The Administration

The passage of my resolution of inquiry was a critically important step forward in protecting the privacy and constitutional rights of millions of Americans who are deeply concerned about the scope and legality of the NSA's domestic surveillance program. I want to thank Chairman Sensenbrenner for his steadfast cooperation and willingness to work in a bipartisan manner to pass this resolution. Bipartisan support for this resolution sends an unequivocal message to Attorney General Gonzalez that stonewalling the Committee's request for information regarding this program is unacceptable. It is unconscionable that the Administration continues to ignore Congress' Constitutional authority to oversee legal safeguards, which were put in place to protect the civil liberties of all Americans. It appears that this Administration has assembled what news reports have called 'the largest database ever amassed in the world' from the telephone records of ordinary Americans, without the lawful supervision of FISA courts. It is clear that this Administration has arrogantly disregarded the law, and we must now immediately hear the legal justification of this program.

You don't need to look further than Iraq to see that the Bush administration's dangerous doctrine of preemption is a failure that we cannot afford to repeat with Iran. Congress has neglected its oversight of this failed policy, and we must force a debate on this issue. If our goal is to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, then that is what our policies should be designed to do. We need to drop the preconditions for diplomacy and remove regime change from the table.

President Bush's address on Iran yesterday was forceful. The President has made a clear choice for Iran.

I would prefer a harsher approach in which we would already impose sanctions. Iran has been buying time, using diplomacy to build-up its nuclear facilities.

But I have faith in the President, whose heart is in the right place. The President has laid-out a lear path for Iran - now it is up to the Iranian leaders, and I hope that they choose wisely.

Our troops in Iraq continue to serve with courage and bravery and I remain proud of them. Their successful mission to eliminate the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a great victory. However, al-Zarqawi's death does not change the fact that the President's failed policy in Iraq has cost too many American lives, tarnished America's image abroad, nearly exhausted our military, and taken our attention away from the Global War on Terrorism.

Today, I again sent a clear message to President Bush that he cannot count on me to continue paying for his stay-the-course policy in Iraq. We must re-deploy all our troops out of Iraq, returning most of them home and leaving a quick-reaction force in the region. It is time to change course and bring our troops home within six months.

U.S. involvement in Iraq has now claimed 2,497 lives and cost nearly $350 billion dollars. Our people would willingly bear the human and economic cost of the war in Iraq if it would actually save American lives in the long-run. It will not. Given the President's lost credibility and ever-changing excuses for taking our country to war, we can no longer justify the egregious loss of American life and hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars spent in Iraq.

Nineteen of 24 federal agencies cannot produce full audits that show how they are spending the taxpayer money they get from Congress every year, according to the Government Accountability Office's review of the books for 2005. The legislative branch isn't adequately examining where taxpayer money is going and whether it's being spent properly, even when istances of waste, fraud and abuse are identified by GAO, the White House's Office of Management and Budget, or the Inspectors General who work in each agency. This unchecked overspending has contributed to four record-high budget deficits in a row and a federal debt that has reached $8.3 trillion and is growing. American taxpayers, including the future generations who will have to pay back that debt with interest -- much of it to foreign coutries -- deserve to know how Washington is spending their money. Congress is letting them down.

I think that the American people are quite relieved that the terrorists are interned in Guantanamo, not in the United States. I do not think the suicides will generate any sympathy for them and I think that this is one of the issues which works in Bush's favor. Iraq is costing him votes. But anything about homeland security, including Guantanamo, gains him support.

I was one of the veterans whose information was compromised, initially by the Department of Veterans Affairs. And that was shocking and disturbing. And now I'm even more shocked that there are actually 2.2 million of active duty military personnel, including 80 percent of our active duty soldiers and 430,000 National Guard members and 645,000 Reservists currently on duty with the military forces, whose information has been compromised. Defense officials have already said this loss is unprecedented. It's a major security breach. And it imperils not only the safety of our individual soldiers, the men and women of our armed forces, Marines, Navy, Air Force, National Guards men and women, but it could pose a threat to the overall security of the nation.

The Bush Administration's dangerous incompetence in handling this situation has only compounded the problem. We have got 130,000 troops in Iraq, other troops in Afghanistan. We should be doing all we can to make sure that they are protected and that they are supported. This incompetence has, once again, put a great stress - mental stress, I think -- on the forces that are in the field and their families here at home. It's unacceptable. It's something that not only we are shocked about but, frankly, it leaves us to ask the question: What will happen next? What other area will this administration let us down on?

We should be focusing on the needs, aspirations, and challenges of Americans, not on divisive issues such as gay marriage that have no place in the political debate except to be mean-spirited, to discriminate, and to bring bias and prejudice. The needs of Katrina survivors are still unmet, gas prices continue to skyrocket, confusion on the prescription drug bill abounds, record deficits are spiraling out of control, and today the Washington Post reports that as many as 2.2 million military personnel were among the 26.5 million records mishandled and lost by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Americans on active-duty, many of them overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, are now distracted with the threat of identity theft back home. House Democrats have called for an immediate investigation and review of the VA's security practices and how this breach happened, as well as introduced legislation protecting veterans and service members from identity theft and other harm.

Yesterday, Congressman Jim McCrery (R-LA), the Republicans' point person on Social Security, said that the first order of business in the new Congress in January will be to take up President Bush's Social Security privatization proposal. The American people rejected that plan overwhelmingly. Rubber stamping President Bush's failed Social Security privatization scheme simply reinforces the Republican record of failure and attention to the wrong priorities. Democrats have a new direction for the American people, and are working to strengthen Social Security and address the real concerns of everyday Americans.

With personal identity theft on the rise, it makes no sense to hand over 2.65 million taxpayer files to private debt collection companies. I am proud that my colleagues joined me in supporting my amendment, saying 'no' to President Bush's harebrained idea to create a new, privatized tax collection system. It would cost taxpayers more while protecting their personal financial information less. Currently, a system of checks and balances that has been refined over the years ensures that IRS employees protect taxpayers' private information. If we allow that information to be handed over to private collection agencies, we put taxpayers the mercy of these private, for-profit companies. That's not good enough for me or the people of this country.

Today, I sent a letter to Secretary Chertoff with a bipartisan group of my colleagues asking that the Department of Homeland Security reconsider it's misguided decision to reduce the National Capital Region's Urban Areas Security Initiative allocation by 40 percent. Distributing homeland security dollars without adequate consideration of risk is a dangerous practice that diminishes our ability to protect potential targets and we need to more details on the DHS's decision to ensure that is not the case.

Whether it's the failure to secure our ports, the refusal to fully implement the 9-11 Commission recommendations, or the insistence on driving critical homeland security dollars away from at-risk sites, the Bush administration has continually failed to make America as safe as it should be.