Washington - U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) this evening began a series of floor speeches aimed at highlighting what Iraq War spending could provide in domestic priorities. He plans to deliver these speeches periodically, particularly when a domestic policy priority is being considered on the Senate floor.

This evening, Sen. Menendez focused on what Iraq War spending could be providing in public safety priorities (the Senate passed the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill this week). Below is the text of his remarks, as prepared for delivery:

THE IRAQ WAR: What It's Costing Us Here at Home

Part 1: Public safety

M. President,

On October 11th, we marked the fifth anniversary of Congress's capitulation to the resolution authorizing the War in Iraq.

We should take this opportunity to tally up what this war has cost our nation.

We are all very aware of the human cost. More Americans have died in Iraq than died on 9/11. These are our friends and neighbors, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, gone forever.

28,000 men and women have come back home wounded, some with legs or arms blown off by bombs, some blind from shrapnel in their eyes, some thrown into a state of mental shock from which they will never recover.

As for the Iraqi men, women and children who have died in this conflict, we cannot even say. Some estimates say the body count is more than 100,000. And as for the people who have been forced to abandon their homes, they are about to number four and a half million. A disproportionate number of them are children.

We all know that the Iraq War is a human calamity of vast proportions.

It can be harder to visualize the direct damage that comes from the financial cost of the war-to see it as the cancer it is, making our debt metastasize, threatening our budget, eating away at the financial stability of our entire nation.

We are paying for this war with borrowed money, racking up massive debt, severely threatening the future of our country. We know that our country has spent more than $450 billion on this war so far. We continue to spend about $10 billion every month.

That doesn't just add up to a stack of bills that could have sat in the Treasury. It's equipment at ports that scan for nuclear weapons, and other measures that actually make the homeland more secure. It's children healed with better healthcare.

It's more teachers in schools, better training for our jobs, energy that's clean and doesn't strengthen repressive regimes in the Middle East, payment of our debts so future generations will inherit a country that is financially viable.

Those are casualties we cannot fail to count. When our money gets burned in Iraq, we deserve to know what we're trading away. What we're trading away cannot be summed up in one speech, so I'll be coming back to this subject as many times as necessary to give each sacrifice fair attention.

When we add it all up, the bottom line is very clear: if we had never gone into Iraq, our lives would be better. And the sooner we get out of Iraq, the better our lives will be. I will repeat this until our troops have come home.

If we had never gone into Iraq, our lives would be better. And the sooner we get out of Iraq, the better our lives will be.

M. President, today I would like to speak about what the failed War in Iraq has cost us in terms of our security here at home.

The Bush Administration likes to parrot the line that "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here."

Never mind that the War has created more terrorists than there were before. Beyond that, it has directed funding away from programs that actually would prevent terrorists from attacking the homeland.

The Administration's budget for the failed War in Iraq is 13 times this year's budget for Homeland Security. Do they really think the Iraq War is 13 times more important to America than the Department of Homeland Security's mission?

When it comes to our money, the Administrations' motto really is, "We're spending it over there so we don't spend it here."

Every time we ride the subway or the bus, we put ourselves at risk, because our public transportation systems are unnecessarily vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The American Public Transportation Association estimates it would cost $6 billion to make them substantially more secure. That includes funding for personnel, training, communications systems, cameras and detection systems. We spend that much in Iraq every 18 days.

That's what the war costs. Security on public transportation. Versus 18 days in Iraq.

Money being spent in Iraq could have substantially improved security at our nation's ports-where 95% of cargo slips into the country without any inspection whatsoever. For the cost of three days of operations in Iraq, we could fund a year's worth of strong port security initiatives: purchasing radiation detectors, giving individual grants tailored to the specific needs of each port, and drastically increasing the number of containers screened.

Here's an example. There's something called a Container Security Device. It attaches to the hinges of a container and lets inspectors at ports know if the container has been tampered with. They cost about $25 each. You could provide a device for every one of the 11-million-plus containers that enter our ports every year for the same money it costs us to be in Iraq for one single day.

That's what the war costs. Electronic security for every container entering the United States. Versus one day in Iraq.

And as we consider the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill, this is as good a time as any to discuss how funding for the Iraq War impacts local police here at home.

With the billions of dollars going toward a failed effort to secure the streets of Baghdad, we could boost our efforts to fight violence and the terror of gangs on the streets of the neighborhoods we call home. The FBI tells us that crime rates are going up in the United States.

That's no coincidence, considering the Bush Administration has repeatedly cut federal funding for hiring new police, law enforcement technology, and successful prevention programs.

The Senate is taking action to reverse this situation. I was proud to co-sponsor Sen. Biden's amendment, which was adopted, to boost funding for the COPS program, one of the most successful federal crime prevention programs in history. 8 hours of Iraq funding would pay for that amendment.

That's what the war costs. More police on the streets. Versus 8 hours in Iraq.

When it comes to our money, the message the administration is sending us is clear: "We're spending it over there so we don't spend it here." In terms of security, If we had never gone into Iraq, our lives would be better. And the sooner we get out of Iraq, the better our lives will be.

The costs of the war for the United States are only going to escalate as Great Britain withdraws its troops. So the financial question we have to answer as a nation is as urgent as any we have ever faced. We have to decide what we value as a nation. The war? Or keeping our country safe.

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