[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 78 (Thursday, June 2, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H3922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1050
                    AMERICANS HAVE SPENDING FATIGUE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Quarterly 
today has a headline that says, ``Some House Republicans Showing Signs 
of War Fatigue.'' Unfortunately, this headline comes just the day after 
the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee has approved another $119 
billion for our overseas wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. That's 
$10 billion a month and $2.3 billion each week.
  By the most conservative estimates, we have now spent over $2 
trillion in direct and indirect costs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of 
this money has gone into nation building rather than stopping or 
defending against any real threat. We have turned the Department of 
Defense into the Department of Foreign Aid, and the American people are 
tired of it. They want us to stop rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan and 
start taking care of our own people. We are spending billions and 
billions that we do not have--that we are having to borrow--on people 
who do not appreciate it unless they are on our payroll.
  Alfred Regnery, publisher of the conservative American Spectator 
magazine, wrote last October that ``Afghanistan has little strategic 
value'' and ``the war is one of choice rather than necessity.'' He 
added that it has been ``a wasteful and frustrating decade.''
  The American people do not want, nor can we afford, endless, 
permanent wars. Nor do they want 11 or 12-year wars that last about 
three times as long as World War II.
  You can never satisfy governments' appetite for money or land. They 
always want more.
  Every gigantic bureaucracy always wants to expand its mission so it 
can get more funding. Every government agency always exaggerates the 
threats or problems it is confronting so it can get more money.
  The Pentagon is a gigantic bureaucracy that will do everything within 
its tremendous power to keep getting more and more money from the 
taxpayers. But there have to be limits somewhere, and fiscal 
conservatives should be the ones most horrified by all the hundreds of 
billions we have poured, and continued to pour, down these Iraqi, 
Afghan, Libyan rat holes.
  The American people and conservative Republicans all over this 
country are saying enough is enough. They want us to stop rebuilding 
Iraq and Afghanistan and paying for a useless war in Libya and start 
rebuilding the United States of America.
  We are almost $14 trillion in debt and headed much, much higher very, 
very soon. Soon, we will be printing so much money that our Social 
Security and other pensions will be worth very little. We have got to 
get our fiscal house in order. We have got to stop spending hundreds of 
billions all over the world and start taking care of our own people.
  Georgie Anne Geyer, the conservative foreign policy columnist, wrote 
a few months after the Iraqi war started many years ago that 
``Americans will inevitably come to a point where they have to choose 
between a government that provides services at home or one that seeks 
empire across the globe.''
  Mr. Speaker, the American people reached that point a long time ago. 
Hopefully, the Congress will soon follow their lead.

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