Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this conversation is 4 years too late. If we had this conversation 4 years ago, we would have known that we had the wrong intelligence, the wrong country and the wrong war. This administration is now borrowing $10 billion a month with the help of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. If they are truly concerned about fiscal responsibility, $10 billion should catch their attention. We borrow the money.

Let's talk about our troops and supporting our troops. If we were to support our troops, first of all we would take them out of a civil war. Secondly, we would care for them while they are here. Third, while they were there, we would make sure that they have the equipment they need. We know this administration has failed on all levels.

Our President says we need to listen to the generals. All of the generals are saying that we have weakened our military.

Let's support our country and let's support our defense. Make our military strong again so we can practice self-defense.

This administration and its allies have hurt us abroad, hurt our reputation, and will spend us into financial disaster if we allow them to. Fortunately, Congress has the power of the purse, and we will exercise it. I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Madam Speaker, there are those who say we need to support our troops. The question is what troops, the same troops we have sent out three and four times? I have asked my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to please look at the armed services numbers and see the strain that we are putting on our military.

I have also asked them to think about if they had family members there, would they still be talking about supporting the troops in such a way as to put them in harm's danger?

Supporting our troops means getting them out of a civil war. Support our country by caring for our own people and bringing our money home to protect our borders in this country.

We need to spend money to build our military back up. We need to protect our borders, and we need to support our troops and support their families by bringing our troops home now.

We are at the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Things are not going well. Our troops are strained. Our generals are speaking to the President of the United States, who does not seem to be listening. I would like to read this to the President of the United States on this day.

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked last month by a House panel whether he was comfortable with the preparedness of Army units in the United States, he stated simply: ``No, I am not comfortable.'' Mr. President, that is one of your generals. General Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday: ``We have a strategy right now that is outstripping the means to execute it.'' Mr. President, that is one of your generals.

The Army Vice Chief of Staff, General Richard Cody, described as

``stark'' the level of readiness of Army units in the United States which would be called on if another war breaks out. The readiness continues to decline of our next-to-deploy forces, Cody told the House Armed Services Committee Readiness Panel last week.

Mr. President, hear your generals and end this war now.

Mr. Speaker, I was interested in hearing from Members on the other side speak about the money we needed to save and the debt we have, because it was the Republican administration that drove us into the greatest deficits in history. Indeed, they are the reason I am standing here today.

I am a social worker by profession, and for years I noticed things were getting worse and worse for the middle class. I kept saying the middle class is stumbling and the poor have fallen, because while the very wealthy were enjoying the tax breaks, thanks to this administration, the middle class was trying to figure out if they had enough money to go to the movies on Friday night and have money for pizza. Indeed, this is the first time we have seen this great, great difference in the rich and the poor since the time of the Titanic. Wages have been flat for several years now.

The American public understands this. This is not a Republican issue, it is not a Democratic issue, it is an issue about protecting the middle class, building the middle class, and bringing the poor so we do not have a permanent underclass in this country. The way to do that is to make sure we have a fair tax system, and we have to have accountability and oversight to make sure that we do.

We know that the tax breaks have gone to the top 1 percent for too long. So this drove me to Congress, looking at this; and the final, final nail in the coffin was looking at what happened after Hurricane Katrina because even if the administration could not find it in their hearts to take care of the people of Katrina, where was the homeland security?

When you look at Louisiana, you realize there is a port there. Gas and oil are there. Our food, our grains come there. Seventy percent of the grain passes through there. Certainly that is a vulnerable area. We heard that we were spending all of this money for homeland security and for programs to protect the American people. But when Hurricane Katrina hit, the American Government was missing in action with the exception of our military, and I give them great credit for what they did.

I know this because I went there not once, but twice. It was very frightening to see that the Federal Government was missing in action. And then the extra insult of having to listen on television while they were praising each other for the good job they did. They didn't bring the resources to the American people. They didn't have the money to bring the resources to the American people.

Where is the money? That is why we are here in Washington, to find out where is the money for the programs that the American people need, that we must have to protect us.

I looked at Iraq. I went there a couple of weeks ago. I looked at the contractors there personally. There are more than 100,000 contractors in Iraq for 133,000 soldiers; some more now, we had over 100,000 contractors.

The American public knows this word so well, Halliburton. The American people understand what has happened to the money. Every child born today has a birth tax of about $29,000. Think about that. We went from a budget surplus to the greatest deficit in history, borrowing money from Communist China along the way to pay our bills, which is a security risk that all Americans understand, and every child born today owes about $29,000 before he or she draws their first breath. This is an outrage, and we need to turn this around.

Like the rest of my freshman class, this propelled me to run. I had never even run for office in elementary school or high school. I was a social worker. I taught politics. Yes, I got involved in politics, but never envisioned myself here. And it is a tremendous honor to be on the floor and to be able to protect and speak up for the American people.

But we have an obligation to, first of all, provide programs that lift the poor and the middle class, to make sure that the wealthy pay their fair share; and we have an obligation to be fiscally conservative, and we can do that by good fiscal oversight and accountability. That has been missing for many years.

We are having more hearings now looking at various aspects. I serve on the Armed Services Committee. It was a shock to me to find out that we did not have the equipment we need and that the soldiers were suffering so.

Again, we can talk about Walter Reed. We had a week last week about that. Who could leave a soldier in rooms that had mold? Who could leave soldiers unattended and untreated? If we are going to honor our soldiers, we need to honor our commitments to the soldiers, and it is not right to say if we can afford to. When we put them into battle, we make sure that our commitment will be to care for them. Once they say they are going to serve us, it is our obligation to serve them.

It is truly an honor to be here and to be able to be working for the people of my own State, New Hampshire, and the people of this country. It is an honor to be here with such wonderful colleagues who are driven by one motive, and that is service and patriotism.

We were campaigning over a year or 2 years. We heard the message loud and clear from the middle class that they needed protection. They needed protection from policies and this administration that protected the wealthy and harmed the middle class. They wanted their children to be able to afford college again because that changed. They wanted their children to have the opportunities that they had growing up.

Even rents have gotten so high and with wages so flat, adult children have to come home to live with their parents. This is not the American way. The American way is to be fiscally responsible and to make sure that opportunities are available for all.

I think we have a terrific class with wonderful leadership. Speaker Pelosi certainly understands the direction this country needs to go in. We will do the job that the American people sent us here to do.

I thank the gentleman, and Madam Speaker.

I just came out of an Armed Services hearing where we were discussing, once again, readiness, and we had the Army there telling us the great strains on their budget, the strains on their equipment, and, most importantly, the strains on their soldiers. And so I am standing here today in support of our soldiers, in support of our military, in support of our ability to respond to any crisis in the world. And Iraq is not the place that we need to put our soldiers and all of our resources.

Last weekend, I went to Iraq to look for myself what was going on. I saw a lot of contractors taking quite a bit of money, serving soldiers in jobs that soldiers could have done themselves. I saw the strains on the soldiers. I saw National Guard troops that were in for a third deployment. And I saw the difficulty that the Iraqis were experiencing. In flying over Baghdad, I saw a very sad city.

Now, what I would like to see happen is for us to take the money that we are pouring into Iraq and put it into Afghanistan where the original trouble started, where we actually had the terrorist training camps, where we still need to finish the business that we started in 2001. But we need money to do that, we need resources to do that. They have been diverted and put into Iraq.

There were no Iraqis on the planes that day on 9/11. We went into Iraq because we picked the wrong war, the wrong people, and we should have stayed in Afghanistan and supported the effort there. So I urge my colleagues and I urge the House to do the right thing by our soldiers and by the Iraqis as well, and to make sure that we tend to where the real problems are in Pakistan and also in Afghanistan.

I also would like to see some money in homeland security. The first thing we need to do is support our own borders. We need to protect our borders. And when you look at the money that we have put in homeland security, it is miniscule. We are still not checking all of the cargo that comes into the belly of a plane, we are not checking the cargo that comes from overseas. They say that we don't have the equipment. We certainly could have the equipment. Hong Kong checks every single container that comes from abroad. And that is the great worry, that a dirty bomb could come from abroad in a container. We need to use the money wisely. Of course we need defense. We have to invest in our country. But we need to take those dollars and make sure that we are protecting our borders first and foremost, and then also working in Afghanistan; and, making sure that we have enough money and enough resources and enough troops to respond to anywhere else in the world that trouble could brew. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, honoring our soldiers means honoring our commitment to these soldiers.

Supporting the troops means several things: It meant, first of all, making sure that the mission was essential to the United States before putting them in harm's way. Secondly, it meant making sure, if they were in harm's way, they had the equipment that they needed. And, third, after they had borne the battle, we had an obligation, if we were going to support the troops, by providing medical care for them. This administration has failed on all three levels.

How did this VA medical care disaster happen? This is absolutely shameful. In a House hearing on Monday, the top military brass said there was enough money in the budget to provide care. So what was the problem here? Was it a lack of real support for the troops?

This administration owes these soldiers and their families an apology and a pledge to start really supporting the troops.

Madam Chair, it is my honor to be on the committee that has brought this bill forward, and I urge my fellow Congressmen and -women to say ``yes'' to this bill.

What this bill is doing is finally representing the working men and women of America. It is finally giving them an opportunity to once again regain a decent wage and to regain benefits.

It is critical for our country and for our middle class to have this bill passed, but there is reason for this also. Because when people have worked in factories before without union representation, they worked under extremely difficult circumstances.

In the early 1970s, I worked in a factory during the summers when I was in college. And I saw people come in and try to form a union, and I saw them get fired as soon as they heard about it. And so the people who had to work there day after day, year after year had to suffer under some pretty terrible conditions that most people would not accept.

So the union is critical and the support for it is critical. But I also support the idea that people can vote out in public. And I vehemently disagree that this will in some way harm individuals. I live in New Hampshire; and in New Hampshire, many of the towns still have town hall meetings. You stand there publicly and you vote. And nobody experiences any great tragedy for speaking as a body and as an individual in that body to say what direction they want their town to go in. This has been part of our history from the very beginning, and I am proud to endorse this bill.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, as we continue today to debate a resolution on the floor voicing this Congress' opposition to the President's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq, I think it is important that we stress that Congress is not alone in opposing the President's escalation.

First of all, it is critical that we remember that the people of Iraq do not wish us to be in their country. They wish to sort this out themselves, and we need to honor that. But retired and current military leaders in our country have also expressed their opposition to this plan.

Retired General Barry McCaffrey described the President's plan as a ``fool's errand.'' Retired General Wesley Clark said, ``Without such fundamental change in Washington's approach, there is little hope that the troop surge, Iraqi promises, and accompanying rhetoric will amount to anything other than stay the course more.'' And this from Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq: ``It's clear that you cannot solve this problem militarily. You have to have the combination of military, economic and diplomatic things that we need to do.'

Mr. Speaker, President Bush's plan to escalate the war in Iraq will not bring success in Iraq or make America more secure. It faces significant bipartisan opposition in both Chambers of Congress, and the plan is opposed by a majority of people in our country.

The American people rightfully want to know where their leaders stand on this critical issue, and the House is prepared to act. Unfortunately, on the other side of the Capitol, Senate Republicans blocked debate on this critical issue, and the House is prepared to do it now.

While Senate Republicans cut and ran from this most important issue, over the next 4 days this House will debate, and then on Friday vote on a resolution on the President's plan to escalate the war.

Mr. Speaker, House Democrats will ask the tough questions about the President's new strategy and continue to insist on a new direction, while always putting our troops first.

The days of rubber-stamping the President's war plans are over. And starting today, this House is going to have an important debate on the President's troop escalation plan.

Madam Speaker, this is a very important debate. Four long years and we are searching our souls. We have sent our finest and our bravest soldiers on a mission that made no sense from the beginning. Our Nation was attacked by evil people who trained in Afghanistan.

We have a right to go into Afghanistan to remove the terrorist training camps. As a matter of fact, we should be working even harder there to make sure our Afghanistan mission does not fail. We must not allow the Taliban and other terrorist groups to control Afghanistan again.

However, we are unable to give Afghanistan our full attention because our President has led us into a war with Iraq. Why? There are no Iraqis on the plane that day. The Iraqis had no weapons of mass destruction. And they never asked us to come to their country. They do ask us to leave, though. And yet we will not leave.

The President will not listen to the Iraqis. The President will not listen to the American people. The President will not listen to the world. But Congress will. We are ready to go in a new direction and say no to the President, and no to his plan to escalate this war.

I was a military spouse. I am very, very proud of my husband's service. I am also on the Armed Services Committee. I know our troops need our support and they have it. But troops also

need to know that their leaders will make sure that their mission is in the best interests of the United States before they are asked to go fight and die for their country.

I watched a young soldier walk down a ramp on the way to Iraq. He was looking at all of us, and we were looking hard back at him. And I think most of us had the same thoughts in our hearts, that we could not look him in the eye and tell him that his mission was so essential to the security of the United States and the freedom of the world that he had to go and he had to die if necessary.

Why could we not tell him that? Because the mission had changed. Several times the President told us why we were there, and it was always a different reason. The mission had changed. And therefore the soldier looked confused and we certainly felt confused also, because we could not tell him why we were there.

I wanted to run up to him and tell him I support you, I support you by making sure that you never get sent to a war against unless we know why you are there.

What is this talk I have heard tonight about freedom and liberty? This talk of glory that I heard on the floor. This romanticized language, this talk about Davy Crockett. There is no Davy Crockett in Iraq. Our troops need clear-eyed leaders, not this romantic rabble that we have been hearing. This war has cost us. We have paid a terrible price.

Our military troops are strained. Yes, they are strained. Their families are strained. Our brave soldiers have died or they have been injured. The Iraqis have lost their lives. They have lost their society. They have lost their infrastructure. They are losing their middle class who are moving to other countries to keep their children safe.

Their people are fleeing from their own country. We are wary, they are wary, the world is now more dangerous. Iraqis were polled and the majority of them said they wanted the Americans to go home and let them work out their problems. For 4 years the administration and its supporters here have made no plan for them to do that.

Now they ask us on this side of the aisle what our plan is. This is a strange question. But it shows how confused this administration's supporters are, if they are looking to us and ask us what our plan is. They have been offered plans. They even commissioned a plan, and they do not follow any plans. The President follows his own way.

We have offered plans. They will not listen. I for one want the United States to succeed in this world. Therefore, I am going to listen to all of the generals who have pled with the President and pled with the President's supporters in this administration to do the right thing here.

But the President does not listen. Now, I am going to vote to tell the President that I am against his escalation.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last comment.

Mr. Chairman, I am deeply concerned by what I am hearing on the opposite side. And I understand fully the frustration of the American people, having listened to the leadership of this party for so many years distracting Americans from the real issues confronting us. And to hear them attack Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House for using a private airplane to take her back and forth to California, and of that size, is just outrageous.

The truth of the matter is that this is the party that completely blocked the 9/11 recommendations that were so critical to the security of this Nation. This is the party that refused to make sure that all the cargo inside the belly of airplanes is inspected. And now, when we have the Speaker of the House, who is rightly concerned about security, using a plane to protect her, and it is absolutely critical that we have this, now they are standing up to speak about this.

I am also deeply concerned about the claim that we are not being effective on global warming, because the American people understand this. They have seen the data. They understand it. They want us to move forward in a bipartisan manner. And they want us to stop bickering.

And so I plead to all of us to stop the bickering. Let's move on with the legislation.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

People in New Hampshire are deeply concerned; both parties, by the way, are deeply concerned about global warming. And they want us to get on with the job of taking care of this and not spending our time and the people's time. And we are on the payroll of the American people, arguing and quibbling about such minor issues as the airplane.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Reclaiming my time, yes. I absolutely agree that this is wasting our time. We are earning our paycheck from the American people, and we need to do the work of the American people.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Reclaiming my time, I thank you and we intend to continue to deliver to the American people what they have asked us to do.

Announcement by the Chairman

Mr. Speaker, I feel exhilirated at the end of this week. As I was campaigning through my district, the First District of New Hampshire, over and over again I kept hearing questions about what can Congress do to help the middle class and what can Congress do to help grow the middle class, to lift people into that robust middle class that we all want. And certainly this week we have shown what we are capable of doing. People are worried about Congress being able to get together and pass any legislation that would actually help the people. This week we have shown that we know how to get this job done. It certainly is an exhilirating feeling to be part of this.

We watched out for the taxpayer this week. We passed a PAYGO, pay-as- you-go. We said to the taxpayers of this country, we know your taxes are high, we know that you're worried about the highest deficits in American history, and we're going to do something about it. We're going to pass some programs that help you and we're also going to make sure that we don't drive up the deficit.

And then we looked at people who have children in college and we said, we know that you need help and we're going to help you. We cut the interest rates in half. Yet it didn't cost the taxpayer a dime. That is awesome. I feel wonderful and proud of the leadership, the Democratic leadership that brought this forward, and I am delighted that so many Republicans joined in that vote, because I think that it helps all of us.

Then we took a look at Medicare part D and we knew there was something wrong with Medicare part D. What was wrong with it was that the American taxpayer was not at the table when that was passed. It was the insurance companies, it was the pharmaceutical companies, but senior citizens were not there and neither were the American taxpayers. And so we said, we're changing this legislation so we will make sure that they have to negotiate the price of prescription drugs.

Now, we did hear a lot of hollering that this wouldn't help, but I will tell you something, you would never find the CEO of a company ordering their purchasing department not to negotiate the price of anything. We all know, children know when they are little, they take their lunches and they try to cut the best deal for themselves trading. We understand that you negotiate if you want the best deal for the American public and that is what we did.

So we can go back to our districts and we can look at everybody and say, we understand, because we come from you. We're the freshman class that have been out there listening to the issues and we have come to the floor of the House and with the help of the Democratic leadership and certainly some Republicans that joined forces with us, we have passed some pretty significant legislation. So when my child goes back to college next year and the American children go back to college next year, they know that when they leave college, we have reduced their debt $4,000 over the terms of their loan. And when senior citizens go to their pharmacies for their prescriptions, they know that we did the best

that we could for them this week. It's a beginning. There will be more to be done, of course, but it is an impressive beginning. And when people go to the gas pump, which is the other way that we saved money for the American taxpayer, they know that we are not going to subsidize the oil companies anymore, that we are not going to take taxpayer money and give them a subsidy. This is what we have been asked to do and this is what we delivered this week.

I congratulate everybody who had a part in this and I urge the American people to stay tuned, because we are going to continue to deliver what the American public has asked us to do and what they need us to do. While we do that, we are also going to be paying attention to the international scene. We know that we have to have a strong national defense. We understand that we have enemies in this world and that we have to be careful. That is why we made sure that we will have containers that are inspected and that is why we looked very carefully with the 9/11 Commission and we said, yes, they're right and we need to do this now. On September 11, 2001, I was on the Beltway in Washington, D.C., and it was a terrifying place to be, no question about it. But I would go out to my district and say, we can't live in fear but what we have to do is be sensible and take action to keep us safer. We can't cower in fear but we can pass legislation that will protect all of us. We need to be on the world stage. We need to be bold. We need to take action to make sure that we are safe, but we also have to make sure that we don't terrify Americans.

So this week we said, here is some legislation that is going to protect you at the airports, it is going to protect you at the ports, it is going to protect our Nation and we are moving forward on every direction. I am delighted. It has been a wonderful couple of weeks and I know with all these good people working hard that America can continue to be reassured that we will lead the country in the right direction.

Mr. Speaker, I am urging my colleagues today to pass the College Student Relief Act. I speak not only as a Congresswoman from New Hampshire, but also as the mother of a college student and one about to enter college.

These student loan interest rates are absolutely crippling students' ability to go to college and putting a burden on their families. These students are also deeply concerned now about what will happen when they go into the workforce and they have to pay a higher interest rate on their loans, as well as paying for higher energy costs and paying for rent and paying for all of the other expenses that young adults experience.

I urge my colleagues to please ease the pain on these students, encourage this higher education, because higher education is the key to prosperity in our country.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.

I am a proud sponsor of this bill. My interest in this bill is both professional and personal. I have worked in senior centers for years and watched seniors struggle with insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. And then I watched my father struggle, through three major illnesses, with insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. My father would have been delighted to have somebody come from the Federal Government and say, I am here to help you, because my father needed that help, and so do all the other seniors in this country. And do not believe for a moment that things are better now, because my mother also receives prescription drugs and struggles with the cost and worries about what is happening to the money that she has left.

I urge my colleagues to please support this bill. It is a beginning. It is the voice of the people, the voice of the taxpayers.

Who sits at the table right now with the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies while they negotiate? We don't. The taxpayer cannot sit at the table. But if my colleagues pass this bill, the American taxpayer, the seniors and all those who require these drugs will finally be represented.

Mr. Speaker, I am the parent of two children with asthma, and my husband has asthma also. When my children were young, I spent many hours beside their bed helping them to breathe with machines, giving them medicine that had side effects that were very unpleasant and kept both my children and myself up. We had a great deal of worry in those early years.

It is my great hope that science will find a cure. I ask all of my colleagues to reach out and help my children and the children of America to be free of these diseases.