Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it is high time for the Bush administration to take action to recoup the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Enron energy trading racket stole from people in the State of Washington. We have now heard the tapes, the smoking guns, where energy traders talk about ``jamming'' grandmothers in Washington State, saying ``burn, baby, burn,'' during the brownouts, just laughing at the fact that they got away with hundreds of millions of dollars of theft. We are calling on the administration to stop protecting the Enron energy trading racket. We will offer on the floor of the House next week an amendment to compel the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to get off the dime and get our money back from Enron. This is a ripoff that is too obvious even for the Bush administration to ignore, and it is time for Congress to stand up on our hind legs and force this administration to take action. The people in Snohomish County deserve their hundreds of millions of dollars back, and we are going to see to it that they get it.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to join my colleagues in honoring Catherine May Bedell. In my role as a previous representative of the Fourth Congressional District, before I was freed by the voters for other duties, as we say, and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) took that noble office, I did not have the honor of knowing her personally, but I knew her by her legacy. That I think is maybe the nicest, most meaningful legacy a Member of Congress could have. That is when I was door-belling and going to thousands of homes when I was running in Yakima for the seat that she previously held. I had a lot of people, when her name came up, said, I remember her. She was really a nice lady. I really liked her. I heard that a lot. When you think about a legacy that any of us might have here, I think that is the highest one we could have, that our names may come up when other people are door-belling. She was well loved in Yakima Valley, and we are thinking of her family today. It is an honor to represent her district as well.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Well, I know, but I would like the gentleman to articulate that, actually.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, that is one of the best rhetorical questions the gentleman has ever posed and very successfully; and it is accurate that the Senate and the House are now under the control of our friends, the Republicans, for the last 2 years.

Mr. INSLEE. Let me answer that and quickly segue to tonight's discussion. The presidency is under control of the Republican party, the Senate is under control of the Republican party, the House is under control of the Republican party, and if there is waste, fraud or abuse, it is under the watch of the Republican party which controls the government of the United States. Our Republican friend speaking this evening talked about waste, fraud and abuse. Let us cut to one of the most onerous, glaring, enormous, stunningly scandalous waste, fraud and abuse that the Bush administration, with Republican support, has supported, and that is that they have given almost $40 million of taxpayer money to Mr. Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress who tonight stands accused of giving away some of our most secret information to Iran. This President, amongst the many mistakes that he has made, squandered almost $40 million in waste, fraud and abuse, taking the money from American taxpayers and giving it to this fellow that he told us was going to be the ``Spartacus of Iraq.'' We were told by the Vice President that we would be welcomed as liberators, with rose petals, and that this administration believed with Richard Pearl and Dick Cheney and the whole group of them and Paul Wolfowitz, we have heard them described as the neo-cons. They are neo-cons, and they allowed Mr. Chalabi to con this administration out of $40 million, and we have not got a penny back. Now, we 2 weeks ago, I think, tonight, held a meeting here on the Iraq Watch, and we blew the whistle on Mr. Chalabi loud and clear. Interestingly enough, the next morning, we were advised that the administration had finally cut off this spigot of taxpayer money to Mr. Chalabi. A week later, we find out that he is under investigation; and they have now raided his offices to find out if, indeed, he did give this secret information to Iran. I just am encouraged, I suppose, that our Republican friends want to root out waste, fraud and abuse. It would have been nice if they had joined us in blowing the whistle on Mr. Chalabi months ago when we had been saying that this whole plan was based on a house of sand. Now the administration, just to make sure people understand what happened here, Mr. Chalabi and his allies gave phony information about weapons of mass destruction. The neo-cons in the White House and the Defense Department bought it hook, line and sinker. They convinced the President, who apparently did not need much convincing, that we would just send Mr. Chalabi in there and he would be, as I said, the new Spartacus of Iraq, the De Gaulle of Iraq. So what did we do? We put him on the payroll of one of the biggest welfare programs ever, to the tune of $40 million, and we flew him and 800 of his closest co-conspirators into Iraq about 4 days after the invasion, 2 days after the collapse of the Iraqi Army, thinking he was going to be our agent. It was a total scam, and the American taxpayers paid for it, and he is the worst case of waste, fraud and abuse.

Mr. INSLEE. And Mr. Chalabi in the press reports said, well, somebody in the agency of the United States government told me when they were drunk, and this guy who had the President give $40 million to then disclosed some of the most sensitive information possible, that we have broken the Iranian code.

Mr. INSLEE. What is so disturbing about this, at least to me, is this is almost a pattern of this administration blowing Top Secret security information. They did it through Mr. Chalabi, although perhaps unintentionally. They did it blowing the cover of a CIA agent in order to punish Joe Wilson, the ambassador who blew the whistle on the falsehood that the President gave in his State of the Union speech. Is nothing sacred? Is nothing sacred in our security information? This administration needs to be held to account. Here we have a situation where the President of the United States okayed $40 million of taxpayer money going to this scam artist who had already been convicted of bank fraud in Jordan and could not set foot back in his home country because of his previous conviction. We have a situation where this information was found out to be totally false, all of it. We started a war based on this false information. And how many people have the President fired as a result of this scandal, as a result of this failure? How many people has he let go? How many heads have rolled in his administration to have accountability for this Chalabi debacle? Zero. Zero. This President has shown zero accountability throughout this entire mess, and the only people he has fired are those who are the ones who have told the truth, General Shinseki and Richard Clarke.

Mr. INSLEE. Paul O'Neill. He punished Joe Wilson's wife.

Mr. INSLEE. And, Mr. Speaker, if my colleague will yield, another thing that cannot stand is this administration essentially sort of pooh-poohing the enormity of this disaster of relying on Mr. Chalabi. There are two groups that have suggested it is of no consequence, one of which is Mr. Chalabi. He was interviewed in a major newspaper sometime ago and the article said ``an Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington,'' and that is Mr. Chalabi, ``said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited,'' meaning wrong, meaning false, ``had achieved the aim of persuading America to start a war.'' Mr. Chalabi has just kind of laughed off the fact that his false information caused America to start a war in which over 700 Americans have died. To him, that is okay because he described himself as a ``hero in error.'' Hero in error? Here is a man who took $40 million of taxpayers' money, gave us apparently willfully, according to Colin Powell, Colin Powell says willfully deceptive information, and started a war in which 700 Americans have died, in which thousands have been terribly wounded; and he describes himself as a hero. Well, he is no kind of hero in this Chamber or in my district or any district in this country. But he, apparently, is still on some kind of a little bit of a working relationship with the Bush administration. How do I know that? Well, we have paid the man $40 million, and I have not heard the President of the United States say ``give the taxpayers that money back.'' I have not heard the President of the United States say, ``Mr. Ashcroft, go get that $40 million back; this man started a war, gave me false information.'' Still, with apparently now, or maybe people around him cooperating with the Iranians and breaking our security information, I have not heard the President say to go get that $40 million back. What I have heard the President say, and what this administration has done, although the President says it was not with his approval, but he said, and there is a certain irony here, in the speech where the President of the United States had Mr. Chalabi sitting up in back of the First Lady, up there in the second row, at that very same speech where the President gave the American people the falsehood that Iraq was buying uranium from an African country, we now find out that was false. And we know it is false, because Ambassador Joe Wilson, who worked for the first President Bush, blew the whistle on that falsehood and indicated that that was not true. And what was the response of the administration? They blew the CIA cover of Joe Wilson's wife in an attempt to destroy her career with the CIA. So here you have a situation where this administration has squandered $40 million of taxpayers' money and has not lifted a finger to get it back, even though that created a fraud which started a war, which destroyed the career of the person who told the truth about the falsehood that Mr. Chalabi got the President to tell the American people. This is kind of an Alice in Wonderland moment, it seems to me, where the truth-tellers are punished, and the President still says go ahead and keep your money, I guess, that we gave to Mr. Chalabi. Something is wrong with this picture. This administration has failed to come to grips with the multiple mistakes it has made in Iraq. And until it faces the music and admits the multiple mistakes it has made, we will continue to make them.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman would yield, I want to address why and how that happened. This incompetence, as the gentleman describes it, Mr. Speaker, was institutionalized. It was set up to be incompetent. What happened here was the CIA had good reason not to trust the information they were getting from Mr. Chalabi, and they kept telling the White House that. But the people in this administration, if they have a belief, it must be right, and it really does not matter what the evidence is. So what they did was, Mr. Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence agency, heretofore never in existence in the Pentagon; and it was their special little intelligence shop which they staffed with the people who worked for the neocons, who were basically going to tell the neocons whatever they wanted to hear. So when the CIA was telling them and the Air Force, for instance when the Air Force told them these aluminum tubes the President told us about were used to build a nuclear weapon, I think it was the Air Force told him, or the CIA, one of the agencies, I have forgotten which one now, they said that is not accurate. So they just went to the little Pentagon fiefdom of the neocons and said, sure it is. They got their yes men and made their yes men in control of America's foreign policy, and this has led to the loss of 700 American lives as a result. Now what has this President done to bring accountability to that system? Has he changed the director of this Pentagon intelligence agency? No. Has he disbanded it? No. Has he taken away the washroom privileges of anyone in the Pentagon? No. Has he canned the Secretary of State? No. Has he changed the Director of the CIA? No. The only thing he has done or his administration has done is to break the security secrecy of the identity of a CIA agent in order to punish the one man who told the truth about the falsehoods that the President gave the American people. That is the only person that has lost their job associated with this, except General Shinseki who also told the truth about needing several hundred thousand American troops to provide security in Iraq. We are seeing that the first step to a successful Iraq policy is to admit the mistakes of the past, clean house and get some new, fresh ideas in Iraq. Clinging to these folks and these agencies which have been so wrong on Iraq so many times is not going to allow us to be successful in Iraq, is not going to allow us to bring our troops home in a reasonable period of time. We are asking the President to finally demand some accountability; and if this Chalabi scandal does not wake up the President to this need, it is hard to imagine what will.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I think responsibility is the right word, and I think what has been so stunning to us is the failure of the President to hold people and agencies responsible for their multiple foul-ups. This is not the way to run a railroad or a war, and other Presidents in other difficult circumstances have had the gumption and leadership to hold people accountable. I had the honor of joining my dad, a World War II vet, at the dedication of the World War II Memorial this weekend. We were very proud of many people, including my father, at the dedication. The memorial is a very moving place, and I encourage people to visit it. It is a very moving place. They have 4,000 stars representing our losses in World War II, and framing that wall of stars are two pillars, both of which have quotes from President Harry Truman. I was talking to my dad, and he reminded me that Harry Truman did something. He held somebody who was very popular at the time accountable. He fired General MacArthur. It was an extremely controversial thing for the President to do. But he recognized in war you have to have accountability and responsibility. There is nobody in this administration as popular as General MacArthur. I can guarantee the President that. And if President Bush had half the gumption of President Truman, he would fire some of these people tomorrow to send a message that we are not going to tolerate this incompetence anymore, and we are going to send a message to the world that we are going to be accountable to it as well.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield, I want to just kind of recap some of the things we have talked about as to why we are so adamant that this administration change and improve its policies in Iraq. We have talked about some things tonight, but I want to talk about the 10 significant failures of this administration. I just want to recap them quickly as to why we feel so strongly, why we have been here every week. I want to list them quickly. Failure number one: the President told us, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.'' That and his other statements, many others, were false. Failure number one. Failure number two: they told us that they had clear and convincing evidence of the connection between Saddam Hussein and the attack, the heinous attack on us on September 11. Those statements were false. Failure number two. Failure number three: they told us we would be greeted as liberators, with rose petals at our feet. Mr. Chalabi would be the Spartacus of Iraq. That statement was false. Failure number four: they ignored clear evidence and clear advice from General Shinseki and many others that we would need several-fold the number of troops that they gave to this effort in order to secure Iraq, and they ignored this clear advice. Why? Because they wanted to fight this war on the cheap so they would not have to pay for it. Well, we have suffered from their effort to fight a war on the cheap with a lot of dead good American people in Iraq. Failure number five: they refused to involve the United Nations until maybe 2 weeks ago, when they finally went back on their knees to the U.N. Failure number six: they refused to have elections. Failure number seven: they had no command and control system on the prisoner camps. Failure number eight: no armor. Failure number nine: no plan to pay for this war. Failure number ten: they gave $40 million of taxpayer money to a con man that got us into this war. These are 10 failures, and they demand accountability from people in this administration.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, there are some outrages that are so gross and offensive that even if it takes years to right them, we should do that, and one of those outrages is the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001 on the West Coast of the United States. But in fact there are two outrages involving the energy crisis in the Western United States. The first outrage is that Enron and various other traders gouged over hundreds of millions of dollars from consumers in the western United States. But the second and perhaps equal outrage is that the Federal Government, under the Bush administration, has been wholly ineffectual in getting back the money that has been stolen from consumers in the Western United States. These are two outrages. Today and the last few days we have now discovered over 2,000 hours of taped conversations between Enron traders and others that clearly show the way that they stole hundreds of millions of dollars from consumers in the Western United States. Those were discovered because of the great work of a small public utility district, the Snohomish PUD in Snohomish, Washington, that finally let us know, to get a window of the horrendous theft that went on, and I just want to quote a couple of things that the Enron traders talked about as they were stealing from the consumers of the West Coast. Here is one trader, Tim Beldon, who since pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges, who said, ``Grandmothers were taken at the tune of a million bucks or two a day.'' Taken. They were taken due to the outright fraud of Enron. Another quote from an employee who can be heard asking, ``Do you know when you started overscheduling and making buckets of money on that?'' Well, the buckets of money that they made came right out of the pockets of consumers. The last quote, we heard traders of Enron saying basically, ``Isn't it great that we jammed grandmothers for millions of dollars?'' Well, it is not great that they ``jammed'' grandmothers on the West Coast of the United States, and that needs to be fixed by the Federal Government. But the second outrage is that our Federal Government and this administration has acted essentially like the Keystone Cops in doing nothing effective to get back these millions of dollars from our consumers. In Snohomish County, Washington, we have had 50 percent increases in electrical rates as a result of this gouging, and yet the FERC, the Federal Electric Regulatory Commission, and the Bush administration has done nothing to get this money back for the consumers. Next week, when the energy bill is on the floor of the House, I will be offering an amendment to compel FERC, to compel the Bush administration to get off the dime and get this money back that has been stolen. They have acted with all the energy of Barney Fife on this, and it is time for them to do the job and get this money back for ratepayers. Now, why has this not happened? Why has the Bush administration sat on their hands while this theft occurred? Well, I have to tell you that we have done everything humanly possible to get the administration, the President and the Vice President, to act on this. In fact, during this crisis in 2000 and 2001, we asked the Vice President to personally intercede. Do you know what he did? On April 17, 2001, he met with Ken Lay of Enron; and they apparently talked about the energy crisis. And what after that conversation did they do? Two days later, the Vice President came out, Mr. Cheney came out on April 19 and said, ``We think price caps simply don't work.'' And they did nothing effectual to solve this problem. In fact, we had a meeting with the Vice President when this was going on, and we told the Vice President of this, at the very time there were brownouts in California, we told the Vice President of the United States that over 30 percent of the generating capacity in America was turned off. Obviously, to anyone who knew anything about energy, people were gaming this system. And we pleaded with the Vice President to help us. After we laid out all of these facts and circumstances, these are several Members of Congress and myself to the Vice President, he looked at us in our eyes and simply said, ``You know what is wrong with you? You just don't understand economics.'' Well, we do understand economics. We just do not understand Enronics. We just do not understand a Vice President who wants to talk to Ken Lay but will not lift a finger to help American consumers to get these hundreds of millions of dollars back that were stolen. We do not understand a Vice President who says let those grandmothers be jammed, and we are not going to help. We are going to have an amendment next week to solve this problem.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, how often in the last year have we heard the phrase in this country saying we support our troops? I have heard it a lot on this floor, but those who oppose this amendment have a new slogan. We support our troops except for their constitutional rights. The women of this country are in the streets of Baghdad and Nasiriyah and Fallujah today trying to install the concept of individual liberty and individually, constitutionally protected rights in Iraq while their Members of the U.S. Congress are trying to deny it back here in Washington, D.C. Do not deny this amendment. Do not send the proud women in our armed services to the back streets of Baghdad. They are serving to establish liberty in Baghdad, not back-street abortions. Do not go back to those old days while we fight new battles trying to establish liberties overseas. Pass this amendment.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Let me say one more thing. We need elections sooner rather than later in Iraq to vest them with their own destiny, and I will offer an amendment to do that as well. I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman has put his finger on what we ought to call the Chalabi principle in the Bush administration. The Chalabi principle is this: If you tell the truth, you get fired by the President. If you tell a falsehood, you get promoted and praised. That is a pretty strong statement, but let us look at the facts. General Shinseki told the truth. He said we are going to need several hundred thousand troops to prevent massive looting and anarchy after the army collapses, and it was true; so they canned him. General Zinni said the same thing; he gracefully was allowed to retire. Joe Wilson told the truth and pointed out that the President told a significant falsehood to the American people and Congress in the State of the Union address, asserting that Iraq was getting uranium to build a nuclear weapon. He told the truth and so the President's people punished Mr. Wilson's wife by outing her CIA employment, which should be a Federal crime. So if you tell the truth in the Bush administration, you can canned, punished, and your wife's career gets destroyed. But if you tell a falsehood, like Mr. Chalabi's outfit who gave us repeated misinformation, according to the Secretary of State, you get praised, you get the President trying to get you an in in the new government in Iraq, and you get $350,000 a month of taxpayers' money, together with the millions of dollars we spent trying to parachute them into Baghdad to form a new government, which was an abject failure, you are praised. If you are Paul Wolfowitz, who told the Congress that oil revenues would pay for this and we would be greeted with rose petals, you are praised by the President. And if you are the Defense Secretary, if you are wrong about WMD, wrong about the connection with 9/11, wrong about the number of troops we need, and wrong about not having armor and how we are going to pay for it and how much it is going to cost, if you are wrong about not having early elections, the Vice President says you are the best Secretary of Defense America has ever had. This is the Chalabi principle. We need to break this. This is one of the things wrong with our Iraqi policy. The people telling the truth are not listened to, and the people fouling up get promoted. That needs to change.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, my constituents are tired of being suckered with false information that both precipitated and continue this war in Iraq, and they want some accountability of what happened with such a massive amount of misinformation given to the American people leading up to this war. They want accountability, and they deserve accountability. We offered today an amendment to the defense authorizations bill to be considered this week that will give Americans some accountability on the source of this information, of Mr. Chalabi's rogue group, this alleged Iraqi National Congress. And there is nothing congressional about it. It is a bunch of folks that want to go back in and run Iraq and who convinced the neoconservatives who are behind this war that we would all be greeted with rose petals because Mr. Chalabi would be seen as the great savior of Iraq. This great fantasy was bought hook, line and sinker by the President of the United States and the administration, and it was a fraud. And it is time for the American taxpayers to have accountability here. Now, what I am told, and I want to make sure it is true, but I am told taxpayers are still paying this group, this group that gave us, apparently willfully, or potentially willfully, false information leading to this war. We are still paying $350,000 a month for their great services in Iraq. What did this group do for the American people? It got us into a war based on false administration they gave to the administration. The administration was all too happy to accept that there were weapons of mass destruction there; that there was a connection to 9-11 and that they would be greeted as liberators, the three legs of this stool, all of which were false. And we are still paying these people. So we will offer an amendment, hopefully tomorrow it will be allowed, I hope the majority will allow it to be considered, which will cut that money off, assuming the things I have suggested are true; and I believe they are. So we need some accountability here of this group. We cannot continue it. And I want to make sure people understand how dire this is and how hoodwinked this administration was. And, frankly, I think they were patsies for this group. We paid millions of dollars very shortly after the Iraqi Army collapsed to fly into Iraq, I am told like some 800 or 900 of the cohorts and the coconspirators, if I can use the pejorative term that I think is appropriate here, of Mr. Chalabi's. We flew them into Baghdad, and it was going to be the sort of great saviors flying in that would be the recipient of all these rose petals and would quickly reestablish them as the functioning government of Iraq. Surprise. They were not really welcomed with open arms in Baghdad. Totally failed. Wasted our millions of dollars, and they are still taking money from the taxpayers. Now, here is one mistake, at least one mistake the administration ought to own up to and fix so we do not continue pouring money down a rat hole in Iraq with the Iraqi National Congress, which has not helped us one wit. Because, frankly, what Iraq needs is a real congress which is elected by the Iraqi people. These guys who are under indictment in Jordan, you cannot parachute him in and expect him to be welcomed as the savior of Iraq.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we have about 30 seconds, and I just wanted to wrap up and thank the gentleman for his work tonight. I just want to say one thing. One of the worst possible things that can happen to our soldiers is base the war on wishful thinking. And the failures we have been talking about tonight have largely occurred because of civilian decisionmakers who have based decisions on wishful thinking that are not in touch with the reality and the difficult situation in Iraq. We are very hopeful that this administration will start to recognize the challenges we have in Iraq and start listening to military advisers, rather than basing their decisions on the fantasy that they have that this can be done on the cheap. We have paid too dearly in blood for that misassessment, we have paid too dearly in treasure for that misassessment; and it is time for a fresh, new strategy in Iraq. Just sticking with the same old same old is a recipe for disaster.

Mr. INSLEE. And if I can remember who the third one is, if I can read my notes here that I wanted to talk about. Help me out, gentlemen. Who is the third one I was thinking about here? The list goes on and on.

Mr. INSLEE. We have a different opinion. This gentleman has not been sanctioned. This gentleman has not lost an hour of overtime.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for just a moment, and then I want to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel). One of the unfortunate reasons there has been a failure here is that there is a persistent practice or habit in this administration to ignore a principle of leadership, which is to reward competence and to sanction incompetence, to reward those who are right and sanction those who are wrong, to reward those who tell the truth and sanction those who do less than that. And look what happens in this situation. Let us compare those who were wrong to those who were right. Those who were right, General Shinseki, right about needing new troops, canned. General Zinni, who was right about needing more armor and troops, canned. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, by the way, stood up personally to Saddam Hussein and saved hundreds of American lives to get them out of Iraq before the first Persian Gulf War, this guy has guts; he told the truth and pointed out that what the President told the American people about buying uranium from Niger was a falsehood, he told the truth, and they tried to destroy his wife's career in the CIA. So we have three truth-tellers, all of them who were punished by the executive branch of the United States. Now, look at the other three people. George Tenet, CIA, who, if there was a more massive failure of information in American history next to calling Benedict Arnold a good American, I do not know what it was; still on the job, has not been sanctioned. He has not lost an hour of vacation time. He does not have a pink slip, does not have a slap on the wrist, said by the President to be doing a great job, when we started a war based on false information. Donald Rumsfeld, the man who ignored General Shinseki, ignored General Zinni, ignored the intelligence from Ambassador Joe Wilson, involved in a war where we have incompetent planning, failure of planning, and we are now in a deep morass in Iraq, called by the Vice President, and I want to quote here almost, the greatest Secretary of Defense America has ever seen.

Mr. INSLEE. Reclaiming my time, I just wanted to note, following the horrendous situations in our prison camps, a lot of folks thought the only reason people were calling for the Secretary of Defense's replacement was that problem. But that was only the straw that broke the camel's back. We had all these other 10 problems which I alluded to, all of which he was involved with. That is why many Members here believe that this Nation deserves better to serve our troops. I would like to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel), the originator of this, who shows great leadership on being able to tackle these very great problems in Iraq.

Mr. INSLEE. It is. And, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for leading on this issue about this flak jacket failure. I do want to make the point, though, I think the administration has made some changes in its policy that are starting to move in the right direction, but they are a year, and we have suffered dramatically as a result of that. We welcome these changes that we are seeing now. Now the President says now he wants the U.N. to come in and help us. But frankly it is very difficult, after we stuck our finger in the eye of the rest of the world, to encourage people. But we want to encourage the administration to move. And I will just mention two other things, and then I will yield to my colleagues. Two other areas: One, this administration has not proposed a single plan on how to pay for this war. Every single dollar that is being spent in this war is coming out of the backs and the futures of our children of deficit spending. We have a $500 billion deficit, and this President was not forthright enough with Americans to even put in his budget one dollar for the Iraq War, knowing that every dollar he put in the Iraq War would be additional deficit spending. Winston Churchill said, ``All I have to offer you is blood, sweat, toil, and tears.'' We cannot now just tell the people of America let us fight the Iraq War and then go shopping. We cannot simply have the only people sacrificing in America those in the frontlines of Iraq. This is a tough battle, and the President of the United States cannot fight it on the cheap. We need to face the difficulty in Iraq straightforward and have the tenth thing we need, and then I will yield. We need something we have not had for 1\1/2\ years now. We need a plan for success in Iraq, and we still do not have one this late in the game. And the reason I say that is tonight, as we are sitting here, supposedly we are going to have a turnover to a sovereign government in Iraq on June 30 and no one has a clue who they will be, no one has a clue what they will do, and the sad fact is the only thing this Iraq group is going to do is issue library cards because, frankly, we are running Iraq because we are the only force that is capable of doing that right now. We need a plan. We need some fresh thinking. I have some thoughts I will describe a little later. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).