Byron Dorgan: “I believe it is 69 countries have donated $1.5 billion total. In this request, they are asking the American taxpayers…”

“I believe it is 69 countries have donated $1.5 billion total. In this request, they are asking the American taxpayers for $21 billion but say there will be a dramatic amount more that is needed but that is going to come from somebody else. It appears very unlikely it is going to come from anybody else. That is my point. The first step is I think this administration ought to work to have debt forgiveness with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and others so they do not have that debt overhanging that country and then have that country's oil produce the revenue to reconstruct the country. This is not a desperately impoverished country. This is a country that sits on top of massive quantities of money in the form of oil, and yet we are being told the American taxpayers--who are already facing very large, staggering deficits, I might say--that somehow the issues of building dams, building prisons, building communities, doing job training, building hospitals, building health care facilities, building roads, all of that should be borne by the American taxpayer at a time when they have the capability to produce the revenue in Iraq to pay for all of that.”