[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 53 (Tuesday, March 27, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3782-S3785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAQ SUPPLEMENTAL
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I think this is certainly one of the most
important bills we have had before us and one, frankly, that is the
most time-constrained of any we have had before us. Normally, we have a
good deal of time to talk about bills and we have budget bills that
won't go into effect until next year, but the fact is, this bill, which
is for the funding of troops, these dollars need to be available within
the next couple of weeks, as we understand it, of course. So it is
important that we recognize that and that we understand the purpose of
this bill is to fund our troops.
Whether you agree with the troops being there, the troops are there,
and the fact is that it is up to us to provide the support they need
and the dollars which are necessary to provide them the support they
need in the position they are in. If there were ever a bill that should
be recognized as having a unique purpose and should not be attached to
other kinds of nonpertinent issues, I believe this is one. We are going
to have the opportunity to decide whether we want to attach other
issues to this bill and extend it, whether we want to have a situation
where there is a veto and all those time-consuming things or whether we
indeed want to have a clean bill that provides for the support of our
troops who are now in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For weeks now, the President has repeatedly said he will veto the
bill if it ties the hands of the generals on the ground. What he is
saying is he and the generals have a plan, and the fact is the plan
seems to be making more advances and accomplishments than we have had
in the past, so we need to allow that to continue to work. We have all
said the President needs a different plan. The President now has a
different plan. There is new leadership in Iraq.
So I think we need to understand where we are with respect to this
bill because we certainly have been on notice and are well aware of the
looming veto. That veto would simply take more time and keep this money
from getting where it needs to be to support the troops.
Not passing this legislation, of course, would only delay the
critical resources and the necessary equipment and training for our
soldiers who are getting ready to deploy or have, in fact, deployed.
Secretary of Defense Gates has warned the Congress that if we delay
emergency spending for our troops already deployed, many will not be
able to come home. This is a very serious statement, and we need to pay
attention to it.
I don't want to portray the President's plan in Iraq as being a
success so far, but our commanders on the ground are reporting good
news and that we are making progress, and that is what it is all about,
of course. We need to be there until we have completed our task. I
understand that explaining what the completion of the task is may not
be easy, and people have different views about what that should be, but
it is pretty clear we need to be able to get the Iraqis in a position
to govern themselves before we can return. I am for returning as soon
as possible, but I think setting an artificial definition for when they
return is not appropriate anywhere and particularly not appropriate on
this bill.
I just do not understand how Members on the other side can say one
thing in their States and then stand and do the opposite thing--stand
for supporting their troops in their States and then come here and have
exactly the opposite position in Washington. At this point, we are
where we are, and we need to have funding for our troops in the field,
no question. Nobody would argue that, and I think no one would dispute
that is a time sensitive issue as well.
We are going to be here this week on this bill. We are going to be
gone next week. If the bill were to be vetoed, then we would have to go
through that whole process. One can see that if we are going to get
this done by the date which we have all heard, which is April 15, it is
important we take off these kinds of things that are holding it up. We
should not play political one-upmanship when it comes to funding our
men and women who are in theater or are ready to deploy--I don't think
there is any question about that--nor should we attempt to move
legislation by buying votes for things that would be at the expense of
our troops.
Unfortunately, the emergency legislation we have before us has been
larded up with all manner of nonemergency spending and extraneous
measures. Not only are we attempting to tie the President's hands by
micromanaging the war, but we are trying to push through pet projects
at the expense of our troops. I understand the politics of this place.
When someone has something they would like very much to have done, the
greatest thing to do is to put it on the bill that has to pass, and
even though it is inappropriate, even though it is not a part of the
purpose of the bill, of course, I understand that helps get it done.
But the request submitted to the Congress was to have $100 billion for
troops and hurricane relief. The bill we are considering contains an
additional $20 billion--$20 billion--for individual Member requests, a
minimum wage increase, and small tax packages. The last time I checked,
none of these is an emergency, so they do not qualify for this bill. I
understand the merits of many of these things, and they should be
considered. But, again, in terms of how we do things here, this is an
emergency bill, and things that are in here ought to qualify as
emergencies or else not be on the bill.
So we have to say: Do they have merit? Of course they have merit.
There is no question that many of them do and should be individually
addressed in the normal legislative process. They should be considered
because they have merit and, indeed, are worth consideration. However,
we are also faced with the question that the majority has said we must
get our fiscal house in order. That is what we have been hearing, but
that is not what we have been doing. It is easy to say that, but it is
hard to do it.
We do need to take a look at spending. This is an emergency bill--
this is outside the budget--and so it is a wonderful place to pen on a
lot of things that are additional spending that really aren't within
the limits of spending, which all of us seem to be so proud to be
putting on in this Congress. So I think we have to take a look at all
those things. Almost to a person, everyone has come to the floor and
promised the American public that future spending would be paid
for. These things that are added are not paid for. So we are not
keeping that promise that has been made.
I think this week the majority will have an opportunity to stand by
their words. We must keep Federal spending under control and
accountable. To add things that are inappropriate, that do not fit on
the bill, that are outside the budget--to use this opportunity is not
being accountable. To add projects to emergency spending, which by
definition is outside the normal budget process, is not the right way
to accomplish this goal.
It is going to be tough. We are going to have projects that everyone
on both sides of the aisle thinks: Oh, that is good for my State--
whether it is shrimp or spinach or whatever. So there will be support
for those things. But the fact is, they do not belong on this emergency
bill.
I remind my colleagues of the budget resolution for 2007 which
explicitly defines what constitutes an emergency. It says all of the
five following criteria must be satisfied in order for something to be
considered an emergency: No. 1, is necessary, essential, or vital; No.
2, sudden, quickly coming into being, and not building up over time;
No. 3, a pressing and compelling urgent need requiring immediate
action; No. 4, an unforeseeable, unpredictable, and
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unanticipated issue; and, finally, not permanent but temporary in
nature.
The Senate has to establish the criteria, and I think we ought to
follow it in this budget area. I know we cannot fix the problems in
just 1 week. There should be an effort to remove all the extraneous and
nondefense spending. I look forward to bringing an important question
before us, privatizing these things. The American people will soon
learn whether the Members of the Senate have committed themselves to
getting their financial house in order, whether they will back their
words with action.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I join my distinguished colleague from
Wyoming in addressing the pending business of the Senate, which is the
emergency supplemental to help fund our troops who are serving in
harm's way. The problem with this particular legislation is it does
more than that. In fact, contrary to its advertised purpose of
supporting the troops, it undermines the ability of our commanders on
the ground to actually succeed in the goal they volunteered to achieve
and which we have asked them to do because it sets artificial timelines
and attempts to micromanage the fighting of the war on the ground.
It ultimately jeopardizes the ability to get funds for the troops, to
provide the necessary equipment, to provide the replenishment of used-
up resources that are necessary as we rotate troops who are in the
battlefield today. It would ultimately make it more likely that troops
who are already there--who sacrificed a lot, along with their
families--are going to have to sacrifice even more because the troops
necessary and the equipment necessary to actually rotate in and relieve
them of their responsibilities will not be available.
The other thing that is so unseemly, to me, about this whole process
is, because this is the train leaving the station and colleagues know
that this bill needs to pass, or at least some version of it--emergency
spending to support our troops--that the House, in particular, and now
the Senate has joined in a similar manner in larding this
appropriations bill with various pork projects.
My colleague from Wyoming has pointed out that the nature of
emergency spending means this money goes straight to the deficit. In
other words, the bill is passed on to the next generation and beyond
and not paid for.
We just went through an elaborate process in passing a budget
resolution. Time and time again, the new majority has said they want to
engage in some budget and fiscal discipline, but that stated goal, to
try to deal with taxpayer dollars responsibly, to find offsets for
spending and have pay-as-you-go rules is completely belied by the
actions reflected in this particular appropriations bill.
The fact is, we did debate this issue just 2 weeks ago with regard to
artificial timelines and micromanaging the war. The Senate voted 48 to
50 not to approve cloture on S.J. Res. 9, which was an effort by our
Democratic colleagues to micromanage and set artificial timelines. They
lost that vote by 48 to 50. Now they are back again, trying it another
time.
Giving the enemy a timetable when American troops will withdraw from
Iraq without regard to conditions on the ground, without regard to the
early signs of progress that we are making, only helps the enemy plan
on how to establish and accomplish their goals, not our goals. Our
focus should be on how to succeed in Iraq, not how to tie the hands of
our troops, jeopardize the funding that is necessary for their success,
and to micromanage something that we have no business micromanaging
from the Halls of Congress, thousands of miles away from the
battlefield.
The tragedy of this is it now represents 18 different proposals by
the Democrats in Congress on how to lose in Iraq and not a single
proposal on how to succeed. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee on which I serve has pointed out that there are between 5,000
and 6,000 al-Qaida operatives now in Iraq. To pass legislation which
sets an arbitrary deadline for withdrawing our combat forces without
defeating al-Qaida makes no sense, no sense at all. It will create a
power vacuum, much as Afghanistan was after the fall of the Soviet
Union, which then gave rise to a failed state and a launching pad for
terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. We need
to do everything in our power to prevent that from happening again and
not forget the lessons of 9/11 and allow it to be repeated in Iraq.
The Iraqis know our commitment there is not open ended, and they
understand the future of Iraq is in their hands. But to pass
legislation that micromanages how our troops should fight the enemy and
essentially allow the creation of safe havens for terrorists is the
height of irresponsibility.
We pointed out before, but it is worth pointing out again, we
unanimously confirmed General Petraeus, the architect of the
counterinsurgency plan currently being carried out in Baghdad. He does
not need the armchair generals in the Senate dictating military tactics
to him. If the Members of this body really support the troops, we will
provide, unencumbered, the resources necessary for our troops to
accomplish the goals which they so valiantly and bravely volunteered to
do, under the leadership of great generals such as GEN David Petraeus.
We all want our troops home as soon as possible. We all share that
goal. But any decision to withdraw from Iraq before the Iraqis
themselves are able to stabilize their country, with our help, to allow
them to govern and defend themselves, will not heighten America's
national security but, rather, will jeopardize it.
We have had 18 proposals to date from our colleagues on the other
side of the aisle. Every attempt they have had to try to pass one of
these proposals has failed. But as Yogi Berra said, ``It's deja vu all
over again.'' Here we go again. We just voted last week 48 to 50
against legislation that would impose a deadline. I hope we will not
have to continue to debate this over and over again and continue to
send the message to our enemies: Yes, you are that much closer to
breaking America's will in this contest of wills in something that is
so important to our national security. We need to get this legislation
passed and passed soon, so our troops do not have to guess whether the
funding necessary to carry out their mission will be forthcoming.
Using the supplemental appropriations to play political games and to
pay off domestic priorities, such as peanut subsidies and spinach
subsidies, is not in the best interests of our men and women in
uniform. That is why the President has threatened to veto this bill,
due to the pork and the timelines that are included in it. I encourage
my colleagues to think long and hard before moving forward in a way
that would compromise the mission of our troops who are serving to
protect all of us.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the amendment of
Senator Cochran, the amendment to strike the language, of which I am a
cosponsor. I raised this in the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense
last week. Senator Cochran indicated then that he would do as he has
done; that is, to move to strike the language in the supplemental
requiring the phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 120 days, 4
months--120 days.
Mr. President, as you heard--and you have been a party to--4 months
is clearly not enough time for General Petraeus or the brave members of
our Armed Forces to have a chance to see if a surge in troop numbers
could turn the war. I don't know for sure. I had, as a lot of us did, a
conversation with General Petraeus before he took command about the
troop surge, about the 20,000 troops. I personally think we need
100,000 troops, but we don't have them. General Petraeus is a very
smart man. He is a combat soldier. He is in control. I believe to put
on an arbitrary timeline of 120 days is the wrong message at the wrong
time, where they are beginning--just beginning--to secure some
neighborhoods. Will they continue to do this? We hope so. But we should
bring every bit of stability we can to the Baghdad area.
I have no illusion about sooner or later coming home. I would like to
see our troops come home. I don't think that will be the end of the
struggle
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with Islamic fundamentalists by any stretch of the imagination, but I
think if we are able to stabilize that area of Iraq to some degree,
perhaps there can be some kind of diplomatic resolution because
ultimately none of us ever envisioned staying in Iraq. We have been
there 4 years. I wish we were not there today, but we are and we are
heavily engaged.
I think we need to give our Armed Forces every opportunity to
succeed. We should not send an ambiguous message to them: We are going
to support you today and tomorrow we want you to withdraw, in 120 days,
or begin to withdraw. I think that is the wrong message, and I think it
would undermine the morale of our troops.
Congress should not be armchair generals. We should not try to
micromanage what is going on on the ground. That is why I support the
Cochran amendment. We need to give our commanders and our soldiers
every chance to succeed in Iraq, to bring stability there, where
diplomatic maneuvers then perhaps could begin to work. Sending
ambiguous messages to our Armed Forces is not the right way. They need
our support both morally and materially. I believe at the end of the
day they are going to get it.
The President has already signaled if this language were to stay he
would veto this bill. I believe what he says he is going to do. But we
can strike this language today. We can move on and get this
supplemental passed to make sure our troops are well funded and that
they have what they need to succeed. And they will succeed.
The members of our Armed Forces are in harm's way every day. We know
the horror stories about war. But they bravely face a sometimes unknown
enemy and have done everything asked of them--sometimes two and three
times, Mr. President, as you well know. Micromanaging the war from the
Halls of Congress is not the right thing to do.
I urge my colleagues to support the Cochran amendment and strike this
language from the supplemental bill.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BOND. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call
be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. BOND. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business. I
know it is not our side's time. If there is no objection, I would
appreciate using the time.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, this is going to be a very busy day. I have
comments that will relate to what will happen when we bring the bill up
on the floor, but I thought I would take this time to talk about two
things that are extremely important. First, with respect to the bill, I
am the lead Republican cosponsor, with the Senators from North Dakota
and South Dakota, on ag disaster. We have been 3 years without an
agricultural disaster bill. We have had 3 years of agricultural
disasters. Those of us from the Midwest know that we have been
afflicted with droughts, tornadoes, tremendous losses by farmers,
livestock producers, and others in agricultural production. I visited
southwest Missouri this January and saw what some people described as
countywide tornadoes. The ice storms were so severe they broke down
trees, collapsed sheds, knocked out power, broke down fences, and put
many livestock and poultry producers on the verge of financial
disaster.
Similarly over the years, when drought has struck, the ag producers,
livestock and poultry and crops, were hit severely. This ag disaster
package is absolutely essential. I appreciate the lead of the chairman
of the Appropriations Committee in including our request for ag
disaster.
In addition, I am a very strong supporter of the amendment of the
ranking minority member of the Appropriations Committee to strike the
limitations on the ability of General Petraeus to conduct the war in
Iraq. Let us remember that General Petraeus came before the committees
to outline his new ideas, his new plan for moving forward in Iraq.
People had been saying: We need a new plan. Yes, clearly, we need a new
plan. The Bremer plan, debaathification, firing the Army, sending them
home without pay and with their weapons, turns out to have been the
absolute wrong thing to do. But General Petraeus, who was unanimously
confirmed by this body, has gone back to Iraq with his new way of going
forward.
They have made some significant changes in the rules of engagement.
Now no longer are Shia death squads or militia off-limits. Moqtada al-
Sadr has seen the light or felt the heat, and he has gone to Tehran. We
are talking action against Jaysh al-Mahdi and others who are engaged in
sectarian battles. We have a new plan of going in, holding, and
clearing, the conventional and now-proven theory of dealing with
insurgencies. You cannot just go in and wipe out people who are causing
chaos and killing their political enemies. You have to stay there and
maintain peace, security. That is what we are supporting the Iraqi
forces doing. The Iraqi forces are there. They are the ones who are
going to have to take over. The training of the Iraqi forces is the
critical element for us to assure stability in the region.
Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and on mine
embraced the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. For example, the
distinguished majority whip on December 8 on CNN said:
We ought to follow the Iraqi Study Group.
This new plan the President and General Petraeus have put forward is,
by and large, the Iraq Study Group's plan. After receiving the report,
when you look at the recommendations, they track with what we are doing
now, from sending reinforcements to Baghdad to increasing the number of
embedded American advisers, to holding the Iraqi Government responsible
for specific security and political milestones. The differences between
what we are doing now in Iraq and the Iraq Study Group recommendations
are insignificant. Sending reinforcements to Baghdad, the principal
tenet of the new plan General Petraeus has put forth, is referenced in
general by the Iraq Study Group, which said it could support a short-
term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize
Baghdad, recognizing the level of violence in and around Baghdad has
crippled the ability of both the al-Maliki Government and the U.S.
military to restore basic services and establish a modicum of law and
order. I quote:
The ISG recognized, as does the U.S. military, that Baghdad
is central to success or failure in Iraq. It is not
surprising that more troops were added--the total number of
which is still below 2005 levels.
There is one other very important point that is of concern to
everybody in this body and all Americans. The Iraq Study Group said:
The United States should not make an open-ended commitment
to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq.
President Bush said of his plan and its implementation:
I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other
leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the
Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it
will lose the support of the American people.
It is clear we have a new way forward. The language in the underlying
legislation before us says we ought to set a timetable, a political
timetable. We ought to determine in this body exactly the dates when we
start removing troops from Baghdad, from Iraq, changing our policy.
I have a novel idea: Wars cannot be run from these hallowed and
comfortable and sanctified chambers 10,000 miles away from the war
zone. How about allowing the officers, the men, and the commanders in
the field--who are engaged daily, risking their lives to bring peace
and security to Iraq--to determine when and how we can best turn over
to the Iraqi security forces the critical job--the critical job--of
assuring security and a relatively peaceful country? Nobody is saying
it is going to be a Jeffersonian democracy. What we are seeking is
peace and security.
We had an open hearing with the leaders of the intelligence community
in January before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The top leaders of
that intelligence community said, unanimously, it would be very unwise
to establish a short-term political timetable for withdrawal prior to
the
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time the Iraqi security forces take over.
If this body, in its ``wisdom''--an oxymoron in this case--says pull
out on such-and-such date, and the Iraqi security forces are not ready
to take over, what would happen? Three things--all of them bad.
No. 1, the killing, sectarian violence between Shia and Sunnis would
escalate. You would see many more thousands killed, as we would no
longer be there to serve as a buffer and as adviser to prevent that
from happening.
No. 2, the goal of al-Qaida, as expressed by Osama bin Laden and his
No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to achieve the headquarters of the
caliphate in the ``land of the two rivers,'' i.e., Baghdad, would be
achieved. They would have a safe haven. They would have a safe haven
from which they could train, recruit, perhaps even get back to turning
on the dual-use facilities Saddam Hussein set up for turning out
chemical or biological weapons.
Now, the third thing that would happen, which is a true disaster,
would be the neighboring countries would have to come in to back up
their co-religionists. If the Sunnis are being oppressed by the Shia,
then the Sunni states will be ready, and they will come in. If they
come in, Iran and its Shia partners are all ready to come in.
What happens then? We have a conflagration in the Middle East
bringing in many countries in a region-wide war that will draw,
unfortunately, perhaps hundreds of thousands of American troops to
prevent the disaster from spreading, to support our friends in Israel.
General Petraeus has promised, in his confirmation hearings, that he
will tell us if the new plan, the new rules of engagement--putting the
Iraqi security forces out front, with American advisers continuing to
supply American troops to go after the high-value targets, the radical
Salafist jihadists of al-Qaida and other entities--we will continue to
hunt them down so they do not overwhelm the Iraqi security forces.
General Petraeus will tell us. He should know by this summer if it
fails. If it fails, he said he will tell us, and I would trust he would
begin making such changes as are necessary, without tipping off the
enemy what they are planning to do. The important thing is not telling
the enemy what our timetable is.
I think it is perhaps illustrative to share with you some comments
from an e-mail I received from a marine who has been in Iraq and who is
going back. He was commenting on a timetable. He said: I haven't polled
all of them. I don't speak for all of them, but I can tell you, a
lion's share think a timetable is a disastrous idea. I don't know what
possible benefit you can assess that would come from a timetable. Where
is the help toward mission accomplishment?
He said: Iraqis understand that progress is being made. I think the
Iraqi forces are getting ready to take over and with our help should be
able to do it sometime in 2007. But if we tell everyone exactly when
that is going to be, it gets a lot easier for the merry mujahedin to
claim victory, lay low, and then wreak havoc when the coalition packs
up shop.
This particular marine said: I'm not wild about going back to Iraq,
but I would sure as heck rather do that than essentially invalidate
everything we've done to date by leaving too early and inviting chaos.
That is the choice. Does a political timetable give Members cover
back here? Maybe. But I have even heard that ridiculed. I have heard
that ridiculed. I ask this body to strike the language, let General
Petraeus run the war, let him pursue every avenue to assure Iraq is
stable and secure. He and the President have said, if it does not work,
we will change policy. But let's give it a chance to work.
Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues and yield
the floor.
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