Floor Statements

Yesterday's Senate vote for another blank check to President Bush for the Iraq war was as wrongheaded as the Senate's original 2002 blessing for that invasion, despite the strong opposition of most House Democrats.

Of course the Iraq surge has worked. Not the surge in Iraq. That surge has failed miserably, failed to achieve any of the political objectives, the benchmarks that the President set himself. No. The only surge that has worked is the propaganda surge here in Washington. Hemorrhaging more dollars and more blood into the sands of Iraq is not a formula for achieving success.

The taxpayers' price for Iraq is $3 billion every week of every month of the year. Take all the money that is used to research and seek a cure for cancer at the National Institute for Cancer, that is how much money we spend in Iraq in 2 weeks. But whether deaths are up or deaths are down, ``the Administration's consistent response is the troops cannot come home.''

We need to learn from the courage displayed by our troops. My colleagues in this House need to learn from that courage and vote to limit any more funding in this war to a fully funded, safe, redeployment from Iraq that begins today.

Madam Speaker, two-thirds of the benefit of this tax cut will go to families who earn $100,000 a year or more. Now, I support giving them the tax break, but I don't support borrowing $50 billion to do it.

Our Republican colleagues say today that, well, you don't have to borrow the money. Why don't you just cut spending? Well, that's the very question that we asked President Bush's representative when he came in front of our committee, and he stood there and he kind of scratched his head and said, I can't think of any spending cuts, nor have these Republicans offered a single spending cut to finance this $50 billion tax cut.

No, their approach is their old borrow-and-spend approach that they've used for the last 7 years. The debt goes up; the dollar goes down. We have the specter on the horizon of both inflation and recession, and they follow the same old broken policy.

I believe that they are holding taxpayers across this country hostage to force the Congress to borrow more money for yet another tax break. It does not make good economic sense, nor is it equitable.

Mr. Speaker, you would think there would be no disagreement that support for our troops which begins on the battlefield shouldn't end there, yet some Senate Republicans deleted from this very legislation an important provision authorizing eligibility for below-market affordable home loans of up to $325,000 through our Texas Veterans Land

Board for our Texas veterans. These are the servicemen and women who served in Iraq and in Afghanistan and over the last 30 years who are excluded from the current program.

Today we say once more to these Senate obstructionists, stop and remember that those who fight to keep our homes safe deserve a fighting chance at homeownership. This bill is truly a way to honor our vets, not only with our words, but with our deeds; in this case, deeds to a home. When our vets are willing to pay the ultimate price for our freedom, we can afford the price of correcting this disparity.

This bill also prevents the expiration of existing group health insurance guarantees for mental health coverage. While maintaining this protection is very important, what we really need is prompt approval of full equity in all health insurance coverage so that mental health services are not treated differently from physical health services. Whether it is a broken leg or a broken spirit, folks need affordable access to professional care that includes treatment for addiction and depression. I salute our colleagues Congressman Kennedy and Congressman Ramstad in their bipartisan effort for mental health parity, including addiction and depression. Let's get it done in 2008.

Approval of today's bill encourages equity, equity in covering veterans whenever they have served, and at least a little equity in mental health coverage.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Responsible, pay-as-you-go government is a significant part of the new direction to which this Congress committed our country last January. Now is hardly the time to abandon that important commitment.

For 7 years, spend-and-borrow Republicans have seldom met a problem in this country that they didn't address by borrowing more money and incurring more public debt. Now, when America faces a credit crunch, they say ``get more credit.'' They insist on borrowing even more money to finance another tax cut.

Admittedly, under Republican rule, the AMT, the Alternative Minimum Tax, turned into the ``Aggressive Middle-income Tax.'' Republicans were so busy treating the Federal Treasury like an ATM to finance tax cuts for the wealthy few that they largely forgot about the need to permanently fix the AMT affecting the middle class.

We need that permanent fix that President Bush continues to refuse to support, but correcting and reducing the AMT can be accomplished in a fiscally responsible manner. We Democrats understand that discipline is required for fiscal responsibility. You simply cannot make a mountain of debt disappear, say, the way they erased the CIA torture video.

This bill pays for the AMT fix in part by adopting most of the Abusive Tax Shelter Shutdown Act that I first authored in June of 1999, but which year after year House Republicans have blocked. Indeed, they blocked it even after Senate Republicans approved the measure.

Today, we can stop corporate tax dodgers from shifting the tax burden to middle-class families, ensuring both tax fairness and fiscal responsibility.

After having run the national debt up sky high, these Republicans clamor for another loan. ``Just give us another $50 billion for one more tax cut.'' And we Democrats are saying ``No, your debt addiction must stop today. You're way over your credit limit.''

The Republican borrow-and-spend approach that we've had for the last 7 years may be easy politics, but it's mighty hard on an economy where the dollar keeps falling so that it's worth even less today than a Canadian looney.

In this bill, one way that we stop this Republican credit card borrowing spree is by adopting much of the Abusive Tax Shelter Shutdown Act, which I first introduced in June 1999. It combats tax shelters by denying a deduction for transactions that lack what is called ``economic substance.'' What that means is no more tax evasion by corporations that rely on what one professor described as ``deals done by very smart people that, absent tax considerations, would be very stupid.'' And it is very stupid to allow them to continue doing that.

When the corporate tax dodgers are made to pay their fair share, as this bill does today, everybody else who plays by the rules can pay less. And that's what this bill does. We stop corporate tax evasion; we stop corporate tax dodgers from shifting the tax burden to middle-class families, ensuring today both tax fairness and fiscal responsibility.

Let's be very clear about what is being postponed and who is doing the postponing. When this President exercised his second veto, he postponed our desire to see that children get the health care that they need. And tonight, when Republicans in this House and their nicotine-peddler allies stand in the way of the door at the doctor's office, millions of children are denied the care that they deserve.

This President's holiday season veto of our efforts to aid these ailing children is neither sound fiscal policy nor good medicine. And for the President to make the incredible statement that the children of the working poor should ``just go to the emergency room,'' that is neither compassionate nor conservative. With his ideological blinders, he just doesn't seem to see the children of the working poor who are up all night with an aching ear, an abscessed tooth, or can't get antibiotics for strep throat. Those are the challenges working families face who do not have access to health care.

A healthy body, like an educated mind, is an opportunity that all of our children should be permitted to share. For as long as the President and a minority of this House stand between children and the lifesaving, pain-reducing care that they need, we will work to overcome their intransigence, whether it takes one time in January or another time thereafter. We cannot yield to those who would block our children from the care they need.

Mr. Speaker, most folks think of ``CAFE'' as a place to eat. Well, our cars and our trucks have been eating too much energy and emitting too much pollution for far too long, while our planet and our pocketbooks take a beating. Fuel efficiency standards have not been increased since 1975 when Paul Simon began singing ``Still Crazy After All These Years.''

Well, it is still crazy that 32 years later fuel economy standards have not been increased and we cannot get more miles per gallon despite both our dangerous overdependence on foreign oil and the growing threat of global warming. We need 21st-century fuel economy standards for 21st-century vehicles. And thanks to this bill, many of those vehicles will be fuel-efficient, plug-in hybrids, following the lead that we have taken with the Plug-in Partners campaign in Austin, Texas.

Texans alone will save $2 billion at the pump when these standards become fully effective. And consumers across America will save billions more from the requirement in this bill that utilities generate at least 15 percent of their energy from renewable energy. Keep in mind that even Governor Bush signed a renewable energy portfolio in Texas, and Texas is currently ahead of the country on this issue.

A green light for green energy encourages a new generation of job- creating innovation that we can export to the world--reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and, maybe even more importantly, fossilized thinking that we have heard so much of here this morning.

This bill will reduce the threat of both global war and global warming.

But there is an ``alien'' issue in this bill and only one alien issue--those who have been so alien to the freedoms we hold dear as Americans.

This is an Administration that has desecrated our Constitution, debased our values and repeatedly undermined our freedoms. For a party that purports to hate Big Government, these Republicans sure do seem to love Big Brother. They demand unlimited Executive power and unrestrained authority to intrude into our everyday lives. Today, we dare to impose some limitations on one of so many examples of their callous disregard of our liberties.

If even former Attorney General John Ashcroft, sitting there in his hospital bed in intensive care, if even he could recognize the illegality of the surveillance that Dick Cheney demanded, why shouldn't we in Congress be able to do the same? And if one telecommunications company had the courage to say ``no'' to this Administration's wrongdoing, why not the others? And why would we want to protect these corporate accomplices in the surreptitious destruction of our freedom from any accountability whatsoever?

Yesterday, we told this President ``no more blank checks for Iraq.'' And today we say no more unauthorized blanket surveillance of American citizens. Those of us who love liberty must stand up to this Administration's fear-mongering, to its continued leveraging of fear for its own political purposes.

As Mr. Cheney's current chief of staff once said and what many Americans now recognize is an irresponsible and unconstitutional expansion of Presidential power: ``We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop.''

Well, today we must be that force. This Congress must stay ``stop.''

Liberty is our strength. Fear is our enemy. This legislation strikes an appropriate balance to keep our families safe and ensure they remain free.

Mr. Speaker, some refer to this as a bridge fund connecting monies from one year to the next to finance this Iraq war.

A bridge is built to overcome an obstacle, and the obstacle here is George Bush. Granting this President 50 billion more dollars without reasonable restrictions to end this war is just building another bridge to nowhere.

Today, instead, we use this funding to build a bridge that brings our troops home by beginning a safe, orderly, phased redeployment from Iraq.

The President can no longer defy our Constitution as the sole ``decider.'' America has decided that he's wrong, dead wrong, too many deaths wrong, and it's elected representatives in this Congress are now declaring ``no more blank checks.''

Despite the sacrifices of our troops in this deadliest year of the war, this surge has failed completely to achieve its purpose of political progress. ``Retreat,'' you say; you've had a 5-year retreat from political reality. Progress, you say; not in Iraq, not in political reconciliation; progress, perhaps only in your self-defeating propaganda as you repeatedly waved your ``mission accomplished'' banner.

The continued cost of this war in hemorrhaged blood and $3 billion of taxpayer money every week is not acceptable or sustainable.

Mr. President, no more ``cut-and-run''. We will not cut these reasonable restrictions from this legislation, and we will not run from your veto threat.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

We are hearing the same old tired Republican borrow-and- spend rhetoric. They're all for our middle class tax relief and extension of important tax incentives; they just don't want to pay for it. They would rather borrow from our grandchildren. ``Borrow it, you'll like it.'' That's the misguided approach we've followed for 7 long years under this Bush administration. And look at the mess it has gotten us into: the dollar going down by the day, the specter of inflation and recession occurring at the same time. And now, because of our Democratic commitment to pay-as-you-go government, what we do in this bill is to reduce the revenues coming in by about $76 billion in mostly middle class tax relief over the next 5 years, and then replace those same revenues with another $76 billion.

It's balance. No new debt. And that is the type of fiscal responsibility that is anathema to our Republican colleagues and this administration. The best that they have been able to do is offer us more empty demands to just cut spending to pay for this legislation. President Bush sent his representative from the Treasury Department to our committee on this very bill, and we said, ``well, what specific spending cuts do you have to pay for this bill if you think that's the way to do it?'' And he scratched his head, and he couldn't think of a single spending cut, nor have our Republican colleagues sought any. Their approach is just more borrow and spend.

Let's be clear about it. Over the last 7 years, no one in this country has spoken louder about fiscal responsibility and cutting spending than President Bush, and no one in this country has done less about it.

Ole Rip Van Bush, he snoozed while the spending soared, and he just borrowed more and more with a happy face toward our children.

Today, we Democrats fulfill our pledge to stop making things worse so we eventually can be able to turn them

around. A vote for this bill today is a vote for middle-class tax relief, and it is also a long overdue vote to repudiate this Republican fantasy.

Mr. Speaker, today we take an important step forward in developing a comprehensive 21st century trade policy, recognizing that the benefits of trade cannot be measured solely in the volume of commerce that crosses international borders. A modern trade policy considers the impact of trade on workers and the environment, and this pact does that. Yet we have not fully achieved the goal of effective safeguards, and I believe that we are taking a step in the right direction; we're just not quite to the final destination. I believe it is better to approve this agreement as a step of genuine progress than to reject it.

This agreement includes unprecedented action to prevent illegal logging that is decimating rainforests in South America. For the first time in this agreement, environmental infractions can be enforced with something that is

more than a mere parking ticket. That's what was done in prior agreements where governments wrote fines to themselves no matter how great the environmental degradation. And today, finally, we have recognition in this trade agreement of the importance of multilateral environmental agreements that have been totally disregarded in previous trade pacts.

So this is real progress. But I am pleased that our chairman and the Trade Subcommittee chairman have recognized that there is more work that we can do and there are plans to conduct hearings, the first ever hearings in the Ways and Means Committee, on the environmental effects of trade as well as on the investor-state provisions.

While our legislative intent is unequivocal regarding the agreement's preamble that ``no foreign investors have greater rights than do American citizens,'' the potential harm to our health, our worker safety, and our environmental laws from abuse of investor-state provisions demand the removal of outmoded and flawed language that keeps cropping up in these agreements and should not appear in future agreements.

Acknowledging that we are making real progress with this agreement is really a recognition of just how far behind we have been. After years of total indifference to the concerns of workers and the environment, this agreement addresses those concerns, and almost any change represents progress. Today we move forward, and eventually together I believe that our ultimate goals will be fulfilled.

Madam Speaker, support for our troops does not begin on the battlefield and it must not end there. With approval of this legislation, Texas veterans will be eligible for below-market home loans of up to $325,000. Under the previous law, this benefit was restricted to veterans who had served prior to 1977. Today, we close the gap for the many who have been our heroes in the last 30 years who are not currently eligible. Those who have served to keep us safe in our homes deserve a chance of a home of their own. That is what this bill does.

We know that Veterans Day is approaching, but every day that we enjoy freedom bestowed by the sacrifices of those in uniform is a day that we should honor them. It is often said that we should honor our vets not only with our words but also with our deeds. Well, today we expand the opportunity for each vet to obtain a deed for their home. As veterans paid the price to build our great democracy, we can afford the price of building a foundation for their home ownership.

Madam Speaker, on this unfortunate day 5 years ago, a majority of this House enabled President Bush to proceed with his tragic ``go it alone'' war. He was dead certain then, and he was dead wrong then. He is dead certain today, and once again dead wrong. As a result of his choices, we approach now some 4,000 Americans whose lives have been lost, perhaps as many as another 30,000 who have been disabled.

Our Treasury, of course, has been disabled of what is scheduled to be probably a trillion or more dollars out of our Treasury that could have been spent right here at home on more causes that would have touched and protected the American people, their health care and economic security.

After this 5 years, I think it is important to look back and realize that despite the position of the Republican leadership, the Republican administration, and most of the Democratic administration, that in this House that day 5 years ago, a substantial majority of House Democrats voted against this war that should never have been launched.

We say today that the best course for this country to pursue is a new course, a change of course, not just more of the same old thing as the President proposed in his escalation, as he has implemented in his escalation, but a genuine change in course.

We need to end this endless war in Iraq. We really already have a blueprint of how to do it, how to implement a safe and orderly redeployment. The United Kingdom, the only one of our allies to offer any substantial help in Iraq, is already redeploying and seems to be indicating that their troops will be out of Iraq next year. We need to join that coalition, the coalition of refocusing on priorities here at home, because what we have done in Iraq has not made our families safer. As one independent study after another has shown, what we have done there has made our families much less safe than had this adventure never been launched.

For the last 5 years, this administration has repeatedly presented us with false choices. Remember, there would be a mushroom cloud, perhaps, if we waited to find the smoking gun to justify the invasion of Iraq to find all these weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Now we hear the same old deadly course is the only alternative to a ``precipitous withdrawal.'' Well, I don't know of anyone who is

proposing a precipitous withdrawal. There are other reasonable alternatives. We believe that the better course, a new course, is a safe, orderly, fully funded, phased redeployment. The British already have this underway.

The British already have this underway. We can follow their example, and we can follow the leadership of the American people reflected in one study after another, that they want that kind of change in course.

The choice to redeploy or not is a decision about priorities. While it is true that the big cost of what we are doing there is measured in the blood of the brave, we are also hemorrhaging some $3 billion in Iraq expenditures right out of our Treasury, week after week, month after month.

The President vetoed the Children's Health Insurance bill, because even too little for our children seems to be too much for him. Half a trillion dollars for a war already that he chose in Iraq, but for the children of America's working poor, he brusquely tells us, they can just go to the emergency room. With millions of children uninsured, it is too soon to declare ``mission accomplished'' there, just as it was too soon for him to make that declaration years back and many deaths back in Iraq.

In Iraq and with the Children's Health Insurance Program, we believe that the President is on the wrong course and that we cannot afford to wait until he departs office to end this war and to end the indifference that he has shown toward our children.

This fifth anniversary then should be commemorated with thoughtful consideration of alternatives for new courses and new avenues to address the tremendous damage that has been done by this faulty policy of preemptive war. I believe that we need in these next few months to continue to focus on the wrongs that have been committed, the damage that has been done, and bring people together behind a genuinely new course that we have not tried before, and that is a complete but phased, safe and orderly, fully-funded redeployment of our troops that will protect our families, that will assure our Nation's security, and will not continue with the hemorrhaging that we have suffered these last many years.

The Republicans charge that we want to help so many children with no insurance and that we want to allow them so much time to reconsider their indifference. We plead guilty as charged.

This President? It's like the book title, Dead Certain but also Dead Wrong.

The only question is how many children will be dead or will suffer with disease and disability until enough Members of this Congress are willing to stand up to the President and stand up for children.

President Bush has ideological blinders. He is never around the children of the working poor, the child who sobs with an earache, the child who moans as a result of an abscessed tooth, who has no antibiotics for a strep throat, and the poor parent who lacks the ability to do something about it.

The President's veto today is neither sound fiscal policy nor good medicine, and his solution that these Republicans embrace of ``just go to the emergency room'' is neither compassionate nor conservative.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution has rightly earned a place on this uncontested Suspension Calendar. So long as it is not misinterpreted as suggesting that Congress supports a long-term troop presence in Iraq, it merely generates another report that does no harm and not any significant good.

We know that, in addition to the blood of the brave, President Bush is hemorrhaging money as fast as he can get it, $3 billion every single month, building toward a price tag of $1 to $2 trillion on this tragedy.

The Senate version of Senators Kerry and Clinton has a better approach in demanding cost estimates on each alternative redeployment and in asking that one of these redeployments occur by the end of next year.

Our problem in Iraq is not a lack of reports, but a lack of the collective will in this Congress to initiate the change in course that President Bush will never undertake on his own. And I hope we have the courage of our troops, the courage to take that action as soon as possible.