Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the McGovern-Obey-Jones amendment. Quite simply, all this amendment does is make sure that the President and the Congress be accountable to the American people, our troops, and their families about what our policy in Afghanistan is going to be from July 2011 onward.

At this time I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this moment we have close to 100,000 U.S. servicemen and -women deployed in Afghanistan. The war has raged for nearly 9 years, and our mission has changed at least that many times. We have lost over 1,000 of our brave soldiers. Thousands more have been wounded. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money. In 9 years, neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama nor this Congress has seen fit to pay for the war. That's a burden we are placing on our children and our grandchildren.

All of us, every single one of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, are dedicated to defeating al Qaeda and holding to account those who committed the horrible atrocities on September 11.

What we are proposing today in no way lessens our commitment to that fight, but our current policy in Afghanistan is deeply flawed. We are getting sucked deeper and deeper and deeper into a war with no clear end. It is a war that will continue to claim the lives of our soldiers; it is a war that will continue to bankrupt us, and it is a war that will not enhance our national security.

My friends, we can no longer go along to get along. All of us have a responsibility to make sure that we are doing the right thing. It's not just the President's war. It's our war, too. We are the ones who voted to put our soldiers in harm's way, and we are the ones who keep funding it. My friends on the other side of the aisle who question, Why are we asking questions? Why don't we just rubber-stamp what the Senate did or rubber-stamp what the President sent us? Well, the reason why we shouldn't do that is because that's not our job. We're supposed to deliberate, and we are supposed to ask questions, and we're supposed to figure out whether we're doing the right thing. They are our constituents, our family members who are in harm's way.

We need to let this administration know that we want a way out. We want a plan. That's not a radical idea. We want a plan. We want an exit strategy. For the last 30 years, we said, Never again will we commit our Armed Forces without a clearly defined mission, and that means a mission with a beginning, a middle, a transition period, and an end. Well, that's all we're asking for today, a clearly defined mission. What's the plan?

We are dealing with the worst economy since the Great Depression. Our citizens, our constituents are hurting, yet we're told that we cannot afford to extend unemployment benefits to out-of-work Americans because we cannot afford it. We are told we can't help more families afford a college education or rebuild our roads and our bridges. But when it comes to supporting a corrupt, incompetent Karzai government, we're supposed to be a bottomless pit. Don't ask any questions. Just give them all the money they want. Look the other way. That's not right. That's not our job. I don't have all the answers, but I do know that it makes absolutely no sense to quietly endure the status quo.

Ending a war is not easy. It requires courage and it demands action. What this amendment requests is action, a strong signal to the administration that we want a plan. It also signals the Congress will no longer just sit back and hope for the best.

To those who say that asking the Afghan Government to stand up and take responsibility is somehow a bad idea, I would remind them that when we signaled to Iraq that we had a withdrawal plan, officials there actually began to act like a real government.

Ensuring that the President gives us a plan by next April so we can figure out by July what to do with the money slated for the war is not too much to ask. We require, we deserve, and we should demand the information we need to do our jobs.

Let me just close with this: There is a small sliver of America that is directly impacted by this war in Iraq, and those are the people who are fighting the war and who have family members who are fighting the war. The rest of us are asked to do nothing, absolutely nothing. We are not even asked to pay for it, hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money. Well, the least we could do for these brave men and women whom we have put in harm's way is debate this issue to make sure we're getting it right, to make sure we're not sending these people on a mission that commits itself to a war with no end. That is what we're asking for here today, a clearly defined mission. I ask all of you, every one of us here, to reengage in this policy.

This issue has been on the back burner for too long. We're at war. Our constituents are dying. Each and every day we read about more people who are killed in Afghanistan. We have an obligation to do better. This policy is deeply flawed. We need a way out, and I ask all of you today to vote for the McGovern-Obey-Jones amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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