[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 9, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H4736-H4743]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE 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 as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I would like to welcome my
colleagues to another addition of the 30-Something's hour. I would like
to thank the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for allowing us the
opportunity to get together and talk not only about some of the most
important issues that face this hall this week and at this moment but
also talk a little bit about how these issues are of particular concern
to people of younger generations in this country.
We are going to be joined today, I know, by Mr. Altmire, who just
gave a very compelling 5-minute address to the House and, hopefully
very soon, by Ms. Wasserman Schultz, one of our favorite members of the
30-Something Group.
Madam Speaker, hopefully we will get to touch on a few different
topics, but I think we need to touch on at the beginning of this hour
the subject that really dominates the debate in Washington, D.C., right
now, that dominates
[[Page H4737]]
most of the discussion out in the coffeehouses and pancake breakfasts
and pasta dinners happening across this land, and that is, what is
happening in this town? What is happening in Washington, D.C., inside
the beltway? And that is, why can't government figure out what everyone
else has figured out across the country, that we need to set a new
direction when it comes to this country's policy in Iraq.
Now, I am certainly starting to feel that frustration. People thought
when they weighed in on the national elections in the beginning of
November of last year that they were actually saying something; that
when they stood up in record numbers in some parts of this country and
made courageous decisions district by district to replace long-time
incumbent Members this Congress with relatively new Members, such as
myself, such as Mr. Altmire and some 40-odd number of our friends on
this side of the aisle that became new Members this January, they
thought that it meant something. They thought that that voice that they
spoke with in the beginning of November was going to be heard down
here. And I can tell when I go back to my district, and I just came
back this last weekend and I have been back every weekend since we have
been down, that the patience of the American people is starting to wear
thin. Now, it is not necessarily directed here. I think some people are
still in some sort of sense of euphoria that we finally have a Congress
that is listening to the American people again. Their anger is directed
at the President of the United States. Their anger is directed at an
administration that just doesn't seem to get it, that refuses every
step of the way to step up to the plate and have some type of
accountability for what is happening here, refuses to listen to the
American people.
And the American people have spoken in the election, and they
continue to speak today. A CNN poll that came out just a short while
ago said a majority of Americans, 65 percent, oppose the Iraq war, and
a full 54 percent disapprove of the President's decision to veto the
Iraq accountability bill last week. Nearly six in ten Americans, in a
recent Gallup poll, support setting a firm timetable for withdrawing
U.S. troops out of Iraq; 61 percent of Americans, in another CNN poll,
favor a bill that sets benchmarks that the Iraq government must meet to
show progress that is being made in Iraq; 55 percent of Americans think
it was the wrong thing for the United States to go to war in the first
place. That is an amazing number, Madam Speaker; 55 percent of
Americans, the majority of the Americans, now today believe that it was
the wrong decision to go into Iraq in the first place.
Before the time of Mr. Altmire and me, the 30-Something Democrats,
Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz, liked to point out
third-party verifiers. It is not just our saying it. Things that we
stand here and say have actually been said time and time again by
people who know what they are talking about and the American people.
Here is third-party verification: The American people by large
numbers support not only the actions of this Congress when it comes to
setting firm benchmarks for the Iraqis to stand up for themselves but
also to set firm timetables by which we would start to redeploy our
troops. Now, the American people join a growing hegemony of opinion
within our foreign policy community. There are very few times when
Republicans and Democrats outside this hall decide to agree on a course
forward on something as weighty as the foreign policy issues that
confront us in the Middle East. But the Iraq Study Group, five
Democrats, five Republicans, Mr. Altmire, came together and told us, it
is time to set a new course. It is time to start bringing our troops
home, start redeploying them to fights that matter. Record numbers of
retired generals.
Now, it has become kind of de rigueur to see on a daily basis retired
generals from across America to come out and start to criticize the
President's policy. This didn't happen before in these numbers. This is
not the normal course of business for the men and women who have spent
their lives fighting and leading American troops to then turn around
after they have left their military service and criticize the very
government that they have worked for, fought for and bled for all of
those years. But that is what is happening today because the stakes are
so high. The American public, bipartisan leaders on foreign policy
issues and former military leaders are standing up and saying enough is
enough.
{time} 2030
We need to set a new course.
Now, there seems to be a very powerful sound barrier that has been
built around the White House. Because for as many voices, the
multitudes of American people, the multitudes of foreign policy
experts, of retired generals, many of which ended their careers on the
ground in Iraq, for all of those people throwing the might of their
collective voices at the White House, a deafening silence.
Madam Speaker, I got the chance to go over and visit our troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan; and the first thing you're struck by is the
unbelievable and unconditional bravery that they show this Nation. The
capability of these forces is almost beyond explanation, and I got the
chance to come back and talk to the President very briefly about it in
a visit to the White House.
Those troops know that the situation on the ground has changed
dramatically, that the fight that began as a battle against the
autocrat that was Saddam Hussein now has become a civil war. The troops
know it because they're right in the middle of it.
We asked our military leaders, how much of the fire that is being
directed at American troops is the result of insurgent forces and al
Qaeda forces firing at Americans and how much of it is simply a
sectarian war that we find ourselves in the middle of? And the answer
was the same no matter who you asked. Ninety percent of the fire
directed at American forces are Sunni and Shia fighting each other,
sometimes Shia and Shia fighting each other, that we are caught in the
middle of.
This President, for some reason, refuses to understand how things
have changed on the ground in Iraq and how things have changed when it
comes to the opinion of foreign policy leaders, military leaders and
the American public.
I think many of us were very proud to stand together, certainly the
freshman class and as a caucus, to support our leadership's position to
set a new course; and we were dismayed to see a President who is
unwilling to work with this Congress. We will take another shot at that
this week by presenting the President with another alternative on his
desk once again to set that new direction. And from what we hear today,
it will be met with the same resounding deafening silence and
indifference to the will of the American people.
I am so glad to be joined here by one of my great freshman
colleagues, Mr. Altmire from Pennsylvania, who I think shares with me,
as new Members, as two young guys who have only spent about 4 or 5
months down here, that sort of growing sense of frustration when we go
back to our districts and we hear people who wanted that change feeling
like they're not getting it here because there is an administration
that simply won't join that growing unanimity of opinion to set a new
course.
I would like to yield to my friend from Pennsylvania.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate the gentleman from Connecticut, and I
admire his leadership. I know that you did make that trip to Iraq and
you came back and you can speak with some authority and some expertise,
and I appreciate hearing from you. And I especially appreciate the
opportunity to speak tonight on what is definitely the most important
issue I think everyone would agree that we face.
I was struck by the fact that the gentleman mentioned third-party
verification for different options and different opinions in Iraq. And
what strikes me is the fact that the President of the United States has
declined to listen to any third-party verification. He has delivered a
loud and clear message last November that the American people called
for change, not only domestically here in America but especially in
Iraq. He has been told by his generals on the ground that he is not
moving in the correct direction. He has been told by his advisers,
before they're replaced, that he's not going in
[[Page H4738]]
the right way. The Iraq Study Group, as we all know, recommended the
course of action that we have advocated; and the bill that he vetoed
was verified by the Iraq Study Group.
The fact that he fails to listen to the American people, he fails to
listen to his military advisers, he fails to listen to his White House
advisers and he fails to listen to the Iraq Study Group, that
demonstrates a clear decision on his part that he is going to ignore
all of those opinions and continue down the same failed course.
I was dismayed today when I heard the news that 35,000 American
troops have been told that they can expect to be sent to Iraq this fall
and that their tour is going to last at least through the spring of
2008. Now, this is additional troops after the surge that we had been
told in January was only going to last a few months and only going to
be 21,000 troops. Now we're hearing an additional 35,000 troops and the
surge is going to be at least 18 months instead of the 2 or 3 or 4
months that were we were initially led to believe.
But, thankfully, this Congress took clear and decisive action by
sending the President a bill, which we have talked about before, that
gives the troops the money that they need. It actually contains more
money in funding for our troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan
than the President requested, and that bill was met with a veto, as we
know.
I had someone come up to me over the weekend and say, well, when are
you going to get our troops the money that they need? And I said, we
sent the President a bill that does exactly that. It was the
President's decision to veto that bill and delay this process and, most
importantly, delay the funding for our troops.
So the fact that he now came out and made a statement today that if
we sent him a bill, that is, we took out all the things that he talked
about that he doesn't like, it is not going to have the timelines and
the things that he used as his reason for vetoing it the first time, we
are going to send him a bill that gives the troops the funding that
they need to get them through the next several months, and it is
actually going to again be more funding than he asked for for the
period of time that we are going to send him the money for, and we were
told today that is going to be met with a veto.
So I am exasperated to hear this, because I want the troops to get
the money and the funding and all the equipment and resources that they
need to continue the brave fight that Mr. Murphy from Connecticut was
talking about and that he witnessed firsthand. But we can't do that
alone. We need the President to sign the bill that we sent him.
Tomorrow, we are going to vote on our second bill after the veto; and
we are going to send it to the White House. I hope that the President
will reconsider his decision to delay the funding that our troops in
the field need, because these are the bravest and brightest Americans.
These are people who are putting their lives on the line. They are
giving every sacrifice. They are leaving their families back home for
extended periods of time, multiple tours. And we are giving them the
money that is required, but the President is delaying the process. So I
share the frustrations of the gentleman from Connecticut.
At this time, I will yield to the gentlewoman from Florida, our
fearless leader with the 30-Something Working Group, Ms. Wasserman
Schultz.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much, Mr. Altmire.
I have to tell you what a pleasure it is to have the reinforcements
in you and Mr. Murphy and a number of other Members, you, Madam
Speaker, to have been elected on November 7 to bolster the efforts of
the 30-Something Working Group. Because we hung in there for the last
couple of cycles and took to the floor every night to talk to the
American people and to our colleagues on this floor about the issues
that we believed were important to them that were not being addressed
by our colleagues and good friends on the other side of the aisle when
they were in charge.
I want to follow up on what you and Mr. Murphy have just been
discussing relating to the President and his attitude. The conclusion
that I have reached is that it must be that the President has contempt
for the democratic process. I can't really reach any other conclusion
besides that.
Because we are not a monarchy. He hopefully realizes that he was not
elected king. He is not self-appointed. He is one of three branches of
government that are coequal, coequal meaning we have as much say and as
much right to weigh in on something as significant as whether to, A,
commit our troops to war, and, B, we control the appropriations, we
control the purse.
And what we believe, as Democrats, is that it is irresponsible for us
to give this President a blank check and an open-ended commitment to
the Iraqi government with absolutely no accountability and no
requirement that there be progress forward or benchmarks met. I mean,
the President must believe that we aren't listening to our
constituents, or maybe he's not listening. He says he is listening. In
fact, on April 24 of this year the President said this, ``Last
November, the American people said they were frustrated and wanted
change in our strategy in Iraq. I listened.''
Really? I have yet to see any evidence of him listening. What I have
seen evidence of, and, you know, I know that I often go back to the
analogy of my interaction with my own children when talking about this
President, but my frustration and observation about the insolence on
occasion of my own children is similar to what we have been observing
from the reaction from this White House.
I really can analogize it that when I am talking to, for us as the
Democratic majority in Congress, we sent him legislation in the
supplemental appropriations bill that he vetoed. And I have the
privilege of serving on the Appropriations Committee and served on the
conference committee. We sent him the legislation with a timeline for
withdrawal, with his own benchmarks as he outlined on January 10, with
accountability and with protection for our troops, A, ensuring that
they not have a tour of duty without a 365-day separation in between
those tours, the Army's own rules. We made sure that there was $1.7
billion in funding for veterans' health care. We made sure that there
was $1.7 billion in there for military health care, something that you
have been incredibly concerned about, veteran and military health care,
Mr. Altmire. And on and on. The issues that were, according to the
President, very important to him and clearly important to the American
people.
And so he vetoed that and said that there were other concerns that he
had, that he didn't want his hands tied, that he wanted to have the
flexibility, that he just wanted a blank check and open-ended
commitment. We, being a coequal branch of government, have gone back to
the drawing board. And the Democratic majority believing in compromise
and a need to negotiate in good faith, we have now put forward another
proposal, a proposal that is designed to address the concerns that he
outlines.
And normally when you're going through a good-faith negotiation there
is what's called ``back and forth,'' for example, the analogy that I
began a minute ago, when my children don't like what I'm telling them,
when I'm talking to my kids and I explain to them that I want them to
do A and they don't want to do A, and we kind of go back and forth. And
being a parent of small children, sometimes it's a dictatorship, but
sometimes there's negotiation. And it always works better when you can
work things out with your kids and teach them that compromise is going
to get you further. But when they don't like that compromise, my kids,
just like all kids, stamp their foot and whine a little bit and tell me
that they don't want to do that.
That really feels like how this President has reacted to Congress'
clear ability to weigh in on the direction that this war should be
taking. The American people certainly have weighed in. And what I don't
understand is why the President isn't willing to come to the table and
negotiate in good faith. The my-way-or-the-highway attitude that he has
taken is irresponsible.
What we are doing in this next proposal is we are making sure that we
fully fund over the next 3 months the
[[Page H4739]]
funding that the troops need. We provide the President and the Army
with the funding that they need, but we tie it to benchmarks, we tie it
to progress. The Iraqi government cannot believe that we will be there
forever.
And then we have a second vote where we would come back; and if the
President can certify to us that those benchmarks are being met, then
the rest of the funding would be released. If he can't certify that to
us, then the funding that we would appropriate would be used to go
through a redeployment process.
Because at some point the madness has to end. That is what the
American people have told us when we've gone home to our districts in
town halls, in e-mails, in phone calls. The President appears to have
ear plugs in his ears, and it's wrong. And that's why the Founding
Fathers established coequal branches of government, so that one person
in the executive office, in the Oval Office could not unilaterally
decide to commit our troops, to keep them there and to engage us in
military action indefinitely. It's irresponsible.
Mr. Murphy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Your question is a perfect one: When will this madness end? When will
we recognize that we need to set a new course, that we need to start
paying attention to not just what's happening within the borders of
Iraq but what's happening in Afghanistan, what's happening on our own
shores, where we still haven't appropriated the amount of money to
devote to the resources that we should in order to secure our own
borders and our own ports?
And here is what it comes down to: If the Democrats weren't in
control, the madness would never end; it would go on forever. There is
absolutely no commitment, no willingness, no one on the other side of
the aisle, very few at least on the other side of the aisle and
certainly very few in the administration have woken up to the new
reality here.
And to me, I won't say who it was, but a member of the Republican
leadership the other day was quoted in the paper as saying this. This
person said, you know what? The President, we are going to give him
some time to put forth this plan to escalate the war in and around
Baghdad.
{time} 2045
But if it doesn't work, he is going to have to tell us what plan B
is. Guess what. We are not on plan B we are on plan like double R. We
have tried everything. We have been in there for longer than we were
involved in World War II, and we still haven't found out what works.
Well, at some point, we are going to have to wake up to the notion
that nothing that our military may try is going to work.
Now, if anyone can do this job, I think our military can do it. The
problem is that we have gotten ourselves into a political quagmire, and
the sooner we realize that plan A and plan B and plan C and D and E and
F all didn't work, in large part because we have gotten ourselves into
a mess that has probably, we hope, a political and diplomatic solution
but may not have a military solution.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I just want to talk for a minute, I know we
really want to talk about some domestic issues here, but I want to talk
about some of the stress we have put on our forces here at home.
Because I have to tell you, as we watched some of the tragedies unfold
in the Midwest, in Kansas, and we saw the inability of our National
Guard in that State to respond, unfortunately, it took that incident
for a lot people to finally wake up to the notion that our Reserve
units and our National Guard units, the very troops that we relied on
for years, decades, to provide us with security when tragedy befell our
compatriots here at home, aren't there any longer. We heard it from
Governors in Iowa, Minnesota and, of course, now in Kansas.
The administration, as usual, seems to be more interested in throwing
around blame than they seem to be interested in actually solving the
problem. When the Governor of Kansas came out and said, listen, here
you see it; we don't have the resources to respond to this devastating
crisis because our National Guard units have been deployed over and
over again overseas in a way that we never asked our National Guard and
Reserve units to be deployed in the past, the White House came back and
said, well, you know what? That is not our fault. That is the
Governor's fault for not telling us that she had problems. If she had
just told us she had problems, we would have done something about it.
Well, guess what? She did. Last year, quoted in the New York times,
the Governor of Kansas said, we are not only missing National Guard
personnel, we are also missing a lot of the equipment that is used to
deal with situations at home, day in and day out.
Well, you know, we have heard a lot about how folks in the White
House don't read newspapers with the rigor that some of us do. They
certainly did not read The New York Times that day when the Governor of
Kansas almost a year ago sounded the bell and said, if we don't start
replenishing our units here at home, we are going to be in big trouble.
And we are.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I am really glad that you touched on that,
because you read my mind. I am obviously from a State where the
National Guard and its readiness is imperative. We are approaching June
1st, which is the beginning of hurricane season. It runs all the way
through to the end of November. I know from conversations that I have
had with our Guard leadership in Florida that a good amount of our
equipment is over in Iraq still. And to make matters worse is that the
equipment that has come back is in such horrendous shape that it is
almost unusable.
When I had a meeting in my district office with the head of our
National Guard, with the commander, this was over a year ago, he
expressed that concern to me over a year ago. We can't deal with the
lack of readiness in Kansas but certainly not in a State like Florida
where we are in the middle of hurricane alley. And we have already had
the first main storm today, three weeks before the hurricane season
even begins.
So we are not just talking about the foreign policy impact, the
perception of our Nation across the world or the impact on our troops.
There is a domestic impact, a significant detrimental domestic impact
to our inability to address where we are in this war and when it is
going to end.
We have got to make sure that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi
troops are in a position to stand on their own so that we can bring our
troops home and deal with the domestic needs that we have in this
country.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentlelady has touched on that
issue in a way that makes sense to most onlookers. She comes from a
State that has seen problems. But we saw as a nation what happened in
New Orleans in 2005 and the lack of response that took place in large
part because of these issues that we are talking about, because the
Guard and the Reserve that would usually be called upon to address
those issues and come to the aid of the victims of that hurricane were
deployed or otherwise engaged.
We have a National Guard and Reserve that has been the subject of
multiple deployments now, often three, four deployments. And when we
have a situation like unfortunately happened in Kansas recently, we see
the result. The Guard and Reserve is over deployed, and we are not able
to respond in the fashion we need to respond when we have a national
emergency, such as we saw in Kansas.
I wanted, if it is okay with the gentleman from Connecticut, to
switch the topic to gas prices, because I realized as I was looking at
the gentlewoman from Florida, there may be some viewers who are
wondering what that apparatus is that is next to her. It is a gas pump.
I will let her talk about that momentarily.
But I just wanted to start the ball rolling on that discussion and
read you a quote from the President of the United States from July of
2001. So we are going back 6 years now. This is what the President
said: ``My administration has proposed a plan that will reduce
America's reliance on foreign oil.'' Six years ago.
For those who are interested in the success or lack thereof of that
statement: In 2002, this Nation got 58 percent of its oil from foreign
sources. That was our dependence. In the year 2006, last year, that
number had risen to 66 percent.
[[Page H4740]]
Here you have a President who says that it is one of his priorities
to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We went from 58 percent in his
first full year in office to 66 percent last year, and it is
exponential growth, just a chart that goes straight up. So I would say
that his philosophy has not worked as well as perhaps he would have
hoped.
What is most disappointing to me is I sat here for my first State of
the Union address as a Member of Congress, and I listened to the
President go on for quite some time about energy independence and the
need to reduce our dependence and reliance on foreign oil. I was
encouraged by that. This was still my first month in office, and I
thought, this is a President that has finally seen the light and was
going to move in that direction.
But, unfortunately, I went back and I reread some of his previous
State of the Union addresses, and I realized that he has made that
claim multiple times over the years of his administration. And instead
of seeing a diminishment of our reliance on foreign oil source, it is
growing exponentially.
So it is frustrating to me to see the lack of attention to what is
the first issue domestically that I hear about when I go back to my
district, and I am sure the gentlelady from Florida and the gentleman
from Connecticut have the same questions bestowed upon them when they
go back to their districts, why are gas prices so high, and what are
you doing about it?
Well, this Congress is taking steps to do something about it. After
years of coddling the big oil companies and giving them taxpayer
subsidies in the billions of dollars at a time when they are making
all-time record profits for any industry in the history of the country,
we have finally decided we are going to pull back on those subsidies
and redirect them to alternative sources of energy, to research and
development of a myriad of sources of energy, to get us off of our
dependence on foreign oil, something the President said was his
priority 6 years ago, but nothing was done about it.
So this Congress is going to use that money for research and
development to grow us out of this problem through research and
development.
I yield back to the gentleman from Connecticut, who has a chart that
illustrates what has happened to gas prices since this President first
took office.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, let me set the stage to kick
it over to Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Here it is. The President took office January 22, 2001, $1.47; $1.47,
that is like sort of a mystical number now. I can't even fathom when we
were paying $1.47 for gas. Today, the average price for a gallon in the
United States, $3.05.
Now, I am going to admit that in my part of the world, in
northwestern Connecticut, probably like everybody's district, we have a
couple of conspiracy theorists up there. We have a couple of people
that are not actually willing to believe that the best of intentions
are always at the root of decisions made in our political and economic
system.
I have to tell you, the cynic in me and the conspiracy theorist in
me, and there is a little bit of it, wonders a little bit why gas
prices dipped down, curiously, right about the time when we were all up
for election and reelection. Just when there was this sort of wave of
economic discontent swinging across the country and all of the people
were talking about finally taking our economy back from the oil
companies. Just as this country was poised to make a decision to
finally end, as Mr. Altmire said, our firm decades-long dependence on
oil and foreign oil in large part, why did gas prices just dip right
then? And then as soon as January, February came around, creeping up
and up, a little bit more and a little bit more. Now as we head into
the summer, into the prime driving months of the year, we are at $3.05
a gallon.
Now, I am not willing to say that is just politics, but the cynic in
me has to wonder sometimes whether or not our gas and oil companies
were just hoping, hoping that they could stem the tide and that they
wouldn't have a Democratic majority here who would make a difference.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I don't mean to interrupt the gentleman, but I did want
to remind anyone who is observing this discussion tonight that the
``Six for '06'' was the Democratic mantra moving forward and going into
the election. Ms. Wasserman Schultz was here for that discussion, and
Mr. Murphy and I were out on the campaign trail. And we talked a lot
about gas prices and taking on big oil for the first time in many years
and revoking some of these subsidies and redirecting them. That was a
key staple of this six policy issues that the Democrats made as their
top priority for that election cycle and for the first 100 hours in
Congress after we were able to retake the Congress.
The gentleman talks about the sequence of events that, as that
discussion was brought out, it became pretty clear to everybody that
this was going to be a change. This was going to be a new direction for
the country.
Again, I am just saying that, as the gentleman is, it is an amazing
coincidence that just as that proposal comes forward and just as the
momentum starts to shift and look like the Democrats have a chance to
promote this agenda in the majority for the first time in 12 years, we
do see an incredible drop in gas prices. I think it went down something
like 80 cents over a several week period leading up to the election.
Now, as you said, it is back up to record levels here shortly
thereafter.
I did not mean to interrupt.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I would like to think that miracles do
happen when it comes to energy policy, but unfortunately, I think that
may be a little naive.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Mr. Murphy.
You know, I really became enraged this weekend because you both have
heard me refer to myself as what I am, and that is a ``minivan mom.'' I
am a minivan mom, one of the millions of minivan moms that drive around
my district with the kids in the back seat. And I can tell you that we,
ideally, if you are a mom with little kids, would drive a smaller
vehicle so that you could save gas, so that you could save money, so
that you could be more energy efficient and environmentally conscious.
However, when you are traveling from soccer to baseball to dance
class to school and all the things that minivan moms have to do, you
need a vehicle the size of a minivan. And they are expensive to fill
up. Believe me.
This weekend, we were back up, just for 87 octane, when I filled my
gas tank, 87 octane in my hometown of Weston was $3.06 a gallon. The 93
octane was about $3.88. I stood there, and it had been a while since we
felt the rage and actually a while since I have gotten feedback from
constituents about their frustration, because, like you said, I am
actually an idealist. I am not a cynic. I am not someone that believes
in conspiracy theories.
There is just no question in my mind that that drop in gas prices was
absolutely tied to the potential fortunes of the Republican candidates
for Congress and this administration. So I am just going to say it
straight out.
The only explanation other than that and the only explanation for the
insensitivity on the part of the President and this White House must be
that they are not filling their own tanks. Maybe their drivers are
doing it for them.
I would like to take the opportunity to introduce our colleagues and
the President to a gas tank. This is what they look like. And when you
insert the pump into your vehicle, the indicator on the gas pump shows
you how much you are paying and shows you the total at the end after
you are done filling your tank.
{time} 2100
They are not filling their own tank. That must be the only
explanation why the President hasn't taken any steps to address our
dependence on foreign oil, to deal with the record profits, obscene
profits that the oil industry is making.
I don't understand how he could look himself in the mirror after the
2006 State of the Union which I was here for and you guys were running
to join us here. I heard President Bush stand at that lectern and tell
us that we must end America's addiction to foreign oil. It clearly was
just words. That is what they are good at. They are good at the words.
They just are not good at backing up the words with action. But we are.
Here we are talking about what we need to do. I want us to share with
our colleagues and other folks that might be listening what our plans
are, because we are going to take some action.
[[Page H4741]]
We represent the folks that drive minivans around their district and
drive pickup trucks and who run small businesses who need to make sure
that gas prices don't cut their legs out from under their business and
prevent them from being able to function. That is the reality on the
ground every day.
Your gas prices go up, you have a harder time choosing to provide
your employees with health insurance, you have a harder time being able
to buy that piece of equipment your business needs. There is a direct
result on small businesses from gas prices going up.
We are taking several significant steps. The Speaker has created a
Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence. That was a
controversial move but something that she felt was important because it
is so critical that we address the issue of global warming and energy
independence that we needed to highlight it and put it up on a pedestal
and get Members to travel the world and talk about how we can move the
ball down the field and address this issue.
In addition to the hearings and oversight that select committee will
be doing, and that select committee will meet for a year time period
because there needs to be action taken within a very short time span so
we can get some results for the American people.
Also, in the Energy and Commerce Committee, we will be hearing Mr.
Stupak's legislation called the Energy Price Gouging Prevention Act to
immediately provide relief to consumers and prevent the oil companies
from price gouging like what is clearly going on here. I mean, we
cannot allow the oil industry to put our constituents on the roller
coaster ride that they are clearly on right now.
We have to do a number of things. We have to set an example in this
institution. Speaker Pelosi has moved forward with the Greening the
Capitol Initiative. I am privileged to chair the subcommittee which
will be working on a lot of the initiatives for the Greening the
Capitol project.
What we will be doing is within the next 2 years, by the end of the
110th Congress, we will establish policies that will make our Capitol
complex carbon neutral; and we will make sure that we set an example
for businesses across the country. We have to take several major steps
to provide relief and balance and focus on alternative energy research
so we can truly wean ourselves off dependence from foreign oil and not
just talk about it.
I am a little hot about that. I see the Speaker is standing on her
feet, which means we are probably getting close to the end of our time.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. On the heels of introducing some of our
colleagues and members of the administration to a gas pump, and I think
you are right, it is hard to understand how people can be so
indifferent to the rising costs. Maybe they haven't seen a gas pump I
want to introduce them to something else.
This is a wallet. If you are an oil company executive, your wallet is
busting at the seams. So your wallet is going to look different. This
is a thin wallet. This is what the American people, working-class
individuals throughout this country are dealing with. They are dealing
with wages that have been pretty much flat for the last 5 years.
Oil company profits over the last 5 years have gone from $6.5 billion
in 2002 to $30.2 billion in 2007. I want to make sure that while we are
introducing some of our colleagues and some people in the
administration to a gas pump, let's also introduce them to the thin
wallet. If the average worker's income doubled from 2001 to 2007, I
would say no problem, you can handle gas prices that doubled over that
time. But the fact is that wages for average Americans have remained
flat. Why? Because we have set up an economy that is designed to fail
for regular, working-class individuals in this country, the folks that
we represent, the people working in small businesses, who are living
from paycheck to paycheck and can't take these increases at the pump.
As much as we have to introduce people to the notion that we have to
start redirecting our energy policy, we also have to reintroduce people
to the fact that there are millions of Americans out there playing by
the rules who simply don't have the means to deal with these increased
prices.
Mr. ALTMIRE. The gentlewoman from Florida listed off a number of
initiatives that this Democratic Congress has taken at long last to
address the gas price crisis that we are facing in this country. We are
going to move with great speed to address these issues. We are going to
address the price-gouging situation. We are going to address
alternative sources of energy. We are going to address the
environmental impact of the choices and the long-term consequences. We
will address the price of gas that we see at pumps every day, similar
to the one that the gentlewoman was holding up.
But I want to remind everybody, which is obvious because we are
having this Iraq debate now and the President has sent one bill back
with a veto and may send a second bill back with a veto, that we,
because of the Constitution, can't do it ourselves. This is a divided
government that we have, and we need the assistance of the people on
the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue down at the White House to join us
in this effort to make a national priority of lowering the gas prices
and addressing this issue for the first time since this President took
office.
I don't see any indication that he is willing to do that. We can pass
legislation, we can have committee hearings and oversight and talk all
that we want, but if we are not joined in this effort by our colleagues
on the other side of the aisle, and especially the President, we are
going to be unable to address this issue in a way that is satisfactory
to the American people.
I would urge my colleagues to voice their opinion that this is a
priority. It is important to their constituents, and we do need to have
a bipartisan effort moving forward to do this because this is an
important issue. These are big topics that we are trying to pursue, and
we need a unified American people and a unified body to take the
initiative to the President and hopefully work with him on a positive
solution.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I think what is important for us to emphasize
in the 30-Something Working Group here is we are about action. Our
Democratic leadership under Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer
and Mr. Clyburn, our whip, and Mr. Emanuel, our caucus Chair, we spend
a lot of time on this floor. The people who are watching see us doing a
lot of talking. I mean, talk i nice, but I want us to make sure that we
are getting across what we are going to be doing about this problem.
The Speaker has made a commitment that has directed the committees
that are chaired by Democratic Members that, by July 4, that we will
expand and extend renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives,
that we will make efforts to make our Nation's farmers leaders in
reducing our independence on foreign oil by promoting clean,
domestically produced alternative fuels.
They do that in Brazil. Brazil has become completely independent of
foreign oil. In fact, our own auto industry, our American automobile
industry manufactures vehicles to be driven in Brazil because they use
an ethanol-based gasoline so they can be self-sufficient. It is
entirely doable.
We need to refocus, and our policies and committee hearings and
legislation that will be moving through by Independence Day will move
us in the direction of changing our dependence from the Middle East to
the Midwest in our country.
We will also provide incentives for an energy-innovation economy that
will create new jobs and efficiency measures to help consumers and
small businesses reduce energy costs. And we are going to make sure
that we strengthen our national commitment to energy research and
development for the next generation of high-risk, high-reward energy
technology.
We have an innovation agenda that was part of the New Direction for
America agenda that we ran on and talked about in race after race in
district after district. People want to know that it is not just words,
that it is not just lips flapping up here. We are going to actually
move legislation and use our congressional oversight capability and
leadership on this issue so they don't hear one more quarter go by
where they see record profits from the oil industry, one more quarter
go by where they are on a roller coaster ride for gas prices.
We need to make sure that we help our colleagues on the other side of
the
[[Page H4742]]
aisle and the President of this country knows what a gas tank is.
Because Mr. Altmire did make reference that this is a gas tank, but
this is a pretty ancient gas tank. This is a representation of a gas
tank that probably dates back to the 1950s. Perhaps that is the last
time that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle or the
President actually used one of these. That really is, I think, the only
explanation for their insensitivity.
It is our job to make sure that we move this innovation agenda
forward so we can make it a priority. That is why rolling back those
subsidies were part of our 6 in '06 agenda.
One of the first bills that we passed in the first 100 hours in the
majority was a repeal of the subsidies that were given away to the oil
industry that they literally said they did not need. How could they
need them? They are sitting on piles of money, billions of dollars, and
we gave them subsidies. We gave them back money that they owed us, that
were royalties that we should have earned because we give them the
right to drill on government-owned land.
It is just unbelievable that the priorities of the administration
would be closer to the oil industry than it would be to the people. It
is immoral. It really is. It is nothing short of immoral.
We have to start thinking about how the decisions we make here impact
real people. We stand in this Chamber every day. And you know what
happens? I was in the legislature in Florida. My district is 450 miles
from the capitol in Tallahassee, and it is a lot further from
Washington. It becomes really easy, I think, for a lot of the Members
to forget the impact of the decisions that we make in this room on real
people. You can easily become desensitized. Maybe that is what it is.
I know the President goes around the country and talks to people. But
the way they set those events up for the President, as I understand it,
he is isolated. They screen a lot of the people that get an opportunity
to be in the room with him, if not all of them. I just don't think he
hears from enough people about the true impact of his policies. It is
the only explanation.
If he was really hearing what people were saying and if he was really
sympathetic to the plight of people who are struggling, and not just
poor people, but we are talking about middle-class people who have a
job and who are, like you said, living paycheck to paycheck, and even
people not living paycheck to paycheck.
Just because you can afford to pay $55 to fill up your gas tank
doesn't mean it is okay. It shouldn't cost that much. It doesn't have
to, and we need to make sure that our actions become reality and that
we put pressure on the President to sign what we send him when we send
it by Independence Day.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I always think there is this pyramid of
political influence out there. For a very long time, the only people
that really mattered in this system were the people gathered at the tip
of the pyramid, the people with the big political action committees and
who could afford to hire 10 lobbyists to patrol the halls of Congress.
And all of us, you know, that exist down at the bottom of that pyramid,
and when we come here we get to be closer to the top than the bottom,
but the regular folks who sit wondering, and even if they don't wonder
if they can afford to fill their tank, they wonder whether increasing
gas prices means they can save less, whether this will have some impact
on their retirement savings. All of those folks that exist at the base
of that pyramid didn't matter any longer.
As much as for me and Mr. Altmire, as much as we care about setting a
different course in Iraq and taking on the hegemony of the oil
companies and setting a new course for health care policy, I think for
us this election was as much about sort of flipping that pyramid on its
head and saying we have got to start taking the time to form consensus
back at the base of that pyramid and having those decisions be the ones
that matter here in Washington.
I have to tell you, standing here as a member of the 30-Something
Working Group, nobody knows more than we do about how many Americans
now stand on a precipice of jumping off a cliff to having faith in
their government. Young people, whether in their 20s or 30s, but people
now in their 40s, 50s and 60s have just lost any faith that what they
care about will actually be reflected in what happens in Washington.
{time} 2115
Guess what, in January, when a new Congress got sworn in, it all
changed. Now, it may not change so much that things happen here with
the alacrity that people may like. This government is still designed
not exactly to respond overnight, but you would not be seeing the
policy proposals that you are outlining, whether it is taking on the
royalties and the tax breaks, whether it is taking a look at antitrust
provisions, whether it is passing a strong price-gouging bill. You just
would not see that.
You would hear a lot of bluster, but you would not be seeing action
if we did not flip government on its head in January and start once
again listening to people out in communities rather than just listening
to the conversations that happen perpetually within the halls of
government. All those conversations are focused on one thing, the
status quo.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Just what all this boils down to for me is
just one word, and that is insensitivity. I mean, there is a
disconnect, which is almost a word that has almost become cliche, but a
disconnect between what is really going on in the lives of the average
American person and the policies that the White House and the President
advance.
And that insensitivity, it is not isolated just to the price of oil.
It is not isolated just to the President's believing that he is the
only one that is right, and he was elected to be the decision-maker, as
he said, and to heck with anyone else's opinion. The insensitivity is
reflective, and it permeates every decision they make.
Let me just give you an example. I sit on the House Judiciary
Committee as well, and tomorrow we have Attorney General Gonzales
coming in front of our committee for our regular oversight of the
Department of Justice. So the insensitivity and the tone deafness
extends to even an issue like that.
The White House has defended their firings of the U.S. attorneys,
essentially saying they had the right to do it, and they told us
whatever reasons that they decided to release those U.S. attorneys, but
they got caught in a fabrication. They got caught in a whole series of
different stories that have come back to bite them.
Now we have a situation where we have an Attorney General who has
completely undermined our ability and the American people's ability to
have any confidence and trust in what he says. That is a pattern that
exists. I mean, we talked during the campaign and during the 109th and
the 108th about the culture of corruption. I mean, that is what has
been hanging over this Capitol, which finally we have been able to lift
it.
There are still remnants of it. We still have, sadly, a number of
even our colleagues who have been accused of things and are going
through investigations, but the Department of Justice and the Attorney
General could have handled this U.S. attorney issue in a very simple
way, a way that I do not think I could have or you could have
questioned.
They had the right to decide to change who was sitting in those
offices, who was serving as a U.S. attorney, and all they had to say
was, we wanted to change the leadership in those eight offices.
Instead, they got so caught up in telling a story that they thought was
legitimate enough, that now it is not the firings, it is the coverup
that is the problem. And that is what the White House does not seem to
get.
We are almost talking apples and oranges. They are defending their
right to have fired them. We are not disagreeing with them over their
right to have fired the U.S. attorneys. We do have a serious problem,
and we should have a serious problem not being able to trust that the
information the administration and the Department of Justice provides
to us when we ask them questions is accurate and that it is factual.
It is the trust and the violation of that trust that has been
undermined for so long, and that was another result on November 7. Part
of the result of the election is that the American people's confidence
in their government was so badly undermined that they
[[Page H4743]]
wanted us to help them move in a new direction.
So it is just not isolated just to the issues we have been talking
about tonight. We could go through a laundry list.
Mr. ALTMIRE. We only have about a minute and a half left, and Mr.
Murphy is going to do the wrap-up.
I just wanted to say that I see this prop that we have here, and it
reminds me of, Mr. Murphy and I were watching you and Mr. Meek and Mr.
Ryan last year with that big oil rubber stamp that you kept bringing
around. Thankfully, we were able to retire that rubber stamp because
the American people voted for a change in direction. I hope it is not
going to take 18 months for us to retire that prop, that we are going
to take clear and decisive action here in Congress, as I know we will
under the Speaker's a leadership, and we are going to be able to do
something about the gas prices in a way that is going to allow us to
retire your prop there. But we are going to do our part, and I am going
to send it over now to Mr. Murphy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Speaking of props, I think by displaying
that rather thin wallet before, I inadvertently started to make a case
for an increase in congressional pay, for staff members here.
So, we are on honored to be able to have this opportunity that the
Speaker has given us, Mr. Altmire and I, certainly to be able to join
our colleagues who have been up here for the last few years beating the
drum.
You can e-mail us at [email protected] or you can visit
us on the web at www.speaker.gov/30something. We hope that people will
share their thoughts with us
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