Leahy To Vote No On Iraq Spending Plan

Statement Of U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy
On The Fiscal Year 2007 Emergency Supplemental
May 24, 2007

Mr. President, I will vote against the Fiscal Year 2007 Emergency Supplemental conference report.  Although there are many sound and worthy provisions in this bill – such as assistance for Afghanistan and other countries, and additional funds not requested by the Administration to help address the backlog of equipment for the National Guard – the inescapable fact is that this legislation would not reverse this Administration’s disastrous Iraq policy.  I simply cannot vote in favor of a bill, containing tens of billions of additional dollars for the President’s policy in Iraq, that does not begin to bring our troops home.     

As one of the 23 senators who opposed authorizing this war, I believe it is vital that we send a strong signal that Congress is going to exercise its Article I constitutional powers and end our central involvement in Iraq’s civil war.  Every Senator – for or against this military adventure – must take a stand on whether to continue the status quo or change course.  That, at the end of the day, is what this vote represents.

Congress had a workable and I believe widely acceptable plan in the original version of this supplemental bill.  Taking a page from the Iraq Study Group recommendations, the plan was to end the military mission in Iraq as we currently know it.  We would reduce American forces to the contingent necessary for limited Iraqi troop training, counter-terrorism operations, and protecting remaining American personnel. 

I and others joined with Senator Feingold in an effort to strengthen that position by ensuring that no funding could go toward deployment, beyond those narrow purposes.  About a month ago, we all saw the President veto the supplemental bill.  Then last week, the President muscled his congressional allies to vote against the stronger Feingold-Reid-Leahy provision.

So what we are left with is this new version of the supplemental – the status quo, more of the same old stay-the-course.  The reality is that this new conference report does nothing to stop the President’s open-ended escalation.  It will not force the Iraqis to make the difficult political compromises which they need to make.  Nor will it begin a redeployment of American forces.  The final legislation drops the mandatory timetable for planning and commencing redeployment with a targeted completion date.  Beyond some reporting requirements, there is no limitation on troop levels.

What the legislation does do is limit our aid to the Iraqi government if actions toward reconciliation are not taken, although the President may waive these limitations. 

I agree that we should tie our aid to the Iraqi government to clear benchmarks.  But that alone is not sufficient.  The reality is that despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, the violence has increased.  We all know that the trends are going in the wrong direction.  This piecemeal approach assures that our troops will remain in the middle of harm’s way for the foreseeable future.  

And when it comes to changing the dynamic in Iraq, it is troop levels that matter.  The introduction of more forces through this open-ended escalation that the President calls the surge is sending the wrong signal to the Iraqis and to countries in the region that have interests there.  It says they do not have to make the tough decisions because the American forces are there to do the dirty work, to spill their blood and to contain sectarian militias or deal with unwelcome foreign fighters. 

Rory Stewart, a perspicacious observer with hands-on experience in Iraq, rightly pointed out in a recent public forum that our presence there is fundamentally undermining Iraq’s political system, “infantilizing” Iraq politics, to use his phrase.  He notes that Iraqi politicians are far more capable of making deals and reaching compromise than we think, but that our troop presence allows them to play hardball with each other.  “Were we to leave,” Mr. Stewart says, “they would be weaker and under more pressure to compromise.”

As I have said, there are many aspects of this supplemental that I support.  We have, for example, included $1 billion in un-requested funding to help rebuild our National Guard, which is suffering from dangerously low equipment stocks because so much of the Guard’s equipment has been sent to Iraq.  We have funded the Marla Ruzicka Fund to aid innocent Iraqi civilians who have suffered casualties, and a similar program to aid civilian victims of war in Afghanistan.  There is other funding for refugees and humanitarian assistance in Africa and the Middle East, as well as for Kosovo.  I am gratified that we have been able to include funding for elections in Nepal, to support reintegration of former combatants in northern Uganda, and to begin the clean up of dioxin-contaminated sites in Vietnam and for health programs in nearby communities.  

These are just a few of the things carried over from the original, vetoed version of the bill that I support and for which I have worked hard.   I want to thank Senator Gregg, the Ranking Member of the State, Foreign Operations Subcommittee, and our counterparts in the House, Chairwoman Lowey and Ranking Member Wolf, for working together in a bipartisan way to allocate the foreign assistance funding in this bill. 

Yet there is a central fact that we must meet head on.  This war has been a costly disaster for our country.  Our ability to fight terrorism, pursue our larger national security and foreign policy goals, and secure the welfare of every American has been diminished because of it.  Thousands of our troops have lost their lives or suffered grievous, life-altering injuries.  Tens of thousands – and possibly hundreds of thousands -- of innocent Iraqis have lost their lives.  We have opened a gaping wound in the Middle East and severely damaged our image and our influence.  This war has been a foreign policy failure of epic proportions. 

It is time to bring our troops home.  It is time to show the Iraqi people that they cannot expect us to make these sacrifices if they won’t make the hard decisions that are spread before them.  I regret that this legislation whitewashes what was a reasonable, good faith effort to bring real pressure to bear in Baghdad and beyond.  I cannot in good conscious vote for it.

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