Date: 2007-04-24
Speaker: LINCOLN DAVIS (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Tennessee

I thank my friend from Arkansas (Mr. Ross). I have had an opportunity to get to meet a lot of folks that I have served with here in the U.S. House. All of those obviously within the Blue Dog Coalition have become pretty endeared to me because of the commitments we focus on as being deficit hawks and defense hawks. We talk about those issues conservatively. I am going to talk a little bit about each of those issues tonight. * I had a privilege recently to spend considerable time with my good friend JOHN SALAZAR from Colorado. I have become convinced he knows how to hook up a piece of equipment. I am also convinced in the conversations with him that he and his family have shared in the good Lords Earth in being farmers with his brothers. and in talking with him. I had a much deeper understanding and certainly a much deeper abiding friendship knowing that as my brother and I both farm. brother doing most of it back home. that all of us come from different parts of the country maybe. but we all have that same spirit and that same heartfelt belief that America is the greatest place in the world to live and raise your fainily. For those of us who live in rural areas. obviously we believe that is probably the best place for America to raise their families. I traveled today with a group of young students from both Clark Grange and York Institute. being named after Alvin C. York. Sergeant York. from the hometown of Pall Mall where I live. and as we traveled through the Capitol I could see their eyes light up as we talked about the history of this great building that we serve in. the great Chamber that we are in here this afternoon. But as you look on the wall in the rotunda. you realize that America in the 1770s. in 1775. at the Boston siege. we convinced with our ragtag Army. the ontinental Army. convinced the British soldiers and sailors that we could defeat them. and they set sail late in the winter. early spring and went to New York. We followed them there. and by 1776 we suffered a pretty strong defeat. The first victory that we receivedfor our independence. for our democracy that we have was in Saratoga in the fall of 1777. which convinced another nation called France to come and join us in our fight for independence. but I can assure you. no one won our independence for us. In this country. we fought until basically the battle at Yorktown where Cornwallis. general of the British forces. decided that he had to surrender. and surrendered.That basically ended the hostilities until Washington in 1783 resigned his commission to the Continental Congress that existed at that time. So from 1775 basically until hostilities pretty much ceased in 1781. we fought for our independence in this country. We fought so we could establish a democracy that would be a shining example. as Mr. Reagan used to say. on that hill to the rest of the nations of the world that this is what can be accomplished. That took us 6 years. and 2 years into being sure to sort of protect that fragile peace that we had until Washington gave up his commission and surrendered it in 1783. I want to remind the people of America and the people of Iraq. we fought for our independence. We fought for this democracy that we have. No one came to this country and forced upon us a democracy. No one came to this country and said this is the gift we want to give you. The blood and the tears and the hard work and the sweat of our young men and women from this country have been in Iraq now for over 4 years. toiling. and in fact. in many cases going to war with the Iraqis. first of all. to depose a ruthless dictator. we all agree with that. and then we fought with the Iraqis and in many cases against the Iraqis. whether they be Sunni or Shia. to say we want to give you this gift that we fought for over 200 years ago. we want to give you this gift called democracy. In 2005. in December. we literally sent a surge of our troops over in the midsummer of 2005 to be sure that those brave individuals from Iraq. men and women. over 12 million of them. went to vote to establish the leaders of their country so they could establish their own Constitution. The surge then allowed them to vote. They finalized their commitment. in my opinion. for the democracy. No one gave us ours. We are trying to give them theirs. And we have tried and we have tried and we have tried and we have spent billions of dollars making it happen.