[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 31 (Tuesday, March 15, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H1502-H1503]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            SMART SECURITY AND $81 BILLION IRAQ SUPPLEMENTAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, this week Congress is debating the 
President's request for more than 81 billion additional dollars to 
finance his misadventure in Iraq.
  I will oppose this bill because I support the troops and have deep 
admiration for their courage. I will vote against the supplemental 
because I believe our brave soldiers are being used as pawns by their 
civilian superiors, whose wastefulness and incompetence is betraying 
their duty to keep us safe.
  This supplemental will bring the overall Iraq price tag to more than 
$200 billion. What are the American people getting for their $200 
billion? What kind of return on their investment?
  We have created a hotbed of terrorism in Iraq. We have earned the 
wrath of the entire Muslim world. Meanwhile, we have a Swiss cheese 
homeland security system, and we have lost 1,500 of our troops, not to 
mention the more than 11,000 wounded and the many who will suffer 
mental trauma for the rest of their lives.
  The Center For American Progress did a study of what $200 billion 
could really buy in terms of our security here in the United States of 
America.

[[Page H1503]]

  Five billion dollars would give our ports and waterways the 
protection they need from attacks.
  It would cost only $1 billion to screen all air passenger cargo.
  Just $2.6 billion would allow our rail and public transit systems to 
meet important security requirements.
  Just think of what we could do at home for $200 billion: universal 
preschool education, comprehensive health coverage for every American, 
a safe child care system that will give peace of mind to all working 
families.
  There would still be plenty left over to implement a SMART security 
agenda that would be about preventing war, not preemptive war; that 
would eliminate wasteful programs like missile defense and the many 
Cold War relics that are doing nothing to keep us safe.
  SMART security would mean robust multilateral alliances to stop the 
spread of terrorism, vigorous inspection regimes to stop weapons of 
mass destruction proliferation, and an ambitious humanitarian 
development program that tackles the poverty and despair that foster 
terrorism in the first place.
  $200 billion, that is about $675 for every American man, woman and 
child, which is not to say that the sacrifices of this war have been 
spread evenly throughout the population.
  The well-connected and the wealthy have not been asked to sacrifice, 
even though rolling back the Bush tax cuts would go a long way toward 
paying this enormous bill.
  No, the ones who have sacrificed are coming home in flag-draped 
coffins because they were sent to depose a regime that represented no 
imminent threat to our security. Their families did not get a tax cut. 
The only thing they got from the government was a devastating letter 
that Donald Rumsfeld did not even bother to sign personally.
  The most disturbing thing about the President's request for more Iraq 
funding is the lack of accountability. Why are we writing another check 
for a mission that has been so badly botched? Who is being held 
responsible for the misuse of the money we have already approved?
  If Secretary Rumsfeld and the Pentagon could not manage to get body 
armor to our troops with the first $100 billion we gave them, why would 
we trust them with even more hard-earned American tax dollars?
  Where is this money going? How much of it is enriching war 
profiteers? Why did the Army waive its usual procedures and make full 
payment to Halliburton, despite legitimate questions about overbilling 
and financial mismanagement?
  Why can we not get a congressional investigation into the $9 billion 
that mysteriously disappeared from the books at the Coalition 
Provisional Authority?
  If the President wants more money for this war, he can take it out of 
something he cares about instead of taking it out of the hides of the 
American people.
  No more blank checks. I will vote against this supplemental, and I 
urge my colleagues to do the same.

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