30-Something Working Group
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - November 01, 2005)
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I just keep asking myself where is their outrage, where is their shame? Why are we the only ones that appear upset about this? Why by their deafening silence does it seem as though they are sanctioning the activity that is going on in the White House? Sanctioning the corruption, sanctioning the cronyism and the culture that has been established here?
And it would be one thing, you could say, all right, we are going to compartmentalize, many people compartmentalize things. There are many Americans that may say, you know, foreign policy is not my concern. Of course, everybody in America cares about the loss of life, and I am sure that there is not one American that does not feel sadness over how many troops we have lost, but let us say you have Americans that can compartmentalize the foreign policy and comfort themselves by saying, I know, I think what has gone on is awful, but they are making up for it. The administration makes up for it with their fabulous domestic policy with the way they are taking care of things at home.
Are we satisfied with the direction we are going? Tonight in south Florida, today all day and tomorrow it is expected again to be pouring down rain. I have 90-year-olds, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I have 90-year-olds and older sitting in squalid apartments tonight with molding wet carpeting, with holes in their roofs who are not getting the assistance they need because FEMA is a disaster of an organization. It is supposed to be a disaster relief organization. They are a disaster all by themselves.
I want to tell you what my 6-year-old daughter said this morning. We were watching TV. I was getting ready and I was watching the news and she was in there with me. And she said, Mom, is Hurricane Rita coming? Because 6-years-old do not know the difference. Rita. Wilma. They just hear the names on TV, and there is not a lot of clear understanding.
I said, No, Hurricane Rita is long gone. You can imagine a 6-year-old living in Florida. There is a lot of fear of the concepts of hurricanes and one after the other after the other keeps coming down the pike.
So my telling her that Rita was long gone and there was no need to worry anymore, that satisfied her.
The report on the news about hurricanes in general went on for a few minutes, and I was not near the TV so I could not hear exactly what they were saying, but all of a sudden she said, Mom, I know what it is; hurricane FEMA is coming. I laughed, and I explained to her what FEMA was and tried to help her understand, that FEMA is supposed to be an agency that gets us ready when a hurricane is coming and takes care of us after a hurricane passes and makes sure that people are okay again.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is the pattern. Because there is no accountability in Iraq, and just giving away the store, contracts without any accountability.
In Florida, we have been hit by eight hurricanes in 15 months. A year ago, FEMA gave out $31 million in reimbursement and assistance to people who were not even hit by a hurricane in Miami Dade County, one of the counties that I represent. So my answer to my daughter this morning was, honey, even though this is an agency, a department in the government that is supposed to take care of people after a hurricane comes by, many people think they are doing such a poor job that it feels like they got hit by hurricane FEMA after they have come through. That is what is going on in Florida tonight as we speak.
You still have them make mistake after mistake, no communication, and yet this leadership and this Congress still refuses to appoint an independent Katrina commission to ensure that we can review the aftermath of that storm, the aftermath of Rita and Wilma and find out why they were not ready, what happened.
We still have 4 weeks left of hurricane season. We are in a 15- to 20-year run of expected really tough storms, and I mean we have an administration that we have to count on now until 2008. Do we want to leave these people in peril in charge of every branch of our government? Do the American people have that kind of confidence? Culture of corruption, cronyism, and incompetence.
It is time to make some changes so we can take this country in a new direction and reinstate Americans' confidence in their government's ability to do right by them. Up and down the line, they have proven that they do not deserve that confidence. They have not earned it.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And the culture that the gentleman is describing, he is absolutely right. It is not isolated. It is not like you can cordon off this instance and say it was just an anomaly, it was unusual. When you have something that is essentially your culture, like their culture of corruption, it is what defines you. It is what drives you every day. The culture that you are raised in is your belief system. It is your traditions. It defines almost everything about you.
It is clear that up and down this administration, up and down this leadership, I wish it stopped just at the administration, but it flows all the way down through this institution on their side and beyond. And we are in deep trouble because this government is being run by people who live by a culture of corruption.
The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) talked earlier about the 14-year covert CIA operative who talked about how treacherous it was and how they were being undermined by officials in their own government. Well, I want to go back to what Mr. Melman said in that Chris Matthews interview. Not just what he said previously, but in that same interview we talked about earlier. Chris Matthews asked him if he thought that heads should roll, essentially, for that conduct. And what he said was: ``I do not believe it would be hard for President Bush to ask that person to walk the plank.''
I do not see the plank. I have not seen Rove walk off of it. He is there still. He is still the Deputy White House Chief of Staff with the highest security clearance, with the ability to assist the President in making the most important decisions that this country faces.
The New York Times on October 5, 2003, talked about the instance of treachery. Within the CIA, they said the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery, as the gentleman from Ohio outlined. Miss Plame, a specialist in nonconventional weapons who worked overseas, had nonofficial cover and what was what in CIA parlance was called a nok, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create.
So we are not just talking about your run-of-the-mill covert agent. I know as I have been following this, and we are obviously not intimately familiar with the CIA's operations, I initially thought that Ms. Plame was a nominal covert agent. I know there are varying degrees. But apparently she had the most difficult cover to develop. It makes matters that much worse.
We have got to make sure that the American people can trust the information and the people who are running this country. We have to be able to trust the information that comes out of the White House.
I have spoken, I know all my colleagues have too, to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have said that they no longer trust the information that comes from the White House; yet they continue to walk the plank for the administration and for their leadership. They do whatever they are told. They never stray.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. 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.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Where is their backbone?
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. 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.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. The gentleman is absolutely right. It would be one thing if they could look us right in the eye and look the American people in the eye and their own constituents and say, I have consistently been voting exactly the way I feel. The votes I have cast go to the core of my principles, and I have always voted how I believe.
Only we know that not to be true. They could not possibly do that. They cannot have town hall meetings in their districts and look their folks in the eye and say, I have always voted my own convictions, because we have watched the read lights change to green lights, and the green rights change back to red lights. We watched this board over here.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Tears are shed, threats are made, and arms are twisted.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Oh, my God, puking blood. It is just unbelievable. They have this timer that they set with 5-minute votes that turn into 40-minute votes, like the energy bill. I was not here, but the Medicare bill, a 15-minute vote, over 3 hours. And all the while our vote board with our names up here in lights, arm-twisting, blood-puking, the green turning to red, yes to no, and literally the angst that I have watched on some of my colleagues' faces knowing they want to cast their vote with how they truly believe, but they care more about the money continuing to flow, about the chairmanships continuing to come their way, and about the appropriations continuing to remain in the budget.
It is all about them. And when I ran for office, I thought it was supposed to be about the people I represented. That is why I came here. I am not sure why they came here. They have made it pretty clear, but I know that it is obvious that we came here for different reasons than they did.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, the most troubling aspect of what he just said is the question why will they not admit that they made a mistake. And the troubling aspect of that is that they did not make a mistake. It was deliberate. There is a strong possibility, given all the things we talked about here tonight, that they took us into war because they wanted to take us into war, because they had some grand plan. They had motivation. They had ``war fever,'' as the gentleman referenced earlier that Colin Powell indicated that Vice President Cheney had. The ability to admit mistakes when one believes they made them, but one has to first believe they made one. That is kind of the first rule. And the lack of capacity to acknowledge that they made mistakes is just astonishing. It really is, and they continue to astonish us on this floor and the American people.
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