Floor Statements

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 50 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, November 10, 2005, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, this is the moral argument of our generation. I agree with you 100 percent, but I think there is an economic component of this, too. If we are going to be a great nation economically, we need to have healthy children, who are going to be able to go to school and learn so that they can become scientists and engineers, so that we can drive this economy through the 21st century.

As much as it is a moral imperative, it is an economic imperative that will continue to make the United States of America a strong country economically and militarily.

Mr. Speaker, I wonder, and we have asked this question before here, I wonder where the religious right organizations are that during the election were so engaged and involved in the Christian Coalition and promoting Christian values on a couple of issues. I cannot think of any more pronounced Christian values than taking care of those among you who cannot take care of themselves, for whatever reason.

It is stunning to me, growing up Catholic and spending 12 years in Catholic schools with nuns and priests and brothers, that the issue of poverty that you see more in the Bible than probably any other social issue, that somehow the silence is deafening here on these issues of us trying to help poor people and the majority actually causing harm to them. All these organizations that help put these folks in office are lost and cannot find their way.

I do not want to say that their membership is lost, because the people I go to church with, the people who represent Christian social organizations in my community, are very, very, very concerned about this.

I would hope that in the course of the next 48 hours we are able to bring this to their attention so that maybe we can put a stop to this before it actually harms young children.

I think we are not alone here, and I think there are some conservatives who are out there who agree with what we are saying here. We say it all the time during our Special Orders. This is not a Democrat or Republican thing. This is about putting the interests of the country before your own particular party. That is what we are trying to do here.

This is a quote from Cal Thomas, who is one of the most conservative columnists in the country, who says, ``Here is a suggestion to the Republican majority. Don't start with the poor, start with the rich.'' That is Cal Thomas talking.

And let me just put this up here. This is the tax cut, my friends. This is the tax cut. This is what people who make over $440,000 a year get, and this is what our brothers and sisters get who make $20,000, $35,000, and $40,000. Why can we not ask these people? Why do our leaders not have the courage to ask these people? We know they contribute to their campaigns. We know they get corporate welfare. I bet many of these people are executives in the oil companies who got $16 billion in corporate subsidies. We know that. We are sure that some of these people who make all this money and are getting the big tax cut represent the pharmaceutical industry that are getting $100 million in corporate subsidies. We are confident that the executives of the big agribusinesses are receiving some of this tax cut, and they are also getting corporate subsidies for that.

Why can the Republican leadership in this Chamber, in the Senate, and in the White House not ask these folks to give up just a small little wee bit of this, just a little bit of this so that we can make sure that Medicaid, Medicare, which is on the table in the Senate version, $80 billion over the next 10 years is proposed to be cut out of that. The Republican Study Committee wants to cut even more and push the prescription drug benefit back, not do anything to reduce the cost.

We are making decisions that are hurting these people because we do not have the courage to ask those people who have benefited most from society to give just a little bit back.

Absolutely. And if we look at the number of engineers and scientists that a lot of these other countries are graduating, last year alone China graduated 600,000 engineers. We graduated 70,000, with most of them foreign born. So to put additional barriers up, an additional burden or two on someone who is trying to construct financially a way to go to school, it makes absolutely zero sense economically for our country.

Look at what the GI Bill did for this country, because we had educated people going out into the work force as doctors and lawyers and scientists and engineers. Look what the space program did. The goal of sending people to the Moon was to motivate and organize a country in math and science and physics and a variety of other areas that led to tremendous developments and discoveries that otherwise would not have been, and that led to great economic growth.

So the gentleman is exactly right.

There it is. That is not Kendrick Meek saying that or Ms. Wasserman Schultz. These are CEOs.

We will also post this on our Web site and make it available.

The gentleman is exactly correct. This is great to have the gentleman here because, obviously, he brings in a new perspective from the Science Committee, which reinforces a lot of the things we have been saying. So we appreciate the gentleman being here.

One of the things we have to add onto this, as if this is not enough for a 22-year-old to have to overcome, $17,500 of debt, $3,000 in credit card debt, so you are already over $20,000 in debt before you even get out of school, let alone if you want to get a law degree, a master's or a Ph.D., or whatever it may be, would be an additional burden. In a weak economy that is not growing the kinds of jobs necessary to move our country forward and to maintain our economic superiority, add to that the $27,000 that every single citizen owes to pay the $8 trillion in debt that we have in the United States of America.

Our friends on the other side, the Republican majority, had to raise the debt ceiling to over $8 trillion, and each citizen owes $27,000. So we try to put this in perspective for people who are having babies today, and our generation who have young kids, 2 or 3 years old. Run this number out 20 years. If you have a 2-year-old, run that number out 20 years at a 57 percent increase every 5 years.

What does that number look like 22 years from now and what does the debt look like 22 years from now if we keep running these huge structural deficits, paying interest on the loan?

Pull it out. Get it. Get it right now. Let us get this thing up here.

Please. Show them. Go ahead. I yield to my friend.

Let us lay this out real quick before my colleague puts the cherry on top.

So we have $17,500 in student loan debt and $3,000 in credit card debt. Run that out 20-some years. A child born today owes $27,000 to the debt that we have in the United States of America, the $8 trillion. Every citizen owes $27,000.

And some change. And we are continually running these structural deficits at over $400 billion to $500 billion, with a war and natural disasters. So we are borrowing money to pay for this.

Mr. Speaker, that is what our generation is going to change when we take the country in another direction. It is time for us to start saying that we want the best and the brightest to come and work for our government. There used to be a day and age when government service, assisting your country, coming from the private sector for a few years and helping out and giving your time and talents to the government was a respected endeavor.

Mr. Speaker, we are ready, and we have a game plan to find the money.

Why can we not go to the oil companies that we just gave $16 billion in corporate welfare to, why can we not have the courage, why can the Republican leadership here not have the courage to ask the oil companies to give back their $16 billion in corporate subsidies to help pay for some of these priorities?

Why can the President of the United States and the Republican leadership in the Senate and the Republican leadership in the House, why can they not go to the pharmaceutical companies and ask for reimportation for the Medicare program to help save our country billions of dollars?

Why can they not allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug prices with Merck and Pfizer on behalf of the Medicare recipients who are going to now be eligible for Medicare part

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan) to continue his coherent and intelligent argument on behalf of research and development for alternative energy sources and alternative technologies to reduce our dependence on oil.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think the gentleman makes a tremendous point that we try to present here. The way our friends on the other side run the government is not with an understanding of, really, what day and age it is. It is 2005. We are an information technology age. Government needs to be integrated, and our policy on alternative energy sources will strengthen our position in foreign policy. They are not two separate smokestacks. They are one coherent policy that we are trying to integrate here and say they are all connected.

And I think this brings up a tremendous point about leadership, about the corruption and the cronyism, but directly to the incompetence. Here we have, directly after 9/11, a terrorist attack on the United States of America; and everyone in the country was looking to the President for leadership, and no one really knew what to do. It was this great moment in history, but every American citizen wanted to give something. They wanted to be a part of the solution.

And many people will remember, Mr. Speaker, that the American people were going to blood banks. They wanted to give blood. They wanted to do whatever they needed to do. They were donating money to organizations. And the Red Cross had to say, We have enough blood. Thank you, but we have enough blood for now. But the American people still wanted to give. And there were nonprofits and foundations and all kinds of organizations opening up so that the American people could donate money to help the families and the victims of 9/11 and the policemen and the firemen and the emergency responders.

The American people wanted to give. And the best challenge this administration can come up with, not walk to work or get a bike so we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil so we can reduce the chances of this happening again. Do my colleagues know what this administration asked the American people to do? The great challenge after September 11 from this administration was go shopping. If that is not incompetent executive leadership at its best, I do not know what is.

And I get upset because I think that tragic situations like that, as painful as they are, there is a glimmer of possibility within that. And we could have made it a national commitment to search for and get to a point where we are no longer dependent on foreign oil. The American people could have been rallied to that cause, to conserve. And to have the Vice President say that conservation is just a personal virtue, but has no place in the public discourse is an outrage.

So why not, with all the political capital that this President had, why not say this country is going to have an Apollo project for alternative energy sources, for hybrid engines, for biodiesel, for wind and solar and everything else? We know we cannot do it today, but America is not about what we can do today. America is about what we can do tomorrow and next year and 10 years from now. And we could have laid out a long-term strategy of all the great possibilities that this country is so good at throwing out as a goal and then going after it. And it is a shame. It really is incompetent leadership.

And that is one of the reasons that we come here every night. We could be sitting in our offices. We could be going out to dinner. But we choose to come here because we want to ask, Mr. Speaker, the American people to give us an opportunity to take this country in a new direction, to change what we are doing, to get this Congress and make it independent of all the special interests, and to end this incompetence, this inability to govern.

We are not setting good records.

The gentleman is talking about the Medicare cuts to our seniors.

Medicare, the health care program for our senior citizens, our grandparents, our parents. And the gentleman is talking about the Senate making $40 billion in cuts.

Over 10 years. This is the same time that the Republican Conference wants to pass $70 billion in tax cuts; and we know when they give tax cuts, who they give them to. But I think it is important, because I forget the number of what the Republican Conference here in the House wants to cut Medicare to, and what that number may be.

I wonder, I wonder why they would cut Medicare to the tune of $200 billion.

Over 10 years. I wonder why they would not go to the oil companies and ask them to give back their billions and billions and billions in subsidies. I wonder why they would not go and ask the pharmaceutical companies.

But what really strikes me as odd as you talked about the premium going up and the copay going up. I wonder if the health care we have given to Iraqis, I wonder if they are asking them for a copay. I wonder if they are asking the Iraqi citizens who are getting free universal health care in Iraq for a copay. Does anyone know? Because I do not know.

I do not think there is a copay or anything

So we are cutting health care, we are increasing the copays, increasing the premiums, but yet giving, we have created a welfare state in Iraq, in which we are not even asking the Iraqis to pay a copay or pay their premium.

Yeah, because I thought they said that we could, did they not say something about loaning them? Well, we wanted to loan them the money, right?

Mr. Speaker, we do not swear to the Iraqi Constitution. We do not come here to represent the Iraqi people. First and foremost it is the United States. So you are telling me that we are giving money to the Iraqis, grant money; but if we have a natural disaster in the United States, we ask the American citizens to fill out a form so they can maybe get a loan. And if an American citizen wants to go to college, they got to take out a loan.

So we are loaning money to the American people so our kids end up with $17,500 in college debts because we loan them the money; but when it comes to Iraq, we have created a welfare state.

And at the same time we are giving money away, and I know my good friend from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan) wants to make a point. At the same time we are giving this money away to Iraq, it is not like we have it. We are borrowing money from other countries. This President has borrowed more money from other countries in the last 4 years than this country has borrowed from other countries in the last 224 years.

So let us get this straight, the Republican majority in the House, the Republican majority in the Senate, and the Republican President, who have all been in charge the last 4 years, have borrowed more money from foreign countries and then they give it to foreign countries. They give it to Iraq. That is unbelievable to me when at the same time we have American citizens who need a little bit of assistance on college tuition, but they got to go borrow the money.

This Republican leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I am almost afraid to have this outfit that we have in charge here, Republican majority and the Republican running the executive branch, I am almost afraid to have them go out into the international community to try to rehab our relationship because their solution is to just throw money at the country and just give them grant money, taxpayer money. That is their only solution. A stronger America begins right here at home. We need to do this together because it is only together that America can do better.

So let us see if we can tie this all up. Our country gives billions of dollars in corporate welfare to the most profitable industries in the world that are having the most profitable quarters in the history of mankind. They are then giving tax cuts that go primarily to the top 1 percent, who are probably executives of the oil companies and the pharmaceutical companies.

Half a million dollars and up. So you get corporate welfare from the public taxpayer. Then you get tax cuts for people making more than half a million dollars. And then the money that does get sent here, we give it to Iraq and create a welfare state. And then we do not even have the money to give away; we go and borrow it from a foreign country. We have borrowed more money in the last 4 years from a foreign country than we have in the last 224 years.

From China, from Saudi Arabia.

Especially when Halliburton stock has doubled. I mean, all this is going on and Halliburton's stock's doubled.

No-bid contracts. They just get money thrown at them.

Mr. Speaker, the end result is not a good one. It is not an effective use of the taxpayers money.

That is why we want the independent Katrina commission, so we could make sure we figure out what we are doing, but we fear that when we start pulling off the onion piece by piece by piece, that we are going to end up finding out what is going on in Iraq, and it will be a tremendous waste of the taxpayers' money.

Amen.

Yes, sir. [email protected]. Send us your ideas, your comments, your thoughts. We appreciate them. We do read what you send in. We are going to be introducing some new methodology in the next week or so. [email protected]. We thank our good friend from Missouri for joining us tonight.

If the gentleman will yield, I think this brings up a real contrast. First, we have made it a point here in the 30- Something Working Group that this is not about party. This is about doing what is best for the American people. Because together America can be better. I just want to take this opportunity, having talked to all of you already tonight, to just say we hope that the moderate Republicans will stand up, because they can have a tremendous voice in this body. Not in a partisan way but in a way that actually acts on behalf of the American people. We hope that those moderate Republicans step up to bat and help the Democrats moderate some of these drastic cuts that are going to the most disadvantaged and the middle-class people in this country.

I think it is important as the Senate has made cuts out of the Finance Committee of almost $6 billion, the Medicare program if it comes out of the Senate as is now, $6 billion in cuts. And then the Republican Study Committee, the most conservative people in this Chamber, want to delay the prescription drug bill. Here is an opportunity where I think they could maybe take a Democrat initiative, a Democratic Party initiative, to reduce the cost of the Medicare prescription drug program. Instead of cut it and reduce benefits for seniors, why not put a provision in the Medicare prescription drug bill that says you can negotiate down the drug prices. Give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to negotiate down like the Veterans' Administration does. Why not let the Secretary of Health and Human Services do that? Why not let the reimportation from Canada to help reduce the cost of drugs? There are a couple of provisions here that will help reduce the cost without reducing the benefits to the Medicare recipients.

One of the provisions, as you said, was giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services who basically in his department administers the Medicare part D, this new prescription drug bill, giving him the ability to go to Merck or Pfizer or one of the major drug companies and basically say, on behalf of these millions of Medicare recipients, if you want the contract to sell them drugs, you need to sit down with me and talk price. The Democrats were not saying we need to create a whole new bureaucracy. We did not say we have got to put a whole new office building in Washington, D.C. to do it. Just give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to go and basically negotiate down these drug prices.

The bulk purchasing power, some studies say, would at least save 10 to 15 percent. I have seen some people say it could save up to 20 percent. So you take $700 billion and you take 10 or 15 or 20 percent of that, you are talking upwards of saving the American taxpayer over the course of the next few years $140 billion that could go into Katrina relief.

That did not happen. The Republican majority in this Chamber rejected the proposal.

I just want to expound on that point for just one second. Those people who will see an increase in their copay will then not go to utilize the care and the service, and they will end up like Americans who do not have any health care, they will end up in an emergency room much sicker than they were when they originally could have had the problem taken care of because they were covered under Medicaid, and the taxpayer is going to end up footing the bill in the long run. We are not making this argument solely for moral reasons, but this is an economic argument that is going to save the taxpayer money in the long run and I think the Republican majority has proven in many ways that they do not know how to govern, and one of the reasons is they would rather spend more money on the tail end than do the right thing and spend it up front.

That woman probably called off work and there was a ripple effect.

Let us look at another provision on here that the Republican Study Committee is also looking to do: Increase the Medicare Part B premium by $4.6 billion.

Medicare Part B is the senior citizen program, the Medicare program that insures our parents and our grandparents. This is where the Republican Study Committee is going to go to pay for the tax cuts, to pay for the $16 billion in subsidies that they are giving to the oil companies, to pay for the subsidies that they are basically giving to the prescription drugs. They are going to go to our senior citizens and ask them to give up $4.6 billion in 2006 and $84 billion over the course of the next 10 years. These are senior citizens that, as I am sure they are in your district, whose pension is not going up, if they can even keep their pension. Health care costs obviously are going up here, the cost of natural gas and gasoline, heating oil, all of this is affecting how our seniors can actually survive day-to-day; and our friends on the other side are making another wrong decision by going after them and asking them to foot the bill.

Mr. Speaker, one of the decisions that is being made down here as we cut the vets' budget, there is a chart that explains where some of the tax cuts are going and you will see of all the tax cuts down here, $34,000 to $54,000, $840. And people who make $440,000 a year and up, $87,600.

Now, to put this into ``middle America speak,'' the Democrats are for reducing a small little portion of this, not even the whole thing, but asking these people who make a million dollars a year or more to just give up a wee little bit of that up there, just a small little tiny part of that so that we can fund some of these other priorities that we have agreed as a country are important, like making sure our veterans have the proper amount of health care.

And if, as a country, the leadership in this Chamber and the leadership in the White House, especially in the executive branch, if they do not have the guts to ask this person who makes a half a million dollars a year to give up just a small amount, a few thousand dollars of their tax cut to pay for veterans health care or to pay for Medicare, if the President of the United States cannot find it in his Constitution to ask this person, then I believe he is failing his responsibility and his oath of office. And I really believe that because that is about leadership.

To go to the person who does not have a lobby group on K Street to come over here and lobby us, okay, that is a major problem. And at the same time as these tax cuts are going on, we are cutting student loans, we are increasing the burden on our kids who go to college. And if the Republican majority--as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) pointed out, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) is a freshmen. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I are in our second term. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) has been here four or five terms. He is on his fifth term, I believe. If the Republican majority thinks that we are going to sit up in our office or if we are going to go home and lie on our couch and turn on C-SPAN and just watch this happen, they have got another think coming.

We are going to come to the floor every night if we can and we are going to grab every hour that we possibly can

because there are 700,000 people in northeast Ohio that count on me to come down here and talk about this stuff, because they are on the other end of this stick. Fifty percent of the people in my district did not even get a tax cut. They did not get any of this stuff, none of it. Fifty percent of the taxpayers in my district did not get any of this stuff. And if this administration and the leadership in this House does not think that we are going to come to the floor and talk about this inequity, about them cutting Medicaid services, which in the long term costs these taxpayers even more money, if they think we are going to sit by while tuition goes up 57 percent over the last 5 years and not say anything, they have got another think coming.

We are not going away. We will be here every night if we have to.

The problem is, and here is the problem that hurts me the most, is that the people who make a half a million dollars, a million dollars a year, they make it because of the benefits that have been given to them and the opportunity that has been given to them by our veterans, to be able to take advantage of a capitalistic system, to be able to take advantage of a democratic system with a strong military to make sure that you can make solid business investment and make money.

Bill Gates did not invent the Internet. It was the public tax dollars that went to do the research. Bill Gates capitalized on the Internet. So he has a responsibility to keep the system going for the next guy, but to do this and to not have the guts to pay for these people, to pay for veterans' health care benefits.

Madam Speaker, can we just say, if you have worked in the White House for 5 years and you are the chief of staff of the Vice President, indicted on five counts of lying and obstruction of justice, and you have the deputy chief of staff of the President of the United States lie to the American people on two occasions, you have the Vice President of the United States mislead on several occasions Tim Russert and the American people, you do not need ethics courses. You need to be fired. Okay. This is not brain surgery. This is probably a basic management technique. If you lie to the American people and you work at the White House, you should be fired, and there should be no place for you in representing the public.

Just a reminder to send us e-mails at [email protected], any articles or whatever, Madam Speaker, from our colleagues here so that we can talk about them on air. That is [email protected].

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be back here on the House floor on behalf of the 30-Something Working Group. We have been coming to the floor, Mr. Speaker, now for a couple of years weekly; and over the past several months we have turned it into a nightly, and sometimes bi-nightly, event, where we come down

here and we talk about what is going on in the Nation's capital.

We do not only talk about what is going on with regard to people who are our age, within the 30-Something Working Group, although the original mission of our group was to explain and to lay out the facts for people who are in our generation, in their 30s with families, and how the decisions that are being made here affect that group of people.

Since then, we have broadened this really to touch on all of the issues, because it seemed as we got further and further into the budget cuts, the tax program that the Republicans have, the war, the inability to address the natural disasters, we have broadened our mission to deal with all of these issues, because all of these issues hit home to not only people who are in their 30s but people across the country.

We have come to find that the decisions over the past several years that we have been here, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I are on our third year. The gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) is a freshman member. But over the past several years we have seen up close and certainly personal the absolute failure of the Republican party and their ability to govern, the total and complete incompetence.

This is not a party issue. The only reason we have to talk about parties is because the Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. And when you are running $500 billion deficits a year, you are spending $1.5 billion a week in Iraq, creating a welfare state there, you are cutting taxes on people who make billions of dollars a year here in the U.S., you take public tax money and you give it, to the tune of $16 billion in the last few months, this Congress has taken taxes from average, middle-class people. You sent it down here, Mr. Speaker. The average people sent it down here.

And this Republican Congress and Republican Senate and Republican President give that tax money, $16 billion worth, to the oil industry. The most profitable industry in the world right now is the oil industry, and public tax money is going to subsidize the oil industry.

Then our friends in the Republican party go down the ``shake-down street,'' K Street, where all the lobbyists are. Anyone who has been to Washington, you go to K Street, that is where the big major lobby firms are. The Republicans then, after giving the public tax money in subsidies to the oil companies, they go out to ``shake-down street'' and they shake down the lobbyists for money. So the lobbyists then give the money to the Republican party so they can spend it on their campaigns. And we have a big hole here because the only group missing in this equation is the American people, the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek).

A double standard for people working in their administration.

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the point that I think that we have been trying to make here in the 30-something group. You cannot put your political party above the interests of the country; and if you out a CIA agent because it may benefit your political party, you are wrong. You are wrong. You cannot do that because it weakens the country; and you did not just out her. You outed every contact she has made in the last 20 years. You outed the front company in Boston that the CIA had. They had a front company. They talked about her being at the Belgium University. So any

American now at the University of Belgium is now suspect if they have any contacts.

This has ramifications well beyond what the average person could even understand, well beyond what we could even understand, because this woman was working on behalf of the United States of America and the one quote that sticks with me is the one CIA operative that said, outing a CIA agent is the moral equivalent of outing a military unit in a forward area. So in Baghdad, they are over there, it would be like Karl Rove or Scooter Libby saying to the insurgency in Iraq, the Marines are coming right over there in about a half an hour; that is where they are coming. That would be unacceptable.

But in the covert world, that is exactly what Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and all the minions over in the executive branch did. It was a coordinated effort to out this woman because they did not like what her husband was saying about the war, and that is wrong. That is wrong.

If you do not believe us, because we love our third-party validators, this is Melissa who was a 14-year covert CIA agent. She says, We are talking about lies and we are talking about capabilities. We do our work, we risk our lives, we risk lives of our agents in order to protect our country; and when something like this happens, it cuts to the very core of what we do. We are not being undermined by the North Koreans. We are not being undermined by the Russians. We are being undermined by officials in our own government. That I find galling.

Could you imagine being a CIA operative somewhere in the world right now and you think, do they got my back in D.C.? Do they got my back? Or are you afraid that if I get caught up in the wrong political debate, somehow I may get outed by my own government?

That is what this is all about, and to have the kind of deceit and lies take place out of the executive branch, let us just look at this.

Official A in the indictment, now we are not making this up. This is right out of the indictment for Scooter Libby. Official A, which the administration has admitted is Karl Rove, on July 10 of 2003, the middle of the summer, Official A, which is Karl Rove, advised Scooter Libby of a conversation that he had earlier that week with Bob Novak, the columnist, in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip. Libby was advised by Official A, by Karl Rove, that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife.

So Karl Rove told Scooter Libby in July of 2003 that Novak was going to be writing a story.

Now, September of 2003, a couple of months later, Karl Rove says to ABC News to the question Andrea Owen asked, Did you ever have any knowledge of the CIA agent or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press? Any knowledge or did you leak it. Karl Rove said no. He lied to the American people. He did not lie to Andrea Owen. He lied to the American people. We know from the indictment he told Scooter Libby Novak was going to write about it, and 2 months later he says he does not know anything about it.

Then he does a CNN interview just July of this year; and he says, I will repeat what I said to ABC News when this whole thing broke some number of months ago. I did not know her name, and I did not leak her name.

Well, if you go back to the indictment, Official A, who is Karl Rove, advised Libby of the conversation that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife. He lied. Now, he is in the White House making decisions on behalf of the United States of America.

We cannot have it, unacceptable behavior, unbecoming of a White House official.

Then I am going to wrap this up. I am going to go right through this so we can get everybody involved here.

Then not only did Karl Rove and Libby lie to the American people, they lied to Scott McClellan, because he came out 2 months after the indictment and said what everyone already knew, and McClellan says, Those individuals, Rove, Libby, Abrams, assured me they were not involved with this. Another lie.

Now we have to change our language a bit to respect the rules of the House and respect the office which we are about to discuss.

This is out of the indictment. On or about June 12, 2003, that same summer that we were just talking about, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA in the counterproliferation division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

Scooter Libby was the chief of staff of the Vice President of the United States who has been indicted under five counts: two counts of making false statements, two counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. So the Vice President on June 12 told Mr. Libby about Joe Wilson's wife. Then 2 months later, in September, the Vice President is on Tim Russert. Okay.

The big time, the prime time.

Tim Russert, son of Big Russ, Buffalo, Ohio, John Carroll graduate.

Mr. Russert says to the Vice President, this is 2 months after the Vice President told Libby about Joe Wilson's wife. Russert says, Joe Wilson says he came back from Niger and said that, in fact, he could not find any documentation that in fact Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels.

Question: Were you briefed on his findings in February-March of 2003?

Vice President Cheney: No, I do not know Joe Wilson. I have never met Joe Wilson.

Now, talk about what is the meaning of ``is'' is. I mean, give me a break.

Two months earlier, the VP told Scooter Libby about Joe Wilson's wife; and then he says 2 months later, to Tim Russert, I do not know Joe Wilson.

It is not us.

If the gentlewoman would yield, that is a tremendous point. They have deceived and misled the American people. Then, when the Democrats want to change things and try to take things in a new

direction, people say, well, we were all dealing with the same intelligence. So we say, well, let us go and look at the intelligence. When we say let us try to fix this problem together in a bipartisan way, because there is so much at stake here, we get stymied.

Senator Reid had to shut the Senate down the other day on behalf of the American people so that we could get a good, solid overview of the intelligence. We are not saying this just to say it.

If the gentlewoman will yield, this is not personal. Let us be absolutely clear about this. This is business. This is about the business of the American people.

When we have the Chief of Staff of the Vice President lie to a Grand Jury on two counts and of perjury, two counts of false statements to Federal agents and of obstruction of justice; when we have the Deputy Chief of Staff of the President lie to the American people on two separate occasions; when we have the Vice President of the United States knowingly make a comment to Scooter Libby that he knows about the ambassador's wife and then goes on Meet the Press and says he does not know, this is not about Democrat and Republican, this is about the future of the country.

This country is going in the wrong direction, and every ounce of energy in the White House is geared towards covering up the outing of a CIA agent. So this is not personal. This is about the 700,000 people we each represent and the 300 million people that are in this country. It is about the wage gap, the gap between rich and poor, the increased number of poor people in our society and the lack of an adequate response to the greatest natural disaster in the history of the country. That is about executing our constitutional obligation, our constitutional responsibility.

This is this is not personal, Mr. Speaker. This is not personal. This is about us as elected representatives in the United States Congress, who swear to uphold the Constitution, wanting to take the country in a new direction, wanting to change the way business is done down here and to get rid of the corruption and the cronyism and the incompetent leadership. That is what this whole thing is about. It is not personal.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, our friend from Florida was talking about what is going on and how personal this is.

I mean, we have an obligation here. What is going on today is the Republican majority has created a welfare state. They have created a welfare state. They have created a welfare state here in the United States, but the welfare state is for a very small group, corporations. Sixteen billion dollars in the last few months of corporate welfare went to the oil companies, the most profitable quarters they have had in decades; and public tax money was given to the tune of $16 billion to subsidize them. Pharmaceutical companies have gotten over $100 billion in average people's tax money, sent down here. The Republican majority gave it to the pharmaceutical companies. So we have a welfare state in the United States of America.

But we also are creating a welfare state in Iraq. While we are cutting free and reduced lunch and Medicaid and Medicare, health care programs for United States citizens, we have opened up 110 primary health care centers in Iraq. We have educated 2,000 health officials. Three point two million kids in Iraq have been vaccinated. We have rehabbed 2,717 schools and trained 36,000 teachers.

Now maybe we should be doing this because we invaded the country and bombed the heck out of it. So maybe we should be doing it. But when they are giving billions to the wealthiest corporations in the country and they are cutting free and reduced lunch for kids and they are doubling the cost of college tuition and raising the fees for student loans to the tune of $5,000 over the life of the loan, they are doing what is best for the Republican Party and they are doing the absolute worst thing they could possibly do for the United States of America.

And let me tell the my colleagues why, Mr. Speaker. The Chinese government in the country of China produced 600,000 engineers last year. We produced 70,000, half of those engineers foreign born. How are we going to stimulate our economy, create new jobs, innovate the new technologies that are needed to be innovated so that we could keep on the cutting edge of a vibrant global economy if we are not investing into the very people who are going to create that wealth? We cannot ask poor, unhealthy, uneducated kids to go into the workforce and create wealth for us. But yet we are making the investment in Iraq and we are giving away billions in tax dollars to the oil companies and to the pharmaceutical companies.

That system is corrupt. That is a corrupt system. Corrupt. And the way it is being administered and the way government is being administered is at a level of incompetence that we have never really ever seen. With the war, the execution of the aftermath of the war, the rehab, the nation building, complete incompetence on behalf of the guys who wear the suits and ties. Complete incompetence.

The response to Katrina, the highest level of incompetence possible because they put people in charge of FEMA who were political cronies, and the level of cronyism in this administration is really higher than we have really ever seen. And they are not cronies because they know the administration. They are cronies because they get the job and they are not competent.

We all know if one gets a political job and they get to hire people that they are going to hire people they know because this is a business about loyalty. But we also have to hire people who are competent. And Mr. Brown, Brownie, ran an Arabian horse show or something like that, and then he is in charge of FEMA, the point person for emergencies in the United States?

Now this could have very well been a terrorist attack. There could have been explosives. There could have been bombs on the levees instead of a Category 4 hurricane. And our response would have had to have been the same, and it was not a good response. It was not an adequate response.

So the level of incompetency here is unreal. It is a corrupt system that takes care of corporations and ignores every other American. I just want to tell my colleagues it would be nice if someone on the other side, if someone in the Republican Party, would just stand up and take responsibility. We get lectured all the time about personal responsibility. Please someone stand up and take responsibility, because they are weakening the country. They are weakening the country. And we have a constitutional obligation to try to offer solutions.

No.

No, you guys have the floor all the time.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, will the gentleman be willing to support an independent commission for Katrina, a bipartisan commission?

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time.

Mr. Speaker, we want a commitment from the gentleman, if he is willing to take responsibility, to establish with us a bipartisan committee like the 9/11 Commission to oversee Katrina in which Democrats and Republicans both would agree and both have equal power in the commission like the 9/11 Commission.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate that, but the bottom line is this, my good friend from California: Your committee is controlled by the majority party. It

is not a bipartisan equal commission like the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission was the most successful commission we have had in trying to address a major terrorist attack in the United States. Let us put a bipartisan commission together and look at Katrina.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Reclaiming my time, you are leaving all of the decision-making power in the hands of the 11 Republican Members.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the way the committee is set up right now, there are 11 Republicans and there are 9 Democrats on the committee. The Democratic Party cannot subpoena a witness without the support of the Republican Party. We cannot subpoena the documents. We cannot get the kind of information that we need without the approval of the majority party, and you are asking the American people to trust the Republican Party, the same people that appointed Brownie to run FEMA, and he is still on the payroll.

I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, he did. But the same party that is overseeing him has left this man on the payroll making $148,000 a year.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, we are getting into some procedural stuff here, but the Republican Party does not need to offer amendments because they get everything they want into the bill during the committee process. They offer it. They do not need to offer amendments.

And the money we are borrowing, this is the ultimate irony of the whole deal, and this is why we say that I did not hear our friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), when he was down here take responsibility for that. It was conspicuously absent from the argument.

The most ironic piece of this whole ordeal is that that money that we are borrowing from China and Saudi Arabia and Japan is going to fund $16 billion in subsidies to the oil companies. That money that we are borrowing from China is going to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry to the tune of $100 billion.

So the MO of the Republican majority is to go borrow money from the Chinese and take that money and give it to corporate America, and then go to corporate America and shake them

down, go out to shakedown street on K Street, shake down corporate America for campaign contributions to run the election, and the group that is absent here, the American people.

The next entrepreneur, the next business person, the next person that is going to go out and create wealth. And that is the whole thing with the Democrats. We are trying to convince the Republican Party that together America can do better for all of us.

I think there is a tremendous, huge magnificent moral component to this that our friends who in many instances invoke their religion to pass legislation tend to forget when it is dealing with the poor in our society. They forget their religion. But there is also an economic argument here.

We talked in the last hour about the Chinese producing 600,000 engineers. And the country of India, producing 350,000 engineers, and the United States only producing 70,000 engineers. The reason the Democrats are fighting for the free and reduced lunch program and student loans and increased funding for Pell grants and Medicaid is because we need healthy educated kids so that they can go to college and become engineers and create wealth so that we can keep this great democracy alive.

This is not just a moral argument. It is. But it is not just a moral argument. This is an economic argument. Who do we suppose is going to come up with the next alternative energy source? Who do we suppose is going to come up with the next great invention that is going to lead to more manufacturing in the United States of America, if we are not educating everybody?

In our cities, my friends, when we have 75 percent of our kids who live in our cities living in poverty, they are never going to be on the economic playing field for us. And we need 11 on both sides of the ball, my good friend. We need linebackers and cornerbacks and strong safeties and linemen. We need quarterbacks and running backs and tight ends. And when they only educate half, you are losing, you are walking onto the field with only half a team.

I would like to introduce one of my mentors in Congress, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson), an outstanding leader on a variety of issues, a recent Member of the Ways and Members Committee, a former quarterback at East Hartford High School.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the gentleman just said. I did not know the gentleman was the one who tried to offer the amendment. It is good for the 30-Somethings to understand to put a face with the idea.

That idea to just negotiate down drug prices on a $700 billion prescription drug bill, now that may save 10 percent, that may save 20 percent, some people would say that would save 30 percent. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that we could save 20 percent of a $700 billion bill. That is $140 billion that we would have here to either return back to the middle class in the form of middle-class tax cuts or to fully fund student loans or to fully fund the Pell grant or No Child Left Behind. $140 billion goes a pretty long way, and that is what the Democrats want to do.

We have a Member here who is willing to sit in committee until 4:00 in the morning to try to get that provision tacked on to the bill, and you get shot down.

But we are here to say that we are fighting on behalf, and I was telling my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), earlier, there is an old Irish saying, Is this a private fight or can anyone get in it? And I believe that is what the mentality of the 30-Something group. We are ready to scrap

here. We are not going to sit back and let anyone push us around and let anyone tell us that we do not have ideas. Because we do have ideas. And just because the Republican majority does not like them, just because it may be contrary to their fund-raising opportunities, that does not mean we are going to stop.

I have to go catch a plane, and I am sorry about that because I would love to sit here and continue this discussion. But let me say, in closing, that the Democratic party wants to take this country into a new direction. We want to change the way things are going in Washington right now, and that is part of what this is all about. We also want to say to the American people that when you put us in charge, we are going to put the interests of the country before the interests of our own party.

The system that we just talked about where the pharmaceutical companies are getting middle-class taxes, they come to Washington and it returns to the oil companies and to the pharmaceutical companies, that system is inherently corrupt. And that when our Republican majority friends appoint someone who is in charge of an Arabian horses outfit to run FEMA, we are going to end the cronyism, and we are going to end the incompetence and the incompetent way they govern. We want to take the country in a new direction.

I thank my friends. I thank my friends. I thank my friends.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for this opportunity to be here with him tonight, as we do every night; and I want to take this opportunity for a couple of minutes here with my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), who is also here to recognize the impact that the Tuskegee Airmen have had not only in Alabama, where they did the original training, but all over the country and the kind of impact and leadership that they have set out for all of us, quite frankly, to try to achieve.

November 11, Mr. Speaker, marks the 51st year we have honored veterans. Memorial Day recognizes those people who have unselfishly given their lives in service to this Nation. Veterans Day honors all those who defend democracy by serving in the Armed Forces.

The beautiful thing, Mr. Speaker, about the Tuskegee Airmen, when they were set up during World War II, these black military pilots were trained at a separate air field in Alabama, Tuskegee, Alabama, therefore named the Tuskegee Airmen. The establishment and the training of the airmen was an experiment to prove that blacks were incapable of operating expensive and complex combat aircraft.

The true spirit of those men came through, however; and instead of the expected failure, the Tuskegee training program produced 992 graduates, 450 of whom served in combat. They flew more than 15,500 missions, destroyed 260 enemy aircraft, sank one enemy destroyer, and demolished numerous enemy installations. During World War II, the airmen earned 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 744 Air Medals, eight Purple Hearts and 14 Bronze Stars.

This is what it is all about. And there is going to be an event on Veterans Day that my colleague from Ohio and I, and even our good friends from Florida, I am sure, will not be able to make, but we want to take this opportunity here on the House floor to honor those men who provided a tremendous example for our whole Nation.

Mr. Speaker, if my colleague from Florida will continue to yield, I just want to get this into the Congressional Record. The speaker on November 11 in Youngstown is going to be Luther H. Smith at the VFW Post 6488's annual Veterans Day program.

This gentleman epitomizes what it means to really be a hero. He received his military aviation training at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in 1942, and he then became a fighter pilot with the all-black 332d Fighter Group. He has said of the Tuskegee Airmen: ``We didn't start out to be heroes, but now we are legends.''

Mr. Smith is credited with destroying two German enemy aircraft in aerial combat and 10 German aircraft in ground missions. So we want to welcome Mr. Smith not only into the Congressional Record but to the VFW Post 6488 in Youngstown, thank him for his service, all Tuskegee Airmen in Youngstown, and all veterans on Veterans Day.

So I thank my colleague very much for allowing me to thank our veterans for their service to our country; and with that, I yield back to the gentleman from Florida.

Well, my two mentors in Congress. Really, just to see you two standing next to each other puts a little lump in the throat. The good gentleman from Massachusetts, who we have been getting e-mails about from folks that say they just love the accent from Boston.

I would also like to welcome our good friend and my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), who has been a voice for the underprivileged for the past 10 years in Congress. Prior to that, he was a psychologist in prisons, a very dangerous job; and he had many other careers prior to coming to the United States Congress.

So we have a heavy bunch here, along with our good friend, the gentlewoman

from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), who keeps us all together and brings a little class and elegance to the whole operation and some sense and some civility and a little bit of grace.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, the interesting point that our friends always make is if we tax corporations, then they just pass it on to the consumers. So they raised fees, and it is getting passed on too to the students. As we go through this tonight, let us ask other Members, Mr. Speaker, to pay very close attention. I do not think it is a coincidence that the very programs that are getting cut, student loans, Medicaid, school lunches, these just happen to be by coincidence the programs in Washington, D.C. that do not have lobbyists. There is no one down here greasing the wheels, putting money into the Republican campaign coffers for student loans, for the fees to be decreased. There is no big lobby group out there for that.

And there is no big lobby group out there to make sure that poor people have the proper kind of health care that they need. So as we go through this tonight, it is important for all of us to remember that it is not a coincidence that our friends cut programs where there are not big lobby groups and big donors and then they keep the programs that have corporate welfare in them or that the lobbyists want. Then they are off to shakedown street, K Street, which is where all the lobbyists are. They go down to shakedown street, shake down the lobbyists. The lobbyists donate money to the Republican Party, and they keep the system going.

Sixteen Democrats voted to reduce the fees, eliminate all fees that would increase the cost of receiving the loan. Sixteen Democrats voted for that amendment. Twenty-two Republicans voted against that amendment.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Florida will continue to yield, I think it is quite interesting too that our good friend Jim Wallace, an evangelical preacher, and several others from religious organizations, are stepping up and trying to pressure the Republican Party, who have called themselves Christians and who have utilized the Christian right and the label of the Christian Coalition and yet in the very next breath they cut poverty programs, cut programs for average people. I find that horribly hypocritical.

That is a lot of money.

You are now.

That is $27,000 for each person. So if you are a baby born today, right now, my nephew, Nicholas, born 3 weeks ago, he owes $27,000 to pay for the debt.

Now as we look at the numbers, as the gentlewoman stated earlier, he is going to go to college and have to borrow money, $17,000, $18,000, now an additional $6,000. So this kid before he even gets out into the workforce to have a full-time job is going to owe $27,000 on the debt and $23,000 on student loans. That is $50,000. Run that

out 22 years, plus the additional burden we are putting on this young fellow, and what kind of future are we leaving to this kid?

Wow.

Mr. Speaker, can the gentleman explain who offered that motion, what party?

Mr. Speaker, there is a certain amount of corruption within the system, is there not, when that happens? There is just a certain amount of corruption and incompetence in the system.

Now, I know our friends, they like to say, well, all the Democrats, all they want to do is spend, spend, spend. But they have borrowed and spent over $1 trillion just in the last 4 years from foreign countries, more than the past 42 Presidents.

Record-breaking spending, record-breaking deficits. The party of fiscal conservatism has become an absolute joke. It has become a caricature of itself.

Here is a conservative that we may disagree with on many, many issues, Cal Thomas of the Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, a conservative columnist, one of the most conservative in the country who tries to provide a little advice to the Republican majority: ``Here is a suggestion on your budget cuts: Don't start with the poor, start with the rich.''

A good first step, $16 billion in subsidies to them. They have not done anything with trying to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, allow for reimportation, allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down the drug prices of a $700 billion bill that we were told that night was $400 billion.

Mr. Speaker, I think the Republican Party, after they give the $16 billion in subsidies, will head out to shakedown street, K Street, where all the lobbyists are, and they will say, hey, we just gave you $16 billion in public taxpayer money, and average people, middle-class people, people who need LIHEAP, who have high heating costs and everything else, they took that public money, they gave it to the oil companies, the oil companies are going to make tremendous profits and have made tremendous contributions to the Republican Party.

[email protected].

Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman will yield, I want to share with the Speaker and the American people to get this in the Congressional Record some of the e-mails that Brownie was sending on the day of the Katrina tragedy and the days after the Katrina tragedy.

First of all, this is about cronyism in politics at its best, a culture of cronyism and a culture of corruption. We see it all the time at the local, sometimes at the local level, but the way that the cronyism has permeated, permeated, the Federal Government with President Bush's friends is really absolutely sickening.

This is an article today out of CNN.com. The quotes are posted on websites. The gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Melancon), from New Orleans, has all of the quotes posted on his website from Brown, the former head of FEMA on the day of the Katrina tragedy. This is just startling. This is just startling.

First let me say that Mr. Brown spent a decade as the Stewards and Judges Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. How he ended up as the head of the FEMA agency is beyond my ability as a human being to put into my head, to conceptualize. I cannot believe that the President would put someone who was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association in charge of FEMA. He did not get an appointment as an ambassador to a country that has a lot of beaches. He ends up in charge of FEMA after 9/11.

Here is what he says, one of the e-mails. Brown wrote to Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs the morning of the hurricane, ``Can I quit now? Can I come home?''

A few days later Brown wrote to an acquaintance, ``I am trapped now. Please rescue me.''

I mean, give me a break. A few days later, Brown is talking to his PR director, his press secretary, Sharon Worthy, about his attire, asking her, can you imagine this, asking her ``Tie or not for tonight? Button down blue shirt?'' He is asking her about what he should wear.

This is a couple days after Katrina, when the American people were watching on all the cable news channels people suffering in pools of water, flooding everywhere, nothing to eat, people who do not have their insulin, old folks starving to death, dehydrating, no water, no ice, and this guy is saying ``I am trapped now, please rescue me?'' Is that the kind of leadership we want? No. The United States wants leadership and we get cronyism.

A few days later, she says, this is his press secretary again, ``Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt, all shirts. Even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this crisis and on TV you just need to look more hard-working.''

You got to be kidding me. This is what your FEMA director is doing during Katrina? He is talking with his press secretary, who said roll up your shirt sleeves so you look like you are working.

Still on the parole for $148,000.

This is cronyism at its best, because this fellow is not the least bit qualified to be in charge of FEMA. The top 8 or 10 people of FEMA were all political appointments of people who were not qualified.

We want an independent commission to oversee this whole process. Why? Because this could have been a terrorist attack, and we have got someone in charge of responding to the terrorist attack who is talking about rolling up his shirt sleeves so he looks good on CNN.

And we are getting lectured to by people telling us that that party on that side of the aisle is responsible? Is this responsible? Is that good leadership? We have not seen good leadership out of this administration yet. Come on.

If the gentlewoman will yield further, I think the point really is that not only do they disrespect government, and if you disrespect something, it tends to not work appropriately, they see government as their little sandbox, and they see government as their opportunity to take care of their political contributors, to bolster their own political party.

I understand.

Together we can do better.

Mr. Speaker, there is also another welfare state: Iraq. We have forgotten to even bring this up tonight, but there is a welfare state in Iraq. And as they are cutting programs in the United States on student loans, do we know what they are doing in Iraq? They rehabbed 2,717 schools in Iraq. They trained 36,000 teachers in Iraq. As they are cutting Medicaid and Medicare in the United States, they have trained 2,000 health educators in Iraq, 3.2 million children vaccinated in Iraq, 110 primary health care centers built in Iraq. We have a welfare state in Iraq right now that is being funded by the American taxpayer at the same time that the Republican Congress is cutting funding for the United States citizens that live right here in this country.

So they take your public tax dollars and they give $16.5 billion of it to the oil companies, $100 million of it to the pharmaceutical companies, do nothing to reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals; they give between $200 billion and $300 billion to the welfare state in Iraq and, at the same time, they are cutting programs here in the United States of America. That is just corrupt. They put their party before the country.

We want to take this country in a new direction, change what is going on in this country, and create some independence from shakedown street.

Mr. Speaker, I want to share with the American people something we shared with them earlier in the last hour or 2 hours ago about being fiscally responsible. In fact, in the last 224 years, 42 Presidents, they borrowed $1 trillion from outside sources, other countries. Forty-two presidents, 224 years over a trillion dollars.

In the last 4 years, the Republican President with the Republican House and the Republican Senate have borrowed more than we have borrowed in the previous 224 years, over a trillion dollars from foreign countries, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia.

Here is the kicker. See, now they are the bank. Now China is the bank. Now they are already taking our jobs. Now they are holding the bank notes, and we got to pay interest on it.

Here is the kicker. Here is what just really frosts me. At the same time, China is graduating 600,000 engineers a year; and the United States is graduating 70,000. So what does the Republican majority do? After borrowing billions of dollars from the Chinese and watching them educate their kids and have 600,000 engineers when we only have 70,000, they raise the fees on student loans. They cut the education budget.

Then the kids who need health care, so that they can at least concentrate in school, so they are not sick, they cut that, too.

Where is the long-term vision from the Republican party?

So are you saying that the interest that the American taxpayer pays on the money we are borrowing from China is being invested on the Chinese people to create 600,000 engineers a year?

Do you know why? Because the kids that have to pay this debt, that $8 trillion, they are not just Republican kids, they are not just Democratic kids, they are kids born in the United States of America.

$148,000 a year.

Corruption.

Cronyism.

Incompetence.

[email protected].

Mr. Speaker, my good friend and mentor, Congressman Delahunt, is also here to help us explain how. This man was a prosecutor, a district attorney in the great State of Massachusetts. So he understands exactly what, I think, we are going to go through here. And he volunteered his services. This is the kind of gentleman that we are dealing with here, to come down and help us kind of walk through this.

We are going to lay out for the American people tonight exactly what has been going on here with the CIA leak, and we have all of these examples, and we have had example after example after example over the past year of different reasons, really, quite frankly, since the war, about what has been going on and how this administration has misled the Congress and misled the American people. So we kind of want to go through chronologically exactly what has been happening.

I am going to take a couple minutes here just to walk through this and lay the foundation. We are going to actually have the next hour as well; so we are going to have some time to go through, but I think it is important, as we have all talked about already, to let the American people know exactly what has been happening.

Now, this was President Bush's original promise when he was the Governor of Texas. He was running for the Presidency of the United States. He said, ``In my administration we will ask not only what is legal but what is right, not just what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves.''

So this President came in with a pretty high standard of how he wanted his administration to run, and we all respected the President for that. I remember his saying and the Vice President saying time and time again, We are going to bring honor and dignity to the White House.

We see where he got it, from his father, who was a very good man. This is his talking about former CIA head talking about leaks: ``I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.'' That is President 41.

Former Republican National Committee Chair Ed Gillespie, who might as well be the Chair of the committee that heads up the Katrina investigation because it is so partisan, this is what he said when he was asked on ``Hardball'' with Chris Matthews: ``I think if the allegation'' of the CIA leak ``is true, to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative, it's abhorrent and it should be a crime, and it is a crime.''

And Chris Matthews said: ``It'd be worse than Watergate, wouldn't it?''

And Gillespie said: ``Yeah. I suppose in terms of the real-world implications of it. It's not just politics.''

So first President Bush, Ed Gillespie. The President came into office. He was from Texas. He did not want Potomac fever. He was going to bring a fresh, new approach to Washington. Then once the leak stuff starting coming out, he says now: ``If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.''

And that is true. The original person now, Scooter Libby, who has been indicted for perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice, has resigned. So that is good. The President's original statement said that ``if anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.''

``If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.'' That is what the President said. That is not what Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr. Inslee, Mr. Delahunt, Mr. Meek, Mr. Ryan said. The President of the United States said that. So now we are basically saying that this President said if anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would be out.

So let us see what actually happens here. This is from the indictment, quoted from the indictment: ``On or about July 10 or July 11, 2003,'' Scooter ``Libby spoke to a senior official in the White House, Official A.'' Now, we have come to know that Official A is actually Karl Rove. Official A has now been outed as Karl Rove, ``who advised Libby of a conversation Official A had earlier in the week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip. Libby was advised by Rove, ``Official A'' in the indictment ``that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife.''

That is from count one, obstruction of justice, in the indictment of Scooter Libby. Remember the date, July 10, middle of the summer.

Now, Karl Rove, a couple of years ago, in September of 2003, the fall, a couple months later, the end of September, September 24, to ABC News producer Andrea Owen, when she asked: ``Did you have any knowledge or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press?'' Karl Rove said no. In July, in the indictment, he is the one talking to Scooter Libby about Novak using it in the article. That is a lie. He lied to the American people on ABC News.

Asked again, Rove revises his answer. This is in July 4 of 2005, just this past summer: ``I'll repeat what I said to ABC News when this whole thing broke some number of months ago. I didn't know her name, and I didn't leak her name.''

If the gentleman will yield, so Cooper is going to say that Rove told him.

Wow.

That is very important. That is huge. Here we are, in the indictment he knows in July. In September of 2003, a couple of months after he had already known and told Libby, he denies it to the American people. He lies about it. In Washington, you know, you misrepresent, you mislead. In Ohio, you lie. We tend in the Beltway here, people who get ``Potomac fever'' tend to soften it up like it is kind of okay. In Ohio this is a lie. So Karl Rove lied to the American people.

Now, not only did he lie to the American people, this poor fellow here, Scott McClellan, who is the spokesperson for the White House, says on October 3, which is after July when Rove already knew and told Libby, after September, when he already denied it once to ABC News again, Scott McClellan goes out in public and says, those individuals, Karl Rove, Elliot Abrahms and Scooter Libby, assured me they were not involved with this.

So they lied to their friend and colleague Scott McClellan as well. So here is where we are right now.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, now we have to be very careful with this next example, because although we can say that Karl Rove lied, we have to be very careful to respect to the Office of the Vice President here, and we intend to do that. This is the next set of facts. This is also from the obstruction count, count one, obstruction of justice in the indictment of Scooter Libby.

If the gentleman will yield further, absolutely. This is from count one of the obstruction of justice indictment of Scooter Libby, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. We have got to keep the dates straight again here.

On or about June 12 of 2003, which again is the summer of 2003, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States, who is currently Dick Cheney, that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA. That is what the count says. That is what the indictment says, that the Vice President on or about June 12.

Here we have the Vice President on Meet the Press in September, September 14 of 2003, a couple of months later.

Mr. Russert asks, ``He,'' Ambassador Joe Wilson, ``says he came back from Niger and said that in fact he could not find any documentation that in fact Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels. Question: Were you briefed on this finding in February or March of 02?'' Russert asked Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney says, ``No, I do not know Joe Wilson. I have never met Joe Wilson. No, I do not know Joe Wilson.''

The indictment tells us that on June 12 he is telling Libby about Joe Wilson. And then he says a couple months later to Tim Russert, ``I do not know Joe Wilson.'' That is misrepresenting the facts. That is misleading, in my estimation, the American people once again.

If the gentleman will yield, I think so. What do you mean by ``know.''

Mr. Speaker, that is a great segue into what we are going to get into, which is the damage that has been done to the Central Intelligence Agency on this.

Here we have the Vice President told Libby about Joe Wilson's wife and then two months later denied even knowing who this person was. We have Karl Rove in the indictment known as ``Official A'' who said that Novak was going to write a story about this, and two months later on ABC and then a couple years later he denies even knowing Joe Wilson or having anything to do with this.

Now, is this illegal? We do not know just yet with Karl Rove, because this investigation is still open. But did Karl Rove lie to the American people? Yes. And he should leave office immediately, because he broke trust with the American people.

We have our good friend from Massachusetts, a former prosecutor, a former DA with a very distinguished career in law enforcement here to join us.

Congressman, that is not you saying that. Who is saying that? Who wrote that?

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, when you have that kind of mindset where you think you can get away with everything, when you think you can make these decisions in a box and you can take a country to war, as Thomas Friedman says, ``on the wings of a lie,'' then you end up with all the stuff we are already talking about. They just take it to the next level, and they think they can lie to the American people, lie to the grand jury and obstruct justice.

The Republicans.

The gentleman makes a great point. We need to reiterate this to our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to the American people, that this outfit that is currently in charge of the House and the Senate and the White House will do anything that they need to do to promote and bolster their party, the Republican Party. They will be willing to do anything. And they have proven, not just violating the rules of the House or the spirit of the rules of the House by keeping the clock open so that they can pass legislation at 3 in the morning 15 times, or lie about the prescription drug bill, or lie about the war, but to out a CIA agent to benefit yourself politically is outrageous.

As my friend said, that is no different, especially in the 21st century when we are dealing with intelligence, the war on terrorism is a war of intelligence, and so those covert operatives are foot soldiers in forward areas; and it is, as has been stated, the moral equivalent of outing a CIA agent, outing a CIA agent is the moral equivalent of telling the enemy where the marines are, and they are coming.

So the gentleman is saying that when we were in charge, we actually put the country before our own political party.

You can get ahold of us at [email protected]. We are going to get up these facts on the Web site, too, so you can follow them.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to keep on rolling here. We have so many facts to deal with.

Part of the conversation that we were just engaged in is we know that Karl Rove lied to the American people. We know that Scooter Libby has misrepresented facts and been indicted on five counts: one obstruction of justice, two making false statements, and two committing perjury, lying to Federal agents and lying to the grand jury.

We know that the Vice President of the United States has clearly, clearly withheld information from the American people, that the indictment has said that he knew all about, regarding the Valerie Plame investigation.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) said we are eroding basic freedoms here. And if you do not believe that, if you do not believe all of these facts that we are giving to the Speaker and to the American people and to our colleagues through third-party validators, if you weaken the Central Intelligence Agency, all you have done is weaken a country. That is all you have done.

And through the leak, through the outing of Joe Wilson's wife, and outing Brewster-Jennings and Associates, the small Boston company that was a front company for the CIA, you also out every contact that this woman has established over a 20-plus-year career. All of her contacts over 20-some years that maybe she could go back to and elicit and solicit information from them, she cannot any longer.

If maybe they paid a little more attention to actually administering government instead of, A, running it down and, B, trying to use the levers of government to try to hurt our own CIA agents, can you imagine the amount of time that was spent trying to organize this outing of this agent after Joe Wilson came back? Can you imagine how much that consumed the White House? Instead of thinking about better, more efficient and effective ways to administer government, they were spending all that time trying to out Joe Wilson's wife. What a misuse of government power. That is a clear abuse of power and the sleaze factor of the whole deal.

I will be happy to yield to my friend.

On this march to war, as the drumbeat quickened, it was we are going to destroy anybody in our path that tries to stop us and even if you are a CIA covert agent that has served this country in the intelligence community for years.

Now, earlier, my friend from Florida said, Well, how would these CIA agents feel? So I think it is nice for us to give our opinion, but I think we should actually quote a couple that have been in the news recently. One, former CIA covert agent Jim Marcinkowski on ``60 Minutes'' the other night said about exposing the Boston company, exposing that that was a CIA front, exposing Brewster-Jennings, could lead foreign intelligence agencies to other spies. There is a possibility that there were other agents that would use that same kind of a cover. So they may have been using Brewster-Jennings just like her.

As you said, this is not just about Joe Wilson's wife. This is about everybody who she came in contact with, who she worked with, who she may have been affiliated with in a CIA front company.

And then a former 14-year covert CIA operative. Now, you asked, What do they think? This is what they think. This is what is in the heart of a CIA covert agent right now. This is how they feel.

``Because we're talking about lives and we're talking about capabilities, we do our work. We risk our own lives. We risk lives of our agents in order to protect our country. And when something like this happens, it cuts to the very core of what we do. We're not being undermined by the North Koreans. We're not being undermined by the Russians. We're being undermined by officials in our own government. That, I find galling.''

A former 14-year covert CIA operative, in regard to this whole CIA leak and the administration outing an agent: ``We're not being undermined by the North Koreans. We're not being undermined by the Russians. We're being undermined by officials in our own government.''

If the gentlewoman will yield, Mr. Speaker. That is the point I think that we have been trying to make all night here, in our first hour and in this second hour, that this outfit who runs this Chamber and who runs the Senate and who runs the White House have over the past 11 years in the House, in the Senate on and off, and in the White House since the 2000 election, have consistently and constantly put the Republican Party before the interests of the United States of America.

Every single time. Whether it was lying about the prescription drug bill and the amount it would cost, $400 billion, and then we found out months later it would be 500, 600 and then $700 billion. The war, the oil for reconstruction, the greeted as liberators, and all the nonsense we heard. Then the whole CIA leak investigation. Every single instance. Tax cuts for billionaires, cutting poverty programs and raising tuition and health care on the middle class. Every single instance.

Every single instance has put their party before the interests of the United States of America so that they could go down the shakedown street and raise money that the lobbyists will put in the Republican Party coffers and just keep the game going. From here to shakedown street, shakedown street into the Republican coffers, and then you get the legislation you want. And not in one instance has it been in the best interest of the country.

Tears are shed, threats are made, and arms are twisted.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's comments.

We are kind of wrapping things up here, and we have got some late- breaking news here that I think we want to share with the American people that just recently we got some information on.

And this kind of feeds into every single thing. This is always happening because we are paying so little attention to what the administration and government should be.

Mr. Speaker, we have a culture in Washington.

What we want for kids, for young people, it is not that we do not want them ever to make a mistake. We want to teach them that when they do make a mistake, they learn and they overcome and they become better. Every one of us in our own lives looks back on mistakes we have made and we say it was painful, it hurt, it was embarrassing, but today I am better because of that mistake. And to have the leaders of the country send a message out to the kids across the country, one, that it is okay to lie, that it is okay to withhold information because it may be a little bit embarrassing, that you are never able to make a mistake, that is bad for our kids. It is bad for our country. It is bad for our institution. It erodes the basic tenets of our democracy that a lot of people made a lot of great sacrifices, sometimes their lives, to uphold this concept that we have.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would also like to thank everyone for being here for the 30-something Group.

And I want to make one final point because we have heard this on the talk shows from a lot of different sources about the CIA leak: well, they went after Libby for outing a CIA agent, and they only got him on perjury and false statements and obstruction of justice. And as we close here, I want to just reiterate what the prosecutor said. He said, I am the umpire and as I am trying to umpire the game here and figure out exactly what is going on, by their committing perjury, they were throwing dirt in my eye.

So maybe someone will end up getting indicted on this count or several counts of outing a CIA agent. But what Fitzgerald is saying is that when one lies to the grand jury and they lie to Federal agents, it is very difficult for him to prove his case because he cannot get to the truth. And I think in my

experience, just reading cases like this, if one really wants to get a prosecutor upset, as my two friends here probably know much better than I, start lying to him. And I think the end is not yet in sight, and it is going to be very interesting to see how Karl Rove ends up in this whole deal. And we know that there have been misleading statements and outright lies to the press and the American people.

So to our friends at home: [email protected]. They can send us an e-mail, and we will continue to try to organize these facts and let everyone know that the Democratic Party wants to put the country before our own party as we have before.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be down here.

This is a pretty sad day in the United States of America with the recent news regarding the Chief of Staff of the Vice President being indicted on five counts of making false statements, perjury, obstruction of justice.

The 30-Something Group has been talking about for quite some time on this floor the culture of corruption that we have seen in this Chamber, on Capitol Hill, and now we have come to find that this is also extended into the executive branch, the Republican one-party rule. Inevitably when one party controls all the levers of government, inevitably it leads to corruption, and today we saw another taste of that.

My friend from Florida is here, and before we get into the corruption and the cronyism that has been going on in the way that this government has just been corrupted, I want to talk for a few minutes about what our friend was saying who was here prior to us.

I want to make this perfectly clear. The Republicans control the House of Representatives. The Republicans control the Senate. The Republicans control the White House. We have a one-party government here in Washington, DC.

I find it humorous and sometimes hysterical that the other side can look over to the Democrats and blame us for all the big spending and all the deficits. They look over here and they point to my friends on the left. We do not have any power. We are not running the government. One-party rule. Take responsibility for your own actions.

My friend who was here prior was talking about all the Democrats want to do is spend. The Republican majority has borrowed and spent this country almost all the way into bankruptcy. Our national debt just went to $8 trillion.

The Republicans have controlled this House since 1994. They have had the White House since 2000 and the Senate on and off, but it had control of the Senate for the past few years. They have been able to implement their agenda, and they keep saying that we want to raise taxes.

We do not want to raise taxes. We want to reduce spending here, as the rhetoric came from the other side, but we do not want to do it on the backs of the middle class.

We want to reduce corporate welfare to the tune of $16 billion in the two energy bills. Sixteen billion dollars we voted to subsidize oil companies, and they are coming out with the highest profits that they have had in a long, long time, record profits just in the last quarter.

We want to end corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical companies, $700 billion in spending on a Medicare prescription drug bill that does nothing to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.

Democrats wanted reimportation from Canada to help reduce the cost. Democrats wanted to give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to negotiate down drug prices by basically going, on behalf of all of the Medicare recipients, to Merck and Pfizer and all of these big drug companies, and basically say, if you want a contract, let us talk price. If we took 10 or 20 percent of the savings of that bill, $700 billion over the next 10 years, if we saved 10 percent, that is $70 billion which would pay for Hurricane Katrina. But we could save closer to 20 or 30 percent, which would be $140 billion of the taxpayers' money that we could save. We do not want to raise taxes.

Now, do we think that we should be giving tax cuts to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and at the same time cut Medicaid, which is a health care program for poor kids and poor families? Meanwhile, middle-class America's health care is going up 15-20 percent. My God, we cannot do anything to help average people because we have to take care of the big corporations and keep the corporate welfare going.

Let me say this before we get back to our message. This is very simple to connect the dots. This body taxes the American people. The American people send their money down here. The Republican Congress gives that money, to the tune of $16 billion in the last few months, to the energy companies. Can you imagine, your tax dollars going to subsidize oil companies. American tax dollars coming down here, and the Republican majority takes it and gives it to the pharmaceutical companies to buy prescription drugs for seniors; great idea, but is it a good policy not to do anything about controlling the costs?

What the Republican majority does is then they go to the shake-down street, which is K Street where all of the lobbyists are. They go and shake down all the lobbyists who they just spent a bunch of tax dollars on, and the lobbyists who they shake down fill up the Republican campaign committee coffers to the tune of millions and millions and millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars is spent lobbying. This is corrupt to the core. This is not the way to govern.

We understand there is money in politics, but to use the hard-working public's money that average people send down here and to give it to corporations is atrocious. Our good friend Cal Thomas, who is one of the most conservative Republican columnists in the country, said in The Washington Times, which is not a liberal newspaper, gives his friends in the majority a little suggestion: Do not start with the poor to pay for Hurricane Katrina, start with the rich. He goes on to say, which I tend to forget about, the corporate subsidies to the big agribusinesses, this is Cal Thomas, not the gentlewoman from Florida or me, this is our conservative Republican friend Cal Thomas, 72 percent of farm subsidy money goes to 10 percent of the recipients: the richest farmers, corporations, estates and other entities.

Mr. Speaker, this is ridiculous that we are going to cut lunch programs, food stamps, cut student loans for average people trying to send their kids to school, and yet provide corporate welfare to the top 10 percent richest farm agribusinesses, multinational corporations.

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

What is the temperature?

Mr. Speaker, I am reading through the indictments right now. It is really unbelievable, the blatant lies that are in this, that are astounding to me.

Count 5, the perjury count, where they have a series of questions, and the question from the lawyer to Mr. Libby is his specific recollection that he told Cooper about Mr. Wilson's wife working at the CIA, and he attributed that fact to what, reporters?

The answer is yes. Many reporters.

Libby said, ``I was very clear to say reporters are telling us that because in my mind I still did not know it as fact. I thought I was. All I had was this information that was coming from reporters.''

He continues to lie, saying, Yes, sir. He asked him again, and Libby said, ``Reporters are telling us that. I do not know if it was true. I was careful about that because, among other things, I wanted to be clear I did not know Mr. Wilson. I don't know. I think I said I don't know if he has a wife, but this is what we are hearing.''

They asked him again, and he said it was a fact what I told the reporters.

All throughout this he testifies to the lawyers that he was told about Mr. Wilson's wife working for the CIA from reporters. In the charge of perjury is that in truth of fact, as Libby well knew when he gave this testimony, it was false in that Libby did not advise Matthew Cooper or other reporters that Libby had heard other reporters talking about Wilson's wife working for the CIA; Libby heard it from the Vice President of the United States.

The Vice President of the United States in this indictment, and there may be a trial, and this may be a question of fact, but in the indictment on page 5, on or about June 12, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. That is on June 12 of 2003.

The Vice President told Libby in September, July, August, September; 3 or 4 months later, the Vice President is on Meet the Press. Mr. Russert asks him about Joe Wilson going to Africa to check out the uranium deal. The Vice President says, ``No, I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson.''

A question has arisen, on and on he goes about the questions, and Joe Wilson, ``I don't know who sent Joe Wilson.''

That is not true. The Vice President told Libby that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA in June, and in September he is on Meet the Press saying he does not even know who Joe Wilson is. He is not lying to Tim Russert, he is lying to the American people. You cannot lie to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think the silence speaks for itself.

Let us quickly go through this. June 12, the Vice President tells Libby about Joe Wilson's wife. In September the Vice President is on ``Meet the Press'' with Tim Russert and he says, I do not even know who Joe Wilson is. Can one imagine? We look at him and we believe him.

Here is Scott McClellan on October 3. So June the VP told Libby. In September he lied about it on ``Meet the Press.'' Then in October McClellan says, Those individuals, Karl Rove, Abrams, and Lewis Libby, assured me they were not involved with this.

The lie continues. I mean, these are the same people that told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These are the same people that told us we would be greeted as liberators. These are the same people who said we could use the oil money for reconstruction. Have they told the truth since they have been in office?

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. It continues just to be unbelievable. Count four, the perjury count, it is unreal.

Again, we said on June 12 the Vice President told Scooter Libby about Joe Wilson's wife working for the CIA and then Libby is talking about a conversation he had with Tim Russert on July 10, which is a month later, and he is explaining the conversation, and it went something like this:

Russert said, Did you know that Ambassador Wilson's wife works at the CIA? And I was a little taken aback by that. I remember being taken aback by it. And I said--he may have said a little more, but that is what he said. And I said, no, I don't know that. And I said, no, I don't know that intentionally because I didn't want him to take anything I was saying as in any way confirming what he said because at that point in time I did not recall that I had ever known and I thought this is something that he was telling me that I was first learning.

That is on July 10. But the indictment says one month before, the Vice President of the United States told Scooter Libby that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. A lie. As we put our hand on the Bible and put one up to God, and these are the same people who told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These are the same people who told us we were going to use the oil money for reconstruction, 200, 300 billion American tax dollars later. The same people that told us we would be greeted as liberators. They lied to the grand jury. They lied to Tim Russert. They lied to the American people.

They passed a prescription drug bill. They told Congress it was $400 billion. It was $700 billion. We found out 3 months later after we voted for it. I mean, they can lie to the Democrats, but who lies to Tim Russert? One cannot lie to Tim Russert. He is the best.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

It is a culture.

Reclaiming my time, we do not want to make light of it, but let us just think of what President Clinton had to deal with in his impeachment. That is private behavior. If he committed perjury, that is wrong, and we are all against it.

You are talking about outing a CIA agent. You are talking about lying to FBI agents. This is the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States, not some intern. This is one of the architects of the war.

Now, we all know that all the nonsense that was told to us before the war was not true, and now you are willing to lie to a Federal grand jury? You are willing to lie to FBI agents? You are willing to lie to Tim Russert? You sure as heck are going to be willing to lie to the American people, a couple of folks in Ohio that work in a steel mill and just trying to make ends meet. That is nothing, to lie to them, if you are willing to go to jail or prison to lie.

And we know through the indictment that the Vice President told Libby on June 12, so the Vice President knew in June. Then he goes on Tim Russert in September and says, ``I don't know Joe Wilson.'' He says, ``I don't know Joe Wilson.'' You told Libby 3 or 4 months before you not only knew him, you knew his wife worked for the CIA.

Now, we have Mr. Gillespie, who is going to be the Chair of our Independent Katrina Commission, here is what Karl Rove said. ``Did you have any knowledge or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press?'' ``No.'' That was in September, I think, right after Cheney was on Meet the Press.

We do not know exactly what the situation that Karl Rove is in is. I may speculate for a second. But you cannot tell me that Karl Rove, who manages every single solitary detail of everything that happens in the executive branch and the White House and the West Wing, you are going to tell me that Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President knew this, but Carl Rove did not?

It is going to be interesting over the course of the next few weeks and months to find out exactly what Karl Rove did know. I think this goes right to what we have been talking about over the past year, 2 years, since we started doing our 30-something Group, that the Republicans continue to pick their party over what is best for the country.

Now, we are all Americans here. You cannot out a CIA agent, you just cannot do it. You just cannot lie a country into war. It is just wrong, for all these obvious reasons. And you just should not take public tax dollars and give them to the oil companies, like we are doing.

We gave $16 billion through the two energy bills we passed and corporate welfare to the oil industry. Now, all you have to do is go to the gas pump and realize that that is not a good idea, or read the paper, where the oil companies have some of the largest profits in the history of oil companies in the last quarter. We are giving them your public tax dollars, the people you represent and I represent that work hard and see that big number at the top of their check, and then the much littler number that you actually get, because money comes down here, and the Republican Congress takes it and gives it to the oil company, and then goes to the oil company out on ``Shake Down Street,'' K Street, just a cab ride away, shakes down K Street, and K Street fills up the Republican coffers with money, and the cycle continues.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is what we are asking the American people for, for an opportunity to take this country in a new direction; to change what is going on here, and stop not only the corruption that we find here, but establish a system of government that does not put a political party before the interests of the country.

When you look at what happened through FEMA with Hurricane Katrina, the top 8 to 10 people in FEMA were political cronies. They were political hacks. ``Brownie,'' the man in charge of FEMA, was a lawyer for horses, someone who owns horses, or a horse's attorney. I am not exactly sure what he was. He had the right college roommate, so he got appointed to FEMA.

Listen, we understand that you make political appointments, but if you appoint somebody who is incompetent, you put them as an ambassador to a country that has a lot of beaches; send them over there, have a nice house, drink a lot of nice wine, have a good time, make nice with whatever country that you are representing or trying to schmooze. You do not put that person in charge of FEMA.

My friend who was here earlier said we wanted to make FEMA bigger and more bureaucratic, and the old scare tactics, like we are not old- school Democrats. We want efficient, flexible, nimble government that works. If it means a little bit more money, maybe it does, and maybe it needs to be spent. But where is the accountability? What it needs more than anything else is competent leadership.

So you are saying, Mr. Speaker, I want to get this clear here, for the Members of the Chamber, you are telling me that Brownie, the guy that President Bush went down and said you are doing a good job, Brownie, when he really was not doing a good job at all, really was not doing much of anything, you are saying he is still on the payroll?

But the Democrats are the ones that waste the money. We are the ones that do not know how to handle government. Come on.

That is it. Putting the party that you belong to

should not come first. The Republican Party should not come over the interests of the country. All we are saying is that the Republican majority has had control of this Chamber since 1994. They control the Senate, and they control the White House. They pull all the levers of government. Whether it is emergency management, failure; poverty rates, up; tuition rates, doubled; health care costs, up 15 to 20 percent a year. The Republicans take public tax dollars and give it away in corporate welfare. Mr. Speaker, $16 billion in public tax money went to the oil companies and the energy companies and subsidies, and $700 billion in the medicare prescription drug bill.

Now, the Democratic Party wants to lead, and we want to lead and put the interests of the country before what is necessarily best for the Democratic Party. And here is a great example:

In 1993, when we were running huge deficits, the Democratic- controlled House, the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Clinton passed a balanced budget bill that led, without one Republican vote, that led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of the United States of America. And it was not popular and it was not fun, and many Democrats lost their seats over it. But you know what? You have got to balance your budget. And someone, more than one person was a statesman to make that decision. You put the interests of the country before your own personal political interests and that of your party. That is what we want to do. That is what the Democrats want to do. We want to take this country into another direction and change what is going on here.

Let me tell you what we will do when we are in charge. One is, we will redo the prescription drug bill. We will go and we will allow for reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada that will drive down the costs which will save the taxpayer billions of dollars over the next few years. We will go back and we will put in the medicare prescription drug bill a provision that allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate on behalf of the medicare recipients and on behalf of the taxpayer to Merck and Pfizer, and they will negotiate down the cost of drugs. Some people project that savings could be 20 to 30 percent. Twenty to 30 percent of $700 billion is 140 to $210 billion. We would take those savings and we would invest it into the American people.

We would also take the $16 billion that we have given to oil companies and we will add that into the mix. Now, notice I did not say one time we want to raise taxes. We will take that money and we will invest it into programs that will lead to economic growth.

One, we will have a plan that will create a million engineers and scientists in the next 10 years. We are getting our clock cleaned by China and India. Last year China graduated 600,000 engineers, India graduated 350,000, the U.S. graduated 70,000. Half the foreign-born will eventually move back to their home country. The Democrats have a proposal to take those savings and invest it into education. We will reduce the cost of college tuition by investing that money. We will make sure that there is a clinic and a nurse in every single school in the country so that our kids are healthy, because if we do not have healthy students, we cannot have educated students, and if we do not have educated students, we cannot have a strong economy, and that is the bottom line.

The Democrats will invest in magnetic levitation trains, the hottest train technology going right now. There is only one in the world. It is in Shanghai. I was on it when I was over in China. Mr. Speaker, 270 miles an hour we are going down the pike, and I am holding a cup of coffee and it did not spill. It is the latest train technology, it is a jobs program, it is good for the environment, and it reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

The Democrats will take the savings from that money and we will invest it into preventive health care. We will make sure that we are doing for the American people what we are doing for the Iraqis, and that is allow them to go to a clinic when they have a cold instead of walking into an emergency room with pneumonia.

Mr. Speaker, we want to spend less money in the end, but it means putting it up front first for prevention. And we will start an Apollo program for an alternative energy source, so that these engineers and scientists that we create will be able to eventually reduce our dependence on foreign oil so that not one more American life has to be lost defending our right to go and get oil so that we can drive SUVs.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) who is down in Florida with his constituents. Send us an e-mail to [email protected]. Send us an e-mail, let us know your thoughts. We want to take this country in a new direction, change the way we are going, and put the country before the party.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate his yielding to me. Just so that we can go back, and, obviously, he has outlined why we have a need for this independent commission. I think it is important that we go back and we explain what is actually happening here right now. We have been asking for this thing for how long now, months? Almost 2 months we have been asking for an independent commission. We want to go back, Democrats and Republicans, and look at what happened with Katrina so that we can stop and prevent these things from happening.

We are not doing a good job in this country of administering emergency services. And we have the Republicans in charge of the House and in charge of the Senate, in charge of the White House, in charge of FEMA, in charge of the whole executive branch, and we keep having these missteps and these failures, and no one is figuring out what in the heck we are doing wrong because the committee down here that the Republicans have appointed only gives subpoena power to the Republicans. So we have the Republicans overseeing the Republicans. And I think we might as well put Ed Gillespie in charge of the committee down here to oversee what is happening, the head of the RNC, because this has become political.

And what we want to say to the American people, Mr. Speaker, is that Democrats want an opportunity to govern this place because our friends on the other side do not know how to govern. They have been in charge now in the House since 1994. They have control of the Senate, they have control of the White House, and they do not know how to govern. And we need to be prepared for not only natural disasters, but potential terrorist attacks to the United States of America.

And we need to do what we did with the 9/11 Commission, an independent commission, independent of all of the nonsense that happens in this body that has gotten us to a point where the Republican majority does not know how to govern. Get an independent commission with an outside Democrat and an outside Republican, bipartisan, where they can subpoena people, oversee what happened for Katrina, oversee Wilma, oversee Rita, and figure out what we need to do, because at some point, at some point, something is going to happen in America that is going to be more tragic than these natural disasters, and we are not going to know how to respond. And our kids and our grandkids are going to look back and the American people are going to look to this body and say, What have you done to prevent this? What have you done to improve the emergency management execution in the United States of America? And we are saying on record here five times a week sometimes with the 30- something Group we want an independent commission. We do not want politics involved. Do the right thing.

And we are asking people at home to contact us, housedemocrats.gov/ katrina, and become a citizen cosponsor of H.R. 3764, become a citizen cosponsor, and I think we have over 40,000 citizen cosponsors for this. Get on this Website, housedemocrats.gov/katrina, become a citizen cosponsor so that we can become prepared for a possible terrorist attack that may happen in the United States, another natural disaster that may happen in the United States. We will be ready, and then down the line we will be able to look back, and there is always room for improvement. We watch the game film the next day, and we see what we did right and what we did wrong, but at the end of the day, we can say we have done our job. We have put the microscope up to the problem. We have looked at it, put the sunshine on it, and figured out what we did wrong.

And it takes courage. I mean, it is not easy to be self-reflective. It is not easy to critique oneself. And that is what we are asking this Congress to do, have the courage to do the right thing: Get an independent commission here.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, he is absolutely right. I think the gentleman makes a great point. This is important. This goes beyond Katrina. The independent commission that we want goes beyond Katrina.

We had a situation in Ohio a year or so ago where a potential terrorist was planning an attack in Columbus. You are in the middle of Ohio, it was something about a shopping mall. The gentleman was stopped and held, and I do not even know what the status is right now. But this was in Ohio. It is not just the gulf States or Florida.

Katrina and the independent commission, these are all the editorials that have been written in support all over the country. I think a lot of the editorial boards understand what we are trying to say here, and they are being very supportive.

We talk about an independent commission. I want to read a little bit from the Houston Chronicle in Texas, a little bit of what they say about trying to fix the problem: ``The most promising option is an independent commission along the lines of the September 11 problem. This is great, because this puts a little meat on the bone. It should be headed by national figures of unassailable independence and credibility such as former President Jimmy Carter, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.''

We are talking about Republicans, but just to be independent of the day-to-day politics that go on in this Chamber. This is not something that needs to be compromised. This is an issue that has long-term ramifications, and we have an obligation.

We come here early in January every other year and we put our hand on the Bible and one up in the air. We have an obligation to make this government run effectively and efficiently. A lot of hard-working people pay a lot of tax dollars that come to us, and then we invest it to improve the quality of their lives.

Part of that is to make sure they are safe. So when we had all these problems with body armor, where their kids, their sons and daughters were going over, we wanted to make sure they have the proper body armor and the up-armored Humvees; and we fought through the 30-something Group and the Democrats and put enough pressure on where we finally got that problem fixed. It is a whole other issue why we went to war without the proper equipment.

But we have a responsibility here to make sure that this government runs efficiently. A component of that is emergency management services, which, as we found, became very apparent in the past few months. So we have this obligation; and we are trying, the 30-something Group, the Democratic Party, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), we are trying to move this committee out of politics into an independent commission, get Sandra Day O'Connor, get Colin Powell, get some good, solid Republicans who are going to be independent and do what is best for the country, because time and time again, unfortunately, my friend, the Republicans continue to prove their ineptness, their inability to govern; and we have a responsibility as the minority party, as the opposition party, to provide alternative views, and we want an opportunity to run the government.

We proved in 1993 with not one Republican vote that we could balance the budget and handle those difficult decisions, and that vote in particular led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of the United States of America.

Our friends on the other side are not only inept in trying to administer emergency services, because they appoint all their cronies to the top positions in FEMA, all friends of friends of a college roommate who gives a lot to the Republican Party, which led to poor execution of emergency services. Their party, the Republican Party, takes higher precedence for the people who govern this Chamber than the country, and they have proved that time and time again. Party over country. What the Democrats are trying to say is pick the country over the party.

If the gentleman will yield further, Mr. Speaker, Brownie is still on the payroll, $100,000.

$148,000. Talk about rewarding negative behavior. Do you do that with your kids? Your kids come home, they took a spelling test, got a D, do you throw them $20? Good job, Kendrick. Go out and get another

one. That is what we are doing. We are reinforcing bad behavior.

``You are doing a good job, Brownie.''

The world is watching. You are not doing a good job. You are doing a bad job. In fact, you are fired. Get out. What do you mean, you are doing a good job.

Maybe their plan was this: they said we will keep Brownie on, pay him $148,000, and when there is a situation, we will go to Brownie and ask, what do you think we should do? He will tell you. Then they do the complete opposite. Maybe that you is how they are using him, do you think?

Mr. Speaker, I think it really comes down to the fact that every decision that is made by this Congress, by the Republican-controlled Congress, by the Republican-controlled Senate, and by our Republican President is based on supporting and lifting up the Republican Party. I hate to break it to them, but this is not about the Republican Party; this is about America. This is about what is best for America.

You talk about violating basic House rules, and every time they have done that, every time they have kept the roll call open at 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning; I mean, last year, I cannot remember what vote it was, but we were here until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. It was on the prescription drug bill, because we had to kick over $700 billion to the pharmaceutical industry, one of the most profitable industries in the whole entire world, them and oil, and the reason is they put the Republican Party before the country.

Yes, no doubt about it. We maybe could have prevented, if we had been really on the stick and really open, we maybe could have prevented some of the things that are happening.

I think this really goes to the fact that the Republican majority believe that the government and the taxpayer dollars that we have here are just for them. It is for them to build their party up. It is for them to use it to build up the Republican Party.

I am sorry, but my citizens in my district do not pay taxes so that the leaders of the House, the Republican leaders of the House, can go out to Shake Down Street out there on K Street, just a cab ride away where all the lobbyists are, and go and shake down the lobbyists. I mean, when a Democrat applies for a job, and the leaders on the Republican majority say to the lobbyists, you cannot give that job to a Democrat because we will not do business with you then.

And when you come to the American people and you try to say with a straight face about fiscal discipline, but when we are here at 3:00 in the morning, and arms are getting twisted to pass a Medicare prescription drug bill, and the Republican majority does not have the courage to go to the pharmaceutical industry and say, listen, we want to pass a Medicare prescription drug bill, but we want to give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the opportunity, the power to negotiate on behalf of the Medicare recipients to get the costs under control. The Republicans put a provision in the Medicare bill that explicitly said the Secretary of Health and Human Services is not allowed to negotiate down the drug prices. Can you imagine that? Can you believe that? And then only 25 Republican Members voted against it.

Then you come to the energy bill, and with the energy bill, you have billions of dollars in there to subsidize the oil companies, and a major oil company comes out today and talks about 89 percent profits in the last quarter, $10 billion, and you are getting public tax dollars from middle-class Americans who live in Youngstown, Ohio, one of the poorest areas in the country, you are taking their tax dollars and you are giving it to the oil companies.

Now, a third-party validator, right here, Cal Thomas, one of the most conservative Republican columnists in the country right now, suggests to our friends on the other side, to the Republican majority, he is commenting on the offsets to pay for Katrina, and the Republican majority is taking the money from Medicaid, free and reduced lunch, and college students. Cal Thomas says, here is a suggestion: Do not start with the poor, start with the rich. That is Cal Thomas. That is not Kendrick Meek, that is not Tim Ryan, that is not Debbie Wasserman Schultz, that is one of the most conservative Republican columnists in the country.

He also goes on to say, talking about using government as their own little sandbox that they can play in and as a welfare state for corporations, because this is corporate welfare. Cal Thomas, conservative Republican. Did I mention he is a conservative Republican?

I appreciate that.

Quote: Seventy-two percent of farm subsidy money goes to 10 percent of recipients, the richest farmers, partnerships, corporations, estates, and other entities. Corporate welfare, my friend, to the oil companies, to the pharmaceutical companies, and to the big agribusinesses, and the Republican leadership in this Chamber goes out to Shake Down Street and tells all the lobbyists on K Street that they have to hire Republicans or they are not going to do business with the Republican majority.

We are going to give you public tax dollars for the energy companies, public, through subsidies, billions of dollars in the energy bill. You are going to raise money for Republican candidates. It is that simple. Go out and shake down K Street. That should be called not Operation K Street; it should be Operation Shakedown.

So the American people should be outraged at this, corporate welfare to the most profitable industries in the country with your tax dollars, and the Republican majority uses it to raise money for the Republican Party. They are putting their party, the Republican Party, before the country.

And that is when it has got to stop. You did not come to Congress to rubber-stamp this stuff. The people in my district did not send me here to rubber-stamp this stuff. They sent us here to end it, because the average worker, the average small business person in every single instance, health care, energy, gas prices, natural gas, pharmaceuticals, wages, on every single count they are forgotten.

They are forgotten because we spent so much, the Republicans spent so much time giving out public tax dollars, corporate welfare so that they can increase their campaign coffers and run 30-second ads. And they go out and shake down K Street. It is ridiculous.

Well, let us look. My friend brings up Iraq, which is a perfect example. We just talked about corporate welfare to the oil companies; corporate welfare to pharmaceutical companies; tax cuts that go primarily to those people who make over a million dollars a year. And this President does not have the guts, and the Republican Congress, they do not have the guts to ask the wealthiest people in the country to contribute. Two wars and major natural disasters, poverty is increasing, the tuition cost has doubled over the last 4 or 5 years, and this Republican Congress, they do not have the guts to go ask the billionaires in the country to contribute.

But we are going to give them public tax dollars to support their corporations. But there is more welfare going on. Iraq has become a United States welfare state. Look what is going on here. 110 primary care centers built in Iraq with American tax dollars. Okay. 2,000 health educators trained with the American tax dollar.

3.2 million children vaccinated in Iraq with the American tax dollar. Great. Super. We went in there, we broke Iraq, we buy it. That is our responsibility. But back at the ranch, $10 billion-plus, as I have talked to a few of our friends on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, $10 billion-plus cuts in Medicaid for American kids. American citizens. $252 million cut for health care professionals; $94 million

cut for community health centers in the United States of America.

Student loans. We are building 2,700 schools that have been rehabbed in Iraq; 36,000 teachers and administrators trained in Iraq. We are cutting student loans in the United States. Iraq is a welfare state. So if you are sitting on the couch listening to the 30-something Group right now, and these are all third-party validators, this is not us making this stuff up.

Cal Thomas, the conservative Republican columnist, agrees with us. You see a Republican-controlled government, one-party government spending your tax dollars, giving your tax dollars to the oil companies, to the pharmaceutical companies, to the billionaires in the world, and/or in the United States, and creating a welfare state in Iraq while you are cutting health care in education and research and development. Even the Centers for Disease Control, our conservative friends on the other side want to cut the Centers for Disease Control at a time when we have this bird flu epidemic waiting in the wings.

We can do a better job. The Democratic Party has proposals. We want to create a million new engineers and scientists in the next 10 years. We want to build magnetic levitation trains in the United States and connect the United States of America. We want to invest in the research and development and create alternative energy sources so we no longer have to worry about being dependent on foreign oil.

And that is part of the magnetic lev trains. We want arts and sports in all of our schools for all of our kids because we recognize in the 21st century that learning a musical instrument helps you with math. And when you are good at math, you become an engineer or a scientist, and you will go out and generate wealth. We make good investments. The Democratic Party makes good investments.

We balanced the budget in 1993 with not one Republican vote. And President Clinton made a lot of tough decisions, and the Democratic Congress made a lot of tough decisions. And, quite frankly, some Members lost their seat over it. But it led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of this country. And I do not think there is an American out there that would not say, boy, I would love to go back to the late 1990s. Boy would that not be great. Portfolio was up. Everything was up that should have been up. Everything was down that should have been down.

But meanwhile, our Republican friends keep this culture of corporate welfare and corruption and keep propping up the Republican Party, instead of propping up the United States of America, and being more concerned about shaking down the lobbyists on K Street, instead of propping up the United States.

The Democrats want to take this country in a new direction. We want to provide new leadership. We want to change the direction of the country, and we want to get rid of this culture of corruption and cronyism, and we want to prop up the country, not any one political party, and use the government to enhance opportunity for people in the United States of America.

Our Web site is www.housedemocrats.gov/katrina. Become a citizen cosponsor to the independent commission so we can reform government the way it needs to be done.

And [email protected]. We have been getting a ton of e- mails lately and a lot of support, over 40,000 citizen cosponsors for the independent commission for Katrina.

Help us change this government. Help us help the Democratic Party take this country in a new direction, a better direction, and help us get rid of this Republican-controlled government that does nothing but corporate welfare and create a welfare state in Iraq at the expense of the American worker and the American taxpayer.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak on a program back in Youngstown, Ohio in the Mahoney Valley, the old steel valley, called the Steel to Scholars Program. And this program was initiated by the president of our Chamber of Commerce, Tom Humphries. The intention of the program is to go into schools and school districts to set expectations and to highlight schools that are having success on the test scores that are mandated by the State of Ohio, and other test scores that schools take.

And I want to take this opportunity, Madam Speaker, to thank Tom Humphries for taking the initiative in recognizing the importance of education in our community.

There is a lot that needs to be done in the field of education at a State level and local level and definitely at the Federal level. But I believe that the most important thing that the Steel to Scholars program accomplishes is that it sets goals, and it rewards and highlights positive behavior and positive achievements.

Madam Speaker, we recognize throughout society, whether it is in business or in education, that the level of success that any organization has or any school district has or any team has is directly related to the level of expectations that the community or the coaches provide and the bar that is there for the students to achieve.

Regardless of what we talk about, as far as what needs to be done for education, whether it is through programs, or after-school programs, or exactly what needs to be done, there is nothing more important than telemarketing high levels of expectation, not in any particular school district, but in all school districts, and that is what the Steel to Scholars program is all about.

The competition that we have in the United States of America and around the globe is more pronounced than it has ever been in the history of the United States of America. The competition is fierce. That is why tonight, Madam Speaker, we need to highlight the responsibility and the obligation of all of our citizens. Parents need to make it a personal mission to sit down and do homework with their kids; not some parents, all parents. Teachers and priests and pastors and the Chamber of Commerce and local elected officials all need to be there to raise that bar, to raise that level of expectation so that the kids, the students, will go out and try to achieve those levels.

If we look at what has happened in the past few years, just in the past decade, the local labor pool that used to be the United States is now the globe, and high-tech, high-value workers, are rewarded with high salaries.

I feel that the United States is not making the kind of investment that we need the make. Example: China, last year, graduated 600,000 engineers; India, last year, graduated 350,000 engineers; the United States, 70,000, and half of those graduates are foreign-born.

In high-tech output, total research and development investment, U.S. patent applications, in all three of these areas the Chinese have grown and closed the gap on the United States and are projected to surpass the United States in the upcoming years. The U.S. has lost world share in high-tech exports. If we do not recognize that we need to make investments in research and development, make investments in education, but at the same time demand from local school districts, local teachers, parents, local elected officials, there is no one that cannot be involved in this project. It will lead to the success or the failure of the United States in the next couple of decades. Everyone has a role to play.

Madam Speaker, I believe that the No Child Left Behind plan that passed this Congress needs to be fully funded. We need to make sure that those components of the No Child Left Behind program that allow for tutoring and math and reading that have shown great levels of success, those children who are tutored in math and reading through the No Child Left Behind program have increased their reading scores by 70 percent in some school districts, one teacher to six kids, but the funding needs to be there.

So we have the parents, the local community, the local elected officials, and groups like the Chamber of Commerce, and people like Tom Humphries all coming together to support these kids so that we can have a better economy in the City of Youngstown and in the old steel valley.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House again. Unfortunately, we are missing a couple of our standard-bearers who are usually here, our two Members from Florida, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), who are down dealing with the hurricane and the storm down in Florida. So we want to send out to them our thoughts and our prayers. We are thinking about them and their constituents and all the citizens of Florida at this time. And we are glad they are down there where they should be, with their constituents.

I would also like to say hello briefly, Mr. Speaker, not only to those citizens of Florida but some friends of mine who are paying attention to what is happening here tonight and good friends of mine who are back in Ohio now, Bill and Molly Gales, who are watching us, paying attention, trying to understand some of the issues of the day, and I would like to give a shout out, Mr. Speaker.

But let me say this, Mr. Speaker, we spent the last hour listening to, quite frankly, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of empty rhetoric. And normally the 30-something Group comes out and we talk about and criticize and critique the performance of the Republican majority. And I want the American people to understand this: the Democrats do not have any power in this Chamber.

The Republican Party just spent the last hour blaming the Democrats. Like we had any lever of government to pull. The Republican Party controls the House by a large margin. They control the Senate. And the Republican Party controls the White House. They control every legislative and executive branch of government in the United States of America right now, Federal Government. So to look over here like we are the ones running these huge budget deficits is an absolute joke.

I would like to say, my friends on the other side who were talking about saving money and controlling the deficits that are projected as far as the eye can see, $500 billion, I would like to say to our friends, Mr. Speaker, go to www.Thomas.gov and you can get the votes for two particular votes that I think the American people and Members of this Chamber would be interested in. Go check out H.R. 1, this is www.Thomas.gov, H.R. 1 in the 108th Congress. That is the prescription drug bill. That is a bill that spent 700-plus billion dollars on the Medicare prescription drug program and did absolutely nothing to control the costs of drugs by allowing for reimportation from Canada that would drive the costs down, or allow for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate with the drug companies on behalf of the Medicare recipients. Both of those provisions were Democratic provisions that went to drive down the costs of the prescription drug bill because we would be able to control the costs.

Now, my friends on the other side who have spent the last hour being so critical, I find their names on the ``aye'' column. There were only 25 Republicans who voted against the prescription drug bill. So the Republicans passed a prescription drug bill full of pork that did not control costs.

Before I yield to the gentleman, let me first give him a formal 30- something welcome. Do not let the gray hair fool you. This guy is 39\1/ 2\. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

We are going to have to implement the same rule that we had to implement when the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) came. The gentleman is going to have to pay dues twice to the 30-Something Group.

I agree with the gentleman 100 percent. The study that the gentleman just referenced, the Economic Policy Institute, the 30-Something Group is all about third-party validators. This is not the Meek or Ryan or Delahunt or Pallone Institute. This is the Economic Policy Group, a nonpartisan economic study group saying that the tax cuts were bogus.

A couple of our friends on the other side said, well, the projected budget is going to be $100 billion or $80 billion less than what they thought it was going to be because the tax cuts are actually working.

What they fail to tell you is that a loophole has been closed. It sunsetted out last year. So there was a tax put on a small business, people, that raised money to the tune of $80 billion. Do not come in and mislead the American people. It is not the tax cuts that are working. The tax cuts are not working.

Go ask the workers at Delphi if the tax cuts are working. Go ask the workers whose wages have been stagnant the last 30 years if the tax cuts are working. They want to talk about we want to raise taxes. They are spending money on the country's credit card, as my good friend has said.

Real quick, I just want to clean this up. The two bills I want our friends, other Members, to go see, go to Thomas.gov. H.R. 1 in the 108th Congress was the prescription drug bill which we were lied to about the original price, was supposed to be $400 billion. Then they came back months later and said it was $700 billion, no controls on the price. Go to the 108th Congress, H.R. 1. Then go in the 109th Congress, Thomas.gov, H.R. 3893, our energy bill.

Our friends that are so concerned with reining in spending, the Republican House passed a bill that has given billions of dollars to the oil companies, and BP's profits today came out 34 percent higher this quarter.

I mean, give us a break. The rhetoric is done. You try to dust off the rhetoric from the 1980s and put it in today's society, and it just does not work because it just does not make any sense. If you can hear and see and think, you know what they are saying on the other side is not making sense.

What the Democratic proposal is is to balance the budget; is to implement PAYGO, which means if you spend money, you have got to pay for it, one way or the other. Our friends, the Republican majority, that started out with this big Republican revolution that I think has ended up in a Republican devolution, would not pass the PAYGO rules. We have a plan, you go to the House Committee on the Budget, to balance the budget. We retain middle-class tax cuts for working people.

I am not afraid to stand up and say I am going to ask Bill Gates to pay a little more in taxes. I am not afraid to say it. I do not think that is a bold political move, but the wealthiest people are the only ones in this country who have not been asked to sacrifice in some way to pay for the two or three wars that we have going on and the greatest natural and national disaster this country has ever seen.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield briefly,

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I just want to make a point.

The money that is getting cut, and we understand that reform needs to take place and our friends on the other side have not been willing to do it, but to cut $94 million in community health care and community health centers, that is preventative medicine. That investment is ultimately going to save our country money and save our health care system money because those people who will not have access to the community health care centers will end up in an emergency room a week or two later.

Instead of going to the community health center with a cold, they are going to go to the emergency room in downtown Youngstown or East Hartford, Connecticut, or wherever they are living, and they are going to walk in with pneumonia; and it is going to cost the taxpayer more money. That is poor management. That is not smart. That is silly. No businessperson would make that investment.

Basically what we are trying to say is that the Republican majority in the House and the Senate are not only spending American, hard-working taxpayer dollars to subsidize the most profitable industries in the country, the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the top agricultural, the megafarms. Not only are they doing that, welfare for corporations, and Democrats are for ending corporate welfare. Not only have they provided a welfare state for Iraq where we are not going to loan them the money and get the money back, welfare to corporations, welfare to Iraq, and then we are cutting the programs that just may lead to economic growth in the United States. We have to jump-start this economy, and we are not going to do it by cutting one of the great investments of high-speed rail. What a great program for United States of America.

When I was in China, I went to Shanghai. They had a magnetic levitation train. It is the only one in the world. It goes almost 280 miles an hour. You are standing up and you are drinking your coffee. Why is that in Shanghai and not in the United States of America?

Look at some of the cuts from the Republican Study Committee. Loans to graduate students, $840 million in cuts; eliminate the National Science Foundation math and science program grants.

And tuition is going to double in 5 years.

Mr. Speaker, how about this for short-sightedness. We are going to cut the Centers for Disease Control. Everybody is talking about the avian flu. We do not know what to do. People are making requests of the administration. I am sorry, but government is the problem, unless somebody needs something. And I am sorry, but the Republican majority has had this House since 1994. They have had the Senate since 2000 or 2001, definitely since 2002, and on and off through the 1990s, and the White House since 2001. They cannot govern.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the decisions that we need to make have to be focused on what is best for the country, not what is best for one's political party; and I think that has really been the problem. It seems to me that every decision that is made down here by the Republican majority is what is best for the Republican Party, not what is best for the country. And it is time we start choosing the country over the party if we want to have some success.

And just go through everything that has happened. Everything that has happened with the majority leader has been an attempt to secure power for the party and not do its best for the country. Let us look at the CIA leak and the corruption that is going on. To out a CIA agent because their husband disagreed with them on the war is choosing their party and protecting their party over what is best for the country.

And to make cuts in programs that would invest in the American people and lead to economic growth instead of listening to Cal Thomas, who says cut for the richest people who are getting corporate welfare, they do that because they could then raise money for their party. And if the Republican majority keeps choosing their party over the country, then the country becomes weak; and a strong America starts right here at home.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is another example of the extreme Republican majority in this House choosing their party over the country. They do not want to find out what the truth is, although that would be best for us to fix the problems that we had with Katrina and then be able to respond to the next problem that we may have, whether it is a terrorism attack or another natural disaster. We would then educate ourselves.

But to not give the Democrats subpoena power to try to fix the problem because they hired all of their cronies in the top 8 or 10 positions in FEMA is, again, what is best for their party, not what necessarily is best for the country. And the Democrats are providing, time and time again in committee, on the floor, with amendments, with ideas, whether it is lend the money, whether it is reduce the cost for prescription drugs, whether it is strip the billions of dollars in subsidies that went to the oil companies, the Democrats have always provided an alternative, a change, to take the country in another direction. And that is what the Democrats are for.

Let me real quickly give the e-mail address here: [email protected].

I would like to thank our dual Member from Massachusetts and our Member and a half from New Jersey. With that, Mr. Speaker, I say this is not your father's 30-Something Group.

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt about it. I think there are so many issues we need to address as a Congress that are going either unaddressed or the actions of the Congress are hurting the average American people. That is why the Democratic Party is presenting proposals that will take us in a new direction. I think the country needs to go in a new direction. I do not need to go back to Ohio to figure that out. I think it is all over the country. We had a gentleman here last night from Oklahoma. We had a woman here from Florida. We had a man from New Jersey and a man from Ohio. From all over the country people are saying, Democrats, please take us in a new direction, in a direction that will change the country, and those are the kinds of proposals that we are offering.

As we look back as to what has been happening here for the past 5 years, it has been nothing but appointing crony friends to positions that are key in executing the game plan for emergency management, and then the job not getting done, hiding information on the true cost of the Medicare bill so we have a corrupted system here.

The Democrats want some transparency, and we want the opportunity to lead so we can take this country into another direction. I found it very interesting today in The Washington Post there was an article about a speech that Colin Powell's chief of staff for 16 years, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, gave. During the course of the speech, he talked a lot about what has been going on. This is one of the third-party validators that we like to have at the 30-something group. We like to validate our thoughts with someone who is independent of us. This is not the Meek Report or the Ryan Report. This is a 16-year chief of staff with Colin Powell, and he is a veteran. He was the director of the Marine Corps War College for quite some time. And what he had to say I found unbelievable.

He talks about him seeing a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, by cutting out the bureaucracy that had to carry out the decisions: ``We have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, and generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina.''

If there is a nuclear terrorist attack or major pandemic, ``you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.''

This is a guy who has been in the Department of State for 16 years. This is a 16-year chief of staff, worked at the State Department, ran the Marine War College. This is a guy who has been around the block. He is saying if we have a terrorist attack of significant magnitude, we are going to see the ineptitude of our government.

What the Democrats are saying with our independent commission that we want to oversee what happened with Hurricane Katrina, we had better figure out what the answers are here. We had better figure out what we did wrong because the next time it may not just be New Orleans, it may not just be the gulf coast and then people are going to come to us and say in 2005, where was the United States Congress? Where were they in their oversight duties? Article I, section 1 of the Constitution, the people of this country govern in the House of Representatives and we have oversight over everything, over every executive function, including FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.

The concern is when a man of this magnitude who has been around the block as many times as he has been, who has watched up close the misinformation with the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, all this other stuff, says to us you will not even believe the ineptitude if there is a major nuclear attack in the United States, the ineptitude of the government. Now, our job is we should not have to wait.

And that is why the Democrats want an independent Katrina commission just like we had an independent 9/11 Commission, bipartisan. And the committee that is set up right now might as well be chaired by Mr. Gillespie, the chair of the Republican National Committee, because it is a partisan committee. The Democrats do not have subpoena power, it is 11 to 9 Republican to Democrat. And I just feel that that is an unfair way to go about solving the problems, because it is about CYA, it is not about getting the facts. And that is a real problem.

And meeting our constitutional obligation, we stand here and we raise our hand and we swear to uphold the Constitution so help us God. Part of that responsibility is the oversight that I think we have been derelict of our duty. And the Republican Congress has been derelict of their duty, and that is why the Democrats want to take this in a new direction and change what is going on down here and do that by having an independent commission that will get to the facts, not to the politics.

The last part of this article about the Colonel, he says what my colleague just said, what he was just saying: You and I and every other citizen like us is paying the consequence. Whether it was a response to Katrina that was less than adequate certainly, or the situation in Iraq which still goes unexplained, we are paying the consequences.

You are right.

Yeah.

40,000? Wow. H.R. 3764, you can come to www.housedemocrats.gov/katrina. We are trying to get a grassroots movement together, and it sounds like we are well on our way. 40,000 citizen cosponsors for this bill to form an independent commission so we can go back and review and actually fix problems. Would that not be novel, for government to go back and actually have an independent commission, remove the politics, and fix the problem? That is what the Democrats want.

And all that you said there, I want to make one final point because we only have a couple minutes left. If you do not believe us and you do not believe our third party validators, Mr. Speaker, let us just use good common sense here. Every single cut that is being made to supposedly pay for Katrina is being cut in a program that does not have lobbyists. Can you believe that? Medicaid, after-school, free and reduced lunch, student loans, no lobby groups down here for those people. So we are going to pick on the little kids, we are going to pick on the people who cannot defend themselves. But meanwhile, the guys who are raising millions and millions of dollars for the Republican majority, we are not going to touch you. We could not possibly ask in this time of great national crisis, three wars, we have a natural disaster and high gas prices, we could not possibly go ask the wealthiest in this country to pay their fair share.

And I say this, and I do not say this lightly. This administration does not have the guts, the guts, to go and ask the wealthiest people in this country to help out. It is easy to cut programs for poor people. It is easy, because you know why? None of those people associate with the poor Americans. They are not sitting on the White House lawn drinking champagne and eating caviar.

But show the proper leadership and ask the hard questions and ask all Americans, including the ones making a billion dollars a year, to pay their fair share. Our Web site is www.housedemocrats.gov/katrina for our citizen cosponsorship, and you can e-mail us at [email protected].