Mr. Speaker, before the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was interviewed on television by George Stephanopoulos. Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Secretary Rumsfeld what invading Iraq would cost. Rumsfeld answered, ``Under $50 billion.''

Mr. Stephanopoulos then replied that outside estimates say it would be up to $300 billion, to which Rumsfeld replied, ``Baloney.''

Well, it may have been baloney to Rumsfeld then, but he must eat his words now because the cost of the occupation has climbed to over $400 billion so far. And it's going to go up, up, and up because our leaders in the White House seem simply not to care how much this occupation costs. It's like that old joke: We could say they are spending like drunken sailors, but we wouldn't say that because that would be an insult to the sailors.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated yesterday that the occupation of Iraq could cost the taxpayers $1.9 trillion by the year 2017. Of that amount with over $500 billion going to just pay off the interest on the debt we're piling up, it is going to cost $500 billion. That's $500 billion that would fly out of our treasury and land in Japan and in China and the other countries that are lending us the money for the occupation. That is far more than what the SCHIP bill would cost us.

It is incredible to me and to most of my colleagues on this side of the aisle that the administration would rather give our country's money to foreign governments and investors than invest it in the health care of America's poor children. And it is incredible to me that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, who lecture us daily about fiscal constraints, did not make a peep about this fiscal catastrophe.

The next question is, what are we getting for this money? The answer is, we are getting a slap in the face from the Iraqi leadership.

Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist who has won three Pulitzer Prizes, reported yesterday that the Iraqi leaders who are supposed to be working on the political reconciliation needed to end the conflict have been more asleep at the switch than ever. Mr. Friedman writes: ``Study the travel itineraries of Iraq's principal factional leaders. Did they all rush to Baghdad to try to work out their differences'' after General Petraeus testified before the Congress? ``No. Many of them took off for abroad. As one U.S. official in Baghdad pointed out to me,'' and this is Mr. Friedman speaking, ``at no point since the testimony by General Petraeus ..... have you had the four key Iraqi leaders in the same country at the same time. They saw the hearings as buying them more time, and so they took it.''

With American troops and innocent civilians continuing to die in Iraq, you would think our leaders in the White House would be on the phone ten times a day with the Iraqi leaders demanding that they get out of their La-Z-Boy recliners and get to work. But the White House shows no desire to knock heads together. What does the White House do instead? It sends us a request for another $46 billion for this occupation.

We must tell the White House, ``Sorry, we've run out of blank checks.'' Then we must use our power of the purse to defund the occupation. Instead, we must fully fund the safe, orderly, and responsible redeployment of our troops out of Iraq, and that includes the withdrawal of all military contractors, including those trigger-happy Blackwater boys who have given our country a black eye.

Mr. Speaker, from now on every time the administration tells us it needs more money for its senseless occupation of Iraq, we have the perfect one-word answer, and that word is ``baloney.''