[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 22 (Tuesday, February 6, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H1257-H1258]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1600
                    NO BLANK CHECK FOR THE PENTAGON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Tierney). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, in an interview published yesterday by the 
McClatchy newspaper chain, Dick Armey, our former Republican majority 
leader, said he felt really bad about voting to go to war in Iraq. Mr. 
Armey said, ``Had I been more true to myself and the principles I 
believed in at the time, I would have openly opposed the whole 
adventure vocally and aggressively.''
  It takes a big man to admit something like that. Chris Matthews on 
MSNBC on election night said, ``The decision to go to work in Iraq was 
not a conservative decision historically'' and said the President asked 
Republicans ``to behave like a different people than they intrinsically 
are.''
  In 2004, William F. Buckley, Jr., often called the godfather of 
conservatism, wrote that if he knew in 2002 what he knew by 2004 he 
would have opposed going to war in Iraq.
  Today, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing 
on the subject of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq. A couple of years ago 
the same committee, then under Republican leadership, held a similar 
hearing.
  David Walker, now head of the GAO but then Inspector General of the 
Defense Department, testified at that time that $35 billion had been 
lost in Iraq due to waste, fraud and abuse and another $9 billion had 
just been lost and could not be accounted for at all.
  I heard a talk by Charlie Cook, the very respected political analyst, 
who said people could not really comprehend anything over $1 billion. 
But $44 billion is an awful lot of money in anybody's book.
  A Foreign Service Officer told me last year, a few months after he 
had left Iraq, that he sometimes saw SUVs there filled with cash with 
barely enough room for the driver.
  Conservatives have traditionally been the strongest opponents and 
biggest critics of Federal waste, fraud and abuse. Conservatives have 
traditionally been the strongest opponents and biggest critics of 
wasteful, lavish and ridiculous Federal contracts. Conservatives, 
especially fiscal conservatives, should not feel any obligation to 
defend wasteful spending or lavish Federal contracts just because they 
are taking place in Iraq.
  Ivan Eland, in the January 15 issue of the American Conservative 
Magazine, wrote this. He said, ``Many conservatives who regularly gripe 
about the Federal Government's ineffective and inefficient use of 
taxpayer dollars give the Pentagon a free ride on their profligate 
spending habits.''
  Conservatives admire, respect and appreciate the people in the 
military as much or more than anyone. Conservatives believe national 
defense is one of the few legitimate functions of the Federal 
Government and one of its most important. However, this does not mean 
we should just routinely give the Pentagon everything it wants or

[[Page H1258]]

turn a blind eye to waste in the Defense Department.
  The Defense Department is a gigantic bureaucracy, in fact, the 
biggest bureaucracy in the world. It has the same problems and 
inefficiencies of any giant bureaucracy; and conservatives, especially 
fiscal conservatives, should not give a free ride to waste, fraud and 
abuse just because it is done by the Defense Department.
  Counting our regular defense appropriations bill, plus emergency and 
supplemental appropriations bills, plus the military construction 
appropriations bill, plus the end-of-the-year omnibus appropriations 
bills, we spend more on defense than all of the other Nations of the 
world combined. Yet the military, like all other bureaucracies, always 
wants more money.
  Well, at some point, we are going to have to decide, do we want 
national defense for our own people, or are we going to be the 
policeman of the world and provide international defense for all 
countries that claim to be our allies?
  With a national debt of almost $9 trillion and unfunded future 
pension liabilities of many trillions more, I believe it is both 
unaffordable and unconstitutional for us to try to be the policeman of 
the world. We will soon not be able to pay Social Security and 
veterans' pensions with money that means anything, and all of the other 
things the Federal Government is doing, if we try to maintain an empire 
around the world.
  Conservatives have traditionally been the biggest critics of 
interventionist foreign policies because they create so much resentment 
for us around the world.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, conservatives have traditionally been the 
biggest critics of nation building, as President Bush was when he ran 
for the White House in 2000. We need the more humble foreign policy he 
advocated then, or we need to tell the people to forget about their 
Social Security because we are giving blank checks to the Pentagon.

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