Lynn C. Woolsey: “the ink has hardly dried on the latest supplemental spending bill for military operations in Iraq, but that has not…”

“the ink has hardly dried on the latest supplemental spending bill for military operations in Iraq, but that has not stopped top officials in the Pentagon from starting preparations for the next supplemental bill. It was reported yesterday that the Pentagon has begun laying the groundwork for the next supplemental requests which may come as early as this August. The Pentagon will likely request more than $25 billion more, but some in Congress have indicated that they will ask for as much as $50 billion more. The Pentagon which receives over $400 billion annually from the United States Treasury acts like 25 or 50 billion is a mere drop in the bucket. Likewise, when supplemental requests are doled out in these smaller, ha-ha smaller, $50 billion increments, many Members of Congress and much of the Nation have absolutely no concept of the true cost of the war in Iraq, which at the moment adds up to over $200 billion. But when you think about the financial strain being felt at home like the fact that we are not fully funding the No Child Left Behind Act or that we are not paying for adequate health care for our returning veterans, it does not take long to realize that $50 billion more for Iraq takes a toll on the American people here at home. Mr. Speaker, why are we funding a war, especially one that was entered into on false pretenses, through repeated supplemental spending bills?…”