Mr. Speaker, yesterday the House voted on the Defense appropriations bill for the year 2007, and once again, we missed a golden opportunity. We missed an opportunity to pass a bill that strengthens our national security, while at the same time, reflecting the very best of American values.

Foremost among these values is our desire for peace, our capacity for global leadership and our compassion for the people of the world.

Unfortunately, the Defense bill passed by the House, which included a $50 billion bridge fund for Iraq, came to a grand total of $431 billion. This amounts to more than all other discretionary programs combined. With this latest appropriation, the war in Iraq now totals $320 billion.

With this amount of money, we could have given more than 61 million American teenagers a 4-year university scholarship. We could have created nearly 3 million affordable housing units, a process by the way that would in itself have created over 1 million jobs.

Remember, this is the same war that Paul Wolfowitz said could be paid for out of Iraq's oil revenues, the same war that caused Bush economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, to be fired when he suggested it might cost as much as $200 billion.

Three years, more than $300 billion later, and over 2,500 American soldiers killed and more than 18,000 wounded, and with Iraq's oil still not flowing at the capacity it was before the war, there is still no end in this war in sight. We are still mired in a seemingly endless conflict.

The President still has not told the American people how he plans to bring our troops home, or even what an end to the war would look like. In fact, when pressed, our President, the commander-in-chief, explained that ending the war would be the job of a future President.

Mr. Speaker, this administration likes to claim that those who support the U.S. leaving Iraq are somehow not supportive of our troops, but the very, very opposite is true. Those who would leave our soldiers in harm's way for years on end on a dangerous and ill-conceived mission should ask themselves whether this is the best way to truly support our troops and to truly secure America.

What we need is a smarter approach to national security, an approach that puts sanity back in our Nation's defense policies.

With the help of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and Women's Action for New Direction, I have introduced a plan that would do just that. It is SMART security, H. Con. Res. 158, and it represents a sensible, multilateral, American response to terrorism.

SMART security focuses on investments in multilateral partnerships and regional security arrangements, rather than spending billions of dollars for perpetual war and Cold War relics like the missile defense system.

SMART attacks terrorism at its source with an ambitious international development agenda that supports democracy and economic growth in the troubled regions around the world.

You see, Mr. Speaker, it is time for a fundamental change in our national security policy, a change affected through our actions on the ground and through the bills we pass in Congress. Yesterday's Defense bill was a step in the opposite direction.

The first step in the right direction is an end to the war in Iraq. For the sake of our soldiers, their families and our national security, it is time to stop spending billions of dollars on this war, and it is time to bring our troops home.