[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 130 (Wednesday, September 5, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H10131-H10138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE NEW DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Walz) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, today marks the eighth month
since my colleagues and I were given the privilege to enter this sacred
institution to represent our respective districts across the country.
The Democratic freshman class, one of the largest in recent history,
also came at an historic time in changing control of both houses of
Congress and leading America in a new direction.
Much has changed in eight months. Much has changed personally for
each and every one of us. Eight months ago I stood in this very spot
with my 2-month-old son, Gus, as we were sworn into this esteemed body.
My 5-year-old was a kindergartner at the time.
Well, now, 8 months later, Gus is 10 months old, on the verge of
walking; and that kindergartner is now an experienced first grader.
Much has changed for us professionally. I had the opportunity last
week to go back and address the school where I taught. Many of us came
to this institution from many different walks of life. We were
teachers. We were newspapermen. We were law enforcement officers. We
were physicians. We were farmers. We were many different things. But
each and every one of us came to this institution with a very sacred
duty: to change the direction that America was going; to listen to the
American public; and to make sure that this institution was once again
judged on effectiveness, not ideology. And this Congress has done just
that.
This Congress has changed the priorities that have permeated
Washington for the past 12 years. This new Congress has changed things
from some of the most historic funding for veterans to the most
sweeping ethics reform, described as some of the biggest changes since
the Watergate era.
We have much to be proud of and much work yet to do. The Democratic
freshman class was given an opportunity to change the course and to
change the debate.
I had the opportunity to speak with some reporters asking what will
the legacy be? What will this class have accomplished when all is said
and done? And I think, in looking at this group of people and having
the sense of pride that I have in serving with them, that the answer
will not be known for many years. This class has thrown themselves into
their work with such due diligence that I think the American people
would be proud. We passed legislation not just on a Democratic agenda
but on a bipartisan agenda.
We knew, each and every one of us that got here, that we did not come
to this institution with an ideological mandate. We knew that the
American people, when they were speaking last November, were not saying
that they were enamored with just Democratic ideology. They were
enamored with the speaking about changing the direction of the country,
providing a new direction, providing ethics that actually work.
Providing funding for our veterans, funding for our children, and
taking this country in a new direction in the war on terror and what
was happening in Iraq.
And I am proud to stand here today with my colleagues, and we are
going to spend a little bit of time highlighting those achievements,
and it is one that all American people should be proud of.
This Congress can do nothing with just one party. This Congress can
do nothing with just ideology. When this Congress works together,
things get done that would amaze the American people.
I, coming from Minnesota, have witnessed two of the biggest disasters
that my State has ever witnessed. Back on August 1, the collapse of the
I-35W bridge, to see a major interstate, eight-lane highway, crash into
the Mississippi River. We lost seven people with a hundred injured.
That tragedy and the response to it illustrates what can be the best in
America.
Within 60 hours, the House of Representatives and the Senate had
passed
[[Page H10132]]
legislation to rebuild that bridge. It went to the President's desk
within 72 hours, was passed, and the money is already flowing to the
State of Minnesota to correct that.
Last week on August 19, we saw some of the most massive flooding in
my district that had ever been witnessed, 17-plus inches of rain in a
24-hour period. We had seven deaths and thousands of homes washed out.
The response was quick. It was bipartisan. It was professional. And it
is one that the American people should expect, not hope for.
While the rains were still falling, I toured the area in the first
few hours with the Republican Governor of Minnesota. The following day
I toured with the Republican Senator and a Democratic Senator, and we
held a news conference together with the Republican Governor. On
Tuesday, President Bush was in Minnesota saying he would do everything
he could to support us. On Wednesday, the Governor asked for a
declaration, a disaster declaration, and on Thursday the President
approved it. By the weekend FEMA was on the ground and people were
rebuilding their lives.
That is what the American people should expect out of government: it
is effectiveness; not its ideology; its bipartisanship, and it can be
judged on what we do for the American public.
Those things have happened. They have happened across the board. They
have happened in great numbers. And it is a message that I think the
American people should be proud of.
As I said, much has changed. Much has changed for me personally. This
is the first year I didn't start a school year teaching in a classroom.
But I said many of those years, those 20 years in the classroom, taught
me something about the next generation of Americans. They are
optimistic. They believe that the best days are yet to come. They have
a vision that can extend beyond the next election into the next
generation. Our young people understand this. The American people
understand this.
My colleagues are here not out of anything great that they personally
did, but they are here and this change is happening because of the
greatness of the American public. The American public and the system
knew it needed to self-correct itself. It needed to bring change to
this institution, and that change is happening.
So for the next few minutes, we are going to discuss some of those. I
am privileged to be joined by my colleague from Kentucky, another one
of the freshmen that came here that sprung up from this greatness of
the American public and brought a message of change, of optimism, of
prosperity that all of us can benefit from.
With that, I yield to my colleague from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth).
Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Minnesota for
yielding. And I want to join many of us in expressing my great empathy
for him and the residents of his State who have gone through so much
recently. And we all, I think, not only empathize but sympathize with
what the people of Minnesota have had to go through, and I know we all
stand ready to help in any way that we can.
But my colleague is right, Mr. Speaker. When we all came to this body
last year right after being elected and we all met for our orientation
and, as freshmen, we met for the first time and started comparing
notes, it was clear that we all came with pretty similar mandates.
We were sent by our people to change what was going on in this country.
We were sent by the people of this country to deal with energy
problems. We were sent by the people of this country to deal with a
dysfunctional health care system. We were sent by the people of this
country to deal with the income and wealth inequality that has put such
a strain on the great working families of this country and has seen the
wealthiest people in America have their wealth increased by leaps and
bounds while, as the census report just mentioned last week, 95 percent
of the people in this country have not seen their standard of living
improve over the last 6 years.
We were sent by the people of this country to do something about the
education system, to make sure it not only leaves no child behind but
moves every child forward; that we work with the most gifted kids and
we work with the kids posing the greatest challenge; that each one of
them will have the best that our teachers have to offer and have the
greatest support system that we can provide for them.
And foremost of all these things, the people of America sent us to
Congress with one overriding thought, and that was to change direction
in Iraq.
And it is very interesting because I know that the people on the
other side, our colleagues in the Republican Party, want to try to spin
our activities by saying, well, we haven't really accomplished very
much. Well, I think every one of us knows how hard we have worked over
the last 8 months to accomplish the mission that the people of the
United States sent us here for.
We have dealt with minimum wage, increasing the minimum wage for the
first time in 10 years. We have dealt with the energy situation. We
tried to eliminate the great and unnecessary tax cuts that were given
to the oil companies when they were making record profits. We dealt
with health care, not just recently by trying to expand the Children's
Health Insurance Program to cover 5 million more American children, but
also in trying to save money and make the system more efficient by
forcing the pharmaceutical companies to negotiate with Medicare in the
Medicare part D program.
In every area of our jurisdiction, we have tried to respond to the
demands of the American people. We have listened to them. We are
dealing right now with the revision of No Child Left Behind. The
changes we are making in that program stem directly from what we have
heard from the American people. We are listening. We are acting. We are
moving.
And so it is with not only a great deal of personal disgust but also
with a sense of outrage that I listened to President Bush make a
statement when he was halfway around the world in comparing this
Congress, this body, with the Parliament in Iraq. And I know he likes
to be cute and that is the way he is, but for him to stand halfway
across the world before international cameras and international media
and tout the fact that the Iraqi Parliament has passed 60 bills when,
according to him, we haven't passed that many in this session of
Congress to me is an outrage. It's not even factually correct. We have
sent him 57 bills; he signed 55. We have passed several hundred bills
in this House.
But the most important thing is look at what he has done. Look at the
vetoes he has threatened, the vetoes he has actually made. He has
already threatened to veto 10 out of 12 appropriations bills we passed
in this body. After the committees in this body, both parties working
hand in hand, have dealt with these issues and the budgeting for months
and months and months, he says arbitrarily, they weren't my budgets, it
wasn't what I asked for and, therefore, I'm going to veto them.
For him to criticize the United States Congress for not passing
legislation is like the Vice President criticizing his lawyer friend
for getting in the way when he shot him. I mean, if anyone is more
responsible for retarding and obstructing the work of this body, it is
the President of the United States and his party. And it happens day
after day. It happens hour after hour. And the only reason it happens
is because the Republican Party and the President of the United States
have run out of initiatives. They have run out of ideas. They know the
American people have rejected their agenda, and they are looking for a
new direction, and they just simply don't want to see us succeed.
But that's not what we're here for. We're here to continue working.
We're going to generate the type of grassroots support for what we've
done. We know it's out there. We're listening to the people. They will
be listening to what we're doing, and they will force this Republican
Party and this President to move in our direction.
I am convinced that we are doing the right thing, that we are
working, we are making progress for the American people. We will
continue to do that under the great leadership we have in Speaker
Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer. And I know eventually the Republican
Party will come to their senses and they will begin to realize that the
American people want us to act to solve the very demanding, the very
challenging problems that face
[[Page H10133]]
this country. We are about that task. That's why we came here. That's
what we will continue to do as long as we are here.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
Kentucky. And he sums it up well. One of the things that the American
public is most frustrated with is the idea of nothing happening or
obstructionism. And I think some know that there is a difference
between legislation and politics. But most people in America don't want
to deal with the political side of it. They want to see the
effectiveness.
And I should note 8 months ago on this day a couple of major changes
were made that we were able to make. We have three branches of
government, but the business that happened in this House for both sides
of the aisle can be changed with rule changes. And on that first day we
made some major rule changes that affect the American public, to
understand that rhetoric is not good enough, that action is what is
demanded.
The first thing that we did is we enacted PAYGO budgeting. No more
blank checks. No more recklessly spending our children's rightful
inheritance to this country by putting in fiscal policies that are
short-term, feel-good tax breaks for very few Americans. PAYGO
budgeting is exactly what the American people live by. It is how every
middle-class American has to get by in their own life. And this House
of Representatives finally put that in. By doing so, we will do
something that the American people should expect to happen: We will
balance the Federal budget by 2012.
{time} 1730
But that's not good enough. We have a $9 trillion deficit. The idea
that this Congress has been able to tell people you can have something
for nothing, you can give tax cuts to the wealthiest and underfund
programs, what's happened is this country is using the equity in our
own country that belongs rightfully to our children and spending it
now. Those days are over. PAYGO is a rule of this House and it will
continue to be so as long as the Democratic Congress stays as it is.
The other major change was one that the American people simply don't
understand. Many of us who came here didn't understand it, and many of
us were incredibly frustrated by it, how this sacred institution, the
most important, deliberative legislative body, democratic institution
the world has ever seen has an image problem when it comes to ethics.
Every single Member who walks through this door should be very, very
cognizant of what this means to the American people.
So the ethics changes that were taken up 8 months ago, I think the
American public would probably be hard-pressed to even believe that it
didn't happen. The difference between 8 months ago and today is simply
this: Lobbyists will no longer be able to provide one penny in food,
not one penny in gifts, and not one penny in travel to any Member of
this body. Now, that's a far sight from golf trips to Scotland and
special interests that we had seen before. Those who think that the
election of last November made no difference, look no further than K
Street to understand the changes that happened here. Ethics changes
have been sweeping.
Now, one of the things in standing here and talking about these
things, I think there is a sense of frustration amongst many of us, the
game seems to be coming from the other side of the aisle, is to delay
and slow everything down and to drive the approval rating of this
Congress as low as it can possibly go. None of us should be happy with
the fact that when a Presidential approval rating is as low as this
President's is and a congressional approval rating is as low as this
body is right now, that's nothing to be proud of. And it's nothing to
point one finger at each side of the aisle. What we're doing is we're
undermining the basic tenet of this great democracy. And for those who
think that this is someplace else, it's full of your neighbors, it's
full of the people you work with, it's full of the teachers, the
newspapermen, the law enforcement officers that you sent here. It is
incumbent upon this institution to get the ethics changes right.
So we have passed some of the most sweeping ethics changes. And soon,
maybe by the end of today, we will see the President sign in more of
that; tightening up of not only the bans on gifts, but also making sure
that bundled contributions to campaigns are being shown, that we know
who's giving money, that we understand who is trying to look at and who
is trying to influence decisions that are made in this House.
Now, one of the things I would like to say is that, speaking of your
own accomplishments, there is a saying in Minnesota, ``Act and let
others do the speaking for you.'' I want to quote a few things that
have come out of newspapers basically over the last 30 days of all
things that are happening here. We have a couple of things here.
``Democrats who control Congress headed into a summer recess having
passed several high-profile bills, raising the minimum wage, bolstering
U.S. security, expanding children's health care. Their top priority,
ending the Iraq war, remains frustratingly unfulfilled. But the
Democrats who took over in January were able to go home last month for
a month-long break having won more support in the U.S. Senate and U.S.
House of Representatives for bringing combat troops home by next year
than any time before, marking a significant turnaround from last
year.'' Reuters of August 5 of this year.
``Some non-partisan observers agree, Democrats have reason to boast.
Democrats have had a good run legislatively over the past few weeks,
and that does help them going into the recess,'' said Larry Sabato,
Director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
``Congressional Democrat majority made major strides towards
implementing its domestic agenda before going home. It will face
hurdles when lawmakers return at summer's end, President Bush being the
main one. Farm bills, lobbying reform, energy, education, children's
health insurance, all advanced in the final 10 days, establishing House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a major legislative player.'' Wall Street
Journal.
``Besides their success on increasing the minimum wage, ethics and
lobbying, September 11 Commission recommendations, Democrats have moved
forward with initiatives to expand health insurance for all of
America's children through the SCHIP program, a shift in U.S. energy
policy away from reliance on foreign fossil fuels. They have helped
focus the war debate on the question of when, not if, U.S. forces will
be pulling out.'' The Los Angeles Times.
``I have long been and continue to be an advocate of congressional
oversight as a fundamental element of our system of government. I also
have publicly expressed my belief that congressional debate on Iraq has
been constructive, appropriate and necessary.'' That last one coming
from Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.
This Congress is making changes. This Congress is listening to the
American public. This Congress is taking what it can control in its own
hands, like rules, and strengthening them, making sure that ethics
reform is a top priority, making sure that people can once again walk
in this building, see this American flag, understand the history that's
been written here, and trust the Members that have been here to do the
duty of the American public. And in doing so, we have passed some of
the most sweeping legislation.
The first one I want to talk a little bit about is veterans issues.
Now, in serving on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, it's something
that, of course, is very near and dear to my heart, something that I
can't say that it's a personal sense of pride, but it's one of a
personal sense of responsibility. The House historian notified me,
after a week or two here in Congress, that as a retired command
sergeant major in the Army National Guard, that I was the top ranking
enlisted soldier to ever serve in Congress. Now, those Members familiar
with the military understand that being an enlisted soldier brings a
sense of responsibility of making sure troops are taken care of.
So to sit on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and watch the historic
progress that has been made on veterans issues, I think it's
interesting to keep a couple of facts in mind. In the 77-year history
that we've had a Veterans Administration or the Veterans Affairs, in
that 77-year history there has never been the infusion of resources
given to that administration as
[[Page H10134]]
we've seen in the last 8 months. There is a group of veteran service
organizations led by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled
American Veterans, the Paralyzed American Veterans, the American
Legion, that each and every year for the last 22 years have put
together what they call the independent budget. And this independent
budget does something very simple. It takes a look at the needs of all
American veterans. It determines how many veterans are going to need
services, whether it be veterans health care, re-employment,
educational benefits, and the gamut of resources that we provide our
veterans for the service they do this country. They take that number
and then they figure out the real dollar cost of providing exactly
those services, services that were promised, services that were
guaranteed to our veterans when they signed up or were drafted to serve
this Nation at times of peace and times of war. They take those two
numbers and they put it in a budget and they send it to Congress. They
say, you have X number of veterans at X number of cost; therefore, you
should budget X number of dollars. And for the past 21 years, Congress
has failed to meet that.
Congress has so blatantly understated the need that the current
administration stated 3 years ago, when they made their budget, that
their determination was that we would see fewer veterans and the cost
of veterans health care would go down. Most of us will take the bet
that the sun will not rise tomorrow before that would happen. And guess
what? It did not happen. So we were left, 2 years ago, with a nearly $2
billion shortfall in taking care of our veterans. And the decision came
then, who doesn't get care? Who do we turn away? And the answer was
simply, turn away Priority 8 veterans. We will prioritize these
veterans.
Now, Priority 8 veterans, to the American public, that may not seem
like too much, but a Priority 8 veteran is this. It's someone in my
district making $27,701 or more can be thrown off as a Priority 8. That
can be a combat veteran. That can be a veteran of our conflicts, our
current conflicts, Vietnam, or World War II, determined mostly on the
economic scale, not the need, the accessibility, not what was promised
to them, not what the right thing to do was. But lo and behold, you
knock off several million veterans, and look, we had a balanced budget.
That's not the way this Congress is going to deal with it. That is not
the way this Congress is going to keep their responsibilities. And in
this budget, we increased $3.6 million in veterans funding over the
President's request.
When we passed that piece of legislation by, I believe, and I believe
this is correct, I may be off by one or two, 409-2 was when this
passed, and that piece of legislation was being threatened to be vetoed
in that appropriations by this President. One of the 12 appropriations
bills which, by the way, for the first time in a decade, all 12 were
done on time, all were done by the August recess. That, in addition to
passing nine earlier this year that were not done from last year's
work.
So for any American who listens to the rhetoric, who listens to
people talk about nothing being done, the question would be, can they
back that up with fact? We can back it up with fact.
We've made some major changes on dealing with the current situation
in Iraq and Afghanistan. The signature injuries of this war is the
traumatic brain injuries and the concussive injuries caused by
improvised explosive devices. They have become more sophisticated over
time in the damage that they're doing.
The care our soldiers are receiving on the battlefield is second to
none. It is the best care that has ever been given in the history of
warfare on this planet. One of the problems with that is we are sending
soldiers home with horrible injuries, injuries that are going to be
with them for a lifetime, that is going to take a lifetime of care. And
what this Congress has done is we passed legislation introducing new
research dollars, new research centers, five of them, to be placed
around the country in conjunction with our VA hospitals that have our
polytrauma centers, the ones that are dealing with these concussive
injuries. And we're going to put the funding there, we're going to put
the research there, and it's going to do something. It's going to
provide care not only to the soldiers, but it's going to provide the
necessary resources to the families that are going to have to adjust
their entire lives to deal with the damage that has been done by these
injuries. This is not something that these veterans and their families
should feel lucky to have. It's not something that they should have to
come here, even though that's exactly what happens, and lobby this
Congress to do that. It's what is the morally right thing to do. It is
also the best way to show future generations of our young people who
want to serve this country, who want to defend this country, that if
they do so, we will be there every step of the way.
What we're seeing coming out of this conflict is post-traumatic
stress disorder and suicide prevention. We passed H.R. 327, Joshua
Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act. That is starting to get centers
up and running. It's starting to do more identification. We are now
screening every single soldier who returns from this conflict for
traumatic brain injury and for post-traumatic stress disorder.
We are changing the way that we welcome our soldiers home. We are
changing the way that we treat them and we screen them and we bring
they and their families into the process of making them whole again.
We have the Rural Veterans Healthcare Improvement Act. One of the
things we have a problem with, and this is one the American people
should be incredibly frustrated with that I, as a veteran, was, our
veterans who have to travel to VA centers to get health care are
reimbursed at the 1978 rate of 11 cents a mile. And I have a veteran, a
first sergeant no less, who saw combat duty in Korea. When he brought
this up about a year ago to an official, he was simply told to get a
more fuel-efficient automobile. Now, this Congress has found fit to
reimburse itself at 48\1/2\ cents a mile. At some point, the American
public should ask where is the hypocrisy in who we're treating and who
should receive the benefit. But those have changed.
We also introduced legislation that changed the GI Bill. We have
soldiers, in the units that I served with, in the 34th Division who
served the longest tour of duty in the war of Iraq of any unit in the
U.S. military, 22 months. These are the same soldiers that, 14 months
previously, served a tour of duty in support of Operation Enduring
Freedom, the war in Afghanistan. And the way the GI Bill is written,
these soldiers have been gone for 4 years. Many of them signed up for a
6-year commitment. Their commitment is coming to an end, and at the
same time, their benefits. They would have been able to use their GI
Bill had they not been out fighting a war to defend America, had they
not been doing what they were asked to do, and because of that they
were losing their benefit. Previous Congresses took no action to
correct that. This Congress did. That's taking care of our veterans.
That's not only standing in front of them for photo opportunities, it's
standing behind them.
I am proud to say this new Congress puts its money where its mouth
is. It truly supports our veterans. It understands that it's
bipartisan. And this is a great accomplishment.
At this point, I would like to yield a little time to my colleague
from Kentucky to talk about a few more initiatives.
Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman.
I would like to follow up on something to which you alluded because I
think it's really important. This Congress has not only taken on a lot
of new initiatives and has tried to deal with substantial problems that
face this country and our people, but it has also made up for a lot of
lost ground and a lot of inactivity in prior Congresses. And we hate to
sound partisan around here, and I know the American people don't want
us to be partisan, they want us to work together, and I think we have
tried to work together and to reach out, but the fact remains that over
the last 6 years the Congress did not do a lot of the things that it
was supposed to do. We've seen the impact in a lot of ways. We've seen
the impact on our budget, where we have increased the Federal debt, the
national debt by $3 trillion, 50 percent over the last 6 years. That's
because the previous Congresses were not doing their fiscal accounting
the right way.
[[Page H10135]]
We've seen time after time, program after program, you mentioned
veterans. We also had situations with education. We've had situations
with health care where basic research that we were supposed to be
funding has been cut. A lot of human services have been cut or zeroed
out in past budgets. So we've not only had to take new initiatives, but
we've had to make up for a lot of lost ground and programs that have
affected a lot of Americans adversely. So we've had a lot to do.
And another area we've had a lot to do, and this is, again, something
you alluded to, my colleague from Minnesota has alluded to, is that
we've had to finally provide the accountability for many of the
operations of government which have basically gone unsupervised for the
last 6 years. We've seen it time after time after time. We've seen it
in the reconstruction effort in Iraq. We've seen it in cases of fraud
and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid situations. We've seen it in the
enforcement of coal mine safety rules. We've seen it in environmental
regulations. Across the entire spectrum of government we have seen time
after time where problems in the operation of government have basically
gone unsupervised and unaccounted for.
{time} 1745
We have taken steps to do that. I hope that the American people all
have the occasion, for instance, to read the new Rolling Stone where
there is an article about all of the subcontracting, the private
contracting in Iraq, and the billions and billions of dollars which
have been lost or essentially stolen by fraudulent activities by
contractors in no-bid contracts and in sweetheart contracts given to
friends of the administration. Nobody was looking at these deals until
this Congress decided to take action and look at them. And now we have
tried to implement new contracting laws and new supervision so that the
taxpayers' dollars are accounted for. This is what the Congress is
supposed to do. This is what we're doing.
Again, it comes to me as an incredible affront for the President of
the United States to stand halfway around the world and say to the
world that this Congress is not doing what it should be doing and that
it is not functioning as effectively as the most dysfunctional
parliament in the world, which is the Iraqi Parliament. I can't imagine
what the American people would say if Speaker Pelosi or my colleague
from Minnesota, or any one of our Members went to Australia or went to
Iraq and compared President Bush unfavorably to Mr. Maliki. There would
be an outcry unheard like anything in this country. And yet the
President does it in Australia and criticizes this Congress. I hope the
American people respond with the same degree of outrage which I think
they would, and probably justifiably, if we were out there comparing
him to Prime Minister Maliki.
I would like to expand on that a little bit, just for the sake of
having fun, since the President likes to be cute and have fun when he
makes these statements. Since he was so interested in the Iraqi
Parliament, let's talk about what the Iraqi Parliament has done with
regard to some of the benchmarks that they were supposed to make
progress on. We're going to get a report from General Petraeus in a few
days. But the Government Accountability Office has already given us a
report on the progress of the Iraqi Parliament, the one that Mr. Bush
seems to appreciate so much.
One of the benchmarks, enacting and implementing legislation on de-
Baathification, nothing done. Laws were drafted, not passed. Enacting
and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of
hydrocarbon resources of the people of Iraq, none being considered by
the Parliament. Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to
form semiautonomous regions, that one they did enact a law. Enacting
and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral
Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities,
and a date for provincial elections supporting laws, not enacted.
Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty, no law
drafted. Enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong
militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are
accountable only to the central government and loyal to the
constitution of Iraq, no laws drafted. Nothing done.
So this is the great Iraqi Parliament that President Bush seems to
appreciate when he is standing halfway across the world. The fact of
the matter is, this Congress has acted. It has acted in so many areas
that I am so proud to speak of and that my colleague has done such an
excellent job of enumerating. But this Congress continues to work in
education, in health care, in the environmental issues, and, yes, in
Veterans Affairs, for the great heroes of our country to whom we made a
critical promise when they decided to give their service. We had made a
promise to them, and we haven't been keeping it. This Congress is going
to make sure that we do keep it, even though prior Congresses and this
administration is not.
So again, I am very proud of the record that this Congress has
assembled over the last 8 months. I am, again, ashamed of the President
of the United States for what he said in Australia. But I hope he will
come back. I hope he will realize that his legacy is going to depend,
to a certain extent, on how he reaches out to us and deals with us over
the next 15 months.
The Constitution begins with article 1, which vests the legislative
authority in this country in this body, not in him. Now, he doesn't
seem to have read the Constitution. With 700 or so signing statements
in which he said he is basically going to ignore what this Congress
does with executive orders, vetoes, and virtually every other
parliamentary procedure or technical procedure he can use to invalidate
the work of this Congress, I think basically he has a lot to answer
for, both to the American people and to us. The Constitution vests the
legislative authority in this body. We are doing our job. We will
continue to do our job.
I ask the President and the Republicans on the other side of the
aisle and in the other body to recognize that this is our job. We are
the ones mentioned by article 1. We are mentioned first in the
establishment of this government, and I think we will continue to act
first in the interests of the American people.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. The gentleman's point, one of the things that
is very well taken is that the genius of our system lies in the system
of checks and balances, the oversight that should have been provided.
Now, those of us who were expressing grave misgivings about the
President's plan to basically simply trust him that he had a plan for
Iraq, to trust him that he had a plan on this, and any of us who spoke
out and said, the responsibility for enacting foreign policy lies
between the Congress and the President, carrying out the military side
of it will always be done with great professionalism.
But as we ask the questions, what is the step beyond the military?
What is the step for political gain in Iraq? What is the bigger
picture, the geopolitical picture, of the Middle East? When we started
asking those questions for 3 years prior to this Congress coming, we
were told we were unpatriotic, that we were somehow undermining the
troops. Forget that we funded them in terms of the VA and everything
else at a historic level once we got here. We were told that. This
oversight and this ability to check the executive branch is exactly
what the American people are looking at.
I stress it and say it again. I do not believe that the American
public were enamored strictly with Democratic ideology. But I can tell
you what they were disgusted with; the belief of the sense of
righteousness that was coming that there could be no room for debate,
there was no room to compromise, there was no room to listen to the
experts, and there was no reason to back off and say, ``Perhaps we were
wrong.'' That's what we heard. That's what we heard for 6 years from
this administration. That's what we heard with a Congress that provided
this President no reason to veto. None. Zero. Why should he? They were
writing the legislation. The President has been using the word ``veto''
in almost every sentence since we came here. That tells me the system
is working beautifully. That tells me that the system is providing
those checks and balances.
In this idea of oversight, there are a couple of important pieces of
legislation that I would like to bring up and
[[Page H10136]]
then talk about how bills are now being written here, how laws are
being enacted, and how the rhetoric that gets to the American people is
all based on spin and politics. It is not based on reality.
The first of these is the Rail Safety Act. We had a sense in this
country over time, and it was fought for by our grandparents and by our
great-grandparents, it was fought for by every generation, to provide
safe working conditions for our workers, to provide child labor laws,
to provide good, safe ability of our people to make a living and return
home to their families at the end of a hard day. The Rail Safety Act
was to be authorized by Congress to oversee the operations of our
railroads. Well, for the last 12 years, Congress has basically said,
``We should just let the rail industry determine their own safety''.
That is pretty much how we did it with airlines prior to September 11.
``They'll provide it.'' No thought that maybe the purpose of business
is to provide returns to their investors. No thought that maybe they
would try and save a little money by cutting off safety at the expense
of what might happen. So for 12 years, we have sat around and we have
done nothing to reenact the Rail Safety Act.
This year we have already held three hearings. There will be a
reauthorization of this. I have sat in those hearings in the
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and watched rail workers
come up and talk about how many long hours they are being forced to
work, how their grievance process is held up and never listened to, how
we are simply running on borrowed time before we are going to see a
major accident, and how we have seen the data that has shown we are no
safer. I have listened to people from the railroads testify in front of
our committee and tell me how safe it was and how the numbers are
comparable to previous years. And I have to note, ``but your numbers
only went to October of last year. We had 3 more months that you didn't
include.''
``Oh, yeah, sorry about that.''
That's the type of thing that went on. The American public doesn't
expect us to take one side or another. They expect us to stand here,
look at data, be fair, work with our colleagues across the aisle, hold
firm to our convictions, disagree on issues, but do it agreeably, and
come to a consensus that works. Don't try to figure out what the
talking point is. Don't try and figure out how you can make the other
side look bad. I spend a lot of time down here watching how much time
goes in watching my colleagues make sure they say ``Democrat'' instead
of ``Democratic.'' If it weren't so sad, it would be funny. But the
problem is that's one small area that is a much bigger problem, that
it's about the message, not about the effectiveness.
The second one I want to talk about is a very important one. Maybe
many Americans don't know about it, but we have been waiting 8 years to
get a reauthorization of the Water Resources Development Act, the WRDA
bill. The WRDA bill deals with everything from transportation, clean
water, everything in this country dealing with how we work with one of
our most precious natural resources, our lakes and rivers. In my State
of Minnesota, one of the most important assets economically,
environmentally and culturally is the Mississippi River. It is
something that is so inherently ingrained in who we are as Americans
and those States that are on that river that how we treat it and how we
deal with it is critically important. Well, the locks and dams that
make Minnesota a major shipper of our grain in the breadbasket of
America are over 70 years old. They're in decay. We need to invest in
the upkeep of these. That can only be done, the locks and dams on the
upper Mississippi, through the Water Resources Development Act. We need
to pass that. We need to move it forward so that our economic vision
will extend to our children.
For 8 years, nothing was done. Nothing was invested in. And now,
today, taking it one step further, I sat in a hearing in the
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee dealing with the state of
the bridges in our country. Now, it's obviously very timely. It has
obviously been driven by the catastrophic and horrific collapse of the
I-35W bridge in Minnesota. But when you see a map highlighting the
thousands of structurally deficient bridges across this country, and I
watch the administration's representatives say, ``We've got plenty of
money to take care of this. We don't need to find a new revenue
source,'' the aversion to speaking together and taking something off
the table before we've had a chance to debate it is absolutely
something the American people will no longer tolerate. This Congress
has said, ``We need to figure out how to get these bridges funded.'' If
it is through a Federal gas tax, then let's talk about it. And if it is
through public-private partnerships, let's talk about them. If it is
through reprioritizing how we use the resources we have, let's talk
about them.
But we don't get that. What we get is slogans and radio ads talking
about Democrats want to tax. Democrats don't want to tax. Democrats
just want a country that works. This new Congress wants to have that
discussion. We have sat here and watched bill after bill after bill go
through subcommittees, committees, the full House, and minutes before
we are to vote on it, the other side brings up a motion to recommit,
which means a new piece of legislation. Most of the time, I have
already got it down pretty well, is this one immigration or is this one
felons? Which one are they going to bring up? They bring these up so
they can go to the American people and tell them, ``They didn't vote
against giving benefits to illegal immigrants.'' Well, one of the
reasons we didn't do that was because they're not telling you the whole
story. First is, it's already illegal and it doesn't happen. Secondly,
the little part of the line that they don't say is, it would totally
gut the funding of the piece of legislation we put out there.
That type of politics has the American public frustrated beyond all
belief. Those two pieces of legislation, Rail Safety Act and the WRDA
bill, should be absolutely nonpartisan. They should have maybe some
philosophical differences on how you administer that or possibly how
you pay for it. But here was the solution we had: ``Let's not regulate
it. Let's not provide oversight. Let's let the corporations themselves
do so. That's the best way to do that.''
Well, the American public has rejected that. The American public has
said, no. The American public says, We're not against regulation. We're
against excessive regulation.
{time} 1800
We are against regulation that doesn't make sense in terms of safety
and the ability of our railroads to profit. But somehow because we are
asking for these pieces of legislation to go through, that we are not
supportive of economic growth, is ludicrous, especially on the WRDA
bill.
Everybody agrees that the WRDA bill will be a major economic driver.
It will put billions of dollars into the economy in terms of rebuilding
and rehabilitating the locks and dams and other resources, as well as
speeding up the transportation time. The Mississippi River has such a
bottleneck near St. Louis that we can barely move cargo through that.
We have an aging infrastructure, bridges that are unsafe, roads that
are clogged.
The solution from the administration, they are talking about
congestion pricing. That means we will charge a higher toll on roads
that are busy in order to force people off them. I guess they assume
that some of us are just driving around in the mornings, not taking our
kids to school, not going to work; that we just like driving and
clogging the roads. So the best thing is those of us who can't afford
us, get us off the roads so those lanes will be nice and wide open for
the people who can afford to pay to go down them.
The American public said that is not a solution. Get something else
and debate it. That is what we are trying to do.
Now I would like to take a minute to explain to you how I believe and
what I have seen and what I was hoping when I left that high school
classroom, when I came to this building, when I came to this sacred
floor, how I was hoping legislation would work. I live in southern
Minnesota. It is one of the most productive agricultural lands in the
Nation; in the world, I should say.
The county I live in is called Blue Earth County. People on the
prairie are pretty literal. When they call towns Plainview, that is
because that is what you see. When they called that
[[Page H10137]]
county Blue Earth, that is because the soil there is so black and so
rich that when the sun shines on it on the summer days, it literally
looks blue. This is land that can produce 200 bushels an acre of corn.
This is land that feeds the world.
The farm bill is an important piece of legislation to that district
but also across the country. The farm bill is a big piece of
legislation that has historically been very, very bipartisan. That is
because 66 or so percent of the farm bill deals with nutrition
programs; how we feed our children in schools, how we feed our seniors,
how we feed those who are not fortunate enough or need to use food
stamps or other programs. That is 66 percent of it.
About 12 percent deals with the safety net that keeps our farmers in
business, that provides this country the cheapest, most abundant,
safest form of food at the least expensive disposable income of any
nation in the world. That farm bill does that. It also provides things
like rural development. It also provides conservation measures.
Well, here is how the farm bill was written. When I got here to
Congress and was placed on that committee, we were given the
instructions by the chairman of that committee in January to spend the
next 2 months going out and listening to everybody, holding sessions,
holding hearings, soliciting information, doing whatever you could to
let people start writing that farm bill, because here was the
directive. The farm bill would be written by the people through the
subcommittee, to the full committee, to the House of Representatives,
and then we would get a piece of legislation that we could be truly
proud of.
So we did it. I went out and held 14 listening sessions throughout my
district. It varied in attendance from maybe 50 to 150 people. It
varied from teachers to social workers, of course farmers, agribusiness
people. And as they came there, they came with a lifetime of ideas.
They came with a vision of what agriculture should look like in
America, and they wanted to be part of the process.
So they came and told me this: Congressman Walz, the average farmer
in the first district is 58 years old. We are getting old and our
children are leaving. It is very difficult to get into farming.
So groups as diverse as the American Farm Bureau and the Land
Stewardship Project and the Farmer's Union got together, and each of
them had proposed different ideas on beginning farmer and rancher
legislation. Their members came to these meetings and explained the
need for this.
We, myself, my staff, the ag committee staff, got together and helped
write legislation. That legislation was taken into and offered up in
the subcommittees as amendments to the farm bill. My colleagues on both
sides of the aisle debated both for and against this piece of
legislation and offered secondary amendments to change it, which we
debated, accepted some, rejected some. When we were done, we had a
piece of legislation that was heralded by most farm groups as a major
step forward in making agriculture accessible to future generations.
That piece of legislation got added in. It was not written by special
interest; it was written by people who care about this. Did special
interest have their say? Of course they did. Our job was to sort that
out.
Well, that piece of legislation in the farm bill happened in all the
subcommittees, and that piece of legislation was debated in the full
committee and that piece of legislation passed out of the full
committee and came to the House floor. My colleagues on both sides of
the aisle, I can guarantee you this, many of them, especially those in
farm country, said this is a good piece of legislation.
Bipartisan groups, groups that were on the spectrum of politics about
as far apart as you could get from one another, from environmental
groups to production ag groups, were saying: You know what, I think
they got it right. And then as we brought it to the floor, one of the
things that we had to do was figure out how this thing is going to be
paid through the whole process. Because commodity processes have been
high in past years, we did not pay about $60 billion in subsidy
payments, whether it be direct payments, contra-cyclical payments.
So what happened was when we budgeted under PAYGO, our budget for
this year's farm bill was $60 billion less. So when we got to the end
it became apparent, because Democrats wanted do make sure we did
something as simple as this, we let the Food Stamp Program, senior
feeding programs and some of our nutrition programs that had been
underfunded for years, we wanted to do something as simple as boost
them up to a level that people could get the caloric intake they needed
to have a healthy diet, and then we wanted to peg it to inflation to
make sure that what we put in the bill this year isn't eaten up by
inflation next year. Doing any budgeting without considering inflation,
to me, seems disingenuous.
So we did that. The way we came up paying for it was a suggestion
given to us by President Bush and his budget director. They had
identified several years ago approximately $7\1/2\ billion in
uncollected taxes from companies, in the President's own words, that
were inappropriately using the U.S. Tax Code to shift their tax burden
by shifting profits to offshore entities, mainly in the Caribbean,
Bermuda being the one, meaning foreign corporations doing business in
America, making a profit here, shifting that profit to Bermuda
and reporting zero in tax liability.
The President said it was inappropriate, as did his budget director.
We agreed with him. We closed that loophole, asking them to do the
thing that is most American of all, pay your fair share and take that
money, put it in to enhance our nutrition programs.
Well, that was unacceptable because now that is considered a tax.
That was the rhetoric that was coming. So now a decision has to be
made. Are the American public, when they listen to this farm bill that
needs to pass, and, by the way, we told them in January that we would
have it done by the end of July, and there wasn't a single person that
thought that was possible. Well, it was done. It was done by the end of
July. We took it home.
I went to Farmfest, Redwood Falls, Minnesota to wide acclaim for this
piece of legislation. It is not perfect. Nothing here is. It is a
compromise. But it is a good one. It is good for rural America. It is
good for our nutrition programs. It is good for our economy.
Well, that thing is now under a veto threat by the President. So the
President has a decision. He can stand in front of the American public
and say ``I am going to veto a really nice piece of legislation that
was worked on from the grassroots level,'' exactly how you would hope
the American democratic system works, ``and I am going to veto that
because I believe that those foreign corporations have the right to
avoid paying their taxes,'' or he can tell the American public, ``You
know what? This was worked on bipartisanly, this was done correctly,
and we should vote together on this.''
We should tell the American public, this isn't about politics. This
isn't about trying to get a campaign ad that says the Democrats are
trying to raise taxes. This is about doing the right thing that we can
all take credit for. That needs to happen. Now I would say the ball is
in the President's court. The ball is in his court when it comes from
the Senate to do exactly that. This Congress will continue to do that.
The last thing I would like to talk a little bit about is this new
direction. One of the things that I think Democrats are rightfully
proud of, it is the first piece of legislation many of us got to
cosponsor, that was the small business tax relief and the raising of
the minimum wage.
This piece of legislation, we know it has been over a decade since we
saw a raising of the minimum wage. Some of my colleagues say, what's
the big deal? I have got many names and many stories I could tell them
why it is a big deal to raise the minimum wage, why the 3 million
children living in families with parents with minimum wage, it is
probably a pretty big deal to them.
But part of the story is focusing on the small business tax relief.
The rhetoric that will come out is always one or the other, either/or,
the false dichotomies. ``Well, Democrats are for raising the minimum
wage, but they are not for helping business.'' Nothing could be further
from the truth. In fact, we passed this and it was signed into law.
[[Page H10138]]
Here are a couple things that it did, just to let you know. It was
endorsed, by the way, by the Chamber of Commerce and the National
Federation of Independent Businesses. I don't hear my colleagues on the
other side talking a whole lot about this. I think they should. It
would be a good one for them to talk to their constituents about.
It extends a tax provision that lets small business owners write off
more equipment each year for use in their trade or business,
understanding that small businesses have a need for the infusion of
capital purchases and things that they need to get started with their
business, making sure they are able to write those off. Absolutely
appropriate, absolutely the right use of the Tax Code, and absolutely a
sense of investment in the future.
If we give these tax cuts, and some of them are pretty substantive,
about $4.84 billion total, it ensures married couples who jointly own a
small business both receive credit for paying Social Security and
medicare taxes.
I am at a loss to understand why over the last 12 years of Republican
control that was never fixed. This is a pretty important fix, and it is
one that small businesses understand is important. It includes enhanced
tip credit to ensure employers don't lose current tax benefits when the
minimum wage goes up; S Corp provisions to keep tax benefits of being a
small business even as they grow and expand; and extends the Work
Opportunity Tax Credit through August of 2011.
These are things that are going to impact positively on small
businesses. Seventy percent of our jobs are created in small
businesses, employers with 50 or less employees. Those are the things
that we have taken to do.
So those who would say nothing positive is being done, this Congress
is not moving anything forward, would be remiss to look at the facts,
what the facts have been. The most significant increase in veterans
care that we have seen in the 77-year history, probably I think it is
safe to say in this Nation's history; an ending of a 10-year period
without a raise to the minimum wage for millions of American workers; a
small business tax package that is going to enhance their ability to
compete in the world; an ethics reform package that independently has
been hailed as one of the most significant since Watergate, to bring
back the dignity, to bring back the trust of the American people in
this institution.
You heard some of the things about energy, focusing on energy
independence. We have got a farm bill that is going to be one of the
best we have seen. And when the President decides he is going to choose
our farmers over foreign companies that avoid paying taxes, we are
going to get a great farm bill.
We have got a Water Resources Development Act that is going to
enhance our ability to compete in the world while adding billions of
dollars in investments to our infrastructure.
We are going to clean up the Rail Safety Act. We have seen packages
to education to make college more affordable, the most significant
increase to Pell Grants. We have cleaned up what has been an absolute
debacle in private lending, moving away from government-subsidized,
low-interest loans to get our children through college by saying, gee,
we have this vast pool of American kids who need to go to college to
compete. Why shouldn't we profit from that? Why shouldn't we let
private lenders make a whole bunch of money of them? That would be a
good thing to do.
Now, that is quite a difference from what she said when I went to
school, when future generations invested in me and said we are going to
keep college as affordable as possible. We are going to make sure we
use grants as much as we can, and we are going to make sure that the GI
Bill can be used by these young people who are willing to sign up and
they are able to get their education. That was wisdom. That was vision.
That was nonpartisan.
Many of those accomplishments can be attributed to ideas coming from
the Republican side of the aisle. Unfortunately, for the last few
years, that hasn't been the case. But we have got a new direction. We
have got a new optimism.
As I started speaking today, I talked about the changes each one of
us have seen. We have been here for 8 months. In my home State of
Minnesota, I am happy to tell you that I think I have witnessed change
that all us want to know.
On August 19, as we talked a little bit about it, my district saw
some the worst flooding that they have ever seen; 17 inches of rain in
a 24-hour period. We had entire towns wiped out, towns of 2,500 to
3,000 people. I went into that town riding on a boat as people were
leaving their second story windows as people were picking them up. We
have seen catastrophic displacement of large numbers of people.
As I said, on Sunday, the rains were falling, and I was there with a
Republican Governor. On Monday, a Republican Senator and a Democratic
Senator, a Republican Governor and a Democratic Congressman toured
together and promised to do everything that was possible. On Tuesday, a
Republican President was in Minnesota pledging to the help of the U.S.
Government. On Wednesday, a Republican Governor requested that help.
And on Thursday, the administration delivered on that. By Sunday, FEMA
was in the district caring for our people, taking care of the needs,
and showing that, you know what? When we work together, there is
nothing this Nation can't accomplish.
I am proud to be a member of this new class. It has been 8 months of
change. The new direction we are going in is one that the American
public wants.
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