[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 114 (Tuesday, September 13, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9947-S9951]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR SCIENCE, THE DEPARTMENTS OF STATE, JUSTICE,
AND COMMERCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of H.R. 2862, which the clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 2862) making appropriations for Science, the
Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, and related
agencies for
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the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006, and for other
purposes.
Pending:
Lincoln amendment No. 1652, to provide for temporary
medicaid disaster relief for survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
Dayton amendment No. 1654, to increase funding for Justice
Assistance Grants.
Biden amendment No. 1661, to provide emergency funding for
victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Sarbanes amendment No. 1662, to assist the victims of
Hurricane Katrina with finding new housing.
Dorgan amendment No. 1665, to prohibit weakening any law
that provides safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices.
Sununu amendment No. 1669, to increase funding for the
State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, the Southwest Border
Prosecutors Initiative, and transitional housing for women
subjected to domestic violence.
Lieberman amendment No. 1678, to provide financial relief
for individuals and entities affected by Hurricane Katrina.
DeWine amendment No. 1671, to make available, from amounts
otherwise available for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, $906,200,000 for aeronautics research and
development programs of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration.
Clinton amendment No. 1660, to establish a congressional
commission to examine the Federal, State, and local response
to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf
Region of the United States especially in the States of
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other areas impacted in
the aftermath and make immediate corrective measures to
improve such responses in the future.
Coburn amendment No. 1648, to eliminate the funding for the
Advanced Technology Program and increase the funding
available for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, community oriented policing services, and
State and local law enforcement assistance.
Amendment Sponsorship
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, with respect to the list of amendments
that has been filed to the pending bill, the amendment that Senator
Salazar has filed dealing with the hurricane, I ask unanimous consent
that amendment be attributed to Senator Bingaman.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Amendment No. 1670
(Purpose: To establish a special committee of the Senate to investigate
the awarding and carrying out of contracts to conduct activities in
Afghanistan and Iraq and to fight the war on terrorism)
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1670, which I have
filed at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan] proposes an
amendment numbered 1670.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The amendment is printed in the Record of September 8, 2005, under
``Text of Amendments.'')
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will describe very briefly this
amendment--I shall come to the floor and talk about it more later--and
then I will use the remaining minutes that are available to talk about
an amendment I have previously offered to the bill.
This amendment, very simply, deals with the contracting that our
country is paying for, particularly with respect to Iraq and
Afghanistan. It especially deals with establishment of a special
committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse.
Now, I indicated yesterday that whenever you speak of the company
Halliburton, people think you are coming to the floor to criticize the
Vice President. Let me say that is not the case. The Vice President was
the president of Halliburton but not during any of the time that any of
this has happened. But Halliburton has been, I believe, the largest
contractor in Iraq. Halliburton and some other companies have been
cited in ways that make my blood boil, and I believe it has the same
reaction with the rest of the American people.
Let me read some headlines, if I might. Nobody, by the way, seems to
want to investigate this, and nobody seems to care much about it.
``Halliburton Has Failed to Account for $1.8 billion in Charges'' for
work performed in Iraq and Kuwait. That is from the Wall Street Journal
of August 11, 2004.
``Pentagon Auditors Have Recommended Withholding 15% of Payments to
Halliburton.'' That is from the Wall Street Journal of December 10,
2003.
. . . the [Pentagon's] top financial officer . . . alerted
[Secretary] Rumsfeld of ``significant issues regarding the
timeliness and adequacy of KBR price proposals'' and
``deficiencies'' in its billing, purchasing, and estimating
systems.
``Whistleblowers Have Documented Halliburton Waste, Fraud, and
Abuse.''
``Halliburton Overcharged $186 Million for Meals.'' That is from the
Federal Times of June 21, 2004.
``Halliburton Overcharged $212 Million for Oil Deliveries.''
I could go through this. I have a sheet that is eight pages long.
And, yes, it talks about $85,000 new trucks that are dumped on the side
of the road because they have a flat tire or a fuel pump that is
plugged. What do they do with it? Well, this is direct testimony from
people who worked for Halliburton who drove the trucks, abandoned the
trucks, let them torch the trucks for a flat tire. The list is
unbelievable when you hear what has happened.
A contractor pays $45 for a case of soda, $100 for cleaning a 15-
pound bag of laundry. We had one fellow who was buying towels--towels--
for our soldiers. He held up two towels: This is a towel we would
normally purchase, but we were asked by Halliburton subsidiary,
Kellogg, Brown, & Root, KBR, to buy towels with their logo on it. So
you doubled the price of the towel to ship to the soldiers because it
has the logo of the company on the towel.
In 1941, Harry Truman was in this Chamber. We had a Democrat in the
White House. A Democratic Senator demanded an investigation of waste,
fraud, and abuse, and a special committee was established called the
Truman Committee. They went after waste, fraud, and abuse. I am sure it
was not very pleasant for Franklin Delano Roosevelt down at the White
House with a Democrat in the Senate demanding an investigation of
waste, fraud, and abuse. The fact is, the Truman Committee uncovered
massive waste, fraud, and abuse.
Now we have a President and a Congress controlled by one party. We do
not even have oversight hearings on these things. I am the only one who
has been holding hearings in the Democratic Policy Committee and having
the whistleblowers come forward and talk about the massive waste,
fraud, and abuse that exists. No oversight hearings. No accountability.
Nobody seems to care.
My amendment, very simply, says there ought to be established a
special committee to investigate this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse.
Let me say to those who say, Well, you are trying to legislate on an
appropriations bill, yes, I am. I am. I tried to offer this on the
Defense authorization bill, which is where it belongs. I did offer it
to the Defense authorization bill, and the Defense authorization bill
was taken off the floor of the Senate; we are told never to reappear
again. So the only option we have is to offer this kind of amendment on
this appropriations bill.
So I wanted to describe what this amendment is. It would establish a
type of Truman Committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. It is
not about politics. It is about, on behalf of the American people,
asking the tough questions about waste, fraud, and abuse. We are
shoveling money out the door, shoveling money--billions and billions,
tens of billions of dollars--to be spent in the country of Iraq for
rebuilding Iraq. Then we hear stories about the American taxpayer
paying for the air-conditioning of a building in Iraq, and then it goes
to a contractor and a subcontractor and somebody else who subcontracts
from that, and by the time it gets installed, it is a ceiling fan, and
the American taxpayer paid for air-conditioning.
Guess what. It is going on all over. The company orders 50,000 pounds
of nails, 25 tons of nails, and they order the wrong size, so
Halliburton's nails are lying in the sand somewhere in Iraq. Does
anybody care about that?
We are talking about billions of dollars of no-bid contracts. I am
going to hold a hearing on Friday with the woman who rose to the
highest rank--the highest civilian employee in the Corps of Engineers,
Bunnatine Greenhouse. And what is happening to her? Well, she had the
guts to speak up and
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speak out, saying these no-bid contracts were being awarded to
Halliburton in an inappropriate way without following the rules.
Well, guess what happened to Bunnatine Greenhouse for raising those
questions. She is losing her career over in the Pentagon at the Corps
of Engineers. She is being demoted. She always had excellent, sterling
evaluations--until she said: You can't do this. This isn't a buddy
system. You can't be awarding contracts this way.
For her honesty and for her courage, she is told she is either going
to be fired or going to be demoted, against, I might say, the wishes of
the inspector general who is investigating it.
Amendment No. 1665
Mr. President, let me talk for a moment about the other amendment I
have offered to this bill. As you know, today's trade announcement is
we had a $58 billion--$58 billion--trade deficit in the last month;
about $700 billion a year, we are going to see. That is $700 billion
a year more than we send out in exports that we purchase in imports. So
let me talk about this.
Here is what is happening in American trade. We are drowning in trade
deficits. As you know, attendant to that, we are sending jobs overseas
at a rapid rate.
Fruit of the Loom--you all remember the people dressed up as grapes,
singing their little Fruit of the Loom songs. It used to be American
underwear. But American underwear is no longer American. If you are
wearing Fruit of the Loom somewhere in America today, you are wearing
Mexican shorts or probably Chinese shorts and T-shirts. So Fruit of the
Loom is gone, and 3,200 people who used to work for Fruit of the Loom
are no longer employed.
PalmPilot--if anybody has worked on a PalmPilot, here is the last
message from a young woman--I have her name, and I will not go through
it, but I will at some other time when I have the time to do that. Here
is the last message from a women who worked for PalmPilot. By the way,
she was forced to train her replacement, who is a worker from India,
because those jobs went to India. Here is her last message on her
PalmPilot: ``My job's gone to India!!''
I have spoken at length about Huffy bicycles. I will not speak longer
about them today, but all the folks in Ohio were fired. They used to
make Huffies. Incidentally, this little thing between the handle bars
and the front fender, that used to be an American flag decal. They
cleverly changed it to a globe once the jobs went to China, and all the
American workers were fired. Oh, it is still an American brand, it is
just that Americans do not get a chance to make them any more because
the American workers were paid $11 an hour, plus benefits, and now they
are made in China, but with workers who make 33 cents an hour and work
7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. They are still sold in Wal-Mart,
Kmart, and Sears. They are called an American bicycle. They are not.
They are not an American bicycle.
And the Maytag repairman--all those television commercials about this
old bloke having nothing to do. Well, 1,600 U.S. Maytag jobs went to
Mexico and Korea.
I could do this for a long time.
Even as it proceeds to lay off up to 13,000 workers in
Europe and the United States, IBM plans to increase its
payroll in India by more than 14,000 workers.
That was 2 months ago in the New York Times.
Now, what does all this mean for our country?
It means our country is losing economic strength, losing jobs. We are
hollowing out America's manufacturing base. In the last 20 years, our
manufacturing base has shrunk by half. We are told it is all right, and
it is going to be fine in the long run if those who produce, yes,
American companies that produce, search for the lowest cost production
anywhere in the world and then they land in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh,
Indonesia, China or somewhere else and hire someone else for 16 cents
an hour. And, yes, they do. They will hire 12-year-old kids for 12
cents an hour and work them 12 hours a day. If you doubt it, I will
show you where it happens.
People say: Well, that is all right because all those jobs, they are
going to go elsewhere, but we will have higher wage, higher skilled
jobs in this country. They are all wrong. It does not work that way.
This country is losing economic strength and losing economic
opportunity. The people who are losing their jobs because American jobs
are moving elsewhere, in search of lower wages, those are people who
are not able to find jobs that are equivalent jobs. In almost all
cases, they find the next job at a lower wage rate.
This is a race to the bottom. Rather than aspiring to lift other
countries up, it is driving down wage rates and opportunities in our
country.
There is a man named James Fyler. James Fyler died of lead poisoning.
He was shot 54 times. I suppose that is acute lead poisoning. He was
shot 54 times long ago because he had the temerity to stand up for the
ability and the right of workers to organize. So he lost his life. I
could cite many others who lost their lives standing up for the right
of people to organize as workers. Apparently, there are companies who
have decided to pole-vault all over that and produce elsewhere where
workers cannot organize; produce in China, where if a worker tries to
organize, he or she can be sent to prison. If you want names, I will
give you names of at least a dozen people--and there are hundreds
more--who are sitting in prisons in China because they wanted to
organize workers.
Producing in China is easier, producing in other countries is easier
because you don't have to worry about child labor, about dumping
chemicals into the air and water. You don't have to worry about workers
organizing.
What is going wrong in trade is going to dramatically injure this
country and its future and opportunities. I am offering an amendment
because we have trade negotiators now negotiating in the Doha round who
have indicated it is all right and we will consider negotiating away
our opportunity to protect ourselves against the dumping of products
into this country, into our marketplace at below their cost of
acquisition, which is an opportunity to ruin the domestic industry and
drive domestic industry out of business.
We protect ourselves with antidumping laws. We protect ourselves
against deep subsidies of products that are dumped into our marketplace
with countervailing duties. Our trade negotiators have signalled that
that which our trade partners want, to get rid of our countervailing
duties or antidumping laws, basic provisions that protect American
workers, protect American jobs against the unfairness of trade, our
trade negotiators have said: It is on the table. We are willing to
consider that.
My amendment says no money will be used by the folks in the Commerce
Department and the U.S. trade ambassador's office negotiating these
trade agreements to weaken trade protections for American workers and
businesses. It is a simple amendment but important in terms of the
future.
I notice my colleague from West Virginia has arrived. I know he is
set to assume his address to the Senate. Let me, in courtesy to him,
close my remarks and simply say, I intend to come to the floor later
this afternoon to speak again about both of these amendments which are
important, the addition of which will add significantly to this
appropriations bill.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
a national debate: our country's future
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, chapter 3, verses 1 through 8, of the Book
of Ecclesiastes in the Holy Bible begins:
To everything there is a season and a time for every
purpose under heaven.
Let's read that again:
To everything there is a season and a time for every
purpose under heaven.
It is time for a national debate, and its purpose is our country's
future. Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to put events into
perspective, to shake us and to sharpen our clarity of vision. The
wrath of Katrina, tragic and devastating for thousands, must certainly
[[Page S9950]]
has caused many thinking Americans to consider anew the proper
priorities for our country.
Who among us has not wondered if the efforts to rescue and evacuate
Gulf Coast residents suffered because too many National Guardsmen have
been detailed and detained in Iraq? What thinking American has not
pondered why we had such a painfully slow response to a behemoth storm
which we knew for days would likely turn New Orleans into a caldron of
despair? Is there anyone in our great country--anyone--who did not feel
the painful outrage of the citizens of New Orleans and Louisiana and
Mississippi, as they waited for days without food, without water,
without knowledge about loved ones? Who among us did not shrink in
dread from the specter of our fellow citizens' bodies floating in the
murky flood waters or stacked in hospital stairwells for want of anyone
anywhere else to house them? Could this be happening in a major
American city? Can you believe it? Could we be so inept at dealing with
this tragedy?
The events of the past several days seem to have reduced our much
touted American know-how and technology to little more than children's
toys, strangely impotent in a real crisis.
I know many Americans cringed, as I did, at the vision of the callous
neglect of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens which flashed
around the world, making the United States appear to be a nation
unmindful of its own, a nation unable to handle a disaster about which
it had ample notice, a country loudly touting our form of government to
the world while failing to provide even the most basic protections to
our own citizens. What a shame.
If Katrina has any redeeming impact, it must be to cause us to see
ourselves as others must surely see us. I regret to say that the
picture cannot be a pretty one. That image is certainly not one that
reflects the humanitarian goodness and morality of the vast majority of
the American people. The perception of the United States in these
troubled times should be a cause of major concern for everyone who
holds public office--did you hear me?--for everyone who holds public
office, regardless of political party. It is time to look at where we
are and where we are going.
Few would now argue that the war in Iraq has improved the world's
view of the United States. Again, what a shame. What a terrible shame.
What a terrible mistake. It was an unnecessary and ill-conceived
conflict which distracted us from our proper course of bombing the
terrorist training grounds of Afghanistan. I have never bought the
absurd claim by some that we are fighting terrorists in Iraq so we will
not have to fight them here at home. Who believes that? That claim is a
nonsequitur at best and, at worst, a patent distortion of what has
happened in Iraq. The war in Iraq created a hot bed of terrorism where
none existed before, and it ensured Osama bin Laden an endless supply
of recruits, now even more fanatic in their hatred after scandals at
Abu Ghraib and the destruction of so many innocent lives in Iraq as a
result of our unprovoked invasion.
I said it then. It was a mistake. We were being misled. I said it
then, that Hussein did not pose a threat to our national security. I
didn't believe the stories that were told. And as it turned out, the
stories were wrong.
For everything there is a season, saith the Bible. The season has
come for Americans to look homeward instead of continuing to spend
billions of dollars in Iraq. Let us husband our hard-earned tax dollars
and spend them here at home. Look homeward. The Iraqi people must
slowly find their own way now.
Further, U.S. dictated deadlines are counterproductive. We cannot
force-feed democracy in Iraq. To keep large numbers of American
soldiers in Iraq much longer only earns the United States more enmity,
reinforcing our unfortunate global image as conqueror, not liberator.
Haven't we learned that? The Iraqi people must begin to take it from
here. In fact, there is no longer a war in Iraq. The President says we
are a nation at war. We are not a nation at war. The U.S. military is
at war. The Nation pays little attention to it. The newspapers seldom
mention it. The administration is deaf, dumb, and mute on the war.
A national war? Guardsmen know about it. They know there is a war,
and their families know there is a war. We started that conflict. We
started that conflict, and we met the goals established at its outset.
Now there is a slow, festering, internal political struggle pitting
Shiite against Sunni against Kurd which will play itself out perhaps
for decades until it either devolves into outright civil war or
resolves into some sort of compromise which suits those who live in the
country of Iraq.
We cannot resolve Iraq's internal issues. It is time for the United
States to begin to bring our troops home. What are we waiting on?
There are those who say if we were to leave, we would not be honoring
those who gave their lives in vain. That is an argument that is
eternal. We continue to feed lives into the slaughterhouse.
The invasion of Iraq was never supposed to be an open-ended
peacekeeping mission with our troops mired amid the chaos of continuing
urban warfare, the most dangerous place in the world. How would you
like for your son to go? How would you like for your daughter to go?
How would you like for your grandson to go? For what?
We need to bring them home with a hearty ``job well done''--a hearty
``job well done.'' We should begin with the National Guard. Praise God,
the National Guard. Obviously, they are needed here. They were needed
in New Orleans. They were needed in Mississippi. They were needed in
Alabama. They are an integral part of our first responder team in the
event of a terrorist attack, God forbid, or if another national
disaster were to strike.
It is time to come home--come home, America--time to come home; time
to come home, America; time to look within our own borders and within
our own souls. There are many questions to be answered and many
missions to accomplish right here on our own soil. We have neglected
too much for too long in our own backyard. Come on, wake up, wake up,
America.
To everything there is a season--a time to break down and a time to
build up. If we had spent the money a few years back to rebuild those
levees on the Gulf Coast, thousands would be alive today. Perhaps we
can finally see the value of that budgetary stepchild called public
works.
All across this country, there are years of neglect of the basic
infrastructure of the United States that cry out for attention. Years
of neglect--years of neglect--of the basic infrastructure of the United
States that have been crying out for attention, cry out today for
attention, and we have delayed for decades, and the needs are only
growing.
There are antiquated sewer and water systems built a century ago in
our major cities. Take a look here in Washington, DC, right here in the
Nation's Capital. Washington, DC, has water not always safe to drink.
There are rural communities in America that live with black mud coming
out of their faucets. There are unsafe bridges. There are aging
reservoirs. There are schools without adequate heat or modern learning
tools all around our land. Homeland security needs are underfunded. I
have time and again, time and again offered amendments to more
appropriately fund homeland security. My amendments were defeated
because the White House and the leadership of the party that controls
this House and the other House oppose those amendments. Yet we continue
to commit billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq while our own needs go
begging. Can't we see? How long, how long, how long will we close our
eyes to these needs?
Is it not now painfully evident to everyone that we must make basic
investment in our own country a national and urgent priority? Imagine a
terrorist attack on the heels of a catastrophe such as Katrina. Can you
imagine the horror, the chaos, the utter confusion? I have to believe
that Osama or one of his henchmen is taking notes as we struggle with
the devastation left in Katrina's wake.
Our economic resources are stretched dangerously, dangerously thin,
and so is our military might--you better believe that--so is our
military might.
We have taken on too much. We have turned our backs on cooperation
with the international community, decided to go it alone, and pursue
some grandiose scheme of remaking the world in our own image. How
silly.
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By now it should be clear to all that grand experiments are very
costly. It is time for a national epiphany. The sound of Katrina's
bugle must be heeded. We cannot continue to commit billions of dollars
in Iraq when our own people are so much in need--not only now in New
Orleans, but all across America--for everything from education to
health care to homeland security to securing our own borders. We need
to stop making excuses, stop spinning the facts, and come to grips with
the unpleasant truth. The Government of the United States is failing
the American people. Failing. That is the catastrophe.
Where is the national debate about our priorities which Katrina
should prompt? What does it take to wake us up? Hey, listen, hear me:
It is a debate that must begin, if not on this Senate floor, then in
the barber shops and in the grocery stores of America and in the print
and broadcast media of this great Nation.
It is past time for that debate and high time for all of us to
realize that there is nothing more patriotic than taking a good, hard,
honest look at our national priorities. We, the people--we, the
people--always have that right. A strong republic depends upon just
that kind of periodic soul-searching. Does our moral sense of ourselves
translate into Government policies? I believe that. Presently, it does
not. We have a disconnect in Government policy in everything from a
tarnished U.S. image abroad to a failure to address gasoline shortages
and skyrocketing prices that will certainly slow our economic engine
and take their toll on working people.
Instead of asking the public not to buy more gas than needed, I wish
somebody would ask the giant oil companies to pass up some profits and
help hold down gas prices as a patriotic gesture for our country. Would
that be so outrageous? What do you think?
Why have we not had the vision to invest in alternative energy
sources on a grand scale to free us from the addiction to foreign oil?
For too long--for too long--our great land has been allowed to drift
toward balkanization, a separation between the haves and the have-nots,
with the lower end of the income scale at risk from a tattered safety
net and a neglected infrastructure, lacking the jobs and housing they
need, the health care to stay well, the insurance to cover hospital
stays, or the educational opportunities to prepare for the future.
I remember, yes, I remember an America that used to feel more like
one country--one country, an America that shared the sacrifice of war
and tightened its belt so we could pay for it now. But now we borrow to
go to war, and we cut taxes to spare those in the high brackets from
sacrifice.
Where is the sense of shared destiny? It has taken nature's own
weapon of mass destruction, a category 4 hurricane, to remind us that
we are all American and that our Government has a moral obligation to
serve and protect us all.
This country is on the wrong track, and the course needs correcting.
Continued denial serves no good purpose. Further loss of American life
in Iraq may permanently sour the American people on future military
action and damage the recruitment for our all-voluntary force.
To everything there is a season--a time to kill and a time to heal.
We have seen the fallacy of sending too many members of the National
Guard to the Middle East. What folly.
As I speak, we have lost 1,886 sons and daughters in Iraq. And for
what? And there seems to be no end in sight, no plan. We have 137,000
troops still serving in Iraq with 2,000 more scheduled to go in
October. We are building at least--now get this--we are building at
least four semipermanent bases in Iraq structured to hold 18,000 troops
each. Why? That does not sound like ``staying not one day longer than
needed'' to me. In truth, most Americans no longer support a massive
deployment in Iraq. Nor do they understand the mission of that
continued deployment. Despite repeated directives by the Congress, the
``powers that be'' refuse to actually budget for Iraq, so that a total
picture of our fiscal situation and the cost of the war is deliberately
obscured. We are driving our country ever deeper into debt and
stretching every resource that we possess to the breaking point. How
much longer can it last? Prudence demands that we reassess our posture.
Our inept and pathetic, pitiful response to Katrina has underlined our
vulnerabilities and writ them large before the world. The American
people deserve better than this.
I call upon the leaders of this country to come together and to work
together to repair our storm-ravaged Gulf Coast and help salvage the
lives of its victims. But more than that, I call upon the Congress to
inventory our homeland with an eye to the future. Let us look around,
America, and target our deficiencies. Let us work with State and local
communities to shore up our weaknesses. We must react in a crisis, of
course, but for God's sake, let us finally understand that we must also
anticipate the future and be unafraid to commit the resources to make
us strong at home. The lesson of Katrina most surely is that an ounce
of prevention is worth several tons of cure.
We need to also learn that we cannot long remain a world power if we
continue to let America crumble from within. The alarm bells are
sounding--listen. The alarm bells are sounding and we must answer the
call. This is no time to play for partisan advantage. This is certainly
not the season to circle the wagons and hunker down. We need not
stretch our brains to write new talking points or invent new excuses.
And please, oh, please, please, let us not resort to the trusty
bureaucratic ruse of simply reorganizing Government agencies once
again.
It is time for real leadership. It is the season for true humility.
The Bible says:
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit
before a fall.
For years we have been getting it wrong here in Washington. But if we
have the will, we can begin to get it right. The American people
deserve leaders with the honesty to take responsibility for failures--
quit making excuses, quit spinning the facts--and the wisdom to change
when change is obviously and so urgently needed. And may God, may
almighty God, grant us the grace.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). Under the previous order, the
Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
____________________