Remarks as prepared for delivery

M. President, 

Very soon, our nation, this esteemed body, and – in particular – the President of the United States will address two of the greatest challenges our nation currently faces.

The first is Afghanistan.                                                         

The second issue is raising the debt ceiling and confronting our nation’s unsustainable spending and debt. 

To the average American, Afghanistan and raising our debt ceiling may seem unrelated, but they are – in fact – directly related.

They are directly related to the hard fiscal and strategic choices our nation must make if we are to remain safe and secure in the coming decades.

With respect to raising the debt ceiling, the budget realities we face are both striking and frightening. 

M. President, while some may choose to ignore this threat, mere words cannot give weight to the fiscal peril our nation now faces – only numbers can.

Since 1992, we have raised the debt ceiling 16 times. In 1992, our national debt stood at $4.1 trillion. Between 2002 and today, our national debt rose from $5.9 trillion to over $14.3 trillion.

Now, for the first time in our nation’s history, our yearly budget deficits may exceed a trillion dollars for four years in a row.

At the current pace of deficit spending, CRS projects our national debt will exceed $23.1 trillion by 2021.

In order to the pay for the financial hole we have dug, the Congressional Budget Office projects that net interest payments will increase four-fold over the next 10 years, from $197 billion in FY 2011 to $792 billion in FY 2021.

To put that number into perspective, one decade from today, interest payments on our $23.1 trillion dollar debt will exceed the amount we currently spend on education, energy, and national defense. Combined.

M. President, numbers of this size are not only unimaginable, they will prove catastrophic for our nation’s future. 

The fiscal peril we face reminds me of the words that a former Senator said on this floor in declaring why he chose in 2006 to vote against raising the debt ceiling – when our national debt stood at that time at $8.18 trillion. 

He said, and I quote,

“The rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of the critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they counted on. Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities.”

That former Senator was President Barack Obama.

While his perspective on those words may ring different today, I believe they accurately capture the difficult choices we face today.

The choice is this - will we rebuild America’s future or not?

Today, with our nation facing a stagnant economy and a death spiral of debt, we can no longer have it all – or pretend we can. We must choose what as nation we can and cannot afford to do. 

Our risky debt will not only undermine our economic security, it also threatens our national security. As Admiral Michael Mullen said, and I quote… 

“…I believe that our debt is the greatest threat to our national security. If we as a country do not address our fiscal imbalances in the near-term, our national power will erode, and the costs to our ability to maintain and sustain influence could be great.”

M. President, we can no longer, in good conscience, cut services and programs at home, raise taxes or – and this is very important – lift the debt ceiling in order to fund nation-building in Afghanistan. 

Ten years ago, when our mission in Afghanistan began, it was a just and rightful mission to seek out and destroy those responsible for the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans.

We overthrew the Taliban government that provided safe haven to Al Qaeda. We have hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden, as well as most of the senior members of this terrorist group. Today, in Afghanistan, in a nation of 30 million people, intelligence estimates suggest that there are only between 50 and 100 Al Qaeda terrorists harbored there.

Because of the incredible work of our military men and women, the mission of destroying Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, by all accounts, has been a success.

But the real truth is, after 10 years, our current mission in Afghanistan has become less about destroying Al Qaeda and more about building a country where one has never existed. 

In February, I saw firsthand the significant challenges our brave troops face as they pursue this nation-building mission. 

During the trip, I heard from Ambassador Eikenberry and General Petraeus. I visited Helmand Province and Kandahar. And I met with local tribal leaders and President Karzai of Afghanistan.

What I heard from many officials and diplomats was that progress could be just around the corner – but only if we gave it more time and money.  

I heard that we must stay to counter the threat of Al Qaeda, but then was told that only a handful of Al Qaeda members existed in Afghanistan. 

I was told that governance was improving, but that corruption was so rampant that billions – yes, billions of dollars – were lost to corrupt officials who seemed more interested in improving their own lives than the lives of their people. 

I was told that we need a sizeable force to defeat the threat posed by the Taliban, but that estimating the size of the enemy was difficult. Still, everyone acknowledges that their force is a fraction of the number of troops we have. 

I was told that because of rampant corruption and theft, the very cost of moving our supplies was indirectly funding the very enemy we face.  

I was told that China – yes, China – could reap billions by extracting resources from Afghanistan, but that they are not contributing anything to the costs of security. 

I was told that after years of spending billions training a new Afghanistan military and police force that it could be years longer before they could fully defend their nation and their people – and even then, it would demand billions more in funding from us.

I was also told that we’re building schools, roads, infrastructure, as well as providing billions in aid for small businesses and job creation so that Afghanistan could become more self-sufficient, but that today, 97 percent of the Afghan economy is based on foreign aid – and that is after 10 long years. 

I have been told again and again that American aid is critical to rebuilding Afghanistan, but that local projects built with American tax dollars could not be branded as American-funded projects out of fear of reprisals.

I was told that the people of Afghanistan truly want us there, but was then told in a meeting with President Karzai that it was time for America to leave.

The American people have been hearing all of these arguments and sad facts for nearly a decade.

Now, after 10 years, I had truly hoped progress in Afghanistan would be clear and the Afghan people would be united and their government and leaders would be one defined by honesty, integrity and a shared determination to build a better state. 

But the real truth is impossible to ignore. 

After 10 years, M. President, we face the choice of whether we will continue to spend tens of billions of tax dollars and lose precious American lives not on fighting and killing Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan – but by policing and building a state where the leaders seem indifferent to the difficulties of their people, and their people seem indifferent, at best, if not hostile, to our presence.

M. President, tomorrow President Obama will present to the American people his latest review on the war in Afghanistan and whether our mission will change.

As is already clear, some in this esteemed body will argue for the President to stay the course – and others will suggest a very different course. 

The question the President faces – we  all face – is quite simple: will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation’s fiscal peril, we cannot do both.

I believe that if we are being honest with the American people about the depth of fiscal challenges we face at home, it is impossible to defend the mission in Afghanistan, in which we are building schools, training police, teaching people to read – in other words, building a country – even at the expense of our own.

Neither the President nor any Senator can divorce the difficult decisions we must now make on Afghanistan from the equally difficult decisions we must now make on cutting domestic spending in order to raise the debt ceiling. 

While the truth is the war on terrorism must be fought and it must be won, that war is not in Afghanistan. And yet, with every passing month we are choosing to spend billions we can't afford to fight a war against an enemy that is no longer there. 

M. President, since the day I was sworn in, I have heard from countless of my fellow West Virginians who ask: how is it possible that we are willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan while we face mountains of debt and spending cuts here at home?

How is it possible that we will choose to spend hundreds of billions to help build Afghanistan when our children, our seniors, our veterans, the poor and middle class, are being asked to bear the brunt of massive spending cuts? 

I have carefully thought over these questions over these many months and after hearing from my constituents, seeing Afghanistan again with my own eyes, listening to our soldiers on the ground, hearing from dozens of diplomats, foreign policy experts and the military leaders over these many months, as well as confronting the truth about the fiscal and economic peril our nation faces in the coming years, I believe it is time for President Obama to begin a substantial and responsible reduction in our military presence in Afghanistan. 

I believe it is time to for us to rebuild America, not Afghanistan.  

It is why I strongly agree with Senators Merkley and Lee, and the words of 27 of my Republican and Democratic colleagues, who made clear in a letter they sent to the President last Thursday, that, and I quote: 

“we must accelerate the transfer of responsibility for Afghanistan’s development to the Afghan people and their government.  We should maintain our capacity to eliminate any new terrorist threats, continue to train the Afghan National Security Forces, and maintain our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts.  However, these objectives do not require the presence of over 100,000 American troops engaged in intensive combat operations.”  

M. President, I believe it is time for us to compel the elected leaders of Afghanistan and its people to take responsibility for the destiny of their nation – so that we can ensure the destiny of ours.  

In that spirit, I have sent President Obama a letter calling on him to pursue significant reductions and end the scope of our current mission in Afghanistan well before 2014. 

I believe any future mission in Afghanistan should – as my Senate colleagues suggested in their letter – focus primarily on responding to any resurgent terrorist threat, as well as providing targeted training for the Afghan military and police. 

Throughout this transition period, and beyond, I have asked the President to provide the American taxpayer a monthly accounting, to be published online, of every dollar that will be provided to Afghanistan government officials and agencies so as to ensure that no American tax dollars are lost to corruption and greed. 

As for those – on the right or the left - who believe that leaving Afghanistan sooner is irresponsible, I simply ask them – is 10 years not long enough? 

I ask them to tell the families and our brave military men and women who are on their third or fourth tour of duty, how much longer must they wait to come home.

I ask them to look into the eyes of any American child and ask them to surrender our nation's future for the sake of another. 

I ask all of them to explain to the American people the sanity of spending $485 billion more, on top of the $443 billion we have spent, to build Afghanistan over the next decade at the very same time our nation drowns in a sea of debt.  

M. President, the time has come to make the difficult decision.

Charity begins at home. 

We can no longer afford to rebuild Afghanistan and America. We must choose.

And I choose to rebuild America.

As I made clear when I ran for this esteemed office, I would not put my political party before country, but would do my best to do what is right for the people of my beloved state and this great nation.

To that end, I promised to speak out and take positions, as difficult as they may be, not for the benefit of my next election, but that are best for the next generation. 

It is why I spoke out about the debt, to tell the American people and the people of West Virginia that I would not vote to raise the debt ceiling without a long-term, permanent fix.

I did this not because it was popular or easy, but because we, as elected leaders of this great nation, have a solemn obligation to rebuild our nation before all others. 

Our economy, our prosperity, our schools, our children, our veterans, our soldiers, our workers, our seniors, our nation’s future, must come first. 

I, for one, will not look West Virginians in the eye and tell them that in order to raise the debt ceiling, vital programs and funding for Social Security, Medicare, our schools, roads, healthcare, veterans, seniors, infrastructure – will be slashed – but we will continue to spend billions building schools, roads, infrastructure in Afghanistan.

The time has come for us to realize the people of Afghanistan must choose their own destiny. We cannot build their country for them.

The time has come for us to realize that in this time of fiscal peril, our solemn obligation is to build up our own nation, and, that by doing so, we will make America safer and stronger for generations to come. 

The words of the great West Virginia statesman Robert C. Byrd ring even more true today than in October 2009, when he gave his last floor speech about the war in Afghanistan. Our friend said:

“During a time of record deficits, some actually continue to suggest that the United States should sink hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars into Afghanistan, effectively turning our backs on our own substantial domestic needs, all the while deferring the costs and deferring the problems for future generations to address. Our national security interests lie in defeating--no, I go further, in destroying al-Qaida. Until we take that and only that mission seriously, we risk adding the United States to the long, long list of nations whose best laid plans have died on the cold, barren, rocky slopes of that far off country, Afghanistan.” 

May God bless the brave men and women who serve this nation, and the United Stated of America. 

Thank, you M. President, and I yield the floor.