Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for yielding.

I want to join my colleague, Mr. Obey, the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, in acknowledging the great work of Rob Nabors and all of the staff involved in putting this bill together today.

I want to join him in acknowledging the leadership of the distinguished minority leader, our majority leader, Mr. Hoyer, the chairman, Mr. Rangel, for his important work on unemployment insurance, Mr. McDermott, who just spoke, for his important work getting the bill ready. Mr. Lewis, to you and to Mr. Cantor and all involved in all this. Mr. Murtha, to you as well, and Mr. Skelton, to you as well.

We were able to come to this compromise because we were ready. As Mr. McDermott said, earlier in the year we had a bill ready for unemployment insurance. It wasn't going to be signed by the President. We had to put it off until another time. Two weeks ago tomorrow, the unemployment rate in our country shot up by half a point from approximately 5 to 5.5 percent. It sent a very stern message to the Congress of the United States and to the President that we must act.

Following that, on the floor last week, on two occasions, we had a very strong bipartisan vote in favor of unemployment insurance. So when Mr. Rangel went to the table to talk about compromise, it was clear that we had to reflect the will of the American people, and he was ready, he was ready with the legislation. And I'm pleased that Mr. Boehner was ready to accept that.

When we started talking about the final versions of this bill in the past couple of weeks, little did we know that the skies would open and rain would fall and the Midwest of our country would be deluged, and there would be a need to make some adjustment in this bill for disaster assistance to the Midwest and to replenish the FEMA fund to make up for funds spent now. We were ready. And I don't think there was any compromise on that subject; we all agreed that that had to be done.

I am particularly pleased that in the legislation there is a signal sent that this Congress cares about investments in science, it cares about the future, not as much as I would like, but nonetheless, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having that included. And I thank my colleagues for accepting that.

I want to join in all the commendations, again, to those who helped bring this compromise to the floor. I am very pleased that it has the GI Bill, finally. It became clear that this is what we had to do, what we owed our young people to say thank you to them by sending them to college. Mr. Chet Edwards has been a champion on this issue. I will come back to that in a moment.

But, Mr. Speaker, I'm sorry that I cannot fully participate in all of the comradery that is accompanying this legislation that we bring to the floor because of the huge amount of money that is in this bill to fund the war in Iraq without any conditions, without any limitation on time spent there. I'm glad that we have something about no permanent bases, yes, but this is the first time that we will be sending a bill--well, we sent it to the Senate with conditions and they struck it. We have no choice. This is not about a failure of this House of Representatives; it's about what we cannot get past the next body and onto the President's desk.

Mr. Speaker, about a week ago, I spoke at the opening of the groundbreaking for the Institute of Peace. I know that you have been involved in that over the years. And I said that day, on a warm June day like today, it was reminiscent of one 45 years ago when President John F. Kennedy delivered the commencement address at American University.

In the last summer of a life that ended far too soon, President Kennedy spoke of the need to seek peace even in the midst of the Cold War. He said, ``The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war,'' Kennedy told the crowd assembled. ``We shall be prepared if others wish it, we shall be alert to try to stop it, but we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just.'' That was President Kennedy's philosophy of his foreign policy.

Contrary to that policy, President Bush started a war based on a false premise. He sent our troops into a situation that he didn't know what he was getting into. The philosopher Hannah Arendt once said, she observed that nations are driven by the endless flywheel of violence, believing that one last, one final violent gesture will bring peace. But each time they sow the seeds for more violence.

Five years later, we are still engaged in the war in Iraq, 2 years longer than we were in World War II, and that has come at a very great cost. The costs are clear, of course, and we all mourn 4,100 of our troops who have lost their lives in battle, tens of thousands of our troops injured, thousands of them permanently. I met with some of them with my colleagues, Mr. Dicks, Mr. Inslee and Mr. McDermott, at the Seattle VA Hospital last Friday. And before that, Mr. Murtha and I visited our troops in the hospital as well here in Washington, D.C.

Over Memorial Day, I visited our troops in Iraq with some of our colleagues. It was my sixth trip into the theater. And what they asked me is what they always ask: What's going to happen to us when we go home? And for a long time on those visits I didn't have an answer that I could be very, very pleased to tell them. But now, because of the leadership of Mr. Edwards, and others, we're able to say that when you come home, you will be met with the biggest increase in the Veterans Administration health budget in the 77-year history of the Veterans Administration, and that means in the history of our country, an even bigger investment this year.

And after tonight, in a bipartisan way, we can proudly say--and Mr. Young, who has done more than you? You have just been wonderful, and I salute you as well. We can proudly say to our troops, to our young student veterans, that when they come home, we will say thank you by sending them to college; $7 for every dollar spent on the GI Bill following World War II. We owe these troops nothing else.

Now let's go back to the cost of that war. We talked about those who lost their lives, we talked about those who are permanently injured. And it's such a sad story. The cost to our reputation in the world is enormous. The cost in dollars, the Heritage Foundation said $2.75 trillion. The Heritage Foundation, that's their figure; nearly $3 trillion projected to be the cost of this war.

And so it's hard to understand when we say to the President, we would like to insure 10 million children in America, and he says we can't afford it, so I vetoed the bill. And the Republicans stuck with him on that veto--not all, many voted in a bipartisan way. Forty days in Iraq, 10 million children insured in America for 1 year. We can't afford it? $2.75 trillion, the cost of this war.

But what is worrisome--I know to Mr. Skelton, to Mr. Murtha, and I'm certain to Mr. Young, although he has not given me license to speak for him--is the cost of the military capability of our Nation, lives, limbs, reputation, dollars, opportunity costs at home. But this is about keeping the American people safe. That's what we take an oath of office to do, to provide for the common defense. And our ability to honor our oath of office to uphold the Constitution--in the preamble it says ``to provide for the common defense''--is greatly diminished because this war has diminished the capability of American military forces to protect our interests wherever they are threatened in the world.

So let us think and hope that this is the last time that there will ever be another dollar spent without constraints, without conditions, without direction. Why should we trust the same judgment that got us here in the first place in this war?

So while I'm pleased that we have some spirit of civility here tonight about coming to a conclusion on this bill to bring it to the floor, and I enthusiastically will vote for the domestic piece of this, I'm not urging anyone to do anything, I just want you to know why I would be voting ``no'' on the spending without constraints.

We owe our troops more than sending them into war on a false premise, without the equipment and training they need, without a plan for success, without a strategy to leave. This war has not made the region more stable, it has not made our country safer. It has undermined our capability to protect the American people. It should come to an end safely, honorably, responsibly, and soon.

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