The 30-Something Working Group
Floor Speech
THE 30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - May 23, 2007)
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You have just known me longer.
Thank you, Mr. Meek. It is a pleasure to be here. We have been trying to get the three of us back together again. It is a good problem to have. We have a lot more on our plate now that the Democrats are in the majority. The other good part of our problem is that we have expanded the active members of the 30-Something Working Group, with the Speaker that is in the chair this evening and a number of other Members, Mr. Altmire, and we are really happy about that.
But I am glad the three of us were able to come back together this evening to continue our effort to speak to both our generation and to the American people, the rest of the American people, about our concerns and the Democratic new direction that we have been successful in moving in since November 7th when we were victorious in the election and when the American people indicated to this Congress that they wanted to move in a new direction.
We struggled through the last number of years. Gradually, and unfortunately a cloud hung over this institution and this Capitol, a culture of corruption had developed, Mr. Ryan, and we just could not allow it to continue any longer. The American people were fed up with it, and that is why tomorrow we are going to be considering lobbying reform and ethics reform, so that we can inspire the confidence of the American people once again in their leaders, both as individuals, because traditionally they have said to pollsters that they support their Member of Congress, they like their Member of Congress, but they can't stand the institution.
That is a sad state of affairs. We need to make sure that our institution, the one we are proud to serve in, is one that the American people can be proud of as well. There has been too much corruption here, unfortunately led by individuals formerly in the leadership in this institution on the other side of the aisle for far too long, and we need to take some significant steps to clean it up, which is why we are going to be considering this legislation on the floor tomorrow.
We also talked about during the campaign and leading up to, and now since Nancy Pelosi, our Speaker, took office, that we are going to implement the priorities that were important to the American people, including the minimum wage. We passed our ``Six in 06'' agenda in the first 100 hours that we were in the majority. The minimum wage was part of that. The implementation of the 9/11 Commission recommendations was a part of that. Making sure that we could repeal the $14 billion in subsidies that we gave away to the oil industry under the Republican leadership, that was a part of that package, and a number of other provisions.
Our priorities since taking control of the House of Representatives have been a reflection of the priorities of the American people.
We have been interacting with this President, which in my experience the only thing I can analogize it to, Mr. Ryan, is like trying to move an iceberg. This is a person who occupies the White House now that seems to have no respect for the system of checks and balances, no respect for the fact that the Founding Fathers created three branches of government that were considered coequal, and that he was not elected king of this country. The Founding Fathers very definitely intended for us not to have a monarchy, not to establish a monarchy, and he doesn't get to just decide what is going to happen, particularly when it comes to war and executing the powers of the Presidency. He does have to have input from us.
I can tell you from my perspective, I think from your perspective, Mr. Meek, and Mr. Ryan as well, that this is the beginning of the end. The actions we have taken, insisting upon him not having a blank check and ending the blank check and the open-ended commitments that have been there, it is the beginning of the end.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you. What we are doing, you are absolutely right, Mr. Ryan, is creating an incubator for al Qaeda. That is exactly what has occurred. In fact, if you recall, we heard a few years ago a lot of back and forth from the President about whether he did or didn't say that the reason that we actually went into Iraq was because of the connection, supposed connection, between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Then I know Tony Snow, the White House Communications Director, has said no, we never did say there was any connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Now, yesterday and this morning at the Coast Guard Academy graduation, now, finally, how many years into it, he can hang his hat on there being a connection between al Qaeda and our involvement in Iraq.
Why? Because he created that situation there. Because we created an incubator and a hotbed that is an environment for that. Of course, if you have a culture like that, and I mean the culture in which bacteria will grow, just like a petri dish, if you create a petri dish like that and culture it, of course you are going to see the bacteria grow. If you create an environment in which bacteria can grow, it is going to explode like wildfire.
No wonder. It boggles my mind why he believes that what he is saying is not transparent to the American people. It certainly is transparent and evident in the polling numbers, because he has literally an approval rating in terms of the way he has handled this war that is below 30 percent now.
You would think that politically we would delight in that as Democrats. But it actually makes me sad, because how can a President be effective on any other issues when he clearly won't even be able to get the American people to listen to what he is saying because they are so soured on the direction that he has taken this country? That makes it very difficult for us to even reach out in a bipartisan way and attempt to work with him, because he has no credibility at all. He has his own party Members who are finding it very difficult to do anything in terms of their agenda domestically, and we don't see any outreach. He has created an impossible situation, Mr. Meek.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Mr. Meek.
I have to tell you, I have thought recently when people come up to me, you would think that there are people that would say, Debbie, Kendrick, Tim, what does it really matter? We have been spending billions of dollars for the last 5 years. We are over there in Iraq. Yeah, the American people are opposed to this, and we are in a pretty bad situation over there, and there doesn't appear to be any end in sight, but how does this affect my life? At the end of the day I am eating, my children are eating, they are going to school. Iraq is far away, and it is not impacting me whether we continue the war in Iraq or don't continue the war in Iraq.
Gradually day by day, the percentage of people that don't feel that way, that get it, that understand what the impact is, not just on the perception of America in the world, but what the domestic day-to-day impact is, is growing.
Besides the President's popularity ratings, which are in the toilet, we have a situation here where people are realizing, for example, that our National Guard is unable to be 100 percent ready to take care of us and do the job that we actually created the National Guard to do.
Mr. Meek, next Friday is June 1, the official start of hurricane season, even though we have had activity a few weeks in advance of the beginning of hurricane season. And yesterday NOAA came out with their prediction on how busy this storm season is likely to be, and their prediction is 10 to 14 named storms, and a good chunk to be in the category 3, 4 or 5 category.
We have a National Guard that has equipment that is still over in Iraq, and when it does come back, it comes back in such terrible shape, it isn't going to be ready to take care of Americans who are in need after the aftermath of a natural disaster. That is a direct result of our inability to extricate ourselves from Iraq, our inability to hold the Iraqi Government accountable, to establish benchmarks, to make sure that there is some progress made, and that they don't have an open-ended commitment and a blank check even after the Iraqi Parliament, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek, have indicated that they don't want us there anymore.
There was a resolution that came out of the Iraq Parliament that indicated they didn't want us there. There is an incredible frustration among the Iraqi people about our being there. There is a worldwide concern about our presence there; and, most importantly, the American people want us to bring the troops home so that we can refocus the attention that we are paying in Iraq on training those troops to stand up on their own and for the Iraqi Government to function on their own.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Like happens to you sometimes, my blood is starting to boil because all that it takes, I'm sitting here listening to this back and forth that we're going through here and example after example about the reasons for the American people's outrage, for our outrage, for our persistence in trying to move this iceberg and get some progress and end the blank check and establish some accountability.
You know, it's very simple. All the President has to do is be a diplomat himself and agree to come to the table and compromise and negotiate and end the my-way-or-the-highway politics. He is not king. Yes, he was elected President, but he was elected to one branch of the government, which, the way our government is set up, is designed to work coequally with this branch of government.
He has disdained the legislative branch, and this is the representative body of the United States of America. The people who elect us elect us to be their voice. They elect one person, an executive, and they elect 435 of us so we can have a collective diversity of opinion and that the result in terms of the outcome of policy is a combination of that diversity. And he has no respect for it, and that's why his numbers are where they are. That's why the support for this President, the bottom has dropped out of it.
And that's why over the next several months we will push this iceberg with all our might, and I can feel it, that their ability to continue unabated with the disdain and disregard that this administration has shown for the American people and our opinion, it will come to an end and it's going to come to an end in a fashion that we will help bring about the change that the American people ask for. And that is the only way that this is going to happen, if we continue to fight, we continue to push hard, we make sure that we go out to our communities like we will all do next week.
I know I'm having a town hall meeting next Wednesday in my district to talk specifically about the war in Iraq and how people feel about it, get their feedback, talk about the other issues that are important to them, because people are tired. They're tired of the war. They're sick of the deaths. They're sick of the death toll, and they want us to be able to talk about how we're going to expand health care.
We have the SCHIP program that we need to reauthorize later this year. We have 9 million kids that we need to find the money to cover. We have to make sure we can reduce the cost of health care for small businesses. We have a deficit that has ballooned out of control, that we're trying to get a handle on, no thanks to our friends on the other side of the aisle.
We have a lot to do, a long to-do list, and it would be great if the President would just recognize that we all need to work together and end his disrespect for the American people and for the democratic process because it's gone on for far too long. And we have a lot at stake here.
And I just have reached my level of frustration. I know my constituents have, and that's why I'm proud of our caucus because we have hung together. We have stuck together and pushed and pushed and pushed each other so that we can get behind a policy that not all of us are 100 percent behind. Everybody didn't get their way with the legislation that we put forward with benchmarks and timelines. But you know what? That's what this representative body that we were elected to is all about.
It's about compromise and it's about standing up for the people who don't have a voice. They elected us to be their voice and I have been very proud to be a Member of this institution, really proud of our Democratic leadership.
And I'm just hopeful that we can get beyond this war and start talking about things like the $3.22 a gallon that our constituents are paying, on average, for their gas as we approach the summer season as well.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I think you are right. I think also, as the summer begins and then wears on and we have an opportunity in the summertime to go home and spend some time in our districts and interact with our constituents, that the issues that pile up, at we're going to have a difficult time dealing with, because we are still mired in this hopeless war in Iraq, are going to continue to fray the patience of the American people, and I think our friends on the other side of the aisle will hear from their constituents.
I keep wanting to move a little bit and talk about gas prices, and I'm chomping at the bit to do that because you've heard me talk about this before. I'm one of those minivan moms. I drive my kids around in my minivan to soccer games and to school. And last summer when we were frustrated with the rise in gas prices, I remember exploding on the floor here talking about how it cost over $55 to fill up my gas tank. And then, of course, conveniently, right before the election, the prices came down again. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that an election was imminent, and I'm sure the oil industry didn't do anything deliberate to ensure that that would happen.
But amazingly it is now May and those gas prices have not just crept but leapt back up, and I want to just share with you the timeline that has existed since this administration took over in the executive branch.
We are now paying more than double for gas than when President Bush first took office. This chart will illustrate that the average price per gallon on January 22, 2001, at the beginning of the Bush administration, was $1.47, and then as of May 21, 2007, just a couple days ago, the average price per gallon today is $3.22.
Now, what that means is that amounts to real money. When you're talking about it costing 20 or so dollars to fill up your tank or $25 to fill up your tank, that's a manageable amount of money.
But when you get to $50, $50, Mr. Murphy, is an amount that I think about. I mean, when I am faced with paying a bill that's $50, that's real money to me. To me, that gives me pause. I have to make a decision, normally, about other things unrelated to things that I absolutely have to have like gas, about whether or not I am going to actually spend $50. Do I have the money? What else will I not be able to buy if I spend $50 on this item?
Gas is not like that. Gas is something that's not optional. You have to drive your kids to school. You have to make sure you can get your car to the grocery store. If you don't go to the grocery store because you don't have gas, your family doesn't eat. If your kid is sick and you can't fill the gas tank, then you can't take them to the doctor, and they get sicker. How are you going to get them to the emergency room if they get so sick that you need that kind of health care? Those are real problems that Americans face when gas prices reach that point.
What we are doing in the Democratic Caucus and as we continue to fight to move this country in a new direction is we are working on an energy package that we will bring to the floor by July 4, an energy independence package that will ensure that we can crack down on price gouging, like the legislation that we passed off this floor yesterday, that we can really start to respond to the oil cartel and make sure that they are pursued for the antitrust violations that they engage in, and that we really invest in alternative energy.
The President's remarks during the State of the Union last year were just words. When he referenced his desire to see America end our addiction to foreign oil, nice words, but no action to speak of. Nothing that I can see in any policy is reflective of the words that we heard in this Chamber during that State of the Union. We, on the other hand, are going to make a difference.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We are wrapping up in a few minutes, but I have got this gas tank replica here, which is pretty ancient-looking. It's actually decrepit itself. I bring it with me to the floor because it is the only explanation that I can find as to why our good friends on the other side of the aisle and this President seem totally unresponsive in trying to address this problem and work with us.
My only explanation is that perhaps they don't pump their own gas, or perhaps the last time they actually filled their own tank, and saw that ticker, and realized how much it cost to fill up a tank is when gas pumps look like this. That's my only explanation, given this is the 30-something Working Group. Maybe it has been since the 1950s that they filled their own tank, unlike the people that we represent, who are trying, struggling to fill their tank every day.
We are going to continue to back up our words with action. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the 30-something Working Group under the leadership of our Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We encourage you, any of the Members, anyone listening, to sign onto our Web site. The charts that we have been describing tonight are up on that Web site. You can reach us, e-mail us, at 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov, and you can also reach our Web site by signing on to www.speaker.gov and look for the 30-something link, and you can find all the things that we are working on in the 30-something Working Group.
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