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(Mr. Welch of Vermont asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Welch of Vermont: Mr. Speaker, this week we received more proof from Iraq that the President's troop escalation plan is failing.

A senior U.S. military commander told the Washington Post yesterday that if the President really wanted to stem the violence in Iraq, he would have to send an additional 20,000 U.S. troops there, something that no American would support. But even then, it appears that Iraq will remain incapable of taking full responsibility. Iraq is in a civil war, and our troops, it is not the job of our men and women in uniform to be refereeing a civil war.

Last week, one of our generals put a surveillance out to determine who was laying these IEDs that are killing our troops, and it turned out to be Iraqi security forces, people who work with us by day and then were trying to kill our soldiers by night.

It is time for Democrats and Republicans to work together to bring the President to his senses, to change the direction of the war in Iraq.

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(Mr. Yarmuth asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. Yarmuth: Mr. Speaker, it appears that the House Republicans are operating from the same playbook as President Bush.

Over the first 5 months of this year, this new Democratic Congress has approved more than 45 key measures, most of them with strong bipartisan support. Unfortunately, President Bush has been a stubborn opponent of our efforts to move this Nation in a new direction. He opposes or has threatened to veto 60 percent of the House's work.

The President threatened to veto a Defense authorization bill because he believed it gave our brave soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan too big a pay raise. His administration opposes a bill that would make college more affordable by cutting student interest rates in half. And he has once again threatened to veto legislation promoting life-saving embryonic stem cell research.

While the President has been obstructing our agenda for months, House Republicans have jumped on the bandwagon and are now delaying critical appropriations bills. Rather than obstructing the process, Republicans should join us in passing bills that will help us better secure the homeland and better serve our veterans.

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