I know that my Republican colleagues are as ashamed as I am that the United States is forced to borrow over $1 trillion from foreign nations to pay for our national priorities like reconstruction of the gulf coast and the war in Iraq.

I fully support the goal of species protection and conservation and believe that recovery and ultimately delisting of species should be the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's top priority under ESA.

I know that my Republican colleagues are as ashamed as I am that the United States is forced to borrow over $1 trillion from foreign nations to pay for our national priorities like reconstruction of the gulf coast and the war in Iraq.

If the United States were to cut and run from Iraq, we would send a message of weakness that would embolden our terrorist enemies across the globe. A failed Iraq would destabilize the entire region and undermine U.S. national security for decades to come.

The truth is the Republican leadership has created a credit card Congress that is recklessly selling out the future of America, our children and our grandchildren, and President Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible President in the history of America.

Now is not the time to give greater protections to pharmaceutical companies that put unsafe drugs like Vioxx on the market. Such protections have nothing to do with the liability insurance crisis facing doctors and should be stripped from this bill.

Our constituents paid into Social Security, and they want it paid back to them when they retire. Cutting Social Security benefits that Americans have earned should always be a last resort.

In 2003, Congress authorized the construction of a visitor center for the Vietnam Memorial to help provide information and educate the public about the memorial and the Vietnam War.

As an adoptive parent myself of foster children, I have seen firsthand the glaring problems of the system currently facing this Nation.

Like my colleague, I represent a large Assyrian community in central California, one of the largest concentrations of Assyrian Americans anywhere in the United States.

We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government.

House Democrats have tried to increase port security funding on this House floor four times over the last 4 years, and House Republicans have defeated our efforts every single time.

In our system of democracy, our government works on a system of checks and balances. Instead of stripping power from the courts, I believe we should follow the process prescribed in our Constitution - consideration of a Constitutional amendment.

It is about time that we develop a worldwide strategy to reduce illegal trade in meth and its precursor chemicals and stop the devastating impact that methamphetamine use is having on our children and our communities.

The longer we go without strong leadership from the Administration and until we see significant progress in the day-to-day lives of the Iraqi people, the more difficult it will become to sustain the support of the American people and Congress for the current course.

We must support initiatives that provide clear, concrete measures and milestones that our troops need for defeating the insurgency, building up Iraqi security forces, and handing over Iraq to the Iraqi people.

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help.

Athletes as role models and heroes is a hoax, a sick hoax. The men and women who are fighting in Iraq, they are the true heroes.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

As I think through the issue of funding the rebuilding of Iraq, I think about the analogy of a bankruptcy proceeding. There is no doubt that Iraq as a country is bankrupt.

Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United States has ever before waged, for the success of democracy in Iraq is a crucial test of the ideals this Nation was founded upon.

The situation in Iraq will be long, it will be expensive and it will be difficult. But in the end, Iraq will very much be worth it.

It's true that the war in Iraq opened a distance in relations between part of Europe and the U.S. government, but our basic ties are stronger than that. We share democracy, free markets and a commitment to Western security. We differ on how to guarantee that security.

It was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

Further, Japan is the second largest donor in Iraq after the United States, with over $5 billion dollars for humanitarian, infrastructure and reconstruction projects.

Iraq's elite Republican Guard is doing so badly they're changing their name to the Democratic Guard.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

Rather, it is through conciliation and compromise that we are building a fair Iraq, a just state for all its peoples.

This will be Iraq for all without discrimination among Iraqi citizens, or ethnic or sectarian discrimination.

The Bush administration also was not straightforward about the intelligence it had, releasing tenuous information that fit its goal of attacking Iraq. I feel deceived.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

We are at war to liberate Iraq, to protect the people of the United States and other countries from the devastating impact of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being used by terrorists or the Iraqi government to kill thousands of innocent civilians.

The poorest residents of the gulf coast were most affected by the devastating hurricanes, and the poorest Americans have shouldered a disproportionate share of the burden in Iraq.

We believe the use of force against Iraq, especially with reference to previous resolutions of the UN Security Council, has no grounds, including legal grounds.

This war of choice in Iraq is undermining the very fabric of American society.

And now when we hear that Iran and Iraq plan to cooperate more closely and that a fundamentalist is coming to power in Tehran - a man about whom we cannot be sure that he is absolutely averse to terrorism - it is very worrisome.

What is the first thing we did when we took control of Iraq? Protect the oil fields. Remember the administration quote about how the oil would pay for the war.

The Syrian regime is helping the insurgency in Iraq and allowing all kinds of militants to come in and out, and go to Iraq to attack random soldiers and innocent people.

I think the suffering, violence and cruelty and Guantanamo and the rest is going to go on and on in Iraq.

Well, I know that 500,000 children died in Iraq because of the embargo.

We must do everything we can to be more aggressive in confronting Syria about what they are doing in Iraq.

If the president is going to use so much language of theology and the Bible, then let's use that language for a serious discussion about the war in Iraq. And that was never done.

It would be immoral to walk away from the consequences of our actions, leaving behind anarchy and civil war in Iraq.

Tony Blair faced a massive defection from his own party ranks during voting around the intervention in Iraq. For our present purpose, the point is not that he survived the defection, but that he had to face it.

Will we fight or will we retreat? That is the question that is posed to us. Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle often refer to Iraq as a distraction.

To the contrary, I believe the U.S. military has already done all that has been asked of them. Saddam Hussein is on trial. The threat from alleged weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq has been neutralized.

If we don't have accurate information, if we are not able to tell difficult truth one to another, we will never be able to effectively design a policy for Iraq.

According to various polls conducted, the single most important issue in last week's election was not the Iraq War, not the War on Terror, not even the economy. It was the cultural war.

I don't think so, but it's always in the back of my mind that many of the soldiers being wounded and killed in Iraq are about the same age as my kids. My godson is going over soon, so the war's about to get personal for me.