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Mr. Dorgan: Mr. President, there is a lot of discussion today, and has been in the last week or two, and perhaps there will continue to be discussions about the funding for our troops in Iraq. I think it is important to say that the Congress has passed legislation that will go to the President that actually requests more funding than the President requested for the troops in Iraq. It also establishes a goal of hoping that perhaps we will be able to extract our troops from Iraq in a year. There is not a requirement that American troops be pulled out of Iraq. It establishes a goal. But what I wish to talk about today is the part of the bill that provides a higher level of funding for the troops than the President requested.

It is regrettable that in this country we have gone to war in Iraq and to war in Afghanistan. We have asked very much of our soldiers to go into harm's way--3,300 plus of them have been killed in Iraq--but we have not asked for similar circumstances from the American people. We have not asked for a commitment from the American people. In fact, the very funding the President has requested, once again, as emergency funding is not paid for. The President says: Let's have emergency funding and add it to the debt.

We have not asked the American people to pay for the war. We sent the soldiers to war with the understanding that when they come back, they will inherit the debt and pay for this war. That doesn't make sense to me.

Even more than that, the President says one can contribute to this country by going shopping, going to the mall. So we send soldiers to war, and we go to the mall. Where is the national commitment? Where is it that we have asked the American people to go to war against terrorism, to go to war in Iraq with the American soldiers?

I remind everyone that what we did in the Second World War--and by the way, this war has now lasted longer than the Second World War. But in the Second World War, our country mobilized. There was Rosie the Riveter. There were three shifts at the manufacturing plants. We had our capability humming in this country producing everything we needed for that war. We had rationing. We had factory lights on 24 hours a day.

William Manchester wrote a book, "The Glory and the Dream." He describes what we did. He said this:

From an initial keel-to-delivery time of over 200 days, Henry Kaiser cut the average work time on a liberty ship to 40 days. In 1944, he was launching a new escort aircraft carrier every week, and they were turning out entire cargo ships in 17 days. During the first 212 days of 1945, they completed 247 cargo ships, better than one a day.

We had this country's productive capacity revved up full speed. When Stalin met with FDR and Churchill in the mid-1940s before the end of the war, he said: Thank God for America's productive capability, America's manufacturing capability.

Here is what they did. Manchester, in "The Glory and the Dream," described this. I want us to think about this just for a moment: From 1941 to 1945, We turned out 296,000 warplanes, 102,000 tanks, 2.4 million trucks, 8,700 warships, and 5,400 cargo ships. America went to war. In the last year of the Second World War, we were producing 4,000 warplanes a month in our factories. Contrast that with what is happening today.

The reason I ask these questions, the reason I come to the floor to ask those questions is because of this picture. This is a picture of something called an MRAP, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, which is much safer than the humvee. This version of the MRAP is what the Commandant of the Marine Corps said we need in Iraq, 6,700 of them.

There have been 300 IED attacks in Iraq against this version of the MRAP. Not one death. Let me say that again. There have been 300 attacks by an IED against this vehicle in Iraq; not one death in those attacks.

We have had 3,342 U.S. troops killed in Iraq, 70 percent of them caused by IEDs, improvised explosive devices. The Commandant of the Marine Corps says this vehicle will save three-fourths of the lives that are being lost. Eighty percent of the casualties from IEDs will be saved with this safer vehicle.

Why do I raise this question in the context of what we did in the Second World War? Because we have been producing about 45 of these vehicles a month. At a time when the Commandant of the Marine Corps says we need 6,700 in Iraq to safeguard the soldiers going on patrol in Iraq, with the capability that this vehicle will save three-fourths of the lives that are now being lost, we are producing 45 a month. They say they want 6,700 in Iraq, and the President has requested less than a third of that amount. We wrote money in this appropriations bill, $1.2 billion, to substantially increase the number of MRAP vehicles that must be produced and must be sent to Iraq to save lives.

Let me read, if I might, James Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps, understanding I am talking about this MRAP:

The MRAP vehicle has a dramatically better record of preventing fatal and serious injuries from attacks by IEDs. The Commander of Multinational Force West estimates that the use of MRAP could reduce the casualties in vehicles due to IED attacks by as much as 80 percent.

This is from the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Why is it we could produce 4,000 warplanes a month at the end of the Second World War in support of our fighting men and women, and we produce 45 MRAPs a month in this country? Why is it we surge our troops to Iraq but don't surge our production of the MRAP vehicle, just as one example, that would provide dramatic increased protection against the lost of life from IEDs? Why will we not surge this? Why is this less important? I don't understand this at all. We go to war, but it is just the troops, not the country?

There was a story in USA Today, April 19:

In more than 300 attacks since last year, no Marines have died while riding in the new fortified armored vehicles the Pentagon would like to rush to Iraq, the Marine Commander in Anbar Province said. Attacks on other vehicles cause more than two casualties per attack, including deaths.

IEDs are responsible for 70 percent of the casualties in Iraq. Yet, while this country has sent its soldiers to war, it has not mobilized the country. We do not have third shifts with the lights on 24 hours a day. We don't have Henry Kaiser producing 1 ship a day, 4,000 warplanes a month. In fact, this relates to something else I have talked a lot about on the floor of the Senate. Only two U.S. steel mills are qualified to produce the special armored steel for the Defense Department at this point--two. Both have been acquired by foreign companies in the past year and a half.

Let me say that again: Only two U.S. steel mills are qualified to produce armored steel for the Defense Department. Both have been acquired by foreign companies in the past year and a half. Oregon Steel is now owned by Evraz Group S.A. of Russia. The International Steel Group was acquired by the Dutch conglomerate Arcelor Mittal.

The Defense Department has requested that the armor steel made by both firms be categorized with what is called a "DX" rating for the MRAP program. DX stands for the highest national urgency. Under the 1950 Defense Production Act, any item with a DX rating gets top priority and must be furnished to the U.S. Government in advance of any other customers. Several other items that are critical to the MRAP vehicles--ballistic glass, transmissions, and Mack Truck chasses--are also supposed to receive the DX rating.

I am told Defense officials are in negotiations with both the steel mills I mentioned, that are foreign owned, to make sure there will be enough steel available for the various kits they need for the MRAP vehicle.

The point I want to make is simple: In the Second World War, we had some unbelievably brave soldiers, men and women who went halfway around the world to fight because their country asked them to fight for this country's freedom. But it was more than just soldiers; it was in virtually every manufacturing plant in this country and with virtually every citizen, through rationing, through production, through the capability to produce what the soldiers needed.

Contrast what we did in the Second World War with what we do today. We decide to send the soldiers to Iraq, but we make only a few of the MRAP vehicles that would save so many of those lives that are now being lost to IED explosions. We can't do this. This ought not be acceptable to anybody in this country. If we are going to war, the country needs to go to war with the soldiers. When the President sends us an appropriations request and says, Oh, by the way, the MRAP is a lower priority, we are not going to fund it, we are not going to ask for what the Marine Corps Commandant says is necessary in the field, we will ask for slightly less than a third of that number of vehicles--this Congress fortunately has said no, Mr. President, that is not what we are going to accept. We decided to invest in these vehicles as quickly as we can and move them to Iraq so when soldiers are on patrol and they are hit with an IED, they have better armor and a better opportunity to protect their lives.

There will be a lot of discussion in the coming days about who is right and who is wrong on all the funding issues with respect to Iraq. I want my colleagues to understand a couple of things. First, we have actually increased the funding requested by the President. We have increased the funding for couple of reasons. No. 1, we added funds for safer vehicles that the President did not request enough of will save the lives of troops; No. 2, we had to add funds for military and VA medical care because the President did not request enough money to care for the injured soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. We increased the funding for both. We have actually increased the funding for the troops.

I understand there is a disagreement about the language with respect to Iraq. Ours establishes a "goal," not a requirement, a goal, hoping we can extract our soldiers from the middle of a civil war in Iraq within a year. That is a goal. I know the President and others suggest that somehow fully funding the troops and even adding more where it was necessary and establishing such a goal is pulling the rug out from under the troops, but nothing could be further from the truth. What I think injures our troops is to decide we are going to surge the troops but we will not surge the equipment necessary to protect them. That is wrong. This Congress has said it is wrong in the legislation we have passed.

I hope in the coming days and in the coming conflicts, whether it is dealing with Iraq or dealing with the terrorist threat around the world, we will decide in the future never again to send our soldiers in a manner that allows us not to use the full impact, the full capability of the American people to produce that which the soldiers need to do their jobs. That has been the case, regrettably, here.

Early in the Iraq war I received e-mails where people would send me pictures that illustrated what they were trying to do to protect themselves. Their humvees were not armored, so soldiers had welded patches of various kinds of metal to make them stronger. But now we have a new vehicle that can save a dramatic number of lives. The President's budget did not request nearly the money for it that should have been requested. So Congress added to it. I hope this is the first step to do what we should do with America's capacity to say to the soldiers: You have not gone to war alone. This country goes to war with you, with every capability we have to protect you.

I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The Presiding Officer (Ms. Klobuchar): The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

The Presiding Officer: The Senator from Virginia is recognized.

Mr. Webb: I ask the quorum call be rescinded and that I be allowed to speak for 15 minutes as in morning business.

The Presiding Officer: Without objection, it is so ordered.