Date: 2003-10-17
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Madam Speaker. I opposed the Presidents decision to rush to war earlier this year. Many of us. at that time. warned of the high costs and difficulties of winning the peace that we face today in Iraq. But the Presidents poor decisions have painted our country into a difficult corner. and I believe that we now have a responsibility to provide funds and to maintain security on the ground in Iraq and to assist in the reconstruction of that country. Let us not fool ourselves or the American people. It will not just be the tens of billions of dollars that we passed in the bill today. It will require billions more in the years ahead. We also have other responsibilities. to level with the American people and to pay for our efforts in Iraq in a straightforward and upfront manner. The President shirked the first responsibility by failing to prepare the American people for the true costs of the war and winning the peace. Now. he seeks to escape responsibility for the second by putting those costs on our national credit card and running up huge deficits. Every penny of the $87 billion requested by the President is money borrowed from the next generation of Americans. His outofsight. outofmind approach to such important issues will end up costing our children down the road. We should not be waging war and peace by credit card. If we are willing to pay the price to defeat the scourge of terrorism. we must pay for it in an honest way. While the Bush administration has asked our troops and their families to make the ultimate sacrifice. the President has given the wealthiest Americans a huge tax cut. That Is wrong. It is wrong to pass the buck to the next generation. It is wrong to ask the younger generation. including our troops and their children. to bear the burden alone. And it is wrong to shield the wealthiest Americans from paying their fair share. We now face a huge responsibility gap in our government. It is the gap between those who understand that we now have a responsibility to establish stability in Iraq and help rebuild Iraq and who are prepared to pay for it the right way and up front and those who call upon the country in their rhetoric to pay any price in Iraq. but then run from responsibly paying that price. I filed an amendment in this House to fill that responsibility gap. It was an amendment to scale back the Bush tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans to pay for the costs of the bill we passed today. Incredibly. the House leadership prohibited that amendment from even coming to a vote. The President is asking the American people to invest billions of dollars of our money to build schools. hospitals. roads. electric grids and communications systems in Iraq when here at home our Federal. State and local governments are experiencing huge revenue shortfalls in this very difficult economy. The Presidents budget request of this year falls $9 billion short of what was promised by we. the Federal Government. just a year and a half ago to meet our obligations to Americas schoolchildren under the No Child Left Behind legislation. Three out of five children in this country who are eligible for Head Start cannot receive help because of lack of funds. Years ago. the Federal Government pledged to cover 40 percent of ensuring that children with disabilities receive a good education in this country. That was the right thing to do. But today we are only paying 18 percent of what was promised. The same shortfalls occur in health programs. our national transportation infrastructure. job creation initiatives and a range of other important domestic needs. We must meet our needs here at home at the same time that we meet our international responsibilities in Iraq. Afghanistan and other places around the globe. We as a Nation. as a people. have enormous resources. We can meet both our domestic needs and our international responsibilities. but we must be prepared to pay for them. If we refuse to pay now for our efforts in Iraq by reducing portions of the tax cut to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. it will make it much. much harder to make the investments that we also must make in education. health. transportation and other needs here at home. Already this year when many of us in the Committee on Education and the Workforce called for full funding for No Child Left Behind and for special education programs. we were told we did not have the resources because of the large tax cuts disproportionately weighted to the wealthiest. Adding this $87 billion to the deficit will make it even more difficult to meet those pressing needs. We must pay now for the costs of our efforts in Iraq. We cannot put everything on our national credit card. The President. I believe. has totally abdicated his leadership responsibilities in this area. Our international responsibilities now require us to pay the price of leadership. Leadership is about setting priorities. The war in Iraq was a war of choice. Regardless of what any of us may think about how that choice was made. we now have a responsibility to pay for the consequences of that choice. The President. by refusing to honestly pay for the war and its aftermath. by refusing to reverse the tax cuts on even the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. refuses to acknowledge the real costs of those choices. There are some who argue that because the President has refused to scale back his tax cuts to pay for the war and its aftermath. those of us who believe we have a responsibility to provide security and aid in reconstruction of Iraq have no alternative but to support the Presidents request for $87 billion without conditions. that we have to go along with his plan to wage war and peace by credit card. That is a false choice. and. I believe. an irresponsible position. We have an obligation as a Congress to hold the President to a higher standard of leadership. If the President believes. as I do. that we now have an obligation to provide security and help rebuild Iraq. he should have the simple courage to ask the wealthiest Americans to give up some portion of the huge tax cuts to help pay for our efforts in Iraq. The choice is not between doing nothing and doing it the Presidents way. We should do it the right way.