Moment of Silence in Remembrance of Members of Armed Forces and their Families

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to offer this amendment along with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) and the gentlewoman from California (Mr. Stark).

The continuing resolution provides approximately $100 billion for Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan. This amendment states that not more than $10 billion of the funds made available by the bill may be used for military operations in Afghanistan. The intent is clear: It is time to bring U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan to an end and to bring our troops home. The war effort in Afghanistan is no longer serving its purpose of enhancing the security of the United States, which should be our goal.

We were attacked on 9/11 by al Qaeda. Al Qaeda had bases in Afghanistan. It made sense to go in and destroy those bases. And we did. We have every right, we have every duty to destroy bases which are being used to plot against the United States. But the CIA tells us that there are now fewer than 100 al Qaeda personnel in all of the country of Afghanistan. Congress and the American people helped greatly reduce U.S. involvement in Iraq. Through the elections in 2006 and 2008 we forced a new direction in Iraq and helped bring thousands of troops home. We must now do the same in Afghanistan.

The intent of this amendment is to reduce the funding for Afghanistan sufficiently to leave enough funds to provide for the safe and orderly withdrawal of our troops but not funding for ongoing combat operations.

The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) earlier today said he would propose an amendment to establish a blue ribbon commission to examine our war effort and to ask the question of how best to fight the war. With all due respect, that is the wrong question. The right question, the first question is: Why do we need to fight this war at all?

It is past time to admit that our legitimate purpose in Afghanistan--to destroy al Qaeda bases--has long since been accomplished. But it is a fool's errand to try to remake a country that nobody since Genghis Khan has managed to conquer. What makes us think, what arrogance gives us the right to assume that we can succeed where the Mongols, the British, the Soviets failed? No government in Afghanistan, no government in Kabul, has ever been able to make its writ run in the entire country.

Why have we undertaken to invent a government that is not supported by the majority of the people, a government that is corrupt, and try to impose it on this country? Afghanistan is in the middle of what is at this point a 35-year civil war. We have no business intervening in that civil war, we have no ability to win it for one side or the other, and we have no necessity to win it for one side or the other. This whole idea of counterinsurgency, that we are going to persuade the people who are left alive after our firepower is applied to love the government that we like is absurd. It will take tens of years, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of American lives, if it can be done at all, and we don't need to do it. It's their country. If they want to have a civil war, we can't stop them. We can't choose the rulers that they have, we don't have to like the rulers that they have, and we don't have to like their choices. It's not up to us.

At this point we must recognize that rebuilding Afghanistan is both beyond our ability and beyond our mandate to prevent terrorists from attacking the United States. And if it be said that there are terrorists operating in Afghanistan, that may be, but it is also true of Yemen, Somalia and many other countries. We do not need to invade and conquer and occupy all those countries, and Afghanistan provides no greater necessity or justification for military operations.

We are debating on this floor hundreds of budget cuts--cuts that will grievously hurt millions of Americans--in order to reduce our expenditures by about $60 billion. Yet we are throwing $100 billion a year--plus countless lives--down a drainpipe, for no useful purpose at all--and with very little discussion of our purposes and of whether our policy matches our purposes.

To continue so bad a policy at so high a cost is simply unconscionable. It is unjustifiable to sacrifice more money and more lives this way. I urge my colleagues to join me and Ms. Lee and Mr. Stark in voting to bring the U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan to a close. Vote for this amendment. Let's bring our troops home. Let's stop wasting our lives and our money and our treasure and our forces. Let's bring our troops home. Let's devote our resources to something that helps the people of this country.

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Mr. NADLER. Thank you.

The remarks of the gentleman from Florida were incorrect. This amendment limits $10 billion from this CR, enough to bring the troops home during the pendency of this CR. Funds that were already spent were appropriated from the previous CRs. So it hasn't already been spent.

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Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman for his remarks and for yielding.

I just want to make one comment on what was said a moment ago by the gentleman from Florida. This amendment reduces funding in this CR to $10 billion. It should be enough to withdraw the troops. But the argument was made that to reduce the funding is not to support our troops, to rob them of the implements of doing their job. But the fact is that the only power that Congress has to effectuate the war-making power, to control whether we should be at war somewhere or another, is the power of the purse.

We are not saying, by adopting this amendment, we would not be saying that we want our troops there with no weapons and so forth. We would be saying use the funds to bring the troops home. It is more supportive of the troops to bring them home from a war that they should not be fighting, that is not vital to our national security, it is more supportive to bring them home than it is to give them weapons to fight an unnecessary war in which some of them, unfortunately, will lose their lives.

So I say support our troops. Bring them home. Support the country. Stop fighting where it doesn't make sense, and spend our military resources where it helps the national security of the United States, which is not in Afghanistan right now.

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Mr. NADLER. Madam Chairman, I am not going to repeat all of what has been said about the Republican war on women, about the fact that the Republican majority was elected pledging jobs and all we see is a war on various social services and women and nothing about jobs, but I am going to say this: I have been listening very carefully to the supporters of this amendment, to Mr. Pence and others, and what do I hear? I hear that we must punish Planned Parenthood by defunding them because they have committed a number of sins.

Sin Number 1, they perform abortions. They are a very large abortion provider, and even though none of those abortions are paid for with Federal funds, that is prohibited under the Hyde amendment however you read it, we don't like Planned Parenthood because they are a large abortion provider.

Number two, we don't like Planned Parenthood because they have committed allegedly various terrible things. Some provocateurs went into their offices and said that they were representing sex workers and they were offered services, and any organization that is willing to do this should not get Federal funds.

We are going to punish Planned Parenthood, number one, because they are a large abortion provider and we don't like abortion providers; and, number two, because they do other things, which if in fact they do, which I don't think they do, but if in fact they do, they are bad things.

There is a major problem with this. There is a major problem with this rhetoric and with this reasoning. And, by the way, the CR to which this is an amendment eliminates title X family planning funding anyway, so it will eliminate most of the funds that go to Planned Parenthood. But whatever funds that are available, they can go to other people to provide those services, not Planned Parenthood, because we don't like Planned Parenthood for various reasons.

A bill that punishes someone, some person or organization who is named or is identifiable, by legislative action is called a bill of attainder. That is the definition of a bill of attainder: A legislative punishment, penalty, a legislative penalty, a legislative-enacted penalty--in this case, no funding--directed at some identifiable person or organization to punish them for something.

Article I, Section 9 says, ``No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed''; a fundamental foundation of constitutional law.

If Planned Parenthood or anybody else is doing terrible things and ought to be punished, that is up to the courts. If, indeed, Planned Parenthood is trafficking with sex traffickers, let them be prosecuted. If, indeed, Planned Parenthood is doing anything illegal, let them be prosecuted. Let the organization be prosecuted. Let the individual employees who are doing these things be prosecuted at law. That is our system. But you don't punish an organization because they are doing something of which you don't approve.

Now, if you want to say we don't think that there ought to be any contraceptive services in the United States and therefore we are going to have no title X funding, the CR does say that. I don't agree with it, but it is constitutional. But to say that if we have title X funding, if we have maternal services funding, none of it can go to Planned Parenthood, it can go to somebody else, but not Planned Parenthood, that is a legislatively enacted punishment because Planned Parenthood is or is allegedly doing things of which you don't approve.

Now, I heard a lot at the beginning of this Congress about we have to make sure that we adhere to the Constitution. This is a bill of attainder, because it is a legislatively enacted punishment of a named organization because that organization is doing things or is allegedly doing things of which we don't approve.

So I submit that in addition to all the other reasons why this shouldn't be done that have been enacted here, this is flatly unconstitutional, and I challenge anyone to say how this is not a bill of attainder. Again, the black letter definition of a bill of attainder is a legislatively enacted penalty aimed at some person or organization that is identifiable, named right here, for some reason, that they have done various things, provided abortions, done illegal things or otherwise.

So in addition to all the other problems, this amendment is unconstitutional and will be struck down by the courts if it should pass.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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