Waiving a requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII with respect to consideration of certain resolutions reported from the Committee on Rules.

Madam Speaker, I thank the Speaker for according me the time. I am claiming it on behalf of my colleagues who will be here shortly with me, Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan, the cofounders of the 30- Something Working Group. We will be exploring an array of issues this evening dealing with many of the subjects that my colleague and the gentleman from the other side of the aisle discussed this evening.

Much of what the gentleman said or some of what he said I would agree with. It certainly would be a contribution to the public discourse if there were an open and transparent debate and discussion on the issues that are confronting the American people.

I only wish that were the truth, not just the official truth but the real truth because what is lacking within this institution, this body, is an open and transparent and real discussion, genuine debate and respectful discourse.

I find it interesting that the gentleman talks about cutting spending and indicates that this side of the aisle supports raising taxes. Well, that is just simply inaccurate.

I think the only tax that we can agree on that ought to be cut is the tax that is in the form of waste and fraud and abuse. Tragically, what we have observed over the course of the past 6 years is an abundance of fraud and waste, a corruption tax, if you will, Madam Speaker. But what we have not seen is an open and transparent and respectful process to discuss these particular issues.

If the Chair would bear with me for a moment, I am going to read excerpts into the Record of a deal that was struck between conferees on the Senate side and on the House side that did not include the Members of the minority party. How can you have a discourse or

a conversation when Members of the minority party are excluded?

You cannot, that is right, and I welcome Mr. Ryan to the floor.

Mr. Ryan, let me pause for a moment and find that particular report so we can discuss transparent and open and respectful discourse and inclusion. The previous speaker was correct; there ought to be inclusion. But there is none and that is a sad comment on democracy within this institution. I would only hope that the rhetoric that I heard earlier would be matched by action and deeds on the part of the Republican leadership in this House.

Madam Speaker, let me read into the Record an article from The Washington Post. It is dated January 24, 2006.

We talk about saving money, Madam Speaker. We all want to save money. We had an opportunity to do that, Madam Speaker, but we failed because of a closed-door deal that reduced a savings that was possible by $22 billion.

Again, I am quoting from the Washington Post: ``House and Senate GOP negotiators, Republican negotiators, meeting behind closed doors last month to complete a major budget-cutting bill, agreed on a change to Senate-passed Medicare legislation that would save the health insurance industry $22 billion over the next year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.''

Now, let me repeat that, Madam Speaker, and may all those that are observing our conversation tonight, our colleagues and all those in attendance here, listen carefully. It would save the health insurance industry $22 billion. Not the American taxpayer, but the health insurance industry it would save $22 billion.

``The Senate version would have targeted private HMOs participating in Medicare by changing the formula that governs their reimbursement, lowering payments $26 billion over the next decade. But after lobbying by the health insurance industry, the final version made a critical change that had the effect of eliminating all but $4 billion of the projected savings,'' for the taxpayer, Madam Speaker, not for the HMOs. But who loses in that closed-door deal? And yet we hear, the taxpayer. You cut spending.

I can't wait until this budget is finally produced here on the floor, because we have not had a budget in years, until President Clinton was the President, that has been balanced.

No, I understand that. But, do you know what? Let us remember then we had dialogue and a working relationship between the President and the Congress. Let's give credit. What I am looking for, when I hear talk about let's sit down and talk, of course, we welcome that, and let's have this understanding. Let's work together.

How can you work together when you have closed-door deals going on that eliminate a savings to the taxpayers of America for $22 billion? Is this about saving the HMOs and the health care industry money, or is it about taking care of the American taxpayer?

So, please, please, let's match the rhetoric that we hear here with action, not with closed-door deals that benefit the health care industry, the $22 billion, and think nothing of helping the American taxpayer.

Reclaiming my time, they are borrowing that money, but they are not giving it to the American taxpayer. They are giving $22 billion of it to HMOs in this country. They are not giving it to the beneficiaries, they are not giving it to the American taxpayer. They are giving it to the health care industry.

OPEC.

Reclaiming my time for a moment, it is like we have developed a new class in the United States, and I am trying to think of an appropriate term. The one that just came to mind while you were speaking was we have a class now of welfare kings.

Welfare kings. What about, Madam Speaker, this $22 billion? Who is it going to? It is going to the welfare kings in this country. That is who is receiving it. It is a tax on Americans. We had a savings of $22 billion, but somebody, behind closed doors, by the way, without the presence of the minority party, decided to give it to some welfare kings.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that the American people understand who is running the show here in Washington. In 2002, the House of Representatives, the majority were Republicans. In 2003, in 2004, in 2005, and 2006, they were Republicans; in 2001, in 2000, in 1999. And since 2001, January, we had a Republican President. And the same is true on the other side of this building in the United States Senate.

So when I hear the head, I presume our colleague is the Chair of the Official Truth Squad, say, you know, we have got to curtail spending, and the Democrats want to take money out of your pockets, I am really befuddled, Madam Speaker. I am really confused, because you are in charge. You are running the operations of Government. Where have you been? Why did you not cut before? Why did you not manage this in a away that was competent? Why did you go and borrow money from the Chinese? Why did you borrow money from the Koreans?

Exactly. And what is the story? When you come to the floor, the rhetoric is, we want to work with you. And yet when Democrats say we are willing to sit down and have a respectful and substantive discussion about the issues that are confronting America, what do you do? You close the doors on us. You do not tell us where you are meeting. You do not tell us what time.

And you gave a break to the HMOs of $22 billion, which is like asking the taxpayers, you are increasing the tax to the American taxpayers by $22 billion at the same time. It does not compute.

It is going to the welfare kings.

Can I tell you where else the money is going? The money is being wasted. And the money is being wasted because of sheer incompetence and mismanagement. And no big contracts, no big contracts. I will tell you where the money is going. Let me give you one example.

Can you all see this right here to my left, this chart? Row after row after row after row of trailers. And they are all sinking into the mud. These were the trailers that FEMA, the Federal agency that responds to natural disasters, purchased I am sure for hundreds of millions of dollars. I do not have the exact amount.

Three hundred million dollars. So there is $300 million sitting out there, sinking into the mud, that will not ever be used. Meanwhile, we have thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of people in Alabama, in Louisiana, in Mississippi, the Gulf States, that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina and they do not have any homes. They are homeless. They are living in their cars.

It is a natural disgrace. Six months after the disaster. But because this administration has made incompetence a virtue, we are wasting $300 million of the taxpayers' money, Madam Speaker. I mean, think of that. If you want to talk about fraud and abuse and mismanagement, that picture, let me suggest, epitomizes.

How do you say, if I can interrupt, how can you say we were fully prepared? We were fully prepared? The President said that to the American people in the aftermath of the hurricanes and in the disasters that befell the Gulf States.

This is just a closeup of the picture of the chart that I showed earlier of those trailers that are crumbling someplace, somewhere, at the tune of $300 million. Well, if we were fully prepared, God save this Republic in the event of another natural disaster or a terrorist attack. I would suggest to the American people and to you, my friends, that we are ill-prepared. We are not fully prepared. We are unprepared. We are fully unprepared because of the incompetence and mismanagement that we witness on a daily basis near Washington.

Madam Speaker, if I can, that is the problem that the Secretary of Treasury has. He is representing an administration and a rubber-stamp Congress that can only be described as irresponsible when it comes to fiscal policy. I mean, maybe we ought to write back, now, this is a letter dated March 6, 2006, and say, you know, we are sorry, but we are not going to raise the debt limit anymore; we are done, we are finished, we are closing you down.

Why should we be voting to raise the debt limit? With all of the fraud and the mismanagement and the abuse of the taxpayers, why do we not say go back to that conference committee and tell them to reconsider their closed deal that cost the American taxpayers $22 billion? Why do we not do that instead? Or why do we not recommend that the Bush administration stop spending $1.6 billion on advertising and public relations contracts; why do we not do that? Why do we not tell them to stop the no-bid contracts that are leaving resources sinking in mud somewhere in Arkansas to the tune of $300 billion? Why do we not tell them that they ought to go find the $9 billion that they cannot find that is somewhere in Iraq that is unaccounted for?

You know what? I am not going to vote simply because the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States is representing an administration that is in accord, if you will, with a Congress that cannot handle the budget in an appropriate way.

You know, the three of us were watching you, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, lead the first hour, and it was very informative and we want to congratulate you on a great presentation.

Many of our female colleagues on the Democratic side participated, and you talked about the role of government, particularly as it impacts women. You know, the truth is, and we have seen it just recently in South Dakota, that if the Republican majority has their way, they will see to it that the woman's right to choose will be ended in this country. They will do everything that they can to effectively repeal Roe v. Wade.

If you are familiar with that South Dakota law.

Exactly. In case of rape or incest. This is a dramatic change in terms of the role of government as reflected in the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade and all of the advances that have been made in terms of civil rights and other issues.

But I know we all want to get back to discuss the issues that impact every American.

I think we ought to inform our colleagues here and those that are observing our conversation what the Democratic policy is in terms

of inspection of goods coming into this country is not 5 percent, but 100 percent. We have what I would call a zero tolerance policy, and it can be done, and it can be done in a very cost-efficient way, in a way that not only will prevent a terrorist attack coming in via our maritime shipping, but will be efficient in terms of taxpayer dollars.

Do you know in Hong Kong every single container ship that comes in, every piece of cargo, goes through a high-technology review? Every single piece is inspected. I guess what my point would be is that if they can do it in Hong Kong, we can do it in the United States of America. We can do it. We should have a zero tolerance policy, period.

Madam Speaker, let me just conclude by saying we should not ever mislead the American people. We know and they know who is in charge here in Washington. When I hear comments that would suggest that Democrats are in any way impeding or obstructing this Congress, my response is that is absurd. The Republican Party is in control.

If the gentleman will yield, let me just basically say, Mr. Delahunt, the bottom line is backroom deals are nothing new to the Republican majority. They do it every day, every hour.

That is the reason why we are in the situation we are in now as it relates to our fiscal situation. They are meeting with these special interests in the back halls of Congress, not here on the floor of the House, but in the back halls of Congress, and we wonder why things are the way they are.

Do you want to talk about irresponsibility? The bottom line is we can't even print them fast enough. Secretary Snow writes a letter saying we have to raise the debt limit or they will not be able to continue to finance government operations. That is on December 29.

There are so many letters, I just don't have time. The bottom line is here, February 16, just last month, again, the Secretary writes and says that we have to raise the debt limit, and if we don't do it, as a matter of fact, no, today, on February 16, he is going to have to go into the G fund, the retirement fund for Federal employees.

One more letter, Mr. Ryan, if you would bear with me. Here again, March 6, 2006, he is saying, hey, I am going to have to exercise some of the power that has been given to me by Congress. We no longer can operate unless you raise the debt limit.

The bottom line is, Mr. Delahunt, that you cannot believe what the Republican majority tells you as it relates to, oh, we want to cut the budget in half. Oh, trust us. We will make sure that we are fiscally responsible.

The bottom line is these letters by the Republican Secretary of Treasury, as a matter of fact, Mr. Snow, I think he is a nice guy. He is the accountant for the United States of America.

He is a CPA, and he lets us know when we are running out of money. The bottom line is that he is saying he has to take drastic steps. Never before, this last letter just written days ago, it says for the first time in the history of the United States of America, we may not be able to reach our obligations to foreign nations.

Madam Speaker, I think this is something we need to be very alarmed about, and we need to do something about versus being alarmed about, but we need to do something about it immediately.

I am glad that you are breaking this down so that Members understand exactly what we are talking about. I just want to say that all of these letters that we have received from Secretary Snow raising the debt limit, Madam Speaker, Republicans have given the administration and themselves these increases in the debt limit.

Mr. Ryan, can I just walk down there and just rubber-stamp that chart there? This rubber stamp says ``Official rubber stamp. I approve everything that George W. Bush does, Member of Congress.''

You can talk, sir, but I just want to have permission to come down there and rubber-stamp that, because all of these letters that have been written by Secretary Snow, I guarantee you that the Republican majority will grant him the raising of the debt ceiling so we can owe foreign countries more money.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Delahunt, you are 110 percent right. The bottom line is who is going to level with the American people, tell them the truth about what is going on? If you are not prepared, say you are not prepared and then take the steps to get us prepared.

The American people, we are an understanding people. We know we run into real issues every day in our own homes, but for the President to say, A, he did not know anything about possible levee breaks or individuals being in a detrimental situation and loss of life, the video proves that that is not the case. Time after time, again, this administration has been caught on camera, okay, saying one thing to the American people and something else is going on in the background.

As you know, we have asked for a Hurricane Katrina Commission, just like the 9/11 Commission, so we can get down to the bottom of this. It is not to say, hey, Mr. President, you were wrong; Louisiana, you were wrong; New Orleans, you were wrong; other gulf coast cities, you were wrong; and Mississippi, you were wrong. It is not finger pointing. It is making sure that we correct it. If we find ourselves in a bad situation, we have got to make sure we correct it.

Speaking of correction, I think it is important that we share, Madam Speaker, the fact that we are going down almost a path of no return. This Republican majority, Madam Speaker, is out of control, out of control in a way that they are borrowing as much money as they can possibly borrow from who? Foreign nations, foreign nations that we have questions about.

There was just some press accounts today talking about Iran. Iran's President is shooting verbally back at the United States of America, saying, bring it on. The bottom line is that this administration has put us in a posture, Madam Speaker, to where that if we say something about Iran, that we want to get serious with, and they should not chuckle when we say it, and that is what is happening right now.

As it relates to fiscal responsibility, I just want to speak for a moment very boldly on the fact that we have tried to do everything we can as a minority, and as you know, as the minority party, we do not have the votes to be able to push the policy in the direction we need to push it, pay-as-you-go. When you are in a situation, when you are borrowing more from countries, record-breaking borrowing from countries that at $1.05 trillion, let me just

add the Republican Congress to that because the President cannot do it by himself, $1.05 trillion from foreign Nations, more than any other time in the history of the Republic in 4 years, from 2001 to 2005, versus 42 Presidents before this President and this Congress were only able to borrow $1.01 trillion from foreign nations in 224 years, it is alarming. I want to say that we have tried to stop that from happening.

On March 30, 2004, Republicans voted by a 209-209 to reject the motion by Representative Mike Thompson of California, who is a Democrat, to instruct conferees to use pay-as-you-go policies. Also, again in 2004, vote number 97, we believe in third-party validators, they voted down. Similar vote on May 5, 2004, Republicans voted 208- 215, Republicans on the 215 part, to reject a motion by Representative Dennis Moore, once again Democrat. In 2004, vote number 145, similar vote on November 18, 2004, Republicans voted to block an amendment by Representative Stenholm, who is no longer in Congress, to not raise the debt limit and to be able to use pay-as-you-go.

Mr. Ryan has two other examples there that are recent that Mr. Spratt has put forth, pay-as-you-go amendments. Again, Republicans voted against it. Again, Mr. Spratt did it, and H. Res. 393 in 2005, budget resolution, failed. No Republicans voted for it, bottom line. I am trying to read the chart from here.

Let me just say this, Madam Speaker. I think it is important that we document this and we share this with the majority and with all of the Members that we have done everything in our power to stop this Republican Congress from putting this country in further debt to foreign nations. That is incompetence. That is jeopardizing America's security. That is jeopardizing America's financial security.

If anyone knows what it means when a creditor calls your house talking about you need to pay me, you know exactly what I am talking about. The creditor calls your house, they call you by your first name. They disrespect you from the beginning, and no other time in the history of the country, this is not Democratic stuff, this is U.S. Department of Treasury information that we have here, they are disrespecting the United States of America. Democrats have nothing to do with that. We have tried to turn the tide on the dependency that this Republican Congress has in raising the debt limit.

Now, the Secretary of Treasury has asked us to raise the debt limit again by $821 billion. That is going again to allow Iran, Japan, Red China and other countries, OPEC countries, Iran, Iraq, Madam Speaker, Korea, that should mean something to some of our veterans that allowed us to salute one flag. This is a problem. This is a major problem. That is a problem that not only Democrats, Republicans and Independents should be concerned about, but the Americans that are not voting now need to rise up and say enough is enough.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I think it is important for us to realize the history of this in the wrong way, in the wrong way. This is not something that we have dreamed up. This is not something that just happened yesterday.

I am just going to read what Secretary Snow said, Secretary of the Treasury, appointed by the President, confirmed by the Republican Senate. I think you have to pay attention to what he said. This is not what we are saying but what the Secretary said.

In a letter to Congress he urged lawmakers to pass a new debt limit ceiling immediately to avoid the first default on its obligations in U.S. history. For the first time in U.S. history. This is a Republican Congress saying trust me, a Republican White House saying trust me, a Republican Senate saying trust me, we know what we are doing. The first time in U.S. history. That is a fact. That is from the lips of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

He goes on to say that the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government, he is saying to the leaders of the House and Senate, that the full faith and credit commitment, referring to the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, that we will pay our bills. What he is saying now is that for the first time in U.S. history we will not be able to pay our bills. This is not a situation created by us. We tried to stop it with PAYGO and went through the whole process with that. This is the Secretary of the United States Department of Treasury.

I am sorry, Mr. Ryan, you are going to have to yield to me.

Mr. Ryan, you have to yield to me. The President has said that he has not known about a lot of things and then we found out later.

He thinks someone might have said something to him about it.

Let me just say this, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Democrats on this side of the aisle have great credibility when it comes to homeland security. Great credibility. I am on the Homeland Security Committee. We asked the Department of Homeland Security.

Madam Speaker, we brought the President and the Republican majority along, kicking and fighting, not to do it. Now, we did it, but they do not want to provide the oversight, when I am saying the Republican majority.

I just want to mention a few things now that we are getting into this subject, because I want to put what we are doing first versus what they are not doing.

September 29, during a meeting of House and Senate conferees, Democratic Congressmen Obey and Sabo and Senator Byrd offered an amendment to increase funding for port container security by $300 million. House conferees defeated the amendment on party-line votes.

2004, October 7. During also a House and Senate conference committee, the same Democratic Members offered an amendment to increase and enhance funding by $150 million. Republicans defeated it on a party- line vote.

On June 18, 2004, Democrats supported the same amendment to increase port and container security by $400 million, because this is what the Coast Guard is calling for, Mr. Delahunt.

This is not where we are just picking a number out of the sky. And this is not all they need. We are trying to give them a little bit more, and I will yield to Ms. Wasserman Schultz in a minute and she will talk about what is being checked and what is not being checked.

We are trying to do something about it. We are trying to protect America. So it goes on, Mr. Delahunt, and Ms. Wasserman Schultz, and it goes on and on. If we had enough time, I could read all this off.

So when folks start talking about where are the Democrats on this issue, just because the Republicans say it, it does not necessarily mean it is true. We have facts, Madam Speaker, and the Congressional Record on our side and commitment to the American people and the safety of our country on our side.

The bottom line is that the Republican majority talks about things, and we do things. When we are in the majority, we will do it. We will not talk about it. We will talk about what we have done and how we are doing it.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz, can you share with the Members this chart?

The U.S. Coast Guard.

If the gentleman would yield for a question, I am sort of the least senior of the four of us here this evening. I am a freshman. I have just gotten here a year ago. I am wondering, you are talking about the four letters that you have shown that Secretary Snow has sent to the Congress asking us, begging us, to increase the debt limit. Would this be the first time under this administration, Mr. Ryan, that that was necessary?

Is it unprecedented? If we raise the debt limit this year, is it something that was an anomaly, was it something that had not occurred before?

I just want to share with you, because that is billion with a B.

And trillion with a T.

When I am home and you all are home, we talk to our constituents, and they ask me, sometimes they ask me questions that makes it clear that it is hard for anyone to get their mind around what a billion is. So we spent some time, we did some research to try to help put what a billion is in terms that people can understand better.

So let us just translate it into some things that maybe people can think about, you know, more in the way they deal with things on a day- to-day basis. A billion. How much is a billion dollars? Well, a billion hours ago, humans were making their first tools in the stone age. That was if we were talking about what happened a billion hours ago.

If you are going on to a billion seconds ago, let us start with seconds, a billion seconds ago, it was 1975, and we had just pulled the last troops from America out of Vietnam. That was a billion seconds ago.

Let us try to break it down a little bit more. A billion minutes ago, it was A.D. 104, and the Chinese first invented paper.

Well, so now let us talk about what a billion dollars ago was. Under this administration, a billion dollars ago was only 3 hours and 32 minutes at the rate that our government spends money.

A.D. 104, 1975, the stone age, and 3 hours and 32 minutes ago.

Because the third-party validators that we use on this floor is for the purpose of showing that others who have fact- checked, experts who have fact-checked what is going on internally in this institution report on what they see.

And so if we are going to talk about accuracy and clarity, it is the third-party validators who the American people are going to listen to. You know, quite honestly, although I really feel privileged to be able to come and join you on this floor every night, a lot of people would just chalk up what they say and what we say on the floor as noise, you know, as partisan noise.

And so third-party validators are important. And so let us talk about what USA Today said about who is in charge and what they are responsible for and what they could have done about it. This is just last week, February 21, about 10 days ago.

USA Today editorial. The title of the editorial was Who is Spending Big Now: The Party of Small Government. Tax cuts, they say, force hard decisions and restrain reckless spending.

The last time we looked, according to USA Today, the last time we looked, though, Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House. They are the spenders. In fact, since they took control in 2001 they have increased spending by an average of nearly 7\1/2\ percent, 7\1/2\ percent a year, more than double the rate in the last 5 years of Clinton-era budgets.

I mean, the truth hurts.

That is factually accurate information by an outside source.

This is not by people who have D and R's next to their name in this Chamber. There is a better way.

Mr. Ryan, we had a better way that Democrats were responsible for with

their votes, some who lost their offices in casting their votes for the PAYGO rules that we used to have here. You have another third-party validator chart up there right now that talks about the education investments that we make here.

You have picture after picture and week after week of new revelations about the shocking aftermath of the response of this administration to Katrina.

Last week it was the videotape evidence that when Max Mayfield, who is based in Miami at the National Hurricane Center, clearly warned the President and the Secretary and those assembled from the administration's team, that it was quite possible that the levees in New Orleans would breach, and then on Tuesday, 2 days later, you have the President declaring that there was no way that anyone could have anticipated a breach of the levees.

I mean, how do they look at themselves in the mirror? How does he look at himself in the mirror and go on each day?

I know the gentleman from Florida wants to go back to PAYGO, but what I heard today in a meeting earlier in the afternoon, I heard the feeling and the sentiment that you described this way: Whether you are talking about the aftermath of Katrina, and quite honestly in my community the aftermath of Wilma, or you are talking about this port deal, the bottom line is that the homeland is not secure. The homeland is not secure.

We have port security that has been essentially undermined by the Republican leadership here, and I know we will talk about that in a little bit, but the American people's confidence in their government has been shaken. We continually have to increase the debt limit and we have a solution, Mr. Meek, that we have been pushing over and over and over again repeatedly. Yet, it falls on deaf ears.

What we advocate is going back to the PAYGO rule, and again, to translate that into terms that most people understand and deal with every day, you do not spend more than you have. You make sure you have the revenue coming in for the money that you are going to put out.

Listen, there are people in everyday life in America that struggle with that every single day, but most people think it is totally irresponsible. Even if they are engaging in it in their own house, they think it is the wrong thing to do, to spend what they do not have. I do not know in America that anyone has the ability on their own to raise their debt limit in their household. Can you imagine, you reach a point in your day-to-day life and you are going along and you have a certain amount of money that you earn. You have a certain amount of credit. Let us say you have a couple of credit cards. When you reach the debt limit on your credit card, the maximum that the credit card company will allow you to put on that card, unless you ask permission from the credit card company, you cannot do that usually, depending on your track record.

If you compare the track record of the United States of America recently, you know, we are not doing so good because we are not getting a handle on this. Most credit card companies would say, no, we are going to stop you at a certain point and not let you raise your debt limit.

And, Mr. Ryan, if you would yield, this is also the party that tries to represent themselves as the party of less government and more personal freedom. And in my time here, just in the year that I have been here, we don't even talk about the Terry Schiavo case last year anymore because so much else has happened that is disturbing in terms of their leadership that that seems like a

distant memory, but that was not even a year ago. We are coming up on the year anniversary of that.

The beginning of my first year in Congress you have the bookends of Terry Schiavo's tragic case, where this Congress, this Republican leadership inserted itself into one family's private angst-ridden tragedy. Then you have Katrina, you have the debt limit increase, you have the largest deficit in history, you have the refusal to go back to the PAYGO rules, and you have the port deal. This is the party of less government and more personal freedom? No, it is not. The evidence does not lie.

The funny thing, and I have heard Mr. Meek say this at home in Florida a lot. Just because you say it over and over again does not make it so. Things do not come true just because you say them a lot. The facts do not lie.

Thank you.

Even in the case of rape or incest.

But your point is, and the point we have to make here is, there is a radicalism in this Republican leadership; that they have reached new heights. Schiavo, South Dakota, the Alito confirmation. There is just a growing list.

And now this port deal, where the President literally saw nothing wrong with allowing a foreign government-owned corporation to take over the port terminal operations at six major ports. No alarm bells were set off to trigger a national security review, a 45-day national security review that can be triggered under the law. It defies logic.

Right. Not the least of it was that he did not even know about it.

Six White House offices were part of the committee that reviewed this port deal. I asked in Financial Services. I am on the committee. I am on the subcommittee where we had a hearing last week, and the President still didn't know.

Oh, most definitely, just to take off from where you have launched. Really, the facts are laid bare.

It is evident who is for security and who is just kidding. And if you look at this chart here, this pie chart, the source is Fox News, that is our third-party validator, so we are not talking about a liberal bastion, who is for security and who is just kidding? Less than 6 percent of our U.S. cargo at our Nation's ports is physically inspected. That is 95 percent not inspected. We will say 94 percent not inspected and 6 percent inspected, but I think actually the number is just a little lower than that.

The difference between the increase in security at airports and the increase in security at ports since the 2001 9/11 attack is $18 billion, Mr. Ryan, increased airport security, compared to a $700 million increase in port security.

Now, I heard one of our colleagues bragging about the $700 million increase and trying to detail how much of an increase the six ports received that the port deal, the DPW port deal, was involved in, as if that was some fantastic accomplishment.

There is a $6 billion difference between what the Coast Guard has said they need, a $6 billion difference. The Republican Congress has shortchanged port security by $6 billion, according to the Coast Guard. They have requested $7.2 billion.

Not Mr. Meek, not Mr. Ryan, but the Coast Guard has requested $7.2 billion and gotten $910 million in congressional appropriations. That is a commitment right there to national security.

Mr. Delahunt, the point is the issue is so much bigger than this one port deal. This is emblematic of the tremendously significant problem. You cannot say even if this problem gets addressed, this port deal gets addressed, which it should, you cannot say, okay, we are done. It is so much deeper than that. Democrats have been constantly fighting for increased port security, and Republicans have not, plain and simple.

You cannot.

Balanced by not one Republican vote in the House or the Senate.

If the gentleman will yield, the point is that it is not that we have the money to give the health care industry. It is not like we have it. It is not like you look at the table behind me in the House of Representatives and it is stacked with money and who wants it. No, the health care industry is over here, Mr. Meek. We will give them some. We don't have the money to give.

This is the point I think we need to focus on: We don't have the money in the United States of America today to subsidize the energy companies, to subsidize the health care industry. So what is the Republican Congress doing? They are borrowing the money, Mr. Meek. They are borrowing the money from the Chinese, they are borrowing the money from the Japanese.

Right. If you break it down, Mr. Meek, basically what is happening is we are here in the United States Congress. Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution creates this House of Representatives. Levy taxes. The Republican majority levies taxes on the American people. The money comes down here.

What do we do with it? What the Republican majority is doing with it is they are spending it on corporate welfare, and we don't even have it to give to them. So the Republican majority wants to give them so much that they have to go and borrow the money.

I am not making this up. So the Republican majority goes out and borrows the money. They have borrowed so much money in the past 4 or 5 years that they have to go out and borrow it from the Chinese government, from the Japanese government and from----

OPEC countries in order to fund the corporate welfare.

Bingo.

He is a CPA.

Well, it is an excellent question. I think what Mr. Meek was saying was that we are going into the government retirement program in order to not have to increase the debt limit.

What we have here is that the Republican Congress has raised the debt limit numerous times since President Bush has been in. June of 2002, $450 billion, which means Congress raises the debt limit so we can go out and borrow more money. May of 2003, $984 billion, Mr. Delahunt. That means almost $1 trillion.

Again, November of 2004, this administration, this Republican Congress, went out and borrowed another $800 billion. And now the new increase that the Secretary of the Treasury is asking for is another $781 billion.

So, Mr. Speaker, over the last few years, the Republican Congress, the Republican President, has borrowed $3 trillion, new money, from the Japanese, the Chinese and OPEC countries.

And trillion with a T.

Why would they not? They rubber-stamped it in June of 2002. They rubber-stamped it in May of 2003. They rubber-stamped it in November of 2004. Go ahead. Put it on there.

Why did you borrow money from OPEC?

Can you imagine, Mr. Delahunt, if you are asking the American taxpayer who is already paying an increase of 15 to 20 percent a year in their health care, and now you are telling them, this is what you are telling them, this is the God's honest truth, this is third-party validators, we are not making it up. You are also saying that the money that is taken out of your taxes that you send to the Republicans down here in Washington, that money is also going to the HMOs. So not only what you pay out of your paycheck every single month, but also the taxes that you see come out, that you send down here to the Republican majority, they are sending that to the HMOs, too.

You cannot make it up.

When you look at what you are just saying, what Mr. Delahunt was just saying, that the money is now, all these tax cuts, but yet they are still borrowing money to spend so they can give it to the health care industry or everything else, where is the money not going?

I had a friend of mine who is from Russia, his name is Vladimir, and Vladimir was just a third-party observer to all of this as he was watching. And he couldn't believe honestly the rhetoric that he would hear as a new citizen of the country versus what was actually happening because he was into politics and he was paying a little bit of attention.

So all of it, this money that is going to the HMOs and going to all these different places, where is it not going?

The welfare kings and the health care industry. If you look at where it is not going, this is the Federal Government's commitment to education. Again, as Ms. Wasserman Schultz said, this is a third-party validator. This is called the Committee for Education Funding in February 2006. In 2002 there was an 18.2 percent increase. And as you can see, it dramatically is reduced to where in the 2007 budget President Bush's proposed budget, Mr. Delahunt, there is going to be a negative 3.8 percent decrease in education funding. So as we are competing in a global economy with 1.3 billion Chinese workers, with 1 billion workers in India, with the country of Ireland that is called now the Celtic Tiger because of its increase; and part of what the Celtic Tiger has done is make education free for everybody, college education. We are decreasing education. And so my friend Vladimir is right.

Look at what is happening in this country, Madam Speaker. We are giving money to the welfare kings and decreasing funding for our students. Now, that is appalling to me.

Three hundred million dollars.

This is the same party that in 1994 said that they were going to pass a balanced budget amendment to make sure that they balanced the budget every year. It would be a constitutional amendment. And here we are, 12 years later, and they are borrowing money like drunken sailors from the Japanese, the Chinese, and from all kinds of foreign countries.

Look, of all the money that we have borrowed, almost all of it is from foreign countries. That is the money we have borrowed. That is the money we have borrowed from foreign countries. And I am sure the Members, Madam Speaker, cannot even see this. This is the money we have borrowed from domestic interests. Look, it is a joke.

It is not only the woman's right to choose. We have a variety of things. It is about throwing people in prison. Throwing people in prison, Mr. Delahunt.

He didn't even know about it.

He said he didn't know about it, and I believe him.

No, if he said it, it is true.

It is what they want.

Third-party validator, the U.S. Coast Guard.

So if someone would say we are not telling the truth, they are saying the Coast Guard is not telling the truth.

Time and time again.

Madam Speaker, if Members would like to get ahold of any of the information, all of the charts we had here tonight are available on our Website, www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something

Also, Madam Speaker, my old high school, the John F. Kennedy Eagles, bowed out of the high school tournament tonight. They lost to Campbell Memorial High School, and I just want to say what a great year they had. My brother happens to be the assistant coach. I wanted to give a shout-out to the John F. Kennedy basketball team.