[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2809-2810]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 IN SEARCH OF A COMPETENT CONSERVATIVE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, last week, a number of Americans were able 
to see the President on the videotape on Katrina and see also what has 
happened down in New Orleans since that time, or the lack of action 
there. We also witness every day the civil war that is engulfing Iraq 
and a policy of failure to bring stability to Iraq, the chaos that has 
engulfed our Medicare prescription drug plan, and also the flare-up 
over our port security and selling major assets of America's 
infrastructure to foreign countries.
  In 2000, President Bush ran as a compassionate conservative. At this 
point, I would settle for a competent conservative. From Iraq to 
Medicare to port security to the deficit to Katrina, this 
administration has mismanaged the situation to the point where even 
diehard supporters are acknowledging their incompetence. And this 
Congress has been a rubber stamp to the administration's policies and 
has refused to do its job, which is oversight, on every one of these 
issues.
  On Iraq, we have $10 billion out of $480 billion totally missing. Not 
one hearing about what happened to the $10 billion. Nobody has asked a 
single question. Nobody can account for it. We have soldiers over there 
without KEVLAR vests, where parents are left to literally do bake sales 
to raise the money for their children so they can have the protection 
that their government and their taxpayers expect and are responsible 
for, yet nothing. We have literally members of the armed services 
running around like scrap metal collectors trying to solder their 
Humvees, yet nobody has asked a single question as to how that 
happened; why is that happening.
  We have Paul Bremer, the President's ambassador, who now writes a 
book and says that he had asked for 500,000, or doubling the size of 
the troop level; yet for 3 years the President of the United States 
said nobody ever asked for more troops. If they want more troops, we 
will send more troops. General Abizaid and Paul Bremer, the President's 
ambassador, have said that he had asked for more troops, and neither 
the Secretary of Defense nor the President of the United States 
acknowledged that memo. Yet what do we have? Nobody is holding them 
accountable. Nobody is holding anyone accountable in the 
administration.
  We have a great deal of incompetence. We are at $480 billion in Iraq, 
with 2,300 Americans, our fellow citizens, having lost their lives. 
Well over 15,000 are wounded, permanently many of them, yet not a 
single question of what happened here. What is the competency here?
  Now, take a look at this on Medicare. It is not just isolated to 
Iraq. We have now had that policy, and that policy has run its course. 
We now have a civil war that the American people find themselves in the 
middle of, between the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds all fighting 
each other, and nobody has asked the questions of what happened to the 
troops, the amount of troops, what happened to the KEVLAR vests, the 
Humvees; how come there are not enough men and women that the 
ambassador and the general had asked for.

[[Page 2810]]

  Not a question. Nobody is responsible. Nobody ever got fired, let 
alone the questions about the intelligence going into it.
  Take Medicare. We debated here on this floor, and I voted against 
that bill and said it was going to lead to great confusion to seniors. 
Rather than a simple plan, letting negotiations happen, letting 
reimportation happen, and letting generics hit the market, which all 
would drive the price down of prescription drugs and save money, 
Members here said and the administration said it will only cost $390 
billion over 10 years. Before the ink was dry, it rose to $790 billion. 
So all the taxpayers are going to have to pay double what they were 
told and everybody in the administration knew.
  One person who said, here is what the report said, was under threat 
of being fired if they let that information out. Yet now, with 2 years 
to prepare, 2 years to get ready, the Web site, run by HHS, had the 
information wrong. The catalogue they sent out to every senior had it 
wrong. It has led to massive confusion where seniors now are sometimes 
double enrolled, cannot get enrolled, and where States are having to 
step in for the poorest of the poor because they cannot get their plan. 
It is run like, as some people say, they couldn't run a one-car parade 
if they tried.
  Again, that massive incompetency and the inability of this Congress 
to have oversight and keep people's feet to the fire and hold them 
accountable, to ask the questions and get the answers the American 
people want are not being done today.

                              {time}  1945

  And the incompetency is not isolated to Medicare or Iraq. Take the 
response to Hurricane Katrina: when we saw that tape, we now learn 
that, in fact, Mr. Brown, or known to the rest of us as Brownie, was 
doing a heck of a job, and he gets fired, and yet it is Chertoff who is 
still head of the Homeland Security Department, had no idea what was 
going on, no line authority, never involved himself, and we had a 
massive disaster.
  When you run through the economy, Iraq and the deficit, what this 
President has done, I would settle, and I think the rest of the country 
would be quite happy if we had a competent conservative rather than the 
compassionate conservative that we were promised. The American people 
are not looking for a compassionate conservative, a fiscal 
conservative, or a social conservative. A competent conservative would 
do America well.

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