Mr. Speaker, most of us returning to our districts have had an inordinate amount of inquiries and complaints, I am sure, from constituents about local developments and problems. Local hardships are the first things on the minds of my…
Mr. Speaker, most of us returning to our districts have had an inordinate amount of inquiries and complaints, I am sure, from constituents about local developments and problems. Local hardships are the first things on the minds of my constituents, and I am sure many of my colleagues have experienced the same problem.
People are concerned about the budget cuts at the city and State level, they are concerned about layoffs of people, they are concerned about the fact that there are property tax increases as a result of trying to make up for shortfalls in the budget of a State or of a city. So local hardships are on folks' minds.
I try to get them to understand that, okay, let us talk about it. You have your city councilman, you have your State officials. I certainly am concerned about the local hardships also. But I think it is important for them to understand that it is all interwoven. All politics inextricably are interwoven, and what is happening down here in Washington has an impact on what is happening at the local level, and the sooner we understand that, the better.
What we do in Washington generates a lot of local hardships and suffering. National and international blunders create pain and suffering in our neighborhoods. That is where the troops come from. That is where the soldiers who are on the frontline come from. They come out of our neighborhoods, and those blunders and things that we do, like the war in Iraq, which I consider a blunder, and the fact that the combat was successful has not made me a believer that that war was necessary. It is a blunder. Every life that was lost was lost unnecessarily, in my opinion. It will suck vitally-needed resources from the war against terrorism. We are in for a much more serious situation developing in Iraq, which I will talk about later.
The poor will bear the burden of the war in Iraq. They will bear the burden. They have already borne the burden of the combat. A study by the New York Times showed that the people who are the soldiers in our military forces now are folks from the neighborhood. Members of working families make up more than 90 percent of the forces.
We are proud of them. When there is a war that is really necessary, we are proud of the fact that they are there to fight the war. We do not want their lives to be lost unnecessarily. We do not want them to find themselves sitting in Iraq for the next 5 years. We do not want the terrible conditions to be foisted upon those who happen to be there, and there is no rotation out because we do not have troops to replace them with.
There are a number of problems which place the burden of the war on Iraq on the backs of the poor. Those are my constituents, and those of many of my colleagues. We want them to understand we are concerned and are working to relieve those burdens here in Washington.
There is a scenario shaping up for bloody guerilla warfare in Iraq. I am not a military expert, I am not on the committee, but I think there is some sophomoric knowledge, some examples of immediate history, not too far in the past, Vietnam, Chechnya, the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, the suicide bombers in Israel. There are a number of items there which should lead us to understand that we are in for serious trouble as things are developing in Iraq, and, if we do not do something quickly in Iraq more decisively, we are going to have many more unnecessary lives lost, we are going to have to spend a tremendous amount of resources. Dollars that ought to be going to make up these budget gaps in the cities and the States, those dollars will be going to fight a guerilla war in Iraq.
There is a way out of this. I was not for the war, but I certainly would like to see a successful occupation. We are there now, and we should pull out all stops and make certain we bring justice to the ordinary people of Iraq. That is the way to avoid guerrilla warfare.
Guerrilla warfare will never succeed unless it has a base in the population which is going to help hide it and nurture it and make it difficult for an occupying force to deal with. We did not have guerilla warfare to any great extent in Germany after the Second World War. We did not have it to a great extent in Japan. Yes, there was some guerilla warfare, and it is not talked about much, some holdouts, et cetera, but their efforts were quickly undercut by the way the population of Germany and Japan was treated by the occupying forces.
The same thing is true here, and we are in the process of failing in our slowness in responding to the needs of the general population in Iraq.
There is a formula for success, and I would like to see that formula carried out, because I do not want more of my constituents stuck in Iraq as an occupying power. It destroys their mental capacity after being there under such tremendous strain for a long time. The weather is 140 degrees. All kinds of things are taking place that impact on a human being, and I do not want a situation where we are stuck there with the poorest of the poor in the Armed Services having to carry out unnecessary duties.
Let us go now into a situation which will correct the situation properly and lead us to a point where we can declare success in Iraq and leave.
The Marshall Plan model is there, the Marshall Plan model we used in Europe. Why was it possible to overcome all the difficulties in Europe? Why did the Soviet Union, who at that time was given an opportunity to participate in the Marshall Plan, why did they refuse? It was because they knew that the general population would benefit in a way which would undercut their communist schemes and their own schemes for world domination, and they did not want the population to be satisfied in any way, a part of a partnership for progress and a partnership which took care of meeting the needs of ordinary people.
So the Marshall Plan model to spend money, to use our resources, our technical know-how, to improve the state of the lives of the people there, is very much necessary. We could rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq in one year. It may cost a great deal, but it will cost far less to go in to rebuild the infrastructure of the water systems and the electricity systems than it will cost us if the population becomes alienated and supportive of guerilla warfare. We have what it takes to do it.
I will come back and talk about the formula for success in the occupation of Iraq in greater detail.
There is a formula for success to relieve the suffering and the hardships in our States and our cities also, but it is all interwoven with the kinds of resources we put into places like Iraq. We do not have the money. We voted to appropriate $79 billion for the war in Iraq and related matters, and there is no money to deal with the problem of economic recession here at home. So we have to stop the blunders internationally in order to be able to deal with our problems closer to home.
All politics are inextricably interwoven. We must understand that clearly ourselves, and we should also make sure that our constituents understand.
In New York, I hear repeatedly complaints about, Congressman, why do you not do something about the fact that we just got an 18 percent property tax increase, an 18 percent property tax increase? On top of that, there is a ticket blitz. The cops are being encouraged to write tickets for everything. You drop a gum wrapper on the sidewalk, a candy wrapper, and they rush to write a ticket because they need the money. The citizens become the victims of the government to raise revenue.
Some of that is happening right here in Washington, D.C. also and some other big cities. The citizens are the targets for the people who are governing them in order to raise more revenue.
It is not funny at all. I had a lady come into my office crying because she was in an intersection and happened to be caught in the intersection when the light changed, and the policeman pulled her over and gave her a ticket for a moving violation. Under normal circumstances, that would not happen.
Layoffs are taking place in New York City and New York State, certainly New York City. People who get laid off are the last hired, so they get laid off, and inevitably they are the poorest people.
They laid off 1,200 paraprofessionals in the schools, the people who are in the classrooms with the teachers and who help to monitor the hallways and the lunchrooms. They are the people living in the neighborhood, they are the people that know the families, they are the people that know the children best. How are we going forward in our education reform and education improvement if we are going to take away that vital part as a result of budget cuts?
Budget cuts are reversing the progress that we were making in education reform. ``No Child Left Behind'' is just an empty slogan now because of the fact that the Federal Government is not following through on its promises.
Even worse, what we had going at the State and local level is being cut. You cannot talk about improving education if the budget cuts force you to lay off teachers. Therefore, the ratio of children to each teacher in the classroom inevitably gets higher.
One of the clear principles of reform that we have established is in the lower grades, you need fewer children per teacher. That reform goes out the window because of the fact you have no money to hire teachers, quality teachers.
There is an acceptance of teachers who are not certified and hiring teachers who are substitute teachers, because in many cases they are cheaper. The budget can take them, but it cannot pay for quality teachers. Quality teachers in some instances are being encouraged to retire because they are at the end of the scale in terms of salary payments and they drain more of the budget. Never mind the fact they are the ones who know how to teach the children, that they must mentor new teachers coming in, they are the ones that hold the system together. No, let us get them out, because we want to lower the cost of personnel.
So, these local hardships and cutbacks and raids on education progress doom any forward motion. We can forget about it.
Then promises, of course, are being broken for education here in Washington.
Local level problems are, in some ways, insoluble in terms of the financing. At the local level, the State level, there are constitutions, State constitutions, city charters, which say you cannot spend more money than you anticipate taking in, in revenue. They are bound by that and must operate within that stricture.
The Federal Government does not have to operate within that stricture. In fact, several speakers today, and one in particular tonight, pointed out the fact we are borrowing money on a wholesale basis. We may be borrowing about $1 trillion over the next few months. We are not bound by the revenue coming in. We are borrowing money, we are using Social Security funds.
The things that are important to the powers, the majority powers in Washington, the Republican majority, the things that are important to them are being funded. They are funding the tax cut, they are funding the war in Iraq, they are funding farm subsidies, which are far too high and unjust, they are funding the things that are important, and education happens to be one of the things not important enough.
I suppose most of our colleagues are like me. They were anticipating that if we follow the usual pattern, the Health and Human Services markup would be taking place after we come back from the July 4th recess and, in some cases, it would be one of the last of the markups. But to my surprise and shock, I have received information which states that we had the markup today, that the Health and Human Services markup has taken place, and it is over, and the education portion of the budget has been gutted in terms of promises made that are not being kept. There has been a broken promise in terms of overall education funding.
The majority party Republicans loudly proclaimed that they would provide a $3 billion increase from the previous year, over the previous year for the Department of Education. That $3 billion was cut down to $2.3 billion, or a 4.3 percent increase in education, which is the smallest dollar increase in 5 years and the smallest percentage increase of money for education in 8 years.
Let us just stop for a moment and think about the fact that education started way behind as a Federal expenditure, and over the last 8 years we have had steady increases, as the American people have made it quite clear to all of us. In every district I think it has been made clear by the constituents that they want the Federal Government to do more for education, even when ideologically, the majority of Republicans, the Republican majority did not care for the Department of Education and they tried to dismantle it, and they had to retreat. Not only did they retreat on the effort to dismantle the Department of Education, but they began to appropriate large amounts of funds for education in response to their own constituency. Everybody sees the commonsense wisdom of more support for education.
To go back to the war in Iraq for a moment, since the President declared victory in Iraq, we have lost more than 50 lives. I think 14 of those lives have been lost as a result of hostile activities, but the others have been lost as a result of accidents. What are accidents? Why are accidents killing so many of our soldiers? What is the problem? The problem is, I think, that we have a high-tech operation with respect to our military, and too few of our soldiers really know how to operate all of the equipment and the weaponry that we have. Helicopters in particular need to be investigated because a large number of accidents happen there. But just the rapid movement of vehicles and collisions on the ground seem to be a major problem. So education in our military to produce a better-equipped military is as important as education anywhere else.
Returning to our education appropriations process, the No Child Left Behind Act, which had great fanfare when the President signed it, he promised America's school would now be on a path of reform and a new path of results. Our schools now would have greater resources to meet those goals. That is what the President promised. He stated that we have accountability from all 50 States now. But the problem is, where are the resources? This bill provides, the markup today provides an increase of only $381 million, or 1.6 percent over the current funding level for the No Child Left Behind Act. That is a freeze in real terms. We can provide $1 trillion in tax cuts but, at the same time, this bill does not even come close to meeting the funding levels authorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, which would require another $8 billion in fiscal year 2004.
In the case of special education, we have made promises and have a $1.2 billion shortfall. I think it is important for all of our colleagues to wake up to the fact that this is on the table right now, it has been done, decided in the markup in the Committee on Appropriations responsible for Health and Human Services; and we should move now if we are going to have any effective counterattack before this appropriations bill hits the floor.
Title I funding, we have a shortfall there. We are $334 million short, since it provides only a $666 million increase requested by the President instead of the overall amount originally contemplated. College education, the increase there is another broken promise.
In the agencies under the Health and Human Services appropriation subcommittee, the Institutes of Health have received a great decrease after having 15 percent annual increases over the last 5 years. We recognize the need to deal with the use of science, the best
science in the world to come to grips with the more rapid-reaching of ways to contain diseases and to provide cures for the incurable items that are still on the agenda, but that 15 percent increase has now been cut to a mere 2.5 percent increase.
The health care safety net is not taken care of. Bioterrorism, a concern that the Department of Homeland Security has talked about quite a bit; bioterrorism preparedness under the Republican bill received $94 million less than they received this year.
The Department of Health and Human Services asked for $100 million to get the Nation better prepared for an influenza pandemic, and the bill provides only half of that amount.
The nursing shortage is not dealt with properly and, of course, when it comes to unemployment insurance to deal with the most important factor in our recession, a the fact that people have no money to spend, that is underfunded too.
Low-income heating assistance was greatly cut also. Promises have been broken. Why? Because when it comes to the domestic budget, we plead bankruptcy. We do not have the money. We have enough money in the domestic budget, of course, to provide the biggest tax cuts in history. We have enough money in the overall budget to provide a $79 billion special allocation for the war in Iraq and related matters. What we want to do, really, we can find the money for.
So the local hardships and the immediate problems faced by education are not unrelated to our blunders at a national and international level. The tax cut is a national blunder. It is a great economic disaster that we are going to suffer for, not only nationally, but it is going to create pain and suffering in our neighborhoods.
The war in Iraq is a blunder because it will suck a large number of vitally needed resources. Human life is sacred, and every human life lost in the war in Iraq is the first problem that I have, the first problem that anybody who believes in the sacredness of human life has. Soldiers have to die; military activities are necessary. But only when they are necessary should they be conducted, only when they are necessary. Only when they are necessary should we place the life of a soldier at risk. Only when it is necessary should soldiers have to die.
I am not a pacifist. I was in favor of immediately going to stop the Taliban in Afghanistan and to extract from them al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. They were immediate enemies. They made no effort to hide the fact that they were there in Afghanistan. So it is not a pacifist sentiment that drives me; it is a reverence for human life that only when it is necessary, as it was in that case, and as military action is in many other cases, should it happen.
Was it necessary to lose lives in Iraq? And we have lost relatively few, and we like to boast about that; but there will be more lives lost, I assure my colleagues, in Iraq. And it is not necessary.
A lot of focus has been turned in the direction of the weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction are thoroughly being analyzed, and the case for that, whether they exist or whether we deliberately oversold the existence of weapons of mass destruction or not, all that is being very well aired in the press. I think in many cases the media got in bed with the war; and ``embeddedness'' had really a double meaning. The media that got in bed with the war and praised it and covered up certain kinds of things are feeling guilty now, and they are going to extremes to examine the whole question of weapons of mass destruction. When did we know what we know, who exaggerated, how incompetent is our military intelligence? Was it the incompetence of our military intelligence, or was it the White House insisting that the facts be twisted?
I am confident that we are going to come out with some real answers there, but we are focusing so much on that, we are losing sight of the fact that there is a situation developing in Iraq which is dangerous and will engulf us in a war that is going to take a lot more lives, a lot more resources.
The war in Iraq already has pinned down, we say 150,000, of our troops; but we never give the correct figure. I am sure we have at least 200,000 there already, but we are going to need more. We cannot occupy a country of 24 million people with 150,000 or 200,000 troops if that population is hostile. We are making that population more hostile because, of course, we are zeroing in now on the neighboring nation of Iran.
Why is activity in Iran going to impact on what happens in Iraq? Because the majority of the people in Iraq are Shiite Muslims. Shiite Muslims are the predominant group in Iran. And one of the alliances that we expected to form was, with our liberating troops, was the Shiite population that had been exploited, oppressed under Saddam Hussein, because Saddam Hussein is Sunni. The Sunnis had oppressed the Shiites. Well, the Shiites, we say, did welcome us in places where there were large Shiite populations. We had the least amount of trouble in the heated combat and even now in the occupation.
But if we are going to go into a situation now where a great deal of pressure is being brought on Iran, and it may be necessary, Iran may be the real problem, and we should not be in Iraq; if we are looking for nuclear weapons, it may be that Iran is far closer to building a nuclear weapon, buying parts maybe from North Korea than is acceptable. But the Shiite population in Iraq will not be an ally. So we are going to have to worry about the guerilla warfare problem even more if we lose the loyalty and the support of the Shiites.
We are neglecting some other things, as I said before, while we pour our resources and our troops into Iraq. We are neglecting Pakistan. I have said many times that I know a little bit more about Pakistan than I do most of the Muslim nations because I have a Pakistan population in my congressional district. They are major allies of the United States. They were in the Cold War; they were in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Pakistan has always been with the U.S.
But in my opinion, we have always given Pakistan very second-class, shabby treatment. The amount of aid presently going to Pakistan from the United States is less than $500 million at this point. Yet Pakistan is a major ally of ours. Pakistan, its government, put itself on the line from the very beginning in the war against terrorism. They allowed our troops in, they have cooperated in many ways, but we still are neglecting Pakistan. We are so preoccupied with focusing on Iraq that we are ignoring a major ally.
What is the danger of this? The danger is that Pakistan's government is on our side, but Pakistan is still a Muslim nation. Pakistan is still the home of the Taliban. The Taliban were created in the religious schools of Pakistan before they marched into Afghanistan and united to take over that country. This is not a great secret. One does not need the CIA to tell us this; it is well-known. So the pressure on the Pakistan Government is enormous, and there were parts of the Pakistan military that helped to train the Taliban, the parts of the Pakistan military that is very sympathetic to al Qaeda and the final situation is Pakistan already has nuclear weapons.
Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and we know that. Everybody knows that. They are right there, available. If al Qaeda, the Taliban, the forces inside Pakistan were to pull a coup and take over the government of Pakistan, I think we would be forced to react militarily immediately. We would be forced into a situation which is very dangerous for a long, long time to come, with the bomb in the hands of terrorists for sure. No speculation.
So why are we so reluctant to maximize our resources in Pakistan? If ever there was a nation that deserved to have a massive Marshall Plan model, it is Pakistan. We should go in to help the economy of Pakistan, to help the education structure of Pakistan. We should see that expenditure as being far more worthwhile and productive in the fight against terrorism than many of the expenditures we are making in Iraq. In Iraq, the poor will bear the burden of the war. As I said before, people from my district, the working families, produce the soldiers.
The winds of war are blowing and we are ignoring them. We do not seem to talk very much about the fact that guerilla warfare is a possibility, because every day there are more incidents taking place of attacks on American soldiers in Iraq. More incidents
take place every day. We have decided to have some counteroperations, to sweep through certain areas and intimidate certain folks, and even round up certain operatives who probably are getting ready to launch guerilla warfare, if they are not already involved.
All of that is necessary, but I do not see any overall plan that says, look, we do not want to have guerilla warfare break out in Iraq; we do not want a guerilla warfare situation. And the worst element in a guerilla warfare situation is a population that is friendly to the guerrillas; the population that hates the liberators. That plan is not there. The understanding is not there.
I think that it is not required that you have a great deal of military experience in order to understand what is going on. A group of sophomores huddled around a table at lunch time could see the unfolding of the situation, it seems to me, and understand where it is going. A group of sophomores could say, look at the situation that took place in Afghanistan, when the Soviets tried to occupy Afghanistan. They won the comeback, then they tried to occupy the territory, and their losses were so great until they finally just gave up and pulled out because the guerilla warfare was unbearable.
Now, I mentioned to an expert 2 weeks ago, I said, do we not have to worry about the escalating guerilla activities? These incidents that are spontaneous right now, but they are probing and they are experimenting and they are finding out certain kinds of weaknesses. Do we not have to worry about something like a Tet offensive that took place in Vietnam in the City of Saigon?
For those of you too long to remember the Vietnam War, the war in Vietnam was declared a success and was moving along at a jolly pace when suddenly there was a big offensive launched by the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong are a guerilla operation, of course. And this primarily took place in the City of Saigon. From the destruction that was wrought on the day of the Tet offensive, from that day on, we know now that our military understood that the war was lost. They would not give up. They would not admit certain things. But that Tet offensive of guerilla warfare sort of sent the signal of how powerful the forces were.
I raised that issue with this expert at a meeting a couple of weeks ago and he said to me, well, the Vietnamese had jungles to hide in. The Iraqis do not have any jungles. It is wide open desert. So we do not have to worry about that kind of guerilla warfare. I did not press the point, but the Tet offensive took place mostly in the City of Saigon. In the city. And it is in the city, in urban warfare, where our high- tech weaponry and equipment has the least advantage. We are at a great disadvantage with high-tech warfare in urban warfare, in house-to-house warfare. You are so close to the enemy that blockbuster bombs do not do you any good because they will kill you as well as the enemy.
We are in a situation where the enemy knows the terrain better than we do. We are in a situation where the enemy will have the support of the local population, unless we take steps to end that. So we ought to fear and we ought to be very worried about a massive, bloody war, a guerilla war, developing in the next 6 months in Iraq. And when that develops, great amounts of human lives are going to be lost. And to restore and get back to where we should be is going to be very costly. We ought to look at it now and look for solutions now.
I believe in peace because I think human life is sacred, but I take off my hat and I salute our men and women in our Armed Forces. I think every soldier is a hero. I take exception to some people who would make these gradations and degrees. This veteran did not see combat, therefore he does not deserve the same benefits as the guy who saw combat. This veteran did not even go overseas or this veteran went overseas but he spent all his time behind the lines, he was in a unit that buried soldiers.
Anybody who puts on a uniform is a hero, because once you put the uniform on and you take the oath, your life does not belong to you. You go where you are sent. And it is only by the grace of God or by accident or whatever that you do not end up in a place where your life is more at risk than another. Nobody chooses where they go once they become a soldier. So every soldier, every person in the military ought to be saluted as a hero from the time they put the uniform on.
Let us not degrade them by saying, you did not see enough combat, or some guys saw a whole year of combat so they deserve more benefits than the guy who saw one week of combat. Everybody is a hero and ought to be treated that way. Certainly the people who see combat deserve to be treated as heroes.
I like the model established by the Vietnam Memorial Wall. For the first time, the Vietnam Memorial Wall made us look at every soldier who got killed as a hero. Their names are on the wall. I think that is a great monument, one of the greatest war monuments ever created, and I think it is a peace monument. Because when you have to look at human beings individually, then you know the horror of war. I have gone to that wall with people looking for their relatives or friends. I went with my young brother, who not so long ago was a sergeant major in the Army, 20-some years. I went with him to look for a friend of his that he went to high school with. And I saw the tears in his eyes when he found the friend's name on the wall. Just a friend.
Think of all the mothers and the fathers and the relatives who go to that wall and cry over lost loved ones, 58,000 now. But I think it is a monument that lets us know that war is hell, war is horrible, and not a single life should be put at risk and lost unnecessarily.
They used to have tombs of unknown soldiers. They still have them. All over the world you will find these tombs of unknown soldiers. Well, I hope that there will be no new tombs of unknown soldiers. Soldiers should be known. The names of all the soldiers who died should be known. All the soldiers who put on a uniform and were available to die should be known.
All human life is sacred, and until we recognize how sacred it is, we will not have the national policies or international policies which are worthy of the people who make up the Nation. The people who make up the Armed Forces, as I said before, 90 percent are from working families. Everybody should realize the importance of working families to America. If you did not realize it before, realize it now. It should have an impact on our policies.
We should look at the minimum wage that is $5.15 an hour for the last 3 or 4 years. Working families are not given an opportunity to earn a decent living. We should look at OSHA, at health and safety requirements in the workplace. There are a number of programs for poor children that we should look at.
We have been struggling this week in the Committee on Education and the Workforce with Head Start. Head Start is a successful program. They have not been able to malign Head Start or discredit Head Start. Despite the great success of Head Start, there are people who still only want to nickel and dime Head Start. They do not want to raise the amount of money we appropriate for Head Start so that Head Start can hire decent teachers and keep them.
One of the biggest problems with Head Start is they cannot keep any teachers. Because the teachers are paid so poorly, they are always moving on to some other school or education arena. So we get only new teachers in Head Start, teachers who cannot teach anywhere else. Same thing is true in poor schools.
We have had two bills in the last 10 days in the Committee on Education and the Workforce where we have tried to raise the amount of forgiveness on student loans so that people who teach in poor areas would have their loans forgiven if they teach for 5 years. We tried to raise the amount of loan forgiveness for Head Start teachers. We tried to have some Federal incentive and this would show that we have placed our priorities in the right place. But we lost. The only budging that we got, the only movement we got from the majority of Republicans was a forgiveness of the loans for math and science teachers, which is a victory still, but not nearly enough.
Math and science teachers have their loans forgiven if they teach for a 5-year period, up to $17,500. That is in the bill that will be coming to the floor, and we
would like to make another try to expand that so that at the very bottom in early childhood and Head Start so that we also try to encourage teachers with that kind of incentive. We do not have the money. Those are poor children. They need a good start in life. We forget that they are going to become the soldiers who go off to fight the wars. They are going to become the heroes whose names are listed on another Vietnam Memorial Wall, or whatever the next wall will be. I hope in the future, all our heroes are honored in a similar fashion; that somewhere their names are known.
We have a scenario for a bloody warfare about to happen in Iraq. We ought to take a hard look at it. I am concerned because I do not want the members of my district telling me that I did not do what is necessary, all that I could do to protect their relatives, their children who are over there. Many went in the National Guard not expecting ever to see combat. National Guard units have been called. Many are in the regular service because they wanted to be all that they could be and come out and get an education using the benefits promised by the services, which is great for a young person who has reached a dead end, who cannot afford to go to college, who cannot afford to pay tuition.
There are many motivations. But once they are in the situation, they certainly should be treated like the heroes that they are.
We had a rotation system in Vietnam. It was not passed by Congress, it was a matter of common sense which was finally figured out by the military in Vietnam so that the system did not leave anybody in combat for more than a year. In the last 2 years of the Vietnam War, you did a year and you were out. There was a rotation. There is no such rotation that has been established in Iraq. So we have 140 degree temperatures over there. No beds for them to sleep in.
My colleague, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), went to visit, and she talked about the horrible situation that both men and women have to live in in Iraq. Those soldiers. And the most terrible thing is that once you have a hostile population, every time you step out on the street, you do not know when a sniper is going to be shooting at you or you will confront a group of people you do not know is friendly or might be a suicide bomber.
Can you imagine how nerve-wracking that is, and how many nervous basket cases we have if people have to stay there and have no idea when they are going to be leaving because we have no rotation system? Why do we not have a rotation system? Because the administration is blundering again. They are determined not to admit we need more forces there.
We need more troops there. We need more troops, period. We may have to go into a draft to get those troops. That is the last thing that the powers that be in Washington want to admit, that we are in a war now requiring large amounts of personnel, and they may have to draft people. It is better to admit it sooner and have less deaths than to wait until later and be forced into it.
We have scenarios, as I said before. We know what happened in Vietnam. The Tet Offensive showed us how effective guerrilla warfare can be in the city, not just the jungle. And the Russian attempt to occupy Afghanistan is another obvious example of what guerrilla warfare is like and how difficult it is to handle it.
Right now Chechnya, a relatively small province in Russia, will not be subdued. Hatred can reach a level, fanaticism can reach a level which makes it almost impossible to get back to peace. And the suicide bombers in Israel are another example of a level where it is difficult to get back to establishing peace.
But what it says in those situations, great harm can be done and we are placing our personnel at great risk. We need to do whatever is necessary to establish some new security.
First, the formula for success in the occupation of Iraq has to begin with the establishment of proper security. Proper security means if more troops are needed, we need to establish proper security. Before we can do anything else, we need to block the escalation toward guerrilla warfare with the support of the population. Do I sound like a war monger? No. I was against the war in Iraq. I want to save lives. I do not want one blunder to lead to the loss of more lives than the original blunder took.
I would like to see us have more troops in Iraq to secure it. Once we secure it, let us institute a Marshall Plan. What is the element of the Marshall Plan that is the most important? Let us give people electricity. Let us give the populous water. They had electricity and water before; they do not have it now. Is it so difficult to get electricity and water? If the soldiers and the local population cannot do it, we should form a corps of plumbers and electricians. We may need to pay them double for leaving their families and traveling across the ocean and going into an area that is not secure, but pay them whatever is necessary. In less than a year, we could reestablish all of the electricity that existed before with a corps of plumbers and electricians.
It is not a great undoable task. It requires money. Spend the money that way instead of spending it fighting guerrilla warfare that is going to be endless. It is a slow period for the sheet metal workers; let them form a corps. Let us let the iron workers, the people who tore down the wreckage at the World Trade Center, let them go, organize them, and do what has to be done to restore the infrastructure in Iraq and win the hearts and minds of the civilian population. Let the workers go to the aid of their fellow workers. We have the soldiers over there; let the working families send the additional heroes to restore electricity and restore water and other systems.
The problem is the way this administration operates, they would spend a lot of time figuring who is going to get the contract, who is going to profit from it, how much knowledge can you get from your contributors, and a lot of other things that come into play. We need to do this and do it fast.
I remember that the earthquake in Oakland devastated a part of Oakland; and if the freeway and a number of things had been left that way for a year, it would have wrecked the economy of that area of California. We appropriated first $6 billion and later $8 billion, and they marshaled all of the technology, engineering skills, and in less than a year, the damage from that earthquake was restored and its impact on the economy was nil. It can be done. We do not need to have somebody come down from heaven and wave a magic wand. It is American know-how. Let us spend it up front to bring justice to Iraq instead of spending it in a bottomless pit, guerrilla warfare.
Finally, alleviating hardships here in the States does not require heavenly intervention. I want to call Members' attention to an article that appeared in The New York Times, Tuesday, June 10, issue which is very revealing. I find it very inspiring. It is about a colleague of ours, Bob Riley, before he ran for governor in Alabama. As a Republican Congressman, he had a nearly perfect record of opposing any legislation supported by liberal Americans for democratic action, or anything else that was considered liberal.
Why am I going to talk about Bob Riley? Because I think to relieve the hardships in our cities and States, to stop the budget cuts, to stop the cuts in education which force us to increase the size of classrooms, to stop the cuts which force us to push the best teachers into retirement, to stop all this, we need to marshal our revenue in a different way and change our priorities, and in order to do that you need a political base.
One of the big problems with taxes and tax policies in America is that only the majority party, the Republican Party, has ever really showed great concern about tax policy. I mean, the kind of concern that it merits. I think the Democratic Party deserves to be chastised for not really thoroughly exploring what the meaning of tax policy is in the context of American politics.
Bob Riley, forced in a situation where Alabama is starved for revenue, and he is now the governor, put aside any right wing ideology and has come out with common sense that we all should take a hard look at. Governor Riley has stunned many of his conservative supporters and enraged the State's powerful farm and lumber lobbies by pushing a tax reform plan
through the Alabama legislature that shifts a significant amount of the State's tax burden from the poor to wealthy individuals and corporations. And Governor Riley has framed the issue in starkly moral terms arguing that the current Alabama tax system violates biblical teachings because Christians are prohibited from oppressing the poor. That is Governor Bob Riley who used to sit here in this Chamber on the other side. I salute Governor Bob Riley.
If Governor Riley's tax plan becomes law, and it has to be ratified in September by the voters, it will be a major victory for the poor people of Alabama if it becomes law. But win or lose, Alabama's tax reform crusade is posing a pointed question to the Christian Coalition, focus on the family and other groups that seek to import Christian values into national policy. The question has been asked, if Jesus were active in politics today, would he be lobbying for the poor? This is from a New York Times article of Tuesday, June 10.
Alabama's tax system has long been brutally weighted against the less fortunate. The State income tax kicks in for families that earn as little as $4,600. Even Mississippi does not tax income until it is over $19,000. Alabama also relies heavily on sales tax which runs as high as 11 percent, and their sales tax applies to groceries and infant formula as well as everything else.
The upshot is wildly regressive Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in State and local taxes while those who made over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.
I would like to read that again:
Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in State and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 per year pay just 4.1 percent.
A main reason Alabama's poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The State allows big landowners to value their land using ``current use'' rules, which significantly low-ball its worth.
Governor Riley's plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in additional desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities. It would raise the income threshold at which families of four start paying taxes to more than $17,000. Instead of having to pay taxes, those who make $4,600, you would not have to pay State taxes until you get to $17,000. It would scrap the Federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies in the timber industry a great deal of money.
Alabamians are used to hearing their politicians make religious arguments, and Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system.
Let us understand what is happening here. This Governor--he must be some kind of genius--has gotten this tax package through the legislature already, but in Alabama you have to ratify it. The ratification will take place in September, which means that the poor people of Alabama will have a chance to vote to support what this Governor is doing or not. In terms of votes, they certainly outnumber the rich. It is something to watch.
Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system.
I repeat: Governor Riley thinks that he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system.
Quoting Governor Riley, ``I've spent a lot of time studying the New Testament and it has three philosophies: Love God, love each other, and take care of the least among you,'' he said. ``I don't think anyone can justify putting an income tax on someone who makes $4,600 a year.''
Religious groups could provide the margin of victory in September. Susan Pace Hamill, a University of Alabama tax professor with a theological degree from an evangelical divinity school, caused a stir recently with a law review article called ``An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics'' which makes an evangelical case for making the tax system fairer. She plans to train speakers this summer to take the theological argument to the grassroots. Kimble Forrister, the State coordinator of Alabama Arise, a coalition that advocates for poor people, expects the 100 church groups that are part of his organization to hold church-basement workshops this summer to get the word out to their congregations.
Many theologians argue that it is far easier to find support in the Bible for policies that help the poor than for any cut in the dividend taxes. If Governor Riley's crusade succeeds this summer, Alabama may offer the Nation a model for a new kind of tax system, one where the devil is not in the details.
End of quote from the New York Times article.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit the New York Times article of Tuesday, June 10, entitled ``What Would Jesus Do? Sock it to Alabama's Corporate Landowners'' for the Record in its entirety.
[From the New York Times, June 10, 2003]
What Would Jesus Do? Sock It to Alabama's Corporate Landowners
(By Adam Cohen)
Montgomery, AL.--If the religious right had called up
Central Casting last year to fill the part of governor, it
could hardly have done better than the teetotaling, Bible-
quoting businessman from rural central Alabama who now heads
up the state. As a Republican congressman, Bob Riley had a
nearly perfect record of opposing any legislation supported
by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.
But Governor Riley has stunned many of his conservative
supporters, and enraged the state's powerful farm and timber
lobbies, by pushing a tax reform plan through the Alabama
Legislature that shifts a significant amount of the state's
tax burden from the poor to wealthy individuals and
corporations. And he has framed the issue in starkly moral
terms, arguing that the current Alabama tax system violates
biblical teachings because Christians are prohibited from
oppressing the poor.
If Governor Riley's tax plan becomes law--the voters still
need to ratify it in September--it will be a major victory
for poor people, a rare thing in the current political
climate. But win or lose, Alabama's tax-reform crusade is
posing a pointed question to the Christian Coalition, Focus
on the Family and other groups that seek to import Christian
values into national policy: If Jesus were active in politics
today, wouldn't he be lobbying for the poor?
Alabama's tax system has long been brutally weighted
against the least fortunate. The state income tax kicks in
for families that earn as little as $4,600, when even
Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabama also relies
heavily on its sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent
and applies even to groceries and infant formula. The upshot
is wildly regressive: Alabamians with incomes under $13,000
pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes,
while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.
A main reason Alabama's poor pay so much is that large
timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state
allows big landowners to value their land using ``current
use'' rules, which significantly low-ball its worth.
Individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income
taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states
allow, a boon for those in the top brackets.
Governor Riley's plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in
desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities.
It would raise the income threshold at which families of four
start paying taxes to more than $17,000. It would scrap the
federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for
dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the
current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies
like Weyerhaeuser and Boise Cascade, which own hundreds of
thousands of acres, millions in taxes. Governor Riley says
that money is too tight to lift the sales tax on groceries
this time, but that he intends to work for that later.
Church and state are not as separate in Alabama as they are
in most places. (The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme
Court was in federal court last week defending his decision
to install a 2.5-ton rendering of the Ten Commandments in the
state's main judicial building.) Alabamians are used to
hearing their politicians make religious arguments, and
Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that
Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system. ``I've
spent a lot of time studying the New Testament, and it has
three philosophies: love God, love each other, and take care
of the least among you,'' he said. ``I don't think anyone can
justify putting an income tax on someone who makes $4,600 a
year.''
The state's progressive voters, including many in the
sizable African-American community, have backed tax-law
changes like these for years. And reform-minded business
leaders, who see such tax changes and improved schools as
crucial to the state's economic development, have promised to
spend millions of dollars on television ads in support of the
September referendum.
But religious groups could provide the margin of victory.
Susan Pace Hamill, a University of Alabama tax professor with
a theological degree from an evangelical divinity school,
caused a stir with a law review
article called ``An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-
Christian Ethics,'' which makes an evangelical case for
making the tax system fairer. She plans to train speakers
this summer to take the theological argument to the grass
roots. Kimble Forrister, the state coordinator of Alabama
Arise, a coalition that advocates for poor people, expects
the 100 church groups that are part of his organization to
hold church-basement workshops this summer to get the word
out to their congregations.
The Christian Coalition of Alabama has not yet taken a
position on the September vote, but it has been speaking out
against the plan's tax increases. In an interview yesterday,
John Giles, the group's president, had trouble pointing to a
biblical passage that directly supported his opposition to
new taxes, but he referred to Jesus' statement about
rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The key question, he
argued, is, ``How much is Caesar's?''
As the Bush administration and the religious right fight to
put theology more squarely into public policy discussions,
they are going to have to be ready for arguments like the
ones coming out of Alabama. Many theologians argue that it is
far easier to find support in the Bible for policies that
help the poor than for, say, a cut in the dividend tax. If
Governor Riley's crusade succeeds this summer, Alabama may
offer the nation a model for a new kind of tax system: one
where the Devil is not in the details.
Why have I started my closing remarks with that article? Because I think if ever there was a formula for success in relieving suffering and hardships in the States and cities, it is an adoption of a simple Christian ethic that those who have the least deserve the least amount of taxes and the most amount of help from their government.
I have two pieces of legislation that I have introduced: One is called the Domestic Budget Protection Act, H.R. 1804. I have discussed that previously on the floor. That calls for a situation which would relieve the pressure on the domestic budget by forcing the consideration of all future military actions, like the war in Iraq, to be paid for by corporations. We once had a surcharge. During the war in Vietnam, during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, we had a surcharge on corporate profits to help pay for the war. We should go back to that so that the payment for the war is taken out of the budget as a competing factor for domestic programs like education, health care, a prescription drug benefit, et cetera.
I have a second bill, H.R. 2335, which is called the Emergency Revenue Sharing Act. The money we save should be spent in relieving the burdens that the cities and the States are now forced to deal with during this recession period. If we took the $79 billion, or an equivalent amount of the amount that we appropriated for the war in Iraq and related matters, and sent it to the States and the cities, we would end the layoffs of school teachers and personnel in the schools, we would end the pressure on our civil servants, and we would end the kind of oppression of our taxpayers that has taken place through property tax increases and ticket blitzes.
All politics are inextricably interwoven. What happens at the local level is inseparable from what happens down here. What we do here is inseparable from the hardships that are created at the local level.