Floor Statements

Long, long, long years.

You are the cardinal, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. No, that is okay. I defer to the senior Member.

I would be happy to. In the Appropriations Committee, I think we have now maybe 11 or 12 subcommittees, and the chairs of the subcommittees are referred to in the body as cardinals. Well, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, as the cardinal and the chair, carries the gavel for the Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee. So we are very, very proud of our 30-Something member.

Ratified by the Democratic Caucus.

But what I think is interesting about all of this is that when you look at today we passed the minimum wage bill. Historic. Look at what we have been able to do with the 9/11 Commission report; what we were able to do with ethics reform; what we are going to do with negotiating drug prices; what we are going to do with stem cell research. When you look at what will be done in just a few weeks, the light of government and the power of government over the past 10, 12 years has been used really to take and help the top 1 percent of the people in the country, whether it was for tax cuts for millionaires or corporate welfare for oil companies or energy companies, whether it was for corporate welfare for the pharmaceutical industry, but the resources and the energy of this body were being used and the levers of government were being used to help that very small percentile of the American people who had the ability to invest in stocks, who have the ability to move their investments abroad to China and other countries and ship their goods back here and who take advantage of the tax cuts and make money off of corporate welfare. They just benefitted in every single way.

But if you look at what we have done and what we are going to do in the next couple of days, we raised the minimum wage, which will affect millions of Americans, 3\1/2\ million women and children, lifting them out of poverty. And you can pull all the stats you want, but the bottom line is that people who make minimum wage are going to make more now in the United States of America. And that is not saying we have done anything tremendous. That should have been done years ago.

When you look at what we are going to do with student loans, cutting the rates for student loans in half for both students and parents, loans that have come out. Cut the interest rate in half. That will save the average person who takes out a loan $5,000 over the course of the loan.

So now you have an increase in the minimum wage, now you have a reduced loan payment because the interest rate has been cut in half and you are going to save money on that, and then, if you are parents or grandparents, like Mr. Delahunt, and qualify for Medicare, there is going to be less money out of your pocket to spend on prescription drugs because we are going to use the ability and the power of this program to reduce the cost of drugs for our senior citizens.

I will be happy to yield, but just in those three things, those three areas, Mr. Delahunt, average people are going to benefit, and we have only been here 2 weeks.

And the time will come, as you have proven.

What I thought was funny today, or yesterday, in one of the local Capitol Hill newspapers, Roll Call or The Hill, the financial sector, the folks who lend money to the students were squawking, and it was blatant right in the article, because they are going to have reduced profits. Well, I am sorry, we are not here to make sure that you get good profits. We are here to make sure that students in the United States of America can afford to go to college and that they can go out and make good profits. This is not an enterprise here for you to tap into and let the money come shooting out.

And I am happy to yield to my colleague, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

Will the gentleman yield?

I think the good part about this whole first 100 hours and what we have been able to do, Mr. Speaker, is that we are making some structural changes. We are not petering around the edges. I think the people out there that wanted us to be bold, they are seeing bold. The minimum wage, now, obviously it hasn't been done in 10 or 12 years, since 1997, so it is bold.

We like your passion.

I would reclaim my time, but I forgot what I was going

to say. So I will yield to my friend from Miami.

Who we haven't heard from in 20 minutes. We are all excited to hear what you have to say.

I am having a senior moment.

I appreciate your points. One of the things that we now expressed in the last Congress was having these third-party validators.

This is not just Democrats. I have not talked to a Democrat yet who thinks that escalating this war is a good idea, and our new direction is not just continuing down the same war with more troops. But I just want to share a few quotes that I did some research on and pulled out that I think are indicative of what's going on here.

Colin Powell, as my friend from Florida said earlier, quote: I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work. That is Colin Powell, who basically led us into this mess that we are in.

Oliver North said, quote: A surge, or targeted increase in U.S. troop strength, for whatever the politicians want to call dispatching more combat troops to Iraq, isn't the answer. Adding more trainers and helping the Iraqis to help themselves is. Sending more U.S. combat troops is simply sending more targets. That is Oliver North. I found that in Human Events online.

Major General Don Shepherd, United States Air Force retired: I would not even consider increasing troop strength in Iraq. Shepherd, who works as a CNN military analyst, offered this analysis of what should be done next after he was briefed by members of the Iraqi Study Group. He wrote, quote: I would not even consider, again, I would not even consider increasing troop strength.

And I will give you one more, as we are going through this. Michael Vickers, former Special Forces officer, who

said the security situation is inextricably linked to politics. If you can solve some of the Iraqi political problems, the security situation becomes manageable.

If you cannot, all the forces in the world aren't going to change that, and I found that on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS of December 12 of 2006.

So this is coming from Republicans. This is coming from Democrats. This is coming from people all over the country.

If the gentleman from Florida would yield, I am happy to take my whooping like a man, Mr. Speaker. And let me just say to you, Mr. Speaker, and any of the other Members who may be Buckeye fans, not only was the game horrible, a complete whooping, but then I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was I called Mr. Meek, and I said, ``Mr. Meek, I had a terrible dream last night. It was awful. Let me tell you about it.'' And he reminded me that it actually happened. And then our first meeting this morning, I ran into Ms. Wasserman Schultz, who was in her beautiful outfit that she has on now but also the University Florida Gator glasses, and her Coke this morning had a little cozy on it that was also blue and orange. So she is very humble about her victory last night. And the only thing I can say is that the coach of Florida is an Ohioan, born just a few miles outside of my district. That is all I am hanging on to.

That is all I am hanging on to. But it was a great game, and you have got a great coach and a great team, and see you on the basketball court.

Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman is right. Last week during all of the Speaker ceremonies, one of the things was a mass up at Trinity College where the Speaker went to college. There were two pictures up on the altar. One was a picture of a kid in Darfur and the other was a kid from Hurricane Katrina. There were pictures of these kids from New Orleans and Darfur all over. I think that kind of symbolized where this Speaker is taking this House of Representatives, that is, we are going to act in the best interest of those kids to protect them by implementing these recommendations.

I think the frustration we see on the other side of the aisle, and there is always a level of frustration because you are in power and then out of power, but the one level of frustration from the other side of the aisle is this stuff isn't brain surgery. We have been waiting years to implement some of this stuff. The minimum wage, 10 years. The 9/11 Commission report has been out for a long time. Some of these other things such as negotiating drug prices, we are actually going to get this stuff done in the first 100 hours of legislative business we are doing here. I think there is a level of frustration on their side because some of them wanted it and it couldn't get through, or they don't want it and we are implementing it. But this agenda has the support of the American people.

In some ways, these are broad parameters for us. But take the PAYGO rules. We are going to make sure that we are only spending money that actually comes into the Treasury. We are not going to go out and borrow from China. I know our friends who were here before were talking about we are going to get rid of all of the tax cuts. We are going to implement middle-class tax cuts, and we are going to ask some of the people who have been making millions, if not billions, of dollars over the past couple of years to pay more. If you are making millions of dollars a year, we are going to ask you to pay more in taxes. And the reason we are going to do that is we are either going to ask you or we go and we borrow it from China. You are benefiting a great deal from the economy that we have here, from the political system we have here, and we need your help in balancing our budget.

Now, there is nothing that has more of an effect on average people than increased interest rates. As we borrow money and borrow money, money becomes scarce in the market, and interest rates go up. If you try to buy a house or car, interest rates have gone up and you are paying more. We are going to keep those tax cuts for the middle class, and we are going to ask the wealthiest to pay a little more. And by balancing the budget, we are going to try to reduce interest rates, and that will lead to another economic boom like happened in 1993 when President Clinton and a Democratic Congress balanced the budget. That is the way it is going to be.

We are proving to the American people, and this is the exciting part, I think the American people took a leap of faith on us. In the last few days, we have actually done what we said we were going to do. Later this week we are going to continue to do what we said we were going to do, and next week we will do what we said we were going to do. And when the President gets here to give his State of the Union, he will have a Democratic agenda lying on the table to have to discuss, and that includes the war in Iraq.

When you talk about PAYGO, and we were talking earlier about the college loan interest rates and in cutting these interest loans in half for both parent and teachers, the bottom line is we are going to cut those interest rates and make college more affordable. You are also talking about the minimum wage and the stem- cell research which we want to talk a little bit about tonight. We are talking about bread-and-butter issues, investing in science and cutting interest rates in half, making sure the bottom is lifted up. I think we have a lot going on.

Mr. Speaker, just to be fair, these numbers have been shifted and I have seen different numbers for China, India and the United States. But the bottom line is no matter which ones you are looking at, they have a significant advantage on some of these. You look at our math and science scores, they have gone up a little bit, I think in the fourth grade range, but not nearly where we want them to be. We still have a tremendous gap between the wealthiest and poorest districts. We have a tremendous gap between minority districts and white districts. We have got a lot of work to do.

The No Child Left Behind Act is coming up this year to be reauthorized and hopefully funded at the levels. Hopefully we can make the kind of changes that we always hear about on the campaign trail when it comes to education, teachers grabbing us about No Child Left Behind. We have a brutally competitive world out there waiting for us, and these changes need to happen, and some of them need to happen in the first 100 hours.

Unheard of in the 108th Congress, unheard in the 107th Congress.

When we are here early, he comes to the floor.

Cheers, brother. I couldn't agree with you more, and we want to thank you too for your leadership. We have had a good couple of years where one of us is inevitably tired and cranky, maybe hungry, and the other one has said, we have to go. We have to go do it. We have to keep going.

But when you look at what we are able to do, and I was just glancing over at the minimum-wage stuff, 13 million people would likely benefit from the increase. 7.7 million women, 3.4 million parents, and 4.7 million people of color will benefit, with an average family of three getting $4,400 more a year in their pocket. That is why you do what you do. That is why you get into public life.

You start looking at some of the funding streams for community health clinics and safe and drug-free schools, and the Pell grants, and we are not going to be able to wave a magic wand, because we are in a heck of a hole, so it is going to take us a few years to get out of this, but we are going to start bringing some balance to this process. And I think average people are going to start being represented here under the dome.

We are not perfect. We will probably make some mistakes along the way, but I think they are going to be mistakes of us trying to do the right thing and make things happen. This is an incredibly complex system we run, with 435 Members from different walks of life, different States and different regions to try to make things happen. Then to go across the hall and try to agree with 100 people from 50 States, and balance that off the President and the executive branch is difficult, but I think we are laying down some good framework here that we can work in the next few weeks and hopefully in the next few years that will affect average people's lives.

So, cheers. And now to my Gator friend.

Very diplomatic. I want to make one final point before we close up here.

If the elections didn't go the way they were supposed to, or the way they did, I should say, and this was still a Republican-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate, just to put all this in context, what would have happened is the President would have said that we want to put 20,000 or 30,000 more troops in Iraq, and this Congress would have got out the rubber stamp, and it would have been a done deal. And in several months there would be a $100 billion supplemental and there would be 30,000 more troops in Iraq, and we would be further down the line. There would be no question that that is exactly what would have happened.

So the power and the force of the American people in their statement that they made basically says we are going to have a discussion about this. Now, how this ends up, we don't know. But I know from a personal perspective there is going to be some strong resistance to adding any more troops, and we are going to have a discussion about money and everything else.

Now, we don't have a caucus position, but the bottom line is this: there is going to be a discussion. And that is what is great about this country, and that is what is great about the elections. It is not just going to get rammed through this House, and the American people are not going to feel helpless. They are going to feel like they are here.

I know we are ready to wrap things up. Mr. Meek, great game last night. You are actually a Miami of Florida fan.

Miami of Florida.

That is what I said.

All I am saying is that last night he was like a big Gator fan.

Now, I can see Ms. Wasserman Schultz, because I have seen the outfit. But you, all of a sudden they win and you are now a big fan.

But I want to congratulate you. This is not poor sportsmanship. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I want to congratulate you as well. Thank you for all your hard work.

And I yield to my good friend.

Wait a minute, I want to clarify, it is the Ohio State university.

We are still maintaining our grass-roots approach here with the legal pad. WWW.Speaker.gov/30something.

WWW.Speaker.gov/30something.

Madam Speaker, I want to interject myself in the spirit of debate that we are having here, and want to thank both sides for making this a bit more fun than normal. But we heard a couple of words here today, one of them was ``bitterness,'' one of them was ``market forces,'' and one was ``business.''

If you look at the Republican-controlled Congress and you look at running the government like a business, I think you fail on all accounts. I think when you talk about losing $9 billion in Iraq, and no one knows where it is, that is not running government like a business. When you look at all of the waste, this government is being run like it is 1950 with misleading information. Now we are moving into a new economy, knowledged-based and information-based, and the government has not changed at all.

All of the guys who came in here with Newt Gingrich in 1994, you may remember the big Republican revolution, we are going to balance the budget, we are going to run this thing like a business, we are going to have a smaller government, you are talking about a trillion dollar Medicare drug program, and you have to go back to your conservative base and you have to tell them that you passed it without any ability to negotiate down the drug prices. Good luck in the next 5 weeks.

You have to go back to them and say we are for free markets. But when we ask to get reimportation into this country from Canada and some of the G-7 countries to drive the prices down, you all were against it. That is not worshiping the free market like you normally do.

There are a lot of contradictions going on here, and I think we need to point this out to the American people.

Another thing that I think is even more important, as you guys move away from what your rhetoric is, is that this President and this Congress has borrowed more money from foreign interests than every single President in Congress before you. That is not conservative Republicanism. That is not running your government like a business.

If we don't get past all this rhetoric and doing something else, we are not going to be able to move the country forward. All of these games, we are now competing with 1.3 billion citizens in China and 1 billion citizens in India; hard-core brutal competition, and we are not investing back into the American people. We cannot even give them a slight pay raise. When you guys have given this Congress $30,000 in pay raises, you can't even raise the minimum wage.

We have to invest in these people. You can't compete with 300 million people against the whole globe and say just a small fraction of our society is going to be able to compete. If you can afford to go to a good private university, if you can afford the tuition, then you are going to be just fine. If you are a trust fund baby, you are going to be just fine.

Let us invest in the American people. We need everybody on the field playing for us. And I think Mr. Obey's frustrations is that day in and day out you guys go to great lengths to walk the planks for your political donors. That's the bottom line. You can't argue away from negotiating down drug prices.

And thank God in your case for Wal-Mart. They saved you with Katrina bringing water down and making sure it got in. Thank God for Wal-Mart. If it was not for them, we would really be in a trick. Their $4 prescriptions are going to be helpful, and down in Katrina they were the ones getting the water in when FEMA was like a three-ring circus.

That is not running government like a business. So get your actions to match your rhetoric, and we will all be able to get along a lot better.

Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

Just to clarify to the gentleman from Texas, our frustration is as the gas prices were high, you all were putting $12-15 billion in corporate subsidies to the oil companies while they were having record profits. That's the frustration.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

You are talking about letting the free market work. You shut down. You have a closed market with pharmaceuticals. We wanted to allow reimportation in from Canada; you wouldn't allow that. And if the free market was working, just like Wal-Mart, I am sure they are buying in bulk and using the negotiating power of Wal-Mart, just like they do on everything else to keep the prices down. You are not allowing the free market to work.

Mr. Speaker, the single most important thing this administration and this Republican Congress can do to keep us safe is immediately implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, but this President and this Congress have failed to do so.

So what do we get instead? We get a bloody and costly war. We get incompetent leadership. We get Republican leadership in the House, the Senate and the White House that gets 5 Fs and 12 Ds from the 9/11 Commission. We get a Secretary of Defense that says that the next person that brings me a postwar plan, or asks us to do so, is going to get fired, and then no one in the administration gets fired for all the bumbling that goes on with this war. Not only do some of them not get fired, the Assistant Secretary of Defense actually got a promotion to the World Bank.

What else do we get? We get a report from a nonpartisan Intelligence Committee that said this war has made us less safe. We get $8 billion a month getting sent to a black hole. We are borrowing more money from foreign interests than we ever had. This President has borrowed more money from foreign interests than every President before him.

Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is this. This President, this Congress and his policies have made us less safe, not more safe.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlelady from Florida and my good friend, the chairman from Pennsylvania, for all of his leadership on this committee and many other issues in Congress.

I am honored today, Mr. Speaker, to sponsor H.R. 6051 to name the Federal building and courthouse in Akron, Ohio, after Congressman John Seiberling, who served in the House from 1970 to 1987. I am also humbled that over the last 5 years I have come to know Mr. Seiberling as a friend, as a mentor and as a role model for I think what it truly means to be a dedicated and distinguished public official.

In Ohio, and in particular in my congressional district, Mr. Seiberling is among the most respected and loved leaders of the last century, and it is a distinction that is well-deserved. During his 16 years of service in the House, he has an endless list of legislative achievements, as you heard here earlier tonight, including the bill that constructed this Akron Federal building. He also was a champion of civil rights and workers' rights.

Most notably, he successfully sponsored and passed dozens of bills addressing conservation and environmental protection which continue to benefit our Nation here today.

From protecting wilderness areas to authorizing the legislation of the American Conservation Corps, to establishing the only national park in the State of Ohio and the Cuyahoga Valley, which actually kept Akron and Cleveland from growing together, he demonstrated a long-term vision which is seldom seen in politics today and leadership and ability.

Even after leaving Congress, he remained one of our Nation's advocates for conservation and environmental protection. So it is no surprise that he was nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 and in January 2001 received the Presidential Citizens Medal.

But as important, John Seiberling distinguished himself in his community, Ohio, and this body through civility, kindness, and a genuine respect for all people.

And it was interesting, as I was beginning to offer this piece of legislation, to talk to several current Members of Congress who were staffers when Mr. Seiberling was a Member of Congress, and each of them said that he treated the staffers as he treated the Members of Congress, which I think is a sign of class and kindness that is to be respected here today.

Since introducing this bill, not only did I hear these stories, but I also heard many other stories from staffers and colleagues and others, and there is yet to be a conversation with any of these Members where Mr. Seiberling didn't end his conversation with a ``thank you'' or a ``please'' or ``thank you for your assistance,'' going above and beyond the kind of respect that most people offer.

In 2001, when Mr. Seiberling received the Presidential Citizens Medal, he called many of his former staffers, one of whom is my chief of staff now, Mary Anne Walsh, to ask them to join him at the White House ceremony because he said: ``I am receiving this award because of your hard work, your talents, your dedication. And that made it all possible for us to make a difference during my congressional career.'' That statement represents the essence of the man John Seiberling is.

When John first ran for Congress in 1970, he had a slogan that said: The guts to do what is right. And for those of us who know John Seiberling, I am certain we will all agree that John never needed the guts to do what is right; it is just who the man is.

And so, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Young, Ranking Member Oberstar, Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member Norton, Ms. Brown for handling the time here tonight and helping me with this legislation to help move this bill through the committee and to the floor so quickly.

President Kennedy said in the great speech he gave at Amherst College that this Nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but by the men it honors. And I think this is a very appropriate response to honor Mr. Seiberling to reflect the importance and the greatness of this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay respect and tribute to Mr. George Silvestri, who passed away on July 6 at the age of 87.

George Silvestri was born in Youngstown, OH in 1919 and graduated from East High School. After high school George served in the U.S. Army under General Patton for 4 years and earned the rank of sergeant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After his discharge in 1945, he returned home to Youngstown and soon after married Elvira DeCato.

George applied his experience serving his country to serving the Mahoning Valley by forming a construction company with his brothers, Frank and Anthony. The Silvestri Brothers Construction Company later expanded to a number of different companies that focused on a wider range of development and construction.

These construction companies contributed to some of the most well known projects in the 17th District, such as the Delphi Packard plant

in Warren, the GM Assembly plant in Lordstown, and General Electric in Ravenna. In addition to these sites, the Silvestri Brothers's companies were instrumental in developing and building interstates and expressways throughout the Mahoning Valley, as well as western Pennsylvania.

Aside from these larger endeavors, Mr. Silvestri and his brothers developed sewer and water line projects, as well as residential development in and around the Youngstown area. This small- and large- scale infrastructure was crucial to the growing economy of the Mahoning Valley. His companies laid not only the foundation for businesses and transportation throughout the 17th District, but also for future entrepreneurs in the Mahoning Valley.

A member of the Ohio Contractors Association, the Trumbull County Builders Association, and the National Italian American Federation, George Silvestri retired in 1984. Mr. Silvestri's legacy in the Mahoning Valley will live on through his work and the many people who have benefited from his contributions. I am honored to have represented George Silvestri and he will be missed.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 461, on Ordering the Previous Question providing for the consideration of the bills (H.R. 4830) Border Tunnel Prevention Act of 2006, (H.R. 6094) Community Protection Act of 2006 and (H.R. 6095) Immigration Law Enforcement Act of 2006, I am not recorded, due to an injury I sustained the night of September 19, 2006 and my subsequent visit to the hospital this morning. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 462, on Agreeing to the Resolution providing for the consideration of the bills (H.R. 4830) Border Tunnel Prevention Act of 2006, (H.R. 6094) Community Protection Act of 2006 and (H.R. 6095)

Immigration Law Enforcement Act of 2006, I am not recorded, due to an injury I sustained the night of September 19, 2006 and my subsequent visit to the hospital this morning. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 463, on motion to suspend the rules and pass the Military Personnel Financial Services Protection Act, I am not recorded, due to an injury I sustained the night of September 19, 2006 and my subsequent visit to the hospital this morning. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

I think it is important. Again, this is a third- party validation from the national intelligence estimate. This is not us talking.

Time and time again we find out there are these other people that are giving us information. This is not information coming out of the Democratic Caucus, and I want to read some assessments that are almost unbelievable, things that we have been saying, but finally now the best and the brightest of the national security teams across the countries, the spy agencies, professionals in the business are saying this.

They are saying that although the intelligence officials agree that the United States has damaged al Qaeda, which we have, probably through Afghanistan more so than Iraq, the original front that we all agreed on, that we disrupted their abilities to plan and direct major operations, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized.

We poured gasoline on a fire when we went into Iraq, and we need to make that point. Many of the new cells, the NIE conclude, have no connection to any central structure and arose independently. The members of the cells communicate only among themselves and derive their inspiration, ideology and tactics from the more than 5,000 radical Islamic Web sites. They spread the message that the war in Iraq is a western attempt to conquer Islam by first occupying Iraq and establishing a permanent presence in the Middle East.

What we have to realize here and I think what the President needs to realize and the lack of oversight by the Republican Congress, what we need to realize here is that it is not our view that matters, it is what do they think? How do they see our response? If average people in the Middle East see us as being detrimental to their interest, their ideology spreads. So this attempt in Iraq has really poured gasoline on the fire. I think at the end of the day, it has made us less safe.

And it is not our saying it.

I think we need to make this point very clearly. Is Saddam Hussein being gone a good thing? Yes. But overall, take a step back and look at the big picture. If you are creating thousands and thousands of more terrorists who are decentralized and spread across the world who are looking to hit the United States and make the bull's eye much bigger, I think it is important to say this administration clearly has made the United States less safe. And as citizens of this country, we can't be afraid to say that. They have made us less safe, period, dot, Mr. Meek. Less safe. Not me, not Kendrick Meek, not Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not Bill Delahunt, not Nancy Pelosi, not Harry Reid, not Chuck Schumer, but independent professionals have made this assessment and said that the war in Iraq has made the country less safe.

And even those people who said maybe it was a good idea to go in, it was the administration and the execution afterwards that has made us less safe because we went in there with no plan. We went in there without enough troops. We went in there and didn't do the job. We went in there without the proper approach to figure this whole thing out.

And at the end of the day, it is not our saying it, and I take no pride in

saying that we are less safe now because our constitutional obligation, when we swear and put our hand up, is to make sure that we protect this country. I take no pride in this, but what we have to do is take this information and fix it. And the Republican majority has made no attempts to try to fix this.

Everything has been politics, Mr. Delahunt. Everything has been, how do we smooth this over? How do we make this look good? How do we come out and stay the course and put a banner up ``Mission Accomplished''? And when that banner does not work, you put up another banner and then another banner, and you have people come to the floor. Things are not going well in Iraq. Let us admit that.

If the gentleman from Florida will yield, I think the point here is this: Was this the intention of this administration? Was this the intention? Of course it was not. So we don't want to misstate anything. The intention of the war in Iraq was not to somehow build an alliance between Iraq and Iran.

Thank you. When you don't plan, when you don't follow through, when you don't have an exit strategy, that is what happens. So, my friend, what do we do when you have an administration and a Congress that are so reckless and so ill prepared for what the consequences are going to be that that happens? You have the Iraqi leaders and the Iranian leaders shaking hands and building alliances. We could see it coming. You can see it coming. Do you reward them with re-election? Do you say the people who got us into this position, we are going to ask them to come in and clean it up too?

It has been bad preparation. It has been misleading information up to the point that ultimately leads to this. And no one has been fired. And as Mr. Murtha said so eloquently, not only hasn't anybody been fired, but the members and the architects of this have been promoted. Mr. Wolfowitz, who was Under Secretary of Defense, is now with the World Bank. He got a promotion. Mr. Rumsfeld is still there. All the underlings are still there.

I think it is so important that we keep going back to this national intelligence estimate that was done by over a dozen professionals who have been involved in this field, Republican and Democrat, overseen by Republicans.

It says, ``The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded,'' and this is very important, ``it has expanded from a core of al-Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of self-generating cells inspired by al-Qaeda's leadership, but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.''

So what we have done, so what we have done is we have spread this, diffused this radical ideology into self-generating cells that will be able to look, assess, and potentially attack the United States in a very decentralized way, which makes it even more difficult for us to try to combat it.

Now, this is another quote from the article. I believe this is the New York Times article. ``In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists.'' So it is now a training ground, it is now a practice field for new terrorists, ``and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake al-Qaeda's current leadership in the constellation of the global Jihad leadership.''

We now are creating competing interests between al-Qaeda and these veterans of the Iraq war. We have turned this into a way for these terrorists to go to Iraq and basically become decorated in their way in this own demented movement that they have. And we all agree that it is demented and it does not make any sense, and they are fanatics and everything else.

But what we are trying to do is say, let's be smart about this. And their approach has caused us more grief, created more terrorists, and put us at more risk. The United States is less safe today than we were a few years ago because of the way this administration has conducted this war.

Now, if we had got rid of Saddam Hussein, and that would have been it, and we would have secured Iraq and built this democracy there, that is one thing. But that did not happen. Now we have a Secretary of Defense, it finally comes out that he said, the next person that asks me about a post-war plan will be fired.

So we have got an estimate saying that this war is actually increased the number of terrorists, and then at the same time, and we know part of it is because it has taken so long to secure the country. Then we found out the Secretary of Defense said, well, the next person that asks for a post-war plan is going to be fired. Wrong.

I do not recall ever seeing General Eaton.

Because I do not know where to start with what happened on Monday, September 25, 2006, which just so happens to be today with the hearings on the other side from the Democratic Policy Committee with these separate generals who are there, but I want to share with the American people and I want to share with the Speaker and other Members of this House some of the quotes that came out of there. I think this is important because we already have a national intelligence estimate saying that this country is less safe because of the war in Iraq, and then I am going to my friend from Florida who I know has some points to make, too. Less safe, okay, so now we go into what the testimony of some generals who are on the ground had to say.

This is General Batiste, who Mr. Delahunt referenced earlier. This guy used to be the senior military assistant to former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who is now with the World Bank. He got a promotion for his great work in Iraq. He ``charged that Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration `did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq.' ''

``He told the committee, `If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents.' ''

He ``charged in his testimony that Rumsfeld `is not a competent wartime leader' and surrounded himself with `compliant' subordinates.''

`` `Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build ``his plan'' which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace and set Iraq for up for self-reliance,' Batiste said.''

``In addition, Rumsfeld `refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency.'''

The retired general said, ``At one point,'' and this is the apex of incompetency, ``At one point he threatened to fire the next person who talked about the need for a post-war plan.''

Now, we have all been involved in some form of leadership, whether it was in athletics or in politics or in business or whatever the case may be. To just not plan for an insurgency in a war is unacceptable. But then to say that whoever wants to talk about a plan is going to be fired is the height of incompetence.

Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Florida.

Any time I can have an opportunity to give you more chance to speak directly to the American people, I will step up and I will take that opportunity, because I think the American people need to hear what you have to say.

They want what you are giving them, Mr. Meek.

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much, and the staff that stays here with us so late every night. Thank you, Mr. Delahunt, who, as we know, is several years older than the 30-Something Group. We know how tired he gets. Thank you, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a great leader in Congress.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 59 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, September 26, 2006, at 9 a.m., for morning hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity, and I would like to thank Leader Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn and also John Larson, our Vice Chair, the leaders of our caucus, for the opportunity to come down here and speak to other Members of this body about the issues of the day.

Day in and day out, as we continue to have debates here on the floor of the House of Representatives, one of the main topics here and back in our districts is the issue of the war in Iraq, the issue of the standing, on the stature of the United States of America and the opinion of those around the world of us, and the need for us to build coalitions across the globe in order to fight this global war on terror.

We have major differences. We have had major differences, and we continue to have major differences in this body, in the body that is created by Article I, section 1 of the United States Constitution, as to how we should administer and execute this war on terror.

The Bush administration has tried to implement their philosophy with the war in Iraq, and I must say, Mr. Speaker, that their actions have created more terrorists in the world, it has made the bull's eye on the United States bigger, and it has completely almost eliminated the goodwill that was given to this country from around the globe after 9/ 11.

Many Members of this Chamber can remember the editorials and foreign newspapers where some were saying that today we are all Americans after 9/11. Today we are all Americans. That political capital that we had, that goodwill that we had, was squandered by a very divisive policy, a policy that was based on misinformation, was misleading.

As the days and the weeks and the months go by, we continue to see time and time and time again how this administration misled the Congress and misled the American people. And if we had a huge intelligence failure on 9/11, it only makes sense to be very, very careful before believing the intelligence that is then being presented to you for the war in Iraq.

This issue is the defining issue. The President can continue to try, Mr. Speaker, to somehow change the topic, somehow try to change the debate to something that may be more favorable. But when you look at what is happening with our foreign policy and with our domestic policy, you will see that the American people are moving in a direction away from the President of the United States. They no longer, as Mort Zuckerman said, they no longer give the President the benefit of the doubt. And when the President loses the benefit of the doubt, the President loses the kind of authority and persuasive nature, basic nature of the office.

So let's talk about what is going on here. This war in Iraq has made us less safe. It has given us more terrorists in the world. It has increased the polarization. And if you look just on the front page where we have the President being called a devil, which I don't necessarily agree with, being called a devil at the United Nations, now, we can all at least say that that kind of rhetoric, although it is not helpful, signals the kind of discontent that there is out there in the world for the United States of America.

When you are fighting a global war on terror, Mr. Speaker, you need friends. You need people who are going to help you. You need assistance from all quarters, whether you are a Democrat or whether you are a Republican, whether you are a Member of the United States Congress or you are a member of a parliament in Europe or South America. You need help. We can't fight this global war on terror by ourselves, so we need to engage the international community. We need to engage the international community.

I want to share with the American people some of what is going on. We are going to start with what is going on with the money.

We can see here what the war in Iraq is currently costing the American taxpayers, $8.4 billion per month. It is costing the American people, this war on terror, $1.9 billion per week, $275 million per day, $11.5 million per hour. This is to fund what is going on in Iraq.

And this has basically put us in the middle of a civil war. Only about 7 percent of the fighters in Iraq are al Qaeda types. The rest are Sunni and Shia, and they are fighting with each other, with the American soldiers right in the middle of the mix.

We found out 2 weeks ago that Secretary Rumsfeld said that he would fire the next person who asked for a post-war plan.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we can agree and disagree on a lot of things here, but when you have the Secretary of Defense say to some of his underlings that the next person that asks me about a post-war plan will be fired, that goes right to the heart of the leadership of the Pentagon, the leadership of the Defense Department.

How do you go into a war with no post-war plan? This was a mistake to begin with. And then at the end of the day you start hearing about all the ties between al Qaeda and Iraq that didn't end up to be true. Then you find out the Secretary of Defense didn't want anybody to submit any kind of post-war plan at all to him, or the next one that did would be fired. It goes to the

question of what kind of leadership are we getting here.

And when you have this cowboy diplomacy that we have had for years in the United States of America, you know, the ``Axis of Evil'' comments, and ``we are going to smoke them out,'' and ``bring it on,'' and ``mission accomplished,'' and you have major magazines saying it is the end of cowboy diplomacy, well, when you look at the comments of some of the foreign leaders, calling the President of the United States a devil, it doesn't seem like they think this is the end of cowboy diplomacy.

So we have all got to move forward on this issue, Mr. Speaker, and we have got to somehow figure out together how we are going to do this.

One of the things that the Democrats want to do when we take over the House in January is to start having some hearings, to start providing some oversight.

If we could get that quote from Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich, the former Speaker, the man who led the Republican revolution in 1994, said in the Wall Street Journal column he wrote a couple of weeks ago that the only way to begin to fix this is to have an honest assessment of what is going right and what is going wrong in the intelligence, NSA, the war in Iraq.

But if we don't have an honest assessment, if we don't have honest hearings, and we get briefed every now and again from the Secretary of Defense and it is not helpful. It doesn't make any sense. And we continue to go down this road, to stay the course.

Here is what Speaker Gingrich is saying to us on staying the course. This is from the Wall Street Journal, September 7: ``Just consider the following: Osama bin Laden is still at large. Afghanistan is still insecure. Iraq is still violent. North Korea and Iran are still building nuclear weapons and missiles. Terrorist recruiting is still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and across the planet.''

This is Newt Gingrich saying that this has been a real failure in leadership on the war on terrorism.

Then you come back to homeland security. You come back to what are we doing here at home with the ports, with the immigration issue, with what the Democrats want to do compared to what the Republicans want to do.

If you look at what we were able to accomplish under President Clinton compared to what has gone on with President Bush, this is just border security numbers, Mr. Speaker, the average number of new Border Patrol agents added per year. In the Clinton administration, 642. New border agents per year under the Bush administration, 411. Under the Clinton administration, we actually increased the number of Border Patrol agents much more so, by 230-some a year more than the Republicans have under the Bush administration.

Immigration, INS fines for immigration enforcement. In 1999, 417 under President Clinton. Only three in 2004 under President Bush. The Clinton administration was much more aggressive on the Border Patrol issue.

There were 78 percent fewer completed immigration fraud cases by the Bush administration. Look, in 1995, 6,455, and 1,389 in 2003 under the Bush administration.

If you look at what we followed as the immigration debate here in Congress has raged, you will see that if Democratic amendments, the amendments that we tried to get on over the last 5 years, would have succeeded, there would be 6,600 more Border Patrol agents, 14,000 more detention beds, and 2,700 more immigration enforcement agents along our borders than now exist.

It is clear that the Democratic Party doesn't only provide the rhetoric, but we provide the solutions necessary to try to solve some of these problems. Day in and day out, as we continue to have this debate, we can talk about it, or we can put our money where our mouth is and fund these Border Patrol agents. We can make sure that more than 6 percent of the cargo that comes in and out of the United States is checked for weapons of mass destruction, and for illegal immigrants, for that matter.

We have to do this, and we have to be willing to put the resources necessary into the programs. That means that there are going to be some difficult decisions, because over the last few years we have seen the budget in the United States of America go bust, billions and billions and billions of dollars wasted, billions given to the pharmaceutical industry, billions given to the oil industry, to corporate welfare.

If we don't begin to change that, if we don't begin to put in some basic structural changes to the way the budget process works by putting in PAYGO rules, by making sure you can't spend money that you don't go get somewhere else so you don't have to borrow it. And that is what is happening right now.

I must commend, Mr. Speaker, Senator Voinovich from Ohio, who is talking about waking up the Congress to say we have got to balance our budgets. We have to, because we have two options. We can ask the top 1 percent of the people in this country, the top 1 percent wage earners, people who make more than $1 million a year, we can either ask them to contribute their fair share, and they have benefited greatly over the last couple of years, and use some of that to help us reduce our budget deficits. We either ask them to help, or we borrow the money from China and Japan. Those are really our two options.

Over the past few years we have been borrowing the money from China, we have been borrowing the money from Japan, and it puts us at a tremendous weakness when we have to go to China and ask them for help with North Korea, when we have to go to China and ask them for help in Iraq, when we have to go to China and ask them for help with Russia.

All of a sudden we are going to the bank that is lending us money and asking them to help us with our diplomacy. I don't care if you are a liberal or a conservative, the United States has always prided itself on making sure we balanced our budgets.

In 1993 in this Chamber, controlled by the Democrats, without one Republican vote, we balanced the budget. 20 million new jobs. Economic expansion that benefited everyone. Welfare roles decreased and declined.

Then we look at what this President and this Congress has done. In the last 4 or 5 years, this President and a Republican-controlled Congress has borrowed more money from foreign interests than any other President before him. So 224 years, Mr. Speaker, all of the Presidents added up did not borrow as much as President Bush has borrowed.

So we have a solution, Mr. Speaker, that is not a Democratic solution or a Republican solution. It seems to be based on reality, and, Mr. Speaker, this is the advice that Mr. Gingrich has given on the broken system in Washington. He said in the Washington Post in July, ``The correct answer,'' Gingrich said, ``is for the American people to just start firing people.''

And I think that is about the sentiment in the United States right now is that the American people are ready for new leadership. When you think about what Mr. Gingrich is saying, and you read his Wall Street Journal articles, and you read his books, and you think about what he is saying, in 1994, when the Republican Congress came in and the Republican revolution, and you think about what was said and how many times, and it was masterful campaigning, about we need to run the government like a business, we need to balance the budget, we need to make government more efficient, there is too much waste, there is too much fraud, there is too much abuse, and if we just squeeze the government, we are going to be able to get the kind of resources that we need to fund the programs that we need and give tax cuts and some relief to the American people; and if you look now, in 2006, as to what the Republican majority has done with that opportunity that the American people gave them, it is really a shame because we have huge budget deficits. We are borrowing money from foreign interests. The government is fat and bloated and bureaucratic, and we lose $9 billion in Iraq, and nobody really knows or seems to care as to where it goes.

You have all this pay to play going on. You have a K Street Project going on, started by the Republican Party, that basically says if you are a lobbyist and you want us to help you, if you want the Republican Party to help you, you need to hire my ex-chief of staff to

run your lobby organization, and then you will have access.

When you look at the money, the public money that is being spent on corporate welfare, $12-, $13-, $14-, $15 billion to the energy companies, that is not a real record to be proud of.

When you talk about running the government like a business, and you look at the waste and you look at the bloatedness and you look at the government's inability to address two, at least, of the major responsibilities that we all could agree on here, and that is national defense and emergency response.

The national defense side, look at the war in Iraq. This great Republican revolution gives the power and the responsibility to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and then does not take that responsibility away, then does not demand that they get fired, but they promote him. Wolfowitz is now at the World Bank, and Rumsfeld, no one will dare disappoint him, Mr. Speaker. This is the architect of one of the great catastrophes in the history of the United States of America. No one's been fired.

I run into business people, hard-core conservative Republican business people in my district, and they say, if I was running the business, Rumsfeld would have been fired 2 years ago.

This is not a partisan issue, but you have to provide oversight. It is not about putting your party before the country, and that is what is happening now, and no one will admit it, this stay the course, bury your head in the sand and somehow forget about the reality that is happening on the ground.

When you see time and time again, time and time again, generals that leave and retire and then all of the sudden have a lot to say about what is going on on the ground, and they have a lot of opinions about what is happening in the administration because no one was being listened to, first it was not enough troops, then how it had to change on the ground and the lack of responsiveness. That is not running government like a business. That is not responding to the market in the case of Iraq. That is ignoring the facts on the ground to benefit yourself politically. That is putting the Republican Party ahead of the Republic, and it does not work that way.

Sometimes you make mistakes and you get egg on your face. It does not mean you go get a new banner printed or a new slogan printed. It means you admit it, and you go forward.

Let us have hearings. I am fortunate enough, Mr. Speaker, to sit on the Armed Services Committee. The brainpower on that committee, the kind of experience of Members on that committee, is tremendous, and it has been one of the nonpartisan committees for the most part. Why not go before this committee? Let us let all these people who have traveled the world, who have been involved in the war in 1990, people like Mr. Murtha who are on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, sit down with these people. Let us figure this out, and someone may get some egg on their face, and someone may have to be fired, but if the team's not performing, you may have to cut a few people. You may have to move some positions. You do not promote them.

And you look and see what these generals are saying. ``Rumsfeld and his team turned what should have been a deliberate victory into a prolonged challenge,'' John Batiste in the National Journal, chief military aide to Paul Wolfowitz, brigade commander in Bosnia.

Anthony Zinni: ``We're paying the price for the lack of credible planning or the lack of a plan. Ten years worth of planning were thrown away.''

How can you have lack of planning in a major war? Again, we are not talking about a Rotary Club building a river walk. We are not talking about a Kiwanis group in our local community putting flowers in a courthouse square. We are talking about going to war. We are talking about the most deliberate act that a government can make, that we are going to put our soldiers in harm's way. There are probably going to be innocent lives that are going to be killed, and we are going to kill other people, and now we have these generals saying we did not have a plan. That is the height of irresponsible leadership.

You look at what General Charles Swannack, Jr., said: ``I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq.'' That was in the New York Times in April.

This is not the Democratic Caucus saying this. This is not me.

Look at what another general said: ``If I was President, I would have relieved him 3 years ago.'' This is someone who has got the Bronze Star medal with Combat V, Silver Star medal with gold star, Legion of Merit. These are well-respected people in the military establishment saying we need to get rid of Rumsfeld, which I think would be a great gesture to the international community to say we have made a lot of mistakes. Maybe we can be a bit humble and say that and ask for help and say that we need to make this a global effort.

If you have this kind of irresponsible behavior, this lack of self- awareness to say that we have made some mistakes and we want to go about fixing them I think disrespects the process here, and quite frankly, it disrespects the American people. To try to pitch this al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein pie, when we find out that Saddam did not want to help al Qaeda at all, when you see that, and then yet you continue to ignore the facts on the ground, Mr. Speaker, it only puts us in a deeper hole and makes things more difficult.

So the war side has not been executed like a business because we have not changed, we have not streamlined. And you look at the wasted money on contracts and the amount of money some of these big donors have made, the war profiteering, again, a slap in the face to the American people.

Then domestically when you look at Katrina and a lot of the emergency response problems that we had, we find out again that this government really was not run like a business, that this emergency response system was not streamlined because we had Wal-Mart and we had some of these other businesses, they were getting water and supplies in and out. Their response was much better, much more efficient, much more effective than the Federal Government's.

But it is the Federal Government's responsibility to make sure that we can address these national and natural disasters that happen in the United States of America. That is our responsibility. That is our constitutional obligation. So it is very important that we figure out how to streamline that. Where are the hearings? Where is the oversight? Where is the accountability? There is not any.

And then when you talk about the bloatedness of government, I want to share with you, Mr. Speaker, and the other Members of this body about one of the great proposals that we have here and that the Democrats will offer in January when we take over this Chamber.

Those are two bills, one by Representative Tanner from Tennessee and one by Representative Cardoza from California. These bills say that we are going to run an audit, a real audit, of the Federal Government, and we are going to squeeze this government. We are going to make it fit an information-, knowledge-based economy, and we are not going to sit back and just allow the bureaucracy to grow and grow and grow and keep feeding the beast and just say if we write a bigger check, somehow the problem will go away. You cannot fix it without providing some auditing and then the reform necessary.

The programs that do not work, we get rid of. The programs that work, we fund them, and we fund them by squeezing the waste and the bureaucracy out of some of these other programs, and making sure that every dollar that we get from the taxpayer is spent well and accounted for.

What I like most about these two bills is that we are going to hold the Secretaries of the departments accountable, and so if there is an audit, and recommendations are made, then the Secretary, the CEO of that department, will be held accountable. If they do not meet the requirements of that audit, that Secretary will have to go back to the Senate to get confirmed again.

That is accountability. That is saying no matter who you are, whether you are Secretary Rumsfeld or you are Secretary of Health and Human Services, if the GAO audits you, a real audit, and we make sure that we know

that the facts are right, and you do not meet the requirements of that audit, then you will have to go back for a reconfirmation.

That is how you get change in these huge bureaucracies, and that is what the Democrats are going to do, because if we do not reform this government, if we do not get it ready and able to move us into an information-, knowledge-based economy, we are going to continue to fall behind because we do not have the resources. We cannot keep going back to the taxpayer, asking them for more money and more money and more money, because they do not have it.

Now, if you look at what is going on, why they do not have it and the squeeze that the average people are going through now, look at this.

The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation. Real household income has declined nearly $1,300 under the Bush administration. So you are making $1,300 less. The cost of family health insurance has skyrocketed 71 percent since Bush took office. And if you look, the cost of tuition and fees at a 4-year public university has exploded by 57 percent. These are facts. These are not made up.

So hourly wages are down 2 percent, consumer confidence is down, gas prices are up 20 percent, and mortgage debt is up 97 percent since the year 2000.

We can't keep going back to these people and asking them for more and more money. And the unfunded mandates that are coming from this Congress down to the States and the local tax burden is being increased for mental health levies, for library levies, for community development projects, and these cities and many of them, and one of them is one I represent, Youngstown, another one Akron in Ohio, these cities don't have the resources. And if we are going to compete as a country, you have got to look at it like this: right now it is much different. Cities like Youngstown, cities like Akron, northeast Ohio, Cleveland, we are not longer competing with each other, and we are no longer competing with New York and Chicago. We are all now competing in a global economy.

And as we compete in this global economy, as regions and as a country, we have got to recognize that we only have 300 million people in the United States of America. And when you compare that to the 1.3 billion people in China and the billion people in India, you will see that we have got to be at the top of our game because we only have 300 million people. And when we have many of those people living in poverty, and Cleveland is now rated the poorest city in the entire country. I see Mrs. Tubbs Jones is here who represents that area. With the poverty rates in Youngstown and all of these cities where 80 percent of the kids who go to some of these schools qualify for a free and reduced lunch. And their nutrition levels go down in the summertime when the school lunch programs and those kind of things that are offered, breakfast programs, aren't available in the summer. So how are we going to be ready, Mrs. Tubbs Jones, to compete in a global economy when we are not making the proper investments here at home?

I yield to my friend from Ohio (Mrs. Jones)

If the gentlewoman will yield, because I think this fits. If we are going to be competitive as a Nation, we need to have healthy citizens. All of them, not just some of them. The days of us just being able to compete globally by having everyone in the steel mill and just a few percentage healthy and working in the office are over, and we know that, in northeast Ohio. And so if we don't have these kids and our citizens healthy and educated, and provided some opportunity, it is going to be hard for us to compete. So that is a key component of us being a great country.

I yield to my colleague, Mr. Kendrick Meek, the gentleman from Florida.

As I stated earlier, if Democratic amendments over the course of the past few years, the last 5 years, would have been adopted, there would be 6,600 more Border Patrol agents. There would be 1,400 more detention beds, and 2,700 more immigration enforcement agents along our borders to help us solve some of these problems.

It is a lot like when you invite me out to dinner and you offer to buy me dinner, and then you don't bring your wallet, you know what I mean, and then I end up paying for the dinner. It is just the same thing. You say you are going to provide the Border Patrol agents, and then there is no money there. You invite me to dinner, and then there is no money there. It is pretty much the same thing.

Mr. Speaker, as we wrap up here, this is the 30-something Working Group. We are taking e-mails. You can visit us at www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something. All of the charts that you see here, Mr. Speaker, are accessible on that Web page.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, this is what it comes down to here. Here is the war in Iraq costs, okay? So when you are talking about whether it is homeland security, whether it is the cargo or whether it is the planes, whether it is the first responders, whether it is the kind of technology that we need, all of these other issues, here are the costs, Mr. Speaker: $8.4 billion per month we are spending in Iraq; $1.9 billion per week in Iraq; $275 million per day; and $11.5 million per hour.

So when you are looking at what we need to spend on and what the costs are here, whether you are a Democrat or you are a Republican, Mr. Speaker, we can agree that this money that has been spent to the tune of $400 billion, and when you look at the projection for war spending in Iraq over the next few years, when you look at what we are going to spend and you look at the situation that we are in while we are in Iraq right now, we are in the middle of a civil war. So we are basically dumping good money after bad, getting misinformation from the administration.

Here are the projected costs for the growing cost in Iraq in billions of dollars, and we see in the blue over there about $318 billion, getting close to $400 billion. And you look at the projection out into the future, talking about $500- or $600 billion, getting close to $1 trillion we are going to spend in Iraq, Mr. Speaker.

When you look at the cuts that are going on here at home, when you look at the lack of investment here at home, we can all say that what value are we getting from this investment into Iraq, which are in the middle of a civil war? We have ethnic groups fighting with each other, with the United States in the middle. The number of terrorists are going up. The number of incidents in regards to American soldiers and international forces and Iraqi troops there, all going up.

This is not getting better, it is getting worse, and we have some 84 or 85 former members of the national security saying that we are losing the war in Iraq. We are certainly not winning it. It is time for us to reevaluate, and I think Mr. Meek and myself and Mr. Murtha and Mr. Skelton and the members of the Armed Services Committee are saying let us have some oversight. Let us have real hearings, because how can you have the Secretary of Defense, who is in charge of this whole operation, still be in place, failure after failure, bad intelligence, bad information, lack of a plan, and at the end of the day, you may be able to accept all that, but 2 weeks ago, about a week and a half, 2 weeks ago, when it all came out that the Secretary of Defense was quoted as saying that he would fire, Mr. Speaker, the next person who asked him when are we going to come up with a postwar plan, when are we going to come up with a postwar plan. And one of the main provisions for going to war is how are we going to get in, what is the strategy, and the most important question, how are we going to get out.

This Secretary of Defense said he does not have a plan to get out, and the next person that asks him in his inner circle about having a plan, they are going to be fired. Now, that is not leadership.

Then we get caught in these situations, and we have, it is like if something is going wrong, we have to get a new banner we put out and a new slogan that we put out and mission accomplished. That is unfair to the American people.

Because the lack of oversight, the lack of review, the lack of account. And it is amazing to see how poorly this has been executed and no one has been fired. Nobody has been fired.

And so we call upon the Republican Congress to execute their constitutional obligations, Article I, section 1 of the Constitution that creates this body we think needs to provide the kind of oversight. And it is not a coincidence. No one can be appointed to this body. You have to run. You have to be directly elected to this body. If something happens to a Senator, they

resign, they pass away, a Governor can appoint. You can't get appointed to the House of Representatives, Mr. Meek. You have got to run; you have got to get elected.

And so the costs are there, Mr. Speaker. All those billions of dollars. And when you compare those costs to what we could spend that money on here in the United States, it is baffling, it is mind- boggling.

Mr. Meek mentioned the Homeland Security Department, $33 billion for a year. That could be paid for, our homeland security budget could be paid for with 4 months of spending in Iraq. How about equipping commercial airlines with the proper defenses against shoulder-fired missiles? $10 billion. That could be paid for by 5 weeks in Iraq. And on and on and on.

Now, a lot of our cities, I represent Youngstown, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; Warren, Ohio. A lot of the issues we face back home are the issues of cops and making sure we have police on the beat. And a lot of these local communities, very poor, they don't have the necessary resources, Mr. Meek, to fund the police and fire. There are always levies going on the ballot getting shot down. We could double the COPS program which provides community policing grants. We could double the COPS program, $1.4 billion a year with 5 days in Iraq.

So you want to talk about homeland security? You want to talk about making our neighborhoods safe? Just a few weeks in Iraq, we could be able to fund this program.

I want to thank Mr. Meek.

There is no question about it, Mr. Meek. And whether you are dealing with the environment, whether you are dealing with the oil industry, the energy industry, whether you are talking about the pharmaceutical industry, you have got it. And I think Mr. Gingrich has said it best.

And we are joined with a guest here, a special guest for the 30- somethings. And I just want to share, Madam Leader, real briefly, on July 13 what even Newt Gingrich is saying, the third-party validator, Mr. Speaker, about lack of leadership here in the United States Congress.

He said, ``When facing a crisis at home and abroad, it is important to have an informed independent legislative branch,'' created by Article I, section 1 of the Constitution, ``coming to grips with this reality and not sitting around waiting for Presidential leadership.''

It is time for this body to step up and start leading. And with that I yield to our fearless leader, Ms. Pelosi from California.

Thank you so much. It is an honor to have you down here with us. We come here a lot, and to be graced with your presence, I think it is important what the leader said about what we can do not within the first 100 days, but within the first 100 hours. They are some very basic, simple steps.

We talk about just the average person, what changes will happen in their own lives if their student loan rates are cut in half and the minimum wage is raised within the first 100 hours. That is a significant impact on people around the country.

It is not that we are going to wave some magic wand, but we are going to do the people's business. With the gentlewoman's leadership, it is going to be an exciting time.

Mr. Speaker, you see excitement among Democrats about some alternatives. We have some challenges, but any time you challenge the American people, they seem to step up. I know Ms. Pelosi will provide us with that leadership.

I thank the gentleman, and I want to thank the leader again because I think you are exactly right. This is in the Congressional Record. This is not a campaign promise on the stump somewhere across America. This is right here with the stenographer taking down the words and making sure this is recorded for posterity.

I think the reason this is possible, Mr. Meek, the reason that this first 100 hours is possible and why it will happen, is because our leadership has gone to great lengths over the past couple of years to unify our caucus. Never before has the Democratic Caucus been more unified in support of basic legislative initiatives which we can actually move on.

What has happened for years and years is we tend to always talk about what divides us. We come down here and we are critical of the administration, but what we want to do as leaders is figure out what can unite us. Ms. Pelosi has done that not only in this caucus, but also with the Senate, also working with Harry Reid in the Senate and their leadership for a new direction for this country. So it is very important.

I was corrected by a good friend of mine, Mr. Mack from Florida, about the ability of someone to be appointed to this body. No Member can be appointed, but the general membership can appoint a Speaker, and the Speaker doesn't necessarily have to be a Member of this body, so I am told. And so someone can be appointed to this body to oversee it.

Now, someone on the other side should think about maybe looking at that and taking advantage of it. But I know when we get elected and we take over this Congress, I know it is going to be Ms. Pelosi who is going to be our Speaker.

I yield to my friend, and I thank my friend, and I look forward to seeing you next week back here again with all of your skills and rhetoric and commitment.

As you were talking, and we have all reviewed the Constitution, one of the things I found very interesting as I was reading this is the very beginning, the ``We the people'' paragraph. `` . . . in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,'' and then this last little phrase here hit me: ``provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.'' The general welfare. Not the special interest groups, not the oil companies, not the energy companies, not the pharmaceutical companies, but the general welfare, Mr. Speaker.

And that is what we are here to do is provide for the general welfare. And I think next year in January, when we agree as a caucus to elect a Member of this Chamber, an elected Member in Ms. Pelosi, we can move in that direction, our constitutional obligation to provide for the general welfare.

www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something. All of the charts and the rubber stamp and everything are on the Web site for people to access. HouseDemocrats.gov/30something.

If you just look at what the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) has said, ``Unfortunately, Congress is not ready to face the reality of the problem.'' He is talking about airline security. That is not us. That is not Democrats saying it. Republicans now are saying it, Newt Gingrich, generals, Republicans, Bill Buckley. I mean, come on, they are all saying this, that they are not addressing the need of the problem.

Would the gentleman yield?

I made it to the third quarter.

If the gentleman would yield, last year we raised $50,000 for a trust fund for the kids of these families. This year we raised $30,000, so there will be $80,000. Hopefully we can raise more in the next couple of years. I am not necessarily saying I will play in the game next year. I will be happy to write a check, but to make sure that there is a trust fund there for all of these kids, I think we should eventually expand it to all of Capitol Police who get killed in the line of duty protecting us and protecting this Capitol. I think it is important.

I didn't really want to bring it up, but our coach for the team is Tom Osborne, the former great coach of the University of Nebraska. He was our coach, and I was an old quarterback. So if Tom Osborne is my coach, I am going to try to impress him.

This is the result for my trying to impress Tom Osborne.

If the gentlewoman would yield, last night's injury has now relegated me to yoga and golf. So I have changed my future. At 33 years old, I am now limited to different forms of yoga and improving my golf game. No basketball. No baseball. In fact, last night Mr. Meek, as he drove me from the field to the locker room and almost to the hospital, said this morning when he picked me up to take me to the gym, he said, ``I have your spikes in my car.'' And I said, ``You can burn them because I am never going to need them again.''

Will the gentleman yield?

Because it comes down to this, that this is another, I think, election year situation. But the bottom line is this: We opt out of the Geneva Convention, and we make a certain set of rules to say how military prisoners should be treated, just because if we do that, we have a certain set of standards, it does not mean other countries won't opt out, and their standards will be a heck of a lot lower than our standards.

Nobody wants to us to do it.

John McCain, who has actually been through it, the most well-known political prisoner in our country's history, now, given the modern media today and the kind of fame that he has generated, says that this is a bad thing for our soldiers. This isn't about anyone else's soldiers. This is about our soldiers. You want to be promilitary? You want to be pro-U.S. soldier? You want to protect our soldiers? You failed them on body armor. You failed them with a plan to get out. And now if they get caught, you are going to say there are no international standards in which we can hold these other countries by, and you will be able to do anything you want to the American soldiers.

Now, we know there are rogue people, but there are many people who will get political prisoners and actually abide by the rules. We know there are some that won't. But to go against John McCain and to go against a JAG officer like Lindsey Graham, and to go against Mr. Warner, Chair of the Armed Services Committee, who has been in for years.

And let's be honest here, Mr. Speaker. This is a joke because this is about 84 percent of America's top national security experts saying we are losing the war in Iraq. This is about all these generals that we have been showing night in and night out saying there is no plan to get out of here, there was a bad plan to get in, there was a bad plan to start with. There was no plan, bad information, bad intelligence, nothing was right. Look back at everything they said about using the oil for reconstruction money, about being greeted as liberators, about all this nonsense that we heard before.

This is an opportunity for this administration, Mr. Meek, to try to change the subject. And all of a sudden we are talking about a few political prisoners, and it has enormous ramifications.

But the bottom line is this: This administration wants to talk about anything but the war and the economy. They want to change the subject anytime they get a chance to. And now we have got this debate about military prisoners. And I am not saying it is not important, but my God, you have got millions of people living in poverty. You have got seniors whom you are threatening with their Medicare. You have got 40 some million people with no health insurance. You have stagnant wages. You have gas prices going up. You have health care going up. You have tuition going up. You have poverty rates going up. You have got veterans' benefits going down. And you want to talk about this one little sliver to change the subject, and you are coming up with all these new phrases again, ``Islamofascism'' and all this other stuff.

Let me finish, Mr. Meek, because the bottom line is this, here is the cost: $8.4 billion per month, $1.9 billion per week in Iraq, $275 million per day in Iraq, $11.5 million per hour in Iraq. If this is the legacy of the Bush administration, you know what? If I was in the White House, I wouldn't want to talk about this either. I would talk about anything possible other than this fact.

You want to start talking about providing health care for millions of citizens? You want talk about lower tuition costs? You want to talk about investing in alternative energy sources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil? You want to talk about what Mr. Mica wants to do with airline security and port security? We have got the money. We have got the money. But we are spending it in a black hole called Iraq.

I appreciate the gentleman's passion and want to thank you for inviting me to be down here with you again.

I think what you are trying to say is that this Congress, this President, has really put us and the American people in a lose-lose situation. Good Presidents and a good Congress do not put the American people and their military operation in a lose-lose situation. And now they have reverted back to just saying, Democrats don't care about national security. Democrats are more in favor of protecting the terrorists. Just name calling. It is like you are on the playground again.

The thing that we have to look at is the record. The record does not lie. And what the generals are telling the civilian side what to do and the civilian side not listening, as you expressed earlier. But here is what we are hearing from former generals who, once they get out, can all of a sudden start speaking the truth. Like General Shinseki tried to say to Rumsfeld, ``You've got to send in a few hundred thousand troops.'' And Secretary Rumsfeld, Mr. Speaker, said, ``No, no, no. Don't worry. We can do this on the cheap.'' Rumsfeld was wrong and Shinseki all of a sudden kind of disappears. Look what is happening now.

Lieutenant General Newbold: ``What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures.'' This man was the top operations officer for the Joint Chiefs, commanding general for the First Marine Division, Legion of Merit Navy and Marine Corps commendation medal.

How about General Eaton: ``2\1/2\ more years of that leadership was too long for my Nation, for my Army and for my family.''

These are generals.

How about General Riggs: ``They only need the military advice when it satisfies their agenda.''

I think what we want to do, Mr. Speaker, is get out of the politics and let's start solving problems. Seven hundred thousand people per Congressal district vote for us to come down here and fix problems, not to play politics with what is going on. And this has been all politics, all the time, from this administration. It doesn't matter if what they are saying is even remotely close to being based in reality. It doesn't matter what the facts on the ground are. You can sit here and say, the Democrats this and the Democrats that.

You're in charge of the House, the Senate and the White House. Don't go blame the minority party for your failures. That is what has happened here. I will be happy to yield.

The debate coming out of D.C. and the old Potomac two-step is, ``We'll blame the Democrats.'' What are you going to blame the Democrats for? We have bills sitting in committee. No one has given them even one hearing in a committee. We have got discharge petitions sitting over here for veterans benefits and all kinds of other things. They never see the light of day. We are the minority party. You can't blame us. You can try, but you can't blame us. Take responsibility for your actions. And if you solve problems, the American people would return you back. But you haven't.

Just look. The failure to execute basic governmental programs. Look at homeland security. Look at Katrina. Look at the war. You got Newt Gingrich, the father of the Republican revolution in 1994, basically saying, ``Vote the Republicans out.'' Here is what Speaker Gingrich said in the Wall Street Journal just a couple of days ago. Just consider the following, he says:

``Osama bin Laden is still at large. Afghanistan is still insecure. Iraq is still violent. North Korea and Iran still building nuclear weapons and missiles. Terrorist recruiting still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and across the planet.''

This is not a Democrat. This is someone who cares about his country and saying, ``We may even disagree on how to fix the problem, but can we please admit that we have got some serious problems in 2006 in the United States of America? We have a government that doesn't work because it thinks the government is built on a concept of an economy that was 1950. It doesn't work.'' This is from a few months ago, about the Republican majority.

``They are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.''

We don't need to make this up. We don't need to create this. This is not fiction. This is about what is happening here. We come down here, Mr. Speaker, because we want to start solving these problems. When we are not included in the debate, you are basically saying half of the country has no

solutions. Well, we have solutions. When we get in charge next year, we are going to show the American people our ability to govern. We are not trying to obstruct. We couldn't even obstruct if we wanted to. All we are saying is, every single aspect of the neoconservative political agenda has been implemented and it is not benefiting the American people.

Look at your energy costs. Look at your health care costs. Look at your tuition costs. Look at your tax burden. Look at the inefficiency of government. Look at how your government responds to natural disasters. Look how your government handles its foreign policy. Look at the prewar plan. When you have a problem with your political system and your leadership, when you have the Secretary of Defense. Just think about this. There is a problem when the Secretary of Defense wants to invade a country and doesn't want anyone around him talking about how we are going to get out once the war is over. We have got the best military machine the planet has ever seen. We knew we were going to march right to Baghdad. We didn't know it was going to be as quick as it was but we knew it would be quick. Certainly the Iraqis weren't going to be able to stop us. And then the Secretary of Defense, used to be called the Secretary of War, the same position. But the Secretary of Defense tells everyone around him that we're not allowed to talk about a postwar plan.

What? Mr. Speaker, that is crazy.

Come in.

Supplement.

I want to share a couple of other of these quotes that support what you are saying. Here is from General Batiste: ``Rumsfeld and his team turned what should have been a deliberate victory in Iraq into a prolonged challenge.''

General Zinni: ``We are paying the price for the lack of credible planning or the lack of a plan. Ten years' worth of planning were thrown away.''

How about General Swannack: ``I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq.'' That was from the New York Times in April. And on and on and on.

But here is the point I want to make before we yield to our other good friend from Florida about just not listening and not even accepting facts presented by nonpartisan people.

The 9/11 Commission was a bipartisan group that said you need to implement these. After months and months of study on what happened on 9/11, this is what you need to implement. And it has not been done.

And then the Senate Intelligence Committee comes out and says there was no tie between Saddam and al Qaeda, and yet the administration goes out and continues to perpetuate falsehoods. Excuse me, but, I mean, come on. It was the Senate Intelligence Committee report, and the Senate is controlled by Republicans. That was basically a Republican report and a nonpartisan report, and yet they continue to just go on and say things that just don't match with reality.

I yield to my friend from Florida.

If I may inject here, the last attack, the attack prior to 9/11, was in 1993. This is a very patient group. Just because we haven't been hit yet does not mean we are executing the plan properly. And to just dismiss the 9/11 report and continue down the road of ignoring what the experts are telling us from Iraq and from everything else puts us in a certain amount of danger.

And you have the charts that we have shown night after night that are on our Web site, housedemocrats.gov/30something, night in and night out, about the ports and the amount of ships coming in and cargo that are coming in that are not checked, Mr. Meek. You guys are in Florida, we have Lake Erie in Ohio. I mean, this country is surrounded by cargo coming in and out of our ports, for us not to check it all.

And then, when you think about what we are spending in Iraq, $2 billion a week, $8 billion a month, and what we could do with that money on addressing the issue of our ports, on our homeland security, on our first responders, on making sure everyone has the proper radios and the proper equipment to coordinate these kind of things; what we could do with technology at the borders, at our airports, the retinal scans, and all kinds of things that could spring up and even have some economic stimulus.

What economic stimulus are we getting out of Iraq right now? Nothing. Nothing. It is like putting money and just flushing it. And so I think it is time, and I yield to my friend, but I think it is time that we start straightening this out

And let us look at the colossal failure that has been made here. We have now, because of the decimation in Iraq and the inability of a post-war plan that Rumsfeld didn't want anyone to talk about, and not propping up some government there to combat Iran, now you have Iran as the major player in this region. And they are talking about nuclear weapons, they are funding terrorists through the back door in Iraq through Hamas. Through all of the terrorist organizations in the Middle East, Iran is the one stoking this fire.

We have put ourselves in such a position of weakness. Now, we have troops there and troops in Afghanistan, too, so what if something else happens? And I think it is interesting, and our ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Skelton, has been talking about this for a long time, and it is difficult to even fathom this, but one-half of all Army units, deployed and nondeployed, Active and Reserve, one-half of all Army units received the lowest readiness rating any fully formed unit can receive, with a decline in levels that haven't been seen since Vietnam.

So our army is not ready. Not only are we in a quagmire in Iraq, we have problems in Afghanistan, the poppy crop is growing like gang busters, it is a major parts of their underground economy that is going to the terrorists, now our army is not meeting the readiness capabilities in case something else happens.

And we are in a position of weakness with China because we are borrowing billions of dollars from them, so how do you negotiate with all these people from a position of weakness? You can't. It has been America that has always balanced the budgets so we didn't have to borrow money from people; very selective in our foreign policy; making sure we had friends and allies. All down the tubes in one presidency.

Yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I want to share as we end here from the Newt Gingrich commentary from the Wall Street Journal where he talks about some of this stuff, about trying to figure out what the solutions are by figuring or understanding what the problems are.

Then he talks about, and this is his advice to George Bush, ``Then he should announce an honest review of what has not worked in the first 5 years of the war.'' That is what we have been saying. Let's find out what has not been working. Based on the findings, he should initiate a sweeping transformation of the White House national security apparatus. Good idea.

The current hopelessly slow and inefficient interagency system should be replaced by a new metrics-based and ruthlessly disciplined integrated system of accountability. That is what we want to do. Accountability. Let's sit down and have hearings and figure this out. The House of Representatives has a role to play in this oversight. The President should insist upon creating a new, aggressive, entrepreneurial national security system. It is time to do this.

Following this initiative, the President should propose a dramatic and deep overhaul of homeland security grounded in metrics-based performance to create a system capable of meeting the seriousness of the threat.

This is about reforming the institution of government. The former Speaker understands it. The Democratic Party understands it, and the only people who seem not to get it are the people who serve in this administration and the high levels of this Congress. I hope it changes. All of the charts that we are using tonight are available on this website, www.House Democrats.gov/30Something. It has been an enjoyable evening once again.

Bill Clinton.

Democrat.

George Bush, the second.

Republican.

It is good to be back. There are several things that I want to touch upon after hearing some of the comments that have been made.

I think I am taken care of. The crack staff here at the 30-Something Working Group. I thought maybe you missed my being over in the other part of the well, and this made me nervous because I know how you like things the way you like them. Very habitual.

Madam Speaker, I think it is important that we focus on what Ms. Wasserman Schultz said and what has been said by several of my colleagues here, Mr. Delahunt and the gentleman from Florida, and after watching the weekend shows and going through the pain and angst of trying to decipher reality from fiction, I think it is important that we do not get to a point in this country where, because there has not been a terrorist attack in the past few years, that somehow that makes everything okay. We are combating an enemy here that their ability to wait and then strike is staggering. They are patient people. The last terrorist strike prior to September 11, 2001, was in 1993, 8 years prior. So to say we are doing everything right, as was stated on one of the weekend shows by a major member of this administration, I think does not show the kind of responsibility and the kind of urgency that I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz pointed out. With border security, we do not know who is coming over the borders. They may be coming through Mexico, but it does not mean they are Mexicans, which has been an ally of ours. You do not know who is coming through. So I think it is foolhardy to say that.

And then I want to almost in our private meetings make a motion to make the former Speaker Newt Gingrich an honorary member of the 30- Something Group because of the kind of analysis that he continues to provide us and what we are in agreement on.

Now, let's look at what the former Speaker has said about staying the course. And this isn't just Iraq; I think this is also dealing with homeland security. The former Speaker says in the Wall Street Journal on September 7.

I would be happy to yield.

He was the man who set the basic principles of what the Republican revolution was going to look like.

So on September 7, 2006, in the Wall Street Journal, he says: ``Just consider the following: Osama bin Laden is still at large, Afghanistan is still insecure, Iraq is still violent, North Korea and Iran are still building nuclear weapons and missiles, terrorist recruiting is still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and across the planet.''

Is that the kind of leadership we want in the United States of America to secure our country? I don't think so. Given that foreign policy and domestically, given what Ms. Wasserman Schultz has said about our borders and our homeland security and our ports, that is not the kind of leadership we need.

And the final point I would like to make before I yield to my friend from Florida is that we have tended to take the long view. I think we have made some difficult decisions, our party, in the last 10 or 15 years that have been difficult, balancing the budget in 1993, leading the lower interest rates, creating 20 million new jobs, welfare reform. All of those things were very difficult decisions politically, but over the long haul history is judging them to be good decisions on behalf of the country. And to look and see what Secretary Rumsfeld said when he kept getting questioned about what we were going to do in post-war Iraq, Madam Speaker, I think says it all. And this is from a story in The Washington Post on Saturday, Madam Speaker.

It says: ``Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said. Brigadier General Mark Scheid told the Newport News Daily Press in an interview published yesterday that Rumsfeld had said ``he would fire the next person,'' who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

He would fire the next person that brought it up, Madam Speaker. This isn't saying, I don't want to hear the other side. This isn't saying, we aren't talking about that yet. This isn't saying, we are having a meeting about something else right now, maybe we will bring that up later. Or, we are having a meeting about that tomorrow. The Secretary was saying he would fire the next person who even brought up designing a post-war Iraq plan.

Now, that is the kind of leadership we are getting. And I think in September of 2006 as we see where this country is, where former Speaker Gingrich is saying where the country is and all the lack of successes that we have had, to see the kind of leadership coming out of the Pentagon and the Secretary saying we will fire you if you even bring it up one more time about a post-war plan in Iraq, I think speaks volumes about what is going on.

I yield to my friend.

Mr. Delahunt, I have got to tell you, over August break I had numerous conversations with business folks, Republicans, card-carrying, who would talk to me about the fact that if they were running the business and Rumsfeld was their assistant or vice whatever, he wouldn't be around. He would have been gone years ago.

30-Something Working Group www.housedemocrats.gov/ 30-something, housedemocrats.gov/30-something. And all the charts that you have seen tonight, Madam Speaker, are available on the Web site. I yield back to my good friend from Florida (Mr. Meek).