[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 39 (Wednesday, March 7, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H2285-H2297]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CONGRESSIONAL IMMIGRATION CAUCUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, welcome to the chair. I hope you enjoy your 
duration up there, as many years ago, it must have been 1995, I had the 
privilege of my first time in the chair. I hope you enjoy it as much, 
and I hope everybody at home is watching you in your day of glory.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California 
for yielding.
  I feel compelled to respond to many of the remarks that have been 
made here on the floor about the condition of the health care treatment 
for our veterans. I won't deny that there were unacceptable conditions 
in Building 18. I don't believe there has been any empirical data or 
quantifiable information that says it has gone beyond some of the rooms 
within Building 18.
  But I know when I go out to Walter Reed and when I go to Bethesda and 
when I go to Landstuhl and I look those people in the eye that are 
there every day with compassion fatigue that are giving their heart and 
soul and everything they have for the health care interests of our 
brave soldiers who have been wounded defending our freedom, a lot of 
that freedom and a lot of that mission have been opposed by the people 
on this side of the aisle, there is a strong commitment in all of those

[[Page H2286]]

hospitals by the personnel that are there. They work long hours, and 
they give the best service with everything that they have. And I will 
agree that there is a bureaucratic problem and we ought to find a way 
to put some software in place and put a system there so we can track 
patients and they don't get dropped from the system and they can be 
expedited through with the most efficient and high-quality care 
possible.
  But this being an issue that is being stampeded and run up the 
flagpole goes beyond trying to fix the problem. It is an effort to try 
to undermine the mission of our soldiers overseas, and I think that is 
deplorable, Mr. Speaker.
  So I stand with the people that serve America, those that put their 
lives on the line, those that have lost life and limb. I stand with the 
people who stand there and help them. And we need to be supportive and 
encouraging and fix the problems we have and remove the politics from 
this debate.
  I yield back to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BILBRAY. I appreciate that, Mr. King.
  At this time it is my privilege as the new chairman of the 
Congressional Immigration Caucus to actually recognize Congressman 
Nathan Deal of the great State of Georgia, who actually has agreed to 
serve as the subcommittee chairman on the Immigration Caucus for 
Birthright Citizenship.
  At this time I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. DEAL of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Bilbray.
  Mr. Speaker, as we approach this topic of dealing with the ever-
increasing problem of illegal immigration in this country, it is 
certainly one with many facets. But the one that I would like to 
address briefly tonight is the issue that relates to birthright 
citizenship. Let me define it, first of all. It is the extension of 
citizenship to any child born on American soil, regardless of the legal 
status of the parents of that child.
  The United States does just that. But we are in an ever-increasing 
minority in the world community. Currently, there are approximately 141 
nations that do not grant birthright citizenship.

                              {time}  2020

  And there are only about 35 countries that do, the United States 
being one of those. In fact, every country in Europe no longer grants 
birthright citizenship. Ireland was the last of those countries, and in 
2004 by popular vote, they no longer grant birthright citizenship. 
Israel doesn't, Japan doesn't, virtually every country on the face of 
the earth with the exception of the United States have recognized that 
the right of citizenship is indeed one of the most precious rights, and 
it should not be extended to those who have broken our law and who are 
illegally in our country.
  Just as the overall immigration issue has many facets, so does the 
issue of birthright citizenship. First of all, there is the question 
of, how do you solve the problem? The real difficulty comes from the 
fact that the current interpretation is based on an interpretation of 
the language of the 14th amendment.
  Many legal scholars believe that the intention of the 14th amendment, 
which had as its primary purpose to settle the issue of citizenship for 
individuals who were formerly slaves, has been perverted to extend it 
to birthright citizenship for anyone born on American soil. There are 
certainly legitimate arguments that can be made on both sides of the 
issue. But the one that I think focuses most clearly on whether or not 
it was the intention of the writers of the 14th amendment to include 
this issue is demonstrated in the language that comes out of the 
debates that surrounded the adoption of that amendment.
  The reality is, though, that many of the court cases upon which 
people rely today to say that we automatically extend citizenship to 
anyone born on our soil regardless of the legal status of their 
parents, comes from a day and a time when the United States did not 
have immigration laws in place, did not have in place laws that 
distinguished between those who were legally in our country and those 
who were not. We, of course, now live in a day and a time when those 
laws are in place, albeit they are not very well enforced most of the 
time.
  But what is the cost of this issue of birthright citizenship? I think 
there is a legitimate argument that can be made to say that birthright 
citizenship is one of those magnets that contributes to illegal 
immigration in the first place. Consider the latest statistics from the 
Center for Immigration Studies in which they say that there are 
approximately 383,000 children born every year to illegal immigrants. 
That is, about 42 percent of the births to all immigrants in this 
country are to illegal immigrants to this country, and that births to 
illegal immigrants now account for one out of every ten births in the 
United States. One out of every ten children born in this country is 
being born to someone, a parent, who had no legal right to be here.
  What are the financial costs associated with it? We all know that 
illegal immigration in and of itself places huge financial strains on 
local governments in providing education, in providing health care, and 
on State governments in the same way, and also on the Federal 
Government.
  The Center for Immigration Studies found that the cost to United 
States taxpayers for the cost of illegal immigration is approximately 
$10.4 billion a year. And a large part of that cost is attributable to 
babies born to illegal immigrants.
  In my State of Georgia, for example, I am told that a non-Caesarian 
section child delivery with no complications costs approximately 
$2,720. Now you multiply that figure, and probably my State's cost is 
less than the national average, but you multiply that by the 383,000-
plus births every year, and you can instantly see that just in that 
initial health care delivery cost, it is a very significant sum.
  But what does birthright citizenship then also do to our system? 
First of all, in 1996, when we passed the Immigration Reform Act, one 
of the things that many people have bragged about was a provision that 
said in general terms that if you are illegally in this country, you 
are not going to be entitled to any social benefits other than 
education at the elementary and secondary level and emergency medical 
care.
  Now, we make a mockery of that by virtue of birthright citizenship 
because even though we say we are not going to extend those social 
services, by giving a child of an illegal immigrant citizenship status, 
you immediately have TANF, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, 
whatever term you call it in your community, those kinds of welfare 
social benefits flow through the child. There are also food stamps and 
housing subsidy benefits, and who are you going to deliver them to, a 
new child? Of course not. Those social benefits in the form of cash and 
other indicia of benefits flow through the hands of the illegal 
parents.
  And are you going to deport the parents, an illegal immigrant who has 
given birth to a child who is a United States citizen? I say you 
probably are not, and the statistics bear me out.
  So I would simply say, Mr. Speaker, if somebody is concerned about 
these issues, the next time they have to wait in line in the doctor's 
office or in the hospital or in the waiting room of the emergency 
clinic, or the next time that they are in the grocery checkout line and 
somebody is paying for food with food stamps and it is fairly apparent 
that they are not legally in this country and you want to know why, the 
why lies in birthright citizenship that is being granted to a child of 
that illegal immigrant.
  Now, as I say, we are in the distinct minority in the world community 
of continuing to allow this practice to occur. I, along with Mr. 
Bilbray and Mr. King and many others in our conference, are authors of 
legislation that would attempt to correct this serious problem that we 
have.
  Many who would dispute whether or not this is a part of the magnet 
that draws people into our country and to cross our borders illegally 
should take reference to a statement contained in one of the 
publications from the Department of Homeland Security. I would like to 
read from that publication. It says, ``An industry has developed around 
this practice,'' that is, crossing the border illegally specifically to 
give birth, ``with travel agents specializing in birth tours and 
clinics

[[Page H2287]]

providing post-natal care, which includes transportation services. For 
those seeking entry into this country, it is a small price to pay for 
legal entry and social benefits that accrue with citizenship.''
  So our own Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that it is 
indeed one of those magnets that causes us to have a problem with 
illegal immigration.
  In 2002, it was reported by the Los Angeles Times in a study that 
they did looking at South Korea, and what they found was that since 
South Korea allows dual citizenship, that is both South Korea and 
United States citizenship, for a child born in the United States, they 
found that South Korea was hosting these so-called birth tours which 
were intended to bring pregnant women to the United States so they 
could deliver their child here and that child would be a United States 
citizen.

                              {time}  2030

  Now, they probably returned back to South Korea with that child. So 
what would be their motivation? Well, first of all, they would be 
entitled to the benefits of American citizenship, but another added 
advantage, since South Korea is a country that requires universal 
military service, it is a way of excluding that child from the 
requirements of South Korea that they be inducted into their military 
services. So it has consequences, not just to us, but to some of our 
allies such as South Korea.
  So I would simply thank Mr. Bilbray for the time you have allotted me 
tonight to speak on this issue. Hopefully, we will see some action on 
this issue of birthright citizenship. It can stand alone, or it can 
travel as a part of a more comprehensive immigration reform package; 
but I submit that unless we address this problem, it is only going to 
get worse. It is going to only magnify the ever-increasing problem of 
illegal immigration, and I would urge my colleagues to join with me and 
you and Mr. King and others in sponsoring the legislation that we have 
tailored to try to address this problem.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to say thank you very much to 
Mr. Deal for taking a leadership role on this issue. It is quite 
appropriate you are pointing out how broad the problem is of this 
automatic citizenship given to people that have no obligations, no 
responsibilities, and are leveraging the fact that some people think 
that everyone born on U.S. soil somehow gets automatic citizenship. The 
fact is I think that the Korean parents are a good example.
  The subject to the jurisdiction clause of the 14th amendment does not 
only mean that you can be arrested. It means that you must, according 
to common law, be totally obligated. You must be able to be tried for 
treason and be forced into the military.
  Can you imagine if these terrorists from Korea were told, sorry, you 
are now going to be drafted into the United States Army? People would 
come unglued. They would say that is inhumane, that is outrageous, how 
can you do that. Well, it is just as outrageous to give automatic 
citizenship to the people that have no obligations and no 
responsibility to the Federal Government, to give them citizenship, as 
it is to require them to be tried for treason against the United States 
or to serve in the military when they are not, quote, unquote, subject 
to the jurisdiction in a manner that applies to the 14th amendment.
  This thing we have to understand, that rights and responsibilities 
come together, and as these legal Korean tourists come to our country, 
they have certain rights and certain responsibilities, but they do not 
have total responsibility, and thus they do not have birthright 
citizenship.
  I think that is a clause to get into. I just wish that the people who 
would be as outraged about us drafting a Korean tourist or trying them 
for treason will be just as outraged about the people leveraging and 
taking advantage of our hospitality and then trying to demand rights 
where the rights obviously do not exist historically or in fact.
  I appreciate the fact that you took a leadership role on this after I 
got my 5-year sabbatical that the voters gave me from Congress. You 
picked up the baby and actually carried it, and I really appreciate 
that and your leadership will be appreciated.
  It is astonishing that back in the 1990s when we first brought up 
this issue, some people were saying, well, what is this issue. But more 
and more when you go talk to the American people, they want to know 
what has kind of been tagged this, what they call it, ``anchor baby'' 
issue because they see this huge open door for abuse.
  In California alone, I want you to know and I just say this to the 
people, how big a problem, how big a price tag can automatic 
citizenship to foreign nationals and illegal aliens can be. How big can 
it be? Just in California, it costs the State of California to pay for 
the births of the children of illegal aliens $400 million a year, and 
that is a price tag to people who are illegally in the country.
  Let us face it, that $400 million could sure provide a lot of basic 
health care to legal Americans, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, that 
is being denied those people of need, while we accommodate those who 
have broken our laws and their families and encouraged them to 
emigrate.
  So I thank you very much for taking this leadership role, and I 
greatly appreciate the fact that Georgia is represented on the 
Immigration Caucus, and that is a great advantage for us. Thank you 
very much.
  Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege to serve on the Immigration Caucus, 
and as someone who grew up on the Mexican border between San Diego and 
Tijuana, I saw this issue as it has evolved over the last 45 years.
  I grew up in an area where illegal immigration was just sort of a 
matter of fact. You saw people going north, and I got to tell you, as a 
young man, you never knew where they were going. They were all going to 
a place called L.A. or norte, norte, and you never understood what was 
the impact in the communities beyond the border.
  But, seriously, I think the one thing that I would ask those of you 
that live beyond the border, you do not see on the border, like those 
of us that grew up there, I happen to have had the privilege to serve 
as a life guard in a small community on the border called Imperial 
Beach. In that job, I had the experience of rescuing illegals when they 
were drowning in the Tijuana River. I recovered their bodies when they 
did not make it, and in the 1980s, some of you may not remember a thing 
called the bonsai charges, where the coyotes, the smugglers, would 
organize illegals into huge groups at the border and rush them up the 
freeway.
  I would just ask any of you to consider what your reaction would be 
if you were driving along at 65 miles an hour, 55, and you saw massive 
pedestrians running at you on the freeway in a manner that you do not 
have a chance to stop. Well, let me tell you something. After seeing 
what happens when somebody gets hit by a vehicle at 55, 60 miles an 
hour, I became committed as a member of the county board of supervisors 
in San Diego to finally say stand up and say this is wrong, this is 
immoral, this is outrageous.
  Americans should be ashamed that we do not control our frontier, that 
we do not guarantee our sovereignty on U.S. soil. And the immigration 
issue is an issue of sovereignty. It is a concept of protecting the 
land that our forefathers have given to us and also protecting those 
rights and those privileges that should and can be rendered to those 
who are citizens and legal residents.
  But, sadly, we have found excuses to look the other way. Be it 
political correctness or some sick concept that encouraging illegal 
activity somehow is going to be good for America, it is sad that we 
allow not only illegal immigration but all the illegal activity that 
happens along the border.
  I am really encouraged, though, to see colleagues like the gentleman 
from Georgia and Mr. King, people from the interior, that get it, that 
understand that the immigration problem is not something at the border 
that can only be addressed at the border, but is something that is in 
our neighborhoods every day; that it is on the street corners, we see 
it every day; and that the American people, though they have been 
ignored on this issue for too long, are saying we are going to hold 
both parties accountable if you do not address that.
  I think in all fairness, as a Republican, I think we can all agree 
that a

[[Page H2288]]

degree of the problems in the last election was that voters did not 
believe Republicans were doing enough and are going to demand that 
Democrats and Republicans put their partisanship on the side and take 
care of this problem.
  I am glad to see the kind of general support that we have seen 
working on this issue and the community support on this; and at this 
time, if I may, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to Mr. King.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California 
for organizing this Special Order here this evening, and I also thank 
the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Deal) for making his presentation and 
making a compelling case for why we have to end this thing we call 
birthright citizenship, anchor babies, or more appropriately, more 
accurately, as automatic citizenship. It was never part of the concept 
constitutionally that we should grant that kind of a thing, for all the 
reasons that Mr. Deal said and all the reasons that Mr. Bilbray said, 
and a lot of other reasons besides.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I would submit this, that I am going to roll out 
some facts and figures here, and I would ask that you maybe could pay 
attention and take some notes on this because it is important for us in 
this country not to be establishing an immigration policy based upon 
anecdotes or based upon emotions or based upon somebody's feelings, but 
base it upon some empirical data. We need to base our policy on some 
facts.
  I would point out that I wrote a letter to the White House last year. 
It was off of a request of that White House liaison that took place 
last April, and by June 23, I was finally frustrated with my e-mails 
and phone calls to the liaison who promised to get me some answers.

                              {time}  2040

  So I put it in letter form, hard copy, sent it to the White House, 
sent it as an e-mail also, and instructed my staff to call the White 
House every week to get answers to the questions. Because it occurs to 
me that facts don't work for the people that are for open borders, but 
facts absolutely support the people that stand up for the rule of law 
and that stand up for national sovereignty and stand up for national 
border protection and enforcement in our workplace to shut off the jobs 
magnet.
  I think we should start with a simple basis. If you go back to the 
beginning of Western Civilization and the Greeks, they would ask. They 
would look at things. They were proud. They lived in the age of reason. 
They said, I think, therefore I am. We are going to do deductive 
reasoning. We will start with the most logical, obvious questions, and 
we are going to reduce it down. If we can narrow ourselves down to a 
conclusion, we will come to a conclusion. If we can't, we will need 
more data.
  They were proud of the way they could think and reason. That's the 
foundation for Western Civilization. Had they not developed that age of 
reason, we would never have had the Age of Enlightenment. Without the 
Age of Enlightenment, we would never have had the United States of 
America. So we are founded upon reason.
  Questions start from the beginning. Is there such a thing as too much 
immigration, legal or illegal? That is one of the questions I asked the 
President.
  Then I asked, would you separate that into, is there such a thing as 
too much illegal immigration? And then, is there too much legal 
immigration? Then, the question that follows is, within those two 
categories, illegal in one category and legal immigration in the other 
category, if there is such a thing as too much, how much is too much? I 
will submit in the category of the illegal, one is too many.
  I don't think the White House can take that position, neither can 
most of the Democrats and many of the Senators, Democrats and 
Republicans; one is too many. Is there such a thing as too much legal 
immigration? Yes, there has to be. Otherwise, you have to be willing to 
accept everybody on the planet that wants to come to America, and that 
might actually be everybody.
  I would argue that this million or so that come in legally in a year 
is kind of an acceptable number, but is probably twice as many as the 
American people like to have. American people don't only want to 
eliminate all the illegal immigration, they want to reduce legal 
immigration, and they want to go back to an immigration policy that is 
designed to enhance the economic, the social and the cultural well-
being of the United States of America.
  Call it a selfish policy, if you like, but any Nation that 
subordinates their immigration policy to the people who will illegally 
cross the border from other countries doesn't have much of a policy and 
doesn't have much of a destiny if they don't have control of their own 
destiny. We have got to be in control. We have got to set that policy.
  So I went on down this list of things, and if there is such a thing 
as too much legal or illegal immigration, then how much is too much? 
And how many do you believe would be legalized by the Senate version of 
the bill that passed last year?
  Of course, before, I believe it was the Bingaman amendment, it was 
between 100 and 200 million would be legalized with a path to 
citizenship into the United States. Under the Senate version of the 
bill that probably would have had enough votes to pass with the 
majority of the Senate. Well, there were some caps that were put on 
because of that amendment that I just referenced, and then the number 
came down to, and this is the number I would ask of the White House, 
how many do you believe would be legalized by the Senate-passed version 
of the bill?
  I can tell you at this point that, according to the Heritage 
Foundation, according to Robert Rector and according to some real good 
solid statistical analysis done by Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, it 
comes to about 61.1 million people. The lowest number we could come up 
with about 53 or 54 million people; 66.1 million is the most reliable 
number over the next 20 years that would be legalized. By the Senate 
version, it has got to be nothing but amnesty.
  I looked back, and how do you quantify that? In 1986, President 
Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty bill. He called it an amnesty bill. He 
was straight up honest about it. It was one of the two or three times 
he failed me, but at least he was straight up honest. Some will say 
that was to legalize 300,000, some will say it was 1 million, but not 
many will say that it actually brought in 3 million, some 3.1 million 
people who became citizens through this amnesty that was passed in 
1986.
  I have met some of those people. I have looked them in the eye, and I 
can tell you, they do not respect the rule of law like the rest of the 
Americans do. Therefore, they want amnesty for the rest of the illegals 
that are in this country, because they see it was good for them. Well, 
if something is good for someone, that is not a measure that it is a 
good policy for America. It is only a measure that it is good for 
someone.
  But regardless, that was a series of questions that I asked of the 
President. In addition to that, I asked, would you be willing to agree 
to a hard annual cap that would control the aggregate of all of the 
different immigration policies that are out there and say that, from an 
annual basis, it never exceeds a certain number?
  Now, I would start with 1 million and ratchet it down for the 
American people if I could. We could probably assimilate 1 million 
people in this country a year if we had good assimilation policies. 
That letter, with those questions, and those five questions as I recall 
that went to the President on June 23, and the White House got a call 
every single week until September.
  Finally, I got an answer back, not from the White House, not from 
Secretary Chertoff, but a subordinate of Secretary Chertoff. The answer 
that came back was a cut and paste to somebody's constituent response 
letter and didn't answer a single question that I had asked.
  So I wrote a letter back that said, Dear Mr. President, thanks for 
the letter that was in response to my letter full of questions, but you 
really didn't answer any of my questions. Would you like to try again? 
I would really appreciate it. I am the ranking member of the 
Immigration Subcommittee, and we have to set an immigration policy 
here.
  Finally, I got a letter back, and it said, immigration is too 
complicated and too serious a policy to reduce it to numbers.
  What a shocking thing. That is a single piece of all of this. So when 
you add to this, you can add that we have a

[[Page H2289]]

major problem on our borders. We are seeing $60 billion out of our U.S. 
economy that are wired into the Western Hemispheric countries other 
than the United States. Those are transmittals from the wages in 
America; $30 billion goes to Mexico; $65 billion worth of illegal drugs 
come across that southern border into the United States. We are 
watching 11,000 people a night pour across the southern border.
  In fact, just yesterday was the anniversary of the battle of the 
Alamo when Colonel Travis and those brave Texan Americans were 
slaughtered at the Alamo. Santa Ana's Army was only half the size of a 
nightly number of illegals that come across our southern border.
  Those are simply some of the pieces. There are many other statistics 
out there that are empirical data, and I pray that this Nation will 
look at numbers, look at reality and not be stampeded by hyperbole or 
anecdotes and establish a policy that is good for the economic, the 
social and the cultural well-being of the United States of America.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. King, first of all, I have to say I am so proud that 
you are our ranking member on the Immigration Committee. With you on 
that, leading the Republican side of that committee. Hopefully you will 
be able, and I know it is a tough sell; I am going to meet with your 
chairman and try to point out what is the obsession that the Senate and 
some Members of the House of Representatives have to give amnesty and 
reward 12 to 13 to 15 million people for breaking the law?
  Do they really think we can defend the concept, the rule of law, by 
having up to 60 million people in this country celebrating the fact 
that they are here because they broke the law? You know, I am thankful 
that I was able to listen to you tonight, because I keep saying, and I 
was saying to a couple of Senators this week, what is the obsession, 
what is the motivation for giving amnesty and rewarding people for 
breaking our laws? What message have you seen? What agenda are you 
fulfilling? What political group are you fulfilling?
  Now that you brought it up, you are right, you point out you gave 
amnesty to a group that originally was proposed to be 300,000, ended up 
with all the delays in the agenda to be 3 million; then you get all of 
their relatives coming in. This is the group that is lobbying and able 
to vote to encourage more people to come in, and this downward spiral 
has started. If we don't stop it now with the American people that 
really believe in the rule of law, that really believe in the concept 
of common decency that you do not punish somebody for waiting patiently 
to immigrate legally while you reward somebody who breaks the law, if 
we are not willing to stop this downward spiral now, it will continue 
to grow larger and faster down the line.
  I think the American people here know this is not a Republican or 
Democratic issue; this is an American issue. If anybody doesn't believe 
that the rule of law is important, I can take you to a lot of places I 
spent a lot of time in other countries where people can buy off the law 
by politics or by money.
  This amnesty, it just seems like the most un-American concept I 
heard. Let me tell you something, my son was sitting there, 19 or 20 
years old, and he brought up the interesting issue, and I guess from 
the mouths of babes, he said, Dad, let me get this straight, Mr. 
Kennedy says that if you break the law for 5 years, you now get 
rewarded for it? Does this mean that if I am willing to testify that I 
have driven without a license for 5 years, I get a license for free?

                              {time}  2050

  Because that is what people think they can do with immigration and 
make it work. It won't work with the traffic situation; it won't work 
with an immigration issue.
  I am glad you bring this up, and just seeing a self-made special 
interest group that is driving us toward an abyss of the destruction of 
the entire concept of what this greatest Republic we call the 
``American experience.'' I yield to Mr. King.
  Mr. KING of IOWA. I thank the gentleman from California for adding to 
this subject matter in that way.
  A piece that I left out was that the 66.1 million that would have 
been legalized by the Senate version of amnesty last year happens to 
be, and I believe coincidentally, the sum total of all Americans who 
have immigrated into the United States and become naturalized, most 
through Ellis Island, but done so legally. We are talking about doing 
that in one fell swoop.
  So, in 1986 it was a 300,000, maybe a million number. That was a 
great big piece to try to swallow and get our brains around. In 1995, 
before the 1996 election, there was an accelerated effort, especially 
in California, to naturalize a million people so that they could go to 
the polls and vote in that Clinton/Gore election. And we all know where 
the incentive was, on which side of the aisle that was. That was 
perhaps 1 million in 1986. At most, it was 1 million in 1995 before the 
1996 elections. That was an appalling number to think about a million 
people getting fast-tracked to citizenship or amnesty. And this is a 
time now we are seriously talking about 66 million people. Sixty-six 
times an amount that was too many in 1995, it was too many in 1986, it 
is absolutely too many today.
  There is another component of this, too, and that is that we know on 
the left, and I am going to say on the part of Democrats, they 
recognize that they are going to pick up about two out of every three 
immigrants that would have amnesty. They have a strong political motive 
that subordinates the United States, our Constitution, their oath of 
office, by the way. That is the incentive. It is a political incentive 
on the left hand side of the aisle. On the right hand side of the aisle 
we have elitists. They aren't all on the right hand side of the aisle; 
we have plenty of left-wing rich folks, too, that are capitalizing on 
cheap labor. They believe that they have some kind of birthright to 
always be hiring cheap labor and continue getting richer off the backs 
of the people they are hiring.
  Think of this kind of like a barbell. On the one side, the weights 
over here on the barbell are the liberals that get all the political 
power that comes from illegal immigration. On the other side there are 
probably about 2-1 Republican conservatives that get empowered by 
getting rich off of cheap labor. In the middle is the handle of the 
barbell, that is the middle class, the middle class that used to be an 
ever-broadening, an ever more prosperous middle class that now is 
losing its purchasing power and being narrowed by the greed of the 
people that are politically greedy on the one side, and economically 
greedy on the other side.
  I asked this question to the business community in America, because I 
know I will not convince the people on the other side of the aisle, 
where will you apply your trade once we have destroyed this America 
that is based upon the rule of law?
  I will yield back to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Let me say, what we are fighting for here is nothing 
short of the middle class. The fact is there are those on the left and 
the right that say we desperately need more poor people. You know why? 
It is because the major corporates want cheap labor on the right, and 
the left wants cheap votes. And they are willing to sell their 
children's birthright out, their grandchildren's future out just to be 
able to capitalize off of this illegal activity.
  At this time, I have the privilege of recognizing the gentleman from 
California who has agreed to be the subcommittee chairman on the Border 
Security Policy Committee team for the Immigration Caucus, Mr. Royce.
  Mr. Royce, I yield to you.
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I would like to start by congratulating Congressman Bilbray for his 
position as head of the Immigration Caucus. I thank him, also, for 
taking on this tough, but very important, issue.
  What I wanted to make as a point, Mr. Speaker, was that before 9/11 
border security was not seen as a national security matter. But we, as 
an institution, asked the 9/11 Commission to give us direction, to look 
at how 9/11 occurred and to suggest steps that we should take. Today, 
thanks to the 9/11 Commission, we now know that national security must 
be the number one priority when it comes to border security policy.
  The commission found that our immigration system has, in their words, 
``the greatest potential to develop an expanded role in 
counterterrorism.'' And I think that still holds true today.

[[Page H2290]]

  The challenge we face for national security in an age of terrorism is 
to prevent the very few people who pose overwhelming risks from 
entering or remaining in the United States undetected. And terrorists, 
unfortunately, have used evasive methods to enter and stay in our 
country, including specific travel methods and routes over the border, 
liaisons with corrupt government officials, human smuggling networks, 
and immigration and identity fraud. This needs to be addressed. It is 
elementary. It is imperative as well to border security to know who is 
coming into the country. I don't think anyone today can say with any 
certainty that we know who is crossing our borders.
  When I was chairman of the Subcommittee on International Terrorism 
and Nonproliferation, I held field hearings on the border in San Diego 
and in Laredo, Texas. One thing that was expressed at these hearings is 
that the border fence that was built in San Diego is very effective. 
The double fence on that border, according to the Border Patrol that 
testified at these hearings about the effectiveness of the border 
fence, is, as they said, a great force multiplier. The reason they 
wanted to expand the fence and the reason we passed legislation to do 
that and included an appropriation of $1.2 billion to do it was partly 
because the Border Patrol told us that there were over 400 attacks on 
the Border Patrol and that if they could have that double border fence 
the way they had it in San Diego at other routes where the smugglers 
cross, that would help protect them. They said it expanded their 
enforcement capability; it has allowed them the discretion to redeploy 
agents to areas of vulnerability or risk. It is one component, they 
said, that certainly has been integral, in their words, to everything 
we have accomplished raising the level of our security in San Diego. 
What happened in San Diego? The crime rates on both sides of that 
border, which had been lawless, dropped by over 50 percent on the San 
Diego side and on the Tijuana side.
  With the establishment of the border fence in San Diego, crime rates 
fell off dramatically, but also vehicle drive-thrus fell off. San Diego 
is no longer one of the most prolific drug smuggling corridors. It was 
cut by over 90 percent.
  The bill that we passed last year puts a fence where it is needed 
most, in the areas that have the highest instances of drug smuggling, 
human trafficking, gang activity. All of the smugglers' routes, where 
there are roads, basically, through those areas, all of that will be 
fenced with a double border fence. It would allow the Border Patrol to 
better focus its resources and better protect our borders.
  Now, we have some say that to finish that project would cost $3 
billion. Well, $3 billion is less than the cost of the 250,000 inmates 
who have committed felonies, who are here illegally in the United 
States. The cost to the taxpayers in one year is more than the cost of 
building that double border fence.
  But the focus I want to make here, the point I want to make, it is a 
matter of national security. We had Kris Kobach testify at my hearings. 
He was chief adviser on immigration law to former Attorney General John 
Ashcroft. And he spoke of concern about terrorists illegally crossing 
our borders into this country. I will just share with you a couple of 
cases he cited.
  Mahmoud Kourani was one; he was indicted in 2004. He paid to be 
smuggled out of Beirut, Lebanon; paid $3,000 to the Mexican Consulate 
to be smuggled into Mexico. And at that point he paid a smuggling 
organization to bring him in the trunk of a car over to the United 
States. This is the brother of the Hezbollah general who was in charge 
of security in the southern sector of Lebanon at the time that the 
attacks occurred. He was involved in the attacks against Israel. I was 
there in Israel in August. I visited Rambam Hospital when the city was 
under rocket attack and saw some of the effects of Hezbollah there in 
that country, where there were 500 civilian victims in that hospital.
  And I can just tell you that his brother pleaded guilty to providing 
material support to Hezbollah. He had been trained in Iran in every 
method of explosives, and he was sentenced to 5 years in our prison, 
along with some of his colleagues, who were also caught as a result of 
our operations.

                              {time}  2100

  Kobach went on to cite a second case involving Farida Ahmed, who was 
on a terrorist watch list. He was on that watch list because he was 
suspected of being an al Qaeda operative trying to get into the United 
States. Ahmed was caught in Texas at McAllen Miller International 
Airport on July 19, 2004. He was trying to get up to New York City. He 
produced a South African passport with pages torn out and with no U.S. 
entry stamps. He later confessed to entering the country illegally by 
crossing the Rio Grande River.
  In 2005, 3,722 individuals from state sponsors of terrorism or 
countries with terrorist ties were caught trying to illegally enter the 
United States. I know some of the stories from border guards who have 
told me. One showed me his injuries that he sustained when he stopped 
an individual who originally was from Uzbekistan, had been trained, he 
said, in an Afghan training camp. This was the individual's second 
attempt to enter illegally into the United States. The first time he 
had tried to fly in through an airport and he was turned back. This 
time he came over the border. When he was caught, he was motivated 
enough, the individual, to bite the shoulder of the Border Patrol agent 
so severely that the Border Patrol agent had to be hospitalized.
  The reality is that we have some very determined foes attempting to 
get into the United States and our experience with Hezbollah agents 
frankly should awaken us to the fact that we should take the advice of 
the Border Patrol when they say to us, give us that double border 
fence. We have had over 400 attacks in 1 year or instances of violence 
against our agents. Give us the double border fence we need.
  Well, we have got the appropriation. We have got the authorization. 
The first appropriation for $1.2 billion. We need several billion more 
to finish the whole project. But we should take their advice. It's past 
time we strengthen operational control of our borders and ports through 
additional physical barriers and fencing and greater use of state-of-
the-art technology and surveillance across our entire border.
  The border fence is needed, it's needed now, so one of my goals, and 
I am sure the caucus's goals, is to ensure that the fence gets the 
funding it needs and that the entire 700 miles gets built as the act 
that was signed into law says it should be built.
  I thank you again, Congressman Bilbray; Mr. Speaker, thank you, and I 
will yield back to Congressman Brian Bilbray of San Diego.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Thank you very much, Mr. Royce. Seeing that you are the 
chairman of the Border Security subcommittee, it is good to hear today 
that the administration has found the money to finally fill in the 
border tunnels across our border. A lot of people when I say the fence 
isn't working, if the fence wasn't working, the cartels would not be 
spending millions of dollars trying to figure out how to tunnel under 
the fence.
  Mr. ROYCE. If the gentleman will yield, I was in your fine city and 
had an opportunity to go down to visit some of the Border Patrol agents 
that I talk with and work with. One of them showed me a station across 
from the Border Patrol station on the U.S. side, and he said that in 
that station, they had actually filmed work on a tunnel, it was 
actually on Mexico property, that one of the cartels was building, 
digging a tunnel, and they turned over, he said, to the Mexican 
government, and the Mexican equivalent of the FBI arrested two Border 
Patrol agents, customs agents on the Mexican side who were involved 
with the cartels in actually supervising the digging of that tunnel.
  The point I am making is that there is a degree of corruption here in 
some of the institutions in Mexico which have unfortunately led to a 
lack of cooperation in enforcement of our borders. And because of that 
lack of cooperation, I think it is doubly important that not only we go 
forward with the effort to fill these tunnels, but let's again get the 
fence that the Border Patrol says it needs built.
  Mr. BILBRAY. I thank you for that. Because before the fence, as 
somebody that grew up down there and watched this game being played, 
any criminal on either side of the border could jump

[[Page H2291]]

across the border and avoid enforcement on the other. Even in Mexico, 
they had the area called the Zona Norte, the northern zone, and 
everyone knew that it was a criminal hideout because they could always 
jump onto the American side if the Mexican officials came. So this 
issue of creating a barrier is common sense and common decency.
  As Governor Ruffo of Baja, California, once said, he said something 
in Spanish and said in Mexico, we have a saying, Good fences make good 
neighbors. Frankly, I think those people that always attacked the 
concept of having secure borders should just listen to Ruffo's advice 
that common sense does go a long way.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. ROYCE. It is certainly true that the lack of border security 
leads to a criminal element controlling that border. In this case, it 
is the cartels. And it is important to remember again that the erection 
of the border fence in San Diego led not only to a reduction of crime 
on the U.S. side by more than 50 percent but again led to a reduction 
of crime on the Mexican side of the border and in Tijuana by more than 
50 percent. Why? Because of the very point you have just made, the 
cartels lost control once the rule of law was applied to that sector of 
the border and law enforcement was able to get in control.
  Mr. BILBRAY. I appreciate that. The fact is most Americans may not 
understand that it is so out of control that they have had over 30 
police officers murdered in Tijuana and over nine Federal prosecutors 
assassinated in Tijuana. In fact, it was so bad that the Mexican 
government 10 years ago sent their army to the American border. You 
hear an outcry here when we talk about the possibility of sending our 
troops or our National Guard down to the border. I wonder where these 
people are that are so outraged about America exercising our 
sovereignty, using our resources, when they ignored the fact that 
Mexico did the right thing by bringing their troops up.
  I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your work on this and look forward to 
working with you.
  Mr. Speaker, we are talking about border control, but I want to make 
sure that the American people and everybody recognizes, in your 
district, the real problem exists that those who hire illegals are the 
ones who are creating the number one source of illegal immigration. 
When we talk about the violence at the border, when we talk about 
people dying, drowning at the border trying to come into this country 
illegally, the people that are at fault for that are those employers 
who provide the incentive for people to break our immigration laws and 
those who are profiteering off illegal immigration, and that is the 
illegal employers.
  I would ask you and I would ask every Member of Congress and I would 
ask everyone who is listening across the United States to take a look 
at H.R. 98 which is a bill that Silvestre Reyes, a very respected 
Democrat from El Paso, who is a former Border Patrol agent, and David 
Dreier, a Republican, former chairman of the Rules Committee, put 
together working with the men and women who actually have to control 
our frontier and control immigration, the immigration agents 
themselves. They put together a bill called H.R. 98, and it is so 
simple that there is no excuse for anybody not to support it, unless 
they think that there is an advantage to encourage illegal immigration.
  In this bill, it says one thing. It says, let's get rid of the 37 
different documents that anybody can prove they are legal to be in the 
country to work. Let's go down to one simple document, a tamper-
resistant Social Security card to allow Americans and foreign nationals 
alike to prove that a Social Security number that they are required by 
law to provide for employment is actually their number and not one that 
they have taken or 20 of their buddies have taken from somebody else 
and are using because they have stolen a Social Security number. One 
document for any employer to know to check, to be able to verify 
electronically that whoever is in front of them is qualified to work in 
the United States. Because it is essential that we give employers a 
simple, verifiable way of knowing who is legal and who is not legal so 
that we can do what I think Democrats and Republicans who really care 
about America can do together and, that is, crack down on the employers 
who knowingly hire illegals. We all know who they are, we know where 
they are, and we need to eliminate the excuse for hiring illegals. We 
need to start cracking down on that.
  I just ask that when we get into this issue, let's not talk about 
amnesty, let's not talk about excuses for rewarding people for illegal 
immigration, let's talk about working together and cracking down on the 
illegal employers, making it clear that if you want to come to this 
country and work, then you come here legally, you play by the rules, 
you get rewarded for that.

                              {time}  2110

  So, Mr. Speaker, a lot of people may not know, but I am privileged to 
have a mother who is a legal immigrant who came back to this country 
back in the 1940s. And as she reminds me so often, everyone who rewards 
illegal immigration is insulting those immigrants who came here and 
played by the rules. Anybody who talks about giving amnesty or any 
reward to those who have violated our immigration law is insulting the 
hard work, the patience, and the perseverance to be a legal immigrant 
and everyone who has played by the rules and stayed within the law.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say tonight that every Wednesday 
night we are going to try as the Immigration Caucus to give a report to 
the American people about what is going on with the immigration issue. 
It is something that politicians have ignored for too long, but it is 
something that the American people are demanding that we finally 
address if we want to stay in this city representing the people.
  So tonight I appreciate the time to be able to address this issue.


                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the Speaker for this time, once again allowing 
us to begin the 30-Something Working Group.
  We have a lot of issues to talk about. And as everyone who has 
followed the 30-Something Working Group over the years knows, this is 
our attempt to let the American people know what is happening in their 
Congress and what the issues are that are being discussed, and we have 
requested some time here to be able to go into some detail on what 
these issues are. And I wanted to start today by talking about the 
situation at Walter Reed, which I know is a subject that is of great 
concern to everybody in this Chamber, and it is certainly the issue 
that I am hearing the most about as I travel around my district. And if 
we have some time after we conclude that discussion, we may move on to 
some other issues.
  But I wanted to start by talking about the situation at Walter Reed. 
And I have put up here for my colleagues to take a look at the Newsweek 
cover from this week, and we see here that this is a national story. It 
is the number one story in the country, and it tells the story about 
how we are, unfortunately in many cases, failing our wounded. You can 
see it on the cover.
  What we are talking about with the situation at Walter Reed is we 
have brave men and woman who are fighting for this country, who are 
putting their lives on the line, who are making every possible 
sacrifice, and they are coming home in need of medical treatment, in 
many cases serious health situations, long-term medical problems, and 
we have not seen the best quality of care that those men and women 
deserve. And the situation that has been uncovered recently at Walter 
Reed is something that was uncovered by a Washington Post expose'. It 
wasn't brought to light by the people at Walter Reed, it wasn't brought 
to light by elected officials, it wasn't brought to light by anyone 
except for a series of newspaper articles.
  There are two issues that we need to discuss. The second of those 
issues is, why did it take a Washington Post news article before people 
started to talk about this issue, before people started to be held 
accountable for this issue? Which, as I am going to talk about in the 
time line of events, for those of you who may wonder how this

[[Page H2292]]

all came about, what were the complaints, how long has this situation 
been known, we are going to walk through that entire time line tonight. 
But the second issue is, why did that Washington Post news article 
become the first source for all of this to happen?
  The number one issue that we need to deal with as a Congress and that 
we can promise the American people that we are going to deal with is we 
need to find a solution to this problem right now. We understand there 
is a situation that needs to be resolved. And to be candid, the 
American people aren't calling for another blue ribbon panel that is 
going to take a 2-year study and issue a report that is 2\1/2\ inches 
thick and sit on somebody's desk before anything happens. They want 
results right now.
  We need to go into every military and veterans health care facility 
in this country and make a determination: Are the conditions 
substandard? Are there actions that need to be taken? And, if so, let's 
deal with that immediately. Let's not wait for the course of a long-
term study. There is going to be room for that and there are going to 
be people held accountable, and that is not to say that we are not 
going to work hard to detail every single fact of how this came to be. 
But the most important part for our military men and women who were 
promised quality health care when they signed up is we need to restore 
their confidence and their trust in the system, which right now, 
justifiably, is lacking. Because we have military men and women every 
day who are coming back, not just to Walter Reed, but all across this 
country to Department of Defense facilities, and veterans who have put 
their lives on the line who are coming back and using the VA health 
care system and finding that the care in many cases, as has been 
described with Walter Reed, is substandard. This is outrageous and this 
is unacceptable, and this Congress is going to take the appropriate 
action to make sure that these things are taken care of and they do not 
happen again.
  So, again, the two issues: number one, fix the problem now; number 
two, let's get to the bottom of why it took so long for people to be 
held accountable and for us to get to the point where this situation 
was known to the American people and especially to our brave men and 
women.
  So I do have a time line of events that we in the 30-Something 
Working Group are going to turn into a chart which we will be able to 
display at one of our future meetings, but now I did just want to read 
some of these things that have happened in the past.
  In mid-to-late 2004, a very senior Member of this Congress, with his 
wife, announced that he was going to stop visiting Walter Reed out of 
frustration. He said he had voiced his concerns about what he was 
seeing to his commanders, including Major General Kiley, over the 
troubling incidents that he had witnessed. And this, again, is a very 
senior Member of this Congress, said his efforts were rebuffed and 
ignored. And he has a quote that says when he brought problems to the 
attention of Walter Reed, he was made to feel very uncomfortable. Now, 
that is unacceptable, and that was 2\1/2\ years ago. So right there we 
have a very senior Member of Congress voicing concerns and being 
ignored.
  In November 2005, the Congress was then of course controlled by the 
Republican Party, and the House Veterans' Affairs Committee announced 
that, for the first time in at least 55 years, veteran service 
organizations would no longer have the opportunity to present testimony 
before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs 
Committee. So in November of 2005, we had an announcement from this 
Congress, then under Republican control, that we would not be 
investigating any situations and there would be no forum to bring 
before Congress complaints about what we were seeing at Walter Reed.
  The pattern continues. In September of 2006, 13 Senators sent a 
letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee to preserve language in 
the House Defense Appropriations bill that prohibits U.S. Army from 
outsourcing 350 Federal jobs at Walter Reed Medical Center. This is 
September of 2006. A similar provision was defeated by a close vote in 
the Senate of 50-48 during the bill's previous consideration.
  Also in September of 2006, and again for my colleagues watching we 
are going to have a chart that will illustrate this and it be visible. 
But in September of 2006, Walter Reed awards a 5-year, $120 million 
contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by a former senior 
Halliburton official, to replace a staff of 300 Federal employees. So 
those employees were replaced in September of 2006, despite the fact 
there had been to that point complaints by very senior Members of 
Congress about what was happening at Walter Reed.

                              {time}  2120

  I would pause there to ask my colleague from Connecticut, Mr. Murphy, 
if he is ready to weigh in on this issue. And if not, I can certainly 
continue down the time line.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Mr. Altmire. I want to let you 
get back to the time line because I think it is important for people to 
understand where this started, and to talk a little bit about where we 
are going, because so much of the news these days is filled with bad 
news, bad news for our veterans, bad news for the security of our 
country. And we talk about that a lot here. Mr. Altmire, as you know, 
this place focuses on crises often and on bad news.
  The good news is that things are changing. The good news is that 
there is a commitment now to make up for the wrongs of the past. But it 
is fairly mind-blowing to people out there to think that it took The 
Washington Post to uncover what was happening in our veterans system. 
Because, Mr. Altmire, as you know, veterans back in our districts, back 
in Pennsylvania and in Connecticut and throughout this country, have 
known what is going on with veterans for years. I mean, they have been 
down here in Washington, DC, month after month, year after year trying 
to tell this Congress that there are waiting lines for care; that the 
conditions are often substandard because of years of neglect in capital 
improvements; that they simply don't have the access to the funds 
necessary to pay for the rising premiums and rising copays.
  And before this story in The Washington Post broke, you, Mr. Altmire, 
and those of us in the 30-Something Working Group were yelling about 
this on the House floor. We got here with that mandate, to change 
things.
  So you are going to run through, I think, some fairly amazing 
comments from some of the soldiers and staff at Walter Reed Hospital in 
terms of what they have been dealing with over the past several years. 
But we just need to remind people out there that you can't absolve this 
former Congress in the last 12 years from the catastrophes that we are 
uncovering within our medical system, specifically, in this case, 
within our veterans medical system simply because The Washington Post 
didn't get around to writing about it until last month, because if you 
were back home listening to this, you heard it time after time again.
  I mean, here is the thing. We are talking about a substandard level 
of care for our veterans. We should be talking about the gold standard 
of care for our veterans. And we shouldn't be talking about just 
lifting up Walter Reed Hospital so that it meets the standards of 
dignity that every other hospital in our health care system abides by. 
We should be talking about raising up veterans care so that this is the 
highest standard. It is what everyone else in the medical community and 
the provider community seeks to meet. The people coming home from 
Afghanistan and Iraq, people coming home from Vietnam and previous 
engagements should come home to the best care this country can provide, 
Mr. Altmire.
  And I would like to yield back to you so you can continue to tell the 
story of what we have found at Walter Reed hospital.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. And I wanted to, before getting 
into some of the quotes that the men and women who have been in Walter 
Reed have, over the course of time provided, I did want to continue 
down the time line. And I had left off with the 5-year, $120 million 
contract that was awarded to a former Halliburton official which led to 
the replacement of 300 employees at Walter Reed.

[[Page H2293]]

  And I wanted to, then, quote from a New York Times article about that 
issue. It said: ``The prospect of privatization at Walter Reed led to a 
large exodus of skilled personnel after the Army reversed results, 
actually changed the results of an audit conducted that government 
employees could do the job more cheaply.''
  So they had done a study that showed that things could be done in 
that manner. But they decided to reverse the results and move in the 
direction that we have described. And we have, unfortunately, seen the 
results.
  I will move in, now, to some of the quotes. And it is troubling, I 
will tell my colleagues who are watching, to hear some of the 
complaints that were made. And I would remind, again, that in 2005, the 
Republican leadership of this Congress made a decision that they were 
going to not hold the joint hearings on this issue to allow some of 
these things to be brought to the attention, not only of the Congress, 
but of the American people. And it is unfortunate what the result has 
been, that 2 years went by and these things continued, and these quotes 
are the result.
  And I am going to refer my colleagues to this chart as I am reading: 
``The mold, mice and rot at Walter Reed's Building 18 compose a 
familiar scenario for many soldiers back from Iraq or Afghanistan. 
Soldiers and veterans at other facilities report bureaucratic disarray 
similar to Walter Reed's. Indifferent, untrained staff, lost paperwork, 
medical appointments that drop from the computers, and long waits for 
consultations.''
  And what this describes, unfortunately, is that the problem at Walter 
Reed is not unique to Walter Reed, but it is a systemic problem across 
the country's military and Veterans Affairs facilities. And that is 
very troubling to me.
  I have three VA hospitals in western Pennsylvania, one of which is in 
my district. And it is undergoing a $200 million renovation right now. 
And I am hopeful that we will, at that time, have the premiere Veterans 
Affairs highest-quality facility in the entire country.
  But the systemic problem facing our military health facilities and 
our Veterans Affairs facilities is shown by some of these quotes. So, 
again, my colleagues want to refer to this chart. From California, this 
says: ``The room was swarming with fruit flies, trash was overflowing, 
and a syringe was lying on the table.'' That is from a facility in 
California.
  From a facility in Fort Knox, Kentucky: ``The living conditions were 
the worst I had ever seen for soldiers. Paint peeling, mold, windows 
that didn't work. I went to the hospital chaplain to get them to issue 
blankets and linens. There were no nurses.''
  So as troubling as the situation at Walter Reed is for those of us 
who are now delving into the details and learning the unfortunate 
facts, it is even more troubling to think that these are problems that 
are happening all across this country.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire can you yield for a moment? 
Because I want to talk about, as these revelations were coming out in 
The Washington Post and in articles that followed, this administration 
had a choice to make. They could open up this issue and they could 
allow for a vetting of these problems and put them out in the open air 
and come together, as Republicans and Democrats, to solve them; or they 
could try to paper over it and cover it up.
  And some of the most disturbing things that have happened in this 
sequence of events, which are a little bit later on your time line, is 
what happened after these revelations came into the light. We know that 
in the days following that article that the soldiers at Walter Reed 
were told that they couldn't speak to the media about what was 
happening.
  We know that the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which I 
sit on, had to subpoena the former head, the fired chief of Walter Reed 
Army Medical Center after Army officials told him that he couldn't come 
testify at the hearing.
  And so I am so thankful that we have a majority now in charge of this 
House which is actually going to do the work to uncover, I hope, not 
too many more abuses that we haven't already seen in the newspaper 
reports that have come out. But the fact is that right now we don't 
have an administration that is helping us try to correct this, Mr. 
Altmire. And it makes our job even harder; but makes me, I think, and I 
think the American people are in the same position, that they are 
thankful that there are people here doing that work.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. Well, the level of frustration I think that we are all 
feeling builds every day as more of these facts come out. And I think 
the most upsetting part is the fact that these are situations that were 
known within the military health apparatus, and nothing was done about 
it.
  Complaints were made from patients. Complaints were made from 
families. Complaints were made, as I talked about earlier, not just 
from Members of Congress, but from very senior and influential Members 
of Congress, all of which were ignored.
  And continuing with our around-the-country look at some other things 
that have happened, if my colleagues could refer to this chart.

                              {time}  2130

  This comes from Fort Campbell in Kentucky where they said: ``There 
were yellow signs on the door stating that our barracks had asbestos.'' 
This was an open and operating military facility.
  From Fort Irwin in California: ``Most of us had to sign waivers where 
we understand that the housing we were in failed to meet minimal 
government standards.''
  It is very troubling for me, and I am sure for my colleagues 
listening, to read and to hear these quotes and think of the fact that 
there is no group of people that should stand ahead of our men and 
women in the military and our military veterans when it comes time to 
allocate Federal resources. And we have a Federal budget that is 
approaching $3 trillion, and we certainly spend a lot of that on the 
Defense, and rightly so, Department of Defense. And to hear these 
situations taking place, it is just very upsetting.
  So, continuing, for my colleagues, to refer to the chart again: 
``Behind the door of Army Specialist Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the 
wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When 
the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can 
see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. Signs of 
neglect are everywhere. Mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained 
carpets, cheap mattresses.''
  And I will move to the last chart we have with these quotes, and then 
we can discuss it a little further. This is from building 18, which is 
the subject of the Washington Post report on Walter Reed which began 
this whole investigation: ``Life in building 18 is the bleakest 
homecoming for men and women whose government promised them good care 
in return for their sacrifices. `I hate it,' said one soldier, who 
stays in his room all day. `There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't 
work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there is no heat, no 
water.' ''
  Well, I do want to assure my colleagues and the American people and 
reiterate what I said earlier that by far the more important thing here 
is fixing the problem. We have outlined, I think, in pretty graphic 
detail what the problem is and the scope of the problem. We are not 
just talking about one facility at Walter Reed, although that has been 
the source of the beginning of this story. We are talking about 
facilities all across this country. And we do need a top-to-bottom 
review of every single facility. Let us find every problem that exists 
and let us fix it right now. That is the number one issue.
  And we are not as interested in casting blame in this situation. 
There is no question people need to be held accountable for this 
problem. And the hearings that we have had and the hearings that this 
Congress is going to continue to have with the Armed Services 
Committee, with the Veterans' Affairs Committee and with the Government 
Oversight Committee, we are going to get to the bottom of how this 
could possibly have happened, why it happened, who is responsible and 
who should be held accountable. But, again, that is the secondary 
issue. The primary issue is fixing the problem now. And I want to 
assure the American people, as I am sure my friend Mr.

[[Page H2294]]

Murphy does, that this timeline that I was reading from is going to 
stop in March 2007, as far as the situation being ignored and the 
situation not being brought to light. This is a new day. It is a new 
Congress. And we are going to take action. And it is unfortunate, and I 
am regretful that it took this long. But we are here now, and the 
situation that we are describing is not going to be easy, but we have a 
commitment in this Congress for Members like Mr. Murphy and myself that 
place no greater priority than finding the resolution to this problem 
and to our Nation's military men and women.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire, you hit it right on the head. 
It is, fix the problem, hold people accountable, in that order. We need 
to start holding people accountable here. I think that is a lot of 
frustration that led to you and I coming here and 40 or so of our 
fellow new colleagues here. I think a lot of the impetus that brought 
us here was this sense that nobody was being held accountable for what 
was happening in the government, whether it be the failure of our 
military strategy in Iraq or whether it be the failure of many of our 
domestic programs here at home.
  So we have got to keep the focus and the light of this place on 
finally holding this administration and the people in it and, frankly, 
even Members of this legislature accountable for their actions. But we 
have got to fix the problem first because people didn't send us here 
just to investigate and hold hearings and put out subpoenas. They want 
that responsibility of Congress to come back. They want us to fulfill 
that constitutional obligation. But they sent us here to get stuff 
done. And that is the miracle of what has happened here over the last 2 
months is that we are fixing problems. We are not just talking about 
it. We are actually doing what we are saying.
  The first 100 hours was all about that, Mr. Altmire. It had to be for 
the two of us one of the proudest moments of our life to be here 
joining hands with many of our Republican colleagues and for the first 
time making this place work again. Passing new bills to fund higher 
education, reforming the Medicare prescription drug law, investing in 
stem cell research; doing it with Democrats and Republicans, making 
this place work again.

  So here is the thing. We proved we can solve problems. We proved that 
we can work as Republicans and Democrats to fix things. And maybe we 
are confronted with our biggest problem; not just what we have 
uncovered in our veterans' system, what people like you and I have 
known for years, but the greater quagmire which exists in our military 
today in the situation we have got ourselves in Iraq. But we need to 
take both of these on, fix the problems to the extent that we can, and 
then hold people accountable because what we know is that we weren't 
ready for this war. We weren't ready for this war with the equipment, 
the trucks and the kits we needed for our troops. We know that, when 
this war began, we were $56 billion underfunded within the Army for the 
equipment that they needed. We know that, after the invasion, it took 
18 months for American soldiers to receive body armor; 18 months of 
being on the front lines before they got the body armor that they 
needed. And we know the health care system wasn't ready for the legions 
of troops that came back.
  I think I shared this on the floor the other night: A group of 
veterans came into my office and shared with me a statistic that was as 
interesting as it was sobering, that in conflicts earlier in this 
century, on average three wounded soldiers came back for every soldier 
that died on the battlefield. Today 16 soldiers come back wounded for 
every soldier that dies on the battlefield. And that is due to some of 
the advances in armor protection equipment. It is also due to the 
miracles of modern medicine and the response time that our medics and 
doctors in the field are able to perform.
  But it means that we have more people coming into our hospitals with 
more complex, more lasting injuries. They need better care, and they 
need faster care. And it appears that no one at the outset of this war 
was thinking about this problem ahead of time. They weren't preparing 
our military for battle. They didn't have a plan to occupy that 
country. They didn't think, it seems sometimes, more than a few seconds 
about the political realities that would emerge on the ground as we 
invaded Iraq. And now it turns out they also didn't think about what to 
do with the veterans when they come back.
  Mr. Altmire, I never served in the military. I never fired a gun. I 
have never been shot at. I get to serve in this Chamber on a cold night 
like tonight in Washington, DC, in a nice, heated place indoors because 
my contemporaries, my classmates made a different decision. They 
decided to go overseas and protect this Nation. And there isn't a day 
that I get up that I am not grateful for the decision that my friends 
and my relatives and my classmates made to allow me to serve this 
country in a very different manner. So as unfathomable as it is to me 
to think about what it is like to be on the ground in Baghdad today, to 
have veterans comparing their experiences in our own domestic veterans' 
health care system to the situations that they faced on the ground in 
Iraq is unconscionable to me. Think about what it must be like to come 
back to this country maimed, injured, perhaps with legs, arms 
amputated, and to enter a system with flies, with garbage, with 
syringes. I mean, we know what is happening with soldiers coming back 
with PTSD and other mental health issues from what they have seen on 
the battlefield, and to think that we are putting them into a system 
which not only abuses the sense of honor that we should have for those 
that come back. We should be celebrating them rather than putting them 
in these conditions.

                              {time}  2140

  But I am sure it aggravates what must be an unbelievably complicated 
transition back to life here in the United States. We need to start 
honoring their service again. And God forbid we ever have to engage in 
another military action in this country again. God forbid we have to 
send our brave young men and women overseas to fight.
  You know that in our lifetimes we will see that moment. We hope we 
don't. We hope we are wise enough in this Chamber to prevent another 
foreign engagement from happening, but the chances are that you and I 
may vote sometime during our service here to do this again.
  We better get it right that time. We better make the investment up 
front to make sure they are safe when they head over to that 
battlefield, and when they come home, the services are there for them.
  We are going to fix it. We are going to fix it and hold people 
accountable, and we are going to do it in that order. The American 
people for a long time maybe didn't have confidence when people stood 
up here and said there is a problem and we are going to do something 
about it. In this Congress, that is going to be our hallmark. We are 
going to be able to go home in the coming weeks and months and tell 
people that what you read about, whether it be in Newsweek or the 
Washington Post, is going to be taken care of.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. You talked about 
investments, making investments in our troops and making investments in 
our veterans. As you know on this 30-Something Working Group, I have 
spent a lot of time talking about our Nation's veterans and our VA 
healthcare system, and I am going to spend a lot more time talking 
about our VA healthcare system, because, as I said, there is no group 
that should stand ahead of our Nation's veterans when it comes time to 
make funding decisions.
  I wanted to talk a little bit about the decisions that have been made 
in past years. We have talked about this before, and I have another 
chart here that I would like my colleagues to take a look at. This is 
the underfunding, the chronic underfunding of the VA healthcare system.
  We have talked before about the fact that President Bush has 
delivered seven State of the Union addresses now and he has only 
mentioned veterans healthcare in one of those seven State of the Union 
addresses.
  I think as a Congress we have a responsibility when we talk about 
supporting our troops and we talk about supporting the brave men and 
women who we are sending off to battle, who were promised quality 
healthcare in

[[Page H2295]]

the VA health system when they signed up, we have an obligation to fund 
all of them at levels at which they can obtain this quality healthcare.
  So let's take a look at what has happened in recent years. I refer to 
the chart.
  In January of 2003, President Bush's budget cut veterans healthcare 
and eliminated 164,000 veterans from the roles of eligibility for VA 
healthcare. That was in January of 2003.
  In March of that same year, this Congress's budget, the Republican 
budget that cut $14 billion from veterans healthcare, passed. 199 
Democrats voted against it in this Chamber, but, unfortunately, at that 
point the Democrats were in the minority and they couldn't prevent 
these cuts. We have seen what the result has been of that $14 billion 
cut.
  In March of 2004, the Republican budget that shortchanged veterans 
healthcare by an additional $1.5 billion passed Congress, and this time 
201 Democrats voted against it. But, again, being in the minority, 
Democrats were unable to prevent those cuts, and we have seen the 
result.
  In March of 2005, continuing, President Bush's budget shortchanged 
veterans healthcare by an additional $2 billion for 2005 and cut VA 
healthcare by $14 billion over the next 5 years. 201 Democrats voted 
against that.
  So I think, Mr. Murphy, you would agree that you see a trend 
developing here over time of just cut after cut after cut to the VA 
healthcare system, and that is, A, not fair and not just, but it is 
also not sustainable, without encountering the types of problems and 
the systemic difficulties that we are seeing across the VA healthcare 
system.
  So in the summer of 2005, after serious Democratic pressure, months 
and months of pressure and warnings that the shortfall was going to be 
detrimental to the VA, the Bush administration finally acknowledged 
that their previous budgets had been inadequate and the shortfall had 
been $2.7 billion. The Democrats fought all summer to get this 
resolved. It is a disgrace that it had to come to that. We never should 
have been in that position.
  Then, after months and months of this discussion, in March of 2006, 
almost a year earlier from today, President Bush's budget cut veterans 
funding by an additional $6 billion over 5 years. Keep in mind, this is 
in the context of not mentioning veterans in his State of the Union 
addresses when he comes before this Chamber and outlines to us what his 
priorities are within his budget for the coming year. Veterans are not 
even mentioned. And I can see why. I wouldn't mention it either, if I 
had the same type of record on veterans healthcare as the President 
has. So in March of last year he proposed $6 billion in cuts over 5 
years.
  Well, something happened in November of 2006. As we all know, the 
American people spoke up and said they were fed up with this and 
weren't going to take it any more. I know I heard loud and clear 
throughout my campaign and certainly on that election day in November 
that veterans funding was a big part of why the American people were 
frustrated with the decisions of this administration and the decisions 
of this Congress up to that time.
  As we have talked about many times, I said that my number one 
priority in considering the budget for the current year, which was left 
undone by the previous Congress, was veterans healthcare funding. I 
said I would never support a budget that did not at least maintain the 
current level of services for VA healthcare funding in the continuing 
years, and certainly in the current year.
  Thankfully, under the new leadership in Congress we passed a budget 
for fiscal year 2007 that increased veterans funding by $3.6 billion. I 
won't go back and read the numbers again, but you remember hearing 
about a lot of billions of dollars of decreases, $14 billion over 5 
years, $6 billion additionally over 5 years in previous Congresses.
  The first budget we had to pass in this Congress, in the climate of 
enormous pressure for fiscal responsibility, we had to cut over 60 
programs to find the room in the new pay-as-you-go budget scoring to 
pay for this, because we are not running the country on a credit card 
as we have in years past. We are fiscally responsible and we do have an 
obligation to find the funding to pay for our priorities. And we did 
that. We found $3.6 billion to increase funding for veterans 
healthcare.
  I think in the time to come, very shortly you are going to see a 
further demonstration, a very strong demonstration from this Congress 
in a very difficult climate of our commitment to funding VA healthcare. 
That is going to be something that we are able to demonstrate to the 
American people, and to keep our promise to do what we said we were 
going to do and to do what the American people expected us to do.
  But the unfortunate reality, Mr. Murphy, is that these funding cuts 
from the past have had a terrible effect on the institutions, both in 
the VA and also the lack of attention in the Department of Defense 
health facilities, and has led to some very, very serious problems, as 
outlined by the Washington Post. But those issues have consequences, 
and they are in the past. We have a responsibility now in the new 
Congress as leaders and as the elected group from the American people 
that is charged with dealing with this to take action. As we have said 
many times tonight, we are going to take action.

                              {time}  2150

  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire, we have to look at veterans' 
health care, care for our wounded as part and parcel of the cost of the 
war. The cost of the war is not just troops on the ground, the 
equipment, the weapons. The cost of the war is all of that, which, of 
course, runs into the billions, racking up hour by hour, day by day, 
but the cost of the war also includes top rate, gold standard care for 
those troops when they return to this country.
  Sometimes you talk about the cost of the war and veterans' health 
care. They are in kind of different silos in Washington speak, and we 
are figuring out how Washington talks versus the rest of the world.
  Out there, what our veterans and soldiers talk about is a cost of 
battle, a cost of sending our troops overseas, which includes making 
sure, when they come back to this country, they get everything they 
need. That is part of our challenge. We came down here I think, not to 
speak for both of us, but to sort of change how Washington thinks about 
this world and start making it match up with the reality out there in 
our communities. We sat there for the last 2 years campaigning to get 
here, listening to people screaming and yelling about rising energy 
prices. We listened to families talk about how they couldn't afford to 
send their kids to college, and we heard seniors talking about how the 
Medicare prescription drug bill does not work. And they watch 
Washington do nothing about it. There is a disconnect that has happened 
over the past 12 years, and certainly over the last 6 years especially, 
and how people talk about their problems in the world and how 
Washington views them. There is no better example than veterans' health 
care.
  To veterans and soldiers, the cost of the war includes taking care of 
soldiers when they return to the United States. We have to make people 
understand that again.
  We sat for that very long debate about the escalation of the war. We 
listened to the people on the other side of the aisle make a 
ridiculously simplistic argument. They said, to support the troops, you 
must support the commander of the troops. Part of supporting the troops 
has to be supporting everything he asks you to do. You can't make an 
independent judgment about whether what he wants is right or wrong; you 
simply have to line up with him, or we are going to tell you that you 
are not supporting the men and women who fight for this country.
  We know that is wrong. We know that the American people don't believe 
that, and we know this election was in part about separating what is 
right for the troops, the country and what the President has asked them 
to do and has vastly under-equipped them to do.
  But you just detailed maybe example number one where what the 
President's policies are over the past several years has been the exact 
opposite of what is right for our troops, cuts to veterans' health 
care, increases in premiums. That is as bold and plain and simple and 
concise as you can make it.
  You can't stand here and say, in order to support the troops, you 
have

[[Page H2296]]

to support the President when the President puts forth a budget, year 
after year, budgets that don't do justice for the veterans who return.
  I think the American people have weighed in on that issue on whether 
or not we need to support the President on everything he does in order 
to support the troops, but there is yet another example.
  Mr. Altmire, I think we also have to talk about the issue of 
accountability here. Here is the problem, is that our military is 
stretched thin right now. This isn't just about supporting the troops; 
it is about supporting the generals that oversee those troops and 
supporting the commanders who are struggling to do more with less.
  Let me read a quote from General Peter Schoomaker, the Chief of Staff 
of the Army. He says, ``To meet combatant commanders immediate wartime 
needs, we pooled equipment from across the force to equip soldiers 
deploying in harm's way. This practice, which we are continuing today, 
increases risk for our next-to-deploy units and limits our ability to 
respond to emerging strategic contingencies.'' This was from a 
Washington Post story.
  That is a pretty amazing statement to come from our Nation's top 
military brass. To come out on the record, flying in the face of what 
the President is telling the American people and saying that we are 
endangering the lives of our troops by overextending the limits of our 
equipment and our machinery within our Armed Forces.
  So we also have to force the military commanders who are desperately 
trying to do the right thing with a very flawed policy and with an 
administration which pays no attention to the root causes of the 
insurgency which puts our forces in harm's way and who doesn't give the 
Army the resources they need to fight this battle and obviously doesn't 
treat the soldiers the way they need to be treated when they come home.
  This is about supporting our troops and about supporting our 
commanders and about supporting our Armed Forces in general. They are 
being asked to do so much more with so much less. This is no secret. 
When we come and vote on the supplemental request from this President, 
you better believe that Members on this side of the aisle are going to 
make sure that there is a historic commitment to veterans, just like 
there was in the continuing resolution. We have to make that a priority 
in this new authorization of funding because we are beginning to talk 
like everybody else talks out there. We are beginning to understand 
that the cost of this war is the money that it takes to fight the 
battle on the streets of Baghdad, but it is also the cost of taking 
care of those soldiers when they come home.
  Mr. Altmire, you underplay your effect on that discussion. You were a 
real hero on that issue of making sure that the veterans' care and 
funding were in that continuing resolution. I hope people back in your 
district understand what you did on that issue to ensure that those 
funds were part of that continuing resolution.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate the gentleman mentioning that.
  I wanted to finish the time line. I want to make sure to get that in 
before we run out of time here, and then maybe move on to one other 
issue.
  In September 2006, we talked about the replacement of the 300 
employees by the former Halliburton official.
  In October 2006, the Secretary of Defense's wife, Joyce Rumsfeld, the 
then-Secretary of Defense, was taken to Walter Reed by a close friend 
who was also a Walter Reed volunteer. When hospital officials found out 
that this was the case, Mrs. Rumsfeld's friend was banned from entering 
or continuing to volunteer at the hospital.
  So the implication was they did not want them to see what was 
happening at the hospital. That is from a Washington Post article. I 
would not have mentioned that were it not printed in the Washington 
Post, that the Secretary of Defense's wife had a close friend 
volunteering at Walter Reed, and they were asked not to continue 
volunteering, again the implication that they would not like what they 
would be seeing there.
  Then, moving to February 4, 2007, getting up almost to current time. 
The number of Federal employees providing facilities management 
services at Walter Reed by this time, a month ago, had dropped from 300 
to fewer than 60. This is before The Washington Post article came out, 
immediately before. The remaining 60 employees, 50 of them were private 
workers. That is from the Army Times where we get those statistics.
  And then everything begins to change.
  February 19, The Washington Post expose comes out detailing 
mistreatment of veterans and housing on the grounds of Walter Reed Army 
Medical Center. That is the turning point. Unfortunately, we heard 
about the 2004 visit and the complaints registered by a senior Member 
of Congress. We heard, in 2005, the then-Republican Veterans' Affairs 
Committee chairman announced they were not interested in hearing from 
our Nation's veterans anymore; they were not welcome to address the 
committee to talk about some of these issues.
  The Washington Post article comes out February 19, one week later, 
February 26, the soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center were told 
that they were to wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms 
ready for inspection at 7 a.m. This was new. More importantly, they 
were told that they were no longer allowed to speak to the media. I 
think we can see why that is.
  So that is the time line of events leading up.
  Let's look at what has happened this week. This is Wednesday, March 
7.
  Well, on March 5, in the new Congress here, the House Oversight and 
Government Reform Committee began holding hearings to investigate the 
Walter Reed scandal; again, in the context of the previous Congress, 
that was unwelcome.
  March 6 and 7, yesterday and today, the House Veterans' Affairs 
Committee held hearings on the Walter Reed scandal, and today there was 
also an Armed Services Committee hearing. So we have three separate 
committees looking into this, actively reviewing the situation and 
actively looking for answers and actively looking for results.

                              {time}  2200

  So I would refer, once again, anyone interested in learning more 
about this story to the Newsweek article, and I once again put this 
chart up. It is a great article. It gives a good summary of the 
situation, and I would ask the American people and our colleagues to 
just continue to seek answers. We are going to do our best to get to 
the bottom of this. We are going to do our best to make sure that this 
system is resolved, and unless Mr. Murphy wants to talk about this, I 
was going to, in our short time, move into one other issue because it 
is budget season.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Sure.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. And we actually had booked this time to talk about the 
budget, and then these issues were developing this week.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let me highlight one thing before we leave 
this subject. This is going to be a chart that we might see a few more 
times on the 30 Something Working Group hour here.
  I just want to make sure the people know we are back to business 
here. This is 81 hearings that have been held on issues related to the 
Iraq War this year. I mean, you go through the list just the week right 
after we got back from recess, the last week of February, on Tuesday, 
the 27th, two hearings; on Wednesday, the 28th, five hearings; on 
Thursday, the 1st, three hearings.
  Now, that may seem like a lot. It seems like, well, what is Congress 
doing with all these hearings. There was so much work to be done to 
uncover all of these abuses. I think that is going to kind of level out 
over time, but right now we needed to get back to the work of starting 
to do some oversight when it comes to this war, to start uncovering 
many of these abuses. We will continue this chart going forward.
  This idea that you presented that we have got two jobs, fix it and 
hold people accountable, we are doing both. This continuing resolution 
that kept the government running had historic levels of funding for 
veterans care. I think we are going to be able to do something similar 
with the supplemental authorization that we will vote on in the coming 
weeks.

[[Page H2297]]

  But we are also doing that second part, which is holding this 
administration accountable, to make sure that it does not happen again, 
because I do not want to be here a year from now just trying to play 
catch-up and plugging all the holes that this administration creates. I 
actually want to solve the problems and make sure that competent people 
get into places that matter in this administration.
  I want to make sure that the President starts putting budgets before 
us that make sense so that these oversight hearings, 81 hearings that 
have been held already in this Congress, are going to start to get us 
there.
  That is maybe the moment to turn. We have got a few minutes left to 
talk a little bit about this budget.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. That is a chart that we are going to be seeing a lot 
more of, and I did want to make one point about that.
  Those 81 oversight hearings on what is happening in Iraq, those are 
not make-work hearings. Those are not hearings just to hold hearings. 
Those are serious issues that this Congress is looking at.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I sit on the Government Oversight and 
Reform Committee, and in that committee, we found out that we sent $9 
billion in cash over to Iraq, on pallets, handed it out in duffel bags. 
We found out that when we were subcontracting to these subcontractors 
to do security, they subcontracted again, and they subcontracted again, 
and everybody takes a little money off the top every time. We did not 
know. We had not heard about any of that until we started doing 
hearings.
  So you are exactly right. Hammer that point home. This is not doing 
hearings for hearings sake. This is doing hearings to uncover the 
waste, fraud and abuse that has been happening in this government. This 
is my taxpayer dollars. This is my neighbor's taxpayer dollars that are 
going down the drain with some of these programs. This is real stuff.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. This is in the context of being told, the American 
people were told, that the oil proceeds in Iraq would pay for the cost 
of the war. You have a couple of issues. One is the oil proceeds. We do 
not have any accounting of where a lot of them are going. They are 
disappearing into the black market. They are certainly not paying for 
the cost of the war.
  The second issue is, we have paid almost $400 billion as a Nation on 
the Iraq War of our money, the American people's money, and as you have 
outlined, we have lost billions of dollars in Iraq that is completely 
unaccounted for. You certainly know about that from the Government 
Oversight Committee, and I am sure we will talk more about that.
  In just the few minutes that we have remaining, about 4 minutes 
remaining, I did want to talk about budget season. Here we are in the 
spring, and as our loyal constituents and people who follow the 30 
Something Working Group will know, we do talk about the budget at some 
length and rightly so, because the budget has not been managed well 
over the past 6 years.

  We have an administration that came into office. We had just had four 
consecutive years of budget surpluses that were forecast as far as the 
eye can see, and in the last 6 years, we have had six consecutive 
budget deficits that are now forecast as far as the eye can see. There 
has been a $9 trillion swing in the 10-year forecast from a $5.5 
trillion surplus over 10 years to a $3.5 trillion dollar because of the 
fiscal mismanagement that we have seen over the past 6 years. The 
President just submitted to us his 2007 out-of-balance budget.
  So I will use this as a teaser for perhaps our next 30 Something 
Working Group because we will not be able to get into it as much as we 
would like, but for those watching, I would just say that we are going 
to talk at great length about some of these issues in the coming weeks.
  We were going to talk about foreign-held debt today, and I have a 
chart that I would refer my colleagues to. This President has added 
more than $1 trillion of foreign-held debt to America's balance in just 
6 years. He did more than his 42 predecessors combined in just 6 years. 
The history of the country up to his administration had put less in 
foreign-held debt than he did in just 6 years.
  So let us take a look at who is holding this debt. I get this 
question all the time because I talk about the deficit and the debt and 
who is holding it. Japan holds $644 billion in American debt right now. 
China holds $350 billion of American debt. That is after only 1 year 
earlier it was $250 billion. So the Chinese have added $100 billion in 
American-held debt. The U.K., $240 billion, and you can see the other 
countries down here, Hong Kong is on there. Of course, they are now 
part of China. This was a historical chart.
  So we have a lot of work to do to restore fiscal responsibility, but 
we are going to be talking in the weeks ahead in how we are going to do 
that with this Congress.
  We have already taken the steps to move in that direction with the 
pay-as-you-go budget scoring, and you are going to see some things 
happening with the budget that have not been done in 6 or 7 years 
because we do have a responsibility to be fiscally responsible. The 
American people sent us here to do that.
  So with that, I would ask Mr. Murphy if he does not have any 
comments, he has got his e-mail chart there.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. First of all, let me say that there is 
nothing that acts as a tantalizing teaser to whet the appetites of the 
American people than telling them if they tune in next time, we will 
talk about foreign-held national debt. That really gets people's blood 
pumping.
  I cannot give the chart without letting people know out there that 
the clock is ticking. 365 days you have left officially in the 30 
Something Working Group. Congratulations. Happy birthday today. I do 
not know why the rest of the Members are not here to celebrate.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I think they are out celebrating.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. They might be having one of your behalf.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. But thank you for saying that.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Anything we have talked about today, if 
people want to get more information about, they can e-mail us at 
[email protected], and you can always visit 
www.speaker.gov/30something. One of these days when they go to that Web 
site, they will actually see our faces on there. Technology sometimes 
does not keep up with the changes in the House, but I am sure that our 
faces will be on that Web site, sooner rather than later.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman and today is my birthday. It is my 
39th birthday, and I was happy to spend it here with you tonight 
talking about the budget.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It is how every young boy hopes to 
celebrate their 39th birthday.
  Mr. ALTMORE. That is right.

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