[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 755]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      IRAQ SUPPLEMENTAL AND TROOPS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burgess). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, today we learn the Bush administration 
plans to ask Congress for another $80 billion in emergency funds for 
the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. This $80 billion comes on top of an 
additional $200 billion that we have spent in Iraq since the beginning 
of the war 2 years ago.
  Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration never leveled with the American 
people about the kind of sacrifices they would have to make in order to 
fight this war. You will remember that before the war, President Bush 
and his war cabinet said the sacrifices would be minimal. They falsely 
claimed the majority of the war costs could be paid for by the 
royalties Iraq received on the sale of its oil. Nearly 2 years have 
passed since the beginning of the war, and we have yet to see one cent 
from the sale of Iraqi oil.
  You would think my Republican colleagues, particularly the ones who 
repeatedly come to the well of the floor to rail against the waste, 
fraud, and abuse in our Federal Government, would be demanding some 
accountability from the administration about the cost of the war. You 
would think they would be calling for congressional hearings demanding 
to hear from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on exactly where the Pentagon 
spent the $200 billion Congress already appropriated for the war.
  Unfortunately, Republicans have abdicated their oversight 
responsibility and are giving the Bush administration a free ride on 
the enormous miscalculations we have all witnessed in the Iraq war.
  Mr. Speaker, during World War II, then Senator Harry Truman created a 
war investigating committee charged with exposing any fraud or 
mismanagement in our Nation's war efforts in both the Pacific and the 
Atlantic. Truman was, of course, a Democratic Senator serving in a 
Democratic Senate majority, overseeing the Democratic administration of 
President Franklin Roosevelt. Truman never worried about the fact he 
was investigating a President of his own party. He refused to allow 
politics to get in the way of good government; and as a result, his 
investigations saved the American taxpayer more than $15 billion.
  Now, that was a lot of money back in the 1940s, and it is still a lot 
of money today. But I wonder just how much more money we could save the 
American taxpayer if congressional Republicans took their oversight 
responsibility seriously.
  Where is the Republican Party's Harry Truman? Why are congressional 
Republicans so worried about asking the Bush administration for 
specifics on where it is spending the $200 billion Congress has already 
appropriated? Could it be that congressional Republicans are afraid of 
what they would uncover if they looked too closely into the 
administration's handling of the war?
  The Bush administration has awarded Vice President Cheney's old 
company, Halliburton, billions of dollars of no-bid contracts since the 
beginning of the war. Despite the lack of congressional oversight, we 
discovered that Halliburton was charging for meals it never served our 
troops. Obviously, that is a waste of America's taxpayers' money. How 
many other examples of fraud and abuse are out there?
  Mr. Speaker, I opposed giving President Bush the authority to begin 
this war. I also opposed the $87 billion emergency supplemental because 
I believed the administration had to explain to those of us in Congress 
exactly how it planned to spend the money.
  The days of handing a blank check to the Bush administration should 
be over. It is time for Republicans to realize that our Founding 
Fathers gave Congress oversight responsibilities for a reason. We are 
not here to be lap dogs to any administration. As we prepare to debate 
another Iraq supplemental, I would hope congressional Republicans would 
keep that in mind.

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