Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join this effort on Earth Day. I have two messages, one inspirational and one that desires, frankly, a good fight. Let me start with the inspirational message. I want to tell my colleague about a friend of mine, a Dennis Hayes, who as a young man the first Earth Day stood up and said, I am going to become personally committed to the environment of the globe. And he became, actually, the manager of the organization that conducted the first Earth Day. And Dennis Hayes is still fired with the vigor of dealing with these multiple environmental challenges, and he is working in Seattle now for the Bullet Foundation, which helps promote many great ideas and environmental agendas. I hope other people who are of his youth become inspired on multiple environmental challenges now, politically and otherwise, and stay working as long as Dennis has, who is still working on solar cell technology and a host of other efforts to deal with our energy. I appreciate this opportunity. We will have other opportunities next week to continue this discussion.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, is it appropriate for the Speaker, who presides over this Chamber, when there is a clear and direct personal attack using personally disparaging comments about a Member of the United States Senate on a repeated basis, is it appropriate or allowable for the Speaker to interject and prohibit that activity, even without a Member of the Chamber expressing a concern? In other words, does the Speaker have the ability to exercise preemptory power to enforce the rules of this House when there is a sneak attack disparaging the personal integrity of a U.S. Senator?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, one of the things America abhors is a sneak attack. President Roosevelt in this Chamber described December 7 as a day that would live in infamy. What I saw a few minutes ago is a sneak attack on a Member of the U.S. Senate by a bunch of my colleagues who came down here and disparaged him, contrary to the rules of the House. The Speaker repeatedly admonished them for violating the best traditions of this House, and my colleagues continually came to the Chamber to continually violate those traditions of this House. Mr. Speaker, I want to give notice that we have a long time in this election period coming up, and we have problems deciding what we are going to do about Iraq, and it is not going to help us if we turn this into a Chamber of personal assassination. Let me just say, there is a lot of nerve in this Chamber attacking a guy who has a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and Purple Hearts in the tradition of his Nation, and it should not be countenanced by the Speaker ever under any circumstances, whether Democrats are in the Chamber to object or not.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the reminder. That statement was false, and it was false at the time it was made. The reason I know that is that subsequent information has revealed that our own agencies have reported that they concluded that those aluminum tubes were probably going to be used for some standard rockets, not anything to do with centrifuge tubes; and yet the President of the United States told the American people there is no doubt that Iraq had some of the most lethal weapons devised by man. Now, the fact of the matter is, if this is some innocent thing that occurred, we need the President to address the American people about how this happened. Now, I am glad that the President has finally allowed Condoleezza Rice to publicly answer some of the questions around what has happened in some of this affair. It is unfortunate that it has taken so long to be drug to the public spotlight; but, nonetheless, we hope this will shed some light on this.

Mr. INSLEE. It is apparent the questions asked by the President were not about the inspection program. The statements were ``let's go bomb Iraq, because there are no targets in Afghanistan,'' or something to that effect.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for a moment, I just want to sort of reiterate basically what the gentleman is saying. I keep hearing more and more evidence that with the President taking our eye off the ball of al Qaeda, it has damaged our ability to bring them to the ground; and it has done that in multiple ways. We had a hearing the other day in the Committee on Financial Services about our ability to track down and cut off the funds of al Qaeda coming out of Saudi Arabia, because that is where the money came, largely, from al Qaeda. It turns out the administration has had a lot of the forces that could have been used to cut off the money going to al Qaeda, the people who killed 3,000 Americans, to chase Saddam's funds all around the world. Now, it would be nice to get ahold of Saddam Hussein's funds. That is fine. I am sure he abused and did the Iraqi people tremendously, not only personally, but fiscally. But the guy who killed over 3,000 Americans is at large; and his network of raising money is still intact, because this President took our eye off the ball and cut off some of the resources we had to cut those resources off from al Qaeda.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield on that point, I would like to comment on what you just said, but before I do so, I would like to make a statement of why we are here tonight. This is months after the Iraq war started, and I just want to state the reason I am here tonight is the people who are fighting this war deserve answers of how this war started based on false information. If it takes us years to get to the bottom of how this was started, why it was started and who started it so that they can be held accountable, we are going to be here until we get those answers. But you have put your finger on a very, very important point; and that is that the people who this administration are attacking, Mr. O'Neill, Mr. Clarke, Ambassador Wilson, the actuary of the Medicare fund, all of whom are being attacked by this administration, their statements have proven to be true in the last several weeks. One of the great ironies of this is that this administration is attacking civil servants for telling the truth. Look at Mr. O'Neill. As you indicated, he was attacked because he had the temerity, and this was the Secretary of the Treasury, a high-level person appointed by the President of the United States on a personal basis. Mr. O'Neill said, ``In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction. There were allegations and assertions by people.'' That is from Mr. O'Neill's book. He said that in January 30, 2001, before September 11, the President instructed at the National Security Council meeting, that the President directed the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to ``examine our military options'' with regard to Iraq. Mr. O'Neill was quite viscerally attacked by the administration for making those statements. But now it turns out in listening to statements by Condoleezza Rice and essentially Donald Rumsfeld and Mr. Clarke, those things were true. From their own lips, of people still in the administration, that statement was true. Mr. Clarke a week or so ago had the temerity to point out that on the day after September 11 the Secretary of Defense said something to the effect like ``let's get ready to bomb Iraq,'' and it was pointed out to the Secretary of Defense that al Qaeda, who at that point we knew was behind the September 11 attack, that al Qaeda was in Afghanistan, not Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld responded, ``Well, there are not any targets in Afghanistan.'' Mr. Clarke originally said, ``Well, I thought he must have been kidding.'' It turned out he was not kidding, and when asked about that on a talk show this weekend, Mr. Rumsfeld, I did not hear him deny it. Incredibly, I did not hear him deny it. What I heard was Mr. Clarke pointed out that on September 12, when he talked to the President of the United States, the President of the United States took him aside and said, essentially, ``I want you to look and scrub to see if you can find any evidence whatsoever that it was Iraq behind this.'' Mr. Clarke wondered about that, because he felt the President was essentially pushing to find something that had not been reported to date. Originally, you know what the administration said? They said Mr. Clarke was not there that day. Well, today we find from Condoleezza Rice not only was he there, but, yes, those conversations apparently took place. So what we are finding is we are finally getting down, after peeling the layers of the onion, to the truth of what happened in Iraq. And what happened in Iraq is that this administration very early on was bent on taking a course of action involving military action in Iraq. It is not that they were forced to by this overwhelming intelligence, this mountain of intelligence that led us to the inescapable conclusion that Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction. As early as the day after the attack on September 11 they were looking for some reason to start a war in Iraq. This is something that has been confirmed today by their own statements.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield further, I think what the gentleman is pointing out is that there were huge falsehoods that are now apparent that were told to the American people, to the U.S. Congress, that were used as a premise to start this war. I want to talk about just a couple of those and see what the administration has done in response to those. The President on March 17, 2003, said, ``Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. ``This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.'' The second half of that is true, but the first statement is false. Yet, no one in the administration has admitted the falsity of that statement, despite overwhelming intelligence information to this effect. We have people serving, and we have lost over 500 Americans in this war that was started based on a falsehood, and no one in this administration has had the courage and the willingness to straight talk, to say these statements were false that were the basis for this war.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it is clear that our country did not have things to be proud of at the time that the Kurds were gassed. We could talk at length about that.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we should have clearly raised a siren internationally when that was going on, but let us not compound the error by leaving these falsehoods to lie like sort of a stinking mackerel in the moonlight right now without this administration clearing this up and shooting straight with the American people. Because on January 28, 2003, the President of the United States stood right behind the gentleman from Hawaii and addressed the Congress and the American people and said, ``The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' That statement was false, and the administration knew it was false. He went on to say, ``Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.'' That statement was false. Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, we have got people there tonight who are sitting ducks for this terrible situation in Iraq, and there are two things really galling to me about this. Number one, I have heard some people in these Chambers sort of suggest, well, we only lost a couple today; we only lost 10 this week; we only lost 100 this last couple of months; it is not like Vietnam. Well, I have got to say when I went to a family 2 weeks ago to spend the Sunday with them when their father and husband of two young kids is never coming home again, it is just like no other war; and these numbers, this is not a numbers game. These people who are serving tonight deserve something. They deserve their government to be accountable to them, to be responsible to them as to why this war started based on false information given to the American people, and we are now learning that there was lots of false information given to them. They are entitled to that. The American people are entitled to that, and we are intending to get that one way or another.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. I want to make a couple points before I address the specifics of this trade adjustment which I really think is great, not a panacea but certainly one of the things we need to do that address this problem. But I want to make two points about why legislation like this is necessary right now, and that is that two I think interesting facts that demonstrate why Congress needs to act now and the administration needs to follow us in doing so. That is the unemployment, the job loss that we have suffered in the last 3 years is actually understated. A lot of folks have heard now a familiar number that we have lost about 2.2 million jobs in the last 3 years which is a greater job loss than any other time since Herbert Hoover was President of the United States. But that number is really kind of a fake number, and the reason is that it fails to take into account the jobs that should have been created under any sort of normal rate of economic growth. The truth is we have lost specifically about 2.2 million jobs, but if we had just grown jobs to keep pace with the rate of population increase, we would have actually grown four and a half million jobs if we had only kept pace with the population increase in the United States in the last 3 years. So it is not that we have lost 2.2 million jobs, sort of behind the curve by 2.2 million Americans that are out of work. It is actually closer to 7 million. So the job deficit, along with the largest Federal deficit in American history, we now have the largest job deficit in the last 50 years.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, that is another way of basically saying we have had no meaningful job creation for the last 3 years. So we have a $7 million job deficit and we basically had an experiment and that experiment failed. The President basically said these very large tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, those who are over $200,000 a year, we are going to create millions of jobs. It failed even to keep pace with just population growth. There is four and a half million jobs missing that should have been there just to keep pace with population growth, and then there are 2.2 million jobs lost on top of that. So we are in a deep, deep hole; and whatever we are going to say, if we add one job now, we are still at the bottom of the well. So maybe we are one inch off the bottom of a 7 million foot well, if you will. We have got a long ways to go. Second point is the reason Congress needs to act now is that these figures belie the severity in the length of this unemployment. Because we have over 2 million people who are unemployed tonight who have been unemployed for more than 6 months. That is the longest period and the largest number of people who have been unemployed over 6 months for over 50 years in America. So not only are people not even counted in the unemployment insurance statistics because they have given up looking for work, those who are still on there we have the longest period of long-term unemployment in the last 50 years. So I just want to point out those two points that we need to take into consideration whether we are going to act or not boldly and aggressively. And we think we should. So one of the ideas, and this is not the only idea that we need to pursue, but we need to bring our trade adjustment assistance for Members up to speed with what is going on in the U.S. economy. We, and I am sure the gentleman has talked about this, have had a program to help people who have lost jobs that are associated with the dynamics of trade in manufacturing now for some period of time. We have seen in Seattle a great success with that program. We have seen hundreds of folks, if not thousands, in Boeing who several years ago during the downturn availed themselves of the benefit of this program to get retraining. I have talked to any number of those. It is not 100 percent, but any number of these folks have been successful in finding other careers with retraining. But now we have this phenomenon in the service sector, computer programming, accounting, in radiological services, in call centers. Now the service sector employees are experiencing the dynamics of trade. We simply have to bring this up to speed to this century's challenges that exist. Our bill will do that. It will simply say that people in the service sector who lose jobs associated with the dynamics of trade are going to have an assistance from Uncle Sam. It is a pretty simple commitment that Uncle Sam ought to fulfill. We hope that the administration will embrace this idea. And I will share one piece of good news. I serve on the President's Export Council, which is a group appointed essentially to advise the executive branch on export policies and trade policies. It is a group of a lot of high-level executives of major corporations at General Motors, Intel, Boeing, a couple of Members of Congress; and last week, we met and this group sort of unanimously concluded that this idea of the extension of trade adjustment authority to service personnel should be pursued, and that will go to the President as a formal recommendation of this group here in the near future. So we are hopeful that the administration and our Republican colleagues will join us in this very commonsense measure to help Americans get back on their feet, and we do not want to hear that we cannot do this for fiscal reasons, for two reasons; and there is a fiscal impact for this obviously, and we should be totally responsible in addressing that fiscal impact, but we believe that in the long term this is fiscally responsible to do because these folks are going to get back to work, they are going to get off the unemployment rolls, and they are going to start creating wealth and profits and wages and taxes themselves. This is a fiscally responsible thing to do, is we get people back to work. Over the long term it does not create the deficit; it helps to ameliorate it. In addition, we think there are some future tax cuts for those earning over $200,000, which on a scale is not as important as the fact as getting these thousands of people who may have lost these jobs to folks in other countries due to trade. They have a higher claim on America's assistance right now, and they will be much more productive for the U.S. economy as well, and so we think this is a fiscally responsible approach; and we hope our Republican colleagues will join us. There is one other thing that this bill will do. You may have talked about this already, but I want to allude to it. There are some imperfections in the existing trade adjustment bill, one of which would not kick in assistance for Americans except that they lost their job, at least the presumption is a country that we already had free trade agreement with. That is an artifact of history that we had to cure because if you are out of work, frankly it does not make a difference to your creditors whether you are out of work, losing a job to someone Uncle Sam has a free trade agreement with or not. So we hope to fix that in the long term. The bottom line is, as the trade world has changed, as the economy has changed, Congress needs to change our provision for Americans to get retrained; and this is a fundamentally sound, fair, fiscal way to do it, and we are hoping that ultimately this becomes a bipartisan effort. Unfortunately, we have not had our colleagues across the aisle coming in droves to join this, and that frankly is disappointing because anyone ought to understand when you are out of work and your job's been shipped to another country, and your mortgage still needs paying and your child's college education tuition still needs paying, it should not be a Republican or Democrat position the fact that we ought to help you get retrained, and we ought to recognize for those of us who recognize the value of trade, and I count myself among those who come from a very trade-dependent part of the world. The State of Washington is one of the trade-dependent parts of the country. We recognize the value of trade, selling Boeing planes to India, selling Microsoft software to China. We understand the value of trade, but those who care about trade have to recognize that there are dynamics of trade and people are discomfited and there are job losses associated with trade, and we need to create a lifetime learning situation where, as trade creates dynamic changes in the job market, we need to guarantee Americans the ability to get back on their feet and become retrained, and that is one part of that support system that I hope that we will pass.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we need to be in a bipartisan fight against the Federal deficit. One of the tools we have in fighting the Federal deficit is called the pay-as-you-go rule, and it is a tool that works very, very well because when the pay-as-you-go rule is in effect, any Member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, if they are going to propose a new spending or a new tax cut, they are required to show how they are going to pay for it. This is common sense. Unfortunately, my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle refuse to apply this common-sense rule that was effective during the 1990s in reducing the Federal deficit. Now, there is one thing we ought to be able to agree on, when you are in a fight, it does not make sense to tie one hand behind yourself. And the Republicans are tying one hand behind us, and the pay-as-you-go rule is going to be the pay-as-you-gone rule. I am disappointed that my Republican colleagues are taking a dive against the Federal deficit.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor to express concern about the European Union's first step in a decision against Microsoft, one of the most creative engines of economic growth in American history. The reason we all ought to be concerned about this European Union decision is it essentially breaches and disturbs, if not destroys, a carefully wrought-out resolution of antitrust issues in the American judicial system. Whatever one thinks of our judicial system, we ought to know one thing, that it is better that these matters be resolved in the American system than internationally when the international groups now could turn into a feeding frenzy, if you will, of upsetting this apple cart after we have worked for years and millions of dollars of effort to have a very carefully calibrated resolution of these antitrust issues. We hope that our government expresses and does not acquiesce in this issue since we need to have comity and a consistent application of antitrust rules across borders. We hope that our government will take that position.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. INSLEE. Let me, if I can, say why that is a problem. We need the administration to fulfill its obligation to the American people to help get to the bottom of what happened in this situation. The fact is, I will indicate in just a moment, every single chance we have had to peel back the onion and peel back the draperies to find out what happened, this administration has continued to suppress information. I want to give the gentleman this one example. On January 28, 2003, the President went before the Nation in the State of the Union address, stood right behind where the gentleman is standing right now and said, ``The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.'' That statement was false. The reason we know that is that the person sent by the administration to Africa to find out whether it was true or not, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who, at the request of the administration, went to Africa and reported back before the State of the Union address that that was a bunch of hokum, it was a bunch of malarkey, and it was false. And the President, in the State of the Union, despite that specific response from our intelligence service, if you will, or someone acting in their behalf, put it in the State of the Union anyway, or someone on his behalf. Everybody can make mistakes. We are all human. But let us see what this administration's response to this falsehood and disclosure of falsehood was. Was it a thank you to Mr. Wilson for helping us get to the bottom of this? Was it a further inquiry to find out who was responsible for putting this gross misstatement in the State of the Union address? No. What did they do? They tried to punish Joe Wilson, the citizen who did his patriotic duty to disclose this misstatement, by outing his wife who worked for the CIA, attempting to destroy her CIA career, to send a message to the world and to America, ``Don't tell the truth about this administration because we'll attempt to destroy you.'' That is what they have attempted to do. Thank goodness there is a grand jury investigating what could be a Federal crime here, because this is a pattern with this administration. Look what is happening tonight.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield, the obligation that I think is paramount, forgetting for the moment the need for allies, but the real paramount obligation is to the families who have lost loved ones in Iraq. Now, the family I think of is one that I spent some time with last weekend who lost their husband and son in the Tigress River, a U.S. soldier awarded the Bronze Star for his heroism and service in Iraq. That family is owed an explanation by its government as to why their husband and son died in a conflict that was started based on false information from the Government of the United States, and that ought to be a bipartisan position that that obligation is owed. Amongst questions that need to be answered are these: Why did the President of the United States of America and his administration 10 times on nine separate public appearances tell the American people that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had obtained aluminum tubes for use in a reconstituted nuclear program, when its own Department of Energy had told it that that was false before they made those statements? How can they possibly now stonewall this information when we have already peeled back the onion to find out that the Department of Energy had told the White House that they were wrong about this claim and they still used it to start this war? That is a question this family is owed an answer to. Second, why did this administration tell Americans that Iraq had developed these robot drone aircraft for the purpose of spraying chemical and biological weapons on us here in the continental United States when its own Air Force in analyzing the information had concluded that these robots were used for photography, not aerial spraying of biological and chemical weapons? Why did the President of the United States authorize doing that, and if he did not do it, who did? Who did that? Because those people need to be held accountable, if necessary, with their jobs at least. This administration has done nothing of the sort.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield, the question you are asking is what Americans are asking all over the country. Yesterday, one of my constituents asked, I thought, a very interesting question. He said, after September 11, who did the President focus on? According to Paul O'Neill, the Secretary of the Treasury, including the President's own counterterrorism chief, Richard Clark, the answer was Iraq. What my constituent asked me then, he said, well, you know, 15 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Did the President ever ask about Saudi Arabia, the country where historically a lot of these companies he has had dealings with in the oil and gas industry are? No. He never asked about Saudi Arabia. Iraq, Iraq. I wanted to read what the counterterrorism chief says happened, because it is important, in trying to find out whether they focused on Iraq without justification. Mr. Richard Clark said, ``Mr. Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq, and we all said no, no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan; we need to bomb Afghanistan. And Mr. Rumsfeld said, there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, well, there are a lot of good targets in a lot of places, but Iraq has nothing to do with it.'' This is the counterterrorism chief of the White House. He went on: ``Initially, I thought when he said there aren't enough targets in Afghanistan, I thought he was joking. Initially. I think that they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying we have looked at this issue for years; for years we have looked, and there is just no connection.'' This is the White House's counterterrorism chief telling the Secretary of Defense there is no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. And what did the President tell the American people over and over and over? He said essentially you cannot even think of them as distinct entities. He wanted to create a fear, to create an image in America that al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden had been morphed into Saddam Hussein, because he believed it was in the Nation's best interest, for whatever the reasons are. But he did not have the right to tell these falsehoods to the American people. Now that the truth is coming up, he owes us an obligation to hold accountable in his administration whoever is responsible for this, and he owes us the obligation to stop stonewalling the distribution of truth to the American people, and he needs to come clean, as his arms inspector, David Kay, says he should do. This is an obligation to the people who are serving in Iraq tonight, our brothers and sons and daughters and husbands and wives.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, frankly, again, I want to reiterate we are all human and we have all made mistakes and every administration has made mistakes in the past, and we ought to be somewhat understanding of that. But this administration has been an abject failure in helping us find out what happened here and finding responsibility for those and taking action to hold them accountable so we can demonstrate to the world and to the American people that we are not going to countenance starting wars based on falsehood. Let us look at the record of this administration in that regard. How many people have been held to account for the fact that a war started based on false information? How many people? The answer? Zero. Zero. Five hundred people have lost their lives in Iraq, but zero people has George Bush held accountable for this false information, and it is wrong. Only one person in America has lost their job over this false information, and that was a radio talk show host. We need accountability for this mistake, and this administration needs to get busy, instead of stonewalling and covering up the truth, to help us find the truth and find who is accountable.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, just to follow up on the comment and the discussion of the deficit, it is not only Democrats who are concerned with the deficit; it is Republicans as well. Last night I was in a town hall meeting attended by about 150 people in Snohomish County, Washington, and I had a fellow stand up who said he was a Republican and was extremely concerned that this government, which he understood was controlled by the Republican Party lock, stock and barrel, was running up these enormous deficit. His basic question was, What is going on? He was flabbergasted to see that happening. What I had to tell him was the news was actually worse than he had heard. He had heard the number that the Republican government had run up a $500 billion deficit, and it bothered him. It bothered him even more when I told him the deficit was actually higher than that because the administration and the Congress to some degree have played with some funny numbers that make Enron blush how accounting is done. One example, I had to tell him the President's budget, which has been forwarded to the Congress proposing expenditures for next year, omitted any sums for fighting the Iraq war, any sums for fighting the Afghanistan war. You can kind of understand how a government can run up giant deficits, the largest deficits in American history if they play funny games of sending up budgets when we are in the middle of a war spending $100 billion a year in Iraq, or a little short of that, and then assess zero cost to that. I just cannot understand, this administration must not think anybody can read in America when they try to play games like that. I can inform the White House that my Democrat and Republican constituents are very aware of this and are very concerned about it. Let me turn, if I can, to the Iraq issue which we have now been talking about for some months. The reason we are here is twofold: One, our proud men and women are doing a job in Iraq tonight which all Americans are proud of. Over 500 of them have paid the ultimate sacrifice to the duty to which they pledged honor to our country. Their sacrifice demands that the government of the United States tell the truth to the American people about what happened in Iraq and why this war started, based on false information. Just to set the stage for our discussion tonight, I would like to point out at least some of that false information that ended up starting this war. I want to be very specific on this so no one can say that we have gilded the lily. The fact is, sadly, that on March 17, 2003, the President of the United States of America went before the American people and in an address to the Nation said, and I quote, ``Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.'' That statement was false and the information gathered over a year of spending over $100 million of seeking with a fine-toothed comb in Iraq has demonstrated with some conviction that that statement was false, unfortunately. On August 2, 2002, the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, went before the Veterans of Foreign Wars and stated, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.'' That statement was false, false both on the issue of the presence of weapons of mass destruction as indicated by Mr. David Kay, who was the person hired by this country to find out, but also false in saying there was no doubt, because a review by this Chamber, by the three of us and others, has showed there was plenty of doubt about this issue in Iraq that was covered up, was suppressed by this administration.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I think the proper characterization, I heard one of our colleagues at a town meeting say to one of our colleagues never in this country have so many been misled by so few, and now we are going to find the truth as to why that happened. And the reason we are going to find the truth are two principles: principle number one, facts are stubborn things; and, two, the truth comes out. It is coming out now, and it has come out yesterday on television, and it is coming out tomorrow in the commission. I want to read some of this truth that I believe we are going to hear. The question is whether or not this administration was compelled by intelligence reports of weapons of mass destruction that forced them to action in Iraq or whether this administration had a preconceived judgment and decision to go after Iraq and then went looking for something to substantiate that preconceived decision to the American public. And it is the latter, and we know it is the latter, because every day more and more truth is leaking out of this White House. What did we hear last night? We heard in a book by Mr. Richard Clarke, who was the White House's former counterterrorism chief, a pretty high individual in the White House who is responsible for counterterrorism, which was quoted in the New York Times, where he said that Mr. Bush pressed him, Mr. Clarke, three times to find evidence that Iraq was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The accusation is explosive because no such link has ever been proved. Mr. Clarke says, quoting the President, `` `I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything,' '' Mr. Clarke writes, and Mr. Bush told him `` `See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way.' '' When Mr. Clarke protested that the culprit was al Qaeda, not Iraq, Mr. Bush ``testily ordered'' him, he writes, to `` `look into Iraq's Saddam,' '' and then left the room; then demanded a report, which was prepared, which came back and gave the same answer that there was not a meaningful connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, sent the report up the chain from CIA and FBI. It got bounced back and sent back saying, `` `wrong answer, do it again.' '' A war was started on a false premise of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, and the truth as to why that happened is coming out. Basically, as far as I can tell, the White House's principle is that their Secretary of the Treasury, who essentially said pretty much the same thing, that it had been Iraq, Iraq, Iraq even before September 11. Their counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, who said on the day of the attack they said let us go get Iraq and try to gin up some evidence to support this, in a manner of speaking; Joe Wilson, who was sent by this administration to find out whether this is a bill of goods about this uranium that got into the State of the Union address, the White House is saying that all these people who worked for the White House in these high positions have no clue as to what was going on. As far as I can tell, what the White House says is their position is nobody who ever worked in the White House has a clue as to what went on there because whatever they said has got to be wrong. And now, instead of welcoming a critical analysis as to what went wrong here and where the foul-up is, what is this administration doing? According to the New York Times, the way they characterize it, and I think it is fair, they have ``opened an aggressive personal attack against its former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke.'' What did they do to Joe Wilson, the ambassador who found out that they told a falsehood in the State of the Union address? They tried to destroy his wife's career. What did they do to their former Secretary of the Treasury, who said essentially that they had been trying to go after Iraq from day one in the administration? And I paraphrase a little bit, but generally that was the thrust. They attacked him personally.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, this really is a bright day for the U.S. House of Representatives because today, with the passage of this bill, we will expedite the abilities of Americans to give the gift of life. It is not every day that we do something in the House of Representatives that can allow people to live, allow people that are now on waiting lists, waiting this morning to get an e-mail to come in and get their liver transplant or their heart transplant, that we are going to pass a bill today that will allow people to make a decision to actually give the gift of life; and I think that is a pretty good thing to be pleased about in the U.S. House of Representatives. The part I would like to talk about just briefly about this bill is a portion of a bill that Floyd Spence, our great Republican colleague from South Carolina, who I introduced a portion of this bill with back in 2000. Floyd, when we introduced this bill, was the longest living double heart/lung transplant in America, and I hope that this will shine on his memory with the passage of this bill today. Because what this bill will do will create an organ donor coordinator position in hospitals. It will be largely federally funded, and where we have put organ coordinators in hospitals, we have found we actually doubled the rate of donation decisions made by families, because it allows families the confidence and the knowledge and the coordination with doctors and nursing staff to make this decision. So this bill, we believe, is going to significantly increase a number of people who get that great call in the morning saying, come on down for your new liver and a new lease on life with 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 new years of life that people are going to have in this country because this bill is going to pass. Just to put a personal face on this if I can, and let me tell my colleagues why I feel so passionately about this. I want to introduce my colleagues to a friend of mine, Chris Klug. This was taken about 2 years ago when we started working on this bill. Scott, in the year 2000, had a problem where he lost his liver function, and Scott did not have a lot of time to live when he got a new liver transplant. Just to show my colleagues how successful these organ transplants can be, Scott, just 2 years later after getting a new liver, went on to get a Bronze Medal in the slalom snow-boarding Olympic championship in 2002. That is a pretty amazing thing that this gift of life not only gives a gift of life, but it gives a gift of the tremendous life that Scott is now engaged in. We can see him on these snow-boarding competitions on occasion. The second person I want to tell my colleagues a little story about is, yesterday morning I was at the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle, Washington, and I was talking to Dr. Robert Carithers and Dr. Connie Davis, who had been involved in one of the premier transplant centers in the United States. They introduced me to a general named Henry Durnil. Henry is a fellow who works making sure that our navy ships are in good shape at the naval port in Everett, Washington, and some time ago, Henry's liver started to fail him. He got a call Saturday saying, come on in, get your new liver, and I got to meet Henry who was lying in bed. I have got to tell my colleagues if my colleagues saw the smile on Henry Durnil's face and we heard him talking about the miracle of getting a new lease on life, my colleagues will both vote for this bill and they will be happy to spread the gospel of helping others to make the donation decision, because Henry told me that he felt this was truly a miracle. He thanked his nurse, Susan Moore, and the whole transplant team at the University of Washington. I am happy we are going to pass this bill so there will be more people with Henry's story to tell. I want to make a special plea to those who are considering this bill, and may be candidates to be organ donors. There are 80,000-plus people who are in the position of Scott Bennett, whom I also met yesterday at the Washington University Medical School. Scott Bennett has climbed Mount Ranier a few times. He has a heart ailment and has been on a waiting list for a heart for over 4 years. I would also like to mention Jack Slater, who is a teacher for Seattle public schools who has been writing a diary in the Seattle newspapers about his experience. Mr. Speaker, we have over 80,000 people like Scott and Jack on a waiting list. This is a step we are going to take today to get the Jacks and the Scotts of the world in a position like the Chris Klugs of the world back doing healthy active lives. To let Members know how active they can be, we are trying to get the Organ Donation Transplant Athletic Games in Seattle in 2006. I want to make a couple of points in general that are important in this issue of donation. Number one, it is very important for people to realize that all of us are both prospective donors and recipients. I can tell Members how we are all prospective recipients, because a year after I started working on this bill, my son developed a congenital eye condition and ended up getting his sight restored due to a cornea transplant. So all of us can be recipients. But most importantly, we can all be donors. It does not matter how old you are, your race, where you live; all of us can give the gift of life. There is a fellow named Jamie Moyer, who is an All-Star pitcher for the Seattle Mariners. He is going to be the starting pitcher this year, and he has been an advocate for organ donation issues. Not all of us can pitch like Jamie Moyer, but all of us can be donors to give the gift of life; and I hope people will think about that in their own personal lives. Secondly, if someone wants to be a donor, it is very important to talk to your family because your family is essentially involved in the decision at that particular moment, and it is very important to let your family know about your wishes because your family needs to convey your wishes to the hospital at the right time. I hope people will talk to their families about this issue and we can make sure that we help more folks on the road back to recovery. I thank the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Bilirakis), who has shown great leadership on this issue. This is a great bipartisan effort, and the wonderful story that we can tell as we go home to our constituents this weekend is to say that we can give the gift of life. It is a good day for the House of Representatives and America.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. I appreciate the gentleman from Maine bringing this important matter to national attention. I do care about the mercury contamination which this country will be experiencing because of the attempted sellout by this administration to special interests which will result in more mercury in the blood of young children in America. If that sounds like a strong statement it is, and it is true. But one of my concerns here is this is not just the only instance when this administration has knuckled under to the interests of special interests on K Street rather than the public interest which is supposed to be expressed on Independence Avenue where the U.S. Capitol is located. I just want to say that this is not, unfortunately, an aberration of this administration's sellout to special interests, to ignore science, to ignore clear health implications. It is consistent with their pattern of neglect of science and they are showing great attention to special interests. They need to do it the other way around. We need an administration that will show special sensitivity to health interests and ignore special interests on occasion. They have got it exactly backwards. They show exquisite attention to lobbyists from these industries and ignoring the clear science for health to the American people. I want to list some of the other places where they have done this. And the oil and gas industry that has attempted to open up these methane drilling wells in a variety of places, the Rocky Mountains, including wilderness areas in Utah and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they have catered to specialists; and they have ignored the clear import of science. We are not the only ones who care about this. There have been some investigations in the Department of Interior about a fellow who used to work for the oil and gas industry, then was put as the fox in charge of the hen house, supposedly regulating. What was the first thing he did, like in the first few weeks on the job? And what did the investigators find out? They found out that he hosted a get-together, a little shindig for all the lobbyists to come down and do business with me, boys, I am now in charge of the Department. That is not what we expect from our public officials, and as a result, we have seen some ignoring of good science, which has caused tremendous problems for ranchers in Wyoming of contaminating the water supply because they have shown more interest to K Street than to Main Street. Second example, we had over a million people testify about whether to preserve old-growth timber in our remaining 10 percent of our national forests that have not been clear-cut, and we went out to ask what the public thought of the President's proposal to open up what we call the roadless areas to clear-cutting, and the public responded. There were over a million people who told the administration to keep their handsaws and their chainsaws from clear-cutting our roadless areas. And they got maybe three letters from the lobbyists on K Street. So what did this administration do? They are gutting this protection of the most pristine, the most precious crown jewels in our national forest system to allow these 6-foot and 8-foot and 10-foot 600-year-old trees to be cut down in clear-cuts, violating the clear science that that is not what we should be doing with the roadless areas. And why did they do it? They did it because this administration is extremely sensitive to K Street and not sensitive to the health interests and well-being, as they should be, of our constituents. Let me tell the Members why this is important. A lot of people do not think of forests as a health issue, but we have found out that is where our clean water comes from, from the forests. This is the greatest water purification system the planet has. And this administration ignored 1.2 million people who told this administration to ignore K Street and fall to the wishes of people, which they did not do. Third issue, and again I think it is important to note, anyone can make a mistake and any administration can make a mistake once in a while, but this is just a long train of abuses, an unbroken chain of following special interests rather than the health of the American people. When we are considering lead poisoning levels in the lead paint industry, which is of some interest to Members of Congress now because we are drinking water with too much lead in it in the Washington, D.C. system, which is an issue we are going to have to address, and maybe that explains some of the bad legislation around here, I am not sure; but in consideration of lead poisoning levels, in 2002, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention was preparing to address the issue, and they had been advising that we need to address this issue. Did the administration address this issue in an aggressive, health-oriented way? No. Did they appoint people to the reflective committees that made their decision? No. They had special interests on their operation, and they failed the health of the American people. We could go on and on, but we are limited by time. This is a system that has corrupted the democratic process, and some of the best evidence that I know of, and the gentleman may have talked about this already, about a month ago, 20 nonpolitical Nobel laureates, and Nobel laureates usually think about physics and chemistry rather than politics, and they do not pound a lot of yard signs and they are not interested in running for public office, but 20 people who won the Nobel Prize, Americans in various sciences, chemistry, physics, name it, they were so disturbed by what this administration was doing in ignoring science to cater to special interests, they got together and wrote a letter to the President of the United States, and their basic message was start listening to good science rather than bad special interests. And it is a pretty extraordinary event when scientists will get out of the lab, frankly, where they do tremendous work, and write a letter like that to the President of the United States. These are Democrats and Republicans, probably some Green Party members in there too. So I think it is an indication of how sour and corrupted this system has become. And so we are down here blowing the whistle on it, and I want to thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) for his efforts.