Ethics,'' which makes an evangelical case for

making the tax system fairer. She plans to train speakers

this summer to take the theological argument to the grass

roots. Kimble Forrister, the state coordinator of Alabama

Arise, a coalition that advocates for poor people, expects

the 100 church groups that are part of his organization to

hold church-basement workshops this summer to get the word

out to their congregations.

The Christian Coalition of Alabama has not yet taken a

position on the September vote, but it has been speaking out

against the plan's tax increases. In an interview yesterday,

John Giles, the group's president, had trouble pointing to a

biblical passage that directly supported his opposition to

new taxes, but he referred to Jesus' statement about

rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The key question, he

argued, is, ``How much is Caesar's?''

As the Bush administration and the religious right fight to

put theology more squarely into public policy discussions,

they are going to have to be ready for arguments like the

ones coming out of Alabama. Many theologians argue that it is

far easier to find support in the Bible for policies that

help the poor than for, say, a cut in the dividend tax. If

Governor Riley's crusade succeeds this summer, Alabama may

offer the nation a model for a new kind of tax system: one

where the Devil is not in the details.

Why have I started my closing remarks with that article? Because I think if ever there was a formula for success in relieving suffering and hardships in the States and cities, it is an adoption of a simple Christian ethic that those who have the least deserve the least amount of taxes and the most amount of help from their government.

I have two pieces of legislation that I have introduced: One is called the Domestic Budget Protection Act, H.R. 1804. I have discussed that previously on the floor. That calls for a situation which would relieve the pressure on the domestic budget by forcing the consideration of all future military actions, like the war in Iraq, to be paid for by corporations. We once had a surcharge. During the war in Vietnam, during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, we had a surcharge on corporate profits to help pay for the war. We should go back to that so that the payment for the war is taken out of the budget as a competing factor for domestic programs like education, health care, a prescription drug benefit, et cetera.

I have a second bill, H.R. 2335, which is called the Emergency Revenue Sharing Act. The money we save should be spent in relieving the burdens that the cities and the States are now forced to deal with during this recession period. If we took the $79 billion, or an equivalent amount of the amount that we appropriated for the war in Iraq and related matters, and sent it to the States and the cities, we would end the layoffs of school teachers and personnel in the schools, we would end the pressure on our civil servants, and we would end the kind of oppression of our taxpayers that has taken place through property tax increases and ticket blitzes.

All politics are inextricably interwoven. What happens at the local level is inseparable from what happens down here. What we do here is inseparable from the hardships that are created at the local level.

Mr. Speaker, we are all glad that Saddam Hussein has been dethroned. It is better for the world. It is better for Iraq. But the cost is too great and has been too great in dollars, and we now are considering another $87 billion. We have already invested more than $70 billion. The regular defense budget is also enormous, and that has been expended, and there is no end in sight. We will have more requests for more money.

The cost has been too great. We have not achieved any greater amount of security from terrorism. In fact, we are less secure from terrorism now than we were before we invaded Iraq. We have been forced to concentrate all of our energies, all of our priorities, our best minds, everything has been concentrated in Iraq, ignoring the threat in Afghanistan and the borders of Pakistan.

The overwhelming burden of the Iraq blunder, however, has been placed on the backs of working families. The actual troops out there are from working families. We all support our troops. We all want to do whatever is necessary to make certain that those troops come home. We want to do whatever is necessary to support them to guarantee that they have a chance to come home. The overwhelming burden of the Iraq blunder, however, should not remain on the backs of working families. Mismanagement should not cause more unnecessary suffering and more death among working families, relatives of people who are from working families.

The New York Times documented what we all knew already, that more than 90 percent of the members of the military are from working families. More than 90 percent of the people in Iraq are from working families. This is true for the war in Iraq, as it has been true for most other wars.

We know in the Civil War, the people who had money could buy their way out of the draft and pay someone else to go in their place. But, in general, draft boards and drafts in cases of the war in Vietnam and Korea and so forth have ended up selecting large numbers of working family members.

The greatest generation that celebrated winning World War II had many components, class-wise, but the overwhelming number of people who lost their lives in World War II were also people who were in working families.

Working families are very special to America. Working families have a right to make a claim on America. And what concerns me, and the reason I am here today, is that we do not seem to understand the importance of working families, the people who are in charge, the people who are in power continue to treat working families as if they were expendable, that they are not important.

We heard some discussion of the welfare bill before today. It was technical, and it was probably difficult to understand, but that is one of the greatest harassments of working families you are going to find, the present welfare legislation, which provides a family of four is given a subsidy of $6,000 or $7,000 per year, while at the same time we give subsides to agribusiness of more than $250,000 per year. One more treatment, one more example of the treatment of working families.

We need to take a hard look at this war in Iraq and what it is doing to us. We need to stop the war for many reasons. We need to stop the war because it is absorbing large amounts of cash that can be used for other purposes, for purposes that we need here at home to improve our economy and to improve the lot of all of us, including the lot of working families.

This great Nation's survival and its freedom are directly dependent on the courage and the devotion of men and women from working families. The blunder has been committed already. We are mired in a deep pit. We cannot leave now. The sons and daughters of working families must remain on the dangerous front lines. But at least we could support those troops in a better manner, not in the current superficial manner being mouthed by so many while at the same time they undercut our troops.

We need to understand that in very concrete ways, we are betraying the troops in Iraq who are from working families. The kinds of programs that have been promulgated by the Republican leadership are outrageous. Patriotic and meaningful support means that we must address some of the following issues, and we must do it immediately:

The conflict must be better managed so that there is multinational participation in the decision-making and a clear exit strategy to bring these American troops home. The best we can do for our troops, the most important thing we can do for them, is to bring them home. It has to be an honorable exit. We do not want to leave the job half done. We have to make certain that no other leader like Saddam Hussein is ever able to take control of Iraq.

We want to encourage democracy as much as possible. The first step toward doing that is to share the decision-making with other nations and have other nations get involved because they know they can participate in the decision-making. They will then commit troops and commit equipment and other things. And, most of all, they will be there to send a message to the Iraqi population that Americans are not trying to take over their country, occupy their country, and control the tremendous oil fields that lie beneath that country. That would be one way to say to working families, we care about the troops, we care about your son and daughter. We are going to make that effort.

With regard to the United Nations, this administration has only offered a cold shoulder, despite the difficulty that we are in. We are not moving to try to convince the rest of the world that we are ready to share decision-making with Iraq. We are ready to go some extra lengths, swallow our pride, do some things we said we would never do, put away our anger, and do what will promote a solution, the fastest possible solution in Iraq. That is what we can do for our troops. They deserve it.

There are some other direct benefits that the sons and daughters of working families over there deserve. They deserve adequate equipment and they deserve troops, a troop contingent, enough troops to make it safer for them. There are not enough troops in Iraq. They are not adequately equipped.

We heard some speeches before from some visitors who went over. I found them very interesting. John Murtha, who has been on the Committee on Armed Services for two decades, made the same trip, came back and was incensed and angered by the fact that the morale was so low and obvious needs in equipment and supplies were not being met. And he immediately demanded that the President fire the people who were in charge of the war in Iraq.

John Murtha, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who has long experience in the Committee on Armed Services, saw an outrageous performance in terms of the leadership who planned and executed the war in Iraq.

Rotation rights have been sort of dismissed. Even in the war in Vietnam, there was a right of a soldier not to be placed at risk for more than a year. A year in combat, placing your life at risk, was all that was demanded. You could rotate out of Vietnam after a year. Those rights have not been guaranteed to the people in Iraq, soldiers, regular soldiers or Reservists.

The worst thing is the people who are in the Reserves, who thought they were going for a 6-month stint, have now

had their time extended. Worse still for the people in the Reserves there is no economic justice. People in the Reserves gave up jobs. They were not career people. Yes, they signed up, and they knew that they would have to go in case of an emergency, but they were not career military people. And they did not want to give up their income and their jobs, leave their families indefinitely, but they had to do that. They were forced to do that.

We have behaved so abominably toward those working families that a Washington Post article of yesterday describes it as unacceptable, almost atrocious. It is a legislative atrocity that they described. I am going to read from this article in which the Washington Post described what is being done to Reservists in this war in Iraq. ``A proposal to close any pay gap faced by civil service employees who are called to active duty in the military reserves will not be considered by the House and Senate negotiators working on the fiscal 2004 Defense authorization bill.''

Now, this brings it home to us. We mouth our concern about supporting the troops and here is an example of how little we are supporting the troops, especially the Reservists, how we hold them in contempt really.

``In May the House Government Reform Committee approved an amendment sponsored by Representatives Tom Lantos and Chris Bell aimed at requiring Federal agencies to make up the difference between civil service and military pay for those on military duty.'' The provision was one of several civil service changes but, hear me carefully, a civil servant working for the Federal Government, who happens to be in the military Reserves, goes to Iraq; he is paid at the same rate as any other soldier, but he left a job that was paying far more. He left a family that had been nurtured on an income of more.

If the Federal Government still had him on the payroll, it would cost them a certain amount of money. If they continue to pay him at the same rate, it does not cost them any more money, it just keeps him at the same rate while he is off doing his duty for his country under very difficult circumstances. But they did not agree to that.

``The provision was dropped when the Armed Services panel put together the House version of the defense authorization bill. That version sets out guidelines for weapons and equipment purposes and for troop strength. The Lantos bill amendment stalled because of its cost: $160 million over 5 years including $75 million in fiscal 2004.''

Hear me carefully: It would have cost the government, the Federal Government, $160 million over 5 years, including $75 million in fiscal 2004. But if those same people had remained in their jobs, they would have been paid the $160 million over 5 years and $75 million. And the Federal Government was not called upon to do any more than they would have done if there had been no war in Iraq. I find that atrocious. I find the behavior of this Congress under the Republican majority leadership to be atrocious.

More important, in another outrageous observation, however, were objections from the Defense Department, which argued that making up differences in pay for civil service employees would undercut military morale. You have two sergeants, one a career military and one a Reservist doing the same job. And essentially the government is paying the civilian employee more for that service than the career military guy. That is the heart of the Defense Department objection. Listen to that carefully. It would undercut military morale to have a citizen who was earning an income at a certain level from the Federal Government, who was there against his will, he did it out of duty, has been shipped to Iraq, and he is in units along with career military people.

Now, if you are a career military person, you know what the pay scale is. You have accepted the pay scale. Your family is probably getting some benefits that the civil servant family is not getting. There are a number of ways in which a career person has adapted to a situation that they voluntarily went into. But the Reservist, who happened to have been a civil service employee for the Federal Government, has to hear that he would undercut morale if the government paid him at the same rate that they were always paying him.

About 200 private sector employers, however, and 50 State and local governments make up the difference in pay for their worker. Listen carefully: The Federal Government, the men and women in charge of the blunder in Iraq, who created a situation requiring all these Reservists to go, they are doing less than 200 private sector employers, 50 State and local governments, which now make up the difference in pay for their workers when the workers are forced to serve as Reservists.

This is outrageous. It falls right at the doorstep of us Members of Congress and Members of the other body. About 65,000 Reservists are employed by Federal agencies. Mr. Speaker, 65,000 is a large number that we are depriving of income, we are depriving those working families of their income at a certain level, forcing them to accept the pay of the military service that they are in. Sixty-five thousand Reservists are employed by Federal agencies making the government the single largest employer of Reservists. An additional 48,000 Federal technicians are required, they do not have a choice, to be members of the Guard as a condition of employment.

So we have a huge contingent of citizens, who happen to be Federal employees, who are treated like dirt. Our government, our Federal Government treats this huge number of people and their families like dirt. Working families should not have to bear these kind of burdens. This is a legislative atrocity.

Madam Speaker, I submit this article in its entirety into the record. It is entitled ``Pay Gap Remedy for Military Reserve Appears Doomed,'' in the Washington Post, Monday, September 29th.

[From the Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2003]

Pay-Gap Remedy for Military Reserves Appears Doomed

(By Stephen Barr)

A proposal to close any pay gap faced by civil service

employees who are called to active duty in the military

reserves will not be considered by House and Senate

negotiators working on the fiscal 2004 defense authorization

bill, according to congressional aides.

Most lawmakers feel that the issue was evaluated by the

House Armed Services Committee during its deliberations and

is now closed, the aides said.

The proposal, pushed by a group of House Democrats, ran

into opposition because of its cost, as well as concern that

it might cause morale problems among regular military troops.

In May, the House Government Reform Committee approved an

amendment sponsored by Reps. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Chris

Bell (D-Tex.) aimed at requiring federal agencies to make up

the difference between civil service and military pay for

those on military duty. The provision was one of several

civil service changes proposed for the Defense Department and

forwarded to the Armed Services Committee.

But the provision was dropped when the Armed Services panel

put together the House version of the defense authorization

bill, which sets out guidelines for weapons and equipment

purchases, military benefits and troop strength.

The Lantos-Bell amendment stalled because of its cost--$160

million over five years, including $75 million in fiscal

2004--and because it could have triggered jurisdictional

questions that would have given the Government Reform

Committee a voice in shaping the defense bill, a

congressional aide said.

More important, however, were objections from the Defense

Department, which argued that making up differences in pay

for civil service employees would undercut military morale.

``You have two sergeants, one a career military and one a

reservist, doing the same job. And essentially the government

is paying the civilian employee more for that service than

the career military guy--that is the heart of the Defense

Department objection,'' the congressional aide said.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said there would be no comment on

the issue.

Supporters of the Lantos-Bell effort argue that National

Guard and reserve families are increasingly at risk of

financial hardship because reservists are being called up

more frequently since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Army recently issued a policy requiring Guard and reserve

troops to serve 12-month tours in Iraq, meaning that most

Army reservists will be mobilized for more than a year.

About 200 private-sector employers and 50 state and local

governments make up the difference in pay for their workers

and the federal government should serve as an example of the

importance of assisting reservists, an aide to Lantos said.

But other congressional aides said the issue needs more

study. It might be more appropriate to use pay supplements to

offset income loss for specific occupations or individuals

rather than to take a blanket approach, they said.

Recent studies indicate that between 30 percent and 40

percent of activated reservists face a loss of income during

mobilization.

About 65,000 reservists are employed by federal agencies,

making the government the single-largest employer of

reservists. An additional 48,000 federal technicians are

required to be members of the Guard as a condition of

employment.

The Office of Personnel Management has called on federal

agencies to shoulder the cost of health insurance premiums

for employees called to active duty. At last count, about 80

out of more than 100 federal agencies had agreed to pick up

the premiums.

Madam Speaker, just treatment for working families left behind ought to be a major goal of a government that has asked people to go and fight in Afghanistan or in Iraq. Just treatment for working families left behind. What is involved in just treatment? I serve as the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. And I am on that committee which has jurisdiction over the minimum wage, over the Wage and Hour Act, and other safety programs related to persons in the workforce. We have had constant harassment since the Republican majority took control of the Congress on all of these fronts.

On the minimum wage, we are still at $5.15 an hour. In the last 3 years, the Republican majority has refused to allow us to bring a bill to the floor to increase the minimum wage. That is what we think of working families that we send off to war in times of war. They go. They die. They fight. They get wounded. They are the backbone of the security for America. But we do not want to increase the minimum wage beyond $5.15 an hour. We have had constant harassment on overtime pay and recently that was sort of intensified. But they do not want to pay people cash for overtime. They want changes in law, so that employers can pay you comp time if they so choose. It is not your choice. It is their choice. Comp time, taking the cash out of your pay check and food off your table, but offering you comp time at some future date they choose.

They pushed that very hard. And even now, although we stopped it in the Congress by executive fiat, the law is being changed to eliminate certain categories of people as being eligible for overtime.

A jobs program is not in sight. Unemployment goes galloping on, and we do not have a jobs program.

Health care, the papers all reported yesterday or today that the number of people who are uninsured in America has jumped dramatically, gone up. Those are working families that are uninsured.

Poverty, three or four days ago, it was reported that poverty has greatly increased. These are the families from which these soldiers come. These are the families that supply the troops out there that we say we care about.

Madam Speaker, at this time I would be glad to yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman and I would like to add to that discussion on veterans.

Most of us in the House of Representatives were shocked 3 weeks ago to discover that there was a provision where veterans who go to the hospital must pay for their food, their meals. And we immediately passed legislation to end that. I do not know whether it has been signed by the President yet or not. It is just one more administrative atrocity. I use the word atrocity, and I think it is appropriate. It is an atrocity to have veterans treated as they are. Some of my friends earlier are talking about ``you have to go to Iraq to know exactly what is happening.''

I suggest to those who want to know what is happening, go to Walter Reed Hospital and visit the wounded. The wounded also suffer. And in many cases those are wounded one week, and in a few weeks are dead. You can get a good example of what is going on if you look at veterans who, the minute they are off the roster of the Army, they will get no pay. They will be put on disability. Some have totally lost everything in terms of limbs or the capacity to work. They were put on disability, which is a far cry from the salary they earned as a soldier.

So my simple plea is that working families who fight for the security and peace abroad deserve survivable and living wages and a reasonable chance to pursue happiness here at home. We are investing tremendous amounts of money in the rebuilding of Iraq in the Armed Forces, and we are neglecting the needs of our own people in catastrophic proportions.

On March 3, I summarized my concern with the waste of American cash in a rap poem which I call Stop The War--We Need The Cash.

Stop the war, we need the cash.

Tank battles escalate into nuclear ash.

Stop the war.

We need the cash.

Give Medicaid families some of Rumsfeld's stash.

Throw the empty body bags in to the trash.

Stop the war.

Welfare mothers rush to cry.

Soldiers from the ranks of the poor will be the first to die.

Stop the war.

Vietnam had profound lessons to teach.

Empires lose when they overreach.

Stop the war.

One of the greatest monuments related to heroes is the Vietnam War Memorial monument here in Washington. That monument makes a statement that has never been made by any other military monument in the history in the world. Instead of unknown soldiers in a tomb, they have put the names of every soldier who died in Vietnam on the wall for you to see. They have given those individuals a person. They are there. And you must confront the fact that wars take individual humans in large numbers, in the case of Vietnam, 58,000, but regardless of numbers, the individualization of a process, the Vietnam Memorial Wall does that.

The poor are up there. The youngsters who came from welfare families. The numerous youngsters who came out of the big cities because when the draft was on, the largest proportion of young men who went to Vietnam came out of our big city slums. We must stop and think for a moment about the way those soldiers and everybody who was enlisted are treated in terms of the technicalities and administrative requirements of the veterans administration.

They have categories, Category 7, 8, people who served in combat under great risk are given preference. They are different from others. But I say that anybody who has served in the military for the benefit of his country deserves equal treatment, because once you put the uniform on and you take the oath, your life belongs to the military, to the Nation. And where you go and what you do is determined by forces that you have no control over.

If you were needed behind the lines to catalog munitions or run a computer, then you were assigned there because you were needed there. The fact that you were not put on the front line does not make you any less than the people who were put on the front lines, because you could not make that decision.

So everybody who put a uniform on and took the oath should be treated as a hero. They are a small percentage of the rest of us. Even in World War II when such large numbers went to war, the percentage of those who actually went to war was still a small percentage of the overall population. They deserve to be treated as heroes. Those who went to Vietnam deserve to be treated as heroes, regardless of how many hours they spent in combat under fire. They were all heroes. They come from working families, as I said before, most of them; and this classification scheme, these technicalities about how much copayment you have to pay if you are a Category 8 versus Category 7, whether you are eligible at all is part of the insult that working families have been forced to endure; and we should fight against it.

Righteous indignation is in order. The treatment of working families in America is an outrageous abomination and we should fight. We fight on the front lines, and we die on the front lines. We should fight our government.

We should fight Alan Greenspan. Alan Greenspan is against the minimum wage law. Alan Greenspan has been the economic guru of Democrats and Republicans for a long time. Did you know that Alan Greenspan thinks that we should not even have a minimum wage law? Part of the reason we cannot get a minimum wage law to the floor is we have the guru of our economic system saying we do not need a minimum wage law. This is outrageous.

Alan Greenspan happens to be a disciple of Ayn Rand, a woman who was a great individualist, who felt that government was not needed, group action was not needed except in times of war or when you need the police. So when her physical body was threatened, she believed in the group process, we should have police, we should have an Army. Any other time, individuals should be totally left alone; and if they cannot make it, let them die. So that man is a disciple of Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan. He is one of the reasons we cannot move. Philosophically, there are too many people in Washington who agree that minimum wage laws are not important.

Examine the tax cuts of that situation in terms of what happened at the New York Stock Exchange. The New York Stock Exchange has a big brouhaha because the man who headed the stock exchange, Dick Grasso, had a severance package of $140 million and he wanted another 48; and they made a big brouhaha, and headlines were formed about how dare he ask for another $48 million. Well, what about the first $140 million? These astronomical amounts of money are being tossed around by the people who belong to the kleptocracy. At the time I call them kleptocracy, call them oligarchy, whatever you want to call them. They are the ones who want a tax cut. They do not need a tax cut. It is obscene the kinds of figures that we have heard that corporations throw around among themselves, Enron, WorldCom. The head of WorldCom, one of the directors got a $400 million loan from the company, $400 million. Can you imagine a loan of $400 million? Surely if you get a $400 million loan, it is understood by those who loan it to you that you are never going to pay it back.

But this goes on, and these are the people who will show great indignation if a welfare mother gets extra food stamps. This is the kind of mental attitude that we have allowed to develop.

The workers who are on the front lines in Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere else have to know they have to come forward and fight, fight this kind of oppression.

On Wednesday, July 16, as a result of my anger following the attempt to stop the payment of overtime to workers, I wrote the following and enter it into the Congressional Record:

``Mr. Speaker, the July 10th vote to allow the expenditure of funds to implement radical changes in the overtime provisions of the Wage and Hour Act was an outrageous and devastating attack on working families.

Compounding the horror of this action is the recent announcement that our present complement of soldiers in Iraq, 90 percent of whom come from working families, will be forced into combat overtime for the indefinite future.''

At the same time we were fighting overtime payment for workers here, we were announcing, the President was announcing, Rumsfeld was announcing that they would be extending the time of the soldiers indefinitely.

``Not even the 1-year rotation rule of Vietnam will be applied to relieve their long ordeal under extreme heat and guerilla warfare duress. Overtime in the dangerous defense of the Nation is being mandated without controls while at the same time overtime wages to feed working families is being subjected to new schemes to reduce take-home pay. This is an unacceptable continuation of the gross exploitation and oppression of working families by the Republican scrooges who presently dominate the Congress and the White House.''

I summarize my statement in a rap poem, which is called ``Let the Rich Go First.''

Working Families

Keep your soldiers at home,

For overtime in Iraq

No cash

No comp time

Not even gratitude,

Republicans intrude

To exempt all heroes,

No combat rotation

Life on definite probation

Scrooges running the Nation.

To the front lines

Let the rich go first--

For blood they got a thirst,

Let the superstars drink it

In the glorious trenches;

Leave the disadvantaged on the benches.

Working Families

Let the rich go first:

The battlegrounds they always choose

Their estates have the most to lose;

Send highest IQs to

Take positions at the front,

Let them perform their best

High-tech warfare stunt;

Working Families

Keep your malnourished sons home--

Harvard Yale kids should roam

The world with guns and tanks,

Reserve gold medals

For the loyal Ivy League ranks.

O say can you see

Millionaire graduates

Dying for you and me?

Welfare Moms

Have a message for the masters:

Tell Uncle Sam

His TANF pennies he can keep

For food stamps we refuse to leap

Through your hoops like beasts;

Promise to leave our soldiers alone

And we'll find our own feasts.

To Uncle Sam we offer a bargain--

Don't throw us dirty crumbs

Don't treat us like bums

And then demand

The full measure of devotion;

Our minds are now in motion

Class warfare

Is not such a bad notion;

Your swindle will not last

Recruiters we won't let pass,

Finally, we opened our eyes--

Each family is a private enterprise.

Each child a precious prize;

We got American property rights,

Before our children die in war

This time we'll choose the fights.

Let the rich go first:

They worry about

The overtime we abuse;

The battlefields they always choose

Their estates have the most to lose.

Let the rich go first!

I have stated a divine right of parents that nobody's ever bothered to talk about. We assume that the government, like the kings and the queens of old, have the right to conscript in a time of war and take their sons and daughters. Why do we not have a movement which challenges that? Governments that do not bother to provide food, clothing and shelter for poor youngsters have no right to later on claim their lives in wars that they had no decision-making power to start or stop.

It comes down to a class warfare. There is class warfare in America. The rich have declared war. The powerful have declared war on the poor. The poor do not fight back. They do not know that they are being constantly abused. It is time we took a hard look at how much they are abused in times of war. Like the blunder in Iraq, it is a life and death matter. They are going to die if they do not fight back.

America is a promised land, and America's promised land is being grossly mismanaged. We are as a promised land as man can ever get, human kind will ever get. We have the greatest potential of anything that ever existed on the face of the Earth. While managing a society that provides justice for all provides the right to pursue happiness and the opportunity to pursue happiness for all. That is possible in America, but America's promise is being grossly mismanaged by this Republican administration. The war in Iraq is the most dangerous mismanagement this country has ever experienced.

Preoccupation with $87 billion for the war dooms any realistic effort to revive the economy. There are alternatives, but this mismanagement team will never consider those alternatives.

There was a bill offered by a friend of mine, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), which says if we are going to spend 20-some billion dollars in Iraq to rebuild Iraq, then let us spend an equal amount in the cities and the States to improve our economy. That is a good idea. There are other good ideas along those lines that have been offered.

I think several months ago I offered a bill called the Domestic Budget Protection Act, H.R. 1804. The essence of the Domestic Budget Protection Act is we should have a situation where the domestic budget, the budget for education, for highways and schools, and the budget for health care is not in the same category with the budget for the war. Let the war pay for itself in some other way, and H.R. 1804 says that we should pay for it the way we paid for part of the Vietnam War and part of the Korean War and to some extent World War II. We placed a tax on the profits of corporations. Let a tax be placed on the profits of corporations to pay for the war so that no money is taken out of the other revenue that comes in and there is no threat to the domestic budget from the war budget. That is not a radical idea. We have done it before. Let us consider it now and do it now.

I also had another act which was a twin for that, and this is called the Emergency Targeted Revenue Sharing Act of 2003, H.R. 2335, and that is a simple act which says that we should spend the same amount of money in the States and the cities on job creation programs, education, health care, et cetera, that we spend in Iraq. The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) says $20 billion, I said $9 billion was at the time the amount we were proposing for the war in Iraq.

The principle is pretty clear, as my colleague from Ohio stated. We are suffering greatly in our cities and our towns. Our schools are suffering. People are being laid off. Terrible things are happening in terms of taxes being raised on ordinary local people. At the same time, the Federal Government is cutting income tax for the richest people, for the Dick Grassos who earn $140 million and want another $40 million. They are getting tax cuts for the WorldCom president who can borrow $400 million. He is getting a tax cut. For all the Enron criminals who squandered large amounts of money, they are getting tax cuts. But for those who are out there searching for jobs, they are sinking in a quagmire of poverty. The report that came out a few days ago said poverty is increasing. The number of people who are uninsured is increasing. It is not surprising, they are both very much related.

We want to support the troops. The first way we can support them is to support their families. We should manage the war and the economy better, manage the war and the economy better.

The team now in charge is not capable of managing better. I have here an advertisement that appeared in the New York Times last Friday. It is a big, full page advertisement that reads: ``Donald Rumsfeld betrayed my son and our Nation; it is time for him to go.'' It is written by a person who has three sons in the military, three sons in the military. Two of them are in Iraq.

His name is Larry Syverson of Richmond, Virginia. I am going to read it all and submit it for the Record.

``I am a patriotic American with three sons in the military, two serving in Iraq. Brandon is a master gunner near Tikrit. Bryce is a gunner stationed in Baghdad. I'm proud of their service, but I'm angry with those who have led us into what can only be called a quagmire.

``Donald Rumsfeld had day-to-day authority for planning the war and its

aftermath. He was the chief architect, and it is his house of cards that is tumbling today. Months after the President declared `mission accomplished,' Americans are being killed almost daily. On April 13, Rumsfeld said: `Every hour that goes by, it's getting better and more peaceful and more orderly in Iraq.'

``We know that is not true. Rumsfeld's bad planning has left our troops poorly equipped and vulnerable in an increasingly hostile environment, and Americans are being asked for an additional $87 billion for Iraq. We now know that the President and those who serve him misled us about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's supposed nuclear program, about a link between Saddam and September 11.

``I'm in awe at the courage of my sons and the honorable service they give, but the leaders they serve have not acted honorably. They have failed my sons. They have failed all of us. At the very least, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must go.''

Now this is an ad that appeared in The New York Times and is paid for by MoveOn.org that says we can win without war.

We have a situation where very high-powered leaders with very high- powered advice, almost unlimited funds to pay for the personnel to do the planning, have placed us in a situation which is a quagmire. There is an overwhelming blunder that has taken place in Iraq. Did we not know about the dilemma of Robert McNamara in Vietnam? Were the people who did this not able to read? Did they not see the clippings and the media representations about the war in Chechnya, the Russians trying to contain a very small population, compared to the 24 million population of Iraq? Did we not see that and understand what that was all about? Did we not understand what happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan? Did we think the Soviet Union was driven out of Afghanistan because we supplied the Taliban, the al Qaeda at that time, the Mujahadeen? We supplied them with modern weapons. We supplied them with training. We spent billions of dollars that were never recorded in Afghanistan to defeat the Soviets.

I invite anybody who would like to hear more about that to read a book called Charlie Wilson's War. Charlie Wilson's War has gotten very little publicity in terms of what it deserves. Charlie Wilson's War is a story of a Congressman named Charlie Wilson from Texas. He is still alive. He was an amazing character and should be given some kind of medal for being the Member of Congress who controlled and manipulated billions and billions of dollars. He has the record for what he controlled and manipulated, using the CIA and other mechanisms to get money into Pakistan to be used against the Russians in the war in Afghanistan.

Eventually, the modernizing of the Mujahadeen and the Taliban, including Osama bin Laden, who was there at the time, the modernization of that group led them to the point where they were able to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Stinger missiles were supplied in tremendous numbers through the efforts of Charlie Wilson. It is something everyone should read. But did Rumsfeld not read it?

Westmoreland, in Vietnam, kept offering optimistic reports and blowing up the body bag numbers for the enemy. Did he not read about that? Later, we found it was not true. The number of enemy that General Westmoreland claimed were being killed in Vietnam was far less than were being killed. Therefore, it threw off all our calculations, and the North Vietnamese were later to mount a tremendous counterattack, and we had to scramble to get out of Saigon. Did no one read that?

Does anybody remember the Tet offensive, the Tet offensive in Saigon? At a time when President Johnson said we were winning the war, the Vietnamese guerrillas, with the help of North Vietnam, launched a massive weekend guerilla attack which shattered once and for all any hope that we could ever win the war in Vietnam. It was called the Tet offensive. In the environment of Iraq it will be easy to mount a Tet Offensive type operation. They have already started down that road.

The guerilla attacks are getting more intense in Iraq. There was an 8-hour firefight yesterday, an 8-hour firefight with the guerrillas yesterday. This is not a hit-and-run suicide bomber situation. They are moving into other levels.

Now, should we cut and run? That is not my proposal. I propose that we immediately move as rapidly as possible to create a situation which will head off the support for these guerrillas. The way to do that is to be able to get help from other nations. Let it be known clearly that we are not oppressors, we are not occupiers, we do not intend to stay there. We need to get help from other nations, move rapidly to establish a constitution for Iraq, and while we are doing that, send in more troops.

We cannot play games the way we are playing now, pretending we do not need more troops. The way to stop the guerrillas is to have more troops. The way to stop the sabotage of the oil wells, the way to stop the sabotage of the water systems, the way to stop the sabotage of the electricity systems is to have more troops to guard them. You cannot escape the need for more troops on a short-term basis.

Naturally, Mr. Rumsfeld does not want to be in a position of exposing that his calculations were all wrong. God forbid he should become a person who has to call for a draft. But he puts our soldiers in harm's way by playing such games, by not agreeing with the generals who are afraid to say so in public but they tell us behind the scenes they need more troops. We need more American troops while we are waiting for those others to come from other nations, who might show up and they might not.

We must understand the degree of the mismanagement. Robert McNamara was a genius, but he got caught up in a situation in Vietnam which drove him to ignore all of his common sense and all of his genius. Lyndon Johnson was a political genius, but ego and the belief that America must never allow itself to be defeated led to a quagmire in Vietnam. Fifty-eight thousand died in Vietnam.

The numbers are much smaller in Iraq, but every life is sacred. And if we do not move now in a decisive way, the numbers will go up, and every soldier killed will have died in vain. I do not think this blunder in Iraq is worth a single American life, and since we are there, we could not avoid being there, let us try to limit the number of lives that are being lost.

So I say to the working families of America and the people who care about all of Americans, who care about our troops who are out there suffering, really care about the troops and not just waving flags but refuse to provide the kind of support the troops need, as veterans, as soldiers out there who need flack jackets at work, and there are a number of things going on which are detrimental to our troops in the field and certainly affect their morale when they look back home and see their families being treated like dirt, I say to all those people who are watching this to not give up.

Now is the time for us to come forward and place ourselves on the front lines for the defense of America. The greatest Americans are the Americans who want peace. The greatest Americans are the Americans who will tell the truth and who will fight the myths that are endangering our security. It is a myth that Iraq is a center for fighting terrorism. That is a myth. We have said it is a center, but it is only a quagmire, a trap, an ambush. The real center is still wherever Osama bin Laden and his network is located, and that network is still our greatest threat in terms of our security. That is a myth. We should fight that myth.

We should fight the myth that the United Nations has nothing to offer; that France, with its French fries and American fries, does not deserve to be a decisionmaker in this situation; that Russia only wants to get involved because it wants to get the money back for its contracts; that Iraq cannot pay for its own reconstruction. That is the biggest myth. Iraq has oil fields beneath the surface that can pay for any reconstruction they need to take. The problem is that many of the people involved in this war are trying to secure the oil of Iraq for the oil barons and the companies that already are involved. They want theirs off the top. They do not want an agreement which says Iraq should pay its own way because they have plans to take their commissions off the top.

There was a time when the Middle East oil flowed out of the Middle East and each country only got 12 cents on the barrel. The rest of it flowed to Great Britain or France or some other country, the dollars. They want to go back to that. They do not want to admit that Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction. We can set up a situation where they wait maybe 10 years, 20 years. Who cares? Charge them low interest. They can pay for their own reconstruction.

We need to come forward and be as fervent, as dedicated as the people who support Donald Rumsfeld. They have fervor. They are bold. But they are wrong.

We need to be fanatics for peace.

We are citizens who ought to volunteer to do our part.

Never mind looking for a military Purple Heart.

We are fanatics for peace.

Our holy assault must never cease.

The Constitution light still shines.

We should launch spit into the fascist face.

Our maneuvers will launch the human race.

Pledge allegiance to the human race.

Pledge allegiance to the civilization that our children

deserve.

This is the cause we swear to serve.

Victory without blood in Ghandi's name.

Celebrate Mandela's fame.

The spirit of Martin King again will reign.

Resist a government that has now gone insane.

Commanders of abuses must face the Nuremberg nooses.

We are fanatics for peace.

Run and broadcast the brave news.

Divine mobilization is what working families should choose.

Surrender we unconditionally refuse.

Our vision will not decrease.

Our passion will never cease.

We are fanatics for peace.

We are the greatest Americans.

We want peace.

Madam Speaker, the article I referred to earlier is as follows:

I'm a patriotic American with three sons in the military,

two serving in Iraq. Branden is a master gunner near Tikrit.

Bryce is a gunner stationed in Baghdad. I'm proud of their

service. But I'm angry with those who have led us into what

can only be called a quagmire.

Donald Rumsfeld had day-to-day authority for planning for

the war and its aftermath. He was the chief architect and it

is his house of cards that is tumbling today. Months after

the President declared, ``mission accomplished,'' Americans

are being killed almost daily. On April 13, Rumsfeld said:

``Every hour that goes by, it's getting better, and more

peaceful and more orderly in [Iraq].'' We know that is not

true. Rumsfeld's bad planning has left our troops poorly

equipped and vulnerable in an increasingly hostile

environment. And Americans are being asked for an additional

$87 billion for Iraq.

We now know that the President and those who serve him

mislead us about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's

supposed nuclear program, about a link between Saddam and

September 11. I'm in awe at the courage of my sons and the

honorable service they give. But the leaders they serve have

not acted honorably. They have failed my sons. They have

failed all of us. At the very least, Secretary Donald

Rumsfeld must go.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from New York for yielding to me.

I noted earlier that many of our colleagues had gone to Iraq over the weekend, and they came back and described their experiences. I went to southeastern Ohio over the weekend, and I talked to people in Shady Side, Ohio and in Bel Air, Ohio, and Youngstown, Ohio, and I heard about infrastructure needs in Ohio. I heard about schools that need to be built. I heard about water and sewer systems that small communities simply cannot afford to pay for. And I talked with teachers and principals, talked with about three or four high school classes over this last 4 or 5 days while I was in Ohio.

We are a compassionate people, I would say to my friend from New York. We are compassionate. We care about other people, but we also care about the people that we are charged to represent. And in my district, I have got so many needs.

I found out this past weekend that in one of my communities there is the great danger that we are going to lose an additional 275 good- paying jobs, union jobs, steelworker jobs. This really concerns me. I think there is a bleeding of jobs in this country.

I looked at the headlines in the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch this morning. Iraq Battle Last 8 Hours and then One in Six Uninsured, this U.S. report says. Unemployment is skyrocketing in my district and throughout Ohio. More and more of our constituents are without health insurance. Our schools are being inadequately funded.

I toured a school in my district, I would say to my friend from New York, not long ago; and after that tour was completed, one of the parents on that tour came to me and he said, Congressman, I have two children who attend this school. I had no idea it was in this condition. He said, I am a building inspector, and if I were inspecting any other commercial building that had the problems this school has, I would close it immediately. He said, I saw at least 100 safety violations in this school. And he said, there are violations that cannot be easily fixed because this school has been added on to. It has been patched together over multiple years.

Why is it that we seem so willing to accept the fact that our kids can go to dilapidated schools, our people can be without health insurance, our roads can be unbuilt, our veterans can be shortchanged in the health care we provide to them, and yet we seem so willing, almost casual in talking about billions of dollars for the rebuilding of Iraq?

I might say to my friend from New York, it is not the rebuilding of Iraq. It is the building of Iraq. The President said when he addressed the United Nations that he intends to build 1,000 new schools in Iraq. We did not destroy 1,000 schools in this war. They want to build two 400-bed hospitals in Iraq. We did not destroy hospitals during this war. Talk about nation building. This President, during the campaign, criticized efforts to nation-build. And as I said earlier when I started my comments, we are a compassionate Nation. We care about the needs that exist in other countries. We care about the people in Iraq, but we are charged primarily to represent our constituents right here at home.

I want to state, I do not know if many of my colleagues or the President understand what life is like in southern and southeastern Ohio. It is an Appalachian district. Unemployment in one of my counties is 13.5 percent. People want to work. They are good people. They want to care for their families. They care about their kids as much as any Member in this Chamber cares about his or her children. They want them to get a high-quality education as much as any person in this Chamber wants their children to get a high-quality education.

If I can just take a moment before I yield back to talk about veterans. I am on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. I keep reminding us in this Chamber that we are underfunding the VA health care system by at least $1.8 billion. Think about that. We have got veterans who are going without health care, who are being denied the ability to enroll in VA health care, who are going to be asked by this administration to pay more copayments for prescription drugs. The President wants to impose a $250 enrollment fee on Priority 7 veterans. And Priority 8 veterans are being told they cannot even enroll in the VA system. They can make as little as $24,000 and be a Priority 8 veteran, and yet we are just, it seems, almost casually talking about spending $21 billion to build schools and roads and bridges and clinics and hospitals in Iraq. I just do not understand what is wrong with this government. I certainly do not understand what is wrong with this President and this administration.

We have got a war going on. We are shortchanging our national needs. We are not caring for our soldiers. We have got about 40,000 soldiers in Iraq tonight that have cheap vests that are not capable of stopping bullets. The more expensive protective vests, my understanding is, cost $571 on average. I got a letter from a young soldier, a West Point graduate. He said, Congressman, they are issuing two kind of vests over here. One is capable of stopping a bullet, and the other only stops shrapnel. My men are asking me why they have the cheap vests.

I wonder how many of our soldiers may have been wounded or killed wearing a cheap vest, inadequate protective body armor. And the British Broadcasting System has reported that we have made a deal with some of these other countries, I think Poland and some other countries, that if they will

contribute soldiers, we will provide them with these higher-cost vests. I want to make doggone sure that no foreign troops get these better vests before every single American soldier that is in Iraq has access to one of these protective garments.

I thank my friend for allowing me to express my opinion on this subject, and I yield back to him and thank him for his graciousness this evening.