[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11898-11905]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     THE 30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I would like to welcome my 
colleagues to another addition of the 30-Something's hour. I would like 
to thank the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for allowing us the 
opportunity to get together and talk not only about some of the most 
important issues that face this hall this week and at this moment but 
also talk a little bit about how these issues are of particular concern 
to people of younger generations in this country.
  We are going to be joined today, I know, by Mr. Altmire, who just 
gave a very compelling 5-minute address to the House and, hopefully 
very soon, by Ms. Wasserman Schultz, one of our favorite members of the 
30-Something Group.
  Madam Speaker, hopefully we will get to touch on a few different 
topics, but I think we need to touch on at the beginning of this hour 
the subject that really dominates the debate in Washington, D.C., right 
now, that dominates most of the discussion out in the coffeehouses and 
pancake breakfasts and pasta dinners happening across this land, and 
that is, what is happening in this town? What is happening in 
Washington, D.C., inside the beltway? And that is, why can't government 
figure out what everyone else has figured out across the country, that 
we need to set a new direction when it comes to this country's policy 
in Iraq.
  Now, I am certainly starting to feel that frustration. People thought 
when they weighed in on the national elections in the beginning of 
November of last year that they were actually saying something; that 
when they stood up in record numbers in some parts of this country and 
made courageous decisions district by district to replace long-time 
incumbent Members this Congress with relatively new Members, such as 
myself, such as Mr. Altmire and some 40-odd number of our friends on 
this side of the aisle that became new Members this January, they 
thought that it meant something. They thought that that voice that they 
spoke with in the beginning of November was going to be heard down 
here. And I can tell when I go back to my district, and I just came 
back this last weekend and I have been back every weekend since we have 
been down, that the patience of the American people is starting to wear 
thin. Now, it is not necessarily directed here. I think some people are 
still in some sort of sense of euphoria that we finally have a Congress 
that is listening to the American people again. Their anger is directed 
at the President of the United States. Their anger is directed at an 
administration that just doesn't seem to get it, that refuses every 
step of the way to step up to the plate and have some type of 
accountability for what is happening here, refuses to listen to the 
American people.
  And the American people have spoken in the election, and they 
continue to speak today. A CNN poll that came out just a short while 
ago said a majority of Americans, 65 percent, oppose the Iraq war, and 
a full 54 percent disapprove of the President's decision to veto the 
Iraq accountability bill last week. Nearly six in ten Americans, in a 
recent Gallup poll, support setting a firm timetable for withdrawing 
U.S. troops out of Iraq; 61 percent of Americans, in another CNN poll, 
favor a bill that sets benchmarks that the Iraq government must meet to 
show progress that is being made in Iraq; 55 percent of Americans think 
it was the wrong thing for the United States to go to war in the first 
place. That is an amazing number, Madam Speaker; 55 percent of 
Americans, the majority of the Americans, now today believe that it was 
the wrong decision to go into Iraq in the first place.
  Before the time of Mr. Altmire and me, the 30-Something Democrats, 
Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz, liked to point out 
third-party verifiers. It is not just our saying it. Things that we 
stand here and say have actually been said time and time again by 
people who know what they are talking about and the American people.
  Here is third-party verification: The American people by large 
numbers support not only the actions of this Congress when it comes to 
setting firm benchmarks for the Iraqis to stand up for themselves but 
also to set firm timetables by which we would start to redeploy our 
troops. Now, the American people join a growing hegemony of opinion 
within our foreign policy community. There are very few times when 
Republicans and Democrats outside this hall decide to agree on a course 
forward on something as weighty as

[[Page 11899]]

the foreign policy issues that confront us in the Middle East. But the 
Iraq Study Group, five Democrats, five Republicans, Mr. Altmire, came 
together and told us, it is time to set a new course. It is time to 
start bringing our troops home, start redeploying them to fights that 
matter. Record numbers of retired generals.
  Now, it has become kind of de rigueur to see on a daily basis retired 
generals from across America to come out and start to criticize the 
President's policy. This didn't happen before in these numbers. This is 
not the normal course of business for the men and women who have spent 
their lives fighting and leading American troops to then turn around 
after they have left their military service and criticize the very 
government that they have worked for, fought for and bled for all of 
those years. But that is what is happening today because the stakes are 
so high. The American public, bipartisan leaders on foreign policy 
issues and former military leaders are standing up and saying enough is 
enough.

                              {time}  2030

  We need to set a new course.
  Now, there seems to be a very powerful sound barrier that has been 
built around the White House. Because for as many voices, the 
multitudes of American people, the multitudes of foreign policy 
experts, of retired generals, many of which ended their careers on the 
ground in Iraq, for all of those people throwing the might of their 
collective voices at the White House, a deafening silence.
  Madam Speaker, I got the chance to go over and visit our troops in 
Iraq and Afghanistan; and the first thing you're struck by is the 
unbelievable and unconditional bravery that they show this Nation. The 
capability of these forces is almost beyond explanation, and I got the 
chance to come back and talk to the President very briefly about it in 
a visit to the White House.
  Those troops know that the situation on the ground has changed 
dramatically, that the fight that began as a battle against the 
autocrat that was Saddam Hussein now has become a civil war. The troops 
know it because they're right in the middle of it.
  We asked our military leaders, how much of the fire that is being 
directed at American troops is the result of insurgent forces and al 
Qaeda forces firing at Americans and how much of it is simply a 
sectarian war that we find ourselves in the middle of? And the answer 
was the same no matter who you asked. Ninety percent of the fire 
directed at American forces are Sunni and Shia fighting each other, 
sometimes Shia and Shia fighting each other, that we are caught in the 
middle of.
  This President, for some reason, refuses to understand how things 
have changed on the ground in Iraq and how things have changed when it 
comes to the opinion of foreign policy leaders, military leaders and 
the American public.
  I think many of us were very proud to stand together, certainly the 
freshman class and as a caucus, to support our leadership's position to 
set a new course; and we were dismayed to see a President who is 
unwilling to work with this Congress. We will take another shot at that 
this week by presenting the President with another alternative on his 
desk once again to set that new direction. And from what we hear today, 
it will be met with the same resounding deafening silence and 
indifference to the will of the American people.
  I am so glad to be joined here by one of my great freshman 
colleagues, Mr. Altmire from Pennsylvania, who I think shares with me, 
as new Members, as two young guys who have only spent about 4 or 5 
months down here, that sort of growing sense of frustration when we go 
back to our districts and we hear people who wanted that change feeling 
like they're not getting it here because there is an administration 
that simply won't join that growing unanimity of opinion to set a new 
course.
  I would like to yield to my friend from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate the gentleman from Connecticut, and I 
admire his leadership. I know that you did make that trip to Iraq and 
you came back and you can speak with some authority and some expertise, 
and I appreciate hearing from you. And I especially appreciate the 
opportunity to speak tonight on what is definitely the most important 
issue I think everyone would agree that we face.
  I was struck by the fact that the gentleman mentioned third-party 
verification for different options and different opinions in Iraq. And 
what strikes me is the fact that the President of the United States has 
declined to listen to any third-party verification. He has delivered a 
loud and clear message last November that the American people called 
for change, not only domestically here in America but especially in 
Iraq. He has been told by his generals on the ground that he is not 
moving in the correct direction. He has been told by his advisers, 
before they're replaced, that he's not going in the right way. The Iraq 
Study Group, as we all know, recommended the course of action that we 
have advocated; and the bill that he vetoed was verified by the Iraq 
Study Group.
  The fact that he fails to listen to the American people, he fails to 
listen to his military advisers, he fails to listen to his White House 
advisers and he fails to listen to the Iraq Study Group, that 
demonstrates a clear decision on his part that he is going to ignore 
all of those opinions and continue down the same failed course.
  I was dismayed today when I heard the news that 35,000 American 
troops have been told that they can expect to be sent to Iraq this fall 
and that their tour is going to last at least through the spring of 
2008. Now, this is additional troops after the surge that we had been 
told in January was only going to last a few months and only going to 
be 21,000 troops. Now we're hearing an additional 35,000 troops and the 
surge is going to be at least 18 months instead of the 2 or 3 or 4 
months that were we were initially led to believe.
  But, thankfully, this Congress took clear and decisive action by 
sending the President a bill, which we have talked about before, that 
gives the troops the money that they need. It actually contains more 
money in funding for our troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan 
than the President requested, and that bill was met with a veto, as we 
know.
  I had someone come up to me over the weekend and say, well, when are 
you going to get our troops the money that they need? And I said, we 
sent the President a bill that does exactly that. It was the 
President's decision to veto that bill and delay this process and, most 
importantly, delay the funding for our troops.
  So the fact that he now came out and made a statement today that if 
we sent him a bill, that is, we took out all the things that he talked 
about that he doesn't like, it is not going to have the timelines and 
the things that he used as his reason for vetoing it the first time, we 
are going to send him a bill that gives the troops the funding that 
they need to get them through the next several months, and it is 
actually going to again be more funding than he asked for for the 
period of time that we are going to send him the money for, and we were 
told today that is going to be met with a veto.
  So I am exasperated to hear this, because I want the troops to get 
the money and the funding and all the equipment and resources that they 
need to continue the brave fight that Mr. Murphy from Connecticut was 
talking about and that he witnessed firsthand. But we can't do that 
alone. We need the President to sign the bill that we sent him.
  Tomorrow, we are going to vote on our second bill after the veto; and 
we are going to send it to the White House. I hope that the President 
will reconsider his decision to delay the funding that our troops in 
the field need, because these are the bravest and brightest Americans. 
These are people who are putting their lives on the line. They are 
giving every sacrifice. They are leaving their families back home for 
extended periods of time, multiple tours. And we are giving them the 
money that is required, but the President is delaying the process. So I 
share

[[Page 11900]]

the frustrations of the gentleman from Connecticut.
  At this time, I will yield to the gentlewoman from Florida, our 
fearless leader with the 30-Something Working Group, Ms. Wasserman 
Schultz.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much, Mr. Altmire.
  I have to tell you what a pleasure it is to have the reinforcements 
in you and Mr. Murphy and a number of other Members, you, Madam 
Speaker, to have been elected on November 7 to bolster the efforts of 
the 30-Something Working Group. Because we hung in there for the last 
couple of cycles and took to the floor every night to talk to the 
American people and to our colleagues on this floor about the issues 
that we believed were important to them that were not being addressed 
by our colleagues and good friends on the other side of the aisle when 
they were in charge.
  I want to follow up on what you and Mr. Murphy have just been 
discussing relating to the President and his attitude. The conclusion 
that I have reached is that it must be that the President has contempt 
for the democratic process. I can't really reach any other conclusion 
besides that.
  Because we are not a monarchy. He hopefully realizes that he was not 
elected king. He is not self-appointed. He is one of three branches of 
government that are coequal, coequal meaning we have as much say and as 
much right to weigh in on something as significant as whether to, A, 
commit our troops to war, and, B, we control the appropriations, we 
control the purse.
  And what we believe, as Democrats, is that it is irresponsible for us 
to give this President a blank check and an open-ended commitment to 
the Iraqi government with absolutely no accountability and no 
requirement that there be progress forward or benchmarks met. I mean, 
the President must believe that we aren't listening to our 
constituents, or maybe he's not listening. He says he is listening. In 
fact, on April 24 of this year the President said this, ``Last 
November, the American people said they were frustrated and wanted 
change in our strategy in Iraq. I listened.''
  Really? I have yet to see any evidence of him listening. What I have 
seen evidence of, and, you know, I know that I often go back to the 
analogy of my interaction with my own children when talking about this 
President, but my frustration and observation about the insolence on 
occasion of my own children is similar to what we have been observing 
from the reaction from this White House.
  I really can analogize it that when I am talking to, for us as the 
Democratic majority in Congress, we sent him legislation in the 
supplemental appropriations bill that he vetoed. And I have the 
privilege of serving on the Appropriations Committee and served on the 
conference committee. We sent him the legislation with a timeline for 
withdrawal, with his own benchmarks as he outlined on January 10, with 
accountability and with protection for our troops, A, ensuring that 
they not have a tour of duty without a 365-day separation in between 
those tours, the Army's own rules. We made sure that there was $1.7 
billion in funding for veterans' health care. We made sure that there 
was $1.7 billion in there for military health care, something that you 
have been incredibly concerned about, veteran and military health care, 
Mr. Altmire. And on and on. The issues that were, according to the 
President, very important to him and clearly important to the American 
people.
  And so he vetoed that and said that there were other concerns that he 
had, that he didn't want his hands tied, that he wanted to have the 
flexibility, that he just wanted a blank check and open-ended 
commitment. We, being a coequal branch of government, have gone back to 
the drawing board. And the Democratic majority believing in compromise 
and a need to negotiate in good faith, we have now put forward another 
proposal, a proposal that is designed to address the concerns that he 
outlines.
  And normally when you're going through a good-faith negotiation there 
is what's called ``back and forth,'' for example, the analogy that I 
began a minute ago, when my children don't like what I'm telling them, 
when I'm talking to my kids and I explain to them that I want them to 
do A and they don't want to do A, and we kind of go back and forth. And 
being a parent of small children, sometimes it's a dictatorship, but 
sometimes there's negotiation. And it always works better when you can 
work things out with your kids and teach them that compromise is going 
to get you further. But when they don't like that compromise, my kids, 
just like all kids, stamp their foot and whine a little bit and tell me 
that they don't want to do that.
  That really feels like how this President has reacted to Congress' 
clear ability to weigh in on the direction that this war should be 
taking. The American people certainly have weighed in. And what I don't 
understand is why the President isn't willing to come to the table and 
negotiate in good faith. The my-way-or-the-highway attitude that he has 
taken is irresponsible.
  What we are doing in this next proposal is we are making sure that we 
fully fund over the next 3 months the funding that the troops need. We 
provide the President and the Army with the funding that they need, but 
we tie it to benchmarks, we tie it to progress. The Iraqi government 
cannot believe that we will be there forever.
  And then we have a second vote where we would come back; and if the 
President can certify to us that those benchmarks are being met, then 
the rest of the funding would be released. If he can't certify that to 
us, then the funding that we would appropriate would be used to go 
through a redeployment process.
  Because at some point the madness has to end. That is what the 
American people have told us when we've gone home to our districts in 
town halls, in e-mails, in phone calls. The President appears to have 
ear plugs in his ears, and it's wrong. And that's why the Founding 
Fathers established coequal branches of government, so that one person 
in the executive office, in the Oval Office could not unilaterally 
decide to commit our troops, to keep them there and to engage us in 
military action indefinitely. It's irresponsible.
  Mr. Murphy.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
  Your question is a perfect one: When will this madness end? When will 
we recognize that we need to set a new course, that we need to start 
paying attention to not just what's happening within the borders of 
Iraq but what's happening in Afghanistan, what's happening on our own 
shores, where we still haven't appropriated the amount of money to 
devote to the resources that we should in order to secure our own 
borders and our own ports?
  And here is what it comes down to: If the Democrats weren't in 
control, the madness would never end; it would go on forever. There is 
absolutely no commitment, no willingness, no one on the other side of 
the aisle, very few at least on the other side of the aisle and 
certainly very few in the administration have woken up to the new 
reality here.
  And to me, I won't say who it was, but a member of the Republican 
leadership the other day was quoted in the paper as saying this. This 
person said, you know what? The President, we are going to give him 
some time to put forth this plan to escalate the war in and around 
Baghdad.

                              {time}  2045

  But if it doesn't work, he is going to have to tell us what plan B 
is. Guess what. We are not on plan B we are on plan like double R. We 
have tried everything. We have been in there for longer than we were 
involved in World War II, and we still haven't found out what works.
  Well, at some point, we are going to have to wake up to the notion 
that nothing that our military may try is going to work.
  Now, if anyone can do this job, I think our military can do it. The 
problem is that we have gotten ourselves into a political quagmire, and 
the sooner we realize that plan A and plan B

[[Page 11901]]

and plan C and D and E and F all didn't work, in large part because we 
have gotten ourselves into a mess that has probably, we hope, a 
political and diplomatic solution but may not have a military solution.
  Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I just want to talk for a minute, I know we 
really want to talk about some domestic issues here, but I want to talk 
about some of the stress we have put on our forces here at home. 
Because I have to tell you, as we watched some of the tragedies unfold 
in the Midwest, in Kansas, and we saw the inability of our National 
Guard in that State to respond, unfortunately, it took that incident 
for a lot people to finally wake up to the notion that our Reserve 
units and our National Guard units, the very troops that we relied on 
for years, decades, to provide us with security when tragedy befell our 
compatriots here at home, aren't there any longer. We heard it from 
Governors in Iowa, Minnesota and, of course, now in Kansas.
  The administration, as usual, seems to be more interested in throwing 
around blame than they seem to be interested in actually solving the 
problem. When the Governor of Kansas came out and said, listen, here 
you see it; we don't have the resources to respond to this devastating 
crisis because our National Guard units have been deployed over and 
over again overseas in a way that we never asked our National Guard and 
Reserve units to be deployed in the past, the White House came back and 
said, well, you know what? That is not our fault. That is the 
Governor's fault for not telling us that she had problems. If she had 
just told us she had problems, we would have done something about it.
  Well, guess what? She did. Last year, quoted in the New York times, 
the Governor of Kansas said, we are not only missing National Guard 
personnel, we are also missing a lot of the equipment that is used to 
deal with situations at home, day in and day out.
  Well, you know, we have heard a lot about how folks in the White 
House don't read newspapers with the rigor that some of us do. They 
certainly did not read The New York Times that day when the Governor of 
Kansas almost a year ago sounded the bell and said, if we don't start 
replenishing our units here at home, we are going to be in big trouble. 
And we are.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I am really glad that you touched on that, 
because you read my mind. I am obviously from a State where the 
National Guard and its readiness is imperative. We are approaching June 
1st, which is the beginning of hurricane season. It runs all the way 
through to the end of November. I know from conversations that I have 
had with our Guard leadership in Florida that a good amount of our 
equipment is over in Iraq still. And to make matters worse is that the 
equipment that has come back is in such horrendous shape that it is 
almost unusable.
  When I had a meeting in my district office with the head of our 
National Guard, with the commander, this was over a year ago, he 
expressed that concern to me over a year ago. We can't deal with the 
lack of readiness in Kansas but certainly not in a State like Florida 
where we are in the middle of hurricane alley. And we have already had 
the first main storm today, three weeks before the hurricane season 
even begins.
  So we are not just talking about the foreign policy impact, the 
perception of our Nation across the world or the impact on our troops. 
There is a domestic impact, a significant detrimental domestic impact 
to our inability to address where we are in this war and when it is 
going to end.
  We have got to make sure that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi 
troops are in a position to stand on their own so that we can bring our 
troops home and deal with the domestic needs that we have in this 
country.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentlelady has touched on that 
issue in a way that makes sense to most onlookers. She comes from a 
State that has seen problems. But we saw as a nation what happened in 
New Orleans in 2005 and the lack of response that took place in large 
part because of these issues that we are talking about, because the 
Guard and the Reserve that would usually be called upon to address 
those issues and come to the aid of the victims of that hurricane were 
deployed or otherwise engaged.
  We have a National Guard and Reserve that has been the subject of 
multiple deployments now, often three, four deployments. And when we 
have a situation like unfortunately happened in Kansas recently, we see 
the result. The Guard and Reserve is over deployed, and we are not able 
to respond in the fashion we need to respond when we have a national 
emergency, such as we saw in Kansas.
  I wanted, if it is okay with the gentleman from Connecticut, to 
switch the topic to gas prices, because I realized as I was looking at 
the gentlewoman from Florida, there may be some viewers who are 
wondering what that apparatus is that is next to her. It is a gas pump. 
I will let her talk about that momentarily.
  But I just wanted to start the ball rolling on that discussion and 
read you a quote from the President of the United States from July of 
2001. So we are going back 6 years now. This is what the President 
said: ``My administration has proposed a plan that will reduce 
America's reliance on foreign oil.'' Six years ago.
  For those who are interested in the success or lack thereof of that 
statement: In 2002, this Nation got 58 percent of its oil from foreign 
sources. That was our dependence. In the year 2006, last year, that 
number had risen to 66 percent.
  Here you have a President who says that it is one of his priorities 
to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We went from 58 percent in his 
first full year in office to 66 percent last year, and it is 
exponential growth, just a chart that goes straight up. So I would say 
that his philosophy has not worked as well as perhaps he would have 
hoped.
  What is most disappointing to me is I sat here for my first State of 
the Union address as a Member of Congress, and I listened to the 
President go on for quite some time about energy independence and the 
need to reduce our dependence and reliance on foreign oil. I was 
encouraged by that. This was still my first month in office, and I 
thought, this is a President that has finally seen the light and was 
going to move in that direction.
  But, unfortunately, I went back and I reread some of his previous 
State of the Union addresses, and I realized that he has made that 
claim multiple times over the years of his administration. And instead 
of seeing a diminishment of our reliance on foreign oil source, it is 
growing exponentially.
  So it is frustrating to me to see the lack of attention to what is 
the first issue domestically that I hear about when I go back to my 
district, and I am sure the gentlelady from Florida and the gentleman 
from Connecticut have the same questions bestowed upon them when they 
go back to their districts, why are gas prices so high, and what are 
you doing about it?
  Well, this Congress is taking steps to do something about it. After 
years of coddling the big oil companies and giving them taxpayer 
subsidies in the billions of dollars at a time when they are making 
all-time record profits for any industry in the history of the country, 
we have finally decided we are going to pull back on those subsidies 
and redirect them to alternative sources of energy, to research and 
development of a myriad of sources of energy, to get us off of our 
dependence on foreign oil, something the President said was his 
priority 6 years ago, but nothing was done about it.
  So this Congress is going to use that money for research and 
development to grow us out of this problem through research and 
development.
  I yield back to the gentleman from Connecticut, who has a chart that 
illustrates what has happened to gas prices since this President first 
took office.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, let me set the stage to kick 
it over to Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
  Here it is. The President took office January 22, 2001, $1.47; $1.47, 
that is like sort of a mystical number now. I can't even fathom when we 
were paying $1.47

[[Page 11902]]

for gas. Today, the average price for a gallon in the United States, 
$3.05.
  Now, I am going to admit that in my part of the world, in 
northwestern Connecticut, probably like everybody's district, we have a 
couple of conspiracy theorists up there. We have a couple of people 
that are not actually willing to believe that the best of intentions 
are always at the root of decisions made in our political and economic 
system.
  I have to tell you, the cynic in me and the conspiracy theorist in 
me, and there is a little bit of it, wonders a little bit why gas 
prices dipped down, curiously, right about the time when we were all up 
for election and reelection. Just when there was this sort of wave of 
economic discontent swinging across the country and all of the people 
were talking about finally taking our economy back from the oil 
companies. Just as this country was poised to make a decision to 
finally end, as Mr. Altmire said, our firm decades-long dependence on 
oil and foreign oil in large part, why did gas prices just dip right 
then? And then as soon as January, February came around, creeping up 
and up, a little bit more and a little bit more. Now as we head into 
the summer, into the prime driving months of the year, we are at $3.05 
a gallon.
  Now, I am not willing to say that is just politics, but the cynic in 
me has to wonder sometimes whether or not our gas and oil companies 
were just hoping, hoping that they could stem the tide and that they 
wouldn't have a Democratic majority here who would make a difference.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I don't mean to interrupt the gentleman, but I did want 
to remind anyone who is observing this discussion tonight that the 
``Six for '06'' was the Democratic mantra moving forward and going into 
the election. Ms. Wasserman Schultz was here for that discussion, and 
Mr. Murphy and I were out on the campaign trail. And we talked a lot 
about gas prices and taking on big oil for the first time in many years 
and revoking some of these subsidies and redirecting them. That was a 
key staple of this six policy issues that the Democrats made as their 
top priority for that election cycle and for the first 100 hours in 
Congress after we were able to retake the Congress.
  The gentleman talks about the sequence of events that, as that 
discussion was brought out, it became pretty clear to everybody that 
this was going to be a change. This was going to be a new direction for 
the country.
  Again, I am just saying that, as the gentleman is, it is an amazing 
coincidence that just as that proposal comes forward and just as the 
momentum starts to shift and look like the Democrats have a chance to 
promote this agenda in the majority for the first time in 12 years, we 
do see an incredible drop in gas prices. I think it went down something 
like 80 cents over a several week period leading up to the election. 
Now, as you said, it is back up to record levels here shortly 
thereafter.
  I did not mean to interrupt.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I would like to think that miracles do 
happen when it comes to energy policy, but unfortunately, I think that 
may be a little naive.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Mr. Murphy.
  You know, I really became enraged this weekend because you both have 
heard me refer to myself as what I am, and that is a ``minivan mom.'' I 
am a minivan mom, one of the millions of minivan moms that drive around 
my district with the kids in the back seat. And I can tell you that we, 
ideally, if you are a mom with little kids, would drive a smaller 
vehicle so that you could save gas, so that you could save money, so 
that you could be more energy efficient and environmentally conscious.
  However, when you are traveling from soccer to baseball to dance 
class to school and all the things that minivan moms have to do, you 
need a vehicle the size of a minivan. And they are expensive to fill 
up. Believe me.
  This weekend, we were back up, just for 87 octane, when I filled my 
gas tank, 87 octane in my hometown of Weston was $3.06 a gallon. The 93 
octane was about $3.88. I stood there, and it had been a while since we 
felt the rage and actually a while since I have gotten feedback from 
constituents about their frustration, because, like you said, I am 
actually an idealist. I am not a cynic. I am not someone that believes 
in conspiracy theories.
  There is just no question in my mind that that drop in gas prices was 
absolutely tied to the potential fortunes of the Republican candidates 
for Congress and this administration. So I am just going to say it 
straight out.
  The only explanation other than that and the only explanation for the 
insensitivity on the part of the President and this White House must be 
that they are not filling their own tanks. Maybe their drivers are 
doing it for them.
  I would like to take the opportunity to introduce our colleagues and 
the President to a gas tank. This is what they look like. And when you 
insert the pump into your vehicle, the indicator on the gas pump shows 
you how much you are paying and shows you the total at the end after 
you are done filling your tank.

                              {time}  2100

  They are not filling their own tank. That must be the only 
explanation why the President hasn't taken any steps to address our 
dependence on foreign oil, to deal with the record profits, obscene 
profits that the oil industry is making.
  I don't understand how he could look himself in the mirror after the 
2006 State of the Union which I was here for and you guys were running 
to join us here. I heard President Bush stand at that lectern and tell 
us that we must end America's addiction to foreign oil. It clearly was 
just words. That is what they are good at. They are good at the words. 
They just are not good at backing up the words with action. But we are. 
Here we are talking about what we need to do. I want us to share with 
our colleagues and other folks that might be listening what our plans 
are, because we are going to take some action.
  We represent the folks that drive minivans around their district and 
drive pickup trucks and who run small businesses who need to make sure 
that gas prices don't cut their legs out from under their business and 
prevent them from being able to function. That is the reality on the 
ground every day.
  Your gas prices go up, you have a harder time choosing to provide 
your employees with health insurance, you have a harder time being able 
to buy that piece of equipment your business needs. There is a direct 
result on small businesses from gas prices going up.
  We are taking several significant steps. The Speaker has created a 
Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence. That was a 
controversial move but something that she felt was important because it 
is so critical that we address the issue of global warming and energy 
independence that we needed to highlight it and put it up on a pedestal 
and get Members to travel the world and talk about how we can move the 
ball down the field and address this issue.
  In addition to the hearings and oversight that select committee will 
be doing, and that select committee will meet for a year time period 
because there needs to be action taken within a very short time span so 
we can get some results for the American people.
  Also, in the Energy and Commerce Committee, we will be hearing Mr. 
Stupak's legislation called the Energy Price Gouging Prevention Act to 
immediately provide relief to consumers and prevent the oil companies 
from price gouging like what is clearly going on here. I mean, we 
cannot allow the oil industry to put our constituents on the roller 
coaster ride that they are clearly on right now.
  We have to do a number of things. We have to set an example in this 
institution. Speaker Pelosi has moved forward with the Greening the 
Capitol Initiative. I am privileged to chair the subcommittee which 
will be working on a lot of the initiatives for the Greening the 
Capitol project.
  What we will be doing is within the next 2 years, by the end of the 
110th Congress, we will establish policies that will make our Capitol 
complex carbon neutral; and we will make sure that we set an example 
for businesses

[[Page 11903]]

across the country. We have to take several major steps to provide 
relief and balance and focus on alternative energy research so we can 
truly wean ourselves off dependence from foreign oil and not just talk 
about it.
  I am a little hot about that. I see the Speaker is standing on her 
feet, which means we are probably getting close to the end of our time.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. On the heels of introducing some of our 
colleagues and members of the administration to a gas pump, and I think 
you are right, it is hard to understand how people can be so 
indifferent to the rising costs. Maybe they haven't seen a gas pump I 
want to introduce them to something else.
  This is a wallet. If you are an oil company executive, your wallet is 
busting at the seams. So your wallet is going to look different. This 
is a thin wallet. This is what the American people, working-class 
individuals throughout this country are dealing with. They are dealing 
with wages that have been pretty much flat for the last 5 years.
  Oil company profits over the last 5 years have gone from $6.5 billion 
in 2002 to $30.2 billion in 2007. I want to make sure that while we are 
introducing some of our colleagues and some people in the 
administration to a gas pump, let's also introduce them to the thin 
wallet. If the average worker's income doubled from 2001 to 2007, I 
would say no problem, you can handle gas prices that doubled over that 
time. But the fact is that wages for average Americans have remained 
flat. Why? Because we have set up an economy that is designed to fail 
for regular, working-class individuals in this country, the folks that 
we represent, the people working in small businesses, who are living 
from paycheck to paycheck and can't take these increases at the pump.
  As much as we have to introduce people to the notion that we have to 
start redirecting our energy policy, we also have to reintroduce people 
to the fact that there are millions of Americans out there playing by 
the rules who simply don't have the means to deal with these increased 
prices.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. The gentlewoman from Florida listed off a number of 
initiatives that this Democratic Congress has taken at long last to 
address the gas price crisis that we are facing in this country. We are 
going to move with great speed to address these issues. We are going to 
address the price-gouging situation. We are going to address 
alternative sources of energy. We are going to address the 
environmental impact of the choices and the long-term consequences. We 
will address the price of gas that we see at pumps every day, similar 
to the one that the gentlewoman was holding up.
  But I want to remind everybody, which is obvious because we are 
having this Iraq debate now and the President has sent one bill back 
with a veto and may send a second bill back with a veto, that we, 
because of the Constitution, can't do it ourselves. This is a divided 
government that we have, and we need the assistance of the people on 
the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue down at the White House to join us 
in this effort to make a national priority of lowering the gas prices 
and addressing this issue for the first time since this President took 
office.
  I don't see any indication that he is willing to do that. We can pass 
legislation, we can have committee hearings and oversight and talk all 
that we want, but if we are not joined in this effort by our colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle, and especially the President, we are 
going to be unable to address this issue in a way that is satisfactory 
to the American people.
  I would urge my colleagues to voice their opinion that this is a 
priority. It is important to their constituents, and we do need to have 
a bipartisan effort moving forward to do this because this is an 
important issue. These are big topics that we are trying to pursue, and 
we need a unified American people and a unified body to take the 
initiative to the President and hopefully work with him on a positive 
solution.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I think what is important for us to emphasize 
in the 30-Something Working Group here is we are about action. Our 
Democratic leadership under Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer 
and Mr. Clyburn, our whip, and Mr. Emanuel, our caucus Chair, we spend 
a lot of time on this floor. The people who are watching see us doing a 
lot of talking. I mean, talk i nice, but I want us to make sure that we 
are getting across what we are going to be doing about this problem.
  The Speaker has made a commitment that has directed the committees 
that are chaired by Democratic Members that, by July 4, that we will 
expand and extend renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives, 
that we will make efforts to make our Nation's farmers leaders in 
reducing our independence on foreign oil by promoting clean, 
domestically produced alternative fuels.
  They do that in Brazil. Brazil has become completely independent of 
foreign oil. In fact, our own auto industry, our American automobile 
industry manufactures vehicles to be driven in Brazil because they use 
an ethanol-based gasoline so they can be self-sufficient. It is 
entirely doable.
  We need to refocus, and our policies and committee hearings and 
legislation that will be moving through by Independence Day will move 
us in the direction of changing our dependence from the Middle East to 
the Midwest in our country.
  We will also provide incentives for an energy-innovation economy that 
will create new jobs and efficiency measures to help consumers and 
small businesses reduce energy costs. And we are going to make sure 
that we strengthen our national commitment to energy research and 
development for the next generation of high-risk, high-reward energy 
technology.
  We have an innovation agenda that was part of the New Direction for 
America agenda that we ran on and talked about in race after race in 
district after district. People want to know that it is not just words, 
that it is not just lips flapping up here. We are going to actually 
move legislation and use our congressional oversight capability and 
leadership on this issue so they don't hear one more quarter go by 
where they see record profits from the oil industry, one more quarter 
go by where they are on a roller coaster ride for gas prices.
  We need to make sure that we help our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle and the President of this country knows what a gas tank is. 
Because Mr. Altmire did make reference that this is a gas tank, but 
this is a pretty ancient gas tank. This is a representation of a gas 
tank that probably dates back to the 1950s. Perhaps that is the last 
time that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle or the 
President actually used one of these. That really is, I think, the only 
explanation for their insensitivity.
  It is our job to make sure that we move this innovation agenda 
forward so we can make it a priority. That is why rolling back those 
subsidies were part of our 6 in '06 agenda.
  One of the first bills that we passed in the first 100 hours in the 
majority was a repeal of the subsidies that were given away to the oil 
industry that they literally said they did not need. How could they 
need them? They are sitting on piles of money, billions of dollars, and 
we gave them subsidies. We gave them back money that they owed us, that 
were royalties that we should have earned because we give them the 
right to drill on government-owned land.
  It is just unbelievable that the priorities of the administration 
would be closer to the oil industry than it would be to the people. It 
is immoral. It really is. It is nothing short of immoral.
  We have to start thinking about how the decisions we make here impact 
real people. We stand in this Chamber every day. And you know what 
happens? I was in the legislature in Florida. My district is 450 miles 
from the capitol in Tallahassee, and it is a lot further from 
Washington. It becomes really easy, I think, for a lot of the Members 
to forget the impact of the decisions that we make in this room on real 
people. You can easily become desensitized. Maybe that is what it is.
  I know the President goes around the country and talks to people. But 
the

[[Page 11904]]

way they set those events up for the President, as I understand it, he 
is isolated. They screen a lot of the people that get an opportunity to 
be in the room with him, if not all of them. I just don't think he 
hears from enough people about the true impact of his policies. It is 
the only explanation.
  If he was really hearing what people were saying and if he was really 
sympathetic to the plight of people who are struggling, and not just 
poor people, but we are talking about middle-class people who have a 
job and who are, like you said, living paycheck to paycheck, and even 
people not living paycheck to paycheck.
  Just because you can afford to pay $55 to fill up your gas tank 
doesn't mean it is okay. It shouldn't cost that much. It doesn't have 
to, and we need to make sure that our actions become reality and that 
we put pressure on the President to sign what we send him when we send 
it by Independence Day.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I always think there is this pyramid of 
political influence out there. For a very long time, the only people 
that really mattered in this system were the people gathered at the tip 
of the pyramid, the people with the big political action committees and 
who could afford to hire 10 lobbyists to patrol the halls of Congress. 
And all of us, you know, that exist down at the bottom of that pyramid, 
and when we come here we get to be closer to the top than the bottom, 
but the regular folks who sit wondering, and even if they don't wonder 
if they can afford to fill their tank, they wonder whether increasing 
gas prices means they can save less, whether this will have some impact 
on their retirement savings. All of those folks that exist at the base 
of that pyramid didn't matter any longer.
  As much as for me and Mr. Altmire, as much as we care about setting a 
different course in Iraq and taking on the hegemony of the oil 
companies and setting a new course for health care policy, I think for 
us this election was as much about sort of flipping that pyramid on its 
head and saying we have got to start taking the time to form consensus 
back at the base of that pyramid and having those decisions be the ones 
that matter here in Washington.
  I have to tell you, standing here as a member of the 30-Something 
Working Group, nobody knows more than we do about how many Americans 
now stand on a precipice of jumping off a cliff to having faith in 
their government. Young people, whether in their 20s or 30s, but people 
now in their 40s, 50s and 60s have just lost any faith that what they 
care about will actually be reflected in what happens in Washington.

                              {time}  2115

  Guess what, in January, when a new Congress got sworn in, it all 
changed. Now, it may not change so much that things happen here with 
the alacrity that people may like. This government is still designed 
not exactly to respond overnight, but you would not be seeing the 
policy proposals that you are outlining, whether it is taking on the 
royalties and the tax breaks, whether it is taking a look at antitrust 
provisions, whether it is passing a strong price-gouging bill. You just 
would not see that.
  You would hear a lot of bluster, but you would not be seeing action 
if we did not flip government on its head in January and start once 
again listening to people out in communities rather than just listening 
to the conversations that happen perpetually within the halls of 
government. All those conversations are focused on one thing, the 
status quo.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Just what all this boils down to for me is 
just one word, and that is insensitivity. I mean, there is a 
disconnect, which is almost a word that has almost become cliche, but a 
disconnect between what is really going on in the lives of the average 
American person and the policies that the White House and the President 
advance.
  And that insensitivity, it is not isolated just to the price of oil. 
It is not isolated just to the President's believing that he is the 
only one that is right, and he was elected to be the decision-maker, as 
he said, and to heck with anyone else's opinion. The insensitivity is 
reflective, and it permeates every decision they make.
  Let me just give you an example. I sit on the House Judiciary 
Committee as well, and tomorrow we have Attorney General Gonzales 
coming in front of our committee for our regular oversight of the 
Department of Justice. So the insensitivity and the tone deafness 
extends to even an issue like that.
  The White House has defended their firings of the U.S. attorneys, 
essentially saying they had the right to do it, and they told us 
whatever reasons that they decided to release those U.S. attorneys, but 
they got caught in a fabrication. They got caught in a whole series of 
different stories that have come back to bite them.
  Now we have a situation where we have an Attorney General who has 
completely undermined our ability and the American people's ability to 
have any confidence and trust in what he says. That is a pattern that 
exists. I mean, we talked during the campaign and during the 109th and 
the 108th about the culture of corruption. I mean, that is what has 
been hanging over this Capitol, which finally we have been able to lift 
it.
  There are still remnants of it. We still have, sadly, a number of 
even our colleagues who have been accused of things and are going 
through investigations, but the Department of Justice and the Attorney 
General could have handled this U.S. attorney issue in a very simple 
way, a way that I do not think I could have or you could have 
questioned.
  They had the right to decide to change who was sitting in those 
offices, who was serving as a U.S. attorney, and all they had to say 
was, we wanted to change the leadership in those eight offices. 
Instead, they got so caught up in telling a story that they thought was 
legitimate enough, that now it is not the firings, it is the coverup 
that is the problem. And that is what the White House does not seem to 
get.
  We are almost talking apples and oranges. They are defending their 
right to have fired them. We are not disagreeing with them over their 
right to have fired the U.S. attorneys. We do have a serious problem, 
and we should have a serious problem not being able to trust that the 
information the administration and the Department of Justice provides 
to us when we ask them questions is accurate and that it is factual.
  It is the trust and the violation of that trust that has been 
undermined for so long, and that was another result on November 7. Part 
of the result of the election is that the American people's confidence 
in their government was so badly undermined that they wanted us to help 
them move in a new direction.
  So it is just not isolated just to the issues we have been talking 
about tonight. We could go through a laundry list.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. We only have about a minute and a half left, and Mr. 
Murphy is going to do the wrap-up.
  I just wanted to say that I see this prop that we have here, and it 
reminds me of, Mr. Murphy and I were watching you and Mr. Meek and Mr. 
Ryan last year with that big oil rubber stamp that you kept bringing 
around. Thankfully, we were able to retire that rubber stamp because 
the American people voted for a change in direction. I hope it is not 
going to take 18 months for us to retire that prop, that we are going 
to take clear and decisive action here in Congress, as I know we will 
under the Speaker's a leadership, and we are going to be able to do 
something about the gas prices in a way that is going to allow us to 
retire your prop there. But we are going to do our part, and I am going 
to send it over now to Mr. Murphy.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Speaking of props, I think by displaying 
that rather thin wallet before, I inadvertently started to make a case 
for an increase in congressional pay, for staff members here.
  So, we are on honored to be able to have this opportunity that the 
Speaker has given us, Mr. Altmire and I, certainly to be able to join 
our colleagues who have been up here for the last few years beating the 
drum.

[[Page 11905]]

  You can e-mail us at [email protected] or you can visit 
us on the web at www.speaker.gov/30something. We hope that people will 
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