Speeches

Rubber Stamping the Administration's Policy in Iraq
House of Representatives - October 8, 2003

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight because I know that we are going to next week be in a session of the "Rubber Stamp Congress." Tomorrow the Committee on Appropriations will meet for several hours, and they will pass out $87 billion worth of borrowed money.

I brought this because in my district one of my constituents started printing up what he calls "fraudulent event notes." This is a $1 billion note in "deception dollars."

Now, 87 of those look something like this. That is what we are going to put out tomorrow, $87 billion of hard-earned money, with very little discussion, and the President wants them to run it through this House next week. We will come in on Wednesday. We will fly in on Wednesday afternoon; on Thursday we will have a little debate; and Thursday it will be gone. Two, three hours of debate, $87 billion.

Now, when you think about that, this Rubber Stamp Congress never says no to this President. It is a failed policy, with the same people in charge today that got us in the mess. Oh, they have rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic. Ms. Rice is now in charge. She sort of elbowed Colin Powell off to one side, and Mr. Rumsfeld off to the other side, and she is running in and telling Mr. Bremer what to do, the Viceroy we appointed over there to run this place.

What is missing in all of this is a plan to give the control of Iraq to the Iraqis. They say someday. Five years, we are going to be doing this for 5 years. In one year, we have been in here for $79 billion, and now we are back for $87 billion more, all borrowed.

We cannot touch those tax cuts. Oh, no, we gave that money to the rich people, and, I do not know, they are doing something with it somewhere. They are not making jobs. We have got no jobs in this country. But we are printing money. The presses are running like mad printing this money to send over to Iraq.

Now, what are we going to send it there for? You heard from one of my colleagues a little bit of it. We are going to send over a guard system for public property, $15 million. That is just for training and administration.

We are going to send them 80 pickup trucks at $2.6 million. That is $33,000 apiece. That is a pretty good pickup truck. You can get a pickup truck for under $20,000 right now. But, no, we have to send them the $33,000 brand.

We are going to send over a communications system of handheld radios, 400 of them, and 200 satellite telephones, for $6 million. How many of your police departments have that kind of equipment? And yet we can send it over to Iraq.

Or we can go and give security for the judges at $200 million. Four hundred judges. We are going to provide security details constantly for $200 million.

These phony dollars that they got us into, they got us into a war on a fraudulent basis. The President stood right here and said things which he now says, "My, it wasn't true." But we are going to pay for it.

We are going to pay for a witness protection program. If any Iraqis come forward, we promise them that we will take them to the United States and set them up someplace in Florida or wherever, I do not know, and spend $100 million on them, like they were crime fighters in the Mafia in the United States.

That is what your money is going for.

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of things in this country that ought to happen before that happens.

We are going to buy them 200 tanker trucks. We are going to buy them 250 natural gas trucks. More of these dollars. They are going out. They are going out to the people, and they are going to be spent over there, and the Iraqis themselves say, "Give us 10 cents on the dollar, and we can do it ourselves." But this is an American occupation headed by Viceroy Bremer, and there is no intention in this list of turning over control to them.

We are going to set them up an army. We have decided they need a 40,000-man army. They had an army before. Where is it? Why do we have to buy new weapons for all of them?

Four hundred thirty-five Members are going to come in here with their rubber stamp, and they are going to say, "Mr. President, you want it. I close my eyes, it is yours." And we are going to send them $87 billion, with no discussion. It is wrong. Keep your eye on them.