Floor Statements

Thank you, my friend. One quick piece of business that has been mentioned several times here today is the countdown to the Bush prescription drug tax.

Now, for those Members who do not remember, the Republican Congress voted this boondoggle a few months back, told us it was $400 billion before we cast a vote on it, and it ended up being $700 billion. The real number was actually hidden from Members of the United States Congress before they voted.

What happens is through this bill seniors have until May 15 to sign up for the prescription drug plan, and if they do not sign up by May 15, they are going to be penalized with the Bush prescription drug tax, which means that there will be an increase in monthly premiums by 1 percent for every month they do not sign up. So if they do not sign up by May 15, they will not be eligible to sign up, I think, until January of 2007 to begin again. That means there will be a 7 percent increase if seniors do not sign up by May 15.

This is a complex plan, a complicated plan; and we are rushing and forcing our seniors to make a decision. So we just want to put a little X here on Thursday, March 30, a couple days before the Final Four begins, so our seniors know that the countdown is on and

they have several weeks before this President will levy a tax on them.

This is President Bush's Congress.

This is his Congress. They toe his line.

Bobble heads.

You are exactly right. Article I, section 1, of the United States Constitution creates this House of Representatives. It does not say we are going to have a king. It does not say we are going to have a President. That all comes later. Article I, section 1, of the Constitution creates this body, and when things get so turned around that this body is rubber stamping everything, this is President Bush's Congress. They have done every single thing that he has asked and everything that is supposed to be up is down statistically, and everything that is supposed to be down is up.

Now, since President Bush has been in and President Bush's Congress, they have raised the debt limit by $3 trillion. Basically what happens is the CEO, the President, the Treasury Secretary, they come to Congress; they come to the board of directors and say, hey, we need to go out and borrow more money for the business. So the Congress time and time and time again says, sure, keep going, we will not even ask any questions as to where you are spending it.

They raised the debt in June of 2002 by $450 billion; May of 2003 by $984 billion; November of 2004, $800 billion; and just 2 weeks ago, we did it again by several hundreds of billions of dollars. Almost $9 trillion is the limit the United States can go and borrow.

As the gentleman from Florida said, we are borrowing it from the Chinese, the Japanese, OPEC countries. Can you imagine, we are going to the oil producing countries to borrow money? Are they not getting enough of our money right now? I think they get plenty of our money, Mr. Speaker.

Now, what did the Democrats try to do to stop the insanity? We have a little provision here that was implemented in the early 1990s, and it basically said if you want to spend money, you have got to go find it somewhere. You have either got to raise revenue or you have got to cut spending from another program in order to bring it into balance. It is called pay-as-you-go, just kind of like you do at home.

Right.

That is a great point, and I thank the gentleman.

So, in this Congress, the Democrats have tried to reimplement this pay-as-you-go system because Bush's Congress, Bush's House, Bush's Senate, President Bush, they got rid of the PAYGO requirements. They said we did not need them anymore, and the Democrats, time and time, you know, we hear a lot about, well, what is the Democrats' plan? This is the Democratic plan: We want to implement PAYGO rules back into the United States Congress to rein in this spending. John Spratt from South Carolina, our ranking Democratic member on the Budget Committee, tried to put a substitute amendment in on the 2006 budget resolution, and that amendment failed. Zero Republicans voted to reimplement the PAYGO rules.

We tried again with another Spratt substitute amendment, H. Con. Res. 393. I am not making this up. This happened. It is in the Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker. The Members can go and look and check it out. It failed 194-232. Zero Republicans voted to reimplement the PAYGO rules.

Mr. Thompson from California tried; Mr. Stenholm, a former Member from Texas, he tried. Mr. Moore from Kansas, he tried. We have been trying to implement fiscal restraint on Bush's Congress, and they refuse to accept it time and time again.

Now, the funny part about it, and not really funny ha-ha, just funny peculiar, is that this is the same outfit that campaigned in 1994, Mr. Speaker, that they were going to pass a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution. They wanted to enshrine balanced budgets into the U.S. Constitution and make a constitutional amendment. Now, 12 years later, they are the most fiscally irresponsible group that has run the show in the United States Congress.

Time and time again, when Democrats have tried to rein in spending, we keep butting our heads up against the Republican majority, President Bush's bobblehead Congress that just continues to say ``yes'' to every single thing that they do.

I remember, too, my good friend from Florida, time and time again we heard about how government needs to be run like a business. And you know what, put me in. Sign me up. I agree. I think it should be run like a business. But when you apply this scenario to a business model, we are the board of directors, the United States Congress, and the majority in particular. The President is the CEO. So if the CEO keeps going back to the board to say, hey, we want to go borrow more money, the board should at least ask some questions, like, Where are you spending it?

And when you hear where they are spending it, in Iraq a $1.5 billion a week, and then Halliburton, who is getting the contracts in Iraq, is inflating prices and has been fined already for inflating prices, basically bilking the taxpayer, Mr. Speaker, is what that is called in laymen's terms; yet there is no oversight. Where is the $9 billion dollars in Iraq. Where is it? You got it. No, I don't. You don't have it? He's got it. Wait a minute, I don't have it. Nobody knows where it is, $9 billion.

This is not an operation that is being run like a business, especially in Iraq. Then we look at what happened when Katrina hit. That operation, FEMA, was certainly not run like a business, because you don't put a horse lawyer in charge of an emergency management operation. That is the bottom line. You put people in who will respect the operation and respect what needs to be done.

So if all this is happening, we've got to make some changes. And if it is General Motors, the American people do not have a vote as to who is on the board or who is the CEO of the company. But, fortunately, my friend, in the United States of America, the American people have the opportunity to pick a new board, and in November of 2006 the American people are going to have an opportunity to pick a new board.

It is the next President's issue.

Here is the choice, my friend. The American people will have a decision to make. We can either go and keep following President Bush down this unknown path, that I don't even know sometimes if the President knows where we are going as a country, or we can change course and we can go in a different direction than President Bush's direction. Because that direction, as you have seen, has led to more borrowing from foreign interests than the previous 42 Presidents.

We are not making this up. That is from the United States Department of the Treasury. And when you look at the interest payments that we have to pay just on the interest, and here is a great example, Mr. Speaker: for the 2007 budget, we will spend about $230 billion just paying the interest on the money that we owe all these other countries.

So if China loans us money, they loan us the money and then we send them the interest. So China takes the interest and invests it back into their state-owned companies and wipes out the manufacturing base in the United States. That doesn't seem too smart. That is President Bush's direction. The Democrats want to take the country in another direction.

So $230 billion out of the 2007 budget is going to go just for interest. Wasted money. Flush it right down the toilet, `cause it is done. Then what are we going to spend on education? Fifty billion. We have $230 billion on the interest and $50 billion on education. You know, 10 or 15 on homeland security, and a pittance, just a little more than that, on veterans.

You know, President Kennedy said: ``To govern is to choose,'' and this is the choice that this President makes. The Bush Congress continues to reaffirm with their rubber stamp time and time and time again. So all we are saying is what we want to do is we want to change direction.

I personally would like to stop following the President, because I have seen his track record, and I don't want to follow him. It is just like any leader. You are with them, you want to be with them, but over time they build a record, and this Republican Congress refuses to break free from what the President is doing here. And this is President Bush's Congress, my friend.

Mr. Speaker, you have to be tough, there is no doubt about it, but you have to be smart. What we are doing now is not smart. We talked earlier about the debt and deficit and everything else we have now. In 1993, a Democratic House, Democratic Senate and a Democratic President balanced the budget in the United States. It led to the creation of 20 million new jobs. The Democrats know how to govern.

We had an incident in the late 1990s with Bosnia. General Clarke, a Democrat; Madeleine Albright, a Democrat; President Clinton, a Democrat; we went into Bosnia with a coalition of countries around the world to help us stop basically what we said was happening in Iraq. We went in there, and we did not lose one American soldier. The Democrats know how to administer governments, and the Republicans, quite frankly, do not because the numbers do not bear it out. The budget is ballooning. They have raised the debt ceiling by $3 trillion. They are borrowing money from Japan, China and the OPEC countries, and whoever else will loan them money. The deficit next year is projected to be about $500 billion. Tuition costs have doubled in the past 4 or 5 years. The gap between the wealthiest people in our society and the poorest people in our society has grown to a point we have not seen since pre-World War II, and Iraq is a mess. $1.5 billion a week. We are losing soldiers every day, and there is absolutely no end in sight. We did not go in with enough troops, and whether you supported the war or not, you want to make sure that you succeed, for God's sake.

Mr. Speaker, we have not seen the rebuilding effort in Iraq that we need to see in order to get out of there.

From a security perspective, we need to be tough; we need to be smart. We need to have our act together, and we have a comprehensive plan. You know, these bumper-sticker solutions to complex world problems do not work. They just do not work. They have gotten us into the situation we are in now.

If you look at the plan that the Democrats have, we talk about 100 percent of the ports. Right now, we are only inspecting 5 percent of the ports here. The Democrats have tried. Let us get those charts out about all of the amendments we have offered to try to increase funding for port security.

We only check 5 percent of the cargo coming into the United States ports. That means 95 percent is not checked at all because of the failed leadership on behalf of President Bush's Congress.

What have the Democrats tried to do? Some people ask: What are the Democrats doing? Here is what we are doing.

In June of 2004, Mr. Obey tried to put on an amendment right here in Congress to increase port and container security by $400 million; Republicans refused to even allow a vote. That was for $400 million, and we need $6 billion worth to actually do the job. That is what the Coast Guard says we need. We only asked for $400 million, and could not even get a vote on it.

October 7 of 2004, another amendment by Mr. Obey, Mr. Sabo and Senator Byrd to increase funding by $150 million. That was shot down.

We kept trying, we kept going. On September 29, 2005, Mr. Obey, Mr. Sabo, increase funding for port and container security by $300 million. The House conferees defeated this amendment along party lines. Democrats for, Republicans against.

Again, March of 2006, Republicans blocked an effort by the Democrats to bring the King-Thompson port deal bill to the floor.

Again, Republicans voted against the bill. Time and time and time again, the Democratic minority tried to get President Bush's Congress to support these deals, to support increases in funding so we can get it from 5 percent to 100 percent. We should check all of the cargo that comes into the country. So that is one issue. We need to check the ports. Okay? But there is not one little bumper sticker we could say we are going to have, we are going to put it on all our cars, then the problem is going to be solved. That is just one component.

We believe, in the Democratic Party, that if we do not have a long- term alternative energy proposal where we are going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we will continue to be in these squabbles and these entanglements in the Middle East, time and time and time again. So the Democrats want to fund the ports. We have made efforts to do that. We want an alternative energy program. We need to get the oil man out of the White House in order to do that. And not only are we trying to take on the oil companies, the Republican majority in the energy bill gave the, check this out, gave the oil companies $12 billion in corporate welfare. So not only are your gas prices going up; your public tax dollars that you send to Washington, D.C., the Republican majority is also giving that to the oil companies on top of what you are already giving them.

The first day we take over, next January, we will implement the 9/11 Commission's report, make sure we put that thing front and center and we do what the bipartisan commission has told this country that we need to do.

The COPS program that you mentioned, our first responders, that program is gone. It is gone. President Clinton had a goal of putting 100,000 cops on the street. And the Republican Congress has almost nearly eliminated that program, if it is not all gone already.

So what we are saying is, real security is an opportunity for all of us to have a comprehensive plan, implement the 9/11 Commission's report, make sure that we secure the ports and fund the funding level that the Coast Guard recommends, not Kendrick Meek and Tim Ryan, what the Coast Guard recommends. Let's develop an alternative energy policy in this country so that we are not reliant on oil from the Middle East that gets us entangled in all of this stuff. And let's make sure we fund our police and fire and our first responders, the first line of defense here.

So be tough, but be smart and make proper investments that are going to yield value and protect the country, not where did the $9 billion go that we are spending in Iraq that no one knows where it is.

Be happy to yield.

Prevention.

Just like you get your food, just like you get the toys that shipped to the local store that you are going to buy, same thing. Those all come in through the ports.

Now, here is what is interesting, Mr. Speaker. And I think this is something that really makes your ears perk up when you hear about this. On March 28, just a day or so ago, Senators said that a report, this is from Bloomberg News, Senators said a report that investigators smuggled enough radioactive material to build two dirty bombs into the United States called into question the Bush administration's efforts to secure the borders.

Now, check this out. A sting operation that was described in one of three Government Accountability Office reports, now this is the GAO, this is not a partisan deal, said, they released a report. The report accused the Bush administration of being slow to deploy equipment that would detect radioactive materials, and they say corrupt foreign border officials and poor maintenance of detection devices have left the U.S. vulnerable to terror plots.

Enough material for two dirty bombs to go off in the United States was snuck in by, you know, through a sting operation that we were trying to figure out what is going on. We are not doing enough.

Now, third-party validator, which the 30-somethings like to promote. We don't want this to be all our opinion here. This is from a retired Coast Guard commander who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He says: ``Both the opportunity for terrorists to target legitimate global supply chains remain plentiful, and the motivation for doing so is only growing. We are living on borrowed time.''

We are not here to scare anybody, but the reality is, when you only check 5 percent of the cargo coming into the country, and your own folks are sneaking in enough nuclear material to set off two dirty bombs, and we are giving tax cuts to billionaires and not funding port security, when we are giving $12 billion in corporate welfare to the oil companies, when we are giving billions in corporate welfare to the health care industry, and we are not funding our national security priorities, when we are spending a billion and a half in Iraq a week, and $9 billion of it no one can find, and we have these kinds of situations, we have an obligation. When we come here the first part of every second year and we swear our allegiance to the United States and the Constitution and everything else, we have an obligation to oversee what is going on. So we have an obligation to come down here and be critical of things like this and provide solutions, which we have time and time again.

Now, President Bush's Congress has not taken any of our recommendations, and they are up for a job review in November; and I hope that the American people, Mr. Speaker, take a good look at what has happened over the past 4 or 5 years and hope that our plan on real security, which you can find on our Web page, housedemocrats.gov, you can get the whole deal and you can see our comprehensive plan to try to do this.

You can also check out our plan on innovation, how to get the country moving economically again. Periodically, we will have unveilings of different ideas that we have. But we have tried on port security. We have tried on PAYGO. We have tried on school funding and we continue to get shot down by President Bush's Congress. So we have got the plan; we just need the opportunity to implement it. For Members who are in their offices and would like to send us e-mails or anyone else, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. All the charts that were here that we used will all be on the Web site so you can go back and reference them all.

Yield to my friend.

Before we go, I know you have a Florida team in the Final Four this weekend, and I want to wish you the best of luck.

I hope you guys pull it off. Since there is no Ohio team, with a good conscience I can root for Florida.

As you are talking about the interest on the debt, we have got to get the money from somewhere; and as we show, night in and night out, here on the 30-something group, we are borrowing a good deal of this money from China. And this is what has happened since President Bush took over, Madam Speaker.

In 2000, we borrowed $62 billion from China, and in 2005 it grew exponentially to $257 billion that we borrowed from China. So this is significant in so many ways, as the gentlewoman from Chicago, from Illinois stated, that we are paying the interest on the debt. And that is money that is not going to education. That is money that is not going to homeland security. That is money that is not going for health care, veterans, whatever the case may be.

So that is bad enough, but we are borrowing it from China, so now we are paying them interest on money and they are taking that and putting it into their state-owned companies and hurting American manufacturing and a lot of American small businesses that I am sure are in your district, as they are in mine. And all we are saying is, this is a competitive global economy. We can't have this disadvantage here of where we are going to borrow the money and they are going to take the interest out of the American economy and pump it back in, so they are winning twice.

If the gentlewoman would yield, I think the great example that we have used here a million times is Katrina.

We have a ton of snow, but no hurricanes. The fact that this government had days to prepare for Katrina and couldn't figure out how to do it. Now, we are talking about something that may happen that we will not have 5 days' notice to plan for it. It is difficult for us to understand, but this needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed immediately.

Because the fact of the matter is, the American people were counting on us. Our first obligation here is to make sure that we are protecting the American people and to have 95 percent of the cargo not inspected, I think, is a dereliction of duty on our part. I will be happy to yield to our friend.

Well, you have two beautiful young daughters waiting in the cloakroom for you.

One of the issues, too, is we are talking about this. We now have evidence where a recent report coming into our hands, through the United States Senate, that investigators smuggled in enough radio active material to build two dirty bombs into the United States, which calls into question this administration's efforts to secure our borders.

I would be happy to yield.

This isn't, Mr. Delahunt, and Mr. Meek, saying we are going to run a sting operation to check the ports and see how the borders are. This is the Government Accountability Office. This is their report, and they were able to sneak in, through the northern border and the southern border, enough radioactive material to build two dirty bombs in the United States of America.

We are not here because we want to pick on anybody.

I would be happy to yield.

I want to comment. This is the same article, from the GAO report, again, a third party validator, not from the 30- Something Group.

This is a Blumberg news article. Thank you.

This quote is from a retired Coast Guard Commander who is now a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Steven Flynn. ``Both the opportunity for terrorists to target legitimate global supply chains remain plentiful and the motivation for doing so is only growing.''

We are living on borrowed time. And all we are saying here is that the strategy from this administration is wrong. You cannot convince me, Madam Speaker, that we could not marshal the resources of the United States of America and focus this country's energy on the equipment, the technology, the research that needs to be done to develop the newest technologies, and put them where they need to be, you cannot convince me that we could not do that, Mr. Meek. You cannot convince me that the United States could not do that.

What we are saying here, and we are not here to pick on anybody, we do not want to hurt anybody's feelings but it

seems that the end result can be tragic. And you know what, there may be a situation where we do do all we can and it may not be enough. But to sit here and see this haphazard garbage, lack of focus, this administration has the worst case of political A.D.D. we have seen in a long time and it is hurting the country.

Madam Speaker, last week, we had an opportunity, Mr. Sabo from Minneapolis-St. Paul offered an amendment in this House to add over $1 billion to port security, homeland security, in the supplemental, and it got shot down on pretty much a party-line vote.

Time and time again, the Democratic Party has offered amendments in committee to increase funding for homeland security, and the majority side, time and time again, shoots down those amendments to add additional funding. But if it comes to giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country, they are all standing, saying we have got to go for it, but if we need an extra $1 billion for homeland security, everyone heads for the hills, and they hide under the seats.

Here's a list, June 17, 2003, Mr. Obey from Wisconsin, increase port and maritime security by $500 million. Republicans defeated the amendment on a party-line vote.

June 24, 2003, another amendment by Mr. Obey, increase port and maritime security again by $500 million. We are not even addressing the problem. I mean, $7 billion more we need, $6- or $7 billion more just to address what the Coast Guard is telling us we need. Mr. Obey is only asking for $500 million, Madam Speaker. Republicans block consideration of that amendment by a vote of 222-200. That is Rollcall vote 305, Madam Speaker, and this other one was in the House Report 108-169, page 97, for the Members, Madam Speaker, who would like to look it up.

We are not making this up. You people want to know what the Democrats want to do? We want to increase funding for port security, and the Republican majority will not let us.

September 17, 2003, Mr. Obey, Mr. Sabo and Senator Byrd tried again to increase funding to enhance port and maritime security, $475 million. Guess what happened, Madam Speaker. Republicans defeated this amendment on a party-line vote. You want to know what the Democrats want to do, Madam Speaker? We want to increase funding for port security by half a billion dollars.

June 9, 2004, another amendment by Mr. Obey of Wisconsin in the Appropriations Committee to increase port and container security by $400 million. We are not asking for an arm and a leg here. We are still $6.5 billion away from where we need to be, but we are just trying to chip away. Throw us a bone. Help us out. We just want to get moving in the right direction here. What happened again? Republicans defeated the amendment on a party-line vote, House Report 108-541, page 128. Go look it up.

I am quite frankly tired of hearing that the Democrats do not have an agenda because every single day in committee, no matter what committee it is, Appropriations Committee, Armed Services Committee, Education Committee, Homeland Security Committee, we are trying to get things done, and the Republicans block us every single time. This is what the Democrats want to do and we are getting blocked.

I appreciate that. And you know, as we are beginning to wrap up here, I think it is important to make this point, because I am sure you did, and you guys have experienced this too. There is a certain level of frustration that I have because I feel like our generation is getting dealt a pretty bad hand here.

As you just showed, we are mortgaging off our future. This is public debt held by China that has quadrupled. We went over that earlier in the evening. The debt limit has been increased by $3 trillion just since President Bush has been in, $450,984,800 and recently almost up to, almost up to $9 trillion in publicly held debt.

The war, I mean, this administration is strapping our generation with debt, with war, with lack of investment, with increased tuition costs, increased energy costs, millions of our fellow citizens without health care. This administration and the Republican Congress is dealing our generation a pretty bad hand.

And I started telling a lot of these student groups that come in and out of here, we go to schools and talk, hey, it is going to be our generation's responsibility, our life's work in this Congress, or wherever we may end up, to try to fix this mess. And that is exactly what it is.

I yield to my friend.

As we wrap up, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something.

All of the charts, Madam Speaker, that we used here tonight are on this Web site for the Members to review and check out.

And again, in closing, before my friend wraps this up, I think again this administration, this Republican Congress, has really put the next generation behind the 8-ball with the war, with the debt, with the income inequality that has not been at this level of separation of the richest to the poorest since before World War II, and all the other issues we talked about. And I think it is unfair to do that to the next generation.

America has always been about making the next generation better. And, hopefully, with our advice and counsel, this Republican majority will take that and move forward.

If I do not get a chance to tell you guys, Go Gators.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and its Goodyear blimps, which are celebrating their 80th anniversary as international symbols of American culture and innovation.

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, headquartered in Akron, Ohio for over a century, launched the first Goodyear blimp, the Pilgrim, in 1925. Since then, the company has built more than 300 of these graceful aerial giants, including numerous airships in a partnership endeavor with the U.S. Government to assist in military surveillance activities.

Although Americans are probably most familiar with seeing the Goodyear blimps at sporting events, during World War II, the Goodyear blimps protected American ships and armed forces while escorting convoys and task forces across the Atlantic Ocean.

Today, the Goodyear blimps support national and local charities every year, helping secure millions of dollars in donations. Perhaps even more important, the Goodyear blimps help federal and state emergency service agencies and victims of national disasters.

For all of the above, and in many thanks to a distinguished American manufacturer, I am proud and honored to recognize the extraordinary contributions Goodyear blimps have made to our nation.

Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here. We have a lot to talk about again, as we wrap up another week of business here at the Capitol.

There are a lot of issues facing our country, and I had a lot of meetings this week on different issues: education, folks in about manufacturing, about the local economy and the problems that they are having with pension and health care.

I think if you look at what is happening in the country, you will see that most Americans either intellectually or in their gut realize that the country is going in the wrong direction.

So our plan tonight, as we come here several nights a week, is to try to let the American people know that we are moving them forward.

One of the issues that I think is a fundamental issue that we have in the country facing us is the issue of balancing the budget here and making sure that our country pays its bills. The Republican majority has not been able to get themselves together in a comprehensive way, as you said, to try to balance the budget here in the United States.

I want to just make a point here, and we have got several charts I think that are pretty powerful in illustrating this point.

The Republicans have increased the debt limit, Mr. Speaker, by $3 trillion, $3 trillion. This Republican Congress, Mr. Speaker, has said to the Treasury Department, go ahead out and borrow that money. In June of 2002, increased by $450 billion. In May of 2003, increase of $984 billion. In November of 2004, $800 billion, and we have an increase coming that is going to probably come in the next couple weeks of another $781 billion. Over $3 trillion this Republican Congress has okayed for the Treasury to go out and borrow because this Republican Congress does not have the fiscal responsibility or the discipline to rein in spending.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, just as you were saying, this is what you were saying: only 5 percent of the cargo coming in is inspected. Mr. Speaker, our source on this one, our third-party validator on this one, is Fox News. So that is where we are.

Now, here is the recommendation from the Coast Guard. Their own estimates, this is the U.S. Coast Guard and I know you have a Coast Guard, probably more than one facility, down in Miami, in the intercoastal for sure, but this is what the Coast Guard estimates that they may need, $7 billion in order to secure and meet their obligations through the Transportation Security Act. Here is what Congress has appropriated, $900 million, not even $1 billion. We need to be here. Here is where we are.

Now, what have the Democrats tried to do? We have been very aggressive and assertive and proactive in trying to make sure that we meet the obligations to protect and secure our own ports. This is just a laundry list. I am going to run through them real quick here.

November 28 of 2001, Dave Obey from Wisconsin tried to put $200 million in grants for port security and studies. Republicans knocked it down 216-211 in a party-line vote.

April of 2003, another Obey amendment for $722 million to increase security. Again, 221-200. All the Republicans prevented us from increased port security.

Again, Democrats, June 17 of 2003, Obey again, $500 million, shot down, party-line vote.

June 24 of 2003, Obey again, Republicans blocked consideration of that amendment by a vote of 222-200.

All of the Republicans are voting to prevent the increase in funding just by a few hundred million dollars. It is not like we want to even say we are going to go for the whole $7 billion that we need, but we are trying to slowly increase the funding for this so we can make sure that we are protecting our ports.

Again, in September 17 of 2003, Obey, Sabo and Senator Byrd tried to increase funding to enhance ports by $475 million. Republicans defeated that amendment on a party-line vote.

Again, June 9 of 2004, Mr. Speaker, again, again and again; June 18 of 2004; October 7 of 2004; again and again, September 29 of 2005, $300 million, again shot down along party lines. March 2 of 2006, again.

Mr. Speaker, we have a real problem here because it seems that every time that the Democrats want to increase funding even marginally to protect our ports, there is a Republican party-line vote that prevents us from doing that. That is what the Democrats are trying to do.

That is our plan.

And it is not just the war, Mr. Delahunt.

It is the war intelligence that no one here has asked any questions on. It is what is going on with the ports. It is the amount of borrowing that we are doing; this $3 trillion in new debt this Republican Congress and the Republican Senate and House and White House has incurred on the American people and, just like in our own houses, we have to pay interest on that debt, that money that we borrow.

What we are having happen now, because of the reckless and fiscally irresponsible behavior of the Republican majority, it is impossible for us to make the kind of investments that we need to make here, Mr. Speaker. Every single family fundamentally understands the importance of education; yet here is what we have to fund because of all this borrowing. We pay this much on our interest on the debt, not even buying the debt down, but just paying the interest on it, Mr. Meek. We have to pay almost $230 billion in the 2007 budget.

These little blocks down here, these are the investments that we have to make in education, in homeland security, for veterans. Look how small they are compared to the interest on the debt.

Yes. Yes, if this money could be distributed to these other priorities.

Yes.

Yes, these are our priorities as a country. And we can stand here and talk about port security, and we can talk about education all we want, and we can talk about what investments we need to make in alternative energy sources, and we can talk about the Democratic plan for innovation, research and development tax credits, broadband in every household, Mr. Speaker, in 5 years.

In 2007 it will be almost $230 billion, with some interest.

Japan.

If the gentleman will yield, that is powerful, very powerful stuff. I mean, that is good. And in addition to what the gentleman from Massachusetts said, the point is that it is not conservative to balance the budget. It just is what it is. You just do it. The Democrats did it in 1993 without one Republican vote. President Clinton got in with the Democratic House and a Democratic Senate and balanced the budget, Mr. Meek. That is just what you do when you take your oath, when you swear to uphold the Constitution and preserve, protect, and defend the country.

Part of preserving, protecting, and defending the country is making sure we balance the budget, Mr. Delahunt.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, this means that we already are not meeting our obligations. That already means that the financial constraints that the Republican majority has put upon us already is forcing the Secretary of the Treasury to not put money in to meet the obligations of the Federal employment retiree program.

That is the first step.

He must have faxed it.

Borrow and spend.

This President has not vetoed one spending bill, not one. So to say Congress needs to get its act in order, Congress is spending and the President is okaying it. Then the President puts his budget, and this Republican Congress gets out the rubber stamp, all at the expense of the next generation who are going to have to borrow and pay interest on this money to pay it back. Ultimately at the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, it weakens the country.

Communists.

At the same time, my friend, the Republican majority is borrowing and spending and borrowing and spending. They are not borrowing it from Sky Bank in downtown Warren, Ohio. They are not borrowing it from National Citibank.

They are borrowing it from these other countries. And at the same time, at the same exact time, Mr. Speaker, this Republican Congress has given $6 billion in corporate welfare to the energy companies, primarily the oil companies, which are having their most profitable quarter, one after another, one after another; $22 billion to the health care industry, Mr. Speaker. Corporate welfare.

So what the Republican majority is doing, my good friend, is they are borrowing money from the Japanese, the Chinese, and OPEC countries; and they are then taking that money that they are borrowing and then they are giving it in corporate welfare to the most profitable industries in the world. And at the same time, tuition costs go up, local property taxes go up, no investment into after-school programs, the significant kinds of investments that we need to allow our kids to be competitive in a global economy.

All of this money that we are borrowing, we have got to pay interest on it. And if we pay the interest on it, that means that we cannot spend that money in other areas or give it back, in fact, to the taxpayer maybe in the form of a tax cut so there may be some middle class people.

For a change, instead of giving it to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who themselves say they do not want the tax cut. Bill Clinton, who is making millions a year, we do not want the tax cut; make the proper investments.

From all the borrowing and spending and borrowing and spending that the Republicans have done, Mr. Speaker, this is the interest on the debt for 2007: $230-some-odd billion. Of the tax money that the American people will send down here, 230 billion of it will go to those countries that Mr. Meek mentioned to pay off the debt service. Meanwhile, education, homeland security, and veteran spending will be reduced here, here, and here.

Now, what the Democratic plan is is to make sure that we ask the Warren Buffets of the world to pay their fair share, make the proper investments in the broadband research and development tax credit, and grow the economy so we can reduce this payment, and we can make sure that we properly fund and invest in education, homeland security, and veterans.

Now, if you want to just look at what we could do, my friend, if we did not have to pay that interest on the debt, the red bar, what would we be able to do with it? Sixty thousand kids we could enroll in Head Start to make sure that they have health care so they could be healthy, productive, educated citizens. Every single Member of Congress would get $1 million a day for their congressional district, $365 million for you, $365 million for me, $365 million for all 435 Members. Could you imagine what you could do in your district with $365 million a year to spend if we did not have to pay that interest on the debt? Your schools; your transportation issues; your ports; the Coast Guard, which I know is there in the intercoastal; health care. Almost 80,000 veterans would be able to get health care, improve Social Security solvency by $.5 billion. This is what we can do, my friend, when the Democrats take over. We will be able to move ourselves in this direction. Will it be a panacea? No. Because we have got a big mess to clean up when we take over this place.

But, Mr. Speaker, time and time and time again, the Republican majority went out, borrowed money, and spent it on corporate welfare for the most profitable industries, whether it was health care or whether it was the energy companies. Time and time and time again. And one of the provisions that the Democrats have tried and tried and tried to get on, we need a structure in which we could contain the reckless spending of the Republican majority, and what we have tried to do is put an amendment on bills that say if you spend money, you cannot borrow it. You either have to go and raise it, raise revenues somewhere, or you have to cut it out of another program so it is deficit neutral.

Mr. Spratt, our leader on the Budget Committee, tried to put these PAYGO, pay-as-you-go, rules onto the 2006 budget resolution. It failed. Not one Republican voted for it. That is rollcall No. 87, March 17, 2005. I am not making this up. This is right in the rollcall. We wanted to put controls on spending. Republicans voted against it. Again in the 2005 budget resolution, Mr. Spratt tried to do it again, rollcall vote No. 91, March 25 of 2004. Not one Republican voted to contain the spending and put the pay-as-you-go rules on.

We also have been trying to do this for years now. For years. Mike Thompson in California tried to do it. Charlie Stenholm of Texas tried to do it. Dennis Moore of Kansas tried to do it. What are the Democrats for? We are for balanced budgets, and the proof is in the pudding. The proof is in the Congressional Record, because we have tried to do it time and time and time again, and every time we have been shot down by the Republican majority.

So we are trying to contain spending so that we could reduce our debt payments so that we could take that money and provide broadband for every citizen in the country in the next 5 years, to have a strong, sufficient research and development tax credit, to encourage spending, investment, into innovative programs. We have a plan, and we know what we want to do.

www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. Drop us a line.

You cannot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

OPEC countries in order to fund the corporate welfare.

Bingo.

He is a CPA.

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

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

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

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

And trillion with a T.

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

Why did you borrow money from OPEC?

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

You cannot make it up.

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

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

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

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

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

Three hundred million dollars.

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

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

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

He didn't even know about it.

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

No, if he said it, it is true.

It is what they want.

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

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

Time and time again.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I think the point was, and we were all campaigning during the initial vote for the war. But I remember making the argument as I was campaigning, as I think a lot of other Democrats were here in the House, instead of going off to war, the alternative was, now we are spending a billion and a half dollars a week in Iraq, I think one of the alternative proposals was to fund this stuff, take care of the Nation's security, take care of the ports, make sure that we have enough people to do the kind of real inspection that we think needs to be done instead of spending the money elsewhere.

And when you think about it in a logical way, that this money is going to be spent to hire American workers to protect America, it makes a lot of sense.

I just want to make this point too, Mr. Speaker, that, you know, we are not saying that when the Democrats take over in January that all of a sudden we are going to inspect every single ship that comes into the United States of America. That is not what we are saying.

But what we are saying, first is because we are going to have to start balancing the budget and start plugging a lot of the holes that the Republican majority will have left us to clean up, what we are saying is, 5 percent of the cargo coming in is a small amount.

And when the Democrats are in charge, we want to refocus our efforts on port security and make a little bit more of an effort. So it may not be 100 percent, but we are saying that it is a priority for us to make this kind of investment.

I know you are getting on a roll.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to make a point here. The last chart that we had up said that the Coast Guard is saying they need a $7 billion increase in funding. Now you are reading these amendments.

That is right. Again this is a third-party validator. This is from the Federal Register. Coast Guard estimate to implement the Maritime Transportation Security Act, how much money do we need to protect ourselves? $7 billion.

What has the Republican Congress appropriated? $900 million, .9 billion. So we have got a long way to go here as you can see. So as Mr. Meek is going to start reading this stuff, Mr. Speaker, this is billions.

Democrats were trying to put amendments on that were like $150 million. We are not even trying to increase it all that much. But we are saying we tried a billion. We tried $500 million.

You are making a strong point here, Mr. Meek.

When you think about the $16 billion in corporate welfare that we have given to the energy companies; when you think about the billions and billions and billions of dollars in subsidies we have given to the health insurance industry through the prescription drug program that has been a total debacle, you will see that what the Democrats are saying is that we have a better plan.

We will not give $16 billion to the oil industry, the most profitable industry in the world, Mr. Speaker. We want to spend that money prudently, in a fashion that best represents the interests of the American people. And that is what we have been trying to do as Mr. Meek went through, Mr. Speaker. Amendment after amendment after amendment, the Democrats and the minority tried to attach to the majority Republican Party's bills. And we tried to get September 29, and you can get all of this, and we should put all of this on our Web site so everyone can see Democrats have tried and tried and tried to get increased funding for homeland security and for the protection of our ports, whether it was Mr. Obey from Wisconsin, Mr. Sabo, Senator Byrd, Mr. Obey, Mr. Sabo again and again and again. All throughout.

This sheet goes from 2001, 2003, 2003, 2003, 2003, 2004, 2004. Time and time again the Democratic Party has tried to get amendments on spending bills that would increase funding for port security by $100 million, by $500 million, by more if we could try to plug this gap.

Again, I just want to make this point because we are not demagoguing this issue. What we are saying is 95 percent of the cargo coming into the country is not inspected. All we are saying is it should not be 5 percent. Should it be 90 or 80 or 70 or 50 or 40? It should be certainly something more than 5 percent, and all we are saying is we are giving corporate subsidies to the oil industry, giving corporate subsidies to the energy companies, giving corporate subsidies, totally, billions and billions and billions, to the health industry. You are giving tax cuts to Bill Gates, and this is going on.

So Democrats, Mr. Speaker, want to say let us increase this gradually as we are able to balance the budget and hopefully make investments in this. You are going to hire American people, hire American worker, protect the country, send a signal across the world that do not even try it, okay. That is the bottom line.

I think it is important for us to say, Mr. Speaker, to the Members of this chamber that this is brinksmanship now with the debt ceiling. We are on the line here, and Secretary Snow, and I do not know if you went over this before.

March 6 sent a letter to John Spratt who is our ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee. Today, it was reported in the Associated Press the Secretary told Congress yesterday in this letter, the administration is taking, quote, all prudent and legal actions, end quote, including tapping certain government retirement funds. Now they are tapping retirement funds to keep from reaching the $8.2 trillion national debt limit, and in the letter to Congress he said that we need to raise the debt ceiling immediately to avoid the first government default on its obligations in U.S. history.

If this outfit hasn't gotten us into a real predicament, I don't know what a predicament is. If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we are going to default on our obligations. The United States of America, Mr. Speaker, for the first time in our history.

I would be happy to yield.

So let us look at this. We talked about two things basically tonight. We talked about the ports and the debt ceiling. On the port deal, to try to increase spending, the Democrats offered, I don't know, a dozen different amendments to try to increase funding from U.S. ports, and each time the Republican majority shot our idea down.

We had ideas. We offered solutions. The Republican majority, Mr. Speaker, shot us down. Ms. Wasserman Schultz just talked about the pay- as-you-go system, where if you pay more for a program, you have to find money somewhere. You have to raise revenue or cut spending, but you have to pay for it so we don't have to borrow from all these foreign countries.

Former Member Mr. Stenholm offered an amendment to try to implement PAYGO rules into the budget process. Mr. Thompson from California tried to do it, Mr. Moore from Kansas tried to do it, and Mr. Spratt tried to do it on numerous occasions, to implement pay-as-you-go rules to try to constrain the reckless spending from our Republican colleagues, Mr. Speaker. And in each instance, Mr. Meek, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, it was the Republican majority who said we will not accept fiscal discipline, we will not accept increased funding for our ports; and the Democrats were the party offering the ideas and offering the amendments time and time and time and time again to prevent this from happening, where we owe Japan $682 billion, we owe China $250 billion, and we owe OPEC countries, Mr. Meek, $67.8 billion.

Now, that is a shame. And I don't like that. And I don't think the American people like that.

I yield to my friend.

Thank you. Thank you.

Job openings.

Mr. Speaker, www. House Democrats.gov/30something. That is www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something. Members of Congress can go to this Web site and access all of the charts, see our third-party validators, and see why we are so alarmed at what is going on here in our Nation's capital.

I yield to my good friend, Mr. Meek.

Madam Speaker, our friend Mr. Davis is on the Budget Committee, and I think when he talks about you are preparing a substitute right now, what the Democrats are going to do when we are in charge, Madam Speaker, we have a track record already, and Mr. Meek has the statistics, and we have the charts here.

Mike Thompson from California offered a vote on pay-as-you-go to make sure everything we spend money on was budget neutral, so we did not go into deficit. Charlie Stenholm, when he was in office, offered it. Republicans voted against that, and voted against Mike Thompson's bill.

Dennis Moore of Kansas offered a pay-as-you-go amendment to a piece of legislation that got shot down. Every Democrat voted for it. Every Republican voted against it.

Mr. Spratt offered amendments within our budget that we were providing to try to amend the budget resolution, on two occasions, in March of 2005 and again in March of 2004. Zero Republicans voted for this.

So when Mr. Davis says this is what the Democrats are going to do when we are in charge, that is what we are talking about here, making sure you pay for your bills as you go along, not this reckless spending.

He is not a king, Mr. Meek.

If the gentleman will yield, I thought it was very interesting when our friend talked about trust. I couldn't help but see earlier our friends, the Truth Squad, and they were talking about all the spending increases and spending increases, all borrowed money. All of it is borrowed. And it is not having results. We are talking about results. We are talking about having an impact.

And as my friend, Mr. Davis, said, who I just enjoy being around him. I mean he is good.

I want to be friends with you.

I am friends with him.

But the point that he made, Mr. Meek, talking about their saying, trust us; and Republicans say that the American people should trust them. But we have a history here that says we have trusted you and you have misled us.

You misled us with the facts of the war, you misled us on the economy, you misled us on the results of what the tax cuts would be, you misled us when you said government was going to be smaller under your reign, you misled us when you said government would be more responsible under your reign. It has failed time and time again.

I have two images in my head, Mr. Meek, about the real incompetence of the Republican majority to be able to run government. I have a picture of 11,000 trailers that are sitting in Hope, Arkansas, in the mud right now that cost the taxpayers $300 million that are sitting in the mud, and we still have people that are not in their homes in the gulf coast. That is a government that does not work.

And what the Democrats are saying is that we have solutions to this. We are not going to participate in cronyism and the lack of responsibility and responsiveness on the Republican side for not providing any oversight to all this.

Then we have the administration come out and say they didn't know anything about it, but memos leak out, and we find out they knew about it. Now, all of a sudden we get videos that are out saying that the administration knew exactly what the threat was and what would happen yet still not being able to respond.

That is the bottom line. The people of this country, Mr. Meek, want a responsive government. It doesn't have to be big, and in today's society, government should not be big, but it should be responsive, effective, efficient, nimble, flexible, able to change with different scenarios as the scenarios change and as society changes.

Our Republican friends, and I mean that sincerely because I consider many of them friends, they just lack the ideas to try to move the country forward. So it is not anything personal, it is just that they do not have the ideas, Madam Speaker, to move this ahead.

What the Democrats offer, and this is the thing, Mr. Meek, for us personally, definitely in the 30-somethings, and I know our Democratic friends believe, profit is not a dirty word. Profit is good. Greed is bad; profit is good. We want more profit, because that means more people are going to get hired. But in the end, our friends on the other side, on the Republican side, cannot put forth an adequate reform agenda that will move the country forward.

All we have to do, Mr. Meek, is look at what the budget looks like right now. Look at what the budget looks like right now.

Getting ready for New Year's.

Cabbage and sauerkraut.

Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Meek. It's trillion.

Wrong.

It is a big typo.

Unbelievable.

Mr. Meek, will you yield for one moment?

I just want to let the Members know according to the Department of Treasury, again, third-party validator, the OPEC designation includes those countries, what is it, $65 billion?

Okay. That is what we have borrowed from them. Iran, Iraq, Libya, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Bahrain, Ecuador, Oman, Venezuela, Qatar, Nigeria, Kuwait, Indonesia.

I said Iran and I also said Iraq. I also said UAE, which has been in the news lately. But I just wanted to clarify for you.

Iran, all the nuclear issues, all the conflict and controversy, we are borrowing money from them to finance the Republican spending spree that is rewarding their wealthy contributors.

Them, along with a lot of other countries, yes.

Be happy to yield.

We are not done yet.

Well, let us do this here. This is the debt increases that you were referring to in the letter. Already, this President, and this Republican Congress have raised the debt ceiling, which means this country can now go out and borrow more money from the countries that Mr. Meek was talking about.

June 2002, this Republican Congress okayed raising this debt ceiling by $450 billion. In May of 2003, $984 billion increase in the debt ceiling. November of 2004, $800 billion, raising the level of the debt ceiling again. And then the pending increase, $781 billion increase in our debt ceiling. That is a total of $3 trillion, $3 trillion that this Republican Congress has okayed, Madam Speaker, and will go out and borrow from the countries that Mr. Meek just spoke of.

Now, real quick, of that increase, since 2001, this country has borrowed $1.18 trillion, which is signified by the blue bar there on the far left. Of that money, of the $1.18 trillion, $1.16 trillion, the orange bar is foreign debt borrowed from foreign countries. And over here, this bar, you could barely see, Mr. Meek, that is domestic borrowing. So of all these, of this debt of the money we are borrowing, it is almost 100 percent from foreign countries. Piece by piece by piece.

It is not just the ports. It is not just the ports, Mr. Meek, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It is our future. It is this country that is getting mortgaged, and we have to pay interest on that.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I yield to you to talk about that.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

And in addition to the money that we could be investing, and those are all investments, those are paying our Head Start, a million per Congressional district that is going to get spent on health and education and pushing it into our future making sure that we keep our promise to our veterans who we have promised that we would provide health care for.

But at the same time, when you balance the budget, you keep interest rates low. And we notice now how interest rates are starting to creep up every few months another quarter point, quarter point, half. It keeps going up. We want to balance the budget here like President Clinton and the Democratic Congress did in 1993 without one Republican vote, Madam Speaker, without one Republican vote, balanced the budget. Interest rates stayed low, and people went out and borrowed and invested in the economy.

So it is not government's job to go out and create work. We have a responsibility, and one of the things is to keep the budget balanced, keep interest rates low, and then allow that money to be borrowed by the private sector, so people can go out and make a profit and hire people and put that money back into the economy.

Be happy to yield to my friend.

I think, at the end of the day, this is symbolic of what is happening in all these other areas that we talked about tonight. It puts a face, so to speak, on what is happening, that Mr. Meek talked about, all the foreign borrowing, the deficits and everything else. Now, it is like, well, it is our ports, my goodness gracious. Well, that is just the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately.

As we have been saying for a long time in the 30- something group, we have got to try to convince, Madam Speaker, the Republican majority to start putting the country before their own political party, and I think we would be okay.

The Web site, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something, Madam Speaker, for all the Members who want to access this. All the charts that you saw here tonight, Madam Speaker, are accessible on this Web site for Members to access.

To my friend from Florida, I thank you for the opportunity to be here with you.

Well, that has really been the problem here. And I thank the gentleman, and I want to congratulate you, as your partner down here at the 30-somethings, for your recent election to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation as their chairman; and I want to congratulate you, only in your second term to receive that distinguished honor. But I agree with you 100 percent.

I would be happy to yield.

Wait a minute. He did not yield to you.

He did not yield to you.

Well, you are our guy.

But back to the reason we are here, the issue of ``trust us.'' And all we have to do, really is look at the facts. And I really believe that the Republican majority, they may believe that they are actually doing the right thing. I do not think there is any malice. I do not think they hate people. I do not think they are bad people. Many of them on the other side are our friends.

What I do argue, Mr. Speaker, is that the Republican Party is void of any knowledge about how to execute government. And I believe they do not have the ideals necessary to advance this government and this country in the 21st century. They just do not have them. They are just stuck, I think, in an era that no longer exists. Their old phrases no longer apply to how society is today. And so all they have, quite frankly, Mr. Meek, is to say, ``Trust us.''

But when we look at Katrina and the fact that there are 11,000 trailers sitting in Hope, Arkansas, worth $300 million that are now in the mud because they did not know how to deliver them or they did not know where they went, or they did not know where they should go, meanwhile people are still homeless down there. That means you do not know how to administer government.

When you start a $700 billion prescription drug program and you do not allow for any kind of negotiation down of the drug prices, that means you do not know how to execute government.

When you lose $9 billion in Iraq and you get a Three Stooges routine that, you got it, I mean you got it, I mean Curly got it, no one knows where $9 billion is, it is just example after example after example that this outfit does not know how to execute government.

And when you have spent, as the Republican majority has, the last 10 or 15 or quite frankly, since President Reagan, running down government, it does not work. Government is the problem. And then you actually need it, and the outfit who hates government doesn't know how to execute it in a way that is meaningful.

I will be happy to yield.

And I just want to say to the gentleman, one, how much I agree with you. And two is we are not saying that government is the only answer in many situations. It is not. In many situations it needs to get out of the way. Maybe it does need to be a bit smaller. But it has responsibilities, and certain responsibilities are not being met under this administration because of an utter and total disrespect for government in general, and this outfit comes with the same old ideas that are not applicable today, and this is the kind of execution of government that you get. You get 11,000 trailers in Hope, Arkansas, with nowhere to put them.

We have missed you.

And a lot of what they were trying to say, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, was how were we to know. We found out they did know.

They were warned. And then not only were they warned, but they were spread out all over the country saying our responsibility is to execute this particular agency at this particular time and we should all be here. That is a level of incompetence that I think is unsurpassed.

How many times do we hear from our friends on the Republican side that government needs to run like a business, it needs to be flexible and this and that? This is an atrocity. This business would be bankrupt if you ran it the way we are running FEMA. If that was a business, it would be bankrupt. The war in Iraq, in that execution, the administration of that war, after we conquered Baghdad, that business would be bankrupt. It would go belly up.

No doubt.

And for our friends in the business community, it is like having a board of directors or having shareholders. If the people running the business are not doing the job, Mr. Meek, then the board of directors may have to make a decision. Well, the United States Congress, Mr. Meek, is the board of directors.

That is our responsibility, to say if the executive branch is not executing their responsibilities the way they should, then we have to intervene and make some big-time decisions.

But what do we have?

That is a great point. We will get criticism levied at us from the majority, saying how dare the 30-Somethings go out there night after night, sometimes 2 hours a night, and all they are is critical.

Wait a minute. Are you asking us to just sit by and let all this happen, and no one is providing a little sunlight on this? I hate to tell them, but Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution creates this body, Mr. Meek, this body, and the problem I think with the majority in the House and in the Senate, the Republican majority in the House and in the Senate, is they are too coachable. They are too coachable, because the President coaches them, and he basically says ``We need X, Y and Z,'' and it goes out and happens. They are too coachable.

The execution of government includes a lot of different things, including how administrative agencies are run and Medicare and the prescription drug program are run. But the one issue that highlights the incompetence of the Republican majority and the Republican President is what we have been doing as far as our national debt and our annual deficits.

Now, this chart, and this is really one of the great charts, it is good, shows increases in the Federal debt in foreign borrowing. So way out here in the blue is the increase in the national debt from 2001 to 2005. Over $1 trillion, $1.18 trillion was the increase in the national debt just in the past 4 years. Of that debt, of that increase, $1.16 trillion was borrowed from foreign sources, Mr. Delahunt. Right here.

You want to know how much we borrowed from U.S. interests, from domestic borrowing? Right here. $0.02 trillion. I mean, we are mortgaging our future to foreign interests, the Japanese Government, the Chinese Government.

Thank you. We are no longer controlling our own destiny.

OPEC.

Mr. Delahunt, if you do not mind, I want to share another chart. This is the public debt held by China. One country, in 2000, they held $62 billion. In 2005, they hold $257 billion in public debt. This is when the President took office.

Now look at it. With the rubber stamp, Congress has just, time after time after time, continued to exacerbate this problem.

Now, look, in June of 2002, the Republicans increased the debt limit by $450 billion. That means they are okaying the Treasury to go out and borrow more money. In May of 2003, they increased it again by another $984 billion. In November of 2004, they did another $800 billion. Now we have got a pending increase that we know is going to happen because this runaway train isn't getting stopped any time soon, another $781 billion.

That is $3 trillion in debt that the Republican House and Senate and Republican White House went out and borrowed from foreign countries.

Now, who is patriotic now? You want to call this patriotism, mortgaging the future of the country to the Japanese and Chinese Governments and--

This was last year.

No doubt about it.

Find a positive way to explain that. Our friends on the other side who say we are always being negative. Figure out, if they can explain to us a positive way of saying that this country is being sold off to other countries piece by piece.

If they can find a positive way of explaining that, we are open to it.

What is that?

Before you can spend any money, you have got to find a way to pay for it.

We heard from the President during the State of the Union address a bunch of fuzzy math, but we are going to balance the budget by 2009.

We are going to cut the budget in half by 2009. That reminds me of the old Lou Rawls song, I will see you when I get there. Do you know what I mean?

This is just to put a bow on everything that we have been talking about. When we are paying the interest on all of this debt, you know, we are not borrowing the money from Sky Bank or Home Savings in downtown Warren, Ohio. We are borrowing it from these other countries, and we are paying them debt.

Look what we are doing just on the interest on the debt, Mr. Meek, Mr. Delahunt. This is the net interest we pay in the 2007 budget, what we are going to have to pay, almost $250 billion just on the interest on all of that money that Mr. Meek showed you where we are borrowing it from.

But also look what we are not spending it on because of it. Here is education. Here is homeland security. Here is veterans. All of these programs are taking a hit because our friends on the other side do not know how to balance the budget. They waste spending. They lose $9 billion in Iraq. They waste $300 billion on 11,000 trailers sitting in the mud in Hope, Arkansas, and meanwhile Pell grants are going up, veterans are asked to pay more, and we cannot take care of our own ports.

We will be back in an hour. But if you want to get a hold of us, Members who are watching this in our offices, www.housedemocrats.gov/ 30something

Well, I 100 percent agree with you.

You know, the fact that they could even claim that there is some kind of oversight going on is an absolute joke. Anybody who has even been paying the least bit of attention to what has been happening here the past 4 or 5 years can see that there hasn't been any oversight.

The discussion tonight has been about foreign countries running our ports, as if this is the first time, or as if this hasn't been going on. Other countries have, piece by piece, been taking more and more of the United States of America.

In the last 4 years, this has been the increase in our national debt: $1.18 trillion has been the increase of that debt that this Nation, the Republican House, the Republican Senate and the Republican President have run up. $1.16 trillion of that has been borrowed from foreign interests.

Of this number, this is what we get from foreign interests, and this is what we borrow from domestic interests. This is piecemeal, piece by piece by piece by piece, selling off the United States of America.

So it is not just the ports, as Ms. Wasserman Schultz was saying. This is about the debt, the interest, our country. Who is holding the debt? Japan, China, the Caribbean, Taiwan, OPEC, Korea, all own bits and pieces of the United States. If you look at Japan and China, they own almost $900 billion, almost the whole kit and caboodle of the $1.18 trillion that we have. Most of that is owned by Japan and China.

Again, I ask my friends, including the judge who was down here, give us a good, solid way to explain this scenario of our country raising the debt limit, the Republican House and Republican Senate and Republican White House raising the debt limit by $3 trillion since President Bush has been in, more debt than we have borrowed from foreign interests in the past 224 years, the Republican Congress and the President. How do you explain that and make it sound good, make it sound positive? Because there is no way.

But our constitutional obligation, Mr. Meek, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, is that we are here to oversee what this President is doing, and if we feel that this President and this Congress, Republican Congress, is not doing what they need to be doing to strengthen the United States of America, then our job is to call you out on it; not because we want to, but because that is our obligation here. Not because we like it.

This is our second hour tonight. We could be doing a lot of other, different things. But this is important to the country because this President and this Republican Congress is selling this country off piece by piece by piece.

I say this to our friends in Congress, Mr. Speaker, who may be watching in their offices, that if you are a business person, you can't just keep going out and borrowing money and borrowing money and borrowing money; and if business isn't going so well, borrow money. Get it from China, get it from Japan, get it from Korea. You can't go out and borrow and borrow. We have an obligation. The trade deficit with China, $202 billion from $84 billion just a few years ago in 2000.

I yield to my friend, who has been just a strong advocate on being a deficit hawk and getting us to balance our budget. I appreciate your leadership.

I would be happy to. This is the pay as you go. This is if you spend money or you give tax cuts, you have got to find other areas to cut spending or raise another kind of revenue. There will be no budget deficits. Everything will be deficit neutral. Pay as you go.

Mr. Meek just gave 3 scenarios where the Democrats put forth amendments or motions to try to control the spending of the Republican Congress, and in each instance the Democrats all voted for balancing the budget and the Republicans all voted against balancing the budget.

Again, Mr. Spratt, our good friend from South Carolina who is our ranking member on the Budget Committee, who was the architect of the Clinton balanced budget from 1993 that led to 20 million new jobs and surplus revenue, Mr. Spratt offered a substitute amendment. Rollcall vote number 87 on March 17, 2005. It failed. Not one Republican voted for the PAYGO that was included in Mr. Spratt's substitute amendment.

Again, Mr. Spratt offered another amendment. Rollcall vote 91 March 25 of 2004. Again, pay as you go. Deficit neutral. Help us reduce the deficit. Help us get back to balanced budgets. Again, not one Republican voted for that substitute.

Time and time again, Mr. Meek, we have offered solutions to this problem to quit selling off our country piece by piece, and the Republican Congress has voted against it.

Like you said, what is our benefit? We get to fund our deficit and that is about it. We do not go belly up. But what is our benefit? We do not have more money to invest in education as Ms. Wasserman Schultz pointed out. We do not have more money to invest for our veterans. This is money that is going to pay the interest on the money that we are borrowing.

Let me say real quick, trust us, this is the debt limit increases just since 2002. Since President Bush, Republican House, Republican Senate, $3 trillion in new borrowing from the Republican Congress. This is third party validator. This is fact.

The Truth Squad can come out and check the facts and maybe help us find

a positive way to talk about it. June 2, 2002, the Republicans raised the debt limit by $450 billion. May of 2003, $984 billion. November of 2004, $800 billion.

Now, the next increase is going to be for $781 billion more. $3 trillion since President Bush and the Republican House and the Republican Senate have been in charge of this operation here. And we just keep going and borrowing and borrowing and borrowing from the Japanese, the Chinese, the OPEC countries. And at the end it is mortgaging the future of this country.

I would like to thank Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It is good to have you back.

Mr. Meek, congratulations again for being elected to chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. You are such a young member. Congratulations for getting that reward from your peers.

Www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30Something. All of the charts that the Members saw tonight can be accessed off this website. The third party validators. This is not Kendrick Meek and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Ryan making this stuff up. These are facts. And hopefully these facts will lead to us recognizing that we are not doing everything we can and hopefully we can get the country going back in the right direction.

Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the opportunity once again to come to the floor of the House of Representatives as the 30- Something Working Group. Myself along with Kendrick Meek, Mr. Meek from Florida, and also Ms. Wasserman Schultz from Florida, we have been coming here now, Mr. Speaker, for a couple of years talking about the condition of the United States, our fiscal situation, Mr. Speaker, our investment situation or lack of investment in the United States of America, and also what we believe is the Democratic Caucus and Leader Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and the issues that we are trying to put forward.

It has been a very interesting week here for the Democratic Caucus, Mr. Speaker. We had a wonderful guest, George Lucas, the famous writer, director, producer of the great Star Wars movies; and he was here to talk about the innovation agenda that the Democratic party is beginning to put forward. And we have, Mr. Speaker, an innovation agenda to keep America competitive in the 21st century.

As we look at what has been happening here in the United States, this kind of breaks down into two or three separate categories. One, if we want to be a strong country, we have got to start here at home; and we got to start making the investments here in the United States. Research and development, education, health care, alternative energy technologies must start here; and we must begin to grow our economy here, Mr. Speaker, if we are going to be of any good to anyone else here in the world.

Unfortunately, our friends across the aisle on the Republican side have failed miserably in their attempt to try to balance the budget here in the United States of America. We have, as citizens of this country, regardless of what political party you belong to, we have as a country an $8.2 trillion national debt, $8.2 trillion dollars. Each citizen in this country owes $27,000 to our national debt. If a baby is born today, that baby owes $27,000 to the United States government to help us pay our debt. If you are a senior citizen, you owe $27,000 to the United States Government. And if we keep going down the path that we have been on, and here it is, $8.2 trillion as of Valentine's Day, 2006, and your share of the national debt is $27,500.

Mr. Speaker, we have a real situation in the United States of America. So not only do we owe this, not only does each person owe that, what do we do? So if we are running a $400 billion annual deficit or $300 billion, what do we do to fund business in the United States of America? We have got to go out and borrow the money. And this President in the first 4 years of his term borrowed more money from foreign interests than every single administration prior to his in the last 224 years. This President borrowed $1.05 trillion from foreign interests in 4 years, more than every other president before him.

Is that making America stronger, Mr. Speaker? I do not think it is. I think it weakens our country. And here it is. This President in a Republican House and a Republican Senate has borrowed $1.05 trillion from 2001 to 2005. And all of these Presidents did not borrow as much from foreign interests as this one has.

And that puts us, Mr. Speaker, that puts us at a position of weakness because guess who we are borrowing the money from to pay the bills. We borrow some from U.S. interests, but this is a chart that outlines who else we are borrowing this money from. $682 billion we have borrowed from Japan; $249 billion we have borrowed from China; $67.8 billion from OPEC.

Are you kidding me? We are borrowing money from OPEC to help fund and plug the hole in our annual deficits here? Meanwhile, they are making money hand over fist. This is a very dangerous situation that we are in, Mr. Speaker, because here is the end result. Here is where the rubber meets the road.

As we all take out loans to pay for our homes or our cars or our kids' education, unfortunately you cannot just borrow the money at zero percent interest. You have got to pay interest on the money you borrow. So the interest on $8.2 trillion is a lot of money. So what does that mean for our annual payments that we have to make just on the interest?

This chart is the 2007 budget in billions of dollars. This big red bar that gets up to $230 billion is what we are going to pay in the 2007 budget projected on interest on the debt, just the

interest. We are not paying it down. We are just paying the interest on it, and this nice lavender bar that barely gets up over $50 billion is what we are going to spend on education and then homeland security and then veterans.

The irresponsible policies of this administration put our fiscal house in disorder because we are spending so much money on just paying the interest on the money we owe the Chinese and the Japanese and the OPEC countries. That is a great deal for those countries, great deal for them, but what about us?

A stronger America starts here at home. So until we fix this problem, there is no issue we can go on addressing because it straps our hands behind our back, Mr. Speaker, because we want to make investments in education, research and development, Pell grants to lower the cost of college tuition, put research money into figuring out an alternative energy source so we are not dependent on some of these OPEC countries.

But check this out: this is the interest on the debt that I just showed. This is what we could spend every day in this country if we did not have to pay all this interest on the debt. We could invest $1 million a day into every congressional district.

I represent a district in northeast Ohio, Youngstown, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; Niles, Ohio; Warren, Ohio; Portage County. Kent State University is in my district. This is an older area in the northeast of the great State of Ohio, the great Buckeye State. $365 million I could have to go back to this area and invest in the schools, Head Start, all kinds of other different things just from my district; and every other Member in here, Mr. Speaker, would get $365 million, a tremendous difference. Give it to the Chinese banks, the Chinese Government; give it to the Japanese banks, the Japanese Government; give it to OPEC or give it to the kids who are trying to go to school in Youngstown, Ohio, of which 80 percent live in poverty that go to Youngstown city schools. I know what I would like to choose.

Some other things here. We could provide health care to 79,925 more veterans if we would not have to pay the interest on the debt like in the late 1990s when we made the very difficult decision here, and I am glad the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) is joining us for this point.

A very difficult decision in 1993 when President Clinton got into office. We were running budget deficit after budget deficit every year, and our Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, with a Democratic President, balanced the budget in 1993 without one Republican vote. I am not saying some Republicans would not vote for it now, but at that time, when the heat was on, without one Republican vote, and it led to balanced budgets, surpluses as far as the eye could see, investments into education, Hope scholarship, the whole nine yards and the greatest economic expansion in the history of this country.

More important, the private sector, because interest rates were low, the private sector was able to go out and create over 20 million new jobs. We cannot create jobs here in government. That is not our duty. That is not our responsibility. This is the chart, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Bush, all in the red; and Clinton in the late 1990s, after the 1993 budget was implemented, we started having surpluses in the late 1990s, projected out as far as the eye could see because of fiscal discipline.

That is what our job is here, balance the budget, keep interest rates low, invest in the education and research, like this country has always done, and the private sector will join and take over.

Some other things. If we did not have to pay the interest on the debt, we could enroll 60,000 kids into Head Start. You want to talk about being compassionate, you want to talk about if you practice the Christian faith, being a Christian, I think somewhere that means making sure we can invest into those poor districts, those poor children, and I am so glad that Mr. Meek is joining us because we started out here, and that ``we'' being me, talking about the impact of the budget deficit and the fiscal situation that we are in right now and the damage that it is causing to the American economy and the lack of investment because we are paying the interest on the debt to many of these countries overseas.

So thank you very much for joining us. I know you were busy in a Homeland Security Committee hearing, and I appreciate you coming up to support the 30-somethings.

In 5 years.

Let me share a statistic that is Americans' ranking with broadband penetration as of January of 2005. Korea has almost a 25 percent penetration; China, 20 percent; Iceland, 15 percent; the U.S., 11 percent. This is one area where we are falling behind in a big way.

Another area that you touched upon, this is the number of engineers, people with engineering degrees this year: China, 600,000; India, 350,000; U.S., 70,000. We cannot compete in a brutal, brutal global economy if we are not making the kinds of investments that are going to increase this number. Now, I understand that the Chinese and India, they have more people than we do, all the more reason that we need every single citizen in our country on the field with the opportunity to play

and to help make investments in the United States and create wealth in the United States.

That is what this Innovation Agenda does, broadband penetration, next 5 years in every household as Mr. Meek said, increasing the number of engineers and scientists by 100,000 in the next 4 years. That is in the Democratic Innovation Agenda, and let me just share with who assisted the Leader Pelosi and the Democratic Caucus with putting this together.

John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems, Incorporated, said that, ``The Innovation Agenda focuses on the right issues for building our Nation's competitiveness, from investing in basic R&D, expanding science and math education and broadband infrastructure, to creating a globally competitive business environment . . . I look forward to working with both sides . . . to implement these laudable goals.''

That is not Tim Ryan; that is not Kendrick Meek; that is not Nancy Pelosi. That is the CEO of Cisco saying get our act together and make the proper investments that need to be made.

Also, the Federal Government affairs person at Microsoft says that ``we ask Congress to give these issues serious consideration and support.'' And he says, ``At Microsoft, we are committed to changing the world through innovative technology and, in order to fulfill that commitment, we need a pool of well-educated, skilled workers.''

This is not just one party. These are CEOs, probably even Republicans; and if you go to our Web site, we have all of the quotes from a lot of people, from the American Corn Growers Association, TechNet.

We need corn, I love corn; but these are folks that are not just aligned with us philosophically. This is a very pragmatic approach to how to keep America competitive, and I think our plan is much better than the plan or lack of plan that the other side has. They have been in charge of this House since 1994 and have not been able to make strides in this area, and the numbers bear that out. These are facts. This is not something that we have made up.

Good guy.

I think so.

We talked about raising the debt limit. If you go back and review what happened during the Clinton administration, two times President Clinton had to raise the debt ceiling. Twice. Those were early on. They passed the balanced budget in 1993 without one Republican vote. Democratic House, Democratic Senate, Democratic White House, balanced the budget, helped the private sector create and provided the environment for the private sector to create over 20 million new jobs.

We need to provide that environment again for the private sector to go out and do its work. We are not going to create the jobs here. We cannot create any jobs. It is not our job to create jobs.

Our job is to create an environment in which people can go out and seize the opportunity that we helped create. So Clinton did it twice. This President has done it five times already, and he has only been in office 5 years. President Clinton was in office 8 years.

Democrats know how to balance budgets and make proper investments. If you look at the execution of government, from this President, this Republican House, the Republican Senate. Katrina, a disaster, the way FEMA reacted, an absolute disaster. The way the American people in that region were treated and are still being treated, and the money that is being wasted, because there are 11,000 trailers sitting in Hope, Arkansas, that cost $300 million that are now sinking in the mud that no one is living in.

I mean, give me a break. You look at the war in Iraq. We just find out in the last few days, $9 billion. Nobody knows where it is. Where is it? I don't know. Somebody find it. We don't know where it is. What would you do with it? I don't have it. I gave it to him. What did you do with it? He got it. It is like watching a Three Stooges episode. $9 billion of public money wasted.

Halliburton, overcharging for food and all kinds of other stuff. Halliburton has already been fined $2 million for wasting the taxpayers' money. Fraud. Come on. All we are saying here is there is a way to execute government, and we know how to do it. You could know better than anybody else, Mr. Meek, living in south Florida, with how FEMA operates and how they don't always follow the proper procedure. We can compare that to FEMA as it was executed under President Clinton.

I will be happy to yield.

I know that.

They will get over it.

An initiative endorsed by the CEO of Cisco Systems; the managing director of government affairs at Microsoft; and a laundry list,

American Corn Growers; CEO of AEA; I mean, come on, Information Technology Industry Council, vice president. This is not a Democratic- supported agenda. This was the Democrat's ideas, but this is supported by Democrats and Republicans because it is the right thing to do for the country.

Increase the research and development tax credit. Double the funding to the National Science Foundation. These are things that, these are smart business decisions. We are in the business of government. If you were in a business, you would not run yourself into debt and run annual deficits as far as the eye can see. You would not stop funding education or pull back or not make that kind of investment. You would not cut funding to research and development. That is your lifeline, that is how you keep yourself competitive, and that is all we want to do and try to give every kid an opportunity to get up in there.

I do not think you can.

We cannot afford business as usual.

Fourth quarter.

No gravy.

I agree with you 100 percent, Mr. Meek; and I appreciate your passion. The $9 billion, you talked about some of the irresponsible domestic fiscal problems, challenges that we

have here in the United States. They are unbelievable, the magnitude that they are at right now and the magnitude that our friends on the other side let it get so far out of hand. But not only here at home do they have problems governing and balancing budgets and trying to put our fiscal house in order here. $9 billion lost in Iraq. Okay?

Third party validator. This is not Tim Ryan from Ohio. This is not Kendrick Meek from Florida. This is not Nancy Pelosi saying this. This is the Inspector General that said nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraq reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday. And the IG says the same thing. Unable to account for the funds. $8.8 billion was reported to have been spent on salaries, operating and capital expenditures and reconstruction projects between October of 2003 and 2004. The CPA, Coalition Provisional Authorities, have left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used. Severe inefficiencies and poor management. What is going on over there? Haliburton is inflating their numbers to increase their profits at the expense of the United States taxpayer.

Back home with Katrina, we have----

No, I understand what you are saying.

And you may like this one because this totally reaffirms what you just said. It affirms it, but then it even reaffirms it. At the House Budget Committee hearing this morning, the committee hearing was on discretionary spending.

Just this morning, today, Thursday. One of the things OMB and the White House are emphasizing this year is this great new agency rating system that they have put together with ratings from effective to ineffective. Okay? And they looked at FEMA and the administration's self-performance, so this is the fox watching the hen house here. Mitigation programs were rated moderately effective. Disaster recovery, adequate. Disaster response, adequate.

I do not know what it is.

If anybody in America that watched what was going on during Katrina thinks that FEMA's response was adequate, then we have a total communication problem here, and we maybe need to come up with a couple new words, because the performance there was not adequate. Brownie's performance was not adequate. The Secretary of Homeland Security's performance was not adequate. Appointing an attorney to an equestrian society is not adequate. That is inadequate, and this country deserves better.

Government, you cannot, and this is the problem, what I really disagree with our friends on the other side. I do not believe that government is the answer. We cannot create jobs, and I do not believe that. The private sector creates jobs. We create a good environment.

Our friends on the other side for the past 12 to 20 years have just been saying government is the problem. Well, you know what? Government was the problem there because you do not have any respect for what is going on. Who else is going to come in in a disaster, other than FEMA? That is our responsibility. Who else is going to help with broadband access all over the country? The government.

Now, we do not want the government in everything; and I, quite frankly, think the government is too involved in too much right now. But there are targeted areas where the government can be effective. One of those is emergency response, and we are getting inadequate performance from this administration.

Another one is when you go to war. Who is going to go to war? Two private businesses? McDonalds against Burger King in the great grudge match? No. Countries go to war. Governments go to war. And $9 billion just unaccounted for, inadequate, ineffective, inefficient, waste of the taxpayers' money and, quite frankly, a disgrace, Mr. Meek. And this is why I think that we need some wholesale changes.

One final point before I yield to my friend.

Part of the problem is, we have a one-party government here. Republicans control the House, Republicans control the Senate, Republicans control the White House. Somebody should be getting kicked around if you cannot find $9 billion that was supposed to be spent on a war in Iraq and it is not and no one can find it. Where are the oversight hearings from our friends on the other side? We are in the minority. We do not have subpoena power.

You know what? If this was a sexual escapade there would be hearings all over the place. But this is about $9 billion in taxpayers' dollars that is gone, and no hearings. No one is getting there.

In fact, here comes the report. I don't even know what I just did with it. Here comes the report, the article about the $9 billion. Paul Bremer says and the Pentagon disputes the Inspector General's report. Not, we better find out what happened because we do not want it to happen again and we are the guardians of the public tax dollars. We have got to make sure what happened never happens again.

That is not what we get from this outfit. We get: It was not us. It wasn't me. I don't know. What did you say? I cannot hear you. And these guys say, Inspector General, watchdog groups, $9 billion unaccounted for. The Pentagon says, We disagree.

Well, then, where is it? Show it to us.

We are not wiretapping you.

How do I know? How do I know? Because you told them? You are the same group that told me that the war was only going to cost the American taxpayer $50 billion and now we are up to $400 billion, and you said we would be greeted as liberators, and that never happened. And you said we would use the oil for reconstruction. That never happened, Mr. Speaker. Why should we believe anything that is coming out of this administration or the Republican Congress right now? It cannot be trusted.

I appreciate that.

Mr. Speaker, as we wind down here, just to sum this all up, I think we have addressed an issue tonight. We found a theme, Mr. Meek, about incompetence. And it is not personal. Democrats at one point many, many years ago maybe did not do right by the American people, who knows. But I am saying this is not personal. But there is a real trend going on here with Katrina, with the war, and this administration and the Republican House and the Republican Senate's inability to execute the responsibilities of government.

We are running huge annual budget deficits to the tune of $400 billion next year. They are going to raise the debt limit for the fifth or sixth time in the Bush administration to over $8.2 trillion. The fiscal house is a mess. We are borrowing money from China, Japan, and OPEC countries. Inability and an incompetence when it comes to governing in the United States of America.

And then we talk about corruption, and there is personal corruption and then there is stuff that affects the people, Mr. Meek, and what is happening here is with the Medicare prescription drug plan, for example.

There is a corruption tax that is being levied on the American people because you pay for the end result. The American people pay, Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day. When a Medicare negotiator, the head of the Medicare program, is negotiating the Medicare prescription drug program that costs $700 billion and at the same time is negotiating his lobbying job that he is going to go to when he is done working for the Federal Government and the Medicare prescription drug plan is a mess. When the oil industry gets $12 billion in corporate welfare and they have the highest profits they have ever had, setting records, and who pays at the end of the day? The American consumer. And we cannot get enough money to people who are trying to get heating oil and lower gas costs.

So from the budget to the execution of Katrina and the war, failing to balance the budget, borrowing money from China and Japan, giving away corporate welfare to the oil industry and the health care industry at the cost to the American taxpayers, two of the most profitable industries in the world, and at the same time when members of this administration are not only negotiating that bill but are negotiating personal contracts for themselves, there is something wrong here and we need to fix it.

And the Democrats have a plan because if it were not for their behavior, we would be able to implement our Innovation Agenda that would go on and create millions of jobs in this country. We would incentivize research and development with our R&D tax credit that we have in here. We would be able to double the funding for the National Science Foundation for more research and development that the private sector could come in and benefit from. We could do all these things, but we need to ask the American people politely but forcefully we want a chance to govern this country because we have the ideas and commitment to make this happen.

Mr. Speaker, other Members of this House can get a hold of our information and our charts that we have used today at www.housedemocrats.gov/30something.

Mr. Meek, do you have any closing remarks?

Wonderful.

I just want to show you the graph that we have here. I would like to welcome all the gray hairs to the 30-Something group. And you, obviously, Mr. Delahunt, the gentleman from Massachusetts, has been here for a while, so your gray hair is--

You brought up the issue of global standards, and this is a chart that illustrates what you were talking about.

This is the students who will graduate with engineering degrees this year. In China, 600,000; India, 350,000; and the U.S., 70,000; and a good portion of the U.S. graduates will be foreign born who will probably return to one of these countries but fits under the U.S. statistics.

How are we going to possibly try to jump start our economy if we are not going to address this issue? Under our innovation proposal we are saying we want to create 100,000 new engineers and scientists in the next 4 years. We are limited to what we can do because this President and the Republican House and the Republican Senate have run up such tremendous budget deficit that we have to pay down. When we get in charge we will have to pay down the debt for a while and reduce the deficit, but we are focused and we have a way to pay for this 100,000 new engineers and scientists in the next 4 years.

I want to make a distinction here. This President finds the time and the energy and the commitment to put $16 billion in corporate welfare into the energy bill, finds the time and the energy and the commitment to put billions upon billions of dollars in the Medicare prescription drug bill that is going to some of the most profitable industries in the country, including the pharmaceutical industry. So the fact of the matter is we have got a President who is committed as he could possibly be to corporate welfare for the most profitable industries in the country, but yet we just want to train math and science teachers. We just want to create 100,000 new engineers and scientists, Mr. President. That is all we want to do, Mr. Speaker.

I accept the time, Mr. Speaker.

I wanted to, first of all, thank Mr. Miller for his leadership. I am able to sit on the committee with him, on the Education Committee, and we go through these struggles all the time. But before we get to our friend, Mr. Inslee from out west, who is very familiar with technology because of the mass amounts in his district, I want to put forth before I do that the 30-Something Group is pretty consistent. We do not want this to be about Bill Delahunt or Rush Holt or Kendrick Meek or George Miller saying something.

We want to have a third-party validator, and so before we kick it over to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), I just want to say what some high-tech CEOs are talking about when they refer to our innovation agenda, the Democratic Innovation Agenda.

John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems, Incorporated: ``The innovation agenda focuses on the right issues for building on our Nation's competitiveness, from investing in basic R&D, expanding science and math education and broadband infrastructure, to creating a globally competitive business environment . . . I look forward to working with both sides of the aisle to implement these laudable goals.'' That is the CEO of Cisco Systems.

How about the Federal Government affairs managing director of Microsoft: ``The policy agenda announced today by Democratic Leader Pelosi and her colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus to promote investment in education, research and development and innovation marks a positive step forward in the struggle to maintain our Nation's competitive edge in the global marketplace . . . At Microsoft, we are committed to changing the world through innovative technology and, in order to fulfill that commitment, we need a pool of well-educated, skilled workers. We ask Congress to give these issues serious consideration and support.''

This is the CEO of Cisco Systems. This is the Federal Government affairs director at Microsoft. This is not Tim Ryan from Ohio who is toeing the line for the Democratic Party. This is the CEOs, many of them Republicans, saying this is the kind of investment we need to make. Go to our Web site and you can see the whole packetful of quotes that will be up there from CEOs from around the world.

They are begging for the leadership that we should be providing in this Chamber.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield for just 10 seconds. This is at the same time that this President and this Republican House and the Republican Senate have the political gumption to give $16 billion in corporate subsidies to the energy companies and billions upon billions of dollars in corporate welfare to the health care industry and the pharmaceutical companies, at the same time they are cutting these programs.

I just want the American people, Mr. Speaker, to be aware of what is happening here. They are not just cutting this stuff because we are in tight fiscal times. They are cutting it, and at the same time giving corporate welfare to the tune of billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to the wealthiest industries in the country, to the most profitable industries in the country.

I only took 15 or 20 seconds. You took a minute and a half.

For the record.

Tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of the people in the whole, entire country.

If the gentleman would yield, I want to make a point that we have kind of left out when talking about technology. We talk about the $682 billion from Japan and the $249 billion from China that we are borrowing.

Earlier in the evening, we talked about the 600,000 engineers that are going to graduate in China. They are taking, they are basically lending us money, we are paying them back with interest, and they are investing that money right here to train engineers to the tune of 600,000 a year.

Do you think these engineers are working just in private industry in a communist country? No, they are working for the Chinese military. They are working on the next-best technology that the Chinese military, their communist government, could maybe put up possibly in the international community. We are funding our own enemy's military because we are fiscally reckless here at home.

In fact, I thought that was a joke. In fact, I wrote it down in a journal, and I laughed about it later in the day because I thought it was a joke. Then I find out that they are serious.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to Mr. Inslee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to Mr. Holt and thank him for his good leadership.

Mr. Speaker, to get ahold of us, any of the Members who are in their offices or anyone else, the Website is www.housedemocrats.gov/30Something. All of the charts you saw here tonight are available on our Web site, and we will be back in an hour.

Would the gentleman yield?

You are exactly right, and it is that. It is the cost of the American people of the kind of corruption that is inherent in this system today as the Republicans run the House and the Senate and the White House.

Let me just say this so we are clear. After record profits had been earned by the oil industry, they received in the energy bill $12 billion in corporate welfare, but nothing is done by this Congress to address lowering gas prices or home heating oil.

Now, Halliburton, the former company of Vice President Cheney, got billions of dollars in no-bid contracts, and they have since been fined $2 million for over charging the government and are suspected of costing the government $1.4 billion. Halliburton has been fined for basically stealing the taxpayers' money.

The oil industry is getting $12 billion in subsidies, and nothing is being done to lower Mom and Dad or Grandma or Grandpa's gas cost, and the top Medicare administrator, Tom Scully, negotiated to get a lobbying job at the same time he was negotiating the Medicare prescription drug bill, which helped companies more than it helped senior citizens. You say corruption tax, and that is what I mean. Tit- for-tat, taxpayer pays for it. Corporate welfare to the oil industries, nothing to lower gas prices, citizens pay that corruption tax.

There have been a few Members who I consider very good friends on the other side of the aisle who have over the past few weeks and few months have really come out and said we have got to get rid of the corporate welfare, we do have to make these changes, we do have to get rid of the things that are going on with the oil industry.

The problem is, is they are just a handful of those people, and the rest are putting the kibosh on the minority of the minority of the minority of the Republican party, just like they are doing to the Democrats.

Absolutely. Let us just look at one thing we have been talking about here.

One of the major costs of the kind of institutional corruption that is going on right now is what is going on with the interest on the debt. The Nation's debt is now over $8 trillion with a T, and the interest in the 2007 President's budget, the interest alone is almost two-hundred-and-twenty-some billion dollars out of this budget. Now, when you look and you compare what we have to pay in interest on the debt compared to what we are paying for education or homeland security or veterans, it is totally and utterly disproportionate to the kind of investments we need to be making, because this money, and on the chart here, we are borrowing this money from the Japanese government. We are borrowing the money from the Chinese Government. We are borrowing the money from OPEC countries.

We are ceding our country away to these other foreign interests, and at the same time, we are asking Japan and China to borrow money because we do not have enough because we are giving out corporate subsidies to the oil companies and corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical companies. While we are doing that, we have to go and borrow the money from the Chinese government, and then we have to borrow it from the OPEC countries, and as we showed before earlier, an hour or so ago, the Chinese Government is taking this money, they are lending it to us, collecting the interest and investing that money in the training of engineers to the tune of 600,000 engineers that they are going to train next year while we are training 70.

That really is the bottom line, that these kind of decisions are leading and costing. They are leading to enormous problems for our country, and they are costing us a lot of money. They are really beginning, I think, to push the burden down on to the next generation. We cannot continue to sustain the kind of deficits that we are running. The next year or 2007 year's budget deficit is projected at over $400 billion, $400 billion, and that is unacceptable while we are giving the oil industry $12 billion and $16 billion to the energy industry, and we are giving to the tune of $50, $60, $70 billion to the health care industry in subsidies.

It is a coincidence, or maybe it is not, that the oil industry's profits are going through the roof. So it begs the question, why are we subsidizing them? The energy companies, profits going up, subsidizing them, too. Pharmaceutical companies, profits through the roof, subsidize them, too. This is pay-to-play in Washington, D.C., and all the while, it is happening at the expense of average people. All this is happening at the cost of the American people.

There is a corruption tax. There is a K Street tax to average people who are trying to do business, trying to make ends meet in middle America and all across the country, and they are having a very difficult time of it. They are paying the cost of K Street and the cost of the corruption that is going on.

Can I say something? There has been this whole discussion over the last 10 or 15 years, and

it started with President Reagan's government, you know, government is the problem. I think it is fair to just on balance say that we understand government cannot solve all the problems nor should it, and we understand the private sector can solve a lot of these problems, but there are areas where the two need to work together. That is what we are talking about with The Innovation Agenda.

A lot of the recommendations that we have here are coming from CEOs, Republicans, who are saying this is what we do, and if you look at the history of the country, railroads, the space program, the interstate highway, National Institutes of Health research and development that has been going on for years and years, National Science Foundation, they are critical. Universities are government. They are publicly funded, publicly subsidized, and they are doing all kinds of research for all kinds of really good causes.

So we have a responsibility here, and our responsibility is to take the public's tax dollars here that they give us and spend it wisely and spend it in a way that there is accountability.

Now, $9 billion lost in Iraq is not accountability. Borrowing from the Chinese and the OPEC countries and the Japanese governments to fund our deficits, that is not accountability. That is reckless fiscal policy, and it prevents us from investing in the kind of innovation that we want to invest into. That is the cost to the country of this nonsense that is going on down here, $400 billion deficits, and we are spending $16 billion in corporate welfare to subsidize the oil industry? $400 billion projected deficit for 2007, and we give it in a giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies? That is irresponsible fiscal policy because we do not have the money to give them in the first place.

I will stand up here if we had the money and make the argument that we still should not give it to them, but we are borrowing money that we do not have to give to people that do not need it. That would be like giving Bill Gates a tax cut. We have given Bill Gates a tax cut, too. We are giving people money that we do not have and they do not need it, and it is coming at the expense of things and investment in technology, and innovation is a part of this.

I just want to read a couple of quotes because the 30 Somethings are all about the third party validator. There may be some people who say, well, there goes the Democrats, there goes the 30 Somethings, they are the on the floor, they do not have any solution. What are they talking about? This is a third party validator about our Innovation Agenda that Leader Pelosi came up with.

That is exactly right. John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems, Incorporated: ``The Innovation Agenda focuses on the right issues for building on our Nation's competitiveness, from investing in basic R&D, expanding science and math education and broadband infrastructure, to creating a globally competitive business environment. This agenda thoughtfully addresses how government can best play a role in improving our economic competitiveness by focusing on innovation. I look forward to working with both sides of the aisle to implement these laudable goals.''

That is the CEO of Cisco Systems.

And then we have the managing director of Federal Government Affairs for Microsoft saying, ``At Microsoft Technology we are committed to changing the world through innovative technology; and in order to fulfill that commitment we need a pool of well-educated, skilled workers. We ask Congress to give these issues serious consideration and support.''

We need a pool of skilled workers, American skilled workers, and we need to increase it. Our innovation agenda calls for 100,000 new scientists and engineers over the course of the next 4 years and putting broadband in every household in the country in the next 5 years. And we probably could do it quicker, but we have this tremendous trade deficit and budget deficit here in the United States that will not allow us to do it because of the reckless fiscal policies of the Republican Party that run the House, the Senate and the White House.

Mr. Speaker, this is what we are competing with. China is going to produce 600,000 engineers next year; India, 350,000 engineers next year; the United States of America, Mr. Speaker, 70,000 engineers next year. That is unacceptable.

And I recognize that they have larger populations than we do, but when we have many of our school districts that have 70 or 80 percent of the kids living in poverty, we are never going to be able to catch this number because we do not have enough players on the field. This is a broad approach that the Democratic Party has.

Our friends on the other side of the aisle, and many of them are very dear friends, they have been in charge of this House since 1994, and we have the highest budget deficits that we have ever had in the history of the country. They have had to pass a debt limit increase five times since President Bush has been in office.

And they are going for number six.

We need to get the fiscal house in order and start making targeted investments in education and making sure that we have enough people to compete on a global economy. This is brutal competition that we are facing. I have an opportunity to spend 2 weeks in China in August, but the brutal competition that we must face in order to continue to lead the world because we cannot have a tier one military with a tier two economy. And you want to maintain your superiority in the world, you better have a tier one military, and if you want a tier one military, you better have a tier one economy. If you want to have a tier one economy, you better make the kind of investments that the Democratic Party wants to make in order to start evening out some of these numbers so we have job growth in the United States, so we are filling the need and filling that pool of well-educated, skilled workers that companies need.

As you were talking about, the Democrats have a history of balancing budgets in this Chamber. In 1993, without one Republican vote, the Democrats balanced the budget and it was signed into law by President Clinton, led to great surpluses, the greatest expansion in the history of the country and created over 20 million jobs.

Now, the Democrats have tried, while we have been down here, to try to get our friends on the Republican aisle to show some fiscal discipline, to show a little bit of fiscal restraint. And we have tried. There is a provision here called PAYGO, pay-as-you-go. If you spend money, you have got to pay for it. If you cut revenues, you have got to pay for it. If you increase spending in a certain program, you have got to pay for it. Pay-as-you-go.

Now, over the last few years, Democrats have tried to reinstate PAYGO which led to all these surpluses in the nineties, and then our friends on the Republican side got rid of this a few years back. But over the last few years, we have tried to put these PAYGO rules in. Let me give you three third-party validators, not Tim Ryan, not Kendrick Meek, this is in the Congressional Record. March 30, 2004. Republicans voted by a vote of 209-209, ties lose, to reject a motion offered by Representative Mike Thompson, Democrat from California, to instruct the budget conferees to put the pay-as-you-go requirements in the 2006 budget resolution. That is 2004, vote number 97, if you would like to check it out, Mr. Speaker. Also, May 5, 2004, Republicans voted by a vote of 208-215 to reject a similar motion by Representative Dennis Moore, Democrat from Kansas. That is 2004, vote number 145. And then again, November 18, 2004, Republicans voted to block consideration of the Charlie Stenholm amendment to the debt limit increase bill which would have restored pay-as-you-go requirements. That is 2004, vote number 534, basically saying, we need to put a system in place to make sure that this Congress doesn't just spend money recklessly like they are doing now.

$9 billion lost in Iraq.

$16 billion to the energy companies, the oil industry in particular, the most profitable industry in the world right now.

Billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical industry in corporate welfare. And we are not balancing the budget. We are taking the money again and we are borrowing it. We are borrowing money we don't have and we are giving it to people who have a lot of money.

This is the interest payments that we are making in the red. This is the investments that we are making in education, homeland security and veterans.

Mr. Meek, I know we are beginning to wrap up and work our way out here, but I just want to share this with the Speaker and the Members of Congress. What else could the government do if we weren't so far in debt and had to pay all this interest?

It is an important answer. What else could the government do with the interest the country pays every day on the publicly held debt? We could invest $1 million a day, Mr. Meek, in every single congressional district. Every district. So at the end of the year, you would have $365 million to invest into your congressional district in South Florida. I know that you have a lot of needs down there, as do I in Ohio.

And we talk about getting our children prepared to become engineers and scientists in part of our innovation agenda. Just what we pay every day on the debt could enroll almost 61,000 children in Head Start for an entire year. We are getting young kids who are at risk into the Head Start program which has shown that there is constant improvement and they fare much better than kids who don't get in.

I want to talk about how the veterans could be helped.

I agree 100 percent with you, my friend.

I wanted to finish up. I want to just say thank you to you for coming down here every night and making these points in such a passionate way.

The debt and the deficit I think really as you are talking about are part of this corruption tax. And I know I wanted to get into this, but these are the numbers here. This is what we owe. This is what the national debt is. $8.2 trillion. You want to let a number sink in? Try to wrap your brain around that sucker. $8.2 trillion. Every Member of Congress, every child, every adult, every senior citizen, your share of that debt is $27,500. So take your credit card debt, take your house, take your car, add it all up and throw another $27,500 on it. Take your college loans and throw another $27,500 on it because of the fiscal irresponsibility of this Congress and this administration.

This number has gone up dramatically over the past 5 years. The Republican majority has raised the debt limit, allowing the Treasury Department to borrow more money, five times. And they are not done. Five times, Mr. Meek. And they are not done. Many high-powered Members of Congress got this letter from Secretary of Treasury John Snow saying that the United States needs the Republican Congress to raise the debt ceiling one more time.

As soon as possible. This particular letter was sent December 29 to Senator McConnell.

Dear Senator McConnell:

The administration now projects that the statutory debt limit, currently $8.184 trillion, will be reached in mid February of 2006.

And at that time unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations.

Now, that is where we are. Because of that number, my friends, because of that number and that number, the government will shut down unless we go out and borrow more money. That is irresponsible. I have got a friend back home. I won't give his last name. His first name is Dave. He is a banker. He consistently addresses this issue as we talk, how the country cannot keep going on and on and on borrowing this kind of money without putting the burden on the next generation.

For those people who don't think this matters, your share of your tax revenues are going to pay off the interest on this debt. And those payments are going to the Chinese government and the OPEC countries, Mr. Meek. That is a shame. That is a dirty shame.

A lot of air comes out of the balloon.

Thank you.

The Web site is www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. We ask the Members to send us something if they have any comments about what we have been talking about.

Mr. Speaker, it is good to join the gentlemen.

As we are talking about the debt and we are borrowing this money from the Chinese, from the Japanese, from the Koreans, from the OPEC countries, as we borrow that debt we have got to pay interest on that debt.

So as we are paying interest on that debt, this chart will show us that out of our priorities that we have in this country, the red is what we are paying in billions of dollars in the 2007 budget in interest, compared to education, compared to homeland security, compared to veterans.

So when we are talking about borrowing the money and what we are paying the interest on and what country we are paying the interest to, that interest money, the red, is going back to China. It is going back to Japan. It is going back to Korea.

It is going back to OPEC.

Which is also going back to OPEC. So OPEC is benefiting from the high oil prices, high gasoline prices. They are benefiting from the net interest we have to pay on the money we are borrowing from them at the expense of education, homeland security, and veterans.

Let me just show you this, and let me just say this is a powerful, powerful, powerful group of information here that we need to share, and I have got to tell you something. I love this slide. I love this. I want to be friends with this slide.

Look what we can do. This says what else could the government do with the interest, the red that we just showed, what else could the government do with the interest that the country pays every day on the debt that we have. $1 million in every congressional district per day. That means in the gentleman from Florida's congressional district, you get $365 million; the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), $365 million for your congressional district; $365 million for mine. I can tell you, with the health care priorities and education and veterans that live in my district, they would love to have an extra million a year.

With the debt every day, we could provide health care for almost 80,000 more veterans if we balance our budget, if we get our fiscal house in order here. We could improve Social Security solvency by almost half a billion dollars if we could begin to balance the budget.

A track record here.

The fact of the matter is, as you just so eloquently put it and passionately put it, this money that we are borrowing is not going to fund education. It is not going to lower tuition costs. It is not going to fund No Child Left Behind. It is not going to fund the veterans. This money that we are borrowing from the Chinese and Japanese and the Caribbean and OPEC, the oil-producing countries, is going to fund corporate welfare to the oil companies, $16 billion in corporate subsidies to the energy companies in the last energy bill, and billion upon billion upon billions of dollars that go to the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and all these other health care providers who are getting all their money.

Your tax dollars, Mr. Speaker, are going for corporate welfare; and we do not have enough to give them so we have got to go to the Japanese to borrow them so we can give them to the wealthiest industries in the United States. This is craziness, and we need to stop it.

It is the cost of the K Street project, and the average person that pays taxes foots the bill.

Can you repeat that? I missed that.

Do you have the number on the trailers, how much that cost? Because I heard it today, and I am sorry to interrupt you, but I think this is a salient point that we need to make.

I heard tonight on CNN earlier this evening that the cost of the 11,000 trailers was upwards of $300 million. So basically what happened is FEMA is so screwed up, okay, because there are not many other ways to put it. They are so screwed up that they bought 11,000 trailers that they moved to Hope, Arkansas, and put them in a field that is full of mud. They sunk in the mud so they are not even good anymore. They will probably have to get rid of them.

Real estate people in Louisiana said that $300 million could build 2,500 homes for middle-class people in Louisiana or in the gulf States. It could open up all of the schools in the gulf coast.

So when we come down here and we are talking about the debt, the deficit, and the recklessness and the irresponsible spending, reckless abandon for balancing the budget, that is one issue.

But another issue is look at the waste. My goodness, $300 million to buy trailers that are now sitting in the mud in Hope, Arkansas, instead of actually housing people?

You mentioned Speaker Gingrich earlier. He was talking, and I read in the paper the other day, he is as critical of the Republican establishment in this House and in the Senate and in the White House as any of us are.

This is not about Democrat and Republican. This is about America functioning as a government in the 21st century with the communication capabilities that we have, with the technology that we have, with the know-

how that we have. To hear afterwards that experts were trying to tell folks in FEMA, and outside of FEMA, what would happen if there was a category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane that came into the gulf States. We knew.

What we are trying to say here is that the Republican majority in the House and the Republican majority in the Senate, in this administration, Republicans in the White House, do not know how to govern.

Now, because the whole philosophy is that all government from top to bottom does not work, it is worthless, it has no value, that is not true. That is just not true. We are saying that government needs to get out where it does not work, and it needs to be efficient and effective where it has responsibility.

Now, FEMA, for example, who else is going to coordinate between the gulf States and emergency response? Who else is going to protect us with Homeland Security, of which you are a committee member, Mr. Meek? Who else is going to provide for the defense? Who is going to balance the budget? Government has some responsibilities to invest.

All we are saying is do it in a responsible manner. This nonsense is reckless, paying $225 or $230 billion in interest on the money you are borrowing from the Chinese Government, Japanese Government and the OPEC countries, and then basically raising tuition and underfunding No Child Left Behind.

In Ohio, No Child Left Behind is underfunded by $1.5 billion a year. Cutting veterans benefits? Not funding Homeland Security? You know, this is not very visionary on behalf of our brothers and sisters on the other side of the aisle.

Well, then, this number, my friend, the purple lavender, it is a nice lavender, it needs to be at the level of the red. The education needs to be up here, and the net interest on the debt needs to be down here. Then we will start talking about innovation.

Well, can I interject, because I can, this may be going to build schools; but it is going to build schools in China, because they are making money off of us. It is going to build schools in Japan, which of course we want the kids all over the world to be educated and healthy. We were all for that. But you know, not because of the recklessness that the Republican majority has been exercising here.

Basic stuff, basic stuff.

I just want to make a point, and then kick it to my friend, that all of that money that is wasted, Kendrick, is going to this. Okay? There was $100 million here, $100 million there. No oversight. No oversight at all on behalf of this Republican Congress.

That is the problem. Article I, section 1 of the Constitution creates the House of Representatives, and our job is to oversee everything, including the administration. So if they are at war, we should be overseeing this. And if there is a bunch of political hacks that are making money off this, then we need to go and bust them. We need to be involved. But this Republican Congress will not oversee what is going on in Iraq, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. Delahunt was just talking about, you are paying for, you are, I am, with interest, because we are borrowing it from the Chinese and the Japanese governments.

And OPEC. And OPEC. Did I mention OPEC?

But this is an issue that, Kendrick, we need to oversee what is going on

here and the Republican leadership does not want to provide the proper oversight. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars which goes to the interest on the debt, which we have to borrow from the Chinese and Japanese, which allows them to fund their economy.

Www.housedemocrats. gov/30something. All of the posters that we had up tonight you will be able to access on the Web site.

Again, I think that is an important point. Democrats have consistently tried to put fiscal restraints on this runaway spending that the Republicans have been doing over the past few years here, trying to balance the budget here so we can get back on the right track and get back the surpluses. We have got our hands full. Housedemocrats. gov/30something.

Happy Valentine's Day to all the sweethearts out there.