[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 52 (Monday, March 26, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H3071-H3078]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, it is good to see you in the 
Chair this evening.
  This has been a pretty amazing first 3 months for a new Member such 
as myself, who just joined this Chamber after having watched it from 
afar for a number of years. As our majority leader said at an 
engagement earlier tonight, this has really been one of the most 
remarkably productive Congresses in as long as he can remember being 
here. That is important. That is important to me.
  Mr. Speaker, we are going to be joined later tonight by Ms. Wasserman 
Schultz, who is just beginning her second term. I think she shares a 
lot of the same frustration that the new Members do, that for all of 
the important policy changes that this Congress has started, whether 
you want to talk about raising the minimum wage, starting to repeal 
some of these massive tax breaks we have given to the oil industry, the 
very important action that we took on Friday that we will talk about in 
terms of Iraq and the new direction that this Democratic Congress is 
beginning to set on what we do in Iraq, maybe the most important thing 
was that we started getting this place to work again and starting to 
give our constituents out there faith that Congress is back to work for 
the people of this country. Instead of sort of waiting for the special 
interests and

[[Page H3072]]

the lobbyists to line up and come into the offices of the prior 
leadership to tell them what they wanted, now actually we have got the 
American people, middle-class families, working class families, their 
priorities are back in charge here again. That is what makes me proud 
to be part of this group.
  This is the hour that the 30-Something Working Group gets to spend on 
the floor of the House. I am proud to be a member of that group, a new 
member, proud that Speaker Pelosi has allowed us this opportunity.
  We are going to cover I think a couple of subjects tonight. We will 
certainly talk about what happened here on Friday.
  But I want to first just rewind for a second, to rewind to what 
happened when we first got here in January. Because it is interesting. 
I watched C-SPAN occasionally when I got home from the campaign trail, 
I got home from the State capital where I served in Connecticut for a 
few years, so I have some familiarity with some of the talk that goes 
on in this place.
  But now I get to sort of listen it to with new ears, because now I 
listen to a lot of the revisionist history that gets thrown around this 
place late at night, listen to our friends on the other side of the 
aisle, and they are friends.
  It is important to put up this chart, Mr. Speaker, to remind the 
American people that we actually can be friends when it actually comes 
to putting on the floor of the House of Representatives up or down 
votes on issues that matter to regular, middle-class families out 
there.
  We can talk about 68 Republican votes along with the Democrats voting 
to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. When we raised 
the minimum wage, set that bill on a path forward in this House, we got 
82 Republican votes for that. Stem cell research, passed 253-174, 37 
Republicans. Better prescription drug programs for our elderly, 24 
Republicans. And on and on and on.
  When it matters, where you put up-or-down votes in front of this 
House for things that make lives better for regular people out there, 
you are going to have Republicans and Democrats agreeing. So we are 
friends. We are friends when we put things before us we can all agree 
on.
  But there has been some revisionist history. There has been some 
interesting 20-20 hindsight happening on this floor often. We heard 
just a little bit of it before. A lot the decrying about the situation 
that our Federal budget has gotten into is pretty curious, seeing that 
the reason that I am here in large part is because a whole bunch of 
people out in northwestern Connecticut who voted for one person for 24 
years decided that the budget priorities, along with the priorities on 
our foreign policy, were gravely out of whack.
  A $9 trillion deficit, Mr. Speaker. A President that inherited a 
budget surplus, who ran on very fiscally conservative principles, 
managed to turn that into a record deficit in his first 6 years in 
office. A Republican Congress, I am sure there were some Democrats that 
were at the trough as well, but a Republican-led Congress that was 
complicit in racking up record amounts of debt that we know are not 
owned in large part by domestic banks but are increasingly owned by 
foreign banks, Asian banks and, in fact, it will put us in a very 
difficult position with when we are sitting down at a table to 
negotiate foreign policy with a lot of these foreign debt holders that 
have fairly decent leverage over us.
  So we hear a lot about how we need to do something about this 
deficit. How it is our children, our children are going to be crippled 
under the weight of this deficit. They absolutely are. They absolutely 
are.

                              {time}  2130

  We had 6 years with a Republican President, 6 years with a Republican 
House, a Republican Senate for much of that time. Could have fixed it 
during that time; didn't get the job done.
  Let's take a look at this chart for just one second. Let's make this 
clear, when we borrow money, all of this debt that we have racked up 
over the past several years, it is owned by Japan, China, the United 
Kingdom, Caribbean nations, Taiwan, OPEC nations, right down the line. 
That is who owns our foreign debt. That is what places us in incredibly 
compromising positions when we try to bring them to the table to be a 
multilateral player in actions throughout this world.
  So here is why I am here: I am here because people in northwestern 
Connecticut wanted us to finally challenge this President on his 
disastrous policy in Iraq. I am here because they were sick and tired 
of the programs that make communities strong, the health care programs, 
education programs, job training programs, we are getting slashed and 
burned and cut to the bone by this Congress, while they gave away more 
and more massive tax breaks to their friends in the upper .1 percent of 
income earners in this Nation.
  But they are also upset because the party that I think they thought 
was, you know, you see it in the polls, people for years and years and 
years thought that the Republicans were the ones that could manage 
their money and the Democrats they weren't so sure on. Well, they 
finally wised up after a while to realize that this place wasn't so 
responsible even under Republican rule; that in fact after budget after 
budget that got put before here, that President Bush put before this 
Congress was rubber-stamped over and over and over again and led to 
some of the most fiscally irresponsible policies that this Congress has 
ever seen, that this Nation, in fact, has ever seen. Largest Federal 
debt in the history of this country, growing by the day.
  Now, here is the good news: it's changing. Now, as many times as 
folks on the other side of the aisle want to talk and use the term 
``biggest tax increase in the history of the Federal Government,'' 
well, I'm still searching through that budget resolution, I'm still 
searching through what I am going to vote on this week and I don't see 
it. I don't see it because it's not there because we are actually going 
to do the responsible thing. Because what happened to create this 
Federal budget deficit was not just these massive tax breaks that they 
gave away to the folks way at the top, top, top of the income bracket, 
but they also spent money in a way that would have your eyes spin to 
the back of your head if you dug into some of the things they were 
doing here.
  A Medicare prescription drug program that deliberately ties the hands 
of the Federal Government, doesn't allow the Federal Government to 
negotiate lower prices with the drug industry, Mr. Speaker, making 
millions, hundreds of millions, in dollars in profit for the drug 
industry at the expense of American taxpayers.
  A defense policy which asks virtually no questions of how we spend 
our money in Iraq. We find out that there was $9 billion sent over to 
Iraq on pallets, thrown out of SUVs in duffel bags, unaccounted for; 
disappeared in that country. Stories of these pork barrel projects that 
would make your head spin, the ``bridge to nowhere'' in Alaska, simply 
the tip of the iceberg when it comes to some of the frivolous spending 
that happens from this supposedly fiscally conservative Congress.
  You could run through the examples over and over and over again. Mr. 
Speaker, we just had a hearing in the Government Oversight Committee 
that I sit on where we found out that the government does audits, each 
Department does an audit every year to try to make sure that we are 
spending money in a fiscally sound manner, just like any business 
would, that government should act like a business. Well, the analogy 
isn't particularly apt in a lot of facets. But when you are talking 
about at least having generally accepted accounting principles to make 
sure that money comes in and goes out in an efficient manner, well, 
yes, we should start acting like a business does.
  The only agency in the Federal Government that can't give a clean 
audit year after year after year, the Department of Defense. Nobody 
here is putting pressure on them to account for how they spend money, 
to make sure that the billions of dollars that we hand to the 
Department of Defense in order to protect this country is being spent 
in the means that make sure that we are not saddling our children or 
grandchildren with the enormous amount of debt that we have racked up 
in this Congress.
  I mean, you want to talk about spending money wisely, our friends on 
the other side of the aisle have to look themselves in the mirror, have 
to wonder why this election happened. I know

[[Page H3073]]

that this war was a major factor in people's choice at the polls. I 
also know that were a lot of people in my district, and I have got the 
run of the economic spectrum in the Fifth Congressional District, from 
people living in places like New Britain and Waterbury that used to 
have good, solid middle-class jobs who are still struggling to get back 
to that level of sustenance, to folks that are doing pretty well with 
their lives that have made a buck in this economy. Those folks at the 
upper end of the economic spectrum are wondering how this government is 
spending their money.
  So this week we are going to put a budget before this House. And Mr. 
Meek, who has joined us and Ms. Wasserman Schultz, who sits on the 
Appropriations Committee, can talk more intelligently than I can about 
this. We are going to finally put a budget before this House that is 
going to start to reflect the priorities of the American people; we are 
going to get our financial ship in order. All the things that folks 
over there talk about are actually going to be reality in this budget.
  We are going to make sure that we invest in the programs that make 
America strong. We are going to make sure that we end this disastrous 
policy of unbalanced budgets. We can do it in the next 5 years. That 
budget says that we can and we will. And it is going to continue at a 
pretty important precedent that we have set in this Congress, which is 
to change course on some of the most disastrous policies of this 
administration, particularly the vote that we took on Friday on the war 
in Iraq, and I know that we will talk about that, but also start to get 
our fiscal ship in order, to put our money where our mouth is.
  It is one thing for people to come up to this dais day after day 
after day and talk about fiscal responsibility. It is another thing to 
actually do it and put it into practice.
  The budget that we are going to vote on will be, as I have learned, 
this place calls a pay-as-you-go budget. It is simply this, what every 
family lives with every day. You want to spend some new money, show how 
you are going to pay for it. You want to cut some taxes, show how you 
are going to account for it. Pretty simple budget rule, Mr. Speaker. 
But not to be too partisan here, it took a Democratic Congress in order 
to start playing by those very simple rules.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I want to want to hand it over to Mr. Meek for some 
words, who normally gets to kick off this hour. But let me say that it 
has been a proud first three months. Probably the proudest day I have 
had was on Friday, when we came together to stand up to the President's 
policy in Iraq. It is going to be another proud week this week when we 
set the budget policies of this country straight and we finally stand 
up to the President and don't do what every other Congress has done, 
which is take this massive document, throwing our deficit into an 
increasingly upward spiral, throwing our families into turmoil. We are 
going to finally take this very weighted document and hold it up to the 
light, not just rubber-stamp it.
  It is going to be another good week here, Mr. Speaker. And with that, 
I yield to Mr. Meek.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Thank you so very much, Mr. Murphy. It is an 
honor to be here on the floor with you. I look forward to having a 
discussion not only with you, but also other Members of the House about 
what is coming up this week. I know that you alluded to last week's 
action that took place here on this floor. Democrats and Republicans 
and the majority were able to pass an emergency supplemental war bill 
that would not only put benchmarks in to make sure that the Iraqi 
Government is doing all that they should do to make sure that they 
carry out their responsibility since the U.S. taxpayer will be spending 
over $100 billion and counting over in Iraq in this piece of 
legislation, this supplemental, but also the $400-plus billion that 
have already been spent.
  And also security for the troops, making sure that Department of 
Defense regulations, Mr. Speaker, that have been put forth to protect 
our troops, that they have what they need: the up-armor that they need, 
the training that they need, the equipment that they need, the personal 
equipment that they need.
  And also making sure that our troops, as it relates to their rotation 
into theater, that they actually get an opportunity to have a Defense 
Department that has to do what they said they would do, and making sure 
they have enough time to be with their families, make sure they are 
able to maintain a job, those that are Reservists and National Guard 
men and women back home. And to also make sure that their families have 
an opportunity to be a part of their father or their mother's lives, or 
their parents having an opportunity to enjoy their son or daughter. And 
I think that is so very, very important as family values, and it is 
also standing by our word.
  If we can't stand by our word while they are enlisted or federalized 
to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, then how do they expect for us to 
stand next to them and behind them when they are veterans and they are 
out in the world of veterans health care?
  I can tell you also, Mr. Speaker, that I am very pleased with the 
fact that we did put something in the legislation that will hopefully 
point towards redeployment of our troops. This war will continue and 
continue and continue if left up to the President of the United States. 
But before I start talking about the action really that we took, 
passing that legislation, seeing the voice vote that took place in the 
Senate last week, moving on legislation even with a closer time line 
and different benchmarks, which, Mr. Speaker, you know we will come 
together in conference to talk about a little further and iron out and 
be able to get a work product to the President.
  But as you know, today, March 26 of 2007, the number stands at 3,235 
U.S. servicemen and women that have died in Iraq; some 13,415 of U.S. 
troops have been injured and returned back to battle. You have to think 
about it, injured and then returned back to battle; 10,000 U.S. troops 
have been injured and have not been able to return back to battle.
  Hearing those numbers and hearing how they continue to move up, Mr. 
Speaker, even speaks further to the kind of oversight that this 
Congress must have in this conflict in Iraq, this civil war in Iraq, I 
must add, that we are officiating.
  We know that the President had a press conference after we took our 
action here on the floor. I want to commend the Members again who voted 
in the affirmative to make sure that we were able to take action, the 
first time the U.S. Congress has taken action with benchmarks, even 
against profiteering with U.S. contractors that are the third largest, 
you may call it coalition partner, or the second largest outside of 
U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq. You would assume that there are 
other countries in the world, since this is such a world issue that the 
United States is involved in, you would assume that there would be a 
number of countries before U.S. contractors, but U.S. contractors are 
the second largest number of individuals that are there.
  Mr. Speaker, when I talk about these numbers and when we talked about 
the action last week, the President, then he sprung into action. He had 
a press conference talking about how the Congress is now holding 
dollars back from our men and women in theater and asking us to please 
stop. Well, I am glad that I lived long enough over the weekend to come 
back here to the floor, Mr. Speaker, to not only share with the 
President, but those that may think that by us standing up on behalf of 
veterans health care, by us making sure that Walter Reed Hospital gets 
the necessary dollars they need to be able to take on the influx of men 
and women coming back from theater that are injured of the 10,772 that 
cannot and will not go back to theater and the 13,415, when that number 
continues to increase, that when they get their care in the field and 
then they move on to Germany and they get even further care, and some 
of them have to come back here to Washington, D.C. to even get physical 
therapy and all the things that they need to get back to the theater, 
if that is stopping the dollars from getting to the troops, then I 
think that we need to go back to a civics lesson of what this is all 
about.
  We are putting dollars in what the Republican majority did not put 
in. Anything that the President asked for, the Republican majority 
rubber-stamped it. As a matter of fact, the Republican majority in the 
last Congress

[[Page H3074]]

was so loyal to the President of the United States that whatever he 
said, whatever he wanted, they did it. And guess what, Mr. Speaker? I 
am here to report that that is one of the big reasons why we have a 
Democratic majority right now in the U.S. House of Representatives and 
in the Senate. Some 30-odd seats were lost living under that 
philosophy. And all of the hours that we spent on this floor, all of 
the hours that we spent in committee saying that if you give us the 
opportunity to lead, we will lead. Democrats, Republicans, Independents 
and some Americans who never voted before in their life went out and 
voted last November.
  Now, the President can have a press conference, that's fine, he is 
the President of the United States. I can go out and have a press 
conference. The bottom line is let's not have the people of the United 
States of America feel that the U.S. House and the Senate are holding 
money back from the troops. As a matter of fact, we have given more 
than what the President called for as it relates to armor. We've given 
the troops more as it relates to troop safety and force protection. 
We've added three new brigades to the Marines. We've added 36,000 more 
soldiers to the Army to make sure we are at the readiness level. Under 
the Republican majority of the 109th and the 108th Congress, as this 
war started and continued to escalate to the numbers of where it is 
now, our readiness levels, and when I speak of readiness levels, Mr. 
Speaker, I speak of the fact that if we had to go into another 
conflict, we are not ready.

                              {time}  2145

  There is not a National Guard unit right now that is ready to go to 
battle. Now, what do we mean by readiness? Making sure that they have 
the equipment, making sure that they have enough personnel to be able 
to rise to the occasion, all the specialists that are needed, all the 
striker brigades that are needed. We have 100 of them, but we are not 
at the readiness level that we need to be, and we haven't been at this 
low level that we are now since the Vietnam war. I am not giving out 
any national secrets. Everyone knows that this is the case. So if we 
know the obvious, why not take care of it?
  We are doing more than what the President has asked for. The 
President just has a problem. Do you know what the problem is? It is 
the fact that the Congress has said: Guess what, Mr. President. I know 
you have been saying a lot over the last 4 or 5 years of this war, now 
within its fifth year, the third escalation of troops that you have 
sent over to Iraq; and we pass a nonbinding resolution in the majority 
and Republicans voted for that, too, saying that we disagree with that 
philosophy. The American people are far beyond the President on this 
issue. So we are here to represent the American people.
  The second point, when you look at this issue of the binding 
resolution, it says that if the Iraqi government does not meet the 
benchmarks set by who, the President of the United States, George W. 
Bush, then the redeployment of troops will start. The clock will start 
at that point for a redeployment of a number of troops within 6 months.
  What else took place? The President said that it is important that we 
are not there forever. Well, still living under going in the old 
direction, the President wants the prerogative to be able to say, well, 
they are going to be there as long as they need to be there, and there 
is not necessarily a plan, and you haven't given an opportunity for the 
plan to work of the new escalation of troops.
  Well, guess what? We saw plan one, and the violence did not go down. 
We sat here and watched plan two, and the violence did not subside. 
They weren't using Vice President Cheney's, the enemies are in the last 
throes of their insurgency, later to find out that that is not the 
truth.
  So I guess we are just are supposed to continue to go on and on and 
on.
  So, Mr. Murphy, I guess when we start looking at the benchmarks, that 
is the problem. Why doesn't the President say, that is my problem; I 
have a problem with the fact that the U.S. Congress is saying they no 
longer want to go with my original thoughts? There is nothing wrong 
with that. He is an American. He can say it.
  But the bottom line is every last one of us sitting in these seats 
here in Congress and across the hall in the Senate, our obligation is 
to the individuals that have sent us here. Our constituents that have 
Federalized us here to make decisions on their behalf.
  We are not generals. Some of us served in the military, some of us 
did not serve in the military, some of us never wore a uniform in our 
lives, but I can tell you this much. We have been sent here to watch 
over the U.S. taxpayer dollars, have the well-being of our U.S. troops 
that are allowing us to salute one flag, and to make sure that our 
number one obligation is to be loyal to the American people, and not 
one person.
  So I speak very firmly and I stand very firmly on this point. Because 
I sat here the last 4 years in the minority not having an opportunity 
to be a part of the decisionmaking, not even being able to agenda a 
bill in committee or subcommittee, not able to bring a bill up here on 
the floor that the Republican majority did not allow me to. I mean, 
under the rules, they didn't allow me to. To now say, well, the 
President says that we are holding up dollars, emergency dollars for 
the war in Iraq?
  Let me just share a few other things, and then possibly we can go 
into an exchange.
  In the summer of 2005, there was a shortfall as it relates to 
veterans' health care, $2.7 billion.
  In March of 2006, the President's budget cut funding by $6 billion 
over 5 years that was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress. And 
the first time, Mr. Murphy, that we had an opportunity to do anything, 
when I say the Democratic majority, the first action, and it was 
because of the inaction by the Republican Congress that did not pass 
the appropriations bills on time, that we passed a continuing 
resolution to keep this government running, and what did we do?
  Well, we went into that bill and we made sure some of the special 
interest tax breaks and all of the things that the Republicans had in 
place, being loyal to individuals that had great influence in this 
House, and I am not talking about Members, I am talking about outside 
forces. We took $3.6 billion of the U.S. taxpayer dollars to increase 
the VA health care program and to make sure that their budget was in 
place so that our veterans would have somewhere that they can get care 
and their families.
  That was our action. The President didn't ask for that. As a matter 
of fact, the President didn't even want it. But we did it because it 
was the right thing to do, and that was prior to the Walter Reed.
  I keep saying that because that is so very, very important. People 
think that politicians and some folks do things just because somebody 
was looking or somebody said that you should do it or you are under 
some political pressure. That was a natural thing for the Democratic 
majority to do, and we did it.
  And for the President to stand and say, well, you know, there is 
things in there that should not be in there and things that I didn't 
ask for. Well, guess what, we have to ask for it. I am even going to go 
down memory lane again.
  January of 2003, the same administration, President Bush cuts 
veterans' health care for 164,000 veterans.
  March of 2003, Republican budget cut $14 billion from veterans' 
health care, passed by the Congress, with 199 Democrats voting against 
it. That is House Concurrent Resolution 95, vote number 82.
  March, 2004, Republican budget shortchanged veterans health care by 
$1.5 billion. It was passed by the Congress, 201 Democrats voting 
against it. That is House Concurrent Resolution 393, vote number 92.
  March, 2005, President Bush's budget shortchanged veterans' health 
care by more than $2 billion for 2005 and cut veterans' health care by 
$14 billion over 5 years. That was passed with 201 Democrats voting 
against it. That is House Concurrent Resolution, vote number 88.
  I think it is very important that we outline that.
  Just like I said here earlier when I talked about the 2005 shortfall, 
after Democrats pressured the Bush administration and finally 
acknowledged that the 2006 shortfall for veterans' health care totaled 
$2.7 billion, Democrats fought all summer to make sure that

[[Page H3075]]

those dollars were placed back in the right direction as it relates to 
veterans' health care.
  Also in March, 2006, President Bush's budget cut veterans' funding by 
$6 billion over 5 years, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress 
and, like I said, at $3.6 billion.
  Mr. Speaker, we come to the floor and we mean business. We are not 
coming here to have a press conference and talk to some folks that may 
not quite understand exactly what is going on day to day in Congress. 
That is why we are here. We are here to make sure the American people 
know exactly what is going on here.

  The reason why we speak very passionately about, you may say, well, 
it is Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq and, guess what, that other issue, Iraq. 
The reason we speak very passionately about that is that we have seen 
so much on this floor and so many words that Mr. Murphy talked about 
earlier, Members going on passing out inaccurate information every now 
and then, or the spirit of the information, whichever way you want to 
frame it, and to see the hard-core reality of these issues are still 
not addressed.
  I had something here where all of the veteran groups, I must add 
here, Mr. Speaker, ``This much-needed funding increase will allow the 
Department of Veterans Affairs to better meet its needs for the men and 
women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as all veterans who 
have served in the past.'' That is from the National Commander of 
Disabled American Veterans. That press release was March 21, 2007. 
``The American Legion and its 2.8 million members applaud the Budget 
Committee for the budget resolution recommendation for $43.1 billion in 
discretionary funding for veterans. Your recommendations are close with 
the views that are estimated, that was estimated by the American Legion 
earlier this year.'' That is by the legislative director and the lead 
on the American Legion.
  I think it is very, very important that Members understand that. 
Veteran groups are 110 percent, 110 percent, Mr. Speaker, about what 
this Democratic-controlled Congress is doing; and we are just getting 
started. This is Monday. We are talking about the things that we need 
to put in place to make sure that our men and women need to have what 
they need to have when they are in theater and when they are out of 
theater.
  I challenge the President to think within his heart and within his 
mind that he would turn a new leaf, and making sure that when we send 
this emergency supplemental to his desk, if he vetoes it, it will be 
his action that will be delaying the dollars to go to our men and women 
in harm's way.
  I have said once before last week, Mr. Speaker, I voted for two 
emergency supplementals, a lot that I did not agree with, but the last 
thing I wanted to do was to leave our men and women in harm's way 
without the necessary funding that they need. So if I, someone that has 
a different opinion than the President and the old Republican majority 
as it relates to this war in Iraq, we are all Americans first and, 
guess what, life is not perfect and everything is not going to come the 
way you want it to come when you want it to come.
  There are other people in this democracy that have something to say 
about it, and I know there are Republicans in America that feel the way 
the way that we feel. I know that there are Independents in America 
that feel the way we feel, and I know that there are Democrats and 
those that are looking to vote in coming elections to be a part of this 
democracy.
  So I come very proud of the work that has been done and the work that 
will continue to be done here in this House.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Meek, just as a transition to Ms. 
Wasserman Schultz, I would just say, elections matter; and there is 
probably no better example of that in recent history than the election 
in November. Things have just changed here. The air is different, the 
priorities are different, the rate of action is different.
  And, Mr. Meek, I get why we had to have an election in order to 
change course in Iraq. I understand that this is a very difficult 
subject that has divided people for a number of years. Over the past 
several years, people, large numbers of people came to the conclusion 
that we needed to change course from the President's policy, that we 
needed to put a Congress here that is going to start standing up to 
this guy and insisting that there are some other fights that matter in 
this world, and that we need to invest back in Afghanistan, that we 
need to make sure that our borders here are protected and that we 
needed to start redeploying our forces.
  So I get that we had to go to a national referendum in order to set a 
new course. That is an important issue that has divided people.
  Now, people have come down pretty firmly in the past 12 or 18 months 
on the side of a new direction. That is why Friday, to me, was maybe 
the most gratifying day in the short number that I have been here. But, 
Mr. Meek, I don't get why we had to have an election to decide to 
support veterans.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. If I may, and then I will yield and you can 
share all the great information. And Ms. Wasserman Schultz happens to 
be in between us today, so all we need is Mr. Ryan down here, and she 
will have a real challenge. But I can tell you from past experience of 
serving with her for 12 plus years now that she is very capable of 
rising to the occasion here.
  Let me just point out, just today, Mr. Murphy and Ms. Wasserman 
Schultz, we took a vote. We took a vote saying that we would like for 
the appointed U.S. District Attorneys to come and be confirmed before 
Congress. Something that is very, very important, giving the chief 
judge an opportunity to appoint a temporary U.S. District Attorney, for 
that opportunity to take place because of what is happening now in the 
Justice Department. And I think it is important. I saw Ms. Wasserman 
Schultz earlier talking today about this very subject.
  But, on the Republican side, you have some Republicans that are 
saying it is just horrible of what is happening. Because if what we 
think or believe what happened, these political appointees and then 
they got taken out because they were either going after someone that 
the administration did not want them to go after or they weren't going 
after certain individuals as it relates to political motivation. And 
under what we may call regular order in the 109th Congress or the 108th 
Congress or beyond, the kind of grip that this administration had over 
the House and the Senate, the chokehold that they had over the House 
and Senate, this would have never been an issue. It never would have 
been followed up on. There never would have been a hearing.
  Guess what? Now, Mr. Speaker, there are hearings in both House and 
Senate, and now the Attorney General is getting caught in his own 
words. One minute he had nothing to do with it, and he didn't know what 
anyone was talking about. Now we understand that he led a meeting even 
talking about this issue.
  So when you look at it, and Mr. Murphy and Ms. Wasserman Schultz, 329 
Members of the House. It goes to show you, with the right leadership in 
place, we have a Democratic majority, Republicans will vote, some 
Republicans will vote and move in the right direction. Only one Member 
of the Republican leadership voted for this commonsense approach. There 
are still Members on the Republican side that are in the leadership 
that are still holding on to what used to be. The election took place 
last November. You would think, well, maybe the American people are not 
with this.
  So I am just saying that this issue is continuing to evolve, and I 
bring these examples up so that the Members can see that we have a lot 
of work to do. It is not about partisanship. This is about leadership, 
and we are providing the leadership here.
  I know Ms. Wasserman Schultz who serves on the Judiciary Committee 
can speak more eloquently on this issue. But this is one example 
amongst many. You called out those bipartisan votes at the beginning of 
the hour. We have to continue to embrace bipartisanship because that is 
what the American people want. They don't want us to be Democrats and 
Republicans. They want us to be Members of Congress watching out for 
the better good.

                              {time}  2200

  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Mr. Meek and Mr. Murphy, it is 
great to be here again.

[[Page H3076]]

  I had an opportunity to engage in some dialogue with the caucus 
chairman on the Republican side, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Putnam). I fully expected to be engaged in a point-counterpoint 
discussion on the U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney scandal, 
and that he would be defensive, as many of his colleagues have been. 
But knowing Mr. Putnam as we do, he was very frustrated. He expressed 
deep concern. He was beyond comprehension how the administration could 
have dealt with this problem in the way that they did.
  I was asked how I felt about it as a member of the Judiciary 
Committee. Quite honestly, under normal circumstances the President 
does have the right to appoint and unappoint and ask for the 
resignation of U.S. Attorneys that serve at his pleasure. Had it been a 
matter of him just saying, yes, I asked for their resignation, we have 
some other needs, we are moving in a different direction, whatever he 
said, just be straight with the American people. Just be straight with 
the Congress. If he had said, yes, I asked for their resignation, I can 
do that, I am the President. Fine.
  But, instead, it is fabrication, it is distortion, it is no, it was 
not him, it was the guy behind the tree. It was his mother. Just own up 
to what you did.
  Now, if the problem is what you did, you asked for their resignation 
because they were too good at their job and they were pursuing public 
corruption cases against Republicans, and we have colleagues that 
picked up the phone and put some pressure on these U.S. Attorneys whose 
resignation ultimately was asked for, that is a horse of a different 
color.
  But this would have never exploded to the level it has if they had 
just said, yes, we did. What I pointed out in my conversion with Mr. 
Putnam, in past years, and I was happy to see he was frustrated and 
concerned and there is bipartisan concern about the action that this 
administration has taken repeatedly on the war in Iraq, on the U.S. 
Attorney firings, and on the handling of the Valerie Plame issue, and 
the list goes on and on.
  Had there not been Democrats in charge of the Congress, this would 
have been another thing that would have been swept aside. They would 
have moved on or waited it out. They would have squeezed their eyes 
tight shut and hoped that this, too, would pass.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I know that some of this administration 
are supposedly not great students of history; but if you read of recent 
Presidencies, you might find out if you tell the truth right off the 
bat, you get yourself in a lot less trouble than if you try to place 
the blame.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I want to go back to my ``mom'' analogy that I 
had last week. It is like how I deal with my kids. I told them, as all 
little kids, they get nervous when they have done something wrong. 
Sometimes they might not be completely truthful. And I have sat them 
down time and again, and said, listen, honey, if you just tell me the 
truth right away, it is going to be easier. I might be a little mad, 
but I am going to be more upset if I find out you lied on top of a lie. 
Young kids might not completely understand this, but grownups like the 
President and the Attorney General can certainly understand the more 
you stretch the truth, because we have to be careful about the words we 
use here, the harder it is to remember the last one you told, the last 
version of the truth you told.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, there is going to 
be a lot of stuff over the next couple months about Executive privilege 
and who said what, and there may be a lot of terms that may not seem 
like it matters to regular people.
  The heart of the matter is the difference between America and some 
Third World nations out there is we have a system of blind justice 
which holds people accountable for their actions based on whether they 
were right or wrong, whether they broke the law or didn't break the 
law; not whether they have some powerful friend sitting in the halls 
and corridors of power in Washington, D.C. or their State legislature. 
That is what separates this country from a lot of other places in the 
world where you can get hauled off to jail simply because you have 
fallen in disfavor with someone who is in a high political position. 
That is the essence of the genius of this country, that we have made 
sure that our legal system operates separate from our political system.
  There is going to be a lot of commotion about Executive privilege. 
What it comes down to is what may have happened is that this 
administration violated one of the basic principles of American 
democracy: don't mix justice with politics.
  And you are very right, maybe people wouldn't have found out about 
this if we did have Democrats in the majority.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We absolutely have to make sure that we 
continue to exercise the system of checks and balances in our oversight 
role here. If we don't, I am really fearful about what else. And we 
have already seen the evidence of how far this administration will push 
and how obsessed they are with the notion of a unitary Executive and 
the concentration of power that they have tried to gather in the 
Executive, through signing statements which are notations, whole 
paragraphs and pages and pages of notations on legislation that we pass 
here.
  We will say ``X'' must happen. And in a signing statement, the 
President will actually write a note that says why he doesn't have to 
do ``X'' even though Congress passed a law and he signed it. He has 
exercised more than any other President combined the so-called right 
to, essentially if he doesn't think a provision in the law that we have 
passed is constitutional, he has exercised his belief that he can 
ignore it or not implement it. That is what the judiciary is for.
  So between signing statements and the abuse of power with the PATRIOT 
Act and National Security Letters and essentially not being entirely 
straightforward, for lack of a better term, I am coming up with a lot 
of adjectives and synonyms for the ``L'' word here, there is an 
incredible effort being made that seems to require more energy than the 
straight-up truth does.
  That is why the oversight role is so important. If we are not here 
asking questions, then the administration will run rough shod over the 
Constitution. They have proven that.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The sense I am getting from my district now is that 
this is all fine probably if everything is going okay for everyone 
else. But the fact that things aren't going well, people are struggling 
to pay for their health care and college tuition. They are living 
paycheck to paycheck, bankruptcies are up, foreclosures, and kids are 
getting killed because of an administration that has been less than 
forthright with the facts. I think that is what is stirring among the 
American people.
  That is what happened in the election in November; and I think quite 
frankly the key to moving the kind of agenda we want to move here is 
going to be organize and tap that energy that is back home in a lot of 
our districts. Unless we do that, we are going to struggle. But I think 
we have the wind at our back. We have the American people at our back. 
They like what we are doing. There are good responses from the bill we 
passed on Friday.

                              {time}  2210

  We have got to get out of Iraq, and this President does not have the 
credibility to I think withstand the kind of pressure that is coming 
from the American people. The American people want out. They are tired 
of watching what is happening. Five more soldiers got killed, more kids 
maimed, more kids injured, more kids at Walter Reed, more kids go into 
a VA system that is less than adequate, and the American people are 
looking for the kind of changes that you have talked about, Congressman 
Meek has talked about.
  The bottom line I think is this, and whether you are talking about 
the war or anything else. For the war, it is like, well, there is only 
two options here. We either go down the road the President has taken us 
down and keep going or we have this alternative that we presented to 
get us out in the next year, hopefully earlier. An alternative to not 
going with our proposition is to continue to give the President a blank 
check, continue to have kids get killed, continue to not have a plan 
with absolutely no explanation as to what we are doing over there. No 
one even knows anymore.

[[Page H3077]]

  To go along with the President's budget means that as we look through 
our notes here and the research we did, 1 million children who are 
currently covered under the SCHIP program will get cut out of it. Our 
plan, invest $50 billion to cover millions of children who are 
currently uninsured. Which way do you want to go? I mean, this is not 
brain surgery. The President wants to continue to give tax cuts to the 
top 1 percent. We want to cover kids with health care, without raising 
taxes.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Altmire). All Members are reminded to 
refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Speaker, but this Congress 
wants to add up to $50 billion to cover $50 million of new children on 
the State Children's Health Insurance Program. We want to get the Pell 
grant up to at least $4,600 and we reject the President's proposals for 
cuts.
  Now, imagine the leadership in the United States of America in 2007, 
Mr. Speaker, 2007 where he is going to say we want to not fund Pell 
Grants, we want to not fund children's health insurance and we want to 
continue to spend $2 billion a week in Iraq.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I thank the gentleman. On Friday, what we said 
was no more blank checks, no more war without a strategy and a plan to 
get our men and women in uniform home, no more sending troops over into 
combat, into harm's way without the armor they need, without the 
preparation they need, without the rest they need. All of those items 
were in that Iraq War supplemental.
  The alternative, what the President preferred, was just give me the 
money, just give me the money; do not ask me any questions. He was 
opposed to his own benchmarks. The benchmarks that he laid out on 
January 10 were in the bill, the ones that he said the Iraqi people 
have to meet, that the Iraqi leadership has to meet, and we added some 
that said, you know what, you have to make sure that you think about 
protecting the men and women we are sending over there.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We said that you said these are the benchmarks, and 
guess what, we are going to hold you accountable for what you have 
said, because up to this point, you have been saying whatever you want 
and there has not been the kind of force of law which we passed out of 
here on Friday.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Words are nice, but when you go, like each of 
us have, to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and you look those troops 
in the eye and you have a chance to spend some time with them, the 
words ring really hollow unless you know you can back those words up 
with some action, with some commitment, with some belief in the mission 
and understand how devoted these men and women are to getting the job 
done.
  I mean, listen to some of the folks that are in that hospital, they 
all, to a person, have told me when I have been there, they want to go 
back. They want to get better, and they want to go back to join their 
comrades, their buddies, and help finish the job, but we have to make 
sure that we have their back.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Is that not interesting that the soldiers we talked 
to, Mr. Speaker, at Walter Reed, back home, the kids that have gone, 
come back, gone, come back, and they are going back again, the reason 
you hear about why these kids want to go back and you think why would 
you want to go back, they want to go back because their buddies are 
still there. They feel like if they go back that they will be able to 
save their lives.
  The last couple of funerals I have been to with kids who were stop-
loss and were supposed to come home but ended up staying longer than 
they probably should have and ended up not making it back, the reason 
they wanted to go back in the first place was to protect their friends, 
and that is the heroism, that is the valor, that is the nobility of the 
cause. That is why these kids go back.
  To talk about that the debate last week, and many of us did not get 
an opportunity to speak for a variety of different reasons, but to 
hear, Mr. Speaker, some people say that if we bring these kids home, 
somehow that is going to make us less safe here in the United States, 
is an appalling argument, that this administration and this Republican 
Congress would rubber stamp this war to go over there, and that 
National Intelligence Estimate has told us that this war has created 
more terrorists, not less. It has created terrorists, Mr. Speaker, and 
then now that we have thousands and thousands and thousands of more 
people gunning for us here, these folks have the audacity to tell us, 
Mr. Speaker, that somehow us bringing our kids home is going to make us 
less safe.
  Now, that, to me, is appalling and to continue that kind of 
disjointed logic is unacceptable to me because we have kids in our 
districts who are not back home. They are either in Iraq, and many of 
them have gotten killed under the guise of the war, and to tell us that 
by bringing our kids home and getting them out of a civil war is going 
to make us less safe does not make any sense because all of the 
intelligence in the whole world is saying this war in Iraq has 
completed the final piece of the fanaticism of the Middle East.
  We have given anyone who kind of wanted to join but did not really 
want to, they are now joining. They are now a part of everything. They 
are now a part of the terrorist groups. They are now a part of the 
terrorist organizations. They now hate the United States more than they 
ever have, and so I find the whole operation appalling.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. What we have gotten ourselves into, this 
is a religious war.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Civil war.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. This is a religious war that we helped to 
create in part. It did not exist until the bull sort of rushed into the 
China shop, but I think we all find it appalling, some of us, this 
simplistic terminology that gets rolled out here that we cannot leave 
until victory has been achieved. Explain to me what victory is because 
if we have to stay there until we have completely eliminated a civil/
religious conflict, well, it was not raging for the decades before we 
got there and is one that has almost no historical bounds. That is a 
difficult victory to ask our brave men and women to achieve, to try to 
somehow remediate a dispute between Shia and Sunni that cannot be 
resolved through the military actions of our men and women.
  Victory is much broader than that. Victory is about going after the 
fight that really mattered in the first place which is in Afghanistan, 
Mr. Speaker. Victory is about making sure that we secure our borders 
here at home; that every container that comes into American ports gets 
checked; that every airport has the proper screening technology to make 
sure that the ports of entry who brought in the terrorists who harmed 
this country have all the technology they need to make sure that it 
never happens again.

                              {time}  2220

  That's victory in the end. So it's frustrating as a new Member to 
come down here and to listen to this new terminology get thrown out 
there that doesn't have any basis in reality. That is part of what we 
did on Friday as well, to start to broaden that definition of what 
victory means and try to challenge the people to rise to that.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. On behalf of the American people, I think they are 
trying to see what we are trying to do. We are trying to end this war, 
stop the killing of our own kids, stop the maiming of our own soldiers, 
get them out of a civil war, try to calm down what's happening, stop 
the $8-plus billion a month that we are spending over there, and try to 
take some of that money and invest that into our own students, our own 
kids.
  I was, just before I got here, having dinner with an old friend of 
mine, who is a Republican. He said, we have spent $400 billion, soon to 
be $500-and-some-billion dollars on this war. Can you just imagine, we 
could have covered all of our citizens for health care, we could have 
paid for everyone's college education, and, you know, gotten some stuff 
done in this country.
  Instead, we have $500 billion, we have well over 3,000 kids have 
gotten killed, adults and soldiers, some 25,000 maimed or injured and 
God knows how many innocent Iraqi civilians, many of them children.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. As we conclude, the President is so stubborn 
and so ``my way or the highway,'' that his own definition of victory, 
the benchmarks that we have put in this bill, he is threatening to 
veto. That is

[[Page H3078]]

what is mind-boggling, even when we insert his milestones. Still, that 
is not acceptable.
  If the gentleman would like to talk about our Web site.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Our e-mail is [email protected] if any 
Members would like to e-mail us or visit us at www.speaker.gov/
30something, e-mail us, [email protected].
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. The Web site now, Mr. Ryan, is updated.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. All of the new statistics from our budget will be 
on there, I am sure.
  I think this is an appropriate time to make the announcement of our 
key staffer for years and years and years here at the 30-something 
Working Group, Tom Manatos has gotten engaged. He is going to be 
married to a beautiful young Republican.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Who works at the White House.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Who works at the White House, and the engagement, I 
guess, was blessed by the Greek Orthodox archbishop. How about that for 
off to a good start?
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. The bipartisan spirit preached by the 30-
something working group put in practice.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absorbed, even, by the 30-something 
leadership.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Right up to the staff level.
  Mr. Speaker, we yield back the balance of our time.

                          ____________________