[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4573]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                CONGRESS DEPENDS ON TRUTHFUL INFORMATION

  (Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, last year the Bush administration misled and 
systematically lied to the American people and to this Congress about 
the reasons why it said it was necessary to go into war with Iraq. We 
know that what they said about weapons of mass destruction, about 
nuclear weapons, about the biological weapons, we know all this was not 
true. The only question now is when they knew it was not true.
  We now learn, Mr. Speaker, that the Bush administration misled this 
Congress deliberately and knowingly misled this Congress as to the cost 
of the Medicare bill by over $140 billion. We know that they threatened 
the actuary with being fired if he gave truthful information to 
Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, we depend on truthful information to have democracy. 
Martha Stewart faces jail time for lying to the government. When are we 
going to hold this administration accountable for lying to the American 
people and to this institution so that we cannot do our work properly 
because we are working on false information? When are we going to 
appoint an independent counsel to begin to demand honesty so that we 
can represent the American people properly?

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