Frank Pallone: “this evening I want to remind the American people about the Republican Party's cozy relationship with our Nation's…”

“this evening I want to remind the American people about the Republican Party's cozy relationship with our Nation's corporate interests. This relationship has been extremely beneficial to America's corporate elite, but has been extremely harmful to America's middle class. It is necessary for me to remind the American people of this relationship because Republicans are now doing everything they can to run away from the relationship. Republicans are hoping the American people forgot that Vice President Cheney worked behind closed doors with corporate executives from the oil and gas companies to write an energy bill that benefited them with billions of dollars while doing virtually nothing to help middle-class Americans with rising prices at the gas pump. Republicans are hoping the American people will forget President Bush misled the American people into supporting the war in Iraq and rushed to war with absolutely no plan to win the peace. Last month the President finally admitted that he miscalculated in Iraq, but now Republicans would like the American people to forget such comments. They would also people to forget that the war in Iraq has now cost the American taxpayer $200 billion in which billions of dollars have gone to another corporate friend of the Bush administration, Vice President Cheney's old company, Halliburton.”