30-Something Working Group
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - October 06, 2005)
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, it is great to see that our ranks are expanding, in more ways than one in the 30-something Group, just a little ribbing to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).
We have been talking about this for the last couple of weeks, and it is almost hard to pick a jumping off point when it comes to the culture of corruption and cronyism that goes on here. I am the newest one of us, so I sort of have the freshest look. I was so hopeful when I came here 10 months ago that we would be able to come together in a spirit of bipartisanship and that of all types of investigations, of any investigation, that the investigation of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina would be one that you would think would be a no-brainer as far as bipartisanship. It has to be similar to the 9/11 independent commission, and it is not just about that we need Democrats and Republicans. It is that we need no partisanship involved in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the investigation of Hurricane Katrina.
The analogy we have been using on the floor is having a committee in the Congress that is lopsided in terms of partisanship and internal and not independent investigating Hurricane Katrina's aftermath would be like saying that the Enron executives or the Tyco executives should be allowed to investigate themselves and determine what happened and report back to the public or the Federal Government as to what happened.
I think that people would be pretty outraged if we allowed the Enron CEO to handle their own investigation.
Back in 1994, I was serving in the Florida House of Representatives with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), and I remember when Mr. Gingrich took the floor repeatedly and pointed then to what he called an arrogance of power. I have to tell Members it did not take them very long to come full circle and be kings of the hill of that arrogance. They have literally defined the word.
We have reached a point now where what they pointed to that they said developed over 40 years, it only took them 10. So they have a much shorter learning curve than some of our predecessors. The cronyism and the corruption has got to stop. We could go through a long list of people hired who were totally unqualified for the positions they were appointed to. And then to add insult to injury, also engaged in corrupt activity during their tenure, one of whom, Mr. Safavian, was just arrested, just indicted, and he was in charge of procurement at the White House.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. MEEK of Florida. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, what this boils down to is, it is about the three Cs: We have competence, cronyism and corruption. That is what this Chamber has become about. It is a question about their incompetence. There has clearly been corruption, and we have only to list the myriad of people who are in hot water at the executive branch level and, unfortunately, in this Chamber on the other side of the aisle. As much respect as we might have for our colleagues, we have an even greater respect for this institution, and, unfortunately, there are quite a number of people who forget their need to respect this institution.
And if it were not bad enough that we have a laundry list of people now who have been hired as cronies who were unqualified at the executive level for the position that they took on and then later engaged in corrupt activity, on top of that now just yesterday we hear a report that Special Operations forces were taught by individuals who have been determined to be in this country illegally, illegally, and who are now in the process of being deported. We have Special Operations forces who do not even like to acknowledge that they exist being taught foreign language by people who were found to have been in this country illegally, two from Indonesia and one from an African country.
Let us go further because I wish it stopped there. Just yesterday, we found that there is a spy apparently in the White House. I mean, a spy in the White House. I do not know. I am new. I am a freshman, and 9/11 was 4 years ago. I would think that by 2005, as 4 years has passed, the crackdown and effort that the administration and the Republican leadership here has been engaging in it to shore up our homeland security and make sure people feel safer, and security has been the issue. How in God's name do we have illegal immigrants from areas that one might question the motivation of some of the people and why they are here because certainly those nations that these illegal immigrants are from have had al Qaeda representatives come? We cannot make a blanket statement about it, but no question there have been problems with those countries.
Special Operations forces being taught by illegal immigrants and a spy in the White House, and we have cronyism that is running rampant at the executive branch level and ethical problem after ethical problem and indictments in this very institution. My God, if that does not cry out for a new direction and this country to be taken in a new direction, I do not know what does.
I came here and held up my right hand and swore to uphold the Constitution and the integrity of this institution, and I want to underscore the summary that the gentleman from the State of Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) said the other day on a news program.
The way he characterized what this institution has become is that the leadership in this institution has taken this institution from the People's House to the auction House, and there is no other way to describe it. That is the bottom line. And it is really sad.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, since the rule for the energy bill tomorrow was just filed, it seems a good place to jump off from, because I really hope that now that tomorrow we are going to be throwing the door, blowing the door wide open to more offshore oil drilling in the United States coastal regions, the gentleman from New Jersey represents the Jersey shore, I represent the eastern coastline, the gentleman represents the eastern coastline. Sorry, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) does not have much of a coastline.
But we have some deep, deep concerns that are going to be dealt with on the floor tomorrow where, for the first time, we are going to have the possibility of drilling much closer to the United States coastline in places that have been subject to a ban and moratoriums.
Given the track record, particularly recently, of competence, cronyism and corruption, I am hopeful that we are not going to see the giveaways that are in this bill tomorrow turn into what we have seen in terms of the three C's in the last several weeks and, quite honestly, in the last several years.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, tomorrow they will be trying to create the mythology for the American people that this is going to do something to reduce gas prices.
Mr. PALLONE. And it will not. There is not anything in it.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. There is not a single item in this bill that will reduce gas prices, not tomorrow, not next Tuesday, not 3 weeks from now will one penny get cut off a gallon of gas as a result of this bill.
What will happen is it will put more money in the pockets of the people who make money off the energy industry; we are going to waive the Clean Air Act provisions; it limits FTC penalties for price gouging; and it is almost completely impossible to increase refining capacity. There is a taxpayer subsidy for oil companies. These are the provisions in this bill. There is a giveaway of Federal lands in this bill. Madam Speaker, it is unbelievable. We just did this 7 weeks ago, and now we are going to give them more. I mean, where does it stop?
We have an alternative, I say to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), if the gentleman would like to outline some of the provisions in it.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, if my colleagues do not mind me jumping in here, lest people think that we are just on the Floor here pointing fingers and only being critical, we have our own alternative proposal, the democratic alternative to the energy bill tomorrow.
People might think that we as Members of Congress are somehow different than our constituents. I am just a minivan mom. I do not drive a big old SUV; I drive a mini van. I wish I could drive a car that was smaller, but I have 3 little kids who have to be strapped into a car seat. I have 6-year-old twins and a 2-year-old baby girl and I, like most moms, do not have much of an alternative in terms of making sure I have a car that is safe, that is big enough to haul them and all their soccer stuff and Brownie stuff and baseball stuff, just all their stuff. That is what parents across this country deal with every single day.
Last week and the week before and the week before that, I paid $45 to $50 to fill up my tank. Whenever I end up spending $45 to $50 on anything, I swallow hard. When you have to do that once a week, there is a problem. We make an okay income as Members of Congress. Think about the people who are struggling paycheck to paycheck.
Tomorrow on this floor, we are going to offer a real alternative to the energy bill. We are going to offer an alternative that puts some bark into the Federal Trade Commission's bite. We are going to give explicit authority to the FTC to define, for the first time, price gouging and what it is and how to penalize for it and make sure that there are factors that can be determined. We are going to make sure that everybody in the supply chain, including home heating fuels, deals with price gouging measures. We are going to make sure that it is not just one end of the chain, the energy chain, but the whole thing. We are going to establish a strategic refinery reserve. Our substitute would increase our Nation's refinery capacity by establishing a strategic refinery reserve.
Madam Speaker, we are taking real steps in our proposed alternative tomorrow which, of course, is not going to pass because the Republicans much prefer their industry-laden benefits package, which is the best way to describe this bill.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Pork.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Pork. We will substitute any appropriate word. We have to make sure that we provide some real relief to the minivan moms and dads across this country.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Madam Speaker, we understand the majority has about 10 minutes. We are going to come back another 10 minutes after the Majority side; we will have 10 minutes after that, and I think the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is going to be sponsoring that. We have a couple more minutes and we are going to turn it over to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).
But first, let me just say this real quickly, the articles that we talked about tonight, and this is just one publication. Washingtonpost.com. If you want to figure out how you can be a cosponsor on House bill 3764, that is housedemocrats.gov/katrina, you can go on-line and become a cosponsor of that legislation as a citizen to be able to push the drive for us to make sure that Americans never, ever have to go through the lack of response that they have received, and that is for Federal, State and local.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Schmidt). The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. We will give it out next time.
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