[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 28, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H226-H227]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in a mood to lament what is 
going on in this House. The American people, I think, sometimes do not 
understand what it means to have one-party government. The United 
States right now is in the hands of one party from the Presidency 
through the Senate, right on through the House of Representatives. One 
party makes all of the decisions. That has a very strong effect on what 
happens around here. Issues that might raise questions if they are in 
the hands of the majority party are clearly not raised. If they are an 
issue of the minority party, who cares because the majority is running 
the place and there is really very little that the majority cannot do, 
from the way it has handled the Committee on Rules to the way it 
handles bills all up and down the line.
  If it was just the processes of the House that I was depressed or 
upset about, that would be one thing. But there are huge issues that I 
think affect the American body politic. When people think about the 
Congress, there is often a saying, that people like their 
Congressperson, but they do not like Congress in general because of the 
things that they see happen here.
  The first issue that brought this to my mind was the issue of the 
outing of a CIA agent by someone in the White House. I am not someone 
who is enamored of the CIA, but still someone who knows the importance 
of the CIA; and I believe that the protection of CIA agents is 
absolutely paramount. We cannot have an intelligence agency that is 
being exposed on every hand by anybody for any political purpose. The 
issue comes up, there is no outrage in this body.
  We will give them $40 billion more for the budget for that agency, 
but we will for political purposes out an agent anytime we feel it is 
politically, or some people will, anytime they think it is politically 
expedient. It obviously came from the White House, and we are several 
months down the road, and there is nothing happening. They have moved 
it now to a special prosecutor in Chicago. Why there, I do not know. 
Finally, the Attorney General felt he could not handle it; it was too 
hot to deal with in the Justice Department, so it is gone.
  There are other things that happen here. We have intelligence leaks 
in the other body. There is no outrage anywhere. No one demands an 
inquiry because the man who did it apparently, we do not know, and it 
is not clear who did it, but it is clear there should be an 
investigation of an intelligence leak. It does not happen. Where is the 
outrage in this place? Is it only Democrats in the minority that feel 
outrage? Are there no Republicans who care about the intelligence 
agencies in this country that allow leaks, allow outing of agents?
  The other thing that we do in this House is we deal with public 
policy,

[[Page H227]]

huge public policy, policy that affects 20, 30, 40, 50 million people 
at a swipe, not little issues. Sure, there is the museum that goes up 
in somebody's district, and people get all excited about the pork 
involved in that kind of thing. Those are not the issues people should 
be outraged about.
  The outrage ought to be about issues like, take the pharmaceutical 
bill. It comes to the floor. Medicare affects 40 million people. The 
issue sits on this floor frozen in time for almost 2 hours while the 
leadership of the majority tries to get the votes. We are told that the 
voting closes down after 15 minutes, but that issue could go for 2 
hours. Where is the outrage in this body?
  Mr. Speaker, one Member even suggested he was given a little extra 
encouragement.

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