As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate.
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.
Heart disease continues to be the number one killer; cancer, the number 2 killer, not far behind. The tragic aspect of these deadly diseases is that they could all be cured, I do believe, if we had sufficient funding.
If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.
If you are going to have to play defense all the time, you cannot have the kind of ingenuity, assertiveness, independence, and intelligence which is what has made our country strong.
We are not utilizing the Iraqi oil for U.S. purposes. We are not asking that the Iraqi oil be used to pay our military expenses. We are asking only that the Iraqi oil be used to rebuild Iraq - that is, to rebuild Iraq for the Iraqi people.
