[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20236-20242]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 TWO AMERICAS LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from California 
(Ms. Lee) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, first, let me just remind those who are 
listening tonight that there have always been two Americas here in the 
United States. I was quite taken aback right after the very recent 
catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina that reporters and many individuals 
kept commenting that this is not America, we do not know this place, 
this cannot be America. But my response consistently has been, this is 
the America that I know and this is the America that brought many of us 
here to Congress.
  By race or class, there are two distinct and separate societies 
surviving on sheer will and determination here in our own country. It 
just does not make sense that the richest, most powerful Nation in the 
world has some of the poorest, unhealthiest, and most vulnerable people 
in the world. In many ways, Hurricane Katrina has brought to light the 
shame that the United States really, quite frankly, has tried to sweep 
under the rug for decades.

[[Page 20237]]

  Now, the Congressional Black Caucus has represented this hidden 
America for nearly 40 years in this Congress. The Congressional Black 
Caucus has consistently worked to eradicate poverty throughout our 
country. Just look at the disparities agenda put forth by the 
Congressional Black Caucus under the leadership of our great chairman, 
the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt). Whether it is 
unemployment rates, whether it is health statistics, whether it is 
statistics as it relates to decent and affordable housing, the gaps are 
glaring. The disparities are glaring.
  The disparities of poverty severely and disproportionately affect 
African Americans and people of color in our country. Let us just for a 
minute, and I put this chart up here so we can look at the poverty 
rates right now in the United States and where they were in 2000, in 
2000, 11.3 percent was the poverty rate, increasing every year to 2004, 
which, of course, the Census Bureau has just put out, 12.7 percent, and 
it is climbing.
  So who are the poor? Newsweek magazine, and I hope everyone reads 
Newsweek this week, September 19, and what Newsweek says. Let me read a 
paragraph from that article where it describes who the poor are: ``With 
whites making up 72 percent of the population, the United States 
contains more poor whites than poor blacks or Hispanics. In fact, the 
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that the increase in 
white poverty in nonurban areas accounts for most of the recent uptick 
in the poverty rate, but only a little more than 8 percent of American 
whites are poor.'' That is 8 percent compared with 22 percent of 
Hispanics and nearly 25 percent of all African Americans, 25 percent in 
a country that is 12 percent black. That is the point that we need to 
make, that people need to understand.
  So those naysayers who say we are playing the race card, which we are 
not, they need to look at the facts. They need to look at the 
disproportionate numbers of Americans living in poverty who are African 
American and who are Hispanic. The facts speak for themselves.
  We are going to talk tonight about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on 
people who are poor and who did not have the money to leave and to 
evacuate, most of whom happen to be black. We are going to talk about 
that tonight. I hope those who are listening and watching understand 
that this America that many of us here understand and know, these two 
Americas that unfortunately we have been faced with, is one of the 
reasons why we fight each and every day against the budget cuts, 
against the tax cuts, against putting unnecessary resources into an 
unnecessary war.
  That is why many of us here are here tonight as members of the 
Congressional Black Caucus, as Americans, as Members of Congress to 
really call to the attention of the American people the huge impact of 
poverty, the disproportionate numbers of individuals who happen to be 
black and Latino in our country. Here we have the greatest, most 
industrialized, most technically developed country in the world; and we 
have this unbelievable number of American citizens who are poor.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), 
who has been all of his life a warrior, a fighter for the poor, who 
organized the Poor People's Caucus here in Congress and who will talk 
to us now with regard to why he has embraced this agenda as his life's 
mission.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California 
(Ms. Lee) and also thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine 
Brown), who has been working on this issue.
  First of all, I want to continue the discussion that the gentlewoman 
has been a leader on since she arrived in Congress. There are a few 
things that I want to add to this discussion because we have to speak 
truth to this great tragedy.
  The first understanding that we have to arrive at is that many people 
in New Orleans were in dire straits before the hurricane and the 
mishandling of the hurricane and floods ever occurred. We are talking 
about a poverty that is so devastating that many of us, including 
myself, come in and out of New Orleans and never see what is really 
going on.
  Mr. Speaker, 84 percent of the folks there are African American and 
poor. We have a tragedy that was waiting to happen. Ever since 
President Lyndon Johnson made the first efforts against a war on 
poverty, which was aborted shortly after that, we have neglected, 
generation after generation, to address this problem.

                              {time}  1645

  So the second thing that I would make clear to everybody is that New 
Orleans is not just the only place that there is such devastating 
poverty that it shocks one to know what it is. When we go to many other 
parts of this country, there are huge places of depressed areas, of 
deprived people, of great suffering, of high unemployment, of tragic 
failings, and hope is missing in a lot of these places.
  So what we are doing is speaking not only about Katrina and New 
Orleans, but we are really talking about this condition of poverty that 
spreads across this entire country. And we are now forced, with the 
classic tragic mishandling of the flood, and this is the first time in 
the President's public career that he has ever admitted that, because 
of this Federal bungling, that the responsibility is at his level. Now 
I can suggest to the Members that one of the reasons that he is doing 
this is that his ratings are now lower, that in seven previous 
administrations no second-term President has ever been in the situation 
that he has. Whether that will change what we do remains to be seen. It 
may be another Rove tactic to get him to go up, but this discussion 
precedes what the President is going to say almost at the same time 
tomorrow. What he says will tell us where we are going and what they 
do.
  At the same time that we are getting ready for the President's mea 
culpa, let us remember that there has been nobody here talking about 
rolling back the Medicaid cuts and the food stamp cuts and other 
restrictions. Those are quietly going forward at the same time that we 
are saying we have got to do more. And this is not just about volunteer 
help, which we are grateful for, and corporate contributions. We are 
talking about the government dealing with this problem.
  The last point is that we now have a plan in progress in which the 
Halliburtons are now coming not only from Iraq but all over to begin to 
take over the reconstruction efforts. From our members in Mississippi 
and Louisiana, we find that there are no plans for the small 
businessmen to participate in the rebuilding. So this is a major issue 
which requires us not just to get the President straightened out. We 
have got a budget that will take us into an absolute no-way-out trap if 
we do not really change the terms of what we are doing.
  Poverty is now being challenged. We might not be here were it not for 
the revelations that have been made by most of the press. And for us to 
be unaware that the black and the poor in this country are now the 
victims of one of the most federally bungled cleanups in America, we 
have gotten rid of the FEMA Director, but that is only the tip of the 
iceberg.
  Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.
  Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman please 
explain to me, because I quite do not understand it. I heard what he 
said about the Halliburtons of the world. But could he explain why 
minorities and women, the people that are most affected by this 
hurricane, cannot participate in the recovery.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, because these are no-bid, multimillion 
dollars contracts for which they are not even eligible to bid; and then 
when they subcontract them out, they subcontract them out to other 
large corporations and not to the small business people who can best 
contribute and bring the economy back together.
  Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida. Just a follow-up, Mr. Speaker.
  Can he give me the criteria, how they participate? Is it some kind of 
campaign contribution? Is there some kind

[[Page 20238]]

of criteria? I need to be able to go somewhere and tell my small 
businesses who want to participate how to participate. Whom do they 
have to write the checks to?
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, what I am trying to do is draw the 
parameters of where we are today. Today, we are not dealing with the 
people on the ground that can be of the most help. We have business 
people, construction people, who actually could be helping, and they 
cannot get in the door because they do not have the answers to the 
gentlewoman's questions of where do they go. I have been trying to call 
the Mayor of New Orleans, and he does not have a phone. Only cell 
phones, and everybody in America is probably calling him on those one 
or two phones.
  I commend the leader of this Special Order.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Conyers) for his comments.
  Let me just say I believe, unfortunately, that this Congress and the 
administration suspended the requirements to include minority- and 
women-owned businesses in the upcoming contracts, which to me is 
appalling and unacceptable; and we need to go back and repeal what they 
repealed.
  Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine 
Brown) to come forward and make her statement.
  Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, let me commend the 
congresswoman for her leadership in this area. Let me commend the 
Congressional Black Caucus for their leadership; and I also want to 
commend the American people, because the American people have come 
forward, the private businesses, the private organizations.
  What has been blatantly clear to all Americans is that the Federal 
Government has been missing in action. We have two Americas. It is 
tragic. We have one black. Yes, I said it, black, African American. One 
white. One rich and one poor, and the poorest Americans are still the 
most vulnerable. We need to ensure that all Americans, regardless of 
where they live, can find a quality of life and work.
  This hurricane has put a spotlight on the tragic situation that 
exists with this administration, and I call it reverse Robin Hood, 
robbing from the poor and working people to give tax breaks to the 
rich. I am going to repeat that. Reverse Robin Hood, and I have said it 
over and over again. Robbing from the poor to give tax breaks to the 
rich. That has been the policy.
  There are two things that I want to discuss today. In light of the 
hurricane, why are we doing away with Davis-Bacon? And, two, why are we 
doing away with affirmative action contracting programs?
  Almost as disturbing as this administration's horrible response to 
the hurricane is their suspension of all labor rules for hurricane-
related contracts. Just like in the past, the Bush administration is 
taking every opportunity to destroy organized labor but has taken it to 
a new level by suspending all affirmative action programs in 
contracting. This is a new mandate by this administration, and it will 
do absolutely nothing to ensure quick or better service for those 
suffering from the hurricanes but will certainly ensure that none of 
them are involved with rebuilding their homes and communities. The very 
same people whose tax dollars will be paying for the reconstruction 
will be shut out of the opportunity to participate in the cleanup.
  Just like in Iraq, where we never had any oversight, we cannot afford 
to see the repeat of this situation in the gulf States. And let me say 
again, Iraq, no oversight, over $1 billion, no accountability. If this 
had been a Democratic administration, somebody would be in jail, and 
certainly the Congress would be investigating and investigating, and 
there would be hearings and hearings and hearings.
  Nothing, nothing goes on in the people's House. The only thing that 
we do is vote on somebody's courthouse. No discussions about the issues 
of the day. If it was not for this Congressional Black Caucus, no 
discussion.
  As always, President Bush talks the talk. In fact, I have come to the 
conclusion that our government is a paper tiger. We talk the talk, but 
we do not walk the walk. He and his political cronies continue their 
assault on minorities and the working poor, while lining the pockets of 
their political cronies and filling their campaign coffers.
  Lo and behold, whom do we see getting the biggest contract in the 
cleanup of the hurricane? I heard one of my sisters last Tuesday night 
ask the Secretary, the Secretary that was here, can anybody do any 
business with the Federal Government other than Halliburton? A $588 
billion contract, no bid, no opportunity for anybody else to 
participate. If I am incorrect, please somebody speak up. None other 
than Dick Cheney's Halliburton. So while the poor in Louisiana, 
Alabama, and Mississippi suffer from Federal neglect, Dick Cheney and 
his cronies keep getting rich. I said it. If Hurricane Katrina's high 
winds, rain, and furious power were not enough, the Federal 
Government's inadequate response to this tragedy just adds gasoline to 
the fire.
  I want to take a moment to thank the people locally in my area of 
Jacksonville. We have sent over 18 tractor trailers full of goods and 
services. Goods. I asked them to give me their wish list, and 
everything on their wish list we filled. And, in fact, I got a call 
today. We have got another one filled, and we are getting ready to send 
it to Mississippi.
  And let me tell my colleagues something. People from Mississippi and 
Louisiana are calling me. To this day no one has been to their 
community. They do not have communication. They do not have water. They 
do not have lights. What is the problem in the richest country in the 
world? We are not a third world country. We still have not gotten 
services to these local communities.
  As I bring it to a close, remember to whom God has given much, much 
is expected. We cannot continue to run around the world talking about 
our fighting for democracy, fighting for our neighbors, when we do not 
fight right here at home for the people who pay the taxes. We have got 
a lot of work to do in this Congress, and it is not just passing a bill 
naming a post office.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). The Chair would 
remind Members that personally offensive references toward the 
President or the Vice President are not permitted under the rules of 
the House.
  The gentlewoman may proceed.

                              {time}  1700

  Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, on that question, I 
understand I cannot discuss their personal motives, but I understand 
that I can raise their names.
  This inquiry should not be on the time of the gentlewoman from 
California.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). The gentlewoman is 
reminded that innuendo relating to personal pecuniary gain by the 
President or Vice-President is improper under the Rules of the House, 
as I am being informed by the Parliamentarian.
  Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I did not understand what 
you are saying, sir. Would you repeat what you just said?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman will continue with her time.


                        Parliamentary Inquiries

  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman will state her inquiry.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman just stated a rule that is 
unclear. The gentleman was questioned by the gentlewoman from Florida 
about the rule. The gentlewoman basically said, are you saying we 
cannot refer to the President of the United States or to the Vice 
President of the United States? I would like clarification on the rule 
that you attempted to describe.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Parliamentarian informs me that the rule 
of the House does not restrict reference to policies of the 
administration, including criticism or critique, but prohibits 
personally offensive references,

[[Page 20239]]

including accusation or innuendo of malfeasance.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry. I do not 
want to take away the time of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Lee).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman will state her inquiry.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to know if indeed it is a 
fact that the Vice President of the United States receives a salary in 
the form of deferred compensation from Halliburton which, in turn, 
received a no-bid contract to do the cleanup work for Katrina, are we 
prevented from saying that on the floor of the House?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman has not stated a 
parliamentary inquiry.
  Ms. McKINNEY. I thank the Speaker. That means we can speak about 
these kinds of things.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members should refrain from personally 
offensive remarks related to pecuniary gain of the President or Vice 
President. That is improper under the Rules of the House.
  The gentlewoman may continue. Thirty-seven minutes remain.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Davis).
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman 
from California for yielding. More importantly, I want to thank her for 
her passion, her leadership, and her dedication to trying to make sure 
that America does in fact become the land that we often hear about but 
the land that we have not yet experienced.
  Katrina has pulled the cover, in a real sense and in many ways, off 
the whole question of poverty, which is something that we do not talk 
about nearly enough. We often talk about other kinds of issues and 
other kinds of things, but very seldom do we get to the core of it in 
terms of saying that poverty continues to be a major problem for a 
large segment of the American population. As a matter of fact, we saw, 
and people have already indicated, individuals who did not have enough 
resources, could not put together enough money, did not have 
transportation money, who simply could not get away, who could not get 
out of the path of the oncoming hurricane because their purses were 
empty.
  But they are not empty only in New Orleans. When we look across 
America, we see large population groups. I think of young men, for 
example, in my city, the City of Chicago, the city that we call the 
``city of the big shoulders,'' a city where more than 50 percent of all 
of the young African American males between the ages of 16 and 22 do 
not have a job, do not go to school. How could there be anything other 
than poverty in a situation like that? I run into individuals in their 
early 30s who have never had a job in their entire lives, never had a 
job, who automatically then become a part of the underground economy in 
many of these areas where we see concentrations of poverty.
  I was hoping that we would use this opportunity, but it is clear that 
that is not the direction in which we are headed. This provides us with 
a tremendous opportunity to develop massive training programs for 
individuals so that they can go back and rebuild their own communities, 
rebuild their own homes. They could develop the skills, and they could 
experience something that they have never done before in their lives: 
They could have a job. They would have the opportunity to work.
  But even if they get the opportunity, are we saying that they can be 
paid less than minimum wage in some instances? Where they are almost 
put back into a slave-like condition, where they are working but at the 
end of the week have not earned enough for basic food, shelter, and 
clothing?
  So I am afraid that not only is the mishandling something that 
happened immediately, but it looks as though we are going to mishandle 
the rebuilding and the reconstruction and the redevelopment of those 
affected areas.
  So I join with my colleagues in suggesting and calling for a real 
effort on the part of the administration to make sure that those 
individuals get a chance not only to live, because a fellow named 
Thomas Wolf said something once: ``To every man his chance, his golden 
opportunity, to be and to become whatever his talent, manhood, 
ambition, and hard work will combine to make him.'' And, of course, if 
Wolf was around today, he would probably say ``him and her,'' or ``her 
and him.'' That is supposed to be the promise of America, and that is 
what we call upon the American people to make sure comes out of the 
tragedy of Katrina.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois for 
that very eloquent statement.
  Let me just say in reference to the comment made by the gentleman 
from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) earlier and the gentleman from Illinois 
(Mr. Davis) in terms of the President taking responsibility, which he 
just said he would take, I think it really warrants us to ask the 
question, why was he so irresponsible early on in responding to this 
great tragedy? And that answer has to be gotten, I think, for all of us 
to be able to understand the direction in which he is going to move. 
Tomorrow he is going to talk I think about his plan and response, but I 
would just hope that he would talk about his plan to eradicate poverty 
by the year 2010, and that is what many of us are working toward.
  I would like to now yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Waters) who all of her life has worked to eradicate the conditions 
which give rise to this very obscene and immoral condition which so 
many millions of Americans live in.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Lee) for organizing us this evening to talk about 
poverty. As a matter of fact, I know that the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Lee) had already began to organize around the issues of 
poverty and had been trying to focus us for some time to really get 
involved in unveiling what is going on in America. And, despite the 
fact that there are so many competing interests and despite the fact 
that not enough Members of Congress have the courage to talk about 
poverty or race or class, Katrina has brought us face to face with what 
is wrong in America.
  As we stand here today with this picture from Newsweek, with this 
child's face, this baby's face with the tears running down, the 
caption: ``Poverty, Race, and Katrina: Lessons of a National Shame,'' 
we are forced to have to deal with these issues of poverty, race, and 
class.
  There was an interesting debate going on when this hurricane first 
struck. The journalists would say to African American legislators, did 
race have anything to do with this? They were looking for the 
confrontation, helping to draw out the right-wing conservatives so that 
they could say what they normally say when we begin to describe what is 
wrong in America: Ah, there they go, playing the race card again, or 
trying to marginalize someone when they dare to get up and talk about 
race, poverty, and class.
  Well, what is interesting about this discussion is every journalist 
who confronted an African American legislator raised the question until 
finally I said to them, you are asking this question so often, you must 
know something. You must know something that you want to talk about. Do 
you think this is about race? And so I say to my colleagues I have 
decided, based on what has happened with this horrendous disaster, that 
we must talk about class, race, and poverty.
  As a matter of fact, as I sat in my bedroom watching the 20,000 or 
more people sitting outside the convention center and I heard the head 
of FEMA, Mr. Michael Brown, say that he did not know they had been 
sitting there for 3 days, they were without water, they were without 
food, they were without lights, and that coming on the heels of what 
had happened in the dome where the evacuees were placed, no 
electricity, toilets not working, food ran out, water ran out, I got up 
from my seat and caught a plane and went to Louisiana, because I could 
not sit there any longer watching what was happening to the most 
vulnerable people in the world.
  Going there, going to these shelters, going to the Louis Armstrong 
Airport,

[[Page 20240]]

watching people suffering, thousands of people without water, without 
food, without medical care, old women in wheelchairs who needed their 
medicine, people with diabetes and high blood pressure and the morgue 
that was being placed right there in the airport to accommodate the 
people who were dying on the sidewalks, I decided that it may not be 
politic to talk about race or class or poverty, but, Mr. Speaker, when 
I came to this place, I came to talk about those issues, and I decided 
that I, too, had been organized by the right-wing and others not to 
confront the issues in ways that I know I feel deeply about.
  So I do not care what happens and from whence it shall come. In 
addition to everything that I do, call me whatever you want to call me, 
say that I am playing the race card, say whatever you want to say. I am 
going to talk about race, I am going to talk about poverty, and I am 
going to talk about the class issues of America.
  We are brought face to face with these issues, looking at what 
happened in New Orleans. The population of New Orleans is 448,000 
people; 67 percent of the city's population is African American. About 
27 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The city's 
median household income is $27,514. Two in 10 households in the 
disaster area had no car, compared with 1 in 10 nationwide. About 4.5 
percent of the disaster area received public assistance. Nationwide, 
the number was about 3.5 percent. In 2000, New Orleans had the fifth 
highest poverty rate and the fourth lowest household income of major 
American cities.
  In the lower ninth ward neighborhood, which was inundated by the 
floodwaters, 98 percent of the residents are black, and more than a 
third live in poverty. Sixty-five percent of these families are one-
parent families. The housing in New Orleans is much older than the 
national average, with 43 percent built in 1949 or earlier, compared 
with 22 percent for the United States and only 11 percent of them built 
since 1980, compared with 35 percent for the United States.

                              {time}  1715

  New Orleans public schools are 93 percent black; 55 of the State's 78 
worst schools are in New Orleans. The State of Louisiana rates 47 
percent of New Orleans schools as academically unacceptable, and 
another 26 percent are under academic warning.
  About 25 percent of New Orleans adults have no high school diploma, 
and we can go on and on and on. Louisiana has the largest percentage of 
children living in poverty, 30 percent.
  Louisiana and Mississippi have the highest infant mortality rate in 
the Nation, 10.3 percent per 1,000 births. Louisiana and Arizona have 
the biggest teen dropout rate in the Nation. Well, as we travel around 
the Nation and we take a look at poverty, today we are talking about 
New Orleans, but let us take a look in St. Louis, Missouri, let us take 
a look in Philadelphia, let us take a look up in Harlem, let us take a 
look in Appalachia. Let us take a look at poverty in America.
  We cannot continue to place our heads in the sand. Why do we have 
this poverty? Why it is that public policy no longer discusses poverty, 
race, and class? It is because the right wing conservatives have been 
very successful at silencing those of us who should be discussing it.
  They have pulled every trick in the book. They have their talking 
heads on Fox Television and other right wing stations that are 
basically undermining us and basically denigrating us whenever we talk 
about these issues.
  But, ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that we are going to have 
to do this, not only for ourselves but for America. The attitudes that 
have come out of this hurricane, the President's mother, Mrs. Barbara 
Bush, said the people in the Dome were disadvantaged anyway, they were 
better off.
  Attitudes. You know, people want us to say the President went into 
the White House and said, we are not going to go to New Orleans to help 
the black people. No, we are not saying that. We are not saying that it 
is that obvious, that it is that overt. It is about attitude. It is 
about the kind of attitude that drives your actions.
  When you have Barbara Bush saying, well, they are better off. People 
who are dying in the Dome, people who are dying outside of the 
convention center, they are better off, so why should we care? I mean, 
it is that kind of attitude that leads to the kind of policies and the 
kind of marginalization that leads to a lack of concern and resources 
for the people who so desperately need it.
  Attitudes. We have one of the Members of my committee that I serve 
on, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker), who said God had done 
what we had not been able to do in getting rid of public housing. 
Attitudes that lead to the kind of decisions that result in racist 
actions.
  In addition to all of this, we find that there are things still going 
on in Louisiana that we thought we would never see again in life. There 
were a group of people who were told to cross a bridge to get to safety 
and to high land.
  These African American women and men, for the most part, with a few 
whites with them, started across the bridge to a little town called 
Gretna, I believe. And they were met by the police officers with guns. 
And they shot their guns over the heads of women and children, mostly 
African American women and children, and said, get back over to New 
Orleans, this is not the Superdome, we do not want you over here. You 
cannot come over here.
  And for those people who managed to get past them at the end of the 
bridge, they came and they took their food and their water away from 
them and drove them back on the other side of the bridge.
  Ladies and gentlemen, I would not be worth my salt if I did not 
direct my attention to these atrocities. I would not be worth being 
elected to the Congress of the United States of America if I did not 
stand up for the least of these and the most vulnerable of these.
  We have seen the face of poverty. It was reflected in a profound way, 
people trapped and died because they did not have transportation. 
People died because they did not get rescued. Their government let them 
down. People said do not point the finger. How many fingers do I have?
  I am pointing them all. Because in addition to whatever mistakes were 
made at the local and the State level, in the final analysis, we have 
the most powerful government in the world, and they let the people 
down. They let the people down even though we had the resources, we 
have the helicopters, we have Navy bases. We found a Navy base over in 
Alexandria, Louisiana, England Air Force Base, that is boarded up that 
has 450 rooms, dormitories, that are not being used.
  We had ships fully equipped with all of the medical equipment right 
there right off the coast. Unused. We have the resources. We have the 
National Guard. We have the money. We have what it needs.
  Now, people want to ask me, did it happen because of race? I submit 
to you that when you have the kind of attitudes that speak like the 
President's mother, Barbara Bush, who spoke like the gentleman from 
Louisiana (Mr. Baker), who acted the way the police officers acted that 
drove my people back across the bridge shooting guns over the heads of 
women and children, that results in racist acts.
  It results in the kinds of decisions that marginalize, that deny, 
that cause people to die and to be harmed unnecessarily. And so poverty 
is an issue that we must pay attention to.
  Today, we are focused on New Orleans; but tomorrow, we have got to 
focus on poverty all over the United States of America, whether we are 
talking about New Orleans or any of the other cities that many of us 
represent.
  I am grateful to be able to be in good strength, and I am grateful 
that I have found my courage again, the courage to do what we should 
always do. I am so grateful that I am resigned, and I have resolved 
that this Congress is going to hear about this day in and day out.
  Never again shall I find myself in a position where I am crying and 
lamenting after the fact. I have got to be in the faces of those who 
make public policy. I have got to use my influence. I

[[Page 20241]]

have got to do everything that I can possibly do.
  The President of the United States does not back up. They are in our 
faces. Yes, Mr. Speaker, he gave another no-bid contract to 
Halliburton. We have criticized him time and time again about 
Halliburton and the fact that they stole our money in Iraq, they 
cheated us. But they do not back up. They stay in our faces with their 
policies, and we have got to stay in theirs.
  Ms. LEE. I want to thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) 
for that very clear and powerful statement also. If there was any doubt 
who was left behind in the Gulf region, I think the entire country 
knows now who was left behind.
  Let me yield now to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney).
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to 
commend my sister colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), 
for introducing comprehensive poverty legislation of which I am a proud 
cosponsor.
  It is high time that we talk about poverty; and when we talk about 
poverty, I would like for everyone to see this beautiful black face, 
this beautiful black baby, who has a tear rolling down her cheek, which 
epitomizes in so many ways the conditions of Black America which now 
have been revealed for all of the world to see.
  But I came down here not to take very much time, but to say to my 
sister colleague that she said she was not going to play the race card.
  Well, you do not have to, because the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. 
Baker) already has, if the reports from The Wall Street Journal are 
correct. And so I would just like to read into the Record what it is 
that The Wall Street Journal says that the gentleman from Louisiana 
(Mr. Baker) had to say.
  He said, according to The Wall Street Journal: ``We finally cleaned 
up public housing in New Orleans. We could not do it, but God did.''
  Now, when the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) made that comment, 
he was talking about that baby. And there are some of us, some of my 
colleagues outside of this body, who are very concerned about what the 
gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) had to say.
  But I also know that the mainstream media do not always get it right. 
So I would like to hear publicly from the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. 
Baker) to see if this is exactly what he said and what he meant.
  Because, if it is, I can guarantee you there will be many people who 
will have something to say to him. The public policy we make here is 
all about attitudes, and when you have got this kind of an attitude 
making public policy, you cannot help but have tear drops rolling down 
the faces of America's children.
  Ms. LEE. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney) 
for her very passionate statement and for asking the tough questions, 
as she always has and will continue to do.
  I would like to now yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis). 
We all know that poverty knows no boundaries. We see high incidences of 
poverty all over our country in rural and in urban areas.
  We know much of your community is a rural community steeped in 
poverty.
  Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Thank you for organizing this Special Order 
tonight. Because our time is limited, I want to make my remarks 
suitably brief. But I want to pick on something that has been a theme 
of what I have heard from a lot of my colleagues in the last several 
minutes.
  We have talked a lot, appropriately, about the question of national 
will in this country of ours, and I am reminded that several hours ago 
we passed a resolution on the floor honoring a woman named Rosa Parks 
who was a seamstress in the city I was born in, Montgomery, Alabama.
  When Rosa Parks made the decision to stand up by sitting down, by 
refusing to give up her seat on the bus, my grandmother was a 46-year-
old woman who lived in Montgomery; my mother was a 12-year-old child. 
And they both vividly remember at times when they were escorted or 
asked to leave the front of the bus, to go to the back.
  And in that generation of Americans, there was a certain percentage 
of people who felt that, well, it is just the way it was. There was a 
certain percentage of people who felt that racial segregation, 
separating people based on color, was just in the fabric and the 
atmosphere of what we were as a country.
  And when the Rosa Parkses of the world asserted themselves, a lot of 
people dismissed their effort. A lot of people said that it is a 
quixotic venture.
  And here we are 50 years later with a whole lot of political power 
for this community, a whole lot of an ability to stand here and to talk 
about these kinds of questions. We are a long, long way from the 
Montgomery, Alabama that Rosa Parks and my mother and grandmother lived 
in.
  What has changed about that 50 years is our will changed as a 
country. Our sense of what we would and would not tolerate changed over 
a period of time, and that which seemed tolerable many years ago, all 
of a sudden came to be seen as intolerable. It is my sincerest hope, as 
a Member of this House, that when our time is long done, when the 
youngest of us here have left this body, that some group of Americans 
will look back and they will say that we managed to take these 
questions of poverty, impenetrable, cutting, wounding poverty, off the 
table, that we somehow managed to find a way to build enough of a net 
in this country that everyone who tries to build a family has a maximum 
opportunity to do it, that we managed to build enough of a net in this 
country that when anyone gets sick, that we find a way to give them a 
quality of care, that we found a way to build enough of a net in this 
country, so that if there is an ambition in our children, the ambition 
will always be rewarded.
  The hope that I have is that we will one day reach a point where 
these kinds of questions come off the table, just as the question of 
what side of the bus you can sit in came off the table. If we are going 
to get to that point, it will require a lot more than the reaction to 
Hurricane Katrina.
  It will require a lot more than the reaction to the Gulf that was 
exposed in New Orleans. It will require a sustained commitment to be 
serious about these questions. It will require a sustained commitment 
to talk about issues of day care for working mothers, issues of health 
care for indigents, issues of exclusion for all kinds of groups who 
have been marginalized in America.
  But I think those things are within our reach. The reason I think so 
is because I think that we have the capacity as a country to come back 
to a vocabulary and a dialogue of national greatness. We have the 
capacity as a country to talk about a vision that will make America 
great, that will not simply be based on the force of our arms, that 
will not simply be based on our intercontinental ballistic missiles, 
but will be based on the quality of the institutions that we build.

                              {time}  1730

  I will end by mentioning someone that I know inspired many of my 
colleagues in this body, Robert F. Kennedy, the Senator from New York 
who died seeking to change the country by winning the presidency.
  He often ended his speeches by saying, ``Some men see things as they 
are and say why? I see things that never were and say why not?''
  That has to be the constant challenge of all the Members of this 
institution who style themselves as progressives. The constant 
challenge has to be that we will see a range of visions, a range of 
opportunities and quality of life for our people that we have not 
previously seen and that we will have a national will to move toward 
that time.
  So I thank the gentlewoman for organizing this event. I thank my 
colleagues for speaking.
  In the final seconds I have here today, I will simply make the point 
that all of our citizens in this country ought to understand that we 
are impacted when some of our people do not share in the same circle of 
opportunity, but yet they are working and striving and pushing 
themselves every day to

[[Page 20242]]

do it. That exclusion and that absence does not just wound African 
Americans, it does not just wound Latinos, it wounds everyone in this 
country that shares our national identity.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his statement also 
raising the need for sustained commitment, because that is what this 
country and the President must do and develop a plan to eradicate 
poverty by 2010.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson).
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Lee) for her bill, H. Con. Res. 234, to require the 
President to immediately present a plan to eradicate poverty by 2010. 
Her resolution is indeed timely.
  Hurricane Katrina has rubbed away the scar tissue from a festering 
national wound which is poverty and the growing economic divide that 
continues to afflict our great Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, only a few weeks ago, the U.S. Census Bureau released 
its annual report on poverty income and health insurance coverage. The 
report documents that poverty rose by 1.1 million people from 2003 to 
2004. The number of Americans without health insurance also rose from 
45 million in 2003 to 45.8 million in 2004. Shame.
  The facts presented by the Census Bureau report are incontrovertible. 
Poverty is on the rise throughout the United States of America, and let 
me briefly cite a few other startling facts taken from the latest 
Census report.
  In 2004, 37 million Americans lived in poverty, up by 5.4 million 
from the previous year.
  More than one in six American children now lives in poverty.
  The poverty rate for African Americans was 24.7 percent in 2004. The 
poverty rate for Hispanics stood at 21.9 percent for the same year.
  The real income of American households declined in 2000 among all 
income groups.
  In my home State of California, 13.2 percent of its residents, or 4.4 
million people, currently live in poverty; and 18.5 percent of 
Californians, or 6.7 million people, do not have insurance coverage.
  The U.S. Census report is not the only recent document that details 
the growth of poverty in the United States. Today, President Bush 
addressed the opening of the United Nations World Summit on Poverty and 
Reform. Earlier this month, the U.N. released a shocking report on 
global inequality that is critical of American policies towards poverty 
abroad as well as here at home.
  Among its many startling conclusions, the U.N. report reveals that 
infant mortality has been rising in the United States for the past 5 
years and now is the same as Malaysia. America's African American 
children are twice as likely as whites to die before their first 
birthday.
  The U.N. report also notes that although the U.S. leads the world in 
health care spending, this high level goes disproportionately to the 
care of wealthier Americans. It has not been targeted to eradicate 
health disparities based on race, wealth and the State of residence.
  Countries that spend substantially less than the United States have, 
on average, a healthier population.
  For a century in the U.S. there has been a sustained decline in the 
number of children who died before their first birthday. But since 2000 
this trend has sadly been reversed.
  The U.S. is the only wealthy country with no universal health 
insurance system. Shame on us.
  The United States, along with Mexico, has the dubious distinction of 
seeing its child poverty rate increase to more than 20 percent.
  The U.S. ranked 17 out of the 18 OECD countries in the highest level 
of human and income poverty. The only OECD country the U.S. is ranked 
ahead is the country of Italy. Even Ireland ranks higher.
  Poverty is a systemic issue, and we need to move on it now.

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