[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2487]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 IN SEARCH OF A COMPETENT CONSERVATIVE

  (Mr. EMANUEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, by now we have all seen the Katrina tape of 
the President being briefed on the magnitude of the upcoming hurricane 
disaster. The tape clearly shows that the President and his 
administration knew about Katrina's magnitude, regardless of their 
after-action denial.
  All I can say is forget the compassionate conservative that we were 
promised in 2000. At this point I would settle for a competent 
conservative.
  Remember, this administration repeatedly maintained that if American 
leaders in Iraq needed more troops all they needed to do was ask. But 
now we know that the President's top man in Iraq, Paul Bremer, asked 
for more troops right after the invasion and the President and the 
Secretary of Defense failed to respond.
  This administration said that the intelligence it used as a case for 
the war was flawed. But Paul Pillar, a high-ranking CIA official, 
recently revealed that the administration intentionally distorted and 
cherry-picked the intelligence in order to justify the prescribed 
decision.
  Today, we are seeing the failure of those decisions. This 
administration said that the Medicare prescription drug benefit would 
cost no more than $400 billion. The real cost of the benefit, nearly 
$800 billion, and the administration knew all along the true cost.
  The President's people say people do not need to worry about 
security, and then we found out that neither the President nor the 
Secretary of Defense knew that the United Arab Emirates was about to 
take over the six major American ports. We do not need a compassionate 
conservative, a fiscal conservative. We need a competent conservative.

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