Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Could I just say one thing?

Mr. McDERMOTT. You essentially make a decision at the Federal level that we are going to require all insurance companies to take everybody. They cannot use pre-existing conditions. One of the things that happened back in the Forties was a bill was passed in this House called the McCarran-Ferguson Act, and that said that all insurance decisions should be made at the local level. So we gave it to the States. So you've got 50 different insurance commissioners doing 50 different things all over this country. When we come to a national health plan that Barack Obama's going to sign, it has to have a national standard that every insurance company has to cover everybody. And you can't say, well, you know, they are this ethnic group or they're a little bit overweight or they smoke. The only thing you can make changes is on age. Obviously, as you get older, there is more likelihood that you're going to have problems. But that's the only kind of rating that there can be in a system that's going to be fair to everyone in this country. And the insurance companies, they obviously didn't want to take care of this woman's kid because they knew that the chance was she might have a recurrence of her leukemia, and they could see her sitting right there and know she had had the disease, so they said, that's a pre- existing condition. We don't want that family. You can't let that happen when we write this national plan. It has to be written right here on the floor. They can't trust it to 50 States because some States will have a good insurance commissioner and some will have people who are not quite so publicly spirited. And my view is that we have to make that decision, and I think the President will support us in that.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Thank you very much, Congressman Ellison. I think that one of the interesting things about the debate that's going on in Congress right now is that the debate seems to be that we can't have a single-payer system in this country. The people aren't ready for it, or it won't work, or whatever, there's all kinds of myths around that. And one of the fascinating things about it is that now, as we come to the President's proposal, he's proposing that we have a public option among those choices that people will have when the national health plan is put in place. Now, everybody immediately says, oh, we don't want a public option. We don't need that. The private industry has--they'll come up with enough options and people will have choices. The problem is people won't have money to pay the premiums. Well, the fact is that the American health insurance industry has had full chance to do it since 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took this off the agenda. They've had more than 60, more than 70 years, almost 75 years to come up with a plan to cover all Americans, and they have not done it. Now, there has to be a public option, and it has to be a good option. There is an interesting book, if people are interested in reading about this whole thing, it's called Do Not Resuscitate, meaning do not resuscitate the health insurance industry that's dying. But that means we've got to have a good public option out there for people to choose. Now, people say, why do we need a public option? You need the competition of the public option to drive the health insurance industry prices down. What's happening today--in fact, when Mrs. Clinton tried this effort 15 years ago, in 1993, we had almost 1,800 insurance companies in this country. That industry is rapidly contracting to the point where today we have around 800. And in many States, particularly rural States in this country, they have one choice of an insurance company, not two. So you've got an insurance company, or maybe they'll have two. But there's no competition in that kind of situation. And you need the government plan. Now, the reason? Why is that? Well, very simply, Medicare has administrative costs of about 3 percent. That means you give a dollar to Medicare, 97 cents goes out in health care benefits to older people in this country. If you give money to a private insurance company, 82 cents, on average, goes out to people. In many companies it's 70 cents is all that gets out to people who are sick. So we need a Medicare-like, a government option to compete with private industry to drive down those costs, because costs are what are killing our health care system today. Costs are going up much faster than inflation. People are finding their deductible higher. They are finding their co-pays higher. They're spending more money out of their pocket, even though they have health insurance. They think, well, I'm covered. I've got this illness, but I don't have to worry. I'm just going to go and have it taken care of. And suddenly they find out they've got huge bills left after, and that's because the plans are simply not taking care of people's needs. And we need a government option. Now, there are several things about a government option. First of all, it has to be one in which it takes anybody. You can't give the insurance companies or anybody else the ability to say, I'd like to take that person, but I don't want to take that person. That person's old or that person looks sick, so I don't want to take care of them. I just want to take premiums from people who are healthy. And the government option has to be one that takes everybody, and so do all the private insurance industry. If we have a health care bill that goes out of this House that does not have insurance changes in it that requires everybody to be taken, then we haven't done what we need. You heard the disparities in minority communities in this country, and it's also, it's just poor people. It's really not minorities as much as it's poor people who don't have the same kind of health care that people do who have a lot of money. I mean, that's the way it is. And we ought to be honest about this and say if we're going to do a national plan, it takes everybody. Now, it also has to give the same set of benefits. Whether it's a private plan or a public plan, it ought to have the same benefits. Now, if the private industry can compete with a government plan, that's fine. But if they can't, they're going to have to find ways to bring their prices down. They're going to either have to squeeze their profits or do something to change the way that goes. Pre-existing conditions. I had a patient or a woman in my district who was an opera singer. She went to Germany, had a contract in Munich. The minute you go into Germany you're in the German system. You're taken care of. Her daughter got leukemia. They spent thousands and thousands of dollars treating the child. She came back. The child had remission, and so they came back to the United States. The woman couldn't find an insurance company in the United States that would give her insurance, except at exorbitant rates, $2,000 a month. Now, why is it that the Germans can figure a way to do that, and we can't in this country? And my view is that you have to have no pre-existing conditions, you've got to let everybody in, and you've got to give the same set of benefits. And I think that the public option is essential for any bill that goes out of here.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Yes.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I rise to commend Amy Isaacs, National Director of Americans for Democratic Action, on the occasion of her retirement. For 20 years Amy has led ADA, the nation's most experienced organization dedicated to liberal policies, liberal politics and a liberal future. ADA was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Reuther, Arthur Schlesinger, and Reinhold Niebuhr shortly after FDR died. Its goal then was to keep the New Deal dream--its vision and its values of an America that works fairly for all--alive for generations to come. Under Amy's leadership, ADA has never forgotten its long history and never wavered from those core liberal values. She began her career at ADA as an intern in 1969 and has moved through the ranks serving as Director of Organization, Executive Assistant to the Director and Deputy National Director, before becoming National Director in 1989. Amy brought to ADA a strong sense that protecting and enhancing the rights of working men and women was a critical ingredient in maintaining a healthy democratic society. Allying ADA with the labor movement's efforts to improve wages and working conditions for America's workers became a key part of ADA's mission under Amy's direction. She recognized that the efforts to increase the federal minimum wage needed non-labor allies. And she enthusiastically threw ADA into the forefront of that fight, by directing the formation of the Coalition for a Fair Minimum Wage which brought together progressive groups of all stripes: religious, economic, social, youth, labor, business and others. Amy's belief that a strong labor movement united with strong allied organizations not only led to an increase in the minimum wage in 2007 but to countless other victories for working men and women. Amy's work did not stop with the fight to end income inequality. Her career is defined by her commitment to erase the evils of discrimination so that everyone can be truly free to pursue their dreams. Not only is she a trailblazer in her own right, but she worked tirelessly as an advocate for all women. From fair pay to reproductive choice, from education to the workplace, Amy never tolerated an injustice against women or any other group striving for equal treatment. It is a rare thing to find someone willing to devote their life to advancing the causes in which they believe. I commend Amy for her dedication and service and wish her all the best as she starts the next chapter of her life. Amy once said to me, ``I've walked with giants'' when I asked for her thoughts about the extraordinary people associated with ADA's history. I say today, she is one of them.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, immediately after the President announced his intention to turn America into a 21st century green economy, the special interests began lobbying to keep America addicted to oil. We were told there's no urgency to change, no threat to the planet from the ongoing and massive releases of carbon into the atmosphere, and that we should pump every drop of oil out of every foreign country regardless of how many wars we need to wage to satisfy our addiction. Just remember this: The special interests want to keep us addicted to oil because that is in their interests, not ours, not America's best interests. We have an Administration that recognizes and is responding to the global crisis, and Congress needs to support the President with legislation that will cure America of its addiction to oil and save the planet in the process. Time indeed is running out, and we have before us the evidence and the legislative proposals to remake America into a clean and energy- independent economy. It's time to act while there's still time to have air to breathe.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I only would like to add that when you meet these youngsters, Lupe, Chris and Nichole, and get to know them, you realize what they have gone through and why we should have a month that helps people think about this, and we realize that these youngsters have tremendous potential. Many of the youngsters I met yesterday are going to college. They went through the system, many of them with a dozen or more placements, and still were able to put it together and carry on their lives. We need to have this month to make us aware of the needs of foster kids in this country.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman have has any further speakers?

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on this resolution under consideration.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume. The month of May marks National Foster Care Month, which provides Congress with an opportunity to recognize the contributions of the unsung heroes who commit their lives to children in foster care, including foster parents who unselfishly open their homes to our most vulnerable children. On any given day, half a million children seek safety, comfort and assistance through our Nation's foster care system. Roughly 130,000 of those children in foster care are unable to return safely to their parents and are now waiting for an adoptive home. Sadly, in 2007, a record 28,000 of those children ``aged out'' of the foster care system at the age of 18 without finding a permanent home to call their own. As the de facto parents or the real-life parents of the Nation's foster children, we, the Congress, have a responsibility to ensure that they have the same opportunity to succeed that our children and our grandchildren have. Congress recently passed landmark bipartisan legislation which represented the most significant reform in the child welfare system in more than a decade. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act included numerous provisions that were designed to significantly improve the outcomes of all children and their families who are in the foster care system. As a result of this bipartisan legislation, grandparents and other relatives who became the legal guardian of a child for whom they cared for as a foster parent now receive greater assistance in caring for these children. The legislation also provides additional support to older foster children, up to the age of 21, who are engaged in school, work or other productive activities. The new law also requires much greater oversight of the health care system and education needs of each of these children in the foster care system. Mr. Speaker, while last year's bipartisan child welfare legislation provided greater resources and services aimed at improving the outcomes of children and families in the foster care system, additional investments and reform are still needed. The job is not done. I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating National Foster Care Month by recommitting themselves to continuing our bipartisan work to further improve the foster care system. Finally, I want to recognize the children in the system that are waiting to be reunified with their families or waiting for an adoptive home. Many of these children have endured great pain and suffering at a very young age, but are able to overcome their grief and turmoil, and go on to succeed beyond anyone's expectation. I applaud these young children for the bravery and determination that they have shown. Behind each number is the face of a foster child who has the same hopes and aspirations as our very own children. We need to make these hopes and aspirations a reality. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 391) recognizing May as ``National Foster Care Month'' and acknowledging that the House of Representatives should continue to work to improve the Nation's foster care system.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin). (Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 735) to ensure States receive adoption incentive payments for fiscal year 2008 in accordance with the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and exclude extraneous material on this bill under consideration.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, last fall, Congress passed bipartisan legislation that provided broad improvements to our Nation's child welfare system. The legislation, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, won unanimous approval in both the House and Senate last fall and was signed into law a short time later. The landmark legislation represented the most significant reform in the child welfare system in over a decade. Among the provisions of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act was the reauthorization and improvement of the Adoption Incentives Program. To encourage and reward States for increasing the number of children who are able to leave the public foster care system for a safe, permanent and loving adopted home, Congress established the Adoption Incentives Program in 1997 as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. The Adoption Incentives Program provides States with financial incentives for increasing, above a certain specific baseline, the number of adoptive families for children in foster care, particularly for those with disabilities or with other special needs or for older youth. The bill under consideration, the Protecting Incentives for the Adoption of Children with Special Needs Act of 2009, will ensure that the improvements made to the Adoption Incentives Program last fall are implemented as Congress intended. The bipartisan bill eliminates a restriction that was inadvertently placed in the Adoption Incentives Program by the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009. The Omnibus Appropriations Act included a provision that required the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, to pay adoption incentive payments awarded for fiscal year 2008 in the same manner as they were awarded in the previous years. The provision was prior to the changes being made to the program of the Fostering Connections for Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. The bill before us simply eliminates the provision included in the Omnibus Appropriations Act, thereby allowing HHS to base upcoming award payments on the new criteria established by last fall's bipartisan child welfare legislation. Removing the inadvertent provision will ensure that the newly reauthorized and improved Adoption Incentives Program is operated as intended by Congress. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, on the occasion of the honoring of his lifetime achievement by one of Seattle's historic organizations and keeper of the arts, the Rainier Club, the people of the State of Washington hold up as a national inspiration the work of one of the world's most distinguished authors, Seattle's own Dr. Charles Johnson. Dr. Johnson made the journey to Seattle from Long Island in 1976 to teach at the University of Washington. He noted in Smithsonian Magazine in 2008 that Seattle is ``an ideal environment for nurturing innovation, individualism and the creative spirit.'' It is in this setting that Dr. Johnson has made a uniquely rich array of contributions to the arts and letters, and became one of his generation's most distinguished African American authors. While his works are too numerous to list, Madam Speaker, Dr. Johnson counts among his literary gems four novels, Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage, and Dreamer; as well as short stories, screenplays, aesthetics, comic art, and King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. His awards and honors are as abundant as they are approbative. Dr. Johnson noted in Seattle's Post-Intelligencer on April 27, 2007 that American society is threatened by a ``diminished literary culture,'' the cure for which is ``the experience of complex, well- wrought, visionary books that challenge our assumptions, our intellectual laziness, and transform as well as deepen our perceptions of the world and ourselves.'' While he probably intended otherwise, this describes Dr. Johnson's own pivotal role in our literary ethos, as his works consistently have challenged readers' assumptions and intellectual laziness while transforming and deepening our world view and our self-knowledge. Dr. Johnson's influence is international, but it is our honor that his presence is local to Washington State's 7th Congressional District.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, for the first time in 15 years we have a real chance to solve America's health care crisis. The stars are aligning as has never been seen before. The American people want a solution, American business needs a solution to stay competitive and retain their best employees, segments of the health care industry, such as doctors, want a solution, and the President and the Congress have started a dialogue. Yet despite all those positive signs, we must not make the mistake of believing a solution is at hand or that it will come easily. As a nation we stand at a crossroads, either sweeping reform or sweeping this crisis under the rug with another Band-Aid. We have to translate the national dialogue into legislation that makes access to affordable health care coverage what it must be in a free and Democratic society, a right and not a privilege. There are lot of pieces to that puzzle and some are more readily solved more than others. In fact, I think some early victories might help instill confidence in the American people. Let me give you an example. When I graduated from medical school, I was $500 in debt after my entire medical education. Today, the average medical student is well over $100,000 in debt. When you are underwater by that much money, you are forced to make decisions based on debt service, not on public service. Across America, from inner-cities to rural communities, we are woefully short of primary doctors. And as long as new doctors have to chase high paying jobs to pay off their debt, we are going to remain short staffed in these underserved areas in our country. Today I am introducing legislation that would offer scholarships that would pay for most all of tuition for medical students in public colleges if they will apply their medical training in underserved areas when they graduate; an even exchange, one year of tuition for one year of service. The American Medical Association says there were 45,000 students enrolled last year in public medical colleges and the mean cost of tuition was $20,000. For a total investment of less than $1 billion per year, my legislation would provide a workforce so that every American can have access to affordable health care wherever they live. The scholarships would be accessible to a medical student enrolled full time and in good academic standing at a public institution. Imagine the positive impact that we would have if we empowered new doctors to serve their country and the highest ideals of their profession instead of serving their debt load. It is important to make the financial commitment at the beginning of medical school so that students can study areas that are related to primary care. Anyone who knows me knows I have long advocated a universal health care system, providing a minimum set of benefits for everyone. But we cannot get universal coverage or any interim step on the way to universal coverage without addressing, and reducing, the cost of health care education for our doctors. We could make a significant impact by lowering the cost of the health care workforce if my bill were accepted. But we would do something else. There are a lot of talented young people who don't have the financial means to go to medical school and fear a crushing debt burden even if they qualify. By removing that mountain of debt, we could use that rock to build a foundation for a permanent solution. We can solve America's health care problem and we can do it before the end of this year, but this is a first step that must happen. We must think about the workforce that will provide that universal access to everyone in the country. We cannot continue with the present funding of health care education and expect that we are going to have the people to provide the primary care, to do the wellness care, to do the prevention. They will all go into high-paid specialties to pay off their debt. This bill is a step that we must take, and it is one where we can make a step forward for all the people in this country.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I was unable to vote on H.J. Res. 38. Had I been able to vote, I would have voted ``aye'' on this resolution and ``no'' on the motion to recommit.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. But the fact is that that is the essence of what the government is about. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are basic documents that say it is our responsibility to protect the life and liberty of the American people and allow them to develop themselves to the fullest extent possible. And there is a point at which when we don't educate our children and when we don't take care of their health care, when we're the only industrialized country on the face of the Earth that doesn't have universal access to health care, you have to ask yourself how many guns do we need? How many bombers? I mean I would like to take a few of those off there and use them as financing for extending the health care system to everybody in this country. It wouldn't take very much out of this budget. But it would, in fact, make us a safer country and make us a morally responsible government to deal with the problems of our people. For us not to do that, for us not to do in energy what needs to be done, in the long run it doesn't make any difference how many nuclear weapons we have. If global warming causes the oceans to rise and all these other things begin to happen, nuclear weapons aren't any good to shoot at polar bears or at whatever. I don't know. We'll have this stockpile of weapons, and some day people will come along a thousand years from now and say, I wonder what they were planning to do with all those weapons? They built them and they sat here and rotted. And that's really what's happening. I really think that making a sensible and reasonable defense system is important. But we have gone way over the top, as has been suggested by some of these weapons systems that people were imagining something. I mean this whole business of Star Wars, it started with Reagan. I mean he said, well, you know, suppose they get up there in the sky and they start shooting rockets down on us. We've got to have this missile defense. And we are spending money even today on that stuff, and it makes no sense whatsoever. If you look around the world and ask yourself are we really threatened by the Iranians? Are we really threatened by the Pakistanis? Are we really threatened by the Chinese? The Chinese have got so many problems of their own. But we continue to build weapons as though they were sitting over there just about to launch off into attacking us, and it could be nothing further from the truth. Chinese families want food and housing and an education for their kids and a health care system and a government that makes peace and makes a decent life for the people. They're not looking to attack us. But yet we continue to build weapons systems. In fact, I think in some cases the military industrial complex was sad when the Berlin Wall fell because they had nothing to justify this stuff. And they've been scrambling around to justify it ever since, trying to find somebody to be afraid of. When, in fact, what we ought to be doing is building a peaceful world and dealing with our own problems at home and the problems of AIDS and hunger and disease around the rest of the world. If we would spend our money on those things, we would have much more peace than we will have building these weapons that are on the chart next to you. There's no security in that kind of continued----

Mr. McDERMOTT. If you spend a dollar in a school educating a kid who then does better in the world and gets a job and makes money and pays taxes and contributes to the society, you've created something. When you build a nuclear weapon and put it on a shelf somewhere, you have developed nothing. It just sits there. Or you build a tank or you build a Humvee.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Well, I have to commend you for coming out here and talking about the defense budget. There's a lot of talk in Congress about entitlements. When we talk about entitlements, people think, oh, you mean Medicare and you mean welfare and you mean Social Security and all these things, but there is, in fact, a defense entitlement in this country. It's as though the Defense Department is entitled to get more and more money every year. And anything anybody can think up for a new defense system, we wind it up, whether it makes any sense or not. Now, if you look at the wars that we've been involved in or the military actions that we've been involved in, they have not been standard wars where tanks are facing tanks or machine guns; it has been mostly counterinsurgency, guerrilla-type events. And we continue to spend huge amounts of money on a variety of weapons that simply don't deal with what the country is facing today. And I think that the most egregious example of this was when the last administration decided that Iran was a problem; therefore, we have to have a missile defense system in Europe against Iran. So we went to the Czech Government, we leaned on them. They said, okay, you can have a tracking station here. And we went to the Poles and said, we're going to put missiles right on the border with Russia. Now, first of all, they've made Iran into a boogyman. And they began to create a defense, and suddenly we're selling and we're putting all this stuff out there, and lo and behold, the Russians don't like it. Now, is that any surprise? If you were a sovereign country and somebody came and put missiles right on your border, how can you possibly think that that wouldn't be responded to by the Russians? The next thing we know, they go into Georgia. And everybody's all up in arms and saying, oh, my goodness, my goodness, what are they doing going into Georgia? Well, if you go on a pretext to go into Iraq and attack Iraq, the Russians say, look, we went into a next-door neighbor that asked for our help. You went 9,000 miles to a place that wasn't asking for it. So the military use of our power, in my view, has been greatly exaggerated in its real importance. What we need today is soft power. I was just in Iraq, and I think that President Obama, one of the things that will be his toughest jobs is to get back control of reconstruction from the military. We fill the military budget with all this money and expect them to go out and build sewer systems and water systems and all these other things. That's not what the military's job is. That should be the job of USAID and the State Department, and it shouldn't be done by soldiers. Now, as long as we inflate the military budget and don't put the money over into the areas where it's really needed, we are not going to change the political climate in these countries. Whether you are talking about Iraq or whether you are talking about Afghanistan or a lot of places, you can talk about Pakistan, what we do is we give them a lot of money from the military budget to buy military equipment from the United States. And, in my view, in the long run, we are not safer. The question is, are we developing a system that makes us secure? And just having tanks everywhere and Humvees and all this kind of stuff does not make us safer. What should be done with our money is to look at what's happening to these countries who are economically being destroyed by this world economic situation and dealing with helping them reconstruct their country. Now, the irony of being in Iraq this weekend was realizing that we were rebuilding things that we bombed and destroyed. The question comes to your mind, well, what did we get out of that except a lot of destruction and a lot of ways to spend money in this country? The Inspector General was out there on the trip with us, and here we have military colonels, you have got a colonel that was just sentenced to 9 years in a Federal penitentiary for taking a $7 million bribe in Iraq. Another colonel and his wife and his sister-in-law were taking bribes and running them through their church, trying to hide them by washing them through the church that they belonged to. This is what is needed in oversight and a clear plan for what we are trying to do with our money. We have thrown money away endlessly. Talk about waste, fraud and abuse, the military, in my view, is as ripe for an investigation as any part of government. Before we expand the budget, we ought to look at and have investigations, as Harry Truman did, after the Second World War. He made his reputation on looking at the misexpenditure of money in the Second World War, and that's what ought to be going on now. We are simply bloating the budget around issues that do not make us more secure and make us, actually, more enemies in the world. For that reason I think your examination, the Progressive Caucus examination of the budget is extremely important. I think that this is an issue, obviously, people, as you point out, have jobs. People make a living making war machinery. But there have to be other things they can make, maybe things related to green energy, or there's a lot of other places that the workers in this country, with all their creativity, could be put to work rather than simply building more and more arms to sell around the world and for us to use in various situations. We are talking about leaving Iraq. But one of the soldiers said to me, if we are getting ready to leave Iraq, why are we still building buildings like that one over there, what are we building for? It is a really good question. I mean, if you listen to the soldiers, they can see that lots of money is being spent wastefully. There is a tower, a control tower for an airport in Iraq. We spent $14 billion building a control tower for a field where there are two helicopters, two helicopters. Now, you ask yourself, what was that tower built for and why was it built there? And these kinds of questions aren't being asked, and I think that's why it's important that the budget that the Progressive Caucus is putting out is really raising a whole series of issues, and I think that the members of the caucus, of the larger Democratic Caucus, should think long and hard about how much money is put into the military budget. At a time when we need things all across this country in terms of health and infrastructure and education, all these issues are going to be sacrificed to the defense entitlement. And Members have to ask themselves are we going to continue to feed the military monster or are we going to take some of it away and deal with the domestic problems of Americans today. So I thank you for the opportunity to talk about it, and I think the American people should be listening and thinking about what makes sense, what makes us safer? I served in the military, so I am not against war. I am not some kind of a crazy peacenik that thinks you never go to war. I served during the Vietnam era. I took care of casualties, so I know there is no glory in war, and I know what happens to those casualties when they come back to the United States. We are creating, by this war, a lot of costs in the future that no one is willing really to talk about. They said today in the newspaper that there may be as many as 300,000 brain injuries from this war. And you think about what that's going to mean as we try to deal with those veterans over the next 30 or 40 years. These kids are 20, 30 years old. They are going to live to 70, so we are looking at least to 40 years, and that is a cost that's built into this kind of behavior. I think it really has to be carefully examined, and I think that Barack Obama is correct in bringing as many of those troops home. I think he should bring them all home, but he is talking about bringing 100,000 home and leaving 50,000 over there. I don't know what for. Is that just kind of for them to sit around and if something happens somewhere they will go jump out and do something? They said they are going to be for training police and training the Army, 50,000 advisers? It doesn't make sense. So thank you for raising this issue. I think it's important that you take an hour tonight and talk about it.

Mr. McDERMOTT. If I could ask a question?

Mr. McDERMOTT. Well, I think it's obvious that one of the things that President Obama faces is the fact that this country has used its military might all over the world for the last 7 years and lost its moral authority by issues like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and a variety of other things. And it is clear, and it was Hubert Humphrey, from your home State and actually was mayor of your city, who said that a country will be judged by how it deals with those in the twilight of life and those at the dawn of life, the children and the old people.