Bernie Sanders was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Vermont, from 1991 to 2007, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He spoke before the House on January 17, 1991, in opposition to the U.S. military action that had begun in Iraq the day before. Sanders used his speech on the Persian Gulf War, which had begun five months earlier when Iraq invaded Kuwait, to highlight the harms of U.S. military action to the Middle East and the negative impacts the war would have on the United States domestically due to its high financial cost. At the time, Sanders was a newly elected member of Congress, and he gave his remarks before a nearly empty chamber of the House.