[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23980-23981]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    FURTHER FUNDING THE WAR IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, over the next couple of weeks, we will 
vote on a huge $87 billion supplemental appropriations bill to further 
fund the war in Iraq.
  Madam Speaker, this is a very serious piece of legislation. It is the 
largest supplemental appropriations bill in our Nation's history.

                              {time}  1715

  While it is critically important that we get our military troops all 
the resources they need, I do not support rubber-stamping this 
legislation so this administration gets a free ride from Congress and 
does not have to account for its strategy in Iraq. Tough questions need 
to be asked.
  Madam Speaker, how could the Bush administration underestimate so 
badly the cost of the war? Bush administration officials either 
dramatically underestimated the costs or were misrepresenting their 
estimates to Congress before the war. Before being forced out of the 
Bush administration, Secretary of Treasury Larry Lindsey estimated the 
cost of the war would be between 100 and $200 billion, but other 
officials in the administration scoffed at that estimate, saying it 
would be a lot less. In fact, OMB Director Mitch Daniels estimated the 
cost at as little as $50 billion.
  If we combine the military costs in the first supplemental and the 
$65 billion included in this latest supplemental, we get $132 billion, 
$132 billion, much higher than the estimates, obviously, from the Bush 
administration.
  Just one week after the war began, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul 
Wolfowitz told the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on 
Defense, ``We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own 
reconstruction, and relatively soon.''
  Yet the Bush administration comes to Congress requesting $20 billion 
for reconstruction costs in Iraq. Was the administration bending the 
truth 6 months ago?
  Madam Speaker, the American people are skeptical about these 
reconstruction funds. We really cannot blame them. In five of the 
largest areas of reconstruction, we will be spending considerably more 
money per capita in Iraq than we spend on our own people here at home.
  The Bush administration proposal calls for $3.7 billion to fund 
repairs and improvements to water and sewage services in Iraq, a great 
funding proposal from an administration that is certainly no friend of 
environmental policies here at home. In fact, the administration called 
for a 25 percent cut in the number of EPA clean-water sewage treatment 
grants over the past year here in the United States.
  Madam Speaker, the Iraq supplemental calls for $900 million to 
construct, repair, and equip hospitals in Iraq, 10 times as much per 
person as we are spending on repairing and constructing our own 
hospitals, clinics, veterans medical facilities, and U.S. military 
medical facilities.
  Months after the largest power blackout in our Nation's history, the 
Iraq supplemental calls for $6 billion to rehabilitate the electric 
power infrastructure of Iraq at a per capita cost of

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$250.32. Here in the United States we do not even spend a single dollar 
to upgrade our electrical grid.
  Madam Speaker, we all understand that Iraq must be rebuilt, but does 
this Nation have to bear the brunt of the costs? Tough questions must 
be answered by this administration over the next couple of weeks, and I 
only hope that they are more forthcoming than they have been in the 
past.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Miller of Michigan). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  (Mr. DAVIS of Illinois addressed the House. His remarks will appear 
hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.)

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