Providing for the Safe Redeployment of United States Troops From Iraq--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

PROVIDING FOR THE SAFE REDEPLOYMENT OF UNITED STATES TROOPS FROM IRAQ--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - February 26, 2008)

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr . President, I come to the floor today to discuss the state of our economy, the budget cuts proposed by this administration, and yes, the war in Iraq and the need to set our priorities straight in this country. Like my colleague from South Carolina, I wish to thank our troops. Like the Presiding Officer, I visited Iraq and saw firsthand the bravery of these troops everywhere I went. Of course, I was very focused on Minnesota troops. They would come up to me in cafeteria lines and airport tarmacs and never complain about a thing. They didn't complain about the heat or their equipment or their long tours of duties. Many of our Minnesota National Guard extended over and over and over again. They really only asked me to do one thing, and that was when I got home, that I call their moms and dads, their husbands and their wives, and tell them they were OK.

When I got home, I talked to their families. I think I called over 50 moms and dads, husbands and wives. I heard a little bit different story. I heard stories of families waiting and waiting and waiting, with anxiety over jobs that might be lost or never gotten back. One of the moms I talked to when I went back in March--I left a message for her. A few months later, I called her again when her son had been killed. I met her.

I have to tell my colleagues, these troops, as my friend from South Carolina said, have done their duty. They deposed an evil dictator. They guaranteed free elections in Iraq. Now it is time for us to do our duty for them.

We all kno w there can be no purely military solution in Iraq. This has been agreed to by so many military commanders and experts and Members of this body on both sides that it is not really worth arguing about anymore. We all recognize that true stability in Iraq will only come through political and economic compromises between Iraq's main ethnic groups and that only the Iraqis themselves can reach these agreements. Given this, I believe our strategy should be focused on transitioning to Iraqi authority and bringing in other countries and that we cannot keep doing this alone.

I was listening to my friend from South Carolina speak so eloquently, and one of the things that struck me that he said was that this was priceless, and he meant this in the best of all ways. He said it was priceless. I just can't say this war has been priceless. After 4 years, 5 years, over 3,600 American soldiers have been killed. Over 25,000 have been wounded. We have been in this war now longer than World War II. Almost $450 billion--$450 billion has been spent. We cannot wait until next year to change our strategy.

The President is intent on leaving the current situation for the next administration to resolve. Unfortunately, our soldiers in the field don't have the luxury of simply running up the clock on this administration. We owe it to them to begin bringing our combat troops home. I think we all know we can't do this overnight. We know we are going to have troops remaining to guard our embassies and to train police and to act as spec ial forces, but I do believe that if we want to push this Government to get its act together, the Iraqi Government, we have to send a clear message that we are not staying there indefinitely. So we owe it to our troops, but we also owe it to the people of this country. We can no longer continue to give the President the blank checks he keeps asking for. We must ensure the safety and the well-being of our troops in the field, but funding must be conditioned on a plan for responsible redeployment of U. S. combat forces from Iraq.

Now, why is this so important to our own country and to our own future and to our own children? Well, as I said, the war in Iraq has already cost over $490 billion directly, and by some estimates it has cost the American people almost $1.5 trillion when factoring in all of the costs. For each month that passes, we spend another $12 billion on the war, and we cannot separate the President's spending in Iraq from the economic and the budgetary problems we face.

One of the things that has always really bothered me on behalf of the people whom I represent is that this administration never really adequately calculated the repercussions of this war. I think the troops in the field--and I will say one thing. Despite the clear disagreements on strategy for this war, there has been bipartisan agreement that our troops need to be treated with the kind of respect they deserve. When they signed up for war, there wasn't a waiting line. When they come home and need medical care and they need mental health care, they need to get their education benefits, they shouldn't be waiting. It is this Democratic Congress that took on this issue and looked at the facts. Why are all of these men and women coming up to me out in Minnesota and saying they couldn't get health care? Look at the facts. The Pentagon underestimated the number of troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan by four times the amount--four times more returning troops needed health care than they estimated. We put billions of dollars into that.

We are willing to rise to the occasion and say we are not going to make the same mistake we made after Vietnam. We are going to treat our troops with the respect they deserve when they come home. But again, when the administration made its plans for this war--a war I did not support from the beginning--when they made their plans, they did not anticipate the enormous costs.

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Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Yes.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized following the remarks of the Senator from Minnesota.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. MENENDEZ). Without objection, it is so ordered.

ECONOMIC GROWTH

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, the administration did not anticipate the cost for our troops. The war has already cost over $490 billion, $1.5 trillion when you factor in all costs, $12 billion a month. They did not anticipate what was going on with this economy. They did not respond the way they were supposed to to the mortgage crisis. They did not anticipate. They listened to their friends in the special interest groups, and look where we are now. Look where we are now.

Two weeks ago we passed a short-term stimulus package that will help change the economic direction of this country by putting money in the hands of American families, including our seniors and our veterans. This action was a start. But today we must begin focusing on the long-term policies to spur economic growth long after the rebate checks are spent. We have to get this economy on the right track, and it means making a reckoning for that money that is spent in Iraq, to start bringing home some of our combat troops, to start being more responsible about this budget.

Today we announced our next step, which is to look at this mortgage crisis, really the crisis that I say fundamentally puts us where we are right now. Mr. President, 8.8 million families across the United States are underwater. They owe more to lenders than they have equity in their home, giving them limited or no options for refinancing.

The Foreclosure Prevention Act, which I am going to talk about later, and I hope will come to the floor this week, signifies a major step in the right direction, curbing the disastrous effect the foreclosure crisis has had on our families and our economy. The time to act is now.

We also need long-term economic policies that will encourage sustainable economic growth in every corner of this country. From the impact of the mortgage crisis and the value of homes, to the skyrocketing cost of oil that fuels cars, trucks, and heats homes, to rising prices in the grocery stores, the middle class is being squeezed from every side.

To give a sense of what we are looking at in our State--and our State has always had a diverse economy; we are eighth in the country for Fortune 500 companies--the unemployment rate for Minnesota recently jumped to 4.9 percent, up from 4.4 percent the month before. Our State has lost 23,000 jobs in the last 6 months alone. Home heating prices for Minnesota families have also risen by 14.1 percent per household in the past year alone.

On the foreclosure front, the statistics in Minnesota are equally devastating. At the end of 2007, over 50,000 families in Minnesota were delinquent on their home payments. It is estimated that 30,000 will lose their homes in the next several years if something is not done.

What are these families like? They are like the Gray family in Minnesota with whom I met. They are both teaching. T hey were all excited to buy their new house. They got a mortgage approved, a standard mortgage. It turned out the home values were much higher, and they were not able to afford a home. So they went to someone they thought they could trust and got one of these adjustable rate mortgages. They were told a lower rate at the beginning, $1,500, and it might go up a few hundred dollars. By 2008, it was up to $3,300 a month from $1,500 a month. We know that is not the rate of inflation. We know it is not the right thing to happen.

I use that as one example of what we are seeing across this country and why this administration has its priorities messed up and why people such as the Grays, good people who are just trying to have a home for their family, have found themselves in the middle of this mess. It is where Wall Street has hit Main Street. It is where the Bush administration's priorities to spend $12 billion a month have hit people like the Grays right in their homes.

The cost of foreclosures is not limited to these families. If something is not done, Minnesotans will lose an estimated $1.6 billion in declining home values. That is because the chickens have come home to roost. When it comes to this mortgage crisis, it is not just one family, one foreclosure. It affects real estate values on an entire street, an entire neighborhood, an entire community.

We need an economy that creates stable middle-class jobs. We need infrastructure investments so we don't have bridges falling, as we did in our State, right in the middle of America. We need energy investments that will reduce our dependency on foreign oil and create good ``green collar'' jobs in the growing clean alternative energy sector of our economy.

The people we serve are asking for a new direction, a government that spends their money wisely, that represents their values, that works for Ameri can families. America wants a Washington that is going to offer new priorities and new solutions.

Last year, our Congress succeeded in a downpayment on change. It was a beginning. We were hampered by procedural rules and all these filibusters, but we moved this country. There is so much more to do. We moved, first of all, to a more responsible budget process. We gave working Americans an increase in the minimum wage. We provided greater financial aid to help their kids go to college. And we passed a new energy bill that raises fuel efficiency
standards for the first time since I was in junior high.

But there is much more that needs to be done.

Senator Dorgan and I heard about it at an economic hearing we had in my State just last week where we met with a panel of economists and experts on energy policy and what was going on in our economy in Minnesota. One economist described our current condition as ``serious, unstable, and declining.'' In our State, families sense their stability is slipping, with 67 percent of middle-class Americans having an increased sense of anxiety about their futures.

Tom Stinson, Minnesota's chief economist, discussed the frightening unemployment statistics. We haven't added any new jobs over the past year, and we are not alone. States that have historically had lower unemployment rates are now creeping toward the national average.

Unfortunately, when we look at this problem we are facing, and we know there are solutions, we know there is a way to get this economy back on track and be fiscally responsible, but President Bush's new budget proposal falls far short of what America needs to address our economic downturn and invest in meaningful recovery effort.

This new budget request does not offer new priorities or now solutions. Instead, this budget continues a familiar pattern of misplaced priorities. It continues a 7-year pattern of fiscal irresponsibility: borrowing money and leaving an ever-larger debt to our children and grandchildren.

Look at this, t he wall of debt we have seen and how quickly it has risen from 2001 to 2013. This administration took a $200 billion surplus and turned it into a $300 billion budget deficit. Do you know what it means to middle-class families? When I talk to people in our States about what all these millions and billions and trillions mean, it means that 1 out of 12 Federal tax dollars goes to pay interest on that debt. That money is not going to the United States. Most of that money is going to companies in foreign countries. That is what is happening to this country.

I was listening before to my colleague from Oklahoma talking about how we have to be willing to make these sacrifices and pay for things. I find this so ironic because it is people on our side of the aisle who have been willing to talk about rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts on people making over $200,000. Think how that money can go to pay off this debt, to go into infrastructure investment we have been talking about, to move this economy in the right direction. It is people over on our side of the aisle who have been talking about oil giveaways and putting them into renewable energies so we can start investing in farmers and workers in the Midwest instead of oil cartels in the Mideast.

How about the debate we had on the middle-class tax issue, on AMT tax relief? We were willing to talk about how we wanted to pay for it. We wanted to pay for it off those hedge fund operators, but they wouldn't go for it. It is this Congress that put the pay-as-you-go back.

When I talk to people in my State, they understand we need to have a short-term stimulus package, why we need it, and why economists believed it was a good idea. But when we go forward in the long term, we cannot keep going the way we are going with this wall of debt. We are not going to end up where we want to go. We are going to be right back where we were before we put the stimulus in place, and we need to make bold changes in this country.

In just 7 years, this administration took that budge t surplus, $158 billion--think of that money--and made it into a $400 billion deficit. So when we talk about this war in Iraq and when my esteemed colleague from South Carolina talks about it being priceless, it is not priceless. It is $12 billion a month.

Meanwhile, this new budget continues to neglect crucial investments that are needed to strengthen our economy and our Nation for the long term. It does not make the investments we need in our Nation's transportation infrastructure. It does not make the investments we need in

developing renewable energy sources to move us toward greater energy independence and security. It does not make the investments we need to support the basic medical and scientific research that has always been a key driver of our country's innovation and growth.

I come from Minnesota, a State where we believe in science. We brought the world everything from the Post-It note to the pacemaker, and we believe this investment pays off not only in the health of our citizens but also for jobs and looking to the future and not letting other countries such as India, China, and other countries go ahead of us because we have failed in this country to have an investment strategy and put those Government policies in place that drives that investment.

Here are a few examples from my State of where the President's budget goes wrong.

American s are struggling to lower home heating costs in any way they can. Nationwide, the average household is expected to pay 11 percent more for heating this winter compared to last year. Families who rely on home heating oil are facing record prices, 30 to 50 percent above last winter.

So what does the administration do in its budget? It cuts this funding. It ends the Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program. The Weatherization Assistance Program increases the energy efficiency of homes occupied by low-income Americans, directly reducing their energy costs. It cut it by 100 percent.

The funds appropriated in fiscal year 2008 for this program will enable upgrades for as many as 85,000 homes. With energy costs rising significantly and an economy poised on the brink of recession, the weatherization program and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program are necessities, they are not luxuries.

Another example: Nearly 6 1/2 years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, Americans are well aware of the need for State and local governments to be prepared as possible against future threats. I heard you talking, Mr. President, earlier this afternoon about the importance of putting that money into our own homeland security. So what does the administration do with this budget? It slashes funding for State and local first responders' efforts, cutting firefighter assistance grants from $1.2 billion to $300 million, and the State Homeland Security Grant Program from over $1 billion to $200 million, and, once again, it proposes to eliminate the cost of the COPS Program.

As a former prosecutor, I take this personally because I saw how that COPS Program worked, how it added police officers to our neighborhoods, how it brought down crime. Look at this: What is the comparison when we are looking at this budget as we are talking about priorities of the $12 billion a month on the war in Iraq? This is the amount the President would need to add to his budget to maintain this police program which puts police out in the neighborhoods at a 2008 level, plus inflation.

Personally, I would like to do more, especially in our rural areas. I think we need meth cops out there. Just to restore it to 2008 levels plus inflation would cost $596 million. What would you do if you just roll back the tax cuts for those making over $1 million in 2009? I am not talking about people making over $250,000; I am talking about people making over $1 million. What would you bring in with that? You would bring in $51 billion. Look at the comparison. Think about how many police you could buy on the streets. Think how much you could buy to help people afford their homes. Think of the benefits. Look at what you can do for $51 billion to help our veterans.

We have soldiers coming home from Iraq that just this summer in Minnesota were told: You are the longest serving unit, you Red Bulls from Minnesota, of the National Guard in Iraq. But guess what. Your paper only says 729 days. So guess what. You are not going to get your full education benefits, even though you served longer than 729 days.

Obviously, we took up this matter with General Shellito, head of our National Guard, took up this matter with the Army, and it is working to fix it. Oh, well, it saved some money to write that down as 729 days.

But think about $51 billion and what we could do with that. We are talking about priorities here.

Fiscal responsibility is also about making sure down the line that these
priorities are right. Do we want a budget that offers tax giveaways to the wealthiest or a budget that provides relief to middle-class families squeezed by rising costs for health care, housing, energy, college tuition, childcare and care for aging parents?

Do we want a budget that gives lucrative special favors to the giant oil and pharmaceutical companies, or a budget that invests in our future prosperity, such as research and development on renewable energy?

Do we want a budget that continues to spend $12 billion a month in Iraq or a budget that provides our veterans with the help they need; that makes sure we have the money we need to keep our troops there for the focused purpose of guarding our embassy and training police and having them there for special forces; and money for the COPS program--that $596 million it would cost to restore that? That is about homeland security.

I want to see an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility by reversing or rolling back these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans--people making over $200,000.

I want to see an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility by eliminating offshore tax havens for multimillionaires so people aren't hiding money in the Cayman Islands.

I want an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility by ending the tax breaks and giveaways that have been handed out year after year to the big oil companies.

I want to see an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility by allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower prices for prescription drugs for our seniors.

The President's budget does not provide the new priorities and the new solutions America needs. Instead, it continues to take us down the wrong path. This budget is only the most recent example of an administration that is putting its head in the sand and ignoring the reality of the looming economic recession.

As the housing market is crumbling, and millions of families are expected to lose their homes in the next couple of years, the administration seems to hope this problem will go away. This is why I have cosponsored the Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Act, and I am committed to working with my Senate colleagues on a bipartisan basis to pass this bill to help keep our families in their homes and get the middle class back on their feet. Across the country, we are seeing families struggling to keep their homes. If something isn't done, over 2 milli on families will lose that struggle in the next 2 years.

Through a pilot project conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, we have been able to track by ZIP Code all of the outstanding subprime mortgages in our State. This data is a startling reminder that we are seeing only the beginning of this crisis if we don't do anything about it. By being able to track the reset dates of all the subprime mortgages in Minnesota, the study shows thousands of mortgages resetting to higher interest rates monthly, causing more and more families to fall behind on their payments. Congress must act quickly if we are going to curb any effects of the housing crisis.

In my home county, where I was chief prosecutor of Hennepin County, we have seen an 82-percent increase in sheriff sales of foreclosed homes. The problem extends to greater Minnesota. We have seen the foreclosures double in some of our urban areas. We have seen 3 out of 100 households--3 out of 100 households--that are in foreclosure.

Something must be done to help these families. I have met them. These are not just statistics and numbers; these are real families living in the State of Minnesota. This is why I believe we need to pass the Foreclosure Prevention Act and why I believe we need to reprioritize what is happening in this country--$12 billion a month in Iraq, with no end in sight, and some people saying we are going to stay there for 100 years, while these families are losing their homes, while our veterans are still not getting a fair shake.

This bill, the Foreclosure Prevention Act, would give $200 million to families to counsel them in ways to avoid foreclosure. I will put that chart up again showing an example of these priorities. This is for people making over $1 million a year--people making over $1 million a year. Here is our $51 billion. Think of this mortgage counseling. It is a proven way to work here. It would be only $200 million.

Our State finance agencies are in a perfect position to help families refinance loans, but their hands have been tied by ceilings on the amount of State-backed mortgage bonds they can use. This bill makes it easier for them to help find families and rework their mortgages. That is what we are trying to do. It will not work for every one of these people. Some we don't want to help. They are not deserving of this. They maybe speculated on these mortgages to begin with. But many of these families I have personally met, including the family from Ohio we saw today here in the Senate. These are hard-work ing families who were maybe not told the truth about their mortgage or misled about their mortgage or the whole mortgage was set up to get them in trouble down the line, and the mortgage lender goes away and sells it to someone else, who sells it to someone else, who sells it to someone else, and pretty soon it doesn't just hurt that family, it hurts the entire street, and it hurts the entire neighborhood.

This is about getting our priorities right. Yes, it is about the war in Iraq and an administration that refused to account for the cost, refused to have a plan to start bringing our troops home, that refuses to admit we are in financial straits--financial straits they got us into. Because we must remember, when they came in, we had $200 billion surpluses, and now we are where we are with this wall of Federal debt.

The American people are tired of this. They want a fair accounting of what is going on in this country. They want a fair accounting of this war and a plan to bring our troops home. That is the best thing we can do for our troops, and that is the best thing we can do for our country.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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