30-Something Working Group

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - March 01, 2006)

Mr. DELAHUNT. That is, I think, such a valid point. There was a recent interview by Brian Williams of ABC News with the former head of FEMA. Do you remember Mike Brown, also known as "Brownie" to President Bush?

Well, during the course of that interview, for the first time, I would suggest, there was much new information revealed by Mr. Brown. Do you remember when there was confusion as to when the President was first informed about the potential destruction of Hurricane Katrina? And the President claimed that, Well, he saw it for the first time on TV? Well, Mr. Brown has a totally different version of that particular scenario.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Delahunt?

Mr. DELAHUNT. Sure.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Maybe that version is different now since he is no longer on the payroll of the Department of Homeland Security. I do not know. Maybe.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Well, I think we have to obviously factor into the account that he was kept as a consultant after he was fired from the payroll, and he is now no longer on the payroll of the American taxpayer. So maybe that is part of the basis for his new-found candor.

But he claims that he had a conference call with President Bush and a variety of officials, both at the Federal, the State and the local level where he articulated his grave concern that in his gut this was going to be one of the most devastating natural disasters ever to be experienced in our history. And clearly, his gut was right on that particular occasion.

Let me just, if I may, for several minutes, just read excerpts of that particular interview. This is Brian Williams. I want to ask you, Why didn't you shout it from the mountain tops? Or do you feel that you did?

I told everybody in that conference, and this is Mr. Brown's response, the President, Chertoff, the State, New Orleans, my gut tells me this is the big one. I want to push everything forward as far as we can. I want to jam up supply lines. I want to cut bureaucratic red tape. I want to do everything that we can.

So what date did the President first hear your voice?

The first time was probably on Saturday before landfall, August 27. But the alarm bells were being sounded on Sunday, prior to landfall, because not only was I having conferences with the President on the telephone, but he was also on the videoconference with all of the State emergency managers, all of the Federal departments and agencies, and listened in to the entire conversation, including the Director of the National Hurricane Centers' warnings.

And so when we see trailers in Hope, Arkansas, and you made that allusion, Mr. Ryan, that some of them may not be fit for families anymore because of the rot that the weather has caused, whom do we get angry at?

First of all, you can get mad at me, said Mr. Brown, if you want, but I think we ought to get mad at Congress, we ought to get mad at the President, we ought to get mad at Secretary Chertoff. "I raised the flag, Mr. President, and I told you that FEMA was being marginalized."

Mr. Ryan, this absolutely segues into your observation that they have brought government agencies down to the point where they are now ineffective. They are practically incapable of delivering basic services in times of emergency.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And I just want to say to the gentleman, one, how much I agree with you. And two is we are not saying that government is the only answer in many situations. It is not. In many situations it needs to get out of the way. Maybe it does need to be a bit smaller. But it has responsibilities, and certain responsibilities are not being met under this administration because of an utter and total disrespect for government in general, and this outfit comes with the same old ideas that are not applicable today, and this is the kind of execution of government that you get. You get 11,000 trailers in Hope, Arkansas, with nowhere to put them.

Mr. DELAHUNT. But you asked, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek, about the reaction of the White House to issues that ought to be part of our public discourse. And the response is "trust me."

How can we trust the executive branch when we have a former director that stands up now and says, Mr. President, on at least a couple of occasions and on numerous occasions to your staff, I raised the flag and told you that FEMA was being marginalized and was not going to be able to respond and, in fact, was on a path to failure. I told you so, Mr. President.

Where was the executive branch? Where was this Republican majority in terms of exercising its responsibility to oversee and to hold accountable executive agency performance? It was not there because this Republican majority, in its management of this Congress, has done nothing more than simply to rubber-stamp the administration's proposals.

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Mr. DELAHUNT. If we did not have a rubber-stamp attitude towards this administration in this Congress, believe me, we would be delivering a service to the American people that all of us could embrace.

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Mr. DELAHUNT. And the execution of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the so-called part D, what has occurred, let me suggest, is that the Republican Party in both this branch as well as in the White House, but particularly in the White House, has developed a habit, a habit of incompetence and a habit that could have been, in my judgment, interrupted and dealt with if we had aggressive oversight and accountability by Members of the House and Members of the United States Senate.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. No doubt.

Mr. DELAHUNT. But rather than doing that, when you speak to Democrats who are ranking members of full committees and subcommittees about conducting investigations, whether it be into energy, whether it be into the reconstruction of Iraq and the magnitude of corruption that is part and parcel of that reconstruction, the list goes on and on and on, and they say no. And that is why we are being embarrassed today. That is why someone like Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA, stands up and says, Mr. President, you have marginalized FEMA. We do not have the capacity to do it. I told you so. And yet not a word, not an agreement to work in a bipartisan fashion with Democrats to ensure that the mistakes that have been made are not replicated, are not continually being made to the detriment of the American people.

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Mr. DELAHUNT. Isn't it ironic, if the gentleman would yield, that we speak about energy independence, and I think that there is a consensus that clearly it is in our national security to develop an energy program that weans us from being dependent on foreign sources of energy, with a particular focus on OPEC.

Well, I wonder if we can wean ourselves from borrowing tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, from foreign sources like OPEC, like the Chinese, like the Japanese.

We have now created here in the United States, and I will utilize President Bush's phrase, an "ownership society." Well, the reality is that under his leadership, with the approval of this Congress, we have created an ownership society in the United States. Unfortunately, the owners are the Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese and OPEC.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. OPEC.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. OPEC.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Because of the economic policies. So what do we gain? What do we gain from securing our independence in terms of energy and at the same time become increasingly reliant on other nations, including potential adversaries and competitors like China to provide subsidies for tax cuts?

To me, that makes no sense. We lose our political flexibility. We cede, I would suggest, some of our sovereignty when we allow ourselves to become borrowers from foreign nations.

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Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, if my friend would yield for just 1 minute. What if one day those nations that are purchasing and buying our bonds, our Treasury notes, Treasury bills, for some reason they decided, maybe because of some political reason, they decided not to purchase in the financial markets American debt instruments? What would happen to our economy? Does anybody have that answer? I mean, I have my own theories, but I am not sure. Could they come over and foreclose? I wonder what they would do.

Now, here is Red China. Red China. It is kind of ironic when you think of Red China, and here we are piling up this red ink, Red China piling up red ink and it is all American red ink. And in 5 years, we have gone from owing the Chinese, Mr. Speaker, $84 billion, to over $200 billion.

I listen to the debates on the floor of this House, I listen to them in committee, and when I hear my Republican colleagues and my friends on the other side speak about China, it is always with trepidation, it is concern about Taiwan, it is looking at China as a potential threat. And yet here we are, knocking on the door of Mao Zedong's China saying, you know what? Would you buy this instrument from us? Give us your dollars.

I am telling you, I think we are putting not only our economy at risk, but we are putting our national security at risk. It is like having a Middle East gulf state operating American ports without doing due diligence. That is exactly what it is, Mr. Speaker. We are giving the country away.

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Mr. DELAHUNT. We did not know anything about Katrina being a devastating natural disaster. We did not know about FEMA not having the resources. We did not know about the lack of coordination. You know what? You know what? They know nothing. They do not know how to govern.

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