Five years after President Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, the administration is requesting $108 billion in supplemental funding on top of an already appropriated $91 billion for FY2008 spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. If approved, this would bring the total direct cost of the war in Iraq alone to approximately $675 billion. On the anniversary of the president’s speech, Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, will speak at the Center for American Progress on the latest supplemental funding request and recent developments in Iraq and the region.

Last week, Senator John McCain laid out what he hopes to achieve with his foreign policy by 2013—without a single sentence on how he expects to actually get there.  In a speech and Q&A session at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden will challenge in detail—and offer a progressive alternative to—Sen. McCain’s foreign policy ideas.

The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports clearly indicate the need for urgent action to reduce the dangerous build-up of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. With the international community moving forward on the next climate change agreement and states and cities in the United States taking steps to reduce global warming pollution, national action is overdue. Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, will discuss his views on federal climate policy and take questions from members of the audience. Markey has spent over 30 years in the House of Representatives developing progressive energy and environmental policies, including the increase in fuel economy standards that became law in December as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act.