Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, April Fool's Day has come early to the United States House of Representatives. The Republicans are in charge. They control everything, and in the last 5 years our debt has increased 60 percent to $8 trillion. That is $27,000 for every American. Well, not for every American, only for working Americans because the rich are exempt from taxes. What they are talking about here, the hard-working Americans, the only people who got a pay raise last year, the people who earn over $1.3 million a year. Madam Speaker, 99 percent of the people in this country had their real incomes go down last year, but not that group. That is who the Republicans want to protect here. It is trickle-down economics. They say we need it now more than ever. How else are we going to recover from Hurricane Katrina? They want to give the wealthiest among us, the top one-tenth of 1 percent, the millionaires, tax breaks, and they will trickle-down on America. Well, the people of the Southeast have been trickled down upon. And, in fact, some of them drowned because of the incompetence of these people.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, well, the majority party is shocked, shocked that price gouging took place in the wake of Katrina. Of course, they turned a blind eye to the gouging of consumers for months and years before that by big oil working in collusion with OPEC. In the last 4 years, the top five oil companies have made $254 billion of profits. Exxon-Mobil, in the quarter before Katrina, $14 billion in one-quarter. And this bill does nothing to provide price relief to consumers or prevent gouging. Big oil gets a pass yet again. They are not getting as big of a gift this time, just a pass. They point the finger at the retailers. Well, with rare exceptions, the gouging is not at the retail level. Producers of gas, they are getting 46 percent more, 47 cents a gallon; refiners, they are up to 250 percent in one year, 70 cents a gallon. Every American is paying 70 cents a gallon more to the refiners and 2 cents more on average to the retail people. It is not the retailers who are price gouging. The chairman says ``we have closed 175 refineries.'' He can only say ``we'' if he is the oil industry. The oil industry has consciously colluded to close refineries to squeeze supply to drive up the price. It is the same thing Enron did in California to stick it to everybody on the West Coast of America. Tried and true. The industry has been doing that for years. It is not environmental laws or regulation which have closed these refineries. They have been closed by mergers and a conscious decision of the chief operating officers and CEOs of big oil to drive up their profits, and boy, have they done that. Unfortunately, it is about to destroy small businesses and consumers across America. But they still cannot take them on. They cannot take on their benefactors here on the floor. The President offered last year to let Valero or anybody else build a new refinery on a closed military base, waiving all environmental laws, and the chief operating officer of Valero, stock up 263 percent in one year, you thought Google was doing good, he said, why would we do that? It is working really well the way it is. It is phenomenally profitable for them and the few others who still operate refineries. We need real help for Americans, short-term relief against price gouging, take on OPEC in the World Trade Organization. And then we need longer-term new technology, new fuels, more efficiency, true energy independence for the United States of America from big oil and the Saudi and the OPEC cartels. That would be something for the American people. You are not doing that.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to support the remarks of my colleague from Ohio. He mentioned what a laborer would earn under Davis-Bacon. I have become aware of the fact that a skilled pipe fitter under Davis-Bacon wages in the Southeast would earn $10.22 an hour. That hardly seems to me to be an excessive wage. And with the extraordinary poverty that was brought to the Nation's attention in New Orleans, one would think that we would want to have people working in jobs that pay a living wage, a decent wage, so that they can support themselves and their families. And it is just extraordinary to me. We had a meeting with the IG and the GAO regarding the FEMA contracts under Homeland Security, and we asked if they could document, particularly with Hurricane Andrew last year and some other times when Davis-Bacon has been suspended, that, in fact, the taxpayers came out ahead. And they said, well, they really could not. So I said, they mean we might just be lowering wages and increasing the profit margin? And they said, they had a lot of concerns about a lot of these contracts and the no-bid nature of the contracts and whether or not taxpayers were getting full value for their money. And it is particularly distressing when we do not know that we are getting full value for our money and we might, in fact, be only increasing profits while depriving people of a living wage. So I support the gentleman's remarks, and I do hope that we are allowed to bring legislation to the floor in the near future to overturn the President's misguided efforts in this area. Madam Speaker, I urge Members to support the legislation. Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The chairman has made an excellent case for this legislation. It is not to set any precedent for the future use of AIP funds, since those funds we know are not going to be adequate in the future to meet the total needs of the system. But this is a recognition of an extraordinary circumstance of the disasters of Katrina and Rita and what it has done to the aviation infrastructure in addition to other elements of the infrastructure in those regions. And it is only, I think, appropriate that the Federal Government use discretion and flexibility in helping those airports to recover and to become fully operational. They obviously suffered not only physical damage but tremendous economic losses due to the storms and, in some cases, face perhaps an uncertain economic future because of the damage in the City of New Orleans and questions about how soon or when full aviation schedules will be reinstated to serve that airport. So I think this legislation is timely. It is appropriate, and I appreciate the chairman of the committee for bringing it forward in such an expedited way. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. H. Con. Res. 161 authorizes the use of the Capitol grounds for the Millions More March scheduled for October 15, 2005. It will be on the 10th anniversary of the original Million Man March held here in Washington on the Mall in October of 1995. This event was one of the largest ever to be held on the Mall. Similar to the original march, the themes and programs of this event will focus on unity, spiritual values, education and economic development. It is going to be extraordinarily timely this year in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and some of the conditions we saw in New Orleans. It will be very relevant to this march, and hopefully the administration and others will be paying attention to the issues and themes raised at this event. The organizers will work with the office of the Architect of the Capitol, the Capitol Police; and the event will be free and open to the public. I support the resolution and urge its passage. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. I stand in strong support of this legislation. It is certainly suitable that a Federal facility in Jamaica, where Colin Powell's parents were born, should be named after him. I would hope that this will be followed by, perhaps, something within the United States itself that commemorates his service to our Nation, which spanned decades, extraordinary service in the military and great service to this administration as Secretary of State during the first term of the Bush Presidency. I would urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation. S. 1413 is a bill to designate a staff housing facility located in Kingston, Jamaica currently used by the State Department for state department employees as the Colin L. Powell Residential Plaza. Colin Luther Powell was born in Harlem in 1937. His parents were Jamaican immigrants who stressed the importance of education and personal achievement. He grew up in the Bronx, and attended City College of New York to study geology. While at City College he joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). When he graduated in 1958 he was at the top of his ROTC class, with the rank of cadet colonel, the highest rank in the corps. In 1962 he was sent to Vietnam for the first of his two tours of duty. In 1963 he was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. During his second tour in Vietnam he was injured in a helicopter crash but managed to rescue his comrades for which he was awarded the Soldier's Medal. In all he has received 11 decorations including the Legion of Merit. In 1986 Powell left Washington to serve as military commander in Frankfurt Germany. He was recalled to Washington by Frank Carlucci to serve as his deputy national security adviser. In 1991 as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Powell became a national figure during the successful Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations. In 2001 President Bush appointed Powell as Secretary of State, the first African American to hold this office. Since his retirement in 2004 Colin Powell has written a best selling autobiography, My American Journey. He has pursued a career as a public speaker and has remained involved in his work with the Alliance for Youth. By any measure Colin Powell is an extraordinary public servant. He is America's premier Soldier-Statesman. This designation is but a small gesture to honor his devotion to public service and his lifetime of dedication to the American public. I support this bill and urge its passage. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, how quickly we forget. We are essentially flying blind with this bill. We were supposed to have a comprehensive report from the Department of Homeland Security which was long overdue, and then, when finally produced, which was supposed to be comprehensive on all the transportation sectors, was a regurgitation of open-source material and news articles. They had an early, more specific version, but it was pulled by the administration because it was measurable. It had goals, objectives and technology. It would have shown how short the funding is in this bill and how little progress we have made: $150 million for all of the ports in the United States of America over the next year. Whew. Mr. Speaker, we could be buying radiation detection equipment for those ports, but that money is not available. It is not in the budget. Aviation security, arbitrary cap on screeners. Okay, you can cut back on labor if you give them adequate technology. But guess what? There is not enough money in this bill to buy the new technology, the new explosives detection equipment that should be at every passenger checkpoint, that should be under every airport, that should be used for cargo security, but they do not want to put up measurable goals, because they are not getting there, and the American people would be pretty darn mad about it if they knew. Then, first responder money, come on. Interoperable communications. First lesson: 9/11. We could not communicate with the fire and police and other first responders in the buildings, and many of them died, because they were out of touch as the buildings were collapsing, and they had no notice. Katrina, first lesson: no interoperable communications. Well, the President provided for zero dollars, and this is up to $76 million nationwide. Wow, that is enough to do three counties in my State out of 36, and that is the money for the entire Nation of the United States of America for interoperable communications, the most basic tool that our first responders need to protect American lives and to rescue people and to better and more effectively deal with emergencies, whether they are terrorist-generated or natural disaster-generated, and we can come up with $76 million nationwide, not even a real tax break for some of the rich people around here. So to say somehow that this is adequate is absurd. If you set goals and the goals are, every first responder in America has interoperable communications, we are falling way short. If you say we are going to begin to protect ourselves against radiological attack, against bombs coming in in shipping containers, we are doing virtually nothing. If you are going to improve aviation security, nothing. Then, finally, they want to push us back to the good old days of private aviation security, but it is not happening, because people know what we have now is better. But in order to facilitate that push, they cap the liability of the private companies who are so good and, now, they have to extend complete liability exemption to the airports to try and induce them to bring in private security, because everybody knows it failed us on 9/11, and it will fail us again, but it will make money for a few special interests.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, the substitute would be a great improvement for the current Endangered Species Act. It would treat landowners much as we do under the Conservation Reserve Program; but the underlying bill would be a disaster for taxpayers, a new entitlement. The Secretary shall pay no less than fair market value. I guess the Secretary, if they are feeling good that day, could pay more than fair market value with taxpayers' money, borrowed money; and it does not require the historic, usual, or custom use. Take a piece of remote farm land, propose a huge development on it; it does not have to be proven to be economically viable. You proposed it; you were going to build 5,000 houses; you were going to make $1,000, $2,000, $5,000 on each house. You would have to be compensated for that. You do not have to prove that this is economically viable, and sequential owners would get that right. You then sell it to your next door neighbor; they can make the same claim. They sell it to the guy down the street, they can make the same claim, on and on and on. What an incredible new, speculative market, helping the housing bubble, I guess; but this is going to kill the taxpayers and the Federal Treasury. You should vote for the substitute. It will improve the Endangered Species Act.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, about 2 years ago, I traveled to Fort Hood, Texas, to see my Guard unit before their deployment to Iraq. I was surprised to see that they were using radios that their families had bought for them at a place called GI Joe's, a good store in Oregon in the Northwest. But the point is they did not have the equipment they needed, they could not train on the equipment they were going to use in Iraq, and now it turns out that that equipment is not available in the United States of America to the National Guard. Yesterday, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said he has about 34 percent of what is needed for the National Guard for equipment for homeland security, for emergencies, disasters or terrorist attacks. Thirty-four percent. He has radios, he said, that cannot communicate with the Army radios because they are Korean War vintage radios. This is an embarrassment for this country. This administration must give the Guard the tools it needs. We don't have to talk about a bigger role for the active duty military. We need to give the National Guard, who does not have problems with posse comitatus and other things, who performed admirably in this disaster, the tools they need for future disasters. More money for Guard equipment now.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, there are some seeds for potential bipartisan agreement. We do need to reauthorize, update, and improve Endangered Species Act. I think there is some fair consensus on that. But we also do not want to go to a time where we have the next passenger pigeon, for instance, where we extirpate a species forever. That is a long time. I wore my eagle tie today in the hope that we will continue to protect the bald eagle, the symbol of our country. There are some serious problems with the bill that was unveiled last week, hastily pushed through the Committee on Resources, and further changed last evening by a manager's amendment which few have seen. Among them, and one that has to give pause to this body as we wrestle with how we are going to pay for Hurricane Katrina and other essential things here, and how much money is being borrowed in the name of future generations, is a section regarding compensation. Now, I had hoped to offer an amendment to say that we would compensate people for foregoing the usual historic and accustomed use. If you grow timber and you cannot cut the trees, you get compensated for the trees. If you ranch and you cannot graze the cattle, you get paid the value of the area on which you cannot graze your cattle. If you grew a crop and there is some sort of restriction and you cannot grow that crop, then you would be compensated. But the bill goes so far beyond that, it is extraordinary. It goes to speculative, proposed, possible, potential use. This is going to create a wonderful new market for speculators. If people across America thought that this was going to become law as written, which it will not, it will be changed dramatically after the Senate acts, if they do act, they would be out right now purchasing, on a speculative basis, or getting options on property that in any way was restricted by the Endangered Species Act. Because they could say, well, it is true that was a tree farm, but actually I was going to build a destination resort on that tree farm. And my destination resort would have provided me with a profit of $1 million a year for the next 30 years. Please pay me $30 million. And the government has 180 days to come up with that money. Now, there is a low-ball estimate for this new entitlement, and who knows how they came up with it, but they are saying, oh, no, it will only be $5 million to $10 million a year. Come on, only $5 million to $10 million a year? This is going to be hundreds of millions, if not billions a year of a new entitlement. And, remember, the compensation is in an amount no less than the fair market value. So taxpayers are going to be obligated to borrow money for speculative, possible potential future profits, and maybe even a little on top of that because the Secretary cannot compensate less than the fair market value. It does not say that the Secretary is restricted to the fair market value; if the Secretary feels generous, borrow more money and pay more than the fair market value. It is binding only on the Secretary as I understand in the new manager's amendment. So the taxpayers are on the hook; but if the property owner says my speculative value was $2 million profit a year for the next 30 years, then that person could go to court. But the government could not go to court to say wait a minute, this is crazy, you really were not going to make $2 million a year on a destination resort on that tree farm. We will compensate you for the loss of harvest of the trees, but we are not going to pay for that speculative value. I cannot believe that any Member of this House is going to open the doors to the Treasury so wide for potential speculation. That is not compensating landowners for usual, historic, and customary use. If that amendment had been allowed, I think many more Members could support this bill; but that amendment was not allowed here in the House of Representatives today. There will be only one substitute and a manager's amendment, no other amendments are allowed. This is a perfect bill. After all, it was just introduced last week. It had no hearings. It was marked up one day in committee, and now it has been changed further by a manager's amendment last night which no one has seen. It is a perfect bill, and no amendment should be allowed here on the floor, but we are going to put the taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. The Bush-Rove administration has delivered cronyism, incompetence and corruption in spades. Mike ``you're-doing-a-heck-of-a- job-Brownie'' Brown is the poster child for the hundreds of unqualified, often incompetent, political hacks chosen to head, to demean, demoralize and dismantle critical Federal agencies like FEMA. Then there is the corruption side. Mr. Brown, as he was resigning, at the same time one of his buddies, David Safarian, the head of Federal procurement for the entire government of the United States, $300 billion a year, is being led out of the White House in handcuffs for perjury, influence peddling and bribery, but he did his job till the end as a Bush political appointee. Before they drug him out in handcuffs, he let billions of dollars in no-bid contracts, awarded to Halliburton and other favorites of this administration. Good job, Mr. Safarian. I hope prison is a good reward for you.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the gentlewoman who preceded me in the well was speaking to the issue of paying for the disaster, not borrowing or obligating future generations to borrow. This House, in fact, 2 weeks ago, with 40 minutes of debate, 40 minutes and no amendments allowed, borrowed $51.8 billion for the beginnings of hurricane recovery efforts, on top of the $10 billion borrowed the week before. Now, she said one thing I do disagree with, which is you cannot ask the rich people to pay for any share of this. Now, it is true they live on high ground, I understand that; so, for the most part, they are not affected by disasters. They have private security, they fly on private jets, they live in a different world than most Americans. But she and the majority are saying, there is no way they should be asked to pay for a share of these disasters, unlike working Americans who are paying day in and day out for the money that is being borrowed. If Katrina cost, she said $100 billion, let us say $200 billion, if we just did not extend the tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year and limited estate tax relief to estates worth less than $6 million, that is most small businesses where I come from, and family farms and tree farms, then that would pay for Katrina over the next 10 years 5 times over. Well, okay. She says that is off the table. Well, let us look elsewhere. They have an interesting list of cuts. As we saw the abject poverty of the inner city folks in New Orleans, they are talking about trimming on medical care for poor people, food assistance for poor people, education for middle class and poor people; those are the things that are being targeted on that side of the aisle to pay for this. I would suggest a couple of other places we might cut. Now, we cannot even build levees that can withstand a category 3 hurricane; we do not have new energy efficient forms of transportation which puts us in enthralled to the Saudis and other enemies of the United States, and the President wants to borrow $1 trillion to go to Mars; and NASA, which was mentioned just previously, is going to spend $100 billion to go back to the moon. They want to get some more dust and rocks. Well, how about we cut those programs and devote that money, the $100 billion to go back to the moon. That would pay for Katrina, according to the numbers previously given, and the $1 trillion would pay for that and a lot of other things in America if we did not go to Mars. I do not think we can afford that now. Until maybe we can build levees that can withstand a category 4 and maybe even a category 5 hurricane, and we do a few things about the areas in the Pacific northwest that are not earthquake proof, and other preventive measures around the country. But, hey, maybe people do not want to cut NASA because it is based in Texas. So, okay. How about then the redundant, useless Cold War fighter called the F-22, which is now 5 times over its original cost estimates and is not needed. That would pay for Katrina relief 3\1/2\ times over, and we could depend upon the F-16 until the joint strike fighter, a little more economical version of a fighter plane, is developed for future enemies and wars, but I am sure they would not want to do that. Well, okay. We cannot cut that. Well, let us talk about something else. How about subsidies to farms where farmers earn over $100,000 a year. I really do not have very many farmers in my State who earn over $100,000 and, guess what, most of the farmers in my State could not get subsidies. But those farmers in the midwest who earn over $100,000 a year in the northern Midwest get very substantial subsidies under the Freedom to Farm Act. If we limited farm subsidies to farmers and families on family farms who earn less than $100,000 a year, in 10 years, we could pay for 1\1/2\ Katrinas. So, instead of cutting the medicaid program, putting the burden on the States and depriving poor people of health care, instead of cutting food stamps, instead of cutting education programs that are important to average Americans, instead of stupid, across-the-board cuts that cut abysmally wasteful programs the same as essential programs, that is how we got in trouble with FEMA, they are cutting an essential program, we could do a few different things. But that would mean maybe a little rethinking on that side of the aisle. Ask the wealthy to carry their fair share of the burden, eliminate the redundant return to the moon, put off the mission to Mars, cancel a Cold War-era fighter designed to have air superiority versus the Soviet Union in Europe, and/or, maybe just cut back on subsidies for farmers who earn over $100,000 a year. That would more than pay for Katrina. If we do all of those things, that would be 15 times what we need to pay for Katrina, and then we could begin to reinvest in FEMA, education and health care, and things that are essential to all Americans, and maybe even veterans' benefits too.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, words that will be remembered for a long time, unless the White House can erase them: ``Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.'' That was the President to Michael Brown, the political appointee head of FEMA, while people were drowning in New Orleans and in the southeast. The President was apparently unaware of the lack of assistance being provided by FEMA. Mr. Brown was shortly thereafter sent back to Washington and then resigned. That might be good if it was an isolated instance. Unfortunately, it is not. This permeates the entire 3,000 so-called plum jobs that the President gets to appoint without any regard to qualification. I mean, Mr. Brown's predecessor was the President's campaign manager who downgraded, demeaned, and ultimately submerged a previously very functional agency, FEMA, into the Homeland Security bureaucracy. Since then, many of the top people have left, and the agency has become totally demoralized, although we do find with new focus in the last week. Hopefully, that will last. Just about the same time that Mr. Brown was going down, the government's top procurement official, that is the person in charge of all purchasing by the Federal Government, $300 billion a year of taxpayers' money, a gentleman by the name of Safavian, was being led off in handcuffs by the FBI, but not before he had let out a few more billion dollars in no-bid contracts to the usual suspects in the wake of the Katrina disaster. He has been found to have not only perjured himself but has taken illegal gratuities and bribes from the now-infamous lobbyist Mr. Abramoff. That was the top procurement official appointed by George Bush. Beyond that, he also, of course, like Mr. Brown, had no qualifications for the job. He once had interned as a law student, helping in some minor way on a helicopter purchase at the Pentagon, and he jumped from there to his political associations with the President, to being head of all purchasing for the Federal Government. Basically, we have here a government run by people who disrespect government. They do not like government. They do not believe in government. Their spiritual mentor, Mr. Norquist, says he wants government so small that he can strangle it in a bathtub. We find out that people drown when government starts to get kind of small because government is not there to respond. Now they are backpeddling and they are trying to pretend, oh, that is not really what it is all about, but it has been. Incompetence threads through so many agencies, conflict of interest, and there might be other things. The one thing they do respect government for is its ability to extract money from all the working people of the United States of America and put it in a place, the Federal Treasury, that they can raid to benefit a very few people and major corporations. Government is a profit center is the way they see it, and they have a wonderful revolving door. They have a fellow over at the FDA in charge of reviewing medical safety, 33 years old, who is a former columnist in The Wall Street Journal, stock analyst, right-wing think tank guru, attacking the FDA who is not supposed to be in charge of new drug approvals; but when a few very potentially profitable drugs did not get approved, he, as the Assistant Secretary, started leaning on the bureaucrats, the professionals, to say why do you disapprove that drug. Pfizer is going to make $1 billion a year on it; it is a great drug. So what if a couple of people died? They probably would have died anyway. So there is another fellow, Mr. Gottlieb, yet another outstanding appointment. Unfortunately, the government is rife with these people. There are too many to document, and what they are engaged in is the systematic looting of the Treasury of the United States to benefit a few, to make government less functional so it cannot serve the needs of the many in times of need, like Katrina, or even in less routine times of need, like education, health care, border control. They have got a beauty here. They have got a woman they want to put in charge of the border control of the United States of America who even the Republican Senators have questioned whether or not she has any capability, a woman named Julie Myers, another political hack. Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich said he would really like to hear from Mr. Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, come spend a little time with us, tell us personally why he thinks she is qualified for the job, because based on the resume, I do not think you are. That is a Republican Senator. This is the woman who would be charged with keeping terrorists out of the United States of America, and that is a dysfunctional bureaucracy and has been for a long time. That is new to the administration, but it is more essential today than ever. We need to clean house at this administration, put competent people in charge so government is there when the American people need it and stop looting the Treasury.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, time and time again here on the floor of the House I hear speeches: ``We will never forget 9/11; we will better prepare and defend America.'' But the most basic lesson of September 11, where we tragically lost so many first responders in the collapse of the towers, was that they lacked secure interoperable communications. They could not talk and communicate with those first responders, and many died needlessly. We have not learned that most basic of lessons. In fact, President Bush this year zeroed out Federal assistance to local communities for secure interoperable communications. How quickly some have forgotten, yet they say it will never happen again. Well, Hurricane Katrina was not a terrorist attack, but the Federal response was worse and degraded from the capabilities that we had on 9/ 11. On that day, FEMA was a high-functioning, independent, professionally run agency. Today, it is subsumed into this gigantic morass of the homeland security bureaucracy, downgraded to subagency level with a political hack as its director, and most of the professional staff has resigned and gone on to run State management agencies around the country. There are still some good professionals there, but the leadership, appointed by the White House, and the fact it was subsumed in the bureaucracy at the insistence of the Republican majority and the White House, they took away its independent agency status. We had a vote on the floor to restore its independent agency status. We predicted these problems, but they opposed that amendment. Now they want to investigate themselves. Will the other side of the aisle fess up, like the White House never does, that they were wrong to follow the lead of the White House to downgrade this agency, to politicize it, subsume it in a huge bureaucracy, and that we are less capable than we were on 9/11 to respond to these types of disasters? I think not. Mr. Speaker, we need an independent agency outside of this highly partisan body. They will not admit to those mistakes. There were certainly mistakes made at the local level, and they will probably highlight those, and those should be rectified, too. But all mistakes should come out, the failings of the Federal Government, the State government, and the local governments, with an independent, nonpartisan commission. That would be greatly preferable to this coverup that is going to go on here.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I have before me a speech given by James Lee Witt who was the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the Clinton administration. It is actually testimony given on May 22, 2004. I think it is very relevant to the debate we had here today about what went wrong and how we are going to fix it and how we are going to understand what went wrong. Basically, Mr. Witt predicted what happened. Here is some of his testimony. Particularly on this issue of Department of Homeland Security and FEMA as an independent agency as the organization that responded for 8 years to the American people's needs in a customer-serviced focused way, that has been destroyed. It is not there now. It is buried down in the bottom of a huge bureaucracy. It now has no communications within the agency itself, nor does it have communications with State and local government where, before, we had a partnership working with State and local governments. There is not even communications from FEMA headquarters in Washington to their 10 regional offices. FEMA employees call me constantly. They have got so many vacant offices within FEMA headquarters now that I doubt they could respond to a catastrophic event. This was testimony on May 22, 2004. Because, when we left in 2001, FEMA was ranked as one of the top agencies in the Federal Government to work for. Just recently in the Washington Post, it was ranked dead last at 28. The morale within the agency is so bad some of the senior level people have quit, some that have the historical knowledge and capabilities to respond, recover, repair, everything the agency did. Our Nation right now suffers on the interoperability of public safety communications. It is zero. This is James Lee Witt, May 22, 2004, talking about the state of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that this administration had said of the former director, Brownie, you're doing a great job. Of course, Brownie is now gone. But it is a much bigger problem than Brownie, the political hack appointed by the President to head this agency, which had been downgraded, underfunded, and basically dismissed by the Bush administration. It is a problem that is of tremendous magnitude. Today, the House voted to investigate itself. I doubt that we will get an honest report out of the Republican majority here. We offered an amendment on the floor. We said: if you put FEMA into this bureaucracy, you will degrade its capabilities. On a virtually partisan line vote, I think 10 brave Republicans voted with us, that amendment was rejected. I guess we were a little bit wrong. It is even worse and quicker than we could have thought that FEMA has been destroyed. It is extraordinary. I hear so many speeches on the floor every night. One gentleman ended tonight with: ``We will never forget 9/11.'' We will not forget 9/11? What was the most basic lesson of 9/11 that killed many first responders who could have survived? The fact that they did not have secure interoperable communications. And what has the response of this administration been? The President recommended zero dollars to assist local communities, sheriffs, police, fire, emergency personnel to purchase interoperable or upgrade to interoperable communications in his budget this year. And the appropriations moved through this House doing the same. Now, my colleagues will say, oh, no one could have anticipated this, and how could we have known, and this was a disaster of untold magnitude, and those local officials, they did not do their job. But it is actually the Congress that has to bear a lot of the responsibility here. It was the Congress that agreed with the politically motivated plan out of the White House to stick FEMA into the Homeland Security bureaucracy. It was the Congress that agreed with the President to cut the budget of FEMA, to cut the disaster teams from three to two. And we wonder why they could not respond and why people died unnecessarily? We need a fair and honest evaluation and investigation comparable to the 9/11 Commission to unearth the facts around this. There are things that need to be done besides restoring FEMA to an independent, professionally led agency status with a robust budget. We are also entering into the greatest rebuilding effort and restoration and relief effort in the history of our country. We need to see that those monies will not be misspent; that those monies will not go to crisis profiteers; that they will get to the people and the communities that need it and the rebuilding will be done appropriately; that we will invest in the infrastructure that was not invested in to protect New Orleans. And it is not unique to New Orleans. I have jetties failing in the State of Oregon. The Corps of Engineers has no money to fix them. If they fail much more, it will cost 10 times as much to rebuild them. I have a dam that was failing in my district, and the corps had to scramble all around the country to find the money to begin to rebuild that dam. It is not their fault. Congress has not given them the funds, and the President has not recommended the funds to protect the American people from disaster. So we need to invest not only in a reconstructed FEMA but also in a more robust budget for the Corps of Engineers for prevention. And we need to make certain the dollars we are borrowing, because every dollar of this is borrowed, are spent wisely. And maybe we should reconsider the tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year and have estates worth $600,000. Maybe they should contribute to the recovery effort too.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the gentleman from Illinois' (Mr. Emanuel) time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to thank the Oregon National Guard. There is a lot of discussion here about the things that went wrong with the response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster; but yesterday, I had the experience of accompanying the adjutant general, Major General Fred Rees of the Oregon National Guard, to New Orleans to see the guard units there in action. We have one of the largest, if not the largest, contingents in New Orleans. They have one of the most difficult sectors, a large portion of the city, particularly the portion of the city that is still submerged; and I had an opportunity there to meet with the troops. They are basically living in battlefield conditions, eating meals ready to eat, sleeping in an abandoned school and a university that is vacant at the moment, and they are doing extraordinary work. One of the first people I met from the city when we made our first stop was a woman who was still in her house. I went to ask her why she was still in her house, because they have been trying to encourage people to evacuate. She said, well, I feel safe. I said, well, I can understand that. She said, no, thank God for the National Guard; I feel safe. She says, you do not understand. She was telling me that she felt safe in her neighborhood for the first time in years, an incredibly high crime neighborhood, because of the Oregon National Guard presence. Then we went on from there to the flooded areas where, in the preliminary stages, they are still rescuing people. The day we were there they rescued people; 570 people rescued so far by the Oregon National Guard. They have begun in their own small way to contribute to the restoration effort of the school, the high school that they are living in which was pretty trashed and this other university campus that they are on, beginning cleanup; but their efforts are just extraordinary. The thing about the National Guard is they do not just bring the military precision to these sorts of efforts. I mean, they have got the discipline, the training, the logistic support, the unit cohesion, those sorts of things; but they have something else special. They are citizen soldiers, and they have other skills, and those other skills are needed more than ever in a disaster, more than regular Army troops. They can certainly restore order. We have quite a number of police officers who have been heavily relied upon by other troops and other units of Guards not from Oregon in dealing with the residents and some of the problems still in the neighborhoods that they are assisting. We have firefighters. We have people with expertise in heavy equipment. They found and repaired an abandoned bulldozer to begin clearing streets for access around one of the headquarters. We have electricians who are trying to wire the school so that they can use the generators, at least have some basics for the troops. This is the National Guard at their finest. Many of these troops have just recently returned from Iraq. They have not even been home 6 months, and many are signed up to go to Afghanistan next March; but I did not hear a single complaint. They said, this is a great mission. We are saving people's lives. We can see we are making a difference here. We are proud to serve. I am proud as an Oregonian to represent many of these individuals. The Guard is a tremendous success story in a disaster which has too many other problems, things that must be investigated by Congress in terms of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, returning it to being an independent, professionally run, high-functioning agency. Many of us objected to putting it in Homeland Security. We were all too right, unfortunately. We must oversee the relief and recovery effort. The government is borrowing and spending $500 million a day. That must be strictly overseen to make sure there is not crisis profiteering that has happened after some other disasters and other hurricanes. Congress has a role in that, and Congress then is going to have to look at the rebuilding effort in terms of the infrastructure that serves that area, the intricate infrastructure, the Corps of Engineers and what steps we are taking for the future, where we will rebuild, and how we will protect those things. It will be massively expensive; and in the face of that massive expense, in addition to a deficit, I hope that the President and the majority party drop their push for more tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. Those who earn more than $300,000 a year and those who have estates worth more than $6 million, should they not contribute to this effort? Are they not part of this country, or do they just live behind walled compounds with their private security and their private jets? We are all in this together, as was demonstrated by my citizen soldiers who are not paid a whole heck of a lot of money to do this. So let us do this right. Let us recognize the National Guard and others who volunteered and have done so well. So far let us support their effort, and let us enter into this rebuilding effort in a wise and cost-efficient way, protecting both the taxpayers and the people who have been ravaged by this storm.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the chairman of the Committee on Rules that more time for words would be great, but what would be better would be action by this Congress to fix a dysfunctional Federal Emergency Management Agency. Dysfunctional at the top, not at the bottom. People at the bottom want to get out there. The first responders want to be out there. They still do not have effective interoperable communications 4 years after 9/11. Given the befuddled response at the top, I am not confident that this $51.8 billion we are going to borrow, indebting a generation of Americans of probably another $100 billion or $200 billion, will be well and effectively spent and get the relief and the rescue efforts and the rebuilding efforts to the people and the communities that are devastated. We are not putting in place oversight and protection against crisis profiteering. We are not trying to improve the agency. It is the middle of a hurricane season. What if there is another tomorrow or next week? Will the terrorists wait until we are done with our natural disasters? No. We need to begin the review and oversight now. They say, Oh, you cannot do that in the middle of a crisis. What is the greatest crisis this country has experienced in the last 100 years? I think it might have been World War II. In the middle of World War II, Harry Truman chaired a committee investigating war profiteering under FDR, the greatest President of the last century, and reforms were put in place. Congress did its job. We need to improve FEMA. We need a better response. The first responders need better tools. The people that have been affected need effective relief, they need compassion, and they need assistance. Shoveling money at them and more words will not do it. We need to make some changes, and you are not going to allow any changes or any amendments here on this floor today, but you will allow us a few more words. We might get up to $1 billion a minute instead of $1.2 billion a minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today Congress will vote to borrow $51.8 billion as a down payment on the relief, rescue and recovery effort, a sum which could reach $200 billion. It is the responsibility of this Congress to oversee the administration's disbursement of these funds and to make certain it goes to the victims and appropriate expenditures and not disaster profiteering. Likewise, Congress must safeguard against opportunists, some even in our own ranks, who would use the disaster for their own petty political ends. In fact, in light of the huge costs, the big run-up in the deficit that we are about to see, some on the other side of the aisle are suggesting this makes the case for tax cuts for the wealthiest investors in America, those who earn more than $300,000, have estates worth more than $6 million. They say that those tax cuts will provide economic stimulus that will trickle down on the people of New Orleans and Mississippi. They have been trickled on more than they can stand. We need an appropriate, compassionate, and cost-effective recovery effort, not more tax breaks for the most privileged among us who were not affected.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman who went before me: we should see the best of human nature and we should all join together, and hopefully Congress and the administration can do better in the relief and the rebuilding efforts than they did in the prevention and disaster response. But it is a time to learn and reform because it may only be days or weeks until we have another devastating hurricane, who knows when the terrorists will attack, and have we learned any lessons since 9/11. A gentleman before me said we will never forget. We have forgotten. There were no interoperable secure communications. They want to blame New Orleans for that. Guess what, the Bush administration zeroed out interoperable communications in the Homeland Security budget. The Bush administration insisted that FEMA had to go into Homeland Security. I joined with 163 Members of this House saying no, that will degrade FEMA. FEMA has been degraded. They have a political hack as their head. Changes need to be made now, and urgently, because the next disaster may strike tomorrow. And if the response is as poor as it was in this emergency, more people will die needlessly.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the House of Representatives under suspension of the rules, that is, a bill with 40 minutes of debate total, no amendments allowed by any Member of the House for any reason, will vote to borrow on behalf of all the American people $51.8 billion to begin the recovery, rebuilding and continuing the aid and assistance efforts subsequent to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Now, it is good that we are reacting and we are going to begin to fund the incredible needs that will arise and have arisen from this disaster. It is the beginning of a long process, and it is probably only a down payment. But some say that we cannot, as the House of Representatives or the legislative branch, examine the causes of the miserable response that caused unnecessary loss of life while recovery efforts are still ongoing. Some say that we cannot question the work done by the administration and the appointees in place who failed to act adequately. They say that would be unseemly. But during World War II, Harry Truman, in a Democratic-controlled legislature, chaired a special committee investigating the procurement scandals of a Democratic administration in the greatest crisis of our history, World War II. We can do both. We can provide aid and assistance, and we can get at the root causes of unnecessary loss of life and unnecessary disaster. We can do that. There are a number of lessons to be learned. We need to be able to respond better today or tomorrow. Hurricane season is not over yet. We might have another. Another might follow tragically that same path. That might be an incredible disaster. And we are going to have the same people in place, the same procedures in place. That is not going to be enough. The terrorists are not going to wait. It has been 4 years since 9/11. We still do not have interoperable, secure communications that were identified as a principal problem on 9/11. The Bush administration zeroed them out in this year's budget, and the Congress has not yet seen fit to restore that money. I hope they will do that in one of these emergency spending bills. Then there are the cuts at FEMA. The aggregate budget for FEMA during the term of the Bush administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been reduced. We are not quite sure how much yet because we do not have the final numbers on this bill. I guess with this disaster assistance that will not be the case. But in terms of their preparedness and mitigation, it has been reduced. The Corps of Engineers has hundreds of critical infrastructure problems, including the levee around New Orleans, underfunded and unfunded. I had a dam in my district that was failing, a flood control dam, with the largest cities in the State downstream. And the Corps of Engineers simply said, We do not have the money. Finally they scrambled around and they found the money. But, unfortunately, they were not able to do that in New Orleans for the Corps budget had been dramatically reduced. In fact, the Corps' own people predicted that this could happen because of the underfunding of the ongoing maintenance and the needed improvements in the diking system there, but all's well. Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy said things are on track to privatize Social Security because we are going to borrow so much money for the disaster we are going to need to privatize Social Security. What? The Bush plan for privatization of Social Security requires borrowing more money. That is absurd. Then he says, oh, and the tax cuts are all on track, too. The tax cuts for the wealthiest among us are on track in face of a war and a disaster. Why? Because trickle-down will help the people of New Orleans. How about Federal investment in the infrastructure that would protect the people of New Orleans and other cities around the United States of America? How about interoperable communications for our first responders across the United States of America? How about more money for disaster mitigation preparedness for FEMA? How about those investments before tax cuts for the wealthiest among us? But they live on the high ground, and I guess they think they are exempt. They are not exempt. We are all in this together, and there should be some degree of sacrifice and level-headedness downtown. We are going to borrow $52.8 billion tomorrow, adding to the deficit; and they are proposing more tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year and estates over $6 million. Come on, let us get real. Let us act on behalf of all our people. Let us invest in our country and our people and do a better job against natural disasters and the potential for terrorist attacks. We need some changes. It should be more than 40 minutes of debate, and one or two amendments at least should be allowed.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman. She has been a very able advocate for the economic interests of her State, as have other Members of the Florida delegation. I want to assure her that at least on this side of the aisle, and I am certain on the other side of the aisle, we understand these problems and assure her we will work with her to try to reach some resolution that is fair to all.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?