[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12214]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, this Congress approved an 
additional $82 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is on 
top of the other $220 billion that we had appropriated, raising the 
total cost of this war to more than $300 billion. If that was not 
enough, this week we are about to approve another $45 billion as a 
bridge loan for the operations in Iraq, bringing the cost up to $350 
billion. What have we gotten ourselves and what have we accomplished in 
the last 2 plus years and after nearly now $350 billion of American 
taxpayer money?
  We defeated Saddam Hussein's regime, but today we find ourselves 
mired in an endless occupation with the inability to find a way out of 
our occupation of Iraq. In fact, the generals there say we are years 
off from ever being able to extricate ourselves from Iraq. Operation 
Iraqi Freedom was a war of choice. As President Kennedy once said, ``To 
govern is to choose.'' One can only hope that the war in Iraq was the 
right choice.
  Every President in the middle of a war has thought and laid out a 
vision of America after that war, how to see of all the sacrifices that 
America made, how the benefits of the war would come home. President 
Lincoln thought of the land grant colleges and the transcontinental 
railroad system in the midst of a civil war. He saw a way of building 
America when it became clear we were going to win that war. President 
Roosevelt, the GI bill and universal health care; President Truman, the 
minimum wage, universal health care; President Eisenhower, on the heels 
of the beginning days of the Cold War as well as the closing days of 
the Korean War, the Interstate Highway System today. President Kennedy, 
in the midst of Vietnam and the early days of his administration of a 
cold war, envisioned a man on the moon and NASA, where America would 
dominate space and all the benefits that would come from that. 
President Johnson saw health care as his vision, Medicare and Medicaid.
  While we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Americans have 
lost 1,700 of their fellow citizens, over 10,000 who have been wounded 
and cost us $350 billion of taxpayer-funded entities and a taxpayer-
funded war, what is our vision? What has this President said? How does 
he see America down that horizon, that point out there on the horizon 
as you look forward? What are we going to build? What vision do we lay 
for the next generation for all the sacrifices Americans have made, not 
just in blood and in treasure, but for our sense of our country?
  As I said, President Lincoln saw an intercontinental railroad system. 
This President wants to eliminate Amtrak. President Eisenhower built 
highways. The highway system we have today was laid out by President 
Eisenhower. President Bush is threatening to veto the highway bill. 
President Kennedy saw a man on the Moon. The President has walked away 
from his vision of putting a man on Mars. President Roosevelt saw a GI 
bill for the troops to come home. Just this last week we cut or 
eliminated the opportunity for our National Guard and reservists to get 
health care.
  Every President during the midst of a war has had a vision of America 
after that war that was bigger, grander and worth all the sacrifice 
that said the benefits of that war, America's prestige, would come home 
in material benefits to America. That is why we have an 
intercontinental highway system. That is why we had a railroad system. 
That is why we had the land grant colleges. That is why we put a man on 
the Moon. We saw a vision, every President that led this country both 
through war and then through peace.
  It is at this time that this President needs to lay out a vision, 
and, let me tell you, it needs to be larger than a tax cut. That is not 
a vision. Somehow, do we have a universal broadband, so America leads 
again technologically? Would you see in the midst of a war a President 
who submits a budget that cuts the National Institutes of Health, a 
President who eliminates from the National Science Foundation $100 
million from its budget, yet we placed 16th for the first time in 
computer sciences? That is not a vision of America that goes forward. 
That is a smaller, a reduced America, an America that does not see 
itself in the grand scheme of things.
  When President Bush ran for the nomination in 2000, he announced that 
he was against nation-building. You look sometimes at this budget, you 
look at what he has done, and who knew it was America he was talking 
about when it came to nation-building? It is time for this President to 
lay out a vision that says, with all the sacrifices, his vision for 
America, what we are going to do. We are going to build in the science, 
we are going to build in the medical field, we are going to provide 
universal health care. What is it? It has got to be more than a veto of 
a highway bill, and it has got to be more than the elimination of 60 
vocational programs. It has got to be more than walking away from 
landing a man on Mars. It has got to be a vision that says the 
sacrifice was worthy of this country and its great commitment to 
democracy around the world.

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