Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is all I am hanging on to. But it was a great game, and you have got a great coach and a great team, and see you on the basketball court.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman from Florida would yield, I am happy to take my whooping like a man, Mr. Speaker. And let me just say to you, Mr. Speaker, and any of the other Members who may be Buckeye fans, not only was the game horrible, a complete whooping, but then I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was I called Mr. Meek, and I said, ``Mr. Meek, I had a terrible dream last night. It was awful. Let me tell you about it.'' And he reminded me that it actually happened. And then our first meeting this morning, I ran into Ms. Wasserman Schultz, who was in her beautiful outfit that she has on now but also the University Florida Gator glasses, and her Coke this morning had a little cozy on it that was also blue and orange. So she is very humble about her victory last night. And the only thing I can say is that the coach of Florida is an Ohioan, born just a few miles outside of my district. That is all I am hanging on to.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I want to interject myself in the spirit of debate that we are having here, and want to thank both sides for making this a bit more fun than normal. But we heard a couple of words here today, one of them was ``bitterness,'' one of them was ``market forces,'' and one was ``business.'' If you look at the Republican-controlled Congress and you look at running the government like a business, I think you fail on all accounts. I think when you talk about losing $9 billion in Iraq, and no one knows where it is, that is not running government like a business. When you look at all of the waste, this government is being run like it is 1950 with misleading information. Now we are moving into a new economy, knowledged-based and information-based, and the government has not changed at all. All of the guys who came in here with Newt Gingrich in 1994, you may remember the big Republican revolution, we are going to balance the budget, we are going to run this thing like a business, we are going to have a smaller government, you are talking about a trillion dollar Medicare drug program, and you have to go back to your conservative base and you have to tell them that you passed it without any ability to negotiate down the drug prices. Good luck in the next 5 weeks. You have to go back to them and say we are for free markets. But when we ask to get reimportation into this country from Canada and some of the G-7 countries to drive the prices down, you all were against it. That is not worshiping the free market like you normally do. There are a lot of contradictions going on here, and I think we need to point this out to the American people. Another thing that I think is even more important, as you guys move away from what your rhetoric is, is that this President and this Congress has borrowed more money from foreign interests than every single President in Congress before you. That is not conservative Republicanism. That is not running your government like a business. If we don't get past all this rhetoric and doing something else, we are not going to be able to move the country forward. All of these games, we are now competing with 1.3 billion citizens in China and 1 billion citizens in India; hard-core brutal competition, and we are not investing back into the American people. We cannot even give them a slight pay raise. When you guys have given this Congress $30,000 in pay raises, you can't even raise the minimum wage. We have to invest in these people. You can't compete with 300 million people against the whole globe and say just a small fraction of our society is going to be able to compete. If you can afford to go to a good private university, if you can afford the tuition, then you are going to be just fine. If you are a trust fund baby, you are going to be just fine. Let us invest in the American people. We need everybody on the field playing for us. And I think Mr. Obey's frustrations is that day in and day out you guys go to great lengths to walk the planks for your political donors. That's the bottom line. You can't argue away from negotiating down drug prices. And thank God in your case for Wal-Mart. They saved you with Katrina bringing water down and making sure it got in. Thank God for Wal-Mart. If it was not for them, we would really be in a trick. Their $4 prescriptions are going to be helpful, and down in Katrina they were the ones getting the water in when FEMA was like a three-ring circus. That is not running government like a business. So get your actions to match your rhetoric, and we will all be able to get along a lot better. Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. You are talking about letting the free market work. You shut down. You have a closed market with pharmaceuticals. We wanted to allow reimportation in from Canada; you wouldn't allow that. And if the free market was working, just like Wal-Mart, I am sure they are buying in bulk and using the negotiating power of Wal-Mart, just like they do on everything else to keep the prices down. You are not allowing the free market to work.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Just to clarify to the gentleman from Texas, our frustration is as the gas prices were high, you all were putting $12-15 billion in corporate subsidies to the oil companies while they were having record profits. That's the frustration.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlelady from Florida and my good friend, the chairman from Pennsylvania, for all of his leadership on this committee and many other issues in Congress. I am honored today, Mr. Speaker, to sponsor H.R. 6051 to name the Federal building and courthouse in Akron, Ohio, after Congressman John Seiberling, who served in the House from 1970 to 1987. I am also humbled that over the last 5 years I have come to know Mr. Seiberling as a friend, as a mentor and as a role model for I think what it truly means to be a dedicated and distinguished public official. In Ohio, and in particular in my congressional district, Mr. Seiberling is among the most respected and loved leaders of the last century, and it is a distinction that is well-deserved. During his 16 years of service in the House, he has an endless list of legislative achievements, as you heard here earlier tonight, including the bill that constructed this Akron Federal building. He also was a champion of civil rights and workers' rights. Most notably, he successfully sponsored and passed dozens of bills addressing conservation and environmental protection which continue to benefit our Nation here today. From protecting wilderness areas to authorizing the legislation of the American Conservation Corps, to establishing the only national park in the State of Ohio and the Cuyahoga Valley, which actually kept Akron and Cleveland from growing together, he demonstrated a long-term vision which is seldom seen in politics today and leadership and ability. Even after leaving Congress, he remained one of our Nation's advocates for conservation and environmental protection. So it is no surprise that he was nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 and in January 2001 received the Presidential Citizens Medal. But as important, John Seiberling distinguished himself in his community, Ohio, and this body through civility, kindness, and a genuine respect for all people. And it was interesting, as I was beginning to offer this piece of legislation, to talk to several current Members of Congress who were staffers when Mr. Seiberling was a Member of Congress, and each of them said that he treated the staffers as he treated the Members of Congress, which I think is a sign of class and kindness that is to be respected here today. Since introducing this bill, not only did I hear these stories, but I also heard many other stories from staffers and colleagues and others, and there is yet to be a conversation with any of these Members where Mr. Seiberling didn't end his conversation with a ``thank you'' or a ``please'' or ``thank you for your assistance,'' going above and beyond the kind of respect that most people offer. In 2001, when Mr. Seiberling received the Presidential Citizens Medal, he called many of his former staffers, one of whom is my chief of staff now, Mary Anne Walsh, to ask them to join him at the White House ceremony because he said: ``I am receiving this award because of your hard work, your talents, your dedication. And that made it all possible for us to make a difference during my congressional career.'' That statement represents the essence of the man John Seiberling is. When John first ran for Congress in 1970, he had a slogan that said: The guts to do what is right. And for those of us who know John Seiberling, I am certain we will all agree that John never needed the guts to do what is right; it is just who the man is. And so, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Young, Ranking Member Oberstar, Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member Norton, Ms. Brown for handling the time here tonight and helping me with this legislation to help move this bill through the committee and to the floor so quickly. President Kennedy said in the great speech he gave at Amherst College that this Nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but by the men it honors. And I think this is a very appropriate response to honor Mr. Seiberling to reflect the importance and the greatness of this Nation.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the single most important thing this administration and this Republican Congress can do to keep us safe is immediately implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, but this President and this Congress have failed to do so. So what do we get instead? We get a bloody and costly war. We get incompetent leadership. We get Republican leadership in the House, the Senate and the White House that gets 5 Fs and 12 Ds from the 9/11 Commission. We get a Secretary of Defense that says that the next person that brings me a postwar plan, or asks us to do so, is going to get fired, and then no one in the administration gets fired for all the bumbling that goes on with this war. Not only do some of them not get fired, the Assistant Secretary of Defense actually got a promotion to the World Bank. What else do we get? We get a report from a nonpartisan Intelligence Committee that said this war has made us less safe. We get $8 billion a month getting sent to a black hole. We are borrowing more money from foreign interests than we ever had. This President has borrowed more money from foreign interests than every President before him. Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is this. This President, this Congress and his policies have made us less safe, not more safe.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it is so important that we keep going back to this national intelligence estimate that was done by over a dozen professionals who have been involved in this field, Republican and Democrat, overseen by Republicans. It says, ``The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded,'' and this is very important, ``it has expanded from a core of al-Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of self-generating cells inspired by al-Qaeda's leadership, but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.'' So what we have done, so what we have done is we have spread this, diffused this radical ideology into self-generating cells that will be able to look, assess, and potentially attack the United States in a very decentralized way, which makes it even more difficult for us to try to combat it. Now, this is another quote from the article. I believe this is the New York Times article. ``In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists.'' So it is now a training ground, it is now a practice field for new terrorists, ``and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake al-Qaeda's current leadership in the constellation of the global Jihad leadership.'' We now are creating competing interests between al-Qaeda and these veterans of the Iraq war. We have turned this into a way for these terrorists to go to Iraq and basically become decorated in their way in this own demented movement that they have. And we all agree that it is demented and it does not make any sense, and they are fanatics and everything else. But what we are trying to do is say, let's be smart about this. And their approach has caused us more grief, created more terrorists, and put us at more risk. The United States is less safe today than we were a few years ago because of the way this administration has conducted this war. Now, if we had got rid of Saddam Hussein, and that would have been it, and we would have secured Iraq and built this democracy there, that is one thing. But that did not happen. Now we have a Secretary of Defense, it finally comes out that he said, the next person that asks me about a post-war plan will be fired. So we have got an estimate saying that this war is actually increased the number of terrorists, and then at the same time, and we know part of it is because it has taken so long to secure the country. Then we found out the Secretary of Defense said, well, the next person that asks for a post-war plan is going to be fired. Wrong.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I do not recall ever seeing General Eaton. Because I do not know where to start with what happened on Monday, September 25, 2006, which just so happens to be today with the hearings on the other side from the Democratic Policy Committee with these separate generals who are there, but I want to share with the American people and I want to share with the Speaker and other Members of this House some of the quotes that came out of there. I think this is important because we already have a national intelligence estimate saying that this country is less safe because of the war in Iraq, and then I am going to my friend from Florida who I know has some points to make, too. Less safe, okay, so now we go into what the testimony of some generals who are on the ground had to say. This is General Batiste, who Mr. Delahunt referenced earlier. This guy used to be the senior military assistant to former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who is now with the World Bank. He got a promotion for his great work in Iraq. He ``charged that Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration `did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq.' '' ``He told the committee, `If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents.' '' He ``charged in his testimony that Rumsfeld `is not a competent wartime leader' and surrounded himself with `compliant' subordinates.'' `` `Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build ``his plan'' which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace and set Iraq for up for self-reliance,' Batiste said.'' ``In addition, Rumsfeld `refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency.''' The retired general said, ``At one point,'' and this is the apex of incompetency, ``At one point he threatened to fire the next person who talked about the need for a post-war plan.'' Now, we have all been involved in some form of leadership, whether it was in athletics or in politics or in business or whatever the case may be. To just not plan for an insurgency in a war is unacceptable. But then to say that whoever wants to talk about a plan is going to be fired is the height of incompetence.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you. When you don't plan, when you don't follow through, when you don't have an exit strategy, that is what happens. So, my friend, what do we do when you have an administration and a Congress that are so reckless and so ill prepared for what the consequences are going to be that that happens? You have the Iraqi leaders and the Iranian leaders shaking hands and building alliances. We could see it coming. You can see it coming. Do you reward them with re-election? Do you say the people who got us into this position, we are going to ask them to come in and clean it up too? It has been bad preparation. It has been misleading information up to the point that ultimately leads to this. And no one has been fired. And as Mr. Murtha said so eloquently, not only hasn't anybody been fired, but the members and the architects of this have been promoted. Mr. Wolfowitz, who was Under Secretary of Defense, is now with the World Bank. He got a promotion. Mr. Rumsfeld is still there. All the underlings are still there.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. Www.housedemocrats.gov/30something.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it is important. Again, this is a third- party validation from the national intelligence estimate. This is not us talking. Time and time again we find out there are these other people that are giving us information. This is not information coming out of the Democratic Caucus, and I want to read some assessments that are almost unbelievable, things that we have been saying, but finally now the best and the brightest of the national security teams across the countries, the spy agencies, professionals in the business are saying this. They are saying that although the intelligence officials agree that the United States has damaged al Qaeda, which we have, probably through Afghanistan more so than Iraq, the original front that we all agreed on, that we disrupted their abilities to plan and direct major operations, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized. We poured gasoline on a fire when we went into Iraq, and we need to make that point. Many of the new cells, the NIE conclude, have no connection to any central structure and arose independently. The members of the cells communicate only among themselves and derive their inspiration, ideology and tactics from the more than 5,000 radical Islamic Web sites. They spread the message that the war in Iraq is a western attempt to conquer Islam by first occupying Iraq and establishing a permanent presence in the Middle East. What we have to realize here and I think what the President needs to realize and the lack of oversight by the Republican Congress, what we need to realize here is that it is not our view that matters, it is what do they think? How do they see our response? If average people in the Middle East see us as being detrimental to their interest, their ideology spreads. So this attempt in Iraq has really poured gasoline on the fire. I think at the end of the day, it has made us less safe. And it is not our saying it. I think we need to make this point very clearly. Is Saddam Hussein being gone a good thing? Yes. But overall, take a step back and look at the big picture. If you are creating thousands and thousands of more terrorists who are decentralized and spread across the world who are looking to hit the United States and make the bull's eye much bigger, I think it is important to say this administration clearly has made the United States less safe. And as citizens of this country, we can't be afraid to say that. They have made us less safe, period, dot, Mr. Meek. Less safe. Not me, not Kendrick Meek, not Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not Bill Delahunt, not Nancy Pelosi, not Harry Reid, not Chuck Schumer, but independent professionals have made this assessment and said that the war in Iraq has made the country less safe. And even those people who said maybe it was a good idea to go in, it was the administration and the execution afterwards that has made us less safe because we went in there with no plan. We went in there without enough troops. We went in there and didn't do the job. We went in there without the proper approach to figure this whole thing out. And at the end of the day, it is not our saying it, and I take no pride in saying that we are less safe now because our constitutional obligation, when we swear and put our hand up, is to make sure that we protect this country. I take no pride in this, but what we have to do is take this information and fix it. And the Republican majority has made no attempts to try to fix this. Everything has been politics, Mr. Delahunt. Everything has been, how do we smooth this over? How do we make this look good? How do we come out and stay the course and put a banner up ``Mission Accomplished''? And when that banner does not work, you put up another banner and then another banner, and you have people come to the floor. Things are not going well in Iraq. Let us admit that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman from Florida will yield, I think the point here is this: Was this the intention of this administration? Was this the intention? Of course it was not. So we don't want to misstate anything. The intention of the war in Iraq was not to somehow build an alliance between Iraq and Iran.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 461, on Ordering the Previous Question providing for the consideration of the bills (H.R. 4830) Border Tunnel Prevention Act of 2006, (H.R. 6094) Community Protection Act of 2006 and (H.R. 6095) Immigration Law Enforcement Act of 2006, I am not recorded, due to an injury I sustained the night of September 19, 2006 and my subsequent visit to the hospital this morning. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.'' Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 462, on Agreeing to the Resolution providing for the consideration of the bills (H.R. 4830) Border Tunnel Prevention Act of 2006, (H.R. 6094) Community Protection Act of 2006 and (H.R. 6095) Immigration Law Enforcement Act of 2006, I am not recorded, due to an injury I sustained the night of September 19, 2006 and my subsequent visit to the hospital this morning. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.'' Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 463, on motion to suspend the rules and pass the Military Personnel Financial Services Protection Act, I am not recorded, due to an injury I sustained the night of September 19, 2006 and my subsequent visit to the hospital this morning. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Any time I can have an opportunity to give you more chance to speak directly to the American people, I will step up and I will take that opportunity, because I think the American people need to hear what you have to say.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. They want what you are giving them, Mr. Meek. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much, and the staff that stays here with us so late every night. Thank you, Mr. Delahunt, who, as we know, is several years older than the 30-Something Group. We know how tired he gets. Thank you, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a great leader in Congress.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay respect and tribute to Mr. George Silvestri, who passed away on July 6 at the age of 87. George Silvestri was born in Youngstown, OH in 1919 and graduated from East High School. After high school George served in the U.S. Army under General Patton for 4 years and earned the rank of sergeant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After his discharge in 1945, he returned home to Youngstown and soon after married Elvira DeCato. George applied his experience serving his country to serving the Mahoning Valley by forming a construction company with his brothers, Frank and Anthony. The Silvestri Brothers Construction Company later expanded to a number of different companies that focused on a wider range of development and construction. These construction companies contributed to some of the most well known projects in the 17th District, such as the Delphi Packard plant in Warren, the GM Assembly plant in Lordstown, and General Electric in Ravenna. In addition to these sites, the Silvestri Brothers's companies were instrumental in developing and building interstates and expressways throughout the Mahoning Valley, as well as western Pennsylvania. Aside from these larger endeavors, Mr. Silvestri and his brothers developed sewer and water line projects, as well as residential development in and around the Youngstown area. This small- and large- scale infrastructure was crucial to the growing economy of the Mahoning Valley. His companies laid not only the foundation for businesses and transportation throughout the 17th District, but also for future entrepreneurs in the Mahoning Valley. A member of the Ohio Contractors Association, the Trumbull County Builders Association, and the National Italian American Federation, George Silvestri retired in 1984. Mr. Silvestri's legacy in the Mahoning Valley will live on through his work and the many people who have benefited from his contributions. I am honored to have represented George Silvestri and he will be missed.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As you were talking, and we have all reviewed the Constitution, one of the things I found very interesting as I was reading this is the very beginning, the ``We the people'' paragraph. `` . . . in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,'' and then this last little phrase here hit me: ``provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.'' The general welfare. Not the special interest groups, not the oil companies, not the energy companies, not the pharmaceutical companies, but the general welfare, Mr. Speaker. And that is what we are here to do is provide for the general welfare. And I think next year in January, when we agree as a caucus to elect a Member of this Chamber, an elected Member in Ms. Pelosi, we can move in that direction, our constitutional obligation to provide for the general welfare. www.HouseDemocrats.gov/30something. All of the charts and the rubber stamp and everything are on the Web site for people to access. HouseDemocrats.gov/30something.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman, and I want to thank the leader again because I think you are exactly right. This is in the Congressional Record. This is not a campaign promise on the stump somewhere across America. This is right here with the stenographer taking down the words and making sure this is recorded for posterity. I think the reason this is possible, Mr. Meek, the reason that this first 100 hours is possible and why it will happen, is because our leadership has gone to great lengths over the past couple of years to unify our caucus. Never before has the Democratic Caucus been more unified in support of basic legislative initiatives which we can actually move on. What has happened for years and years is we tend to always talk about what divides us. We come down here and we are critical of the administration, but what we want to do as leaders is figure out what can unite us. Ms. Pelosi has done that not only in this caucus, but also with the Senate, also working with Harry Reid in the Senate and their leadership for a new direction for this country. So it is very important. I was corrected by a good friend of mine, Mr. Mack from Florida, about the ability of someone to be appointed to this body. No Member can be appointed, but the general membership can appoint a Speaker, and the Speaker doesn't necessarily have to be a Member of this body, so I am told. And so someone can be appointed to this body to oversee it. Now, someone on the other side should think about maybe looking at that and taking advantage of it. But I know when we get elected and we take over this Congress, I know it is going to be Ms. Pelosi who is going to be our Speaker. I yield to my friend, and I thank my friend, and I look forward to seeing you next week back here again with all of your skills and rhetoric and commitment.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to thank Mr. Meek. There is no question about it, Mr. Meek. And whether you are dealing with the environment, whether you are dealing with the oil industry, the energy industry, whether you are talking about the pharmaceutical industry, you have got it. And I think Mr. Gingrich has said it best. And we are joined with a guest here, a special guest for the 30- somethings. And I just want to share, Madam Leader, real briefly, on July 13 what even Newt Gingrich is saying, the third-party validator, Mr. Speaker, about lack of leadership here in the United States Congress. He said, ``When facing a crisis at home and abroad, it is important to have an informed independent legislative branch,'' created by Article I, section 1 of the Constitution, ``coming to grips with this reality and not sitting around waiting for Presidential leadership.'' It is time for this body to step up and start leading. And with that I yield to our fearless leader, Ms. Pelosi from California.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you so much. It is an honor to have you down here with us. We come here a lot, and to be graced with your presence, I think it is important what the leader said about what we can do not within the first 100 days, but within the first 100 hours. They are some very basic, simple steps. We talk about just the average person, what changes will happen in their own lives if their student loan rates are cut in half and the minimum wage is raised within the first 100 hours. That is a significant impact on people around the country. It is not that we are going to wave some magic wand, but we are going to do the people's business. With the gentlewoman's leadership, it is going to be an exciting time. Mr. Speaker, you see excitement among Democrats about some alternatives. We have some challenges, but any time you challenge the American people, they seem to step up. I know Ms. Pelosi will provide us with that leadership.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity, and I would like to thank Leader Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn and also John Larson, our Vice Chair, the leaders of our caucus, for the opportunity to come down here and speak to other Members of this body about the issues of the day. Day in and day out, as we continue to have debates here on the floor of the House of Representatives, one of the main topics here and back in our districts is the issue of the war in Iraq, the issue of the standing, on the stature of the United States of America and the opinion of those around the world of us, and the need for us to build coalitions across the globe in order to fight this global war on terror. We have major differences. We have had major differences, and we continue to have major differences in this body, in the body that is created by Article I, section 1 of the United States Constitution, as to how we should administer and execute this war on terror. The Bush administration has tried to implement their philosophy with the war in Iraq, and I must say, Mr. Speaker, that their actions have created more terrorists in the world, it has made the bull's eye on the United States bigger, and it has completely almost eliminated the goodwill that was given to this country from around the globe after 9/ 11. Many Members of this Chamber can remember the editorials and foreign newspapers where some were saying that today we are all Americans after 9/11. Today we are all Americans. That political capital that we had, that goodwill that we had, was squandered by a very divisive policy, a policy that was based on misinformation, was misleading. As the days and the weeks and the months go by, we continue to see time and time and time again how this administration misled the Congress and misled the American people. And if we had a huge intelligence failure on 9/11, it only makes sense to be very, very careful before believing the intelligence that is then being presented to you for the war in Iraq. This issue is the defining issue. The President can continue to try, Mr. Speaker, to somehow change the topic, somehow try to change the debate to something that may be more favorable. But when you look at what is happening with our foreign policy and with our domestic policy, you will see that the American people are moving in a direction away from the President of the United States. They no longer, as Mort Zuckerman said, they no longer give the President the benefit of the doubt. And when the President loses the benefit of the doubt, the President loses the kind of authority and persuasive nature, basic nature of the office. So let's talk about what is going on here. This war in Iraq has made us less safe. It has given us more terrorists in the world. It has increased the polarization. And if you look just on the front page where we have the President being called a devil, which I don't necessarily agree with, being called a devil at the United Nations, now, we can all at least say that that kind of rhetoric, although it is not helpful, signals the kind of discontent that there is out there in the world for the United States of America. When you are fighting a global war on terror, Mr. Speaker, you need friends. You need people who are going to help you. You need assistance from all quarters, whether you are a Democrat or whether you are a Republican, whether you are a Member of the United States Congress or you are a member of a parliament in Europe or South America. You need help. We can't fight this global war on terror by ourselves, so we need to engage the international community. We need to engage the international community. I want to share with the American people some of what is going on. We are going to start with what is going on with the money. We can see here what the war in Iraq is currently costing the American taxpayers, $8.4 billion per month. It is costing the American people, this war on terror, $1.9 billion per week, $275 million per day, $11.5 million per hour. This is to fund what is going on in Iraq. And this has basically put us in the middle of a civil war. Only about 7 percent of the fighters in Iraq are al Qaeda types. The rest are Sunni and Shia, and they are fighting with each other, with the American soldiers right in the middle of the mix. We found out 2 weeks ago that Secretary Rumsfeld said that he would fire the next person who asked for a post-war plan. Now, Mr. Speaker, we can agree and disagree on a lot of things here, but when you have the Secretary of Defense say to some of his underlings that the next person that asks me about a post-war plan will be fired, that goes right to the heart of the leadership of the Pentagon, the leadership of the Defense Department. How do you go into a war with no post-war plan? This was a mistake to begin with. And then at the end of the day you start hearing about all the ties between al Qaeda and Iraq that didn't end up to be true. Then you find out the Secretary of Defense didn't want anybody to submit any kind of post-war plan at all to him, or the next one that did would be fired. It goes to the question of what kind of leadership are we getting here. And when you have this cowboy diplomacy that we have had for years in the United States of America, you know, the ``Axis of Evil'' comments, and ``we are going to smoke them out,'' and ``bring it on,'' and ``mission accomplished,'' and you have major magazines saying it is the end of cowboy diplomacy, well, when you look at the comments of some of the foreign leaders, calling the President of the United States a devil, it doesn't seem like they think this is the end of cowboy diplomacy. So we have all got to move forward on this issue, Mr. Speaker, and we have got to somehow figure out together how we are going to do this. One of the things that the Democrats want to do when we take over the House in January is to start having some hearings, to start providing some oversight. If we could get that quote from Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich, the former Speaker, the man who led the Republican revolution in 1994, said in the Wall Street Journal column he wrote a couple of weeks ago that the only way to begin to fix this is to have an honest assessment of what is going right and what is going wrong in the intelligence, NSA, the war in Iraq. But if we don't have an honest assessment, if we don't have honest hearings, and we get briefed every now and again from the Secretary of Defense and it is not helpful. It doesn't make any sense. And we continue to go down this road, to stay the course. Here is what Speaker Gingrich is saying to us on staying the course. This is from the Wall Street Journal, September 7: ``Just consider the following: Osama bin Laden is still at large. Afghanistan is still insecure. Iraq is still violent. North Korea and Iran are still building nuclear weapons and missiles. Terrorist recruiting is still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and across the planet.'' This is Newt Gingrich saying that this has been a real failure in leadership on the war on terrorism. Then you come back to homeland security. You come back to what are we doing here at home with the ports, with the immigration issue, with what the Democrats want to do compared to what the Republicans want to do. If you look at what we were able to accomplish under President Clinton compared to what has gone on with President Bush, this is just border security numbers, Mr. Speaker, the average number of new Border Patrol agents added per year. In the Clinton administration, 642. New border agents per year under the Bush administration, 411. Under the Clinton administration, we actually increased the number of Border Patrol agents much more so, by 230-some a year more than the Republicans have under the Bush administration. Immigration, INS fines for immigration enforcement. In 1999, 417 under President Clinton. Only three in 2004 under President Bush. The Clinton administration was much more aggressive on the Border Patrol issue. There were 78 percent fewer completed immigration fraud cases by the Bush administration. Look, in 1995, 6,455, and 1,389 in 2003 under the Bush administration. If you look at what we followed as the immigration debate here in Congress has raged, you will see that if Democratic amendments, the amendments that we tried to get on over the last 5 years, would have succeeded, there would be 6,600 more Border Patrol agents, 14,000 more detention beds, and 2,700 more immigration enforcement agents along our borders than now exist. It is clear that the Democratic Party doesn't only provide the rhetoric, but we provide the solutions necessary to try to solve some of these problems. Day in and day out, as we continue to have this debate, we can talk about it, or we can put our money where our mouth is and fund these Border Patrol agents. We can make sure that more than 6 percent of the cargo that comes in and out of the United States is checked for weapons of mass destruction, and for illegal immigrants, for that matter. We have to do this, and we have to be willing to put the resources necessary into the programs. That means that there are going to be some difficult decisions, because over the last few years we have seen the budget in the United States of America go bust, billions and billions and billions of dollars wasted, billions given to the pharmaceutical industry, billions given to the oil industry, to corporate welfare. If we don't begin to change that, if we don't begin to put in some basic structural changes to the way the budget process works by putting in PAYGO rules, by making sure you can't spend money that you don't go get somewhere else so you don't have to borrow it. And that is what is happening right now. I must commend, Mr. Speaker, Senator Voinovich from Ohio, who is talking about waking up the Congress to say we have got to balance our budgets. We have to, because we have two options. We can ask the top 1 percent of the people in this country, the top 1 percent wage earners, people who make more than $1 million a year, we can either ask them to contribute their fair share, and they have benefited greatly over the last couple of years, and use some of that to help us reduce our budget deficits. We either ask them to help, or we borrow the money from China and Japan. Those are really our two options. Over the past few years we have been borrowing the money from China, we have been borrowing the money from Japan, and it puts us at a tremendous weakness when we have to go to China and ask them for help with North Korea, when we have to go to China and ask them for help in Iraq, when we have to go to China and ask them for help with Russia. All of a sudden we are going to the bank that is lending us money and asking them to help us with our diplomacy. I don't care if you are a liberal or a conservative, the United States has always prided itself on making sure we balanced our budgets. In 1993 in this Chamber, controlled by the Democrats, without one Republican vote, we balanced the budget. 20 million new jobs. Economic expansion that benefited everyone. Welfare roles decreased and declined. Then we look at what this President and this Congress has done. In the last 4 or 5 years, this President and a Republican-controlled Congress has borrowed more money from foreign interests than any other President before him. So 224 years, Mr. Speaker, all of the Presidents added up did not borrow as much as President Bush has borrowed. So we have a solution, Mr. Speaker, that is not a Democratic solution or a Republican solution. It seems to be based on reality, and, Mr. Speaker, this is the advice that Mr. Gingrich has given on the broken system in Washington. He said in the Washington Post in July, ``The correct answer,'' Gingrich said, ``is for the American people to just start firing people.'' And I think that is about the sentiment in the United States right now is that the American people are ready for new leadership. When you think about what Mr. Gingrich is saying, and you read his Wall Street Journal articles, and you read his books, and you think about what he is saying, in 1994, when the Republican Congress came in and the Republican revolution, and you think about what was said and how many times, and it was masterful campaigning, about we need to run the government like a business, we need to balance the budget, we need to make government more efficient, there is too much waste, there is too much fraud, there is too much abuse, and if we just squeeze the government, we are going to be able to get the kind of resources that we need to fund the programs that we need and give tax cuts and some relief to the American people; and if you look now, in 2006, as to what the Republican majority has done with that opportunity that the American people gave them, it is really a shame because we have huge budget deficits. We are borrowing money from foreign interests. The government is fat and bloated and bureaucratic, and we lose $9 billion in Iraq, and nobody really knows or seems to care as to where it goes. You have all this pay to play going on. You have a K Street Project going on, started by the Republican Party, that basically says if you are a lobbyist and you want us to help you, if you want the Republican Party to help you, you need to hire my ex-chief of staff to run your lobby organization, and then you will have access. When you look at the money, the public money that is being spent on corporate welfare, $12-, $13-, $14-, $15 billion to the energy companies, that is not a real record to be proud of. When you talk about running the government like a business, and you look at the waste and you look at the bloatedness and you look at the government's inability to address two, at least, of the major responsibilities that we all could agree on here, and that is national defense and emergency response. The national defense side, look at the war in Iraq. This great Republican revolution gives the power and the responsibility to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and then does not take that responsibility away, then does not demand that they get fired, but they promote him. Wolfowitz is now at the World Bank, and Rumsfeld, no one will dare disappoint him, Mr. Speaker. This is the architect of one of the great catastrophes in the history of the United States of America. No one's been fired. I run into business people, hard-core conservative Republican business people in my district, and they say, if I was running the business, Rumsfeld would have been fired 2 years ago. This is not a partisan issue, but you have to provide oversight. It is not about putting your party before the country, and that is what is happening now, and no one will admit it, this stay the course, bury your head in the sand and somehow forget about the reality that is happening on the ground. When you see time and time again, time and time again, generals that leave and retire and then all of the sudden have a lot to say about what is going on on the ground, and they have a lot of opinions about what is happening in the administration because no one was being listened to, first it was not enough troops, then how it had to change on the ground and the lack of responsiveness. That is not running government like a business. That is not responding to the market in the case of Iraq. That is ignoring the facts on the ground to benefit yourself politically. That is putting the Republican Party ahead of the Republic, and it does not work that way. Sometimes you make mistakes and you get egg on your face. It does not mean you go get a new banner printed or a new slogan printed. It means you admit it, and you go forward. Let us have hearings. I am fortunate enough, Mr. Speaker, to sit on the Armed Services Committee. The brainpower on that committee, the kind of experience of Members on that committee, is tremendous, and it has been one of the nonpartisan committees for the most part. Why not go before this committee? Let us let all these people who have traveled the world, who have been involved in the war in 1990, people like Mr. Murtha who are on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, sit down with these people. Let us figure this out, and someone may get some egg on their face, and someone may have to be fired, but if the team's not performing, you may have to cut a few people. You may have to move some positions. You do not promote them. And you look and see what these generals are saying. ``Rumsfeld and his team turned what should have been a deliberate victory into a prolonged challenge,'' John Batiste in the National Journal, chief military aide to Paul Wolfowitz, brigade commander in Bosnia. Anthony Zinni: ``We're paying the price for the lack of credible planning or the lack of a plan. Ten years worth of planning were thrown away.'' How can you have lack of planning in a major war? Again, we are not talking about a Rotary Club building a river walk. We are not talking about a Kiwanis group in our local community putting flowers in a courthouse square. We are talking about going to war. We are talking about the most deliberate act that a government can make, that we are going to put our soldiers in harm's way. There are probably going to be innocent lives that are going to be killed, and we are going to kill other people, and now we have these generals saying we did not have a plan. That is the height of irresponsible leadership. You look at what General Charles Swannack, Jr., said: ``I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq.'' That was in the New York Times in April. This is not the Democratic Caucus saying this. This is not me. Look at what another general said: ``If I was President, I would have relieved him 3 years ago.'' This is someone who has got the Bronze Star medal with Combat V, Silver Star medal with gold star, Legion of Merit. These are well-respected people in the military establishment saying we need to get rid of Rumsfeld, which I think would be a great gesture to the international community to say we have made a lot of mistakes. Maybe we can be a bit humble and say that and ask for help and say that we need to make this a global effort. If you have this kind of irresponsible behavior, this lack of self- awareness to say that we have made some mistakes and we want to go about fixing them I think disrespects the process here, and quite frankly, it disrespects the American people. To try to pitch this al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein pie, when we find out that Saddam did not want to help al Qaeda at all, when you see that, and then yet you continue to ignore the facts on the ground, Mr. Speaker, it only puts us in a deeper hole and makes things more difficult. So the war side has not been executed like a business because we have not changed, we have not streamlined. And you look at the wasted money on contracts and the amount of money some of these big donors have made, the war profiteering, again, a slap in the face to the American people. Then domestically when you look at Katrina and a lot of the emergency response problems that we had, we find out again that this government really was not run like a business, that this emergency response system was not streamlined because we had Wal-Mart and we had some of these other businesses, they were getting water and supplies in and out. Their response was much better, much more efficient, much more effective than the Federal Government's. But it is the Federal Government's responsibility to make sure that we can address these national and natural disasters that happen in the United States of America. That is our responsibility. That is our constitutional obligation. So it is very important that we figure out how to streamline that. Where are the hearings? Where is the oversight? Where is the accountability? There is not any. And then when you talk about the bloatedness of government, I want to share with you, Mr. Speaker, and the other Members of this body about one of the great proposals that we have here and that the Democrats will offer in January when we take over this Chamber. Those are two bills, one by Representative Tanner from Tennessee and one by Representative Cardoza from California. These bills say that we are going to run an audit, a real audit, of the Federal Government, and we are going to squeeze this government. We are going to make it fit an information-, knowledge-based economy, and we are not going to sit back and just allow the bureaucracy to grow and grow and grow and keep feeding the beast and just say if we write a bigger check, somehow the problem will go away. You cannot fix it without providing some auditing and then the reform necessary. The programs that do not work, we get rid of. The programs that work, we fund them, and we fund them by squeezing the waste and the bureaucracy out of some of these other programs, and making sure that every dollar that we get from the taxpayer is spent well and accounted for. What I like most about these two bills is that we are going to hold the Secretaries of the departments accountable, and so if there is an audit, and recommendations are made, then the Secretary, the CEO of that department, will be held accountable. If they do not meet the requirements of that audit, that Secretary will have to go back to the Senate to get confirmed again. That is accountability. That is saying no matter who you are, whether you are Secretary Rumsfeld or you are Secretary of Health and Human Services, if the GAO audits you, a real audit, and we make sure that we know that the facts are right, and you do not meet the requirements of that audit, then you will have to go back for a reconfirmation. That is how you get change in these huge bureaucracies, and that is what the Democrats are going to do, because if we do not reform this government, if we do not get it ready and able to move us into an information-, knowledge-based economy, we are going to continue to fall behind because we do not have the resources. We cannot keep going back to the taxpayer, asking them for more money and more money and more money, because they do not have it. Now, if you look at what is going on, why they do not have it and the squeeze that the average people are going through now, look at this. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation. Real household income has declined nearly $1,300 under the Bush administration. So you are making $1,300 less. The cost of family health insurance has skyrocketed 71 percent since Bush took office. And if you look, the cost of tuition and fees at a 4-year public university has exploded by 57 percent. These are facts. These are not made up. So hourly wages are down 2 percent, consumer confidence is down, gas prices are up 20 percent, and mortgage debt is up 97 percent since the year 2000. We can't keep going back to these people and asking them for more and more money. And the unfunded mandates that are coming from this Congress down to the States and the local tax burden is being increased for mental health levies, for library levies, for community development projects, and these cities and many of them, and one of them is one I represent, Youngstown, another one Akron in Ohio, these cities don't have the resources. And if we are going to compete as a country, you have got to look at it like this: right now it is much different. Cities like Youngstown, cities like Akron, northeast Ohio, Cleveland, we are not longer competing with each other, and we are no longer competing with New York and Chicago. We are all now competing in a global economy. And as we compete in this global economy, as regions and as a country, we have got to recognize that we only have 300 million people in the United States of America. And when you compare that to the 1.3 billion people in China and the billion people in India, you will see that we have got to be at the top of our game because we only have 300 million people. And when we have many of those people living in poverty, and Cleveland is now rated the poorest city in the entire country. I see Mrs. Tubbs Jones is here who represents that area. With the poverty rates in Youngstown and all of these cities where 80 percent of the kids who go to some of these schools qualify for a free and reduced lunch. And their nutrition levels go down in the summertime when the school lunch programs and those kind of things that are offered, breakfast programs, aren't available in the summer. So how are we going to be ready, Mrs. Tubbs Jones, to compete in a global economy when we are not making the proper investments here at home? I yield to my friend from Ohio (Mrs. Jones)