Byron Dorgan: “this afternoon, I will be attending a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Secretary of Defense will be…”

“this afternoon, I will be attending a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Secretary of Defense will be there, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be there, as will someone from the State Department, and they will be here supporting a proposal by the President to the Congress that we supply up to $200 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan--all of it declared ``emergency,'' none of it paid for, and that is $200 billion for this year. That will take us to almost three-quarters of a trillion dollars, with respect to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, all added to the Federal debt as a result of a request by the President that it be emergency spending. I mention that only because we have been talking out here on the Senate floor about something called the children's health insurance program. It is a fraction of what we will be discussing this afternoon as emergency funding. The children's health insurance bill is fully paid for. That which came out of the Senate Finance Committee on a bipartisan basis to address the issue of health insurance for children and do so in a way that fully pays for it. It is a very different circumstance than exists with the President's request for war funding, for example. But it is interesting to me that the loudest moans in the Chamber of the Senate come when we take the floor of the Senate to talk about taking care of things here at home, taking care of basic things in this country.”