[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 27721-27722]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         BRING OUR TROOPS HOME

  (Mr. DUNCAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, there is nothing conservative about the war 
in Afghanistan. The Center for Defense Information said a few months 
ago that we had spent over $400 billion on the war and war-related 
costs there. Now, the Pentagon says it will cost about $1 billion for 
each 1,000 additional troops we send to Afghanistan. One Republican 
Member from California told me recently that we could buy off every 
warlord in Afghanistan for $1 billion.
  Fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by all this 
spending. Conservatives who oppose big government and huge deficit 
spending at home should not support it in foreign countries just 
because it is being done by our biggest bureaucracy, the Defense 
Department.
  We have now spent $1.5 trillion that we did not have--that we had to 
borrow--in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight years is long enough. In fact, 
it is too long. Let's bring our troops home and start putting Americans 
first once again.

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