Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 58 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, November 2, 2005, at 2 p.m.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

$148,000.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You mentioned it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be here on the floor once again. I thank the minority leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), and the minority whip, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), and our Democratic Caucus leadership, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).

I was moved by my colleagues that came to the floor to honor the late great Rosa Parks, and also the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) who is a Member of this body for a very long time, and actually worked very closely with Mrs. Rosa Parks. I know she is smiling on the gentleman and this Congress tonight for recognizing her contributions. I thank the gentleman for standing up at a time it was not popular to stand up for Rosa Parks and allow her to be a part of your operation. And obviously she allowed you to be a part of her life. Thank you for keeping her memory alive.

Mr. Speaker, I entered my comments for the Congressional Record of condolences to not only her family, but recognizing Rosa Parks's contributions to our great country, and to the world. Many leaders are not revered until they have passed on, and I can tell you that many Members of this Congress, especially in the Congressional Black Caucus, let Rosa Parks know how much we appreciated her contributions. I have read many letters to the editor from around the country from people from all backgrounds commending the life and memory of Mrs. Rosa Parks.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to come under regular order in the 30- Something Working Group to come to this floor once again and talk about some of the issues that are working in our Federal Government and some of the issues that we need to continue to work on.

My State was hit recently by Hurricane Wilma, closely following damage wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and there is a lot of work we have to do. I want to commend those first responders trying to save lives and making sure that we prevent accidents and future accidents. I want to thank Florida Power & Light and light companies from throughout the country for coming down to south Florida to try to restore power to so many Floridians.

But I can tell you it was very disheartening that yesterday, and I just got back this afternoon, there were thousands of people waiting on ice and water. Whatever the issue is as it relates to the communication lines, we are going to have to work on those issues. I know that in south Florida we have the most populated area in the State. We have the west coast hit, but we never can tell what Mother Nature is going to do. The east coast ended up being hammered quite a bit. A number of individuals were left without electricity. Roofs were ripped off. Things like that happen in category 2 and category 3 hurricanes. Water lines were ruptured, but hats off to the local government for making sure that we have potable water in many parts of Miami-Dade County and parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties.

But what we have to do is go back to what we were talking about originally, a Hurricane Katrina commission to make sure that we are able to work the kinks out so we can provide Americans what they need in their time of need. Unfortunately in this particular instance, that did not happen. I want to thank the National Guard for doing everything they could do, but the coordination is still not where it should be.

I wanted to talk tonight about what just happened, what has happened in the past, and how we can correct it in the future. I think that is something very, very important, especially as Members of Congress. I am joined by the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz). Both of us rode the storm out and both of us live in communities where the lights are out.

Both of us called directly to the director of FEMA to recommend to the White House that we be granted individual assistance for households. In Hurricane Katrina, that was not granted. Many Floridians in south Florida lost their homes. They did not meet the quote/unquote 800 threshold for damage to their homes, something that was a discretionary call. The entire Florida delegation asked, with the leadership of the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), for

the White House and FEMA to reconsider. It was denied both times.

This time we assumed nothing and worked very hard to make it happen. It was very obvious, and I am sure people in Washington, D.C. could watch the news and see that the need was there. We needed to meet it, but the Federal response is not what it should be at this particular time. I can tell you as I yield to my colleague, I was very, very disturbed by the fact that a person that I communicate with that I think is a very decent individual, and I still feel he is a decent individual, but when you come down to Florida, the Secretary of Homeland Security says, you just need to be patient. We know you just went through a storm, but be patient.

I can tell you before that, the State director, the Governor of Florida was saying, make sure you have what you need to have, water, ice, 24 hours after the event. Then when folks ran out, they waited in lines for hours. In some instances, water did not show up, ice was not there, and food was not there; and folks were promised it was going to be there and it did not happen.

There are a number of comments going back and forth between State, local, and Federal governments. This goes back to the importance of the independent Hurricane Katrina commission so we can have folks that can sit down and evaluate what happened in Hurricane Katrina, what happened in Rita and Wilma. What happened in other storms, so we can come out with best practices, not just for hurricanes but even if there is a terrorist attack.

This is a perfect example to show how the people who sent us here will not get what they need from the local, State, or Federal Government that is overwhelmed by the event that took place. That is why we have a FEMA, and I think that it is important that we work on these issues. I am glad to be here with my colleagues. We are quote/ unquote evacuees. The airports just opened in south Florida, and I am glad to be here.

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

Mr. Speaker, I feel very strongly also there is a lot of work to be done. What I am disturbed about, I was at the emergency operation center last night in Miami-Dade County speaking with the county manager and several of the county commissioners. The mayor was on his way back from Homestead Air Force Base meeting with National Guard personnel and management, and the bottom line is that they did not get the supplies that they were supposed to get. The ice was not coming, Mr. Speaker. The water was not on the way, and it is not the Kendrick Meek report. It was on the Weather Channel. It was on CNN. It was on Fox. It was on MSNBC. It was on all the major news networks saying we are prepared because we are Floridians, and we are used to doing this. Well, I can tell the Members that we are never perfect.

And I am holding up just one picture here, Mr. Speaker, from the New York Times of the Orange Bowl. Everyone knows about the Orange Bowl throughout the country, but it is not known for what it was known for, for a number of championship games, a number

of professional football games. It is a place of chaos and a place of frustration right now. And I use the word ``chaos,'' and I do not use that loosely.

I can tell the Members I happened to be with the National Guard yesterday. I wanted them to take me to all of these distribution centers by a Blackhawk, and we had an opportunity to see them. There were lines around, literally if we were to go out the front door of the Capitol, we can go clear across the street to the Cannon Building and around, all the way around that building. People were waiting for 7 and 8 hours to get 1 bag of ice and 3 jugs of water.

I do not blame the local government officials. I do not even know if it was the truck driver that needed someone to sign a paper before they released the ice. What I do know is that Americans count on this government for them in their time of need. Local government can only go so far. State government can only go so far. The Federal Government, as far as we are concerned as it relates to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, this is what that Agency does 24-7. They plan for catastrophic events. And as far as I am concerned, as it relates to catastrophic, comparing Wilma to Katrina, it is very hard to compare it, but I can tell the Members that many of the Floridians that are being rationed for gas, we are not saying it is the government's problem for all of that. We are just saying that we need to manage our part of this thing. We need to make sure that if we tell someone that ice is going to be somewhere at a particular time, I can see a truck an hour late or 2 hours late, but 7 and 10 hours late?

This is not the Kendrick Meek report. This is in the papers throughout Florida and throughout this country and on several of the news outlets. And I have this here from the Sun-Sentinel, after the Governor made the comments about they should have been ready. And it is not about the Governor and the State of Florida. This is about responding to Americans in need, and we have a pattern.

In Rita we heard the same complaints from some members of the Texas delegation and some of the folks that came up here from Rita about what should have happened did not happen. We definitely heard those complaints in Katrina. So we know that we are having complaints, and we know that we have a problem, but we are not doing the things that we need to do to correct those problems. We are not doing it. And that is the problem. That is the main problem that we are not learning from recent events. We are talking about within the last 2 to 3 months. This is not like 1967. We do not have to go back that far. Just this year we should learn from it.

And the reason why I am alarmed by this, thank God we are in a hurricane season, but I do not know what these terrorists are thinking about. I really do not. I do not know if they are going to plan to hit a city in the Midwest or the east coast or the west coast. We definitely know that we are not able to respond in a way that we are supposed to respond throughout the country no matter where it is.

So it is important that we have this Independent Katrina Commission that many papers throughout this country has endorsed. It is important that 81 percent of Americans have said that they want an Independent Katrina Commission. It is named Independent Katrina Commission because so many issues happened during that event. And then we had Rita, and then we had Wilma, and no telling, we may have something else.

But what happens when we get a dirty bomb? What happens when we have to evacuate a whole U.S. city and we have to find not only housing, but shelter for folks? What happens when a local government sends out an SOS? Obviously they are sending out an SOS in south Florida. I do not want us to be too proud to beg, but if we need help, we need to say it. And if we are all collocated with FEMA, and everyone is talking to everyone, we cannot be concerned about this is my friend and I do not want to say anything about him, or this is my brother and I do not want to say anything about him. The bottom line is it is not personal, it is just business.

And I had constituents that were told to be at Hadley Park in the middle of my district. Not a truck of ice, water, anything. We had to argue with the emergency management people. We had to argue with the State. And finally it took an act of Congressmen getting involved for that to happen. What happened then? Well, I believe they ended up getting ice and food because there was no water to send over there.

So the bottom line is we do have people in the real world that cannot afford to buy a generator to keep their refrigerator and food fresh. We have people in our country, the working poor and some middle-class folks, that are working from paycheck to paycheck, that cannot afford to have ice reserved for 72 hours.

That is an interesting number because it keeps sliding. I heard we need to have enough to preserve ourselves for 24 hours. I heard this come out of the mouth of the Governor, the chief emergency management person, the FEMA people. And now we have problem. Now that number has slid to 72 hours. What is it going to be next, 150 hours because we cannot respond?

So I am very serious about this because it is our job. Even before Wilma, I am so glad that we were on this floor, and someone said, oh, it is just politics. And it is a perfect example. And, Mr. Speaker, I have said this time after time again. I have shared with the Members. We come to this floor. We say we need an Independent Katrina Commission to evaluate the local, State, and Federal response to these events, and folks said, oh, it is just politics. Guess what? Now it is us. Now it is Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz. Now it is me. Now it is Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, Congresswoman Ros- Lehtinen, Congressman Foley, Congressman Shaw, Congressman Hastings of Florida. Now it is us. Now it is Senator Martinez. Now it is Senator Nelson. Now it is Florida. Who is next?

And when are we going to be able to say, regardless of how it may look on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, the Congress, individuals, we have to work this out? That is why people sent us up here. They did not send us up here to be friends and hug and tell each other, ``I have got your back if you have mine.'' People sent us up here for us to have their back. And unless we are willing to do that, then we might as well just stay in our districts and say, call me when you want me to do something. Somebody calls me from the back of the Chamber and says, this is the way you are supposed to vote. If they are one of those kind of folks and they come and put their card in because someone else told them how to vote, and they say do not talk about that because this is the message for the day, we need to talk about it. We need to critical of one another so we can be better. And, unfortunately, it is now our constituents.

But I feel half all right about this thing because we have been about the solution and trying to bring about over 190 Members of this House. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, on this side of the aisle, it is not politics. It is just business. And guess what? It is reality.

We are calling for an Independent Katrina Commission, along with 81 percent of the American people that are calling for it. What has to happen next? Do we need to have a terrorist attack? Do we need to have a horrific event somewhere to say maybe we need to review what we are doing because what we are doing we are not doing right? It is almost like taking a carton of milk out of the refrigerator and saying, oh, it is spoiled, let me put it back in, and maybe it will be fresh tomorrow. It is just not going to happen. And until we leader up and until we work in a bipartisan way, it is just not going to happen.

So, I mean, I do not know how to make it any more plain of what we need to do and what we have to do, because Americans are suffering, and now, as we stand here today, a supermajority of our constituents cannot even see us here on this floor representing them. And guess what? Other Americans that now are sitting at home saying, oh, that is just a shame, or Members sitting in their office, that is a shame what happened in their district, we are going to pray about it, we know prayer without works is dead. We know that, and we know that we have

to have action. And that is the reason why we have it in our hearts and in our minds to do the right thing. But guess what is standing in front of it? Politics; the politics of saying I have your back, you do not have to worry about it.

This majority over here in Congress is saying, do not worry, we are going to do a partisan commission. You do not have to worry about it. We are not going to be critical of you, White House. White House, do not be critical of us, and we will get through this thing. Let us just ride it out. But somehow, some way, there is a constant reminder of the disorganization of emergency management, and it starts from the Federal, and they will blame the State, or they will blame the local government, and the local government will blame the State, or the State will blame the Federal. We are not into the blame game. We are getting down to how we can get a system that will work for all Americans.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

And over 2,000 FEMA employees there prior to the storm.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, 3.8 million in both of our counties.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to tell you, being a part of the solution is what we do. We are a part of the solution, Mr. Speaker, and I think it is important that even when it comes down to the individual assistance, I mean, you just had to turn on the television and see that there were over 800 homes damaged in Florida. That would automatically allow the people of the State of Florida to be able to call FEMA for individual assistance. But, no, we watched the sun rise and set twice in Florida.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is the only way we are going to get better. We were calling directly to the FEMA director about this individual assistance. You call the 800 number, and the folks of Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama, I think they kind of know about that FEMA 1-800 number.

I am going to put it to you this way. We had to talk to the director. Obviously, I am going to tell you something, I am going to be the first one to tell you, when Michael Brown left, well, he did not leave, he is still on, and I want to talk about that, when Michael Brown was removed, it is almost humorous, but it is sad, when he was moved from the director to whatever job he has now, at the same pay rate, okay, you are rewarded for not doing your job under this whole culture of corruption and cronyism. Because I can tell you right now, folks know that if you were at the helm of the ship and you did not know what to do or how to do it and you did not have the credentials, that you were not only fired, but you were fired yesterday; not, hey, you know something, you are doing a horrible job, but we are going to pay you at the same rate the day before we knew that you were not capable of doing the job, and not only that, we are going to extend you, because under this whole thing of cronyism, this is what we do.

It will be okay if it was a private company somewhere that decided to do that for a member of that company, because it was in their prerogative. It is their money, they make their own money. But when you are using the taxpayer's money to commend cronyism and incompetence, I have a problem with that. I do not think I need to be a Democrat or Republican to have a problem with that. I just need to be an American taxpayer that has a big problem with that.

How does this happen? It happens because it bubbles up from the bottom to the top, or I am going to say from the top it bubbles down from the top to the bottom. If the President is doing it, it is okay for the department heads to do it; if the department heads can do it, assistant secretaries can do it; if assistant secretaries can do it, area regional coordinators can do if; if regional coordinators can do it, it can go all the way down to the person that is making the decision in FEMA to foot drag or not, because they are okay.

Because if you are going to preserve a Michael Brown in the Federal Emergency Management Agency, then guess who also is being preserved around here? I mean, I cannot even imagine for the folks not under the spotlight that are being preserved and rewarded under this culture of corruption and cronyism. And I do not use this corruption and cronyism lightly, because there is a big cloud over Washington, D.C. right now about outing CIA agents, and not a mumbling word from the Congress about it. Not a mumbling word.

I can tell you one thing: If there was a Democrat in the White House and the Republican Congress, as it is right now, we would have to hold Members of Congress back from the gates of the White House, under this whole thing of outing a clandestine agent working to find out more about weapons of mass destruction to harm this country.

So, I say to the Congresswoman, this goes a lot deeper than just the regular Potomac two-step that is going on in Washington. It has gone to a whole other level.

The reason why we were on him on individual assistance to get better, it is because we are a part of trying to make FEMA right. We are a part of trying to make our government work. When we work and when we call and when we plead with Members of Congress and we talk to the department heads and say, listen, grant individual assistance. We already know we are eligible. Just do it so folks will know we are responding. ``Well, we are doing assessments of the assessments, and I haven't heard back from the people that went out in the field.''

Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, thank God for the National Guard. I talked to them. They said listen, anyone from FEMA, who needs to do anything about getting us more, we will fly you down, we will do whatever we have to do. You could go up in a helicopter in 5 minutes and counts 800 homes and it is over.

But, no, this Congresswoman here had to get in a car with a gentleman, and I commended those frontline workers when I first started this hour. I think the first responders should be commended. They are the individuals that do what they are supposed to do. I think the FEMA folks on the ground are trying to do the best they can. They were going out, trying to do whatever they have to do to make it happen. Let us be happy for them, police officers, National Guard.

But, you know something? It comes down to the management of making it work. If you go to a Burger King or McDonald's, I am not picking on them, a fast food establishment, and things are not moving the way it is supposed to be moving, I cannot be mad at the guy on fries. I have to be upset with the manager standing there with a tie on looking important. Either you are going to be a part of the solution or you are part of the problem. Apparently you have a management problem.

And that is what we have. Unfortunately, it is the response to catastrophic events or a possible terrorist attack. This is real stuff. So what we are seeing here on the Floor, just like well were fighting not only on behalf of the people of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, but we are fighting on behalf of Americans about the fact that, guess what? We are not prepared. And all of the paperwork and documents we have that say, oh, we are ready. We have this plan here, and when it is time, we are going to implement this plan.

Guess what? Diddly-squat. Because people are not ready to do what they need to do. What is the bad part about it is we have people covering for one another. Now, the President is going down there tomorrow, and I am glad the President is going down. He is going to fly around and he will take a look at what happened and then he is going to go back to the Hurricane Center and he is going to have a discussion with State and local folk.

Okay. That is good. I am glad the President is going. He should have been down there today, but I am glad he is going.

But I am going to tell you this: I told my people back home, and I told the State folks, if you do not tell the President the truth, then you are buying in to cronyism. You cannot sit there and go through the whole this is the script,

and I do not even want to talk about scripts as it relates to press conferences with the President and the troops selected to speak at that press conference. But I am going to tell you this right now: The business of I have got your back and you have my back and we are elected or appointed and what have you, and you watch out for me, and if I end up getting removed from a location, I just want us to be okay so I can get a 90 day contract or can continue to go 6 months for doing a bad job. Those days are over.

And, guess what? As it relates to the 30-Something Working Group on this side of the aisle, we are going to call it the way it is. Bottom line: It is not personal, it is just business. That is the bottom line. We are not going to allow this to happen.

It is a shame, it is a real shame, that there is not an outrage, there is no outrage from this Congress, this Republican Congress, Republican Senate, the White House, the fact that, you know something, it is not working, we are going to get it right. The Secretary of Homeland Security went down and said you all be patient. What is the problem. What is going on here? What are you crying about? Why are you upset? Oh, you were waiting for a day-and-a-half for ice, or whatever the case may be, or were out there at 7 o'clock and we were supposed to be there at 12 and we did not show up until 7 o'clock?

I was at the 163rd Street location, got there at 10 o'clock. There is the ice trucks, pallets of them. Guess what? A few people there were frustrated because they left after waiting 10 or 15 hours for ice. And these are the victims of Wilma. These are not the folks coming in here saying, hey, listen, I want to suck off the government because I understand you all have milk. No. They came down there for help. We told them to come, and we were not there for them. And we had 2,000 FEMA people, let FEMA tell you, the Governor, oh, we have trucks, and trucks and trucks as far as the eye can see of ice and water. No ice and water. They lost trucks in Broward County. I do not know how trucks can get lost.

Thank God for the National Guard. They put helicopters in the air trying to find the trucks. This is serious business.

Let us just say it. If we have to evacuate Washington, D.C., what is going to happen with the people of the District of Columbia? What is going to happen to the people in Sioux City, Iowa, if they say you have to clear that town now? We are all going to be standing around here saying, oh, my goodness. What are we going to do?

Because you know something? We were not critical of our failures, and we have to be critical of our failures so we can have better days in the future.

It just does not get better. If you take it out of the refrigerator and it is sour, you put it back in and say maybe it will be fresh tomorrow. It just is not going to happen, and it does not make sense, doing the same thing expecting different results. It is beyond partisanship. It comes down to leadership.

I will say this to the majority: if you are not willing to lead, the American people will allow individuals that are willing to lead and are willing to call in, even if it is the same party in the White House, the party that is in control of the White House or in control of this Congress, and it has been proven. When there were issues with President Clinton or issues with President Carter, it was a democratic Congress that called them to the mat. Because we are Americans, and that is our role constitutionally in making sure that this country operates in a good way, because we are the representatives of the people of this country. A Senator can be appointed, but if you are a Member of the House, you have to be elected, and we are elected by the people to what? Lead and have oversight. And if you are not willing to do that, and I say this to the Majority side, I guarantee you, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, white, black, veteran, nonveteran, they want people to lead and they are going to get it. And I am going to tell you right now, I would much rather see some correction take place in the very near future so that lives are not lost and individuals are not told one thing and it is another, turn right, I meant left. We do not have time for that. We need accountability.

Congresswoman, the issue is the fact that if folks would say, well, why are the Democrats not doing something? They may well, I do not know, maybe they are saying what they should be doing and they are not doing. Guess what? I just want to remind the Members just in case, Mr. Speaker, someone bumped their head and has a little amnesia going on, the Republican-controlled Senate, Republican- controlled House, a majority, okay? A Republican-controlled White House. That is legislative and executive branch, all right? They are in control of this government.

The bottom line is in the minority, as it relates to the rules, they cannot agenda bills here on the Floor, they cannot call committee meetings. They cannot even get votes to take place here on this floor, and within the time that it is supposed to take place, especially when the majority is not on the prevailing side, because it is bad policy that they are passing. All we can do is make sure that not only the Members know exactly what they are doing, not only fight them in committee as it relates to amendments to try to make bills better and shame the majority into accepting those amendments so that the bill and the legislation could be better, or we can have better oversight over Federal agencies to make sure what? That the American people get their taxpayer dollars' worth of accountability out of those Federal agencies, and even sometimes out of individuals that are within the Federal Government.

So when that does not happen, we are at the point that we are now: a brick wall. A brick wall of just saying, listen, I am in the majority, and guess what? Live with it. It is not personal, it is just business. And believe it or not, it would be okay if things were properly managed in the Federal Government. It would be okay if we did not have White House folks outing, or rumors of well, the Vice President told his chief of staff who the agent was, the CIA agent was, and somehow it got out to a reporter, and then now her life is in jeopardy, and we have lost someone who had the opportunity to go to the other side where many of our intelligence officers could not go to find out where or how individuals possessed weapons of mass destruction to what? To protect our country, and someone thought because of politics, that they should out her. Okay? It would be okay, Congresswoman, but guess what? It is not.

We have one of the highest deficits in the history of the republic as we stand here in the 109th Congress. We have an emergency management agency/homeland security agency that cannot perform in the way that it is supposed to perform, let alone the public assistance that is supposed to go to local governments after these disasters to be able to replenish their dollars so that they can provide for who? The people that we represent and the Americans that are counting on us to respond in their time of need, let alone the fact that goodness, we cannot even get water and ice right and food. If we cannot get that right, then how can we count on, if we are under the gun of a terrorist attacks, and we do not know what area is safe, can we breath the air, can you drink the water, when is the next attack taking place, at least we have an opportunity with a natural disaster to say, we can see a storm coming, we can prepare for it as best we can, and say this is what we need to do and folks get in place. You get a terrorist attack, you do not get a warning. The terrorist did not call you up and say hey, guess what? We are going to carry out a terrorist attack in maybe another month so we want to make sure you guys are ready.

So unless we scrutinize our system that we have now, it will not be better and we will not be prepared. That is far beyond politics. And it should be far beyond cronyism. And you would say, as much as we talk about cronyism which is, in reality, we do not need to paint a picture there; just open your local paper. Just turn on the television. It is covered with corruption and cronyism. I mean I do not even need to waste time on that. I just need to say that for us to get better, either the majority is going to say, you know something, we are going to do what we are supposed to do, even if it embarrasses some of our friends in and outside of our party, because this is what we have to do. And that is not happening right now.

We have a committee right now, a partisan committee that has been created, more Republicans than Democrats, that is are supposed to be assigned to the committee. I am glad the democratic leader and other folks here on this side of the aisle have said, you know something? We are not going to participate in Operation I Have Your Back, You Have Mine. We are not going to participate in, you know something? We have lunch together and I am going to make sure that you are okay and you look good, because we are friends, and what time are we going to play golf? We are not going to participate in turning our backs on those victims of Katrina and storms after Katrina who are counting on some assessment, true assessment, an independent assessment of what took place so it would never happen again. The fact that water, ice, and food cannot be distributed in Florida right now or is spottily distributed in Florida right now, and yes, I am pretty sure things are getting better before they get worse, but I am going to tell you, if we cannot do that, then how in the world can we sit here with a straight face and say, well, the White House is doing a review of what went wrong with Katrina so that we can correct the future, when it is not even stated on their website of who is on this committee or what is going to happen with the findings, or where are we going to go from there? And in the House, we have a partisan committee that is calling folks up, that is supposed to put together a report by February, Congresswoman. So I guess we are supposed to take that and say, we have it right now. Oh, I am sorry, I go back to my example. My name is Kendrick Meek and I know we had some missteps and I have done possibly something wrong or something, but maybe I need to, I will tell you what, I am going to do a review of myself and I will be back and I will give you a report of where I went wrong. It is just not going to happen. And even on the other side of the building here, they are having some sort of evaluation of what took place. We need an independent Katrina commission.

Congresswoman, I just want to share this. USA Today said we need an independent commission. Let me put my little chart up here, right here. These major papers throughout the country, and these are just the major ones. I am not talking about the small paper that said it is the right thing to do. The News Observer in North Carolina; the Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin; the Atlanta Constitutional Journal; the Courier Journal, Louisville, Kentucky; St. Petersburg Times in Florida; Salt Lake Tribune in Utah; Denver Post in Colorado; the San Antonio Express News, that is in Texas; Houston Chronicle, they have all said, and that is just to name a few, that we need an independent Katrina commission to evaluate what went wrong and how it went wrong so that we can be better.

They are not saying, well, we need to do it so we cam figure out who was wrong. No, we need to have an independent Katrina Commission so they can put together a report and so that we can correct our wrongs.

Unless we are willing to do that, because I guarantee you right now, it is not going to happen under normal circumstances.

I think we must, on behalf of Americans not only our constituents that are Americans too, continue to push and fight and get in the face of folks who are supposed to be doing the right thing and allowing an independent commission to come about so that we can have this kind of change that is needed in our country, so that we can have a better America and a safer America.

Mr. Speaker, I want to let you know that we did not try to pass the time. But we want to thank the Democratic leader and thank you for your indulgence here.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 16 minutes p.m.) the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, October 27, 2005, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the life and works of an incredible woman and activist, Mrs. Rosa Parks.

Mrs. Parks' act of brave defiance rocked the foundation of American society and inspired generations of civil rights leaders and created a sense of hope for every American facing legal discrimination in this country. Ten years after she refused to give up her seat because of her color, the country changed completely.

What seemed like a small act; refusing to leave her bus seat on a winter day in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, led to a boycott of the Montgomery buses for nearly 13 months by the black community. Her act captivated a nation, solidified a movement, and ignited the candle of hope for an entire generation of blacks.

In 1955, Mrs. Parks was a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store, and on that day, in the winter of 1955, she boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus and took a seat in the middle. The bus quickly filled up at subsequent stops and soon a white passenger was left standing. Mrs. Parks refused to give her seat up as the bus driver instructed. In her 1992 autobiography, she said ``People always said that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that wasn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.'' Soon after Mrs. Parks' refusal, the U.S. Supreme Court desegregated Montgomery's bus system.

A museum and library now stands on Cleveland Avenue where Mrs. Parks boarded her bus. She was given the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. One cannot discuss the civil rights movement without mention of her name, and she will never be forgotten for her role in challenging the status quo.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot adequately express my feelings of sorrow at Mrs. Parks' passing. Mrs. Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus in 1955 and took a journey she could never have imagined. But now, 50 years after her ride, we must remember her journey and renew our commitment to equality for all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate and pay tribute to two people who are bound by their love for each other and by their service to God and our community. It is one of these ties that I want to recognize today, for William Randolph Cook and Patricia Colette Green are getting married on Saturday, October 29, 2005 at Mount Hernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Miami Gardens, Florida.

They both served their country with distinction and honor in the U.S. Army. Patricia joined the U.S. Army in 1991 and served until 1994, receiving several commendations for service. Patricia is now a middle school teacher at Bob Graham Education Center. William served in the U.S. Army for four years. William now works for the Dade County Police Department in the PST Division and has received several unit citations from the Dade County Police Department.

They are both native Floridians who returned to the State after their military service and decided to serve the residents of Florida by helping to eradicate drugs from the neighborhood and teaching youth in urban North Miami.

I think the quote from Emily Bronte that they plan to use in their wedding program speaks to their commitment to each other, ``whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.''

Each is a valuable contributing member of the South Florida family, and together they have truly emerged as leaders helping to foster the empowerment of a people and an overall better quality of life in our community. Our prayers and good wishes go with them for a long and happy life together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I can tell the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) I am just so glad to be here with you tonight, and I know that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) was here a little earlier, our good friend from South Carolina and the ranking member on the Committee on the Budget, to point out some of the variations you have been talking about now.

I can tell you also that I was concerned. I think it takes more than a press conference that the majority did today down in the basement of the Capitol here saying we are fiscal conservatives. All of the sudden, after all of this time, after all of this borrow and spend money, no one said a mumbling word. Now we have Americans that are displaced, Americans that are looking for assistance from its government, Americans that are still in shelters, and now we want to be fiscal conservatives. We want to all of the sudden say, oh, well, you know, the American people know the Republican majority here in the House, that we are fiscal conservatives.

Let me just say something. The budget does not reflect the highest deficit in the history of the republic or one of the highest. Definitely when it comes down to the war in Iraq, there is

no real accountability as it relates to corporate greed and corruption and cronyism of companies that have stolen the taxpayers' money under the lights, and they are still getting contracts from some of those very same companies that got contracts in Hurricane Katrina to make the taxpayer victims all over again.

Now folks over there want to get religion about being fiscal conservatives, saying we are going to find some, what, $55 million or whatever the figure is, off the backs of poor people. So I think it is important that we talk about this.

I think that I just want to do this again. Maybe the folks over here on the other side forgot about this. Maybe they forgot about this community. This is the before picture of the Category 3 levee, and this is the after picture. Maybe they forgot about those Americans that lost their homes. All under this we are going to be fiscal conservative. Maybe they forgot about this lady here with her children, finally getting out from the water after 4 days right here in New Orleans. She is carrying her kids out when 30,000 people were trapped there. Maybe we forgot about that. Maybe we forgot about these folks here that had to improvise and find their way back to safety, and these kids stroking here on the refrigerator with a board, maybe they forgot about that. Maybe they forgot about this, too.

Let me just say that I want to make sure we do not get confused on the reason why we are having this debate in the first place. This is all about helping Americans and making sure that local government and the Federal Government is able to respond in a way that it is supposed to respond, appropriately, to taxpayers when this happens.

Now we are going to make the country pay even more of the 67 percent cut that took place under regular order under the last budget that the majority held the clock on once again, open a little bit longer, the Republicans on the majority side did, and now we are going to go back on top of the 69 percent, and the goal is to do an additional 50 percent cut, okay, 50 percent more going into cutting these programs like Medicaid and Medicare and free and reduced lunch for children.

What was so disturbing and I think the Members should be aware of, I watched this on C-SPAN. It was down in the basement. There were about six Members, the temporary majority leader and all of that stuff. They were down there talking, beating chests and all.

In closing my opening statement, I am so happy that there is a God, and I am also happy that there are some folks in this Congress that are willing to put the pressure on the majority side on this issue.

As you know, today we were supposed to do some voting on this, on the budget, and tomorrow we were supposed to do some voting. That vote has been pulled now, and it is not going to happen. I do not think that it is not going to happen because the staff could not necessarily get the paperwork together. It is not going to happen because it was the wrong thing to do on the backs of the wrong people.

You do not go to a family saying we are here to help you, but first of all we are going to take back at least $1,000 of the services that you had coming to you due to the fact that Federal-mandated law, as it relates to health care, we are going to take it back from you. Matter of fact, take that cookie out of the kid's mouth. Did he get that in the free and reduced lunch program? Take it back from him because we are going to cut that, too.

What they did that I think is important and I think the Members in their offices that are watching now needs to know, what they did, they said, well, we are definitely not going to deal with the billionaires. We are having this press conference to send a code to let them know that you are safe.

I want to make it clear we have a Republican majority here in the House, and it has been that way for 10 years. We have a Republican majority over in the Senate and definitely a Republican White House. So anyone that would come and say anything publicly on this floor about, oh, the Democrats are stopping us from governing in a compassionate way, that is not true.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, we need to clarify who we are and they are.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to tell my colleague from Oklahoma that he is supposed to do exactly what he is doing. We are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing, and that is represent our constituents. That is why we are up here. We are not up here to be friends, buddies, and pals. We are here to make sure that folks who woke up early one morning, whether they be Democrat, Republican, Independent, no party affiliation whatsoever, an individual that was in a nursing home could not make it, did not have an absentee ballot, they deserve our representation. And the reason why this bill did not come up and hopefully will not come up in the form that it is in now, and some folks ask what do Democrats do in the minority? What do you do because you do not have the ability, not we do not have the physical ability or the mental ability to do it, but by rule we cannot bring certain things to the floor. We cannot agenda bills here on the floor. There are a lot of things that we cannot do because we are in the minority. But what we can do is propose.

Now, this very bad budget amendment that is coming up that is going to cut the opportunity for families who want to work to be able to have child care and to be able to, like the gentleman from Ohio, provide for their families. And so I think it is important that we realize that this is not a partisan conversation. The only thing partisan about it is the fact that the majority, which is the Republican leadership here, will not do what they are supposed to do.

The last point. This whole issue on this we are going to cut, this exercise as it relates to looking at the budget has gone off the focus of helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina and Rita to we have got to prove to America that we can govern. That is what it has turned into. It has turned into that by saying, well, we can govern because we know how to cut. We know how to cut. Well, who are we cutting? We are cutting those that cannot fight back. You might as well just answer the question the way it really is. Let us talk, let us, like they say in some places, let us put the cookie on the bottom shelf so that we can all reach it and understand what is going on.

So I think it is important, need it be if someone has a bus pass in their hand, they carpool to work, they have to go out and do certain things in their car before they turn it over because they cannot afford to buy a new car. I have been there before, I put my hand up. Those that are running around here know that they can only put $20 in their tanks and some of them have to shut their car off at certain times because they know they just cannot spend that money because they do not have it. These are individuals that we are standing for. These are the individuals that we are leading on their behalf.

So it is important that we put these things out there. It is important that we come to this floor, and not let Democrats in the House or America know what is going on, to let Americans know what is going on. But this stuff does not just happen. It happens because we want them engaged, we want Members engaged in representing their constituents.

Do not forget cronyism, please.

I just want a point of clarification. The folks that are going to suffer under these cuts, they do not make political contributions. Their only contribution is their vote to send a Member of Congress up here. I do not know when I go to these health care centers and they say, well, we had to cut 10 employees, we cannot even meet the people from the community that are coming in and need our help because the budget has been cut.

It is the evolution of taxation. We make the cuts up here and then the States, they return the favor to the local folks, and they cannot do what they are supposed to do. The folks that are being cut and dealt with and manhandled by the majority on this, they do not make contributions to anyone. They cannot afford to. These are the people that are punching in and punching out every day.

I think it is important that everyone understand the proposal that the majority is talking about now will do nothing but weaken the country. That is the bottom line. That is what it does. I want to make that point of clarification because even when I check my campaign reports, there are not a lot of Medicaid recipients there saying, we are writing a fat check to the Congressman. They cannot write $10 to the Congressman because they are too busy trying to pay for gas and the heating oil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, you are doing a better job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate and pay tribute to two people who are bound both by marriage, and by their service to God and our community. It is one of these ties that I want to recognize today, for Pastors Randall and Sharlene Holts of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary.

Reverend Randall E. Holts is the Senior Pastor of the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church of Miami. Since 1985, Pastor Holts has served as the Chief Administrator responsible for administering the spiritual and temporal affairs of the church. Under his dynamic leadership the congregation has grown to more than 2,500 members. In addition, in 1997, Pastor Holts and his leadership team organized and established the ``New Hope Development Center, Inc.'', a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The mission of NHDC is to foster self-sufficiency of families through economic empowerment, and delivering human and social services to improve the quality of life for residents in the community.

Mrs. Sharlene D. Holts currently serves as Pastor of Women's Ministry at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church of Miami, Florida. In December of 1995, Mrs. Holts heard and accepted the call of God summoning her to the Gospel Ministry. Since that time, she has faithfully prepared herself in prayer and study of the Word to do God's will.

Pastors Randall and Sharlene Holts were high school sweethearts, and are currently partners in life, as well as, ministry. They are the proud parents of Shontel Holts-Rich, Ericka Holts and Randall Holts, Jr.

Each is a valuable contributing member of the South Florida family, and together they have truly emerged as leaders helping to foster the empowerment of a people and an overall better quality of life in our community. Our prayers and good wishes go with them for many more happy, productive years in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to celebrate the life of Mrs. Cora Eaves Braynon, a true leader whose rich legacy will enhance our community for many years to come.

Cora Braynon spent her entire career in public health--as a nurse, educator, administrator and as a North Broward Hospital District Commissioner. Mrs. Braynon received a bachelor's degree in nursing from the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and a Master's in Public Health from the University of Michigan.

Mrs. Braynon was appointed to the North Broward Hospital District Board in 1999 and reappointed in 2003. Her last role was that of Vice Chair. Mrs. Braynon also served on numerous District committees including the Executive Committee, Joint Conference Committee, Minority Business Enterprise Committee, and the Quality Assessment/Oversight Committee.

Prior to receiving the appointment as Commissioner of the North Broward Hospital District, Mrs. Braynon was the first black Registered Nurse employed by the Broward County Health Department. She served as Senior Executive Nursing Director for 18 years and retired in 1994. Mrs. Braynon was also an instructor at Broward Community College, Florida Atlantic University and an adjunct faculty member of Barry University Adult and Community Education Program. She also served on the Advisory Council on Nurse Education, Division of Nursing for the Public Health Services, Department of Health and Human Services.

Aside from her commitment to public health, Cora Braynon served 52 years as a life member of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., a public service sorority. She was a pioneer in developing programs to help safeguard the health of teenage mothers and their babies. Her interests were reflected in her sorority work where she implemented the Reaching Adolescent Parents Program. She was also devoted to the Delteen youth program where she mentored many young women on their role and commitment to finer womanhood. Cora Braynon, the immediate past president of the Broward County Alumnae Chapter, served three terms as President. Additionally, she served on regional and national committees of the sorority.

Cora Eaves Braynon, a woman of great accomplishment, leaves behind a large and accomplished family, including her beloved husband, Ronald A. Braynon; three children: Oscar Braynon, Sr. (Patricia), of Miami, Florida; two daughters: Andrea A. Braynon, of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and Terri Braynon Glasford (Jason), of Miramar, Florida; one sister, Carrie Eaves Evans (Willis), of Louisville, Kentucky; one brother, Frank Eaves (Ella) of Prospect, Kentucky; one brother-in-law, Roger Forbes of Fenton, Michigan; sisters-in-law: Betty Sharpe of Lauderdale Lakes, Florida and Rosemary Braynon of North Miami, Florida; grandchildren: City of Miami Gardens Vice Mayor Oscar Braynon, Jr., Gina Braynon and Marina Braynon Moore, a host of nieces, nephews and other family members and friends.

Cora Braynon will surely be missed, but we will all remember her with wonderful thoughts and memories of the person that she was and the many ways that she touched our lives.

Mr. Speaker, once again it is an honor to come to the floor. We would like to thank the Democratic leader as well as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), our Democratic whip, for allowing us to have this hour here to talk about the issues that are facing Americans and the issues that we feel should be brought to the forefront which are not being addressed.

Tonight I am joined by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) and also by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan). I am glad to be joined by them once again because, as we have said before, we are going to come to the floor night after night to try to push the American agenda forward as best we can.

As my colleagues know, being in the minority here in the House of Representatives does not bring about the kind of power one needs to be able to respond to the needs of Americans. But I can say that being in the minority and pointing out these issues of how we could do the job better than the majority side has done, I think is not only educational for the Members of this House but also should bring about some kind of change so that we can have better representation here in Washington, DC, especially representation in terms of legislation that passes from this floor and out of this Congress and on to the White House.

We have been out for a week on the Columbus Day break, and I know the gentleman and his constituents have been getting lots of rain in New Jersey, so my prayers go out to your constituents and many others. Being from Florida, as you know we receive our fair share of good and bad weather. Mainly good, and so we want folks to come to Florida; but we know the Garden State has been hammered, along with other States around it, for quite a few days now. So I hope all is well with those counties that are trying to survive some of the flood waters.

I think it is important to begin where we left off almost a week ago, Mr. Speaker, and to address the issue of having an independent commission for the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita and making sure that not only are those Americans not forgotten but that we not forget the mistakes that took place during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina so that they never happen again. Never again in the United States.

I think it is important for us to also realize, Mr. Speaker, that it was not just a storm. It was the aftermath of the storm and the lack of governance on the front end, making sure that our levee systems were where they should have been and the issues as relates to those buffer islands in the gulf coast area, especially in Louisiana. Those issues should have been addressed by the Federal Government in making sure that we have the kind of buffer to protect one of our greatest U.S. cities.

As my colleagues may know, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings) and also the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) on our side of the aisle have introduced an independent commission bill that we have been working to get to the floor for some time now. I think that not only the Members but the American people need to realize that the power of this House, if we were in the majority, and this is not a partisan issue, but if we were in

the majority, because there is a bill that is there that almost every Member, if not every Member from the Democratic Caucus, has signed on to this bill calling for a 9/11-like commission to deal with the issues that are facing the Katrina victims and to be able to analyze in an independent way outside of this process, outside of the partisanship, to make sure we do what we did for the 9/11 victims, to give them their fair share of representation and insight; making sure that they are not dragged through the mud, becoming victims once again.

Mr. Speaker, as we open our discussions here tonight, I also wanted to make sure that we deal with the issue of corruption and cronyism. When we left here over a week ago, we were dealing with that issue; and I wanted to make sure that we talk about that a little tonight with my colleagues.

I also brought some articles with me that I think Members should be made aware of, and that we share with them the importance of governance and oversight. So there are a number of issues that we are going to talk about, and I just wanted to make some opening comments regarding those items, but I will be happy to yield to my colleagues at any time.

Well, A, congratulations; and, B, because you were feeding the baby for the first time yesterday, I hope that you knew what to do when you were feeding the baby.

There you go. Great uncle.

Two-fer.

Mr. Speaker, I never say anything about the gentleman's age.

I am 39.

Mr. Speaker, since the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is at the younger end, he wants to talk more about the older people that are involved and the wiser people. And I would say to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), we will not prolong it any more.

Ninty minutes.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) brought up some interesting points; and I can tell him, as a parent myself, this issue of No Child Left Behind, we would talk to our Republican leadership colleagues and they would say, well, that was a bipartisan bill and over on the opposite side, in the Senate, folks were having press conferences and bill-signing ceremonies and everything.

But we believed that we were going to see full funding of No Child Left Behind and that this Congress would go down in history as the education Congress, and we are not even close to fulfilling our obligations. As a matter of fact, we have about eight States that are suing the Federal Government over No Child Left Behind unfunded mandates. These are States. These are not other countries. These are States here in the United States that taxpayers pay money.

We have a number of school districts that say, listen, if we can opt out of it, we want to opt out. We do not want to opt in. That is not a federalized education program to help local communities and chambers and all the other do-gooders in small communities and big communities who want to make sure they have an educated workforce. It is not that same theory.

We have one other issue that is here. The gentleman mentioned the issue of the energy bill. I am glad that resurfaced because I am going to tell the Members the reason why that is important. The energy bill came to this floor, and for 90 minutes we sat and stood here on this floor waiting for the board to close. What we call the board here in Congress is a voting board. For several minutes, almost 1 hour. The bill was defeated. And, Mr. Speaker, I think this is where if I had a yellow flag and I was a referee or an official on the 40 yard line that I would actually throw a flag. I would have thrown the flag because the spirit of the rules were violated because when the board opens up and there are 15 minutes to vote, there are 15 minutes to vote, give or take 1 or 2 or 3. But when they say the board is open for 15 minutes and we will close it when we win, then that is a violation of the spirit of the rules of this House. And it feeds into the whole issue of the corruption and cronyism.

I have two young children; and if there were a homework assignment that was due, and my wife and I have to sign their reading stuff and say that it is done, but it would not be fair if my children were to do their homework and there were two other children in the same classroom or in the same school that say, Well, I do not have to do my homework. I will just do it two nights from now because my father or my mother is a chairperson of the PTA and we have power like that. We can do it. That would not be fair to the children who actually did their homework.

I use that analogy because I want to make sure that the Members and the American people understand what we are talking about. Yes, it is a bad thing dealing with children, but it is a horrible thing when we are talking about national policy for the greatest country on the face of the Earth, the shining example of democracy. Now, we salute one flag. And my colleagues heard me speak a couple of weeks ago about those Americans; and, yes, we think about those 2,000-plus individuals who have fallen in this war, but for those Americans who are still here who are voting for representation and fair play, they are individuals that are without limbs now.

We have all gone to Walter Reed. We have all gone to these hospitals in our own communities, these VA hospitals, watching these men and women come

back, half of their head blown off, legs and arms missing. And we are here and we walk through this door and we put our voting cards in these machines to represent them and the Americans that they fought for. And then we come to the floor because the majority did not get what they wanted when they wanted it, to say that they will hold this vote open as long as they have to to make sure that they twist enough arms on the Republican side because every Democrat voted against the bad policy, this bill.

I do not even want to address it as an energy bill because basically it was just a giveaway to the industry. That is all it was. Everything, 7 months prior, that could not go straight-faced into the ``energy bill'' at that time they got in this last time right before we took a break of the bill that just passed recently. And the reason why they got it: A, Hurricane Katrina came through. Hurricane Rita was on its way. The bill was already being marked up before Rita came, but it was on its way to help deal with the issue of price gouging and making sure that we are able to provide energy for our country and hopefully bring down the price of gas, and it did not do that. What it did was it raped our environmental laws. It raped the process of fair play in this institution.

There are certain things, as Members of Congress, we cannot allow to happen on behalf of the institution. When the record books are opened, the annals of history of the 109th Congress, yes, there will be individuals that will be mentioned; but also it will be that day that we were on the floor and the spirit of the rules of the House were violated in the worst way, time after time again. Time after time again.

The leadership from this side, Mr. Speaker, came to the floor with a parliamentary inquiry. The clock was at triple zero. Obviously, the measure did not pass, Mr. Speaker. Can we ask for the Speaker to call the vote? And each person was gaveled down for not making a parliamentary inquiry, and the Speaker said what he had to say at that particular time to keep it going. The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), Democratic leader, came to the floor, gaveled down for asking the question and then pointing out the fact this is what is wrong with Washington now, the culture of corruption and cronyism, not in the dark corners of Congress but under the lights on international, not national, but international television that we are willing to rape the spirit of the rules of this House and the spirit of fair play in America. Not something that we watched on cable television in some foreign land somewhere in a Third World country. Not there. But right here for the world to see. I would not say the hypocrisy of the democracy of everyday Americans, but because of the leaders who allowed it to happen here in this House.

Mr. Speaker, last point, I just want to make sure that we understand, as Members of Congress, that we have a responsibility in the majority and minority. I take full responsibility for what took place, Mr. Speaker, here on this floor, yes. Did I do everything I could? Of course I did. Did I walk over to the other side of the aisle and talk to some of my friends over there that are level-minded individuals, who will go unnamed because we do not want them to receive any repercussions for speaking out, who said, I think that the vote should have been called. Well, you need to go tell your leadership that the vote needs to be called.

I mean, we want to do it in a gentlemanly way. We call ourselves, Mr. Speaker, gentlemen and gentlewomen, respect for the institution, and still the vote was not called. I mean, individuals' arms were twisted. You vote, hurry up, and trying to call the vote while they went. And it almost happened once, and then the conscience kicked in of some Members and they changed their vote and it went back to a losing vote again, and they said we have to hold the board open another 20 minutes because we did not get our way.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I just want to share something with the gentleman, because this is serious business when we come to the floor to talk about these issues. We always say we were elected to represent not only our constituents but also the American people. When they voted for us, they federalized us. They allowed us to come here to vote on policy and to create policy on behalf of the betterment of this country.

The gentleman mentioned something and we do a lot of work here. We have information. We meet off the floor to be able to talk about some of these issues. The Washington Post Federal

Page, I just want to take this and make sure everyone understands this is about saluting one flag. This is not about what side of the aisle we are on. But the reason why we point out the fact, Mr. Speaker, that the majority leadership has not taken leadership to lead us in a way that we should be led in fair play when we are saluting one flag on issues that are facing national security, I am on the Committee on Homeland Security and I am on the Committee on Armed Services with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan); and I can tell the Members right now that energy, as far as I am concerned, is a national security issue.

So when folks come to the floor not on behalf of the American people and national security but on behalf of special interests, I personally have a problem with it.

I take the Federal Page from the Washington Post. This is actually from October 5. This story here talks about: Storms show system out of balance. GOP Congress has reduced agency oversight.

I think it is important that we pay very close attention to not only this article. It names not only three Republicans, one on the other side of the body in the Senate and two here in this body. As a matter of fact, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Harris), two of my colleagues, called for hearings, Mr. Speaker, on FEMA, the money that was spent last year in Florida on counties that were not truly affected by the four storms that came through, the money that was just given out without any oversight, just simply, for the committees wrote a letter, which one I sent on, to have oversight hearings on FEMA. I agreed with that, yes, we should have oversight hearings. If something went wrong, that is the thing that the Congressperson does, call for oversight hearings.

These are Members that are in the majority. These are not Democratic Members that have said we need to have oversight hearings. These are the Members in the majority side that said we need oversight hearings. Guess what. They did not happen, and this was last year. This was the story that they asked for the hearings last year. It still did not happen.

The point I am making on this article, it goes on to say that it took an analysis of the first 6 months of Congress between 1983 and 1997, to make a comparison. This researcher found that both Chambers of Congress both reduced their numbers of hearings. Actually, in the House, there were 782 hearings in 1983 of oversight, and it went down in 1997 to 287. In the Senate, they had 439 hearings on oversight, and in 1997 it went down to 175.

Overseeing the Federal Government, but see, the issue that is so difficult here is the fact that this is our main job, and we are not doing it.

It takes a while to get a culture. If it is corruption, it comes and it goes. When you have a culture of corruption and cronyism, that means two things. Someone has not been overseeing the rules. Someone has not been saying listen, no, I am sorry. We have the Department of Transportation. This is what you are supposed to be doing because we are the oversight committee of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and we have oversight over you and we are elected by the American people to make sure that your tax dollar is being spent in the appropriate way.

This is what we have done, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita. We are living with the highest deficit in the history of the republic. We are standing and we are doing this, and what goes back to this article that I was addressing a little while ago, it talked about the fact that there is no checks and balances.

I just want to remind the Members, since some might have maybe not fully focused on what is happening, the Senate is Republican- controlled. The House is definitely Republican-controlled. The White House, we know for sure that it is under Republican control, and when we see the amount of money that is now having to be spent, I am just going to take Katrina. I do want to talk about health care, and I know the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) has the next hour, and I just want to talk a little bit about health care again.

But I can tell you this, I am going to take Katrina for an instance, $200 billion plus. A big part of that is the fact that Louisiana or New Orleans were flooded, under water. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were displaced.

Two things happened there. Americans died but two things happened there. There was a lack of governance, and I can tell you that if we had the right kind of oversight, if maybe that Army Corps of Engineers captain or commander would have gotten what he needed to do exactly what the National Hurricane Center called for or to do exactly what Members of Congress from that area asked for, or to say that since we are doing all of these strategic review of vulnerabilities, I am on Homeland Security so I know the language, since we are doing all of that and we did all these things when we knew when we were vulnerable, then we are supposed to respond to that, and we did not. That is where the lack of governance comes in.

So this whole issue of oversight is a big issue, and if folks feel that it is not going to be in a community by you, it is already there. Katrina knocked the scab off of the Department of Homeland Security and others that have said that we are ready for anything that happens. It is a perfect example that we are not and we were not. Communities should not have to go through it to learn it, and we are the Congress and we are supposed to do better when we know better, and we know better, and we are not doing better because we are not willing to lead.

On this side of the aisle, we are here at some couple of minutes before 10:00 saying that we are ready and willing to lead or share in the leadership. What is important here is that we allow a bipartisan nature in dealing with some of the issues that we pointed out here tonight, and that is not happening. That is where it comes in.

So I am glad historically that the gentleman was able to share with us what happened when Democrats were in control, how many opportunities that the minority had an opportunity to be a part of legislation and inclusion.

I think what is important here are several points that the gentleman has already made.

You have this chart here dealing with the whole gas price issue on the middle class, and I just want to take a couple of minutes of this hour just to talk a little bit more about what is called an energy bill.

We had an alternative, and the reason why I call it an alternative to the gas or to the energy bill is the fact that we were in the majority and it would be called an energy bill dealing with price gouging and also making future investments and bringing out alternative fuels to be done by a certain date. Also, our alternative said if you price gouge, we are not talking about someone at the pump, we are talking about the oil industry that has soaring, through-the-roof profits in a time that we have individuals who cannot even make it to work now because they cannot afford to buy a tank of gas. They did not get an increase. Their employer did not say, listen, we are going to give you about three hundred more dollars a month so you can pay for gas. They did not say that.

So we dealt with those individuals in our alternative by saying that if you price gouge the American people, not only will it allow State Attorneys General to enforce the law, but you will pay serious fines, up to $3 million a day. Every day you price gouge, you pay. You do not get your profits and run off and the stockholders are happy. No, you are punished, and it not only dealt with gas. It dealt with oil and LP Gas and heating gas.

I think it is important for folks to understand that we were for real about it, and the majority side was really defending the industry. I know we are going to have more time.

Madam Speaker, let us just think about that for a minute. A 60 percent pay cut, the gentleman does know that a 60 percent pay cut, some folks are going to lose their homes.

The media quick-fix probably would be to try to go out and get a loan. Now you make a little bit less than what you used to make, and you may not be able to get the loan because you do not make the money you used to make and the uncertainty of how long your company is going to be able to provide the money that you thought that you were going to be able to make. I think this is a real issue. I think it is a real issue, and I think it is something that we need to be very concerned about.

I agree with the gentleman 110 percent. I have been reading in the paper what is going on. The gentleman from Ohio is living it because it is right there in his district. But guess what, I say to the gentleman, it is happening throughout America. A number of other communities are going through it. And once again, I think it is important, it falls back on the heels of governance again, and also our stronghold and our love affair with China.

I mean, it goes far beyond, far beyond that particular company and the relationship with China. It is almost like if China was to make some sort of move, it would affect the United States of America, whether it be in manufacturing, or if they were to make an issue as it relates to debt, call in some of those chits that they have out there with us as it relates to the debt, because they are buying our debt. If they were to deal with other countries as it relates to oil, it would have some issues and would deal with our economy.

So it is almost like we have to be very, very careful, because the U.S. taxpayers are not only, obviously, the main contributor to many of our trade policies, because it is, unfortunately, a negative trade policy, and that we are having to take in space where U.S. jobs have been lost, people cannot provide for their families like they used to, so then government has to try to be there to be able to assist not only local governments but State governments in areas where individuals through even their payroll taxes could cover some of the costs of some of these unfunded mandates that are now out there, and the Federal Government has to rise up and be a part of that experience.

But I wanted to just, I want the gentleman to finish his point on sharing with us what is happening in your district, and then I want to go back to an article that talks about the issue of not only health care, but where our priorities are as a Congress when it comes down to dealing with the American people. Because that is what the gentleman is talking about right now.

The gentleman is talking about the American people, and the gentleman has a lot of individuals that are deployed out of the State of Ohio that are in harm's way right now, and some of their families are tied up in this. And I can tell my colleagues right now, I am here, I am with my family; but what if I were not and something like this were to happen to a spouse or a loved one or a significant other or a brother or a sister. We are going have to all come together to try to help that individual financially.

Madam Speaker, that is the reason why people elected us to come up here and govern, to make sure that we stand up and forecast future issues. Now, that hospital had to close, I am pretty sure, because the funding just was not there in the preventive way to be able to deal with the issues that are facing indigent patients, or everyday working folks.

But what I am saying is that we do not do things because we are supposed to do them; we respond to it after it happens.

Examples are the health care system, and New Orleans.

Madam Speaker, $14 billion to make ready for a category 5 storm, $200 billion later, or several, up into the $60 billion and $70 billion to not only fix it, but also deal with other issues, because of a result of the fact that we did not do what we were supposed to do when we were supposed to do it. Going back to

vulnerabilities here in the United States, that community was ranked number one as it relates to a storm, a natural disaster in a catastrophic way as it relates to the damage that would be done.

Madam Speaker, I think it is also important for me to point out, when we start talking about this issue, the gentleman mentioned Democrats having to stand up and make sure that we deal with the whole corruption and cronyism issue, and I think that that is important.

And I think it is also important to make sure that we deal with that, but to deal with that, A, we are trying to deal with it by calling out some of this stuff out here on the floor.

We are trying to do the best we can. And there are others who are trying to do the best they can. The gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), who is the ranking member on the Committee on Government Reform, can only do all that he can do to point out some of these issues.

And I have a number of reports as it relates to contracting under the Bush administration. But guess what? If we were in the majority we could do these things and make sure that we save the Federal taxpayer money, we save those dollars. We make sure that they are paying taxes, which we all are, okay, that it is being spent in the way that the American people want us to spend it, in a responsible way.

Now, this whole issue, once again, this corruption and cronyism issue is so deep here in Washington, DC, I do not even have to say, well, let me pick up the paper a week ago because there were some stories in there that I think I need to bring to your attention, or I hear there is a story coming out on Thursday about some of this stuff that is going on here in the Capitol.

You can just walk out the door here in Washington, DC or in your local community and pick up the paper on any given day, be it a Saturday or Sunday or Monday or Tuesday, it does not matter what day, there is always something here, because there are several things that are here because there are several things that are going on in this town, and that is just in the present.

That is just what has happened already. Think about what is happening as we speak, and what is not happening under the culture of corruption of cronyism. What do not we know about now that we will know 6 months from now, because it will have worked on someone's conscience to be able to say, hey, you know something, this is wrong. And it is not wrong because of a personal decision that someone has made, it is wrong because they made a decision that changed the very fiber of the Congress. I mean changed the culture of Congress, I mean, what we are supposed to be doing and not doing.

Yes, we know we have individuals that make bad independent decisions. Oh, I have made some. But they were independent. Did not affect my constituents. Did not affect this country, a bad decision that I have made.

But you have folks that are knowingly and willfully making bad decisions that are altering this Congress, and that will alter many Americans' lives and the way they live and the way they provide for their children, and it is happening every day without a conscience.

Now in the Washington Post, there are some folks here, and we know that there are some folks here in the Capitol that have said, okay, we have to deal with this Katrina issue. It is $200 billion and we are going to have offsets and we are going to deal with it.

Where are we going go for the offsets? Well, in this story, it is not saying, well, maybe we need to look at some of our advanced weapons systems that possibly may be useful to us sometime in the future. Maybe we need to say that we are spending $50 million or $50 billion or $130 billion out there on advanced weapons systems, maybe since they are, you know, advanced, maybe there are some other areas we can take 5 billion here or ten billion there and then maybe we can come up with some offset.

No, not that. Maybe we can go to the tax cuts that we gave to the billionaires. All right. I am not even talking about the millionaires. I am talking about the billionaires. Maybe ask them to give a little sacrifice under this time that the country is going through a lot. Maybe, you know, maybe just a 5 or 2 percent cut from there.

No, they are not mentioned. No, where we are going to go, this is the Republican leadership. This is the discussion that is taking place over there. This is not my report, because I am going to tell you right now this is the Washington Post. House GOP leaders are setting up third party validator, set to cut spending as it relates to Medicaid.

Wow. Let us go after the big people. Let us, you know, the folks that catch the early bus in the morning. Let us go after them. Yeah. They are really strong. In a program that has already been cut.

Let us go pick on someone that is not our own size. Yeah, let us go after individuals and make them, because they are not giving in the way maybe some of these other folks are. Okay. Let us go after them.

Well, let us go after some folks that we were sent up here to protect. Let us go after them. Let us turn on our own. I am bigger than that person. So maybe that guy, you know, that is driving the pickup truck running around here shopping where he is bundling T-shirts and clothes and leaving the truck now parked because he cannot take the kids to the recreation center where they can stay out of trouble, let us beat up on them.

Let us deal with the individuals that the company that they went to work for, said maybe you need to go get on Medicaid because it is better than what we have to provide, because there is really no incentive as a business person for me to provide health care for you, because there is no national policy.

Let us pick on them. Let us take Title I lunch programs to help poor kids to have the nutrition to be able to go to school and think correctly so that they can learn, and so they have to pass a standardized test that this Congress has called for to make sure that they learn, or they retain, whatever the test is supposed to pull out of them, let us take that, let us reduce that.

Yeah. Let us take away from the kids, because guess what, they cannot vote. They are definitely not going to give a campaign contribution. Let us deal with them.

Now I am going to tell you something. And I know there are some well- intended Members here in this Congress. And I know that there are some leadership individuals that are saying, well, you know, maybe that is a great idea. But I can tell you right now, if you are going to do it, we are not going to be sitting here watching and allowing you to do it. You are not going to talk about it in the back halls of Congress and then come to this floor under regular order and say, well, we are doing this because we have to help the people in the devastated area.

As a matter of fact, not only are we helping you, the folks in the devastated area, and I must add there is no discussion in here, well, we are going to take away from the Democratic areas, we are going to carve out those counties and parishes and we are going to cut them. No, no, we are going to do it to you all. We are going to make sure, and this is a national blanket cut, so if you are sitting in Illinois tonight, Member, or if you are down the street, you know, at your apartment or house, I want you to realize that what some Members of the Republican Congress are talking about is cutting programs in your district.

This story goes further on to talk about small farming programs. Okay, so if you are sitting there, Member of Congress, saying, well, they are not talking about me, they might be talking about those folks that are on Medicaid, that I must add if a Member is saying they are talking about those folks on Medicaid, they are talking about your constituents too, but they are going to cut that.

Meanwhile, whatever Mr. Rumsfeld calls for out of the Pentagon, and whatever the White House says that needs to happen, without an exit strategy or even a discussion of the exit

strategy on what is our goals and objectives outside of the several elections that are going on in Iraq and that will continue to go on. What we are going to need as long as we are going to need it. Do not ask any questions. What are you asking questions about?

You are asking a question of me about what I am asking for for the troops as it relates to money? My question is, is it really for the troops or is it really to continue to feed family and friends that are out there making billions on this war, billions they are making?

And I will tell you this also. They can run commercials, I know Halliburton is the shining example of what goes on under a culture of cronyism and corruption and a lack of oversight. I just gave an analysis of what took place of oversight hearings and how the decline has taken place, because no one wants to call out the next person, because we have an oversight hearing, oh, my goodness, we may start to govern around here.

I think it is important for us to also understand that we are sitting here talking about we are for the troops and you know all of this kind of stuff, but we are not willing to lead in a way to say that, hey, excuse me, excuse me, Mr. President, can we talk about maybe when will this be over? Or maybe what is the strategy?

Is the strategy as long as there is an insurgency, we are going to be there? Well, that is a 20-year strategy, Madam Speaker, because we are spending billions to fight an insurgency, not the troops, not the individuals that a train was not ready.

The individuals that said that we should go did not do what they were supposed to do as it relates to the planning. We are going to run to Baghdad, we are going to have bombs and stuff. We are going to get there and this is a race and everybody has a clock going, and the news media like we are here now. Wow, record time. Wow.

There was nothing after that. And because of that, hundreds upon hundreds of Americans have lost their lives, thousands upon thousands of Americans are injured that have come back to their community, that have served their country because their country asked them to serve.

And I am going to tell you, and I want to make sure that we get clarity on this, that it is our job to govern here in the Congress. It is our job to protect these individuals. It is not our job to continue to hold on and to cover for individuals that are making bad ideas or that are sharing bad ideas and continuing to compound on these ideas, and to continue to come here and say, well, you know, why are you asking me the question, and with great arrogance.

Now I am going to share this with you. It is our job, and you know it, for us to not only call out the fact of a lack of governance, a look of oversight, a lack of bipartisan working on these very issues, and bringing to a head of what is important here. The head is, is making sure that we govern in the way we are supposed to govern.

And for some of the individuals that are calling out saying that we have to have offsets, Hey, we have been calling for offsets. We have been saying, if you are going to spend it, you better have a plan on how you are going to pay for it but, listen, did not get religion now when we are talking about the American people.

Do not stand up and say, well, I am going to get religion on this week. I am going the make them pay when you will not even stand up to big companies, when you come to the floor with an energy bill that is a gift to the industry.

You did not come here on behalf of the American people. You came here on behalf of oil company profits. Tell the truth. At least come to the floor and be straight with the American people. Because if you are not, we will. And let me tell you something. It really infuriates me that folks will run around here and even hold their head up going after poverty programs saying that we are going to balance the budget on the back of poverty.

I will put it to you pointblank. Never apologize for representing not only what you feel spiritually about what is going on, because I think your spirit makes religion act right. That is the bottom line. Spirit brings about the kind of change that we call and pray for in government and in our regular lives.

When we talk about young children, when we talk about the weak, physically, maybe financially, these are individuals that are going to pay the high prices for the heating oil. These are the individuals that we ask to go out and vote. They do not need to be Democrat, Republican or Independent, Reform Party, Green Party or no party; and we ask them to go out and take part in this democracy. They are the first ones on the chopping block. As a matter of fact, they were the first under regular order when it came down to even working the budget out in the first place.

Now, when it comes down to responding, going back to what is the federal Commitment to the South, I would add also the poor in this country, and then the first time out of the blocks we are going to go after Medicaid? We are going to cut it. We are going to go after reducing free lunch. We are to go after Head Start. We are going to go after small farming programs. We are going to go after those individuals who cannot hit back.

That is almost like someone who cannot move their arms and their legs, and we get the world heavy weight champion of the world and he hits them and beats them up and it is over in one round and he jumps up and waves his hand and says, I am the heavy weight champion of the world. They expected you to win because you are the heavy weight champion of the world. But the bottom line is, it is okay to have offsets. Goodness gracious, we are calling for offsets. Let us call for some offsets in some other areas so we can ask some Americans who can afford to take the sacrifice of an offset, or a particular program that this Congress has put forth that has very little to do with right now but it has something to do, hopefully, dealing with the future.

And if it is something that is dealing with the future, okay; and we are the superpower of the world, and there is an advanced weapons system that somebody in Congress likes, maybe we need to go to that person in Congress or that person in the other body over there and say, you know something, you know that project we passed, the $400 billion, the advanced weapons project for several million dollars that you wanted, maybe we need to try to offset that. Maybe we can try to do it verses 5 years, we can do it in 8 years. With that money we can have some offsets for the Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita package to help us as it relates to bringing about offsets.

No, that conversation was not in The Washington Post. But we are going to take people, real Americans, and say we are going to make you pay because we are not big enough to stand up to the special interests here in Washington, D.C. Let me just take that way out. The majority leadership of opening discussions, this is the opening discussion, this is not even the ``maybe there was a small discussion.'' No, this is a serious discussion within the leadership of the Republican Caucus in this House about cutting those programs. That is a serious discussion.

Let me just say that it is important that we realize the time that we are in now. I think the gentleman is 110 percent right.

I was in my district recently and I went to New Shiloh Baptist Church. One of my local pastors was celebrating his third pastoral anniversary of the church. And I went over and worshipped with him and some parishioners. When I was there, a couple of folks came up to me and said, It is really something that is going on in Washington right now. Are you not shocked? And I am, like, I am not. Oh, no, I am not. No. Not only did I see it coming, but some more is to come.

How do you know that? Well, I am not a prophet, but I am your Congressman. And when we are not doing our job as Members of Congress, not individuals. Folks make sure to keep the district offices open, respond to constituent mail, return phone calls, this, that and the other, not the individual policing of our own districts, but the policing of the Federal budget, the policing of having oversight over all the Federal agencies. When we are not doing that, then that means we are not doing our job. When we are not doing our job that the Constitution calls for and that the rules of the House calls for of how we do our job and conduct our job and we violate the rules of this House, then we have issues.

When we violate the spirit, I must add, of the rules, then we violate this country. When we violate the spirit of the rules of this House and we violate the spirit of fair play and also our oversight responsibilities through a lack of governance or the lack of oversight, then we will see what we see now.

Now, I am here to say that I think it is very, very important, we have talked and covered a lot of ground here this evening, but I can tell you that there is so much more to be covered. There is so much more work to be done. I wish, because it gives me no pleasure to come to the floor and to just point out the obvious of what is not happening and what is happening to a certain group of people, and guess what, that certain group of people are the American people.

It is not like you start saying, well, there is something happening to the folks over in Iowa. No, it is not. It is happening to the American people. It is happening to your constituents. It is happening to my constituents. It is happening to the Member's constituent that sits right there, and the one that was here a minute ago, and the one that is back in their apartment and the other that is back in their office right now; it can either be a he or she. It is happening to them.

So when the historians start looking at what happened and how did we get to the point where we are now when someone turns the lights on here in the Congress, I mean, the real lights, and that ember starts to hit the floor and they start to look and say, goodness, how did this happen, then we want to make sure that there were Members of this House, need it be those Members that put together reports in minority committees of what is happening and should be happening; need it be our friends on the other side of the aisle that are lathered up enough that will stand up to the majority and that will say, you know something, we are doing this wrong and I will use my voice the best way to use it. And I want to say as an American, I thank you.

The gentleman talked about religion a moment ago. I talked about this article about where we will make these offsets here in The Washington Post: $50 billion, how are we going to find it?

The first thing mentioned is Medicaid. The second thing mentioned is reducing free lunch for poor children, for Head Start and small farming programs. Yes, let us go for those. How are we going to get there?

This is just in today's Washington Post. It is not an article found just the other day. It is important. And we talked about sitting in church or a synagogue or a mosque or whatever the religion may be of policymakers here in Congress and you hear about the ills of our society. You hear about the tragedies and the tough times that parishioners are going through. The only difference between the average American that goes to those institutions of religious practice, the only difference between them and the rest of the American people is that they could have done something about it. That is the bottom line.

Now, that is not about how I feel about it or how you feel about it. Because I could walk into any religious institution and say, you know something, we are here to govern on behalf of the American people. Period. Dot. If given the opportunity to do more we will do more.

Matter of fact, we want to do more. You need us to do more. But I feel for that Member that goes into these religious institutions in their mind knowing that they could have done more and they could have stood up at such a time as this.

So there is a spiritual component to what we do. We cannot get religion on certain things and not have it on others. That is what my colleague pointed out when he said where is the faith community when it comes down to dealing with issues such as this. For openers, we will start with the poor. That is what we are going to do, we are going to start with them first.

Let me just say this. There are faith-based groups that are very concerned about cuts to Medicaid and will speak out, that will come to Washington and will talk to the appropriators and to some of the individuals who want cuts; but those individuals that have relationships with the President of the United States, those very high individuals within the very, very conservative groups should go and say this is wrong, in my opinion.

I think that those voices on a spiritual level need to be worked on, and also in this House. We need to be worked on about making the right decisions as it relates to the masses of Americans who need us the most. That is just where it is. So that is where the responsibility is.

But guess what? Ultimately, we make the decision. They do not. We are elected to make the decision; they are not. And I do not want to put this on an outside group saying it is their responsibility, but as it relates to what people are reacting to here in Washington, DC, as it relates to the leadership and what the leadership is reacting to here in Washington, DC, we just may need that intervention.

We may very well need that intervention on behalf of individuals who cannot fight for themselves. And they have a lobbyist. It is supposed to be Members of Congress. All Members of Congress. Not folks that are saying that, well, we care more about our philosophy and we are going to start with the individuals who cannot protect themselves, because I am their lobbyist. They have the power to elect or unelect individuals, but they do not have the money to send a lobbyist knocking on my door saying, No, I know you want to start offsets, but do not start with us. Matter of fact, do not even look at us. Do not even come this way.

They do not have that. We are here as Members of Congress to make sure they have lobbyists, because we are their lobbyists. We sit at the table. We come to the floor on their behalf. So when we back out, when we see the majority side and this philosophy being pushed onto the front page of the local paper here and other papers throughout the United States that this is where we are going to start, and we are the individuals that are supposed to be here blocking on behalf of the folks that need us most, then we are in trouble.

So we need to start talking about leadership and standing on behalf of every American. We need to start talking about oversight. And tomorrow, if we can, I want us to talk more about this oversight committee, talk about House Resolution 3838 that has this commission that is looking at fraud over contracting. I have a report here that has been put together by the minority side on the committee dealing with the whole issue of protecting against contractor fraud, making sure the American taxpayers are not made victims due to a lack of oversight.

One thing I do know is that the majority, not the White House, not any other group here in Washington, DC, has the ability to oversee the Federal tax dollar in an administrative no-bid contract scenario. They do not have it. They are not moving fast enough to be able to protect the Federal tax dollar.

Well, I want to thank my colleague for bearing with me.

Down last week, but came back in on behalf of the country. The fact is we have to continue to do what we have to do as Members of Congress. I think that it is very, very important that we continue to pay very close attention to these issues.

I want to commend many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle for standing up in ways that are unprecedented in this institution and trying to change the tide of not only thinking but also making sure that we get back to governing this country of ours and that we stand up on behalf of those Americans who need us to stand up for them. I can tell you right now they come in all ages and all economic backgrounds, and some of them are even children. It is important that we work on their behalf in an honest way.

If anything comes out of this, I would be happy if the leadership on the Republican side was to say, you know, I think there are some points that have been made and I think we need to implement some of those things; or at least have a fair discussion on some of those issues to make sure that we will govern in a way that does not violate the spirit of our existing rules. That would be a victory.

Or if the American people were to say enough is enough, it has affected my household personally, and make other decisions based on the representation here in Washington, D.C. And this will not be a discussion; it will be action on what we are talking about. So there is a long time before that happens, because the election is not up until 2006.

But on behalf of the country, there are some things that just cannot wait that long, and there are some issues that need to be brought to the forefront and hopefully change will come out. So my spirit is the American spirit and dream that things will get better and should get better because it is the right thing to do.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 59 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, October 18, 2005, at 10:30 a.m., for morning hour debates.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the Greater Miami Chapter of The Links, Inc., on their 50th year of outstanding commitment to community service. The ceremony recognizing this important milestone will be held on Sunday, October 16, 2005, at Florida Memorial University, Miami, Florida.

The Greater Miami Chapter was chartered on Saturday, November 5, 1955, when founding members Maude K. Reid, Mayme E. Williams, and Susie W. Francis brought together 15 other charter members for an installation ceremony at the Carver Hotel in Overtown.

During its 50th anniversary celebration, the chapter will honor 7 honorees: charter member Susie W. Francis, Frances J. Chambers, Gwendolyn H. Welters, Dorothy J. Fields, Ph.D.; Castell V. Bryant, Ed.D., Regina J. Frazier, and Senator Frederica S. Wilson.

The Greater Miami Chapter lists among its many accomplishments programs that bolster the arts, promote awareness of international issues and multicultural events, and assist young people in reaching their full potential.

Nationally, The Links, Inc. has grown to 274 chapters and approximately 11,000 members who reside in 42 states, the District of Columbia, the Bahamas, Germany and South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, 50 years after their founding, the members of the Greater Miami Chapter of The Links, Inc. are a powerful force for change in the South Florida Community. I thank them for all of their efforts, and wish them another successful 50 years of making a positive impact in the lives of others.