Iraq Supplemental

IRAQ SUPPLEMENTAL -- (House of Representatives - March 09, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, as Congress prepares to debate another $80 billion war supplemental next week, I call on my Republican colleagues to join Democrats in including amendments that would finally begin to hold the Bush administration accountable for the billions of dollars of taxpayers' money being sent to Iraq. The $81 billion the administration is now asking for comes on top of an additional $200 billion already spent in Iraq since the beginning of the war 2 years ago.

Mr. Speaker, it was not supposed to be this way. The Bush administration never leveled with the American people about the type of sacrifices they would have to make in order to fight this war. You will remember that, before the war, President Bush and his war cabinet said the sacrifices would be minimal. In fact, the Bush administration told this very House that Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction.

Two years ago this month, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz testified before the House Committee on Appropriations on the minimal American funds that would be needed to reconstruct Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld told the Committee on Appropriations, and I quote, "I don't believe the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense. Reconstruction funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things."

Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration either deceived this Congress and the American people or woefully underestimated the cost of the Iraq war. Either way, Congress should hold them accountable for their mistakes, and that simply is not happening. Congress should also be demanding that Secretary Rumsfeld explain where the $200 billion already appropriated has been spent.

Unfortunately, Republicans have abdicated their oversight responsibility and are giving the Bush administration a free ride on the enormous miscalculations we have all witnessed in the Iraq war.

Mr. Speaker, during World War II, then Senator Harry Truman created a war investigating committee charged with exposing any fraud or mismanagement in our Nation's war efforts in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Truman was a Democratic Senator serving in a Democratic Senate majority overseeing the Democratic administration of President Franklin Roosevelt. Truman never worried about the fact he was investigating a president from his own party. He refused to allow politics to get in the way of good government. And, as a result, his investigation saved the American taxpayer more than $15 million.

Now, that is a lot of money in 1940, but it is also a lot of money today. I wonder just how much more money we could save the American taxpayers if congressional Republicans took their oversight responsibility for the war seriously?

One Republican, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach), sees the real need for a committee like the one Senator Truman created more than 60 years ago. He and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) introduced House Resolution 116, which creates a select committee to investigate both the awarding and carrying out of contracts in our continued war efforts in Iraq.

For more than a year, I have been strongly advocating for the creation of such an investigative committee, and today, I also became a cosponsor of this legislation that I hope we can include in the Iraq supplemental next week.

Mr. Speaker, every Member of Congress should want to vote for this legislation. After all, one of our main functions in the legislative branch is to oversee exactly where the executive branch is spending funds we appropriate. As Senator Truman demonstrated during World War II, this has absolutely nothing to do with party politics. Instead, it has everything to do with ensuring that the administration is not wasting the American taxpayers' money.

I still cannot understand why congressional Republicans, with the one exception of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach), are so afraid of overseeing the administration's funding of the war in Iraq. I am hopeful that Republicans will finally remember why they were sent to Washington and join us in creating this investigative committee. It is high time we look at the potential for war profiteering and abuse of these contracts and the money we are spending in Iraq.

We need to have oversight. We need to have accountability. It does not matter that there happens to be a war. It does not matter that it happens that we have a Republican president and a Republican Congress. We should all join together on a bipartisan basis to ensure there is accountability for this money before we proceed in spending any more of it.

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