From the Office of Senator Kerry

Thursday, October 2, 2003

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) today joined Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) in calling for shared sacrifice by the wealthiest one percent of Americans to help pay the cost of $87 billion supplemental spending request for the war in Iraq.

“Senator Biden and I are making a common-sense proposal. Rather than borrowing an additional $87 billion, we want to scale back some of the new tax cuts for Americans making over $300,000 a year,” said Kerry in a speech delivered from the floor of the Senate.

“To put this in perspective with the men and women who are making the sacrifice in uniform – who are putting it all on the line for the country – the average enlisted man or woman makes $30,000 per year and the average officer makes $67,000.

“We all know what’s happening. The troops didn’t make millions in the 1980s and 1990s; they’re hardworking men and women, mostly from the middle class, who are fighting America’s war. It’s not unfair to ask those that earn the very most – those many fortunate, talented and hardworking Americans earning more than $300,000 – to sacrifice some of their tax cuts in order to promote a free Iraq; to reduce some of the burden being placed on future generations; and help sustain education, health care, and homeland security.”

The Biden-Kerry amendment to the supplemental spending request reduces the size of the Bush tax cut for the wealthiest one percent of Americans to help pay for the war in Iraq. The rate adjustment would occur during the final six years of the President’s 10-year tax cut plan.

“With 130,000 troops sacrificing every day in Iraq, terribly unfunded domestic programs, and historic debt growing in Washington, it is an equitable and responsible proposal. And I am confident that these patriotic Americans are prepared to sacrifice as well,” Kerry concluded.

The full text of Kerry floor speech follows:

Senator John F. Kerry Floor Statement -- October 2, 2003

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, why are we here today discussing an $87 billion supplemental for Iraq – the second supplemental in six months on top of the first supplemental for $79 billion in April? American taxpayers footed the bill for the war in Iraq. But is it right to ask them to bear all the costs of the peace – a peace we are in danger of losing? Absolutely not!

Last spring, our fighting men and women swept across the battlefields of Iraq. Thanks to their courage and skill, Saddam and his henchmen are scattered and his brutal regime is no more. But in the aftermath of this military victory, we are in danger of losing the peace.

The clearest symbol of that danger is the target on the backs of young Americans serving in Iraq. Today, a soldier in Baghdad or Kirkuk fears getting shot simply while getting a drink of water. A squad at a checkpoint has to worry whether the old station wagon driving toward them is a rolling bomb. And troops moving in convoy take hits from RPGs and “improvised explosive devices.”

Iraq’s infrastructure—its electricity grid, transportation system and oil facilities—remain in ruin and disrepair. Iraq's ethnic, tribal, religious and political divisions pose a growing challenge to forging a new government. And now, Iraq draws terrorists from other states eager to attack American troops, United Nations officials and Iraqis themselves.

We were told Iraqis would see us as “liberators.” Yet, too often they see us as occupiers, as a foreign power ruling over their country – preventing self-determination, not providing it.

We were told to expect elections and quick transition to self-governance, but we now know that elections are many months away, at best.

None of this was planned for or predicted by this President or his war council. We now know that there simply was no plan to win the peace.

Eager to rush to war, the Administration played down, or worse yet ignored, the likelihood of resistance. It low-balled the number of forces that would be needed to seize the alleged WMD sites for which we fought the war, to protect the infrastructure needed for reconstruction, or to contain civil unrest. It underestimated the magnitude of the reconstruction task and the ease with which oil would flow for rebuilding. It refused to tell the American people up front the long-term costs of winning the peace. And it refused – and still refuses --to ask the international community to join us in this very difficult endeavor.

We are now in danger of losing the peace in Iraq because of the arrogance of this President and this Administration both before and after the war. It was bad enough to go-it-alone in the war. It is inexcusable and incomprehensible to go-it-alone in the peace. In the last year, President Bush has had three decisive opportunities to build an international coalition on the issue of Iraq. And three times, he not only failed; he hardly even tried.

The first opportunity came last fall after Congress authorized the use of force. That authorization sent a strong signal that the President and the Congress were united in holding Saddam Hussein accountable for his failures to keep his commitments and his scorn for the world community. It set the stage for the UN resolution that finally led him to let UN inspectors back into Iraq. When I voted to give the President the authority to use force, I said arms inspections are “absolutely critical in building international support for our case to the world. That’s how you make clear to the world we are contemplating war not for war’s sake, but because it may be the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism.” But the Bush Administration, impatient to go into battle, stopped the clock on the inspectors against the wishes of key members of the Security Council and despite the call of many in Congress who had voted to authorize force as a last resort. Despite his September promise to the United Nations to “work with the UN Security Council to meet our common challenge,” President Bush rushed ahead on the basis of what we now know to be dubious, inaccurate, and perhaps manipulated intelligence – intelligence which the inspectors could have vetted and corrected. So the first chance for a true international response was lost in a relentless march to war.

There was a second opportunity– after the Iraqi people pulled down Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad. American and British forces had prevailed on the ground and it was time to win the peace. It was also obvious to everyone but the armchair ideologues in the Pentagon that the United States could not – and should not – undertake the reconstruction of Iraq on its own. To do so risked turning a military victory that promised liberation into an unwanted occupation by a foreign and Western power. From the moment that statue fell, the successful reconstruction of Iraq and the creation of a new Iraqi government depended on the legitimacy of the process in the eyes of the Iraqi people and the world. And that legitimacy in turn has always depended on internationalizing the effort. But the Bush Administration insisted on a UN role that was little more than window-dressing. And yet again, a critical opportunity was spurned.

President Bush’s third – and most recent moment of opportunity – came last week when he addressed the UN General Assembly. Other nations stood ready to stand with us – to provide troops to help stabilize the security situation and funds to help rebuild Iraq. All President Bush had to do was ask. Instead of asking, he lectured. Instead of focusing on reconstruction, his speech was a coldly received exercise in the rhetoric of redemption. Kofi Annan offered to help. The Bush Administration said, “thank you, but no thank you” – and I’m not even sure they included the “thank you.” The President was self-satisfied and tone deaf, stiff-arming the UN, raising the risk for American soldiers and the bill to the American treasury, and reducing the chances of success within a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost.

The President could have owned up to the difficulties we face. He could have signaled or stated a willingness to abandon unilateral control over reconstruction and governance. Instead, he made America less safe in a speech and in conduct that pushed other nations away rather than invited them in. That failure will cost us dearly in the months ahead, in an Iraq consumed with suspicion, resentment, and continued violence.

And what of the cost of the Iraqi operation?

In the fall of 2002, OMB chief Mitch Daniels told us the costs of Iraq would cost between $50 and $60 billion.

In January of this year, Secretary Rumsfeld said the same, and he added that “How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question.” Today, we have a pretty good idea of the answer to that question: the majority is going to be the American taxpayers’ burden.

In March of this year, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz testified in the Senate that Iraq is a “country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

Again in March, Secretary Powell testified in the Senate that “Iraq will not require the sorts of foreign assistance Afghanistan will continue to require.”

And when Larry Lindsey predicted the war may cost $100 billion to $200 billion, he was deemed to be so off base by the White House that he was fired.

Now a year later, Congress is set to appropriate over $160 billion, and costs are estimated to rise to $350 billion to $400 billion over five years. Even Mr. Lindsey’s estimate seems low.

With so much going so wrong, Americans are looking to the White House for direction and leadership. They want straight answers to straight questions.

How long will we be in Iraq? How much will it cost? And how many American troops will it take?

So far, the White House—with all of its evasion and explanation—has been house of mirrors where nothing is what it seems and almost everything is other than what the President promised.

But Americans are also looking to Congress for direction and leadership and for an understanding of what all this will cost and how we will pay for it.

The President has talked a lot about sacrifice in recent weeks. In an address from the White House, he said of Iraq, “This will take time and require sacrifice.” In his weekly radio talk, he warned that, “This campaign requires sacrifice.”

Even in his State of Union address, the President issued a call for sacrifice, saying, “We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, other presidents, and other generations.”

And there can be no doubt that the President has demanded most of this sacrifice from the men and women in uniform. More than 300 troops have given their lives in Iraq. The Army is stretched too thin for its duties in Iraq, and troops who were promised they’d be home long ago remain in Iraq. The President has called on the National Guard and Reserve at historic rates and put more than 200,000 guardsmen and reservists on active duty. The Pentagon has changed the rules so that a guard unit’s activation doesn’t start until the troops arrive in Iraq—a bookkeeping slight of hand that keeps thousands of forces deployed even longer than they expected. And incredibly the President’s call for sacrifice even included billing wounded troops the cost of hospital meals. Fortunately, the Congress rectified that problem in this supplemental.

And yet—despite all we’re asking of the men and women in uniform—the bill we now debate appropriates $87 billion simply by increasing the federal deficit—it asks no sacrifice of anyone living today. This is an off budget, deficit spending free ride.

The amendment that Senator Biden and I are offering will change that. It will pay the cost of this bill—the entire $87 billion—by simply repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

The Biden-Kerry amendment will ask those who can afford to pay this burden to do so—it is a fair plan.

It protects the middle class, meets our obligations in Iraq, and it will help ensure that we have the resources we need to accomplish our goals here at home—goals like making health care more affordable, paying for homeland security, and keeping this President’s promise to leave no child behind.

We should not abandon our mission but we must also demand that whatever we spend in Iraq be paid for with shared sacrifice, not deficit dollars. We are already shortchanging critical domestic programs to pay for an unwise tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. In addition, the Bush fiscal record and its trillions in debt demands that we follow the common sense approach of our amendment.

Since President Bush took office, the cumulative 10-year budget surplus has declined by about $10 trillion. We have gone from the largest budget surplus in history to the largest deficit in history this year. We have added nearly a trillion dollars to the debt inside of a single presidential term. On top of that, we passed a huge tax cut during wartime for the first time, which is the height of irresponsible, reckless budgeting.

The Bush Administration blames this budget crisis on the nation’s response to September 11 and funding for domestic programs - but that is a bold misstatement of fact. The simple facts are that the fiscal policies supported by this Administration - tax cuts already passed, tax cuts that have been proposed, significant increases in defense spending and money for Iraq, and additional interest on the debt - have caused more than half of this turnaround. And as the debt piles up, the President claims that he bears no responsibility when in fact his policies are the primary cause.

Senator Biden and I are making a common-sense proposal. Rather than borrowing an additional $87 billion, we want to scale back some of the new tax cuts for Americans making over $300,000 a year. The average income of those in the top tax bracket is $1 million.

These Americans are not hurting. Their real average after-tax income rose a remarkable 200 percent in the 1980s and 1990s, and their overall share of pre-tax income has nearly doubled over 20 years. In 2000, the 2.8 million people who made up the top one percent of the population received more total after-tax income than did the 110 million people who made up the bottom 40 percent. Think about that: The top one percent of Americans earned more income than the bottom 40 percent - and that’s after taxes.

To put this in perspective with the men and women who are making the sacrifice in uniform—who are putting it all on the line for the country—the average enlisted man or woman makes $30,000 per year and the average officer makes $67,000. We all know what’s happening—the troops didn’t make millions in the 1980s and 1990s—they’re hardworking men and women—mostly from the middleclass—who are fighting America’s war.

It’s not unfair to ask those that earn the very most—those many fortunate, talented and hardworking Americans earning more than $300,000—to sacrifice some of their tax cuts in order to promote a free Iraq, to reduce some of the burden being placed on future generations and help sustain education, health care and homeland security.

With 130,000 troops sacrificing every day in Iraq, terribly unfunded domestic programs and historic debt growing in Washington, it is an equitable and responsible proposal. And I am confident that these patriotic Americans are prepared to sacrifice as well.

Thank you Mr. President.

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