Why does John Kerry stand by and allow Bush, Cheney, and their henchmen to continually mock him with his own words and never stand up and expose the truth of the matter? Mr. Kerry, I have taken out just a couple of hours of my free time this Labor Day weekend to research and write the following speech for you covering just one single issue that cries out for exposure -- why can't you get your own people to do this for you? Here it is:
My fellow Americans,
On November 2nd, you will be asked to make a choice for the next President of the United States of America. You will also be asked for something more than that. You will be asked to take a test. You will be asked to take a test on how much attention you pay to what your government, your leadership says and does.
I trust you to delve into the issues and into the record, to be duly diligent in making sure I and my opponents are who we say are and will do what we say we will do. My opponents trust you to simply believe everything they say, without checking their facts. They trust you to simply trust them even though they have consistently lied to you, even about things as important as the war on terror and the war in Iraq, where the very lives of our soldiers and citizens are at stake.
Let's take just one example for starters. My opponent relishes with unabandoned glee to quote me time and again on how I voted on the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan Act, which provides $87 billion for the military and reconstruction efforts in those countries. He quotes me saying I voted for the act before I voted against it, that the issue was a complex matter. To him, it's a big joke, and he expects you to laugh so hard at my expense that you will not take the time to see if he is telling the whole truth on the matter.
To him, and in his mind hopefully to you, my vote was a vote against supporting our military in Iraq, against body armor and other vital military supplies. One of his ads against me even shows me voting "No" to one item after another on which there was in fact no specific vote. Here is the truth: this was a complex act that, in the Senate alone, included 34 individual line items for funding and 93 separate amendments.
By the way, no line item specified body armor -- you will not find the word "body armor" in the bill, just as you would have been loath to find armor on the bodies of nearly 100,000 of our troops when they were first sent into Iraq by our President.
In a "statement of administration policy" on the Emergency Appropriations act, the President clearly stated his position on this act. You can find his statement on one of his web sites. It has the unimaginative but easily remembered name, www.whitehouse.gov.
With respect to the amendments, I quote: "The Administration strongly opposes any such amendments, including an amendment that was accepted by the Senate to provide for expanded benefits under the TRICARE program." That's an amendment to improve health care insurance for reservists and guardsmen sent to Iraq. True to form, our President was opposed to improving health care coverage, even for troops he sent into harm's way in Iraq.
But even though he singled out his opposition to improving health care coverage for reservists and guardsmen sent to Iraq, his position was in opposition to ALL amendments to the emergency appropriations bills. In this case, cooler heads prevailed and the proposed TRICARE coverage was accepted by the Senate. The President did not have to single out many other amendments he was opposed to, because they had already been successfully tabled -- that is, defeated -- by his partisan Republican majority in the Senate.
He did not want to provide, and I quote, "an additional $322,000,000 for safety equipment for United States forces in Iraq and to reduce the amount provided for reconstruction in Iraq by $322,000,000." The President crows in public every chance he gets that I voted against this or against that, but he was the one opposed to an additional $322,000,000 for safety equipment for our troops in Iraq, and he got his way thanks to a partisan Republican vote to table this amendment. And toward what end? So as not to reduce the amount earmarked for Halliburton and others in reconstruction funds.
He also opposed an amendment that would, and again I quote, "prohibit the use of Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Funds for low priority activities that should not be the responsibility of U.S. taxpayers." No, he would rather the U.S. taxpayer fund low priority activities that would profit Halliburton and other companies.
The amendment further attempted to, I quote, "shift $600 million from the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund to Defense Operations and Maintenance, Army, for significantly improving efforts to secure and destroy conventional weapons, such as bombs, bomb materials, small arms, rocket propelled grenades, and shoulder-launched missiles, in Iraq."
Did you get that? Perhaps I should repeat it -- the President was opposed to shifting $600 million, a mere 3% of the $20 billion earmarked for Halliburton and other companies, to help the Army secure and destroy the bombs, small arms, RPGs, and shoulder-launched missiles that were killing our young men and women on the ground on an almost daily basis. And his Republican majority in the Senate successfully defeated this amendment.
And he has the unmitigated gall to stand up in front of you, the nation, and smirk and joke and laugh that I voted against the body armor that he forgot to provide in the first place!
This is why I changed my mind on this bill. I was all for supporting our military in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I was opposed to the roughly one quarter of the $87 billion emergency appropriation going to directly to Halliburton and other such corporations for non-military purposes, even at the expense of our troops on the ground, their health, and their health care.
And I was opposed to how this was to be funded. Senator Byrd attempted to remove most of the Halliburton pork package from the bill right up front, in the second amendment to the bill. The President opposed that, and his Republican majority killed it.
In another amendment, introduced by Senator Biden and co-sponsored by myself and six other senators, we proposed these emergency appropriations be funded by a temporary suspension of a portion of the tax cuts targeted at those who earn $400,000 per year or more. Again, our President opposed, and successfully defeated, our attempt to save the middle class taxpayer from subsidizing Halliburton.
The list goes on. The president was opposed to and defeated, in a partisan vote, amendments to, I quote, "provide emergency relief for veterans healthcare, school construction, healthcare and transportation needs in the United States, and to create 95,000 new jobs. To require that Iraqi oil revenues be used to pay for reconstruction in Iraq. To amend the Internal Revenue Code to improve tax equity for military personnel. To achieve the most effective means of reconstructing Iraq and to reduce the future costs to the American taxpayer."
I did not vote "No" against body armor and other funds intended to protect our troops. I voted "No" time and again against the tabling, the defeat of these amendments -- an amendment for emergency health care for veterans, an amendment to require that American taxpayers be paid back out of Iraqi oil revenues, another to make the tax code more equitable for military personnel, and one to reduce the cost burden of reconstructing Iraq on the American taxpayer.
In each case, the President killed this support for veterans, for military personnel, for U.S. taxpayers -- except of course for those who earn $400,000 a year or more.
Finally, to add insult to injury, the President opposed and killed an amendment that would, and once again I quote directly from the text of the amendment, "prohibit the use of funds for any contract or other financial agreement or arrangement with any entity that pays compensation in the form of deferred salary to certain United States Government officials." I think you know which certain goverment official is still on the payroll of a certain entity granted generous contracts, without competitive bids, in Iraq. That would be our Vice President, Dick Cheney, and the company he once headed as CEO, Halliburton.
And as if that wasn't enough, he opposed and killed an amendment "to eliminate the flexibility given to the President to reallocate all of the $20.3 billion Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Funds, without approval by Congress." I suppose he didn't want to have to go through the motions of killing off our attempts to control his wild spending on behalf of his corporate friends, since his lock-step Republican majority in the Senate gave him what he wanted anyway.
Or maybe he just didn't want to leave a highly public paper trail, like the votes on these amendments, that you, the voter, could later use to hold him accountable for consistently favoring Halliburton, despite its conflict of interst with respect to Vice President Cheney, and the wealthiest of American taxpayers, at the expense of military personnel under fire on the ground in Iraq, veterans in need of health care back home, and the middle class taxpayers who have to fund his Iraqi miscalculation.
This is the truth of the matter. These are the complexities that I ended up voting against after initially supporting the simple matter of funding our troops in the manner most cost-effective for our taxpayers. My opponent calls this a flip-flop -- I stand by my convictions that this was a deceitful fleecing of middle-class America that put our troops in further danger so that special interests directly tied to the administration could benefit financially.
This is what you will be voting on in November. Will you look into the truth of these matters and understand what this is really about? Or will you simply laugh at the cynical jokes of a President who has lied to you every step of the way? That's what they want you to do -- to laugh all the way to November 2nd. My fellow Americans, this is no laughing matter.
Thank you for bringing the facts to light. I have some reservations about John Kerry, but I feel we must remove the current administration from power. I have never been LESS proud to be an American than I am today.
Posted by: Mike | Thursday, September 16, 2004 at 05:56 PM