[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 67 (Wednesday, April 25, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H4163-H4168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is
recognized for 50 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be
able to kick off what I hope will be a very interesting hour. Every
week we try to get together at least once as members of the 30-
Something Working Group at the pleasure of the Speaker of the House to
talk about some of the most pressing issues, not only to this country
at large, but in particular to the young people of this country. I
appreciate the Speaker giving us this opportunity.
We are hopefully going to be joined today by some of the veteran 30-
Something Members, but we are going to kick today off with Mr. Altmire
of Pennsylvania and myself and our special guest today from New
Hampshire, young-at-heart Paul Hodes.
Madam Speaker, I think the gentleman from Georgia is right on one
point at least, that this is a sobering week here in the halls of
Congress. We have had a lot of bad news this week. We have mourned the
death of far too many young people at Virginia Tech. We have mourned
the loss of one of our own here on the House floor. We are wrapping up
a month in which we have seen 86 more soldiers die on the battlefields
of Iraq amidst a growing civil war, a war now that has cost over 3,300
lives, 24,000 wounded and $379 billion spent.
Our friend who just gave the final 5-minute speech on the other side
of the aisle suggested that the silence was deafening from the
Democratic side tonight in this Chamber. Well, we were talking all day.
We were talking last week and the week before. There was no silence on
this side of the aisle. For the first time, for the first time, this
Congress picked its head up out of the sand to realize what is really
happening over in Iraq.
You can talk all you want about failure and defeat and victory, but
you have got to be a little bit clear about what we are talking about
over there, because maybe we entered into a fight with an army
commanded by Saddam Hussein, but we have now got ourselves mired in
what is a civil war.
Madam Speaker, I got the chance, along with five other Members of
this body, three Republicans, three Democrats, to go over to Iraq and
Afghanistan a few weeks ago, and we asked the generals on the ground a
very simple question: Of all of the fire that you find yourselves in
the middle of on the streets of Baghdad, tell us what percentage of
that which is directed at U.S. forces is a fight from insurgents
directly against the United States, and tell us what percentage of that
fire is sectarian strife, Sunnis and Shia fighting each other.
I have to tell you, listening to the other side, you would have no
clue that the answer was 90 percent. Ninety percent of the fire
directed at U.S. forces is simply by virtue of us being in the middle
of what has become a civil war there.
So you can continue to bury your heads in the sand while we talk
about this tonight, but we choose not to. We chose to side with the
American people, 60 percent of whom say unequivocally that they want a
timetable to bring our troops home. We sided with the Iraq Study Group,
some of our top foreign policy leaders in this country, Republicans and
Democrats, who unanimously stood up to say it is time to redeploy our
forces. We stood with some of the brightest and most courageous
military generals.
We have come to the position that it is de rigueur for generals to
speak out against the war, because it seems that there is a new one
coming out and talking about the tragedy of this war every day. Well,
this didn't happen up until the Iraq conflict. You have never seen this
number of former military men standing up and suggesting we need to set
a different course.
So maybe this is a little bit of a quiet room tonight after a very
long day, but, yes this was a loud and boisterous hall earlier tonight,
because for the first time in a long time, this Congress stood up and
excerpted the will of the American people.
Before I kick it over to Mr. Altmire and Mr. Hodes, let me just
quickly talk about what we did here today.
You want to talk about supporting the troops. Let's talk about the
fact that this bill had every dollar that the President asked for in
it, and more. And more. We put in more money to make sure that every
single troop has the equipment, the protection, the armor that they
need.
This bill has $1.7 billion in additional money beyond what the
President asked for for veterans, $1.7 billion beyond what the
President asked for for healthcare for our existing armed forces.
You want to talk about supporting the troops, then you better look at
the words and the numbers in this bill, balls what the President
wanted, he got, and we put more on top of it to
[[Page H4164]]
make sure that every single soldier is taken care of on the
battlefield, and when they return to this country, they are not just
given average healthcare, but they are given the gold standard of
healthcare when they come back here.
What we did on that bill was for the first time suggest that this
commitment cannot be open-ended. For Mr. Hodes and Mr. Altmire and
myself, we have gotten the opportunity over the last few weeks to go
back and talk to our constituents, and you are having to turn over a
bunch of different rocks as time goes on to find people who are still
willing to say that we should have absolutely no end to our commitment
there. That we should do virtually nothing to force the Iraqis to stand
up for themselves.
Let me give you one important quote from this week. Folks on the
other side of the aisle will say that this timetable is somehow harming
our efforts there. They maybe should speak to our own Secretary of
Defense, who just this week said this: ``The strong feelings expressed
in the Congress about the timetable probably have had a positive impact
in terms of communicating to the Iraqis that this is not an open-ended
commitment.''
Our own Secretary of Defense, the spokesman on matters of war for
this President, says that our discussion here about ending our open-
ended commitment, about forcing the Iraqis to stand up for themselves,
has had a positive effect. So to our friends on the other side of the
aisle, they might want to check with the administration before they
cast aspersions on the work that we are doing here.
The last thing to say. The last thing to say. We better put some
definition on what war we are fighting here. I know Mr. Hodes wants to
say something about this as well. This is not a war for us that needs
to be fought between two sectarian parties in Iraq. This is a war on
the people that attacked this country. Maybe some people on the other
side of the aisle haven't noticed, but the people that attacked this
country came from Afghanistan, a country that we have left behind.
We had a chance to visit Afghanistan just a few months ago, and we
found that the Taliban is in a resurgence there. We found that the new
power player in the Middle East, Iran, is starting to meddle in the
affairs of Afghanistan, in part because we haven't put the money and
the troops and the resources and the infrastructure dollars behind our
effort there to make sure that it is a self-governing country.
We have got fights all over the globe that this country needs to be a
part of if we really want to talk about making this country safe. So
when we talk about redeployment, we mean it. It is not just about
withdrawal. It is not just about taking every single troop who is over
there and bringing them home to their families. We would love to do
that. There is not a single one of us who hasn't spent an amount of
time with the National Guard and the Reserve troops that have been so
heavily stressed by these multiple deployments. There is not one of us
who has not sat with active duty families who have seen their family
members deployed once, twice, three times, over to Iraq and
Afghanistan.
We would love to bring every single one of them home. But we know
that the reality of this new world order is that we have got to have a
much more global view. We have got to make sure that we have the troops
necessary to be committed all over the globe, to make sure that we
recognize how broad the threat to this country is today.
That is not what we are doing right now. That is not what we are
doing. In fact, what we have done is created a safe haven for
terrorists. We have created what our own intelligence community calls
the cause celebre for the Islamic extremist movement in this world, to
find shelter in Iraq, to breed, to train, and then to present an even
greater threat to this country.
So, yes, Madam Speaker, there was a little bit of celebration on this
side of the aisle when we passed this bill tonight. Not because this
isn't the most serious subject that this House will face over the next
2 years. It certainly is. We take that as a grave responsibility that
it so deserves. But because it is about time that we picked our heads
up out of the sand and said in our gut, in our conscience, we cannot
allow our military forces to continue to be the referee of a civil war.
And in our gut and in our conscience and in our head we know that this
fight is broader than just what happens on the streets of Baghdad. This
is a global fight against the people that took us on, and by
redeploying those forces, by doing the right things by the soldiers who
are on the ground in the middle of this civil war, by making a
commitment as strong as ever to our troops and to our veterans, we
finally, we finally, started imposing a foreign policy that will
guarantee the security of this country, not just for the next week or
the next month, but decades and hopefully centuries.
Madam Speaker, I would like at this point to yield, if I could, to a
good friend and one of our new 30-Somethings, the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Altmire.
{time} 2230
Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman from Connecticut. And I wanted to
spend some time talking about what this bill actually does, because I
heard some rhetoric during the debate from the other side that I
couldn't believe I was hearing, because it had nothing to do with the
facts of what's really in this bill. I heard Members stand up and say
that the goal of the Democrats is to cut the funding for our troops and
cut and run and do an immediate withdrawal. And none of that is in this
bill. That is not what we voted on today.
And the great thing about democracy, the great thing about this
House, the House of Representatives of the United States is that we
have people who represent every side of the political spectrum. And
there are a handful of Members who feel so strongly about this issue
that they feel we need to immediately cut the funding and immediately
withdraw our troops and bring them home. And they are very vocal. And
what's interesting about that group is they didn't support this bill.
The people who feel so strongly that we need to cut the funding and
bring our troops home immediately voted against this bill, along with
the Republicans.
So when I hear Members on the other side talk about what our goals
are, and then I think of the fact that they are the ones that voted
with the people who want to bring our troops home immediately and
immediately cut the funding, that leads me to believe that perhaps they
didn't read the bill closely enough, or maybe there's just some
rhetoric that's being thrown around that they know is not true.
And what I would suggest to my colleagues, and certainly to the
American people, is you look at what is in this bill. And we've talked
about this before when we passed the first bill before it went to
conference. We give the President more money than he asked for. The
conference report that we voted today, 4 billion more dollars to go to
Iraq and support our troops than President Bush asked us for. That's
not cutting the funding. That is supporting our troops.
We increased funding for the Department of Defense health care
facilities to make sure that situations like Walter Reed never happen
again. We increased funding for the Veterans Affairs health care system
to make sure that we have adequate coverage for our Nation's veterans,
because, as we have talked about many times on this floor, there is no
group that should stand ahead of our Nation's veterans when it comes
time to make funding decisions.
And this bill, for now the fourth time in 4 months, we have voted to
increase funding for the Veterans health care system, and not continue
the past 6 years of chronic underfunding for the VA health care system.
And finally, this bill does, in fact, add some accountability to the
process. The only remaining leverage that we have left in Iraq, almost
4 years to the day after we were told the mission was accomplished,
that date was May 1, the only remaining leverage we have left is our
presence there.
The gentleman from Connecticut talked about how he was in Iraq, and I
don't want to put words in his mouth, but I am sure you spoke to some
of the leadership over there and experienced the fact that the Iraqi
government has not stepped up to manage their own affairs and
administer their own government. In fact, they have failed miserably in
that action, and they show no
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sign of being willing to step up to the plate. And the only leverage we
have to make that happen, and that is the only solution to this
conflict, is a political solution. There's no military solution
because, it has, as you said, degenerated into a civil war. The only
leverage we have there is our presence there. And until we say, loud
and clear to the Iraqi government, that our presence there is not open
ended, that we do consider this to be a situation that they need to
step up, administer their own affairs and run their own government,
nothing's going to change. And we did have, 4 years ago today, an
announcement that the mission was accomplished; and we'll be here next
year and the year after and the year after, and we'll still be waiting
for the Iraqi government to step up unless we take affirmative action
to add some accountability, which is what we did in this bill today.
So I'm going to give it back to the gentleman so he can talk to Mr.
Hodes momentarily, because I know he's chomping at the bit to say what
he has to say. And I'm looking forward to hearing it myself.
But I just want to be crystal clear, this bill, in no way, represents
a cut in funding for our brave men and women who are serving us in
Iraq. It has more money in it for our troops, direct aid for our
troops, than the President asked for. Make no mistake about that.
So at this point I would yield back to the gentleman from
Connecticut.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I want to read it one more time, Mr.
Altmire, just because it backs up everything you said. I want to read
it one more time. Secretary Gates. ``The strong feelings expressed in
the Congress about the timetable probably have had a positive impact in
terms of communicating to the Iraqis this is not an open ended
commitment.'' I mean, that's worth saying again, because for all the
rhetoric that we get about what we are doing here and what kind of
impact it has in Iraq, we have our Secretary of Defense telling us
exactly what has been our intuition for years; that the only way, Mr.
Altmire, just like you said, the only way for us to exert any pressure
on the Iraqis to stand up for themselves, to get their military shop in
order, to get their civil shop in order, to get their political stop in
order, is to tell them that we are not going to be the crutch that they
can rely on in the long run. We've recognized that here for a very long
time. Our Secretary of Defense now joins us in that.
And at this point I would like to turn it over, yield to Mr. Hodes.
Mr. HODES. Well, I thank my friend from Connecticut and my friend
from Pennsylvania for being here. You know, I'm on the something side
of 30, but we are all new Members here tonight. And we came here, in
large part, because the American people are way ahead of the
politicians in this country. And the American people have had it with
this exercise in Iraq. In overwhelming numbers, they, in their wisdom,
have had it, and they spoke loud and clear to that in November of this
year and that, in large part, is why we, and many of our colleagues,
are now privileged to serve in the House of Representatives.
And what we have done today in passing the Iraq accountability bill
is truly historic. And it started here in the House; it went to the
Senate through the wisdom of our founders. There was a conference of
House and Senate leaders. The bill came back here in slightly altered
form. And now, as we sit here tonight, speaking about this bill, it's
on its way to the desk of the President of the United States. And the
President of the United States has a choice to make about the direction
of this country. He, now, has a choice to make. He has a choice to make
about supporting the troops. He has a choice to make about holding the
Iraqis accountable, as he said he was going to do. He has a choice to
make about supporting our veterans. He has a choice to make about
supporting our wounded, whose care has been a disgrace, as many of us
have seen. The President of the United States has these choices to
make.
Now, we have had a lot of rhetoric in the chamber today, and our
colleagues on the other side of the aisle called this shameful. They
accused us of weakening America. They essentially questioned our
patriotism. They said we didn't support the troops, and that is
poppycock. It's disinformation. It's not true.
We all, whether we are Democrats or Republicans, and I know this is
true of the people in this country, care deeply about this country. And
what we want to see is an America with real strength that is protecting
the real security of the American people, and that is leading the
world, as we once did, as the most credible of nations, as the nation
which, in World War II, stood up to lead the fight against fascism, and
then had the courage to put Nazis on public trial in the Nuremberg war
trials because we were strong enough to have a transparent due process
system. We weren't afraid. And we shouldn't be afraid in resolving this
conflict in Iraq, in acting with the real strength that means real
security.
Now, our brave troops have done everything that we've asked of them.
They fought through an invasion, and after that, it was an ill advised
invasion, but then, through the incompetence and mismanagement of this
administration, they have been left in the quagmire of a civil war.
And I want to turn now to the words of somebody with far more
military experience than me, to talk about the effect of what we have
done here in the Congress tonight. Major General John Batiste, United
States Army Retired, said, this important legislation sets a new
direction for Iraq. It acknowledges that America went to war without
mobilizing the Nation, that our strategy in Iraq has been tragically
flawed since the invasion in March 2003, that our Army and Marine Corps
are at the breaking point with little to show for it, and that our
military, alone, will never establish representative government in
Iraq. And Major General John Batiste said, the administration got it
terribly wrong. And I applaud our Congress for stepping up to their
constitutional responsibilities because this Congress, as Major General
John Batiste has recognized, unlike the rubber stamp Congresses that
have preceded us for years now, is finally the accountability Congress.
We are holding our government accountable by passing the Iraq
accountability act, which forces the Iraqi government to take
responsibility for their own stability.
We are into the fifth year of this war. Hundreds of billions of
dollars, and still, no progress on reforming the Constitution.
What about reconciliation? What about all the ministries in the Iraqi
government fighting amongst themselves? What about the Sunni/Shia
divide that al-Maliki does not seem to want to face and deal with? The
Sunnis and Shiites killing each other, and our troops in the middle of
it.
So we hold our government accountable to our troops, to our returning
soldiers and our veterans. This accountability Congress has held
oversight hearings to investigate government mismanagement and
corruption in Iraq. We found, for instance, in oversight hearings, that
this administration shipped $12 billion of cash over to Iraq without
accounting for it, and gave it away to Iraqi ministries to use as they
would, without ever asking for a single shred of accounting. No paper
trail, no nothing. We're restoring accountability to contracting,
ending the massive waste caused by no bid contracts.
And the contractors in Iraq, just so we are clear, on this, we now
know that, in addition to the 150,000 troops, give or take, currently
in Iraq, there are 126,000 private contractors. And as John Murtha so
eloquently talked about the floor tonight, we've got a situation where
our brave soldiers are standing there, they are making $25,000 a year,
let's say they are pumping gas and doing some security details. And
next to them there's a private contractor making $80,000 a year doing
the same job. Some of these private contractors, we heard, are making
$300,000 a year. That's more than any government official in the United
States government. And you want to know where our billions and billions
of dollars have gone.
So we're restoring some accountability to government with the Iraq
Accountability Act tonight. We're restoring openness and transparency
to government, to repair the fabric of our democracy that has been
undermined in the course of this administration.
So this President does have a choice to make tonight. And I think of
the
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words of Zbigniew Brzinski, the former National Security Adviser, who
called this war an increasingly immoral, futile exercise in
presidential hubris, because, my friends, I'm sorry to say that the
President of the United States has said that he's going to veto what
Congress has passed. He is going to essentially turn his back on the
will of the American people. He's going to go against the advice of
retired generals in droves who've come out to talk about the reality.
And I believe the American people are going to be disappointed in that
veto because they want a new direction in Iraq. And that is the course
we have set tonight. I'll kick it back now to Mr. Murphy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Hodes. The
three of us are new Members. We came here on that tidal wave of
increasing popular angst against this war. And this place shouldn't be
dictated just by what happens in elections, but elections have to mean
something. When the people get a chance to go out there every 2 years
and weigh in on the direction of their Federal Government, they have to
feel, at some level, like what they say matters.
{time} 2245
And, Mr. Hodes, I mean you are right. When they pick up the paper
whatever day it is going to be when he actually vetoes this, the
feeling inside, that voter who thought they went out and cast a
courageous vote for Mr. Altmire or Mr. Hodes or Mr. Murphy who decided
to make a change when it doesn't happen very often that you have a
change like this, maybe once every decade or every two decades, well,
they are going to lose just a little bit of faith in this process. And
every day that we continue to have an administration that refuses to
honor where the American people want the course of this war to go,
which, as we have said over and over again, it is not just the American
people but it is the American people being backed up by generals, being
backed up by the foreign policy community, the Iraq Study Group, there
is a little piece of democracy that dies every day that that happens.
Let me just bring up an additional topic here. When I got out into
Baghdad on the day that we were in Baghdad, what we saw was the
escalation in progress. What the escalation essentially is, is it is
asking these soldiers who are on their second or third tour of duty
over there, who would normally do 12-hour shifts patrolling these
incredibly dangerous streets, trying to dodge sniper fire, trying to
keep clear of the increasing number of IEDs, roadside bombs, now those
troops, after the 12-hour shift, aren't going back to safe barracks;
they are lodging themselves in the neighborhoods, in some of the most
dangerous, war-torn neighborhoods of Baghdad. They are living in
bombed-out buildings with little or no electricity or running water, in
squalid conditions. That is what the escalation is.
Now, if this was a fresh round of troops, if this was a group of
young men and women who were there for the first time, maybe you could
understand putting them in that position. But that is not what this is.
Twenty-three percent of all the troops who are being deployed right now
are National Guard and Reserve troops. Eighty-eight percent of those
National Guard and Reserve troops are so poorly equipped that they are
rated not ready right now. That is from the Washington Post, about a
month back.
We know that the number of Active Duty and Reserve brigades in the
United States that are considered combat-ready, zero. None of them. We
have maxed out our military. We have asked, Mr. Hodes, as you said, our
men and women to do everything we have asked them to do, and we have
got to start asking ourselves the question, have we asked them to do
too much?
One day they are in the middle of a firefight. The next day they are
sitting down and trying to mediate a dispute between two rival
neighborhood groups. The day after that they are overseeing the
construction of a water filtration plant. They are, within a 3-day
period, being asked to be fighters, diplomats, and civil engineers.
Having gotten to spend a couple days on the ground with these folks,
they are by all measure the best people that we could send over there,
the bravest, the most capable. If there is anyone in this world that
could do this job, I know it is them. I knew it intuitively from back
here in the United States. Having spent a few days on the ground, you
know it from the moment you talk to them. But we have maxed them out.
And why I try to get here as often as I can to hear Mr. Murtha speak
here on the floor is because there is no better in talking about this
subject than Mr. Murtha. He said it here tonight: There is no one more
in touch with the troops than he is. And our danger is not just in
asking them something they may not be able to do, but permanently
damaging the capability of this military going forward.
Mr. HODES. Madam Speaker, the interesting thing about what this bill
does, I mean the reality of what it does, is it gives this President an
opportunity, it gives him a fabulous opportunity, to face reality, as a
leader should, and understand that he is being given the opportunity
for a new direction, for a new direction that is tough and smart, and
smart about our security, because it is designed to make sure that our
interests in the Middle East are taken care of in a responsible way.
The American people know that. They want us to be responsible in the
way we resolve the situation in Iraq.
Major General Paul Eaton addressed the notion of why this is so
responsible when he said, ``This bill gives General Petraeus great
leverage for moving the Iraqi Government down the more disciplined path
laid out by the Iraq Study Group. The real audience for the timeline
language is Prime Minister al-Maliki and the elected Government of
Iraq.'' Because it gives the general, it gives the President, the
leverage to say, folks, it is time that you stepped up, to say to Prime
Minister al-Maliki it is time you stepped up. Are you serious about
reconciliation? Are you serious about the political stability that Iraq
needs? Are you serious about the economic stability Iraq needs? Are you
serious about it, or are you just waiting because we are going to be
there forever? Because right now, the President has made an open-ended
commitment, and this bill responsibly puts an end to that open-ended
commitment.
Now, the folks on the other side of the aisle have said, time and
time again, that this somehow weakens us because it gives notice to our
enemy, whoever that may be. They say it is al Qaeda. We are in the
middle of a civil war. There is some al Qaeda there to be sure. What
Major General Paul Eaton said is, ``The argument that this bill aids
the enemy is simply not mature. Nobody on the Earth underestimates the
United States' capacity for unpredictability. It may further create
some sense of urgency in the rest of our government, beginning with the
State Department.''
Because we have got to ask, where are the diplomats? Where are the
diplomats? There are some provincial reconciliation teams on the
ground, working around the country and they are talking about more. But
where have been the diplomats? Where has been the diplomatic effort
that everybody acknowledges is really what is necessary to bring some
stability in the Middle East?
Why did it take Speaker Pelosi to go to Syria to begin some dialogue?
Because everybody recognizes that we have got to talk to people, even
those who are our enemies in this complex world in the 21st century.
So this bill gives the President, it gives the generals, the leverage
to forge a new direction.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I want to yield to Mr.
Altmire in a second.
But let me just underscore this to say none of us are happy to be in
this situation. Myself, I think that this is the best course. I think
that we need to set in law a sense of when our commitment is going to
end there. The only way we will finally complete the training of our
military and our Armed Forces within the Iraqi community is to give
them a sense of when they will have to stand up for themselves.
Now, at the same time, there is no perfect option. In fact, there may
be no good option here. We all have to admit at some level, Republicans
and Democrats, that we have gotten ourselves into a mess here that
there is no pretty way out of. And that is part of what government
hasn't been pretty good about talking about. This administration, it is
all about black and white to
[[Page H4167]]
them. It is good or evil. It is right or wrong.
There is a lot of gray, and we created most of that gray by being the
bull in the china shop there. But what we put forward today, what the
majority of this caucus supported this afternoon and this evening is
not the perfect, and it is probably not even the good, but it is the
best that we can do in a very bad situation. And it is certainly the
best that we can do by the brave men and women who are fighting.
So as proud as we are, I think, Mr. Hodes and Mr. Altmire, standing
up today and finally getting our head out of the sand and putting some
direction in what has been a directionless conflict, at the same time
it is a sobering day because we all admit, especially as new Members
who didn't participate in the lead-up to this very troubling time, that
getting ourselves out of it isn't going to be an easy process and it is
not going to be a very brief process.
With that, I will turn it over to Mr. Altmire.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman from Connecticut for yielding.
I want to talk about what these charts mean that the gentleman from
New Hampshire is holding up next to where he is speaking. These are
examples of generals, people who have seen firsthand what is happening
on the ground in Afghanistan, people with the utmost military
experience, who have said clearly, without ambiguity, that the
President's course of action is wrong. And the course of action that we
took today here in this House is endorsed by these generals. And this
is a further example of the President's not listening to anybody but
himself and his very, very close circle of advisers, any of whom, if
they differ from him, find themselves reassigned or out on the street.
And for some reason, the President doesn't listen to his generals. He
doesn't listen to the Iraq Study Group.
You will recall, and I would like to remind my colleagues, that he
said, when the Iraq Study Group formed and was going about their
business of studying this situation and coming up with their report,
that he was going to pay attention to what they said and take some of
their advice. Well, unfortunately, the report came out and was promptly
discarded by the administration, and they did nothing about what was in
the Iraq Study Group.
Now, some of the things that were talked about that we should engage
in diplomacy with countries like Iran and Syria, we know where the
President stands on that. He is not going to change with that. The Iraq
Study Group recommended that we do set a timeline on our activities to
increase our leverage with the Iraqi Government, as I talked about
earlier. But the President chose to discard that. He chose to discard
what his generals on the ground said. Those that disagreed were
reassigned, and some of them now, as Mr. Hodes has pointed out, are
saying that what we are doing is the right course of action. But what
is most important and what is most relevant for what we did today in
this House, the President is ignoring the American people.
We have all seen the polls about where the American public feels
about this. But we shouldn't legislate by polls; we should legislate
based on we are elected Representatives of the American people. There
are 435 districts in this House, each of whom has a voice, and it is
our responsibility as Representatives to go back into our districts,
listen to what our constituents have to say on these issues of critical
importance, return here on a day like today, debate the issue the
entire day, come back at 11 o'clock at night and we are still debating
the issue. But we took a vote and we had to put it on the line, yes or
no, where do you come down on this issue? The Congress has spoken. At
least the House has spoken. The Senate is going to speak in the next
day or two.
And I want to make one thing clear. Let there be there be no
discussion about this. If the Senate passes the conference report,
which we expect, and sends this bill to the President, as Mr. Hodes
said, he has a decision to make. He can either sign that bill and
provide the troops the funding that they need to continue the mission,
or veto the bill and deny them the support that they need. That is his
choice. The Congress has spoken on that.
So when any Member of this House has one of their constituents come
up to them and say, well, when are you going to give our troops the
money that they need to continue this fight? Well, we did it today. The
answer to that question is we did it today. The Senate is going to do
it tomorrow, perhaps the following day.
Then the President has a decision to make. And if he chooses to veto
that bill, the troops' funding will be delayed. But that won't be
because of us. That will be because of a decision that was made down
the street at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I want
to make sure everybody knows that there are no hard lines in the sand
in this House. And, in fact, the bill that we voted on today is
different from the bill that we voted on about 2 weeks ago. In fact,
what this House voted on, and what many Members insisted upon several
weeks ago, was a hard deadline in the sand that said that we had to be
out of Iraq by next spring or, at the latest, next fall. And many of us
stood up and said, for the reasons we talked about tonight, that in
order to get the Iraqis to finally stand up for themselves, we have got
to give them that sense.
The bill that we voted on today in an effort to bring the President
to the table, to get him to sign a bill that puts every dollar he asked
for, and, more for troops and veterans was a goal. It was a goal. Now,
there are a lot of us who wanted to see more than a goal. All of this
is an effort in compromise. But that goal even is apparently
objectionable to this President. And I have a feeling that this House
will move again and will try to come up with yet another means of
resetting our policy and our course in Iraq that is acceptable to this
President.
{time} 2300
So if anybody has any idea out there that the House of
Representatives is just saying X and the President is just saying Y,
no, we're trying to make that effort. And you know what? People are
going to look in the paper this morning and see a vote that has a lot
of Democrats voting for it and a lot of Republicans voting against it.
Lest they think that that's been the case day in and day out here, in
fact, it's been the exception to the rule in how we have conducted
ourselves in this House. The 100 hours agenda, making changes on our
economic policy, our health care policy, our national security policy,
our homeland security policy had record numbers of Republicans. We
stood together and we have stood together on everything from the
minimum wage to stem cell research to even the budget.
So we have made great progress, I think, in this House on bringing
back together some of that partisan divide. Lest people look up at the
vote that we took tonight and think that we didn't honor our pledge to
really start to bring that back together, I think we have in large
part.
And I think that's important to say because I know, Mr. Hodes, that
as important as it is to the new Members to get Iraq right, to get
health care right, to get energy right, it's also really important for
us to start bridging some of the gaps here. And it pains us when these
things do hit party lines, but on something as important as Iraq, the
vote is what the vote is. And we'll get back to building those bridges
as soon as we get beyond it.
Mr. HODES. I thank the gentleman.
You know, I was hopeful that we could bring both sides of this House
together on this bill because our goal is a common goal, to achieve
real strength and real security for America.
We all honor our troops. We have a difference in opinion, apparently
along party lines primarily, about how best to achieve that. Our
friends on the other side of the aisle, and the President, apparently,
think that an open-ended commitment and putting more troops into a city
of 7 million people into a civil war is the way to do it. We believe
that there is a smarter way to help the Iraqis step up and to achieve
that security.
Let me just talk briefly about what this bill does, because it really
does three important things. First, it adopts the military's own
guidelines for troop readiness, training and equipment. We've been
sending our soldiers without the right equipment, without adequate
training, and without enough
[[Page H4168]]
rest between deployments. They're stretched. They've been deployed two
times, three times, four times. The length of their deployments have
been stretched. And we've adopted the military's own guidelines to say
that before troops are sent to Iraq they must be properly equipped,
they've got to be trained, they've got to be ready to go.
I can't understand why the President would veto a bill that adopts
the military's own guidelines for troop readiness. Because by his veto,
he will therefore be rejecting the military's guidelines for troop
readiness. He will be saying to the American people, I am perfectly
satisfied with sending troops that aren't ready into combat.
The second thing this does is it fully funds the troops, as we have
said. In fact, it provides $4 billion more than the President asked
directly to the troops. So if he vetoes the bill, he will essentially
be saying I'm vetoing, I'm rejecting funding for our troops. I am
rejecting the funding that he asked for. I don't understand how he will
do that, but that's what his veto will mean.
And finally, we provide a responsible way to redeploy that actually
answers the concerns that people had about flexibility for our military
commanders on the ground. Because what we do is we set a date based on
benchmarks for the Iraqis that the President himself set out in a
January 10 speech for the beginning of a strategic redeployment, and we
give the military commanders the flexibility on the other end to reach
the target goals. So if the President vetoes his own announced
benchmarks for the Iraqis, I just don't understand it because he will
be vetoing what he said in a speech to the American people on January
10 as his idea about what the Iraqis ought to be doing for themselves.
He set the benchmarks, and now he said that he intends to veto his own
benchmarks. It's beyond me to understand why he's going to veto what he
said he wants to do.
If I can just go on for one more moment. I want to talk about some of
the other money in this bill because this is really important. People
have complained, I've heard it at home, about what they think is excess
domestic spending in this bill. But here's what this bill does in terms
of funding that is related to supporting our troops.
This bill provides $3 billion more for mine-resistant ambush-
protected vehicles for troops in Iraq.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That doesn't sound like pork.
Mr. HODES. That's not pork. This bill provides $2 billion more for a
Strategic Reserve Readiness Fund to meet the troops' readiness needs.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That doesn't sound like pork either.
Mr. HODES. That's not pork either.
It provides $1.1 billion more for needed military housing. Does that
sound like pork?
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That doesn't sound like pork to me, Mr.
Hodes.
Mr. HODES. The bill honors our returning veterans by providing $2.1
billion more for military health care than the President requested,
including $900 million for post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic
brain injury care and research, and $661 million to prevent health care
fee increases for our troops. Because what they are now facing under
this President's policies is getting sent off to war to fight for their
country and coming home to find that their health insurance costs more,
that the military health system is too overloaded to take care of them,
and that the veterans' system has been overloaded beyond capacity.
Now, if the President vetoes these increases for the veterans and
wounded warriors that his policies have created, it will be something
that I don't understand and I don't think the American people are going
to understand. And so he has a challenge in front of him. He has a
challenge and a choice to make. And maybe between now and when this
bill hits his desk, he will have one of those moments on the road to
Damascus and decide that he will face the reality and do right by our
troops, do right by the American people, do right by this country and
set a new direction in Iraq.
I will kick it back to you, Mr. Murphy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We've got a few minutes left, so I'm going
to throw it over for some closing remarks to Mr. Altmire.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I wanted to change the subject here just momentarily
here, if I could, here at the end and just mention something, because
unfortunately, since we're not in session on Monday due to the
unfortunate funeral that many of our colleagues are going to be
attending for one of our colleagues, I wanted to mention the fact that
Monday is going to be Paul Hayes, the House reading Clerk's last day.
Paul has been here for 20 years, and to many viewers around the country
of C-SPAN, he is the voice of the House of Representatives. I was going
to do a 1 minute on Monday, but I will just do it today because we're
not going to be in session on Monday and just say what an honor it has
been for me, Paul, to be able to spend a few months as a Member with
you here.
I was a staffer, as Mr. Murphy knows, on Capitol Hill for 6 years in
the early 1990s, and we used to watch Paul Hayes at work. And it has
just been a great experience for me to come back as a Member of
Congress and briefly be able to, for about 4 months, to be able to
serve and work with you, Paul. So I just wanted to say congratulations,
and we wish you all the best.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Well, it pains me to admit that I spent
far too much of my life watching this House from a distance. And so I
share those thoughts and I am so glad Mr. Altmire would bring that up
on this day.
With that, before we end our hour, we're going to allow our honored
guest, who we hope is joining us for the first of many visits with the
30-Somethings.
As our veteran Members abandon us, our new Members step up. And Mr.
Hodes, if you might inform folks how they might find us via e-mail and
via the Web.
Mr. HODES. Well, as I said at the beginning of the hour, Mr. Murphy
and Mr. Altmire, I'm on the ``something'' side of 30, but I am glad to
be with you because I am hoping that we, together, have brought an
energy to this Congress that really has set a new tone and will help us
set a new direction for this country, not just on the war on Iraq, but
on health care, on energy, on education and all the policies that the
American people want us to get to work on and we've been working hard
on.
Before we go, I do want to say that Speaker Pelosi's 30-Something
Working Group can be e-mailed at [email protected]. The
30-Somethings, whom I am now a proud guest, being on the something
side, can be visited, and here is the Web site address on this chart,
www.speaker.gov/30something/index.html.
So I invite everybody who has been working tonight to visit the 30-
Something Web site for information on what the agenda for America is
that Democrats have been working on. And I thank you for the
opportunity to be with you.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you very much. I thank the Speaker
for giving us this opportunity once again.
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