Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, just one final note. There is a reason that the Vice President of the United States refuses to let the people who hired him, which is the American people, know what went on in this secret operation that took lobbyist language and put it in our energy bill. There is a reason for that. And that reason is another symptom of the sickness that is on our body politic right now. And I want to thank the gentleman for his efforts

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons this current administration has run up the largest Federal deficit in the universe's history is it has not told the truth to the American people. The most recent example of that is this story that has come out that the chief actuary for Medicare had numbers indicating that the President's Medicare bill would cost billions of dollars more money than the administration told the American people. Indeed, Richard Foster advised the administration that this bill would cost $534 billion, when the administration was telling the American people it would cost about $400 billion. And the reason this individual was not able to blow the whistle at that time is they effectively said they would fire him if he told the truth to the American people. In an e-mail disclosed yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, it was disclosed that this gentleman got an e-mail that said essentially, if you tell Congress or the American people the truth, quote, ``The consequences for insubordination are extremely severe,'' closed quote. We know what that means. This administration told the person he would be fired if he told the truth to the American people. Well, we disagree with Jack Nicholson: We can handle the truth, and we deserve it.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, all of us have tremendous personal respect for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anyone who has had experience like I did, spending an afternoon with a family as I did from Bremerton, Washington, this weekend, but I want to mention a question that I have. Tonight there is someone at large who wants to kill us. This person has killed us. This person has the capability of killing us. This person has an organization dedicated to kill us. We have known this situation since September 11. Why is it that with the passage of years, that is, until last week, that the administration finally says they actually are going to have a 24/7 effort to catch Osama bin Laden? They launched a war and took their eye off the ball to catch this guy who is at-large, and now, last week, finally says now we are going to have an all-out effort to catch Osama bin Laden? Where have they been? They have been in Iraq, and I have a question I want this administration to answer. I was asked by the victims families of September 11 two weeks ago. Why, after September 11, when we knew that somewhere between 12 and 15 of the hijackers who killed our people were from Saudi Arabia, did this administration allow an airplane to fly all across America, when everybody else was grounded, when you could not fly home from anywhere, why did this administration specifically allow an airplane, paid for by Saudi Arabia, to fly around this country picking up potential witnesses who could have helped us catch Osama bin Laden, including members of the bin Laden family? Why did this administration allow that?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I think it was something like 15 out of the 19, and yet this administration, I want to know why they flew out these people two days after September 11 without the full, complete, comprehensive interrogation of these individuals, including blood relatives of the guy who we know did this, and several days later they are playing footsy with the ambassador down at the White House of Saudi Arabia, an organization that has been very close to the oil and gas industry? I want to know why they did that. Maybe there is a good answer. I cannot imagine what it is, but this is one of the questions that the people who are serving in Iraq and the victims of September 11 want answered.

Mr. INSLEE. Zero Iraqis on that plane.

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

Mr. INSLEE. The fact is we should have been cracking down on Saudi Arabia a long time ago. We should have been cracking down on the Pakistani fellow that we found was purveying nuclear technology all over the world and, instead we have been involved in an action in Iraq. Now, I am very happy that eventually maybe something good will come out of the action in Iraq, but our people need answers to these questions.

Mr. INSLEE

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

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if I may, I suppose there are gray zones about conduct, but when the U.S. Congress is debating something as important as the Medicare prescription drug benefit and we are trying to figure out how to finance it so this deficit does not continue and the President knows that there are many people concerned about the cost of this and a good American patriot, in the fulfillment of his democratic responsibilities, figures out it is going to cost another $160 billion than the President tells us it is going to cost, and he tells the administration that and the White House and HHS and everybody else and they tell him that may jeopardize our ability to win our political battle and our political battle is more important than the truth. Because that is what this boils down to. They reached a conclusion here, and their conclusion is they are so smart and they are so gifted and they are so special that they are more important than the truth. Therefore, they ordered and they threatened to fire an American who wanted to and would have shared the truth with Americans and this Congress, Republicans and Democrats, because they concluded they were more important than the truth. And I just may add, I want to tip a hat to some of my Republican colleagues here because we have Republican colleagues that are madder than hops about this too because they were concerned about the cost of this bill because we have a $500 billion deficit and we have a number of our Republican colleagues who want to fix that problem. So they are mad about this too. They are not quite as vocal as we are in this context with their party member in the White House. But Republicans and Democrats ought to agree on one thing, and that is let us get the facts and the truth; then let us have our debate and let the chips fall where they may, and we are just happy to have that debate. But it is time for them to stop perverting the truth.

Mr. INSLEE. And third, they told us their tax cuts were going to result in large surplus. We were going to have surpluses as far as the eye could see. They cut taxes wildly for the upper class. We now have the largest deficit in American history. That is falsehood number three, and they keep making the same mistake. Fourth, and to me a series that I want to go through, because it is one thing to give falsehoods to Americans when it is about money, it is another thing to give falsehoods to Americans from the executive branch of this country sworn to defend the Constitution and the United States of America when it jeopardizes and takes the lives of Americans. I just want to read some quotes that I think we need an accounting of and some responsibility from this administration. On March 17, 2003, the President of the United States told the American people, 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 is a direct quote. It was false. Of all the information that we have gathered after hundreds of millions of dollars, the best evidence we have is that statement by the President of the United States, ``it leaves no doubt.'' America deserves an answer why the President of the United States told Americans that there was no doubt when the facts were at least there was significant doubt as reported by multiple intelligence agencies and the facts have come to bear that multiple statements by this administration were false and as a result of that Americans paid the ultimate sacrifice, one of whose family I visited this weekend whose children will never see their father again who died in the Tigris River trying to save an Iraqi policeman while serving in the United States Army. That family and the other 500 families and the other over 3,000 families of our wounded GIs and Marines and other proud service men and women deserve the truth, and they deserve to know why they did not get it. On August 2, 2002, the Vice President of the United States, while talking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a group that deserves the truth after their proud service to this country, said, ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.'' That statement was false. According to the best information we have after hundreds of millions of dollars spent searching for these weapons, that statement was false. Americans who served in Iraq deserve to know why that happened. We do not know why that happened. It may have been a failure of intelligence. Our intelligence agencies may have overstated the threat. They may have left out caveats in their report to the White House. Somebody in the political machinery may have stretched, exaggerated, spun; we do not know what happened and why those statements that were made were so grievously in error that cost American lives, but we deserve an answer and this Chamber deserves an answer. On January 28, 2003, during his State of the Union address in this Chamber to us, the President stated, ``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. Americans deserve to know the exact circumstances that led to that falsehood being given to them leading to this war. On March 16, 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney on an interview with NBC's ``Meet the Press'' said, referring to weapons of mass destruction, ``He had years to get good at it. We know that he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' To our knowledge that statement was false. On January 9, 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, ``We know for a fact that there are weapons there,'' referring to weapons of mass destruction. That statement was false. On April 10, 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, ``But make no mistake, as I said earlier, we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about, and we have high confidence it will be found.'' That statement may be correct in the sense that he may have had high confidence. He may have had high confidence. But the underlying statement was false. With all due respect, we are hopeful about the people of Iraq; but this war was based on false information, and Americans deserve to know why they did not get the straight scoop about this situation. On September 19, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated, ``No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.'' People have been saying that, well, gee, the administration is now telling us that we did not mean to actually make Americans worried by saying this was an immediate threat. But, in fact, the Secretary of Defense gave reference to an immediate threat with his own language, and on multiple occasions they have continued to make that statement. When White House communications director Dan Bartlett was asked if Saddam Hussein on January 26, 2003, was ``an imminent threat to the United States,'' he stated, ``Well, of course he is.'' This is repeated references, and we have page after page after page of statements that were false. Again, I want to repeat. The people who made these statements may have believed that they were true at the time they were making them. We do not know that. I do not know that. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. But when this country has suffered the loss of over 500 of its sons and daughters and wives and husbands and fathers and mothers, this Chamber owes it to the United States of America to get to the absolute bottom of who is responsible for these multiple falsehoods on multiple occasions with absolutely no contrition, accountability, or responsibility. No one has lost their job over this false information except one disc jockey. Maybe it was not a disc jockey. He was a person who was involved in political discourse. Where is the accountability? Where is the personal responsibility for these falsehoods? Where is the smallest discipline of anyone for giving Americans false information leading to the deaths of over 500 Americans? Where are the changes of procedures? Where is the joint committee in this Chamber? Where is the report of the Congress? Where is the action from the Republican Party to help us find out what happened here? It is missing in action. It is AWOL. With all due respect to our intelligence committees, and they have been doing some discussion of what is happening here, but it is sadly lacking, the type of responsibility that we need to see taken, an explanation of what happened to this information. Let me make one suggestion when we do get to the bottom of this what we are going to find. Let me tell you about a couple of things I have found through my research. There was a statement by the administration, frankly I cannot recall if it was the President or the Defense Secretary that told Americans that Iraq had developed a drone aircraft that was capable and intended to be able to spread biological and chemical weapons, that could fly over America and spread these horrendous materials over the United States of America. Obviously, that is something we should be concerned about and we should do everything we can to prevent. The problem is that the Air Force, the experts in airplanes, had told the administration before they told Americans this information, before they told Americans the information, that these things were made out of balsa wood and almost duct tape and what they were good for is maybe taking pictures. They were not meant for this other nefarious purpose. They had that information and did not share it with us because frankly there was a lot of doubt about this. There was doubt about this. We cannot expect our intelligence service to be 100 percent, but they did not tell us that. These aluminum tubes. The President of the United States in his State of the Union address made reference to these aluminum tubes. He said specifically, ``Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.'' In fact, before the President made that statement, one of our agencies, and it was either the CIA or the Department of Energy, I cannot remember which, had concluded that that was not what these aluminum tubes were for. They were meant for other purposes. If this was one misstatement, we would chalk it up to the fog of war and the need to be responsible as we need to be in the war on terrorism. But when it is a pattern, when it is a pattern of falsehood that continues to be consistent in their approach to the Medicare bill and the effort to clear-cut old-growth timber in the Sierra Nevada and a whole host of issues, it is responsible for Members of the House to come and blow the whistle on this multiple corruption of the democratic process. And that is what we are here to do. Let me suggest there is a simple answer to some of these things, these issues that we are calling for. If the President would really initiate a thorough investigation of this, we could find out why this information was false and why we found out. But do my colleagues know what he did or his people did? When this mistake was found out about this yellow cake in his State of the Union address, we found out that his statement that they were trying to get yellow cake from Africa was false, when the administration found out that was a falsehood, it was pointed out by a gentleman named Joe Wilson, who was a former ambassador who was sent by the CIA to Africa to find out whether this assertion was true, and he concluded it was not and told the administration it was not; and then the President went ahead, and somebody gave it to him. I cannot believe he did it himself and put it in the State of the Union address. I am not faulting him for that specific failure. Somebody had to give that misinformation. But when his administration found out there had been a big mistake in the State of the Union address, one might think he might want to thank the person who helped him correct publicly this mistake because obviously none of us want to make any mistakes. We like to make sure what we are saying is credible. Does the gentleman know what the administration did? Instead, they tried to destroy the career of a CIA agent, who was Joe Wilson's wife, by outing her to destroy a citizen's career in public service who blew the whistle on this corruption of the democratic process. And that is wrong. And we are many months passed this issue, and the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the Western World, cannot find out who in his administration did that. I am not satisfied with that. I am not satisfied unless the President picks up his phone and says I want an answer by eight o'clock tomorrow morning who did this because they are fired. And he has not done that. This is a pattern that needs to be corrected.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it needs to be said, too, that our colleague who made the assertion that he had been offered essentially a $100,000 bribe or something akin to that to his son's election campaign was a Republican. This was a Republican Member, a colleague, who made this assertion, and that is why it is important to find out what happened in the situation. But I will tell Members why I am here at 11 at night and that is there is such a growing pattern of a corruption of democracy here in the Chamber that I have great respect for, the House of Representatives, the people's House. I am a relatively new Member to this Chamber, and it is troublesome to me and I can tell Members it is getting very troublesome to my constituents when they hear this repeated consistent drum beat of a corruption of the democratic process. It is not just one thing. It is the fact they do not let Members read the bill before they vote on it, which my people believe is a corruption of the democratic process, which happened in the Medicare bill. It is the fact that when they lose, they leave the time open for 3 hours to try to break arms, like the Russians did in the Olympic Games in the 1960s when we won the game and the Russian official just put another several seconds up on the clock. My people believe that is a corruption of the democratic process. And then during that 3 hours, according to a Republican colleague, he was offered a $100,000 bribe essentially to change his vote, which he had the moral integrity not to do, by the way, and remained a ``no'' vote solidly because he believed, I suspect, this is a bad bill, as we do. This is a pattern, and it is not just isolated to the Medicare bill. Let me tell Members about another couple of problems that trouble me. I serve on the Committee on Resources, and we had the Department of Agriculture people. They supervise our national forests. We found out due to some diligence of an investigative reporter, that of our hard- earned taxpayer money, this administration has spent almost $100,000 hiring a public relations firm to try to spin the public into accepting a forest plan that would allow more old-growth trees to be cut, which is against public sentiment in the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, and this PR firm advised the Department of Agriculture to keep it secret. It did not want the public to find out that they had spent $100,000 to spin the public. Their memo is a classic. He said we cannot tell the public because this is, quote, ``a matter of perception.'' We should not be spending $100,000 to create misperceptions or worry about perceptions. We ought to give the public the straight scope. That is not the only one. The Department of the Interior, I picked up The Washington Post and I see we have an investigation going on at the Department of the Interior of a gentleman who works for the Department of the Interior, who, on repeated occasions, essentially was associated with beneficial decisions for his former clients in the oil and gas industry to open up methane wells in Wyoming and in the Rocky Mountains when he was specifically ordered not to do it. Time after time, we are finding incidents where common sense and good practices of democracies are being violated. Let me go back to a fundamental tenet. We have disagreements in this Chamber, and our constituents have disagreements. They disagree on a lot of things and it is not unexpected that we would have disagreements about matters of great import. But Americans ought to be able to expect at least one thing from the administration and from the President: That is the truth. Even if they may disagree with it, they are entitled to the truth in exchange for paying their taxes, and they have not got it, repeatedly. I want to go down a list of some of those things. The President's administration told the American public and the U.S. Congress that the Medicare bill would cost about $460 billion. That was false; and more importantly, it was false and known to be false by this administration. To add insult to injury, not only was it known to be false, they ordered their own actuary to refuse to disclose this information to Congress. It is one thing to commit the sin of untruth and falsehood, it is a second sin to cover it up, which they have tried to do. That is falsehood number one. Number two, they used taxpayer money to phony up these videos, acting like it is a news report, saying it is a news reporter reporting live, Sally Smith or whatever her name was, hiring actors to act like they liked the Medicare bill; and seniors all over the country are rejecting this Medicare bill. They want to hire actors. It is a falsehood to do that, and they did this consciously. They cannot do that by negligence or mistake. They made a decision. Somebody who works for the President of the United States said, I am going to hire an actor to fake out the seniors of this country, consciously, intentionally, and it is wrong.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would posit that this is a great example of waste, fraud and abuse being perpetrated by this administration in trying to sell a pig in the poke to senior citizens who are not buying it, and it is waste, fraud and abuse in its most classical sense for at least three reasons. Number one, it is not working. Seniors listen to this and almost laugh at it. I was at a meeting put on by the local chapter of the AARP in Edmonds, Washington last week, and there were about 150 seniors there, 150 seniors who had listened to this ``gobbledy-gook'' put out by the administration, trying to sell this ad to them. Not one single person out of 150 seniors, not the lobbyists who they hire, but the real seniors who supposedly need to depend on real coverage, not one person bought this as a decent plan for them. And I have got to tell you, there was fire and vigor and youthfulness in that room because they were so angry at the government trying to sell them this wasted opportunity. So first thing is the waste, because it is not going to work, because seniors are not going to buy it. Second, it clearly is propaganda. I think the GAO has looked at this, General Accounting Office, and they cited several omissions, at least in the charitable sense of the term, of these advertisements not telling seniors what the real deal is; which is, number one, left out the fact they conveniently forgot that this legislation prohibited Uncle Sam from trying to try to get better drug prices for seniors, prohibited seniors from getting drugs from Canada, prohibiting reimportation in a safe way. Somehow they conveniently forgot that. It is waste because it is propaganda. The third is it is simply not true. Let me tell you, it seems like every week we hear about another abuse of governmental power here. But let me tell you about one I heard about just yesterday, and that was that this administration is sending out deliberately phony alleged videos that purport to be news accounts from news reporters which, in fact, were paid models and actors who were faking like they were doing a news conference. Now if that is not an abuse of government authority, I do not know what is. Right now, the General Accounting Office lawyers are investigating this abuse and I think they are going to find a violation. I will tell you why. This administration hired actors to pose as people. One of the people they hired, actors, who at the ending of this video that the administration is using our taxpayer dollars to send this around to all these local news stations around the country, and at the end they have this actor who says, ``In Washington, I am Karen Ryan reporting.'' Turns out she was just an actor on the take, paid for by this administration with our hard-earned dollars. It is a fraud. It is a fake. It is being investigated, and the administration should be ashamed of itself, not only for the substance of this bill which is insulting enough to seniors, but then they pay these people to fake seniors, to think there is cheering mobs out there. They pay these people to clap for this thing when we go out and talk to real seniors that I know think it is a bunch of garbage, politely speaking. So this is a perfect incidence of waste, fraud and abuse that I wish my Republican colleagues would write letters to the White House and tell them to knock it off because it is our taxpayers dollars that are being wasted here, and it is not going to work.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I pay tribute today to a dedicated veteran, father, teacher, advocate, musician, and athlete. His leadership and courage touched many lives, including my own, and it is my great honor to recognize and commemorate this extraordinary man. Robert B. Maier, was a model American citizen. He served in the U.S. Navy after graduating high school. Later, he taught American Studies and English at Mercer Island High School. A staunch advocate for public school and school employees, Bob worked in Washington State Capitol for 20 years. At the time of his death, he was chief lobbyist and director of public policy for the Washington Education Association. Beyond these accomplishments, one of the most important things about Bob was his enthusiasm for life. Anyone could see it in the way he was always learning new things. He loved to play basketball and music. He read books and solved cross-word puzzles. He took leadership roles in his community. He was a contributor. Bob's achievements and accomplishments speak to his tremendous love and respect for his community, friends, and family. I know he will be remembered by all those he touched. Our children are receiving a better education because of his long effort, for which we are deeply grateful.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it is with great sorrow that I rise on the House floor to mourn the passing of one of my past colleagues and personal friends. Although we all feel great loss with her passing and it is difficult to express grief for her family and all those who knew her, I would like to offer this tribute as a celebration of her many accomplishments. Representative Shirley J. Rector was a woman of spirit and principle. As one of the first women to work at Kaiser Aluminum, she took the bull by the horns and was elected as Steelworkers Union Local 338 legislative education chair and recording secretary. Even at that time, her dedication to making the world a better place was clear. Shirley was committed to public service. She was vice chair of the Democratic Central Committee. I am honored to have been her colleague when she served as a member of the State of Washington House of Representatives where she was instrumental in passing legislation for both the Shared and Family Leave Acts. She was also on the SIRTI Higher Education Board and was co-founder of the Women Helping Women Fund. No one who was there will ever forget her speech which electrified the House concerning family and medical care. I am humbled by these accomplishments and I am assured that her legacy of strong involvement in government and community has touched the lives of many.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I reclaim my time.

Mr. INSLEE. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I want to again reiterate I think there is a mutual desire to try to find the right language that will accomplish our mutual end, but this bill does not use the right language to do it. I want to respond to the gentleman from Florida's (Mr. Keller) statement that my situation was inappropriate. I think I would refer the gentleman to the language of section 5 which cuts off claims for a whole host of injuries including ``any health condition that is associated with a person's weight gain or obesity.'' Any health condition that is associated with a person's weight gain or obesity. The fact of the matter is if someone forgets to put the label on that says do not take this if you have high blood pressure, and you gain weight and your high blood pressure goes through the roof, you have a claim associated to your obesity. There is no reason to have to include that language. And if you are going to include that language, you ought to at least include the well- accepted principle of American jurisprudence in 50 States which is this: If someone refuses to honor the legal mandate for conduct that the U.S. Congress imposed due to inattention or negligence, there is legal responsibility for that. And for the first time as I know it, and I think the gun law is not applicable because that applied to creating an obligation through the obligation of exercising reasonable care, what this amendment does is say if Congress imposes an obligation to say X, Y or Z, it is not the jurors coming up with that obligation to say something on the label. We are simply saying if you do not follow the law, there is a responsibility. I am asking my colleagues to consider this closely for an additional reason. Yesterday, Julie Gerberding, the director of the Federal Center of Disease Control and Prevention said, ``Obesity is catching up to tobacco as the leading cause of death in America. If this trend continues, it will soon overtake tobacco. This is a tragedy,'' Gerberding said. ``We are looking at this as a wake-up call,'' suggesting that over 500,000 deaths annually will occur due to obesity. Now, in light of this scientific information, what is the first thing the House of Representatives does? It rushes to immunity for corporations, which may be appropriate in this particular case; but let us show a little care how we define which cases, so the people who die as a result of negligence and people asleep at the switch and their refusal to do what Congress told them to do are not swept up in this bill.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I think there is a bipartisan consensus here today that educated and informed consumers regarding what is in their food should not have a claim relating to obesity and that we would all attempt to write a law that will effectuate that goal. But as Mark Twain said, the difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightening and a lightning bug. And the difference between a well-crafted bill and one that misses the mark a little bit is the difference between a radical restructuring of civil liability law in the United States and a bill that we want to produce. And, unfortunately, this bill lacks two words. And our amendment would cure that defect. Mr. Chairman, it is a very well-accepted principle, if I can compare this scenario, it is a very well-accepted principle that in America if a person is inattentive for a few moments and violated a law by going through a stop sign, they are responsible to the injured party for the wreck. It is a very well-accepted principle that if a person who manufactures jet airplanes is inattentive for a moment, and they fail to put a bolt on an engine and the engine falls off and 250 people are killed, they are legally, or their corporation is legally, responsible for that violation of the law. It is clear at this moment that if an employee of a company is inattentive and puts the wrong information on the box of a food or a bench or a medical product and someone dies as a result, that corporation is liable for their inattention. But because of the absence of the word ``negligence'' in this bill, we would have removed liability for that very, very well-accepted principle. Let me tell you why that is important. Take the case of Steve Beckler, former pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles who took a product called Xenadrine RFA-1. It is a dietary supplement, and it appears to be covered under the definition of food of this statute or proposal. It was sold and Mr. Beckler died. It was advertised as having the quality of a rapid fat-loss catalyst. The medical examiner concluded that his death was a proximate result of this medication. Now, I do not know exactly about the circumstances of the warnings or lack of warning on that product; but under this bill as currently drafted without the Inslee amendment, if the clear testimony was that the label that said do not take this if you have high blood pressure was left off due to inattention, there would not be a responsibility. And the widow of this gentleman would be out of luck. If, in fact, someone violated the clear mandate of Congress or a State legislative body to give a specific warning that is identified in law, and if that warning did not get on the product, the victim would still be out of luck. And I want to make sure people understand this. By inserting the word ``negligence'' into this bill, we will not be giving jurors the right to determine what warnings or information should be on the product. That is not giving jurors that ambit. All this will say is if my good friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), and all of us get together and we pass a law that certain information has to be on the box, like do not take this weight loss supplement if you have high blood pressure, or do not take it if you have evidence of stroke or previous history of stroke, and due to someone's inattention or the fact that they were asleep at the switch or they just were not doing their job, the victim will not have a claim under law. And I do not think that is what the majority of us ought to be about if we are imposing this obligation. I ask the majority party, let me just pose this as a friendly question to my friends, if indeed we pass a bill here that requires, for instance, that a warning be on a weight-loss product that says do not take this weight loss product if you have an evidence of high blood pressure, and if an employee is asleep at the switch or is inattentive at the brief moment and the product goes out without the label and somebody dies, I am asking the majority party why the widow or family of such a victim who died as a result of an obligation we voted to impose in United States Congress, why do you intend to deny that person a remedy? That is an open question to anyone in the majority.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I want to respond to my friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin's (Mr. Sensenbrenner) appropriate reference to the idea of accountability because, as I said, we on a bipartisan basis ought to be able to craft a bill that appropriately says if a person has information about their food and they are not personally responsible and become obese due to their own lack of personal responsibility, they should not have a claim. And I am first to say that, or second or third. But there is another personal accountability that the way this bill is drafted ignores. And that is that if the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) and I both voted for a bill that imposed a personal legal responsibility to put on every package of phenadrine or any other product that you can think of that says do not take this if you have history of a stroke, and they do not do this, and this is not a jury-imposed obligation, it is one imposed by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) and myself, together, and they fail to do it, they ought to be held accountable because accountability and personal responsibility work two ways in our society. Hold the person who has information about fatty products and they get fat because they are irresponsible, hold them accountable and they have no claim, and this bill should accomplish that end. But for the person who refuses to abide by the mandate of this Congress what to put on food products, they should be held accountable for their lack of responsibility; and this bill clearly obviates that in the language that says ``any health condition that is associated with a person's weight gain or obesity.'' You are cutting off, perhaps unintentionally, claims for injury due to high blood pressure, stroke, cardiac arrest and a whole other group of diseases associated with weight gain. Frankly, I do not think you are intending to do that. Because if I think that you think your constituents, if somebody fouls up a label and they die due to a stroke, I do not think you intend to cut that off; but you are doing it. And it is unfortunate, and I wish you would help me fix it.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will continue to yield, just for a moment. I would suggest, too, that this is for the administration's own benefit. It is certainly for our citizens' benefit, but it is also for the administration's own benefit. When Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler, found out they were putting rebuilt engines in their Mustangs instead of new ones, he admitted that his organization had made a massive mistake and requested forgiveness of the American people. Frankly, it was granted. But it is difficult for the father of the Marine I had lunch with, whose son is now in harm's way in Baghdad, to grant forgiveness when even yet the President will not shoot straight about, number one, the cost of the Iraq war; or, two, not help us find out why we were given such massively inaccurate information. That just continues to fester a wound in the body public of this democracy. It would be to this administration's benefit to come clean about this information. And another thing that we want our conservative friends across the aisle to share a belief in is accountability. We hear a lot about accountability and personal responsibility on this floor, but when a war is started based on a false premise, as in this case and only one person has lost his job as a result of that, and that is a radio personality, nobody in this administration has lost their job, nobody has had their hand slapped, nobody has had their pay docked, nobody has had a single word from the President of the United States castigating them for sending our people, many of whom are not coming home from a war based on a falsity, this President needs to demand accountability from this government. As of today, he has given us zero accountability and only marginal help at finding the truth.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield, I would offer a theory perhaps as to why the administration has in numerous ways expressed kind of a tone deafness to the economic outcry to people going on concerned about their jobs. You saw the administrative report basically saying that outsourcing was not a problem at all, which the White House then tried to disavow, even though the President signed the report which said that, which I saw in the Washington Post today. You saw various efforts by the administration to teach businesses how not to pay overtime to American employees, which I thought was a little bit not what most people would expect of our government to do and use our taxpayer dollars, to teach people not to pay legally-owed overtime. That is distressing. So there is a lack of understanding, and I am not sure the administration understands the huge black cloud of doubt and worry out there, because the American people understand that even though there might be some good numbers out there in various economic indicators, the fact of the matter is, for the first time since Herbert Hoover was President, this President has not created one single net job in America, not one single net job in America. We have lost over 2.5 million jobs. We have got to get 2.5 million jobs back before we can even claim that one new job has been created on a net basis in this country. This has created enormous anxiety, as it should, in our Nation, that then affects the people.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I think it is important in this discussion to say we are as hopeful as credibility can allow for the ultimate outcome in Iraq. We are hopeful that this constitution in Iraq will bear benefits, that a stable government will develop in Iraq, that the Kurds will enter a federation and not end up in a civil war. We are hopeful that will happen. But what we are saying is we need the administration to be honest with us and the American people so we can deal with challenges at home, one of which is this jobs issue. We could be creating thousands of good-paying jobs by creating new infrastructure, but we cannot do that because this administration has not been forthright with us about the true cost of the Iraq war. One of the reasons that we are not growing jobs in this country in transportation infrastructure is because the President has refused to be honest with us about the cost of the Iraq war.

Mr. INSLEE

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

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, the sad fact is that our proud men and women are not being treated with adequate dignity and respect when they come back, and some do not come back from Iraq. There are a thousand frustrations that we have been hearing across the Districts. Let me just give you one. I think it is typical of what happened, a small instance. I have been working with the family of a soldier who was killed. He drowned in the Tigris River while trying to save an Iraqi policeman when they were on patrol. He died a hero in the service of his country. We tried to get his brother in from the Philippines to go to his funeral. You would not think that would be too much to ask when a man gave his life for his country and his family lost a husband and a son for their family. We could not even get the State Department to let his brother in for the funeral of this American soldier. Now, this was incompetence of the highest order. I want to point out two things from my District as I now meet with the families who are now sending their sons and daughters and husbands and wives in the biggest movement of American military since World War II. That is going on right now, and thousands and thousands of Reservists and National Guard personnel are leaving their families and their jobs to go to a multi-year mission that we have no definition how long it will be unfortunately, and what I hear from them is two things. Number 1, they believe that they deserve an administration that will shoot straight with them when it comes to their duty in this war, and I hear over and over again that they believe they are getting the short end of the stick because they are not getting the straight scoop even today about what is going on in Iraq. I will give you an example. I had lunch with a proud father whose son is a marine who is I think in Baghdad tonight, just left a few weeks ago, and he is proud of his son, rightfully so. But he told me in no uncertain terms that he has a very high level of anger that his son is going into harm's way on a war that was based and started on a false premise, a false premise about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he says what he is most mad about is even today, when we know that premise was false, that the President of the United States continues to stonewall an inquiry to find out what happened in this sorry state of affairs. That is what makes him angry; that when this Commission goes to look for this information, the President says, oh I do not have time, I will only give you an hour. He has time to go to rodeos; he has time to go to Ohio and time to fly to Florida, and he ought to have the time to answer the inquires of that father of that proud Marine who is in Baghdad tonight, and tell us why the Americans did not get the straight scoop when we went to Iraq? This man told me this, and I thought this was an interesting comment because I would not think he would be thinking about fiscal issues while his son is in Baghdad, but he told me that he is angered that even today, when we are hundreds of billions of dollars into the Iraq expenditure, that even today, when this administration has run up a $500 billion deficit, the largest deficit in American history and that is getting larger by the minute, even when we know we are going to be in Iraq for goodness knows how long, the President of the United States has not been square with the American people as to how much it is going to cost. We have a $500 billion deficit and we are spending billions of dollars today in Iraq. The President sends up to this Chamber a budget which is supposed to be an honest, forthright, meaningful prediction of the cost associated with running this government and he leaves out one thing, any money for fighting the Iraq war. Now, what does the White House think; that the American people do not know we are going to be spending billions of dollars in Iraq? This administration does not have the courage, I guess, to tell us how much it is going to cost or put $1 in their budget for it.