30-Something Working Group
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - September 20, 2005)
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it is, once again. This is a regular weekly event for us, and it is an important thing we do. And I really enjoy spending the time with you on the floor and with our colleague from Ohio just trying to talk to folks in our generation. So often when I talk to friends of mine and neighbors and colleagues in the 30-something range, they sort of tell me, they scratch their heads and wonder, you know, most of the stuff you all talk about in Congress has no impact on my life.
They really think, because what they are doing is they wake up in the morning. They get their kids ready for school. They get themselves ready for work. They get in their car in their garage. They drive out of their garage. They go to work. They pick up their kids, they come home and park the car in the garage again and start it all over the next day. And when you are living that kind of life, trying to balance work and family, trying to in many cases live paycheck to paycheck, it is very difficult to listen to the debate on this floor and understand how the things we do affect their lives.
But if there is anything that we could do to show our generation how government impacts their lives and can significantly alter their lives or through inaction how it can alter their lives, it is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Because we have so many glaring examples of what went wrong, of what should have happened and did not, and how hundreds of thousands of people's lives have now been turned upside down. And normally, I think people that are in our generation look at, and quite honestly, older and younger than our generation look at the victims of Hurricane Katrina or of any tragedy which is a natural human thing to do and say to themselves, you know, that is not me. That is them. That would never happen to me. I do not live in a community where that could happen.
But the gross underpreparation and disregard for the potential for a Katrina to happen, I mean, substitute any potential disaster in my region of the country and there but for the grace of God.
We have got to take the next step and help not just our generation but all Americans understand what should happen for these Katrina victims now. They need housing. They do not need a lot of talk. Of course, they need sympathy and empathy. They need emotional assistance, but they need housing. They need roofs over their head. They need economic security. They need to know how it is they are going to get a job again, where are they going to get a job again. How are they going to get their home loans resolved?
I was reading an extensive article today how you have banks that were in those gulf coast States that the bank was blown out, the properties that they lent money on are gone, the people are gone. So what happens to the transaction? How do they get the money back? What is Congress going to do to try to help put all that back together and sew it all back together?
Then there is health care. We have to make sure that these people can go to the doctor and get well. Some of them were not well to start with. Some of them were the picture of health and no longer are.
Finally, we have got to make sure that these kids, these thousands and thousands of displaced kids, get back to school somewhere and that the communities that they are going to end up going to school in, we are from south Florida. An influx of children the size of which came out of the gulf coast States is not a depth that our community could absorb. We are already in an overcrowded situation in our public schools, and so are many communities.
So we need to make sure that the leadership in this Congress understands that those are the kinds of tangible things that we need to talk about and stop moving forward with an investigation that is basically turning inward on itself. We need the independent commission. Objective observers, experts, people who can be trusted because it is trust that we need to restore so that when this, God forbid, happens again, and, unfortunately, we know nature will cause yet another problem like this to occur, that we have the accountability in place to know it will not happen. And a partisan committee set up by the Congress with a majority of one party serving on it, whether it is our party or the Republican Party, is not the appropriate way to handle this.
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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And so Republicans do not want certain people to testify. They have votes to prevent the Democratic group from saying, hey, we need to talk to this guy from FEMA or wherever, homeland security.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It would be like if Enron executives or Tyco executives suggested that they would do the investigation on what went wrong with their two companies themselves, the corporate executives.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We do not need the government to come in here; we will investigate it. You are exactly right. That is what is going to happen. It is going to be the same kind of cover-up and whitewash, get out the Brillo pads because we are going to clean this up. We need accountability and I think the American people want it and demand it right now.
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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And I think the 30-something Working Group is encouraging and 100 percent behind Leader Pelosi on this. We do not want to appoint anyone to this.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is right.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Why justify this? Why give some kind of credence or credibility to this nonsense that is going on? This is America, and so America should have 50-50. The Presidential election was about 50-50, and we should all be right down the line.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And the gentleman is absolutely right, we are here to say it right out loud. I also voted against the partisan committee that was voted on last week.
And something else we should address out loud are the ludicrous comparisons that have been made to other so-called partisan or internal congressional investigations. They are comparing the Katrina committee that was formed in the Congress last week to the Iran-Contra investigation. Well, there is absolutely no comparison. The Iran-Contra investigation was by a Democratic Congress versus a Republican administration, where clearly there would not be the legislative branch and the executive branch walking in lockstep. Clearly there was the accountability there when you have two different party leaderships running those two different branches of government. So that is a ludicrous comparison and makes absolutely no sense to use it, and it is disingenuous to use it.
And to add insult to injury, and I also hope we spend some time talking about this, what the leadership in the Congress is talking about, as if it is not bad enough we are not going to really get to the bottom of why there was a serious lapse in emergency preparedness and disaster response in the gulf coast States, now, during the rebuilding effort, when we have all said and all Americans have locked elbows and said we will rebuild the gulf coast region and we will do everything we can to help them, and we absolutely should, what are they talking about here in the Congress? They are talking about massive spending cuts, including cutting the prescription drug benefit for our senior citizens in Medicare; eliminating it, repealing it, or delaying its implementation as an offset to paying for the reconstruction of the gulf coast States.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. I do not want to cut my colleague off.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Go right ahead.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. It is about priorities. Priorities.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Bingo.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. I want to say that out loud. And I cannot say we, because we are not a part of that, but the majority, the majority leadership, I will put it that way, and the White House, would much rather protect billionaires in receiving taxes. For instance, let us say that they decide to repeal this tax cut for 2 years for billionaires. Let us make a sacrifice on behalf of the country.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Let us roll back a piece of it.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Roll back a piece of it. So maybe they cannot buy another yacht for 2 years, but just hold it off for a couple of years to give us the money to be able to respond to not only the natural disaster but also as it relates to what is going on in Iraq right now. That is coming in. That train is going to roll in here again to the tune of $50 billion.
Priorities. We would much rather take prescription drugs away from seniors. And I am smiling because it just seems like a bad dream. We would much rather cut the transportation bill.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is right.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. That is going to put people to work and allow local communities that have traffic congestion, to let that continue because we want to protect the few.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I am sorry, we are all just champing at the bit tonight, but including in a region where the plight of over 100,000 people after the hurricane was the result of their poverty. So now we are going to go in, and the second proposal for spending cuts as opposed to rolling back the tax cuts is to repeal or eliminate or delay massive transportation funding, particularly in communities where mass transit is necessary and the only way poor people can get to work is using mass transit. So they are victims of a natural disaster; and now, a few months later, we will make them victims of a congressional disaster.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If I can say something here. We are taking from the poor to give to the poor. That is exactly what we are doing. My district is one of the poorest in the country, and they say they want to take the $15 million, which is not really a whole lot of
money, for projects that are going to increase economic development in a district like mine, and I know my colleagues have some areas in the same way, and shift it to poor people?
Well, what have the wealthiest people in the world or in the country been asked to sacrifice in the last 5 years? Nothing. Bill Clinton said he got four tax cuts. This guy makes millions of dollars a year. He gets four tax cuts in the last 3 or 4 years. This President needs to have the guts, and I choose my words carefully, the guts to ask his wealthiest contributors to pony up and actually help the country.
This is not partisan. This is not about a particular insurance industry or pharmaceutical industry. This is about the country. Can we for once make a decision that is based on the whole country, blue States, red States, everyone included? We are all going to help them. We are even going to ask the wealthiest people.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They have a name for it. They are calling it Operation Offset. This is their plan. They are going to come back here in a few days and propose Operation Offset, which is going to say that we are not touching the tax cuts. In fact, I will quote. I believe it is the chairman of the Republican study group, our colleague from Indiana. He said, we need to rebuild. We can find the cuts in Washington, D.C. to do that, I really believe that. And his proposal is to set aside all those additional highway projects and delay the drug benefit by a year. Those are just some of the proposals that are expected to come down the pike.
Now, before I yield to the gentleman from Florida, I represent a district that is not poverty stricken. There are poverty stricken sections, but there are communities in my district that are quite wealthy. And I have people in those communities stopping me in the supermarket and saying, Debbie, keep my tax cut. These are people that need help. We need to make sure they can have health care and that they have a roof over their head. So there are people out there that benefit from these tax cuts that get it, so why do they not get it here?
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Please explain prevailing wage.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. I am getting there.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Sorry.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. This was during rough times in the United States. In Louisiana and most of the parishes, prevailing wage is $9.60. It changes from county to county, but mainly $9.60. Minimum wage is $5 and change, and is not a wage that anyone can say I am going to rebuild my house making minimum wage. But when Federal dollars are being spent in contracting, the prevailing wage is supposed to be in place to make sure that the worker, the individual that is going to work. And I am talking about fact, not fiction.
On Sunday I flew with Members of Congress over Louisiana. I was speaking with the Governor of Louisiana, and she told us she wants her people to make prevailing wage. She wants to make sure that Louisianans who want to participate in the rebuilding of their State, that they are not cheated, that they are not left behind, that other individuals from other States or other countries, and I have to add that too, come in and take these jobs away from these people who are victims. Better yet, we are going to do wonderful things in the Gulf States, and this also is evident in my community, Miami-Dade County.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is important. And the only way the proclamation can be overturned that the President waives the Davis-Bacon requirement is through an act of Congress. That means both House and Senate would have to pass an act overriding the President or saying that Davis-Bacon should be reinstituted. Subsection 6 of Davis-Bacon allows the President in time of national emergency to be able to waive the prevailing wage.
We do not hear any discussion about waiving the prevailing wage in Iraq contracts or Afghanistan contracts. It really benefits the contractor. I can see if it was something there that said if we waive Davis-Bacon, then we can save money. That is what they are saying, but that is not actually what will happen. Contractors will make more money because they do not have to pay the people who are out there punching in and punching out every day.
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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We have a constitutional responsibility to make sure that this institution has proper oversight. Article I, section 1, this House right here governs the country, the people. And 11 to nine in the committee is not going to be sufficient. So we are going to keep the pressure on, and we are going to make sure that this administration adheres to the standards that the American people want, not what the majority wants.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. MEEK of Florida. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, to stay on Davis-Bacon for a second, there was also some irony in the President's waiver because last year when it was 2004 and we were in advance of a Presidential election, he took great pains at expressing his deep affection for Florida and Floridians, talked about how important a State we were and made many trips to our State.
Interestingly enough, he waived the Davis-Bacon requirements for Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe County in this last go-round with Katrina.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Make sure we clarify because I want to make sure that Members do not get confused. Under Katrina he did. But there were how many storms last year during the Presidential election that came through Florida?
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. There were four storms last year that came through Florida. Not one of them did he do that. And after Katrina, in a year that is not an election year, he waives the prevailing wage requirements in Davis-Bacon in three counties. Yet FEMA, his administration, has refused to reimburse and grant individual assistance reimbursement for people who had their homes damaged, looking through their roof at the sky that were victims in Florida of Hurricane Katrina.
If they are not going to reimburse people and they are going to have to rebuild themselves or be left out in the cold and not rebuild at all, then what is the burning need to waive Davis-Bacon and the prevailing wage requirements in those counties? I guess only to help contractors, only to ensure that whatever building is going on is going to put as much money in the pocket of a contractor and workers be dammed because they really do not matter anyway because it is not an election year.
I mean, the way that we can ensure that we prevent this fraud and abuse in contracting is stop the sweetheart deals, stop the monopoly contracts, make sure that we have some bidding and responsible bidding so that we know that the contractors that can actually do the work for a responsible amount of money are the ones that get the contract.
We have a funeral and cemetery company that got a contract, a no-bid contract, in Louisiana to bury and, I guess, deal with the bodies, and there are so many of them; and this is the same company that was prosecuted for throwing bodies into the forest of a cemetery in West Palm Beach, Florida. Prosecuted. Buried people in the same grave, moved bodies from one grave to another. This is the kind of track record this company has, and now they have been given a sole-source contract in Louisiana. I mean is it not time that we stop the madness in giveaways that this administration has been in lockstep involvement in trying to help corporations as opposed to real people since the day that they walked into the White House?
I mean, our legislation that was introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) today would do several extremely important things. One is it would establish an independent commission to prevent fraud and abuse. I mean, that is essential. We have to have some reviews of the process. We have to review contract awards to ensure that the Federal Government is complying with the competition requirements that there are. I mean, the implication of potential payoffs is just rampant without that type of review.
We have to review whether contract awards are based on merit as opposed to relationships between awardees and Federal Government officials. I do not know if it is any coincidence, but the Vice President is the former CEO of Halliburton; and I would love to see how many contracts Halliburton has gotten. I am sure there is no coincidence there. Nothing granted to Halliburton based on relationship with the administration. Right? Could not possibly be.
Review in realtime the spending that is going on under ongoing Federal contracts to determine whether it is wasteful, whether they are actually doing the job that we contracted with them to do. In Florida there is a huge review going on over the private contracting that the government has been involved in because in almost every instance none of the private contractors are meeting their obligations. They are not meeting their accountability standards. Money is going out the door.
At the Federal level, we deal in the billions. Billions. People do not have any concept. It is hard to get our mind around that much money. If we do not adopt an independent commission and start injecting, insisting, on some accountability, then it is mindboggling how much waste we are going to let go out the door.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, as we have the last few minutes here, let us just recap what is not happening that should be happening.
The American people clearly have indicated that they want an independent commission. They want a commission that is going to truly investigate what happened so that it never happens again. Instead, they get a partisan committee created in Congress with an imbalance of Republicans to Democrats and Congress investigating itself. What are they getting? Instead of a bipartisan effort to truly rebuild the Gulf States, they are getting proposals to cut prescription drugs for senior citizens, transportation projects for people that are in dire need of being able to use that transportation and unclog the arteries of America, billions of dollars in proposed cuts in higher education, in college aid in the budget; only a couple of weeks delay in the reconciliation process, our budget reconciliation process which is also a round of cuts; a response from the Republican leadership here that the answer to their ballooning the deficit is to cut into the hearts of the people that need it the most.
Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, what we are proposing is an independent commission. We are proposing a review, a thorough review of the contracting process to make sure that there is some accountability in the way we spend these dollars. We are proposing housing and economic security and education assistance for the Katrina victims that need it the most. And I have to conclude by saying that we also have proposed passing legislation to ensure that all victims of Hurricane Katrina, including those in our home State of Florida, get reimbursement for the damage that they received, because they certainly are not getting that help right now.
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