Remarks of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Meeting on Iraq January 24, 2007 Listen to Senator Feingold's Remarks Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. My comments relate to both the Dodd amendment and the Biden amendment. I'll probably support both of them. I've heard many of my colleagues today say this is the moment. I guess what I would say is it should be the moment, but because we are not taking strong enough action, we will not rise to the moment. And I think that's terribly unfortunate. If you look at the wonderful history of this committee, not only in the past, but also under the leadership both of Senator Biden and Senator Lugar, this committee has historically been the place where the Senate rises to the occasion and says no, using its power, either to going into a war or, when necessary, to terminating a war. We did not rise to the occasion in 2002. Despite the powerful hearings and testimony in August that we all heard, with the questions that were raised about the Iraq war, I was stunned, not only that the administration wanted to do this, but that my colleagues could vote for such a bizarre response to what happened on 9/11. This committee did not rise to the occasion. And then, as this war unfolded and it became clear not only that it had nothing to do really with WMD or Al Qaeda, and that it wasn't working out, some of us said: You know, we ought to figure out a way to get out. And I proposed a timetable in August of 2005 saying we ought to have these troops out by the end of 2006. Once again, we somehow let this White House say: Hey, you can't do that; you can't talk about time lines; that's taboo. This committee time and again, and this Senate time and again has allowed this administration to not allow us to talk about the very things that would have gotten us out of this war. We would be out of there by now, and I think we'd be a lot better off if we'd put that timetable in place. And let me remind my colleagues on this side of the aisle -- I'm so pleased we're in the majority again -- but we were in the majority when this war was approved. We have a responsibility as Democrats and Republicans in the Congress of the United States to stop this thing now. And these proposals simply don't do it. I think they are perfectly fine steps in the right direction. But this is the moment to do something serious. And the latest taboo is that we can't talk about using the power of the purse; that we can't use our constitutional authority that Senator Boxer just talked about, and many times it's been done in the past; that somehow we're going to endanger the troops. Well, we have successful redeployed for military operations without endangering troops many times. But yet I see this committee and this Senate once again allowing itself to be intimidated into not talking about our real powers and our responsibility. So I've introduced legislation in the past with some of my colleagues that would say, "Six months after enactment, the troops will be redeployed." The president, in the first two months of those six months, should show us the plan for how he would do that. What we need to add now is the enforcement, the teeth. So I will shortly propose that we use our authorities under the Constitution, our authorities to prohibit funding at a date certain to get this thing done. I fear, Mr. Chairman, that this is slow walking. This is not a time for legislative nuancing. This is not a time for trying to forge a compromise that everybody can be a part of. This is a time to stop the needless deaths of American troops in Iraq. This is a time to refocus our country in the fight against those who attacked us on 9/11. And we have a moral responsibility, as well as a responsibility to the lives of the American people, to start doing it now. And I believe in good faith that this chairman means it when he says that's what we're going to be doing. And so I'm going to support what we're doing here today. Next week, I'll be holding, as chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, a hearing to make it very clear that we have the constitutional power to use the power of the purse, to remind our colleagues and the public of that power. And I will introduce legislation that will combine a timeline with the ability to use the power of the purse so that we can finally redeploy these troops. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

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