David Scott

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield for one moment, and don't you agree, there is such a thirst on the part of the American people for their confidence to be restored in this process, that was what was evident in last fall's election, that nobody is saying cut and run, nobody is saying that you will be unpatriotic if you speak to this. They want us to speak to this. They want us to do our job, and I think that is what you were pointing out in your remarks. One of the two points I wanted to mention too that you alluded to in our House Resolution 97, that I would like for you to be able to expand upon, and that is that the American people need to know that in this bill we will require the inspector generals of the Defense Department, of the Pentagon, to come before this Congress quarterly, not once a year, every 90 days, quarterly, to make reports on how the money is being spent. Never again, never again, will our veterans be suffering in the condition that our veterans are suffering now. The American people are appalled at that. They want some transparency. They want some accountability. You talked about earlier, we talked about Halliburton. We talked about the abuse, the contracting. In this bill, we have made sure that the Inspector General for the Iraqi Reconstruction Program comes before this Congress and gives quarterly reports on how that money is being spent, no more waste, no more fraud, no more war profiteering. The shame of the neglect of oversight is going to be rectified with this bill. I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you very much, Congressman Wilson. Your comments and your participation is so meaningful in helping us bring some light to this issue, especially in extrapolating and explaining to the American people the legislation that we are putting forward. I look forward to you staying with us as we perhaps get into a few more conversations on this issue. But we are also joined with another Member, a distinguished member of our Blue Dog Coalition and a very good friend and who is a very, very significant voice in this Congress in bringing some truth and some transparency so that we can improve the position of our military and make sure that we are responsive to the American people, and that is Mr. John Salazar from Colorado, a very distinguished Member and a hard- working member of the Blue Dog Coalition and a great friend. Madam Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado as much time as he may need.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Well stated. Eloquent and very well stated. And you touched on so many important issues. The strain on our military; and the young lady was so poignant in that. And American people need to understand that, how much more can our military take? Every person, even when the issue was put forward when General Casey and General Abizaid came over here, our Armed Services Committee, I think you may have been on that committee, asked them: Do you need more troops? No, we don't need any more troops. That was just in November. And something changed just in about 30 or 50 days, for all of a sudden now it came. And I want to thank the young lady for your statement. It was very well stated and hit all of the points right on the head in terms of the direction we need to go. And the American people are definitely in step with us. Madam Speaker, I thank you for the time. Please remember this is our Blue Dog hour, and we appreciate the opportunity to talk.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. We are very pleased to have you, and we certainly thank you for bringing those points and for adding to the discussion. As I stated before, I wanted to just share as we go through this, as we talk about House Resolution 97 and our bill on the supplemental, it is important to understand so that we are not caught up in all of this rhetoric and misinformation about what the Democrats are doing, it is very important to understand our shared principles in this legislation and fully funding our national defense. This bill fully funds and supports our troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are upholding these points, requiring the President to simply honor the standards the Department of Defense has set for troop readiness, for training, for equipment. We have just seen that many of our troops have gone into harm's way without the body equipment that they need. What is wrong with making sure that our troops are protected, that they have the body armor? That is what the Democratic plan does. What is wrong with making sure that they are rested and that they are ready? That is what the Democratic plan does. We want to send our young men into harm's way? Make sure they are protected, make sure they are ready and that they are rested, and to make sure that they have been trained. And on each one of those counts, Madam Speaker, this administration has fallen short, and the American people know it, and that is the central core of the bill. Secondly, we have got to hold the Iraqi government to the same standards for progress that the President outlined in announcing the escalation. The President made certain standards. All we are doing is reaffirming these in the legislation so that we have those standards. And then, providing urgently needed support to address the military medical care crisis for our veterans at Walter Reed and other hospitals. And that is why the American people are out in front of us and support wholeheartedly what the Democratic proposal is. Let me continue, if I may, on what it is that we are doing so the American people can be clear. On those three points, just simply requiring the President to honor the standards that the Defense Department sets for their military to be ready, that they have rest, that they have equipment. What can be more plain and commonsense than that? And then holding the Iraqis to the same standards that he put forward in support of the escalation he asked for. And then, thirdly, to provide the urgently needed support to address the military medical care and crisis at Walter Reed and other hospitals that I just got through alluding to and the excellent report in the Washington Post today. The need for accountability on Iraq is clear. Holding the President to his own military readiness policies and performance standards is certainly a good way to start. The alternative is only the President's open-ended commitment in this war, and that is one thing we cannot continue. Our children's lives are too precious, our tax dollars are too precious to continue to be pouring in an open-ended policy. We have got to find a way to bring this matter to conclusion, not in any kind of way of, as the opponents would say, my friends on the other side of the aisle, cut and run. That is all they can say. We want to be there until victory. Well, what is victory? What is victory if it is not what we set out what we were to do in the very beginning, finds weapons of mass destruction, which we did, and they are no longer there? Iraq did not attack this country. This country was attacked by al Qaeda. And al Qaeda is in Afghanistan on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Osama bin Ladin is there on the Pakistan side. I was there. I went over to Pakistan, I went over to Afghanistan. I talked with President Karzai. They know where they are. What are we doing in Iraq, and why did we go? The Congress is working hard to achieve consensus around these shared principles. And let me just say, politics is no easy business. Making laws is sort of making sausage: It is not the prettiest thing in the world. But it is our system. It is give and it is take. It is trying to get 218 votes. It is pulling coalitions together. And that is why you see legislation with the variety of different components in it. But there are some standards here, and we hope that the President will join us in the effort to protect our troops in the field, require accountability from the Iraqi government, and fix the care crisis for our wounded soldiers and our veterans. And, finally, understand that he isn't the only one on the ball field. We all have a role to play. The Founding Fathers made our position clear, and that clarity is speaking on this floor today. And now I want to recognize another one of the distinguished Members from New Hampshire (Ms. Porter) who is doing just a wonderful job, and we thank you for coming on the floor and being a part of our debate and discussion. I yield as much time as she may need to Ms. Porter from New Hampshire.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. I thank Congressman Mahoney. You brought some excellent points up about the need for us to make sure that this funding goes through the normal appropriations process. It might be useful for us to just share with our American people, when we say the normal, the regular appropriations process, is that this President has up to this point funded this war, which has lasted now longer than World War II, on emergency supplementals. And what that does is it foregoes oversight, it doesn't allow Congress to do the job that it has done. And this is why I believe in strong measure this Congress has changed hands. The American people want to see us do our job and bring about the transparency. And that is what is involved in both House Resolution 97 as well as in our leadership bill on the supplemental, the full supplemental bill that we are working on as well. And I certainly thank the gentleman.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Well, thank you, Mr. Salazar. You have done extraordinarily well in presenting the very crucible of our bill, which is bringing the accountability, bringing the needed transparency. No more, no place is it needed more so than in the care of our wounded soldiers. And so much has fallen through the cracks. I read this report. I just want to, I will go back to it for a moment, Mr. Salazar, because it says this. It says that more than 25,000 service members have been wounded in the two wars, and nearly half seriously enough that they can not return to duty within 72 hours. The delays in the Army's rating of disability have been a source of deep frustration for many, with wounded soldiers waiting hours to be moved on, days, and sometimes months to be moved on with their lives outside the military. Many in the National Guard themselves have lost their jobs. We have yet to even come to the depths of the pain that our soldiers are faced with as a result of this. So when the President says send 21,000 more in, send these in, he never again, this President will never again have to go before the voters. But you do and I do. And when we go back before them, they will know that we have done everything in our power to bring a right look on a wrong situation, and to correct this terrible, terrible imbalance for our veterans. And so I thank you for your participation, and I thank you for highlighting that great need. I appreciate your passion for this. We are very, very, pleased for your presentation. Madam Speaker, before I bring in another person, I want to make a point, because I think it is very important that we take a moment to address what the leadership of the Democratic Party in this House of Representatives is really talking about in our legislation. We had, prior to this, a truth squad, and you have people who are trying to make it this or make it that. We realize, as Democrats, that we have an obligation to fulfill the desires and the wishes of the American people for a change in direction in Iraq, among other places, but definitely in Iraq. And it is not an easy thing to do. But it is, as I pointed out earlier, in our exclusive power to legislate and to appropriate and to provide the oversight. That is critical. And this is what we are proposing in our troop readiness, veterans, health, and Iraq accountability act. This is what the talk is about. Let me just, point by point, go through the points so we understand. As the war in Iraq enters its fifth year, with no end in sight, that is fundamentally the most worrisome thing on the minds of the American people. This has gone on longer than World War II. There has never been the clear mission, beyond go and find if they have got weapons of mass destruction. When the soldiers went and they determined that they didn't, that should have ended it. There was no authorization to go in and remove a regime. There were no Iraqis that marched on the Capitol in Washington and said bring us a democracy. Democracy is hard. It requires people to want it in their gut. We are dealing with a society and a region in the Middle East where these civil wars have been going on, in some shape or form, since Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, Ishmael, Esau, the prophet Mohammed and his son-in- law, which brought about the split of the Sunnis and the Shias. Thousands of years, that is what this is. Our children have no business losing their lives in this war. The President has asked that money continue to be provided with no strings attached. The American people want some strings attached. The reason is because as we just got through doing, with what is happening at Walter Reed, with what is happening to our veterans, with the fact of no body armor. We are not going without being rested and properly equipped, well after the American people have called for a new direction. That set the stage for what we are going to offer in this bill. And I want to come back to that, and I want to pause for a moment because we do have another one of our distinguished Members with us, and he has been working very hard as a member of the Blue Dogs and has also been working very hard in this area of bringing transparency and accountability to the situation in Iraq and responding to the needs of the American people. And I want to recognize for as much time as he may need, Congressman Mahoney of Florida.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Would the gentleman yield just for one point because I think it is very important. You bring up this important point that we need to remind the people of America that when that came to our attention, it was Democrats, Democrats who provided the leadership with the amendment to put into the spending bill money for the body armor; that we could have known about the shortage if there was oversight, if that Congress, the Republican Congress, would not just automatically just bend over and rubber stamp. That is why this bill is so important, that we don't have that bypassing with this special emergency supplemental way of funding a war. And I go back to the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and that is why they gave it to us because the House of Representatives is the House that is closest to the people. We were more sensitive, just as you and I are now, to do everything we can to correct this matter. And we also put in there money to reimburse their parents. So many of our soldiers were writing home to mama and to daddy asking them for money for body armor. The shame of this country. Never again will that happen. And that is why we need this bill. I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Again, it is a great privilege to address this House in the Special Order for the Blue Dog Democratic Coalition, and we are delighted to do so. This is a very critical time in the juncture of our Nation. We are faced with a ballooning debt. We have an overextended military. We are in the midst of a very controversial war. It is paramount that Congress not just weigh in, but weigh in heavily as due our constitutional obligations. As we all know, the Constitution speaks very clearly on this matter. In Article I, Section 8, it speaks very clearly that it is exclusively Congress' responsibility when it comes to military action and foreign policy. And that is this: it says that only Congress has the exclusive right to determine the purse strings. In other words, the exact verbiage in the Constitution is ``to raise and support the military.'' And then, secondly, to legislate. And quite naturally, it gave the executive branch comparative duties in a time of war. You know, Madam Speaker, in preparation for this time on the floor, I went back into the Constitution because I wanted to examine how this came about. And if you go back in the Constitution around 1787, if I am not mistaken, there was a great debate on how to handle the question of war and foreign policy facing our Nation. And it was handled by two of our greatest Founding Fathers, one was Alexander Hamilton and the other was James Madison. But you know, Madam Speaker, it was a peculiar circumstance that neither Hamilton nor Madison used their names. That struck me as very strange. Hamilton wrote under the name of Pacificus, and Madison wrote under the name of Helvidius. And I wondered about that. Why? But it was only on this profound question. Because it was so heavily debated, it was so heavily controversial that neither party wanted the public to know exactly who was saying what. But it was very important that they agree on the substance to leave this issue very flexible. But the one important point that they made was it would be the Congress, and expressly the House of Representatives of the Congress, that would have the final say so on the money end and on the legislative end, and that is what we are here to do today. For the American people are looking to this Congress to indeed weigh in. And Hamilton and Madison will smile kindly on us today. Leading off our discussion, Madam Speaker, is one of our distinguished Members, one of our cochairs for communications, one of my dear friends from the great State of Arkansas, Representative Mike Ross.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on this legislation and to insert extraneous material therein.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 755) to require annual oral testimony before the Financial Services Committee of the Chairperson or a designee of the Chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, relating to their efforts to promote transparency in financial reporting.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. We thank the young lady from California for your excellent insight on this, and your commentary was certainly well received, and it helped to shed the light on the debt and the importance of it. So we appreciate this hour, the Blue Dog hour, as we continue each Tuesday night to talk about the budget, to talk about bringing fiscal responsibilities and being good stewards to the taxpayers' money. It has been a good evening.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Especially what was most disheartening was the buildup to that war, to use the credibility of General Colin Powell, and then to abandon what you refer to, with the huge number of troops, the Powell doctrine. You are going to go in, you go in with force.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentlelady would yield for a moment, I think it very important for us to realize, you also alluded to it, you might want to hit on it a little more, the unfairness of it all, the war being paid on borrowed money. Every dime we are spending in our government, for our services, on borrowed money, it is not going to last that long. Many civilizations and nations have gone down because of ballooning debt. If you look at all of them that have gone down, ballooning debt is what played such a great part, and the selfishness of the tax cuts, the war, whatever we are doing, and we are selfishly doing that and putting the burden, as you alluded to, on the backs of our children and our grandchildren. I think you make an excellent point there.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. We certainly thank you. And I hope you might hang around a little bit. We may get into a little soliloquy here. I would like very much to now recognize one of our longstanding Blue Dogs, certainly established as a leader in this Congress, one who befriended me, one who makes a sterling contribution as a leader of the United States Congress, the young lady from California, Ms. Loretta Sanchez. I yield the young lady as much time as she may need.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. We are so proud to do that.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. And we just want to say thank you personally to those soldiers for their sacrifice, for their service, and express to them a great gratitude for a very, very grateful Nation.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. And you and I have talked about that, and I just want to share for a moment the touching experience that we shared going and flying into Ramstein Air Base and going to Landstuhl to the medical center and going from room to room. We went and we talked with soldiers fresh off the battlefield in very serious conditions, and it was a remarkable experience. And I know you joined me in saying that on the floor, we salute those soldiers.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. One of the fundamental charges I felt and responsibilities I felt going, and you did, too, we talked about it, was we have got to improve the image of working with other nations to move forward. But I think that the highlight to me and I think to you was that visit with the soldiers.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentlewoman would yield for a moment. I would like very much to engage you in the feeling of that trip. And it was so important to gather with representatives of those 26 other nations and 13 associate nations with NATO, because we have got to understand, we can't go it alone.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. I certainly thank the gentleman for his observations. They have been very illuminating to us especially on the budget. We have a number of other Blue Dogs here we want to bring into this. I want to now recognize my good friend from Illinois and one of my fellow travelers. We just returned together from NATO, and she has some refreshing observations, I am sure, from that trip of how it relates. She is a good friend and one of the hard-working Blue Dogs who is making a great contribution to this Congress, and that is Ms. Melissa Bean of Illinois. I yield the young lady as much time as she may need.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentleman will yield for a point. I think it is very important, you pointed out that in 2004, if I heard you correctly, $24 billion of Federal Government spending went absolutely unaccounted for. But the other point of that is that this Congress, or the Republican-controlled Congress during that time, did not hold the executive branch accountable for the omission. So not only was the money unaccounted for, there was no means of putting forward accountability by the executive branch.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Well, thank you. The gentleman from Tennessee brings a lot of depth to his thinking, and we appreciate his contribution tonight. Now I want to recognize and yield time to my distinguished friend from the great State of Ohio, the sixth district. He serves on the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Science and Technology, my good friend, Congressman Charlie Wilson. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. You make a very good point, and I think it is tantamount and the American people have seen through and are seeing through the rhetoric of the Bush administration. They are not buying cut and run. The American people went to the polls in November and they did not go to the polls to cut and run. They went to the polls to change direction, a new direction. There is no question about the fact that we have a vital interest in the Middle East. We know that for the foreseeable future, clearly 45 percent of all of the known oil reserves would be under that region and certainly under Iran alone. All of the geologists have pointed out that 25 percent is under that region. There is a great responsibility for us all there. Nobody is talking about cut and run. We are talking about what is happening here is a civil war, and these Iraqis have got to fight that out for themselves, just as surely as it would not have been right for Germany or France to come and plop a hundred or 200,000 troops in the middle of our civil war. That had to be settled by us. They have got to settle their civil war. We have got to contain the situation, and that is how this new direction needs to evolve. I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you, and the gentleman brought up some very interesting points. We are going to talk a little bit more about that, but I know the Americans may be asking, well, what are the Blue Dogs going to do? What is their plan? We have a 12-point plan for budget reform. I want to briefly hit the points right quick. One, require a balanced budget; two, do not let Congress buy on credit; three, put a lid on spending; four, require agencies to put their fiscal house in order; five, make Congress tell taxpayers how much they are spending; six, set aside a rainy day fund; seven, do not hide votes to raise the debt limit; eight, justify spending for all projects; nine, ensure that Congress reads the bills that it is voting on; ten, require honest cost estimates for every bill that Congress votes on; eleven, make sure new bills fit the budget; and twelve, make Congress do a better job of keeping tabs on government programs. Now, I want to yield to my distinguished friend from Tennessee who is just one of the hardest working Members up here and a leader in the Blue Dogs, Congressman Lincoln Davis from Tennessee. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Chandler, I want to make sure that the American people got what you just said. Now, just to make sure that they get it, what you said was that in the last 6 years under this administration this country has borrowed more money from foreign governments than all of the previous administrations going all of the way back to 1789, counting all of the wars, counting the Depression, World War I and World War II, all of the way up to now. From 1789 to 2001, we didn't borrow as much money as we have borrowed in the last 6 years. That is very important. And the other staggering point about that is just the interest that we are paying on this loan is the fastest growing segment of our budget, and just the interest that we are paying to these countries is more than we are collectively spending on our veterans, on homeland security, and on education. That is a remarkable state of financial irresponsibility; and the Blue Dogs are providing the leadership, have been for many years, and finally we got a first step into this process during the first 100 days under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi in passing the PAYGO legislation.