John B. Breaux: “I remember that a great Chinese philosopher once said: May you live in interesting times. I would also add today that we…”

“I remember that a great Chinese philosopher once said: May you live in interesting times. I would also add today that we are actually living in very confusing times. The bombs began to drop on the country of Iraq last night. We have over 200,000 men and women engaged in a war in a far off country. We have a country that is presently on orange alert, the second highest in our country's history. We have a war, and we do not know how long it is going to last, whether it be 4 days or 4 weeks or 4 months. We have a war and we have no concept of how much it is going to cost. We have estimates from $50 billion, $60 billion, $100 billion, depending on how long the conflict lasts. We have a financial situation in this country where we have a $300 billion deficit that is now facing us in the short term. Yet we have a budget recommending that we now take the action of cutting revenues to pay for the cost of the war by about $1.36 trillion, of which the budget request adds $726 billion be protected by the process of budget reconciliation which would prevent any effort to filibuster that, on behalf of our Republican colleagues.”