To establish a congressional commission to examine the Federal, State, and local response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Region of the United States especially in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other areas impacted in the aftermath and make immediate corrective measures to improve such responses in the future.

Madam Speaker, once again it is an honor to come before the House. We would also like to thank the Democratic leader for allowing us to come to the floor.

We usually have a 30-something Working Group, which has now picked up on many new purposes, and tonight, once again, we have the opportunity to come to the floor on behalf of the American people, to inform the Members, and to make the process better. With us tonight we have the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), who is an outstanding Member of this body, and I am also joined by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), and I know others will be coming.

I just want to say that usually we deal with issues that are facing young people, but today there are a number of issues that are facing Americans in general and I am very, very concerned about not only what is going on here in Washington, D.C. but also what is not going on, and I think it is important to talk about those issues in this democracy that so many Americans have lost their lives for, that so many Americans have lost limbs and their mobility to allow us to come to this floor to represent them and represent everyday Americans.

Madam Speaker, we talked last week about the issue of the independent commission, and I think it is important that we look at this independent commission and look into what happened not only with regard to Hurricane Katrina but Hurricane Rita. I strongly believe that we can do a lot more than what we are doing right now.

I know there is a committee that is looking into this effort, but it is not a bipartisan committee. And once again I want to go on the record commending the Democratic leader for not making appointments to that committee, and I will discuss the reasons why later. I think also tonight we will talk about what is happening here in Washington, D.C., or what is not happening here in Washington, D.C., and I think we will help crystallize this not only for the Members but also for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I took the opportunity to go on to the White House Web site.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to submit for the Record the information I will be referring to regarding the White House Web site.

Mr. Speaker, I know the President put forth a task force with his homeland security adviser as the head of it. He mentioned this in an announcement, and I assumed that it would be something where this task force would actually have some findings which would come back to not only the Congress but to the American people. So I checked out the White House Web site, at WhiteHouse.gov, if any of the Members in their offices want to go on to that Web site to find out what is there and what is not there.

This is actually the front page of the Web site. It has a lot of things on here. It talks about what the President is doing, about press briefings, and a number of other things, such as the war on terror. There is a little box down here that says Hurricane Relief Efforts. You click on that and then move over to this particular page here.

Madam Speaker, it goes on. The President is hugging emergency management personnel in Texas. That is fine. We want to commend those Americans who are doing what they are supposed to be doing. It talks about a number of things, speeches in the news, Federal Government Hurricane Rita preparedness. It goes on further down the page, which is the first page if you are looking at it on the computer, President Bush declares a state of emergency for the States of Louisiana and Texas. It goes on and talks about his major speeches.

Madam Speaker, the point is that the President mentions nothing about this review, what went wrong, where it went wrong, and why it went wrong. We know that hurricanes and natural disasters are acts of God; but we also know in the case of Hurricane Katrina, and I can tell Members there are some who came to the Capitol today saying that in the case of Hurricane Rita, and we will be voting on the energy bill tomorrow, one Member said it is the worst bill we have seen in 7 months, and I can tell Members there are some real issues that are going on in that bill that we will talk about a little later.

Madam Speaker, I think it is important that the American people understand that I believe we are not taking this issue seriously. The 9/11 Commission came out saying that many of their recommendations were not enacted, such as intraoperability to allow emergency workers to talk to one another. We had Coast Guard people who could not talk to the 82nd Airborne. We had local police officers who could not talk to one another because we did not do what we were supposed to do years after 9/11.

I can tell Members, the number of Democratic amendments to come up

with intraoperability to make sure that emergency workers can talk to one another was voted down on a party-line basis. I want to make sure that everybody understands what is not going on here in Washington. This is not only national security; it is responding to the Federal taxpayer in the way that they deserve, the State, local and Federal response. But we will never know because this Congress would not allow an independent commission to take place.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Madam Speaker, there are a couple of articles that I want to enter into the Congressional Record because I think it is important. I think it is important for us to understand that this is just one day here in Washington, and I think it is important for Members to understand that we are not here at 11 p.m. at night talking about the Pallone, Wasserman Schultz, Ryan Report. This is actually happening. This is what is happening in our democracy. The 107th Congress, 108th Congress, and 109th Congress are going to be held responsible for what has happened with regard to the deficit, what has happened as it relates to a war where they embellished the reason for why we went to war.

We are going to give this to the Clerk and make sure this appears in the Congressional Record: ``Spy probe widens to cover aides to the White House service.'' This is as it relates to the outing of CIA agents and sharing information with foreign governments: ``CIA Rejects Discipline for 9/11 Failures.''

``Goss,'' who is the CIA Director, ``cites fear of hurting the agency.'' That is also on the front page.

I am just going to go a little further on because this is too much to overlook and if we do not talk about it here in the Congress, then who will? ``Ex-White House Aide Indicted'' for lying to Federal investigators. This is serious stuff. It goes on. ``GOP Divided Over Range of Severity of Spending Cuts.''

I want to yield here for a second as we move along. We were on this floor supplemental after supplemental, borrowing to be able to pay for the war in Iraq. We all want to protect our men and women in uniform. I tell my colleagues I am first in line, and I am pretty sure many of us are. I know the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) and I serve on the Committee on Armed Services. This is what we do every day: make sure that our troops are protected. But I can tell my colleagues right now, when it came down to giving money for chasing weapons of mass destruction that were not there, an imminent threat to the United States of America that was not there, but now it is an imminent threat due to the fact that it is the seed of terrorism right now. Individuals are going in there. They are going after Americans, and they are trying to fight against our troops that are there that were originally there for weapons of mass destruction, but that is another point. Now it comes down to making sure that we respond to Americans that have paid their taxes, that many of their children are at war right now either in Afghanistan or Iraq, that now the majority, the Republicans on the majority side, and not all of them, but I will say the individuals that are running the show on the other side, the leadership, they now want to say, well, we have to look at cuts and we have to off-balance some issues. Let us look at this. They are looking at cuts as it relates to things like Head Start, Title I, meals for poor children.

So we want to take from the poor to give to the poor in the light of being a fiscal conservative, and then at the same time, we have got billionaires, billionaires. No one is saying anything about them. No one is saying anything about the tax cuts for billionaires, not middle class tax cuts. There is no discussion on that on the majority side, and I think it is important that we highlight the hypocrisy in democracy.

There are about ten stories here, and I know folks can go to Washingtonpost.com. This is just one paper I picked up this morning. As it relates to the CIA chief, it goes on: On A-11, it talks about Porter Goss, and this is very interesting. The President said that we should have an internal investigation. Why do we need a 9/11 Commission? Okay. The internal investigation took place between Senator Graham over on the other side, head of the Select Committee on Intelligence at that time, and Porter Goss, who is now the Director of the CIA, was head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Part of the charge for that was to look at individuals no matter what level and ask the Inspector General, and that is the individual that is outside of the CIA autonomy. People are not supposed to be able to reach him and touch him, not supposed to be able to intimidate him.

The Congress passed a bill saying he should investigate this, come back with findings, and if there is a breakdown in management or something that was overlooked, then those, no matter what level, should be held responsible. The Inspector General did his job. He came back with a report, and today or yesterday, the CIA Director, appointed by the President, said, oh, well, we are not going to do anything about that. We are not going to hold those individuals accountable. George Tenet, who was the Director of the CIA at the time of 9/11, also who won the Medal of Freedom from the President, that he will not be held responsible or anybody under him. So the CIA Director said he will see to it that that report stays secret even though, Mr. Speaker, Americans lost their lives. And that is the part that gets under my skin. I do not represent New York. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) represents some of the victims of 9/11.

Two hundred died. His constituents died. And how dare the CIA Director or the President or the Congress sit by and watch this happen. All of those lives, firefighters, police officers, individuals who just said, I am going to work today, folks that have lost loved ones, we are going to say, oh, well, we passed legislation, but we are not willing to stand by it.

Mr. Speaker, I am saying this to make a point that this leadership and this administration, and there were Republicans, Democrats, Independents, even individuals who said, I am not voting because I do not care about the political process, there are individuals that died here and this is not dealing with the issue of, oh, well, they are a bunch of Democrats that died and Democrats in the House are concerned about it.

There are a couple more stories here that I know the gentleman is going to talk about, but that is just section A of the Washington Post, and I am not even at the Federal section yet. But I want to make sure to highlight it for the Clerk so they can enter it into the Congressional Record. There are couple of other stories that I want to get to, to share with the Members, because I want to make sure that we are all paying attention to what is going on because, when all is said and historians look at the 109th Congress on who was doing what and who stood by and watched it happen, I want to make sure that people know that many of us in this Congress were on the side of saying that we were about doing the right thing, that we wanted to make sure that things happened.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, as the gentlewoman shows, it is beyond sad. Sad would be if we could not do anything about it, but we can, and the American people can do something about it. I will tell you right now, all that we are talking about here, and I will tell you, because we like to talk about solutions, we also like to point out the problem.

Time after time again, and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is the Member who has been here the longest, from New Jersey, the fact is that Democrat amendments that have gone down on partisan lines to make sure we take care of the kind of oversight that the American people called for. Well, let us just say the Constitution calls for from this body. We have oversight and investigative powers that we are not exercising.

I think it is important, and I just want to make sure that we put on the record, I have asked the Congressional Research Service to go in and pull the number of Congressional subpoenas that went out in the Clinton administration versus the Bush administration.

I will tell you I personally, my chief and staff and others had to call the House Counsel's information to get this information, to allow the Congressional Research Service to go in, and the Congressional Research Service said, ``Well, somebody said that it may be political.''

No, it is just a history of the House. We did not call the GOP or the Democratic National Committee on this. If subpoenas went out under the Clinton administration, that is a matter of record. What is political about that?

Now, I will tell you, this is not a witch hunt or any kind of hunt you want to call it. It is the truth, and it is the fact that we cannot rely, and that is the reason why we need an independent commission to make sure that not only the act of God, when we watched television, it was the act of a lack of governance. It was an act of cronyism, of the Corps of Engineers stopping work after 37 years on a levee that they knew would be breached. And look, the American taxpayers now have to pick up $200 billion.

I will yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) to talk about his bill, because I think it is important that we get colleagues on the other side to come down and sign on it.

Before we do that, I want to make sure as we move through section A of the Washington Post, I feel that all of this should be enshrined, because I think it is important within the Congressional Record, which it will, that before the historians look at it, that the American people will have an opportunity to look at it and know that they have an option to bring about change in their government.

They deserve better. I am telling you right now, they deserve better. I know they do, and they know they do. This is national security. This is Americans we are talking about.

This is what I could not believe, Madam Speaker. ``Pentagon Releases Repayments Rules.'' Now, we had a big discussion here on this floor about body armor and we went to war saying that we are prepared to go to war.

Well, that is what the generals and the four star guys were telling us in the Committee on Armed Services. ``We got it covered, Congressman. Don't ask any questions. Either you are with us or with them. Don't ask us any questions.'' That is from Mr. Ashcroft over in the Senate, I must add.

Thank God for Senator Dodd and many others here in this Congress that fought to make sure that our men and women had the body armor that they needed.

You would have some folks come to the floor and make you believe that they are the leaders on watching out for our men and women. It is not a partisan issue, it is an American issue, the fact we were talking about body armor, and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the ranking member on the Committee on Armed Services, I would say some folks on the majority side were concerned about the body armor. Men and women were dying because they did not have what they needed.

Guess what they did? They did what they are supposed to do. Moms, dads, uncles, brothers, sisters alike, sons and daughters, bought their loved one body armor, kevlar, to wear in Iraq and Afghanistan. They did so. Then we passed a bill saying they should be reimbursed, rightfully so, unfortunately after the fact, and some folks died.

The Congress called for, once again, the WashingtonPost.com, you go on and check it out yourself, it goes on, ``The guidelines, from Undersecretary of Defense, David S.C. Chu, comes nearly a year after Congress passed legislation ordering,'' this is not asking, ``ordering the Department of Defense to come up with the reimbursement policy. The law required that the Pentagon issue the rules by February 25 of this year.'' Not 2006, but 2005.

Here we are in October, in October, and because there were threats from Senator Dodd and others in this Congress that they will do something drastic legislatively because they did not do it, these are families that still have not been reimbursed. These are Americans. These are Americans. These are not folks in a foreign land.

So when folks start getting upset about what we are talking about here on this floor, I can tell you something, I am glad that somebody fought for the opportunity for us to raise these issues, because this is beyond belief. Here in the United States, our own people. These are our people.

Now, I am just going to share this with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). This is not something as it relates to people saying, ``Oh, you are being partisan.'' No, we are not being partisan. We are telling the truth. We are making sure Members know exactly what they are doing and not doing.

If you are a Member of the majority side and you want to see the kind of change that these men and women deserve, that these men and women deserve to get reimbursed for their body armor, that are financially challenged right now, that are paying too much for gas, that will pay over $1,000 for heating oil or LP gas, this winter, they need that money. And, guess what? You go on the DOD website, there is no mention of it. There is no mention of the fact where they can go on and find out how they can be reimbursed.

So, we are going to work on that. I tried to find that today. This is on behalf of the entire country.

As we look at oversight and accountability, will the gentleman please talk about H.R. 3764?

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I just want to say that we have a cosponsor form here for H.R. 3764 sitting here on the table. There is my pen. Anyone from the majority side, the Republicans, that want to get down to making sure that this never, ever happens again, that we do not have people dying because they did not have insulin, we do not have emergency responders not able to talk to one another because they do not have interoperability where they can talk to one other to save lives, and where we can save $200 billion hopefully in the future, because we could have saved New Orleans if we were on our job, our j-o-b, maybe, not maybe, this independent commission will point out, this independent commission, which the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) pointed out before, it is a group of individuals that are outside of the Congress, like the 9/11 Commission, that will not be here in Congress to carry on about trying to cover up on behalf of the majority side. So we have this here.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Madam Speaker, I want the gentlewoman to do that, but I also want to point out, being on the Committee on Armed Services, some of the other issues that are in this bill. It is very unfortunate. I am not going to be one to talk about the oil companies and special interests and the lobbyists and the K Street project and all of that, because guess what? The American people elected a Congress to protect them from greed, from doing it because we can. And we just passed, the majority did, an energy bill 7 months ago, but they are doing it on the backs of individuals of devastation, communities that are not in place to be able to come to Congress and lobby against this kind of action.

This is what is happening within this bill, I say to my colleagues. We just went through a BRAC process, military base closures. If they close, that means that the government can give this land to oil companies to go in and drill. Local communities have plans for military bases to help their economy, to be able to do the things that they want to do, because it is within their community.

Here is the kicker in this whole thing. There are a number of kickers. You can get kicked to death under this bill. If an oil company was to move in and contaminate or do something to harm the public, if the mayor of that city or county or parish or State were to bring a lawsuit against the oil company, and they were to lose, they would have to pay the oil companies' legal fees. Now, on the other side of the coin, if the local community, parish, county, State was to file a lawsuit against an oil company for not carrying out their environmental duties or whatever the case may be, put their constituents in harm's way, and they were to win, the oil companies, by Federal law, if this passed tomorrow, if the majority has their way, do not have to reimburse the local government for their legal fees.

So here is the U.S. Congress majority that is going to stand on the side of industry to say, we are on your side versus we are on the local mayor, the parish, the county commissioner, or the State government's side, the side of the taxpayers, and that are the individuals who elected us to come to Congress.

Madam Speaker, I warned my friends on the Majority side, I warned them. Because tomorrow we have 5 hours of debate and around 2 or 3 o'clock, we are going to be here on this floor and we are going to see the followers versus the leaders. On this side, we are going to lead because we are going to have an alternative amendment that is not going to have any of that language in there that is going to be able to bring gas prices down, that is going to be able to deal with our issues of conserving energy and things of that nature.

So I think it is important that we realize, and I want to warn the Members, unfortunately, if you keep voting for what they tell you to vote for on the Republican leadership side, you will find yourselves making a career decision, bottom line. Because I think the American people are fed up with this stuff here in Washington, DC. We are trying to do what we can. Someone may say, well, why are you all on the Floor arguing. The gentleman from New Jersey has talked about what Senator Dodd has done. The reason why the Department of Defense wrote those rules several months later after the congressional deadline was the fact that a Democrat raised the issue and threatened them, that he will take it to the next level, and that is the reason why they did it. They did not do it because they were supposed to by law or that it was the right thing to do; they did it because they came under pressure.

I am telling my colleagues that we are within our right to put the pressure on, put it on the Record, and we will be here every opportunity that these lights are on to talk about what is not happening and what we are trying to do, and the reason why we cannot do it because we are in the minority. If the Republican Conference betters itself and it starts to get leadership that is going to lead on behalf of the American people, then God bless them, but I can tell my colleagues right now for the last 10 years, that has not happened. It has not happened. That is the reason why. It can be a Republican parish, it can be a Republican mayor, it can be a Republican governor, if you bring suit against this industry, which is what they are bringing to the Floor tomorrow on the Majority side, you are going to find yourself paying legal fees if you are not successful. That is to intimidate local communities for not bringing suit against individuals that violate environmental law. That is what that is about.

Madam Speaker, we understand the majority has about 10 minutes. We are going to come back another 10 minutes after the Majority side; we will have 10 minutes after that, and I think the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is going to be sponsoring that. We have a couple more minutes and we are going to turn it over to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

But first, let me just say this real quickly, the articles that we talked about tonight, and this is just one publication. Washingtonpost.com. If you want to figure out how you can be a cosponsor on House bill 3764, that is housedemocrats.gov/katrina, you can go on-line and become a cosponsor of that legislation as a citizen to be able to push the drive for us to make sure that Americans never, ever have to go through the lack of response that they have received, and that is for Federal, State and local.

We will give it out next time.

CIA Rejects Discipline for 9/11 Failures

Goss Cites Fear Of Hurting Agency

(By Dafna Linzer and Walter Pincus)

The CIA will not seek to hold any current or former agency

officials, including ex-director George J. Tenet, responsible

for failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, CIA

Director Porter J. Goss said yesterday, despite a

recommendation by the agency's inspector general that he

convene an ``accountability board'' to judge their

performance.

Goss's decision, coming, four years after hijackers

commandeered four jets and killed nearly 3,000 people,

appeared to end possibility that a high-level official will

be held responsible for what several investigations found to

be significant failures throughout the government. The

inspectors general of the departments of State, Justice and

Defense completed their own investigations without publicized

disciplinary actions taken against anyone.

The CIA's report, which severely criticized actions of

senior officers, will remain classified, Goss said in his

announcement, which was welcomed by some former officials

mentioned in the document but assailed by families of victims

of the attacks.

Goss said in his statement that the voluminous report by

the CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson, ``unveiled no

mysteries,'' and that making it public would only bring harm

to the agency when it it trying to rebuild. Goss said that

the report in no way suggest ``that any one person or group

of people could have prevented 9/11.

``Of the officer named in the report,'' he said, ``about

half have retired from the Agency, and those who are still

with us are amongst the finest we have.''

Goss had supported an internal CIA review in December 2002,

while he was chairman of the House intelligence committee.

The CIA report, which was mostly completed in February, is

the last known government inquiry on the counterterrorism

failures ahead of the attacks and has been the most

secretive.

It also had the potential to pit Goss against his own

agency. Convening a review board could have embarrassed his

predecessors and renewed questions over, President Bush's

decision to award Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I think it is utterly reprehensible for Director Goss to be

hinting towards not holding anyone accountable, particularly

since he was in an oversight capacity as house chairman and

is now in a position to atone for his own failures,'' said

Kristin Breitweiser, whose husband, Ron, was killed at the

World Trade Center. ``He is either avoiding embarrassment or

trying to hide something.''

More than a dozen intelligence officials, including Tenet;

his former director of operations, James L. Pavitt; and J.

Cofer Black, former head of the counterterrorism center, are

faulted in the CIA report, said officials who have read the

classified findings. Tenet vigorously disputed the findings,

arguing that he and his officers had done more than anyone

else in the intelligence community to warn about al Qaeda.

The report also names some current undercover operatives

working in the counterterrorism center. Officials had said

exposing them to public criticism would harm their work and

the agency during a time of war.

Tenet had no comment yesterday. Pavitt said he was

relieved. ``He did what was right for the institution and its

people, and for their work,'' Pavitt said of Goss.

Goss's former congressional colleagues, who have urged that

the report be declassified, reacted coolly to his decision to

forgo accountability reviews. They said Goss and John D.

Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, will be

summoned to appear before the Senate intelligence committee

to answers questions this month.

``I am concerned to learn of the Director's decision to

forego this step in the process,'' Sen. Pat Roberts, (R-Kan.)

said in a statement. ``However, I spoke with Director Goss

and Negroponte earlier today and they both strongly believe

that this is the correct course of action.''

The CIA's internal report was done in a response to a

recommendation of the House-Senate committee that looked into

the attacks. The committee called on the CIA's inspector

general to conduct an investigation ``to determine whether

and to what extent personnel at all levels should be held

accountable any omission, commission or failure to meet

professional standards'' to prevent or disrupt the attacks.

Based on these findings, the CIA director was to take

``appropriate disciplinary or other action,'' with the result

to be passed on to the President and the House and Senate

intelligence committees.

But Goss declined. He noted that before Sept. 11, when he

was chairman of the House intelligence panel, the CIA

suffered from cutbacks and reduced budgets. ``Stars'' were

singled out and asked ``to take on some tough assignments,''

he said, ``Unfortunately, time and resources were not on

their side, despite their best efforts to meet unprecedented

challenges.

``Risk is a critical part of the intelligence business.

Singling out these individuals would send the wrong message

to our junior officers about taking risks--whether it be in

operation in the field or being assigned to a hot topic at

headquarters,'' he said.

Citing classified information about intelligence sources

and methods, Goss said the report should not be made public.

Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.) the ranking Democrat on the House

intelligence panel, said she will work to get some elements

declassified and said Goss has a responsibility to ``persuade

the public that he has dealt fairly with his agency's past

mistakes.''

Mr. Speaker, once again it is an honor to come before the House. As the Members know, the 30-Something Working Group, we come to the floor to bring about not only good change for the Congress, but also for the country. And we try to promote legislation that the Democratic side is offering towards some of the issues that are facing the country, but at the same time talk about the responsibilities of the majority that are unmet.

Mr. Speaker, as the Members know, Hurricane Wilma hit not only my district, but many of the Florida delegation in southeast and southwest Florida, and we are constantly struggling with trying to make sure that we can provide for our constituents. And we come to the floor week after week, especially the 30-Something Working Group, talking about what happened in Hurricane Katrina, the lack of response in Hurricane Katrina and Rita by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and also calling up House Resolution 3764, which has over 190 Democratic cosponsors. Unfortunately, last I checked, there are not any Republicans who have signed on to it, and that is very unfortunate because it is an identical commission to the 9/11 Commission that brought about great recommendations, some that have been met, others that we still have to make sure that we implement to secure our country. It was about not making the same mistake again, again, and again. And that is the reason why we are calling for an independent Katrina Commission.

And that is a piece of legislation that is not a Democratic plan, but it is an American plan. Eighty-one percent of Americans support it, and I think it is very important that we do not allow partisan committees that have been established here in the House to dictate the response to natural disasters and a possible terrorist attack.

We have to make things better to protect Americans. It is almost like I feel like an insurance salesman saying that we have to have insurance not after the fact, but before the fact. And if we know we have shortcomings, then we need to deal with that in a very effective way.

Being an ``evacuee'' of Hurricane Wilma due to the fact that there is very little power in south Florida, there are gas lines, Mr. Speaker, I hold up here the front page of the Washington Post that has many people here in south Florida, as a matter of fact in West Palm Beach, standing for hours for gas because we could not get the generators running at Port Everglades to be able to pump the gas to allow many of the stations to have gas and power. These are things that we need to work on.

Governor Bush jumped in front of the train because folks were getting upset with the Federal response once again as it relates to getting the simple things like ice, water, and food down to the affected area. There was a lot of chest-beating prior to the storm, saying, we have 2,000 FEMA personnel in place; we have a set number of trucks that are lined up in Florida, pre-positioned, to go in and provide ice water and food. And in many cases the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) showed that either there were very few, trucks were extremely late like 8, 7 hours. People

there just went through a major hurricane waiting 8, 7 hours just for 1 bag of ice and 3 jugs of water, and in some cases nothing showed up, and folks had to go back home.

That is why we need an independent commission. We do not need officials that have relationships with the President to say, blame me, I am the State of Florida, blame me for the shortcomings of the response. We know in hurricanes, natural disasters, that there are going to be shortcomings. But as it relates to the very simple things that have to be provided, they must be provided. And the reason why they were not provided is that the supplies were not there, period, dot.

FEMA was in charge of making sure that those supplies made it to said location. The truck drivers were not hired by the State of Florida, but were hired by FEMA. And I think it is important that we look at it for what it is.

We do not have to have a commission for every natural disaster or event that takes place here in the United States, but we have a House resolution that, Mr. Speaker, will be part of a discharge petition here in the House, and I want to break that down so that everyone understands what a discharge petition is.

Basically, we are using the rules of the House to call this resolution up to the floor to discharge it, and we need a said number of signatures to be able to pull it up on the floor so that the House can take a vote. And if we do not have some Members of the majority side to see fit to have an independent Katrina Commission that 81 percent of Americans are in approval of, then we are failing to meet our obligations.

We know that we have problems. The Department of Homeland Security telling people in my district to be patient 72 hours after the storm, saying, we will get it right. Well, that is the reason why we have it. We are supposed to be prepared for these events, but we are not, and we are not even willing to correct ourselves. So that is in place as it relates to the Democratic response.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, it is not like we are by ourselves as it relates to calling for this independent commission. And the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) and I were talking about an independent commission, and we have been going week after week here on this floor saying it is the responsible thing to do not only in natural disasters, but also in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. An independent commission will be able to look at the Federal response, the State response, and the local response and learn from either what was good or bad that took place in those events.

If we are not going to have an independent review of our capabilities, then something is wrong. If we are not going to have that, that means that without having it, people will lose their lives possibly because of the lack of response, because they definitely did in Katrina. We had people that were running out of medical supplies. We had people that needed insulin, could not get it because they were stranded and that we were not able to reach them. So I think that is very important.

There are a number of papers that have come out for an independent commission on Katrina: The USA Today; the Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee; the News & Observer from Raleigh, North Carolina; also Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in Georgia; the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; the St. Petersburg Times in Florida; the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah; also the Denver Post in Colorado; and the San Antonio Express, obviously in Texas; and the Houston Chronicle of Texas.

There are a number of papers, and those are just the major ones, that have come out for an independent Katrina Commission.

We have talked about House Resolution 3764, but also as it relates to contracting fraud that may very well happen in Wilma because of a lack of oversight. We have called for House bill H.R. 3838, a bill to create an antifraud commission to prevent waste and fraud and abuse of Federal contractors as it relates to these emergency declarations or what have you. This is about saving money and making sure that we do not make the victims of a natural disaster or a potential terrorist attack victims all over again because we failed to have the proper oversight.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to add the fact that we have to continue to push. Once again I give the report. Every day

I go on the White House Website. I have the Website page here. No mention of an independent or any evaluation of what the failures were during Hurricane Katrina, and we also have the Website that has not changed on the partisan committee that is here in the House. And I think it is important for us to identify that so that we do not have to continue to have Ground Hog Day all over again.

One last point, Mr. Speaker, while we are on this issue here. The gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) and I talked last night about the fact that we were here pushing for this commission week after week. I mentioned that. And we shared with not only the Members, but also Americans, Mr. Speaker, the fact that it could be them next, victims of a poor, short response or an inadequate response.

Little did we know at that time that we would be victims of the shortcomings of the fact that we say we are ready, but we are not really ready or really prepared; and in some cases some people question are we saying we have trucks in certain locations and they are not there, do we need to get prima facia proof that they were there? These are the questions that my constituents are asking.

So I want to share with Members that this independent commission is very important, to make sure that one day it may be you and your constituents going through this and you are going to say, Gee, you know, it is amazing that we cannot even get a truck to come in here with water.

We talked about last night the fact that the terrorists are not going to call up and say, Hey, I want you guys to get prepared. I am going to carry out an attack in another month or so, so you need to get together and pre-position.

That is the reason why the 9/11 recommendations need to be fully implemented. That is the reason why we need a Katrina Commission to look at the lack of response we had on the biggest natural disaster that took place on U.S. soil and the Federal, State and local response to that. That is very, very important. It is not an indictment document; it is a document to make sure that we prevent loss of life in the future.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman is 110 percent right. I think every day Republicans want to see, and Democrats and Independents and even folks that are not voting in America, they want to see leadership. They want to see leadership on behalf of the country. Veterans want to see the flag that they fought for and that some of their friends and comrades died for, that it is not caught up in what we call this culture of corruption and cronyism.

We want to talk about cronyism for a minute, Mr. Michael ``Brownie,'' I am not one to say it is his fault as it relates to staying on with FEMA for 60 days, and then the Secretary of Homeland Security extends his contract at the salary he was making as director of FEMA for another 30 days.

The reason given for doing that is that we need to learn from Director Brown, or Brownie, the President calls him Brownie, we need to learn from him so that we can know more about what happened in Katrina. Now, if you could not get it in the first 60 days, he was only in charge for about maybe 5 or 7 days, thanks to the fact that we were raising the question. The Democratic Leader first called for his resignation because we saw that we had someone that did not have the experience.

The fact he is on for 60 days, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, I am waiting to have a conversation with him on why he would extend it for 30 more days at taxpayers' expense.

Now, folks went into their pockets and said, Well, we are going to help you out for another whole month. That is on them. I do not have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the fact that we are rewarding him in confidence and cronyism with the taxpayer dollar.

$148,000.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time once again, well, I can tell you, the part that I am more concerned about is the fact that this is a high-profile individual within FEMA. What is happening on an everyday basis with someone that really is not competent in Federal Government and is known to the managers? I guess it is okay, because when you think about the culture of corruption and cronyism, if it comes from the top, then it must be okay. If it is all right with the Vice President, then it is okay. That means it is okay with the Department Secretaries and Under Secretaries and the regional directors. So that is the reason why we have to cut it off.

Mr. Speaker, do you know something? Not a mumbling word from the majority on this. Not a mumbling word. Better yet, we have folks coming to the floor, and we started talking about responding to the needs of Americans saying we have to have offsets in Medicaid, we have got to have offsets in possible Medicare, that is not off the table.

What I mean by ``offsets'' is the fact we have to take money from those programs to respond to the Katrina-Rita issue. We have to do that. But, better yet, we have an example of an individual that I think pretty much all Americans, and I am pretty sure that almost close to every Member of the House, agree with the fact that he did not know exactly what he was doing.

I do not blame Mr. Brown. I do not blame him. I blame the individuals that placed him in that position. I blame the managers that saw that he was not up to par and endorsed lackluster, leave-alone performance, lack of competence in doing that particular job. He is probably good somewhere else.

Yes, ``You are doing a good job, Brownie,'' on national television, broad daylight. The world is watching.

And we are going to give you a 60-day extension and have you on as a consultant, have you on so we can learn from your bad job. Maybe we can learn more. No, as a fat matter of fact, hey, you know, 60 days is not enough. Let us extend it 30 more days.

There are too many people around here paying taxes, folks running around here trying to put fiscal responsibility in the backdrop, saying we are conservatives. Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is defending and extending contracts of a person that the front-page national publications say is incompetent and not in any way knowing what to do in a natural disaster. So this is beyond comprehension. And not a mumbling word.

I would say this: I do not blame him. I am not running around here saying I am disappointed in Michael Brown for accepting a 30-day extension on a $140,000 salary. I am not blaming him. He could not do that on his own.

No one from the White House called and said, You know something? Over at the Department of Homeland Security, I think you all are probably not playing with a full deck if you think it is okay to do this. Not a mumbling word. So I am concerned, leave alone as a Congressman, as a taxpayer, that this is okay.

Now, this is just a high-profile case. We talk about corruption and cronyism, a culture. People think, well, wow, they are just saying that because they can say it. No, this is a shining example, and we have been talking about this, and it has been in all of these publications, and they are still doing it, like it is okay.

The only people that can put this administration and set us on a new course and put this majority in check are the American people. But, unfortunately, they will not have an opportunity until late 2006, and on behalf of the country we cannot continue to sit idly by and watch this kind of activity take place.

I would feel a little uncomfortable saying that my colleagues on the majority side are not standing up to their responsibilities in oversight. The Secretary, as soon as he leaves from down in south Florida from Wilma, should be called on the carpet in some committee room saying please let us know what we can learn from Mr. Brown. Please let us know what we can learn from the Director of FEMA. Why do we have to continue to pay him and use the taxpayers' dollars? Someone needs to ask that question. It should be not only the Committee on Homeland Security; it should be congressional leaders calling and saying you need to reverse that.

So I do not even feel half uncomfortable about me being upset about this thing, because I can tell you right now, there are a number of people out there that are very upset; and it is time, it is time, that we cut out this culture of corruption and cronyism, because it is weakening this country. I am going to tell you that right now.

Folks might see little events, but I can tell you right now, I am concerned about clandestine operations that we have going on, especially in this culture of corruption and cronyism. I am concerned about taking people for face value when they say, well, this is what we have in place, and we find out later that it is really not.

I am concerned when we come to this floor and the clock opens up for 15-minute votes, and because the majority side is not prevailing or winning, they decide to hold the vote clock open for 90 minutes. I am concerned about these events taking place under lights, cameras, and action.

I am concerned about those events that are taking place in the back halls of Congress, in the White House, and in other Federal agencies that are not under lights and camera.

So this is the kind of boldness, cronyism, boldness and possible corruption in many places that takes place. And do not take it from me, just pick up your local paper or turn on the news. It is full of it. So if we do not hold ourselves in check, and if the majority is not willing to rise up and police this corruption and cronyism; because, Mr. Speaker, I used to be a State trooper, and we had what they call a game warden, and I always used to say, the game warden cannot be the lead poacher. You cannot be leading off the poacher saying that I am in charge of policing the poachers. So I think it is important that we have folks that will leader up and say, you know something, I know I have been told to be quiet on this, but I have a constitutional responsibility to make sure that we have oversight.

These are not personal decisions, Mr. Ryan; these are decisions that are affecting the governance of this country. So when we allow this kind of stuff to go on, it is making the country weaker versus stronger, because the Federal tax dollars are being spent in ways that they should not be spent, and we are not saving any money by allowing this kind of culture to continue.

Mr. Ryan, I am sorry to cut in, sir, but I am going to tell you this: I know a lot of Republicans. A lot of Republicans are supporters of me. They vote for me, and

some of them say, great job. I have some great friends on the other side of the aisle, I mean great friends. We do a lot together. We talk about things that are common interests. We are friends. My mother was here before me, and some of them are great friends of my mother, and, because of that relationship, we have a great bond.

But I can tell you this: I think this goes far beyond building up or doing something on behalf of the Republican Party, because some of these decisions that are made, it will turn the stomach of Republicans that I know. It would turn their stomachs. I know on the majority side, I know that there are some Republicans that go home, and they are sick. They are sick of what is going on here in this House. But you know something? If they were to stand up, unfortunately they would be knocked down politically. They will find themselves fighting the whole reason why we are here on this floor, fighting against them doing their jobs.

So I kind of feel that there is a purpose for what we are doing here, because as far as I am concerned, we could sit back and just say, well, let them do it, or let them look the other way, because the American people are going to see that they are not governing. But you know something? We are Americans, and we have an obligation to not only our constituents. When our constituents voted for us, they federalized us. So that means that we have to care about the entire country and what happens to the Federal dollar, which is the taxpayers' dollar. It is very unfortunate.

So, Mr. Ryan, I know that it is an influence of the special interests. Their pockets are full because of the relationships here on Capitol Hill that they have and in the White House. Guess what? The average Republican is paying more at the pump, the average Republican does not have health care; just like many of our constituents, there is no health care plan. The average Republican is going to have to bear the brunt, Mr. Ryan, and I am sorry for taking a little of your time here, but bear the brunt of taking away from Medicare, Medicaid, free and reduced lunches for poor people; taking away from projects that would go to local government to build communities; and all of these faith-based groups that are out there trying to bring about some change, it is going to take away from them.

But, meanwhile, when it comes down to saying to a billionaire that we probably cannot give you hundreds of thousands in tax cuts that we have given you over the last number of years, and I am going to reference a report here, a third-party validator, a little later on, to say that it is not working, they say, no, no, no, do not worry about it, do not say anything, millionaire. We have you. We have your back. We are going to protect you, but we are going to make sure that the average Republican, the average Democrat, the average Independent, that they bear the burden, that they send their children into conflict and war, that they pay higher gas prices; not you, special interest. No, no, we are here for you.

But see, the problem here, and we talked about it last night, Mr. Ryan, about the fact that this is the only legislative body on the other side of the aisle in the Senate, where you can be appointed by a Governor to the Senate if someone leaves office. But when someone leaves office here in the middle of a term, you have to be elected. You cannot be appointed to the House of Representatives. So that means that we are representatives of the people, not representatives of the special interests, not representatives of the billionaires of the world; we are representatives of everyday folk.

So I think this is important, because Democrats, we have budget alternatives like pay-as-you-go, saying that if you are going to do it, you are going to show how you are going to pay for it, okay? We have alternatives as it relates to dealing with Hurricane Katrina so that we do not continue to waste the taxpayers' dollars and also make the victims of the event victims all over again. So, Mr. Ryan, we have the alternatives.

I believe that this goes higher than the party. I believe that it goes right to this culture of corruption and cronyism, and I will tell you one thing: The American people will see us bring about great change if just one of the Chambers of the legislative body was to turn Democrat, because what you see right now, based on law enforcement agencies saying, listen, we need to have some level of oversight, this country is going down the drain, because they are dragging it down the drain, and we have to do this. Imagine if we had an oversight committee that would call some of these things into question before they get to the level to where they are now, Mr. Ryan.

You mentioned it.

Mr. Speaker, let us just make sure that we are crystal clear so that everyone understands. Not just saying, well, let me check, let

us see. Let us look at the people that apply for the job. Oh, there is a Republican. No. I want you to hire my right-hand staffer. I want you to hire him or her, put them in the position, okay, and so I can deal directly with them so that we can have a line of communications and we are not confused, because this person has my cell number, okay, and I want to make sure that that happens.

Now, we are not talking about something that the House Ethics Committee has not already dealt with, because of the fact that this issue was brought up and it was very public. It was not any kind of clandestine operation that was going on. You just pick up the paper. Yes, that is what we are doing. What is the problem? If they are going to do business up here, they are going to hire the people that they want hired, period, dot, with a straight face, under the lights with the cameras on and the press running.

That is a problem, Mr. Ryan, and I believe that when you start looking at the whole culture of corruption and cronyism, you have to look at these activities that are taking place under lights, camera, and on the front pages of newspapers. And you know something? The American people, Mr. Speaker, may feel, well, it is okay, because Congress is not calling any of these people in. Once again, you cannot be the game warden and the lead poacher at the same time. You just cannot do it. It is not physically possible. You cannot have a problem and be over the very thing that is the problem.

Once again, I said it last night, I will say it again. These are not personal decisions, Mr. Ryan. These are decisions that are affecting the policy of the country and the Treasury of the country. This is not someone that went off and made an individual bad decision and said, you know, I made a bad decision, it only really affected me, okay, and I am sorry. It will not happen again. No, it is not that; it is a whole Medicare program. It is an entire industry: Energy, we are going to give you what you want.

That is what is going on, and it is affecting the U.S. taxpayers.

If you want to call it an energy bill, I will not, because it did nothing about true conservation. It did nothing about true price gouging. I mean, there was some language in there; but it was not there. We had, on this side of the aisle, a Democratic alternative that stopped price gouging, that put us on a track of alternative fuel and also protected the environment at the same time. We offered that.

That is the reason why the board, the voting board was open for 90 minutes, because it did something. Now, it did not do what the special interests wanted us to do. And you know many of them, I see them. It is not personal; it is just business. I see them. Hey, how are you doing? I am fine. Are you okay? I am doing just fine. Nice day out today. Okay.

But the bottom line is when it comes down to my constituents and it comes down to Exxon-Mobil coming out today saying, hey, guess what, wow, 75 percent up in profits, give me a high-five. What is unfortunate, I think some of the folks in this Congress are actually giving these special interest groups a high-five, and it is unfortunate because it is on the backs of Americans.

We are running around here paying more for gas than we have ever paid before, and there are record profits for the industry. I think there is something wrong there, and I think it is something that is clear as day. And guess what? It is happening under the lights. It is happening in front of the cameras. It is on the front page of the paper in print for historical preservation to the next election.

And what is unfortunate is that we could stand by and allow this to happen and say nothing and say, you know, the American people will respond in an appropriate way of making sure that we have the kind of leadership that is willing to lead. We are trying to lead. Guess what? We cannot prevail, because they are in the majority, and they have the majority of the Members in this House.

If given the opportunity, Americans will see a different kind of policy that is for the people and not for the special interests, not only in that case. You go back to no longer making mistakes in the Federal and State and local response after natural disaster/terrorist attacks.

Not only that, looking at House Resolution 3838, dealing with the issue on contractor fraud, why do we have to read it in the paper? Why do we have to watch television to see that we have not provided the kind of oversight so that contractors do not have cost overruns up to millions of dollars, in some cases billions?

Then we turn around, you want to talk about rewarding a culture of corruption and cronyism? Over in Iraq we have contractors that are under investigation by our government, and the very same Departments of Defense and Homeland Security investigating them, Katrina goes down, hey, guess what? Come on over here. We have a multimillion-dollar no- bid contract for you. Sign right here. We ask no questions. There is no ceiling. There is very little oversight. And we will get around to that thing of oversight. But we are in an emergency so we know that you messed up before.

It is almost like someone going in a convenience store, taking out a gun, taking a couple of hundred dollars out of the cash register, unfortunately it is in the millions as it relates to the Federal taxpayer dollar, they run out of the store, the police catch them, they say, well, you know, not only do you not have to give me the money, but you do not even have to turn over your gun. Go back out there and rob another store. That is what is happening right now.

With that, there is nothing more that I can possibly say about where we stand, what we are trying to do in the minority right now, what we would like to do if we had the majority. So with that, sir, will you give the closing.

With that, Mr. Speaker, we would like to thank the Democratic leadership for allowing us to come here in the first Democratic hour. And like I say, it was an honor to address the House.

Mr. Speaker, once again it is an honor to address the House. I can tell you that this week has been quite eventful. As you know, Mr. Speaker, we come every day to the floor to share not only with the Members but the American people what is actually going on in this House, and what is not going on in this House and what should be going on in this House, and it is the House of Representatives.

And there has been a lot going on this week as it relates to the budget. As you know, many Members came to the floor to speak pro and con of this. I will not use the Washington language, but I will use it in a way that everyone can understand: our relooking at the budget and making more cuts from the budget that have already been made.

And when I have been coming to the floor recently, Mr. Speaker, I have been bringing the local publication, the Washington Post to the floor, just to serve as a third-party validator to the arguments that have been made here on the floor. I am proud that our leadership on this side of the aisle, the Democratic leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), has stood against the winds of power in saying that there are certain things that we will not do. We who are Democrats on this side, we will not turn our backs on the American people.

We will not turn our backs on the survivors of hurricanes Katrina or Rita. We will not stand idly by and watch this country continue legislatively to go down the tubes because certain people and certain individuals in power would like to see their priorities and their projects and their special interest breaks or opportunities prevail on the backs of the American people.

I am proud that we have the leadership on this side of the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) and also the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn) to say no. I am proud of the fact that we have men and women in this Congress that are willing to stand up and say no to the majority, I must add, on the majority side who want to see their goals and objectives carried out on behalf of individuals that have suffered.

Now, I have to commend some of my colleagues here and some of my colleagues even on the other side of the aisle for standing up to the leadership

and saying no, we will not cut Medicaid. We will not cut free and reduced lunch. That did not just come about because folks thought, well, it is okay to stand up. That did not come about within the Republican Conference. But I will tell you how it came about, Mr. Speaker. It came about because Members came to this floor mainly on the Democratic side and said, if you are going to do it we are going to turn the lights up. We are going to raise our voices, and we are going to let our constituents and your constituents especially know that you are allowing this to happen.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a victory lap in any way. I do not want anyone to feel that the tide has changed because as far as I am concerned individuals that are fighting on behalf of billionaires in this Congress to make sure that their tax cut is not touched and that we take away from those that cannot fight for themselves, they are sleeping in shifts. They are sleeping in shifts because they know that that is what they have to do to prevail.

I will tell you on this side, even though we are in the minority, even though we are not in the majority, even though we cannot bring a bill to a committee and expect for it to pass with the majority vote because everything is on partisan lines here as of recently, unfortunately, but I can tell you that even though we cannot agenda some of the things that we would like to agenda that will help this country move to the next level and will put us in the right direction, we are willing to fight with what we have. And what we have is the opportunity to come to this floor to share not only with the Members, let the Members know exactly what they are doing so we are not around here hugging and smiling and cheesing and grinning and scratching where we do not itch, saying ``that was a leadership call.''

Well, I can tell you right now, Mr. Speaker, as we look at third party validators, I just want to make sure that folks do not believe that this is the Kendrick Meek Report and that I just sit in the office and come up with whatever we want to say. I want folks, I want the Members to go to the WashingtonPost.com editorial page just today. Like I said once before, I do not have to go back and pull publications or pull Time from 2 weeks ago or pull Newsweek from a month ago about something they wrote about and say that was a great story from the Sioux City, Iowa Journal about a month ago and I want to bring it to the attention of the Members. You pick up the paper any day and it is filled with what this Congress is doing to a certain group of Americans.

Now, like I said, there has been a lot of discussion about the budget. It is truly, truly beyond me of all the power and influence of Members of Congress, you have all kinds of leadership on the other side of the aisle that has the opportunity to shine in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and some of the biggest natural disasters that have hit this country in recent days. Do they take the opportunity to lean on behalf of those that are suffering right now and displaced? No.

Do they take the opportunity to go in and deal with these Federal agencies who do not even want us to talk to them directly because they feel that they are protected by the White House and why do they have to listen to Congress? We take this opportunity to say that you had the opportunity to perform and you did not. And because you did not perform, we are here as the elected people representing the people of the United States, be if from the affected area or from an area outside of the affected area, your constituents have federalized you to lead.

No. We are not doing that. The majority side is not doing that. No. They are seizing the opportunity to carry out the motives of the special interests. So, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about this issue of a culture of corruption and cronyism, this is a perfect example here in the Washington Post editorial number two, entitled ``Katrina's Costs to the Poor.''

What it is saying here basically is that the Congress voted earlier this year here on this floor, I must add that I did not vote for it but the majority did on party line, vote a $35 billion cut in spending for the next 5 years as it relates to the issue of entitlement programs, Medicaid, Title I. All of these programs that help financially challenged Americans that are federally mandated were cut.

Now, we have forces on the other side saying that we will not even get it up to $50 billion to help the Katrina victims. Well, I can tell you right now that has nothing to do about health. It has everything to do about the priorities that the majority side leadership has picked that they are going to represent. $70 billion in tax cuts mainly, in this editorial, this is not what I am saying, I am reading verbatim from this editorial, mainly for the most wealthy, the most wealthy Americans in this country. They are fighting on their behalf. They are saying it is okay.

I do not blame the top half. I do not blame the billionaires in America for what the majority is doing on their behalf on the backs of the suffering of the American people. I do not blame those individuals. I blame the people that are saying that they want to save our country money by cutting entitlement programs to the very people who have sent us here to protect them. They do not have, the average American does not have a million dollar lobbyist to walk into the office and represent them. They have a Congressman that they sent or a Congresswoman that they sent to this floor to represent them. And if we fail in that duty, then it is beyond personal responsibility, it lies on the majority.

I want to make it clear that you have to make the decision on if you want to lead or you want to follow. And I will tell you there are some folks in this House that are winning right now because we are not having a debate. We are just straight out saying that we are going to cut again the very programs that we just finished, that the majority just finished cutting, that are supposed to be helping the very people that we are trying to help. Better yet, we have asked billionaires to do nothing. We have given them tax cut after tax cut. We have men and women with sand in their teeth over in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are asking everyday punch-in and punch-out, retired, on Medicare Americans to suffer and to pay a price and to take a cut. We are not asking the most able Americans to do the same.

Now, I can tell you that this editorial goes on to say, Mr. Speaker, that the individuals that are being protected in this are the high- priced lobbyists and enriched constituencies. What it means by that by saying if you can pay to play in this House, then you are in good shape. You do not have anything to worry about. We have you, or they have you. And so I am glad that we are coming to the floor to be able to let not only the Members know but the American people know that this is an unacceptable practice, that I am glad that we are prepared on this side of the aisle to be able to put forth an amendment when you come to the floor with your budget that is going to not only move Americans forward but decrease the deficit.

This editorial goes on to say, You are saying that you are going to cut the budget and you are going to be fiscally responsible in managing the money of this country, but better yet, it does nothing to reduce the deficit. It increases the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, it is almost laughable if it was not true. And this is not just Democrats or Independents or some study group out there. You have the Washington Post, you have a number of other publications out there that are saying, wait a minute. You are doing this in the light of being fiscally responsible, but you are not. You are increasing the deficit. You are finding your money for your tax cuts for billionaires on the backs of working Americans, and I guess we are just supposed to sit here because it is in the light of trying to help Katrina victims.

Now I have a personal problem with that and I know the American people are going to have a problem with that also. We talk about this issue of a culture of corruption and cronyism, and I think it is important that we have an opportunity to talk about this a little bit more. This whole cronyism and individuals that are not qualified to lead is prevalent here in Washington, D.C., and it is continuing to happen, and I can tell you right now that it is truly unacceptable.

You want to talk about saving money on behalf of the American people? According to the AP, four out of

five companies that won the largest Katrina contracts are being reviewed for possible waste and abuse. Four of the top 10 companies. So what we are doing here is we are saying, hey, listen, it is okay for you to mismanage the taxpayers' money. Not only is it okay, we will reward you again with a no-bid contract.

That is almost like saying, I have a bad contractor working on my house. I have already given him $200,000 to fix my house. Let me run out and get another loan and see if I give him $500,000 to see if they can really mess that up.

But the sad part about that is I would be doing it with my own money. But the majority and this administration is doing it with the American people's money, and so it is very disheartening.

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to see my good colleague from New York. We are not in the race for the World Series Championship this year like we were a couple years ago, being from Miami and New York. But the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano), I am so glad he came down here today to share in this hour with me.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I am glad the gentleman came down to the floor. I think it is very, very important to have as many voices as possible from different parts of the country sharing with not only the Members but the American people what is actually going on right now. Because by the time the American people find out what we do here, it is too late. It has already happened to them and they are saying, how did this happen. Many times they cannot follow the paper trail back to the source.

The gentleman mentioned the war in Iraq. Well, we have to remind ourselves that Republicans are in control of the House, Republicans are in control of the Senate, and the Republicans are in control of the White House, so it is not just the agencies that respond to the White House. They are the Federal agencies that are out there that are appointed by the President of the United States. So it is not our fault that things are going the way that they are going as it relates to dealing with Americans.

And what we are doing in Iraq is at top dollar. I must add that it is not

like building a school in your neighborhood. It is top dollar, because you have to pay those contractors big money. And a lot of that money goes towards these special contracts. Four of the contractors that are carrying out Katrina work in a no-bid contract are under investigation by this government for mishandling taxpayers' dollars. So we are going to reward them for wasteful spending and possibly stealing.

People get all teary-eyed when they come to the floor and they start talking about the troops and how they support the troops; and some say, well, I support the troops more than you. Well, I support the troops. Who does not support the troops? We all support the troops. I want to meet the caucus that does not support the troops. It does not exist. So let us take that away and start looking at the realities of governing and oversight and not rewarding corruption and cronyism.

The gentleman talks about the money that it is costing. It is borrow and spend. The Republican majority is borrowing and spending at the highest interest rate possible. A lot of Americans receive mail, I do, and I open it and there you might find a free credit card. You can just sign right here. And then you read the fine print and you see that after the first 6 weeks it jumps up to a 21 percent interest rate APR. It is not a deal. So we are chest beating and talking about how we have to help these poor Iraqis, but, meanwhile, when it comes down to Americans here on our soil, suddenly we want to become fiscally responsible on the backs of those very same people.

There is a lot of hypocrisy in the democracy within this Congress when it comes down to looking at that. And that is not just because I am saying it, that is what is actually happening, and that is the unfortunate part about this whole argument. If we could wait until the next round of elections and the American people could have their way with some of the individuals that are running to the floor and cutting the very things that are helping their own local communities in the light of being seen as fiscal conservatives, it would be fine. But guess what, there is too much out there for us to wait that long. It has to happen now and we have to fight now.

Mr. Speaker, once again I want to thank the gentleman for taking the time to come and join us here this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker, I am also joined here by our great local delegate, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), who has been in the Congress quite some time and who has seen quite a bit, so I am so glad she is here and I yield now to her.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) for her leadership. As I said at the top of this hour, we thank the Democratic Caucus of this Congress for standing up on behalf of the American people. When we start talking about issues, these issues we are all talking about, these issues are affecting the American people. It is up to us to be able to share this information. I am glad that the gentlewoman went further into the budget.

Mr. Speaker, we need to balance the budget. We are the only Members of the body that can actually say we balanced the budget and we had a surplus. The majority side cannot make that claim. I was not here, but the gentlewoman was here. They passed the budget that gave us a surplus. The other side cannot even say it because they all voted against it.

Mr. Speaker, it is almost like we need to have an opportunity to come to this floor like every 3 hours. There is so much going on here, the Members need to know that we are watching them. The American people need to know and the Members need to know that we have alternatives, and we are going to present those alternatives legislatively in committee, we are going to present those alternatives here on this floor, and we are going to present those alternatives in Special Orders to let it be known that we are not going to sit by and watch this country start to slide, not because of the American people, but because of the majority who are willing to stand on behalf of the most able Americans as it relates to finances on the backs of everyday Americans.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Ohio could not say it better because that exactly goes to the marrow of this whole issue, of making sure that we engage not only the Members but also the American people. If it was something dealing with total politics, you could say, well, you know, in 2006 it will be dealt with. But there are so many things that are happening to Americans versus for Americans that we need change now.

Like I said, he is right and we are going to see.

I will take some of that, too. Because those of us that are here in the Beltway, and when I say Beltway we are talking about here in Washington, D.C. there is a Beltway that goes around this entire city. Those of us that are drinking the water, breathing the air, and eating the food here understand exactly what is going on, and it is our duty as Americans to make sure that we put light where light is not. And even where you have light, like here under the lights here in this Chamber, that we illuminate it even more as it relates to making sure that every Member knows exactly what he or she is doing or not doing as it pertains to issues that are going to blanket, blanket and increase cronyism and corruption and going to increase the whole, or going to promote the whole theory of borrow and spend.

Folks, it is interesting, and the thing about being in Congress is that it is important that you understand that we all must tolerate one another. It is not personal, it is just business. And the bottom line is, is that if you want to talk about the business and you want to talk about spending, you want to talk about fiscal responsibility, you cannot just have a backdrop in the back of you at a press conference and say fiscal responsibility, and fiscal responsibility, that makes you a conservative. That does not make you a conservative. What makes you a policy maker and what shows that you have the ability to lead is being able to march down to the White House and tell the President: We are concerned about spending. Why don't you veto a bill for once?

The President of these United States, our President, you want to talk about being a conservative, has not even vetoed one spending bill. As a matter of fact, of the transportation bill that has more fat, pork, everything else, a couple of raccoons in there, he did not even have the nerve to stop that. We have bridges going to nowhere. Meanwhile, we have got folks around here in shelters, and we are asking no one to sacrifice. No. As a matter of fact, the majority side, the Republican side, they are asking poor people to sacrifice. They are asking people that their kids are in Iraq right now and Afghanistan to sacrifice.

Meanwhile, you have billionaires saying: Do not worry, you do not have to say anything. This is what the majority is saying. You do not have to say anything, we will protect you. We will protect you, Republican majority.

So I think it is important that we continue every time that we get the opportunity, need it be out in the hall, in our office talking to our constituents, or on this floor talking to our colleagues, that we know and the American people will know exactly what you are doing to them, and it will not be something where that: I do not know, I did not understand what I was doing on that vote. And, if I would have had that opportunity. Do not come creeping in here under the doorjamb writing something into the Congressional Record saying, well, I know I voted for this budget, to cut the budget of a lot of my constituents, but I really feel this way.

Do not do that. We do not want to have to pick up the Congressional Record to find that you have a conscience about the vote that someone told you to do, a twist your arm.

The gentleman from Ohio and I talked the other day about violating the spirit of the rules of the House of Representatives. The so-called energy bill that went and passed this floor just

a couple of weeks ago, held this board open, the voting board here in this House open for 90 minutes, 90 minutes on a 15-minute vote. We came up to these mikes and called: Mr. Speaker, point of order. What is going on here? Did we not have a vote? Oh, wait, I am sorry. You mean to tell me you are not winning and the special interests are not winning on allowing them to stick the drill anywhere they want to drill, and you mean to tell me you are not winning because this is not a true energy bill that is going to talk about conservation and independence and go against price gouging? You mean to tell me until you are able to twist enough arms, or I must add, hammer people, okay, to the point where they are going to change their vote based on their thoughts of coming in here and based on the information that they have on this bill that it does nothing, you are going to hold the voting clock open until you have your way.

It is almost saying that we are at a little league football game and I happen to be the guy that bought the jerseys for one team and my cousin happens to be the ref that has the stop clock, I am going to tell him to stop the clock because we are behind by 7 points and I have got to go over and try to twist some arms and try to change the rules so that we can come up by 8 points, and then I want him to start the clock all over again. That is breaking the spirit and that is violating the rules. They are doing things because they can.

But I can tell you one thing, Mr. Ryan. Just like you talked about that decorated veteran that has worked in the State Department and worked with Colin Powell, the American spirit will prevail over politics, and that is what we have to bank on as it relates to this.

So those individuals that have a problem with us coming to the floor and sharing exactly what is going on, this is fact, not fiction, then they have a problem with the spirit of America. They have a problem with the blood, sweat, and tears. They have a problem with folks that are sitting in Walter Reed right now that laid it down on behalf of this country that we would come here and represent them. They are white, they are black, they are Republican, they are Independent, they are Native American, they are Hispanic, they are Americans. And we are charged with the duty of coming to this floor and making sure that they are represented. Even if the majority does not want to represent them, even if we are in the minority, we do not have the option to say we were bigger, they were smaller. They had the majority, we had the minority. Oh, we could not do anything. We are doing everything. As I speak now, we have Democratic members fighting in committee to make sure that they can get amendments on to bills to be able to help Americans. As we speak right now we are preparing to come to the floor to fight the battle with what we have.

What my colleague from Ohio is saying is 110 percent right. That bill that you have there, we have over 40,000 citizen cosponsors on it right now.

I thank my colleague from Ohio for joining me. Mr. Speaker, I also would like to thank the Democratic leader for allowing us to have this first Democratic hour.

Mr. Speaker, once again it is an honor to be here before the House, and I would like to thank the Democratic leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), and our elected leadership team, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), and also the gentleman from the great State of New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).

We come to the floor, as you know, Mr. Speaker, almost every day to talk about issues that are facing Americans; some that we are working collectively on, others we are not working collectively on but should be working collectively on. Tonight, we are going to talk about some of the issues that we did not talk about last night, but I can tell you that the themes continue to run together.

I am here tonight with the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), Youngstown, Ohio, and as the gentlewoman from Florida was not here, I can tell her that what we are hearing and what we were talking about last night was the fact that now we are looking at how are we going to move forward in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, how are we going to respond to those Americans that have paid taxes all of their lives, and how are we going to correct past wrongs.

From the beginning, the majority side has come off the block saying, well, the story is kind of changing now, which is interesting, but I have a copy of yesterday's Washington Post where there is a lot of bold talk about, well, first we are going to start with Medicaid, which is a program that provides health care for financially challenged Americans throughout this country, and we are going to find this $500 million to offset some of the Katrina cost there; and then we are going to go to some folks who really cannot fend for themselves, we are going to pick on someone that is not our size and we are going to go and cut free and reduced lunches for financially challenged children, and then we are going to hit these small farming programs that we have out here so we can make sure they cannot compete with foreign agricultural interests, which are already cleaning our clock in many ways with the help of this majority that we have here now.

Now, this has kind of changed, but it has the same theme. Now we are going to go after young people, 30-somethings that are trying to educate themselves to compete against those kids coming from other countries here to the United States and that are taking their jobs, and I will let my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryun), talk about China and other countries. As a matter of fact, these days, they do not have to come to the United States. They can stay where they are and they will have good American jobs because the workforce is there. And they will definitely be educated. Yet we are willing to cut Pell grant opportunities and some other things.

So there are a number of issues still on the table, but I hope we can talk tonight about the lack of an independent commission. I understand that there are going to be some additional partisan hearings this week here, if that is what you want to call them, here in the Congress on the House side. I hope that we will have an opportunity to talk about the lack of a Hurricane Katrina independent commission that 81-plus percent of Americans have called for.

So, Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be here once again with my colleagues, and I look forward to some fruitful conversation with them. With that, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. Speaker, I think what the gentlewoman is saying is so very, very important. We talked last night and spent quite a bit of time on the culture of corruption and cronyism, and we know that it takes a while to get a culture. It is not like an incident here and an incident there. It is a culture.

It is not random. It is a way of doing business here in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, it is affecting the entire country and in some cases it affects some parts of the world that we are also concerned about, and there are also parts of the world we are concerned about outside

of Iraq. I think that is important to point out.

I just want to mention something that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) talked about, this H.R. 3764, which is the House bill that will create this independent commission just like the 9/11 Commission. The only difference between the bill we see by the gentleman from Ohio, House Resolution 3764, and the 9/11 Commission is the fact that it says the independent Katrina commission versus the 9/11 Commission.

So it is language that we all understand and eventually, like the 9/ 11 Commission, the majority side came around and voted for it. Some did.

I think it is also important for us to understand that independent commissions are not a new phenomenon to the way to deal with issues in correcting wrongs that took place or possible mistakes that could have happened.

For instance, I mention the 9/11 Commission, which is the most respected commission that came after 9/11. Also, if we look at the commission after the Challenger space accident in 1996, the Presidential commission that looked into the NASA program and things that we needed to look at.

And also in the aftermath of the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 there was an independent commission; and numerous independent commissions established by the White House after plane accident tragedies to make sure that we do not make the same mistakes and correct issues that might have contributed to loss of life. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was another independent commission.

These independent commissions are given authority to go out and make sure that we do not continue to repeat some of the same issues that we are seeing right now. We are seeing a repeat on issues that are facing Americans time and time again.

Now, I want to say to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) on H.R. 3764, how many Republicans are on that bill?

Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure that my Republican colleagues know, either in the leadership or the rank and file, that they know it is okay for you to call for an independent commission even though there is a Republican in the White House, even though there is an agency appointed by that Republican administration, because we are all Americans. We should have this independent commission to make sure that we are able to deal with the Federal response to natural disasters or terrorist attacks, whenever it may happen, or making sure that we can deal with some of the issues in the present.

There are still 100,000 individuals that were affected by Hurricane Katrina that are still in shelters or displaced in some Red Cross emergency housing. The deadline for shelters to be empty was a couple of days ago, but we have trailer parks that are sitting empty. The trailer park has been established, the asphalt has been laid, the trailers have been delivered; but the people cannot move in because of technical issues of getting them in, need it be someone did not hook the power up to the trailer or the sewage is not where it is supposed to be. So there is still a lot of work to be done and lessons to be learned.

Any American city, here in Maryland today, there was an alert about a possible tunnel attack. The week before last it was the New York subway station. So we see cities and counties and local communities finding themselves in harm's way, and Americans may have to leave with what they have in their pockets or on their backs.

If we do not learn from lessons learned, having an independent commission of people who do not have a vested interest, a political vested interest in the outcome of the report, then we are not going to get better as a country, and we are not going to be better prepared.

Two things that we learned under the scenario of Hurricane Katrina: one, we are not ready. How about that. All of these top-off programs that have been created, and when I say top-off, I want to make sure Members understand what I am saying. These are the programs where the Department of Homeland Security would go into a local community and go through an exercise in case a chemical weapon was actually detonated or a terrorist event was to take place here and how would you deal with it, how would hospitals deal with, how would first responders deal with it. Where would the people go. We did that with Hurricane Pat in New Orleans. We knew. When I say ``we,'' the Federal Government knew that anything over a category 3 would bring about catastrophic damage to the area.

I have a little picture that too many Americans are all too familiar with. This is a neighborhood east of downtown New Orleans. Billions of gallons of water flooded 80 percent of the city of New Orleans. Now, that is not Hurricane Katrina by herself; this is a lack of governance. I want to know why the Corps of Engineers stopped their work. After 37 years of working on the levee, why did they stop working to make sure it is safe. Hurricane Katrina came through and the event was over, and it did not look like this. When the levee broke in several areas, all of the loss of life took place at that time. Pretty much all of the property damage for sure took place at that time. When you say it was an act of God, well, I am not going to put all of that on God. I am going to put some of it on this government that should have been there.

Let me just put this poster down because I want to make sure that this aerial picture that was taken, and I am going to put it down for a minute because the real issue, and this is the picture before or right after people were on those roofs waiting, living it out for 3 days, waiting on the cavalry, waiting on someone to come and say is it possible to get off the roof.

Here is another picture. There is concern about somebody looting a Walgreen's for food, and people had to improvise. People are jumping in a boat not with a paddle, but with a board. Here is a kid in a refrigerator trying to find safe haven. It took awhile for all of this ingenuity to come about because definitely they could not count on the government, whether it be State, Federal, local. We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to make sure that this is not coming to a city near all of us, and we are not standing and waiting and hoping and praying that the helicopter is going to come soon or the boat is going to come soon. I think it is important. We need to learn from our past mistakes.

So 81 percent of Americans support this independent commission. For people to talk about they do not quite understand, independent commission, why? We do it when we have a horrific event in our country, whether a plane crash or a natural disaster.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. Speaker, during this time, they spent more time having press conferences thanking everyone and saying you are doing a wonderful job.

No, you are doing a better job.

No, I want to make sure you know that you were doing a good job.

Meanwhile, folks are still clinging onto life, people are running out of insulin. They need medical supplies and people are drowning in nursing homes. These are Americans. These are Americans. These are individuals that live in our communities. There were veterans caught up in this stuff. There were teachers caught up in this. There were individuals counting on their government for them to be there for them, be it State, local, or Federal. I am not here to protect anyone. I want to make sure that we have what we need from an independent commission to make things better.

I remember this time very vividly when these e-mails were going on. This was at the height of the rescue, and they were running around here talking about titles and respect.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has the website at the bottom.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think it is important to note that everyone has some sort of inquiry going on. I mean we have this partisan commission here in the House that obviously we tried to push an independent commission. That is out of order. We cannot do that. We do not need to do it because we have control, and since we have control, we are going to keep control of this situation to make sure it does not get out of hand because there may be some political reasons that we do not want certain things to come out. Well, this happened in America. It did not happen somewhere across in some foreign third world land to a group of individuals who are not a part of our democracy. These are people that live within the borders of the United States of America, born here, and I think it is important that we do not leave any American behind because the whole country can learn. So why deny the whole country from that?

Someone may say, Congressman, Congresswoman, we got it covered. We are dealing with it here in the House. What are you talking about? We are all Republicans, but we got it. We will take care of it. As a matter of fact, the White House appointed someone inside the White House, a high-ranking Homeland Security adviser to the President. Well, that is interesting. We are going to keep the adviser who advises the President on the part of Homeland Security to do a report to let him know what went wrong. If something went wrong, then maybe the adviser did not do what she should have done in this case, maybe some of the conversations that we know that the President's Chief of Staff had with the folks on the ground and the Deputy Chief of Staff that happens to be the boss of the person who is doing the inquiry.

I always tell people, I come to the floor and say, listen, this 30- Something Working Group in looking at what is happening and what is not happening, this is not a game. This is serious, and we went on the White House website 2 weeks ago. This thorough review that they are doing, not a mumbling word about this review. Not anything where Americans can be reassured that our country is doing all that it can to make sure that we do not make the same mistakes, have the same kind of loss of life that took place.

Now, here is the front page, and our President is there and honors Buckley, the anniversary and all. It is good stuff. I mean this is stuff that the

President does. And then we have the little thing that people can click on. I want to make sure that folks know that this is not the Wasserman Schultz-Ryan-Kendrick Meek report.

Third party validators. Then they can go over to the Homeland Security responding to Katrina and Rita and the same picture that was there a couple of weeks ago, the President hugging an emergency worker, rightfully so. I think that is important. But it says nothing, not even a press release, about what we are doing and if what we find we are going to make corrections and these are the subject areas that we are concerned about. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So we know under the drape of not only corruption, cronyism, but this culture that we have here that the majority does not have the ability to even have an inquiry on themselves.

I said this as a joke several weeks ago, and I am going to say it again because it is very real. It is like my coming to the floor saying, Listen, my name is Kendrick Meek, and I have made some possible mistakes, and to make sure that I do not make these mistakes ever again I am going to investigate myself and I will be back in a couple of weeks to let you know what the findings are. That is how off balance, I am just trying to find the right words, that this whole theory is of the fact that the White House can look into itself and that we are going to have some findings that are going to save American lives in the future and that the House is going to have a partisan commission that is going to look at the agency that we did not give proper oversight to and still do not. The Committee on Homeland Security right now, I am here and I am giving the report, I am on the committee, has not even had one, hear me, not even one hearing since Katrina, not one public hearing to talk about what has worked and what has not worked and why do we have this problem and why do we still have people in shelters. Not a mumbling word. Not one. I am telling my colleagues if I am lying, I am flying, and I am still well footed right here. Not one hearing. That is horrible for the Department of Homeland Security, for the committee that deals with it. And I told my colleagues we are here to take care of the Federal business.

I like some of my colleagues. We go and we talk about baseball games and all of these things, and they are nice people. I consider myself a pretty nice person. But let me tell the Members something. This is about business. It is not personal. It is about business. It is about the business of protecting the American people, and if we are going to sit here and act like nothing is really going on, something is really wrong, and that is the reason why we need this independent commission.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

I did not want you to leave out, he raised the ceiling as it relates to small businesses to a quarter of a million dollars that an agency could spend on a credit card and not necessarily have to do business with the small businesses in the area. That was also suspended. These are small and the minority businesses, too. When we say small businesses, these are small businesses, period. This is not something where you say just women-owned businesses and minority businesses. These are small businesses, period.

So I think it is important we realize that any outrage in this Congress is not from the majority side as it relates to it. If you start talking about, well, first of all, I want to help you out, we are going to respond to the disasters, matter of fact we want businesses to move back, we are going to let the businesses back in before we let the residents back in, you have got to do more for our small businesses than give them a boon and say good luck. They have no employees.

In the meanwhile, we want the people to come back, but as it relates to the construction, to build the bridges and rebuild the schools and do all the things that need to happen to make this a functional community; but we do not want them to make too much money. We want them to make the minimum wage on these jobs, or whatever wage you want to pay them, but not a prevailing wage that is this Federal law.

Because this happens to be an emergency, and this is the President's thinking, since this is an emergency, I can just suspend Davis-Bacon. I could not do it under calm waters; let me do it now. Let me just hit you while you are down on all fours.

When you think about it, some people may say, well, what are they talking about? What are these three Members of Congress talking about that happen to be in the minority, a few votes shy from being in the majority, to be able to make what we are talking about reality?

This would not be a discussion about an independent commission to look at Katrina or what did happen or what did not happen in Katrina, best practices, so when another U.S. city goes through a situation where they have to evacuate the entire city, families being displaced, living with others, some people living in arenas, some folks living in gyms and church fellowship halls and synagogue fellowship halls throughout the country, how do we bring about the kind of organization that is needed to make sure that we can get Americans back into their normal lives so that hopefully it will not be a burden on the U.S. taxpayer for a very long time?

The way things are set up now, A, there is no oversight, especially in this House. There is no oversight about the urgency of making sure that we save as many dollars as possible through a functional government doing what it is supposed to do on the timelines. It is not there. Money is still going out for vouchers to stay in hotels. I mean, folks need to have shelter; but if there is a cheaper, better way that will get them back home and to get them helping them, being able to get the paycheck or even open their business, then let us do that to make them self-sufficient. That is not the conversation.

The conversation here is to say, well, let us make some budget cuts, and we do not want to talk about Iraq. We did want to talk about that. Oh, my goodness, if something comes out about Iraq, get out of the way; we have got to fund it. Matter of fact, can we add another billion to it, can we, because I want to make sure we give our commitment to the Iraqi people. Let us get another billion.

But when it comes down to the Americans, our people, once again, I will say we salute one flag. I do not know, we have to look at these student loans and grants, and we have to also look at Medicaid, additional cuts on top of cuts that we have already made.

Well, my colleague said something that I thought was very interesting, and I know our time is coming to an end shortly, about the fact that we have to ask millionaires. We are not

talking about folks that make a hundred, not even $400,000 a year. People that make millions a year, the Congress has to ask if we can roll back some of the tax cuts that they are enjoying right now in the hundreds of thousands to help the country after it was hit by the biggest natural disaster that it has ever been hit with. We have got to ask.

But guess what, no one is asking folks on Medicaid, no one is asking kids that receive free and reduced lunch for the reason because they are poor. No one is asking them. No one is asking States as it relates to rolling back their Head Start money to make sure that kids are ready to perform in this working world and that they go to school ready and prepared. The gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) worked on that in the Florida legislature.

No one is walking around here asking about that. Folks just say, well, you know what, this is what we are going to do; tough talk for hard times. We are not going to pick on someone that can pick back. We are not going to hit a person that can knock us to the floor, because they will be able to give campaign contributions to my opponents. No, we are going to get the folks that we say we are trying to help. We are going to hit them. Matter of fact, we are going to floor them, and we are going to do it because we can. That is what makes this such a tragedy.

That is why we need this independent commission. That is the reason why we need H.R. 3838, an anti-fraud commission that will oversee all of the contracts that are going on in the present to be able to review it all, to make sure that it is not left up to some bureaucrat so that I am sitting somewhere in the Committee on Homeland Security and they are saying, well, you pick up The Washington Post or New York Times, whatever the hometown paper may be in someone's area, and say there were millions of dollars that were spent and someone charged $1,000 for a roll of toilet paper, and we do not know what happened, but we are looking into it.

No, that is after the taxpayers have already been raped of their money and the victims were made victims again because the money ran out. So we do not have time for an Iraq-Halliburton experience that we have an investigation going on, meanwhile thousands of dollars are going out the door.

If folks want to have tough talk about budget and fiscal responsibility, then we have to have management, and we have to have oversight. You just cannot let billions of dollars out the door and expect the people who have already made mistakes again and again and again say here is another $62 billion, see if you can do better this time. It is just not going to happen, and that is the reason why we have to have it.

I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan). I am glad you were able to sum it up for us. The gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) is right to let us focus on things we are doing.

We mentioned the pieces of legislation the Democrats have offered to this Congress. The Congress and the majority side have not accepted that legislation. We are still willing to fight on behalf of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate his yielding to me. Just so that we can go back, and, obviously, he has outlined why we have a need for this independent commission. I think it is important that we go back and we explain what is actually happening here right now. We have been asking for this thing for how long now, months? Almost 2 months we have been asking for an independent commission. We want to go back, Democrats and Republicans, and look at what happened with Katrina so that we can stop and prevent these things from happening.

We are not doing a good job in this country of administering emergency services. And we have the Republicans in charge of the House and in charge of the Senate, in charge of the White House, in charge of FEMA, in charge of the whole executive branch, and we keep having these missteps and these failures, and no one is figuring out what in the heck we are doing wrong because the committee down here that the Republicans have appointed only gives subpoena power to the Republicans. So we have the Republicans overseeing the Republicans. And I think we might as well put Ed Gillespie in charge of the committee down here to oversee what is happening, the head of the RNC, because this has become political.

And what we want to say to the American people, Mr. Speaker, is that Democrats want an opportunity to govern this place because our friends on the other side do not know how to govern. They have been in charge now in the House since 1994. They have control of the Senate, they have control of the White House, and they do not know how to govern. And we need to be prepared for not only natural disasters, but potential terrorist attacks to the United States of America.

And we need to do what we did with the 9/11 Commission, an independent commission, independent of all of the nonsense that happens in this body that has gotten us to a point where the Republican majority does not know how to govern. Get an independent commission with an outside Democrat and an outside Republican, bipartisan, where they can subpoena people, oversee what happened for Katrina, oversee Wilma, oversee Rita, and figure out what we need to do, because at some point, at some point, something is going to happen in America that is going to be more tragic than these natural disasters, and we are not going to know how to respond. And our kids and our grandkids are going to look back and the American people are going to look to this body and say, What have you done to prevent this? What have you done to improve the emergency management execution in the United States of America? And we are saying on record here five times a week sometimes with the 30- something Group we want an independent commission. We do not want politics involved. Do the right thing.

And we are asking people at home to contact us, housedemocrats.gov/ katrina, and become a citizen cosponsor of H.R. 3764, become a citizen cosponsor, and I think we have over 40,000 citizen cosponsors for this. Get on this Website, housedemocrats.gov/katrina, become a citizen cosponsor so that we can become prepared for a possible terrorist attack that may happen in the United States, another natural disaster that may happen in the United States. We will be ready, and then down the line we will be able to look back, and there is always room for improvement. We watch the game film the next day, and we see what we did right and what we did wrong, but at the end of the day, we can say we have done our job. We have put the microscope up to the problem. We have looked at it, put the sunshine on it, and figured out what we did wrong.

And it takes courage. I mean, it is not easy to be self-reflective. It is not easy to critique oneself. And that is what we are asking this Congress to do, have the courage to do the right thing: Get an independent commission here.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, he is absolutely right. I think the gentleman makes a great point. This is important. This goes beyond Katrina. The independent commission that we want goes beyond Katrina.

We had a situation in Ohio a year or so ago where a potential terrorist was planning an attack in Columbus. You are in the middle of Ohio, it was something about a shopping mall. The gentleman was stopped and held, and I do not even know what the status is right now. But this was in Ohio. It is not just the gulf States or Florida.

Katrina and the independent commission, these are all the editorials that have been written in support all over the country. I think a lot of the editorial boards understand what we are trying to say here, and they are being very supportive.

We talk about an independent commission. I want to read a little bit from the Houston Chronicle in Texas, a little bit of what they say about trying to fix the problem: ``The most promising option is an independent commission along the lines of the September 11 problem. This is great, because this puts a little meat on the bone. It should be headed by national figures of unassailable independence and credibility such as former President Jimmy Carter, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.''

We are talking about Republicans, but just to be independent of the day-to-day politics that go on in this Chamber. This is not something that needs to be compromised. This is an issue that has long-term ramifications, and we have an obligation.

We come here early in January every other year and we put our hand on the Bible and one up in the air. We have an obligation to make this government run effectively and efficiently. A lot of hard-working people pay a lot of tax dollars that come to us, and then we invest it to improve the quality of their lives.

Part of that is to make sure they are safe. So when we had all these problems with body armor, where their kids, their sons and daughters were going over, we wanted to make sure they have the proper body armor and the up-armored Humvees; and we fought through the 30-something Group and the Democrats and put enough pressure on where we finally got that problem fixed. It is a whole other issue why we went to war without the proper equipment.

But we have a responsibility here to make sure that this government runs efficiently. A component of that is emergency management services, which, as we found, became very apparent in the past few months. So we have this obligation; and we are trying, the 30-something Group, the Democratic Party, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), we are trying to move this committee out of politics into an independent commission, get Sandra Day O'Connor, get Colin Powell, get some good, solid Republicans who are going to be independent and do what is best for the country, because time and time again, unfortunately, my friend, the Republicans continue to prove their ineptness, their inability to govern; and we have a responsibility as the minority party, as the opposition party, to provide alternative views, and we want an opportunity to run the government.

We proved in 1993 with not one Republican vote that we could balance the budget and handle those difficult decisions, and that vote in particular led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of the United States of America.

Our friends on the other side are not only inept in trying to administer emergency services, because they appoint all their cronies to the top positions in FEMA, all friends of friends of a college roommate who gives a lot to the Republican Party, which led to poor execution of emergency services. Their party, the Republican Party, takes higher precedence for the people who govern this Chamber than the country, and they have proved that time and time again. Party over country. What the Democrats are trying to say is pick the country over the party.

If the gentleman will yield further, Mr. Speaker, Brownie is still on the payroll, $100,000.

$148,000. Talk about rewarding negative behavior. Do you do that with your kids? Your kids come home, they took a spelling test, got a D, do you throw them $20? Good job, Kendrick. Go out and get another

one. That is what we are doing. We are reinforcing bad behavior.

``You are doing a good job, Brownie.''

The world is watching. You are not doing a good job. You are doing a bad job. In fact, you are fired. Get out. What do you mean, you are doing a good job.

Maybe their plan was this: they said we will keep Brownie on, pay him $148,000, and when there is a situation, we will go to Brownie and ask, what do you think we should do? He will tell you. Then they do the complete opposite. Maybe that you is how they are using him, do you think?

Mr. Speaker, I think it really comes down to the fact that every decision that is made by this Congress, by the Republican-controlled Congress, by the Republican-controlled Senate, and by our Republican President is based on supporting and lifting up the Republican Party. I hate to break it to them, but this is not about the Republican Party; this is about America. This is about what is best for America.

You talk about violating basic House rules, and every time they have done that, every time they have kept the roll call open at 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning; I mean, last year, I cannot remember what vote it was, but we were here until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. It was on the prescription drug bill, because we had to kick over $700 billion to the pharmaceutical industry, one of the most profitable industries in the whole entire world, them and oil, and the reason is they put the Republican Party before the country.

Yes, no doubt about it. We maybe could have prevented, if we had been really on the stick and really open, we maybe could have prevented some of the things that are happening.

I think this really goes to the fact that the Republican majority believe that the government and the taxpayer dollars that we have here are just for them. It is for them to build their party up. It is for them to use it to build up the Republican Party.

I am sorry, but my citizens in my district do not pay taxes so that the leaders of the House, the Republican leaders of the House, can go out to Shake Down Street out there on K Street, just a cab ride away where all the lobbyists are, and go and shake down the lobbyists. I mean, when a Democrat applies for a job, and the leaders on the Republican majority say to the lobbyists, you cannot give that job to a Democrat because we will not do business with you then.

And when you come to the American people and you try to say with a straight face about fiscal discipline, but when we are here at 3:00 in the morning, and arms are getting twisted to pass a Medicare prescription drug bill, and the Republican majority does not have the courage to go to the pharmaceutical industry and say, listen, we want to pass a Medicare prescription drug bill, but we want to give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the opportunity, the power to negotiate on behalf of the Medicare recipients to get the costs under control. The Republicans put a provision in the Medicare bill that explicitly said the Secretary of Health and Human Services is not allowed to negotiate down the drug prices. Can you imagine that? Can you believe that? And then only 25 Republican Members voted against it.

Then you come to the energy bill, and with the energy bill, you have billions of dollars in there to subsidize the oil companies, and a major oil company comes out today and talks about 89 percent profits in the last quarter, $10 billion, and you are getting public tax dollars from middle-class Americans who live in Youngstown, Ohio, one of the poorest areas in the country, you are taking their tax dollars and you are giving it to the oil companies.

Now, a third-party validator, right here, Cal Thomas, one of the most conservative Republican columnists in the country right now, suggests to our friends on the other side, to the Republican majority, he is commenting on the offsets to pay for Katrina, and the Republican majority is taking the money from Medicaid, free and reduced lunch, and college students. Cal Thomas says, here is a suggestion: Do not start with the poor, start with the rich. That is Cal Thomas. That is not Kendrick Meek, that is not Tim Ryan, that is not Debbie Wasserman Schultz, that is one of the most conservative Republican columnists in the country.

He also goes on to say, talking about using government as their own little sandbox that they can play in and as a welfare state for corporations, because this is corporate welfare. Cal Thomas, conservative Republican. Did I mention he is a conservative Republican?

I appreciate that.

Quote: Seventy-two percent of farm subsidy money goes to 10 percent of recipients, the richest farmers, partnerships, corporations, estates, and other entities. Corporate welfare, my friend, to the oil companies, to the pharmaceutical companies, and to the big agribusinesses, and the Republican leadership in this Chamber goes out to Shake Down Street and tells all the lobbyists on K Street that they have to hire Republicans or they are not going to do business with the Republican majority.

We are going to give you public tax dollars for the energy companies, public, through subsidies, billions of dollars in the energy bill. You are going to raise money for Republican candidates. It is that simple. Go out and shake down K Street. That should be called not Operation K Street; it should be Operation Shakedown.

So the American people should be outraged at this, corporate welfare to the most profitable industries in the country with your tax dollars, and the Republican majority uses it to raise money for the Republican Party. They are putting their party, the Republican Party, before the country.

And that is when it has got to stop. You did not come to Congress to rubber-stamp this stuff. The people in my district did not send me here to rubber-stamp this stuff. They sent us here to end it, because the average worker, the average small business person in every single instance, health care, energy, gas prices, natural gas, pharmaceuticals, wages, on every single count they are forgotten.

They are forgotten because we spent so much, the Republicans spent so much time giving out public tax dollars, corporate welfare so that they can increase their campaign coffers and run 30-second ads. And they go out and shake down K Street. It is ridiculous.

Well, let us look. My friend brings up Iraq, which is a perfect example. We just talked about corporate welfare to the oil companies; corporate welfare to pharmaceutical companies; tax cuts that go primarily to those people who make over a million dollars a year. And this President does not have the guts, and the Republican Congress, they do not have the guts to ask the wealthiest people in the country to contribute. Two wars and major natural disasters, poverty is increasing, the tuition cost has doubled over the last 4 or 5 years, and this Republican Congress, they do not have the guts to go ask the billionaires in the country to contribute.

But we are going to give them public tax dollars to support their corporations. But there is more welfare going on. Iraq has become a United States welfare state. Look what is going on here. 110 primary care centers built in Iraq with American tax dollars. Okay. 2,000 health educators trained with the American tax dollar.

3.2 million children vaccinated in Iraq with the American tax dollar. Great. Super. We went in there, we broke Iraq, we buy it. That is our responsibility. But back at the ranch, $10 billion-plus, as I have talked to a few of our friends on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, $10 billion-plus cuts in Medicaid for American kids. American citizens. $252 million cut for health care professionals; $94 million

cut for community health centers in the United States of America.

Student loans. We are building 2,700 schools that have been rehabbed in Iraq; 36,000 teachers and administrators trained in Iraq. We are cutting student loans in the United States. Iraq is a welfare state. So if you are sitting on the couch listening to the 30-something Group right now, and these are all third-party validators, this is not us making this stuff up.

Cal Thomas, the conservative Republican columnist, agrees with us. You see a Republican-controlled government, one-party government spending your tax dollars, giving your tax dollars to the oil companies, to the pharmaceutical companies, to the billionaires in the world, and/or in the United States, and creating a welfare state in Iraq while you are cutting health care in education and research and development. Even the Centers for Disease Control, our conservative friends on the other side want to cut the Centers for Disease Control at a time when we have this bird flu epidemic waiting in the wings.

We can do a better job. The Democratic Party has proposals. We want to create a million new engineers and scientists in the next 10 years. We want to build magnetic levitation trains in the United States and connect the United States of America. We want to invest in the research and development and create alternative energy sources so we no longer have to worry about being dependent on foreign oil.

And that is part of the magnetic lev trains. We want arts and sports in all of our schools for all of our kids because we recognize in the 21st century that learning a musical instrument helps you with math. And when you are good at math, you become an engineer or a scientist, and you will go out and generate wealth. We make good investments. The Democratic Party makes good investments.

We balanced the budget in 1993 with not one Republican vote. And President Clinton made a lot of tough decisions, and the Democratic Congress made a lot of tough decisions. And, quite frankly, some Members lost their seat over it. But it led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of this country. And I do not think there is an American out there that would not say, boy, I would love to go back to the late 1990s. Boy would that not be great. Portfolio was up. Everything was up that should have been up. Everything was down that should have been down.

But meanwhile, our Republican friends keep this culture of corporate welfare and corruption and keep propping up the Republican Party, instead of propping up the United States of America, and being more concerned about shaking down the lobbyists on K Street, instead of propping up the United States.

The Democrats want to take this country in a new direction. We want to provide new leadership. We want to change the direction of the country, and we want to get rid of this culture of corruption and cronyism, and we want to prop up the country, not any one political party, and use the government to enhance opportunity for people in the United States of America.

Our Web site is www.housedemocrats.gov/katrina. Become a citizen cosponsor to the independent commission so we can reform government the way it needs to be done.

And [email protected]. We have been getting a ton of e- mails lately and a lot of support, over 40,000 citizen cosponsors for the independent commission for Katrina.

Help us change this government. Help us help the Democratic Party take this country in a new direction, a better direction, and help us get rid of this Republican-controlled government that does nothing but corporate welfare and create a welfare state in Iraq at the expense of the American worker and the American taxpayer.