[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 16]
[House]
[Pages 21352-21353]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          POLITICAL APPOINTEES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, words that will be remembered for a long 
time, unless the White House can erase them: ``Brownie, you're doing a 
heck of a job.'' That was the President to Michael Brown, the political 
appointee head of FEMA, while people were drowning in New Orleans and 
in the southeast. The President was apparently unaware of the lack of 
assistance being provided by FEMA. Mr. Brown was shortly thereafter 
sent back to Washington and then resigned.
  That might be good if it was an isolated instance. Unfortunately, it 
is not. This permeates the entire 3,000 so-called plum jobs that the 
President gets to appoint without any regard to qualification.
  I mean, Mr. Brown's predecessor was the President's campaign manager 
who downgraded, demeaned, and ultimately submerged a previously very 
functional agency, FEMA, into the Homeland Security bureaucracy. Since 
then, many of the top people have left, and the agency has become 
totally demoralized, although we do find with new focus in the last 
week. Hopefully, that will last.
  Just about the same time that Mr. Brown was going down, the 
government's top procurement official, that is the person in charge of 
all purchasing by the Federal Government, $300 billion a year of 
taxpayers' money, a gentleman by the name of Safavian, was being led 
off in handcuffs by the FBI, but not before he had let out a few more 
billion dollars in no-bid contracts to the usual suspects in the wake 
of the Katrina disaster.
  He has been found to have not only perjured himself but has taken 
illegal gratuities and bribes from the now-infamous lobbyist Mr. 
Abramoff. That was the top procurement official appointed by George 
Bush.
  Beyond that, he also, of course, like Mr. Brown, had no 
qualifications for the job. He once had interned as a law student, 
helping in some minor way on a helicopter purchase at the Pentagon, and 
he jumped from there to his political associations with the President, 
to being head of all purchasing for the Federal Government.
  Basically, we have here a government run by people who disrespect 
government. They do not like government. They do not believe in 
government. Their spiritual mentor, Mr. Norquist, says he wants 
government so small that he can strangle it in a bathtub. We find out 
that people drown when government starts to get kind of small because 
government is not there to respond. Now they are backpeddling and they 
are trying to pretend, oh, that is

[[Page 21353]]

not really what it is all about, but it has been.
  Incompetence threads through so many agencies, conflict of interest, 
and there might be other things. The one thing they do respect 
government for is its ability to extract money from all the working 
people of the United States of America and put it in a place, the 
Federal Treasury, that they can raid to benefit a very few people and 
major corporations. Government is a profit center is the way they see 
it, and they have a wonderful revolving door.
  They have a fellow over at the FDA in charge of reviewing medical 
safety, 33 years old, who is a former columnist in The Wall Street 
Journal, stock analyst, right-wing think tank guru, attacking the FDA 
who is not supposed to be in charge of new drug approvals; but when a 
few very potentially profitable drugs did not get approved, he, as the 
Assistant Secretary, started leaning on the bureaucrats, the 
professionals, to say why do you disapprove that drug. Pfizer is going 
to make $1 billion a year on it; it is a great drug. So what if a 
couple of people died? They probably would have died anyway.
  So there is another fellow, Mr. Gottlieb, yet another outstanding 
appointment. Unfortunately, the government is rife with these people. 
There are too many to document, and what they are engaged in is the 
systematic looting of the Treasury of the United States to benefit a 
few, to make government less functional so it cannot serve the needs of 
the many in times of need, like Katrina, or even in less routine times 
of need, like education, health care, border control.
  They have got a beauty here. They have got a woman they want to put 
in charge of the border control of the United States of America who 
even the Republican Senators have questioned whether or not she has any 
capability, a woman named Julie Myers, another political hack. Ohio 
Republican Senator George Voinovich said he would really like to hear 
from Mr. Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, come spend a little 
time with us, tell us personally why he thinks she is qualified for the 
job, because based on the resume, I do not think you are. That is a 
Republican Senator. This is the woman who would be charged with keeping 
terrorists out of the United States of America, and that is a 
dysfunctional bureaucracy and has been for a long time.
  That is new to the administration, but it is more essential today 
than ever. We need to clean house at this administration, put competent 
people in charge so government is there when the American people need 
it and stop looting the Treasury.

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