[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 24375-24376]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          RUBBER-STAMPING THE ADMINISTRATION'S POLICY IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight because I 
know that we are going to next week be in a session of the ``Rubber 
Stamp Congress.'' Tomorrow the Committee on Appropriations will meet 
for several hours, and they will pass out $87 billion worth of borrowed 
money.
  I brought this because in my district one of my constituents started 
printing up what he calls ``fraudulent event notes.'' This is a $1 
billion note in ``deception dollars.''
  Now, 87 of those look something like this. That is what we are going 
to put out tomorrow, $87 billion of hard-earned money, with very little 
discussion, and the President wants them to run it through this House 
next week. We will come in on Wednesday. We will fly in on Wednesday 
afternoon; on Thursday we will have a little debate; and Thursday it 
will be gone. Two, three hours of debate, $87 billion.
  Now, when you think about that, this Rubber Stamp Congress never says 
no to this President. It is a failed policy, with the same people in 
charge today that got us in the mess. Oh, they have rearranged the deck 
chairs on the Titanic. Ms. Rice is now in charge. She sort of elbowed 
Colin Powell off to one side, and Mr. Rumsfeld off to the other side, 
and she is running in and telling Mr. Bremer what to do, the Viceroy we 
appointed over there to run this place.
  What is missing in all of this is a plan to give the control of Iraq 
to the Iraqis. They say someday. Five years, we are going to be doing 
this for 5 years. In one year, we have been in here for $79 billion, 
and now we are back for $87 billion more, all borrowed.
  We cannot touch those tax cuts. Oh, no, we gave that money to the 
rich people, and, I do not know, they are doing something with it 
somewhere. They are not making jobs. We have got no jobs in this 
country. But we are printing money. The presses are running like mad 
printing this money to send over to Iraq.
  Now, what are we going to send it there for? You heard from one of my 
colleagues a little bit of it. We are going to send over a guard system 
for public property, $15 million. That is just for training and 
administration.
  We are going to send them 80 pickup trucks at $2.6 million. That is 
$33,000 apiece. That is a pretty good pickup truck. You can get a 
pickup truck for under $20,000 right now. But, no, we have to send them 
the $33,000 brand.
  We are going to send over a communications system of handheld radios, 
400 of them, and 200 satellite telephones, for $6 million. How many of 
your police departments have that kind of equipment? And yet we can 
send it over to Iraq.
  Or we can go and give security for the judges at $200 million. Four 
hundred judges. We are going to provide security details constantly for 
$200 million.
  These phony dollars that they got us into, they got us into a war on 
a fraudulent basis. The President stood right here and said things 
which he now says, ``My, it wasn't true.'' But we are going to pay for 
it.
  We are going to pay for a witness protection program. If any Iraqis 
come forward, we promise them that we will take them to the United 
States and set them up someplace in Florida or wherever, I do not know, 
and spend $100 million on them, like they were crime fighters in the 
Mafia in the United States.
  That is what your money is going for.
  Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of things in this country that ought to 
happen before that happens.
  We are going to buy them 200 tanker trucks. We are going to buy them 
250 natural gas trucks. More of these dollars. They are going out. They 
are going out to the people, and they are going to be spent over there, 
and the Iraqis themselves say, ``Give us 10 cents on the dollar, and we 
can do it ourselves.'' But this is an American occupation headed by 
Viceroy Bremer, and there is no intention in this list of turning over 
control to them.
  We are going to set them up an army. We have decided they need a 
40,000-man

[[Page 24376]]

army. They had an army before. Where is it? Why do we have to buy new 
weapons for all of them?
  Four hundred thirty-five Members are going to come in here with their 
rubber stamp, and they are going to say, ``Mr. President, you want it. 
I close my eyes, it is yours.'' And we are going to send them $87 
billion, with no discussion. It is wrong. Keep your eye on them.

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