For Immediate Release

Floor Statement of Senator Christopher J. Dodd
Statement on the Emergency Supplemental Request for Iraq and Afghanistan

October 17, 2003

Mr. President, two weeks ago the Senate began debate on President Bush's $87 billion emergency funding request for Iraq and Afghanistan. Since that time, many amendments have been considered by this body. Most of them have failed largely along partisan lines. That is unfortunate in my view. After all, we are talking about spending 87 billion American taxpayer dollars, and this during a time when so many of our national priorities remain unaddressed. Our education system, our health care system, and our homeland security priorities are all drastically underfunded. More and more Americans are finding themselves out of work. Certainly we need to continue to support our troops in Iraq and to assist the Iraqi people to rebuild their country. But we can’t do this alone and ignore the vital domestic needs that so many Americans are today facing.

Mr. President, about a month ago I rose in this chamber to share my thoughts about United States policy toward Iraq. I did so shortly after President Bush's September 7th televised address to the Nation on the same subject. In that speech, the President was candid with the American people about what we should expect in Iraq, namely that it is going to be "difficult and costly" to rebuild that country and to bring democracy to a people who have had no tradition of political freedom or self-determination.

This Senator welcomed the President's honest assessment of what we are likely to be facing in Iraq. It was a positive change from the doublespeak and "non-answers" that the Congress and the American people have been hearing from some officials in the administration since before the outset of our military engagement in that country.

Of course, what the President told us wasn't news. The difficulty and the cost of our involvement are painfully apparent. More than 150,000 coalition forces remain in Iraq – five months after the President declared the end to major hostilities. One hundred and thirty thousand of those men and women are Americans. And every day there are reports of yet another American service-man or -woman being killed.

With the approval of this $87 billion emergency supplemental, the United States will have committed more than $150 billion of American taxpayers’ dollars in a matter of months for our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan – the vast majority of those sums for the Iraq mission.

In light of those statistics, who could disagree with the President that our mission in Iraq has become difficult and costly – both monetarily and in human terms. I only question why it took our President so long to come to that realization. In fact, it now appears that estimates of human and monetary costs that were formerly discounted by the Bush Administration – statements made by Army General Eric Shinseki and the President’s former Chief Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsey – might not have been so far off the mark.

During his most recent address to the Nation, President Bush also explained, in simple terms, U.S. policy objectives: destroy terrorists, enlist the support of other nations for a free Iraq, and help Iraqis assume responsibility. He was less clear on how he intends to achieve those objectives, or to mitigate the myriad of costs to the American people.

That is why, Mr. President, many of our colleagues who have spoken on the floor have decried the fact that at the very time we are being asked to approve $87 billion in additional money for the military and reconstruction costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Administration has yet to lay out a clear plan for how any of the objectives mentioned by the President are to be achieved. Perhaps progress is now possible in internationalizing the rebuilding of Iraq. I take note in particular of yesterday’s unanimous UN Security Council vote in support of the U.S. sponsored resolution on Iraq. However, it is important to remember that this resolution is only the first step toward achieving a broad international coalition with additional governments and international organizations willing to share the burden of this difficult and costly occupation.

Our military has done an exemplary job in winning the war. They should be commended. But they also need help winning the peace. Our forces are stretched thin and our troops are tired. Tragically, more than 332 American military personnel have now died in Iraq, 1,511 have been wounded, and 335 have sustained other injuries. One hundred and twenty of those deaths were unrelated to hostile fire – dehydration, auto accidents and other causes.

These deaths have prompted legitimate questions about the adequacy of the equipment our troops have been provided for the hostile environment being encountered. Efforts by the U.S. Army to address some of these equipment shortcomings have not been fully funded in the pending legislation. That is the Army's assessment – not mine.

That is why I offered an amendment on October 2, to transfer $300 million from Iraqi reconstruction funds to US army accounts for the purchase of equipment vital to the safety of our troops or to reimburse them for equipment they were forced to buy for themselves. In the broader scope of things, I continue to believe that those few hundred million dollars were a mere drop in the bucket. But this drop could have helped protect and provide our troops with hydration and other life-saving equipment that they need. I was very disappointed that my amendment failed, largely along partisan lines, because I strongly believe that the first and most important priority of this funding bill should be to protect our troops.

U.S. liberation of Iraq has not ended the suffering of the Iraqi people. They continue to suffer, and they are frustrated as well. While the decades of fear and brutality perpetrated by the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein are now gone, uncertainty and hardship continue – despite the best efforts of U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer and members of the Coalition Provisional Authority. And this uncertainty and hardship have brought resentment – resentment against U.S. forces, resentment against the UN mission headquartered in Baghdad, resentment between and within local communities.

That resentment has brought with it increasing acts of violence.

While I have not yet had an opportunity to make a first-hand assessment of the situation in Iraq, many who have believe that security remains the most immediate and pressing challenge confronting the Provisional Coalition Authority. It is my hope that the monies contained in this legislation for our troops, coupled with the $5 billion allocated to assemble and train Iraqi police and security forces will improve the security climate so that the road is clear for the equally difficult task of rebuilding the country. I fully support those elements of the Supplemental request.

However, I have serious questions about some of the so-called reconstruction priorities that the Administration intends to pursue once the emergency supplemental is approved – projects that the Administration has identified as high priorities in need of immediate funding. A number of these misplaced priorities have been mentioned during the course of this debate. Let me remind my colleagues of some of these:

• A $100 million witness protection program for 100 Iraqi families – that is $1 million per family.
• Two maximum security prisons at a total cost of $400 million – $50,000 per prison bed.
• Fifteen million dollars for the purchase of computers, with a price tag of $3000 per computer.
• Twenty million dollars for four weeks of business training classes at $10,000 per student.
• Thirty million dollars to teach English as a second language to Iraqis.

These are just a few of the questionable spending priorities embedded in the measure before us.

Mr. President, I supported President Bush last year when he sought authority from Congress to use all necessary means to secure Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions. But even while doing so I was deeply concerned that absent broad international support for preemptively removing Saddam Hussein, the American taxpayer and our troops would be left holding the bag when the time came to win the peace in Iraq. That concern has proven well placed.

Indeed, I am not only troubled by the so-called emergency programs that I just mentioned; what concerns me even more is that we all know that Iraq is going to need more money – above and beyond this current request. A lot more. Yet despite the recent UN Security Council resolution, many doubts remain as to the Administration’s willingness or ability to ensure that other governments and international organizations will begin to share some of those future costs.

The President did not listen to those of us who cautioned him about the implications of removing Saddam Hussein unilaterally. This debate gives him a second chance to listen to similar concerns being articulated about attempting to unilaterally deliver democracy to Iraq. Without significant and meaningful help from others we risk an even more "costly and difficult" engagement in Iraq than the President has contemplated. Equally serious, the President risks losing the support of the American people for his policy. Without that support continued US involvement will not be sustainable.

During consideration of this legislation, members of this Congress have taken certain steps to press the Administration on the issue of burden sharing. These were not partisan efforts because this is not a partisan issue. It is not partisan to insist that the President not have a blank check to pay for all of Iraq's reconstruction. It is sound fiscal policy. Quite simply, we cannot afford to write endless checks for this purpose.

Even before the Administration's supplemental request, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), had calculated that the annual budget deficit would reach $480 billion - the largest in history. Over the past three years, 3.2 million Americans have lost their jobs - 44,000 alone in July. So there are clearly pressing needs at home that remain unmet. We could do a lot with an additional $20 billion on the domestic side of the Federal ledger.

We could do a lot in the area of health care:

• $20 billion could provide health coverage for approximately 1.3 million Americans.
• Current Medicare prescription drug proposals include large gaps in coverage. The $20 billion could be used to close those gaps.
• $20 billion would provide Medicaid coverage for an additional 300,000 children, adults, senior citizens, and individuals with disabilities.

We could do a lot in addressing our nation’s education shortfalls:

• $8.5 billion would fully fund No Child Left Behind.
• $6.15 billion would fully fund Title I programs – programs to help our poorest schools better serve our children.
• $750 million would bring after-school programs to their FY04 authorized levels.
• $29 million would restore the Troops to Teachers Programs.

We could also do a lot in supporting important programs for our nation’s children. Twenty billion dollars would:

• provide 4.4 million more kids with child care,
• enable participation of 2.8 million kids in Head Start,
• fund enrollment of 26.7 million kids in after-school programs, or
• 16.6 million more kids covered by health care.

The bottom line is that we are not going to be able to do any of those things if we continue to go it alone in Iraq. Moreover, the huge and unprecedented amounts of national debt that we are incurring are going to cripple our economy for the foreseeable future.

Why do we go through this silly budget exercise of declaring all these projects an emergency? It is so that our budget rules won't apply – so somehow it won't count. Well, Mr. President, it does count. And I think we should agree here and now that this is real money. Other programs, real programs, important programs, won't be funded because of the so-called emergency projects I mentioned earlier. There are trade-offs.

It is now clear that these trade-offs aren't going to be confronted by the President unless the voices of the unilateralists in the Bush Administration are silenced, or at least the President stops listening to them. The recent UN resolution was an important first step toward that end. Hopefully it has taught this Administration an important lesson: that to garner international help in building democracy in Iraq – help we desperately need – there must be compromise and respect for other points of view.

There is nothing wrong with compromising or with sharing the costs and responsibilities for Iraq's future. In fact, I believe that Congress has a responsibility to see that those costs and responsibilities will be shared. International burden sharing was a condition of Congressional support for funding US peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo. This very Congress included a burden sharing requirement in the legislation passed earlier this year authorizing US participation in the Global HIV/AIDS Fund. Why should Iraq be different? Senate adoption last night of the Bayh amendment, which would convert a portion of the reconstruction monies to loans, should be understood as one small step toward more equitable burden sharing in the rebuilding of Iraq.

During consideration of this legislation we have taken some important first steps. But these are only small steps, and much more needs to be done if the $87 billion we are about to approve is to be effectively used. Mr. President, I will reluctantly support final passage of this bill because I believe we have an obligation to support our troops. However, I want to make it clear, here and now, that if this President expects my future support, he is going to have to bring together a much broader international coalition than currently exists – one that will provide significant financial and military support to our efforts.

The recent UN resolution holds out the promise that this may be possible, but it is only a promise – it is up to the President to see it become a reality.

Mr. President, we cannot and must not let this administration continue to deny what we all know to be true, namely that “multilateralizing” the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq is the right thing to do. It is the right thing for America. It is the right thing for Iraq. And it is the only way to ensure that we will be able to fulfill our responsibilities to the American people. Let us hope that the Administration will use the resources and authorities contained in this bill to accomplish that goal.