[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 24242-24248]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be 
down here.
  This is a pretty sad day in the United States of America with the 
recent news regarding the Chief of Staff of the Vice President being 
indicted on five counts of making false statements, perjury, 
obstruction of justice.
  The 30-Something Group has been talking about for quite some time on 
this floor the culture of corruption that we have seen in this Chamber, 
on Capitol Hill, and now we have come to find that this is also 
extended into the executive branch, the Republican one-party rule. 
Inevitably when one party controls all the levers of government, 
inevitably it leads to corruption, and today we saw another taste of 
that.
  My friend from Florida is here, and before we get into the corruption 
and the cronyism that has been going on in the way that this government 
has just been corrupted, I want to talk for a few minutes about what 
our friend was saying who was here prior to us.
  I want to make this perfectly clear. The Republicans control the 
House of Representatives. The Republicans control the Senate. The 
Republicans control the White House. We have a one-party government 
here in Washington, DC.
  I find it humorous and sometimes hysterical that the other side can 
look over to the Democrats and blame us for all the big spending and 
all the deficits. They look over here and they point to my friends on 
the left. We do not have any power. We are not running the government. 
One-party rule. Take responsibility for your own actions.
  My friend who was here prior was talking about all the Democrats want 
to do is spend. The Republican majority has borrowed and spent this 
country almost all the way into bankruptcy. Our national debt just went 
to $8 trillion.
  The Republicans have controlled this House since 1994. They have had 
the White House since 2000 and the Senate on and off, but it had 
control of the Senate for the past few years. They have been able to 
implement their agenda, and they keep saying that we want to raise 
taxes.
  We do not want to raise taxes. We want to reduce spending here, as 
the rhetoric came from the other side, but we do not want to do it on 
the backs of the middle class.
  We want to reduce corporate welfare to the tune of $16 billion in the 
two energy bills. Sixteen billion dollars we voted to subsidize oil 
companies, and they are coming out with the highest profits that they 
have had in a long, long time, record profits just in the last quarter.
  We want to end corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical companies, 
$700 billion in spending on a Medicare prescription drug bill that does 
nothing to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.

                              {time}  1415

  Democrats wanted reimportation from Canada to help reduce the cost. 
Democrats wanted to give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the 
ability to negotiate down drug prices by basically going, on behalf of 
all of the Medicare recipients, to Merck and Pfizer and all of these 
big

[[Page 24243]]

drug companies, and basically say, if you want a contract, let us talk 
price. If we took 10 or 20 percent of the savings of that bill, $700 
billion over the next 10 years, if we saved 10 percent, that is $70 
billion which would pay for Hurricane Katrina. But we could save closer 
to 20 or 30 percent, which would be $140 billion of the taxpayers' 
money that we could save. We do not want to raise taxes.
  Now, do we think that we should be giving tax cuts to Bill Gates and 
Warren Buffett, and at the same time cut Medicaid, which is a health 
care program for poor kids and poor families? Meanwhile, middle-class 
America's health care is going up 15-20 percent. My God, we cannot do 
anything to help average people because we have to take care of the big 
corporations and keep the corporate welfare going.
  Let me say this before we get back to our message. This is very 
simple to connect the dots. This body taxes the American people. The 
American people send their money down here. The Republican Congress 
gives that money, to the tune of $16 billion in the last few months, to 
the energy companies. Can you imagine, your tax dollars going to 
subsidize oil companies. American tax dollars coming down here, and the 
Republican majority takes it and gives it to the pharmaceutical 
companies to buy prescription drugs for seniors; great idea, but is it 
a good policy not to do anything about controlling the costs?
  What the Republican majority does is then they go to the shake-down 
street, which is K Street where all of the lobbyists are. They go and 
shake down all the lobbyists who they just spent a bunch of tax dollars 
on, and the lobbyists who they shake down fill up the Republican 
campaign committee coffers to the tune of millions and millions and 
millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars is spent lobbying. 
This is corrupt to the core. This is not the way to govern.
  We understand there is money in politics, but to use the hard-working 
public's money that average people send down here and to give it to 
corporations is atrocious. Our good friend Cal Thomas, who is one of 
the most conservative Republican columnists in the country, said in The 
Washington Times, which is not a liberal newspaper, gives his friends 
in the majority a little suggestion: Do not start with the poor to pay 
for Hurricane Katrina, start with the rich. He goes on to say, which I 
tend to forget about, the corporate subsidies to the big 
agribusinesses, this is Cal Thomas, not the gentlewoman from Florida or 
me, this is our conservative Republican friend Cal Thomas, 72 percent 
of farm subsidy money goes to 10 percent of the recipients: the richest 
farmers, corporations, estates and other entities.
  Mr. Speaker, this is ridiculous that we are going to cut lunch 
programs, food stamps, cut student loans for average people trying to 
send their kids to school, and yet provide corporate welfare to the top 
10 percent richest farm agribusinesses, multinational corporations.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman 
Schultz).
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here with 
you again and have an opportunity to have our 30-something Working 
Group talk about the issues that are important to the average American 
today in the 21st century. We also want to thank the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democrat leader, for an opportunity to put 
together this group and have this time on the floor to talk about these 
important issues.
  This is a sad week in the United States of America. This is a week in 
which we started on Monday with my home State of Florida, my district 
in south Florida, being hit by a Category 3 hurricane, Hurricane Wilma. 
Today, 5 days later, we still have 80 percent of the people in my 
county without power. We have considerable difficulties in getting them 
ice and water. We have a Governor of my home State who has held up our 
State as the model for response to and preparation for natural 
disasters, yet if you went street by street and saw the devastation and 
asked my constituents and the constituents of Mr. Meek, if you asked 
our constituents if they think that this is the response that the model 
State should have provided, they would be ready to pull out our hair 
one by one.
  I am going back down there tonight, and I am planning to spend the 
weekend going to distribution sites and talking to my constituents.
  We have trucks and generators and lift stations, and lift stations 
still that have no power. We have the biggest city in my district, the 
city of Ft. Lauderdale, which literally is faced with a backup in their 
sewage system because we did not get generators to them. They are stuck 
in West Palm Beach. The Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA have not been 
responsive. I have people older than 85 stuck in high-rise towers with 
glass blown out of their windows and no elevators working because there 
is no power. These are people who cannot get themselves down 12 to 25 
floors.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What is the temperature?
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It has cooled down. There was a cold front 
that pushed Wilma and made her go faster, reached us right after that. 
It has not been, mercifully, hot. It has been in the upper 60s. But the 
way our climate is, when that cold front leaves, they could be hot 
again. The earliest anticipation that my constituents are expected to 
have power restored completely is November 22. This is from the model 
State.
  That is how we started out. We are talking about FEMA that is still 
woefully unprepared to respond to natural disasters.
  Let me move to the very next day, where we now unfortunately have had 
our 2,000th casualty in the Iraq war. And today, sadly, we have had the 
Vice President of the United States' Chief of Staff indicted on five 
counts, one of which was leaking the name of a covert CIA agent with 
the express, clearly the intent of advancing the administration's 
agenda that they were hell-bent on to get us into the Iraq war, because 
that CIA agent's husband had just come back from Niger and said there 
was no evidence that weapons of mass destruction were being acquired by 
Saddam Hussein and his allies in Iraq.
  So the most sinister of intentions that the Vice President's Chief of 
Staff clearly had was to continue to advance the administration's 
agenda to get us into a war that was ill-advised, that was entered into 
under false pretenses with misinformation, and now the 2,000th American 
has died as a result of that.
  When is the partisan politics and the people in the administration 
who are hell-bent on being right, hell-bent on having it their way, 
when is it going to stop? When are we going to have some bipartisan 
outreach?
  I have been here for 11 months, and it has been incredibly shocking 
to me that we have folks like the gentlewoman from Tennessee who was 
willingly lambasting a group of her colleagues on our side of the aisle 
who have no ability to do the things like she is accusing. When are 
people like her going to sit down around the negotiating table and 
agree that we can and should agree on more things than we disagree?
  It is so sad the Republican leadership in this country is only 
concerned about being right, is only concerned about having it their 
way. Clearly, as the results of this week show, they will do anything, 
will do anything including lie to the government, lie to the press and 
expose an undercover CIA agent's identity in order to have their way 
and get us into an ill-advised and unfortunate war, which now we have 
no idea how long we will be in the midst of.
  I am raising young children, as are many, many people across this 
country. I was fortunate and used to be able to say at every Veterans' 
Day ceremony and Memorial Day ceremony that my generation was the first 
generation in decades that were able to say thanks to the efforts of 
our predecessors, of the generations before us, that we did not have to 
get called to war, that our generation was not thrust in the midst of 
an ill-advised confrontation. The Vietnam War was the last serious 
conflict we entered

[[Page 24244]]

into. Obviously the Gulf War in 1991 was not as widespread and serious 
and ended quickly. But we cannot say that anymore because the 
administration has submerged us into chaos.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I am reading through the indictments 
right now. It is really unbelievable, the blatant lies that are in 
this, that are astounding to me.
  Count 5, the perjury count, where they have a series of questions, 
and the question from the lawyer to Mr. Libby is his specific 
recollection that he told Cooper about Mr. Wilson's wife working at the 
CIA, and he attributed that fact to what, reporters?
  The answer is yes. Many reporters.
  Libby said, ``I was very clear to say reporters are telling us that 
because in my mind I still did not know it as fact. I thought I was. 
All I had was this information that was coming from reporters.''
  He continues to lie, saying, Yes, sir. He asked him again, and Libby 
said, ``Reporters are telling us that. I do not know if it was true. I 
was careful about that because, among other things, I wanted to be 
clear I did not know Mr. Wilson. I don't know. I think I said I don't 
know if he has a wife, but this is what we are hearing.''
  They asked him again, and he said it was a fact what I told the 
reporters.
  All throughout this he testifies to the lawyers that he was told 
about Mr. Wilson's wife working for the CIA from reporters. In the 
charge of perjury is that in truth of fact, as Libby well knew when he 
gave this testimony, it was false in that Libby did not advise Matthew 
Cooper or other reporters that Libby had heard other reporters talking 
about Wilson's wife working for the CIA; Libby heard it from the Vice 
President of the United States.
  The Vice President of the United States in this indictment, and there 
may be a trial, and this may be a question of fact, but in the 
indictment on page 5, on or about June 12, Libby was advised by the 
Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the 
CIA. That is on June 12 of 2003.
  The Vice President told Libby in September, July, August, September; 
3 or 4 months later, the Vice President is on Meet the Press. Mr. 
Russert asks him about Joe Wilson going to Africa to check out the 
uranium deal. The Vice President says, ``No, I don't know Joe Wilson. 
I've never met Joe Wilson.''
  A question has arisen, on and on he goes about the questions, and Joe 
Wilson, ``I don't know who sent Joe Wilson.''
  That is not true. The Vice President told Libby that Joe Wilson's 
wife worked for the CIA in June, and in September he is on Meet the 
Press saying he does not even know who Joe Wilson is. He is not lying 
to Tim Russert, he is lying to the American people. You cannot lie to 
the American people.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I just wonder where the outrage 
is. I did not hear in the last several hours since the indictment came 
out calls for an impeachment trial or calls for hearings in the United 
States Congress.

                              {time}  1430

  And just a few years ago, prior to my coming to the United States 
Congress, there were questions surrounding the previous administration 
and far less serious than lying to get us into war. I mean, these 
accusations, and let us remember that they are accusations, but they 
are very serious accusations, that once the accusations came out in the 
previous administration which were for personal circumstances, 
immediately we went into a situation on this House floor where we had 
impeachment managers, we had a trial, we had a process by which the 
President of the United States prior to this President was actually 
impeached on the floor of the House of Representatives for the 
accusations that were made against him that were far less dire.
  Where is that outrage? Where is anyone on the other side who were 
calling for his head? Why are they not calling for the head of this 
administration?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think the 
silence speaks for itself.
  Let us quickly go through this. June 12, the Vice President tells 
Libby about Joe Wilson's wife. In September the Vice President is on 
``Meet the Press'' with Tim Russert and he says, I do not even know who 
Joe Wilson is. Can one imagine? We look at him and we believe him.
  Here is Scott McClellan on October 3. So June the VP told Libby. In 
September he lied about it on ``Meet the Press.'' Then in October 
McClellan says, Those individuals, Karl Rove, Abrams, and Lewis Libby, 
assured me they were not involved with this.
  The lie continues. I mean, these are the same people that told us 
there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These are the same 
people that told us we would be greeted as liberators. These are the 
same people who said we could use the oil money for reconstruction. 
Have they told the truth since they have been in office?
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished 
gentleman and the distinguished gentlewoman for their comments.
  This is a moment in history today that it seems that we simply pause. 
This morning we did a good thing. We passed a resolution allowing an 
American icon to lie in state, Rosa Parks. Now, just a few hours after 
that vote, we are here on the floor. Really, as I listened to my two 
distinguished colleagues for this very thoughtful discussion, we are 
looking at a constitutional breach in the system of government.
  I sat as a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the 
impeachment hearings of President William Jefferson Clinton; and, of 
course, as many of the Members know, we argued vigorously this issue. 
We argued that his objections were not a governmental action. That was 
the distinction that we made on this whole question of whether or not 
the government itself was being fractured. Today we now have, and, 
again, one is innocent until proven guilty, a fractured government, 
five counts against an individual with an ongoing investigation that 
suggests a number of fractures in the system that go to the very points 
of this discussion: one, did government officials not tell the truth? 
Two, did government officials not tell the truth to Members of the 
United States Congress? Three, on the basis of those nontruths, did the 
United States Congress take a vote to make a determination ultimately 
to go to war? And in the course of going to war, did we not see the 
loss of lives of 2,000 of our brave young men and women and some 
thousands of injured bodies that now lie in hospitals languishing?
  And in the course of this expose that the gentleman has now offered, 
in holding up the indictment, he has enunciated a chronological 
schedule that shows that over and over again there was repetitiveness 
in the government, in this instance, the White House, denying that key 
staff members knew nothing of the pronouncement that an undercover CIA 
agent was who she was and who she was related to; and now we are 
finding out about allegations and now an indictment, which we all know 
is not a conviction and there is a lesser standard through the grand 
jury and its level of being able to indict.
  But there is an indictment that I assume will now go forward, that 
there are now suggestions and allegations that not only were there 
nontruths being told but that they were woven into the infrastructure 
of the closest levels of government, including the President of the 
United States of America.
  I will simply say this: those very difficult days of sending this 
body through an impeachment proceeding brought us almost to the brink 
of governmental collapse. The American people were concerned. The world 
was concerned. This institutional body was concerned. Those of us who 
had such great respect for this body being respected for when it moved, 
it moved on truth and standing. I would argue to this day that the 
impeachment proceedings went beyond the jurisdiction

[[Page 24245]]

of this body because we used a nongovernmental act for a governmental 
action, which was impeachment.
  In this instance I am going to leave with this question: What will 
this body now do to accept our, if you will, institutional 
responsibility to ask the questions, whether the Constitution has been 
breached and whether or not, in fact, there are fractures in government 
now that our investigatory hearings need to begin in order to heal or 
to reform those fractures?
  I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida and the gentleman 
from Ohio, certainly States that have had firsthand constitutional 
breaches as we have looked at elections of 2000 and 2004, for their 
presentation on the floor and allowing me to come over from my office 
watching them during this moment in history that requires our study and 
our consideration.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her 
comments. It continues just to be unbelievable. Count four, the perjury 
count, it is unreal.
  Again, we said on June 12 the Vice President told Scooter Libby about 
Joe Wilson's wife working for the CIA and then Libby is talking about a 
conversation he had with Tim Russert on July 10, which is a month 
later, and he is explaining the conversation, and it went something 
like this:
  Russert said, Did you know that Ambassador Wilson's wife works at the 
CIA? And I was a little taken aback by that. I remember being taken 
aback by it. And I said--he may have said a little more, but that is 
what he said. And I said, no, I don't know that. And I said, no, I 
don't know that intentionally because I didn't want him to take 
anything I was saying as in any way confirming what he said because at 
that point in time I did not recall that I had ever known and I thought 
this is something that he was telling me that I was first learning.
  That is on July 10. But the indictment says one month before, the 
Vice President of the United States told Scooter Libby that Joe 
Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. A lie. As we put our hand on the 
Bible and put one up to God, and these are the same people who told us 
that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These are the same 
people who told us we were going to use the oil money for 
reconstruction, 200, 300 billion American tax dollars later. The same 
people that told us we would be greeted as liberators. They lied to the 
grand jury. They lied to Tim Russert. They lied to the American people.
  They passed a prescription drug bill. They told Congress it was $400 
billion. It was $700 billion. We found out 3 months later after we 
voted for it. I mean, they can lie to the Democrats, but who lies to 
Tim Russert? One cannot lie to Tim Russert. He is the best.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, what has become clear as of today 
is that the culture of corruption in the party and this administration 
and the leadership in this institution has become institutionalized. It 
runs deep.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is a culture.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is a culture of corruption. A culture is 
one that is deep-seated, one that is the product of an accumulation 
within groups of people. The administration, various members of the 
leadership here in our institution, from top to bottom, the people 
running this country are under suspicion. And we have what I have 
referred to as the three Cs: the culture of corruption, the cronyism, 
and the question of competence.
  Because now, as of today, there is no question that these are people 
that are not competent to run our government. They are not competent to 
respond to natural disasters. Look at Katrina and her aftermath. Look 
at Wilma and her aftermath, which is still ongoing. If they are not 
competent to respond to natural disasters, what are we going to do when 
we are hit with a man-made disaster, with a terrorist act?
  I have talked to Members on both sides of the aisle this week who 
have privately worried out loud that they are not sure what would 
happen in their own community if they were hit with either a natural or 
a man-made disaster because there is deep-seated worry and concern 
about this administration's ability to take care of the American 
people. And never mind their ability. They are clearly focused only on 
themselves and their ability to accomplish their own goals and to heck 
with what anyone else thinks.
  Clearly, they were willing to take the biggest step that any leader 
can take of a nation, and that is to send his or her citizens to war.
  Let us just go over what some other people think, and like the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) has said, this is not Mr. Ryan's 
opinion; this is not Ms. Wasserman Schultz's opinion. What I am about 
to tell my colleagues is Ed Gillespie's opinion, the chairman of the 
Republican National Committee. It is not only the President's father, 
whom we can talk about what he said his opinion was when somebody 
reveals the identity of a covert agent. We are talking about on 
September 30, 2003, Ed Gillespie, who is the chairman of the Republican 
National Committee, during an appearance on MSNBC's ``Hardball.''
  So we are talking Chris Matthews, who said, ``I think if the 
allegation is true to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA 
operative, it's abhorrent and it should be a crime and it is a crime.''
  Hardball's host, Chris Matthews, went on to ask Chairman Gillespie, 
``It would be worse than Watergate, wouldn't it?''
  Gillespie's response: ``It's--yeah. I suppose in terms of the real-
world implications of it, it's not just politics.''
  That is absolutely right; it is not just politics. It is not just 
accusations that were of a personal nature like the previous President 
of the United States. We are talking about someone who plunged us into 
war and now we have had the 2,000th casualty of that war, because he is 
so focused on being right that he will clearly do anything and 
authorize his cronies to do anything and say anything to accomplish 
their objectives, even cause the deaths of our citizens.
  I had an opportunity to go visit our troops that have come back from 
the Iraq war at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital right here in 
Washington, D.C. and I spoke to a young man whose legs were blown off, 
who will never be able to walk on his own legs again, whose life has 
been forever impacted because we have an administration that was hell 
bent on being right and was willing to do anything to make sure that 
their agenda was met. Never mind basic human decency.
  We all raise our children, and I raise my children, to understand 
what right from wrong is, to know that we have to tell the truth, to 
know that we need to do right by people. And in my faith's tradition, 
we have an important stress on taking care of one another in our 
community and giving back. We have the spirit of what is called 
``tikkun olam.'' And there is absolutely no hint of any of that in this 
administration or, quite frankly, among the leadership in this 
institution.

                              {time}  1445

  Because to a person, the accusations, and I will respectfully say 
again that these are accusations and that no one has been found guilty 
of anything or has been accused of anything as of yet, but whether it 
is the accusations against our former leader from this institution, or 
all the way up to the Vice President's Chief of Staff and the 
accusations made against him today in the indictment handed down, we 
are talking about decisions they made so they could accomplish their 
own political goals.
  That is just heinous, and I want to know when the hearings are going 
to be called. I want to know where the outrage is. I want to know why 
the press conference was not held to schedule the special committee, 
the bipartisan committee that should be brought together to do an 
investigation. I want to know where the outrage is. I want to know why 
we are not having impeachment hearings. I am waiting to hear that, 
because it is a little bit more important, when you send

[[Page 24246]]

people to war just to accomplish your own goals, than when you lie 
about personal circumstances, totally and completely different. It is 
just disgusting.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, we do not want to make light of 
it, but let us just think of what President Clinton had to deal with in 
his impeachment. That is private behavior. If he committed perjury, 
that is wrong, and we are all against it.
  You are talking about outing a CIA agent. You are talking about lying 
to FBI agents. This is the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the 
United States, not some intern. This is one of the architects of the 
war.
  Now, we all know that all the nonsense that was told to us before the 
war was not true, and now you are willing to lie to a Federal grand 
jury? You are willing to lie to FBI agents? You are willing to lie to 
Tim Russert? You sure as heck are going to be willing to lie to the 
American people, a couple of folks in Ohio that work in a steel mill 
and just trying to make ends meet. That is nothing, to lie to them, if 
you are willing to go to jail or prison to lie.
  And we know through the indictment that the Vice President told Libby 
on June 12, so the Vice President knew in June. Then he goes on Tim 
Russert in September and says, ``I don't know Joe Wilson.'' He says, 
``I don't know Joe Wilson.'' You told Libby 3 or 4 months before you 
not only knew him, you knew his wife worked for the CIA.
  Now, we have Mr. Gillespie, who is going to be the Chair of our 
Independent Katrina Commission, here is what Karl Rove said. ``Did you 
have any knowledge or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the 
press?'' ``No.'' That was in September, I think, right after Cheney was 
on Meet the Press.
  We do not know exactly what the situation that Karl Rove is in is. I 
may speculate for a second. But you cannot tell me that Karl Rove, who 
manages every single solitary detail of everything that happens in the 
executive branch and the White House and the West Wing, you are going 
to tell me that Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President 
knew this, but Carl Rove did not?
  It is going to be interesting over the course of the next few weeks 
and months to find out exactly what Karl Rove did know. I think this 
goes right to what we have been talking about over the past year, 2 
years, since we started doing our 30-something Group, that the 
Republicans continue to pick their party over what is best for the 
country.
  Now, we are all Americans here. You cannot out a CIA agent, you just 
cannot do it. You just cannot lie a country into war. It is just wrong, 
for all these obvious reasons. And you just should not take public tax 
dollars and give them to the oil companies, like we are doing.
  We gave $16 billion through the two energy bills we passed and 
corporate welfare to the oil industry. Now, all you have to do is go to 
the gas pump and realize that that is not a good idea, or read the 
paper, where the oil companies have some of the largest profits in the 
history of oil companies in the last quarter. We are giving them your 
public tax dollars, the people you represent and I represent that work 
hard and see that big number at the top of their check, and then the 
much littler number that you actually get, because money comes down 
here, and the Republican Congress takes it and gives it to the oil 
company, and then goes to the oil company out on ``Shake Down Street,'' 
K Street, just a cab ride away, shakes down K Street, and K Street 
fills up the Republican coffers with money, and the cycle continues.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If the gentleman will yield further, I wish my 
constituents could go to the gas station, but right now they cannot 
because none of the gas stations have any power. There are people in my 
district sitting in the dark 5 days after the storm hit them, 
supposedly the model State for disaster preparedness and aftermath 
response.
  We have a Governor of my State who is refusing, after being asked 
several times this week, refusing to use the state of emergency to have 
the tankers with gas, instead of filling their contracts, which they 
can get premium top dollar for the gas in those tankers, he is refusing 
to order those tankers to deliver gas to meet the essential services 
that we need, to meet the needs of the generators in my cities and in 
the cities across south Florida of my colleagues, the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Meek), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler), the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Shaw), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart), and the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen). He is refusing to reorder 
the priorities of these gas tankers owned by the gas companies, the oil 
companies, and make sure that they can provide gas to the generators so 
that the lift stations can be turned on so the sewage is not backing 
up. We have to boil water or put chlorine in it or buy it from the few 
supermarkets that actually have powered themselves with a generator.
  So we do not have any gas stations that are up and running on their 
own without any generators. Unfortunately, the oil companies have not 
in most cases purchased generators to be there and ready for the gas 
stations to use in the event of an actual disaster.
  So, what we are talking about here is how deep this culture of 
corruption and cronyism and incompetence runs. If you could say it is 
an isolated instance and you have a rogue staff person who just became 
so focused on taking care of his boss that he decided he was going to 
say anything to accomplish his boss's goal, then you could say, you 
know what, you get rid of that cancer, and, okay, the cancer is cut 
out, and then the body is whole and well again.
  But, unfortunately, this is an administration that is so infested 
with cancer, this is a party up and down the halls and walls of 
government that is so infested with cancer that it is impossible to cut 
it out completely. It runs that deep.
  Next year what the American people are going to have to ask 
themselves is if they want this to continue. Do they want to continue 
to go in this direction? Do they want to continue traveling down this 
path, being dragged down this path, having another 1,000 soldiers die 
in a war that was not only ill-advised, but we were led into through 
deception, and then not only through deception, but through deliberate 
acts of deception to ensure that they would be able to drag us into 
war?
  Then, on top of that, let us talk about some of the other things that 
they are willing to do and be hell-bent on in accomplishing their 
goals. Talk about what happens right here just in the last few months 
since I have been a Member of Congress.
  Basically the Republicans here have created a democracy-free zone. We 
talk about the pride that we have in our democracy, and how 
participatory this institution is, and how we are all elected in our 
own right, and we all have the same rights and privileges, we have the 
same number of about 633,000 people that sent us here.
  Yet it is pretty clear that we do not all have the same ability to 
cast our vote and have it stand and mean something and cast it freely 
and willingly, because the Members on the other side of the aisle have 
not been allowed to cast their votes by their leadership and leave that 
as their opinion standing all by itself because they get their arms 
twisted off.
  We have votes like the energy vote that we had a couple of weeks ago 
that was called as a 5-minute vote and was held open for 40 minutes, 40 
minutes, because we were killing that bill, because it was a terrible 
bill that was not going to do anything to reduce gas prices, that was 
not going to improve our energy situation that we are in such dire 
straits in in this country. It was going to put more money in the 
pockets of the oil company executives and the oil companies' profit 
margin.
  So what they did was hold that vote open so they could twist enough 
of their Members' arms and work the aisles so that they could get their 
Members to switch. And we watched it. The board is right up above us 
here, our names are in lights, there is a red and green button, and you 
saw a whole

[[Page 24247]]

bunch of red buttons on their side of the aisle that over the 40 
minutes were switched to green.
  Now, I came here with some conviction, and I came here with some 
backbone, and I am certainly not going to let anybody chisel my 
backbone away just in the name of my party. I just wonder where the 
backbone is? Why are they willing to just cave? Do they not have 
convictions? Do they not understand that you have to represent your 
constituents? Do not they understand that they have to represent their 
constituents, not the oil companies? Do they not understand they have 
to represent their seniors so they can get low-cost prescription drugs 
and not put more money in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies?
  That Medicare prescription drug bill passed before I got here. How 
long was the vote held open; 3 hours on a 15-minute vote to do the 
exact same thing? That bill prohibited the government from negotiating 
prices, just like the Veterans Administration has that ability, 
negotiating prices with the pharmaceutical industry to make sure that 
our constituents, our seniors, could have low-cost prescription drugs, 
who are right now having to choose between medicine and meals.
  This is what we are talking about when we talk about an 
institutionalized culture of corruption, because you do not see the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) and the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) working the aisles, twisting our arms off to 
change our votes from red to green or green to red. We get permission 
to stand and vote our conviction.
  I can tell you all the way back to March, when I had a very strong 
opinion about the Terri Schiavo case, some Members on the floor 
disagreed with me, but nobody was coming here, nobody was pounding on 
me asking me not to do that, ``Do not stand up, Debbie. Do not stand up 
for what you believe in.'' I was allowed, even though I am a freshman 
and had only been here 10 weeks, I was encouraged by our leadership to 
stand up for what I believe in. It is just the saddest thing that that 
does not exist on their side of the aisle.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is what we 
are asking the American people for, for an opportunity to take this 
country in a new direction; to change what is going on here, and stop 
not only the corruption that we find here, but establish a system of 
government that does not put a political party before the interests of 
the country.
  When you look at what happened through FEMA with Hurricane Katrina, 
the top 8 to 10 people in FEMA were political cronies. They were 
political hacks. ``Brownie,'' the man in charge of FEMA, was a lawyer 
for horses, someone who owns horses, or a horse's attorney. I am not 
exactly sure what he was. He had the right college roommate, so he got 
appointed to FEMA.
  Listen, we understand that you make political appointments, but if 
you appoint somebody who is incompetent, you put them as an ambassador 
to a country that has a lot of beaches; send them over there, have a 
nice house, drink a lot of nice wine, have a good time, make nice with 
whatever country that you are representing or trying to schmooze. You 
do not put that person in charge of FEMA.
  My friend who was here earlier said we wanted to make FEMA bigger and 
more bureaucratic, and the old scare tactics, like we are not old-
school Democrats. We want efficient, flexible, nimble government that 
works. If it means a little bit more money, maybe it does, and maybe it 
needs to be spent. But where is the accountability? What it needs more 
than anything else is competent leadership.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I am glad the gentleman brought up FEMA, 
because obviously that is a pretty hot issue down my way right now. Let 
us let people know what we were talking about the other night, because 
Brownie, the former Mr. Michael Brown, the former Under Secretary for 
FEMA, most people think that he is gone. Most people think he is no 
longer involved in FEMA's decision-making activities.
  He is still being paid $148,000 a year as an adviser, because the 
Secretary of Homeland Security Mr. Chertoff just extended his contract 
for another 30 days. They kept him on supposedly to continue to advise 
them on how to deal with the aftermath of Katrina.

                              {time}  1500

  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. So you are saying, Mr. Speaker, I want to get this 
clear here, for the Members of the Chamber, you are telling me that 
Brownie, the guy that President Bush went down and said you are doing a 
good job, Brownie, when he really was not doing a good job at all, 
really was not doing much of anything, you are saying he is still on 
the payroll?
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. He is still on the payroll being paid a 
$148,000-a-year contract for another 30 days.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. But the Democrats are the ones that waste the 
money. We are the ones that do not know how to handle government. Come 
on.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We have two more storms that have hit us since 
Katrina, Rita and Wilma; and it is not like they have fixed it. It is 
not like Brownie has gotten it right now and we have seen the fruits of 
continuing his contract. Now we have people who are sitting in the dark 
in my two counties that I represent, Broward County and Miami-Dade 
County. We have lift stations that are off, all 2,000 lift stations in 
my county have no power. The sewage is backing up. People have to boil 
water, but they cannot boil water because they do not have any power, 
or they have to add chlorine to their water. The ice and water trucks 
that were touted as being pre-positioned prior to the storm, they were 
lost, they could not find them because they relied on cell phones for 
communication.
  Now, hello. How tall are cell phone towers? I would think that if you 
have a cell phone tower getting hit by 120-mile-an-hour winds that 
perhaps you would anticipate that they would be damaged and you would 
not be able to use them.
  Where was the planning? I could nitpick every little detail; but, 
obviously, in the aftermath of a storm, there are going to be kinks, 
there are going to be problems. I do not want to be specifically 
critical of the response to this storm; I want to be more generally 
critical, because they have learned nothing. We have had the two 
additional storms following Katrina, and they have learned nothing. 
Sixty days have gone by. They have not fixed it. They have not made 
adjustments. Why?
  We have people who are sitting in harm's way who have suffered 
damage, and they continue the contract of the man who was clearly 
declared as incompetent and removed from being in charge of Katrina, 
but not removed from the payroll, and the stated purpose was so they 
could continue to get advice from him. A person who was not qualified 
for the job to start with, because his previous experience was being 
head of the Arabian Horse Association.
  You are absolutely right, Mr. Ryan. In terms of cronyism, that was 
the ultimate. You had a guy get a job because he was the college 
roommate of an ally of the President's and put in charge of the agency 
that has to be the command center for every agency in the government 
and directing their response to the aftermath of a hurricane, or any 
natural disaster. What happens is, if you put an unqualified person in 
that position, you are going to end up having the result that we saw in 
the aftermath of Katrina and the result that we have now seen in the 
aftermath of Wilma.
  Now we have Secretary Paulison, Acting Secretary Paulison, who is in 
place now. He is a constituent of mine, he does have the 
qualifications, he does know what he is doing; but Brownie is still on 
the payroll, and FEMA is now in the Department of Homeland Security. It 
is no longer an independent agency that answers directly to the 
President, that has the ability to direct things on their own. They 
have to run it up the food chain to the head of Homeland Security.

[[Page 24248]]

  When you put obstacles in the path of a decision-maker, it makes it 
harder to make the decision. And in the aftermath of a storm, you 
cannot have obstacles. Obstacles harm people. I am hoping that at some 
point someone in the administration decides that it is more important 
to take care of people than to accomplish their own agenda and their 
own goals.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is it. Putting the party that you belong to 
should not come first. The Republican Party should not come over the 
interests of the country. All we are saying is that the Republican 
majority has had control of this Chamber since 1994. They control the 
Senate, and they control the White House. They pull all the levers of 
government. Whether it is emergency management, failure; poverty rates, 
up; tuition rates, doubled; health care costs, up 15 to 20 percent a 
year. The Republicans take public tax dollars and give it away in 
corporate welfare. Mr. Speaker, $16 billion in public tax money went to 
the oil companies and the energy companies and subsidies, and $700 
billion in the medicare prescription drug bill.
  Now, the Democratic Party wants to lead, and we want to lead and put 
the interests of the country before what is necessarily best for the 
Democratic Party. And here is a great example:
  In 1993, when we were running huge deficits, the Democratic-
controlled House, the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President 
Clinton passed a balanced budget bill that led, without one Republican 
vote, that led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of the 
United States of America. And it was not popular and it was not fun, 
and many Democrats lost their seats over it. But you know what? You 
have got to balance your budget. And someone, more than one person was 
a statesman to make that decision. You put the interests of the country 
before your own personal political interests and that of your party. 
That is what we want to do. That is what the Democrats want to do. We 
want to take this country into another direction and change what is 
going on here.
  Let me tell you what we will do when we are in charge. One is, we 
will redo the prescription drug bill. We will go and we will allow for 
reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada that will drive down 
the costs which will save the taxpayer billions of dollars over the 
next few years. We will go back and we will put in the medicare 
prescription drug bill a provision that allows the Secretary of Health 
and Human Services to negotiate on behalf of the medicare recipients 
and on behalf of the taxpayer to Merck and Pfizer, and they will 
negotiate down the cost of drugs. Some people project that savings 
could be 20 to 30 percent. Twenty to 30 percent of $700 billion is 140 
to $210 billion. We would take those savings and we would invest it 
into the American people.
  We would also take the $16 billion that we have given to oil 
companies and we will add that into the mix. Now, notice I did not say 
one time we want to raise taxes. We will take that money and we will 
invest it into programs that will lead to economic growth.
  One, we will have a plan that will create a million engineers and 
scientists in the next 10 years. We are getting our clock cleaned by 
China and India. Last year China graduated 600,000 engineers, India 
graduated 350,000, the U.S. graduated 70,000. Half the foreign-born 
will eventually move back to their home country. The Democrats have a 
proposal to take those savings and invest it into education. We will 
reduce the cost of college tuition by investing that money. We will 
make sure that there is a clinic and a nurse in every single school in 
the country so that our kids are healthy, because if we do not have 
healthy students, we cannot have educated students, and if we do not 
have educated students, we cannot have a strong economy, and that is 
the bottom line.
  The Democrats will invest in magnetic levitation trains, the hottest 
train technology going right now. There is only one in the world. It is 
in Shanghai. I was on it when I was over in China. Mr. Speaker, 270 
miles an hour we are going down the pike, and I am holding a cup of 
coffee and it did not spill. It is the latest train technology, it is a 
jobs program, it is good for the environment, and it reduces our 
dependence on foreign oil.
  The Democrats will take the savings from that money and we will 
invest it into preventive health care. We will make sure that we are 
doing for the American people what we are doing for the Iraqis, and 
that is allow them to go to a clinic when they have a cold instead of 
walking into an emergency room with pneumonia.
  Mr. Speaker, we want to spend less money in the end, but it means 
putting it up front first for prevention. And we will start an Apollo 
program for an alternative energy source, so that these engineers and 
scientists that we create will be able to eventually reduce our 
dependence on foreign oil so that not one more American life has to be 
lost defending our right to go and get oil so that we can drive SUVs.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is so right. As we 
close out, I just want to reiterate that this is about competence. It 
is about who do you trust. It is going to be next year asking the 
American people to give us the opportunity to take this country in a 
new direction, to end the culture of corruption, to end the cronyism, 
to invest the kind of resources that we need to make sure that the 
middle class can be thriving and vibrant, and to make sure that we have 
a disaster response system in place that is responsive, that meets the 
needs of people, and that does not leave them twisting in the wind as 
my constituents are right now, who are without gas and without water, 
where a hospital in my own district is not able to continue to take 
care of people because their employees do not have enough gas to get to 
work. Those are basic needs.
  We want to thank the Democratic leader for giving us an opportunity 
to come on this floor tonight and for creating the 30-something Working 
Group. I know Mr. Ryan wants to give people the Web site where they can 
contact us.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Meek) who is down in Florida with his constituents. Send 
us ane-mailto 30somethingdems@
mail.house.gov. Send us an e-mail, let us know your thoughts. We want 
to take this country in a new direction, change the way we are going, 
and put the country before the party.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I want to let my constituents 
know that I am coming home tonight and looking forward to having the 
opportunity of helping them to get through the aftermath of Hurricane 
Wilma.

                          ____________________