30-Something Working Group

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - November 01, 2005)

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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, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

It is a pleasure to join him once again, and we appreciate Leader Pelosi's giving us this opportunity to talk about the issues that are important not just to our generation but to the citizens of this country who really need to hear both sides of the story, which they are most definitely not hearing from now.

And the gentleman mentioned the extension of Brownie's contract. I was struck by the fact when we learned that, and I think we just learned that last week, that his contract was extended ostensibly to glean more advice from him on what the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA should be doing in the aftermath of hurricanes. And we are still, unfortunately, in the middle of hurricane season. Our respective districts were just struck by Hurricane Wilma, and one of the things that we have learned in the aftermath of Wilma now is that it has really become clear that the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA have learned nothing from the aftermath of Katrina, the blown aftermath of Katrina, and then Rita and then from Rita to Wilma.

Communication failures, an inability of our cities to get generators to run their lift stations, sewage backing up in the streets, gaping holes in condominiums and mobile homes. It is pouring rain today in south Florida, which is pouring more misery on top of people who have already been through so much. And how does Secretary Chertoff respond? He extends Michael Brown's contract by 30 days. This is a person who President Bush ultimately was forced to admit was not able to handle a job the size of Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath, so much so that essentially he was forced out.

But now, because they are so married to the cronyism, the culture of corruption and cronyism and the lack of competence runs so deep and they are so unwilling to give it up and to admit that they are incorrect that they give him an extension and continue to pay him $148,000 a year. This is what they are rewarding. They reward incompetence. They thrive on cronyism and corruption and unethical behavior. It is just unbelievable.

I think this is a good time to turn to our first chart here, if the gentleman is ready to do that.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MEEK of Florida. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me because in between these two charts or slides, I want to tell my colleagues what I saw when I was watching ``Good Morning America'' yesterday morning, Mr. Speaker.

Matt Cooper, the Time Magazine reporter who was one of the reporters involved in all of this and testified in front of the grand jury and initially resisted in terms of his willingness to testify, had an exchange with Charles Gibson on Good Morning America yesterday.

Matt Cooper acknowledged, in questioning from Mr. Gibson, that he initially heard from Karl Rove about the identity of Joe Wilson's wife and what she did for a living. Charles Gibson in this exchange said, ``So, you, I am sure, will likely be called to testify at Mr. Libby's trial, and will you be testifying to those facts?'' In other words, he asked will you be testifying that you initially heard about Joe Wilson's wife's profession and what she did and her identity from Karl Rove? And he said, ``Well, that is the truth, and I plan on testifying about what I know.''

Then Charles Gibson asked Matt Cooper, ``Is there any possibility that you are not correct?'' Because, you know, Mr. Cooper, the other side will say, opposing counsel will try to say that perhaps you are mistaken or you misunderstood or there was some matter of clarity, lack of clarity on your part. He said, ``Well, I was taking notes during this conversation, and I am pretty clear. I am going to go in and testify to what I was told.''

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

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, Cooper is going to say at trial, if asked, that Karl Rove was the first person to tell him Valerie Plame's identity.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Wow.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I thought that was important.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. 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.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And subsequently made a liar out of Mr. McClellan. He is the spokesperson standing in front of the American people and the White House press corps. In fact, I heard an exchange yesterday between him and the White House press corps where he was pressed by them to acknowledge that he basically was trotted up there to the podium and forced to lie to them, unknowingly perhaps. But in addition to being lied to, he lied to the press and to the American people.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, if we had that transparency here, if the leadership here were willing to engage in transparency and get to the bottom of whether or not prior to the declaration of war and taking us into the Iraq war and misrepresenting facts to Members of this body, if they were willing to do that, then we would not be in the position that we are in today, so much so that today in the United States Senate, Minority Leader HARRY REID had the courage to use a rule that has not been used in 20 years, at least 20 years, rule XXI that has not been invoked in 20 years, to bring the Senate into a closed session because of the foot-dragging and hemming and hawing and hand-wringing over exposing the information on how it is that we ended up in the Iraq war, and making sure that they get to the bottom of how much information, following September 11 and prior to September 11, the administration actually had and whether it was available.

None of that information has been forthcoming. There has been opaqueness, not clarity, not transparency, so much so that Minority Leader Reid had to force the Senate into closed session today in order to try to push them to get that part of the investigation rolling. It is just absolutely inexcusable.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It has been such a pleasure to serve with the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) on the Judiciary Committee, and his eloquence and knowledge and commitment to making sure that truth is told is absolutely laudable.

You know, to follow up on what you are saying, there are consequences to the actions that they are taking. It is not just about that it is outrageous that they have to be right and that they are dictatorial and that they insist on having their way and that, during one of the debates in the last Presidential election, President Bush actually could not think of something, of an instance in which he had been wrong. I mean, this is how arrogant this administration has become. This is how deep seated the culture of corruption and cronyism and incompetence has become. But it is the results of that arrogance and that attitude that is what is truly troubling. And troubling is too easy a word.

The other day we went beyond 2,000 men and women who are dead. Dead. Whose families are in tears. Whose mothers will never be the same again because they had to be right. Because it did not matter whether the information they had was true. They were just going to disseminate it. Because they had decided, clearly in advance of September 11, that they were going to take us into war in Iraq.

There are documents, like the Downing Street Memos that have come out, that show that they were fitting the facts around their previously arrived at decision. Sure, it is not President Bush's daughters. It is not Karl Rove's kids. What is Karl Rove still doing there?

Let us go back to the first slide that you had up there. Does it appear as though the President has stuck to his commitment as a candidate, which was, 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.

This is a man who has compromised our national security. This is a man who has compromised not just a covert CIA's operative life but the lives of countless operatives who worked with her, who has helped send more than 2,000 Americans to their deaths. For what? For what?

You know, last year, during the campaign, you had thousands and thousands of security moms who went to the polls, and but for just about everything else that they cared about, they cared most about making sure that their children were safe. They went and cast their ballot for this President, because they trusted him the most to protect them in a time of national security, against terrorism and disaster.

Now we have seen just how well he measures up in terms of his ability to protect people after a natural disaster. And clearly there have been troubling aspects of what they knew in advance of September 11 and whether they could have even prevented September 11 from happening, given the information that they had.

Now they led us into war with misleading information, prevarication, I will use every other word except the word I am not allowed to use as a result of our rules. But how can they not care about that?

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