Whitehouse Speaks Out on Senate Floor Against President Bush's Misplaced Legislative Priorities
Madam President, as my colleagues know, earlier this week President Bush announced he will ask this Congress to provide an additional $46 billion for the war in Iraq next year. That is $46 billion more than the $150 billion he already told us he would ask for. Taken together, that is close to $200 billion more than the hundreds of billions of dollars the taxpayers of this country have already poured into the sands and marshes of Iraq--for a war this President has made clear he has no intention of ending.
The people of Rhode Island are tired of watching their sons and daughters, their neighbors and their friends, sent off to war by a President who won't trouble himself to make a plan to bring them home. They are tired of spending money our country has to borrow on a war with burdens our country should no longer have to bear. And they are sick and tired of hearing this President veto or threaten to veto legislation passed by this Congress that supports the real and urgent needs of Americans and their families--all because he says it costs too much.
Clearly, this President is an expert when it comes to irresponsible and excessive spending. Look at the war. Look at the private contractors. Look at the national debt he has run up. But how can he keep a straight face and tell the American people it is more important to borrow and spend $35 billion for 3 1/2 more months of the Iraq war than it is to provide budgeted health insurance for 5 years to 10 million American children? What a sobering revelation of this administration's misplaced priorities.
No American should doubt for 1 minute what is going on here. Every time President Bush vetoes a bill to fund children's health care, every time he threatens to veto legislation that will send our Nation's children to college, keep families warm during the winter months, invest in job training and technical education programs, or offer the promise of medical cures through research at the National Institutes of Health, President Bush is making a choice. He is choosing prolonging a war in Iraq over battling cancer. He is choosing his no-plan war over helping families in poverty. It is a choice, and it is the wrong choice.
Last night, the Senate passed a bill to provide funding for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and other agencies.
On October 17, the administration expressed its opposition to this appropriations bill based on what it calls ``an irresponsible and excessive level of spending.'' As I said, this President is certainly expert at irresponsible and excessive levels of spending, but what does he mean? The President means that $10.8 billion spent to help millions of Americans lead healthier, more productive lives is irresponsible and excessive, but the nearly $200 billion additional he wants to borrow and spend on the war in Iraq is just fine.
Let's look at two areas in this bill where the funding levels we propose exceed those in the administration's budget to see just how irresponsible and excessive we are.
The first is at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH. Our bill funds the institute at $67 million more than the President's request. I want to introduce my colleagues to one man who does not think this increase is irresponsible and excessive.
This is a picture of Richard Pezzillo on his last visit to Washington, DC. Rich is a bright, kind, thoughtful young man from North Providence, RI, who hopes one day to become a meteorologist. Rich also suffers from hemophilia and right now lies in a hospital bed in Rhode Island, too sick to attend his classes at Western Connecticut State University where he hopes to graduate this May. Sadly, Rich, now 24, has missed 2 1/2 years of school due to his illness.
One of these absences was caused by an activity most of us would never even think about--something we do, in fact, to save lives--putting on a seatbelt. Three years ago, Rich unfastened his seatbelt from the airplane, collected his things, and walked off into the airport and suddenly started to feel tremendous pain. He started vomiting blood. Simply wearing his seatbelt had caused Rich to bleed internally, inside of his stomach, eventually requiring that his gall bladder be removed. Rich spent roughly 3 weeks in the hospital, accumulating bills totaling nearly $1.5 million. Luckily, Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Rhode Island, his family's insurer, covered most of these costs. But Rich is desperately afraid what will happen to him when he graduates from college and no longer qualifies under his parents' health care plan. Hemophilia is one of the most expensive conditions a person can have, one that few insurance companies will want to take on.
Richard Pezzillo is a fighter. He is an example for us all. But he will continue to face tremendous difficulties with his health throughout his life. Soon, thanks to research going on at the National Institutes of Health; specifically at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, hemophilia could be the first disease cured by gene therapy. The funding in this appropriations bill will go toward research which could save Richard's life and the lives of 18,000 people across this country who suffer from hemophilia. This spending is not irresponsible. This spending is not excessive. This spending is vital and it is working and it has the potential to save thousands of people like Rich Pezzillo.
A second place where this bill calls for spending above the President's budget--$128 million above his budget to be exact--is at the National Cancer Institute. Here I want to share the story of Benjamin Haight. I met Ben's parents this summer when they came down to my office from Warwick, RI, to share their little boy's story. Ben was diagnosed with neuroblastoma early in 1999 when he was just 4 1/2 years old. At the time, Ben's dad was a senior chief in the Navy, serving aboard the USS Miami. He was airlifted off the submarine to join his son, as Ben underwent five rounds of chemo, surgery, radiation, and endured two stem cell transplants. These treatments left Ben with no high frequency hearing, requiring him to wear the two hearing aids, and they left him with a severely compromised immune system. But Ben refused to let any of this keep him from being a kid. He told his doctors there would be no treatments during science class, and that they would have to be out by 3 to go to Cub Scouts or baseball or soccer or other activities. He often left his chemotherapy sessions dressed in his Little League uniform. Ben was a snorkler, a sailor, a swimmer, a fisherman, a climber, an artist, and an animal lover. He was, as his parents say, a child first and a child with cancer second.
Though Ben and his family enjoyed 2 years of remission, he relapsed again in October 2001 at the start of second grade. This new round of treatment consisted of more chemo and over 200 blood and platelet transfusions. Ben lost his battle with neuroblastoma on August 8, 2003, at the age of 9. The night before he died, Ben turned to his mom and asked: ``Can't we try a stronger medicine?''
Well, Ben, at the pediatric oncology branch of the National Cancer Institute, they are trying to create that stronger medicine. Ten phase I and four phase II clinical trials are currently being conducted on neuroblastoma, and scientists are closer and closer every day to the stronger medicine you asked for.
Is it really so irresponsible and excessive to provide the funding for these studies, to find the treatments that could have saved Ben Haight and could save so many more children like him?
To me, irresponsible and excessive is borrowing and spending $450 billion for an endless war that undermines our national security and then asking the Congress for another $196.4 billion without a plan to bring our troops home, all while nearly 50 million Americans go without health insurance and millions of families hover at the door of poverty.
We should be clear that the nearly $200 billion this President has requested for the war in Iraq, on top of the hundreds of billions he has already spent, is not even the whole story. When this administration tells us about the financial costs of this disastrous war, they don't tell us about the interest payments we will have to pay. The Congressional Budget Office tells us that interest on the war will total $415 billion by 2017, and then there will be more interest on the additional $200 billion the President wants us to borrow and spend. The final interest costs of this war could approach $1 trillion, passed on to our children and grandchildren.
President Bush, I think most Americans would argue with you. I think most Americans would argue that $22 billion to keep our families healthy is a pretty sound investment in our country's future, and trillions of dollars in spending and hundreds of billions of dollars in interest for a war you won't take action to end, that is what is irresponsible and excessive.
The President's threatened veto of this appropriations bill is just another illustration of his extraordinarily misplaced priorities. The $67 million increase this bill calls for to fund the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is a few hours of the cost of the war in Iraq--not even a full day, not even half a day, a few hours. In fact, the entire NIH budget in this bill is only $1 billion above the President's request. One billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, of course, but it is, in fact, only a few days of the war in Iraq--not a month, not a week, only a few days.
President Bush would rather prolong the war in Iraq than fund additional research at the National Institutes of Health into pediatric cancer, into hemophilia, and into other diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, autism, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's. He would rather fund a continuous war than provide hope for millions of families around this country.
Well, I hope President Bush will listen to Rich Pezzillo's story. I hope he will listen to Ben Haight's parents. I hope he will listen to the thousands of Rhode Islanders who have reached out to me to demand a new direction, not only in Iraq but here at home in America. I hope he will listen to Americans across this country who think that people such as Rich and Ben should be our first priorities.
I am proud this bill puts people such as Rich and Ben ahead of the extreme rightwing ideologies and reckless wars this President pursues, and I hope we in Congress will stand our ground when, of all people, this President charges that putting Rich and Ben first is irresponsible and excessive.
Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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