Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my support for a safe and secure homeland, and for providing local governments and our first responders with the tools and resources they need.

Mr. Speaker, I support H.R. 5441, the Homeland Security Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2007, which passed the House on Tuesday, June 6. Had I been present, I would have voted in favor of this legislation.

I am glad you touched on that theme. It is a pleasure to be here once again for our 30-Something Working Group, where we try to talk about the issues from the perspective of our generation and also talk about the issues important to our generation. And for people in our generation and the point that we are at in our lives, what blows my mind and continues to baffle me since I arrived in the Congress last year was the crushing debt that we are buried under right now, and that is not reversing itself; that there are no efforts on the part of the Republican leadership to reverse course, to turn around and go in the other direction and return to the days when President Clinton was in office. We had a surplus, a budget surplus, when we had no deficit, when we had a much smaller debt in terms of our debt to foreign countries. Of course, we had debt to foreign nations but not nearly what we have today.

We have more debt combined under this President than the 42 other Presidents that we have had previously. And normally we have charts that we can highlight.

Absolutely. The three things I just want to hit on that are on all in that same theme: Last week, we passed a budget led by the Republican leadership here that just continues down that same path of irresponsible priorities; $6 billion cut to Homeland Security over 5 years; $488 million in 2007 alone. Cut the Army National Guard by 17,000 troops. The National Guard, which, if we all recall, the President just talked about deploying to the border, to our Mexican-American border to assist States in border security. On top of that, we are also deploying them to Iraq and Afghanistan. How thin can we spread them? And then on top of that, we are cutting the number of troops we give them.

It cut funding for equipment for firefighters and police; $6 billion cut to veterans' services over 5 years. It tripled health care fees for veterans for TRICARE.

Let's fast forward to the tax reconciliation bill, which is the tax cuts that we made permanent under the Republican leadership's insistence. Let's talk about what that tax cut meant for real people. The tax bill that was signed this week by the President had Americans who made $20,000 a year, they get $2, $2 in their tax break. And when I stand at a town hall meeting and ask folks to raise their hands, Mr. Meek, to let me know, who is it among you who have actually received money in your pocket from the tax breaks that President Bush and the Republican leadership have handed out over the last number of years, in a room full of several hundred people, maybe I get two or three hands. Maybe.

Now, if these tax cuts are targeted like Democrats would design to working families and to people who really needed that money and would actually put it back into the economy so that could revitalize the economy, like buying big ticket items like refrigerators and televisions and other things that would inject cash into the economy instead of investing it, which is what the wealthiest among us would do, then I could understand letting us make those tax cuts permanent all day long, but unfortunately, we do not have any of those tax cuts.

We have tax cuts that puts $2 back in the pockets of people who make $20,000, and Americans who make $40,000, they get a whopping $16, but Americans who

make more than $1 million get a thousand times that. They get $42,000. They get to go out and buy a Hummer. They can buy a Hummer. That is how much money someone who makes $1 million gets back, a Hummer, a Mercedes, a Suburban, a gas guzzler, and you cannot buy one of those with $2.

Then let us add insult to injury, and last week there were comments made in this Chamber on this floor that people who make $40,000 a year do not pay taxes. I mean, come on. Do you know anyone that does not pay taxes that makes $40,000?

It is just out of touch. That is my point.

We are acknowledging, we are calling on the carpet the Republican leadership for plunging us into the most debt we have ever been in and piling it up in record time to boot.

We are borrowing and spiraling downward into tremendous debt to other nations, and then, on top of that, we are giving away our oil drilling rights that we are normally paid royalties for by the oil and gas industry. Last year, we passed two bills that basically give away those rights for free. We give them to the oil industry, and subsequently, several months later, they make more profits than any corporation in American history.

What would we do in the alternative? Finally, finally, there is leadership that is willing to step forward and adopt and propose an Innovation Agenda that would pledge to make us energy independent within 10 years. Our energizing American plan that was put together by the Democratic House working group that gets more specific than our Innovation Agenda. It talks about how we would increase production of American-made biofuels, using our cellulosic sources such as switch grass, producing ethanol through corn and possibly even through sugar cane, investing in research and development to improve the use of renewable energy. These are the commitments that Democrats would make.

So, Mr. Speaker, when people on the other side of the aisle throw out that Democrats do not have an agenda, well, here is a piece of it, Mr. Ryan just had a piece of it. There are three stacks of notebook, none of which are full of empty paper, Mr. Speaker, that outline our homeland security proposal, our domestic security proposals, our energy plan.

These are the things that we would address from day one when we are in charge of this Chamber. We would eliminate the corruption. We would make sure that this Chamber is run in a bipartisan way, as Leader Pelosi indicated just last week. We would adopt democracy once again in the United States House of Representatives which, quite honestly, is something I have not

seen since the first day I got here, and it is really depressing.

It is like I could just close my eyes, and listening to the Republicans, point fingers and call names at us, I could just close my eyes and it is like I am listening to my twin 7- year-olds fight with each other: Yes, they are; no, they don't; yes, they are; no, they don't. That is all they are----

We could do something crazy like collect the royalties from the oil industry and invest it on alternative energy sources like those. We could fund this plan backwards and forwards with the money we did not make them pay us.

That is what is so outrageous

But then we are cutting 17,000 troops out of the National Guard.

I want to close with an observation that what has been frustrating to me is that there is no outrage on that side. Everything we are laying out is factual. We are not making it up. So why does the Republican head only appear to go one way, up and down? Yes, sir, Mr. Speaker. I am happy to do whatever you say. Sure, Mr. President. No problem. It would be nice if they had some joints that made their heads go in this direction and their voices could be lifted up against what is going on here. But, sadly, that doesn't happen.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I have been listening to both of you banter back and forth about gas prices, and what I hear in both of your voices is your desire to get to the core of what we obviously are all baffled about which is why. I mean, why over the last 15 to 20 years has there not been an effort, and let us say in the last dozen years, has there not been an effort to make a real commitment to fix this, to head this off at the pass, to make sure that our constituents are not consistently having to pay, for the foreseeable future, if not forever, more than $3 a gallon for gas?

I guess because I am the newest among the three of us I have reached the conclusion that obviously the Republicans do not have the joints that they need on the side of their neck because their heads do not appear to go this way. They only go this way, like this bobblehead elephant. Apparently, they only know how to say yes, Mr. Speaker; yes, Mr. President; yes, CEO of oil companies; I am happy to do your bidding in whatever it is that you like.

Their necks, unlike ours, don't appear to go horizontal, or side to side. Because if they did, then their voting record would reflect ours and the values of the American people a lot more closely, and they would not have voted in favor of the energy bill they put forward last summer, when they held the vote open for 40 straight minutes to ensure they could twist enough arms to get the bill to pass and give away the subsidies and the oil leasing rights that we own as a United States Government. And instead of collecting the royalties from the oil companies, we gave them away and allowed them to drill essentially for free, or to drastically reduce the rate.

That action and the lack of a commitment to funding alternative energy research and the cozy relationship that the Bush administration has with the Saudis and with the OPEC leaders, that is what has caused us to be in the mess that we are in. And you don't see any commitment on the part of the Republican leadership here to make any significant change.

The only place you see an effort to make a significant change and take this country in a new direction on oil prices and gas prices is through the Democratic agenda, the innovation agenda, where we pledged, when we rolled out our innovation agenda under Leader Pelosi's leadership, to become energy independent within 10 years. And that is possible through the use of ethanol.

I just saw the gentleman who made that presentation to our caucus on CNN the other night for a solid hour, and he literally outlined how it was possible for us to begin to make a commitment in agriculture through corn, which we are already doing in the Midwest, in your area, Mr. Ryan, but also it could be done in my area with sugar cane, in Louisiana and in the mid northwest with sugar beets. I mean, it is possible for us to really make an effort to invest in ethanol.

Brazil did it. Brazil is now completely independent of foreign oil. They manufacture vehicles that run on ethanol. They have hybrid and ethanol-only automobiles. That is something that is entirely possible in this country within 10 years. Unfortunately, the heads of the Members on this side of the aisle only go one way.

And I actually should have mentioned something else. You are a Midwesterner, but we have coastlines in both of our districts in Florida, and obviously the United States is surrounded by coastline. What was the answer to our long-term and short-term energy needs that the Republicans put forward the other day? I mean, fortunately, we pieced together enough Members to defeat it, but that was to bring oil drilling and natural gas drilling within three miles of the coast of this country.

And it is understandable that a lot of our Midwestern colleagues voted to do that, because they are desperate to make sure that something happens and there is some movement on this. But had our Republican colleagues had a little foresight, had they actually had any interest in not, for lack of a better term, no, I won't use that expression, had they had any interest in not continuing to give significant assistance to the oil industry, then they would have not needed to make that short-term, shortsighted last-ditch effort solution to prevent minivan moms like me from having to pay $55 in filling up their gas tanks, which is what I just did the other day when I was driving my kids around.

Will the gentleman yield?

You know, what we always try to do here on the 30-something time is to help people understand that we are not just offering our own opinions. And I think it would be helpful to illuminate for folks and for the Members, Mr. Speaker, just exactly what has gone down here in this Chamber and the opportunities that the Republicans have literally just cast aside.

Let us take a walk down the energy memory lane in the last several months, just since I have been here. Ninety-eight percent of House Republicans voted to let the oil companies keep their exorbitant profits. This was the week of April 28. The vote was on April 27, excuse me. And what they did was, the House Republicans rejected a Democratic effort to accept Senate provisions in the tax bill that would have removed $5 billion worth of subsidies and tax loopholes for large oil companies.

In other words, they would have removed the subsidies and tax loopholes worth $5 billion to oil companies, but House Republicans refused to do that. Ninety-eight percent of them voted to do that. Again, I don't think your rubber stamp is big enough, Mr. Meek.

Let's talk about price gouging. It is really interesting. Before I came here, I was at home for a little while and I was watching CNN and saw a Senate colleague, to stay within the House rules, commenting at a hearing on oil prices. This was a Senate Republican, and he was using very tough talk and grilling the oil companies that were before him. Essentially, the announcer, the commentator on CNN, was talking about how this particular individual had previously never been in favor of legislation and had voted against every opportunity to rein in the oil industry and to try to bring some sanity to the direction that we are moving in terms of our energy policy.

But literally I watched him say it, he said to the oil industry representative that the American people were getting a little bit cranky and tired of this, and that he was getting ready to do something serious. What, I don't know, but if we have reached the point where even someone who has never voted to regulate the oil and gas industry is considering doing that, then you know that the American people have reached their breaking point.

Because in terms of price gouging, it has been a totally different story. The Republican leadership in either 57chamber has never supported adopting price gouging legislation.

In September 2005, Democrats proposed legislation to establish a Federal ban, this was a Democratic proposal, a Federal ban on price gouging for oil, gasoline and other petroleum products during national emergencies; provide civil and criminal penalties for price gouging; ban market manipulation; and require greater transparency in oil and gasoline markets.

This was supported by a majority in the Senate, but it was blocked by Republicans in the House. And that vote took place on November 17, 2005.

So there has never been an interest. In fact, there has been a specific interest in continuing to prop up the oil company profits. We have third-party validator after third-party validator that back this up, so this is not the Debbie, Tim and Kendrick show where we are spewing our opinions. There are facts to back up the things we are saying. We are hopeful that the American people understand who is for true energy independence and moving this country in the right direction and who is just kidding.

I actually think you are being presumptuous because you touched a nerve when you said you think the Republicans lost touch along the way at some point. That presumes that they were ever in touch because when we listen to remarks on the floor of this House where commentary is made that, for example, people who make $40,000 a year do not pay taxes, when you know you pay upwards of $50 to fill up a gas tank, you scratch your head and wonder, who pumps their gas?

When you cannot determine whether they know what the cost of groceries are, are they shopping for food? Who is talking to them in their districts? Are they driven around in limousines? Because all of the indicators, their desire to maintain tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, all of the indicators are there that they really are that out of touch.

I mean, just to have it stated on the floor of this House that people who make $40,000 do not pay taxes, that is just unbelievable. But then just take the tax cut bill, the rubber-stamp Republican Congress, literally and the walk down memory lane that we have been going through turned the projected $5.6 trillion record surplus into a record deficit of $3.2 trillion. The President has quadrupled our debt held by China. The tax bill that was signed, Americans making $20,000 annually get $2 and Americans making $40,000 get $16.

When I ask people in my district in town hall meetings to raise their hand and show me how many have benefited and got money in their pocket from the tax cut legislation, out of several hundred, I get two maybe three hands; that is preposterous.

Here is the kicker: Americans making more than a million dollars a year get a thousand times what people making $40,000 get. They get $42,000. We have a graphic that we can show that means that they can buy a Hummer. That is essentially, they are basically being given the equivalent of a Hummer.

Let me just conclude by adding on to what Mr. Gingrich has said because he also said some things very recently. On May 14, on Meet the Press, Mr. Gingrich said: I think we have to confront the fact that on a variety of fronts, we are not getting the performance we want. The people in charge have an obligation to deliver. When you learn that maybe as much as $16 billion of the $18 billion that we sent to Baghdad for economic purposes was not spent effectively, you know something has to change. When you look at Katrina and you realize that we, the United States Government, paid $1.75 to a general contractor who paid 75 cents to a contractor who paid 35 cents to a subcontractor, who paid 10 cents to put the blue tarp on what was temporary roofing, then you know something has to change.

The leader from the 1994 Republican revolution says something has to change. Change is not going from Republican to Republican. It is going from Republican to Democrat so we can take this country in the direction that we really should be going, and so that the next generation of Americans are going to have an America that they can grow up and believe in.

I thank the gentlewoman, and I rise in

support of the Putnam-Capps bipartisan amendment which strikes the Peterson language that would allow for drilling just 3 miles off our shoreline.

Members, let us put this in perspective. Imagine yourself on the west steps of the United States Capitol admiring the view of our Nation's Capitol, taking in the scenery and enjoying the environment. Now imagine yourself gazing towards the Kennedy Center, and just beyond the Kennedy Center, right there in the middle of the Potomac River, you see a big old oil rig. It is not quite as appealing any more, is it?

Now, I know that we are not going to be drilling for gas or oil in the Potomac River, but I paint this scenario for a reason. That distance from the Capitol to just beyond the Kennedy Center is the same distance that Mr. Peterson is proposing we place natural gas rigs off our Nation's beaches.

There are drastic and devastating environmental and economic repercussions that come with drilling into the ocean floor so close to our beaches, for my own State of Florida and for the rest of the Nation. For example, the uncontrollable discharges of mud, rock, and minerals that come with piercing a hole into our Earth would be devastating for our near-shore activities.

Now, for our colleagues that feel they need to vote for something, anything, to be able to say they are trying to address gas prices, I have a reminder: cars don't run on natural gas. People who are now paying upwards of $50 to fill their gas tanks, this amendment, if we leave it in place, will do nothing to change that. Gas prices will still be astronomically high.

And to address the issue of oil rigs off our shoreline put there by Cuba and China, do we want to emulate the actions of nations like Cuba and China? Do we want the Florida straits dotted with oil rigs? I think not, and I think most Americans would also agree.

I urge my colleagues to protect the coast of the United States and vote ``yes'' for the bipartisan Putnam-Capps amendment.

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing more painful than a senseless death, particularly when a child's life is cut short.

As parents, we do everything we can to protect them. We keep them in car seats protected by seat belts and air bags. We watch what they eat and lock cabinets and plug outlets. We put safety knobs on exterior doors and put gates up at the top of the stairs and around swimming pools. We give them curfews and cell phones so we know where they are and when they'll be home. We teach them right from wrong and we impart our values.

And when they are older, we have no other choice but to hope for the best. We hope that all of the cajouling and caring, crying and cradling, helped them become the best grownups, parents, citizens, professionals, but most of all, we want to help our children to be the best people that they can become.

After all of that planning, preparing, protecting and sometimes panicking, most of us are blessed with the fact that our children do become adults.

So much of our children's lives are beyond our control, including their safety, yet we do everything within our power to protect them.

But what parent in God's name would expect their child to be killed in a terrorist attack? Blown up by a suicide bomber at an outdoor cafe? How does one guard against that? What product is made to shield them from explosives strapped to the body of a madman determined to destroy an entire people? How do we teach our children that

some parents raise their children with this hatred embedded inside their heart?

How, if we want to raise our children as tolerant, understanding, open-minded individuals, do we teach them to look out for certain people who may want to do them harm, without painting an entire people with the same broad brush? Naturally, we teach them that they should be cautious about strangers in general, wary of people who act in a certain way.

Mr. Speaker, I ask this question today because the other day, Tuesday afternoon, I attended the funeral of a young boy, just 16 years old. He was a constituent of mine who lived in the same town where my family and I live.

When I got home, I explained to my two older children where I had been. As inquisitive little ones, they asked how the boy died. And I can still taste the bile in my mouth, Mr. Speaker, when I had to explain that this young boy in our hometown was killed by a bomb that blew up near where he was sitting in a cafe in Israel. I had to explain to my twin 7-year-olds that there are some people in the world who have so much hate in their hearts and who don't believe that the Jewish people should have our homeland, Israel, that they will do anything, including bombing innocent people to try to destroy us.

Mr. Speaker, I could not bring myself to explain that the bombs were strapped to the bomber's body as they were detonated. Thankfully, that was beyond their comprehension, because it was beyond my ability to explain to their young, innocent minds.

Daniel Wultz was sitting at an outdoor cafe with his father in Tel Aviv during Passover. A suicide bomber detonated a bomb strapped to his body, which injured Daniel's father and critically injured Daniel. Daniel lost his leg in the explosion, and, despite severe injuries, emerged from a comatose state and went through several surgeries with many more in front of him. He lived for a month, but succumbed to his injuries on May 14th.

Daniel Wultz was eulogized by his family and friends on Tuesday. He was described as a beautiful young man with a big heart, someone who always did the right thing, who stood up for others, and had a big, beautiful smile. I listened to his Rabbi, Rabbi Yisroel Spalter, talk about officiating at Daniel's Bar Mitzvah. I listened to how proud Daniel was of that accomplishment and how his Judaism had become so much more important to him recently.

I listened to Daniel's best friend and aunts talk about what a righteous person Daniel was, describing how he was always there for his friends and how he taught younger kids basketball and waited with them when their parents were late.

I listened to Daniel's sister talk about how painful it was to lose her beloved brother and how badly they all wanted him to remain with the family and the struggle they were going through with God, who obviously needed him more.

But the most difficult was listening to Daniel's father's angst- ridden voice, wishing that he could have protected his one and only son, and describing that he knew his son's beautiful body ultimately protected him.

Mr. Speaker, as a Jew, as a Member of Congress, as an American, but, more than anything, as a mother, I rise this evening to honor the memory of Daniel Wultz and to ask my colleagues to join me in condemning in the strongest possible way the ongoing cowardly terrorist attacks perpetrated against innocent victims in Israel and throughout the world.

As Golda Meir once said, ``Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.''

Hate is a weapon from which there is no safe haven.

Madam Chairman, American women have a constitutional right to choice as guaranteed by the right to privacy. However, our servicewomen and the wives and daughters of our servicemembers are denied this basic right when stationed at military installations overseas. This amendment guarantees that women who selflessly pledge to defend our Constitution at all costs are afforded the same rights that they fight to uphold.

Current law allows women stationed overseas to access abortion services on a military base only after an act of rape or incest or when her life is in danger. It is bad enough that victims of rape or incest have to pay for these procedures out of their own pocket. But as American women, it is unconscionable that they cannot access the same safe, clean and legal reproductive services available to women here the United States, even if they are paying for it themselves.

Are we really asking these brave and noble women, who are ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, to relinquish the same rights that they fight so valiantly to uphold and defend?

I encourage my colleagues to stand with our servicewomen as they put their lives on the line. Lift the ban on privately funded abortions and support this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I am here today to join my colleagues and the Nation in recognizing May as Asian Pacific American Month, a time to celebrate the numerous contributions that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have made to American life.

But first, I would like to recognize and congratulate my colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda). As the Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Congressman Honda has worked tirelessly to highlight the contributions of the Asian Pacific American community.

Congressman Honda's leadership emphasizes the importance of diversity, cultural education, and awareness of the many beautiful cultures and heritages that are woven into the fabric of our country.

Thank you, Congressman Honda, for your dedication and your passion.

May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants.

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is celebrated with community festivals, government-sponsored activities, and educational activities for students. Currently, 15 million Asian Pacific Americans live in the United States.

With more than 25 Asian and Pacific Islander groups with different languages and unique histories, including Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipinos, Indian, Pakistani, Korean, Japanese, and Bangladeshi, Asian Pacific American Heritage Month highlights the diversity that makes up our great Nation.

As an American Jew, I am proud to say that Asians and Jews have a unique and celebrated history of partnership and community. Asian Americans have developed many thriving communities in California and New York City, for example, where there are also a large number of Jewish communities.

Our cultural similarities and major emphasis on family and education present a variety of opportunities for cooperation between the communities, including community organizing, mutual support and political advocacy.

Asian Americans have impacted our Nation in several distinct ways: in science and technology; arts and media; and business and social work.

Approximately 1.1 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders own small businesses in the United States. Additionally, Asian Pacific Americans have served bravely in the United States Armed Forces, and more than 300,000 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are veterans.

The theme for this year's Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is ``Dreams and Challenges of Asian Pacific Americans.'' Throughout the month of May, this theme serves as a reminder that while this community has made several strides, many Asian and Pacific Americans face economic and societal challenges.

Affordable health care and education are among those challenges that all Americans, including Asian Pacific Americans, face. It is estimated that more than 2 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders currently have no health insurance, a figure that is far too large.

We must focus on policies that will provide all Americans the opportunity to prosper in our great country.

Throughout the month of May, Mr. Speaker, I ask all Americans to join me in raising awareness of this growing community as we celebrate together Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

Mr. Speaker, thank you.

It is so great to be here with my 30 Something colleagues once again; and just to take off from where you left off, we try to help illuminate things during our hours and underscore for the American people, Mr. Speaker, what is really going on inside this Chamber and inside this Capitol and the debt, the colossal debt, that we are literally caving in under.

Just like our poster here, the colossal debt that we are caving in under that Mr. Meek just described.

Sometimes it is hard to get your arms around, or mind around, what 1 billion is. One billion is a very big number. So we took the time to analyze or break down for folks the things that are analogous to 1 billion, and let me just walk people through that, Mr. Speaker, and this might be helpful for you, Mr. Speaker, as well.

The question is, how much is $1 billion really. Well, for example, 1 billion hours ago, humans were making their first tools in the Stone Age. One billion seconds ago, it was 1975 and the last American troops had pulled out of Vietnam.

Gee, I guess we sort of wish we were 20 years in the future and we could be saying that about the troops in Iraq, but I digress.

One billion minutes ago, it was 104 A.D. and the Chinese had first invented paper, and $1 billion ago in Republican terms, Mr. Speaker, that was only 3 hours and 32 minutes at the rate that our government spends money.

So when you talk about people who live paycheck to paycheck, people who are struggling to make ends meet, people who are desperately trying to not live off of their credit cards, it does not appear to matter to the Republican leadership here, Mr. Speaker.

My colleagues, it really is astonishing to me. I have only been here 14 months. Both of you are more senior than me, but I am really surprised that some people actually believe what the Republican leadership says when they say they are the party of less government and more fiscal responsibility. Is an $8 trillion debt fiscally responsible? Is being in debt to OPEC responsible? I mean, where is the fiscal responsibility in that?

Mr. Speaker, I think we are going to need to do these charts on dry erase boards from now on because it changes so rapidly and in the wrong direction that we are wasting public resources by printing them on unchangeable paper.

You know, Mr. Meek, I can understand why you would have trouble seeing past that giant rubber stamp. That is simply because this Chamber, through the Republican caucus and their Republican leadership, have been engulfed by the rubber stamp.

You know, had our bobble-head Republican not turned up missing, we would be able to use that as yet another example of why you continually have these policies that are put forward by the Republican leadership, as rubber-stamped by the Republican majority, because their heads only move in one direction. I guess there is no hinge in this direction, only, yes, absolutely, we are glad to do whatever you say, anything you want, Mr. Speaker.

I mean, it is just unbelievable. Fourteen months here and, ``No, sorry, my conscience won't allow me to do that'' is just not part of their vocabulary. And like I said, the joints just don't seem to work in this direction as they do for the Democrats.

Now, you know, what makes matters worse about all of the things that we have been talking about, about the debt and the deficit and the bobble-head, rubber-stamp Republican majority that we have here, is that there are consequences. This stuff matters. It matters in real people's lives.

And what the Republican leadership would have you believe, especially in recent days, their new thing now is that the economy is doing great. Now, obviously they are now trying to shift to a new frame and help everybody understand that in spite of an $8 trillion deficit, in spite of the colossal debt that we are in to foreign countries across this globe, in spite of the fact that we have disproportionate trade deficits with many, many countries, Americans are doing great.

Really? Really?

Okay, well, let's examine that. I have here what the consequences actually are. We came up with a top ten list that describes the consequences of Republican economic policies. Since they raised the subject, they have brought it up recently and said, everything is rosy, red rosy, and so let's just take a walk down memory lane here in terms of what is really going on in the United States of America.

Number 10. I am Danielle Letterman this evening. Number 10, we have a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion that has vanished. It was replaced by a deficit in 2004 of $413 billion, which is the largest in our Nation's history, and a deficit of $318 billion in 2005, an almost $3.5 trillion deficit over the next 10 years.

Number 9. The Bush administration is the administration with the greatest average annual decline in household income. We are talking real people here. Since Bush took office, household income has declined by $1,670.

We are talking third-party validators here. This is not stuff we are making up. This is not the Debbie Wasserman Schultz encyclopedia.

If people thought everything was as rosy as they would describe.

Number 8, 45.8 million Americans have no health insurance at all, 6 million more than in 2000.

Now, if things were getting better, that number would be, oh, I don't know, smaller, Mr. Speaker, not bigger, smaller. And you have, since then the cost of health insurance has risen nearly 59 percent. Yet workers' wages have only increased by 12 percent.

Now, we all do different things in our lives every day. We go to the supermarket. I am out on the soccer field or at dance class or on airplanes back and forth.

I am sitting next to a couple, a middle-aged couple, on the plane the other day from Tennessee. Not exactly a bastion of liberalism. They are from Tennessee. And do you know what they wanted to talk to me about when they found out I was a Member of Congress? What were we going to do about the cost of health care?

They owned a small business. They employed quite a number, 75 people. They employed 75 people and he literally said, the husband, the husband and wife team literally told me that within the next couple of years, if health care costs continue to go in this direction as they have since 2000, they would probably have to close their business. I mean, that is how bad it was getting.

So the garbage that the Republican leadership and this administration are trying to feed the American people, you know, that 31 percent, that number, I would expect would continue.

Mr. Delahunt, I guess they follow the philosophy and the idea that if you say it enough times, people will believe it. Maybe if you say it enough times, actually our governor, it must be in the genes, also subscribes to that theory in Florida, and really believes that if you say something enough times, then it will come true.

Yes, Number 7. Thirty-seven million Americans are living in poverty. We have a 12.7 percent poverty rate, which is on the rise, and 5.4 million people have fallen into poverty since the beginning

of the Bush administration, 5.4 million people.

You know, if they are going to talk about who is doing better, it is the wealthiest that are doing better. Their income is on the rise. Their life is getting better. Their lives are improving and their outlook is more rosy. The poor are getting poorer.

Number 6.

You are right.

Mr. Delahunt, when I have to pay $56 to fill up the gas tank in my minivan, believe me, you are right. It is not just the poor.

Not be able to get to work. How do people who are living paycheck to paycheck factor in $53, $56 into their weekly budget? And we have shown those charts, before too, and we can again. When your bottom line gas tank, filling-the-gas-tank cost goes from $20-something to $50-something every time you fill up, and people who have to drive any distance, I mean, we are from an urban community, a suburban community, as are both of you.

You just cannot zip around these communities in 2 seconds. You have to drive to get to most places. We are going to get to a point where people will lose their jobs because they will not be able to get to their jobs.

Mr. Ryan, let us just digress for a second and show what is going on.

These are the consequences.

There is no end in sight. No end in sight to the rising gas prices. What will happen with number 7, where we have a 12.7 percent poverty rate that is on the rise and 5.4 million more people who have fallen into poverty. That number is going to get bigger. It is costs like these that send people into poverty.

You have number 6 here that talks about the Consumer Confidence Board's index. Its expectation index is the lowest it has been in 3 years.

Number 5, Congressional Republicans defeated a Democratic amendment recently to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25. If the minimum wage kept pace with inflation, it would be $8.88 right now. It hasn't been increased since 1997. That is 9 years ago. 9 years?

I mean, if you are a person who is living on the minimum wage, struggling to pay, to fill your gas tank, struggling to put food on the table, you have no health insurance, do you really want the Bush administration and the Republican leadership to tell you how great the economy is? Do you believe them?

It is a slap in the face, and, really, a bigger and bigger percentage of the population is being engulfed by the struggle just to make ends meet.

Let us go to number 4.

Maybe they live in an alternative universe, bizarre world.

I know, maybe they watch Star Trek.

Maybe it is.

Oh, please.

Mr. Ryan, I think I have figured it out. You have broken the code. The Republicans are the party of the cavernous abyss. They don't mind sending people right off the cliff into it, whether it is expanding poverty, sinking job growth, increasing the number of uninsured by millions each year.

The party of the cavernous abyss is the party that created this Medicare prescription drug program with another cavernous abyss that senior citizens fall into just after they spend a little amount of money on their prescription drugs. So you have to ask where the American family is. They are engulfed by the Republican cavernous abyss.

Number 4, I think we are on now. Yes, number 4. There are now 1.3 million more unemployed private sector workers than there were in January of 2001, the beginning of the party of the cavernous abyss. The long-term unemployment rate, which is people who are unemployed for more than 26 weeks, has nearly doubled since that time.

This is the rosy economy that we are living in, Mr. Meek. This is how great we are doing.

The economy is growing so well that we have number 3, in which the Bush administration, it has become clear, has the slowest job growth of any administration in over 70 years. Since January of 2001, 2.9 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. That is entire towns in Mr. Ryan's district.

Rosy, rosy. Things are rosy, rosy. Number 2, since President Bush took office the economy that is rosy, rosy has posted only 15 months of job gains of 150,000 or more. That is since he took office, that is in 6 years. That is the number of jobs needed to keep up with the population growth. So we are not talking about anything to write home to talk about.

Finally, number 1 of the top 10 worst consequences of Republican economic policies, 7.2 million Americans remain unemployed today with an additional 4.2 million who want a job, but are not counted among the unemployed because they have been looking so long they get taken off the rolls. The economy is rosy.

Thank you.

The only thing I want to add to tie a ribbon on this whole discussion is that what we have all noticed, whether we are in our districts with our constituents or talking to people across the country, when we interact with them, is that people have reached the breaking point. They don't buy it. They don't buy the garbage that is being fed to them by this administration that the economy is rosy, that everything is going well, that everything is hunky-dory.

They are falling off the cliff into the Republican cavernous abyss, and they are tired of it, and they want to have the Democrats or someone other than the people who are taking them in this direction that they no longer are willing to go, to fix it. Even their former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that they are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.

It is time to move this country in a new direction and restore America's confidence in their government. We know we have a plan that we can do that.

And the astronomical increase we have had in gas prices, which affects everyday Americans every single day, has just been unbelievable.

Actually, Mr. Carnahan, we have a chart that illustrates those drastic increases, that is being brought over right now, that I think would be helpful; because I am a visual person, and graphically depicting some of these significant problems is really helpful.

Thank you.

We have good graph-makers among our staff.

You talk about summer gas prices. Just look at the difference over the years since the Republicans have been in charge.

In 2002, Mr. Carnahan, the average price of a gallon of gas was $1.39; that was the summer of 2002. Then you go to the summer of 2003, it was $1.57. 2004, $1.90. Move over to the summer of just last year, $2.37. And then this April, just last month, we hit $2.91. Now, most of us in the last several weeks have all paid over $3 in most communities across America.

So this is the reality of the rosy Republican economy that they have been describing and painting for us over the last several days.

You are absolutely right. One of the other elements of our alternative budget plan would embrace once again, as was the policy during the Clinton administration and when Democrats controlled the United States Congress, was the concept of PAYGO.

That is, I know, with you as a member of the Budget Committee and Mr. Spratt as the ranking member, is an idea that our Democratic Members have championed as a part of our alternative. And we have done that on a number of occasions and attempted to get the Republicans to go along with us and the concept of PAYGO.

PAYGO is very simple. We came from States, and in our State legislatures you have to operate in the black. Just like people who are members of their families, they struggle not to have to go into debt, not to have to live paycheck to paycheck and not to have to go into massive credit card debt.

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership here does not subscribe to that philosophy, and that is evidenced by their rejection of pay-as- you-go rules whereby we would not spend more than we have.

On March 17 of last year, Mr. Spratt, our ranking member on the Budget Committee, offered a substitute amendment to the 2006 budget resolution that failed 165 to 264, no Republicans supporting pay-as- you-go legislation. And we have the rollcall indicating that we were supportive.

Again, Mr. Spratt offered another amendment dealing with PAYGO that would have reestablished PAYGO, 224 Republicans voting ``no,'' none voting ``yes,'' and it failed, to 232. So we have certainly tried. It is not for our lack of trying to make sure that we restore some fiscal discipline here.

The thing that has been the most frustrating for me as a new Member of Congress, and I am sure it is a frustration you have faced, is that the Republicans try to lead people to believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Yet, I am someone who believes that actions have to back up words and talk is cheap, and that seems to be all that they have been about since I have gotten here.

What makes that more obscene is that the energy bill that Mr. Carnahan referred to at the beginning of our hour highlighted the fact that not only did the oil companies make universal record profits. Let us take it beyond the galaxy, we gave away our rights to collect revenue from them in exchange for the drilling rights.

I mean, what so many people do not realize is that the government owns the land underneath where the drilling takes place, whether it is in the gulf or whether it is on land. The United States Government owns that property, and we give the oil companies the right to drill there in exchange for tax revenue and fees. In that legislation last summer, we forgave all of those fees. We gave it to them for free.

Then a few weeks later they are making universal, history making, record, earth shattering profits and now people are paying more than $3 a gallon for gas, and we gave them our gas rights, our oil rights. It is unbelievable.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, only to clarify who the hypocrites are, because if you separate where the Democrats' voting record is on energy and making sure that we focus on alternative energy like in our Innovation Agenda we rolled out in November, which includes an ironclad commitment that when we take control of this Chamber that we will within 10 years wean ourselves off of foreign oil and become energy independent. So the hypocrisy exists on the other side of the aisle. So I just want to make sure whose hypocrisy we are talking about.

Mr. Speaker, we have been talking about energy supplies and the cost of a tank of gas and how difficult it has been for Americans to deal with those increases, and another equally important issue is how people are going to continue to be able to educate their children from their youngest age all the way through higher education.

One of the things I think it is important for us to highlight tonight is the devastating budget cuts that this Republican budget puts forward in terms of the public education needs that we have.

Literally, the Republican House budget resolution would make the biggest cut, and I think I am right, correct me if I am wrong, the biggest cuts to the Department of Education in 23 years. I guess the only thing that would be worse would be when they proposed to completely eliminate the Department of Education, but they are not doing that. They simply have the biggest cut in 23 years.

The budget resolution cuts next year's Department of Education budget by $2.2 billion, with a B, below this year's funding level. It matches the President's budget cuts in his budget proposal dollar for dollar. Rather than increase education funding, both of the budgets, the Republican leadership's budget and the President's, grossly underfund education, social services and training programs. They cut those programs $4.6 billion below the amount needed to maintain current services. They eliminate completely 42 different education programs, not ones that people would think are not necessary anymore, but things like vocational education, safe and drug free school State grants, a college readiness program for low income students and both parts of the Federal Perkins loan program. It is just really unbelievable. You talked about priorities. This is where the Republicans priorities are compared to where we are as Democrats.

Mr. Cleaver, they do those things. It is the Republicans that do those things. I just want to point that out. When you are using ``we,'' that includes us and we don't do that.

Mr. Chairman, we cannot overestimate the importance and vulnerability of the maritime domain. Maritime security involves hundreds of ports, thousands of miles of coastlines, tens of thousands of commercial and private craft, and millions of shipping containers. In addition, many major population centers and critical infrastructure are in close proximity to U.S. ports or accessible by waterways.

In the 20th District of Florida that I represent, our ports, including Port Everglade in Ft. Lauderdale and the Port of Miami, serve as an entryway to millions of tons of cargo and people each year. It is clear that our country still needs an adequate overarching approach to the challenges of maritime security.

That is why I am standing today in support of the Ruppersberger amendment. Security command centers are vital to the protection of our ports and to the safety of all Americans. This

amendment would help make these centers more efficient, better organized, and promote better coordination among the various entities responsible for security.

This amendment just makes sense. Why wouldn't the Secretary of Homeland Security seek input and advice from those most intimately familiar with the specific mission and needs of a seaport? We must have a broad and comprehensive maritime security strategy, and this amendment is one step to help us get closer to that goal.

I urge my colleagues to support the Ruppersberger amendment on security command centers. I am pleased that the chairman of the committee is in favor of it as well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and pay tribute to my good friend and constituent, John Kross, who is also known to those of us in south Florida as ``Footy,'' the legendary morning radio host who will walk away from the microphone at the end of this week, ending more than 30 years as a morning radio personality.

The veteran on-air personality whose name is John Kross will host his final segment for the Y-100 Morning Show on Friday, May 5, 2006.

Footy has been helping south Florida wake up for more than 30 years and is a mainstay in the south Florida community. Footy is a passionate anti-drug crusader and an incurable chicken-wing junkie.

Originally, he created Footy's Wing Ding, a chicken-wing eating competition, as a fundraiser to aid Here's Help, a not-for-profit organization that assists adults and children with substance-abuse addictions.

Although the event began mainly as a competition to crown the maker of south Florida's best chicken wings, it evolved over the years into a popular spot for pop music's hottest stars.

Each year, Footy's Wing Ding brought a host of celebrities to south Florida to raise thousands of dollars for area charities, including Here's Help, the Sun-Sentinel/WB Television Channel 39 Children's Fund and many others.

While thousands of radio listeners will undoubtedly miss Footy's voice on their radios each morning, I am confident he has established a strong foundation that will help inspire generations of south Floridians to make a difference in their community.

It is my privilege to honor his service to our community in south Florida on the floor of the House of Representatives.

I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing John for a lifetime of achievement in radio broadcasting and charity work to wish him and his family many years of happiness, success and new challenges in the years ahead.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join my 30 Something colleagues once again.

That is $113 billion in 2005.

Mr. Speaker, as I pointed out before, I have only been here 14 months, 15 months now. And a few things have happened that have just absolutely floored me. One of the things that has occurred was the two votes we had last year on energy legislation, energy legislation that the Bush energy department predicted would raise gas prices. And it did.

But if you recall, we had an opportunity as Members to have a briefing from the cabinet officers, by the cabinet officers of the President in this chamber just last year.

And if you recall, we had the Secretary of Energy stand in front of us. And when asked a question about why were they not doing anything about gas prices, and what were they going to do to bring down the cost of oil, he said, ``Well, we really cannot do anything''. I mean, that was his point blank answer.

Now, when we are talking about prices at the pump, I do not understand why our Republican colleagues are not pumping up the volume on prices. I mean it is just incomprehensible that last year we would have a bill on this floor that not only gave money to the oil companies, to the oil companies gave them money, forgave taxes. And we have talked about these things before.

The United States Government owns the land and the rights underneath where the oil companies are given permission to drill. We give them permission. And in exchange for that permission, they are supposed to pay us taxes. They are supposed to pay the United States Government for those drilling rights. Yet in the legislation last year, we forgave those taxes. We basically gave them the oil that they drilled for for free, and now we are letting them sell it to us and our constituents for ungodly amounts of money so that they can make ungodly amounts of money.

On top of that, it is not even like it was a breeze to pass it. You know, you had Republicans here who were not allowed to vote their own conscience because from what I have noted, they all check their consciences at the door there and leave them out before they come in this room, so that there arms can be pressed behind their backs.

And the board up here, it shows how we are voting, it is like a Christmas tree. It goes from red to green, green to red. Really I am not sure where their moral conviction is, because it certainly is not in this room when they are voting. They held one of those votes open on the Energy Bill that we did, I think this was last summer, for 40 minutes, if you recall, so that they could ensure that they gave that gift to the oil companies.

It was unbelievable. And we were already in the middle of a summer of high gas prices. And we have here another chart. And I think we have another one as well that shows the evolution of gas prices.

But, we are now paying 100 percent more for gas than when President Bush first took office. 100 percent more. The rubber stamp Republicans, our rubber stamp Republicans right there, you cannot call it any other thing other than what it is. Literally last summer they let themselves be led off a cliff, led by the nose to do whatever it is that the leadership decided they were going to do for the oil industry.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this back down for a second because I think we talk about the deficit and the debt a lot, and some of the things we talk about on the floor are a little hard to wrap your mind around in terms of the things the people deal with every day. So, when we boil it down to what people deal with themselves every day, which is what a tank of gas costs, what a gallon of gas costs, this is the evolution of what has happened under the Bush administration and their energy policy.

In 2002, the summer gas price of a gallon of gas was average of $1.39. Then

in 2003, it went to $1.57. Then in 2004, it went to $19.0. In 2005, it went to $2.37, and you know what, in April it was $29.1. It is now over $3. I just paid $3.05 at home, and it cost me $56 to fill up my minivan.

So, when we are talking about what goes on up here and how disconcerting and disappointing it is that we have no leadership on the other side and no interest or ability for them, who clearly are in charge of this country and who could make this change, at the snap of their fingers if they wanted to, they can stand and say they cannot do anything to affect oil prices, but the President's been in office 6 years. He had the ability to start right from the get-go and begin investing in alternative energy and trying to actually move the ball down the field when it comes to changing oil prices, but let us look at the timeline of what truly has resulted from the Bush and Republican energy plan.

You have this White House energy plan that was submitted on May 16, 2001, just about 5 years ago now, and you can see as you move up that timeline that, with each phase of the plan that has been implemented, this is the increase in gas prices. There is a significant correlation between the implementation of their energy plan and the increase in the cost of a gallon of gas.

May 17, 2002, the Energy Secretary announces an effort to implement their energy plan under existing law. Gas prices go higher.

Go a little further down the road, and it is December 10, 2004, 75 percent of their energy plan that was hatched in that secret meeting, which they refuse to reveal who was part of it, 75 percent of the energy plan is implemented, and now we are at almost $2 a gallon, actually a little bit more than $2 a gallon.

Then you go over to March 9 of last year, 95 percent of their energy plan is implemented, and we are approaching $3 a gallon.

August 8, 2005, President Bush signs the energy legislation into law, and that is when gas literally in some places hits over $3 a gallon. Now, it has fluctuated back and forth. We are at over $3 a gallon again.

The chart does not lie. It is very clear that their plan raised gas prices. You have an administration infected with former closely affiliated representatives of the oil industry, all the way up to the two people who run this country. I mean, it does not take a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist to figure it out. I mean, come on.

You want to hear the statistic I heard today.

As far as boiling it down what this means for people, $56 to fill up my minivan. We have not raised the minimum wage since 1997 in this country, and at the current minimum wage, a minimum wage worker has to work 38 minutes before they can even afford 1 gallon of gas, 38 minutes. I mean, that is just over the top outrageous. I mean, it really is.

The only thing I want to add in closing is that it is just such a sorry excuse to say we cannot do anything about gas prices. I mean, their argument is you cannot snap your fingers and make a difference overnight. If they cared at all, if the President meant what he said when he said we should end America's addiction to oil, like he said in his State of the Union address, then he would have embarked on a plan that

would actually do that from the get-go, but that statement was so disingenuous and so far from what their goals are, as evidenced by their action that, you know, over the next 6 months, with election after election, whether it is a special election in California or the elections we had last night in Ohio, people will let folks know here what they think of the policies that are being established.

Madam Speaker, Members of the House, it is a pleasure to be here tonight as the 30-something Working Group takes the floor each night to talk about our concerns, both as it relates to our generation and our generation's perspective, and also as it relates to the issues that are important to America.

I can tell you that our thanks goes out to our minority leader, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer. We have been given the privilege to come to the floor and talk about the concerns of all Americans. And, boy, Mr. Ryan, who I am pleased that you have joined me once again tonight, we have been spending quite a bit of time together in the last 14 months since I joined you in the United States Congress, and it has truly been an honor and a pleasure.

There is sure a lot to talk about. We are facing so many different crises, so many different crises of the confidence of Americans, that it is hard to know where to begin sometimes when we take the floor each night. But I know that the thing that is most on the minds of at least the constituents that I represent, and I am certain the ones that you do, because no matter where we go now, particularly in the last 2 weeks when we were home, gas prices and the energy crisis, because there is no other term you can apply to it, that we are in right now is foremost on the minds of Americans. It is virtually impossible for many Americans to be able to afford to get themselves around their communities. Even when they have mass transit, we are literally stuck in the present. We are stuck in neutral, and it is time to shift into overdrive when it comes to looking towards the future and pursuing alternative energy sources.

I mean, when is there going to be some leadership on the Republican side of the aisle here? When is there going to be, instead of political scrambling at the last minute, which is what we have seen in the last several days when now we know they have reached the point of no return in terms of being forced to respond to what is going on with gas prices, when are we going to see some leadership step up? When are we going to see some backbone?

It is just astonishing to me that I guess our Republican colleagues are willing to ignore the concerns of their constituents, ignore the plight that they are facing. You can't turn on the news anywhere in this country and not see a reporter sticking a microphone in one of our constituents' faces and saying, you know, how are you able to afford to fill up your tank? It is mind-boggling.

I yield to the gentleman.

To end the addiction to oil

And you sort of scratch your head and wonder who is it that he is listening to? Who is it that he is hearing? Because it is certainly not the average American.

I am a mini van mom, as you heard me say here on this floor. I drive a mini van and I am schlepping my kids all over the place, soccer and baseball and dance class and all that stuff, and let me tell you it is no less than $50 to fill up my minivan every single time I need to fill up. And fuel economy is one thing and one could argue, okay, Debbie, you should drive a smaller car, you should do what you can, take some ownership and some accountability and try to consume less gas. But when you have three kids, I have twin almost 7-year-olds and a 2\1/2\-year- old. There is only so small a vehicle that you can drive with all the stuff and getting your kids around and having to carpool and throw other kids in the car with you. I mean some of the external advice is just not doable. So when you need to drive a vehicle of a certain size, out of necessity, it is going to cost you $50.

Absolutely. Let us do that. Because the thing that astonished me was that only yesterday did the President make a statement about doing something. And believe me, that statement was only a token statement. He laid out some four-point plan where he is going to try to hold suddenly the oil companies accountable. Holding them accountable? I mean, give me a break. It is a little late in the game now that we are 6 months from an election. Is that not convenient? Is that not nice?

I will tell you I have only been here about 14 months and I am less senior than you. You have been here for at least a couple of years before me. During the time that you have been here, that I have been here, where has the outrage been? Where has the outrage been?

We are only going back to 2002, but in 2002 the summer gas prices, the average price of a gallon of gas was $1.39. You could hear a pin drop, it was so quiet, the reaction from the administration. Okay. No outrage from $1.39 a gallon. Then $1.57 a gallon, a third more, just a summer later. No end in sight. No proposal. No initiative to ease the burden and head this problem off at the pass. A summer later, 2004, $1.90. Now we are approaching almost $2, almost, but one-and-a-half times the cost from the summer before that. No end in sight. No proposal to stem the tide. No proposal to urge the oil companies to diversify or pursue alternative energy sources.

Go to 2005, last summer. Now, last summer was when you really knew that the pressure began to rise. I mean, the boiling point was reached last summer. Last summer was when I really thought okay, there is no way that they can ignore this anymore; yet ignore they did. They reached $2.37 a gallon as the average price of a gallon of gas. And simultaneously last year, in my first year in Congress, two energy bills, two energy bills passed that gave 16 billion, with a ``b'', dollars away to the oil companies.

What we talked about last night I will reiterate again: The United States Government owns the areas in which we allow the oil companies to drill. Whether it is the drilling rights that we grant them in the gulf, in bodies of water, or on land, we own them. And they are supposed to pay us royalties and make tax payments to us in exchange for their being able to drill there. Those two bills that we passed last year, Mr. Ryan, forgave those taxes, essentially gave the oil companies those rights for free. And we have a chart that we will put up. Hopefully we will be able to get access to it. It is stuck in an office, but we will get that chart up here in the hour after next. Record profits, both individual quarterly profits that the oil companies made and historical record profits. We are giving tax breaks to companies that are making record profits and providing no relief, no assistance, no urgency to the American people who are struggling to get themselves to their jobs, to get their kids to school? Where is the outrage? It is just of the oil companies, for the oil companies, by the oil companies. That is the kind of policy that is made here.

And before I yield to you, to add insult to injury, on top of that legislation, forgiving the taxes, if you recall, one of those energy bills was one of the bills that the Republican leadership held open the vote for 40 minutes, twisting the arms of our Republican colleagues who knew that bill was the wrong thing to do, who knew we should be doing something about an energy policy, who had their arms wrenched behind their backs. And we watched our vote board that hangs above us, that lights up above us, the Christmas lights, red to green, green to red, all

over the map for 40 minutes until they got their way. Forty minutes. The rubber-stamp Republican Congress did the bidding of their leadership and the bidding of the President and the bidding of the oilmen in the White House. It is disgusting.

I yield to Mr. Delahunt.

If the gentleman would yield for 1 second, there is a little bit of irony here. Today is April 26, 2006, and we are about 6 months from the election. Isn't it interesting that today, suddenly 6 months before the election, as the heat is intensifying, and elections get closer, and the concern increases on the part of our Republican colleagues about the likelihood of their losing quite a few seats as a result of their not doing what they should have been doing, it becomes more and more of a likelihood and a reality that hearings are beginning to be held, the President is rolling out plans to address the energy crisis and gas prices?

You know, the American people are a little bit smarter than that. They get it. They get when scrambling is going on, when people are trying to, hmmm, I guess the best way to put it is to save their tuchases. That is a Yiddish term, for those of you that don't know what it means.

Thank you.

I was just going to suggest that you put some of the comments from the generals up on the easel.

While you are putting up the other very damning commentary from the myriad of generals that have called for either Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation or for the President to ask for that resignation, I think it is important to point out that in the face of that unprecedented pressure and unprecedented nonpolitical motivation, because certainly the motives of retired generals could not be questioned, the status quo is being preserved, a steadfast, benign status quo, and that is just yet another example of the bobblehead, rubber-stamp Republicans.

You know what else I noticed in the last 14 months since I have been here in my experience is that we haven't had a single Republican come to the defense of these generals or agree, step forward and agree with them. My belief in terms of our role here as public servants is that sometimes you can't be afraid to stand alone. You have to be willing to stand up for the courage of your convictions, even when no one is behind you, because you are the one that has to wake up and look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and know you have done the right thing, and you are only with yourself at the end of the day when you put your head on that pillow.

What I have noticed is not a single colleague of ours on the Republican side of the aisle has stepped forward and said, yes, it is time for Secretary Rumsfeld to resign; it is time for some fresh blood, for some new ideas, for some acknowledgment that it is not going in the right direction.

Why? Because this is what we have on the other side of the aisle in this Chamber. We have bobblehead Republicans. We have people who just shake their head up and down and up and down and are willing to just rubber-stamp whatever it is that they are asked to support, or oppose, for that matter. It is astonishing.

I know the answer. For the same reason that there has been no accountability, for nothing that Congress should have been exercising its role of oversight of this administration. Where were the independent hearings as far as Katrina? Where were the hearings for the culture of corruption? Where is the Ethics Committee and its total lack of operation in investigating case after case of Members on the other side of the aisle who have violated and been accused of violating the public trust? Where has the outrage been?

The answer is the same, Mr. Delahunt. They do not care, on the Republican side of the aisle, to exercise Congress' oversight role. They have ceded, willingly, the legislative branch's oversight role, ceded the authority to the executive branch.

And you know, I have been a legislator for 13 years, it is almost 14 years now. It is the thing that I believe we should most jealously guard, our oversight role, the system of checks and balances, our ability to hold the administration, the executive branch, accountable, even when it is our own administration.

I mean, there certainly was not any hesitation on the part of this Republican Congress to hold the administration accountable and have plenty of hearings from the most minute and unimportant to the significant when there was a Democratic President. But

oh, no, as soon as there is a Republican President, we do not need to ask him any questions, we are just going to let them do whatever they want.

Why? Because they are perfectly happy to be a rubber-stamp Republican Congress. I think the American people are sick and tired of not having people here that serve in the Congress that they send here to stand up and do the right thing, express outrage, understand what they are going through.

I mean, I do not know how some of the constituents, the citizens in America, are tolerating their Member that they have elected staying silent on all of these important issues. I do not get it.

Well, you know, it is getting ready to happen again tomorrow. We are going to watch them deliberately squander yet another opportunity.

Do you remember several months ago when the Jack Abramoff scandal broke, and he was exposed, and indicted and arrested, and decided to plead guilty and began implicating people who he worked with and who he collaborated with? There were calls from the Republican leadership that they were going to do something about this, make the process more transparent, restore ethics to undergird the American public's confidence in this system.

And that was all supposed to culminate in tomorrow's legislation that we will hear in this body, what the Republican version of lobbying and ethics reform is, Mr. Delahunt.

We are all about third-party validators in the 30-something Working Group. I have third-party validators just initially to compare Republican proposals on lobbying reform with the proposals that are coming out of the United States Senate, from the Republican leadership there versus the proposals coming out of the Republican House.

And this was on the front page of USA Today just a couple of days ago, on April 24, just on Monday, the two proposals coming out of the two Republican-led Chambers. Look at the differences, Mr. Delahunt, that we have here.

This is the difference between the lobbying legislation the Senate and the House of Representatives, the gift limits that are proposed in the legislation coming from the Senate.

And, again, this is right off the front page of USA Today. The Senate version of the bill would say that Members could receive no gifts from lobbyists to Members or their aides. None. A ban.

The House version of the bill tomorrow, we would have no change from the $50 limit that is current law. That is transparency? That is a restoration of America's confidence that Members are up here doing the job that they were elected to do? Status quo. That is the reform that we are going to consider tomorrow.

The lobbying ban. Right now, former Members have a 1-year ban before they can come and represent clients in front of Congress and contact their former colleagues and advocate on behalf of those clients. The Senate would double that time to 2 years, at least, so that there would be some distance between the time of service that a Member was here and the people that they served with.

And so the idea behind a 2-year ban, Mr. Delahunt, is that at least some of the issues that that Member was voting on, that the Members that they were working with, that there is some distance between that time, and that way hopefully you are not going to have undue influence occur. The Senate doubled that to 2 years.

In the House, again this is off the front page of USA Today, there would be no change. The current 1-year time limit would still remain in place.

Let us look at congressional travel. Travel sponsored by lobbyists, again off the front page, in that same graph on the front page of USA Today. The Senate legislation that deals with travel by Members sponsored by lobbyists would say that they have to have preapproval in order for a Senator to travel with lobbyists, on a lobbyist-sponsored trip. The Senate legislation said that that would have to be preapproved by their Ethics Committee.

You know, interesting proposal. There are several ways you can do it. We will go one step further in our proposal, which we will go through in a second. But the House version, this is funny; it is so sad that it is funny. The House proposal tomorrow that we are considering on travel says suspend travel until December 15.

What are they hoping, that we get past the election and people will forget? Or maybe we get past the election and it will not matter anymore and they can just go back to taking trips to Scotland and playing golf when they are supposed to be doing the people's business?

I am not sure who they are trying to kid. It is just truly unbelievable, Mr. Delahunt. Their nerve is amazing. So I just wanted to outline that is the difference between the Republican proposals.

Now, I want to just take a minute and go through what the Democrats would do. You know we hear so much that, you know, all the Democrats do is criticize and, you know, we do not have a plan for this, that, or the other thing, which of course we spend each night here trying to outline the plans that we do have, and debunk that oft-repeated myth, which is truly mythological, because we have numerous plans which we will continue to outline.

But let us look at the House Democrats' lobbying and ethics reform proposal, where we would truly crack down and get tough on the culture of corruption and cronyism that exists here. It is called the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. If that is what we are considering tomorrow, which I truly wish we were, then the gift limits that Democrats proposed would be a ban on gifts including meals, tickets, entertainment, travel from lobbyists and nongovernmental organizations that retain or employ lobbyists. Because, you know, what we could debate, we could have a legitimate debate, I think, Mr. Delahunt, on whether or not particularly nongovernmental organizations should be able to sponsor Member travel, those educational trips that I have taken in the time I have been here, once or twice, that are truly helpful.

But, you know, unfortunately, you know that old expression where they talk about the one bad apple spoils it for the whole bunch. In order to restore Americans' confidence in their government, a change like we are proposing, just a total ban would do that. You got to go that far. But that is not what we are considering tomorrow. We are considering just holding off on travel until December 15, squeezing our eyes shut and hoping the problem goes away.

A lobbying ban. We House Democrats would propose, do propose, a 2- year ban for former lawmakers, executive branch officials and senior staff, that they could not represent clients and contact former colleagues for 2 years. It would eliminate floor and gym privileges for former Members who are now lobbyists.

It would require Members and senior staff to disclose outside job negotiations, because the K Street Project, the infamous K Street Project where you have the revolving door of negotiations going on, while staff, while Republican staff are still here working for the public, negotiating lucrative private deals to leave here and then, you know, within a year, representing clients and lobbying their former colleagues.

And the pressure that the K Street Project applies for those private firms to hire those Republican staffers, we would end that practice in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

And finally, these are just highlights. Actually this proposal is far more comprehensive than what is outlined here. Travel sponsored by lobbyists. We would prohibit lobbyists from planning or participating in congressional travel.

It would require Members to pay the full charter cost when using corporate jets for official travel and to disclose relevant costs in the Congressional Record. Literally, the piece of the legislation we are going to consider tomorrow, the only change, is corporate travel; in other words, when a Member is using the private plane provided by a lobbyist. Sometimes, you know, a Member needs to get somewhere quicker than commercial travel allows them to. The proposal tomorrow only prohibits the lobbyists from traveling with the Member on the plane.

They can still do it exactly as they do it now, but they cannot go with the Member. That is the accountability that is provided for in this bill. It is a joke.

You know the American people are not going to buy it. You know, the finger in the dike for the next 6 months and hoping that that gets them through. I mean, I am hopeful that that does not work. It appears that the American people finally get it and that they will be behind us in moving this country in a new direction. Sorry I took so long. That has been growing inside me.

There are lots of reasons, Mr. Delahunt, some of the ones you outlined, but many more reasons why the American people are losing confidence in our ability to make sure that we respond to their concerns. Here are some key facts that I pulled together that just might explain why people are so frustrated, aside from the major issues that we have been outlining here tonight.

Just for example, median income, median family income has dropped every year of the Bush administration. Median wages have dropped 6 percent from 2000 to 2004 according to the Federal Reserve Board. A typical middle-class family, and this is the 30-something Working Group, and we just want to provide some highlights of the things that this generation is struggling to deal with, the typical middle-class family is working longer than in 2001 just to pay the bills.

Health care costs have skyrocketed, with a typical family paying $632 more for health insurance, compared with 2000. The number of Americans without health insurance has increased by 6 million, while the number living in poverty has increased by 4.5 million since 2000. Gas prices are 62 percent higher than in 2001. Housing is the least affordable it has been in 14 years.

In my community alone, and I know your community is expensive as well, the average price of a house in south Florida is more than $300,000. Now how is a young couple, just starting out, who wants to reach the ability to buy their first home, going to afford that?

Come on, I am not that far from having bought my first home with my husband. Trust me, if the prices were like that in south Florida when we first started out, there is no way. We would be living in a shack, which many people in America are continuing to struggle to even be able to afford.

College tuition. Let us continue down the path of what young people are struggling with. College tuition has gone up about 40 percent, even if you take inflation into account, according to the college board in 2005. The number of employees in an employer-sponsored retirement plan dropped by more than 2.7 million from 2000 to 2004. That is Congressional Research Service, our objective Congressional Research Service that cited that statistic.

About 3.7 million employees have lost employer-provided health insurance since 2000. The median household debt has climbed 34 percent, to $55,300, from 2000 to 2004. The typical student graduates from college with about $17,500 in debt. While wages and salaries are at a record low as a share of national income, corporate profits are at a 60-year high.

Finally, the last statistic that I was able to pull together, just to outline what the average working family is struggling through, Mr. Delahunt, is that the number of U.S. billionaires reached a record of 793, which is up 15 percent from last year. It is no wonder that the American people are fed up with us and fed up with the lack of outrage, with the lack of leadership, and that the polling numbers, when you rate the Congress, are just hitting rock bottom.

Mr. Delahunt, I have really enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time here with you tonight. The last couple of minutes we will pull up our 30-something Working Group Web site, which we encourage the Members and anybody who is interested in getting the charts that we have outlined here tonight. They can access that on www.housedemocrats.gov/ 30something.

Madam Speaker, with that, we want to thank the Democratic leader for the opportunity to speak to our Members tonight, and we yield back the balance of our time.

Madam Speaker, I, too, want to express my thanks to the Democratic leader and the Democratic whip.

Wow, the 2 weeks we had at home, I am sure that you experienced just like I did, I went home and heard an earful from folks in my district who just really are at the end of their rope. They are fed up. They are sick and tired of being sick and tired. I think one woman said it best. She has just reached the end of her last nerve, whether it is the culture of corruption and the daily revelation that comes out of this capital with either an indictment or an accusation or an ethical cloud or an example of cronyism, or just one more example of the incompetence that has really permeated government as led by the Republican leadership.

People are sick of it. They really are. They are sick of the gas prices. They are sick of the issues coming up again repeatedly and not being dealt with and not being addressed and their concerns not being addressed until it becomes such an immense political issue that the Republican leadership realizes it is unavoidable. They are over it, and I can understand why they are over it.

It is insulting. In January, the three of us, along with our colleagues, sat in this Chamber and listened to the President deliver the State of the Union and the line he had in the State of the Union about America's addiction to oil and that we needed to end it. You know, it is insulting. It is insulting on so many levels.

Number one, it is insulting that just last year, and I have made this reference before. I have only been here 14 months now, and in the last 14 months just while I was here, we have voted on two different energy bills that gave away the store to the energy companies, to the oil companies.

So it was just so obnoxious when in the President's State of the Union he is talking about us, the United States, needing to end, Americans needing to end our addiction to oil. Where have his proposals been? Where has his agenda been? Suddenly today or yesterday he comes up with his five points that we need to move on to address the energy crisis that we are in? I mean, give me a break.

The American people understand when their leaders are genuine and when they are scrambling because politically they know there is no other choice.

This is something that I think the Members who are hearing us should really be able to see while we are talking about it. And following, I mean, the comparison on the heels of what we have just been talking about with two pieces of Republican-led energy legislation giving away the store last year to the oil companies, forgiving taxes, allowing for drilling rights tax free, with taxes being forgiven. In the time that President Bush has been in office, when he took office January 20 of 2001, gas prices, Americans paid $1.45 a gallon. Now, fast forward to today, and we now pay an average price of $2.91 a gallon. Now, in 5 years, a little more than 5 years.

That is okay. So people understand what we are talking about, those two bills last year cost taxpayers more than $12 billion, with a B, billion dollars in giveaways to big oil companies. That was in the legislation where essentially taxes they were required to pay they did not have to pay because those pieces of legislation forgave those taxes

I would be glad to yield.

Mr. Delahunt, can I ask you a question?

In the evolution of gas prices that you have on that chart, 2002, $1.39; 2003, $1.57; and $1.90 in 2004; $2.37 in 2005; and now an average of $2.91 in 2006, in between that time, because I have not been in Congress all those years, and you have, have the Republicans who have controlled Congress all of this time, and President Bush who has been President all of this time, have they put forward any proposals to fund, significantly fund, alternative energy sources? Has there been anything that has been initiated by the Republican leadership here, by this White House maybe that I didn't see since I was still in the State legislature to fend this off, to make it less likely that the situation we are in now we wouldn't find ourselves in? Because the President did say in his remarks and commentary in the last several days about what control he did or didn't have over gas prices, that he really wasn't able to control market forces. I mean, I heard him say that.

Well, no, he probably can't control market forces, but there are certainly things that they could have put forward. But I haven't seen it. Did they?

What do you mean by a welfare program for Big Oil?

Should we illuminate that a little bit?

Right, the oil welfare that we have given away.

My experience with tax breaks as a State legislator and now a Member of Congress is that you generally give those kinds of breaks to help a business get back on its feet, thrive, to maybe bridge them through a difficult time. In 2002, the oil companies made a combined profit of $34 billion. In 2003 it was $59 billion.

Sure. As you can see, BP, Chevron, Shell, Conoco, and Exxon-Mobil.

Yes, 2002.

That was only the tip of the iceberg, because if you continue down the road, and remember, I just got here, and so we will get to 2005 in a minute. But it was 2005 that the $16 billion was granted that we have been talking about. But you go to 2003: $59 billion in profits. Also the same oil companies.

Then you go to 2004, and we are at $84 billion in profits.

Not bad if you can do it. And then you go to 2005. In a year where we passed two major energy bills that gave away $16 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to the oil companies, they made, last year, $113 billion; and one of those companies made more money in one quarter than any company in U.S. history.

That was Exxon-Mobil.

More than all of the companies combined profited in 2002.

And we don't begrudge profit.

This is doing what the Republican leadership is allowing them to do.

Can I ask you a question, Mr. Delahunt, again because you have more direct experience with this than I do? My understanding is that the oil companies, they do not own the areas of the gulf and the other places that they drill for oil. The Federal Government sells them essentially, through payment of taxes, the rights to drill; that these are essentially public lands, whether they are in the Gulf of Mexico or wherever they are drilling, I mean whether it is Texas or any portion. I do not believe any of the area is private land, any of the significant area. So when we forgive the oil companies taxes, we are basically giving away the ownership rights to a private company that the government owns and just saying, here, take our oil stores for free. Is that right?

If the gentleman would yield for 15 seconds.

Thank you for your generosity. What we are

saying, I want to underscore what we are saying when we say we are not opposed to profit, because that profit we had up there a minute ago, if it happened and the oil companies were being asked to pay their fair share, if they were paying the royalties and the taxes that they are supposed to be under the law to the Federal Government for the rights to drill, you know what? You can't begrudge them the profits, because that is the free market system.

But they are not. They are being given these oil rights for free, for no remuneration or very little remuneration whatsoever. And they don't need it. They are not struggling. Far from it. The people who are struggling now are Americans who need to go to work, who need to get their kids to school.

Mr. Delahunt, given that I am from Florida and have a particular sensitivity to not using much heat, can you explain what the LIHEAP program is?

What does LIHEAP do for folks?

It gives them a break on their bill.

Mr. Delahunt, can I just describe the difference between the Alice in Wonderland-like policy that is made here, where down is up and down is up, and reality? At the end of Alice in Wonderland, Alice woke up and it was a dream and she could go back to what reality really was for her.

That is right, that the Republican leadership won't let Americans wake up from.

That was a long 20 seconds.

Carnack the Magnificent.

I just want to ask you another question. As we went through last year and we debated those energy bills, and I remember when they went through the committees and then actually came, at least one of them did not even go to committee, it just came to the floor. And it came out on this Chamber. One of those bills was yet another example of the red lights changing to green lights, and the board being held open. I think the energy bill that I am referring to, I know the board was held open for at least 40 minutes, until the Republican leadership got the vote that they wanted.

Now, we have asked repeatedly, where is the outrage? Where was the outrage then when Republicans, rank-and-file Republicans, who not only needed some courage, but could have gotten some advice from the Scarecrow and the Tin Man then, too, for some heart and some brains, but where was the outrage? And what did that mean?

Essentially what did it mean when they had the opportunity, when they put their no vote up on the board, yet the leadership came to them on the floor, wrenched their arm behind their back, and what did they do? They were rubber-stamp Republicans yet again. Rubber-stamp Republicans.

And I just, time after time I have noticed that that is really the best way to describe the vast majority of Members of the Republican Caucus, because they have the opportunity to have some courage, they do not have any. What do they have? They have the ability to just say, uh- huh, sure, I will do it exactly the way you want it, Mr. Republican Leader.

He has never been forced to veto any legislation or sent anything that they were afraid he would not like. And I want to know, where are our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, where is their line? Where is the line that we know we all have, that says, you know, this far and no farther? I just cannot do it. They do not have that line.

In our final minute or so, I can tell you that what I learned from my constituents when I went back home is that they know that together America can do better. It does not have to be this way. We do not have to keep going. And through our efforts and the efforts of our other Democratic colleagues, our 30-something Working Group will continue to take the floor each night.

I yield to my colleague from Florida to close us out. We do have a Website.

Mr. Speaker, violence against women is on the rise in this country. Sadly, young women have increasingly become victims of violence and domestic abuse in episodes on college campuses and in communities across America.

One-third of teens report some form of abuse in their romantic relationships.

Forty percent of teenage girls report knowing a peer who has been hit by a boyfriend.

These are our daughters, our sisters, our friends and our neighbors.

The idea that our society is still struggling to cope with such violence is simply unacceptable. We must do more.

Yet the Republican majority's budget resolution mirrors the President's budget suggestion to cut funding for Violence Against Women Programs by $19.5 million dollars--cutting the very programs that prevent domestic violence and aid survivors.

These programs are our first line of defense for battered women across the country--and too often, sadly--our last line of defense.

It is time to get our fiscal house and priorities in order. We must carefully consider the message we send to domestic violence survivors by cutting funding intended as a lifeline in their most vulnerable hour.