Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, my amendment would simply strike the word ``after'' and insert ``before'' in the section of the bill dealing with the Farm Service Agency.

The amendment at hand would allow for the public hearing to take place no later than 30 days before and not after the Secretary of Agriculture allows for an office closure.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

I would be happy to, Mr. Chairman.

I thank the chairman and I thank Ms. DeLauro.

Thank you Mr. Chairman, Chairman Bonilla and Ranking Member DeLauro and the staff on the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.

My amendment would simply strike the word ``after'' and insert ``before'' in the section of the bill dealing with the Farm Service Agency. The amendment at hand would allow for the public hearing to take place no later than 30 days before--and not after--the Secretary of Agriculture allows for an office closure.

In this section of the current bill, language had been put in place to safeguard local FSA offices from inappropriate closure and relocation. In current form, the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture would be able to propose an office closure--and then after the closure is proposed, then hold a public hearing. This language was in last years Agriculture Appropriations Bill--and we thought this would help the process and allow for local public input before any office closures were proposed.

The reason for this amendment is due to my profound concerns of what is currently taking place in Ohio. Last month I was contacted by local producers in my district concerned that their local FSA office would be closed.

My office received a copy of the proposed ``county office reorganization'' as provided by the Ohio State FSA Committee, and I was surprised to see this proposal as there has been no involvement from my local county FSA committees or local producers.

In a memo sent from Administrator Teresa Lasseter (USDA) to all State FSA Executive Directors on January 13, 2006, she states, ``Further, USDA agrees with the long-standing intent of Congress that office closures and relocations should occur based on rigorous analysis to ensure actions are cost-effective and will better serve the public.''

The bottom line is that we need to have complete information about the needs of family farmers and ranchers before we or the Department makes radical decisions about FSA Personnel levels.

This process should start at the county committees and involve an office-by-office and regional analysis. Only then, can our State FSA offices and the USDA make the best decisions on office closures and relocations.

I understand the need for efficiency, but we must be concerned about how this will impact our family farmers and agricultural communities. In most of our counties, our farmers know that they can drive to one place to access their FSA, NRCS, SWCD and Extension. This is the place where they access the Internet, the fax machine and socialize with others in their community.

Again, my amendment only says that the public hearing be 30 days prior to closure, rather than after the closure has been proposed. Please help in supporting the family farmers in your district and support this fair and simple amendment.

Mr. Speaker, once again we are coming to the floor of the House of Representatives representing the 30-something Working Group. My co-chair will be here shortly, Congressman Kendrick Meek from Florida. And we want to thank our minority leader, Ms. Pelosi, and Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Clyburn, Mr. John Larson, our vice chair of our caucus, for allowing us the opportunity to come down here and speak not only on behalf of our caucus but on behalf of what we feel to be the opinion of many of those folks out in the country that are facing some of the challenges that have come from the legislation, that has come out of this Chamber, and has in many ways burdened them and their families because of the lack of leadership, quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, that has been coming out of this Chamber and out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30-Something for those Members and loyal fans who would want to drop us an e-mail about their opinion of what we are saying here, an opinion of what is going on in the government.

I would like to start off today talking a little bit about unfairness and lack of investment in the future of the United States of America. This is a chart that is the Republican tax plan, an overview. And this overview will show you who is benefiting most from the tax cuts that the Republican majority has passed over and over and over again; and how this tax cut has disproportionately favored those people who make more than a million dollars a year.

Now, I think it is important, Mr. Speaker, for all of us to understand at this juncture that we do not have any money to give back in the form of tax cuts. We are borrowing $500 billion a year from the Chinese Government, from the Japanese government, from the OPEC countries, and borrowing that money and giving it back to the wealthiest people in our country in the form of tax cuts for millionaires, $16 billion in corporate welfare for the energy companies, primarily the oil companies.

So when you go to the gas pump, Mr. Speaker, and you ask yourself why is gas so high and the oil company profits so high and then you actually think about public tax dollars going to subsidize the oil industry, that really gets your goat. So not only are your gas taxes high, your gas prices are high, but the public tax dollars that you send down here instead of going into education, instead of going into health care, instead of going into broadband service for all of the citizens in the country, instead of going to clinics, instead of going into all of these art programs and sports programs across the country, Mr. Speaker, the American tax dollar is going to subsidize the most profitable industry in the entire country. $16 billion is going from the pockets of hardworking Americans all over the country to the oil companies.

It is that simple, Mr. Speaker. It is that simple, and what we want to talk about tonight is how a Democratic majority in this House will begin to reform and transform these horrendous decisions that have been made and get our country going in a direction that is going to benefit all.

We will ask, as Democrats, everyone to contribute and we will ask and demand that everyone benefits from those basic contributions. We are going to challenge this country to move forward in a direction that is going to benefit everybody, and the days of we are going to take the public tax dollars and we are going to give them to this special interest group that is in the oil industry and we are going to let them move forward, those days are going to be over as of January 3, 2007.

We need a government, we need a Congress, we need an executive branch that is dynamic, that is mobile, that is agile, that can move in the context of an information economy. As businesses are going down the road, government is holding them back because we are not investing in our workers. We are not investing in education. We are not investing in making sure people are healthy.

To just illustrate how terrible the decisions have been, when you look at all the problems in our country, when you look at college tuition costs doubling, when you look at health care costs going up by 10, 15, 20 percent a year, when you look at the lack of investment into K-12 and the unfunded mandates from No Child Left Behind, when you look at all this and then you have the backdrop of what the Republican Congress is doing night in and night out in the United States Congress, this chart is the Republican tax plan.

Now, I know my friend Mr. Meek, we are probably two of the more conservative Democrat Members. I am the most conservative Democrat Member in the Ohio delegation. Now, we would love to go to all of our constituents and say you all get a tax cut; this is going to be great. It would be good for us politically to be able to say that. Look what the Republicans are doing.

This big yellow bar here is what a millionaire got in the 2006 tax reconciliation bill. They will get $42,000 back. A millionaire will get $42,000 back. If you make $500,000, you will get $4,500 back. If you make $200,000, you will get $1,395 back, and then if you make $100,000 you will get $400 back. If you make $40,000, you will get $17 back.

Is this not disproportionate? If those people who say, Mr. Speaker, well, the millionaire pays more in tax, we do not have the money to give these people to begin with. We are borrowing the $42,000 from China to give the millionaire a tax break. We do not have money to give anybody, let alone the wealthiest people in the country, give them $42,000 back. We are borrowing the money, Mr. Speaker. We are borrowing money from China to give a millionaire $42,000 back.

Now, if you think that is good public policy, then you need to make sure that you vote for your Republican Member of Congress because this policy will continue. Guess what, in 10 years your kids are going to have a big bill that is going to come in the mail to them that they are going to have to pay the taxes, the debt, the deficit, the bill to the Chinese Government, to the Japanese government, to the OPEC countries, that the money went to pay a millionaire $42,000 back.

Those people who think that this money, the $42,000 that a millionaire gets back, is going to somehow get invested back into the American economy, they have not been around for the last 15 or 20 years because this millionaire is taking their $42,000, Mr. Speaker, and they are putting that in an international fund that is going to yield good returns. They are going to invest that money in a stock that is going to invest in a business in China, in Asia. That is what is going to happen. Where is the benefit to the American people?

All we are saying is that we need to begin to invest in the common good. Everybody contributes, everybody benefits.

I would love to go tell this person, and I do not know many people like this made more than $1 million last year. I am from Youngstown, Ohio. Niles, Ohio and Akron, Ohio, is the district I represent. I would think that we would have the courage to ask this person to please pay their fair share, that they are getting a tax cut of $42,000 and we have got to borrow it from China, do you still want it? We are giving $16 billion to the oil companies. Please, someone in leadership in the United States Government, in the Republican party who controls the House, the Senate and the White House, somebody in the Republican party call in Lee Raymond, call in one of these CEOs from one of the oil companies and just say to them, we do not have $16 billion to give you in corporate welfare, I am sorry. I know we may have had a deal before the election, but you know what, I am sorry, and we do not have that money now for you, and we have to invest that money in the broadband access for everyone in the country; we have got to invest that money into reducing the costs of college education; we have got to invest that money into increasing the health and welfare of the general public; we have got to fund No Child Left Behind; we need more engineers and scientists; we need 3 million health care workers in the next decade or so. We need 1 million nurses in the next decade or so.

I would be happy to yield to my friend Mr. Meek.

So you are saying that that money that we are borrowing could pay for tax cuts.

Sunflower seeds.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to make one point as you were talking about the oil companies. They have really become, and I do not say this in a derogatory way, they have become dinosaurs, and the Republican majority has just consistently reaffirmed their prehistoric nature because we are in a new economy. We are in a knowledge-based economy. We are in an economy that can figure out how to not use fossil fuels, how to figure out how to use different things. They run the gamut.

Let us invest in those things and figure out a way that we are not so dependent on the CEOs who are making $400 million, God bless them, retirement package of $2 million tax break, God bless you, but not at the expense of everyone else.

The dinosaur approach no longer works. We cannot have a government that just consistently lives in an age that no longer exists.

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

And the distinction is quite clear. We want to do broadband access to every household, we want to be energy independent in a decade, we want to fund research and development, and we want to have a tax credit for venture capitalists to come in and pump money into those industries. The Republican majority wants to give the oil companies $16 billion. It is that simple.

Put us in charge and we will have an energy independent Nation in 10 years, period. Let's get the country going in that direction, Mr. Meek. And like Ms. Wasserman Schultz said, we can use sugar cane, we can use ethanol, we can use biodiesel, and we can use wind. We can use all these things. And nuclear. We could piece this thing together, but there's got to be a commitment to say why do we have all our eggs in one basket right now.

And then you look at the problems in the Middle East and all the rest that we have.

The American people expect us to come here and come up with solutions; to be creative and figure out how do we fix the problem, not to subsidize with the public tax money the very problem that we are having. We are making the problem worse.

Not only are we giving the oil companies more money, but we could have cut a deal with them. We could say to the oil companies, you are in on it. Make money off it. Hire people, do ethanol. You are in. Make money. Make lots of money. But don't do it at the expense that we are having now, the expense of the American people.

I think when you look at our agenda, when you take a real look, and this isn't about, Mr. Speaker, being on Fox News or MSNBC and two people screaming at each other about who is this and who is that. It is not about that. These are real solutions. And anybody who is watching this debate or this discussion here, this is about what we have in store for the American people. These are our plans: broadband for every household, energy independence in the next 10 years.

Go to our Web site, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. Go to our Web site, see these charts, and look at us. We want to open this government up. Look at our plan. Examine it; you will like it. It is futuristic. It is about what the country is going to look like in 10 years.

I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentlewoman because not only did you have third-party validators, I think we have some of the most important third-party validators to what we are saying here.

The next five posters are strong, conservative Republicans with credentials in the conservative community well beyond anything we will ever have.

This is Pat Toomey, former Member of Congress, president of Club for Growth. He says in the Philadelphia Inquirer on May 8: Republicans have

abandoned the principles of limited government and fiscal discipline. He went on to say: There is a very high level of frustration and disappointment among rank-and-file Republicans when they see a Republican-controlled Congress engaging in an obscene level of wasteful spending.

This next quote is from a guy who gave birth to the Republican revolution in 1994. He said, at the end of March, a congressional watchdog agency recently smuggled a truck carrying nuclear material into the country to test security; he said: Why isn't the President pounding on the table? Why isn't he sending in 16 reform bills?

Mr. Gingrich went on to cite a series of blunders under Republican rule, from failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to mismanagement of the war in Iraq. He said the government has squandered billions of dollars in Iraq. That is from Newt Gingrich, former Speaker, conservative Republican.

He went on to say in the same article: They are seen, the Republicans, and as my good friend from Florida loves to point out, the man who gave birth to the Republican revolution, is now calling the Republican majority they; they are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that cannot function.

This is not the Democratic Party saying this; these are conservative Republicans who had some ideals that see this Republican Congress unable to govern the country.

Pick an issue. The war, down.

Pick an issue. The prescription drug bill, not working.

Pick an issue. Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, not working.

Education costs, through the roof.

You are in charge. You are in charge of the House and the Senate and the White House.

Pick an issue. Pick an issue in this country, oil prices, gas prices, energy costs, health care costs.

Pick an issue. Unable to govern. Unable to govern. And it is not my opinion; it is not your opinion. This is their people saying they do not know how to govern.

We want an opportunity. Then we find out, Tuesday, 26.5 million veterans' information is stolen. You cannot consistently run down government and then expect it to work.

Can you imagine somebody getting a $2 tax break?

We have positions that are right down the middle. We have positions about investing that money instead of giving $42,000 in tax breaks; making sure that everybody has access to broadband; making sure people are healthy; and No Child Left Behind is funded; and balancing the budget by putting paygo rules on that won't allow us to spend money that we do not have, that we do not either cut from a program or raise revenue somewhere.

As we are wrapping up here. I had an opportunity to go to the Kennedy Library. Mr. Murtha received the Profiles in Courage Award for his stance on the war and coming out against the war. I ran into Ted Sorenson, who was President Kennedy's top adviser and speech writer. He said, when he was with President Kennedy, they never submitted a budget to Congress that was more than $10 billion off. They would maybe have some, but never more than $10 billion.

And when President Bush says this Congress has to rein in spending, he hasn't vetoed one spending bill, so don't give us this, and we are supposed to believe you. Let us put our faith back in the American people here, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something.

Just to clarify and add on to what you said, the process down in Washington is that we pass a budget, broad outlines with specific numbers to say, Department of Defense can spend this much, Health and Human Services this much, Education this much. It is all broken down, just like a family budget. And then after you get the budget, then you start divvying up the money as to where it is going to go and which program based on the revenue that you take in.

What is happening now is that the Republican majority has not passed a budget, but yet next week they are going to come and start writing the checks. Checks for what? They are going to start the process of spending the money without a budget. I know there are many families at home and this Republican Congress that came in in 1994 talked a lot about, it is like a family budget. And what does the family do? Well, the family needs a budget and they need to live within their means. This Republican Congress, the bobblehead Congress that says ``yes'' to everything President Bush wants, continues to go down the road of undisciplined spending.

Some people, Mr. Speaker, may say, well, Tim Ryan from Ohio and Kendrick Meek from Florida are just talking again. This isn't us. It is not just us talking about it. It is not just the Democrats. I want to get our third-party validators up and running early here tonight.

As you are going into that, it is very important, just a day ago, we passed, the Republican Congress, passed another tax cut that will give a millionaire $42,000 back, okay? Money that we don't have we are going to go out and we are going to borrow it and you will tell us from who, to pay for the tax cut. And in 2003, Mr. Meek, if you made $10 million a year, you got $1 million back in taxes. You made $10 million, you got $1 million back. We don't have it to give you.

We are political people. I mean, we are Members of Congress and we are public servants, okay? I would love to go to my constituents and say, I am going to give all of you a tax cut. And the really rich ones who may donate to my campaign, I am going to give you a big tax cut, real big. You made $10 million last year. I am going to give you $1 million back. I would love to do that. Everybody would love to do that, Mr. Speaker. We can't afford to do that. We can't afford to go borrow money from a foreign country and give it to someone who made $10 million last year so they could have a tax cut. And the old argument that they are going to take that money and invest it in the United States, that doesn't exist. They are going to get the money and invest it in Asia. They are going to invest it in funds, invest it in other countries. I yield back to my good friend.

The thing is, my friend, we don't have the money to give a millionaire a tax cut. We have had 5.4 million people slip into poverty since President Bush took over. We have middle class families struggling with gas, fuel costs, energy costs, tuition costs, health care costs. We have got a lot of issues for middle class people, lower class people, people who are slipping into poverty, living paycheck to paycheck. It is so irresponsible to give someone who makes millions of dollars a year a tax cut, it just doesn't make any sense.

I said it before, Mr. Speaker, I would love to go to the folks that I know that make millions of dollars a year and say I am going to give you a tax cut. You could put a little more Italian marble in your home. But that is not just reality.

We represent the public. We get paid by the taxpayer. We represent 700,000 people apiece. We need to start talking about the common good, decisions that could be made down here that benefit everybody. Ask everybody in the country to contribute. Wealthy, middle class, poor, everyone is going to have to contribute something, but everyone will benefit them. A rising tide does lift all boats.

Right now, this tide is not lifting everyone up. It is lifting a very small group of people that continue to make money and profits after profits after profits.

I think profits are great. I think they are super. But when the oil companies are making $113 billion, almost up $80 billion from 2002 and everyone is struggling and the Republican Congress gifts the oil industry $16.3 billion in public money, something is wrong there. I think the structure has broken down. I think you are absolutely right. We don't have the money to do this, not only don't have the money, we are neglecting our priorities in education, health care, reform. Let's think about this for a second.

Government is not working, and I showed the quote from Newt Gingrich, when he said the Republican Congress is perceived by the country as running a government that cannot function.

When you look at what happened with Katrina, and the inadequate response from FEMA, when you look at the war, losing $9 billion, losing $9 billion and nobody knows where it is. When you look at what is happening, all the struggles for body armor and up-armored Humvees, we fought for tooth and nail for years to make sure that the troops had that equipment that they didn't have out of the gate. The lack of preparation, the lack of an exit strategy, the lack of recognition of a long-term strategy in Iraq and in the region, these are colossal mistakes.

These aren't boo-boos, these are big-time mistakes that, quite frankly, I get frustrated because I think what have you dealt to my generation? This is kind of personal and may be a little bit selfish. But what are you leaving this next generation? We started this 30- Something group to talk about issues facing our generation and 20s and 30 somethings.

Look at what is being left to us to fix. I mean, I do not know how long I am going to be in government. I don't know how long you were going to be in government.

But we are going to spend the better part of our lives trying to fix the colossal mistakes that this President and this Republican Congress have made. Budgets, lack of fiscal discipline, the war, lack of investment in education.

When you look at what the Democrats want to do, when you look at what we want to do. One is balance the budget, put in these PAYGO rules to make sure that we can only spend money that we actually have and stop borrowing money from all these foreign interests, Democrats have been trying to do that for years. We did it in the 1990s and it worked.

We want to do it again and get the country back on the right path. We want to invest in innovation. Our innovation plan has every household getting broadband technology in the next 5 years so that everyone in our society can compete within this global economy against 1.3 billion Chinese workers, again over 1 billion workers from India, against Ireland, who is just going gangbusters. Their economy is just going gangbusters. We want to be able to compete against these people.

If we don't make the proper investments, we won't be able to do it. We are going to have a plan that we will invest into the Pell Grant. We will cut student loans in half to try to relieve some of the pressure from middle America, from middle income families. This is something that we need to do. We have a responsibility to do it.

I want to make a point, because I believe if we unleash the potential of the American people, that we will be able to address some of these problems. I can't be convinced that we can't solve the energy problem. I just can't believe it.

I am so glad that this President and this Congress weren't around during World War II, weren't around when we were trying to go to the Moon, because there would never have been that challenge. We can do this. Let us unleash the potential of the American people.

The different philosophy here is that our Republican friends want to think that if they give a tax cut to millionaires that will trickle down and somehow help middle America. It is not working. It is not working.

Rich people keep getting richer, middle class people keep struggling and falling behind. More people keep slipping into poverty, 5.4 million more people have slipped into poverty since President Bush became president, 5.4 million people. That is a drain on Nation's resources. Invest in those people, get them broadband technology, make sure they have adequate health care, make sure they have an opportunity to go to college, and you will see the potential of this country unleashed.

It is just frustrating as we talk on the floor and off the floor about a lot of these issues about the challenges that our generation is going to face down the line. You can't tell me that we can't be a competitive country, because I just don't believe it. The Republican philosophy is saying we hope that maybe one day it works its way down, the tax cuts to millionaires work their way down to the middle class. We hope one day that happens.

What the Democratic plan is just to invest into the American people, everyone. We want businesses to do well. We want middle class to do well. We want rich people to do well, we want poor people to do well. This is America. This is the American family. This isn't just your family and your family and everyone separate and nothing ever connects. That is not what made America great.

What made America great is our policies coming out of World War II. Our policies in the 1960s, we are about the common good.

I know that we don't need those same policies. We know as Democrats that it needs to be different because it is a different world. It is not what would Johnson do, what would Kennedy do or what did Johnson do, what did Kennedy, what did Roosevelt do?

It is not about what they did, it is about what would those great leaders do today?

I believe that the Democrats have this plan, with our innovation agenda, with our real security agenda that reduces our dependence on foreign oil. We are just so entangled in this oil mess. Let's stop.

Let's invest in the American people, Mr. Meek. We will come up with an alternative energy source, bio-diesel, hydrogen, ethanol, sugar. We'll figure this out. But unleash the potential of the American people. We will do this and create another great surge in the middle class of the United States of America, and everything then will take care of itself; pensions, wages, health care. Everything else will take care of itself, because we are going to unleash the potential of the country.

I believe it just takes leadership to do that, and we haven't been getting much leadership here. It is really a lack of leadership that has put the country in the position it is.

When times change, when circumstances change, you have to change. Unfortunately, this President and this Congress, no matter what the facts are, stay focused on tax cuts for millionaires and let's hope that that solves all the problems.

We are starting to see now with this increase in interest rates, 16 times, what a terrible problem this is going to be; higher credit card rates, higher mortgages, cars, everything else. You are going to pay more money. So even if you do get a little bit out of the tax cut, if you are a middle class American getting 30 bucks back, gone. That is gone, eaten up with higher interest rates.

In 1993, my friend, not one Republican vote.

I am not saying that to brag. The Republicans could do it. They just don't. We have done it. And it is not being a braggart, but it was Clinton as President and it was a Democratic House and it was a Democratic Senate. And out of the House, not one Republican vote to balance that budget. It led to 20 million new jobs, Mr. Meek, in the United States, the greatest economic expansion in the history of the country. So we have proof. As you said, we know how to do this stuff, and we are asking for a shot to try to do it again.

Clear?

I appreciate that. I think you made a lot of points. I

think one of the things that you mentioned is that we come down here every night. I have got to tell you, you know, you mentioned the race in which our Democratic write in candidate got more write-in votes than all of the Republicans combined, and the Democrat was in the three-way primary. It is unbelievable, because of the energy with which I think a lot of people in this country are willing to go to the polls and make some kind of changes.

But I am tired of coming down here and talking about this. I will be honest with you, Mr. Speaker. I want this fixed. I want an opportunity for us to put the PAYGO rules in place, to make the tough decisions. We get paid to make these tough decisions. Let's make them.

I mean, come on. You know what frustrates me? And it hit me as you pulled out the PAYGO chart. Zero Republicans voted for the PAYGO rules to be put in place. Of the millions of times we have actually tried to put them through, amendments and on the floor and motions to recommit and everything else, all of these different times that we have tried to do this, zero Republicans. But now they are having trouble passing the budget.

Well, maybe if they would have put these procedures in place, these constraints in place, we wouldn't have the problems. We don't even have a budget yet. It is May. It is the middle of May. The law says you are supposed to have it by April 15. So all of this is happening.

I think, Mr. Meek, as we begin to wrap up here, that everything is happening in secrecy, under the dome, on Pennsylvania Avenue, with K Street. When you look at these K Street fairy tales that you just can't believe, it is the environmental meeting, everything is done in secret. A lot of the consumer groups and conservation groups are saying you are meeting with the oil companies and the oil companies are going to write this. They say no, no, no, no, and oil executives come before the Senate. Coincidentally, the Republican Senate does not swear them in to a hearing. Unbelievable.

They all say, ``We weren't there. We don't know anything about it.'' Then we find out a few weeks ago they were all there. The White House memo comes out that they were there, all done in secrecy. Look at the energy policy we have. It is atrocious. Come on. Everyone knows it doesn't work. Go to the gas pump. We don't have to explain it.

Look at the war, all done in secrecy. Nobody is allowed in, not a lot of debate. The information, intelligence, everything is in secret, cherry-picking intelligence and all of this other stuff, all done in secret. Look at the end result. $9 billion lost, no exit strategy. We are not greeted as liberators. We are not able to use the oil money for reconstruction. All the promises made haven't happened. Terrible.

Look at the Medicare bill. Same thing. All done in secret. The numbers were wrong that they gave to the Congress about how much it was going to cost.

Then we find out today, Mr. Meek, and I hate to end on this because we don't have a lot of time to talk about it, we find out now that the National Security Agency is secretly monitoring phone calls of the American people. This is the largest database ever assembled in the world, monitoring the phone calls of American citizens.

Now, give me a break. Enough of the secrecy, enough of the mismanagement, enough of the incompetence. Let's get the Democrats back in so we can implement some of these ideas that we have.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing us to be here. I would also like to thank the staff who is here who stays late with us many nights.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman and I agree with former Congressman Toomey. As you made the point about the wealthiest, the millionaires getting $42,000 back and the missed priorities and the schoolteacher in Ohio who is making $35,000 or $40,000 and getting just a few dollars back, we are not saying that the wealthy person does not make a certain contribution to society because they do. Make profits and make money, we want you to. But there is just as much value to our society by the teacher.

And who actually needs the tax cut is that person who is a home health care aide, driving around, and the gas prices are high and everything else.

Mr. Delahunt talked about borrowing the money to do this and who we are borrowing it from. This is from 2001 to 2005, of the $1.18 trillion in debt that the Bush presidency, the Bush House and Bush Senate racked up, $1.16 trillion of the $1.18 trillion came from foreign nations. We are not even borrowing the money from National Citibank or some bank in our own country, we are borrowing this money from the Chinese government or the Japanese government. That at the end of the day makes us weak.

I want to show one more chart here. This is the public debt held by China. It has quadrupled under Bush. It was $62 billion in 2000, and it is $257 billion in 2005.

And so if you are sitting in a community in Ohio or in the industrial Midwest or in New England or somewhere across this country where the jobs you have are being lost to China, and then you know that your government at the same time is borrowing money from China, and the Chinese government is using that money to undermine American business in the United States of America and we continue to borrow it, and that is just in the past year or so, another $5 billion has been borrowed from the Chinese. This is going on again and again.

The reason I bring this up is today we expanded this. We increased this even more. The $42,000 that we are going to give a millionaire, we do not have it.

Right. The money we pay in interest every year, $230 billion a year, we pay in interest on the debt. That is interest on the debt. Compared to education and homeland security and veterans, this is the number we are paying on interest. This is reckless spending. This is a Congress that has run away with the checkbook. They are taking the country off a cliff financially without any regard for what this is costing future generations.

This group started to talk about optimism and what the future was going to look like.

Just to make a point. We heard a lot today, and I know I heard on the floor today a lot about how, as you said, the economy was doing great and how incomes were up. I think we have some facts that say otherwise.

And I would suggest that the President's approval rating wouldn't be at 31 or 32 percent if the economy was going great.

Exactly.

I yield for Number 8.

And it is a tough argument to make to say, when someone's struggling to say, no, no, you are really doing okay. Wait, no I am not. I have got to tell you it is kind of hard right now. No, I am telling you, you are really doing fine.

I realize you are racking up credit card debt. I realize you can't afford to put gas in your tank.

And I would like to make a comment here, because that is, and I think that is the epitome of what this outfit is all about. It is always that, well, there is going to be a certain segment of our society that is poor. And you know what, it is tough to be in the middle class. And you know what, we can't come up with an alternative energy source. You know, well, conservation is a good personal virtue, but it is not a good, you know, public policy.

You know, this is not leadership. We should be trying to fix these problems, not just say, okay, we accept them. We accept 5.4 million people going into poverty in the last 5 years under the Bush administration. And when you look at who, you know, what? Mr. Meek, I want you to look at this. This picture epitomizes, Mr. Delahunt, because the President is holding the hand of one of the most powerful Saudi leaders in the world.

The king. And I want this President to come hold the hand of somebody in my district. Go hold the hand of one of the 5.4 million people that just slipped into poverty.

This man doesn't need his hand held. But we have got a lot of people in the country that need a little help, and not a handout, a hand up, an opportunity to succeed.

I yield for Number 6.

And not be able to go on a hunting trip, not be able to go on a fishing trip, not be able to go on some kind of family vacation.

I think this is very important when you ask why people are slipping into poverty.

This is exactly right. This is a consequence of some faulty leadership in the Nation's capital. Oil companies profits in 2002, $34 billion. This is BP, Shell, Chevron, the whole bit. It gradually went up, in 2005, $113 billion in profits.

Now, something is wrong with the structure of our society when the oil companies are reaping $113 billion in profits and we have 5.4 million people slipping into poverty. We have college tuition costs doubling all over the country, Mr. Delahunt. We have a structure here that is just not working for the people any more.

Is that in addition to the $113 billion in profit, and three times, triple what it was 4 years ago? The American taxpayers, those that would be overhearing our conversation tonight, are subsidizing those same oil companies to the tune of about $16.3 billion.

So let us be clear. Out of the 100, not only is this outfit here, these oil companies getting $113 billion, our friend is saying, corporate welfare from this Republican-led institution, gave these guys $16.3 billion of taxpayer money.

That is an insult. The more I think about it, that is a real insult.

You know what, it would be nice to represent a district where the economy is going great, would it not? Yes, it is going great. Look around, everybody is having a nice time. That will be great. Fortunately, I think in most districts that is not the case.

Maybe this is a supernatural thing.

Maybe it is supernatural. That is what we all know.

How about the common good?

How about the common good? How about the good of everybody where everybody contributes and everybody benefits. The common good. Rising tide lifts all boats, Mr. Delahunt. Everybody benefits from our economic policy, not this stuff.

How is this good for society? The guy in the pickup truck is paying $57 to fill up gas tanks and the oil companies are making $113 billion in profits, 5.4 million are following into poverty, tuition costs triple. Health care is up how many percent above the rate of increase in wages?

All of these things say that this Republican Congress and Republican administration is about a very small group of people. All we are making the argument more here is we are America. We are a family.

Where is the American family, Ms. Wasserman Schultz? Let us start worrying about all of us. Because if we lose a couple, it is bad for everybody.

I yield to my friend.

Let us do better.

Let us do better. Let us implement some of these ideas that we have. Let us implement some of this innovation agenda where we are going to have broadband in every household, Mr. Delahunt. That will create a whole new class of people that will understand how to benefit from the Internet.

Let's have the research and development tax credit that the Democrats have in our innovation agenda. Let's make sure we get the real security going so we can make sure that we have the proper energy process, the proper energy plan for the United States of America.

Why is it still going to be energy independent and the United States of America still gambling in this game that we have in the Middle East? It's a big game that we are losing. Everybody is losing. It leads to the war on terrorism. It leads to these tremendous profits at the cost of average people, Mr. Delahunt. It is polluting the environment.

We have all kinds of problems because we refuse to say, we want to be a leader in alternative energies in the world. Brazil is doing it, why can't we? Why is there a magnetic levitation train in Shanghai that goes 270 miles an hour and not in the United States, Mr. Delahunt?

Quite frankly, I think this President and this Congress has given our generation, the 30-something generation, a pretty raw deal. You know, you think about it, we are going to have more debt. We are going to have a dirtier environment. We have got higher tuition costs. We have got more debt, higher credit card rates, higher interest rates, less control, because we borrowed so much money from all of these foreign countries. What legacy are you leaving to the next generation, which is what we originally started coming to this floor for?

It is terrible. That is poor leadership. I don't care if you are a Democrat or you are a Republican. That is poor leadership. You left the country worse off than you found it. That is not the American way. That is not the American dream. Give us a chance, Mr. Speaker. Put us in coach. I mean, God, we couldn't do any worse. We have ideas to unleash the potential of this country and move the country forward.

Mr. Meek.

It doesn't work.

You can do whatever you want.

1991?

And I would like to make a point, because as the oil companies reap these profits, and again I am not saying for you not to make profits, but not at the expense of everyone else in society.

So I want to make this point: The oil companies benefit a great deal from the public, from what the taxpayers support, A, point number one, the $16.3 billion in corporate welfare that they are getting from the public tax dollars that is going to them. So they can't say they don't benefit from the public.

But their product is sold on roads that are funded by the taxpayer. Those roads are protected by the taxpayer, paved by the taxpayer, secured by the taxpayer. The ports in which the oil comes in and out of our country, all funded by the taxpayers. The Coast Guard, by the taxpayers. The military, the over $400 billion budget that we have here that we spend on our military that goes to protect the transportation lines and the oceans, and as the ships start distributing this all over the world, that is protected by the taxpayer.

So all we are arguing here, Mr. Speaker, is that the taxpayer has an interest; and when this company and this certain industry benefits so much from the public tax dollars, they should be responsive to the public in these instances.

I would be happy to yield to any one of you to wrap up this brilliant discussion. I am going to yield to Debbie.

Mr. Speaker, as we go through this tonight, the 30 Something's two key third-party validators are the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Congressman Pat Toomey, now president of the Club for Growth, both saying that there is out-of- control spending, out-of-control government, dysfunctional, and the American people know that.

Any Members who would like to come to our Web site, www.housedemocrats.gov/30Something, www.housedemocrats.gov/30Something.

I think the overall point, as you stated, is exactly correct. But when the time came, Mr. Delahunt, Mr. Meek, when the time came for the Republican Party to muster up enough votes to make sure a person making $10 million----

This reminds me of when a football team or a basketball team hires a new coach. They get a coach and usually give him a 5-year contract and give the coach a chance to go out and get their recruits and get them into the system. If you are not winning by the time you have your system in place and your players on your team or your draft picks on your team, by the fifth year, done. You go. Right? You had your chance.

That is exactly what my friend from Massachusetts was saying: This Republican Congress has been in charge since 1994. The President has been in since 2000. The Senate is controlled by Republicans and has been for at least 10 years, with a brief period of Democratic control, barely. They have had a chance to make their implementations, put their policies into place, energy, immigration, taxes, whatever the case may be.

It hasn't worked. It is time to get new coaches, time to get new players, time for a new draft. In November of 2006, we have a draft. What we are saying is here is our agenda. Here are the plays we are going to run, the innovation agenda, the energy agenda, the real security agenda.

I can guarantee you, there is going to be nobody on the Democratic side when we take over this House in November of 2006 that you are going to be able to put in place of the President here holding hands with one of the most powerful oil leaders in the entire world, Mr. Meek.

And that will cost $10 billion just to pay for it.

Talk about a picture speaking a thousand words. Why do we have high gas prices? Why do we have the problems?

If I can make a comment, thinking about the war and where we are right now with the whole war situation, that was all done in secrecy. No one knew what was going on. The intelligence was screwed up. Look where we are now.

The energy plan, secrecy, closed doors. You are not allowed in, and people even from these big companies were denying that they were even there, and then we find out from a White House document a week or so ago that they were there. All done in secrecy, the success of our democracy over the years.

To the point where we did not know what the total cost was going to be.

He just articulated exactly what I was going to say, much more eloquently than I ever could. So maybe I will just point to this picture again, but I think Mr. Delahunt did make the point.

If I could, the strength of our democracy over the years in a bicameral legislature is the debate of the minority party and the majority party in the House and coming to some reasonable solutions that have been debated through the committee process and vetted and studied and looked at, and then over to the Senate, and let that happen and then come together with the administration and make something happen.

When you try to govern in secrecy, you are incapable, FEMA, energy, you know, education costs, all this stuff, there is no debate. It is just rule with an iron fist.

Right.

The end result is that chart you have right there behind Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It is the $3 a gallon in gas. It is the no vision for energy down the line. It is high tuition costs. It is health care costs spiraling out of control for how many years. That is the end result of the back-room deals that you are talking about.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Dr. Carol A. Cartwright, President of Kent State University. President Cartwright will be leaving from her position after serving the Kent State University for 15 notable years.

President Cartwright's commitment to community outreach and economic development extends throughout northeastern Ohio. President Cartwright has a vision to work cooperatively with the surrounding communities to unite academic, public health, business, and community groups for common goals and betterment.

One of the most impressive and lasting achievements of President Cartwright is Kent State's leadership in pulling together The North East Ohio Consortium for Biopreparedness, focusing on public health preparedness. The facility addresses health and safety issues through education, research and workforce development. Part of the center's overall mission is to educate the community on issues regarding public health hazards, infection control and bioterrorism preparedness. The Northeast Ohio Consortium for Biopreparedness is one of only two bio- safety laboratory training facilities in the United States recognized by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. President Cartwright's perseverance to advance biotechnology research has enabled the facility to address public health and protection concerns on a local, State and National scale. I would also like to commend President Cartwright for including the 910th Airlift Wing Command, University of Akron, Youngstown State University, Case Western Reserve, Summa Health Care System, North Eastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, and various other organizations in the Consortium.

President Cartwright has also strongly supported the Washington Program in National Issues, WPNI, which gives Kent State students a real-world appreciation for life and work in the Nation's capital. Each spring semester, Kent State sends 20 of its top students to intern on Capitol Hill, Federal agencies, associations and other organizations. In its 33rd year, the WPNI program is one to be envied by any other university in the country.

Kent State University and all of northeastern Ohio has benefited enormously from President Cartwright's vision, commitment and leadership--and she will be greatly missed.

In closing, I would like to congratulate President Cartwright on all of her astounding achievements during her 15 year tenure as President of Kent State University. I wish her the very best in all of her future endeavors.

So many of our constituents rely on travel to make a living. And I was talking to a gentleman last night who worked for a lab, who was doing a lot of traveling between the labs. And he is charging 30, 40 bucks a day, and that is just the cost of doing business. And trucking, you know, people in the trucking industry are having a difficult time. But average people, as you said, just trying to make a living and get to work, are having a difficult time.

I think this comes down to a couple of different issues, Madam Speaker. This comes down to leadership. And this comes down to, again, and I hate to say it, but the secretive way in which this administration and this Congress do business.

And the leadership, the President, here we are talking about alternative energies. How long have we been talking about figuring out how we are going to find alternative energy sources and what we are going to do and everything else? But yet this Republican majority has not been able to come up with any kind of vision. And the really terrible part was when the President was here for the State of the Union and he said we are going to come up with an alternative energy program that will cut in half by 2025.

To end our addiction to oil by 2025, if we get around to it, and it will only be in half. And there is not the urgency that I think our constituents are feeling right now. Let us do something. You have the ability as President, especially after 9/11. He could have marshaled our country and put us in another direction to say we want to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, we want to reduce the cost of gas, and we want to move in another direction. He could have done that because we were all ready to do whatever he wanted us to do. We would have walked to work. We would have rode bikes. We would have done whatever the President asked us to do. But he did not challenge us to do anything.

I have a Pontiac Vibe. You could not handle your kids in the little Vibe because I barely fit in the thing myself. I have to sit in the back seat and drive from the back seat so my legs fit all right. But, yes, exactly. It is that kind of lack of compassion, lack of understanding of what average people go through, a total disconnect; kind of like when the Vice President said a few years ago, conservation, that is a good personal virtue to have, but as a Nation it is not really a good policy. Wait a minute. It is not maybe the be-all, end-all, but it is a piece of this puzzle that we need to put together to figure out how we are going to do this.

And I think it is important for us to share not only the costs that you have there, and I will let you show that, but then I want to talk a little bit about back to 2001 when this whole thing was concocted and all this was happening. So go ahead.

When the average person hears that their tax dollars that they work hard to make and they send the Republican Congress down here to spend on Medicare and defense and all the other things, when they hear that $16 billion of that went to subsidize the oil companies when they have the highest profits that they have ever had, that is the outrage. And I think the American people are outraged. The Republican bobble-head Congress here who will say yes to whatever President Bush wants, I do not feel the outrage yet from them. And I think this is what our friend, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, said about the Republican Congress, that they are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that cannot function. This is what is happening here. When you have the leader of the Republican revolution that has turned into a devolution saying the government just cannot function, they do not know how to run the government, you are facing it every day at the pumps, Madam Speaker, and the American people are facing this every single day at the pumps.

I want to talk just for a second, because I thought it was interesting that the President said with great enthusiasm that he wants to hold the oil companies accountable. So, Madam Speaker, I have a suggestion. Now, let me share some information with our colleagues here. We have heard a lot about this too. When they were trying to decide what they were going to do for the energy bills years ago in 2001, the Vice President was having meetings that no one knew about, and he was having them with the oil executives, which should not surprise anybody, figuring out that the President and the Vice President both came out of the oil industry. So what has recently happened is that a White House document came out that showed that executives, and this is a third-party validator, this is the Washingtonpost.com, a great newspaper here in town. The White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with the Vice President's energy task force in 2001, something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials.

Now, here is what the document says, just so we can get into it. Because this sounds just like Katrina, this sounds just like the war, this sounds just like the Medicare bill, this sounds just like every piece of legislation that has come out of this Congress that the President has pushed. It has been done under a cloud of deceit, Madam Speaker, misleading statements to not only the United States Congress and Members of the United States Congress, but to the American people, Mr. Delahunt. But to the American people.

And let me share, as recently as just last week, this document that came from the White House, obtained by the Washington Post, shows that officials from ExxonMobil, Conoco before its merger with Phillips, Shell Oil Company, and BP America, Incorporated, met in the White House complex with Cheney's aides who were developing a national energy policy, part of which became law. So you would think, well, the Vice President's staff is meeting with BP Oil executives.

Last week in a joint hearing of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee, the CEO of ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConcocoPhillips said their firms did not participate, Mr. Delahunt, in the 2001 task force. We have got somebody telling us a falsehood, someone misleading us.

So if the President wants to hold the oil companies accountable, let me recommend, Madam Speaker, that people can be fined or imprisoned for up to 5 years for making ``any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation to Congress.'' So everyone denied they had anything to do with this meeting in front of a Senate panel of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and they were there, and we have got all these gas prices and we are wondering about price gouging and everything else, Madam Speaker, and the oil companies are saying, well, we are not price gouging. Well, you know what? Maybe we just do not believe you, because you have a track record here of misleading statements, secrecy. And it hurts me to say that people in Youngstown, Ohio are forced to foot the bill here.

``Mission accomplished.''

And the Democrats time and time again have tried to put provisions in place that we call PAYGO to try to limit the spending of the Republican Congress. They run away. They spend. They charge on the credit card. Many, many instances over the past few years.

Mr. Stenholm from Texas tried to put provisions in as we were raising, as the Republicans were raising the debt limit. He tried to put these PAYGO provisions in saying if you spend any more money, saying you have either got to raise taxes for somebody to pay for it or cut a program so we can balance the budget. Representative Moore from Kansas tried to put this provision in through an amendment to try to limit the spending. We have Members on the Democratic side who time and time again have tried to limit spending in the Congress so we do not keep borrowing from the Chinese, so we do not keep borrowing from the Japanese, the Arab countries who we are also buying our oil from, oil- producing countries.

We are trying to limit spending, but it is the Republican side who continue, Madam Speaker, time and time again to waste our money. The tax money that comes into this country time and time again goes out as corporate welfare for the oil companies, corporate welfare for the HMOs and the health care industry, time and time again.

And I want to share with the Members, Madam Speaker, a chart here that is based on the 2007 budget of how much interest, net interest, we are going to pay on the national debt. So all the money that Mr. Meek was talking about, all the money we are borrowing, we have got to pay interest on this money, Madam Speaker.

This is not a free ride. This is like a bank. You go to the bank, you buy a house, you borrow money. Then you have got to pay interest on it. You buy a house for $200,000. Well, you end up paying $300,000 for the house over the course of the years. It is the same thing that we are doing.

If you look at this chart, the big red tower that we have here is the interest, the net interest that we are paying on the debt. Almost $240 billion of the 2007 budget will be spent on interest on the debt. We are not paying it down. This is just interest payments.

And when you compare that to what we are spending on education or what we are spending on homeland security or what we are spending on veterans benefits, it pales in comparison.

So, Madam Speaker, the folks at home, Members of Congress have to ask themselves, would you rather have your tax money going to pay interest, which makes its way back to the Communist Chinese Government, the Japanese Government, OPEC countries, or would you rather have your tax dollars that come down here? Nobody likes to pay them, but it is like, well, if you are going to pay them, where do you want them to go? Would you not rather have that money invested into the educational systems in the United States of America? Would you not rather have that money focused for Pell Grants? Would you not rather have that money for Head Start?

We are not saying that we do not need reforms in the education system. We do. We admit that. But if you are spending money, and you are asking an American taxpayer, Madam Speaker, you make the decision. Mr. Meek, you make the decision. Would you rather have your tax dollars go to pay interest on the debt that will make its way back to the Communist Chinese Government, or would you rather have that money invested for educational opportunities for your kids, for you to pay less in tuition costs because we are able to fully fund the Pell Grants?

I remember going to school. I remember looking and seeing what my mom got back or got grant money that we got from the Ohio Instructional Grant, from the Pell Grant. That was a good deal of money to defer the costs of my college education. And because of that, Mr. Meek, we, my brother and I, we were able to go to college.

Mr. Meek, it is their money. It is the American people's money. They do not want it sent to Communist China to pay down the interest on the debt. They want it invested in the United States of America. They want this money put into our country, not put off and sent to the Communist Chinese Government so that they can start state- owned companies and basically take work from the American people.

The constitutional amendment in 1994 was a part of the Contract with America.

I want to say that this government run by the Republican majority is in complete disarray.

Inexcusable incompetence, my friend. Inexcusable. If you look, and I do not want to dwell on this, but if you look at Katrina, if you look at the lack of preparedness in FEMA, if you see a storm coming 5 days in advance, and you have the complete lack of competency to deal with the problem, that is an issue that this Congress needs to look at and needs to fix. If you look at all the promises before the war, day in and day out, we are going to use the money for reconstruction, we are going to be greeted as liberators, this is going to reduce the costs of oil.

All of these things that were promised never came to be. The Medicare prescription drug bill, the costs never came to be. It ended up being almost half a trillion dollars more than what the Republican Congress told us it was going to be. Time and time and time again, the tax cuts were going to create all these jobs.

None of this has happened. And now when you look at what is going on here with the gas prices, if you take what has happened since 2001, and you see that there has been no comprehensive energy policy in this country, and you see the end result 4, 5 or 6 years later, that is higher gas prices, reduced supply, which increases the cost for the average American consumer, when you add all this together, you see that the Republican Congress, as stated by former Speaker Newt Gingrich, is incapable of governing the United States of America.

They are too ideological, they are too tied to the special interests. They have the country going in the wrong direction, and it makes it more and more difficult for us to fix the problem.

Now, I think it comes down to one thing, my friend, and I appreciate your help. I think it comes down to one thing. It comes down to leadership. The Republican Party controls the House of Representatives. The Republican Party controls the United States Senate. The Republican Party controls the White House. They have been in charge of this government, this House, since 1994. Their leader, who led the revolution for them to come into power, is now saying they, calling them ``they,'' as my colleagues stated, they don't know how to run the government. It is total incompetence.

But, and I agree with you, I am excited too, Madam Speaker. I am excited because the American people are beginning to understand. Like you said, they got it that this country needs to go in another direction. We are borrowing money from foreign interests left and right, selling off pieces of the American dream, piece by piece. And average people in Youngstown, Ohio; Warren, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; and in Miami, Florida, it is harder now for them to go to work. Their budgets are getting squeezed. Their health care costs are up. Their gas costs are up, their fuel costs are up. Natural gas, whatever it may be, up, up, up, up, up; tuition costs, up. Everything is making it more difficult for families to make ends meet.

So the Democratic Party, we have a bushel full of plans now. I have noticed that we have got so many plans in our caucus that we have a bushel now, full of them, on homeland security, on education, on technology, and energy. You can go to our Web site that we will show later and find all of those charts, Madam Speaker. Members can look at all of the plans that we have.

I want to make one final point before I kick it back to my friend. This comes down to leadership. After September 11, and I am sure we all remember those difficult days, after September 11th, this country was united and the world was united behind the United States of America.

Even in Europe, at that point, there were European op-eds saying that even in Europe, my friends, they were saying that today we are all Americans. Today we are all Americans. We are such a far cry from that. But the important part was that our President at that point, Madam Speaker, had an enormous amount of political power, and the world was looking at our President.

If he would have asked us to walk to work, if that President, if our President would have asked us to ride a bike to work because we have to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we would have all done it. We were sending checks to every nonprofit organization because we wanted to give money. We were giving blood until the Red Cross said we do not need any more blood. The American people wanted to give, Madam Speaker. We needed at that point leadership. The best our President could come up with at that critical juncture, the most important moment in the history of the United States of America, was go shopping, Madam Speaker, go shopping. That is leadership? Give me a break.

Buy duct tape, get your plastic. Go shopping. That moment, if there was leadership in this country, that moment, Mr. Meek, we could have converted our economy over into all kinds of different alternative energy sources, and we could have done it in the next decade. But we lacked the leadership at that critical moment in this country's history, and that is a shame. That is something that you look back on and you regret that we didn't have the proper leadership at that time, and this Republican Congress was a bobble-head. Yes, Mr. President, yes, yes, whatever you say, yes, yes, yes. No leadership.

I am saying, Kendrick, that 5 years later when we see these increased gas prices, and the President stood here just a few weeks ago and said to the American people, we are going to reduce our American dependency on foreign oil by 50 percent by 2025.

Now, let me just suggest that if we can go to the Moon in a decade that we can certainly convert our economy over and become energy independent in a decade. It is not going to take 20 years. We can do it in 10 years. We need the leadership of this Congress, Mr. President, to do it. And it is obvious that you are offended, and I call them our friends, because they are on the other side of the aisle, are so tied to the special interests in the oil industry, the most profitable industry, that they are even giving them billions of dollars of corporate welfare, that they refuse to put significant resources and a significant commitment into alternative energy.

Where is the oversight?

What you are saying is it is an issue of priorities, and why do we continue to focus down in Washington, D.C., Potomac fever, the Republican majority continues to focus on how do we get corporate welfare to the oil companies? How do we subsidize the health care industry, all our friends who donate us billions of dollars? How do we give tax cuts to the wealthiest people?

If you made $10 million in 2003, Mr. Meek, you got a million-dollar tax break. That is where the focus is. And what we are trying to say here is that we need to focus on port security. So instead of giving a man or a woman who made $10 million in 2003 a million-dollar tax break, we want to spend that money protecting our ports.

You have Japan.

That is right.

And it was another example of lack of focus, lack of leadership, lack of priorities. And look what our friend says again, our guy, Mr. Gingrich, who I like.

And the father of the Republican revolution. He said, on March 31, ``He noted that a congressional watchdog agency recently smuggled a truck carrying nuclear material into the country to test security. Mr. Gingrich says, `Why isn't the President pounding on the table? Why isn't he sending up 16 reform bills?' ''

This is the father of the Republican revolution asking the President, why are you not a good leader? That is what he is saying. Why aren't you leading the country? Focused on oil subsidies? Focused on corporate welfare? Focused on subsidizing the energy companies? Not focused on Katrina. Not focused on the war. This administration has attention deficit disorder of immense proportions, Madam Speaker. They can't focus.

Get this country on the right track. Let's focus and let's get the country moving in the right direction.

Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. All of the charts that you have seen here or have seen in the past will be available on the Web site.

But it is important, Mr. Meek, and I appreciate your vigorous defense of what the Democrats have done and what we want to do because we do have an agenda. We have a bushelful of ideas over there that we want to implement, and we need to state this pretty clearly.

Article I, section 1 of the United States Constitution creates the House of Representatives. We are directly elected. You cannot be appointed to this body by anybody. So the American people speak here. When we get in, we will balance the budget. We will get rid of the deficits over time by restricting spending in certain areas, eliminating the corporate welfare, and asking someone who made $10 million in 2003 to actually pay their fair share.

We don't believe that profit is a dirty word, but we also don't believe that we should go borrow money from China to give the wealthiest people in our country a tax credit.

We will invest this money into reducing the cost of higher education. We will make sure that the least among us have health care and have a roof over their head and have food, which is a pretty basic necessity.

And let me just say, before I kick it to you for one last comment, if we are going to be able to compete with 1.3 billion people in Communist China and over a billion people in India and billions of people around the world, we have to have all 300 million of the citizens in our country on the field playing. Right now we are going on with about a quarter of the team, and they have got the referees and 1.3 billion and 1 billion.

We need to make investments in America. We need to put America first. And we need to make sure at the end of the day that we are guardians of the public tax dollar, and so we need to invest that money back into the United States of America that will yield us value for generations to come, just like the GI bill did. The greatest investment we ever made was the GI bill. Let us do it again and get the country on the right track.

I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to praise the passage of H.R. 3127, The Darfur Peace and Accountability Act of 2006. As I was regretfully absent at the time of this vote, I now take the opportunity to affirm my resolute support of this act.

``The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.'' These words, spoken by Thomas Jefferson, come to mind as I consider the current situation in Darfur, Sudan. In a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced and left millions hungry, the United States can remain idle no longer. I stand with my colleagues in the House in support of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act and would have voted for the resolution if I had been present.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

I think that we are starting to see, every single day in the news, and we don't need to bring up all the different topics, but every single day over the course of the last couple of years, we have seen the dismantling of the credibility of the Republican majority.

The party that came in saying they were going to balance the budget, gone. The party that came in and said they were in charge of real security in the United States, gone. Smuggling in nuclear material. The party that said that they were going to get the economy up and moving hasn't happened. All of the promises pre-war, none have happened. None. The party that said America first, well, Mr. Meek, you have the beautiful poster, beautiful in the sense that it illustrates the point of where this Republican Congress is borrowing their money from. That is not America first. That is not taking care of home. I mean, we have got to get back to the basics.

And so every single day this Republican majority and this President are getting dismantled day by day by day in news accounts from people who work, underlings who have diminished the credibility of this administration. They have Republican generals coming out talking about how this has been such a foolhardy effort, and how the execution of the war has been an atrocity, how Katrina just fell apart right before the country's eyes on all of the cable news channels and on the network news channels.

And now, my friend, we have the father of the Republican revolution. I yield to my friend to talk about that because this it is one thing for Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Tim Ryan from Ohio, Mr. Meek from Florida, it is one thing for us to be critical. It is not just us. I yield to my friend.

Can I make a point?

The point I want to make is one that we have made many, many times here, is that this outfit, on the other side of the aisle,

has for the last 14 or 16 years run down government. The only problem in society is government.

And so, when it comes to Katrina or comes to a war and you actually need government or education, you actually need government to work on behalf of the American people, all of a sudden it doesn't work. And it doesn't work because you have disrespected it for the last 14 or 16 years. You have appointed people to positions that are not qualified to actually run it.

And I think what we see here, with the Defense Department and Secretary Rumsfeld and the Pentagon and the way they have executed the war has been atrocious. Katrina, you have people who are not qualified to run the emergency management system in the country. And you get the kind of results that you have talked about. You get what you think about it. If you have a good attitude about things, good things will happen. Run it down, you get crap. And that is basically what has happened.

I yield to my friend.

Well, I just want to say what we are spending our money on, instead of spending it on the Pell Grants, this is what we are spending it on, just the interest on the debt that we have been talking about, and this is what we are spending on education.

We have got to balance the budget, implement these PAYGO rules that say that you are not going to spend any money in this government unless you know how to pay for it. And you are not going to go out and borrow it. We tried to do it with H. Con. Res. 95, couldn't do it. Zero Republicans voted to put PAYGO rules on to reign in spending. We tried it again with roll call vote Number 91 on March 25 of 2004. Dennis Miller tried to do it in Kansas. Charlie Stenholm tried to do it. Democrats have tried to reign in spending here in the United States Congress by putting these PAYGO rules in, Mr. Meek, by putting these rules in. And no Republican, ladies and gentlemen, we had a huge vote today and the Republicans kept talking about we are reigning in spending. Baloney. We have tried to put these restraints on time and time again and no Republican, not one, tried to implement these rules.

I yield to my friend from Florida.

www.housedemocrates.gov/30something. All of the charts that folks see here tonight, Mr. Speaker, can be accessed on this website. www.housedemocrats.gov/30something.

Madam Speaker, the father of the Republican revolution is now saying it has turned into a Republican devolution, with $3 trillion in increased debt since President Bush has been President. This Nation owes $8 trillion-plus, with $27,000 per citizen that they owe back just for the national debt. And this money is being borrowed from foreign interests, the Japanese, the Chinese, and OPEC countries.

We are selling off our country piece by piece, Madam Speaker. Borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend. This President, with the Republican bobblehead Congress that just can't say no to the President, has borrowed more money from foreign interests than every previous President. Madam Speaker, that is an atrocity. That is an assault on the American people.

The father of the Republican revolution says it has turned into a devolution and that this government cannot function. Madam Speaker, it is time for new leadership. It is time for the Democrats to take charge of this House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order for 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, as Mr. Kucinich said earlier, we are continuing our Delphi E-hearing here, which we are going to share with the House of Representatives and the American people, stories that have come from families who are being affected by the shake-up in the auto industry in the United States of America.

I come from a district in Northeast Ohio, Youngstown, Akron, Warren, home of the original Packard car, the original Packard Electric Company. I would like to share a few stories and make a few comments, Mr. Speaker, because today not only do we have a concentration of Delphi employees in my district, today the local General Motors plant that has been in Lordstown, Ohio since the late 1960s, there was an announcement that 1,200 third shift employees would no longer be working at that facility, and it is tragic news for many, many families. And so we want to bring attention to the United States Congress and to the American people about the communities that are being affected and how the policies here under the big dome aren't exactly addressing the needs.

Let me share with you, Mr. Speaker, a couple of stories from back home. This is a letter. First of all, thank you for letting me voice my opinion. I hope someone will actually read this. I was hired in at GM, Lordstown, in January of 1971, with the negotiated promise that if I came to work for General Motors, I could retire after 30 years of service. It was always said as GM goes, so goes the country. ``And I challenge all of you to look back and think of when you were young and innocent. My God, what has happened to the USA? You have the chance to stop this injustice, this rape of the American worker in its tracks. I pray that God give you the courage and wisdom to do the right thing. And isn't that what it is all about, doing the right thing? God help us all.''

That is Stephen P. Medici in Lordstown, Ohio.

This is William Ruppel in Cortland, Ohio. ``I was in the infantry in Vietnam in 1968. After going to college for a while, I was hired at Delphi Packard Electric in September of 1973. After working there for a while, we agreed in one of our contracts to an attrition. For every three people who retired, the company only had to replace one. This was to help the company's costs and to afford a decent wage. Next came the movement to Mexico. The jobs would first come to us. We would work out the kinks, and then off to Mexico they would go.

Delphi, Packard Electric's 146,000 employees working for them outside the U.S. is just about exactly how many troops we have fighting in Iraq. Who is more important? Are these men and women who are supposedly fighting for democracy and fairness going to have their wages cut 60 percent, health care and pensions cut, or maybe have no job at all? I was in the infantry in Vietnam in 1968 and I support and sympathize with these brave people.

Do the rich ever get rich enough?''

``I just read where Delphi wants an extension on the reorganizations,'' said Charlie Stowe from Warren, Ohio. ``This is not fair. I want a 30-year extension on my pension.''

``With no support,'' this is Jean Wooler. ``I have worked for Delphi Packard Electric for 38 years. It has allowed me to live a good middle class life and to raise my daughter with no support from her father. My daughter is now 21 and in college. I do not live lavishly. I have a 3- bedroom ranch and a nice car. I don't dress extravagantly. I live paycheck to paycheck as a single mother on the wages that I may make.''

Mr. Speaker, in closing, let me just say that data has come out now that the Bush tax cut has lowered the tax burden on the richest people in this country. If you made $10 million a year in 2003, you got $1 million back, Mr. Speaker, from the Bush tax cut. And if your average income in this country was $26 million, you paid the same share in taxes as someone that made $200,000. We need changes, Mr. Speaker.

We have to talk to this guy. I just want to make a point because I am for tax cuts if they go to the right people, if they go to the middle class.

I couldn't believe we had other people citing this, but today in the New York Times an analysis finally came out that talked about the 2003 tax cut. What this says is that among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million annually, their investment tax bill, just for the investments that they made, was reduced by $500,000 so they got $500,000 back, less in taxes, and total savings for someone who made $10 million a year was $1 million from the Bush tax cuts and the Republican bobble-head Congress who said yes, Mr. President, deficits do not matter. We can borrow from foreign countries to foot the bill for this.

We don't have money to give a guy or woman who makes $10 million a year, we do not have the money to give them a million dollars back. We had to go out and borrow that million dollars.

I just want to point this out. This is publicly held debt. Tax cuts are given to a fellow, a woman who makes $10 million a year giving a million dollars back in taxes. We do not have it so what do we do, we go out and borrow it. This is the publicly held debt by China. It had quadrupled under President Bush. In 2000 it was $62 billion. In 2005 it was $257 billion. We are borrowing money from the Chinese to give a person in America who makes $10 million a year $1 million in a tax cut.

Now somebody come down here and explain how that is a good thing for our country because the money that they get, that $1 million, they are not investing it in Delphi stock. They are not investing it in General Motors stock, they are not investing it into the United States of America. They are investing it in China.

About 6:30, 7:00 this morning my e-mail goes off. I pick it up. The third shift at a General Motors plant that I have in Lordstown, Ohio, the third shift is being eliminated, and 1,200 United Auto workers, nothing is official, but the third shift is being eliminated and 1,200 people will be out of work. Those are average people in the United States of America that are making $60,000 or $70,000 a year, paying taxes and trying to send their kids to school and we are giving a person who makes $10 million a year a $1 million tax cut. That makes no sense to anybody except the Republican majority.

Just save the transactional cost.

I appreciate that, and I wish the Republican majority would start putting the country before their own political interests. It seems that time and time again they have chosen the loyalty to their own party.

We have got a nice third party validator here. The former Republican Director of the Congressional Budget Office, who was talking about the borrow and spend Republican Congress, he said, Budgeting is about making choices, and this period the Bush presidency and Republican Congress is one that shows a complete absence of that.

They do not have to make any choices. Why? You get the credit card out. But let us take your analogy one step further. You have got the credit card. You are going to Europe, but you are living paycheck to paycheck. Who ultimately suffers in that little family scenario there? The kids. Because there will not be money for education. There will not be money for the health care bill, and they will become a burden on the rest of society. All the way down the line the ripple effect goes.

And as Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman Schultz were saying earlier, this is what they are doing. They have increased the debt limit in the United States by $3 trillion, trillion with a big fat ``t.'' In June of 2002, May of 2003, November of 2004, March of 2006, total over $3 trillion, this Congress raised the debt ceiling that would allow the Secretary of Treasury to go out and borrow money from all the countries that Mr. Meek showed. Time and time and time again.

I just want to reiterate the point that Ms. Wasserman Schultz made, and that point is this: The Democrats, whether it is port security or pay-as-you-go, time and time again we tried to restrain, pull in this Republican Congress, get yourselves under control.

And I know, Mr. Rothman, you were probably in the committee when these amendments were being offered time and time again by Mr. Obey, not once but twice, by Mr. Spratt and the Budget Committee, by Charlie Stenholm when he was here. The Democratic Party was trying to say if you are going to raise the debt limit, you had better put some restraints on the runaway spending that these Republicans have gotten into a very bad habit of doing over the past 4 or 5 years. This is ridiculous. We are sacrificing the future of the United States of America, selling it off piece by piece, diminishing opportunity for our kids and our grandkids, and at the same time just spending money like it does not matter. Let us be responsible in the United States Congress, Mr. Meek. Mr. Speaker, let us be responsible here. We have a solemn oath that we swear to when we come into this Congress. One of the great honors is to be in this Chamber. Only 10,000 people have actually served in this body. Let us take the responsibility seriously.

And one final point, like Mr. Meek said, we have a responsibility. And people may grumble when we walk by them in the hall, and they may look at us a little cross eyed because we come down here every night, but we have an obligation to the American people. And if we have got to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, then so be it. And I have a lot of respect for the people on the other side of the aisle, and many of

them are our friends, but we have legitimate differences here.

And I would say this to my friends, Mr. Speaker: You have borrowed $3 trillion from foreign interests, raised the debt ceiling, cut funding for education, and you gave tax cuts to people who make $10 million a year. You have given them $1 million back. Do you expect us to sit up in our office and go to the little refrigerator and get out a Diet Dr. Pepper and a bag of Cheetos and just sit there and watch VH-1 in our office? No, we are not going to do it. We are going to keep coming down here until the American people get the message.

Can I intervene here for one second because I am thrilled with everything that is happening here. But I came down here to listen to Mr. Delahunt a little bit.

Madam Speaker, I think the gentleman makes a great point. America is not the only country with really, really rich people. There are wealthy people in every country. The difference in America is that we had a strong, vibrant, energetic middle-class of people who worked as of last night on the third shift at the GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio. That is what makes America America, and that resolve to go back and say we want everybody on board here, at least to have the opportunity; not to give the top 10 million people who make $10 million a year a tax cut, $1 million back, but to

create that middle-class again and the economic environment that would do it.

I want to do one-third party final validator. The former speaker the House, Mr. Gingrich, the leader of the Republican Revolution in '94. He said the Republicans, they are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.

As my friend from Florida so eloquently put it earlier today on the House floor, it is scary when the head of the Republican Revolution is referring to his friends on the other side of the aisle as ``they.'' I think that is a tremendous point.

Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something, Madam Speaker. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something for e-mails that folks may want to send to us. All these charts that were available here tonight, Madam Speaker, are available on this website. I thank everyone for the vigorous discussion.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay homage to the Right Reverend Monsignor Sylvester Hladky, a humble lifelong servant of the Catholic Byzantine Church, pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church, and permanent papal prelate.

Born in 1909 in Brooklyn, NY, Sylvester Hladky knew very early that a life of service was for him. After serving his country for 3 years in the United States Navy, the Monsignor was ordained from Saint Joseph Seminary in Edmonton, AB, Canada in 1936. As a young priest, then- Father Hladky spent his time working in Ukrainian mission churches at Fisher Branch, Poplar Fields, and the Indian reservation areas of Manitoba. Following these assignments, Father Hladky was then assigned to mission churches throughout Ontario, to include Welland, Grimsby, Saint Catharaines, Brantford, Kitchener, Thorold, and Niagara Falls. After serving in the Byzantine Ruthenian Eparchy of Pittsburgh, Father Hladky was made the pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church in Struthers, OH.

Father Hladky came to Warren, OH, in August 1945, where he was the pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church on School Street. The parish grew from 30 to 300 families. After leading a building fund campaign, the parishioners purchased property for the construction of a new church and rectory. On Christmas Day 1950, Father Hladky celebrated the first divine liturgy in the new church.

The father dreamt of a parish school where students would receive an academic education, as well as a spiritual one in the Byzantine tradition, and, in 1954, purchased a home to be used as a convent by the Benedictine Sisters who arrived from Lisle, IL, to teach. Construction of a school began, and in 1957, Saints Peter and Paul School opened with 10 classrooms and an auditorium, later adding 16 more classrooms for high school classes.

In 1961, on the 25th anniversary of Father Hladky entering the priesthood, he was appointed dean of the Youngstown Deanery. By 1965, he was named a monsignor, and later, in 1975, he was made a right reverend monsignor. Pope John Paul II named him a permanent papal prelate.

From 1968 to 1996, Monsignor Hladky also served as president of the Greek Catholic Union Tribunal. The monsignor and his parish were instrumental in helping the Benedictine Sisters of the Byzantine Rite to establish an independent monastery in Warren. In 1990, the parish erected a 46-apartment residence near the church for elderly parishioners.

After a short illness, the monsignor passed away on March 7, 2006, at Saint Joseph Health Center in Warren, OH.

In the book of Matthew, chapter 16, verse 18, the Lord said to his disciple, Simon, ``and I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not overcome it.'' Just as Simon was the rock upon which the Christian faith grew and flourished, so was Monsignor Hladky the ever-present and ever-faithful rock upon which our homes, communities, and families grew and also flourished. Mahoning Valley citizens of all faiths pray for Monsignor Hladky and his parish, because this faithful and dutiful servant of God was truly a blessing and we are grateful to have had him touch our valley so.

Can I interrupt here? It's tough to tell that she is a Gators fan tonight, isn't it?

Will the gentleman yield?

You know, before I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida, you can't convince me that we can't do something about this. I can't be convinced of this. Proper investment. We can go back, GI Bill, space race, you know, we, as a country, transcontinental railroad, we had a program, we had a plan that we would invest back into the United States of America. And now we know it is not the transcontinental railroad. Now we know it is not the space program, at least to the extent it was.

But what is it now? Is it business incubators? Is it math and science graduates? Let's figure this out. Is it high speed rail?

What isn't it?

We have got to get past the rhetoric. Let's get past the words. Words, words, words, no substance.

This is Bush's Congress. This is President Bush's Congress.

I am offended that they are not offended. That offends me that they are not offended offended.

That is about $16,000 a year even if it was adjusted accordingly; right? Eight bucks is about $16,000 a year.

``They.''

Who is with them?

We have seen tears shed on this floor.

I think the whole thing is that is missing here, I think time and time again, there is one little general theme, and I think the former Speaker sums it all up for us in that same article. He noted that a Congressional watchdog agency recently smuggled a truck carrying nuclear material, and we talked about this last week a few nights, into the country, smuggled a truck carrying nuclear material into the country to test security. This is a direct quote from the former Speaker.

``Why isn't the President pounding the table? Why isn't he sending up 16 reform bills?'' Now, nuclear materials snuck into the country, and there is no one really even talking about it in the Republican House, the Republican Senate or the White House right now.

All we are saying is, and we come here every night, sometimes two or three times a week, to basically say there is no leadership in Washington D.C., Mr. Speaker.

The Democrats in this House want to step up and take the lead, because, quite frankly, not only us, you couldn't do any worse than this outfit does. We have plans for security, comprehensive plans. We have plans for innovation, plans for job creation, plans for health care. We have an agenda ready to implement for this country, including balancing the budget. But, time and time again, everything is rubber stamped. The bobblehead Congress. ``Yes, Mr. President. Yes, Mr. President. Yes, Mr. President.'' At some point you have to stop and say, hey, wait a minute. The country is going in the wrong direction.

I think what we need to do here the last 15 minutes or

so that we have, I think we need to tell the Speaker of the House and the other Members what we are going to do when we get in.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

Because time and time again, how many debates have we had on the floor over the past several years? No one on the majority side, Mr. Speaker, has been able to explain to this House or the American people how this is somehow good. Somebody explain to the Speaker of the House and somebody explain to the Congress how increasing the debt limit by $3 trillion is good. Is it good for the economy? Is it good for the next generation? Who is benefiting from this? Nobody, except foreign countries. This is bad. This is bad for the American economy, this is bad for job creation, this ends up raising the burden for the next generation. This is terrible. Since the President has been in, June of 2002 raised the debt limit $450 billion. May of 2003, $984 billion. November of 2004, $800 billion. And get that poster ready, Mr. Meek. March of 2006, $781 billion. $3 trillion debt limit increase.

What we have been trying to do over the past so many years consistently and constantly, amendment after amendment after amendment, the Democratic Party has offered and we have it all here, you will be able to go to our Web site and see these charts: In 2006 budget resolution, we offered to put pay as you go, that you are not going to spend any money unless you get it somewhere else or cut it out of a program and pay for it. Democrat, Mr. Spratt, offered that amendment. Zero Republicans voted for that. Rollcall vote number 87 March 17, 2005. 30-Something's aren't making this up.

They found the votes to raise the debt limit. Mr. Spratt again offered the 2005 budget resolution, H. Con. Res. 393, rollcall vote number 91, March 25, 2004, right here in black and white. Republicans, how many voted to put spending under control, reign in this Republican Congress? Zero.

We are tired of the rhetoric, Uncle Bill.

You cannot do it at home, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

They are taking advantage of their power, and it is hurting the country. June 17 of 2003, Mr. Obey tried to increase port security, which is another huge issue we have been trying to do here. $500 million. And we will go through all this. All these charts will be on our Web site, Mr. Speaker, for other Members to access and find out. We have tried consistently to increase funding for port security, and we will pay for it. We have tried to rein in spending. Republican Congress will not let us.

We need the American people to give us a chance to lead this country. We want it. Put us in, Coach. We will put the PAYGO back into effect. We will rein in the spending that the Republican Congress that they think they can cut taxes, borrow money, and spend at levels unprecedented. And I am sure many of you saw the USA Today yesterday. I am sure you made it past the sports section with the recap of the games and everything. The Federal Government spending is outstripping economic growth at a rate unseen in more than half a century. The Federal Government, quote, is currently spending 20.8 cents of every dollar the economy generates, up from 18.5 cents as one White House budget document shows. It is not our documents, it is White House documents. That is the most rapid growth during one administration since Franklin Roosevelt.

Now, what happened to this outfit that came in in 1994 that said they wanted a balanced budget amendment, they wanted to make government smaller, spending it like drunken sailors, get this government under control, make it nimble and efficient and address the needs?

With all the technology and ability to communicate in the 21st century, we cannot even respond to a storm we know 5 days in advance is coming. It is ridiculous, and this country deserves better. We should not expect this comedy of errors that we get from FEMA and Halliburton and everybody in Iraq. It is a comedy of errors, and we need to get things straightened up here.

Gingrich is saying send up reform, lead, do something; this government cannot function. This is not just us. This is Mr. Gingrich saying the same thing.

That is the job. That is the job. That is the responsibility that we have here of oversight.

And it is because the President does not want any oversight, and the Republican Congress says, yes, Mr. President.

As we wrap up, I would suggest that over the course of the next few months, Mr. Speaker, the American people will not get an answer from the leadership on the Republican side about what why the debt limit was increased by $3 trillion, why we are borrowing billions upon billions upon billions and even trillions of dollars from foreign countries, selling off. You will not hear a good answer, reining in spending, the most rapid spending growth during one administration

since Franklin Roosevelt. This is the outfit that wanted to have a revolution.

Mr. Speaker, www.housedemocrats .gov/30something for those Members. All the charts that were up tonight are on the Web site, www.housedemocrats .gov/30something.

Enjoyed it. Go Gators.