[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 38 (Thursday, March 30, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1365-H1366]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     IRAQ AND A COMMONSENSE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, with this Congress blindly passing each and 
every one of the President's requests for more money for the war in 
Iraq, which is soon to exceed $300 billion in total costs, the time is 
long overdue for a little common sense about how we spend the American 
people's money.
  Earlier this month I introduced new legislation, the Common Sense 
Budget Act of 2006, legislation that puts some sanity back into the 
Nation's fiscal policy. This bill already has the support of more than 
35 cosponsors.
  It is beyond dispute that this administration, in tandem with the 
Republican Congress, has been, to put it mildly, less than fiscally 
responsible. And are they spending on the neediest Americans, those who 
need a hand up quite often just to make it from one day to the next? 
No, of course not. Instead, they fattened up the Pentagon and lavished 
wealthy special interests with subsidies and tax breaks.
  Last fall's budget debate actually exposed the staggering hypocrisy 
of it all because the very same congressional majority that is 
responsible for the fiscal decadence of the last several years suddenly 
started lecturing about thrift and responsibility. They were shocked, 
shocked, that spending had been going on around here.
  Federal money for Katrina reconstruction, they decided, had to be 
offset by budget cuts. Deficit spending is okay, apparently, when it 
comes to upper-bracket tax cuts, but not for poor people whose homes 
are under water.
  Well, guess what they chose to cut. The social safety net: Medicaid, 
food stamps, public housing, students loans, and on and on. Just the 
kinds of programs that saved my life and my children's lives when I was 
a single mom on welfare 35 years ago. To help people on the gulf coast 
who lost everything, they took from the people who have virtually 
nothing. That is your Republican fiscal policy in a nutshell.

[[Page H1366]]

  Well, enough of that. It is time we invested more in our people and 
less in our defense contractors. My CommonSense Budget Act would trim 
$60 billion in waste from the Pentagon budget and put it to work on 
behalf of the people and the programs that truly strengthen America. 
The money would be distributed as follows: $5 billion a year for 
homeland security to make up for funding shortfalls in emergency 
preparedness, infrastructure upgrades, and grants for first responders; 
$10 billion each year for energy independence, to kick the imported oil 
habit that we have in this Nation by investing in efficient, renewable 
energy sources; $5 billion devoted to putting a dent in the $8.2 
trillion national debt; and for children's health care, $10 billion 
annually to provide health care coverage for the millions of uninsured 
American children; $10 billion over 12 years to rebuild and modernize 
every public K-12 school in this country; $5 billion a year to retrain 
250,000 Americans who have lost their jobs because of foreign trade; 
medical research, $2 billion a year to restore recent cuts to the 
National Institutes of Health budget; and $13 billion a year in 
humanitarian assistance that allows poor nations to feed 6 million 
children who are at risk of dying from starvation every year, to end 
global hunger.
  The money is there to make an extraordinary difference in people's 
lives. We just need to challenge the entrenched interests and take on 
the sacred cows.
  General Larry Korb worked with the Progressive Caucus and me to draft 
this model alternative, and Ben Cohen from Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and 
the organization Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities also helped 
make the introduction of this bill possible.
  There are models of good corporate citizenship, you see, businesses 
that understand that the return on these investments will benefit the 
entire society: a skilled workforce, healthy children, modern schools, 
fewer fossil fuels, better fire departments, scientific progress, less 
debt. These socially responsible businesses understand what makes 
America strong and safe, and it is not a bloated Pentagon budget that 
continues to invest in Cold War.

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