Democrats and Republicans alike support our military personnel.

As costs mount, in lives and dollars, it is natural to second guess, but one lesson I hope we have learned is that the U.S. cannot go it alone in a policy that leaves American troops taking all the risk and American taxpayers paying all of the costs.

Three big assumptions proved wrong: one, that the Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators; two, that oil would soon pay for Iraqi's rebuilding; and, three, that we have plenty of troops, weapons, and equipment for the postwar situation.

Just a few short years ago in the year 2000, the last full fiscal year of the Clinton administration, this country was running a surplus of $236 billion.

Our country, the United States of America, may be the world's largest economy and the world's only superpower, but we stretch ourselves dangerously thin by taking on commitments like Iraq with only a motley band of allies to share the burden.

I am not disputing the need for this money. What I am disputing and calling attention to is the fact that we are taking the tab for defense in our time against terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere and shoving this tab off onto our children.

Democrats and Republicans alike support our military personnel.

What we are effectively doing, I say this to the young people of America whom my colleagues represent, is leaving our children and grandchildren the tab for fighting a war, letting them pay for the lion's share of it by simply adding it to the national debt.

Domestic discretionary spending on education and health care and the environment has been growing at 2 to 3 percent a year. He says we have to rein it in, but he ignores the spending category that is the big spike in the budget.

Without the Guard and Reserve, our active duty troops could hardly deploy.

We have got thousands of nuclear weapons in order to achieve deterrence.

We would take a little bit of money out of a huge increase in ballistic missile defense and put it in a place where it will do a lot of good, namely, in targeted pay increases to our enlisted personnel, particularly our NCOs and our junior warrant officers.

This war so far has cost us $125 billion and counting, because largely we decided to do it on our own, with only the United Kingdom as a paying, fully participating partner.

We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.

And it raises a fundamental question: How long can we move the world in one direction while we move in another direction, and do we want to backslide into an era that we finally emerged from where we had a nuclear weapon for every tactical mission?

Since the Pentagon underestimated the number of troops required after the end of hostilities, we were not prepared to prevent looting or to guard hundreds of weapons dumps spread throughout the country.

We developed during the 1990s a series of budget process rules that helped us bring to heel these deficits, diminishing every year and moving the budget so into surplus.

The young in this country, and you fellows are young by my reckoning, have a right to be concerned about the course that our government, the Federal Government, is taking under President Bush.

With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.

We don't have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.

One of the great joys this year and the year before has been how all of the people in this body, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, have worked together so well with our chairman and the chairman of the full committee to address the issues of housing for our soldiers.

Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.

I think Democrats keep the commandments of the Lord more.

I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, not as Democrats attacking the administration, but as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety?

The American people are screaming at the top of their lungs to Washington, 'Stop! Stop the spending, stop the job-killing policies.' And yet, Democrats in Washington refuse to listen to the American people.

Welfare reform happened with reconciliation; half the Democrats voted for it. The Bush tax cuts happened with reconciliation; twelve Democratic Senators voted for it. You didn't have a real partisan issue on those times that it was used.

Democrats were quick to point out that President Bush's budget creates a 1 trillion dollar deficit. The White House quickly responded with 'Hey, look over there, it's Saddam Hussein.'

Democrats have laid out a program that, if adopted, would make us independent of Middle Eastern oil in ten years, and create a new economy especially for those in rural America. Our program invests in clean energy alternatives and provides energy assistance for those in need.

Real Democrats don't make promises they can't keep.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

I welcome the Democrats' ideas on Social Security. I think it is very important to make a bipartisan reform.

Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase.

We're going to march on Washington with a host of Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, legislators.

And I want to be able to - you know, make Republicans and Democrats famous for keeping jobs in California.

There's not an appropriations bill in the last 10 years that the-that Democrats passed in the Congress. We haven't spent any money of your taxes in the last decade.

The Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything. They have to compromise with liberal Democrats to spend more money. Even though arguably we have control of the Senate, we really don't.

Anybody who runs for president in this country and comes out as strong as the Democrats were about helping the poor folks and black folks is not going to win.

California is going to be quite good for the Democrats. But the rest of the country is a draw.

The Democrats have no actual policy proposals of their own unless constant carping counts as a policy.

The greatest thing the Democrats have ever done for me was to defeat me for the governor of Tennessee.

The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face. They are cowards.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

I don't understand the Democrats' approach to Social Security in this country, and I'm not alone.

The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.

And American voters understand that if we want to keep fighting to move in the new - in a new direction, we've got a long way to go. And we need to make sure we continue with Democrats being in the majority.

This is a struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party, which in too many cases has become so corporate and identified with corporate interests that you can't tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

Democrats believe they can win at the ballot box by obstructing, and they would rather win the next election than move America forward.

I think too many Democrats are too wimpy. But I think they're beginning to toughen up.