Mr. Brown: Madam President, recently we learned the Ohio National Guard could face early redeployment. We learned the National Guard is being asked to train without the proper equipment. Our Guard will do the job well regardless of the circumstances, but it is wrong to send them to Iraq with incomplete training and inadequate equipment and with insufficient downtime.
The supplemental passed today echoes what many of us in Congress and military families across the country have been saying: We need a new direction for Iraq. Make no mistake, we take a backseat to no one in supporting the brave men and women fighting in Iraq. We absolutely support their families. However, more of the same is not a plan for our troops and will not end this war in Iraq. This war has made our world and our country less safe. The Iraq war has cost 142 Ohioans their lives. It has wounded another 1,000 Ohioans.
Congress will continue to fight for our Nation's military by working to see they have the resources and support they need and leadership they deserve. The supplemental did that today. The supplemental fully funds and fully supports our troops, while establishing conditions that will bring our troops home. It provides desperately needed funding to the VA, something the President simply has not asked for, to help care for the hundreds of thousands of new veterans created by this war.
In the Veterans' Committee yesterday, we heard from families about tragedy after tragedy, from families who have lost loved ones in this war, who didn't get the proper care from the VA because of underfunding, who didn't get the proper direction when they returned home from Iraq because the White House simply did not schedule in the way they should have the kind of help for returning Iraqi veterans. If the President won't take responsibility for those failures and lead our troops home, then Congress must. We owe it to our soldiers, sailors, air men and women, our marines, and especially to their families.
The President should listen to the military leaders and listen to the American people and work with Congress to change course in Iraq instead of threatening vetoes. I hope the President reads this legislation before he makes his final determination whether to sign it or whether to veto it. Vetoing this legislation would deny funding that our military needs and that our veterans desperately need, such as $99 billion in emergency Department of Defense spending--$4 billion more than the President requested; $3 billion for mine-resistant, ambush- protected vehicles; $4.8 billion in military construction in part to fund BRAC--$3.1 billion will go to funding the BRAC 2005 account, and we know all over the country how important that is; and $1.6 billion for individual body armor.
The President and the Pentagon and civilian leaders of this country have fallen shamefully short in their failures to provide the body armor for our troops. We have all heard too many stories. I have heard them in Steubenville and Toledo and Dayton about soldiers' families telling us they didn't have the proper body armor they needed.
The VA would get $1.7 billion more than the President's VA proposal. We know the VA is underfunded at least that much. They have increased only about 10 percent in terms of employees but have a workload of returning Iraqi war veterans of at least 2.5 times that number. There is $39 million in our supplemental budget for polytrauma-related funding. There is $10 million for blind veterans programs. There is $100 million--and this is essential--for VA mental health services and $25 million for prosthetics. None of those did the President include in his request, and none of those have we prepared for properly in the previous Congress and in the White House.
When we add up the numbers and we see 3,300 soldiers and marines in our country have lost their lives in the Iraq war, when you understand the tens of thousands of injuries, we see that our VA is simply not prepared. They are not prepared for this year and next year, let alone for the 50 years down the road when taxpayers are going to be taking care of these deserving veterans, giving the kind of care that we should be providing. We are going to see we are not prepared over the next 50 years to do that, either for health treatment or for treatment of mental health injuries.
In addition to the Iraq spending and the spending for our Nation's returning veterans, there are other things in this emergency spending bill, as there were in Republican bills in the past, drafted by the White House, passed by the Republican House and Senate. There is other crucial emergency spending that needs to be dealt with: $1.3 billion for Katrina relief, $100 million for FEMA and emergency management performance grants, $425 million for securing rural schools, $13 million for mine safety. We have seen some of the most dangerous times in our Nation's mines in the last couple of years. There is $625 million for pandemic flu response, something public health authorities warn us about every week or so here. There is $400 million for LIHEAP to take care of deserving elderly and indigent who simply cannot afford their heating and cooling bills and another $683 million for emergency relief grants--all that this Congress needs to do.
The President has set our Nation on a path that leads in the wrong direction in Iraq and fails to meet the needs of our returning veterans. It is time to change paths. I ask again that the President of the United States read this bill, understand this bill, and understand how the supplemental bill addresses the needs our country faces in the years ahead.
Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The Presiding Officer: The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. Carper: Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The Presiding Officer: Without objection, it is so ordered.
