[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Page 4286]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              REQUESTING A REFUND FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  (Mr. EMANUEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, it is time we give the American people a 
refund, because this Congress is not giving them what they paid for. 
Day after day, we see headlines detailing the incompetence, 
mismanagement and sometimes outright corruption of our government, and 
yet this Congress sits idly by rubber-stamping the administration's 
policies.
  Three years after the invasion, we are mired in an endless occupation 
of Iraq. Yet this Congress has approved $480 billion without a single 
question of where the $10 billion that is missing has gone and how did 
Halliburton continue to get its no-bid contracts.
  A few days ago we learned that government investigators were able to 
smuggle enough radioactive material in the U.S. to make two dirty 
bombs. Not a single question by the administration or this Congress, 
because they have not provided the money for border and port security.
  Since 2000, the Congress has added $3 trillion to the national debt. 
Yet we didn't hear so much as a peep out of this Congress when the debt 
limit was raised for the fourth time in 5 years. The taxpayers bought 
thousands of trailers in Louisiana, and they sit empty.
  Mr. Speaker, the people's House is here to serve the people, not the 
special interests. It is time the American people either got their 
money's worth or a refund. It is time for new priorities. It is time to 
end this rubber-stamp Congress.

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