[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 22 (Tuesday, February 6, 2007)]
[House]
[Page H1214]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 IT'S TIME FOR A NEW DIRECTION IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2007, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor with some 
observations about Iraq, but I must comment on the presentation I just 
heard from my friend from Georgia.
  You know, Mr. Speaker, independent observers agree that Democrats 
have moved quickly and aggressively to implement what we said we were 
going to do in the first 100 hours. I find it disingenuous that our 
friend was talking about somehow the Democrats not dealing with its 
commitment on earmarks, and mentioning the rain forest in Iowa. Mr. 
Speaker, again, independent observers agree that Mr. Obey and Mr. Byrd 
did bring forward a clean continuing resolution that didn't have any 
new earmarks. It killed the earmarks that had been set aside in the 
failed budget of the Republicans in the last session of Congress.
  What my friend is talking about, the rain forest in Iowa, was an 
earmark from several years ago, a Republican earmark, I might say, from 
several years ago. And now he is suggesting that as we have moved 
forward to clean up the budget mess left by the Republicans, failing to 
meet their commitments to produce budgets in a timely fashion, that we 
didn't go back and surgically remove earmarks that they had scattered 
throughout the budget for years. Well, I'm sorry. With all due respect 
to George Orwell and my friend from Georgia, I think that is 
doublespeak. We did what we said we were going to do. The CR has come 
forward without earmarks, and we have put in place a much more 
transparent process so people will know who is doing what on whose 
behalf.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor today to make a few comments 
about the situation in Iraq. There is much ado in the other body to 
work to catch up with the reality on the ground in Iraq and where the 
American public is. This is not the time just to oppose escalation of 
more troops in Iraq. We find that the 21,000 that the President 
referred to is actually going to mean 50 additional thousand when you 
put all the support in. It is time for Congress to deal in a 
comprehensive fashion with what we need to do to make the best of this 
tragically mismanaged situation, a war of choice that we didn't have to 
do, sadly mismanaged by the administration. It is time for Congress to 
rediscover our war powers with Iraq, and even more important, the saber 
rattling that is directed now towards Iran. It is time for us to 
rediscover the power of the purse, not provide an open-ended bank 
account, but tighten down the resources that are provided by Congress 
to the administration, and to rediscover oversight where there are 
daily reminders in every major newspaper of where Congress in the last 
few years has frankly been missing in action.
  To be able to advance those goals in a comprehensive fashion, I have 
introduced new directions for Iraq. It sets forth goals for United 
States policy, supporting the Iraqi people, preventing greater 
violence, reestablish our international credibility and military 
readiness, and focusing on real national security threats. It calls not 
for escalation, but prohibiting the escalation without specific 
congressional approval, and for the redeployment of troops from Iraq to 
be completed in approximately 1 year.
  It calls for the United States to forswear the establishment of 
permanent bases in Iraq, as well as U.S. control over Iraq's oil 
infrastructure and economic policies. It redirects United States 
reconstruction funding from large foreign contractors to Iraqi-owned 
businesses to help create jobs in Iraq. It instructs the President to 
nullify contracts where any company has not fulfilled an Iraq 
reconstruction contract, and to recover lost funds.
  We ought not to just stop the fraud in terms of the contracting, but 
we ought to aggressively punish war profiteering, encouraging Congress 
to investigate and the Attorney General to aggressively prosecute 
profiteering and fraud.
  It requires a regional diplomatic initiative because ultimately it is 
going to require diplomacy on the part of the United States and all of 
the surrounding countries to be able to turn this around.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to look at the New Direction For Iraq 
Act of 2007 as a comprehensive way to change the situation in Iraq.

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