30-Something Working Group

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - September 14, 2006)

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you very much to my good friend, Mr. Meek from Florida, friend and neighbor. It is funny, before we started this hour for our 30-Something Working Group, we had an opportunity to listen to our good friends on the other side of the aisle, and their rhetoric.

I was reminded of the Doug Flutie ``Hail Mary'' pass. I think Mr. Flutie played for the New England Patriots in that game, and it was that ``Hail Mary'' pass that was pretty darn memorable.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Actually it was Boston College, and it was with the University of Miami.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You are right. I stand corrected. You are probably a little bit more accurate on your football knowledge than I am. But I do remember the Doug Flutie ``Hail Mary'' pass.

That is what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are engaged in at this point, they are out of options. They are trying the tired path of scare tactics to try to convince the American people that they are actually the ones who are strongest on national security and homeland security.

There is just too much evidence mounted against them that is transparent and apparent to the American people, that they see it every single day. All anyone has to do is turn on the news, any channel, any hour that the news is on, to see that things aren't going so well and ``stay the course.'' All ``stay the course'' amounts to is a slogan, not a strategy.

If ``stay the course'' is their strategy, then I feel incredibly confident about what will happen 54 days from now. Everywhere I go, and I have been all over the country, so have you in recent weeks and months, people, even the most conservative individuals who I have had an opportunity to talk to, are dumbfounded that the Republicans have led us down this path, and are trying to lead people in America to believe that they are moving us in the right direction on protecting our Homeland.

Monday was the 5-year anniversary, as you mentioned, of September 11. I was home, and I mentioned the last couple of nights that I was home with our first responders commemorating that tragic set of events. One of the most disturbing things, what we did was we actually did a roundtable with our first responders and sat down and asked them, where are we 5 years later? Are all the things that we said and identified that were problems in the aftermath of 9/11, have they been addressed, are we working on them, what do you still need?

We really have to listen, that is our job, because we need to listen to our first responders and find out from them what is really going on the ground. I remember, I am sure you do too, that one of the most significant problems that was identified that has been talked about across this country is the interoperability, which is a word that is difficult to understand. That means the inability for the first responders on 9/11 to communicate with each other while the event was unfolding.

That was one of the major, major recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission that we had to fund and improve the interoperability so that across all of the jurisdiction, all of the intelligence and law enforcement jurisdictions, that there could be communication.

The FBI couldn't talk to the firefighters, couldn't talk to the police officers. And today, 5 years later, that is still not in place. Even though it was a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. And it boils down to funding. You have to fund it. There is no way around it, there is no other way to accomplish it.

But what are we doing instead? What are we spending our money on? Let's look at what the war in Iraq currently costs.

Currently we are spending $8.4 billion with a B a month. We are spending $1.9 billion per week in Iraq on this war, $275 million per day, $11.5 million per hour.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. We are going to lay this on the table here, so the U.S. taxpayers know what they are paying for and also the Members know what they are paying for.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Let's remember this picture. We have funded this relationship. We have made this relationship between the Prime Minister of Iraq and the President of Iran, we have made that happen. These were sworn enemies. During our formative years Mr. Meek, Iraq and Iran were at war, bitter locked-horns war. If you recall, it was the Sunnis led by Saddam Hussein in Iraq versus the Shiites in Iran.

What has occurred is that we have done by our actions in Iraq what thousands of years could not accomplish. We have basically upended the stability that existed there and brought the Shiites into control, and basically created a hotbed of chaos and terrorism that didn't exist before.

Now, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and President Bush would like very much to lead the American people and the international community to believe that the war on terror actually exists in Iraq. But every international expert that has weighed in on this insists that that is not the case; that the chaos that exists there now was created and that the war on terror doesn't need to be fought in Iraq. The way we fight the war on terror is making sure that the homeland is secure. But we can't do that, because our priorities are in the wrong place and we are spending this kind of money in Iraq.

I could stand here and make these claims all day long, but nobody would identify me as an expert on terrorism or on the conflict, the war in Iraq. I am a Member of Congress, elected to represent my constituents.

So let's turn to the people that we did ask to identify the problems in the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror and the things we needed to do to protect our homeland, The bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which was chaired by former Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey, a very well respected Republican, and former Member of Congress Lee Hamilton, a very well respected former Member of Congress. All the commissioners on there were chosen for their expertise.

Let me just go through what they said on Monday. They wrote a public opinion piece, an op-ed that was published in the Boston Globe and I know many other papers, and what they said this:

``As we mark the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Americans ask, are we safer? Two years ago the 9/11 Commission found that our government failed in its duty to protect us. The commission, which the two of us led, made 41 recommendations to ensure that this Nation does everything possible to protect its people. Many of our recommendations, including those to reorganize the intelligence community, were written into law, yet no law is self-executing. Implementation is often the harder step.''

And, boy do we know that, because it is the Congress' job to implement. All the recommendations in the world can come down from experts, but if Congress doesn't pass a law, like you said, the schoolhouse rock explanation of it has to go through the legislative process, it has to pass the committees, it has to pass both houses in the same form and go up to the President and he has to sign it, that hasn't happened.

What they said is, ``We issued a report card on our recommendations in December. It included 10 C's, 12 D's and 4 F's. What we argued then is still true now, Americans are safer, but we are not yet safe.''

That was the one question that I got the most often on Monday, Mr. Meek, was, ``Debbie, are we safer?'' I got asked that question by the press, I got asked that question by constituents, and the answer from the people that would know, the chairs of the 9/11 Commission, was we are safer, but we are not yet safe. Now, that is not a ringing endorsement over our efforts in the last 5 years.

So they asked, what do we need to do, because that is what people want to know.

``First, homeland security dollars must be allocated wisely. Right now those funds are spread around like revenue sharing projects.''

We had our friends on the other side of the aisle claim that they passed this remarkable earmark reform legislation today, which essentially only identifies a few individuals and ties them to the projects that they proposed. But basically what the 9/11 Commission is saying is that there are a bunch of little projects that Members have been able to insert into the process, but no regional or comprehensive approach to appropriating homeland security dollars so that you can get the really big, significant projects accomplished, like interoperability.

``Until Congress passes a law to allocate funding on the basis of risks and vulnerabilities, scarce dollars will continue to be squandered.'' This is Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton's words, not ours.

``Second, States and localities need to have emergency response plans and practice them regularly. Hurricane Katrina taught us a lesson that we should have learned from September 11: From the moment disaster strikes, all first responders need to know what to do and who is in charge.'' And if the directions were coming down from the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Chertoff and there was a plan in place and we had our priorities right, then they would know that. But there isn't

``Third, we called on Congress to give first responders a slice of the broadcast spectrum ideal for emergency communications.'' Again, the interpretability so they could communicate with each other.

``Those frequencies, which easily carry messages through concrete and steel, are now held by TV broadcasters and will not be turned over to first responders until 2009.'' What are we waiting for? They ask, ``Why should public safety wait another 3 years?''

``Fourth, progress on information sharing among government agencies is still lagging. Because of failures in this area, we missed many chances to disrupt the September 11 plot. The Federal Government is doing a better job, but there are still turf fights and gaps in information sharing, especially with State and local authorities.''

Mr. Meek, that was one of the things that was the most striking to me on Monday when I sat with our first responders in South Florida. What they said was that only 15 percent of their funding for homeland security comes from us, from the Federal Government. Eight-five percent of what they were able to accomplish in the last 5 years was only due to the fact that our sheriff's office and our county have been very cooperative and stepped up to the plate and gotten what they needed to do done. But there is a long way for them to go, and there is no excuse for only 15 percent of the funding coming from the Federal Government to secure our homeland, except that we have billions of dollars going over to Iraq.

``Fifth, FBI reform is moving in the right direction, but far too slowly. Problems continue to plague the Bureau. Inadequate information technology, deficiencies in analytical capabilities and too much turnover in the workforce and Bureau leadership. The bureau still struggles.

``Sixth, we have taken a special interest in the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which we recommended and the Congress created. The importance of a second opinion before the executive branch goes ahead with controversial information gathering measures is essential.''

That just has not occurred. In fact, the majority is moving in the opposite direction.

``Seventh, we still do not screen passengers against a comprehensive terrorism watch list before they get on airplanes. The sensible answer is for the government to do the name checking. Right now, airlines screen passengers against an incomplete list.''

How is that possible? What I have noticed and what Americans really, if they were asked, if we went out of this Chamber and walked down the street and we asked most Americans what they can identify as the most tangible thing we have done to improve our homeland security, they would probably answer that they have to remove their shoes before they walk through a metal detector and they have to check their Coke at the door.

We cannot rest our homeland security, the sum total of it, on taking off your shoes and not taking your Coke on the plane. We have to go much further than that. We don't check the cargo that goes in the belly of the airplane, we check less than 5 percent of the containers that go through our ports, and we have some graphical depictions of that as well.

Look at this. Less than 6 percent of U.S. cargo is physically inspected; 95 percent is not inspected.

Let's take a look at some other statistics. This Republican Congress has shortchanged port security by more than $6 billion. The Coast Guard indicated after 9/11 when they talked about how much they needed for the Maritime Transportation Security Act that they needed more than $7 billion. We have appropriated $900 million, Mr. Meek. The facts are all there. The words are spoken on the other side, but the facts just don't back it up.

I am going to go through the last couple of items, because this is so damning. And this isn't coming from Democrats, this is coming from the bipartisan chairs of the 9/11 Commission, and they wrote this Monday.

``Eighth, security is not just a question of airplane procedures,'' like I was just saying. ``The fundamental problem is radicalization in the Muslim world. The enduring threat is not Osama bin Laden, but young Muslims without jobs or hope who are angry with their governments, who don't like the war in Iraq or U.S. foreign policy. We need to do a better job reaching out to the Muslim world so that America is seen as a source of hope and opportunity, not despair.''

Now, one of the worst things that has happened since our invasion of Iraq is the decline in the perception of America's standing in the world. We have so degraded our relationships with foreign nations and world leaders and the perception of America has so badly deteriorated that you have young Muslims and young individuals across the globe who have a view of America that is the opposite of what kids worldwide and individuals worldwide looked at America when President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Reagan were in office.

What this administration and this President have done to the perception of America internationally is abominable.

``Ninth, Congress needs to reform itself.'' Now, this is very interesting. This is one of the most particularly damming recommendations and criticisms coming from the 9/11 Commission chairs.

``Congress has provided powerful powers to the executive branch in order to protect the Nation. To protect our freedoms, it now needs to be an effective check on the executive. Because so much information is classified, Congress is the only source of independent oversight on intelligence and homeland security issues. The oversight committees need stronger powers over budgets and jurisdiction.''

That says it all right there, Mr. Meek. The leadership of this Congress, the Republican leadership of this Congress, has ceded the Congress's oversight authority to the executive branch. They have thrown up their hands and given up and said, you do whatever you want, because what are they, Mr. Meek? They are a rubber stamp Republican Congress and they do whatever the administration wants. They lay down and do whatever they ask. And it even shocks the conscience of the chairs of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they wrote it so that there would be a system of checks and balances, so that we are a coequal branch of government. Only this administration and this leadership in this Congress don't seem to want to adhere to that.

``Finally,'' they say in this piece, ``preventing terrorists from gaining access to nuclear weapons must be elevated against all other problems of national security.'' Just like you were referring to a few minutes ago.

They ignore North Korea, they ignore Iran. They are doing a lot of hand-wringing over Iran because we are spread so thin militarily, and, Mr. Meek, you are on the Homeland Security Committee, you would know better than anybody else, that we are spread so thin militarily that we don't even have all the tools in our arsenal available to us, because we are all over the place worldwide militarily.

``Nuclear terrorism would have a devastating impact. The commission called for a maximum effort against this threat, including stepped up efforts to secure loose nuclear materials abroad, and our current efforts fall far short.''

They close by saying, ``We will surely face more terrorist attacks, yet our sense of national urgency is lacking. Our elected leaders need to act now to provide for the common defense, because the terrorists will not wait.''

If that isn't a damning indictment of our efforts in homeland security and the Republicans' inaction, then I don't know what is.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Mr. Meek. And I didn't ask the gentleman to yield because you were on such a roll, and you did such an incredible job of laying out the difference between what their priorities are and continuing to run in place, or where we would take us, which is a new direction for America.

The bottom line is that on every measure, on homeland security, on the economy and jobs and the energy crisis, because there is no other way to describe when you have to spend more than $50 to fill up the average tank of gas, there is no other way to describe it except as a crisis. When you have that situation facing you, when you have 46 million Americans who lack health insurance, which means when they are sick they can't go to the doctor; when you have a President who is hell bent on privatizing Social Security and yanking the rug out from under seniors who have worked their entire lives so that they have a floor of dignity holding them, so that they don't have to worry about choosing between medicine and meals, then we have got to make sure that we come to this floor every night and that we talk about the direction that we would take them and that we would take this country.

Because we would invest in new alternative energy, we would invest our resources in new alternative energy research. We would make sure that the rhetoric that the President issued to us during the State of the Union, where he said we have to end America's addiction on foreign oil, that was just words with no action, that we will actually make that investment and invest in the Midwest, in ethanol and corn production and in our State and other States across the country that produce sugar so that we can really make a commitment to disconnecting ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil; so that we can actually make sure that we pass a prescription drug plan and change the one that the Republicans wrote for the pharmaceutical industry as opposed to the senior citizens that desperately needed the assistance, that we rewrite that plan so that seniors have the ability to pay for their drugs, so that there is no doughnut hole that on September 22 our constituents are going to be falling through and having an unbelievably difficult time climbing out of. Those are the things that we would do.

After November 7, the new direction for America that we will take this country in will restore that dignity to senior citizens, will make sure that we create a prescription drug program that provides them with the prescription drug assistance that they need, that will invest in the Midwest, that will expand access to health care, that will make sure that we can pass stem cell research into law, and restore the accountability that this Congress should have been exercising and the oversight that we should have been exercising.

I mean, really, why have a Congress? The way it has been operating since I have been here, Mr. Meek, and I have been here almost 2 full years now, why have a legislative branch? The rubber stamp, the rubber stamp that is used here by the Republicans and their leadership, you know, it makes having a Congress essentially unnecessary because they just do whatever the administration wants anyway.

Listen, I could go home and spend a lot more time with my family than come here and waste our time on naming post offices and banning horse slaughtering. And not that those things aren't important; they are important to some people, but they are not the priorities of this country. They are not the priorities of the people when we go walking down the street in our communities and when I go and take my kids to their soccer game and to dance class, when I get in my car and drive my minivan around town.

The people that I talk to, they don't get it. They are scratching their heads, and they don't understand the rhetoric that is coming out of here without any action, and they are yearning and begging us to give them a new direction. We have got to provide them with that new direction.

Mr. Meek, we come to this floor every night as the 30-something Working Group, and I know we are about to wrap up here as we approach the end of our 60 minutes. We really appreciate the opportunity that Leader Pelosi gives us every night. And I want to direct our colleagues to our Web site, our 30-something Web site, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. All of the charts that we have had out here are available on that Web site, and we encourage folks to e-mail us with comments and our colleagues to e-mail us with comments.

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