[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 118 (Wednesday, September 20, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H6837-H6843]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it is again a pleasure to be on 
the floor this evening with the 30-Something Working Group, and my 
colleague Mr. Meek my will be joining me in a few short minutes.
  But I say to my good friend from Georgia who has just issued a call 
to raise the tone of the dialogue, I think the Official Truth Squad 
would do well to engage in a little truth and acknowledge that it is 
they who have engaged in the vicious rhetoric that has gone back and 
forth for the last dozen or so years that they have controlled this 
chamber, and that the direction that they have moved this country in 
has given us neither faith nor reason to believe that this country will 
be able to be put on the right track unless we making some significant 
changes, not the least of which is in our economy.
  Security, Democrats believe that security is incredibly important, 
not just our national security and our homeland security, but economic 
security, and no matter what this district is I travel to, no matter 
what district you represent, the people in this country are yearning 
for a commitment from this Congress to move this country in the right 
direction on economic security. That does not appear to be the 
commitment of the leadership of this institution. One has only to look 
at the commentary across the country to know that it is not just my 
opinion, but this is the opinion of many, many people both who have 
expertise in economics as well as the rank-and-file individuals who are 
struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis.
  I want to just walk through some of the commentary that we have seen 
recently and compare the rosy picture that has been painted by this 
administration and by this Republican leadership, compared to what the 
reality on the ground every day for working families is.
  Let us look at the economy according to essentially do-nothing 
Washington Republicans, and the way we are characterizing them is 
simply because we have spent the least amount of time at work during 
this 109th Congress than in history. We have worked the least number of 
days, produced the smallest amounts of legislation, and yet the 
administration and the Republican leadership continues to toot a horn 
that does not deserve to be tooted.
  Let us look at what President Bush said just the other day. Just 2-
days ago he said, I would say look at what the recent economy has done. 
It is strong. We have created a lot of jobs.
  You also have majority leader John Boehner say on September 1 that 
the American economy is strong; it continues to provide more economic 
opportunity and higher wage jobs to working families across the 
country.
  What I would say to the President and to my colleague Mr. Boehner is 
that I am not sure what country they are living in or who they are 
speaking to, but they seem to believe that if you say something enough 
times and repeat it often enough that eventually it will sink in and 
someone will believe it.

                              {time}  2300

  But if you ask about the economy according to America's working 
families, let's see what one young woman talked about from her point of 
view. Denine Gordon, who is 32 years old and is a waitress who makes 
the minimum wage, news about her latest trouble. Her van has been in 
the shop for a week because she and her husband can't afford to fix it. 
``This is the least I have ever made in my entire life,'' the 
Republican and mother of three said. ``The gas prices went up, and the 
tips went down.'' She said that in the newspaper as reported by AP just 
2 days ago.
  Debbie Brewer, a 50-year-old woman and a deli owner, rattled off her 
biggest complaints about the economy as she counted change while 
closing her register for the night. ``We will never see 99 cents 
again,'' the Republican said, of

[[Page H6838]]

gas prices. ``Everything is jumping, your gas, your food, and 
everything, but your wages don't go up.''
  And what both of these young women are speaking about is the fact 
that in 9 years we have not had an increase in the minimum wage. We 
still have not provided just a minimal increase to those who make the 
least amount of money in the country, who certainly can't afford to 
uphold the costs that their families have on a minimum-wage salary. We 
have a Republican Congress here that has repeatedly refused to raise 
the minimum wage, and no opportunity in the next 1\1/2\ weeks, it 
appears, that we are going to be able to do that. We have legislation 
that is been amended, we have the Labor and Health and Human Services 
appropriations bill that has an amendment sitting on it that the 
Republican leadership refuses to bring to the floor because it was 
successfully adopted in the appropriations subcommittee. As a result, 
that bill was stalled, never to see the light of day because, God 
forbid, it would give the Members an opportunity to have a straight up-
or-down vote on the minimum wage. Their fear is that it actually would 
pass. And that is just incredibly, incredibly sad.
  Let's take a look at some more reality about the economy. This is the 
real economic change under this President. While the minimum wage has 
not increased since 1997, let's look at what has increased. You look at 
this chart over here, all the way on the left you see zero percent 
increase in the minimum wage. But let's take a look at the price of 
whole milk. That has increased 24 percent. Let's take a look at the 
price of a loaf of bread. That has increased 25 percent. How about the 
price of a 4-year public college education? That has increased 77 
percent.
  Let's peruse how much health insurance has gone up. And, Mr. Speaker, 
I can tell you that health insurance in particular is an item that 
people in my district and districts all across the country, I am sure 
yours as well, people are totally frustrated, don't know what to do, 
are tearing their hair out because of the ever-increasing upwards of 15 
percent increases in health care costs.
  It doesn't matter whether I sit next to a mom with young kids or a 
small business owner or a CEO of a large corporation. I just talked to 
a CEO of a large corporation today. The cost of health care is their 
number one concern.
  We have 46 million people in this country that don't have access to 
health insurance, and that number is constantly going up, not down. And 
the reason it is going up is because more and more employers have less 
and less of an ability to provide access to health insurance for their 
employees, so they are just dropping the coverage and leaving their 
employees on their own to figure out how they are going to get that 
coverage.
  What it means when someone doesn't have health insurance coverage, 
Mr. Speaker, is that when their child is sick, when they are sick, they 
can't afford to go to the doctor.
  And I can tell you a little story about how, when I first ran for the 
State legislature in Florida, which was back in 1992, I was walking 
door to door. And I knocked on a door, I knocked on 25,000 doors in my 
first election. And as I was walking door to door, it took a young 
woman who was home at the time a particularly long time to get to the 
door before she could answer it. And she called to me from inside of 
the apartment and said, ``Just a minute, just a minute. I will be right 
there.''
  So I waited patiently. And when she finally got to the door and 
opened it, you couldn't help but notice that her foot was incredibly, 
incredibly swollen. And of course, I couldn't help but ask her what 
happened, what was wrong, because she was obviously in agonizing pain. 
And she literally said to me, and this has been an issue all the way 
this number of years. That was 14 years ago. She literally said to me 
that she now had an infection on her foot, but that she didn't have 
health insurance, so she now was about to actually, as I have knocked 
on her door, she was about to go down to the emergency room at the 
local hospital because she was no longer able to wait.
  And she didn't have health insurance, so she couldn't take care of it 
and go to the doctor for just a chance for him to look at her foot when 
there was only something minor wrong with it; she had to wait until it 
was bad enough for her to take herself to the emergency room so that 
she could get it taken care of.
  And that is the story for millions of people across the country, Mr. 
Speaker. And the problem with 14 years has not gotten better, it has 
gotten worse, a 97 percent increase in the cost of health insurance.
  How about gas prices? Amazingly, people have been rejoicing or at 
least breathing some sighs of relief that there has been a drop in the 
cost of gas lately. What is sad is that there has been a drop from 
upwards of $3 to somewhere between $2.75 and $2.95. You know, when we 
are at the point in this country where people are excited about gas 
prices that are lower than $3, but are still higher than $2.50, there 
is something seriously wrong. Our expectations are out of whack, 
because America can certainly do better. We can certainly move this 
country in a new direction.
  And I guess that the whole issue of gas prices boils down to, the way 
I summarized it, what happens, I think, in this country is that it must 
be on the other side of the aisle that the Republican leadership here 
isn't filling their own gas tank, or maybe they haven't filled their 
own gas tank in so long that they don't remember what the cost of a 
gallon of gas is. They are not standing there at the pump watching it 
tick dime after dime. It used to be pennies. When I was a child, when 
you would pump gas and when my parents were pumping gas, you would 
watch the pennies tick off. Now you watch the dimes tick off.
  And pretty soon, if we don't get a handle on making sure that we 
don't totally rely on foreign oil or oil in general as a resource, we 
are going to probably see quarters rattle off on that end column on the 
gas tank as opposed to dimes or as opposed to pennies like it used to 
when I was a child.
  That is the only explanation I can find to the callous disregard on 
the part of the leadership here for getting a real handle on how to 
address gas prices so that we don't have joy and so that we are not 
forced to delight in a 20-cent drop that brings us to about $2.70 or 
$2.50. It is just our priorities seem to be backwards.
  What we need to do and what Democrats will do in our new direction 
for America if we are given an opportunity after November 7 is we would 
make a real investment in exploring alternative energy. We would make 
an investment in the Midwest instead of the Middle East. We would make 
an investment in ensuring that we can expand the use of ethanol; that 
we can truly, like Brazil did.

  Brazil, Mr. Speaker, is now a country that has broken their addiction 
to foreign oil. They actually are self-sufficient. They grew their way 
out of the problem. They have crops that give them the ability to 
produce enough ethanol, and now they have American automobile 
manufacturers building cars for them that are sold and marketed in 
Brazil so that they can again be energy self-sufficient and not reliant 
upon OPEC and the Middle East.
  And what we have is our Energizing America Plan. We have a plan to 
have farmers fuel America's energy independence, and we have an action 
plan to do that so that we can be truly energy-independent within 10 
years. It is not rhetoric, it is a plan.
  It is not rhetoric like what we heard here with the President's State 
of the Union where he talked about wanting to end America's addiction 
to foreign oil. Well, where is the beef, Mr. Speaker? Where is the 
backup behind the words? Because I haven't seen it, and I have only 
been here 2 years now and completing my freshman term in Congress, but 
I have only seen energy legislation that is written for the oil 
companies, that gives them the ability to not pay subsidies, that gives 
away the store, that gives them the ability to drill all they want 
without paying royalties to the government. And, the last time I 
checked, the oil industry is the most profitable industry on the 
planet.
  Literally, in the fourth quarter of last year, I believe it was 
ExxonMobil that made more money, more profit than any company in 
history. And let's just take a look at the oil companies'

[[Page H6839]]

record profits. Yet we are passing legislation that gives them even 
more money.
  In 2002, you have the oil industry making $34 billion. In 2003, they 
made $59 billion. In 2004, they made $84 billion; in 2005, $113 
billion. Yet, we pass legislation here in this House that actually gave 
them more. Didn't make them pay the royalties and the subsidies that 
they would normally owe to the Federal Government. Why? Because there 
is no commitment on the part of this Republican Congress to actually 
end our addiction to foreign oil, because that would end the direction 
that this profit margin is going. It would make sure that there was 
some balance. It would make sure that we invest, like our plan would, 
in America, in the Midwest, and in my home State where we have sugar 
farmers who could benefit from producing sugar that could be made into 
ethanol. I have a company in my district that has the ability to do 
that, and if we will only give them the opportunity to help move this 
country in the right direction.
  Let's take a look at what is happening with the individuals who work 
for the oil industry. This is Lee Raymond. Why is he smiling in this 
picture? Because he got a $398 million retirement package and a $2 
million tax break. Really. When we are talking about who gets tax cuts 
that have been passed out of this Chamber again and again and again 
since you and I have been here, Mr. Speaker, this is the person and the 
type of person that those tax cuts are designed to help. We passed tax 
breaks and subsidy giveaways for the oil industry, and we refuse to 
raise the minimum wage for people like waitresses and our workers who 
are only trying to make ends meet. It is just abominable.
  What we would do as Democrats is we would move this country in a new 
direction. We would make a real commitment to economic security. We 
would focus on the domestic needs of this Nation. We would make sure 
that we cut the student loan rate in half. It is at its highest rate 
ever. We would make sure that we make a real commitment to expanding 
access to health care, to the 46 million Americans that don't have it. 
We would pass a real prescription drug benefit for senior citizens, and 
not a prescription drug benefit that was written to benefit the 
pharmaceutical industry.
  Right now, Mr. Speaker, the Medicare Part D prescription drug 
benefit, and we are getting close to September 22, which is the date in 
which many, many senior citizens, and they are already dropping through 
it as we speak, that many, many senior citizens are going to fall into 
what is called the doughnut hole, the point at which the Medicare 
prescription drug benefit that was passed in 2003, before you and I 
came to this Chamber, the senior citizens that we represent will fall 
into this doughnut hole. And this is how it is going to happen.
  There is a gap in coverage in the prescription drug benefit designed 
in this bill that makes it so that when a senior citizen participating 
in a drug plan reaches $2,250 in prescription drug expenses, and now I 
am not talking about out-of-pocket expenses, the way you get into the 
doughnut hole is they take the actual cost of the drug, not what the 
insurance plan pays for it, but the actual cost of the drug, plus the 
copay, and they add that up together. When it gets to $2,250, you fall 
into the doughnut hole.
  But it is a bait and switch. You don't get out of the doughnut hole 
when you reach $5,100 in those kinds of costs. You can't climb out of 
the doughnut hole until you reach $5,100 in out-of-pocket expenses. So 
what that means is that many, many senior citizens will never climb out 
of the doughnut hole.
  How is that going to help senior citizens reduce their drug costs and 
not to have to choose between medicine and meals?

                              {time}  2315

  The reason it was designed that way was so the pharmaceutical 
industry wouldn't have to be on the hook for losing a ton of money. The 
Republicans could essentially say they passed a prescription drug 
benefit that really does not help a lot of people.
  Another problem with the prescription drug benefit is that it 
actually is prohibited in the law from allowing the government to 
negotiate for lower prices with the pharmaceutical industry. There is a 
specific prohibition against that.
  That is outrageous. It seems like common sense that we should be able 
to negotiate the best possible deal for our seniors. But we can't do 
it, it is not allowed, even though the Veterans Administration is able 
to do it and is able to get better prices than the Federal Government 
can for our senior citizens.
  That is why people are importing their drugs from Canada. It is 
shocking but true that they actually have American-manufactured drugs 
in Canada available for less money than they are available for here, 
even though they are developed and manufactured in America.
  I was in New York over the weekend, and while I was there I heard a 
radio ad that shocked me. It was a bald-faced radio ad that marketed 
directly to seniors, that encouraged them to contact this Canadian 
company and buy their drugs directly from Canada.
  That is what we have come to. We have to have our own citizens get 
their prescription drugs from outside this country because we are not 
taking proper care of them.
  Democrats would do better. We would move this country in a new 
direction. We would close the doughnut hole by changing the law and 
allowing for the negotiation of lower prices. That savings would fill 
the doughnut hole so there would not be a gap in coverage.
  Those are the kinds of things we would do. We would make sure that we 
put Americans and their economic security first and not the wealthiest 
few, not the CEOs of oil companies, not the oil industry itself. And we 
put action behind our words.
  The gentleman from Georgia concluded his hour by saying we need to 
tone down the rhetoric. Well, if we could tone down the agenda and 
focus the agenda on the needs of the American people, then the rhetoric 
would not need to be so sharp.
  Forgive me, but I happen to consider myself a direct and 
straightforward person. I am going to call it like I see it. The way I 
see it and have seen it since I have been here, Mr. Meek, is that we 
are for working families; we are for making sure that we move this 
country in a new direction; that we expand access to health care; that 
we increase the minimum wage; that we cut the student loan rate in half 
so we can expand access to higher education; that we reduce the 
deficit; restore pay-as-you-go spending so we don't spend more than we 
take in; so we reduce the foreign debt, as you so eloquently talk about 
night after night; so we make sure that we reorder America's priorities 
so that we focus on homeland security. Only 5 percent of the containers 
that come into our Nation's ports are checked, and virtually no 
packages or cargo that is put in the belly of passenger planes are 
checked.
  These are the things that we would do in our new direction for 
America. It is time. We have 48 days. Americans have 48 days to send a 
signal that they want us to move in a new direction. I am looking 
forward to November 8 when we can wake up and implement all of the 
things that we talk about night after night after night.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I think it is important 
that we take this in a very serious manner. Even though it is Eastern 
Standard Time, it is approximately 11:20 p.m., and we have worked a 
full legislative day. We have a full legislative day tomorrow. And we 
are here to give voice to those that are counting on not only Members 
of Congress, but Members of Congress that have the will and desire to 
move us in a new direction.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that for those Members who want 
to join this side of the aisle in making sure that veterans, those who 
have allowed us to salute one flag, to be able to get the kind of 
health care that they deserve from this government, to allow those 
small businesses that want to provide affordable health care for their 
workers, all of the way up to the Fords and the GMs of the world who 
would like to provide health care, because we haven't addressed those 
issues here in this Congress. The corporate community and also the 
business community are suffering because of it, as well as the workers. 
Forty million Americans are trying to figure out how they are going to 
provide health care to not only children but for individuals who punch 
in and punch out every day.

[[Page H6840]]

  These are issues that we are willing to address and that we have had 
here as it relates to legislation in this Congress. I think it is 
important that we focus on bringing balance to this process, not just 
coming to the floor, having discussions. I can see if we were just here 
talking about what the majority is not doing. We are not only 
identifying what they are not doing, but at the same time we are saying 
on HouseDemocrats.gov that we have plans for security. We have plans 
for making sure that we invest in the Midwest versus the Middle East. 
We have plans as it relates to a real strategy for the war in Iraq 
versus just a slogan that says stay the course.
  We have a plan to make sure that we educate our children, an 
innovation agenda that has been out for a very long time. It is nothing 
new, nothing that we revealed in days before the election, some under 
50 days before the next election.
  The American people, and I am not talking about just the Democratic 
American people, I am saying Independents, the Reform Party, all have 
an opportunity to make a decision on behalf of the future of our 
country.
  The gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) and the 30-
something Working Group, as you know we were here earlier with Mr. 
Delahunt and Mr. Ryan, and for those others of the 30-something Working 
Group that were not able to make it to the floor, making sure that 
college is affordable for the next generation, making sure that we are 
not worrying about competing with the school down the street but 
competing with a school on another continent, we want to make sure that 
we do everything that we are supposed to do here in this Congress in 
giving every American a level playing field, if not an advantage over 
other countries, and making sure that they have what they need.
  We have fought the obvious battle here in making sure that our troops 
have body armor, making sure that those families that had to buy body 
armor for their loved ones, husbands, wives, uncles, daughters, making 
sure that we fought for those issues.
  I would give credit to some Members on the other side of the aisle 
who did stand up against the majority. But unfortunately, we have 
overwhelming support for a rubber-stamp majority, those individuals who 
are willing to follow the Republican leadership and not standing up on 
behalf of the American people.
  I think it is important that we give voice to those individuals. I am 
glad Ms. Wasserman Schultz talked about the minimum wage and she 
focused on domestic issues. We have a war in Iraq, but we have a huge 
challenge here in the United States of America. We have a huge 
challenge. We have blue and red States that are suing the Federal 
Government for lack of funding on Leave No Child Behind, which was a 
bipartisan piece of legislation that we felt we could move forth in a 
bipartisan way, not only in this Chamber but also in the Senate.

  But it takes a majority to bring about true bipartisanship. We have 
shown that we have been able to do it. We have shown on this side of 
the aisle that we can balance the budget and secure the future of not 
only Social Security but also secure the future of our country, not 
having other countries having their hand in the pocket of the American 
taxpayer.
  Earlier Ms. Wasserman Schultz talked about the whole issue of border 
security. It was an hour that the majority had, not the last hour, the 
hour before that, talking about how we are securing America and we are 
strong, this, that, and the other, and coming to the floor and sharing 
words without third-party validators. Who are the third-party 
validators? Our third-party validators are the American people who are 
saying that they are concerned about what is happening in this country 
because we don't have the kind of balance that our democracy calls for.
  Who is going to hold in check an administration that is willing to do 
anything to make sure that, you know, let's say the poll numbers, or to 
use 9/11, something that is not dealing with honoring those families 
and those first responders, but to talk about a false agenda as far as 
securing America. We can do a better job.
  Have the majority done some things? Yes, they have done some things. 
I am a level-minded person, and there are some things that have been 
done. But have we secured America in the way we should? As it relates 
to our agenda and securing America, we have put that up front. Not just 
as it relates to uniforms and badges, but also from a fiscal 
standpoint, we are saying we don't want America's back broken because 
of the record-gaining debt of this administration and the Republican 
Congress.
  Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I am going to tell you right now, this poster 
here is very interesting because this poster is the longest-living 
poster that we have in the 30-Something Working Group arsenal of 
posters, to be able to break this down so everybody can understand.
  We don't want to confuse Members or the American people by using big 
words and acronyms and just kind of talking inside a Washington game. 
We want to make sure that people understand. We want to make sure that 
people understand that here as it relates to our efforts on the 
Democratic side of the aisle, that it is not about the Democratic 
National Committee. That it is not about, because I am a Democrat, I am 
right. It is not about okay, I am going to speak to only the Democratic 
Members of the House, because that is not what this democracy is set up 
to do.
  This democracy, Article I, section 1, of the U.S. Constitution, says 
as a legislative body, we have oversight and investigative powers. We 
are supposed to hold this government accountable.
  The House is the only body you have to be elected to. The Senate, you 
can be appointed as a Senator. If a Senator was to say I have to 
retire, health reasons or whatever the case may be, or somebody is 
picked for Vice President, a Governor in that given State can appoint 
an American citizen to carry out that Senator's term. That has 
happened. That has happened in this Congress.
  When we look at the House of Representatives, we are the true body of 
the democracy. We have to be elected. If any Member of the House has to 
leave, they have to hold a special election to fill a seat. Let me say, 
it takes the House and the executive branch to do what has happened. 
$1.05 trillion has been borrowed in 4 years between 2001-2005. 
President Bush, he is our Commander in Chief and he is our President, 
period, dot, but he cannot do it by himself. The Republican Congress 
allowed him to do it in raising the debt ceiling. We had those letters 
out here, and we still have those letters from the Secretary of the 
Treasury saying we have to raise the debt ceiling.
  What does that mean? That means we haven't been responsible, the 
Republican majority, in administering the dollars that the American 
people have given in trust to this Congress and this House to do on 
their behalf. Spending is out of control, borrowing is out of control. 
Borrowing is out of control. $1.05 trillion. In 224 years, and here I 
am in the 109th Congress, a second generation Member of the House, 
okay, and this has never happened in the history of the Republic. This 
is not something that happened maybe 20 years ago, even 100 years ago. 
In 224 years, 42 Presidents have not been able to accomplish what the 
Bush administration and the rubber-stamp Republican Congress has been 
able to accomplish in allowing foreign nations to buy our debt, to have 
their hands in the pockets of the American people, and counting.
  This chart, as far as I am concerned, when we get back here after 
November, we are probably going to have some new numbers. That $1.05 
trillion is higher. This chart is falling apart, goodness gracious, 
because this chart has been the wake-up call.
  We decided to come up with this chart to paint the picture, 
regardless of what the Members on the other side who come to the floor 
say about fiscal responsibility. The Government Accountability Office 
released a report that there are agencies that are coming to the Hill 
that can't explain where millions of dollars have gone.

                              {time}  2330

  And we are supposed to have oversight. We have the Secretary of 
Defense Donald Rumsfeld that says if anyone in the Pentagon says 
anything else about redeployment of troops or a different strategy than 
what I believe, ``I believe,'' or that the administration has embraced, 
then they are fired. Ms.

[[Page H6841]]

Wasserman Schultz, not even a hearing, not even a Member from the 
Republican side outraged to the point where they are going to their 
party leaders saying we have got to call the Secretary of Defense in 
and find out what he is talking about, because this thing is supposed 
to be, using your own words, Mr. Speaker, using their words, saying if 
we hear from the military commanders on the ground what they need, we 
are going to give it to them.
  So when you have this lack of oversight, no matter what your party 
affiliation is, no matter what your motivation may be to vote or not 
vote in November, you have to have issue with individuals that are 
saying, ``Either it's my way or the highway.'' That is okay if you had 
a household somewhere and you are the big paycheck guy or gal or 
whatever the case may be and you are paying the bill. But when you are 
paying the bills with U.S. taxpayer dollars, we have to bring issue to 
that. And because of that relationship that this Republican majority 
has with the executive branch of this government, of our government, I 
must add, it is problematic when you have folks that are not willing to 
ask the question.
  When we walk through these doors into this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, and 
the lights are up in this Chamber, and it says the board is open, what 
we call the voting board is open, and we take our voting card out, and 
we come in here to vote, we are voting on behalf of 600- or 700,000 
Americans that have elected us to come here to represent them, not what 
the special interests say that we should do here in this House. There 
are some very obvious issues that should be resolved, that need to be 
resolved, but will not be resolved as long as we have a rubber-stamp 
Congress in place.
  Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I sleep well knowing that we spend every 
moment that we can here on this floor until the clock runs out by the 
rules of this House to allow us to come here and give voice to those 
Americans that deserve better. We are saying that we are willing to put 
this country in a new direction, not just saying it in fiction. It is 
on the Internet. It is on housedemocrats.gov. We have press 
conferences. We file amendments in committee. And the only reason why 
those amendments and that legislation does not have breath in the lungs 
of the legislation that we file, the reason why it doesn't have a 
heartbeat, is the fact that we are in the minority.
  Now, the only way that can change, Mr. Speaker, is that we need a 
majority of this House to bring accountability back to this government 
to make sure that we have balance, to make sure we have fiscal 
responsibility, to make sure that we stand up on behalf of children who 
can't even vote, and to make sure that we give voice and to make sure 
that we give direction and to make sure that we have the backs of our 
men and women that have sand in their teeth right now in the war in 
Iraq, and to make sure that those individuals that are in Afghanistan 
that are standing on behalf of the hope and the prayer and hopefully 
the willing desire of this Congress, to make sure that we have their 
back, to make sure that we have a true coalition, to make sure that 
other countries can look at this country and know when that whatever 
the President's says, it does not necessarily mean that that is the 
final word.
  Yes, we support our President. But at the same time, Mr. Speaker, we 
have to be able to allow this Congress and this legislative branch to 
function in a way that it is supposed to function. And right now that 
is not the case because individuals are willing to rubber-stamp exactly 
to the word, to the comma, to the period to what the President calls 
for. And it is on domestic policy, and it is also on foreign policy. 
And I think it is important, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, that we carry out 
our duty.
  No other President in recent times, Mr. Speaker, I must add, has been 
able to celebrate the kind of rubber stamp that the Bush administration 
has received. That is not good for America. That is not good for any 
party affiliation anyone may have, and that is not good for the future 
of our country. And that is the reason why we are here in that light.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much, Mr. Meek. And I have to 
tell you that I know I am less senior than you are. I came here a term 
behind you, and I am just completing my second year in the Congress. 
And what I have been shocked by is the lack of oversight. I sit on the 
Judiciary Committee and Financial Services. And in the Judiciary 
Committee in particular, which is supposed to be the place where we are 
protecting our civil liberties and protecting the Constitution of the 
United States of America, even in the Judiciary Committee in this 
House, we have ceded our authority, our authority for oversight, and 
holding the administration's feet to the fire to the executive branch. 
The Republican leadership here has thrown up their hands and said, you 
do whatever you want. It is okay.
  Honestly, sometimes I ask myself, other than our taking the floor 
each night and individually trying to do what we can and as a caucus 
collectively trying to do what we can to hold the administration's feet 
to the fire, I wonder why these people who are running this institution 
bother showing up to work, because what are they doing? We have worked 
less. We have been in session fewer days than even the ``Do-Nothing 
Congress'' of the 1940s.
  We aren't passing significant legislation. Two weeks ago we 
literally, the only piece of, quote, unquote, major legislation we 
passed out was a bill that would prohibit the slaughter of horses. And 
yet we still have Americans who are twisting in the wind, who are 
struggling to make ends meet, who are toiling at a minimum wage rate 
where they can't possibly pay all the bills, and the Republicans just 
continue to paint a rosy picture.
  And what you always say, and I quoted you earlier, is maybe if they 
just think if they say it enough times that people will believe it, or 
it will magically come true. Let us just look at what they said and 
what the reality is.
  Essentially we know that Americans are not fooled by this rosy 
picture that is being painted. Let us look at the recent polling. A 
respected poll, NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, 52 percent of those 
polled disapproved of the President's handling of the economy. That was 
not a long time ago. That was on September 15, a few days ago. A 
Bloomberg-L.A. Times poll showed 60 percent of self-described 
Independents said the economy was doing badly, 60 percent. That was on 
September 5. And really what we are dealing with here is Americans are 
facing a different reality than the Republicans' statistical spin.
  Let us look at the situation with the minimum wage. It is now at its 
lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation. Real household has 
declined nearly $1,300 under this present administration. The cost of 
family health insurance has skyrocketed 71 percent since the President 
took office. And the cost of tuition and fees at 4-year public 
institutions, 4-year universities, has exploded by 57 percent. We are 
talking people who are caving in under money pressures. We have an 
economic squeeze that really in 48 days I believe, we believe, is going 
to affect how people make their voting decisions.
  Look at hourly wages. They are down 2 percent since 2003. Up 20 
percent from just a year earlier are gas prices. Consumer confidence is 
down by 7 percent in just the past month.
  When the economy is rosy, Mr. Meek, and I am no economist, but 
usually the consumer confidence index is not in this direction when the 
economy is doing well.
  What is up 97 percent since this President took office, mortgage 
debt. You and I know we live in now what is one of the most expensive 
communities in the country. Who knew that South Florida would end up 
being as costly as it is? But our school districts actually just 
realized that they lost and had an unexpected drop in the number of 
schoolchildren in each of our school districts, and they are baffled as 
to how that happened, except the only thing they can attribute it to is 
that the cost of housing has exploded to such a degree that people have 
just moved because they can't afford to live in our community anymore.
  And that is the case with communities all across America. Only where 
are they going to go? Every place is expensive. The average cost of a 
house in our communities now is over $300,000. Yet we continue to pass 
tax cuts for the wealthiest few off this floor and out of this Congress 
and send those

[[Page H6842]]

things to the President. At least we have the Senate as a backstop.
  One of the other things I wanted to touch on, we have been talking 
about our 2006 agenda, our new direction for America; and we have 
covered our commitment to real security at home; our commitment to 
better jobs, specifically not sending jobs overseas; increasing the 
minimum wage; cutting the student loan rate; really making a commitment 
to energy independence and affordable access to health care.
  One of the things that we talked about in the 30-Something Working 
Group a lot last year was the privatization scheme that President Bush 
proposed for Social Security. And what Leader Pelosi has emphasized so 
often with us is don't let the American people forget that this is not 
off the agenda or off the table for this Republican leadership or this 
President. They are absolutely still committed to privatizing Social 
Security, and if we take control of this Congress, we will ensure that 
that will not happen. President Bush literally has said he hopes to 
revise his plan to overhaul the U.S. Social Security retirement program 
if his party keeps control of the Congress in the November midterm 
elections.
  And you talked about third-party validators. That is whom we rely 
upon for our information that we disseminate on this floor each night. 
That was the Wall Street Journal just on September 9, just 10 days ago.
  The bottom line is that the threat of privatizing Social Security is 
not over, and we need to make sure that we have a party and a caucus 
and Members who are committed to preserving Social Security.
  Just look at the quote of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson. He 
said, ``Social Security was created in 1935. Today people are living 
longer than that they did in 1935. Yet Social Security's basic 
structure has barely changed. Just 3.3 workers are paying into the 
system to support each beneficiary while 16 workers did so in 1950. The 
President put forward a plan last year to strengthen and modernize 
Social Security. The longer we wait to fix this problem, the more 
limited will be the options available to us, the greater cost, and the 
more severe the economic impact on our Nation.''
  And all of the people in the administration, there is quote after 
quote after quote that describes their underlying intent to privatize 
Social Security, pull the rug out from under our senior citizens from 
the most successful program in American history that is the floor 
through which we will not allow our senior citizens to fall. And we 
have just got to make sure that 48 days from now we are able to make 
sure that our senior citizens can be protected not just in their 
retirement security, but in terms of their health care security, in 
terms of making sure that they have a prescription drug benefit that 
truly protects them, that truly gives them affordable access to 
prescription drugs, that is consistent, that does not have a doughnut 
hole that they fall through, and that allows the Federal Government to 
negotiate for lower prices. Those are the things that are reflected in 
our agenda.
  And you can see by the Republicans' agenda here that they have been 
committed to nothing remotely close to that. They have been committed, 
since I have been here, to increasing tax breaks for the wealthiest 
few. They have been committed to giving subsidies to the oil industry. 
I mean, sometimes I feel like they are committed to reducing access to 
health care because they have done absolutely nothing to move that ball 
down the field. It has just been a real shock to me. And the fact that 
they have allowed the aftermath of Katrina to continue by contracts 
going out the door unchecked, millions and millions of dollars not 
accounted for, no-bid contracts awarded to companies that are 
essentially the friends of Republicans.
  We have got former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, certainly no friend 
of the Democratic agenda, who has commented that ``they are seen by the 
country,'' they being the Republicans, his party members, ``they are 
seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't 
function.'' And that is because they are giving away the store. They 
are letting things happen completely unchecked, ceded the oversight 
authority of the Congress to the executive branch and, on top of that, 
in the war in Iraq, also allowed for contracts to be let without a bid 
with absolutely no oversight of how those funds are spent; one contract 
where $9 million went out the door, and no one knew what it was spent 
on.
  It is just shocking. These are facts. These are not things that we 
are making up, and it is not hyperbole or exaggeration. I just don't 
understand how they look at themselves in the mirror every morning when 
they wake up. My parents raised me that you have got to make decisions 
that are going to make you comfortable and that are going to allow you 
to look yourself in the mirror when you wake up in the morning and put 
your head down on the pillow and rest comfortably at night. And I 
honestly don't understand how any of the Members on that side of the 
aisle can do that when they take out that rubber stamp that you bring 
to the floor each night that we are and they just stamp it. They just 
repeatedly pound it over and over for the agenda of this President, 
which is clearly out of step with the average American.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I can tell you that as 
you start to go down the line of the facts and not fiction of what has 
happened and what has not happened here in this House, you can't help 
but think that we only have tomorrow that we will be in session, and we 
have next week that we will be in session.

                              {time}  2345

  There are a number of conference reports out there, bills that have 
passed both House and Senate that are in limbo that a conference 
committee has not even been appointed by the leadership of the House on 
a bipartisan, in a bipartisan way or partisan way to even deal with 
those issues.
  We have an immigration bill that the American people would like to 
see some action on. No action whatsoever. And I can sit here with great 
confidence to say that it will not happen. A lot of things have, you 
know, a lot of talk on the majority side about an immigration bill. A 
lot of talk about protecting our borders and bringing legislation to 
the floor, if it even made it through a committee, and I will take out 
my Sharpie here of a double-lined fence to protect our border and 
bringing it to the floor for a vote.
  And you take out the legislation and you start to do something, what 
my teachers used to say, reading is fundamental, and you do not see 
here where the money has been appropriated to even build a double-line 
fence that we are coming to the floor and being asked to vote on. It is 
not a joke.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. There is no money?
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. No money. Yes, we are going to build this fence. 
It is going to be for 200, or if someone sat in the back room somewhere 
off the chamber and said, do not make it 200, make it a 300-mile fence, 
let's build a fence all of the way, let's put one in the middle of the 
Gulf, and we are going to run a fence underwater, folks have to put on 
masks and SCUBA equipment, put it underwater, yeah, that is the ticket. 
But no money to be able to pay for the fence.
  Better yet, I think that folks find some sort of gratification or, I 
guess to prove a point, to say we are tough on security. But we are not 
going to put our money where our mouths are.
  The same thing, Mr. Speaker, as it relates to Leave No Child Behind. 
The same thing as it relates to what, Mr. Speaker, Ms. Wasserman 
Schultz talked about as it relates to the minimum wage.
  The 30-Something Working Group night after night pounds the 
Republican majority as it relates to the imbalance of accountability on 
behalf of the American people that are making minimum wage. We have a 
proposal on this side of the aisle to raise the minimum wage to $7.25, 
that will take other workers who are not on the minimum wage, that are 
making $10, $15 or $20 an hour, their wages will go up.
  Meanwhile, CEOs are getting everything that they want, making triple-
diple time of the worker who is going in there and working every day. 
Need it be someone that is retired, that is trying to make ends meet, 
they are going in, they are punching in and punching out every day, 15 
minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the afternoon and 30 minutes for 
lunch if they get that.

[[Page H6843]]

  The CEOs are getting what they want, and guess what? The Members of 
Congress are getting what they want. These numbers that you see up here 
are not minimum wage or even salaried workers in the United States of 
America. The minimum wage worker has not received an increase since 
1997. Look at it. Zeros across the board for the American people. But 
look at Members of Congress. Now, here is the difference between the 
minority, those of us that are the Democrats and the majority, those 
that are in the majority, that has the power and the influence and the 
committee chairpersons that are able to move legislation, and the 
speakership and the majority leader, and the Senate, and the White 
House.
  What has happened? They all got raises. And the difference between us 
and them is that we said we will not participate in another pay raise 
for Members of Congress until the American people receive a pay raise. 
And that is a fact. And that is a promise. And the other promise that 
we have made on this side of the aisle is in the majority, within the 
first 100 hours that the American people will receive an increase in 
the minimum wage. And that is a fact. That is not fiction. That is 
fact. That is on the Record. That is in legislation that was filed in 
the 109th Congress that cannot see the light of day because the 
majority does not want it to happen.
  Now, here is the other issue as it comes down to accountability. 
There is a big differences from that side of the aisle and this side of 
the aisle. We have said we are willing to move forth in a bipartisan 
way and tackle the major issues that are facing this country today and 
tomorrow. The Republican majority has already shown that they do not 
have the will nor the desire to follow through on anything that I am 
talking about at the levels that we are talking about.
  We are talking about moving this country in a new direction to make 
sure that every American can participate, whether they are driving a 
pickup truck or a flex vehicle here in the United States, making sure 
that Democrats, Republicans, independents, members of the American 
people in general, those who cannot even vote will have the 
opportunity.
  We have a proposal on reversing the cost increases that the 
Republican majority has put on the backs of the American worker and the 
American family and in educating the next generation of leaders that 
are here to make sure that they have enough money to attend college, 
that makes sure that there is no devolution of taxes. And what do I 
mean?
  In the 30-Something Working Group, we do not believe in big slogans 
and Washington inside talk. We believe in making sure that the American 
people understand. Devolution of taxes is saying we cut their taxes 
here, and that we do not put it on the backs of the States, because by 
their constitution, by State constitutions, they have to balance.
  Here in Washington, they just put it on the credit card or they ask a 
foreign country to pay for the mismanagement of this Republican 
majority.
  So there is a big choice here. The big choice is that do we want to 
continue to go in the wrong direction, from a fiscal standpoint and a 
respect standpoint as it relates to our veterans and their services, 
also as it relates to health care, or do we want to go in a new 
direction in making sure that we deal with our fiscal issues?
  Because on this side of the aisle, we balance the budget. Not one 
Republican on this side can say that they had anything to do with 
balancing the budget.
  We are almost going to run out of time. But I am just going to say go 
to www.housedemocrats.gov, or www.house.gov/dems. The Members can go on 
and see the report on making sure that we keep Social Security as a 
public program versus privatization. A member actually came to the 
floor after we finished last week and said that no one in my party ever 
said anything about privatization of social security.
  I kind of wanted to ask the gentleman to yield, Mr. Speaker, because 
I wanted to bring a statement out that the President said less than 10 
hours earlier saying that if they get the majority and he is able to 
get the next Congress, as he has it now, to rubber stamp, you are going 
to pursue the privatization of Social Security once again.
  So we want to make sure the American people know about it.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, we have all of the charts and 
particularly the quotes about Social Security, and what the 
administration has said about their desire to privatize Social Security 
and the direction they would take Social Security on our website, our 
30-Something website, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something.
  We also have our New Direction for America pamphlet on that as well. 
We encourage the Members and anyone else who would like to learn a 
little bit more about the direction we would take the country to go on 
to that website.
  Mr. Speaker, we thank Leader Pelosi for the opportunity to talk to 
the Members tonight. Mr. Meek, thank you for joining me once again and 
for your leadership in the 30 Something Working Group.

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