[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9922-9923]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          IT IS TIME TO FOCUS ON NATION-BUILDING HERE AT HOME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. The United States' objective in Afghanistan was to root 
out, destroy, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and their Taliban hosts. That 
job is done. Afghanistan has been superseded now as a haven for 
terrorists by tribal areas in Pakistan, Yemen, and Sudan. The inter- 
and intratribal disputes in Afghanistan are rooted in ancient history, 
and 12 to 36 more months of a large U.S. troop footprint is not going 
to resolve centuries-old conflicts among the Afghan tribes. There never 
has been, there never will be, a strong central government in 
Afghanistan.
  So I disagree with the President's plan for a snail-pace partial 
drawdown of U.S. troops over the next few years. We should do it much 
more quickly and leave only a residual force to prevent a terrorist 
takeover. There were only a few thousand troops there when we drove out 
the Taliban and when we pursued Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, we lost 
an early opportunity to capture and kill him because of mistakes by 
then-Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
  But that being done, the President did say something last night with 
which I strongly agree. He said, America, it is time to focus on 
nation-building here at home. I couldn't agree more. I've been trying 
to do that for the last 2\1/2\ years but running into roadblocks down 
at the White House when I try and rebuild the Nation's transportation 
infrastructure.
  Now, let's just think for a minute. We're borrowing and spending $120 
billion a year in Afghanistan, both to support our troops and to engage 
in nation-building, building them schools, building them highways, 
building them bridges, while our own schools, our own highways, our own 
bridges are crumbling and collapsing; $120 billion borrowed and spent 
in Afghanistan, what could we do with that here at home?
  We could begin to address the backlog of 150,000 bridges on our 
national highway system that need repair or replacement; the $70 
billion backlog on our transit systems for basic capital maintenance, 
let alone new investment in new transit systems to more efficiently 
transport our people; to deal with the 40 percent of the pavement on 
the national highway system that's substandard; to deal with congestion 
in our major cities and our ports; to move freight and Americans more 
effectively.

[[Page 9923]]

  And in addressing that with $120 billion that we're borrowing and 
spending in Afghanistan today and instead spending that money here at 
home, we could put over 3 million to work, not just construction 
workers. People say to me, well, Congressman, I don't work in 
construction. It's not just construction. We have the strongest buy-
America requirement in transportation of any part of the government. 
That means when you buy a transit vehicle, it's going to be made in 
America. That's manufacturing, that's software, that's engineering, 
design. It goes all across the economy. It's small business suppliers, 
minority suppliers under the laws. We could put millions to work and 
stimulate our economy if that money were spent here.
  Last week, I confronted the President's deputy economic adviser, Mr. 
Furman, over these issues; and he did admit that instead of more tax 
cuts, which isn't putting anybody back to work--that's their one 
nostrum which seems to have been adopted by the Obama administration--
hasn't worked for a decade, but if we cut them even more, that will 
then. It doesn't work. Investment works. We know it works. Let's 
invest. But the President's deputy economic adviser said we can't do 
that, we can't get the money to do that, but we can do a Social 
Security tax holiday and borrow $200 billion more and not put people 
back to work.
  Come on. Let's follow up on what the President said last night. Let's 
get serious about it, and let's make the investments here. America, it 
is time to focus on nation-building here at home and put our people 
back to work and ensure prosperity for future generations.

                          ____________________