Prescription Drug User Fee Amendments Of 2007

Floor Speech

PRESCRIPTION DRUG USER FEE AMENDMENTS OF 2007 -- (Senate - May 01, 2007)

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise today to join so many of my colleagues, so many of those in the military and so many of the American people in urging the President to sign the emergency spending bill that relates to Iraq when it reaches his desk. Despite what the President keeps repeating, we can do both--we can fund the troops and change our mission in Iraq. The emergency spending bill we will send to the President shortly gives our troops all the money they need and even more than the President requested, and it changes our mission in Iraq from policing a civil war to focusing on counterterrorism.

It has been 4 long years since President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and prematurely announced ``mission accomplished'' in Iraq. Today, 4 years later, there is one thing on which the American people, bipartisan majorities in both Houses of Congress, military experts, and the Iraq Study Group all agree: We clearly have not accomplished our mission in Iraq, and the only way to succeed is to change our current course of action.

It seems only the President and his small band of advisers think we have accomplished our mission in Iraq. Only he thinks we should stay the course. Only President Bush seems to think the only way to support our troops is for the Congress to be a rubberstamp to his policies. That is not what the American people want, and that is not what America is about. The American people want a change in mission. They want a new direction, not more of the same failed policies. That is why, if the President really supports our brave men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, he will sign the legislation that we will send to him very soon.

The bill provides reasonable and meaningful guidelines to protect our troops by ensuring that all units that are sent overseas to fight are ready, trained, and equipped to fight. It will require the Department of Defense to adhere to its own guidelines to ensure that every unit that is deployed is ``fully mission capable'' for the task at hand.

Why would the President want to send our troops into Afghanistan and Iraq, into fierce battles against the Taliban and the Sunni insurgency without the training and equipment needed to get the job done and to come home safely? But if the President vetoes this bill, he will not be so required.

More important, this legislation shows both the United States and the Government of Iraq how to change the failing strategy in Iraq. It has been clear all along that this administration has failed to plan for the war. They gave no thought what it would take to accomplish this mission. There was no planning for the day after.

When you think about this, it is infuriating; to think that just showing strength alone would solve the whole problem. That kind of careless, narrow thinking has led us to where we are now.

This administration and its President seem to be lost in Iraq. They can only do more of the same. We put in more troops to support a government that every day gets weaker and weaker, that seems to be crumbling from both the Shiite and Sunni side. Why are we putting more troops in Iraq to defend a government that nobody seems to like and in whom nobody seems to have much faith? The escalation is not working.

As a result, our mission in Iraq has devolved so that most of what we do is patrol, police, and stand in the middle of a civil war. The Sunnis and the Shiites have hated each other for centuries. Their enmity goes way back. They will continue to hate each other, to not work with each other, to fight with each other long after we have gone, whether we stay 3 months or 3 years. Yet most of the time our troops, our brave men and women, are simply caught in the middle of a civil war, and we have not even chosen a side. We are just in the middle, and they are just in the middle--trying to defend themselves in the middle of a civil war when we don't know which side we are on, and we are unable to bring the two sides together. It is a debacle.

That is why the Congress is demanding that the President change the current mission in Iraq. As we all know, including General Petraeus, the solution to violence in Iraq is ultimately political and not military, and that is why Congress has imposed tough benchmarks on the Government of Iraq. We cannot afford to send more military troops without doing something to change this weak, almost feckless Government. Our original purpose in Iraq was to fight terrorism. I believe we must continue to fight terrorism; I know that from what happened to my city, my beloved city, and the friends I lost and think of every day.

This legislation says let's go back to that original purpose, counterterrorism, as well as force protection and training the Iraqis. Instead of policing a civil war, U.S. forces will protect U.S. facilities and citizens, including members of the U.S. Armed Forces engaged in targeted counterterrorism missions to prevent anything that happens in Iraq from hurting us at home and continue to train and equip Iraqi security forces, although I must say that has not worked out very well thus far.

I believe these benchmarks are reasonable and achievable with renewed political will from this administration and from the Government in Iraq. The benchmarks were not just pulled out of the air. They were suggested by the bipartisan, highly qualified, highly knowledgeable, highly experienced Baker-Hamilton commission. But more important, they signify the changes in strategy that must be implemented to correct the administration's failing strategy in Iraq.

This is President Bush's war, but he has failed time and time again to make the difficult leadership decisions that are needed to protect our troops in Iraq. If he vetoes this bill, as he has threatened to do on many occasions, our brave men and women will continue to fight a brutal war with no forward-look strategy, no long-term plan, little regional support, and little chance of establishing a stable, representative government in Iraq. Every day it becomes more clear the President never had a working plan for Iraq.

So we have a mission. It is a sacred and important mission. We must change the mission in Iraq away from policing a civil war and toward counterterrorism, which requires fewer troops and gets many more of them out of harm's way. That is what our bill does. It is what the American people want. It is what the facts on the ground demand.

I urge the President to strongly reconsider this threat to veto this legislation. If he does, he will be making a terrible mistake, one that all of us and maybe even he will come to regret. I urge the President to sign the supplemental because it gives our troops and veterans the resources they need. It honors the sacrifices of those serving in Iraq with a change in mission that is long overdue, and it is my hope that one day we will all be able to say that we have accomplished our mission in Iraq. But until we change our mission and put in place a winning strategy, that day will continue to elude us.

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