[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23649-23654]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Boozman). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is 
recognized for half the remaining time until midnight.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
address the House again. Unfortunately, we are missing a couple of our 
standard-bearers who are usually here, our two Members from Florida, 
the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and the gentlewoman from Florida 
(Ms. Wasserman Schultz), who are down dealing with the hurricane and 
the storm down in Florida. So we want to send out to them our thoughts 
and our prayers. We are thinking about them and their constituents and 
all the citizens of Florida at this time. And we are glad they are down 
there where they should be, with their constituents.
  I would also like to say hello briefly, Mr. Speaker, not only to 
those citizens of Florida but some friends of mine who are paying 
attention to what is happening here tonight and good friends of mine 
who are back in Ohio now, Bill and Molly Gales, who are watching us, 
paying attention, trying to understand some of the issues of the day, 
and I would like to give a shout out, Mr. Speaker.
  But let me say this, Mr. Speaker, we spent the last hour listening 
to, quite frankly, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of empty rhetoric. And 
normally the 30-something Group comes out and we talk about and 
criticize and critique the performance of the Republican majority. And 
I want the American people to understand this: the Democrats do not 
have any power in this Chamber.
  The Republican Party just spent the last hour blaming the Democrats. 
Like we had any lever of government to pull. The Republican Party 
controls the House by a large margin. They control the Senate. And the 
Republican Party controls the White House. They control every 
legislative and executive branch of government in the United States of 
America right now, Federal Government. So to look over here like we are 
the ones running these huge budget deficits is an absolute joke.
  I would like to say, my friends on the other side who were talking 
about saving money and controlling the deficits that are projected as 
far as the eye can see, $500 billion, I would like to say to our 
friends, Mr. Speaker, go to www.Thomas.gov and you can get the votes 
for two particular votes that I think the American people and Members 
of this Chamber would be interested in. Go check out H.R. 1, this is 
www.Thomas.gov, H.R. 1 in the 108th Congress. That is the prescription 
drug bill. That is a bill that spent 700-plus billion dollars on the 
Medicare prescription drug program and did absolutely nothing to 
control the costs of drugs by allowing for reimportation from Canada 
that would drive the costs down, or allow for the Secretary of Health 
and Human Services to negotiate with the drug companies on behalf of 
the Medicare recipients. Both of those provisions were Democratic 
provisions that went to drive down the costs of the prescription drug 
bill because we would be able to control the costs.
  Now, my friends on the other side who have spent the last hour being 
so critical, I find their names on the ``aye'' column. There were only 
25 Republicans who voted against the prescription drug bill. So the 
Republicans passed a prescription drug bill full of pork that did not 
control costs.
  Before I yield to the gentleman, let me first give him a formal 30-
something welcome. Do not let the gray hair fool you. This guy is 39\1/
2\. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Delahunt).
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio. Before I 
begin to comment, let me say that over the past several months I have 
had a chance to observe the gentleman and the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Meek) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz). 
They have done an extraordinary job in reviewing what is happening in 
America.
  It is an honor to join the 30-Something Group. I think in terms of 
honesty, I would have to disclose that I am a bit over 30. In fact, if 
you allow me, I am two members of the 30-Something Group because in one 
body you get 30 times two and maybe a little more.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We are going to have to implement the same rule 
that we had to implement when the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone)

[[Page 23650]]

came. The gentleman is going to have to pay dues twice to the 30-
Something Group.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I see. I know the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone). We share the same alma mater, Middlebury College in Vermont. 
I know that I graduated a decade or so before the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Pallone).
  Mr. PALLONE. Is the gentleman sure about that?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. I think so.
  Mr. PALLONE. The gentleman looks good.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Because we are here to be honest, because in the 
previous hour I think what we heard tonight from our friends on the 
other side an attempt at humor. I do not think that they were being 
dishonest. I think that they were just demonstrating a great sense of 
humor because I heard the term ``fiscal responsibility'' as I was 
watching their conversation, and I really laughed out loud.
  I do not know if the gentleman from New Jersey saw it like I did, but 
if the Republicans in this House and in the other branch and the White 
House represent fiscal responsibility, we are in serious trouble. 
Because I remember when the gentleman and I were here during the 
Clinton administration when President Clinton left. My memory is, and 
the gentleman can help me because I am a little older, there was a 
surplus in excess of $5 trillion. And maybe the gentleman can tell us, 
is there still a surplus after the Republicans have run this 
government?
  What we have today is a single-party state, and what has happened? It 
certainly is not, in my judgment, and I think we probably share this 
conclusion, it does not reflect fiscal responsibility. What it does 
reflect is an appetite to borrow money and then to spend it.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right. The 
amazing thing to me when I was listening to the Republicans in the last 
hour is when they were trying to make the analogy to their households 
and talking about their kids. And one of the Republican Members talked 
about how he went down to the candy store and you could only spend what 
was in your pocket, and that is what we want to do here. And I was 
saying, these guys on the Republican side of the aisle have been 
building up deficits ever since President Bush came into office.
  How do they have the nerve to even talk about making the analogy with 
their households and going to the candy store when from the day that 
they arrived they have been increasing the deficit?
  Mr. DELAHUNT. With all due respect to my friend from New Jersey, I do 
not think that he realizes what they meant. They really meant that they 
would send their kid down to the candy store with a credit card because 
that is how they have run this country, on a credit card. It is borrow 
and borrow and borrow and borrow and you know what? Sooner or later 
that credit card gets maxed out. And the next thing if you are a family 
or if you are an individual, you are down at the bankruptcy court. That 
is why I say when I heard the term or the sentence that ``we are the 
party of fiscal responsibility,'' then I knew they were joking. I 
really did. And I started to laugh. That was a great punchline.
  Mr. PALLONE. I know the gentleman says he is older than me and I 
question that. I know I have been here longer than he. I remember when 
I first came down in 1988, there were a group of Republicans who would 
come down and do Special Orders every night, and they had the pages 
come out with this digital clock that really was the length of this 
dais here, and every night they would talk about the deficit and how 
they wanted to cut the deficit and the deficit was climbing too high.
  That is just all completely out of the window. All they have done now 
is increase the deficit.
  I have statistics here that this budget resolution which they were 
going to vote on last week and now they so far cannot get the votes for 
it, and hopefully they will never get the votes for it that they were 
talking about, will increase the deficit by more than $100 billion over 
5 years. By contrast, the House Democratic budget achieved balance in 
2012.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. It is just another example of a great sense of humor on 
the part of our colleagues on the other side on the aisle. They gave us 
and the American people who were watching this evening a real good 
belly laugh. Fiscal responsibility? Please.
  Mr. PALLONE. I wanted to respond to one thing the gentleman said 
because he took us back to the Clinton administration and the last 2 or 
3 years when we had a surplus. Not only did we have a surplus because 
we had a balanced budget but the economy was booming. Jobs were being 
created left and right. I do not care if you were rich or you were 
poor, things were getting better. But President Bush comes in and he is 
elected and he says, the answer to the economy is we are going to cut 
taxes. And the taxes were cut mostly for wealthy people and corporate 
interests and special interests that were helping the Republicans with 
their campaign finance. And that was supposed to be the answer to the 
economy.
  Well, I will say, I have this briefing paper from the Economic Policy 
Institute, which is a bipartisan group. This is not a Democratic 
organization. And they are talking about the boom that was not. The 
economy has little to show for the $860 billion in tax cuts under 
President Bush. As the gentleman said, we went from a surplus of 
something like 2 or $300 billion. Now just the opposite, a deficit that 
is two or three times that.
  And they come to the conclusion in this report, I just want to read 
this one section, it says: ``Almost every broad measure of economic 
activity, gross domestic product, jobs, personal income, and business 
investment among others, has fared worse over the last 4 years than in 
the past cycles. Proponents of this series of major tax cuts since 2001 
have projected that gauges such as these would reflect improvements 
after enactment.''
  In fact, the opposite has occurred. Not only have we created a huge 
deficit under the Bush Republican administration, but all the 
indicators of economic activity have gone down. So where this 
Republican philosophy has just created a dynamic that has really ruined 
the economy, it is not completely ruined, we are getting along, but by 
every economic indicator things were better in the last few years of 
the Clinton administration.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I agree with the gentleman 100 percent. The study 
that the gentleman just referenced, the Economic Policy Institute, the 
30-Something Group is all about third-party validators. This is not the 
Meek or Ryan or Delahunt or Pallone Institute. This is the Economic 
Policy Group, a nonpartisan economic study group saying that the tax 
cuts were bogus.
  A couple of our friends on the other side said, well, the projected 
budget is going to be $100 billion or $80 billion less than what they 
thought it was going to be because the tax cuts are actually working.

                              {time}  2230

  What they fail to tell you is that a loophole has been closed. It 
sunsetted out last year. So there was a tax put on a small business, 
people, that raised money to the tune of $80 billion. Do not come in 
and mislead the American people. It is not the tax cuts that are 
working. The tax cuts are not working.
  Go ask the workers at Delphi if the tax cuts are working. Go ask the 
workers whose wages have been stagnant the last 30 years if the tax 
cuts are working. They want to talk about we want to raise taxes. They 
are spending money on the country's credit card, as my good friend has 
said.
  Real quick, I just want to clean this up. The two bills I want our 
friends, other Members, to go see, go to Thomas.gov. H.R. 1 in the 
108th Congress was the prescription drug bill which we were lied to 
about the original price, was supposed to be $400 billion. Then they 
came back months later and said it was $700 billion, no controls on the 
price. Go to the 108th Congress, H.R. 1. Then go in the 109th Congress, 
Thomas.gov, H.R. 3893, our energy bill.
  Our friends that are so concerned with reining in spending, the 
Republican House passed a bill that has given

[[Page 23651]]

billions of dollars to the oil companies, and BP's profits today came 
out 34 percent higher this quarter.
  I mean, give us a break. The rhetoric is done. You try to dust off 
the rhetoric from the 1980s and put it in today's society, and it just 
does not work because it just does not make any sense. If you can hear 
and see and think, you know what they are saying on the other side is 
not making sense.
  What the Democratic proposal is is to balance the budget; is to 
implement PAYGO, which means if you spend money, you have got to pay 
for it, one way or the other. Our friends, the Republican majority, 
that started out with this big Republican revolution that I think has 
ended up in a Republican devolution, would not pass the PAYGO rules. We 
have a plan, you go to the House Committee on the Budget, to balance 
the budget. We retain middle-class tax cuts for working people.
  I am not afraid to stand up and say I am going to ask Bill Gates to 
pay a little more in taxes. I am not afraid to say it. I do not think 
that is a bold political move, but the wealthiest people are the only 
ones in this country who have not been asked to sacrifice in some way 
to pay for the two or three wars that we have going on and the greatest 
natural and national disaster this country has ever seen.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I think when we hear our friends on the 
other side talk about the economy is growing, well, the economy is 
growing. The question is who is benefiting from that growth, and the 
answer is very simple. It is a very small segment of the American 
community. It is the top 1 percent, the top 5 percent. Their income is 
going up; but remember this, the median income for a family of four in 
this country that is directly in the middle, it is not an average, it 
is directly in the middle, has in fact gone down since the Bush 
administration came to power. There are today in absolute numbers and 
percentages more Americans below the poverty line.
  So what we have is an economy today that is eroding the middle class 
and is creating a Nation and a society where a very few, a small 
segment, is doing quite well and everybody else is slipping behind.
  What we have or what our friends would do is, they support ironically 
a welfare program, a welfare program for pharmaceutical companies; a 
welfare program for large energy companies; a welfare program, by the 
way, for Iraq, not for the United States, but for Iraq, because here is 
what we are doing in Iraq. We are building schools. We are building 
primary health care centers. We are educating teachers. I see the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) has a chart there that 
illustrates this.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield briefly, 
I just want to share a third-party validator that we have as we 
continue talking about welfare in the United States and what it is 
being spent on. This is by Cal Thomas, who writes a column.
  Cal Thomas, as most of you may know, is one of the conservative 
columnists in the country. In his column this week, he says, ``Seventy-
two percent of farm subsidy money goes to 10 percent of recipients, the 
richest farmers, partnerships, corporations, estates and other 
entities.'' Cal Thomas, third-party validator says too much money going 
to the big farmers, and this is a big welfare State. What is Cal 
Thomas' advice to the 30-somethings and the House of Representatives? 
Cal Thomas says, ``Here's a suggestion: don't start with the poor. 
Start with the rich.''
  Cal Thomas, one of the top conservatives in the country, is telling 
the Republican Congress, the Republican Senate and the Republican 
President, start cutting the welfare programs for the richest people in 
this country.
  We have been pinned into a corner in this country where the people 
down in New Orleans and those people who do not have and the middle 
class are somehow to be blamed for our huge deficits when 72 percent of 
ag money, ag subsidies are going to the top 10 percent of the farmers.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to say one thing, and then I want 
to lead into the issue of this budget reconciliation that we want to 
talk about tonight.
  I wanted to go back to what my colleague from Massachusetts said 
about how, since the Bush administration came into office, the fiscal 
policy benefits wealthy people and is at the expense of the middle 
class. There is no question that is true.
  I would venture to say that the Republican fiscal policy is really 
stupid for everyone because the bottom line is that in the last few 
years of the Clinton administration, when we had a surplus and we were 
balancing the budget, everybody was getting richer. The richer were 
getting richer, the middle class was doing better, and the poor were 
doing better.
  I do not even think if you are wealthy you are doing better under 
Bush. You are doing better than the rest of the guys because the rest 
of the guys are suffering, but the irony of it is, in the last few 
years of the Clinton administration, the economy was booming so much 
that everybody was doing better. I do not even care if I were the 
wealthiest person in the world, I do not see how I benefit under this 
administration ultimately, because if the economy does not grow the way 
it did in the boom years of the Clinton administration, nobody 
benefits. It is true, of course, that it is primarily for the benefit 
of the wealthy. There is no question about that.
  What I wanted to stress tonight, and all that we do is that the 
Republicans now have gone even further. Now they are saying because 
they have to pay for Katrina, they want to do this budget 
reconciliation, which is another sort of round of budget cuts; and 
those budget cuts are primarily at the expense of poor people and 
working-class people rather than the wealthy.
  What we are seeing is all the programs that might benefit middle-
class people, working-class people or poor people, whether it is 
student loans or it is health care or it is housing, are all being cut; 
and those cuts directly impact the hurricane victims. Rather than going 
after wealthy individuals or cutting benefits of programs that might 
benefit wealthy individuals or corporate interests, they are simply 
cutting programs for poor people and working people. That is simply not 
right.
  As my colleague from Massachusetts was saying, the irony of it is 
they are increasing the deficit in order to give more tax breaks for 
the rich and for the corporate interests. At the same time, they are 
increasing the deficit by paying for Iraq because none of that is paid 
for. None of the war reconstruction in Iraq is paid for; and if you 
look at these charts, as you were saying, you can see that the very 
cuts that are being proposed in programs here in the United States, in 
many cases money is being spent in Iraq, deficit spending, to do the 
same things in Iraq that are being cut here.
  I do not want to go through the whole thing, but if you look at 
health care, $10 billion in Medicaid cuts are proposed by this 
Republican budget; $252 million in cuts for health care professionals; 
$94 million in cuts to community health clinics in the U.S. In Iraq, we 
get 110 primary health care centers built or renovated, 2,000 health 
educators trained, 32 million children vaccinated. You can go through 
this whole list.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I just 
want to make a point.
  The money that is getting cut, and we understand that reform needs to 
take place and our friends on the other side have not been willing to 
do it, but to cut $94 million in community health care and community 
health centers, that is preventative medicine. That investment is 
ultimately going to save our country money and save our health care 
system money because those people who will not have access to the 
community health care centers will end up in an emergency room a week 
or two later.
  Instead of going to the community health center with a cold, they are 
going to go to the emergency room in downtown Youngstown or East 
Hartford, Connecticut, or wherever they are living, and they are going 
to walk in

[[Page 23652]]

with pneumonia; and it is going to cost the taxpayer more money. That 
is poor management. That is not smart. That is silly. No businessperson 
would make that investment.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I think another aspect of this 
conversation ought to be informing the American people and our 
colleagues that while we are doing such things as building 6,000 miles 
of roads in Iraq, constructing 2,500 new schools or rehabilitating 
existing schools in Iraq, we are not going to see a single dime of 
those American tax dollars come back because we all were here when the 
money for those initiatives was appropriated. Democrats stood on this 
floor and said let us make it a loan; let us allow the American 
taxpayer to be paid back for these billions of dollars that they are 
investing in Iraq.
  The Republican White House, the Republican majority said no. This is 
the same party who about an hour earlier was talking about welfare. 
Tell me, Mr. Speaker, can you imagine this kind of a welfare program 
being sponsored and promoted by a party that claims to be fiscally 
responsible?
  We talk about welfare reform. This is a giveaway of extraordinary 
proportion; but you know what, we will not do this in America. We will 
do it in Iraq.
  Guess what happened? There are layoffs occurring, as everyone knows, 
in Louisiana, in Mississippi, because the tax base for municipalities 
has been destroyed.

                              {time}  2245

  They are laying off firefighters, emergency responders, and teachers. 
Some school districts that formerly employed 2- or 3,000 educators no 
longer have schools that are operating. They have layoffs.
  So what are these communities doing? They are calling on the Federal 
Government for help. You know what the Federal Government is saying to 
them? We cannot give it to you, but we will loan it to you. We will 
loan it to you. In other words, if you are in Iraq, we are going to 
give it to you. What a giveaway. But here in America, no, you have to 
have matching funds if you are a community. The State treasurer down in 
Louisiana said, we asked for a grant, and they said, no grant, but a 
loan. But if you are in Iraq, because of the action of the Republican 
majority and the White House, they said, no, we will just give it away.
  The United States taxpayer is rebuilding Iraq, and they will never 
see a dime come back. If they are serious about Operation Offset, I am 
sure that we could work out a unanimous consent agreement where we 
would go back and renegotiate with the Iraqi Government and say, we 
will give you favorable terms, and we will not charge you an arm and a 
leg in terms of your interest; but at some point in time, that money 
has to come back to the coffers of the United States Treasury because 
we cannot carry you.
  Do you remember Paul Wolfowitz saying this will not cost anything? 
They have those massive oil reserves that will fund the reconstruction 
of their country. They were wrong on that like they were wrong on the 
weapons of mass destruction, and like they were wrong on al Qaeda, and 
like they have been wrong on so many different issues. But if you want 
to see welfare, go to Iraq. You will see an American welfare state 
operating today in Iraq.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I could not help but remember within a few 
days of the hurricane when President Bush gave a speech, I think from 
New Orleans, and he talked about how they were going to reconstruct the 
city and provide all of these programs and benefits, and none of it has 
happened. It sounded like he was doing a reconstruction program like in 
Iraq, or the Marshall Plan after World War II. Now they are proposing 
cuts in all of the programs that would actually benefit people.
  It is not just poor people. If you look at the things that we are 
mentioning here for the U.S. versus Iraq, I talked about health care. 
The Republican budget would cut $9 billion in student loans, $806 
million from No Child Left Behind. That is for all Americans. On the 
other hand in Iraq, they rehabilitated 2,717 schools, and 36,000 
teachers and administrators were trained.
  Even the environment, everybody breathes the air and drinks the 
water. In the U.S., the Republican budget has a $200 million cut in 
clean water State revolving funds, and opens ANWR to oil drilling. In 
Iraq, we spend $1 billion for safe drinking water, $4 million for 
marshland restoration. Everybody is drinking the water and benefiting 
from environmental infrastructure.
  It is just really Americans versus Iraqis, and I am not saying that 
we should not help the Iraqis in some way. I did not support the war, 
and I still oppose the war, but I do not mind spending some money to 
help rebuild Iraq, but it is not fair to spend all of this money on 
Iraq and cut money for Americans.
  Look at the infrastructure. In the U.S. under the Republican budget, 
$336 million is cut from the Army Corps of Engineers, including funding 
for the levee construction in Louisiana. It is no wonder the levee 
gave. We did not keep it up. There is a $2.3 million cut from Amtrak; 
high-speed rail funding is eliminated. In Iraq we are rehabilitating 
the canal system, including repairs to levees, and rebuilding the Iraq 
railway line.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, why should the American taxpayer be 
reimbursed? Why should we be carrying that burden? If they are serious 
about Operation Offset, let us renegotiate. We are the only country, 
the only major donor country, other than, I think, maybe Japan, that 
did not insist on providing reconstruction dollars on a loan basis. We 
are not going to be paid back.
  And here we have Donald Rumsfeld in March 2003 saying, When it comes 
to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will 
turn first to the resources of the Iraqi Government and the 
international community. Hogwash. Hogwash.
  Mr. PALLONE. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) talked about 
prevention before in the context of health care. It is not just Iraq 
versus America, it is the fact that these cuts are plain stupid. We 
talk about prevention in terms of health care, by eliminating community 
health centers, people go to emergency centers, and it costs more. An 
argument could be made if we did not cut funding for the levees in 
Louisiana, we may not even have had the crisis there.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Basically what we are trying to say is that the 
Republican majority in the House and the Senate are not only spending 
American, hard-working taxpayer dollars to subsidize the most 
profitable industries in the country, the oil industry, the 
pharmaceutical industry and the top agricultural, the megafarms. Not 
only are they doing that, welfare for corporations, and Democrats are 
for ending corporate welfare. Not only have they provided a welfare 
state for Iraq where we are not going to loan them the money and get 
the money back, welfare to corporations, welfare to Iraq, and then we 
are cutting the programs that just may lead to economic growth in the 
United States. We have to jump-start this economy, and we are not going 
to do it by cutting one of the great investments of high-speed rail. 
What a great program for United States of America.
  When I was in China, I went to Shanghai. They had a magnetic 
levitation train. It is the only one in the world. It goes almost 280 
miles an hour. You are standing up and you are drinking your coffee. 
Why is that in Shanghai and not in the United States of America?
  Look at some of the cuts from the Republican Study Committee. Loans 
to graduate students, $840 million in cuts; eliminate the National 
Science Foundation math and science program grants.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from Ohio 
(Mr. Ryan), you go to Iraq if you are a student and go to school. If 
you are an Iraqi and you qualify, you get a grant. If you are an 
American, you have to pay your own way.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And tuition is going to double in 5 years.

[[Page 23653]]


  Mr. DELAHUNT. Is this Alice in Wonderland, up is down and down is up?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, how about this for short-sightedness. 
We are going to cut the Centers for Disease Control. Everybody is 
talking about the avian flu. We do not know what to do. People are 
making requests of the administration. I am sorry, but government is 
the problem, unless somebody needs something. And I am sorry, but the 
Republican majority has had this House since 1994. They have had the 
Senate since 2000 or 2001, definitely since 2002, and on and off 
through the 1990s, and the White House since 2001. They cannot govern.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone) makes a very good point about investment. There was just 
completed in Iraq, in Mosul, a magnificent dam. From every source that 
I am aware of, it is purported to be extremely well engineered, and it 
is a dam that will hopefully serve the Iraqi people well. Good for 
them. They benefit from the welfare state funded by American taxpayers. 
But you know what? It was reported in the New Orleans Times Picayune, 
which is the paper down there, that last year the funding for levees in 
New Orleans was reduced. In other words, a levee that may have 
prevented the magnitude of the disaster that befell New Orleans and 
Louisiana could possibly have been averted, and we would not be looking 
at a $60 billion bill. But oh, no, the government is the problem.
  Well, if the government and the Army Corps of Engineers had the 
funding, possibly, possibly, those levees and the issues of flood 
control could have been addressed in a timely fashion. But no, what we 
hear is government is the problem.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the budget bill that they want us to vote 
on, the one we were supposed to vote on last week, cuts funding for 
levees again, not necessarily the one in New Orleans, but other levees 
in Louisiana. This is part of the funding cuts. They want to cut levee 
construction now. This is not the same one that fell in New Orleans.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, there was a dam up in Taunton, 
Massachusetts, in a district that is represented by the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) that was on the verge of collapsing and 
inundating a city of some 50,000 that would have been a disaster. But 
do not worry if you are in Iraq, particularly if you are in Mosul, you 
are well protected. You are well protected because you have a brand new 
dam funded by the American taxpayers. Thank you to the welfare program 
of the Republican Party for our friends in Iraq.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I used this analogy last week, and I cannot 
help but repeating it again. Soon after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. 
invasion, a couple of our Republican colleagues went over there. Maybe 
it was within 6 months of the U.S. invasion. It was in September of the 
year after. They had just come back, the Republican colleagues had just 
come back from Iraq, and they had been there on the first day of 
school. I will never forget because I was on the floor waiting to do a 
Special Order, and three or four of my Republican colleagues, they 
brought back with them the book bags and the pencils. They had these 
book bags that were in blue, and they had emblazoned on them the seal 
of the United States with the eagle. They were so proud of the fact 
that every Iraqi school child on the opening day of school had received 
a book bag with the seal of the U.S., pencils, pads, all kinds of 
things, free of charge.
  I had just come back from approximately the first day of school here 
in the U.S., and I had just been to a teacher event at one of my local 
schools, and the teachers were complaining that the pencils and paper 
were not provided there, and they had to actually go out, the teachers, 
and buy pencils and paper and pads and crayons for the children because 
they were not provided at our public school in my district.
  The pride that was on the faces of my Republican colleagues for all 
the wonderful things we were doing in Iraq, and I kept saying that was 
very nice, but we do not have those things here in my district. It is 
not right. It is not fair. I am not saying again that we should not be 
helping the Iraqis, but it is just not fair that they get this help and 
we do not.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, how about helping our kids? How about 
helping our elderly? How about helping our disabled? How about 
protecting our cities? We talk about a strong America. A strong America 
begins at home. That is really what it is about. Right now, given what 
is happening to our economy, given all of the problems that are 
besetting our Nation, it is time that we focused on the United States 
of America, all of us together. Together we can make America a better 
place for every citizen.

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the decisions that 
we need to make have to be focused on what is best for the country, not 
what is best for one's political party; and I think that has really 
been the problem. It seems to me that every decision that is made down 
here by the Republican majority is what is best for the Republican 
Party, not what is best for the country. And it is time we start 
choosing the country over the party if we want to have some success.
  And just go through everything that has happened. Everything that has 
happened with the majority leader has been an attempt to secure power 
for the party and not do its best for the country. Let us look at the 
CIA leak and the corruption that is going on. To out a CIA agent 
because their husband disagreed with them on the war is choosing their 
party and protecting their party over what is best for the country.
  And to make cuts in programs that would invest in the American people 
and lead to economic growth instead of listening to Cal Thomas, who 
says cut for the richest people who are getting corporate welfare, they 
do that because they could then raise money for their party. And if the 
Republican majority keeps choosing their party over the country, then 
the country becomes weak; and a strong America starts right here at 
home.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, 
can I pick up on the corruption theme. I am the ranking member on a 
subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations. Its 
title is the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. We have not 
held one hearing after repeated requests to exercise our oversight 
responsibility into an unprecedented level of corruption in Iraq.
  In Iraq, billions of dollars are missing. In fact, the defense 
minister of Iraq made this statement, that this is the greatest robbery 
of all time. There is in excess of $1 billion missing from that single 
ministry. I guess there was one contract where they bought some tanks 
from Poland that were 28 years old, 28 years old, to the tune of $230 
million; and they cannot find the contracts. And the current Iraqi 
defense minister is saying all we have are scraps of paper and scraps 
of metal.
  I found it particularly interesting listening to Fox News where there 
were two colonels who were very hawkish in their attitudes that 
described the situation in Iraq in terms of corruption as totally out 
of control. That is the biggest scandal of all, because here tragically 
today was memorable in the reality that there have been 2,000 American 
servicemen killed; and we all, Republicans and Democrats, join our 
fellow citizens in our sympathy to the families of those 2,000 as well 
as to the tens of thousands of American service men and women and 
others including Iraqi civilians and Iraqi members of their defense 
force that have been wounded and maimed for life.
  But to think that this rampant corruption going on under the auspices 
of the Coalition Provisional Authority is not being reviewed and 
examined by the subcommittee with jurisdiction is absolutely an 
abrogation of our responsibility. They are afraid of it. They will not 
look into it. They will talk about it, but it is absolutely crying out 
for review.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, 
one

[[Page 23654]]

of the things that the 30-Something Group has been talking about, and 
it relates directly to what he said, is this idea that there should be 
a bipartisan commission in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And it 
is the same principle that the gentleman from Massachusetts brought up, 
that they just do not want any kind of investigation of themselves.
  The Republicans control the White House, the Senate, the House of 
Representative. They know there are problems that came out of Hurricane 
Katrina. They know they are responsible. They do not want any 
investigation by a bipartisan commission because they do not want an 
investigation of themselves. They are afraid of what it is going to 
reveal. And that is the problem around here. They do not want 
oversight. They do not want accountability. They do not want any kind 
of effort on a bipartisan basis, which would happen with the 
gentleman's subcommittee, because it might reveal that they have 
basically created a lot of problems and screwed up on a lot of things. 
That is what they are against.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is another 
example of the extreme Republican majority in this House choosing their 
party over the country. They do not want to find out what the truth is, 
although that would be best for us to fix the problems that we had with 
Katrina and then be able to respond to the next problem that we may 
have, whether it is a terrorism attack or another natural disaster. We 
would then educate ourselves.
  But to not give the Democrats subpoena power to try to fix the 
problem because they hired all of their cronies in the top 8 or 10 
positions in FEMA is, again, what is best for their party, not what 
necessarily is best for the country. And the Democrats are providing, 
time and time again in committee, on the floor, with amendments, with 
ideas, whether it is lend the money, whether it is reduce the cost for 
prescription drugs, whether it is strip the billions of dollars in 
subsidies that went to the oil companies, the Democrats have always 
provided an alternative, a change, to take the country in another 
direction. And that is what the Democrats are for.
  Let me real quickly give the e-mail address here: 
[email protected].
  I would like to thank our dual Member from Massachusetts and our 
Member and a half from New Jersey. With that, Mr. Speaker, I say this 
is not your father's 30-Something Group.

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