Jon Kyl: “I wished to, first of all, echo the comments of my colleague from Utah. Fred Kagan is an expert, and what he had to say…”

“I wished to, first of all, echo the comments of my colleague from Utah. Fred Kagan is an expert, and what he had to say in that report and in his subsequent summaries of it is something all our colleagues should be familiar with because he makes the very clear point that, as this mission is working, right now is not the time to change the mission and go back to what it was prior to General Petraeus's arrival on the scene. Yet we still have Members of this body and the other body trying to undercut the Petraeus plan in one way or another. The most recent effort to do this is one which is especially distressing. Let me give a little bit of background. First, I wish to note that our Democratic colleagues have not taken very long to reestablish their reputation--well deserved--as the tax- and-spend party, as my colleague from Texas pointed out earlier. Now that the Democratic Party is in control of the Congress, the agenda is very clear. But yesterday, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee went a step too far because he proposed a new tax on every American. This one, ostensibly, to fund the war. Now, there are a lot of different excuses for raising taxes, as my colleague from Texas pointed out a while ago, but I don't think we need a new tax. If we did, our Democratic colleagues would not be proposing $23 billion in more spending than the President proposed in his budget.”