As I sat here, Mr. Speaker, thinking about what I wanted to discuss in this next hour with some of my Blue Dog colleagues, I couldn't help but listen to some of the rhetoric that we've heard over the past hour. You know, for 6 years, for 6 years the Republicans controlled the White House, the House and the Senate. And what did they give us? They gave us tax cut after tax cut for folks earning over $400,000 a year.

   And this new Democratic majority, what has the Democrats given you? We are giving you health care for children of working parents. Let me repeat that. This is health care for the children of working parents. This is not for children whose parents are on welfare. They're already covered under a program known as Medicaid, which is health insurance for the poor, the disabled and the elderly.

   Some 10 million children in America will go to bed tonight without health insurance, without the ability to go to the doctor when they get sick. And who are they? They're the children of parents who are trying to do the right thing and stay off welfare, but they're working the jobs with no benefits.

   While the Republicans were hiding earmarks, the Democrats in this new majority have been passing legislation that says if you're a Member of Congress and if you break the law, you lose your pension, period. And while the Republicans have been on an agenda that benefits those earning over $400,000 a year, the Democrats in this new majority have raised the Federal minimum wage for the first time in 10 years.

   If we're serious about moving people from welfare to work, we've got to pay them more than $10,712 a year, which is what the previous minimum wage represented if you worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, never get sick, and never take a single day off for vacation.

   Now, they said that the Democrats are wanting to provide health insurance for children of working parents. We plead guilty to that, and after all, if the working families have been benefiting from some of these tax cuts that primarily benefited those earning over $400,000 a year for the past 6 years, our working families might not need the help, but they do because under the past 6 years of a Republican White House, House and Senate, quite frankly, they haven't got it.

   It's time, Mr. Speaker, to tone down the political rhetoric and look at the facts, and as a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, I can tell you what we're all about. We're about fiscal discipline and accountability. We're about putting an end to the partisan bickering. We don't care if it's a Democrat or Republican idea. We ask ourselves, is it a commonsense idea and does it make sense for the people that send us here to be their voice?

   Today, the U.S. national debt is $9,063,547,746,613. If you divide that enormous number by every man, woman and child in America, including the children being born today, every one of us, our share of the national debt, $29,888. That's what those of us in the Blue Dog Coalition refer to as the debt tax, D-E-B-T, which is one tax that cannot be cut, cannot go away until we get our Nation's fiscal house in order.

   Tonight, we're going to be talking about the debt, the deficit, and as members of the fiscally conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, we're going to be talking about ways to put an end to this reckless spending.

   If you ask 100 people on the street what they think about this Iraq war policy, you will get about 100 different answers, but one of the things that unites us as Blue Dogs is we believe that the money that this administration asks for for Iraq should be accounted for. We believe that if this President is going to continue to spend, and this is year 5, if this President is going to continue to spend $16 million an hour, $16 million every 60 minutes going to Iraq, and if this President's going to continue down that path, then we believe we're not here tonight to debate the merits of $16 million an hour going to Iraq, but we're here tonight to hold this administration accountable for how that money is being spent and to ensure that it's being spent not on projects for Iraq but providing the protection and the state-of-the-art equipment that our brave and honorable men and women in uniform not only need but deserve.

   This war has affected all of us. My first cousin was in Iraq when his wife gave birth to their first child. He's now back for a second time, and he will be there when she gives birth to their third child. My family's not any different from many families across America.

   Many families have made the sacrifice, some of them the ultimate sacrifice, in support of their loved ones who have gone and simply done what they've been asked to do. And Mr. Speaker, if we're going to send our men and women in uniform to Iraq, we need to make sure some of this money is being spent on them, and we need to make sure that we're taking care of them.

   At this time, one of the things that the Blue Dog Coalition has done is we've written legislation known as H. Res. 97 that was drafted by members of the Blue Dog Coalition to ensure accountability for how the money is being spent in Iraq. At this time, I would call on one of the cochairs, the cochair for policy for the Blue Dog Coalition, and that is my dear friend, the cochair for policy for the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs, and this is Dennis Moore of Kansas who's going to talk more to us this evening about H. Res. 97, which simply is called, Providing for Operation Iraqi Freedom Cost Accountability, and I thank Congressman Moore for being a part of this Special Order this evening.