Frank Pallone: “I could not help but remember within a few days of the hurricane when President Bush gave a speech, I think from New…”

“I could not help but remember within a few days of the hurricane when President Bush gave a speech, I think from New Orleans, and he talked about how they were going to reconstruct the city and provide all of these programs and benefits, and none of it has happened. It sounded like he was doing a reconstruction program like in Iraq, or the Marshall Plan after World War II. Now they are proposing cuts in all of the programs that would actually benefit people. It is not just poor people. If you look at the things that we are mentioning here for the U.S. versus Iraq, I talked about health care. The Republican budget would cut $9 billion in student loans, $806 million from No Child Left Behind. That is for all Americans. On the other hand in Iraq, they rehabilitated 2,717 schools, and 36,000 teachers and administrators were trained. Even the environment, everybody breathes the air and drinks the water. In the U.S., the Republican budget has a $200 million cut in clean water State revolving funds, and opens ANWR to oil drilling. In Iraq, we spend $1 billion for safe drinking water, $4 million for marshland restoration. Everybody is drinking the water and benefiting from environmental infrastructure. It is just really Americans versus Iraqis, and I am not saying that we should not help the Iraqis in some way.…”