Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, that is a great segue into what we are going to get into, which is the damage that has been done to the Central Intelligence Agency on this. Here we have the Vice President told Libby about Joe Wilson's wife and then two months later denied even knowing who this person was. We have Karl Rove in the indictment known as ``Official A'' who said that Novak was going to write a story about this, and two months later on ABC and then a couple years later he denies even knowing Joe Wilson or having anything to do with this. Now, is this illegal? We do not know just yet with Karl Rove, because this investigation is still open. But did Karl Rove lie to the American people? Yes. And he should leave office immediately, because he broke trust with the American people. We have our good friend from Massachusetts, a former prosecutor, a former DA with a very distinguished career in law enforcement here to join us.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we are going to keep on rolling here. We have so many facts to deal with. Part of the conversation that we were just engaged in is we know that Karl Rove lied to the American people. We know that Scooter Libby has misrepresented facts and been indicted on five counts: one obstruction of justice, two making false statements, and two committing perjury, lying to Federal agents and lying to the grand jury. We know that the Vice President of the United States has clearly, clearly withheld information from the American people, that the indictment has said that he knew all about, regarding the Valerie Plame investigation.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) who is down in Florida with his constituents. Send us an e-mail to 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. Send us an e-mail, let us know your thoughts. We want to take this country in a new direction, change the way we are going, and put the country before the party.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What is the temperature?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I am reading through the indictments right now. It is really unbelievable, the blatant lies that are in this, that are astounding to me. Count 5, the perjury count, where they have a series of questions, and the question from the lawyer to Mr. Libby is his specific recollection that he told Cooper about Mr. Wilson's wife working at the CIA, and he attributed that fact to what, reporters? The answer is yes. Many reporters. Libby said, ``I was very clear to say reporters are telling us that because in my mind I still did not know it as fact. I thought I was. All I had was this information that was coming from reporters.'' He continues to lie, saying, Yes, sir. He asked him again, and Libby said, ``Reporters are telling us that. I do not know if it was true. I was careful about that because, among other things, I wanted to be clear I did not know Mr. Wilson. I don't know. I think I said I don't know if he has a wife, but this is what we are hearing.'' They asked him again, and he said it was a fact what I told the reporters. All throughout this he testifies to the lawyers that he was told about Mr. Wilson's wife working for the CIA from reporters. In the charge of perjury is that in truth of fact, as Libby well knew when he gave this testimony, it was false in that Libby did not advise Matthew Cooper or other reporters that Libby had heard other reporters talking about Wilson's wife working for the CIA; Libby heard it from the Vice President of the United States. The Vice President of the United States in this indictment, and there may be a trial, and this may be a question of fact, but in the indictment on page 5, on or about June 12, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. That is on June 12 of 2003. The Vice President told Libby in September, July, August, September; 3 or 4 months later, the Vice President is on Meet the Press. Mr. Russert asks him about Joe Wilson going to Africa to check out the uranium deal. The Vice President says, ``No, I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson.'' A question has arisen, on and on he goes about the questions, and Joe Wilson, ``I don't know who sent Joe Wilson.'' That is not true. The Vice President told Libby that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA in June, and in September he is on Meet the Press saying he does not even know who Joe Wilson is. He is not lying to Tim Russert, he is lying to the American people. You cannot lie to the American people.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think the silence speaks for itself. Let us quickly go through this. June 12, the Vice President tells Libby about Joe Wilson's wife. In September the Vice President is on ``Meet the Press'' with Tim Russert and he says, I do not even know who Joe Wilson is. Can one imagine? We look at him and we believe him. Here is Scott McClellan on October 3. So June the VP told Libby. In September he lied about it on ``Meet the Press.'' Then in October McClellan says, Those individuals, Karl Rove, Abrams, and Lewis Libby, assured me they were not involved with this. The lie continues. I mean, these are the same people that told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These are the same people that told us we would be greeted as liberators. These are the same people who said we could use the oil money for reconstruction. Have they told the truth since they have been in office?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be down here. This is a pretty sad day in the United States of America with the recent news regarding the Chief of Staff of the Vice President being indicted on five counts of making false statements, perjury, obstruction of justice. The 30-Something Group has been talking about for quite some time on this floor the culture of corruption that we have seen in this Chamber, on Capitol Hill, and now we have come to find that this is also extended into the executive branch, the Republican one-party rule. Inevitably when one party controls all the levers of government, inevitably it leads to corruption, and today we saw another taste of that. My friend from Florida is here, and before we get into the corruption and the cronyism that has been going on in the way that this government has just been corrupted, I want to talk for a few minutes about what our friend was saying who was here prior to us. I want to make this perfectly clear. The Republicans control the House of Representatives. The Republicans control the Senate. The Republicans control the White House. We have a one-party government here in Washington, DC. I find it humorous and sometimes hysterical that the other side can look over to the Democrats and blame us for all the big spending and all the deficits. They look over here and they point to my friends on the left. We do not have any power. We are not running the government. One-party rule. Take responsibility for your own actions. My friend who was here prior was talking about all the Democrats want to do is spend. The Republican majority has borrowed and spent this country almost all the way into bankruptcy. Our national debt just went to $8 trillion. The Republicans have controlled this House since 1994. They have had the White House since 2000 and the Senate on and off, but it had control of the Senate for the past few years. They have been able to implement their agenda, and they keep saying that we want to raise taxes. We do not want to raise taxes. We want to reduce spending here, as the rhetoric came from the other side, but we do not want to do it on the backs of the middle class. We want to reduce corporate welfare to the tune of $16 billion in the two energy bills. Sixteen billion dollars we voted to subsidize oil companies, and they are coming out with the highest profits that they have had in a long, long time, record profits just in the last quarter. We want to end corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical companies, $700 billion in spending on a Medicare prescription drug bill that does nothing to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Democrats wanted reimportation from Canada to help reduce the cost. Democrats wanted to give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to negotiate down drug prices by basically going, on behalf of all of the Medicare recipients, to Merck and Pfizer and all of these big drug companies, and basically say, if you want a contract, let us talk price. If we took 10 or 20 percent of the savings of that bill, $700 billion over the next 10 years, if we saved 10 percent, that is $70 billion which would pay for Hurricane Katrina. But we could save closer to 20 or 30 percent, which would be $140 billion of the taxpayers' money that we could save. We do not want to raise taxes. Now, do we think that we should be giving tax cuts to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and at the same time cut Medicaid, which is a health care program for poor kids and poor families? Meanwhile, middle-class America's health care is going up 15-20 percent. My God, we cannot do anything to help average people because we have to take care of the big corporations and keep the corporate welfare going. Let me say this before we get back to our message. This is very simple to connect the dots. This body taxes the American people. The American people send their money down here. The Republican Congress gives that money, to the tune of $16 billion in the last few months, to the energy companies. Can you imagine, your tax dollars going to subsidize oil companies. American tax dollars coming down here, and the Republican majority takes it and gives it to the pharmaceutical companies to buy prescription drugs for seniors; great idea, but is it a good policy not to do anything about controlling the costs? What the Republican majority does is then they go to the shake-down street, which is K Street where all of the lobbyists are. They go and shake down all the lobbyists who they just spent a bunch of tax dollars on, and the lobbyists who they shake down fill up the Republican campaign committee coffers to the tune of millions and millions and millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars is spent lobbying. This is corrupt to the core. This is not the way to govern. We understand there is money in politics, but to use the hard-working public's money that average people send down here and to give it to corporations is atrocious. Our good friend Cal Thomas, who is one of the most conservative Republican columnists in the country, said in The Washington Times, which is not a liberal newspaper, gives his friends in the majority a little suggestion: Do not start with the poor to pay for Hurricane Katrina, start with the rich. He goes on to say, which I tend to forget about, the corporate subsidies to the big agribusinesses, this is Cal Thomas, not the gentlewoman from Florida or me, this is our conservative Republican friend Cal Thomas, 72 percent of farm subsidy money goes to 10 percent of the recipients: the richest farmers, corporations, estates and other entities. Mr. Speaker, this is ridiculous that we are going to cut lunch programs, food stamps, cut student loans for average people trying to send their kids to school, and yet provide corporate welfare to the top 10 percent richest farm agribusinesses, multinational corporations. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. So you are saying, Mr. Speaker, I want to get this clear here, for the Members of the Chamber, you are telling me that Brownie, the guy that President Bush went down and said you are doing a good job, Brownie, when he really was not doing a good job at all, really was not doing much of anything, you are saying he is still on the payroll?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. But the Democrats are the ones that waste the money. We are the ones that do not know how to handle government. Come on.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is it. Putting the party that you belong to should not come first. The Republican Party should not come over the interests of the country. All we are saying is that the Republican majority has had control of this Chamber since 1994. They control the Senate, and they control the White House. They pull all the levers of government. Whether it is emergency management, failure; poverty rates, up; tuition rates, doubled; health care costs, up 15 to 20 percent a year. The Republicans take public tax dollars and give it away in corporate welfare. Mr. Speaker, $16 billion in public tax money went to the oil companies and the energy companies and subsidies, and $700 billion in the medicare prescription drug bill. Now, the Democratic Party wants to lead, and we want to lead and put the interests of the country before what is necessarily best for the Democratic Party. And here is a great example: In 1993, when we were running huge deficits, the Democratic- controlled House, the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Clinton passed a balanced budget bill that led, without one Republican vote, that led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of the United States of America. And it was not popular and it was not fun, and many Democrats lost their seats over it. But you know what? You have got to balance your budget. And someone, more than one person was a statesman to make that decision. You put the interests of the country before your own personal political interests and that of your party. That is what we want to do. That is what the Democrats want to do. We want to take this country into another direction and change what is going on here. Let me tell you what we will do when we are in charge. One is, we will redo the prescription drug bill. We will go and we will allow for reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada that will drive down the costs which will save the taxpayer billions of dollars over the next few years. We will go back and we will put in the medicare prescription drug bill a provision that allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate on behalf of the medicare recipients and on behalf of the taxpayer to Merck and Pfizer, and they will negotiate down the cost of drugs. Some people project that savings could be 20 to 30 percent. Twenty to 30 percent of $700 billion is 140 to $210 billion. We would take those savings and we would invest it into the American people. We would also take the $16 billion that we have given to oil companies and we will add that into the mix. Now, notice I did not say one time we want to raise taxes. We will take that money and we will invest it into programs that will lead to economic growth. One, we will have a plan that will create a million engineers and scientists in the next 10 years. We are getting our clock cleaned by China and India. Last year China graduated 600,000 engineers, India graduated 350,000, the U.S. graduated 70,000. Half the foreign-born will eventually move back to their home country. The Democrats have a proposal to take those savings and invest it into education. We will reduce the cost of college tuition by investing that money. We will make sure that there is a clinic and a nurse in every single school in the country so that our kids are healthy, because if we do not have healthy students, we cannot have educated students, and if we do not have educated students, we cannot have a strong economy, and that is the bottom line. The Democrats will invest in magnetic levitation trains, the hottest train technology going right now. There is only one in the world. It is in Shanghai. I was on it when I was over in China. Mr. Speaker, 270 miles an hour we are going down the pike, and I am holding a cup of coffee and it did not spill. It is the latest train technology, it is a jobs program, it is good for the environment, and it reduces our dependence on foreign oil. The Democrats will take the savings from that money and we will invest it into preventive health care. We will make sure that we are doing for the American people what we are doing for the Iraqis, and that is allow them to go to a clinic when they have a cold instead of walking into an emergency room with pneumonia. Mr. Speaker, we want to spend less money in the end, but it means putting it up front first for prevention. And we will start an Apollo program for an alternative energy source, so that these engineers and scientists that we create will be able to eventually reduce our dependence on foreign oil so that not one more American life has to be lost defending our right to go and get oil so that we can drive SUVs.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. It continues just to be unbelievable. Count four, the perjury count, it is unreal. Again, we said on June 12 the Vice President told Scooter Libby about Joe Wilson's wife working for the CIA and then Libby is talking about a conversation he had with Tim Russert on July 10, which is a month later, and he is explaining the conversation, and it went something like this: Russert said, Did you know that Ambassador Wilson's wife works at the CIA? And I was a little taken aback by that. I remember being taken aback by it. And I said--he may have said a little more, but that is what he said. And I said, no, I don't know that. And I said, no, I don't know that intentionally because I didn't want him to take anything I was saying as in any way confirming what he said because at that point in time I did not recall that I had ever known and I thought this is something that he was telling me that I was first learning. That is on July 10. But the indictment says one month before, the Vice President of the United States told Scooter Libby that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. A lie. As we put our hand on the Bible and put one up to God, and these are the same people who told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These are the same people who told us we were going to use the oil money for reconstruction, 200, 300 billion American tax dollars later. The same people that told us we would be greeted as liberators. They lied to the grand jury. They lied to Tim Russert. They lied to the American people. They passed a prescription drug bill. They told Congress it was $400 billion. It was $700 billion. We found out 3 months later after we voted for it. I mean, they can lie to the Democrats, but who lies to Tim Russert? One cannot lie to Tim Russert. He is the best.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is a culture.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, we do not want to make light of it, but let us just think of what President Clinton had to deal with in his impeachment. That is private behavior. If he committed perjury, that is wrong, and we are all against it. You are talking about outing a CIA agent. You are talking about lying to FBI agents. This is the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States, not some intern. This is one of the architects of the war. Now, we all know that all the nonsense that was told to us before the war was not true, and now you are willing to lie to a Federal grand jury? You are willing to lie to FBI agents? You are willing to lie to Tim Russert? You sure as heck are going to be willing to lie to the American people, a couple of folks in Ohio that work in a steel mill and just trying to make ends meet. That is nothing, to lie to them, if you are willing to go to jail or prison to lie. And we know through the indictment that the Vice President told Libby on June 12, so the Vice President knew in June. Then he goes on Tim Russert in September and says, ``I don't know Joe Wilson.'' He says, ``I don't know Joe Wilson.'' You told Libby 3 or 4 months before you not only knew him, you knew his wife worked for the CIA. Now, we have Mr. Gillespie, who is going to be the Chair of our Independent Katrina Commission, here is what Karl Rove said. ``Did you have any knowledge or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press?'' ``No.'' That was in September, I think, right after Cheney was on Meet the Press. We do not know exactly what the situation that Karl Rove is in is. I may speculate for a second. But you cannot tell me that Karl Rove, who manages every single solitary detail of everything that happens in the executive branch and the White House and the West Wing, you are going to tell me that Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President knew this, but Carl Rove did not? It is going to be interesting over the course of the next few weeks and months to find out exactly what Karl Rove did know. I think this goes right to what we have been talking about over the past year, 2 years, since we started doing our 30-something Group, that the Republicans continue to pick their party over what is best for the country. Now, we are all Americans here. You cannot out a CIA agent, you just cannot do it. You just cannot lie a country into war. It is just wrong, for all these obvious reasons. And you just should not take public tax dollars and give them to the oil companies, like we are doing. We gave $16 billion through the two energy bills we passed and corporate welfare to the oil industry. Now, all you have to do is go to the gas pump and realize that that is not a good idea, or read the paper, where the oil companies have some of the largest profits in the history of oil companies in the last quarter. We are giving them your public tax dollars, the people you represent and I represent that work hard and see that big number at the top of their check, and then the much littler number that you actually get, because money comes down here, and the Republican Congress takes it and gives it to the oil company, and then goes to the oil company out on ``Shake Down Street,'' K Street, just a cab ride away, shakes down K Street, and K Street fills up the Republican coffers with money, and the cycle continues.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is what we are asking the American people for, for an opportunity to take this country in a new direction; to change what is going on here, and stop not only the corruption that we find here, but establish a system of government that does not put a political party before the interests of the country. When you look at what happened through FEMA with Hurricane Katrina, the top 8 to 10 people in FEMA were political cronies. They were political hacks. ``Brownie,'' the man in charge of FEMA, was a lawyer for horses, someone who owns horses, or a horse's attorney. I am not exactly sure what he was. He had the right college roommate, so he got appointed to FEMA. Listen, we understand that you make political appointments, but if you appoint somebody who is incompetent, you put them as an ambassador to a country that has a lot of beaches; send them over there, have a nice house, drink a lot of nice wine, have a good time, make nice with whatever country that you are representing or trying to schmooze. You do not put that person in charge of FEMA. My friend who was here earlier said we wanted to make FEMA bigger and more bureaucratic, and the old scare tactics, like we are not old- school Democrats. We want efficient, flexible, nimble government that works. If it means a little bit more money, maybe it does, and maybe it needs to be spent. But where is the accountability? What it needs more than anything else is competent leadership.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

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

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield further, Mr. Speaker, Brownie is still on the payroll, $100,000.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. $148,000. Talk about rewarding negative behavior. Do you do that with your kids? Your kids come home, they took a spelling test, got a D, do you throw them $20? Good job, Kendrick. Go out and get another one. That is what we are doing. We are reinforcing bad behavior.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. ``You are doing a good job, Brownie.''

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Our Web site is www.housedemocrats.gov/katrina. Become a citizen cosponsor to the independent commission so we can reform government the way it needs to be done. And 30-somethingdems@mail.house.gov. We have been getting a ton of e- mails lately and a lot of support, over 40,000 citizen cosponsors for the independent commission for Katrina. Help us change this government. Help us help the Democratic Party take this country in a new direction, a better direction, and help us get rid of this Republican-controlled government that does nothing but corporate welfare and create a welfare state in Iraq at the expense of the American worker and the American taxpayer.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that. Quote: Seventy-two percent of farm subsidy money goes to 10 percent of recipients, the richest farmers, partnerships, corporations, estates, and other entities. Corporate welfare, my friend, to the oil companies, to the pharmaceutical companies, and to the big agribusinesses, and the Republican leadership in this Chamber goes out to Shake Down Street and tells all the lobbyists on K Street that they have to hire Republicans or they are not going to do business with the Republican majority.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, he is absolutely right. I think the gentleman makes a great point. This is important. This goes beyond Katrina. The independent commission that we want goes beyond Katrina. We had a situation in Ohio a year or so ago where a potential terrorist was planning an attack in Columbus. You are in the middle of Ohio, it was something about a shopping mall. The gentleman was stopped and held, and I do not even know what the status is right now. But this was in Ohio. It is not just the gulf States or Florida. Katrina and the independent commission, these are all the editorials that have been written in support all over the country. I think a lot of the editorial boards understand what we are trying to say here, and they are being very supportive. We talk about an independent commission. I want to read a little bit from the Houston Chronicle in Texas, a little bit of what they say about trying to fix the problem: ``The most promising option is an independent commission along the lines of the September 11 problem. This is great, because this puts a little meat on the bone. It should be headed by national figures of unassailable independence and credibility such as former President Jimmy Carter, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.'' We are talking about Republicans, but just to be independent of the day-to-day politics that go on in this Chamber. This is not something that needs to be compromised. This is an issue that has long-term ramifications, and we have an obligation. We come here early in January every other year and we put our hand on the Bible and one up in the air. We have an obligation to make this government run effectively and efficiently. A lot of hard-working people pay a lot of tax dollars that come to us, and then we invest it to improve the quality of their lives. Part of that is to make sure they are safe. So when we had all these problems with body armor, where their kids, their sons and daughters were going over, we wanted to make sure they have the proper body armor and the up-armored Humvees; and we fought through the 30-something Group and the Democrats and put enough pressure on where we finally got that problem fixed. It is a whole other issue why we went to war without the proper equipment. But we have a responsibility here to make sure that this government runs efficiently. A component of that is emergency management services, which, as we found, became very apparent in the past few months. So we have this obligation; and we are trying, the 30-something Group, the Democratic Party, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), we are trying to move this committee out of politics into an independent commission, get Sandra Day O'Connor, get Colin Powell, get some good, solid Republicans who are going to be independent and do what is best for the country, because time and time again, unfortunately, my friend, the Republicans continue to prove their ineptness, their inability to govern; and we have a responsibility as the minority party, as the opposition party, to provide alternative views, and we want an opportunity to run the government. We proved in 1993 with not one Republican vote that we could balance the budget and handle those difficult decisions, and that vote in particular led to the greatest economic expansion in the history of the United States of America. Our friends on the other side are not only inept in trying to administer emergency services, because they appoint all their cronies to the top positions in FEMA, all friends of friends of a college roommate who gives a lot to the Republican Party, which led to poor execution of emergency services. Their party, the Republican Party, takes higher precedence for the people who govern this Chamber than the country, and they have proved that time and time again. Party over country. What the Democrats are trying to say is pick the country over the party.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate his yielding to me. Just so that we can go back, and, obviously, he has outlined why we have a need for this independent commission. I think it is important that we go back and we explain what is actually happening here right now. We have been asking for this thing for how long now, months? Almost 2 months we have been asking for an independent commission. We want to go back, Democrats and Republicans, and look at what happened with Katrina so that we can stop and prevent these things from happening. We are not doing a good job in this country of administering emergency services. And we have the Republicans in charge of the House and in charge of the Senate, in charge of the White House, in charge of FEMA, in charge of the whole executive branch, and we keep having these missteps and these failures, and no one is figuring out what in the heck we are doing wrong because the committee down here that the Republicans have appointed only gives subpoena power to the Republicans. So we have the Republicans overseeing the Republicans. And I think we might as well put Ed Gillespie in charge of the committee down here to oversee what is happening, the head of the RNC, because this has become political. And what we want to say to the American people, Mr. Speaker, is that Democrats want an opportunity to govern this place because our friends on the other side do not know how to govern. They have been in charge now in the House since 1994. They have control of the Senate, they have control of the White House, and they do not know how to govern. And we need to be prepared for not only natural disasters, but potential terrorist attacks to the United States of America. And we need to do what we did with the 9/11 Commission, an independent commission, independent of all of the nonsense that happens in this body that has gotten us to a point where the Republican majority does not know how to govern. Get an independent commission with an outside Democrat and an outside Republican, bipartisan, where they can subpoena people, oversee what happened for Katrina, oversee Wilma, oversee Rita, and figure out what we need to do, because at some point, at some point, something is going to happen in America that is going to be more tragic than these natural disasters, and we are not going to know how to respond. And our kids and our grandkids are going to look back and the American people are going to look to this body and say, What have you done to prevent this? What have you done to improve the emergency management execution in the United States of America? And we are saying on record here five times a week sometimes with the 30- something Group we want an independent commission. We do not want politics involved. Do the right thing. And we are asking people at home to contact us, housedemocrats.gov/ katrina, and become a citizen cosponsor of H.R. 3764, become a citizen cosponsor, and I think we have over 40,000 citizen cosponsors for this. Get on this Website, housedemocrats.gov/katrina, become a citizen cosponsor so that we can become prepared for a possible terrorist attack that may happen in the United States, another natural disaster that may happen in the United States. We will be ready, and then down the line we will be able to look back, and there is always room for improvement. We watch the game film the next day, and we see what we did right and what we did wrong, but at the end of the day, we can say we have done our job. We have put the microscope up to the problem. We have looked at it, put the sunshine on it, and figured out what we did wrong. And it takes courage. I mean, it is not easy to be self-reflective. It is not easy to critique oneself. And that is what we are asking this Congress to do, have the courage to do the right thing: Get an independent commission here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The world is watching. You are not doing a good job. You are doing a bad job. In fact, you are fired. Get out. What do you mean, you are doing a good job.