Louise Slaughter: “I do not want to contradict my colleague from California, but we do not know the pain of this war. Members of Congress…”

“I do not want to contradict my colleague from California, but we do not know the pain of this war. Members of Congress know it a little better than most people because we try to comfort the bereaved and visit the ones who are maimed, but we don't really know the pain of this war. We can't know about the 35,000 or more young people with life-altering wounds, people 18 and 19 years old who will live with them for the very rest of their lives. We don't know the loss other people have sustained because nothing much is required of us except to pay the bill of $10 billion a month, mostly borrowed from China, so we can finance this war. There is no compelling reason why we should go on forever with this. Nothing that we are asking the President to put on the Internet is anything but classified and who is going to believe it anyway. If the President is running out of money for the troops, it is simply because he vetoed the money that he asked us for that we sent to him. The fault, the blame lies exclusively with him. And with that I ask all of my colleagues to vote for this rule on both sides of the House. Please vote for this rule. Cleanse your conscience. Let's do a good thing today for those people who count on us in Iraq.”