Kendrick Meek: “I am just so pleased how the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), as chairman of the Black Caucus and also just as a…”

“I am just so pleased how the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), as chairman of the Black Caucus and also just as a Member of Congress, is asking the kitchen table questions. These are common questions that we took under assumption, we assumed, when the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States, and the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, came to us and said, this is the situation, this is the case at hand, this is what we need to do. Some of us agreed, some of us did not agree, but genuinely as Americans, we said that we want to support our troops and their families; and we went right to work, thinking they were going to do the right thing. We talk about the money. Mr. Speaker, $87 billion is an awful lot of money. That will buy quite a few new schools in our country. That will put forth quite a few opportunities as it relates to our youth in our communities. But as I look through this, finally, I just want to say to the gentleman that, finally, we got a plan, or what they call a plan, from the administration on Iraq and the reconstruction of Iraq; and that is supposed to explain the $87 billion.”