Chris Van Hollen: “I opposed the President's decision to rush to war earlier this year. Many of us, at that time, warned of the high costs…”

“I opposed the President's decision to rush to war earlier this year. Many of us, at that time, warned of the high costs and difficulties of winning the peace that we face today in Iraq. But the President's poor decisions have painted our country into a difficult corner, and I believe that we now have a responsibility to provide funds and to maintain security on the ground in Iraq and to assist in the reconstruction of that country. Let us not fool ourselves or the American people. It will not just be the tens of billions of dollars that we passed in the bill today. It will require billions more in the years ahead. We also have other responsibilities, to level with the American people and to pay for our efforts in Iraq in a straightforward and up-front manner. The President shirked the first responsibility by failing to prepare the American people for the true costs of the war and winning the peace. Now, he seeks to escape responsibility for the second by putting those costs on our national credit card and running up huge deficits. Every penny of the $87 billion requested by the President is money borrowed from the next generation of Americans. His out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to such important issues will end up costing our children down the road. We should not be waging war and peace by credit card. If we are willing to pay the price to defeat the scourge of terrorism, we must pay for it in an honest way.”