[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 60 (Wednesday, April 16, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H2434-H2440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAQ AND THE ECONOMY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Tsongas). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Klein) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Madam Speaker, good evening. It is a pleasure
to be here tonight on behalf of the freshman class. It certainly has
been an honor to serve here this last year, and to be joined by Mr.
Hall of New York, and a number of other Members who are going to join
us tonight.
What we are going to talk about tonight is something that I think is
weighing very heavily on the minds of Americans right now, and that is
the economy. We understand because the United States is the most
resilient, optimistic, innovative country in the world, that we will
persevere and we will work out the issues that have caused some of the
problems in our economy right now.
But that being said, as we speak today, there are people all over the
United States who are hurting. They are hurting because their jobs may
be threatened or they have lost their jobs or lost confidence that
their job may be here in the next weeks and months. They are hurting
because their home may be threatened from foreclosure or difficult
terms. They may be hurting because gas prices have shot up. If we think
about what the cost of oil was not that long ago, literally back in
2002, it was $28 per barrel. And we know as of today, it hit $114 per
barrel. Shame on all of us for allowing that to be the case today and
for having this dependence on oil. We have leadership in this House
that is working on that.
Americans may be hurting because their health care is a threat,
preexisting conditions, things that are not covered by their policies,
and the cost of insurance is just beyond their means.
There are a lot of things that people are thinking about that are
weighing them down. At the same time, we have a war in Iraq and in
Afghanistan. And a fight that we, as Americans, obviously understand
that when America is challenged, we will fight back. But I think there
is also a broad recognition that the war we are in, at least in Iraq
right now, we may have gotten into for some of the wrong reasons, and
without justification.
With that being said, I want to thank the men and women who serve
this country and put their lives on the line every single day in Iraq
and Afghanistan and around the world. And their families that are back
home, persevering and doing the necessary things to carry on while
their loved ones are gone. I know this Congress has taken upon itself
to be certain and put all of the dollars on the table that have been
promised in the past but not delivered, to make sure that every man and
woman when they come home from service in the armed services, that they
are given all the medical services, mental health services, physical
health services, and a lifetime of care if necessary. We are committed
to doing that as Congress.
But the question today is what should we be doing about Iraq, and how
does this interplay with the economy. That is the subject of what we
are going to talk about tonight. Are there things that we should be
doing to help us as Americans, help us in our daily lives in the United
States, help us make sure that we have the future, a better future, as
our parents wished for us, that my children who are in college right
now, that they will have a better opportunity than I did. That is
something that is the American dream, and it has been around for
generations. And yet people today are questioning if that is where we
are going.
We have to say what do we have to do to make sure that Americans come
first and also protect our national security and evaluate this foreign
policy, this fight in Iraq and other places, yes, is it in fact making
us safer at home and on our streets. Or is it a disastrous situation
that has cost us $600 billion up to this point, over 4,000 lives of our
brave men and women, and 30,000 to 40,000 brave men and women who have
come back with severe injuries and will require lifetime care.
We are going to talk about those issues, engage each other on the
floor, and we are going to continue to invite the American people to
work with us and come up with some good solutions.
I am joined by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hall) who has been a
strong leader and very focused on the fact that our security is
important, but our economy is equally important, and I turn the floor
over to Mr. Hall.
Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, it is good to be here with Mr.
Klein and Congressman Braley.
Before I talk about Iraq, I have to respond to a couple of things
that were said a few minutes ago by our friends from the other side of
the aisle who used the word ``truth'' frequently and talked about their
children and grandchildren. And I am sure they are sincere, but to
those of you Americans out there listening, I am sure you can remember
that when President Bush took over with Republicans controlling both
Houses of Congress in the year 2001, he had a surplus delivered to him
by the Clinton administration.
In the years since then, these folks you just heard talking, who
profess to know what is best for our economy, have delivered to the
United States, from a surplus when we were paying down the national
debt, now the biggest deficit in the history of our country, the
biggest balance of trade deficit, the biggest individual debt by
Americans that is held, whether it is credit card debt or home second
mortgage debt, and now we have the housing crisis, the subprime crisis,
and various big box stores I was reading today are getting ready to
file for or have already filed for bankruptcy, including some that we
have seen proliferating around the country and have assumed that they
were on solid ground.
So I would take all the proclamations you just heard and the fancy
charts that you just saw from the Republican hour before us with a
grain of salt.
The tax increase that they claim we are voting for is actually
something that they, when they installed their tax cuts early in the
Bush years, they installed it by putting in a sunset provision that is
their creation, not ours. So I stand here and say that we have not in
fact voted for anything like this biggest tax increase in history. It
is a theatrical and dramatic presentation,
[[Page H2435]]
well acted, and possibly even believed by them, but it is not the
truth.
As far as Iraq goes, we are spending $12 billion a week in Iraq, and
I have started to look at the needs of our country and my district in
particular in terms of how that money could be used here because we are
basically running on fumes financially. I just visited 13 bridges that
are on the dangerous faulty bridge list that came out after the I-35
bridge collapse in Minnesota, and the estimate of the New York State
Department of Transportation is that it will cost about $60 billion to
fix all of the deficient bridges in the State of New York. That is 5
months in Iraq.
I just came back 2 weeks ago from visiting a Nogales, Arizona,
checkpoint on the Mexican border. Congressman Braley was on that trip,
along with Congressman Arcuri. And we asked at every step of the way
the Customs and Border protection officials what they need from
Congress and what would their wish list be.
They said basically if it was Christmas and they could have
everything that they wanted in terms of infrastructure, primarily what
they need is more loading docks to unload the bales of marijuana that
are stacked in front of an 18-wheeler behind a load of watermelons, or
more bandwidth for more computers so they can get 10 fingerprints
processed faster to establish somebody's identity. All of it, northern
border, southern border, all ports on both coasts, $500 million a year
for 10 years. That is $5 billion.
{time} 2030
That's a little bit less than 2 weeks in Iraq to secure both of our
borders and all of our ports. That sounds to me like it would actually
make our country more secure; not that we want to shut the borders
down, but we'd like to know who's coming and who's going, what's coming
in and what's going out in terms of drugs, in terms of agricultural
products that might be infested, in terms of currency smuggling. So
anyway, there's a real cost to all these things.
And I would just say, after hearing General Petraeus and Ambassador
Crocker for the second time, it's clear that the goals in Iraq that
we're spending this $12 billion a month on have been changing, that the
goal posts have been moving, that 5 years after the initiation of this
war and the death of 4,017 of our mothers, fathers, sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters, I have a figure of 29,676 wounded, the estimate
before the VA, Veterans Affairs Committee, last summer was that if the
war stopped at that point we'd be looking at $1 trillion for the
lifetime care of grievously wounded soldiers returning from Iraq.
That's four injuries primarily, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, spinal
cord injuries that cause paralysis, and amputations.
And these are, fortunately, men and women who we're able to save
today in the battlefield because our battlefield medicine is so much
better than it was in Vietnam, for instance. The ratio is about 16:1
wounded to killed where in Vietnam it was about 2\1/2\:1. That's the
good news is that we're saving more of these mostly young lives of
brave Americans who've gone over there and fought and carried out their
mission.
But the bad news is that the American public has not been told yet
that, on top of the figures you mentioned, there's at least $1 trillion
lifetime care for the wounded from this war that we're already looking
at being responsible for. And we have to take care of these wounded
warriors. You can't pay for the war and forget about the warriors.
So I would just say that we need to look at this in terms of a broad
view of national security and a realistic, clear-eyed view of where we
are financially and whether we can afford it.
And with that, I yield back to Mr. Klein.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Thank you, Mr. Hall. And again, exceptionally
well-stated. I think we all understand the costs of war. I think we all
understand, as Americans, there are going to be times, historically,
when we have to be prepared to fight and to make the necessary
commitments.
There are also times when we recognize that, you know, we have to
look and say, is this the right thing? Is it really achieving our
national security interests?
I think we've heard over and over again, and I'm on the Foreign
Affairs Committee. I know many of you are on the Armed Services
Committee, we've heard about the fact that we have, the real problem,
the terrorist threat is in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iran. And
unfortunately, the strategy that continues in Iraq is one that puts all
of our resources and assets and our men and women in one location where
al Qaeda was not a problem initially. There may be some al Qaeda there,
but we don't have to deal with them necessarily with a 160,000 troop
contingent.
I'd like to now just bring into our conversation another esteemed
member of our freshman class, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Braley).
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I'd like to thank my friend from Florida and also
my friend from New York. We did have a very enlightening trip to
Nogales, Arizona, and the Border Patrol and Customs agents that we
spoke to were all, I think, doing a fantastic job of trying to deal
with a very difficult situation.
But one of the things that trip emphasized to me is we often talk in
this body about the cost of providing border security, the cost of
providing national and international security.
And what we know is that the Pentagon traditionally publishes reports
that provide this body that we serve in their estimate of the cost of
the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we've seen those figures. We've
viewed some of those figures with skepticism. And we've talked about
what the published costs of this war are.
But what we don't talk enough about is what we talked about in
repeated hearings in the wake of the Walter Reed fiasco. And I was
fortunate enough to be serving on the Government Oversight and Reform
Committee, when we had that first hearing out at Walter Reed. We talked
to the highest ranking Army and Department of Defense medical officers.
We had a follow-up hearing after the independent review group chaired
by General Togo West presented its recommendations for the wounded
warriors project. And I repeatedly pressed the top ranking Army medical
officers on that very question; what are the hidden costs of the war
that the American people aren't hearing about?
And I'm glad my friend from New York brought this up, because there
is so much going on beneath the surface that the American public
doesn't hear about.
If you take the average life expectancy of a 19-year-old male, which
is representative of who we're sending to Iraq right now, you will find
that under the published U.S. life tables, those young men have a life
expectancy of approximately 55 years.
Now, when they come back in unprecedented percentages with life-
threatening injuries that we will be responsible for caring for the
rest of their lives, there is an enormous economic cost that we aren't
hearing about. And so I look forward to the opportunity to discuss with
my colleagues tonight what some of those hidden costs are, and what the
American people need to be thinking about as we look at the overall
economic impact, not just throughout our economy, but on the long-term
burden we're placing on our children and our grandchildren to provide
these deserving veterans with the best possible medical care that we
can.
Before I get to that though, I want to talk a little bit about what
we're giving up right now, through the amount of funding that we are
committing every year to the conflict in Iraq because, just for Fiscal
Year 2007, we know that this war is costing, under the most
conservative estimate, $137.6 billion. So the American people may
wonder, well, what would that actually provide if it wasn't going to
Iraq?
Well, for 40 million people in this country, that would provide
comprehensive health care. Now, think about that. We know that right
now there are nearly 47 million Americans without health insurance. So
that cost alone would almost completely eliminate that gap.
We know that that cost that we're spending this year in Iraq would
hire 2.2 million elementary school teachers, provide affordable housing
for over a million different housing units, and provide 142 million
homes in this country with renewable electricity.
And to break that down into a smaller level, I represent the First
District of Iowa. The taxpayers I represent in the First District have
paid, to date,
[[Page H2436]]
$770 million in one congressional district alone, as their share of the
cost of this war. What would that mean back in the First District of
Iowa?
Well, it would hire almost 19,000 public safety officers. It would
hire almost 17,000 music and art teachers. It would provide 126,000
full tuition university scholarships at public universities, and build
86 brand new elementary schools. So when we talk about the actual
financial burden that we are facing every day because of the rising
cost of this war, it is enormous.
And Congressman Klein, maybe you could talk a little bit about what
you've heard from the people you represent in a different part of the
country, where there are different needs, but also very similar
problems that taxpayers you represent are facing.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I thank the gentleman from Iowa for explaining,
not only the aggregate cost, but certainly what's happening in Iowa. I
know one of our colleagues in our freshman class, Mr. Space from Ohio,
he has explained to us the impact in his district in rural parts of
Ohio and how important it is for him to help the local people get
beyond this.
I'm going to explain it a slightly different way, because, again, I
think it's the tangible side of this thing that people need to
understand. The cost per day that we are currently spending, and this
is independent information; there's no question that this is accurate.
It comes from the Library of Congress Research Service.
The cost per day that the war is costing us, if you will, $339
million per day. That is a staggering amount of money.
Now, again, I'm not here to say that we don't have to fight wars, or
don't have to do the necessary things to protect Americans. But when we
come to the conclusion, as most Americans have, that the strategy of
keeping the men and women in place the way they are is not advancing
our national security, we should question whether that money is being
well-spent.
But I've introduced something today in the House, which I'm going to
begin to talk about more actively, and I'm sure the gentlemen here
tonight will chime in on this as well, and that is, whether people
support the war or not, and I know there's differences of opinion on
this, I think every American understands that at $339 million per day,
it's about time that the Iraqi government step up and pay its fair
share.
And whether we're talking about the cost of fuel for our operations
over there, whether we're talking about the cost of rebuilding, whether
we're talking about the training of their military, after five full
years and $600 billion, now coming out to $339 million more every
single day, for all the reasons that Mr. Braley has already mentioned
about the savings and what could be applied in the United States, or
maybe dealing with reducing the deficit or dealing with taxes, any
number of different strategies to make life better for Americans, it's
about time the Iraqi people step up, and if they want us there, the
government, pay their fair share.
And I'll just throw out a few facts as to why I believe this is so
important. First of all, our President, Mr. Rumsfeld and others, when
the war was presented to us in the first place, they told us that this
was a war and a rebuilding effort that was going to be paid for by
Iraqi oil money.
Iraq sits on the second largest quantity, second largest quantity of
oil reserves in the world. They've got tens of billions of dollars in
bank accounts, as we speak, that are not being applied toward the
rebuilding effort. That is unacceptable.
As an American, as a taxpayer, I hope every American understands this
and joins us. This is not a Democrat issue. This is not a Republican
issue. This is an American taxpayer issue that we need to all band
together and say, you know, whether or not you're for the war or not,
absolutely, every American should say, enough is enough. We've paid our
fair share. We've put our men and women on the line, and it's time for
the Iraqis to pay for the cost of this continuing effort to the extent
it continues into the future.
So I've offered House Resolution 1111, which was filed today, and I'm
looking forward to discussing this with many of the Members. I've
already spoken to a number of Members, and they're very interested.
It's being offered in a bipartisan way in the Senate, and I think this
has the opportunity of finding some common ground in changing the
dynamics of who's paying for this, the American people or the Iraqi
government, who wants us, for whatever reason, to continue this effort
in this way.
And I would suggest to you, and rightfully so, that 1 day of the war
could provide for 48,000 homeless vets to have a roof over their head,
men and women who served in Vietnam and other wars.
2,000 new Border Patrol guards. And Mr. Hall just told us, and Mr.
Braley, about how they were down on the border and saw what's going on.
We have border patrol needs. And just again, just 1 day, 2000 more
Border Patrol guards for a year.
We talked about health care. We can go on and on and on. But the
bottom line is, it's time for a change. It's time for a change with the
policy, it's time to re-look at this whole effort. But certainly, at a
minimum, it's time for the Iraqi government to pay for the cost of this
operation.
Mr. Hall, I know that you've got some thoughts on this as well, so
please join us in this conversation.
Mr. HALL of New York. Well, in fact I do. And I thank the gentleman.
You know, I saw 60 Minutes, I think this last Sunday, and they had an
interview about the topic you just mentioned, the Iraqi windfall due to
the price of oil, and how those tens of billions dollars are sitting in
accounts. And the Iraqi officials interviewed on the TV show said they
can't get at them to pay for their own reconstruction; and the American
taxpayer has to keep paying the way we are because they don't yet have
the systems in place or the infrastructure or the banking technology to
be able to transfer the money.
Now, either that's a really lame excuse, or we've been missing the
boat by not helping them set that up. Or both.
But you know, I have to just, not to be, not to carp on an old topic,
but to hearken back to the previous hour and the other side of the
aisle, our friends' presentation about budgetary truth. I would point
out that the President's budget that he sent down to us this year shows
no money for Iraq after the first of the year. So that's obviously not
an honest document.
It also assumes the AMT, the Alternative Minimum Tax which was
supposed to be a tax on the richest of the rich and has become instead
a tax that's been digging deeper and deeper into the middle class, and
we've been working to change that. Our budget does change that and
pushes it back up to the wealthiest 4 percent or so of Americans.
But the President's budget assumes all the money that will be scooped
out of the middle class, if nothing is done, will be available. So I
just had to say those couple of things about that.
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Would the gentleman yield for a question?
Mr. HALL of New York. Yes, please.
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. One of the things that we face every year is
something called an emergency supplemental, which is a request from the
President for billions of dollars of additional funding to fund the
ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, I would just ask my colleagues, and I'll pose this first to you,
Mr. Hall. Where I come from in Iowa, an emergency is something that is
unexpected and unanticipated that you can't plan for. But I am at a
loss to understand why, after being in Iraq longer than we were engaged
in the Civil War, after being in Iraq longer than we were engaged in
World War II, we continue to face emergency supplemental funding
requests for these wars, when the Department of Defense and the
Pentagon and the President have to know how much they anticipate when
they send their budget down for us to consider.
{time} 2045
Mr. HALL of New York. Not only do they know, but the President, as we
speak, is negotiating, or his representatives are negotiating a status
of forces agreement to keep our troops in Iraq for some unknown time.
So they obviously are planning on it. They're just not putting it in
the budget.
And I agree with you that the first year you could call it an
emergency, but after that, this should be on budget. We're building up
enough debt that we're passing on to our children and
[[Page H2437]]
grandchildren with interest anyway, and in order for the public to know
what is really being done in their name, this should not be a
supplemental; this should be in the budget.
I would also like to comment about my trip to Iraq last October. When
I slept in the Green Zone in one of Saddam's pool houses next to one of
his mansions, which, by the way, I think we should give back to the
Iraqi people at this point. He was a tyrant, but he was their tyrant,
and he built the mansion with their money and it might help us lose
that image that some of them have of us as occupiers if we gave them
back their property.
But at any rate, when I slept in the Green Zone, we were told, use
the bottled water, don't drink the water out of the tap; if you hear a
siren, there's a concrete bunker over there; go jump in it because
we've had a few mortar rounds coming in. But that was basically all the
warning we got.
Last week when the fighting was going at a higher level of intensity
when the battle of Basra was on and the Green Zone took so many mortar
and rocket rounds that we lost two soldiers dead and 17 wounded in the
Green Zone, they were telling people then and since then to sleep in
your body armor and your helmet. So October, we were not told that.
Last week and the week before, they were telling our diplomats and our
traveling Members of Congress that. That's not progress; that's back-
sliding.
And Albert Einstein, I think, was the guy who once defined insanity
as trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different
result. That's where we're at now.
There's a friend of mine who's a sheriff in one of the Upstate
counties of New York who is a West Point graduate and a classmate of my
brother-in-law, 1969 West Point grad, who told me a couple years back
that one of the first things they learned at West Point in officer
training class is never send a military force to do a job that is not
militarily achievable.
And this is to say nothing critical or to overshadow the
accomplishments of our forces. Our men and women in uniform have done
an extraordinary job and we should all be extremely proud of them. They
have been creative. They have been extremely loyal not just to our
country but loyal to each other. They have been energetic and
committed. They will do anything we ask of them and anything their
commanders ask of them.
But our responsibility as a civilian government, the kind of
government that our Constitution sets up where the civilian government
and the President, ultimately, is Commander in Chief, but Congress as
well has the right to not only declare war but also to fund Armies. And
we need to be careful that we use them responsibly. These are not
chattel. Our men and women in uniform are human beings that are
stressed out with record rates right now of suicide, divorce, and
bankruptcy among veterans that have returned from this war, as well as
among veterans of previous conflicts.
And I think that it's time for us to reevaluate whether this is
really making our Nation more secure and whether it is worth the $12
billion for nation building that we might better use for rebuilding the
Nation of the United States.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. And these are certainly the questions that our
country is wrestling with right now, and as I turn it back over to Mr.
Braley, I will just mention again that on the economy side of this
thing, and I think about the people back home and what they're thinking
about as they're looking towards the next election and just thinking
about the next week's expenses. And one statistic jumped out at me when
I was hearing about gas prices. Gas prices in the United States are
about $3.39 per gallon, extraordinary, at a time when the oil companies
are still going to be making historic profits.
The United States military is paying $3.23 a gallon in Iraq. That's
$153 million per month. At the same time, Iraqis, when they can get
gas, are paying $1.30 per gallon of gas. What is wrong with this
picture? Our military is paying $3.23 to buy gas in Iraq on our dime,
and Iraqis are getting it at $1.30.
So again, it's this question of as Americans, and being the great
people that we are and trying to do what we can to help here and there,
what can we do differently to help protect Americans deal with their
daily lives and, at the same time, protect our country?
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Well, as our good friend and colleague from
Arkansas Marion Berry would say, That dog don't hunt. This is a classic
example of what we've seen over and over and over again from
procurement decisions that are being made that have an adverse effect
on American taxpayers. And I think if you go back to the beginning when
they set up the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, that it was
set up with the intent of using Iraqi assets to rebuild the country and
to shift the dependency from the government or from the United States
back to the Iraqi people through the oil revenues that we're talking
about.
And we've seen in committee hearings here photographs of Ford trucks
full of pallets that had $250 million in cash per pallet that were part
of a $2.1 billion one-day transfer of cash to the Iraqi government, the
largest single transfer of cash in U.S. history. And that was part of a
transfer of cash that led to $9 billion of missing money that was
supposed to be part of the initial reconstruction of Iraq.
Then the idea was to use those Iraqi oil revenues to pick up the
responsibility and complete the work of rebuilding Iraq. And instead,
we know that one of the big challenges the Iraqi government has faced
is coming to some agreement on the division of oil revenues, and that's
been a major obstacle to rebuilding the country and bringing about
national reconciliation. And who is paying the tab for that? U.S.
taxpayers.
That is why the issue we're talking about is so important. Because
when U.S. taxpayers are bearing the burden of this war, it has an
enormous ripple effect throughout our economy because one of the things
we know is that when we have these ever-growing trade deficits with
countries like China, which is our principal creditor, it makes it very
difficult to keep the economy in this country rolling along providing
the types of goods and services at a reasonable rate; and that has an
enormous impact throughout the economy. And I'm sure as we get further
into this, we will have some real examples of the enormous impact on
various sectors of the U.S. economy from the burden that we are all
responsible for.
But I have to tell you, the idea that you mentioned about shifting
the burden in H. Res. 111, I can tell you this is an enormously popular
bipartisan idea. In fact, last weekend in my home State of Iowa, the
Des Moines Register interviewed every member of the Iowa congressional
delegation, Republicans, Democrats, Senators, Representatives, and
everyone was unanimous in their sentiment that is exactly the one you
expressed in your resolution.
It is time for the Iraqis to pick up the tab for their own well-being
and let the American taxpayers focus on the enormous economic problems
we're dealing with at home: The bailout of Bear Stearns, the subprime
mortgage crisis, all of the things that you work on every day in the
Financial Services Committee. And because of that unique role that you
play here in Congress, I think you have some special insights that
probably would be very enlightening to the people watching tonight and
the people of this country about what you're dealing with on a daily
basis that's being impacted by this ongoing financial commitment.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I thank the gentleman, and being from Iowa, and
obviously one of our farm States, you have a direct understanding of
what the cost of food production is and for farmers, the cost of fuel
and the cost that is just driving the inflation numbers in the United
States. And most Americans aren't even aware of the fact that when you
hear this inflation discussion that energy prices, that's gas prices at
the pump, and food prices, are not even part of that discussion. That's
not factored into these inflation numbers. It's everything else.
And the story we're given is, well, those fluctuate too much. That's
not a reliable factor. Well, you know something? That's the bottom
line. When people go to the grocery store every week, I know back in my
town, and they see a dozen eggs cost this and all of a sudden they're
up 80 cents for a dozen eggs or a gallon of milk or bread or
vegetables, no matter what it is,
[[Page H2438]]
there is a huge inflationary factor tied into the cost of food at a
time when wages are not keeping up. So people are feeling stretched and
pushed and stressed.
So it is important for us to focus on this, and again, I appreciate
the gentleman's comments on our House resolution because I think it is
going to be something that all of us, and everybody has been talking
about this; this is certainly not my idea. I think we can all work
together in changing the direction of how this is going to play out.
And yes, it will probably be a new President before there may be some
major changes in the military strategy, and I would hope and I know I
have heard a lot of good generals talk about some of the different
ideas that they have on changing that. But at a minimum, I think most
Americans would say that wow, I thought they were already paying for
it, and if they're not, they should be. And that's something that I
hope that we can find common ground. That's what Americans elected us
for, not to be Democrats or Republicans, but to come together as
Americans and say how do we solve this problem, just like we started
the discussion tonight.
Mr. Hall maybe can share with us some of the economy and the economic
issues that you're hearing from your neighbors and friends and how we
can try to address some of these.
Mr. HALL of New York. Well, yes. I would just tell you that we are
way behind on our infrastructure in this country in terms of keeping it
maintained to a level of safety or efficiency just to keep traffic
moving.
I had a construction worker tell me yesterday that he was working
with some of his compatriots on the Tappan Zee Bridge which, as you
know, crosses the Hudson River just north of New York and carries the
New York State thruway and millions of cars a day commuting to and from
the New York metro area.
Twelve years ago they were replacing and welding plates to repair
potholes and damage that has been done by the salt and acid rain, and
pigeon droppings, if you can believe it, are a major cause of corrosion
on bridges. And at that time 12 years ago, he and his men that were
working on the bridge said if they did not have to drive across it to
go to work to feed their families, they would not drive across it
because they felt it wasn't safe then. And they told their kids if they
could help it, please don't drive across that bridge. 12 years ago.
Now we're finally getting down to the point where the thruway
authority and the State of New York are looking at building a new
Tappan Zee Bridge because the support pilings of the bridge are either
being undercut by the tide or eaten by aquatic worms, if you can
believe that, or both. There are so many kinds of damage that has
happened in a bridge that only had a 30-year life span, and it was
built more than 30 years ago, and nothing's been done to get ready to
build its successor.
As I'm sure you both do, I'm approached in the district every week by
town supervisors or mayors or what have you asking for help with a
sewage treatment plant, for instance, in the town of New Windsor, New
York, that's 60 years old. It's well beyond its design life, and when
it breaks down, if there's a heavy storm rain event and it becomes
overtaxed with capacity from the storm run-off, you get raw sewage
running into the Hudson River, which we've been trying and pretty much
succeeding in trying to clean up in terms of sewage. The river is much
better. It's actually swimmable, and to some extent, some people eat
fish out of it, but I think that disregards the PCBs, which is another
issue.
But every one of these water treatments for drinking water, sewage
treatment for disposing of wastewater, bridges, tunnels, roads, rail,
which we are so far behind the rest of the world in, Japan, the
European Nations in the EU have a so much more advanced rail system
that it actually substitutes for a short hop air travel in this
country, what we would consider to be flying from New York to
Washington or New York to Boston. They do that by train on a high-speed
train that takes virtually the same time or less because it delivers
them from inner city to inner city. It eliminates the taxi ride out to
the airport and back in from the airport at the other end.
{time} 2100
It eliminates the taxi ride out to the airport and back in from the
airport at the other end. These are all things that cost money.
And you know what else? They hire people. They hire construction
workers, they hire sheet metal workers, they hire engineers, they hire
electrical workers, they hire plumbers. And just as FDR did back when
we had the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and the incredible
unemployment and deprivation when schools were closed across the
country for lack of money to pay teachers, we saw really desperate
times in this country which I hope we don't see again. And I hope we
move fast enough to try to take the steps, not just to build assets
here at home, but at the same time, to put money back into the economy
by hiring people to build this infrastructure. That's the first place
that I would start.
And I think that there's a lot of agreement, when I talk to Members
on both sides of the aisle, and certainly when I talk to my
constituents, that that's a good use of the money that we're--whether
we're borrowing the money or not, and hopefully we will be able to pay
as we go, as in this Congress, this House of Representatives, under
PAYGO, we've been trying to do it, but wherever we come up with the
money, putting it into our own infrastructure here at home is a really
good place to jump-start the economy.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Mr. Braley, obviously a lot of things happening
in Iowa and in the Midwest, and the economy and its impact on the
communities that you represent. Why don't you share with us some of the
experiences you're having and some of the things we're doing in
Congress to address them.
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Sure. And I'm just going to pick up where Mr.
Hall left off. We both have the pleasure of serving on the
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee here in Congress. And one
of the things that we hear about every day is not just the benefits of
having, oh, $137 billion to invest in infrastructure--let's just pull
that number out of the air--but what happens if you don't address your
critical infrastructure needs. Because we hear, for example, that for
every 1 minute delay that UPS drivers have in congested urban areas in
New York, in Florida, maybe lesser in Iowa, but unique, different types
of delays, it imposes enormous economic costs in shipping those goods,
which is then passed on to consumers all over this country.
So when I fly into the airport in Moline and I have to cross the I-74
bridge, which is one of the functionally obsolete, structurally
deficient bridges in my district, and they've got a lane closed down
either for repair work or because an accident is there, it may take you
half an hour to drive from one side of the Mississippi River to the
other side. And all that does is slow down commerce, it slows down
people. And at a time of rising fuel costs, it adds enormously to the
prices that we pay to get where we need to go.
And each of us has unique transportation delay issues. Mr. Klein
comes from an urban area in Florida where traffic congestion in many
ways is a way of life. And you're sitting there waiting to move, your
engine is running, and you don't get very high fuel efficiency from
that expensive fuel you've got. A lot of my constituents live in rural
parts of Iowa, and for them to get basic goods and services they have
to drive to a county seat town or to a larger urban area to get what
they need. And they have larger fuel costs simply to get what they need
to buy to take care of their basic needs. And when we ignore these
infrastructure needs that we've been talking about, all it does is have
very large ripple effects.
But one of the other things that we talked about here is our whole
energy policy. I am very proud of the fact that my State is, I believe,
pretty much in the epicenter of the renewable energy explosion. Whether
it's ethanol, biodiesel, wind energy, one of the things we're trying to
do is create an environment where we can reduce our dependency on
foreign oil and not have to worry so much about the impact of what's
going on with the Iraqi oil fields on our domestic fuel availability.
[[Page H2439]]
And so it's very exciting to see the potential, but one of the things
that's disturbing is when we miss opportunities to do more. So if you
look at wind energy capacity, most people would be shocked, I think, to
realize that the State of North Dakota has the highest wind energy
capacity of any State in the country. So they are a prime location for
us to sell these wind turbines we're producing in Iowa and start to
reduce that dependency on foreign oil.
But they've got a problem. It's the exact same problem Mr. Hall and I
saw with the border patrol down in Arizona, and that is, it's one thing
to say we need to secure our borders, but if you don't have
infrastructure in place to access the border, you can't do your job.
They've got a problem in North Dakota because they don't have a grid
right now that can handle the energy capacity they would generate and
put onto the grid and send out to people in Florida and New York, who
have high demand and don't have the ability to meet their energy needs.
So when we're talking about how this war and the funding for the war
is impacting Americans, I think that the ripple effect is enormous. And
we're really only scratching the surface.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Well, I would certainly pick up on that because
one of the first things that this Congress did, with our freshman class
encouraging the way, was to say that we were going to change the way
Congress paid for and spent the American taxpayers' money, and we
adopted something called ``PAYGO,'' pay-as-you-go budgeting. In other
words, we can't pass a bill without it having been paid for in the
budget. You've got to find the money somewhere in the budget; you can't
say, well, maybe we'll have more money next year. That's just the way
everybody runs their business back home, that's just the way everybody
runs their personal checkbook. I know that my wife and I operate that
way, and I'm sure everybody else on the floor here does the same thing.
You just can't keep spending without having the money to pay it back.
And the reality is that, if you think about that, if you think about
that responsible budgeting and the fact that we're spending--the number
I keep throwing out--$339 million per day, think about the opportunity
of investing in new energy alternatives. And you hear, well, maybe with
some of the types of energy alternatives, the renewable energies,
they're not ready for prime time yet; there are pollution problems with
this type or some type of hazard. I'm from Florida; we should be
leading the world in solar power, but there is a battery storage
capacity issue. Is there an answer? You bet there's an answer. It
requires our scientists, our business entrepreneurs to sit down and
figure it out. And with the kind of money that would be available to
challenge our scientists, our business entrepreneurs to develop solar,
wind, wave, any number of various alternatives, to make us energy
independent and then get rid of this oil import of 60 percent of our
oil from the Middle East and Venezuela every day, which I think every
American understands is a national security problem and all the other
things that go along with that, we would be in great shape.
And that is what we, as Americans, are all about. We think forward,
we're visionary, and we need to recognize that these opportunities that
are being presented to us on becoming energy independent over the next
number of years, as many of us refer to it, the Apollo Project--Mr.
Hall is a leader in our class on these issues--that this is where we
need to be moving forward for our future on national security, for our
jobs, and opportunities that will help us engage in a stronger future
economy, and for an environment. It all ties together very nicely.
Mr. Hall, I know you are very interested in this as well, so please
join us.
Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the gentleman from Florida.
And I am happy to tell you that there is a solution to the problem of
what to do with that power while the battery is being developed, it's
called ``net metering.'' And most States, New York being one of them, I
believe have net metering which enables you to, if you're a homeowner
or a business and you put solar panels on your property or on your roof
and you don't use all that power, it winds the meter backwards and puts
the power back into the grid and uses the grid as a battery. So that's
what most people are doing today who have solar panels.
In fact, I helped the Action Club at the Arlington High School in
Dutchess County, New York recently acquire a grant from the Dyson
Foundation of New York, who were very generous and came up with funding
for them to put solar panels on the roof of the high school. This is
leadership by high school students who went first. And NYSERDA, the New
York State Energy and Research Development Authority, I got part of the
funding from them, developed a design to produce a certain number of
kilowatts from, I think it's 123 kilowatts or so, anyway, it's a
substantial amount of power toward what their school uses.
And then they came to us. And knowing how the appropriation process
here in Congress can take so long and it's not a sure thing--last year
our appropriations were finally signed into law by the President in
December--I didn't want them to have to wait that long, so I was able
to find a private source of funding for them.
But the point is that, it not only works, but the school kids know
about it and they want their school to be solar. And I told them after
they get that installed, they should go get the school bus fleet to use
20 percent biodiesel.
I'm burning heating oil in my home in the northeast, where heating
oil is a major expense, especially this last winter, the cost rising
the way it has has been very harmful to many people, especially those
on fixed incomes. And I just called up the local dealer for heating oil
and said, do you have a biodiesel blend? And the guy on the other end
of the phone said, sure, it's a 20 percent soy/biodiesel blend, and I
own the company, I burn it at home myself. It burns cleaner than
regular oil. And so I said, send it on over. And for the last two
winters now my wife and I have been heating our home with a biodiesel
blend. And that's 20 percent less that has to come from Saudi Arabia or
some other unstable part of the world where we're funding governments
that don't like us, that use that money to buy weapons or to fund
madrassas that teach young people who don't have much opportunity in
their country, by the way, to advance economically or educationally,
they teach them to hate Americans or hate Israelis and to do harm to
us. And then, as Tom Friedman likes to write in the New York Times, we
have to pay for the other side of the war on terror by sending our
troops over there to stabilize these unstable parts of the world.
So that's a lose-lose policy, the old policy that we've been stuck on
of oil dependency. The win-win-win policy is the one that we're talking
about, where we use wind, we use biofuels. I mean, Brazil did this 20
years ago. They decided that they were going to use sugar cane ethanol.
And they converted their vehicle fleet in the entire country over so
that now when they drill offshore for oil in Brazil, they sell it on
the world market and make money off of it, but they don't use it in
their own vehicles. I think they're a few steps ahead of us. But we can
get there. We're the nation that put a man on the moon. We're the
nation that has been able to lead the way in many areas of medicine and
technology, and certainly computer and software and Internet
technology. This is something we can do. And we, in government, can
incentivize it and try to encourage private industry and encourage
individuals to do it. And make it patriotic, make people know that it's
patriotic to drive the most efficient vehicle you can in the most
efficient way that you can. It's patriotic to carpool, it's patriotic
to use mass transit when you can, and it's certainly patriotic to let
your elected officials know at every level of government, whether it's
snowplows in the winter, school buses or UPS fleets or the thruway
trucks that drive up and down all the time from Albany to New York,
governmental fleets of vehicles, if we can buy hybrids, as West Chester
County has done with their bus fleet, they're running not just hybrids,
but biodiesel hybrids, they're already pyramiding in West Chester
County on the B line, as they call it, the county bus route, they're
pyramiding one new technology on top of another. And the next step
would be plug-in biodiesel hybrids.
But we can do this. The technologies are here and available. And the
sooner
[[Page H2440]]
we start getting on the program and using them, the sooner we will be
able to tell some of the countries that we've, unfortunately, been
beholden to, whether it's the Saudis to get the oil or whether it's the
Chinese to borrow the money to pay for the oil, we will soon be able to
tell them, we don't need you quite so badly, and by the way, we'd like
to talk to you about human rights and some other things that right now
we can't be honest about because, in effect, we've lost our sovereignty
because of this dependency.
But at any rate, it's a lose-lose-lose policy on one hand and a win-
win-win policy on the other, and I want to see us go for the win-win.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Well, as we begin to wind down, we started this
discussion about the impact of Iraq and the economy, and the economy
and Iraq. And I think we started it from the beginning saying this
country, we Americans have spent $600 billion on this effort in Iraq.
And at a minimum, as we've discussed tonight, what could we do,
certainly in the future, in terms of Iraq, from the right standpoint,
taking responsibility and making it stand up and step up for itself and
paying for its reconstruction, its fuel needs that Americans are having
to pay for right now, and the training of its military.
And those resources, those American dollars can certainly be applied
in a way to make us safer in dealing with, as you express, national
security interests by taking us away from the addiction to oil and
coming up with wonderful new renewable energy sources. The technology
is there, it's being developed, it's being refined. We can take the
question of the jobs and our economy right now, and of course the
environment.
And so, as we begin to wrap up, if you can give some final thoughts
as to how the Iraq and the economy are tied together and how we can get
beyond this point and do good things for this country.
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Well, I thank my friend for the opportunity, and
also the opportunity to spend time with two of my good friends tonight
talking about very, very important issues.
We've focused primarily on the impact of the war in Iraq and the cost
of the war on the domestic economy here in the United States. But when
I look at my friend from New York and I look at my friend from Florida,
two States that really symbolize a growing connection between our
domestic economy and the global economy, one of the things we know is a
lot of the issues we've talked about tonight all come back to something
we all are charged to do when we swore to represent this country, and
that is to provide security.
{time} 2115
Now that may be security from harm, from foreign interests. It may be
economic security. But it all comes together. And we know that many
developing countries, the addiction to energy needs is what keeps them
suppressed in reaching greater levels of economic stability, and that's
why oil and the pursuit of oil has played such an important role in the
last 100 years in the world economy.
By exporting our knowledge about renewable energy, about new emerging
economies that can be shared and applied in the global economy, I think
we can give a great gift to the American people in the return of a
safer world, a more secure world, and a world where we have the ability
to be able to predict with greater certainty what the current economic
trends are going to be and set economic policies, with the assistance
of the administration and the Federal Reserve, to address these crises
before they become the full-blown crises that we have been talking
about on the floor tonight.
So I look forward to working with my friends and my other colleagues
here on both sides of the aisle in trying to provide some guidance and
direction as we get our hands on this very important subject.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I thank the gentleman from Iowa for
participating tonight on behalf of our freshmen class.
And if you would like to, Mr. Hall, take a minute to give a close.
Mr. HALL of New York. Quickly I would just add about Iraq two quotes,
one from Ambassador Ryan Crocker. When I was over there with our
Republican colleagues Tom Cole, Ric Keller, Dave Loebsack of Iowa, the
four Members of Congress sat with the Ambassador, and he was asked by
one of us, ``What's the state of reconciliation and peace and resolving
the conflicts between the tribes and the different religious sects?''
And I was sitting right next to him; so I wrote down his response to
be sure I had it right. His response was, ``The Maliki Government is
somewhere between challenged and dysfunctional.'' Now, that was
October.
In March General Petraeus stated on March 13, ``No one feels that
there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national
reconciliation.''
So it's my contention that not only do the Iraqis need to start
paying for their own reconstruction, I think they need to take
responsibility for their own security as well because as long as we are
putting our men and women in a police role to try to police their civil
war and their ethnic and tribal and religious differences, it's just
going to let them continue to be dysfunctional. And when we phase out
or pull out or whatever you want to call it and get back to the real
business that this country faces, the real dangers that we face, which,
as you said before, I believe, are Afghanistan and Pakistan certainly
more in terms of terrorism, that they will be forced to come to terms
with whether they want to be a country or whether they want to be three
separate groups of Kurds and Sunnis and Shia or whatever it is. But
that's one thing.
And the other thing is I am a firm believer that after 5 years and a
least $600 billion spent and over $1 trillion in veterans' benefits
that we have incurred that we will have to pay out of responsibility
and the debt that we owe to the men and women who fought in this
conflict that it's time for us to start looking at what those dollars
could do at home for the things that we really need to take care of,
not just for national security but for economic security, education
security, health security, and all the other meanings of the word.
So I thank my friends both, and I thank the gentleman from Florida
for chairing this session.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I thank the gentleman from New York and the
gentleman from Iowa. It's been an honor and privilege to serve with you
and all the rest of the Members of our freshmen class, both Democrats
and Republicans.
I know the future of our country, the future of our families, our
children, and I have got two kids in college right now and I know all
of you have kids in high school and college, we think about that every
day as we try to make decisions which will be the best for our country
both from a national security and economic security point of view. And
I know that we're going to work together in a collegial way to
accomplish those.
So I thank you, wish you a good night, and look forward to seeing you
next week at this time.
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