[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 10752]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Jones) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, last week, I voted against the Defense 
Appropriations bill because of $79.4 billion included it included in 
OCO funding.
  During the amendment process, I joined many of my colleagues in both 
parties in voting to stop funding the war in Afghanistan after 2014.
  Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in this effort, and I am on the 
floor of the House today because the American people are frustrated 
with the administration and with Congress for continuing to spend 
taxpayer money overseas in unnecessary military interventions. I share 
this frustration with the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to bring to the attention of the House an article 
in the Daily Journal Online titled ``No End for Afghanistan's War on 
the United States Taxpayer''--``No End for Afghanistan's War on the 
United States Taxpayer,'' which states:

       John F. Sopko, the Special Inspector General for 
     Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as SIGAR, may have taken 
     Uncle Sam and shaken him by the lapels last month, but the 
     media missed it. Americans, however, need to hear how Sopko, 
     in an address at the Middle East Institute in Washington, 
     D.C., laid out why Afghanistan remains ``relevant''--and a 
     cause for outrage--for every U.S. taxpayer and policymaker. 
     In short, Afghanistan is on life support, and Joe Citizen is 
     its permanent IV.

  These are the words of John Sopko. This article goes on to say:

       SIGAR, on the job since 2008, has produced 118 audits and 
     inspection reports and made 23 quarterly reports to Congress. 
     Nothing seems to penetrate the Capitol dome, however.

  Mr. Speaker, this brings me to a quote by Pat Buchanan, with whom I 
agree strongly on foreign policy issues:

       Is it not a symptom of senility to be borrowing from the 
     world, so we can defend the world?

  How appropriate a statement is that? We are a debtor nation that has 
to borrow money every year to pay the debts of our own Nation, and we 
borrow money to spend overseas in foreign areas. It makes no sense.
  That is why I am so disappointed that, last week, we were unable to 
put a stop on the waste, fraud, and abuse of the American taxpayer 
money in Afghanistan.
  Now, when we also must consider the collapse of Iraq, I am reminded 
of a quote from our country's first President, in a letter from George 
Washington to James Monroe, and I quote Washington:

       I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation 
     has a right to intermeddle in the concerns of another, that 
     everybody has a right to form and adopt whatever government 
     they liked best to live under themselves.

  Mr. Speaker, beside me is a poster of military carrying the casket of 
an American soldier killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan. I bring this 
to the floor because, this past weekend, we had three marines from Camp 
Lejeune--which is in the district I represent, the Third District of 
North Carolina--three marines in the engineering battalion in 
Afghanistan helping to build roads in Afghanistan. The three were shot 
and killed.
  That is why I continue to join my colleagues, and both parties come 
to this floor and to say to the Congress: you are not listening to the 
American people, the American people are sick and tired of their sons 
and daughters dying in foreign lands, borrowing money from the Chinese 
to pay for that development in those foreign lands, and we continue to 
have more and more losing their life and their limbs.
  It is time for the Congress to listen to the American people. They 
are the ones that elect us to come here to represent their views and 
their interests, and we are not listening to them as it relates to 
Afghanistan.
  I pray for our men and women in uniform, their families, and pray for 
the families who have given a child dying for freedom in Afghanistan 
and Iraq.

                          ____________________