[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 129 (Thursday, October 6, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H8729-H8730]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TOM DeLAY'S HOUSE OF SHAME
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Schmidt). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is
recognized for the remaining time until midnight.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity for us
to just grab a few more minutes here and finish up, the 30-something
working group that we have here, and we want to kind of end the
conversation tonight talking a little bit about a recent periodical
that we like to call Newsweek. It is about the power outage. And we
have mentioned a couple of words here tonight, competence or lack
thereof, and cronyism.
Now, we like, at the 30-something working group, to get third party
validators. And here on the cover of Newsweek, GOP, a mounting crisis
of competence and cronyism, which I think is exactly what we have been
talking about here tonight.
Madam Speaker, I would like to submit for the Record an article here,
Tom DeLay's House of Shame, by Jonathan Alter.
Before yielding to the gentleman, I would like to just share a little
bit a couple of the quotes. I want to share a couple of quotes from
this article today or this week. This gentleman is saying, Mr. Alter is
saying that historians will regard this as the single most corrupt
decade in the long and colorful history of the House of
Representatives. That is pretty sad. And that Congress has always had
its share of extremists, but the DeLay era is the first time the fringe
has ever been in charge. And when we talked about Katrina, we talked
about trying to implement this extremist agenda, regardless of what the
circumstances are, and using Katrina as an opportunity to implement
this agenda. I want to just share one more quote before we open it up
here of what then House majority leader Mr. DeLay said after the
hurricanes, and I quote, that Katrina and Rita ``introduced a valuable
forum to promote the triumph of our ideas and solutions for government
over the crumbling and outdated policies of the Democratic controlled
Congress of past decades.'' The crumbling or the triumph of our ideas.
Triumph of our ideas. I mean, let's just look at where we are right
now. Triumph of the Republican ideas? What? Increased poverty? Stagnant
wages? Health care going up by 15 to 20 percent a year? Pharmaceutical
costs going up by 20 percent a year. What triumph of ideas?
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Do not forget the deficit.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. A deficit, $500 billion? Now that is not even
factoring in the war, a war that we got ram-rodded into, lied into. Is
that the great triumph of ideas?
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Ryan, where are we getting the money from?
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We are borrowing it from China. We do not even have
the money.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Saudi Arabia, too. Do not leave them out.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And how many years the majority said about the
Democratic controlled Congress tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and
spend. Well, the last 10 years and the last 5 years in particular,
borrow and spend. We are borrowing the money from China, Japan, Saudi
Arabia, a lot of people who do not have really friendly interests with
the United States of America. And the problem is, we have got to pay
interest on the money we are borrowing. Reckless fiscal policy,
incompetence, corruption, cronyism, time and time and time again.
Tom DeLay's House of Shame
(By Jonathan Alter)
A decade ago, I paid a call on Tom Delay in his Ornate
office in the Capitol. I had heard a rumor about him that I
figured could not possibly be true. The rumor was that after
the GOP took control of the House that Year, DeLay had begun
keeping a little black book with the names of Washington
lobbyists who wanted to come see him. If the lobbyists were
not Republicans and contributors to his power base, they
didn't get into ``the people's House.'' DeLay not only
confirmed the story, he showed me the book. His time was
limited, DeLay explained with a genial smile. Why should he
open his door to people who were not on the team?
Thus began what historians will regard as the single most
corrupt decade in the long and colorful history of the House
of Representatives. Come on, you say. How about all those
years when congressmen accepted cash in the House chamber and
then staggered onto the floor drunk? Yes, special interests
have bought off members of Congress at least since Daniel
Webster took his seat while on the payroll of a bank. And
yes, Congress over the years has seen dozens of sex scandals
and dozens of members brought low by financial improprieties.
But never before has the leadership of the House been
hijacked by a small band of extremists bent on building a
ruthless shakedown machine, lining the pockets of their
richest constituents and rolling back popular protections for
ordinary people. These folks borrow like banana republics and
spend like Tip O'Neill on speed.
I have no idea if DeLay has technically broken the law.
What interests me is how this moderate, evenly divided nation
came to be ruled on at least one side of Capitol Hill by a
zealot. This is a man who calls the Environmental Protection
Agency ``the Gestapo of government'' and favors repealing the
Clean Air Act because ``it's never been proven that air
toxins are hazardous to people''; who insists repeatedly that
judges on the other side of issues ``need to be intimidated''
and rejects the idea of a separation of church and state; who
claims there are not parents trying to raise families on the
minimum wage--that ``fortunately, such families no not
exist'' (at least Newt Gingrich was intrigued by the
challenges of poverty); who once said: ``A woman can't take
care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure.'' I
could go on all day. Congress has always had its share of
extremists. But the DeLay era is the first time the fringe
has ever been in charge.
The only comparison to DeLay & Co. might be the Radical
Republicans of the 1860s. But the 19th-century Radical
Republican agenda was to integrate and remake the South. The
21st-century Radical Republican agenda is to enact the wish
list of the tobacco and gun lobbies, repeal health and safety
regulations and spend billions on shameless pork-barrel
projects to keep the GOP at the trough. Another analogy is to
Republican Speaker Joe Cannon, who ran the House with an iron
fist a century ago. But Cannon had to contend with
Progressive Republicans who eventually stripped him of his
power. DeLay's ruling radical conservative claque remains
united, at least for now.
Comparisons with fellow Texan Sam Rayburn fall short, too.
Rayburn was respected on both sides of the aisle for his
rock-solid integrity. He and most other House speakers
carefully balanced their support for corporate interests like
the oil depletion allowance with at least some sense of
public good. And they had to share much of their power with
committee chairmen. Today, seniority is much less important.
Chairmen are term-limited (six years) or tossed if they
displease DeLay. And this crowd views ``the public interest''
as strictly for liberal pantywaists.
How have they succeeded? A new book ``Off Center: The
Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American
Democracy,'' by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, explains
how the GOP is simply better than the Democratic Party at the
basic blocking and tackling of politics, including the
exploitation of cultural and religious issues. The authors
argue that even if DeLay goes down, the zealotry and
corporate shilling will continue as long as the GOP controls
the House. Consider DeLay's temporary replacement, Missouri
Rep. Roy Blunt. The Washington Post reported last week that
Blunt is respected by Republican members in part because he
has ``strong ties to the Washington lobbying community.''
That's a qualification for office?
The only reason the House hasn't done even more damage is
that the Senate often sands down the most noxious ideas,
making the bills merely bad, not disastrous. What next for
the House of Shame? If DeLay's acquitted, he'll be back in
power. If he's convicted, his proteges will continue his
work. Reform efforts by fiscal conservatives determined to
curb their borrow-and-spend colleagues are probably doomed.
The only way to get rid of the termites eating away the
people's House is to stamp them out at the next election.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would be happy to yield to the gentlewoman from
Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, and yet they are still, in the
aftermath of Katrina, in the aftermath of Rita, with ballooning
deficits and horrific corruption and cronyism, still talking about tax
cuts, making the tax cuts permanent. They are still talking about
budget reconciliation, which is Washington speak for cuts. They are
still talking about not providing what people in this country, in the
middle, in the middle, the average hardworking American needs.
You know, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is absolutely right. It
is the fringe that has been governing this institution, and this
country for the last 10 years. Most of us are mainstream. Most people
consider themselves very middle of the road, moderate, not left, not
right, just middle of the road, and they want the course to generally
be steering in an almost straight path,
[[Page H8730]]
not veering in one direction or another, and most definitely, not
favoring one group over another. This leadership has clearly favored
the privileged, and it is not like, there is no question about that;
that is documented fact. The privileged, they are first in line to get
theirs. And you know, if we can throw some crumbs to the people who are
average everyday Americans, then you know that is fine, too.
But we have got to make sure that we get back to the competence that
we need to run this government. We have to rid this government of the
cronyism and the corruption, and we have got to restore the fourth C
which is the American people's confidence.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. I have had very little to say in this condensed
time that we have. I think it is important for us to make sure that
folks are not just, Members are not just watching thinking that we are
going, just coming out of the sky with this stuff. We gave it at the
WashingtonPost.com. We also said, if you wanted to cosponsor on House
Resolution 3764, which is a bill that we have put forth to be about the
solution, making sure that we can head off a lack of governance, not
paying attention to the things that we need to pay attention to.
One thing about Katrina, Madam Speaker, and Rita was the fact that we
are not ready to respond to a catastrophic event here in the United
States. And I can tell you that our military is ready, but the question
is, are our American leaders ready to respond? Do we have what we need
to have in place as it relates to the management?
And if you want to cosign on this independent commission, that I must
say to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) that we talked about before,
81 percent of the polls show that Americans want to see an independent
commission, you can sign on to this bill just as a regular U.S.
citizen, HouseDemocrats.gov/Katrina.
With that, I say to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) that we have a
lot of work here to do. No one is saying that anyone is guilty or
whatever the case may be because we know that there will be a court of
law that that will take plays and on behalf of the institution, I hope
all works well as it relates to democracy prevailing.
But I will tell you that it is important, and it is embarrassing to
be a Member of the 109th Congress with this cloud over this
institution. And people are going to look at, they do not care. They
look at you as a Member of the House, not as a Democrat or a Republican
or the one independent that we have here in this House. They look at us
as stewards of this democracy that people have died for us to have the
opportunity.
And I yield back to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, I am just going to wrap up here in the final,
unless the gentlewoman has any final comments.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. No, I was just going to suggest that you give
out the website. And we always encourage people who watch us each week
to contact us, give us your thoughts and opinions and please let
Members know.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is a little late tonight. If you are still up,
[email protected]. Send us some e-mails. We have been
getting some really great ones, and a lot of them lately.
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