Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this is a resolution correcting the Record of Tuesday, January 28, 2003. Resolved, That an asterisk be placed in the permanent Record of Tuesday, January 28, 2003, noting that the following statements contained in the State of the Union Address by the President of the United States are inaccurate: One, ``The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' Two, ``Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.'' Three, ``From intelligence sources, we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspections sites, and monitoring the inspectors themselves.'' Four, ``Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.''.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of privileges of the House and I offer a resolution, which I will send to the Clerk's desk.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) is the only one who can give that recognition?

Mr. McDERMOTT. I thank the Chairman. Amendment Offered by Mr. Kirk

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, it is my desire not to be repetitive, but the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) really said it all: Medicare is a program that we all agree we ought to fix, we ought to add a prescription drug benefit. Now Members know that the $400 billion that we have put into it is simply not enough. The plan has a great big doughnut hole in it. Most seniors will pay more than they will ever get out of the program, and when we talk about let us fully fund it so everybody gets what they need, we are told there is not enough money. Then if we look a little further into the bill, we find the medical savings accounts. Now I do not know if Members watching this on their television all understand, $400 billion is what they say, and they have $190-some-odd billion for medical savings accounts. Who gets the benefit from that? How many people in this society are able to put money aside in anticipation of an illness? We buy insurance; we cannot save up for it unless you are rich. This is a plan for the rich to shelter some more of their money. That money could much better be used for providing a good pharmaceutical benefit. Now, the motion of the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) simply says let us get rid of one more tax break for the rich which is all the President and the Republican majority seem to be able to come up with. In a time when we are losing jobs everywhere and everything else is going wrong, they can find money to keep putting money out for tax breaks. Let us take that money and put it into a pharmaceutical benefit for seniors. Why should we put a man out that everybody predicts 30 percent of the seniors who are covered now by their former employment will lose that benefit? Why should 74,000 people in the State of Washington who right now have a benefit lose it so we can give another tax break to the rich? It makes no sense. We should all vote for the motion of the gentlewoman from Illinois because it makes good sense, it is good public policy, and it is humane.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight because I know that we are going to next week be in a session of the ``Rubber Stamp Congress.'' Tomorrow the Committee on Appropriations will meet for several hours, and they will pass out $87 billion worth of borrowed money. I brought this because in my district one of my constituents started printing up what he calls ``fraudulent event notes.'' This is a $1 billion note in ``deception dollars.'' Now, 87 of those look something like this. That is what we are going to put out tomorrow, $87 billion of hard-earned money, with very little discussion, and the President wants them to run it through this House next week. We will come in on Wednesday. We will fly in on Wednesday afternoon; on Thursday we will have a little debate; and Thursday it will be gone. Two, three hours of debate, $87 billion. Now, when you think about that, this Rubber Stamp Congress never says no to this President. It is a failed policy, with the same people in charge today that got us in the mess. Oh, they have rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic. Ms. Rice is now in charge. She sort of elbowed Colin Powell off to one side, and Mr. Rumsfeld off to the other side, and she is running in and telling Mr. Bremer what to do, the Viceroy we appointed over there to run this place. What is missing in all of this is a plan to give the control of Iraq to the Iraqis. They say someday. Five years, we are going to be doing this for 5 years. In one year, we have been in here for $79 billion, and now we are back for $87 billion more, all borrowed. We cannot touch those tax cuts. Oh, no, we gave that money to the rich people, and, I do not know, they are doing something with it somewhere. They are not making jobs. We have got no jobs in this country. But we are printing money. The presses are running like mad printing this money to send over to Iraq. Now, what are we going to send it there for? You heard from one of my colleagues a little bit of it. We are going to send over a guard system for public property, $15 million. That is just for training and administration. We are going to send them 80 pickup trucks at $2.6 million. That is $33,000 apiece. That is a pretty good pickup truck. You can get a pickup truck for under $20,000 right now. But, no, we have to send them the $33,000 brand. We are going to send over a communications system of handheld radios, 400 of them, and 200 satellite telephones, for $6 million. How many of your police departments have that kind of equipment? And yet we can send it over to Iraq. Or we can go and give security for the judges at $200 million. Four hundred judges. We are going to provide security details constantly for $200 million. These phony dollars that they got us into, they got us into a war on a fraudulent basis. The President stood right here and said things which he now says, ``My, it wasn't true.'' But we are going to pay for it. We are going to pay for a witness protection program. If any Iraqis come forward, we promise them that we will take them to the United States and set them up someplace in Florida or wherever, I do not know, and spend $100 million on them, like they were crime fighters in the Mafia in the United States. That is what your money is going for. Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of things in this country that ought to happen before that happens. We are going to buy them 200 tanker trucks. We are going to buy them 250 natural gas trucks. More of these dollars. They are going out. They are going out to the people, and they are going to be spent over there, and the Iraqis themselves say, ``Give us 10 cents on the dollar, and we can do it ourselves.'' But this is an American occupation headed by Viceroy Bremer, and there is no intention in this list of turning over control to them. We are going to set them up an army. We have decided they need a 40,000-man army. They had an army before. Where is it? Why do we have to buy new weapons for all of them? Four hundred thirty-five Members are going to come in here with their rubber stamp, and they are going to say, ``Mr. President, you want it. I close my eyes, it is yours.'' And we are going to send them $87 billion, with no discussion. It is wrong. Keep your eye on them.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I am here to do a public service announcement. I want all of you to get your rubber stamp ready. We are here for 24 hours this week, and next week, when we arrive on Wednesday, within 24 hours we will have given the President $87 billion. That is what he wants in a failed policy. We are going to buy cell phones at $6,000 a copy. The ones we have here cost $1,500. Why are they $6,000 in Iraq? Why are we spending $100 million in a witness protection program or putting in a 911 system or all the foolishness in that bill? There will be no talk tomorrow about amendments in the Committee on Appropriations. We ought to figure out what the President needs until December and give it to him then, and we will come back when he has a plan. He announced today they are not going to go for a resolution in the United Nations. We are going it alone, and the American taxpayers are being asked to suck it up again, give him $87 billion, do not ask him what he did with it, just rubber stamp it. That is wrong. Just vote no.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this time to offer my congratulations to the 23 million people of Taiwan; it will be celebrating the 92nd anniversary of its National Day on October 10, 2003. Taiwan is a dynamic democracy, and world economic leader. With a total of more than 95 political parties, every public office is hotly contested through free elections. People enjoy full political freedom, including freedom of press and assembly. Its per capita income ranks among the highest in the world. The State of Washington, including the Seventh Congressional District, has enjoyed the close commercial, social and cultural ties that link our two nations. Many of our brightest leaders in the state trace their roots to Taiwan, and the Taiwanese American community is integral to our country's rich ethnic diversity. The annual commemoration of this historic date is a valuable reminder that freedom and justice are paramount goals shared by our countries. Again, congratulations to Taiwan and its people on their National Day.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, as we in the House get ready to rubber- stamp another blank check for the President of the United States for $87 billion, I submit for the Congressional Record an article from the New York Times dated 30 September by Douglas Jehl. This is an article that talks about the company called New Bridge. The principals are Joe Allbaugh, who was Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000; Mr. Ed Rogers and Mr. Lanny Griffith, who were both White House assistants for the older Bush. These people work with Haley Barbour, who is running for the Senate down in the South. These folks have put together a program. Joe Allbaugh was FEMA director. He quit that job and went to work putting together the war-profiteering company they call New Bridge. They are going to go out there, and they are all swarming around. When Bremer was here in town, they had a big party, and they began talking about how they are going to get the contracts from the $87 billion. We are going to fund these war profiteers right out of the White House. They have no shame. [From the New York Times, Sept. 30, 2003] Washington Insiders' New Firm Consults on Contracts in Iraq (By Douglas Jehl) Washington, Sept. 29.--A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects. The firm, New Bridge Strategies, is headed by Joe M. Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000 and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until March. Other directors include Edward M. Rogers Jr., vice chairman, and Lanny Griffith, lobbyists who were assistants to the first President George Bush and now have close ties to the White House. At a time when the administration seeks Congressional approval for $20.3 billion to rebuild Iraq, part of an $87 billion package for military and other spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, the company's Web site, www.newbridgestrategies.com, says, ``The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C., and on the ground in Iraq.'' The site calls attention to the links between the company's directors and the two Bush administrations by noting, for example, that Mr. Allbaugh, the chairman, was ``chief of staff to then-Gov. Bush of Texas and was the national campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign.'' The president of the company, John Howland, said in a telephone interview that it did not intend to seek any United States Government contracts itself, but might be a middleman to advise other companies that seek taxpayer-financed business. The main focus, Mr. Howland said, would be to advise companies that seek opportunities in the private sector in Iraq, including licenses to market products there. The existence of the company was first reported in National Journal, a weekly magazine of Government and politics. Mr. Howland said the company was not trying to promote its political connections. He said that although Mr. Allbaugh, for example, had spent most of his career ``in the political arena, there's a lot of cross-pollination between that world and the one that exists in Iraq today.'' As part of the administration's postwar work in Iraq, the Government has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to American businesses. Those contracts, some without competitive bidding, have included more than $500 million to support troops and extinguish oil field fires for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney led from 1995 until 2000. Of the $3.9 billion a month that the administration is spending on military operations in Iraq, up to one-third may go to contractors who provide food, housing and other services, some military budget experts said. A spokesman for the Pentagon said today that the military could not provide an estimate of the breakdown. Administration officials, including L. Paul Bremer III, the top American official in Iraq, have said all future contracts will be issued only as a result of competitive bidding. Already, the Web site for the Coalition Provisional Authority, http://cpa-iraq.org/, lists 36 recent solicitations, including those for contractors who might sell new AK-47 assault rifles, nine-millimeter ammunition and other goods for new army and security forces. New Bridge Strategies was established in May and recently began full-fledged operations, including opening an office in Iraq, its officials said. They added that a decision by the Governing Council of Iraq to allow foreign companies to establish 100 percent ownership of businesses in Iraq, an unusual arrangement in the Mideast, had added to the attractiveness of the market. Mr. Howland is a principal of Crest Investment in Houston and was president of American Rice, once a major exporter to Iraq. Richard Burt, ambassador to Germany in the Reagan administration and a former assistant secretary of state, and Lord Powell, a member of the British House of Lords and an important military and foreign-policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, are among the 10 principals. Mr. Allbaugh, the chairman, spent most of his career in Texas politics before Mr. Bush appointed him to head the federal disaster agency. Mr. Allbaugh, who now heads his own consulting firm here, did not return calls to his office today. Mr. Rogers, the vice chairman who was a deputy assistant to the first President Bush and an executive assistant to the White House chief of staff, is also vice chairman of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, one of the best-connected Republican lobbying firms in the capital. Mr. Rogers founded it in 1991 with Haley Barbour, who became chairman of the Republican National Committee and is now running for governor of Mississippi. Shortly after leaving the White House, Mr. Rogers was publicly rebuked by the first President Bush after he signed a $600,000 contract to represent a Saudi, Sheik Kamal Adham, who was a main figure under scrutiny in a case that involved the Bank of Commerce and Credit International. Mr. Rogers canceled his contract to represent the sheik, former head of Saudi intelligence. Mr. Griffith, a director of the new company, is chief operating officer of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, which he joined in 1993. He was special assistant for intergovernmental affairs to the first President Bush and later worked under him as an assistant secretary of education. Until November, Mr. Rogers' wife, Edwina, was associate director of the National Economic Council at the White House. Reached by telephone today, Mr. Rogers said he did not want to speak for the record and referred a reporter to Mr. Howland. The company Web site says the company was ``created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that the theater of the absurd is opening a new farce. The plots of the old one, the fox, Mr. Ashcroft, is inspecting the henhouse, looking for someone who broke the law by revealing an alleged CIA employee to the press. Does anyone believe that they are going to use all the power of the Patriot Act, that they are going to go through the library records, the medical records, the visa records of everybody in the White House to find out who committed this crime? How can this Congress sit here with a straight face and allow that to be the way this issue is revealed? There ought to be an independent counsel. There is no way you can convince the American people that John Ashcroft, whose campaign manager was Karl Rove in the last election he lost, is going to do a real investigation of who broke the law in the White House. This Congress cannot let that go by because no intelligence agent is going to be safe in the United States if the fox has his way.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Texas for yielding me time. I am here to say you do not have to have a drawl to have this problem in your State. There are 50 States where this is a problem. I was walking across to my office building a minute ago, and I met a reporter from a major newspaper here in the East who said to me, ``What is going on in the Medicare conference?'' I said, ``I do not know. They are talking.'' So he said, ``Well, what do you hear?'' I said, ``We do not hear anything on the Democratic side. That is why we are out here every day trying to instruct those people.'' I went to our Democratic House Member who is on that conference committee and said, ``What is going on?'' He said, ``I do not know. They are not having any meetings where they are discussing anything.'' Now, they have been telling us we are going to have this bill. But this morning I was in the gym, and as I came out of the gym, I met one of my Republican colleagues, and I said to him, ``What does this drug thing look like? How does it look like it is coming?'' He said, ``Frankly, I hope it does not pass.'' I said, ``Really? Why?'' He said, ``Well, when they hang that doughnut hole around our neck in the next election, we are going to be dead.'' You just heard my colleague from Arkansas describe the doughnut hole. You have a $3,500 bill, and you get $900 in benefit, and you still have to pay a $35 a month premium. It is a terrible bill, and the House bill is based on the fact that they hope that the insurance companies will put something together. The reason we need the best of the Senate bill is at least they have a fallback position which would allow the Federal Government to set one up if the private sector cannot. Now, the other thing my colleague pointed out and that needs to be emphasized, this is so privatized that the House of Representatives said that the United States Government, represented by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, cannot negotiate lower prices on the basis of what is good for the American people. He is absolutely, by law, prohibited from doing what is best for the American people. What kind of a plan is that? This is throw the folks into the arms of the drug companies. They must have written every blessed word in it, including that line. They did not want the Secretary of Health and Human Services to sit down on behalf of 40 million people, because they know what happened to them when the Secretary of Veterans Affairs sat down on behalf of the veterans, 5 million of them, and got a huge discount. They are afraid that Mr. Thompson will negotiate something for them. Now, we will hear, I am sure, something is going to pass this Congress, whether it is any good or not will be for the people to decide, because the Republicans know they cannot go home without something. It better be worth something, or else they are going to pay in the next election, because they have been promising, and they have no excuse. They have the Presidency, they have the Senate, they have the House, and if they cannot put a bill out that does what the people need, they need to pay for it at the ballot box. That is what is being set up. We are instructing them the way to go if they want to do what is best for the American people. But if they want to do what is best for PhRMA and the drug companies, we will continue down this path, and no one will know, until one day a bill pops out here, 1,000 pages, and we vote on it, with nobody knowing what is in it. That will be wrong, and the payment will come at the ballot box.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today in my e-mail I got five separate copies of an article that was put in the Atlanta Journal Constitution by a man named Max Cleland. Max Cleland is a Vietnam vet who lost his legs and one arm. He is a triple amputee, was a United States Senator, and in the last campaign they attacked him for being unpatriotic. Max is a hero in my book. The fact that he would raise questions about what the President of the United States is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan did not make him unpatriotic. We are going to have a bill out here in a few days for $87 billion, and the same White House is going to attack all of us if we raise any questions. Max's article starts with an erie kind of quote: ``The public has been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete.'' These ``things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. We are today not far from a disaster.'' That is a quote from a guy named T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, the Sunday Times of London, August 22, 1920. The British know what they are into and they know where they have been; and if we take that quote and then ask ourselves what have we been told, we have been told that the mission has been accomplished. The President went out and said it is all over. There have been 304 people killed in Iraq, 167 of them, more than half, since the mission was accomplished. It was this President on October 14, 2002, who said, ``This is a man,'' meaning Saddam, ``that we know has had connections with al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army.'' Mr. Rumsfeld followed him right up and said, ``Yes, there is a linkage between al Qaeda and Iraq.'' And Condoleezza Rice, not to be outdone, said, ``There have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time.'' And then their story started to unravel. On September 16 of this year, almost 11 months later, the President comes out and says, ``I have not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.'' Condoleezza Rice jumped up again: ``And we never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either . . . direction or control of 9-11. What we've said is that this was someone who supported terrorists, helped them train.'' And Mr. Bush the next day said, ``There is no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties. We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks.'' The American people have been fed a PR campaign of misinformation from the very start. And while that has been going on, and I will have entered into the Record both the speech by Max Cleland and an article from the New York Newsday by Jimmy Breslin dated 23 September, while this has all been going on, our people have been dying. Some of you have been out to the Vietnam Memorial, and those panels get carved with those names in there. One can go up to Walter Reed Hospital up on Georgia Avenue and see people without arms and legs, just like Senator Cleland. While we keep getting misinformation out of the White House, Ryan Carlock, specialist, 416th Transportation Company, died on September 10; Joe Robsky from Fort Irwin, California, died on September 10; Henry Ybarra from Austin, Texas, died. And they keep dying and they keep dying. If we ask questions about this $87 billion, it does not make us unpatriotic. It makes us care about these men and women. [From the New York Newsday, Sept. 23, 2003] They Lied and Many Soldiers Died (By Jimmy Breslin) George Bush won't mention the names below in today's speech, nor will your gullible news and television people-- the Pekinese of the Press. Therefore we print promptly and thus prominently the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq and reported from Sept. 9 to Sept. 19: Spc. Ryan G. Carlock, 25, 416th Transportation Co., 260 Quartermaster Battalion (Petroleum Support), Hunter Army Airfield, Ga. Died in attack on truck Sept. 10. Home: Macomb, Ill. Staff Sgt. Joe Robsky, 31, 759 Ordnance Co., Fort Irwin, Calif. Home is a mobile home park trailer in Elizaville, N.W. Died in Baghdad while trying to defuse a homemade bomb on Sept. 10. He volunteered for this duty because he didn't want children killed by land mines. Sgt. Henry Ybarra III, 32, D Troop, 6th Squadron, 6th Calvary. Home: Austin, Texas. Died when truck tire exploded, Sept. 11. Marine Sgt. Kevin N. Morehead, 33 3rd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group. Home: Little Rock, Ark. Died of wounds received when raiding enemy forces. Sgt. 1st Class William M. Bennett, 35, 3rd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group. Home: Little Rock, Ark. Died of wounds received when raiding enemy forces. Sgt. Trevor A. Blumberg, 22, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne, Fort Bragg, N.C. Home: Canton, Mich. Died in attack on his vehicle in Baghdad on Sept. 14. Staff Sgt. Kevin C. Kimberly, 31, 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, North Creek, N.Y. Killed when his vehicle was hit by rocket-propelled grenade while on patrol in Baghdad Sept. 15. Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson, 27, 311 Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky. Home: Flagstaff, Ariz. Died of wounds on Sept. 15 at Tel Afar. Spc. James C. Wright, 27 Fourth Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. Home: Delhi Township, Ohio. Died when vehicle hit by rocket-propelled grenade during ambush near Tikrit on Sept. 18. George Bush told lies and they died. First, your government lied to ensure Bush's re-election. Who votes against a president in time of war? And even better, you get oil with the winning election. So Bush lied to you. Not misstatements. Lies. He and his people threw away their honor and consciences to lie to the people. they had sworn to protect. The lies of Washington put young men from Seymour, Tenn., and Maspeth, Queens and Palos Hills, Ill., into boxes. And that, dear reader, is quite a lie. At the start, Bush claimed that Iraq had poison gas and was making nuclear weapons. Soon, they will poison us all and blow us up. His proof was documents forged by elementary- school pupils. Still, Bush used it in his State of the Union speech. Condoleezza Rice said it was only 23 words in a speech. What are you so concerned about? The 23 words were only about nuclear bombs. Look now at the lie that George Bush carries into the United Nations today: We went into Iraq because they were part of the World Trade Center attack. That's what they told you, and Americans, who honor their government, believed what their government told them. And so did all those young people as they were about to put up their lives in the desert. On Oct. 14, 2002, Bush said, ``This is a man [Saddam] that we know has had connections with al-Qaida. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al-Qaida as a forward army.'' Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, on Sept. 26, 2002, ``Yes, there is a linkage between al-Qaida and Iraq.'' Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said on Sept. 25, 2002, ``There have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of al-Qaida gong back for actually quite a long time.'' They knew exactly what they were saying and what it would do. It was using a Big Lie in an age of screens and faxes. What did you think it was, a government telling you the truth? Why should they do that? At summer's end, suspicions rose. It was time to change the lie before it became a liability. How do you do that? By using the ultimate con: telling the truth. Here in the world of professional lying is how you use the truth to defuse a lie when it becomes dangerous to keep: Suddenly, Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 16 announced, ``I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.'' That same day, Condoleezza Rice jumped up and chirped, ``And we have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either . . . direction or control of 9/11. What we've said is that this was someone who supported terrorists, helped train them.'' And then the next day, George Bush said, ``There's no question that Saddam Hussein has al-Qaida ties. We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11 attacks.'' So the three now say that they never said that Hussein was involved in the World Trade Center attack. Look up what we said. We never said it. Of course they did. Anybody who thinks they didn't is a poor fool. Take a half-word out of a sentence, replace it with a smug smile or chin motion and the meaning is there. Saddam was in on the Trade Center with bin Laden. Of course Bush and his people said it. Then go to the whip, go to the truth. Only the strong memory is an opponent, and there are few of them. Otherwise, the only thing that can remind people and maybe even inflame them are these dead bodies coming back from Iraq to Heber, Calif. They arrive here in silence. We have no idea of how many wounded are in government hospitals with no arms or legs. You never hear Bush talking about them. He often acts as if subjects like this have nothing to do with him.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, in the next few days, we will hear people say that if you do not support that $87 billion, you are against the troops and you do not care what is happening to our people in Iraq. The fact is that since this war started, 304 people have died. Mr. Speaker, 167 have died since the President announced that the mission was accomplished. And now they want us to give them a blank check with $87 billion. They will not change one single thing. They will not acknowledge anything with the international community; they will not change anything. Mr. Speaker, Sergeant Lunsford Brown died on September 20. Captain Brian Faunce died on September 18. Sergeant David Freidrich died on September 20. Sergeant Paul Sturino died on September 22. They continue to die, and the President will not tell us how he is going to get us out of this morass, except give me more money or you are unpatriotic. Members in this House who want to ask questions are not unpatriotic. The people who make those kinds of charges ought to stand down here and tell people what they did when their chance came. Some of us served. I was not in Vietnam, but I was in the hospitals dealing with people who came back. Everybody in this body ought to go out to Walter Reed and walk around Unit 56 and look at those amputees and talk to them.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for yielding me time. And I appreciate his tenacity for bringing this out here for what I think is the 22nd time to make a point. Now, the next few days we are going to work on an $87 billion bill for Iraq. The President has said we have to give him this money. If we do not give it to him, we are not patriotic. Anybody who wants to quibble about it or ask questions or raise any concerns, is clearly not patriotic and not supporting the troops. Well, let me tell you something, this child tax credit does not go to a family whose father or mother is serving in Iraq today making $29,000. Now, my colleague honestly said, a Congressman gets it, a Congressman gets it, but a sergeant serving in Iraq, getting shot at from every corner, his wife is back home someplace at Ft. Hood or whatever taking care of kids, and they do not get it. Now, I know there are going to be a lot of people out here puffing out their chest and talking about how much they have cared about the troops and how much they care about winning the war and all the rest, they are going to talk about a bill that will have money in it to build schools in Iraq and to put the electric lights on in Iraq and fix up the water system and the sewage system. But for kids of the soldiers, there is no money. Now, if that is considered fair by the Republicans, I certainly hope they can explain it to the troops when they come home, how it was that we could spend billions of dollars fixing up Iraq, but we could not give money to the wife or the stay-at-home person who is taking care of some military kids, some money to provide better day care or better child care for them. It is so unfair on the face of it, I do not know how you can have the gall to stand up here and say that you care. If you do not care about the kids, what are the fathers over there fighting for, or what are the mothers over from fighting for? They are fighting for their children and their future. And you are saying because you do not make enough money, you are not going to get it. If you make enough, like a Congressman, you make whatever we make, you get it. But if you only make $29,000, I guess you are not worth it or your kids are not worth it. I do not know how they explain that. It makes no sense in human terms. It may make some budgetary sense when you drive the country $500 billion in debt in one year, I guess you got to cut somewhere, so let us cut the kids that belong to some sergeant or some lance corporal in the Marines or some chief petty officer in the United States Navy. They do not need it, because we got to buy this other stuff, whatever it is, in Iraq. That is what is wrong with this bill and has been wrong from the very start. The people at the bottom, who need it most, do not get it. And they knew that when they came out of the Committee on Ways and Means that my distinguished colleague from Washington and I both sit on. They knew it. They knew they were not going to get this money, and they just glossed it over and said, well, we do not have to worry about that. Well, somebody has to worry about the sergeant's kids, and, boy, it better be the United States Congress that does it. I urge the adoption of the motion.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this morning I went out to Walter Reed Hospital again. I went out 2 weeks ago. There are boys still coming home without legs, without eyes, all kinds of casualties. And one cannot help but listen to my colleague from Florida and think how well our troops are doing and what they are doing on behalf of all of us, but to continue to see what is going on at Walter Reed is very sobering. And everybody who is going to vote for money around here in the next week or so ought to go out to Walter Reed and walk around and talk to some of these people. Talk to the kid I talked to today who was riding in a Humvee that ran over one of these IEDs that implement some kind of explosive device that people just make up by tying a bunch of things together, and he loses a leg and is on a ventilator at Walter Reed. When you see that, you realize that we could do all of these humanitarian projects, and God knows they need them, there is plenty of stuff to do; but until we are able to bring security to that country, we are not going to be really dealing with what affects the Iraqis, nor protects our own people. Now, I came back from Walter Reed and I sat down in my office and I turned on the television, and there is the President talking at the United Nations. Just like the last talk: We know what is right. You people ought to get behind us. The same tone to the world that we heard before. The world believes that we all ought to do it together in the United Nations. We ought to make it that way, not the United States charging out and deciding we are going to do it, and you are either for us or against us. That kind of cowboy mentality did not work, and it has created the mess we have today. There was no hint in anything the President said of acknowledging the foolishness of going to Iraq alone. What he wanted them to do was to say, you are right, you did exactly the right thing, and we were really wrong. We should have endorsed what you were doing from the start. But the world is not going to do that. The President is going to have to change the tone in which he talks, and, Mr. Speaker, I do not know how we get him to do that. We are going to have an opportunity with a resolution for $87 billion. Now, Mr. Bremmer was over in the Senate yesterday, and he said, we do not anticipate having to ask for any more. Now, this is the war department of Mr. Rumsfeld that did not anticipate that they would need water purification, did not anticipate the need for generators, did not anticipate anything in the way of reconstruction. That is why we are in the mess we are in today. Everybody knew we were going to win the war. Our troops are the best in the world, but it is how we put it together afterward that is so missing, and the United States cannot do it by itself. We cannot write all the rules and regulations. Yesterday, the newspaper carried a story that says Iraq is now for sale. The United States has sort of put this thing through this council they have that will allow companies to come in and buy the companies in Iraq and take over. One Iraqi reacted by saying, well, now it is not going to be just the Americans here. The whole world's going to come and take advantage of us in this process. This war department headed by Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz, nobody has changed. They are still talking the same way. These are the people who told us that this would all be over in 3 months; that the Iraqi people would run out and throw their arms around our soldiers; that we would use all that oil money; we would rebuild the country with the oil money. None of it was true, and they knew some of it was not true when the President came here before us. We cannot have a war built on a faulty premise. Now we are going to have this week the opportunity to look at this $87 billion. We can just write another blank check for the President, rubber stamp it, give it to him; or we can require that he negotiate with the United Nations.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I came rushing over here to make a public service announcement. There is a hurricane coming. But the name is not Isabel. The name is George. Ever since President Bush got elected, this Congress has rubber- stamped every single tax cut he came up with. In fact, I got over here in such a hurry, I forgot my rubber stamp. But the fact is that, at some point, the President has to be brought to reality. I saw the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) out here all exercised over this. This is only $12 billion he is giving away this time. This is chump change. I do not know. I think he has lost his nerve maybe. Because he comes in here one day and asks for $87 billion, and then he says, by the way, let us give away another $12 billion to people. I hope Americans, if they just remember that I gave them all that money and put them $44 trillion in debt in the future, they will reelect me. You say where do I get that number? Well, the Financial Times, and this is no liberal newspaper I want the Members to understand, they revealed that the Bush administration shelved a report commissioned by the Treasury Department that shows that the U.S. economy faces a future of chronic budget deficits totaling $44 trillion, the study's most comprehensive assessment of how the U.S. Government is at risk at being overwhelmed by the baby boom generation's future health and retirement costs. This President does not care about anything except if he can trick the people with a tax cut, he thinks he can get elected. They will forget about the mess he has created in Iraq. They will forget about the mess in Afghanistan. I have got $12 billion more for you, folks, that is our President's plan, and they are going to keep trying to give money away. They act like the $480 billion is nothing. They put on another $100 billion this week, 87 for Iraq and $13 billion in this bill. Is there any end? One would say this was somebody who was addicted if one was talking in any other terms. I mean they cannot get off the needle of tax cuts. And if the Congress does not stand up, when are the people going to be taken care of? Is this bill saving our country? Is it going to make more jobs? I think not. There is no plan to spend any money on making jobs, no. This is just give $12 billion more away so that companies will give more to charity because the Government is not doing its job.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor with a heavy heart today. The wards are full at Walter Reed Army Hospital and Bethesda Naval Hospital, full of young men and women who were sent by their country to defend their country, whose minds have to have the question today, why was I sent there? The President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain have lost the confidence of their own people. They misled us over and over and over again. They must come clean and tell the American people the truth. This is so reminiscent of what I went through during the Vietnam years that it is eerie. A government that says, well, things are better today, things are better today, and another boy or another girl gets killed or is sent back to Walter Reed or Bethesda maimed. The President has got to come forward and tell us the truth about what it is going to cost, where we are going to get the people. They will not talk about a draft, but they have kept those reservists and those National Guard people over there for a year. Those people volunteered to support their country when it needed them. How long are you going to keep them there, Mr. President?

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today I introduced a House Resolution extending the condolences of the United States House of Representatives to the family of Dr. David Kelly. Dr. Kelly died on July 18th in an apparent suicide. The day before, he appeared in front of the House of Commons' Foreign Affairs committee where he was questioned about the role in the controversy between the British Broadcasting Corporation and the government of the United Kingdom over a British intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Kelly's professional integrity and dedication to finding the truth earned him great respect both at home in Great Britain as well as among his international colleagues. Between 1991 and 1998, Dr. Kelly played an essential role in the efforts of the United Nations Special Commission to dismantle Iraq's banned chemical, biological, and ballistic programs. His professional integrity and dedication to finding the truth made the world safer for all of us. [From The Guardian, July 24, 2003] What David Kelly Knew: the killing of Saddam's sons won't divert attention for long from the specious reasons given for invading Iraq (By Richard Norton-Taylor) Uday and Qusay are killed and the delighted British and American governments suggest that Iraq will be a safer place. Yes, Iraqis may well feel safer. And--with the dictator's brutal sons out of the way for ever--more confident about continuing the resistance against the American occupiers. Shortly before their deaths were announced, Richard Gephardt, Democrat presidential hopeful, delivered a blistering attack on Bush's foreign policy which was driven, he said, by ``machismo'' and ``arrogant unilateralism''. Bush, he continued, had treated US allies ``like so many flies on America's windshield''. He added: ``Foreign policy isn't a John Wayne movie.'' The attack on the villa where Saddam's sons were hiding might be seen as driving home the point. Instead, the announcement that they had been killed by US troops in a shoot-out is welcomed by Tony Blair as ``great news''. Jack Straw was more circumspect. He said the death of what he called ``extremely unpleasant psychopaths'' would bring relief for the Iraqi people. But he added: ``I am not rejoicing. I mourn the death of anybody, but it has to be said that it is a very great relief for all Iraqis.'' Both the prime minister and the foreign secretary seized the opportunity to remind us about the brutality of Saddam's regime. This was something many of us pointed out more than 15 years ago. But then, Straw says, there was a Conservative government and, anyway, Iraq was at war with Iran. It was as though they were mightily relieved that attention had been diverted away from the increasingly damaging controversy over what weapons of mass destruction, if any, Iraq possessed when Bush and Blair decided to invade the country, and from the death of David Kelly in particular. And it was another welcome opportunity to remind us of the nature of the Saddam regime. Uday and Qusay, Blair told journalists yesterday, were responsible for the torture and killing of thousands of Iraqis. That is not, of course, what we were told we were going to war for and is not the legal justification the attorney general gave for it. Never mind; let's milk the deaths of Saddam's sons as much as possible and hope the dictator soon shares their fate. But Dr Kelly's death will continue to haunt the government. The man described by Blair after his death as a ``fine public servant'' was dismissed, before it, by those in Whitehall battling with the BBC as some kind of middle-ranking expert, pretty marginal in the general scheme of things. In fact, he was a central figure in the government's continuing quest for evidence of banned weapons in Iraq. He had recently been to Iraq to advise the US-led Survey Group of scientists (including former UN inspectors damned so recently by Washington as incompetent), which Bush and Blair so desperately hopes will come up with credible evidence which could give them a post-hoc justification for war. It is a tragic irony that Kelly will not be able to continue the work. A fellow expert on biological and chemical weapons familiar with Iraq described Kelly yesterday as a ``real loss--he knew the place so well, the individuals so well, he's not somebody you could easily replace''. Kelly was one of the toughest and most effective Unscom weapons inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s. He was convinced Saddam Hussein had possessed weapons of mass destruction. As a senior adviser to both the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office on the threat posed by chemical and biological weapons he had to have access to up-to-date intelligence to do his job. So when he told journalists he had misgivings about the government's now largely discredited September dossier it was extremely significant. If MPs on the Commons foreign affairs committee had bothered to listen to the substance of what he told them instead of scoring points in the battle between the government and the BBC--of which Kelly was a victim--they too would have heard important evidence. Kelly told the committee there was only a 30 percent chance that Iraq had chemical or biological weapons. That Iraq could deploy them within 45 minutes of an order to do so--``ready'' was the word Blair used in the dossier's foreword--was ``highly unlikely'', Kelly told the MPs. Between issuing orders and firing the weapons was a ``long process'', he said. He should know. We are now told that what MI6's agent, an Iraqi brigadier- general, said when he was reactivated--conveniently, shortly before the September dossier was published--was that the Iraqis had a command, control and communications system (presumably bombed out of existence in the first days of the war, if not before) that would have enabled Saddam or his close military associates to contact commanders in the field within 45 minutes authorising the use of WMD. That does not mean deploying them, let alone having them ``ready''. Kelly was a serious and senior source highly respected by his peers. These did not include the armed forces minister, Adam Ingram, who--after Kelly took the conscientious decision to admit to a senior MoD official that he had talked to the BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan--told the world that ``action has been taken against him accordingly''. Challenging the BBC to rule out the scientist as the source, Ingram said: ``Hopefully, that would allow Dr Kelly to carry on with his career in the MoD.'' With such threats hanging over him, it is scarcely surprising if he was under stress before he gave evidence to the committee--even more so after he told the MPs he was not Gilligan's main source. That, too, was not what the MoD wanted him to say. The world, let alone Iraq, would really have been a safer place had David Kelly been allowed to do his job. Some people in Downing Street and the MoD have a lot to answer for.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, could the Chair kindly tell us the amount of time left for each of us?

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today's votes are not about the merits of liberalizing or opening up foreign markets to American goods and services. Democrats and Republicans both support doing that because over 90 percent of our consumers live outside the United States borders. I represent a congressional district whose economy relies heavily on exports, but my district is also deeply concerned about the process by which economies liberalize and the effects these liberalizations have on working families and the environment in which they live. Process is very important. Read James Madison. The rules that the Congress laid out in the fast track bill were not met. Fast track requires the U.S. Trade Representative to consult with several private- sector advisory committees to seek their opinion about trade agreements, but Mr. Zoellick refused to provide these committees with the final text of the agreements before they were required by law to respond. Many on the committees voiced frustration over this. One committee, the Advisory Committee on Services, had this to say when they submitted their final analysis of the Singapore agreement: ``It should be noted that our members were challenged by the lack of available text during the 30-day period we had to conduct this analysis and write this report.'' Mr. Speaker, after EarthJustice represented several environmental groups in court to seek the release of documents used in the U.S.-Chile negotiations, a district court ruled that the U.S. Trade Representative was wrong to deny Americans these documents. After that ruling, instead of opening up, the Inside U.S. Trade article which I offer for the Record says, ``The Office of the USTR is now formally classifying negotiating texts and related documents as exempt from the Freedom of Information Act requests on national security grounds as a part of an overall effort aimed at tightening the flow of information on trade policy between the executive branch and the private sector.'' The Congress needs more time, not less. We do not need obstruction from the USTR. I believe that our Founding Fathers wanted it to be an open process. For that reason, I suggest that we reject this document and we will go back to the drawing boards. Mr. Zoellick has to follow the law. Let people have the information. Do not hide behind secrecy on national security grounds. Mr. Speaker, I will enter in the Record at this point an article from Inside U.S. Trade, dated April 25, 2003.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I offer a privileged motion.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.