Mr. Speaker, when General Petraeus testified before Congress last month, there was a lot of happy talk from the administration about how much improved things had gotten in Iraq. From the way they talked, you would have thought that Iraq had become a sort of paradise, a middle eastern Shangri-La.

But now it's back to harsh reality, and yesterday the administration handed us yet another bill for their senseless occupation of Iraq. This time, the tab is $46 billion in supplemental funding. And this is for Iraq as well as Afghanistan. That's on top of the nearly half trillion dollars we have already spent in Iraq. And make no mistake, this isn't the last bill for Iraq that we will be getting. The administration has no exit strategy. Instead, it has a strategy to keep the occupation going for decades. So the bill will keep piling up until our credit cards are absolutely maxed out. To make matters worse, the administration had the gall to hand us this enormous bill just a few weeks after vetoing the SCHIP bill, which they said was too expensive.

Let's examine the White House's logic. Our policy in Iraq is a failure while the SCHIP program is a big success. So you would think the administration would want to cut our losses in Iraq and increase our investment in SCHIP. But, no, it's the other way around. The White House has turned into Superman's bizarro world, where everything is the opposite of what it should be.

Yesterday, when the administration announced its funding request, the President said, and I quote, ``I often hear that war critics oppose my decisions, but still support the troops. Well, I'll take them at their word, and this is the chance to show that they support the troops.''

Well, a few weeks ago, the administration had a chance to show that it supported the troops, and it blew it. The SCHIP bill that was vetoed included the bill that I sponsored, H.R. 3481, the Support for Injured Servicemembers Act. This bill amends the Family Medical Leave Act to allow family members of a soldier wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other conflict to take up to 6 months leave from work to care for that soldier.

This change in the Family Medical Leave Act is desperately needed by the families of our brave troops. The Dole-Shalala Commission reported that 21 percent of active duty soldiers, 15 percent of reservists and 24 percent of retired or separated soldiers have had family members or friends give up their jobs to care for them while they recovered from their wounds. And 33 percent of active duty soldiers, 22 percent of reservists and 37 percent of retired or separated soldiers have had a family member or close friend relocate, relocate for extended periods of time to care for them while they were in the hospital. So extending the Family Medical Leave Act benefits would help many military families when they actually need the help the most. That's why my bill has been endorsed by the Military Officers Association of America, the Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States, the National Military Family Association, and the National Partnership for Women and Families.

The administration's veto of SCHIP was a slap in the face, not only to the children that will not be covered, but to all of these fine organizations.

Let's support our wounded troops and their families and let's support our courageous troops in the field in Iraq by rejecting this administration's request for supplemental funding, but, instead, fully funding the safe, orderly and timely redeployment of all of our troops and of all of our military contractors. That way we will be supporting the troops in Iraq.

This is what Congress must do. This is what the American people want. And if we fail to do it, we will have failed the American people and our troops.