Kendrick Meek

Mr. MEEK of Florida

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars, and we have the outing of a CIA agent. We have an indictment for the first time in years.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. At that particular time only 11 subpoenas for Republicans. Under this administration, we are still getting that information. Far less. The Republican-controlled Congress, thousands upon thousands of hours of staff interviews of Clinton administration officials.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Can I role play for a minute for the Republican majority? What they are doing in response here in this House to what the gentleman has just pointed out that is public record, third-party validator, using the very words of these individuals. This is what the majority is doing. We read it in the paper. We are hearing it on the news. People all over the world are talking about these allegations. The indictment has quotes of individuals where they contradict one another as it relates to the outing of a CIA agent, but they are my friends. And even though they are not from my district and they did not vote for me, I have their back. Whatever the Democrats say and whatever they may write, or the ranking member of said committee of oversight that wants to review national security clearances for these individuals, I will do nothing to help in that environment to be able to bring about protection of national security clearance credentials for individuals that are questioned in these allegations. Not only will I not talk about it, I will not even have a hearing on it. As a matter of fact, I will not even allow a hearing on it. We would come to the floor and we would say, it is just the Democrats once again being negative, not being productive. All they can do is talk about things that are not of any consequence to national security. Now, that is what they are doing. That is what they are doing. If you ask the majority about oversight, you heard in the last hour we had a couple of hours ago, I read the record under the Clinton administration, 1,089 subpoenas of the Clinton administration for far less, for far less.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. If I can, can I just be the majority right now?

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Those are third-party validators that were actually CIA agents. Am I correct, sir?

Mr. MEEK of Florida. They will not have a choice because we handed it to them. We gave it to them. So the Republican majority once again uses this book. And the power that they have on the majority side to close the rule, the power the people gave to them, is to prevent us from saying, Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk that will replace the cuts that are made to veterans, that will replace the cuts made to child enforcement. Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk that will make sure that those oil companies that are celebrating historic record profits, that we not only talk about those record profits here in Congress, that we do something about it; and we make sure that those who cannot afford heating oil and LP gas this winter can receive a break on that. They stopped that from happening. So when you start talking about where are the Democrats, where are their ideas? Well, guess what? We are not going to tell you that last night at 10 p.m., while some of you all were home asleep, we got them good. We shut them down. We put forth a rule that they cannot even introduce their ideas. And you know why they did it? Because they might very well have lost some of their Members, who would have had to take this card out and put it in these machines behind these chairs and vote for their constituents and the American people.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to read Point No. 4. This paper is still a little warm because they just carried out this act. It states: ``Provide that the amendment printed in the Rules Committee report accompanying the resolution shall be considered as adopted.'' Why come to the floor tomorrow? We cannot offer an amendment.

Mr. MEEK of Florida

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Members for joining us here this hour. I look forward to being back on the floor, all of us, in one more hour when my colleague claims his hour so that we can continue sharing good information not only with the Members but the American people. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Democratic leadership for allowing us to have this hour.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. If my colleague will give out the Web site before we have to close.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Well, there is nothing more evident than the truth as it relates to this budget, and I mentioned earlier about holding the clock open and violating the spirit of the rules of the House when there is a 15-minute vote called. It is customary to give Members 5 extra minutes to get here to vote, but it is not customary to hold a clock open for 3 hours. Let me just say, October 7, 2005, Republicans held open a 5-minute vote on the Gasoline for America's Security Act for over 40 minutes to pass the energy bill, Republicans, which also passed by two votes because of the arm twisting. On November 22, 2003, the majority held open the vote for 3 hours, the longest in the history of the House of Representatives, on the prescription drug bill. Then on the Central American Free Trade Agreement on July 27 and 28, it has two dates because the clock was held open so long. For a 15- minute vote, the vote was held open for over an hour; and it passed on a 217 to 215 vote. Here is the evidence. It is in the Record. I do not need to enter it. It is already there. When you talk about how can this happen, how could this be allowed to happen in America, as we speak now, the Rules Committee is meeting in a dark room just above this Chamber, trying to figure out how they are going to come to the floor under the lights and the cameras and justify voting for a budget like this. I am wondering where the majority's letters are from Family U.S.A. that is saying that these Medicaid cuts that the House has, that it will cause enormous hardships out there. Where is their letter and support from the AARP, the largest retirement organization in the world, that is saying that they are against the Medicaid cuts because it will affect seniors? Where are their third-party validators, these nonpartisan groups? I have to question that because I cannot help think about what we are facing right now. We are facing allegations in the White House of outing a CIA agent and several other agents because someone thought that it would be politically right for them to share classified information about a clandestine agent with reporters. This is not what I am saying; this is what the indictment says. You know what I did get, not from help from the majority, but we finally got the list of the subpoenas that were issued under the Clinton administration versus the Bush administration. It saddens me to see that the Republicans can provide oversight when they want to. They can get to the bottom of what actually happened when they want to. I will tell you this, just one committee I am going to take, just one committee, the House Government Reform Committee issued over 1,089 subpoenas to the Clinton administration. That is the record. That is not my report; that is what the record reflects. Ninety-seven percent of those subpoenas were targeted towards the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party. Only 11 subpoenas for the Republicans, 11 out of 1,089. It goes on further to say that the GAO, this is the Government Accountability Office, examined the White House's efforts to provide documents to the Congress over an 18-month period from October 1996 to March 1, 1999. The Government Accountability Office found that during that period the White House staff spent, alone, over 55,000 hours responding to over 300 congressional requests, producing hundreds of thousand of pages of documents and videotapes and audiotapes to the Congress. They called 134 Clinton administration White House agency officials to hearings concerning allegations of the Clinton administration. The witnesses were called to appear before the committee and in public session, not secret session, but public session, so the American people can see it. The White House chief of staff and the counsel to the President, the counsel to the Vice President, all of them were called here, spent over 568 hours in depositions with staff. That is just with staff. They also provided discussions between the President and his advisers. President Clinton waived the executive privilege and allowed these advisers to testify before the committee about their discussions with him. Internal White House e-mails, over $12 million was spent to reconstruct those e-mails. Confidential conversations within the White House counsel's office were provided to the Congress, but now we have questionable intelligence that sent us to war. We have a CIA agent that has been outed, and this is what the Republican Congress does now. Well, we know that CIA agents are being outed, but we are not looking over there because our friends may be embarrassed. It may jeopardize national security, but that is not important. It is all about making sure that we stay in power and that we do not pay attention to what the American people constitutionally have asked us to do, to provide oversight and to give the American people a voice when wrongdoing is evident, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It is a shame. It is a shame that this is happening as we speak in this Congress.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, let me just say real quick, the gentleman said, when it passes the House floor tomorrow, and I think the reason why you said that, because I know personally that the gentleman has watched on 3, 4, 5 major votes, that 20 minutes into the vote, 30 minutes into the vote, 1 hour into the vote, 90 minutes into the vote, the arm-twisting, the squeals, the cries from this side of the aisle of individuals getting hammered, literally, with their hands on the table saying that you will vote for this. You will vote for this. And that is the reason why the gentleman is speaking in those terms, ``when it passes.'' But I am going to say something. I believe in the spirit of the American people. I hope it rises up tomorrow in a way that it should rise up against this very bad budget. I hope that we can adopt the Democratic budget that is sensible, that put us on the trail for fiscal responsibility by 2015, to make sure that we prioritize on behalf of Americans and not on behalf of special interests. So you are 110 percent right. If things happen at all the way it appears here under this Republican majority, it will pass. It will pass because they will literally make their Members vote for it.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. I know you have a point there. I just want a point of clarification. Point of clarification. I did speak correctly, Mr. Speaker, when I said that the chairman, the past chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Republican, was not only removed as chairman, but kicked off of the committee. They did not even want his thoughts on the committee because he stood up for veterans. He stepped out of line. He stepped out of line. Chairman Smith, Chris Smith stepped out of line, because he did what he thought was right. I am holding in my hand, and I am sorry, but I just wanted to share that because we were making a point earlier and I said he was off the committee, and then folks were looking around. I knew that I was correct. Here is the legislative directory for the 109th Congress. It has the names of the members on the committee, and I do not blame the Members. I am talking about the leadership. But there are two spots there that say vacancy, vacancy. One of those vacancies was the past chairman of that committee who was a Republican that could no longer stomach doing what the Republican leadership was asking in this House for him to do.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Yes.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. If the gentleman will yield, even more, not only was he removed as chairman; he was taken off the committee. I think he was taken off the committee as it relates to being the chairman. I am not just talking about being off the committee, taken out of the chairmanship. But that is what you get when you stand up against the machine.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. That is what happens to so many individuals that stand up against the machine.

Mr. MEEK of Florida

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I will tell my colleague right now, higher copayments, higher premiums, and benefits are going to be reduced. That is the bottom line. It does not get better for the seniors; it gets worse. It gets better for those who are on the side of the Republican majority, because I am going to tell you right now, if you are a special interest group, you do not even have to grab the mike and come to committee. Do not worry. The leadership on the opposite side of the aisle, they have your back. Do not worry, do not say anything, oil industry. Billionaires, do not say anything; we have you. We are going to make sure you are okay. Do not worry about it; you do not have to fight. They were talking about a group within the Republican Conference, or I should say it is the entire Republican Conference, that has come up with a budget that is making cuts across the board for everyday Americans. Not a mumbling word, not a mumbling word about billionaires. The gentleman from Ohio just had a chart up of Americans making over half a million dollars. Not a mumbling word to just say, you know, we need 3 percent of what we have given you to not only balance the budget, but soften the cuts on everyday Americans.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Taxpayers' money.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. No-bid contract.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, let me just on another note that I know we all share. Our hearts and prayers go out to those tornado victims in the Knight Township in Indiana and other victims of that tornado. Mr. Speaker I know that the whole House, we are in solidarity with hopefully their fast recovery from this natural disaster, and with that, I know that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) has the honors of the Web site and closing us out.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. The American people have been told a lot of things as it relates to what is going to happen and what is not going to happen in Iraq. They have been told a lot of things. We have been told that the oil will pay for reconstruction, the oil will pay for military costs; and I can tell you right now what is very unfortunate. We have men and women, I have 21 military installations in my State alone, three combined, three unified commands in my State. We have a number of Guard and Reserve troops. We have 80,000 active duty individuals in my State, servicemen and women, including their families, and a number of them are deployed at this time. Some of them are engineers that are working in Sadr City and, you know, doing infrastructure work and fresh drinking water and building schools and doing all of that. We had them before the Armed Services Committee the other day. But as it relates to the incompetence and the cronyism of contracting, and the abuse and the awarding of incompetence and cronyism, that is overshadowing the work that these men and women are doing on the ground. They are saying, No one is paying attention to what we are doing. And I said, Yes, there are some people that are paying attention to what you are doing, and you are doing a fine job. One thing I can say about the military, they do what they are told. If their country tells them to do something, they do it. It is not, well, you know, I do not know. Maybe I will do it. No, that is not the case. No, they do it. And that is the reason why, regardless of how you may feel, you know, about the reasoning behind why we are in Iraq or not, we have got to respect those individuals. I do not see anyone that does not. But when you have the incompetence and the cronyism from the top, from the folks that are wearing the suits and ties and being driven around here in motorcades making the decisions, it squashes the goodwill that those men and women are doing. And so it is important for us to really pay attention to these secret areas of torture that our taxpayer dollars are involved in. Someone may say, well, those are potential terrorists or they are identified terrorists. Why would we care about how they are treated or if they are tortured? This is the reason why you care. And I want to make sure the Members understand this. You care when a U.S. soldier is caught or detained by an insurgent, that they will not be treated in a way that is inhumane, that they will not be tortured and that we do not have to see on the 6 o'clock news a family crying because they fear that they will go through some of the acts that have taken place in secrecy under this administration. It goes to the incompetence. It goes towards making sure that you carry out your leadership acts. And there have been cries, fortunately, out of this Congress denouncing that kind of activity. When we talk about what the American people have been told, that is a big part of the problem. The American people are not being leveled with. What we are saying on this end, on this side of the aisle, is that we can do better together and we are stronger together when we work together; and we are willing, and the record has shown, in a bipartisan way. And we talked about Social Security. We talked about how Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan came together to save Social Security in a bipartisan way, not, you know, Tip O'Neill going off in his corner and saying, We will let you in on it when we feel like it, after we have it written, okay? Or President Reagan at the same time saying, Well, I do not have the authority of the legislative branch but through an executive way I am going to make you do it the way I want you to do it. Conversations went on not just over coffee, but over U.S. policy, and that is not what is happening right now, gentlemen. When this budget, if it passes this House and they go into what we call a conference committee with the Senate budget and the House budget, I guarantee you, I guarantee you $20, and I am not too much of a betting man, but I am going to tell you this. I guarantee you that the Democratic conferees that are supposed to be at the table will not be invited. It will not be a conference. You can talk to Mr. Rangel, the ranking member of Ways and Means. He is walking around here, they are saying they are meeting in conference. What? No one told me about the meeting; I did not get a notice. We talk about the spirit of the House. We have to make sure that we move in a way that the American people want us to move. This is truth, not fiction. When the gentleman from Massachusetts talks about what we are being told, there are a lot of things we are being told. It is just not true. We were told that the White House had nothing to do with the outing of the CIA agent. Then later we find out that they had everything to do with outing a CIA agent. Not one member of the administration subpoenaed, not one person called from The White House to this House of Representatives and the said committees to answer the question, how could this happen? Why has it happened? Not one individual, outside of Mr. Libby, who I would assume that his national security clearance has been taken by now, has been called on the carpet on other information that has leaked out of the White House that has jeopardized national security. This is serious stuff. So when we talk about what people are saying, or what we are being told, the real issue and the reason why the American people sees the President at a 37 percent approval rating and this Republican- controlled House is between 35 and 31, that is the reason why, because they don't believe what we tell them, especially on the majority side, because it ends up not being the truth once it is all ironed out.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Half a million dollars.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. China.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. That is what you get. You are hitting it right on the head. Here is the real issue here. In the Armed Services Committee, you start talking about strategy for success or you start talking about an exit strategy or what is the strategy, what is the coalition strategy, it is why are you asking questions? What you are talking about? Cutting and run? No. We are talking about running responsible government. That is what we are talking about.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I am going to tell you that it is important that we do start asking some of the tough questions, that we do start pressing the card.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. It does not take 2 years.