Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, gas prices are now over $4 a gallon and may be headed higher. Almost all environmental radicals come from very wealthy or very upper income families. Environmentalists apparently want gas to go even higher so people will drive less.

Well, maybe these wealthy environmentalists can afford $5 a gallon gas, but many poor and lower income and working people are already hurting. Week before last we heard that 935 trucking companies have gone out of business in the first quarter of this year.

We can produce oil now in environmentally safe ways, and we don't have to produce all of our oil. But if we don't start producing a little more, and soon, we're going to become even more vulnerable to foreign oil producers, and we're going to hurt many working people in the process.

Madam Speaker, Ian Lustick, a professor of the University of Pennsylvania and research fellow at the Independent Institute in California, wrote an article in The Hill newspaper a few days ago which made a great deal of sense. He wrote this:

``Nearly 7 years after September 11, 2001, what accounts for the vast discrepancy between the terrorist threat facing America and the scale of our response? Why, absent any evidence of a serious domestic terror threat, is the war on terror so enormous, so all-encompassing, and still expanding? The fundamental answer is that al Qaeda's most important accomplishment was not to hijack our planes but to hijack our political system. For a multitude of politicians, interest groups, professional associations, corporations, media organizations, universities, local and State governments, and Federal agency officials, the war on terror is now a major profit center, a funding bonanza, and a set of slogans and sound bites to be inserted into budget, project, grant, and contract proposals.

``For the country as a whole, however, it has become a maelstrom of waste and worry that distracts us from more serious problems.''

Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security, testified before the Senate a few months ago in a way no other Cabinet member probably ever has. He

essentially said we are spending too much on security and should not let an over-exaggerated threat of terrorism ``drive us crazy,'' into bankruptcy, trying to defend against every conceivable threat. He went on to say: ``We do have limits and we do have choices to make. We don't want to break the very systems we're trying to protect. We don't want to destroy our way of life trying to save it. We don't want to undercut our economy trying to protect our economy, and we don't want to destroy our civil liberties and our freedoms in order to make ourselves safer.''

Secretary Chertoff was exactly right. I believe that most Members of Congress will vote for almost anything if the word ``security'' is attached to it so that they will not be blamed if something bad happens later. We should do some things to protect against terrorism, but we should not go overboard if we still believe in things like freedom and liberty.

Actually, most security spending is more about money for government contractors and increased funding for government agencies than it is about any serious threat. Just 3 weeks after 9/11, when security requests for money were already pouring in, the Wall Street Journal hit the nail on the head in an editorial:

``We'd like to suggest a new post-September 11 rule for Congress: Any bill with the word 'security' in it should get double the public scrutiny and maybe four times the normal wait lest all kinds of bad legislation become law under the phony guise of fighting terrorism.''

The Wall Street Journal was exactly right. Unfortunately, Congress has not followed this good advice. But it is just as relevant today as it was when it first written.

Bruce Fein was a high ranking Justice Department official during the Reagan administration. He says the Federal Government has, ``inflated the international terrorism danger in order to aggrandize executive power.'' This is true, in part. Most agencies and departments do exaggerate the threats or problems they are confronting to get more power. But they primarily do so to keep getting increased appropriations.

Certainly, we need to take realistic steps to fight terrorism. But if we gave the Department of Homeland Security the entire Federal budget, we still could not make everyone totally safe. In a cost benefit analysis, you fairly quickly reach a point in the terrorism threat where more spending is almost totally wasted. People are hundreds of times more likely to be killed in a wreck or die from a heart attack or cancer. We need to spend more on the greatest threats. Also, we need to make sure we do not lose our liberty in a search for an illusive security.

Bruce Fein wrote that if the, ``war against international terrorism is not confronted with corresponding skepticism, the Nation will have crossed the Rubicon into an endless war, a condition that Madison lamented would be the end of freedom.''

Madam Speaker, to sum up, a few people are getting rich at the expense of many by claiming that they are trying to increase our security. We don't need to make our already bloated Big Brother government even bigger just because some company or some bureaucrat callously uses the word ``security'' just to get more money and power.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule that brings this bill to the floor and to this $15 billion bailout bill, and I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I think up here we lose sight of how much $15 billion really is. Fifteen billion dollars would operate the entire State government of Tennessee for almost 1 year, our education, our medical care, our prisons, our roads, our parks. And Tennessee is almost dead on average, statistics-wise, in regard to all the States.

Over 95 percent of the people are paying their mortgages on time. Consistent with that, about 95 percent of the people who have contacted my office or spoken to me about this bill, they don't want us to bail out people who have taken out loans that they couldn't afford. But even worse than that, the $15 billion that's in this bill, even worse, we're going to pass later today a $300 billion housing bill that we really can't afford. Tomorrow we're probably going to pass a $250 billion supplemental appropriations bill. That's $565 billion in 2 days. And all three of these bills are outside the regular or don't even count the regular appropriations bills that we'll be taking up.

Next week, we're going to pass an almost $300 billion farm bill. A couple of weeks ago it came out that the Pentagon has had $295 billion in cost overruns on just their 72 largest weapons systems, not counting the cost overruns that would be in all the thousands of other large and medium size and small contracts.

Last week, we rejected an effort by the administration to save $50 billion over the next 10 years on the Medicaid rules even though payments to hospitals under the Medicaid program have gone up two to three times the rate of inflation every year for the last 15 or 20 years.

What I'm getting at, Mr. Speaker, is this: This Congress is going to go down as the most fiscally irresponsible Congress in the history of this Nation if we keep spending at this rate. No one can legitimately call themselves a fiscal conservative if they vote for all these bills.

David Walker, who just retired as the head of the GAO, respected by both sides, said that even worse than the $9 trillion national debt that we have is the 53 to $54 trillion in unfunded future pension liabilities. It's not going to be many years, Mr. Speaker, before we're not going to be able to pay all our Social Security and veterans pensions and all the other things we promised our people if we keep spending in the reckless manner that we're doing so today and in the days ahead.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I first would like to thank Chairman Oberstar, Ranking Member Mica, and Mr. DeFazio, the chairman of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, for continuing to work on this important technical corrections bill. I rise to voice my support for H.R. 1195 as amended by the Senate, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same. This is the fifth time we have brought a SAFETEA-LU technical corrections bill to the House floor in the past 2 years.

The bill we are considering today is H.R. 1195. This is a bill that the House passed in March of 2007. The House also passed a more recent version of SAFETEA-LU technical corrections on August 1, 2007, H.R. 3248. As Chairman Oberstar mentioned, that bill passed the House with only one dissenting vote. The Senate has amended H.R. 1195 so that the version of H.R. 1195 that we are considering today includes all the changes that were made in H.R. 3248.

Once the President signs this bill, SAFETEA-LU will finally be able to accomplish what the Congress voted for it to do almost 3 years ago. There were many minor errors in policy and in Members' projects in SAFETEA-LU that needed technical correction.

We have heard from the U.S. Department of Transportation and several State DOTs regarding fixes to different programs and high priority projects. I believe this bill addresses most of the issues that have been brought to our attention.

This bill makes critical corrections to the Federal Highway Research Program to ensure that the department can continue essential research programs, including the Future Strategic Highway Research Program and the University Transportation Center Research Program. The bill also corrects several drafting errors regarding the Magnetic Levitation Transportation Deployment Program.

It is important to note that this bill does not make substantial policy changes to SAFETEA-LU. Rather, this bill corrects provisions that were not workable by State DOTs or the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Let me just add a couple of things. Ranking Member Mica, Chairman Oberstar and others have mentioned that our economy needs this bill. Just a couple of hours ago, I met with homebuilders from my district in Tennessee. In 2000, Fortune Magazine said the Knoxville metropolitan area was the most popular place to move to in the whole country based on the number moving in in relation to fewest moving out. Ours has been a very popular, fast growing area. Yet this group of homebuilders told me that their market was down 60 percent just from last year. I have been hearing similar stories. We have got some problems that need work.

One of the Republican Presidential candidates was talking about the stimulus package that we passed earlier and they said the problem with it was that we were going to be borrowing money from the Chinese so that people could buy Chinese products. I am not really talking about the merits or demerits of that bill, but he suggested that what we should do is have a stimulus package on infrastructure, because that would be doing things that needed to be done here in this country and the money would be going to American workers to do that very needed work in this country. So I think that is something that we might want to consider at a later point.

But I simply will close at this time by once again thanking our great chairman, Mr. Oberstar, and my boss and good friend, Ranking Member Mica, for their persistence on this technical corrections bill. I hope all of my colleagues will join me in supporting this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank Chairman DeFazio for his strong and enthusiastic support for this resolution, and I want to add my support for House Resolution 964.

I introduced this resolution because of a tragic 15-passenger van accident last July in which a 10-year-old girl from my hometown of Knoxville was killed.

Alexis ``Lexie'' James was traveling in a 15-passenger van being driven by close family friends to Savannah, Georgia, for a softball tournament. The driver was not a professional driver with a commercial driver's license. In fact, a commercial driver's license is not required to drive 15-passenger vans. This van was privately owned, and there were only five passengers: the dad and mom, their 16- and 10- year-old children, and Lexie.

On July 17, 2007, as the van was traveling east on Interstate 26 near St. Matthews, South Carolina, the left rear tire of the van blew out, and the van ran off the right side of the highway, down an embankment, overturned, struck a fence, crossed the frontage road, and came to rest on its side.

Everyone in the van was wearing a seat belt, but somehow Lexie slipped out of her belt and was ejected from the van onto the frontage road and was killed.

I have met with Lexie's dad, Patrick James, and he is asking some hard questions about the safety of 15-passenger vans. The resolution we are considering today focuses on safety issues that are firmly within the jurisdiction of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee regarding driver and passenger behavior, including the need for better driver training and passenger safety information.

A 15-passenger van does not handle or operate like a larger version of a passenger car. These vans have a higher center of gravity, which makes them less stable and more difficult to handle. In addition, the bodies of the vans extend 4 to 5 feet beyond the rear wheels, causing instability during emergency maneuvers such as sudden turns. This causes the vans to fishtail, and because they are top heavy and may be overloaded in the rear, they are prone to roll over and result in devastating crashes.

In May of 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a consumer advisory safety warning to all drivers of these vehicles. The precautions that NHTSA recommends for all drivers of 15- passenger vans are:

One, keep your passenger load light.

Two, check your van's tire pressure every week.

Three, require all occupants to use seat belts or the appropriate child restraint.

Four, if possible, seat passengers and place cargo forward of the rear axle.

Five, do not place loads on the van's roof.

Six, be very mindful of speed and road conditions.

Better driver training and more thorough dissemination of safety tips like these are the best tools we have right now to help save the lives of other children and adults riding in 15-passenger vans.

As Chairman DeFazio just stated, this resolution is a first step towards calling the public's attention to the very dangerous situation or condition of some of these 15-passenger vans and how prone they are to very serious vehicle accidents.

I strongly support this resolution and hope to make this important safety issue a priority for the Nation. Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no other speakers. Once again I would thank Chairman DeFazio for his support and for his offer to hold a hearing on the safety involving these 15-passenger vans. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a Tennessean on his 70th birthday whose scientific accomplishments have had an incalculable impact on the medical community and our Nation.

In 1969, Dr. Ronald Nutt received a PhD in Electrical Engineering at the University of Tennessee. In the nearly 40 years which followed, he pioneered technology which has saved countless lives and brought distinction to East Tennessee and the University of Tennessee.

Even those who have never heard of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) probably know someone who has been helped by it. PET is a non-invasive technique which can map the entire body with molecular imaging.

Pioneered and internationally marketed by Dr. Nutt, PET is a critical tool today in medicine, and the method is widely used in the fields of oncology, cardiology, and neurology. PET has saved countless lives by innovatively detecting tumors, improving biopsies, and helping to determine the stage of a disease. The effect of PET scanning was so extraordinary, Dr. Nutt was named Distinguished Scientist of the Year in 1999 and received the TIME Magazine Medical Innovation of the Year honor in December 2000.

Dr. Nutt's lifetime of developing this technology has led to many other discoveries. He is the holder of dozens of patents in the field of electrical engineering, with many more still pending. Prior to his work on PET technology, Dr. Nutt took a products business from a single employee to a $10 million a year business in the 1980s. Today, he sits on the board of directors of several companies and continues to be a leader his field.

Dr. Nutt is not only an example of American ingenuity, but his work is also the benchmark for success in his field. His professional accomplishments are equal in scope only with his personal character and continued devotion to family, community, and many worthy causes.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge my colleagues to join me in celebrating the career of Dr. Ronald Nutt on the occasion of his 70th birthday. His work is far from over, but his impact is already certain.

Mr. Speaker, oil has hit $118 a barrel. Gas is $3.50 to $4 a gallon. Fox News this morning said some experts say it will be $5 a gallon by later this summer.

Most environmental radicals and extremists seem to come from very wealthy or very upper-income families. They want gas to go even higher so people will drive less. Perhaps the wealthy leaders of the Sierra Club and some of these other environmental groups aren't being hurt, but they are really hurting the poor and the lower income and the working people of this country.

We don't need to produce all of our oil here domestically, but if we would just start producing a little bit more, then some of the OPEC countries and foreign energy producers would hold their prices down. We need to not let this country be sent into a deeper recession by environmental extremists and radicals.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I will simply rise to say this: I believe that Chairman Rahall has adequately described this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlelady from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

H.R. 5151 will designate portions of the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia as wilderness, and it is my understanding that Members of Congress whose districts are affected support the bill.

Although we should give considerable deference to those who have been elected to represent the people in the area, I do not necessarily agree that wilderness designation is always the wisest conservation decision we can make. Wilderness designation is the most restrictive policy we can impose on an area, and there are often far better, more creative ways to conserve our forests and other natural areas. In many instances, it is a mistake to foreclose active management options that can improve fish and game habitat, increase recreational access and lessen the severity of wildfires. And to protect our economic well- being, provide jobs for young people and protect our national security, our country is going to need continued access to the rich resources our own public lands provide.

We now have over 100 million acres in wilderness areas, and we keep adding to that at a record level. And we are very close to getting to the point where that's beginning to hurt us economically at a time when we don't need more blows to our economy.

Nevertheless, I do wish the people of West Virginia good luck living around these wilderness areas, and I know that they, like the people of my State, will in the long run prove to be better guardians of their mountains, rivers and wildlife than bureaucrats in Washington.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 831 introduced by our distinguished colleague, Don Young, conveys approximately 12 acres of National Forest System land to the City of Coffman Cove. The City of Coffman Cove, Alaska, is a small community with about 200 residents that developed around the Tongass National Forest logging camp and work site. The 12-acre Forest Service site is now in the middle of town, and a new ferry terminal is planned for an adjacent parcel. The location of most of the Forest Service site makes it difficult and inefficient for the Forest Service to manage and an obstacle to the future development and design of the city's downtown. Conveyance of the Forest Service site would benefit both the Forest Service and the city in this regard.

In short, this noncontroversial bill simply conveys to Coffman Cove a small parcel of Forest Service land for which the Forest Service has no use. I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, it's appropriate that the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area be named after Morley Nelson. Morley Nelson demonstrated how private voluntary wildlife conservation efforts can be far more effective than big Federal programs and showed that punitive laws, like the Endangered Species Act, can inhibit and interfere with more creative approaches.

He worked with Idaho Power to redesign their towers and power lines so eagles would not be electrocuted when they landed on them. This not only saved the eagles; it saved Idaho Power the substantial cost of power disruptions.

He worked with private falconers to create a captive breeding and release program that was so successful, the peregrine falcon was one of the first species taken off the endangered species list. The Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to achieve a comparable recovery after more than 30 years.

I am pleased to see Morley Nelson recognized for his great conservation achievements.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the National Crittenton Foundation, a national organization dedicated to supporting and empowering young women and girls at-risk.

More than a century ago, founder Charles Crittenton and his colleague, Dr. Kate Waller Barrett, began an international movement to help homeless, pregnant women and their babies. Today, the unique partnership between The National Crittenton Foundation and the Crittenton Family of Agencies carries on this mission through a national network of affiliated independent, local organizations.

As a leading member of the Crittenton Family of Agencies, the Florence Crittenton Agency in Knoxville, Tennessee has worked tirelessly to ensure that the children, families, and pregnant young women of East Tennessee have the best possible services. I am proud to have such an upstanding organization located in my congressional district.

Founded in 1896 under the proud leadership of Mrs. Annie McGhee McClung, the Knoxville organization experienced a period of decline during wars and the Great Depression, but the challenges facing young women and girls remained. Seeing the great need that still existed, seven Knoxville community leaders signed a second Charter of Incorporation on October 1, 1963, ushering in a new era of innovative services and support.

Through its active participation with The National Crittenton Foundation and the Crittenton Family of Agencies, the Florence Crittenton Agency in Knoxville continues to strengthen communities and have a positive impact on East Tennessee.

In closing, Madam Speaker, I ask that my colleagues join me in recognizing the National Crittenton Foundation and Knoxville's Florence Crittenton Agency on this historic occasion and thank them for their ongoing commitment to our communities and to our country.

Mr. Speaker, oil prices have reached $112, $113 a barrel, an all-time high. Gas prices have reached an average of $3.50 a gallon and in some places even higher, and the only people who seem to be happy about this are Sierra Club and some of these other environmental groups. I have noticed that almost all of these environmental radicals or environmental extremists seem to come from very wealthy or very upper-income families. They are elitist types, and perhaps they're not concerned when their policies destroy jobs and drive up prices because who they're really hurting are the poor and the lower income and the working people in this country.

As the previous speaker, Mr. Poe, pointed out, now some of these environmental groups, their policies are causing food prices to go up worldwide and, in many countries, leading to starvation. But once again, the environmentalists are hurting the poor and the lower-income and the working people. So perhaps they don't care.

About a year and a half ago in one of my newsletters I wrote this: I said, many experts are still predicting that the price of oil, and thus the price of gas, is going to go way back up. Environmental groups think this is good because it will force people to drive less. However, many people already have difficulty paying their gas bills, especially people from small towns in rural areas where many people have to drive long distances to go to work.

And I might add, Mr. Speaker, that when you drive these gas prices up, as some of these environmental groups want, to $4, or $5, or $6 a gallon so people will drive less, you'll put the final nails in the coffins of some of the small towns in rural areas. The environmental groups loudly complain about urban sprawl, but yet their policies are leading to more urban sprawl as they continue to drive up these gas prices.

Syndicated columnist Walter Williams wrote recently, ``If I were an OPEC big cheese, I would easily conclude I could restrict output and charge higher prices were U.S. oil drilling restricted. I would see environmental groups as allies and make `charitable' contributions to help them reduce U.S. output,'' and that's something I thought for quite some time that these OPEC and countries and foreign energy producers I'm sure are contributing big money to these environmental groups, and they're receiving huge multi-million dollar contributions that they were refusing to disclose the source of.

Leonardo Mangeri, of the Italian energy company ENI, said, there are proven oil reserves now, economically and technologically recoverable, of 1.1 trillion barrels, or 38 years of world usage. In addition, he says there are another 2 trillion barrels of recoverable reserves that will be obtainable as technology improves over the next few years.

Also, the International Energy Administration, Mr. Speaker, estimates that at current prices, it will be economic to recover at least another 2 trillion barrels of petroleum from tar sands and oil shale.

Just a couple of months ago, I wrote in another newsletter this: Gas prices are far too high and probably will go even higher. They could be much lower, but very powerful environmental groups want them to go higher so people will drive less. Thus, we have put 85 percent or 611 million acres of the outer continental shelf off limits to oil production. We will not allow drilling in 99.9 percent of Alaska where oil could be found, and have prohibited or restricted production in other parts of the U.S.

We've also placed so many rules, regulations and red tape on all types of domestic energy production that small- and medium-sized businesses cannot compete or even enter these industries in the first place. All of these productions can be done in environmentally safe ways. Some of these environmental groups help the big business giants and foreign energy producers tremendously, but they are really hurting lower- and middle-income people.

Madam Speaker, the front page of the Washington Post today carries a story about $295 billion in cost overruns at the Pentagon; $295 billion. That is a mind-boggling, almost incomprehensible figure to anyone who stops to think about it. The headline reads, ``GAO Blasts Weapons Budget.''

Listen to this story. Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The story continues, ``The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion and are delivered almost 2 years late, on average.

Apparently, there are no fiscal conservatives at the Pentagon. Apparently they believe that the Congress will just keep giving them more money, no matter how wasteful or inefficient they become. Of course, almost all the defense contractors hire plenty of admirals and generals, so almost all of these contracts are sweetheart deals anyway.

It is what the International Herald Tribune a few years ago called the ``revolving door'' at the Pentagon. $1.6 trillion in total costs, and $295 billion in cost overruns, and this was just on the major systems. No telling how much more was wasted on the smaller contracts.

$295 billion would run the entire government of Tennessee, schools, health care, roads, prisons, parks, and on and on for the next 11 years.

Then, on top of all this waste, the request for the Iraq War for the coming fiscal year is $189 billion, or over $500 million a day. Apparently we are having so much success over there that we have to give them more money, more troops and more contractors than ever before.

There is nothing fiscally conservative about the war in Iraq. Conservatives, above all, should realize that any gigantic government bureaucracy is always going to ask for more money and always find reasons to justify it.

And Congress is afraid to cut the Defense Department for fear of being seen as unpatriotic. Yet, it is a very false and very blind patriotism that allows the Pentagon to continually waste mega billions and allows the Defense Department to spend like there is no tomorrow.

In a few short years, we will not be able to pay all of our Social Security, Medicare, veterans' pensions, veterans' health care and many other things if we do not bring Federal spending under some type of control.

In a newsletter I sent to my constituents in Tennessee a few weeks ago I wrote these words before I knew about these cost overruns I've spoken about today. ``Jonah Goldberg wrote in a recent issue of National Review that the `insight that involvement abroad fuels the expansion of the state was central to the formation of the modern conservative and libertarian movements.'

``In other words, perpetual war leads to bigger government and goes very much against traditional conservatism.

``Yet some conservatives have fallen into a trap of never questioning any military expenditure even though there is great waste and overspending in the military just as there is in any giant government bureaucracy.

``Our Constitution is a very conservative document, and our founding fathers felt very strongly that we should have civilian control of the military:

``Service in our military is very honorable and patriotic, but we need strong national defense, not international defense.

``We simply cannot afford to be the policeman of the world, and with the speed of communication and transportation today, we do not need our military in so many countries.

``Conservatives should support an efficient, fiscally conservative military, but it should not believe in turning the Department of Defense into the Department of Foreign Aid as it is in many ways today.''

Mr. Speaker, first I want to commend David Walker for his years of service as U.S. Comptroller General, heading up the Government Accountability Office. Mr. Walker is a highly respected CPA from Atlanta and for the last few years has been trying to be a Paul Revere about the horrible financial condition of the Federal Government. He has appeared before many Congressional committees and on television and has traveled around the country trying to sound the alarm about our $9 trillion national debt, and, even worse, our $53 trillion in unfunded future pension liabilities.

Two days ago in the Washington Times he was quoted from testimony he gave about Iraqi oil revenues. ``The Iraqis have a budget surplus,'' Mr. Walker said. ``We have a huge budget deficit. One of the questions is who should be paying.''

Stewart Bowen, Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction, said increased production, along with the highest oil prices in history, ``coalesce into an enormous windfall for the Iraqi government.'' Mr. Bowen said Iraqi oil revenue is now around $60 billion, and probably headed higher.

Most estimates are that we have been spending approximately $12 billion a month on the war in Iraq, a really astounding figure if you stop to think about it. However, even worse, the request for this fiscal year is $189 billion, or $15.75 billion a month. This comes out to $500 million a day.

There is certainly nothing fiscally conservative about the war in Iraq. William F. Buckley, Jr., was an inspiring figure to almost every conservative Republican. In the current issue of the New Republic, John Judis begins an article about Mr. Buckley in this way: ``In the last years of his life, William F. Buckley, Jr., who died on February 27 at the age of 82, broke with many of his fellow conservatives by pronouncing the Iraq war a failure. He even expressed doubt about as to whether George W. Bush is really a conservative, and he asked the same about neoconservatives.''

Mr. Buckley wrote in 2004 that if he had known in 2002 what he then knew, he would have opposed the war in Iraq.

More significantly, in June of 2005, he wrote, ``A respect for the power of the United States is engendered by our success in engagements in which we take part. A point is reached when tenacity conveys not steadfastness of purpose, but misapplication of pride.'' Mr. Buckley continued, ``It can't reasonably be disputed that if in the year ahead the situation in Iraq continues as bad as it has done in the past year, we will have suffered more than another 500 soldiers killed. Where there had been skepticism about our venture, there will then be contempt.''

The major difference is that instead of just 500 more soldiers killed, we have had more than 2,000 killed since Mr. Buckley wrote that. Earlier in 2005 he had written that the time had come to get out.

There is nothing traditionally conservative about the war in Iraq. It is huge deficit spending. It is massive foreign aid. It is placing really the entire burden of enforcing U.N. resolutions on our taxpayers and our military, when conservatives have traditionally been the biggest critics of the U.N. This war has gone against every traditional conservative position.

In addition, our Constitution does not give us the authority to govern Iraq, which is what in reality we have been doing. All this against an enemy whose military budget was only a little over two- tenths of one percent of ours, most of which was used by Saddam Hussein to build castles and protect himself and his family. Iraq was no threat to us whatsoever.

As the conservative columnist Charley Reese wrote, ``The war in Iraq was against a country that was not attacking us, did not have the means to attack us, and had never expressed any intention of attacking us. And for whatever real reason we attacked Iraq, it was not to save America from any danger, imminent or otherwise.''

Similarly, nationally-syndicated columnist Georgie Ann Guyer wrote a few months after the war started, ``Critics of the war against Iraq have said since the beginning of the conflict that Americans, still strangely complacent about overseas wars being waged by minorities in their name, will inevitably come to a point where they will see they have to have a government that provides services at home or one that seeks empires across the globe.''

Finally, Mr. Speaker, we have to choose. Do we keep spending mind- boggling amounts of money in Iraq, or do we keep our promises to our own people? We cannot afford to do both.