Nation-building Here At Home

Floor Speech

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, after 8 long years, hundreds of billions of dollars of deficit spending and, most importantly, thousands of our brave soldiers killed or wounded, it is past time to reexamine our strategy in Afghanistan.

Instead of nation-building in Afghanistan, I believe we should be doing some more nation-building here at home. The American people deserve accountability in terms of how and when our troops will be returned to their families and in terms of how taxpayer dollars are being spent.

Today, Congressman Walter Jones and I introduced legislation that would require the President to provide a plan and a timetable for drawing down our forces in Afghanistan and to identify any variables that could require changes to that timetable. I should note that the bill does not set a specific date for withdrawal. The bill would safeguard U.S. taxpayer dollars by ensuring all U.S. activity in Afghanistan be overseen by the Inspector General.

We must aggressively go after al Qaeda and its allies wherever they are, but I am not convinced that a long-term occupation of Afghanistan in support of a corrupt, incompetent government is in our best national security interests.

I urge my colleagues to join us in this effort.

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