priority that they deserve. california has been devastated, frankly, by the wildfires that we have just experienced. ten days ago, i was in santa rosa, california, and firsthand witnessed the devastation that took place throughout that region, and in particular in i am met with firefighters,n community leaders, elected leaders and others who traveled to the area with a desire to

help. i've met county supervisors and two of them in particular the supervisors in th and the entire districts were on fire. yet they were leading the charge in the recovery effort into doing so in such a selfless way. but ithe entire communities were devastated. people lost everything and are still suffering to an incredible extent because the loss they experiencedw and it isn't being resettled. my heart breaks and i know that we feel for the 42 people and the families whose lives were ended in the fighters. therfires. there were 42 people in this region who lost their lives. more,4 than 8,400 homes and buildings were destroyed. for example in santa rosa, the housing stockis is 4% of the stk

is gone and many of the folks areng middle-class families, plumbers and teachers and first responders who were barely able to meet their mortgage. fires scorched more than 245,000 acres, 100,000 were forced to evacuate. i am in all of the firefighters and firstt responders who fought day and night and those that worked 80 hours straight to do the work of the evacuations making sure no lives were lost were in peril. i met one whose name is paul and when i met him, he finally was taking a moment of rest from the

firefighting he had been doing. he was wearinghi sweatpants anda sweatshirsweat pants and asweatt he borrowed from another firefighter because he lost his home and everything he had coming yet there he was on the front line fighting to make sure that no other californians or people faced the kind of devastation he faced. there were more than 11,000 total who responded to the fire and some from other states and some from other countries. i stand here in the senate to thank them for the work that they did coming to california and helping us deal with this crisis. first responders and medical professionals did important work as well. 51 doctors at the memorial hospital lost their homes and possessions and still stayed overtime to help crowded emergency rooms full of

patients. i am uplifted by what i know and the world now saul which is the character of the californians. people rushed to help the elderly and nursing homes evacuated. one used his motorcycle to save babies from the neonatal unit and now these folks need our help. senator feinstein and i will continue to demand human resources which include the need for housing by individual assist in, transportation and water infrastructure. we need to make sure all californians regardless of the status can help up to shelters. i should spend immigration enforcement in the area until further notice. our our belief in understanding that that notice will be clear not enforcing

immigration and we want to be cleare because they will keep trusting the word of on the immigration enforcement has subsided. we are told that fema will also support emergency packages that provide disaster relief for texas, florida and the united states virgin islands. and california is resilient and we will rebuild what we need help. but we need help. more than 12,000 constituents contact our office and we will continue to work with fema, the small business administration and usda to ensure that those affected will get all the relief that is necessary. congress needs to fund programs like the community development block grant and section eight housing to help low and middle

class residents they need help to findaf affordable housing in the crisis like many other states inur the country and this is something that has been highlighted by theta devastation that these territories experienced recently but it is an ongoing issue we must deal with and we cannot stop there. we need larger supplemental packages that include helping california. and there has to be a long-term commitment. the ex. it's becoming more frequent. in the 1980s, wildfires burned over 25 acres on average. now typical white old fire wildn over 100 acres. california's 2017 fire season has not yet ended and it's already burned more than the average for the past five years. in southern california from kern county to san diego, red flag

warnings are occurring as we speak and they are currently up to 55-mile per hour winds and warm dry weather with very low humidity. these are the conditions at play in the most recent crisis. we must look at how to prevent them from reaching this magnitude as we go forward. we must pass the wildfire disaster funding act. the budget is dedicated to combating wildfires compared to just 13% of the budget in 1993. the forest service isn't about to use genital relief fund at femthatfema and techniques no s. and itd is cheaper than reactio. the united states service estimated there are 6.3 billion dead trees in the western state.

removing them would improve safety by mitigating wildfires. also it would have an economic benefit and create jobs. there are certain bills and in the bills i mentioned that help achieve this because it will allow the forest service to dedicate to the forest management and not just reacting. wert must listen to the experts, for example too often states are picking up the bill for the prevention and management and we should make it very clear fires are not partisan. this bill that i mentioned is a bipartisan bill and should be inserted cleanly into the next supplemental emergency package. and finally what the left recognize california is leading the way preparing for the increase in wildfires that the federal government needs to do its part. natural desires do not

discriminate by region or party. we must help each other when these tragedies hit but also, we must prepare for the future. so in closing i would suggest an urge of her colleagues to pass the supplemental bill an in fute emergency resources to ensure federal agencies deliver prompt help on the ground and pass the wildfire disaster funding act. thank you, and i yield the floor. >> the senator from florida. >> just as the senator from california has outlined the needs of her state having been hit by a natural disaster, so to natural disasters, not wildfires although we've had plenty in florida, but hurricanes have hit other states.

yesterday the senator spoke at length about the effects on a particular industry. i showed pictures of 75 to 90% of the fruit on the ground. the senator made a unanimous consent request to include a bipartisanf amendment of getting money for agriculture not just in florida about texas and frederico and the virgin islands anat the wildfires in california into that package specifically about $3 billion for agriculture and the losses in florida on agriculture or 2.5 million of which three quarters of a

billion is just losses to citrus growers. that's the bad news because the unanimous consent request rejected but the good news is although the white house rejected it, they made a promise to put it in a continuing supplemental appropriation in november all these natural disasters, and to get the funding in there for agricultu agriculture, but some of us on both sides of the aisle in order to make sure that promises kept have put a hold on the nominee for the deputy budget director. i will take the white house at

its word and i this ought to be worked out in november. that was the subject of my interesaddress to the senate ye, along with my colleague senator rubio from florida as we talked about the losses, particularly to agriculture. w today, i want to talk about here a month after the hurricane innd puerto rico and two months after in florida. the aftermath isn't going so swimmingly because people are not getting the assistance they need. mind you, this is two months after the hurricane, two months after the hurricane in which people have lost all the food in their freezer because they didn't have any power. they are supposed to get assistance in order to be able to buy food, and if you are living paycheck to paycheck and

you don't have a paycheck you don't have any money to buy food and therefore the financial assistance from fema and the usda and yet you want to see the line in miami and orlando and tampa and belgrade. then they are cutting off the lines and the people that are getting cut out or going without food. so, we've got a long way to go. the usda supplemental nutrition assistance program is supposed to help all of our people recover from losses incurred by hurricane irma by making short-term assistance available.

it's especially important for families that are low income that don't have income or they are not getting a paycheck and now they are saddled with unexpected repairs, a storm damaged roof, they spend money evacuating or lost wages during the storm, or they lost power and lost all the foodre in their freezer. some people do go by and buy food in bulk because they can get it cheaper and store it in the freezer and then it's all gone because there's no power. there were 50,000 people waiting at a center in south florida, and many were turned away for waitinwaiting and the sheets fos and hours.

and then the next day, it was the same story in another city i didn't mention, delray beach. so, that people are getting desperate. i want to thank fema for everything you've done and thank the congress for doing the first supplemental in september that was intended originally for harvey in texas but along came irma and florida. i want to thank the congress for the additional supplemental that we just passed last night. but the administration of both used programs for assistance to people, it's not going so well. so, let's takeet another exampl. you get on the phone and call

fema, you're supposed to get a fema representative and you have to wait and wait h and wait. so, if that's because fema needs more peopl people on a short-tem basis to handle the amount of calls, well fema, let's get it going. or what happens if you are calling because he's got to have a fema representative come to your house to inspect your house so that you can then get the necessary individualel assistane to help you and you are waiting for assistance as to when a housing inspector can come and visit the home once you get fruithrough it on the telephoned once we checked, the expected wait time to get a housing

inspector is 45 days. that's too long for families to wait for an inspector to come because these are floridians that are stuck living in damaged homes that have gotten wet and therefore the mold and mildew has built up and they don't have any income that they can go down to on the air-conditioned hotels and they are still waiting for the inspector to come and inspect their homes so they can get qualified to get the assistance that t in fact they e due under the law. so people can't access certain forms of assistance until the inspection is complete. and i am told fema has increased

the number of housing inspectors onhe the ground, but this proces has got to be expedited. this isn't the only delay that is causing a serious threat in florida a threat to help them to safety. now fema has been very slow to get in manufactured homes, mobile homes because a lot of people's homes and/or mobile homes were so damaged that they can't go back and live there so they get temporary assistance and go to some air-conditioned place like an existing complex or chance a hotel but what if you are in the florida keys

where there's no there is not es and motels. that is the lifeblood of the economy and the service industry to live.ace in which they were either all on their side or they were upside down. and it's not unusual because the hurricane came right at the

water. they are not getting those manufactured homes in as temporary assistance. understand the example i gave as the florida keys there is one way in the and one way out but in the meantime, people are suffering and people are hurti hurting. and the red tape shouldn't stop anyone in this country from having a safe place to live. so, i would urge fema to expedite the transporting of these units all over florida to the florida communities and filled them up so that floridians have a place to live that is safe and that is clean.

if it were not enough of what's going on i would say to my friend from new jersey if it were not enough in florida, what about puerto rico? 80% of the island, still on after the hurricane, more than a month, 80% of the island still doesn't have power. i didn't go into the urbanized parts of san juan. i flew back into the mountains and into the middletown. for two and a half weeks they and it didn't have a road to get up there for two and a half weeks. puerto rico over a month i say to my friend from washington, over a month after the hurricane and 30% still do not have water. i was up in the mountains and

solve them going up to eight pipe coming out of the water that was flowing down the mountains. this wasn't necessarily portable water that was allhi they had ad they were lining up with their plastic jars and plastic buckets. hospitals rationing services for the optional operations they are making difficult decisions on prioritizing patients because of limited vindication of andlities, communications power and dialysis centers are desperate to get clean water so that they can process the dialysis for kidney patients. so clearly more needs to beds de also to help the people of

puerto rico in addition to florida and all the other states and i would urge my colleagues to remember the plight of americans trying to put their life together after a major disaster. we heard the senator from california and making th makingt the wildfires. you heard senator make the plea for florida, puerto rico and the virgin islands. you heard of the texas delegatiothe texas delegationma. we all have to come together in this time of need and pass a robust c comprehensive bill, and we hope the white house will be true to its promise that the additional aid particularly for agriculture will be put in the november emergency supplemental. there should be absolutely no

ambiguity of the federal government intends to provide all the necessary assist in to make our people hold. >> host: >> that is what caused the flooding. they scorched the communities across the west and there a are countless families from santa rosa to stand on that need a hand up right now and we've got to be there for them including our fill of americans inur puero rico where the majority are still without power or access to clean water as we just heard so i'm glad we will take up the

relief package to send resources to help our neighbors in need many have lost everything. and i'm glad as you will hear from many of theor colleagues on the floor today that this is not the end ofth the commitment to those affected by the disaster is rather a down payment on what we know will be a long road to recovery for many devastated regions, but i challenge my colleagues to do one better, not only can we address the long-standing fisheries disaster that continues to cause hardship for men and women in the fishing industry and travel communities, we can also fix the way that this country fights wildfires. for far too long dot forest service has been forced to use up its budget fighting wildfires every season to have no funds left over. this is a dangerous cycle and

disservice to so many communities in the west and it's only gotten worse as climate change takes hold meaning our wildfires have grown more massive in size and intensity in recent years so i would urge my colleagues to treat wildfires like the disaster they are and i hope that we all take this moment to acknowledge all of the neighbors affected by the disaster even if they don't make the front page of a paper lets use this to help all of our neighbors in need. thank you mr. president, i yield the floor. >> we currently have a 20 trillion-dollar debt, and you might ask yourself whose fault is that? republicans or democrats.

the answer is both, both parties are responsible, culpable and equally guilty of ignoring the best and the spending problem and allowing the country to roct from the inside out. this year the event will be $700 million, the deficit will be $700 million for just one year, $700 billion. we borrow about a millionli a minute. under george w. bush the debt went from 5 trillion to 10 trillion. under president obama it went from 10 trillion to 20 trillion. it's doubling under republicans and democrats. so, righter now we are in the midst of another spending frenzy. people will say we are spending the money for something that we those in puerto rico and texas and those in florida.

my point is maybe we should take it from another area of spending that is less in need. i think simply borrowing it even for something that you can argue is compassionate is for you and me make us worse as a nation. the number one threat to national security is our guest. mostic people who follow world politics while we do have problems aroundd the world dont really see us being invaded anytime soon i am army but people do see the burden of debt, so what we have before us is a bill $36 billio $36 billiot is going to puerto rico and texas and florida. my request is very simple, we should pay for it. about a month ago we had 15 billion for the same purposes. we are set in all likelihood to

have over $100 billion spent on these hurricanes. i simply ask that we take it from some spending item that seems to be less pressing. we could go through hundreds and of items but one thing i would think we could start with is wh this why don't we qut sending money to countries that burn our flag. so if you are a country saying death to america burning the american flag, maybe we shouldn't give you any money. we give money to pakistan, the trade and sell arms with most of the middle east don't like us, and we do this with borrowed money. we could make the burden of little less and say let's not give any money to countries that don't hate us, to any country burning our flag in pakistan there is a christian woman who's been on death row for five years for being a christian.

she went to the well to draw water and the women of the village began chanting death to the christian as shest was being detained and pummeled on the ground and fought she was going to die the police finally show up and they thought they were there to rescue her but they were there to imprison her. they took her off to prison and that was five years ago, not easy being a christian in the middle east. in pakistan there was a doctor that helped us to get bin laden. he's been in jail now for about five, six years also, so he helped get information to help target bin laden and get this enemy of our country. they put him in jail for helping us. they help one day and stab us in the back the next day. they scurried off and then they

come back. i think we ought to think twice about sending money to countries that burn our flag and countries that persecute christians in the sending money to countries that frankly don't even like us. we send $3 billion helping other countries. if you were going to help your neighbor, if your neighbor was without food with you first feed your children if you have money left over, that is what most would do if you are going to give money to your church or synagogue would you go to the bank and borrow the money to give to somebody would that be compassionate or foolhardy, is it compassionate to borrow money to give to someon else? so, people here will say they have great compassion and want to help the peopl people in pueo rico and texas and florida but notice it's compassion with somebody else's money.

ask if they were giving money to texas or what they are doing to help theirk fellow man and you will find often it's easy to be compassionate with someone else's money but it's not always just that, it's compassion with money that doesn't even exist. of the $20 trillion debt we owe, china holds a trillion dollars of that. we just have to help people, really all of the money is being spent, well if you look back on moneyen that's been spe, people replace everything including things that were not broken. i remember in katrina a family that was holed up in a beachside resort for weeks, taxpayer money they could have put them up across the street for $60 or $50 a night, they were in a

400-dollar a night beachside resort with government money. i think we have t to look at how well the government spends money. you want an example of how well the government spends money last year we had some signs they wanted to study whether or not you weren't strong when he set foot on the moon, whether he set one small step for mankind or one small step for a man. they wanted to know the preposition so they took money intended for a good purpose to study autism and they studied the statement when he landed on the moon and the $700,000. in the $ nih last year, $2 milln studying whether or not if someone in front of you in a buffet line sneezes in th and td

are you more or less likely to eat the food that has been sneezed on i think we could have tolpulled the audience on that . they spent $300,000 studying whether japanese quail or more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. i think we could probably just assume yes. this kind of stuff goes on year after year. you think those are aberrations, that's new. a conservative democrat senator back in the day used to do something called the golden fleece award. they sound exactly the same as this stuff that we are finding now. we spent money studying the gambling habits in uganda and to study how to prepare the philippines for climate change. you name it, we are studying at around the world with money that we do not have. if you want to make the argument over running a surplus we are going to help all the other

countries of the world, i would actually listen to you if we were running the surplus that we are not. we are running a 700 billion-dollar debt. we borrowed a million dollars ai minute, and we have a lot of rich people here and what we ought to do, what are you giving to puerto rico or texas instead are giving money they borrowed so what am i asking? not that we not do this, what i'm asking is why don't we take it from something we shouldn't be doing? if you decidehe you want to help the people next door you might say i'm not going to do a movie theater, i'm not going to go to the broadway play or the nfl game i'm going to save money by cutting back on my expenses so i can help the people next door but are struggling, mother and father out of work that needs my help, but you wouldn't go to the bank and ask for a loan to help

people. that's not the way it works. unless you are a government and then common sense goes out the window and you just spend money because you are compassionate. you have a big heart because you've got the ability of the federal reserve tfederal reserve money. ultimatelyre ramifications to these spendings and we are approaching that they. some people say you get there when your dad is at 100% of gdp. we have now surpassed that of a 18 trillion-dollar economy in the 20 trillion-dollar debt. is it getting any better and have we planned on fixing it at all? there is no fixing. is one party better than the other? no, they are equally terrible. one side is honest and the other side is just hypocrites to say we are going to win by saying we are conservative but they don't

care, it gets worse under both parties. voters need to scratch their head and say maybe they are both equally bad with regards to the debt. most of it is driven by mandatory spending. these are the entitlements, medicare, medicaid, food stamps. it's on autopilot. nobody's talking about doing the inending on autopilot. why? it's risky to talk about these entitlements because everyone is getting one. if we don't though, we are confined to more and more debt and ultimately to a time in which the currency may well be destroyed and the country could be eaten from the inside out in this passage that. last week we voted on a budget

and from appearances he would say they put forth a conservative budget at $6 trillion worth of entitlement savings in the first year $96 billion worth of entitlement savings. but ask any republican in congress where is your $96 billion is in the budget to make it look lik like if the les over telens isover ten years ans no plan to do anything to entitlement spending. there is no plan, there is no committee or bill to come forward so i introduced an amendment to the budgetel and sd you will cut or save or somehowo transform the entitlement to into responsible spending where we spend what comes in and we don't borrow. why don't we put rules for reconciliation in the budget to

tell people yes, we are honest and sincere and we are going to cut has been in. there is 52 republicans and we had five so they save for the spending cuts but not really because nobody will vote to give the instructions to actually do the spending cuts. if you were to eliminate all of the budget that we typically vote on, it's called discretionary spending. this is a military and nonmilitary. if you were to eliminate all that, you still don't balance the budget, that is a third you can't even balance by eliminating a third of it you have to tackle the entitlement and get nobody has the wherewithal, the guts or the fortitude to actually do it. we did have a big fix once upon a time in the social security. 1983 president ronald reagan and tip o'neill came together to say we were out of money and be

gradually raised the age of social security to 57. is anybody happy to do that for jumping up and down saying i want to wait longer, no, nobody is that if we don't do that there will be no social security because we are destroying the system so they pay out more than they bring an end once upon a time it was the other way. we used to have about 16 workers for every retiree and now we have a little bit less than three workers for every retiree. families got smaller. so when people ask me how come social security is running a deficit and how come medicare is, who's fault is that republicans or democrats, it's a little bit of both, but it's also the fault of your grand parents for having too many kids. we had a whole bunch of baby boomers born between your old retiring and have fewer kids and the baby boomers kids have even fewer, so it is a demographic shift. but if we put our head in the sand and do nothing it will continue to accumulate.

we are accumulating by the billions and billions of dollars every year. this year 700 billion it is estimated thato it will be close to me exceed a trillion next year. we had deficits of over a trillion in several years. we went over an eight-year period and actually increased the debt over a trillion a year and a 10 trillion-dollar increase in the debt in the eight years of president obama. if we look at who's fault it is, republican or democrat, it's both. but i will tell you the way it works around here, people say are invited to compromise. so here's the compromise you get. you heard about the brave young the other day. most people here didn't even know were were there to the tune of 100,000 soldiers but the people once they heard about it they said we need more. they didn't know a thousand were

there to. the declaration of the war is to be done by congress. it's the declaration of the war under article one section eight. the congressional powers are laid out and that is an anachronism. but there was never removed from by the constitution they just began exploring this. how important was this to the founding fathers.

i granted the power of war to the. legislature. it wasn't justt madison who said this. it was jefferson, washington and adams. the whole panoply of the founding fathers said the war was to be initiated by congress. there was no debate and most of them didn't know we were in this part of africa yet here, we are. we wouldn't have lost these had we had 10,000 troops in a country that none of us knew we were going to be in the war were debated for th who the parties o war yet we are going to be there now and so the knee-jerk reaction is thatol we are goingo

expand the warfr in africa. there's an expenditure of troops and hundreds of some odd countries. how do you convince the other side of the aisle to pay for it, the republican side of the aisle would spend whatever it takes

to. it's to compromise what we should shoot for and work for the other side. so, that is what happens. there has been a bipartisan consensus for maybe 50, 60, 70 years now and that is to fund everything. if the write once warfare the left says we must get more welfare.e. the writer says we have to have more money for the warfare. it is proceeding apace. we continueer to spend money lie there's no tomorrow, but both parties are guilty of a.

maybe for theor democrats and te warfare but maybe the compromise can be we don't have enough money for either one. maybe the compromise could spend a little bit less on each. we did that recently when i first came up here in the teen party tidal wave that was concerned about that, it was called a sequester and guess who hated it.

people said the sequester wasn't getting. enough money. you have to understand of the newspeak. we have the words to make it meaningless or even to mean the opposite. so, you hear all the time when we had this debate we were talking about tapping the rate of growth of medicaid you hear all the squawking saying we are going to cut medicaid, no we were going to cut the rate of growth of medicaid so we had a sequester, and it was evenly divided between the military and the nonmilitary. it's working for a certain degree and we bought it because the debt thoughts and thought

and said we need to be concerned about the death. debt. we are hollowing the country out from the inside out. so, who destroyed the sequester? both parties were complicit. they essentially destroyed it and spending caps had become meaningless. so we have before us today $36 billion.nd we have a sequester in-place, but there's all these exemptions, so it is exempt. anytime you say it is an emergency, it is an exemption. in the 3,616,000,000,000 because we run a terrible government run flood program with $16 billion in the hole so we are going to bail it out and that sounds like long-term mismanagement and a bad program, badly run the program rather than it sounds

like an emergency and yet it's going to be stuck in an emergency bill to exceed caps. so what am i asking i for a? i'm asking that we set these rules and spending caps into the sequester we are just not counting this money. that is the problem we have this dishonest accounting. why don't, we say it is time we look at america first. it is time that we take care of our own and that we spend money taking care of those in texas, puerto rico and florida but let's spend money we are going to spend in the form of welfare to other countries immediately

should take care of our own. instead though the senate voted otherwise. i forced the issue. they were not too happy with the only got the i vote because i was persistent and i threatened to delay things and i was able to get a vote. do you know how many senators voted for this? no democrats wanted to offset any spending so i think the vote was 87-10, 87 senators voted to keep spending money without any offsets to basically just borrow the money w and now we are havig the same debate again i have an amendmenbeen amendment to offsea 36 billion. in all likelihood i'm not going to get an amendment vote because they don't have time. it would take 15 minutes, and god forbid wee spent 15 minutes talking about how we are being eaten alive by 20 trillion-dollar debt. god forbid we talk about how a 20 trillion-dollar debt is an

anchor around the neck of the country and god forbid we offer an amendment and atam least take 15 minutes to half an offsets to say we should pay for this money we are going to send, paid for it by taking it from some other elements of the budget. so the last time i offered welfare and this time what i put on the table is something that is similar to a bill that has been put forth called the penny plan. there's a great illustration of this if you want to have it on youtube showing in a visual way what it would be like to cut a penny out of every dollar and that is what we are talking about. 1% cut across the board. 1% of the 4 trillion-dollar

budget would be 40 billion so we need 36 billion is wha 36 billis than 1%. you think any american families ever had to deal with a 1% cut. you wouldn't know that it was gone and the waste was astounding. we are going to be for televisions of the afghan ease

can feel better about b themsels watching cricket on tv. i guess they will feel better about the americans paying so they can watch cricket on tv. we defeated them many times and i'm sure we can defeat them again. it was millions of dollars on a gas station in afghanistan.

we are lessening the carbon footprint in afghanistan except for it is completely absurd because they don't have any cars that run on natural gas in afghanistan so it is a 45 million-dollar plant. the original estimates were going to cost aboute a half a million. so it is 46 times cost overrun ended up costing $45 million to a s. go and get the natural gas but that wasn't enough because we had natural gas cars but they have no money to buy the natural gas so we bought a natural gas burning car, gave gas station and credit cardsgh to reduce the carbon footprint of those in

afghanistan. this is absurd. when we look at the budget and accounting a lot of the money that has been spent overseas in the iraq war and afghan war, the somali war, a lot of this isn't really budgeted. a lot of it is actually the overseas contingency operation with dishonest accounting and spending caps but it's also gone a long way in making it easier without restraint so we tried to put restraints on the nonmilitary and that they exceeded the slush fund overseas contingency operation. so we had the budget and i put forward an amendment and simply said we shouldn't spend about

the caps we put these caps in place and this is what s we shod send. because maybe 15 or 20 votes on that. but this is the problem. are we only going to go to the war when congress does its job and declares the more anytime or anywhere that is sort of what we do now. we go to the war anytime and anywhere on the face of the planet and it is not for free. yet no one ever voted on them. we lost a soldier in yemen three or four months ago. a small percentage of america brave young men and women often

from rural parts of the country are fighting the war but the maximum is not fighting. you i could say they are volunteers and that is great and i think that is kind of only half, but i hate that we don't show the responsibility and care of actually doing the job of taking the time to debate it. should there be a war in yemen or not. should we be at war in libya and somalia, pakistan, afghanistan we have troops in 30 or 40 nations where this conflict going on if we are involved in at least six or seven very expensive with human lives and dollars. we need to ask ourselves wha whe we do this forever. they've been fighting for a thousand years. people say we are going after

isis in africa. it's a name for radical jihad islam and they are all over the planet. we are going to go everywhere and kill all of them is there a possibility when we kill one, ten more pop-up. is the workable strategy for killing every terrorist on the planet for every radical on the planet the way we are going to win? we've done in i think january or february we lost one brave navy seal. they do what they are told him to takandtake orders and it is h being put in a situation like

that. the women and children are shooting at you as well.are you have to defendle yourself ad complete your mission and get. they will recite the tradition today the americans came. whether or not we actually killed more terrorists than would be created by the tradition they are also aiding and abetting saudi arabia there are 17 million people who live on the edge of starvation in yemen that is exacerbating that. they import about 80% of their food. currently they have a blockade

so no food is getting in. they see that it is to prevent arms coming and i'm sure it is but one of the consequences there'thishalf a million peopleh cholera and it's a bad form of dysentery and you die from cholera it goes along with no food, no clean water. they are blockading yemen. we are refueling planes and helping them take the targets. one of the targets about a year ago was a funeral procession. there were 500 people, civilians who were wounded.

do you think that they are going to soon forget that. do you think that you killed more terrorists that day and you've created? i would say that they would live thousand years. the day will live on for a thousand years and hundreds if not thousands of people will be motivated to become suicide bombers because ofse the day thy bombed a funeral procession it is incredibly expensive in their lives and our lives. when you look at the cause of famine around t the globe if you look at it extensively and study the causes of famine, probably six or seven times out of ten it is more.

it is ang terrible thing. if we do not acknowledge that and try to think how we can make it a last resort in for goodness sake, they didn't know how many troops were there and get immediate responses they should have had more. we need more troops over there in africa anyplace most have not heard of and whether or not it is an achievable goal. they would see if we have 10,000 we would have prevented the staff. that is one lesson you've learned. the a other maybe he shouldn't have been there at all. people have to stand up for themselves has this idea sort of self rule and independent and if people are not forced into the position of defending themselves, they won't. so we have been in afghanistan

16 years and what have we found? about 680,000 came over here. the best people left. all the good people came over herere. nothing came of itt other than there were not enough people heroic enough to stay in the country to help. food fights over there? some people join the army to us because they come in unintentionallyio.ome in the question after 15 or 16 years they cant fight to preserve the nation and then the taliban takes over. but hothe taliban is not quite s

and isn't quite the same international jihad. however, most if you look at how terrorism and like england and ireland someday we will never negotiate with the enemy. they are unfortunately pretty popular and will be there forever. just like the radicals i think that there are too many to go into the question is do you create morcreate for the new piu put this in context h and say we have to be able to defend ourselves, the country needs to be strong to defend ourselves i could not agree more. but, you know d what, we have become weaker every day as we run up the debt. $20 trillion in debt. $700 billion this year.

we are a million dollars a minute. realize that predicament and then realize the powers that be don't want to allowin amendments to offset spending. so, i am proposing if we spend money on a puerto rico and texas and florida that we offset it by taking it for something that is less of a priority, something else in the budget. if we were to cut 1% of the rest of the budget, we would have more than enough to pay for this. would anybody notice 1%, i'm sure they would have to push things around a little but they would all survive.

they were shoving and i've looked behind him and it intensified and looked like he was going to fall to the ground. so i did what any decent human being would do when you see someone falling i grabbed him by the arm to make sure he didn't fall but also, this was a large, i don't know how man many but is fearful of being separated and left behind. so i took his arm and that is when it turned on me. me. some went bodyslamming from the other direction.

>> a house hearing looked at the political and social media and the effect of russia in the 2016 presidential election. congressman william is the oversight and government reform subcommittee. it is just under two hours. >> the subcommittee on information technology will come to order without objection. the chair is authorized to declare recess at any time. good afternoon. today's hearing is part of a series of hearings the committee has held to analyze the existing law and regulations that may have become obsolete or need updating to reflect technological advances. we have held hearings on the technologies, drones, vehicles and other things and the other issues. today, we turned our attention to the laws and regulations in the political advertisements into the federal electio