Oversight and Accountability in Government

Floor Speech

OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN GOVERNMENT

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Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. First of all, I thank the gentlewoman. I thank you for your leadership. I thank you for your optimism. I thank you for your service to our country and all of our colleagues here.

Every time we come and stand on this floor, it is an overwhelming feeling. It is an overwhelming sense of the greatness of this Nation, as well as the responsibility that goes with standing here. Each and every one of us represents over 600,000 Americans. Their hopes and dreams rest on what we do in this building. This is the most serious task we can ever undertake.

As we talk about restoring accountability and restoring trust, nothing is more important. Nothing shapes this Nation more than what we do here. And as we reflect the great values that have made America the country that it is, we need to make sure that it is being done in the way that the Americans want it to be done. They don't care about the partisan ideology. What they care about is results.

I hear a lot of talk that actions are what matter. I watched for the last hour as our friends talked about a very important subject across the aisle before we came on. They talked about fiscal responsibility. They are absolutely right, that is something that must be restored. This Nation's hopes and dreams and the investments we make in our children and grandchildren are going to be largely determined by how we handle the fiscal responsibility put on us.

The only thing I find curious about the discussion is that our friends are so convinced that nothing works in here they seem to have forgotten to mention that they have been the majority party for 12 years. They seem to have forgotten to mention that they had the executive branch for the last 6 years and both branches of Congress.

During that time, we saw record surpluses turn into record deficits. We now have a $9 trillion national debt. We have seen the largest growth in government in a generation. And we have seen services provided to the people shrink and fees increase.

So I guess, coming from a high school classroom, sometimes I said it is always very important, those actions matter. Everyone wants to do well and everybody wants to talk about it, but what happens in here truly matters.

We have seen the culture of corruption. What I call it is the permanent vacation that Congress was on. Most people realize that the past Congress worked the fewest number of days since the do-nothing Congress of 1948. While we were passing the 100-hour agenda and the things you heard from our friend from Minnesota, all of the things that we accomplished, the previous Congress met for one day in January of 2006.

There is a stark contrast here. You are absolutely right. We were sent to this floor to do the people's bidding, not in a partisan manner but in a way that was open, accountable, transparent and actually got the results that we were looking for.

I wanted the opportunity tonight to come here and illustrate a couple of things how we are doing business differently, how things have changed in Congress and how these things are tangible, and I am going to bring a couple of these that are very near and dear to my heart.

One is about a project back in my district, if I could, Congresswoman, illustrate this just for the people. I will give a little background on it. Because this project had the potential to be the single largest taxpayer loan to a private entity in the history of this Nation, and most people, even in my district, until it was brought to light, knew almost nothing about it.

There was a railroad that came from outside the State of Minnesota that was planning on doing that was very important, building rail infrastructure. All of us agree in southern Minnesota that it is needed. We need to move our commodities to market, we have a burgeoning ethanol industry that needs to move our product, and we also have the need to move coal and other commodities on this railroad.

Well, this railroad tried for nearly a decade to try and secure private financing for this project. It failed to do so. Late in 2005, a program to give loans to railroads all of a sudden found an extra $32 billion in this program. It was written in by a Senator in the middle of the night in conference committee with specific parameters that would only apply to this railroad to get this loan.

This was done in the dark of night. The finances were kept private and out of the public eye, and the decision was going to be made after that conference committee by a set of appointed officials at the Department of Transportation.

Now, that in itself is bad enough in the culture of corruption. But it gets worse. Nine months prior to that Senator writing that in there, that Senator was a paid lobbyist, and as hard as it is to believe, for that very railroad. He is elected to the Senate and he puts this in here.

No one is doubting that we need rail. What this situation did and what it illustrated perfectly was when government is done badly, no matter what the intention was, it starts a domino effect of distrust and bad decisions.

This railroad was going to increase rail traffic up to 36 coal trains a day possibly, one mile long, and it was going to run by the single largest private employer already in my district, 210 feet away. That private employer was the world famous Mayo Clinic. Decisions were not allowed for mitigation, decisions were not allowed to make sure the impact and the safety of the thousands of patients that traveled were addressed. This was a case of special interest and their lobbying friends allowing something to happen that the people of the district had very little say in.

I was told all along, it is the railroad and it is the way it is. There is nothing you can do. They are going to be approved for the loan and they are going to start building.

My question was that I refused to believe that this body would allow that to happen. I refused to believe that the public's elected official for their district would not have the opportunity to see the financial situation of the railroad, as well as the safety, which, by the way, ranked 43 out of 44 in safety, with one being the best.

So upon coming to Congress in January, working bipartisanly across the aisle with our friends, I put forward a bill that would ask that this be evaluated for credit, that this be looked at and see what the finances were, and see if the American people's money was being put at risk.

To put this into context, when Chrysler needed to receive a government loan to stay afloat in the early 1980s, this loan was over twice as big than that. That loan for Chrysler was debated for 3 weeks on the floor openly before it was finally voted on and strict requirements for its payback put into place.

Well, I am happy to say that the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation looked at those finances again and determined that this was not creditworthy and was not worthy of a risk to the American taxpayers.

Now, to ensure that this never happens again, we have taken it one step further and passed a bill that Congress must cosign. If we ever try and do this again with $1 billion or more of taxpayer money on a Department of Transportation loan, it is going to come in front of this body and we are going to get a vote and we are going to ask the questions. Is there a need for public investment into our infrastructure? Absolutely. Is there a need for expanded rail travel? Absolutely. Is there a right of private business to come to the government looking for some help so that they can build that infrastructure and profit? Absolutely. But it must be done in the light of day. It must be done with the approval of the American people's elected representative so that they can have the ability to decide if it was right or if it was wrong, and they will decide that in the way they vote in 2 years.

So, within 2 months, this Congress is starting to take those responsibilities. They are starting to ask those questions and we are starting to see progress. I can absolutely assure you, and I may never be able to prove this, but I had to think had there not been a change to Congress, had there not been a new focus on trust and accountability and a new way of doing business, we maybe would have never seen the light of day on this.

So the people are served well, we have the people's interests at heart, and now we can move forward with a much more responsible plan.

So I applaud the Congresswoman for bringing us together. I know we each have several more opportunities to illustrate these. But I hope this one shows the American people, this is not a partisan issue. This is common sense. This is right and wrong. And I applaud those Members on the other side of the aisle that came to us and said, you are absolutely right, this is the way it should be done.

I yield back to the gentlewoman.

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Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to illustrate to the American people exactly what we are talking about when accountability and oversight fail. There are ramifications. Some may go unnoticed; others are absolutely horrific.

In the past several weeks, we have seen one of those examples. And the sad part is most people were not surprised. Most people have looked at this issue.

I want to talk about accountability and oversight. This Congress and our leadership are making sure we get our job done here. They are working us 5 days a week most weeks. My constituents back home, they don't have a lot of sympathy when they hear we are working Monday through Friday in the Capitol. That is what we were elected to do. That is what we were hired to do in their name.

I hear my friends on the other side of the aisle talk about, what do we have to do the whole time we are here? We are not voting the whole time, and the answer is, do our job providing oversight and accountability. Keep in mind, the entire last Congress had 30 oversight hearings. In the first 8 weeks, we have had 100.

Getting the job done for the American people means acting as a coequal branch in the responsibility of being fiscally responsible with their money, putting policy forward that benefits everyone, and making sure that the follow through is done on that.

I want to mention something as it pertains to our veterans and let people understand where this starts exactly. Make no mistake about budgets, budgets are far more than accounting. We hear our friends on the other side of the aisle talk about accounting and putting money in Americans' pockets. They talk about they have never met anyone who did their own taxes.

Well, I came to this Congress straight from the public school classroom, never having run for elected office before. I was teaching high school geography a few months ago. I can tell them on a high school teacher's salary, I was doing my own taxes.

And when they talk about a budget in terms of only being what is left in the pocket, they forget that budgets are moral documents. They are a reflection of our national values. How we prioritize those values is an absolute reflection of what we believe is most important in this Nation.

Now, I also come to you not just as a teacher but as a 24-year veteran of our armed services and our Army National Guard. I think the highest distinction that I could ever claim--at this time, I am the highest ranking enlisted soldier or servicemember that has ever served in this exalted body; it is something that I am very proud of.

Those people who know something about the military, I retired as a command sergeant major. The command sergeant major has one responsibility: Take care of the troops. Nothing else. That means feed them, clothe them, pay them, make sure their health is taken care of, and train them to complete their mission. That's what you need to do.

Well, I am now a member of the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, and what has happened at Walter Reed and what is going to happen again is not an anomaly. It was a decision. It was a decision that resulted from a failure in leadership and a bigger failure in accountability and oversight. And the saddest part about this is, the saddest, most tragic part about this was, it was totally avoidable.

Our veterans' service organizations, from the DAV to the Paralyzed American Veterans, to the Blind Veterans of America, to the Legion, all of these organizations understood what was coming.

I would like to just talk a little bit about, and illustrate, how the budget impacted what happened and how the lack of leadership and the lack of accountability led to that.

The chart I have up here is showing this is the VA treating many more Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. Every soldier who serves in these wars will, one day, be a veteran. Now, it does not come as a surprise to most Americans, since 2003, when the war started in Iraq, we have seen a steady increase in the number of soldiers that are going to be treated. Seems pretty logical. Most people anticipated that was going to come.

The number of VA health care patients in general continued to rise. We have an aging generation from our World War II veterans to our Korean War veterans to our Vietnam veterans. They are continuing to rise at a steady rate. Every single veteran service organization predicted this. Every single person involved with this predicted this.

Now, we are finding out we have not had enough money. We have not correctly planned ahead to take care of the warrior after the war. When you choose to fight a war, and make no mistake about it, Iraq was a choice, you understand you accept full responsibility for those warriors, not for the time that they are there, not for the time they are treated in a facility like Walter Reed, but for the rest of their life.

In falling short on this, here is how we are going to make up for it. If you will look at our copy here, enrollment fees, pharmacy copayments and third party copayments. This says up here, the President's budget increases fees on veterans. Make no mistake about the language. This is the President's tax on warriors, period.

So we saw a situation, increasing number of veterans coming back, budgets that were grossly underestimating the number, that we would need to try and spend the money elsewhere or maybe put the money back in somebody's pocket. When I go to my district, and I ask them the question, do you want a few more dollars in your pocket or do you want to make sure that warrior has a room that shows the dignity that this Nation should provide, and every single one of them will go with the veteran.

We must have an open debate in this Congress about accountability, where is this money going to go, where is this money going to come from, and I want Members who agree with this, that this is the way we should do it, to stand in front of the mother from Saginaw, Michigan, who was at the VA hospital in Minneapolis, treating her son with a traumatic brain injury, and tell her she better get the checkbook out and write it out and pay for this because that is exactly what has happened here.

When this Congress chose to not hold hearings, to not hold oversight, and to not ask the hard questions, they created the situation at Walter Reed. They created the coming situation on our VA system, and this new Congress has accepted the responsibility and I, as a command sergeant major, retired, stand here and say my responsibility was to take care of those soldiers in my unit. My responsibility now is to take care of all of them.

I have absolute confidence in my colleagues that they will provide exactly that. That is what accountability means. That is what oversight means. It is not a gimmick to get reelected. It is not cute words, and for those that say it is hogwash and pay-as-you-go does not matter, I tell them this is what matters. Decide how we take care of our veterans and let us do it the way this Nation knows it should.

I know we have a few more things to go over, but this illustration is one that impassions all of us. It is one that did not need to happen, but it is one that I am optimistic holds the silver lining of uniting this Nation over an issue we all care about and getting real results.

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Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio, and so eloquently put. It is a new opportunity in America. It is one of optimism. We have got a lot of work to do, but Americans always rise to the challenge in the time of the greatest challenge.

I think it is important to realize that this place we are standing, this sacred hall, this is the people's House. This is the first branch of government in the Constitution. This branch is coequal to the other two branches, and our duty of providing oversight and accountability is not something that we get to pick and choose on. It is our constitutional responsibility.

When I hear people entrust me, you will hear people in this very chamber start using the term ``micromanage.'' It seems to me there is a place where they dream up these words that they just keep repeating and repeating. Well, I can tell you what, micromanage, call it what you may, could be oversight and accountability also, and I ask my constituents, would you like a little oversight and accountability at Walter Reed? Would you like a little accountability on the situation in Iraq? Would you like a little accountability on what you hear on some of the things that are happening? And the answer is yes.

Sunshine truly is the best antiseptic. This new Congress has been here for 2 months, and there is a new way of doing business. It is the way that this country was laid out under the Constitution. It is the one that has served us best for over 230 years, and it is the one that we will continue to use that will provide the American people with the best government possible.

I thank the gentlelady, I thank my good colleague from Wisconsin for the opportunity to be here with you, and I look forward to many more opportunities to do the Nation's bidding the way it should be.

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