Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, nearly 150 years ago, after a long and bloody civil war, our Nation recognized that minorities should have the right to participate as full citizens in our democracy. Unfortunately, granting a right in the constitution and enforcing that right throughout America are two different challenges, and 100 years later, minorities still have trouble casting a ballot in some parts of the country. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to put an end to the racially discriminatory voting practices plaguing the South, and other parts of the country. Now 40 years have gone by, and some of my colleagues might tell you that we don't need the Voting Rights Act anymore, that we've fixed the problems, and that every adult citizen in this country has the same opportunity to cast his or her ballot. While I truly wish that were the case, I'm here to tell you that racially discriminatory voting practices are still alive and well in many parts of the United States. For a clear example of why the Voting Rights Act remains relevant and necessary, take a look at Robert Kennedy Jr.'s exhaustively researched article which just ran in Rolling Stone Magazine--I ask unanimous consent to insert a copy of the article into the record. In his article, Robert Kennedy, Jr. lays out a clear pattern of voting irregularities in Ohio in 2004, many of which disenfranchised African American voters in particular. Together, these irregularities may have even played a part in the outcome of the election. Mr. Chairman, from Buffalo to Rochester, my district is home to some of the most significant moments in the history of the civil rights movement. In 1847, abolitionist Frederick Douglass began circulating the North Star in Rochester, New York. The paper won acclaim from the local printer's union, gave Mr. Douglass a platform to spread his message of civil rights, and demonstrated the successes possible for free African Americans. In July 1905, the Niagara Movement held a meeting in Buffalo during which W.E.B. DuBois authored the Declaration of Principles. This document would later become the basis of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, our Nation's most prominent civil rights organization. I am proud to represent a district with such a rich history in civil rights, and am fully committee to ensuring that the protections that courageous activists from Buffalo and Rochester worked so hard to achieve are diminished. North Star bore the motto, ``Right is of no sex--Truth is of no color--God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.'' I hope that motto will guide my colleagues as we consider legislation to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. Our democracy relies upon the ideal that everyone has an equal voice in each election, and the Voting Rights Act has been a vital component in ensuring that this ideal is enforced. Our Nation has come a long way in protecting the voting rights of minorities, but we still have a long way to go. To weaken the Voting Rights Act would weaken our democracy itself, and everything we stand for as Americans.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, Aristotle once said ``All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.'' With this wisdom in mind, I rise today to honor an outstanding New York State teacher, Lynn Astarita Gatto, and to congratulate her on being chosen as a recipient of the 2006 Disney Teacher Award. Ms. Gatto is a second grade teacher at Henry Hudson Elementary No. 28, a school located in my Congressional district. Each year a select group of teachers across the country are chosen as Disney honorees by a group of their peers that includes representatives from leading educational institutions and former Disney award honorees. This year, 44 winners were chosen out of a field of over 75,000 teachers. Ms. Gatto was among this elite group and is being acknowledged for her creativity, innovative teaching methods, and ability to inspire students. An educator for over 30 years, Ms. Gatto has devoted her life to the betterment of children. Her life-long service warrants particular praise because she has spent the majority of her career in an urban school largely made up of children from low-income families and those struggling with poverty. Ms. Gatto has chosen to focus her energy on students with differing abilities and has provided them with the tools needed for building successful futures. In addition to her innovative work at Henry Hudson Elementary, Ms. Gatto has published articles in teacher journals, contributed to academic books, and written science modules for elementary school students. Each spring, she teaches a course at the University of Rochester's Warner School of Education on the theory and learning of elementary science. Ms. Gatto was also recognized in 2004 for her excellence in teaching when she was chosen as the New York State Teacher of the Year. Mr. Speaker, I once again ask that you join me in congratulating Ms. Lynn Astarita Gatto on being selected as a Disney Teacher Award honoree and for her tireless efforts to empower her students. She is a role model to educators, and an inspiration to us all.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield for a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I will be asking Members to vote ``no'' on the previous question so that I can amend the rule to allow the House to consider a resolution introduced by Financial Services Ranking Member Barney Frank instead of the press-bashing resolution made in order under this rule. I ask unanimous consent to print the text of the amendment and a description immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire if my colleague has more requests for time?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, the Frank substitute resolution expresses Congress' support for intelligence and law enforcement programs that track terrorists and terrorist finances and are conducted consistent with Federal law and with appropriate Congressional consultation. Vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can consider this resolution instead of H. Res. 896. Again, vote ``no'' on the previous question. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for all those who will in future years look back on the vote we take today as a window into the soul of this Congress, for all those who will see the approval or defeat of this bill as a testament to how committed this body was to the ideals from which our Nation draws its strength, for them, let me be very clear. On this day, the Republican majority shamelessly played politics with our most cherished principles. From the very beginning, this resolution and this so-called debate has been about one thing and one thing only: election politics. Six months before our midterm elections, Republicans are falling back on the one play that has worked for them time and time again. They are sowing fear in the hearts of the American people and labeling any individual or organization that doesn't take its marching orders from the White House as a threat to our Nation. Think of what we have heard from leading Republicans over the past few days. They have called the disclosure of the SWIFT anti-terrorist program a ``disgrace.'' They have accused the newspaper that first wrote about it, the New York Times, of forcing its, quote, arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda on the rest of the country. Mr. Speaker, if all this is true, then I have no choice but to conclude that our President, President Bush himself, is a disgraceful, arrogant, left-wing elitist, because it was Mr. Bush who leaked this story. Mr. Bush, as well as numerous top-ranking members of his administration, have proudly discussed their efforts to eliminate the finances of terrorists for 5 years. Not two weeks after September 11, 2001, President Bush told the world the United States had ``launched a strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network.'' Such claims have been made time and time again, not just by the President but by every top Republican official in power. What is more, no fewer than 20 current and former administration officials spoke to New York Times reporters about the SWIFT program. Where do you think the Times heard it? The article that started this all could not have been written without their active help. What the New York Times did, as well as the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and newspapers throughout the country through news services, was to publish a story which had, in effect, already been published a thousand times over by the White House itself and had even been on the Internet. The end result is a Republican administration intentionally leaking a story, as they did to Judith Miller of the New York Times who was then their heroine, both publicly and privately, and then punishing the newspaper for reporting on its leaks. In such a context, the notion that one of our newspapers violated our national security last week is ludicrous on its face. Think of this degree of Republican hypocrisy and then consider this: the bill before us claims to stand against leaks. But it comes 6 years into an administration that has always been willing to leak even the most sensitive information if it thought it would benefit from it politically. It is the height of irony to think that when the Bush administration sought to silence critics of its pre-Iraq war intelligence claims, it chose to leak the classified identity of a CIA agent, as well as previously classified components of a national security estimate to, of all places, the New York Times. But it did so, and it did so willingly. Where were the resolutions of protest from the majority during that scandal? Did we have any expression of outrage over the leaking of a covert agent who, I am told, not only jeopardized her contacts with the CIA but the entire intelligence network itself because people would not trust us anymore? Where were the resolutions of protest about that? Nowhere. Where was the outrage when a national security asset, as well as all of her contacts in the intelligence community, were put into danger? There was none, because Republicans deemed that was a permissible leak, and it was profitable. The Republican outrage we see today stinks to high heaven because the leak of Valerie Plame's identity last year came from high-up, the highest ranks of its own White House. And when all the contradictions inherent in this bill are laid bare, we can see what it is actually all about. Republicans need to change the subject of the real debate everyday people are having in the country. That debate is about the wisdom of this 3-year, $400 billion war in Iraq that is still claiming American lives even today. It is about the numerous scandals of its own creation that the majority is scrambling to explain away. It is about the fact that Republicans have been entirely unwilling to exercise any form of meaningful oversight over the programs implemented by Congress and the White House with disastrous results to our Nation. It is about the very direction that America will take in the years ahead. Democrats are eager to debate all of these issues. But Republicans, as we see today, are interested only in inventing enemies to point fingers at and turn the public against. And to do so, Mr. Speaker, they are willing to jeopardize even our most basic and fundamental principles. They are willing with this bill and with what they have and will say on the floor today to make it the province of Congress to dictate to our cherished independent media what it can and cannot report about and what it can and cannot say. But blaming the messenger is nothing new in this country, Mr. Speaker. The first time a newspaper was punished by an elected official was in 1735 when a New York publisher wrote unflattering things about the Governor of the New York territory and was put in jail. Only a few decades later, the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress to silence those who opposed American involvement in a war with France. But to today threaten retribution and legal action against virtually every news organization in this country simply to gain a few points in the polls? It is a debasement of this Congress and a desecration of our Nation's ideals. Mr. Speaker, my friends on the other side of the aisle and in the White House have a right to be worried about what lies ahead for them, but what they do not have the right to do is to politicize our national security. They do not have the right to hypocritically and arbitrarily decide when the Nation has been endangered by a leak and when a leak is entirely acceptable. And they most certainly do not have the right to reshape this Congress into a body concerned with, in truth, little more than political retribution against an equally arbitrary ``enemies list.'' The American people expect this majority and this administration to guard information, not punish newspapers from writing about it after it has been officially revealed at the highest source of the government. Think about that for a moment. The President of the United States time after time after time has bragged on this program and yet pillories the New York Times and other papers for writing about it. The citizens of this country understand that at the end of the day, the job of protecting our national security falls on the shoulders of our elected officials, not just on journalists whose primary duty is to objectively report on the world around us. Our citizens expect this body to do much more than it is doing here today. They expect it to follow a higher calling. And they are right. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 seconds to say I am sorry this House did not care about the leaking of Valerie Plame to that extent. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of clarification, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield for a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller). (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. The gentleman is correct, and I believe 43 States have had the wisdom to try to raise the minimum wage because we simply cannot get it done here. It should not be the luck of the draw where you are living whether the minimum wage is going to be raised or not. It is a responsibility we have and a responsibility, frankly, most people are tired of watching us shirk. With that, I urge a ``no'' vote on this rule because of the minimum wage. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Madam Speaker, this morning, we are certainly on an important appropriations bill, but I would like to spend my time this morning talking about a portion of the bill that we were not able to get into the bill. Last week, the American people watched as the majority led the charge against the estate tax. Republicans argued they were doing it for the benefit of small businesses and independent farmers. But the majority could not provide even one concrete example that supported their claim. No farm has been found, no small business has been found that had to go under because of the estate tax. What the Republicans were really interested in was the 3/10ths of 1 percent of Americans who pay the tax, super-rich families, 18 of whom have spent a combined $490 million over the last 10 years in their quest to make the estate tax disappear. Today, I would ask my friends in the majority to compare that sum, $490 million just in lobbying costs, to the amount of money a full-time minimum wage earner makes in an entire year, which is $10,712. The minimum wage has not been increased in 9 years. Because of inflation, it is effectively at its lowest level of purchasing power since 1955. And this majority wants to keep it that way. In fact, last night, in the Rules Committee, the majority refused to allow an amendment to this bill that would have increased the minimum wage, so we won't have the chance to debate it here today. Contrary to the claims of Republicans, minimum wage earners aren't just teenagers. Indeed, 46 percent of them are over the age of 25, and 35 percent are the sole wage earners for their families, many of them working two and three minimum wage jobs to put some food on table. Despite what Republicans will say today, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that an increase in the minimum wage would either increase poverty or cost small-business jobs. In fact, the studies that are available show the opposite to be the case. Twenty States have higher minimum wage standards than are federally required. A Center for American Progress study found that, between 1998 and 2003, small business employment in those States grew at an average of 9.4 percent. In contrast, it grew at an average of only 6.6 percent everywhere else. There is also no established connection between increases in the minimum wage and an increase in poverty, contrary to the rhetoric. Once again, the opposite is true. Obviously, when you increase salaries in a way that does not decrease employment opportunities, the increase in the minimum wage helps people to rise out of poverty and gives them more spending power. Finally, consider that 81 percent of all the respondents in America to a January poll said raising the minimum wage was an important priority in their mind. If only 19 percent of Americans aren't thinking about it, that is overwhelming. And so, Madam Speaker, my Republican friends find themselves in a bind. In their steadfast and determined opposition to even a moderate increase in the minimum wage, they cannot claim to be speaking for the American people. They can't claim to be speaking on behalf of the available evidence, either, because that evidence indicates that an increase in the minimum wage will help American workers and the economy, not hurt them. Republicans can't really claim to be speaking for anyone, anyone except, that is, the small group of rich business groups who have dedicated a tremendous amount of time, energy and money to fighting a minimum wage increase. It should not come as a surprise, of course. Ultra-rich special interest groups were the reason that they worked so hard to overturn the estate tax last week, and we really shouldn't expect anything today that would be different. Madam Speaker, what we are seeing is a democracy that has been broken, par for the course from the party that recently tabled the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Our elected officials are supposed to base their decisions on the will of the people, but this leadership cares only about the will of a few rich businessmen. We all know that our democracy was designed to keep this House responsive to the needs of the public, but history shows us that this leadership listens only to well-paid lobbyists and is willing to do almost anything to ensure their agenda is implemented. For years, they have repeatedly assaulted the process, abusing rules and the ethical standards of this Congress to get what they want, no matter the price. When Democrats opposed a repeal of the estate tax last week, we did so because we believe those who have benefited the most from our society have an obligation to give the most back. This week, I think we saw that, with a great gift of Warren Buffett, one of our richest persons and citizens, to help the people at large, not just in America but throughout the world. I ask my Republican colleagues, is that the American dream for you? Or is it one where people cannot get a raise in their minimum income to be able to take care of their families? Is working 40 hours a week for poverty wages the American dream for you? Or is it the belief that honest workers will be given an honest chance to build the life for themselves that they deserve? We have not forgotten that dream on our side. We are going to continue to stand united behind Americans as they pursue it. We also stand for an open and honest democratic government that will demand it. And we will not rest until we have made this House the People's House once more, because the citizens of this great Nation deserve no less. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.