[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15272-15278]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  A CRITIQUE OF RICHARD B. CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burns). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, almost immediately after Senator Kerry 
chose Senator Edwards of North Carolina as his Democratic running mate, 
the Republican attack dogs were out in full force. The most popular 
Republican attack was that John Edwards does not have the experience to 
be vice president, and the second most popular, John Edwards represents 
the interests of the trial lawyers.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the American people, has Dick Cheney's experience 
paid off for them over the last 3 years? Tonight, I will try to 
highlight how Vice President Cheney's experience in the corporate world 
has led to administration policies that benefit the corporate interests 
over the interests of all Americans.
  I want to start by talking about Halliburton. After spending several 
decades in Washington here in the House and working for several 
Republican administrations, Dick Cheney went to Texas in 1995 to run 
Halliburton. On his watch, Halliburton conducted business with Iraq, 
Libya and Iran, three countries that at that time supported terrorism 
and were under strict sanctions from the United States. Despite these 
sanctions, Cheney's Halliburton did business with all three countries.
  During the 2000 campaign, Cheney said, ``I had a firm policy that we 
wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly 
legal.'' But while Cheney was running Halliburton, two of its foreign 
subsidiaries sold millions of dollars worth of oil services and parts 
to Saddam Hussein's regime.
  Vice President Cheney ran a company that did businesses with 
companies that supported terrorism. Is this the kind of experience 
Republicans are pointing to in lauding their vice president?
  Cheney continued to support his former company when he came to 
Washington as the vice president. We all know that the war in Iraq has 
been a financial windfall for Halliburton.
  We also learned last month, Mr. Speaker, that in the months leading 
up to the war in Iraq, an undersecretary of defense had a meeting with 
members of the Bush administration, including the vice president's 
Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, in which the undersecretary notified Libby 
and the others that Halliburton would be awarded a $1.9 billion defense 
contract. This meeting contradicts a statement made by Vice President 
Cheney last September on Meet the Press in which Cheney said, ``I don't 
know any of the details of the contract, because I deliberately stayed 
away from any information on that.''
  Yet, Mr. Speaker, his own Chief of Staff attended a meeting six 
months before the war in which secret contingency plans for the Iraqi 
oil industry that focused only Halliburton were discussed.
  Does Vice President Cheney want the American people to believe that 
his main staffer, his chief of staff, was at a meeting where contracts 
for Halliburton were discussed, but that he, the vice president, was 
never informed about them?
  The primary reason Halliburton received billions in no-bid contracts 
from the Bush administration can be attributed clearly to the cozy 
relationship between Cheney and Halliburton. And despite all the 
problems Halliburton has faced over the last year, the vice president 
continues to be an unyielding, positive spokesman for the company.
  In 2002, Cheney said, ``Halliburton is a fine company and I am 
pleased that I was associated with the company.'' I wonder if Vice 
President Cheney thought Halliburton was a fine company after it was 
forced to acknowledge knowledge that it accepted up to $6 million in 
kickbacks in its contract work in Iraq? Or does the vice president 
think that Halliburton is a fine company now, now that it is under 
scrutiny over allegations of overcharging the government $61 million in 
Iraq? Or was the vice president pleased with his old company's conduct 
when it received several warnings from the Pentagon that the food it 
was serving U.S. troops in Iraq was dirty?
  Perhaps the vice president overlooks these abuses of our troops and 
the American taxpayers because he continues to receive money from 
Halliburton.
  Vice President Cheney tried to squash a story when he appeared on 
Meet the Press last year. The vice president stated, ``And since I left 
Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I have severed all 
my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests. I 
have no financial interests in Halliburton of any kind, and haven't had 
now for over 3 years.''
  But despite the vice president's claims, the Congressional Research 
Service issued a report earlier this year concluding that because 
Cheney receives a deferred salary and continues to hold stock 
interests, he still has a financial interest in Halliburton. In fact, 
if the company were to go under, the vice president could lose the 
deferred salary, a salary he is expected to continue to receive this 
year and next year.
  While losing around $200,000 a year might not put a big dent in the 
vice

[[Page 15273]]

president's wallet, he clearly still has a stake in the success of 
Halliburton.
  And the vice president also neglects to mention that he continues to 
hold more than 433,000 stock options with Halliburton. The 
Congressional Research Service reports that these stock ties 
``represent a continuing financial interest in those employers which 
makes them potential conflicts of interest.''
  So the vice president misrepresented what he and his staff knew about 
the initial no-bid contract, as well as continued financial interests 
in Halliburton. And I ask again, Mr. Speaker, do we want a vice 
president who continues to benefit from a company that is essentially 
robbing the American taxpayers of millions of dollars? Is this the kind 
of leadership Republicans are touting when they praise Cheney's 
leadership abilities?
  I could go on. I would like to talk briefly, I see that my colleague 
from Washington is joining me tonight, I would like to talk a little 
bit about the link between al Qaeda and Iraq and the vice president's 
comments on that, because sometimes I think, Mr. Speaker, the 
Republicans admire Vice President Cheney's tenacity for refusing to 
accept, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that there is a 
connection between al Qaeda and Iraq.
  Last week, as we know, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report 
concluded that even though the CIA repeatedly told the White House it 
did not have any strong evidence linking Iraq to al Queda, Cheney and 
the rest of the Bush administration went ahead and characterized a 
close, well-documented relationship in an attempt to justify to going 
to war with Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee called such 
linkages murky and conflicting.
  Of course, the 9/11 Commission previously went further, reporting 
last month there did not appear to be a collaborative relationship 
between Iraq and al Queda. Those things are pretty obvious.
  Do we have any apology from Vice President Cheney? No, not even 
close. The Vice President continues to be in denial. He went so far as 
to justify this denial by saying that he had reports that the 9/11 
Commission did not have to prove the connection between Iraq and al 
Queda, but earlier this month the 9/11 Commission rebutted those 
claims, saying they had access to all the same intelligence that Cheney 
had.
  Do the American people want to stick with a Vice President who cannot 
finally admit he is wrong and remains in denial about something as 
critical as connections that led us down to war in Iraq?
  So on the foreign policy front, again, I think the Vice President has 
been a complete failure. He erroneously sold Members of Congress on a 
war that did not need to be waged.
  But what about domestic policy? Let us just talk a little bit about 
that as well. I would like to talk about energy policy and the Energy 
Task Force which the Vice President was so much involved with. The 
largest piece of domestic legislation that the Vice President had his 
fingerprints on clearly is the energy bill and his secret Energy Task 
Force.
  Over the past 3 years, the Bush administration and Congressional 
Republicans have done nothing to help consumers struggling to pay 
higher gas prices. When I go home, it is one of the big things my 
constituents talk about, the higher gas prices. I would argue that 
essentially the Bush administration and the Vice President, because of 
their background, are essentially supporting oil and gas companies. 
They do not have a problem with the price increases.
  Vice President Cheney and Republicans have never been interested in 
lowering gas prices, and the reason is because high gas prices mean 
high profits for big oil and gas companies that worked in secret with 
Vice President Cheney in crafting the Republican energy bill.
  For 3 years now, the Vice President has done everything he can to 
keep the records of his Energy Task Force secret. This secret task 
force developed President Bush's energy policy, a policy that was then 
made into legislation here in Congress, and that legislation passed 
this House, but it is now stalled in the other body. But, nevertheless, 
the end result was bad energy policy.
  There is no doubt that the energy industry succeeded with its 
influence during these secret, closed-door meetings in crafting a 
policy that benefited them rather than benefiting Americans, and now 
Americans are paying the price the at the pump.
  For 3 years, the Vice President has refused to let the American 
people know who made up in Energy Task Force. For 3 years now, the Vice 
President has refused to let the American people know how and why the 
task force came to the conclusions that it did.
  What about Enron? Let me just take a few minutes to talk about that, 
and then I am going to yield to my colleague from Washington State.
  Could it be that the Vice President wants to keep the records of his 
Energy Task Force secret because he wants to continue to distance 
himself from Enron? After all, you know, Enron has not been looking too 
good for the last few days, with what happened with their chairman Ken 
Lay in the last week.
  According to a 2002 report by the Committee on Government Reform in 
the House, seven of the eight recommendations that then Enron chairman 
Ken Lay gave to Vice President Cheney miraculously made their way into 
the final Energy Task Force report. So we know that Enron and Lay, they 
were very much involved in this report and ultimately the legislation 
that came out of it.
  Back in January 2002, the San Francisco Chronicle released a memo 
given by Enron Chairman Lay to Vice President Cheney at a meeting on 
April 17, 2001. Enron's memo contains recommendations in eight areas. 
In total, the White House energy plan adopts all or significant 
portions of Enron's recommendations in seven of these eight areas.
  Enron representatives had six meetings with the White House Energy 
Task Force, including four meetings that occurred before the release of 
the final report. The White House has consistently refused to disclose 
what Enron requested during these meetings.
  Despite all these meetings and the fact that Enron Chairman Ken Lay 
was President Bush's largest financial supporter, another reason the 
administration may want to keep these documents a secret is they do not 
want the American people to see more collaboration between the Bush 
administration and former Enron executives.
  Now, I ask you, we talked about foreign policy, we talked about 
domestic policy. Does any of this seem to be a good record? Not only 
has his energy bill not gone anywhere, but Vice President Cheney 
refuses to allow the American people and this Congress to see exactly 
who helped him craft this energy bill.
  Again, I am not surprised, given what happened to Lay last week, that 
they are going to try to keep it secret. They refuse to open up in 
detail any of this information.
  So, Mr. Speaker, Cheney's 3 years as Vice President have been 
abysmal. Perhaps that is the reason some Republicans in his own party 
are asking him, for the sake of the Republican Party, to step down.
  I thought it was very interesting, with all these attacks that were 
taking place last week and even on this floor against John Edwards, 
talking about lack of experience and all this other nonsense, that at 
the same time that Edwards was nominated, or asked by John Kerry to be 
his running mate, we just kept getting more and more reports about how 
the Republicans might be trying to get rid of Dick Cheney. It does not 
seem like that is likely, but it is no surprise, given Cheney's record 
on both foreign and domestic policy.
  With that, I would like to yield to my colleague here, I see we are 
joined by a couple of my colleagues, the gentleman from Washington.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much. I think 
it is really commendable that the gentleman would get up here at this 
hour of the night and call this

[[Page 15274]]

group together to talk about the President and Vice President of the 
United States.
  You know, you think about him, and you realize this man is one 
heartbeat away from the Presidency. If something should happen to 
George Bush, he would be our President.
  The legendary comedian George Carlin made famous the seven no-no 
words, and the Vice President has already used one in an exchange with 
one of his colleagues in the other body. Just picture the situation. 
Here are Members of the other body getting together for a group 
picture, kind of like college graduation or a wedding picture or 
whatever.
  In the middle of that, there is an exchange of ideas about the fact 
that one Member of the other body did not think that the Vice President 
was being straightforward about the Halliburton issue. And the Vice 
President of the United States, now, this man is the man we are 
thinking about would be the next in line to deal with the world 
leaders, with the prime minister of Germany, with the prime minister of 
England, with all these people, and the only word that he can think of 
is a word that, when Bono said it on television at the Academy Awards, 
all the roof fell down. I mean, everybody was just outraged that this 
guy would be out on television using a four-letter word.
  The Vice President does not even apologize. He says ``I am glad I 
used it. I would use it again.''

                              {time}  2200

  Obviously, there are different standards for people like Bono and the 
Vice President of the United States; he can do anything he wants, I 
guess. And he really has shown that characteristic through his whole 
behavior. It would really be good if he would come out and be honest 
and talk about the fact that he has been part of the deception that has 
gone on in this setting.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. The Vice President uttered on the floor of the United 
States Senate a graphic, sexual obscenity that is, I think, beneath the 
office. And the gentleman is right, when he was asked about it, he 
indicated he was not sorry he said it; in fact, he said he felt better. 
Now, this chamber and in fact much of the country got terribly upset a 
few months ago when there was an incident during the half-time at the 
super bowl when Janet Jackson had part of her anatomy exposed. I did 
not see the super bowl, I did not see the half-time show, so I did not 
see that incident, but it has been described.
  I guess I would ask this of the Vice President or of the American 
people: what is more harmful in terms of setting an example for the 
young people of this country, the children of our country, a momentary 
glimpse of a part of the human anatomy during an entertainment show on 
TV, or the Vice President of the United States on the floor of the 
United States Senate using a very graphic sexual obscenity directing it 
toward a United States Senator? And then I would further ask this 
question. all of us perhaps lose our tempers sometimes and say things 
that we should not say and are later sorry for. I know I do. I mean I 
think that is part of the human condition. But what I found most 
objectionable about the Vice President's behavior is that hours later, 
when he had had time to reflect upon his behavior and its possible 
influence upon the country, that he was asked on Fox News, and I was 
watching that show; in fact, I followed him on Fox News just a few 
moments after he had completed his interview, he was asked if he was 
sorry, and he said no, he had no regrets and, in fact, he felt better.
  Now, this is the Vice President of the United States, a person who 
talks about values, about moral values, and I just think it is quite 
unfortunate that this incident happened, but I can understand that it 
happened. As I said, we are all human. We all get angry, perhaps, at 
times. I confess that I have been guilty of that kind of behavior. But 
what I found so objectionable was the Vice President's unwillingness, 
even after he had time to reflect upon it, to admit the error.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Ohio is a psychologist, 
and I am a psychiatrist, and we know a little bit about human behavior, 
and it is true, we have occasionally gone beyond where we intended to 
be. But there is a pattern with the Vice President. He is never wrong. 
He is never wrong.
  Now, the 9-11 Commission came out and said that there is no tie 
between al Qaeda and Iraq, and the Vice President said, I have 
information here that I never gave them. So they said, well, give us 
the information. And he said, no, I am right, because I know what I 
have in my information here. I mean there is a pattern of behavior here 
that says, when I say something, it is right, and nobody can change it, 
nobody can challenge it.
  The same is true with holding the meetings in his White House office. 
I mean when we have all, all the leadership, including Ken Lay, I mean 
this is the guy that took Enron into the ground and put enormous costs 
on people all over the west in this country because of the manipulation 
of what they did; when you have those people in your office and you 
have a meeting to design the energy policy for the United States and 
then do not even think you have to tell us who was there, much less 
what you talked about or what was decided. And then you have the gull 
to go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Oh, and of course, in order 
not to have there be any slippage, we will go hunting with one of the 
members of the Supreme Court, just so that they have a chance over a 
bottle of beer or, excuse me, a cup of coffee, to talk about what is 
coming up before the court. This man is never wrong. He is never wrong.
  Now, he dismisses it all as just simply people who are unpatriotic or 
partisan; he has a whole series of things that he brands on people who 
question him. He cannot be questioned. I cannot wait for the debate 
between the Vice President and John Edwards, a trial attorney. I think 
this is going to be fun, because even members of his own party have to 
stand by while he distorts the truth, and I think that he is going to 
be called to account, to some accountability in the debate which 
occurs, I think in Cincinnati or Cleveland in Ohio, is that right?
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Cleveland, Ohio.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. I mean, when we see what the State Department has 
done, and they tried, and I think Colin Powell actually made a genuine 
effort to tell the President what was what about Iraq. But the Vice 
President of the United States saw fit to go out to Langley, that is 
where the CIA is, out in Langley, Virginia, to go out there 5 times to 
tell them, look harder at that data. You are not coming up with the 
right answer.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I just want to support what my friend 
from Washington State has said. I want to read something that the Vice 
President said on August 26, 2002 in a speech that he gave on that 
date. He said, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein 
has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing 
them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.''
  Now, the Vice President could have said, we have reason to believe, 
or I believe, or Saddam Hussein may have weapons of mass destruction, 
but the words he chose to use were the words ``no doubt.'' There is no 
doubt. And as a result of that thinking, we have lost nearly 900 
American lives in Iraq. Many, many thousands of our soldiers have been 
terribly wounded because the Vice President and others in the 
administration were willing to say ``there is no doubt'' when, in fact, 
there was great doubt, significant doubt. And I believe that if the 
American people had been told that Saddam Hussein may have weapons of 
mass destruction, but we do not know for sure, I believe the American 
people would have supported letting the inspectors have a longer period 
of time, time that they requested, to make sure that we knew whether or 
not Saddam Hussein had

[[Page 15275]]

these weapons of mass destruction before we sent our soldiers into 
harm's way.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, if I could just say, in addition to that, I 
am sure it would have influenced the vote here in the House. I did not 
vote for the resolution in part, in large part because of what the 
gentleman said, which is that I thought that there needed to be more of 
an effort to reach out to our allies and not act unilaterally. But I 
distinctly remember being on the floor that day and having Members come 
up to me and say that they were going to vote for the resolution to go 
to war because of the representations that were being made by the 
President. They said, the President is telling us he has this 
information, and we believe him, and that is why I am going to vote 
that way.
  So I will say I have no doubt that it might have gone the other way 
on the resolution if, as the gentleman said, it had not been 
represented by this administration, both the President and the Vice 
President, that there was more than enough evidence to prove that the 
weapons of mass destruction were there.
  I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I think one of the things the gentleman 
is saying gets to one of the things that is really troublesome about 
this. The American people do not know at a given time what the facts 
are. They assume that the President, that is his responsibility to do 
it. He is gathering information, he is gathering intelligence, he is 
making reasonable decisions. And basically, we put our trust in him.
  Now, when you put your trust in someone, and then it is shown 
categorically that it is not true, as by the 9-11 Commission, you have 
a man who cannot accept reality. I mean the members on the Commission, 
they were not all Democrats, it was not all Republicans, it was not 
people who are far to the right or far to the left or anything else; it 
was a mixture of very well-qualified people to sit in judgment on these 
issues. And when they make a judgment and the Vice President says I do 
not believe it, I simply do not, how could somebody like that make 
decisions for us?
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the chairman of the Commission was the 
governor that I served under in the State legislature in New Jersey for 
6 years, a staunch Republican who has actually been out there 
campaigning against me on occasion. So I mean you cannot ever convince 
me that Governor Kean was not doing what he thought was the right 
thing, and is a very knowledgeable and intelligent man, even though I 
disagree with him on a lot of issues, so the gentleman is absolutely 
right.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, the Vice 
President, not only on war issues, big issues, but let us get down to 
little issues like millions of dollars that he gets in residual 
payments from Halliburton. Here is a guy who says, I have no connection 
to those people. Yet the newspapers report that his assistant is there 
when they give the contract, the no-bid contract to Halliburton. Now, 
the ability to look into the camera and absolutely misrepresent the 
truth is a real skill. This guy is very qualified at this. I mean the 
facts are in the newspapers.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burns). Members are reminded not to make 
improper references to the Vice President such as accusations of 
dishonesty. The gentleman may proceed in order.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. The question of what is in the paper, I suppose, is 
always a question of whether that is the truth or not, but the truth 
sometimes categorically is in opposition to what the Vice President 
says.
  Now, of course, the people have to make their mind up about that. 
They can say, well, you know, we do not think he is telling the truth, 
or they can say well, maybe he forgot, but I do not know how you would 
forget that you were getting millions of dollars in residual payments 
from Halliburton. I do not know how one would say they forgot that one 
of your aids, your number one guy is the guy who was there explaining 
that they got the new contract. People will see that and, I think when 
they think about that, and they come into this election and then they 
say, do I trust him to take care of us? If the Cuban missile crisis 
came, would you want somebody who cannot accept reality?
  One of the things that John Kennedy did, one of the really important 
things for us to understand is, he got us into the Bay of Pigs and when 
they confronted him with it, he said, the buck stops here. I was wrong. 
When it came to the Cuban missile crisis, he said to Bobby, go out and 
get everybody on both sides of this issue, on all sides of this issue. 
I want to hear people who are telling me that I am right, people who 
are telling me that I am wrong; I want to hear the whole thing. Now a 
man who knows it himself what the answer is, has the information in his 
own pocket here, and does not share it with the 9-11 Commission, that 
does not sound like the kind of person one would want to trust with our 
youngsters.
  I mean I had the experience during the Vietnam war of taking care of 
casualties, and I took care of casualties who were people who went to 
Vietnam believing something because they were told by their President, 
and they went there and found out it was not true.

                              {time}  2215

  And they came back really messed up by that experience, and you have 
had a report already coming out of the New England Journal of Medicine 
talking about the fact that 1 in 5 are going to come back from this 
war, because the leadership of this country would not tell them what 
really was happening, they are going to be messed up from this, and 
this President, this vice president, he just does not seem to be 
bothered by that. It is quite amazing when you think about it.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois 
(Ms. Schakowsky) who is joining us now.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey 
for coming down to the floor this late in the evening and giving the 
rest of us an opportunity to talk about what is a very important issue, 
and that is top leadership in our country. And something that I have 
thought about for a long time from the moment I received this holiday 
card from the Cheneys, one of the things about being in the United 
States Congress, I do not know that we are so popular necessarily, but 
we are on a lot of lists, and we get holiday cards from dignitaries, 
some from all over the world and am honored to get holiday cards from 
the top leadership in our country. And it is a lovely card. It shows 
the interior of the residence of the vice president and has a pleasant 
greeting that you might expect, ``Our best wishes to you and your 
family in this holiday season and throughout the year ahead, Lynne 
Cheney and Dick Cheney,'' and I thought that was really nice and 
getting ready to hang it up along with my others, and then I looked at 
the quote that is here.
  And generally when there is a quote, it is something inspiring like 
``peace on earth, good will toward mankind,'' et cetera. And I read 
this quote, and it says, ``And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground 
without his notice,'' meaning God's notice, ``is it probable that an 
empire can rise without his aid,'' speaking about God's aid.
  I looked at that again, because I got a kind of shudder when I read 
it. ``And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is 
it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?''
  And what I read in this, and I do not know if I read it wrong, is 
that this notion of an empire rising with the assistance of God. And I 
was really upset by this, that this was not exactly this notion of 
peace on earth; but, rather, this depicted this kind of view of 
building an empire and doing it with God on our side. And quite 
frankly, I found this troubling.
  The vice president subsequently was questioned about it, and he just 
sort of offhandedly said that Lynne had picked out the quote and he had 
not really paid much attention to it, but I found

[[Page 15276]]

it particularly, at the time that it was received while we were and 
have been engaged in this war in Iraq that many do feel is part of a 
vision of building an empire, to be a very, very chilling notion.
  I wanted to also talk a little bit about the Halliburton connection, 
and of course all of us do that at some risk, because if we run into 
the vice president, we may be subject to some unpleasant language, as 
Senator Leahy found on the floor of the Senate. But things that are 
undisputable that the vice president has said about Halliburton and his 
connection with Halliburton, ``gets unfairly maligned simply because of 
their past association with me.''
  And then he said in January 22, 2004, ``I would not know how to 
manipulate the government contract process if I wanted to.''
  And then also that same day, January 22, 2004, ``I severed my ties 
with Halliburton when I became a candidate for vice president in August 
of 2000.'' In fact, however, the vice president received $178,436 in 
deferred payment last year from Halliburton, and so that was not 
entirely accurate.
  But perhaps more troubling are some of the issues that have been 
raised that really do question whether or not there was any connection 
between the vice president's office and the contracts with Halliburton, 
which it seems that U.S. officials have estimated that the Texas 
company's Iraq deals, Halliburton, from everything from oil repairs to 
meals for the troop would eventually total something like $18 billion.
  Now, $18 billion, when I was in the State Legislature in Springfield, 
that was getting a little bit close to the budget for the State of 
Illinois, and I am sure that it is an amount of money that does exceed 
the budget of many States and certainly of many countries around the 
world. $18 billion is a lot of money.
  But what was found was that in fact in the fall of 2002, preparing 
for war, and this is the fall of 2002, we had not voted yet, or at 
least a decision had not been made yet to go to war, the President and 
the vice president at the time were still saying that this was not a 
done deal that we were going to war; but in making preparations, the 
Pentagon sought and received the assent of senior Bush administration 
officials, including the vice president's chief of staff, before hiring 
the Halliburton company to develop secret plans, secret plans, for 
restoring Iraq's oil facilities. That is what Pentagon officials told 
Congressional investigators.
  So secret plans were being developed, and at that time Halliburton, 
after connecting with the vice president's office, the vice president's 
chief of staff, gets this relatively small contract. I think it was 
about a billion 4. That is all, just a billion 4 contract, kind of 
walking-around money.
  These are, after all, the statements about the lack of connection 
with the vice president. It says on March 5, 2003, a Pentagon e-mail 
sent by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineer official said, the e-mail said, 
``Douglas Feith, who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul 
Wolfowitz, approved arrangements for the contract to rebuild Iraq's oil 
industry, contingent on informing White House tomorrow that we 
anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated with the W.H. 
VP.'' That was an e-mail.
  Now, we know that to be true. That is not a speculation. This is an 
e-mail. This is a document that we have that is suggesting people who 
have no reason to malign the vice president, that that kind of 
connection was made that suggests very strongly, to say the least, that 
the vice president of the United States, who was the former CEO of 
Halliburton, that before major multi-billion dollar contracts were 
awarded, that there was a checkoff.
  Now, the vice president says they still stand by their statements 
that there is no connection.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. 
McDermott).
  Mr. McDERMOTT. We have read those stories. Can we think of any 
explanation for why the vice president would say that he has no contact 
with this in the face of that e-mail?
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois 
(Ms. Schakowsky).
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. The only thing one could think of is that for some 
reason, that the vice president's chief of staff did not tell him or 
something like that, but it seems to me if anyone feels the necessity 
to check with the vice president's office, whether or not he was 
involved directly in conversation, then I think the American people 
need to question that connection. Why would anybody need to do that or 
feel the need to do that? This is very important.
  Let me just say this. We talk a lot about separation of church and 
State, but in some ways this lack of separation between corporations 
that are looking to make profits and the public interest, and what our 
mandate and the mandate of all elected officials is to protect the 
public interest. This blurring of those divisions is very, very 
troubling. Are the interests of private corporations going right up to 
the vice president's office? That is a worthwhile thing for Americans 
to know about.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Strickland).
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Just recently, the Columbus Dispatch, the major 
newspaper in Ohio's capital city, had an editorial, and they pointed 
out that former Halliburton employees have made accusations that 
Halliburton housed some of their employees in hotel rooms that cost 
$10,000 per night. $10,000 per night, paid for, obviously, through 
these contracts, which ultimately are financed by the American 
taxpayer.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, could I ask what hotel 
charges $10,000 a night?
  Mr. STRICKLAND. I was amazed, but as I checked into it, it was not a 
misprint, $10,000 per night. Apparently there are hotels that have 
those kinds of prices.
  There were also accusations made that Halliburton was paying $100 for 
one bag of laundry, and then there were further reports that when a 
contract with Halliburton to provide food to our troops was cancelled, 
that the cost of feeding our troops declined by 40 percent.
  Now, this was information contained in an editorial in the Columbus 
Dispatch, and it was based upon information that was coming from a 
former Halliburton employee. And in that editorial there was a call for 
Halliburton and Vice President Cheney to be forthcoming in explaining 
whatever relationship may have been involved in Halliburton's achieving 
this kind of contract. And the emphasis was made that when you have a 
contract that is a cost-plus contract, there is really no incentive to 
hold down the costs.
  And so while we are struggling here in this country to meet the basic 
necessities of our citizens, we have senior citizens without adequate 
access to prescription drugs, we have children that are not being 
adequately educated, we have an infrastructure in our communities that 
is crumbling and falling apart while we cannot get a transportation 
bill passed, because the President is unwilling to spend money on the 
infrastructure needs in this country, while we are pouring money into 
Iraq, we have these outrageous contracts, which are enriching 
Halliburton and draining resources from our country. It is quite 
disturbing, and I do think the vice president, the administration owes 
the American people an explanation.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois 
(Ms. Schakowsky).
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I want to correct something. First of all, in that 
first small contract, and I was making a joke about $1.4 billion, and I 
was wrong about that, it was only a $1.4 million contract; but 
according to the General Accounting Office, the Pentagon acted 
improperly in tapping Halliburton company to plan the post-war repair 
of Iraq oil fields, a small-scale task order that opened the door to a 
much wider role for the company in Iraq, the General Accounting Office 
said in a report

[[Page 15277]]

released Monday. That was the middle of June of this year.
  The contingency planning task was valued at only $1.4 million but was 
significant, because it enabled the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to 
award a no-bid contract to Halliburton to fulfill a larger mission of 
actually restoring Iraq's oil industry to pre-war capacity.

                              {time}  2230

  I think the fact that a number of these contracts too were no bid 
contracts, that some of which ended up with Halliburton actually paying 
fines of engaging as they did in the oil that they were importing and 
overcharging and overcharging for employees, that ultimately had to be 
either ended or fines were paid. But, nonetheless, the bottom line is 
that this is a company that it appears is making about $18 billion 
overall in contracts in Iraq. And if this is in part at least the 
consequence of some kind of or benefited by a special relationship, 
then I think that the American people are entitled to know the full 
facts about that.
  Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate the gentlewoman's information because I 
think that we have to deal with the facts and the gentlewoman is giving 
us some real factual information there about Halliburton, and how they 
benefited and the vice president's connection to it.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. May I take a minute to make a recommendation to my 
colleagues and anybody watching, there is a book called ``The Imperial 
Hubris.'' It is written by anonymous. That means this is somebody who 
worked for CIA for a number of years and they are not allowed to put 
their name on here, but the subtitle is ``Why the West is Losing the 
War on Terror.''
  What we are talking about tonight is the character of the leadership 
of Mr. Cheney is clearly related to why we are having so much 
difficulty in Iraq. They will not listen to people. They give private 
contracts to the private industries and say, you guys do all of this 
stuff, and their friends are making money hand over fist, and yet our 
kids are dying over there.
  Mr. PALLONE. And also they continue to deny the reality. I mean, 
after the CIA report came out, it was either today or yesterday, that 
the President, President Bush was out there saying that the war has 
resulted in the U.S. being in less danger of attack and terrorism is 
down, the whole thing. And the Democratic candidate, Senator Kerry 
dispute that and said, Where are the facts to back this up?
  In the last few years we know that North Korea has more nuclear 
weapons than it had before, 3 or 4 times as many. There is no question 
that Iran is developing nuclear capability, I mean, the list goes on. 
Afghanistan, I think Kerry said, has basically been made into a 
sideshow. We do not even hear about what is going on there.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I thought the suggestion that really takes the cake, 
that even surprised me was that while we are being told that the world 
is safer than it was before, we are being told that plans are being 
considered to postpone the November elections. I never heard such a 
thing like that, that we should be so filled with fear that maybe even 
the November elections would have to be moved. I think all Americans 
ought to be up in arms about that.
  Mr. PALLONE. Our colleague from Washington addressed that issue the 
other night in a special order, and he pointed out very effectively I 
thought, number one, that during the War of 1812 he was talking about 
President Madison, the Capitol was literally burning and the White 
House too I guess, and we have still had elections. And then he 
mentioned the Civil War, the Capitol was under siege, literally being 
bombarded and we had elections. What could be more threatening from a 
terrorist point of view than actually being under siege and yet we had 
elections.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. I think you can go downstairs here in this Capitol 
building and look in the stairwell and actually see pock marks where 
bullets were fired during that period of time right here in this 
building, the Capitol building. And Abraham Lincoln in 1864 was really 
in danger of losing his presidency because the war was not going well. 
There had been some recent losses and there was wide spread criticism 
of President Lincoln as the President and some of his advisors were 
advising him to postpone the election. And this is what President 
Lincoln said on November 10, 1864, ``We cannot have free government 
without elections and if the rebellion could force us to forego or 
postpone a national election, it might already fairly claim to have 
concurred or ruined us.''
  We are strong people. We can take a lot. The American people have 
backbone. They have got courage. There is nothing that terrorists can 
do that ought to have the power to interfere with our ability to have a 
national election on November 2 as planned, absolutely nothing. And I 
think to imply that those who wish us harm would have that kind of 
power to influence our national purpose and our national behavior in 
that way is giving greater credibility to the terrorists than they 
deserve.
  We are going to have that election on November 2, I believe, but it 
does bother me, it truly bothers me that this would be something that 
would even be considered by this government. It really bothers me. If 
we did not cancel or postpone elections during the Civil War, if we did 
not cancel or postpone elections during World War II, why would we even 
contemplate the possibility of postponing this upcoming presidential 
election.
  One more thing, if I can say this before I yield back, we all want to 
trust each other, but what kind of motivation may such a provision 
inspire? What if it was 3 days before the election and the poll was 
taken and showed perhaps the party in power was not going to do very 
well, would there be incentive to perhaps indicate to the American 
people that there was a justification for postponing the election? I 
would hope not.
  But even to have this as a consideration I find alarming, appalling, 
and as I said earlier tonight, I would just hope the President and 
every Member of this chamber, Republican and Democrat alike, would 
reaffirm to the American people that we intend to have our election on 
November 2 as planned, and that there is nothing that terrorists can do 
to interfere with that Democratic process.
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentlewoman.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Just on that point of the November 2 election, the 
gentleman was discussing what possible motivation, the last thing that 
we want to do is to create in people's minds a fear about voting on 
November 2. What our democracy is based on is the fullest possible 
participation and Americans have nothing to fear but fear itself. And 
what I worry about is that there is a fire being instilled that somehow 
that people, that something could happen and it would not be safe to 
vote. Quite the contrary.
  This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. And the most 
important unit of our democracy is our vote. And to even imply that we 
would at a time when we want to declare and spread democracy around the 
world, even consider the postponement of an election is completely 
unacceptable.
  I think that all of us have to, as leaders in this country, make sure 
that that notion is stomped out immediately, that no matter what 
happens that we will go forward with an election on November 2. And if 
there is some kind of a threat about that, if there is some specific 
threat, after all, we did not raise the color from yellow to orange, if 
there is some specific threat that is known, then share that with the 
American people. Let us know what people need to defend themselves 
against and protect themselves.
  The spreading of a generalized fear and then connecting that to the 
election is as specious I think as connecting Saddam Hussein with al 
Qaeda over and over and over again, which now the 9/11 Commission and 
the Senate Intelligence Committee has said there is no connection. 
There is no connection. Everybody ought to plan to vote confidently on 
November 2.
  Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate the gentlewoman's comments and I agree. If 
we do not enshrine democracy and say that is the main thing we are 
about,

[[Page 15278]]

then we might as well forget it. I think that was my colleague from 
Ohio's point as well.
  I think we have maybe a few minutes left. I want to say I started out 
tonight talking about elections in a sense because I became very upset 
last night when I saw my Republican colleagues get up and basically 
malign Senator Edwards, the Democratic choice for Vice President, and 
the attack dogs were out in full force. And basically they kept saying 
that Edwards did not have the experience to be Vice President, and how 
he only represents the interests of the trial lawyers.
  After I listened to everything that we collectively said this evening 
in our hour or so, it made me realize that Vice President Cheney's life 
story and life experience certainly did not compare in any way to 
Senator Edwards.
  I wanted to ask the question because I asked a few questions when I 
started, would you rather have a Vice President whose experience 
outside of Washington comes from running a corporate giant that was, 
during the time he was running it, doing business with the nations that 
engage in terrorist activities or all the other things that we have 
talked about here tonight, or would you rather have a Vice President 
like Edwards who worked to defend the little guy against the corporate 
giant?
  Every time they bring up lack of experience or the trial lawyer 
experience of John Edwards, all I keep thinking is that he spent his 
time as a trial lawyer looking to defend the little guys against the 
very corporate giants that the Bush and Cheney administration 
essentially come from. And unlike Cheney, Edwards spent decades 
fighting for families and children hurt by the indifference and 
negligence in many case of these large corporations. And he was 
standing up against the powerful insurance industry and their lawyers 
in a sense. And he was always helping families to overcome the 
challenges.
  I could give you some examples but I am not going to do that tonight. 
But I just, it just really riles me when I hear the Republicans stand 
up for these guys for this team, the Bush-Cheney team, who obviously 
come from the oil industry, always out there with the corporate 
interests, certainly based on what we said tonight in Cheney's case 
continues to march to the tune, if you will, of these corporate 
interests including the company that he was in charge of for so many 
years.
  Then we have got Senator Edwards who on the other hand was always out 
there fighting for the little guy. Needless to say, I think it is time 
for a change and if you are ever going to put the experience of these 
two candidates for Vice President against each other, there is no way 
that you are going to do anything but vote for Senator Edwards.
  With that I wanted to thank my colleagues again. I thought they were 
really great tonight, and I appreciate the comments that they made, 
particularly those concluding comments about our democracy being at 
stake which is the thing that we cherish the most.

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