[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 20053-20057]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR SCIENCE, THE DEPARTMENTS OF STATE, JUSTICE, 
        AND COMMERCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 2862, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2862) making appropriations for Science, the 
     Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, and related 
     agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006, and 
     for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Lincoln amendment No. 1652, to provide for temporary 
     medicaid disaster relief for survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
       Dayton amendment No. 1654, to increase funding for Justice 
     Assistance Grants.
       Biden amendment No. 1661, to provide emergency funding for 
     victims of Hurricane Katrina.
       Sarbanes amendment No. 1662, to assist the victims of 
     Hurricane Katrina with finding new housing.

[[Page 20054]]

       Dorgan amendment No. 1665, to prohibit weakening any law 
     that provides safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices.
       Sununu amendment No. 1669, to increase funding for the 
     State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, the Southwest Border 
     Prosecutors Initiative, and transitional housing for women 
     subjected to domestic violence.
       Lieberman amendment No. 1678, to provide financial relief 
     for individuals and entities affected by Hurricane Katrina.
       DeWine amendment No. 1671, to make available, from amounts 
     otherwise available for the National Aeronautics and Space 
     Administration, $906,200,000 for aeronautics research and 
     development programs of the National Aeronautics and Space 
     Administration.
       Clinton amendment No. 1660, to establish a congressional 
     commission to examine the Federal, State, and local response 
     to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf 
     Region of the United States especially in the States of 
     Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other areas impacted in 
     the aftermath and make immediate corrective measures to 
     improve such responses in the future.
       Coburn amendment No. 1648, to eliminate the funding for the 
     Advanced Technology Program and increase the funding 
     available for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
     Administration, community oriented policing services, and 
     State and local law enforcement assistance.


                         Amendment Sponsorship

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, with respect to the list of amendments 
that has been filed to the pending bill, the amendment that Senator 
Salazar has filed dealing with the hurricane, I ask unanimous consent 
that amendment be attributed to Senator Bingaman.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1670

(Purpose: To establish a special committee of the Senate to investigate 
  the awarding and carrying out of contracts to conduct activities in 
        Afghanistan and Iraq and to fight the war on terrorism)

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1670, which I have 
filed at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1670.

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The amendment is printed in the Record of September 8, 2005, under 
``Text of Amendments.'')
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will describe very briefly this 
amendment--I shall come to the floor and talk about it more later--and 
then I will use the remaining minutes that are available to talk about 
an amendment I have previously offered to the bill.
  This amendment, very simply, deals with the contracting that our 
country is paying for, particularly with respect to Iraq and 
Afghanistan. It especially deals with establishment of a special 
committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse.
  Now, I indicated yesterday that whenever you speak of the company 
Halliburton, people think you are coming to the floor to criticize the 
Vice President. Let me say that is not the case. The Vice President was 
the president of Halliburton but not during any of the time that any of 
this has happened. But Halliburton has been, I believe, the largest 
contractor in Iraq. Halliburton and some other companies have been 
cited in ways that make my blood boil, and I believe it has the same 
reaction with the rest of the American people.
  Let me read some headlines, if I might. Nobody, by the way, seems to 
want to investigate this, and nobody seems to care much about it.
  ``Halliburton Has Failed to Account for $1.8 billion in Charges'' for 
work performed in Iraq and Kuwait. That is from the Wall Street Journal 
of August 11, 2004.
  ``Pentagon Auditors Have Recommended Withholding 15% of Payments to 
Halliburton.'' That is from the Wall Street Journal of December 10, 
2003.

      . . . the [Pentagon's] top financial officer . . . alerted 
     [Secretary] Rumsfeld of ``significant issues regarding the 
     timeliness and adequacy of KBR price proposals'' and 
     ``deficiencies'' in its billing, purchasing, and estimating 
     systems.

  ``Whistleblowers Have Documented Halliburton Waste, Fraud, and 
Abuse.''
  ``Halliburton Overcharged $186 Million for Meals.'' That is from the 
Federal Times of June 21, 2004.
  ``Halliburton Overcharged $212 Million for Oil Deliveries.''
  I could go through this. I have a sheet that is eight pages long. 
And, yes, it talks about $85,000 new trucks that are dumped on the side 
of the road because they have a flat tire or a fuel pump that is 
plugged. What do they do with it? Well, this is direct testimony from 
people who worked for Halliburton who drove the trucks, abandoned the 
trucks, let them torch the trucks for a flat tire. The list is 
unbelievable when you hear what has happened.
  A contractor pays $45 for a case of soda, $100 for cleaning a 15-
pound bag of laundry. We had one fellow who was buying towels--towels--
for our soldiers. He held up two towels: This is a towel we would 
normally purchase, but we were asked by Halliburton subsidiary, 
Kellogg, Brown, & Root, KBR, to buy towels with their logo on it. So 
you doubled the price of the towel to ship to the soldiers because it 
has the logo of the company on the towel.
  In 1941, Harry Truman was in this Chamber. We had a Democrat in the 
White House. A Democratic Senator demanded an investigation of waste, 
fraud, and abuse, and a special committee was established called the 
Truman Committee. They went after waste, fraud, and abuse. I am sure it 
was not very pleasant for Franklin Delano Roosevelt down at the White 
House with a Democrat in the Senate demanding an investigation of 
waste, fraud, and abuse. The fact is, the Truman Committee uncovered 
massive waste, fraud, and abuse.
  Now we have a President and a Congress controlled by one party. We do 
not even have oversight hearings on these things. I am the only one who 
has been holding hearings in the Democratic Policy Committee and having 
the whistleblowers come forward and talk about the massive waste, 
fraud, and abuse that exists. No oversight hearings. No accountability. 
Nobody seems to care.
  My amendment, very simply, says there ought to be established a 
special committee to investigate this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse. 
Let me say to those who say, Well, you are trying to legislate on an 
appropriations bill, yes, I am. I am. I tried to offer this on the 
Defense authorization bill, which is where it belongs. I did offer it 
to the Defense authorization bill, and the Defense authorization bill 
was taken off the floor of the Senate; we are told never to reappear 
again. So the only option we have is to offer this kind of amendment on 
this appropriations bill.
  So I wanted to describe what this amendment is. It would establish a 
type of Truman Committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. It is 
not about politics. It is about, on behalf of the American people, 
asking the tough questions about waste, fraud, and abuse. We are 
shoveling money out the door, shoveling money--billions and billions, 
tens of billions of dollars--to be spent in the country of Iraq for 
rebuilding Iraq. Then we hear stories about the American taxpayer 
paying for the air-conditioning of a building in Iraq, and then it goes 
to a contractor and a subcontractor and somebody else who subcontracts 
from that, and by the time it gets installed, it is a ceiling fan, and 
the American taxpayer paid for air-conditioning.
  Guess what. It is going on all over. The company orders 50,000 pounds 
of nails, 25 tons of nails, and they order the wrong size, so 
Halliburton's nails are lying in the sand somewhere in Iraq. Does 
anybody care about that?
  We are talking about billions of dollars of no-bid contracts. I am 
going to hold a hearing on Friday with the woman who rose to the 
highest rank--the highest civilian employee in the Corps of Engineers, 
Bunnatine Greenhouse. And what is happening to her? Well, she had the 
guts to speak up and speak out, saying these no-bid contracts were 
being awarded to Halliburton in an inappropriate way without following 
the rules.

[[Page 20055]]

  Well, guess what happened to Bunnatine Greenhouse for raising those 
questions. She is losing her career over in the Pentagon at the Corps 
of Engineers. She is being demoted. She always had excellent, sterling 
evaluations--until she said: You can't do this. This isn't a buddy 
system. You can't be awarding contracts this way.
  For her honesty and for her courage, she is told she is either going 
to be fired or going to be demoted, against, I might say, the wishes of 
the inspector general who is investigating it.


                           Amendment No. 1665

  Mr. President, let me talk for a moment about the other amendment I 
have offered to this bill. As you know, today's trade announcement is 
we had a $58 billion--$58 billion--trade deficit in the last month; 
about $700 billion a year, we are going to see. That is $700 billion a 
year more than we send out in exports that we purchase in imports. So 
let me talk about this.
  Here is what is happening in American trade. We are drowning in trade 
deficits. As you know, attendant to that, we are sending jobs overseas 
at a rapid rate.
  Fruit of the Loom--you all remember the people dressed up as grapes, 
singing their little Fruit of the Loom songs. It used to be American 
underwear. But American underwear is no longer American. If you are 
wearing Fruit of the Loom somewhere in America today, you are wearing 
Mexican shorts or probably Chinese shorts and T-shirts. So Fruit of the 
Loom is gone, and 3,200 people who used to work for Fruit of the Loom 
are no longer employed.
  PalmPilot--if anybody has worked on a PalmPilot, here is the last 
message from a young woman--I have her name, and I will not go through 
it, but I will at some other time when I have the time to do that. Here 
is the last message from a women who worked for PalmPilot. By the way, 
she was forced to train her replacement, who is a worker from India, 
because those jobs went to India. Here is her last message on her 
PalmPilot: ``My job's gone to India!!''
  I have spoken at length about Huffy bicycles. I will not speak longer 
about them today, but all the folks in Ohio were fired. They used to 
make Huffies. Incidentally, this little thing between the handle bars 
and the front fender, that used to be an American flag decal. They 
cleverly changed it to a globe once the jobs went to China, and all the 
American workers were fired. Oh, it is still an American brand, it is 
just that Americans do not get a chance to make them any more because 
the American workers were paid $11 an hour, plus benefits, and now they 
are made in China, but with workers who make 33 cents an hour and work 
7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. They are still sold in Wal-Mart, 
Kmart, and Sears. They are called an American bicycle. They are not. 
They are not an American bicycle.
  And the Maytag repairman--all those television commercials about this 
old bloke having nothing to do. Well, 1,600 U.S. Maytag jobs went to 
Mexico and Korea.
  I could do this for a long time.

       Even as it proceeds to lay off up to 13,000 workers in 
     Europe and the United States, IBM plans to increase its 
     payroll in India by more than 14,000 workers.

  That was 2 months ago in the New York Times.
  Now, what does all this mean for our country?
  It means our country is losing economic strength, losing jobs. We are 
hollowing out America's manufacturing base. In the last 20 years, our 
manufacturing base has shrunk by half. We are told it is all right, and 
it is going to be fine in the long run if those who produce, yes, 
American companies that produce, search for the lowest cost production 
anywhere in the world and then they land in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, 
Indonesia, China or somewhere else and hire someone else for 16 cents 
an hour. And, yes, they do. They will hire 12-year-old kids for 12 
cents an hour and work them 12 hours a day. If you doubt it, I will 
show you where it happens.
  People say: Well, that is all right because all those jobs, they are 
going to go elsewhere, but we will have higher wage, higher skilled 
jobs in this country. They are all wrong. It does not work that way. 
This country is losing economic strength and losing economic 
opportunity. The people who are losing their jobs because American jobs 
are moving elsewhere, in search of lower wages, those are people who 
are not able to find jobs that are equivalent jobs. In almost all 
cases, they find the next job at a lower wage rate.
  This is a race to the bottom. Rather than aspiring to lift other 
countries up, it is driving down wage rates and opportunities in our 
country.
  There is a man named James Fyler. James Fyler died of lead poisoning. 
He was shot 54 times. I suppose that is acute lead poisoning. He was 
shot 54 times long ago because he had the temerity to stand up for the 
ability and the right of workers to organize. So he lost his life. I 
could cite many others who lost their lives standing up for the right 
of people to organize as workers. Apparently, there are companies who 
have decided to pole-vault all over that and produce elsewhere where 
workers cannot organize; produce in China, where if a worker tries to 
organize, he or she can be sent to prison. If you want names, I will 
give you names of at least a dozen people--and there are hundreds 
more--who are sitting in prisons in China because they wanted to 
organize workers.
  Producing in China is easier, producing in other countries is easier 
because you don't have to worry about child labor, about dumping 
chemicals into the air and water. You don't have to worry about workers 
organizing.
  What is going wrong in trade is going to dramatically injure this 
country and its future and opportunities. I am offering an amendment 
because we have trade negotiators now negotiating in the Doha round who 
have indicated it is all right and we will consider negotiating away 
our opportunity to protect ourselves against the dumping of products 
into this country, into our marketplace at below their cost of 
acquisition, which is an opportunity to ruin the domestic industry and 
drive domestic industry out of business.
  We protect ourselves with antidumping laws. We protect ourselves 
against deep subsidies of products that are dumped into our marketplace 
with countervailing duties. Our trade negotiators have signalled that 
that which our trade partners want, to get rid of our countervailing 
duties or antidumping laws, basic provisions that protect American 
workers, protect American jobs against the unfairness of trade, our 
trade negotiators have said: It is on the table. We are willing to 
consider that.
  My amendment says no money will be used by the folks in the Commerce 
Department and the U.S. trade ambassador's office negotiating these 
trade agreements to weaken trade protections for American workers and 
businesses. It is a simple amendment but important in terms of the 
future.
  I notice my colleague from West Virginia has arrived. I know he is 
set to assume his address to the Senate. Let me, in courtesy to him, 
close my remarks and simply say, I intend to come to the floor later 
this afternoon to speak again about both of these amendments which are 
important, the addition of which will add significantly to this 
appropriations bill.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.


                a national debate: our country's future

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, chapter 3, verses 1 through 8, of the Book 
of Ecclesiastes in the Holy Bible begins:

       To everything there is a season and a time for every 
     purpose under heaven.

  Let's read that again:

       To everything there is a season and a time for every 
     purpose under heaven.

  It is time for a national debate, and its purpose is our country's 
future.

[[Page 20056]]

Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to put events into perspective, to 
shake us and to sharpen our clarity of vision. The wrath of Katrina, 
tragic and devastating for thousands, must certainly has caused many 
thinking Americans to consider anew the proper priorities for our 
country.
  Who among us has not wondered if the efforts to rescue and evacuate 
Gulf Coast residents suffered because too many National Guardsmen have 
been detailed and detained in Iraq? What thinking American has not 
pondered why we had such a painfully slow response to a behemoth storm 
which we knew for days would likely turn New Orleans into a caldron of 
despair? Is there anyone in our great country--anyone--who did not feel 
the painful outrage of the citizens of New Orleans and Louisiana and 
Mississippi, as they waited for days without food, without water, 
without knowledge about loved ones? Who among us did not shrink in 
dread from the specter of our fellow citizens' bodies floating in the 
murky flood waters or stacked in hospital stairwells for want of anyone 
anywhere else to house them? Could this be happening in a major 
American city? Can you believe it? Could we be so inept at dealing with 
this tragedy?
  The events of the past several days seem to have reduced our much 
touted American know-how and technology to little more than children's 
toys, strangely impotent in a real crisis.
  I know many Americans cringed, as I did, at the vision of the callous 
neglect of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens which flashed 
around the world, making the United States appear to be a nation 
unmindful of its own, a nation unable to handle a disaster about which 
it had ample notice, a country loudly touting our form of government to 
the world while failing to provide even the most basic protections to 
our own citizens. What a shame.
  If Katrina has any redeeming impact, it must be to cause us to see 
ourselves as others must surely see us. I regret to say that the 
picture cannot be a pretty one. That image is certainly not one that 
reflects the humanitarian goodness and morality of the vast majority of 
the American people. The perception of the United States in these 
troubled times should be a cause of major concern for everyone who 
holds public office--did you hear me?--for everyone who holds public 
office, regardless of political party. It is time to look at where we 
are and where we are going.
  Few would now argue that the war in Iraq has improved the world's 
view of the United States. Again, what a shame. What a terrible shame. 
What a terrible mistake. It was an unnecessary and ill-conceived 
conflict which distracted us from our proper course of bombing the 
terrorist training grounds of Afghanistan. I have never bought the 
absurd claim by some that we are fighting terrorists in Iraq so we will 
not have to fight them here at home. Who believes that? That claim is a 
nonsequitur at best and, at worst, a patent distortion of what has 
happened in Iraq. The war in Iraq created a hot bed of terrorism where 
none existed before, and it ensured Osama bin Laden an endless supply 
of recruits, now even more fanatic in their hatred after scandals at 
Abu Ghraib and the destruction of so many innocent lives in Iraq as a 
result of our unprovoked invasion.
  I said it then. It was a mistake. We were being misled. I said it 
then, that Hussein did not pose a threat to our national security. I 
didn't believe the stories that were told. And as it turned out, the 
stories were wrong.
  For everything there is a season, saith the Bible. The season has 
come for Americans to look homeward instead of continuing to spend 
billions of dollars in Iraq. Let us husband our hard-earned tax dollars 
and spend them here at home. Look homeward. The Iraqi people must 
slowly find their own way now.
  Further, U.S. dictated deadlines are counterproductive. We cannot 
force-feed democracy in Iraq. To keep large numbers of American 
soldiers in Iraq much longer only earns the United States more enmity, 
reinforcing our unfortunate global image as conqueror, not liberator.
  Haven't we learned that? The Iraqi people must begin to take it from 
here. In fact, there is no longer a war in Iraq. The President says we 
are a nation at war. We are not a nation at war. The U.S. military is 
at war. The Nation pays little attention to it. The newspapers seldom 
mention it. The administration is deaf, dumb, and mute on the war.
  A national war? Guardsmen know about it. They know there is a war, 
and their families know there is a war. We started that conflict. We 
started that conflict, and we met the goals established at its outset. 
Now there is a slow, festering, internal political struggle pitting 
Shiite against Sunni against Kurd which will play itself out perhaps 
for decades until it either devolves into outright civil war or 
resolves into some sort of compromise which suits those who live in the 
country of Iraq.
  We cannot resolve Iraq's internal issues. It is time for the United 
States to begin to bring our troops home. What are we waiting on?
  There are those who say if we were to leave, we would not be honoring 
those who gave their lives in vain. That is an argument that is 
eternal. We continue to feed lives into the slaughterhouse.
  The invasion of Iraq was never supposed to be an open-ended 
peacekeeping mission with our troops mired amid the chaos of continuing 
urban warfare, the most dangerous place in the world. How would you 
like for your son to go? How would you like for your daughter to go? 
How would you like for your grandson to go? For what?
  We need to bring them home with a hearty ``job well done''--a hearty 
``job well done.'' We should begin with the National Guard. Praise God, 
the National Guard. Obviously, they are needed here. They were needed 
in New Orleans. They were needed in Mississippi. They were needed in 
Alabama. They are an integral part of our first responder team in the 
event of a terrorist attack, God forbid, or if another national 
disaster were to strike.
  It is time to come home--come home, America--time to come home; time 
to come home, America; time to look within our own borders and within 
our own souls. There are many questions to be answered and many 
missions to accomplish right here on our own soil. We have neglected 
too much for too long in our own backyard. Come on, wake up, wake up, 
America.
  To everything there is a season--a time to break down and a time to 
build up. If we had spent the money a few years back to rebuild those 
levees on the Gulf Coast, thousands would be alive today. Perhaps we 
can finally see the value of that budgetary stepchild called public 
works.
  All across this country, there are years of neglect of the basic 
infrastructure of the United States that cry out for attention. Years 
of neglect--years of neglect--of the basic infrastructure of the United 
States that have been crying out for attention, cry out today for 
attention, and we have delayed for decades, and the needs are only 
growing.
  There are antiquated sewer and water systems built a century ago in 
our major cities. Take a look here in Washington, DC, right here in the 
Nation's Capital. Washington, DC, has water not always safe to drink. 
There are rural communities in America that live with black mud coming 
out of their faucets. There are unsafe bridges. There are aging 
reservoirs. There are schools without adequate heat or modern learning 
tools all around our land. Homeland security needs are underfunded. I 
have time and again, time and again offered amendments to more 
appropriately fund homeland security. My amendments were defeated 
because the White House and the leadership of the party that controls 
this House and the other House oppose those amendments. Yet we continue 
to commit billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq while our own needs go 
begging. Can't we see? How long, how long, how long will we close our 
eyes to these needs?
  Is it not now painfully evident to everyone that we must make basic 
investment in our own country a national and urgent priority? Imagine a 
terrorist attack on the heels of a catastrophe such as Katrina. Can you 
imagine the horror, the chaos, the utter

[[Page 20057]]

confusion? I have to believe that Osama or one of his henchmen is 
taking notes as we struggle with the devastation left in Katrina's 
wake.
  Our economic resources are stretched dangerously, dangerously thin, 
and so is our military might--you better believe that--so is our 
military might.
  We have taken on too much. We have turned our backs on cooperation 
with the international community, decided to go it alone, and pursue 
some grandiose scheme of remaking the world in our own image. How 
silly.
  By now it should be clear to all that grand experiments are very 
costly. It is time for a national epiphany. The sound of Katrina's 
bugle must be heeded. We cannot continue to commit billions of dollars 
in Iraq when our own people are so much in need--not only now in New 
Orleans, but all across America--for everything from education to 
health care to homeland security to securing our own borders. We need 
to stop making excuses, stop spinning the facts, and come to grips with 
the unpleasant truth. The Government of the United States is failing 
the American people. Failing. That is the catastrophe.
  Where is the national debate about our priorities which Katrina 
should prompt? What does it take to wake us up? Hey, listen, hear me: 
It is a debate that must begin, if not on this Senate floor, then in 
the barber shops and in the grocery stores of America and in the print 
and broadcast media of this great Nation.
  It is past time for that debate and high time for all of us to 
realize that there is nothing more patriotic than taking a good, hard, 
honest look at our national priorities. We, the people--we, the 
people--always have that right. A strong republic depends upon just 
that kind of periodic soul-searching. Does our moral sense of ourselves 
translate into Government policies? I believe that. Presently, it does 
not. We have a disconnect in Government policy in everything from a 
tarnished U.S. image abroad to a failure to address gasoline shortages 
and skyrocketing prices that will certainly slow our economic engine 
and take their toll on working people.
  Instead of asking the public not to buy more gas than needed, I wish 
somebody would ask the giant oil companies to pass up some profits and 
help hold down gas prices as a patriotic gesture for our country. Would 
that be so outrageous? What do you think?
  Why have we not had the vision to invest in alternative energy 
sources on a grand scale to free us from the addiction to foreign oil? 
For too long--for too long--our great land has been allowed to drift 
toward balkanization, a separation between the haves and the have-nots, 
with the lower end of the income scale at risk from a tattered safety 
net and a neglected infrastructure, lacking the jobs and housing they 
need, the health care to stay well, the insurance to cover hospital 
stays, or the educational opportunities to prepare for the future.
  I remember, yes, I remember an America that used to feel more like 
one country--one country, an America that shared the sacrifice of war 
and tightened its belt so we could pay for it now. But now we borrow to 
go to war, and we cut taxes to spare those in the high brackets from 
sacrifice.
  Where is the sense of shared destiny? It has taken nature's own 
weapon of mass destruction, a category 4 hurricane, to remind us that 
we are all American and that our Government has a moral obligation to 
serve and protect us all.
  This country is on the wrong track, and the course needs correcting. 
Continued denial serves no good purpose. Further loss of American life 
in Iraq may permanently sour the American people on future military 
action and damage the recruitment for our all-voluntary force.
  To everything there is a season--a time to kill and a time to heal. 
We have seen the fallacy of sending too many members of the National 
Guard to the Middle East. What folly.
  As I speak, we have lost 1,886 sons and daughters in Iraq. And for 
what? And there seems to be no end in sight, no plan. We have 137,000 
troops still serving in Iraq with 2,000 more scheduled to go in 
October. We are building at least--now get this--we are building at 
least four semipermanent bases in Iraq structured to hold 18,000 troops 
each. Why? That does not sound like ``staying not one day longer than 
needed'' to me. In truth, most Americans no longer support a massive 
deployment in Iraq. Nor do they understand the mission of that 
continued deployment. Despite repeated directives by the Congress, the 
``powers that be'' refuse to actually budget for Iraq, so that a total 
picture of our fiscal situation and the cost of the war is deliberately 
obscured. We are driving our country ever deeper into debt and 
stretching every resource that we possess to the breaking point. How 
much longer can it last? Prudence demands that we reassess our posture. 
Our inept and pathetic, pitiful response to Katrina has underlined our 
vulnerabilities and writ them large before the world. The American 
people deserve better than this.
  I call upon the leaders of this country to come together and to work 
together to repair our storm-ravaged Gulf Coast and help salvage the 
lives of its victims. But more than that, I call upon the Congress to 
inventory our homeland with an eye to the future. Let us look around, 
America, and target our deficiencies. Let us work with State and local 
communities to shore up our weaknesses. We must react in a crisis, of 
course, but for God's sake, let us finally understand that we must also 
anticipate the future and be unafraid to commit the resources to make 
us strong at home. The lesson of Katrina most surely is that an ounce 
of prevention is worth several tons of cure.
  We need to also learn that we cannot long remain a world power if we 
continue to let America crumble from within. The alarm bells are 
sounding--listen. The alarm bells are sounding and we must answer the 
call. This is no time to play for partisan advantage. This is certainly 
not the season to circle the wagons and hunker down. We need not 
stretch our brains to write new talking points or invent new excuses. 
And please, oh, please, please, let us not resort to the trusty 
bureaucratic ruse of simply reorganizing Government agencies once 
again.
  It is time for real leadership. It is the season for true humility. 
The Bible says:

       Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit 
     before a fall.

  For years we have been getting it wrong here in Washington. But if we 
have the will, we can begin to get it right. The American people 
deserve leaders with the honesty to take responsibility for failures--
quit making excuses, quit spinning the facts--and the wisdom to change 
when change is obviously and so urgently needed. And may God, may 
almighty God, grant us the grace.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). Under the previous order, the 
Senator from Louisiana is recognized.

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