Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it is again a pleasure to be on the floor this evening with the 30-Something Working Group, and my colleague Mr. Meek my will be joining me in a few short minutes. But I say to my good friend from Georgia who has just issued a call to raise the tone of the dialogue, I think the Official Truth Squad would do well to engage in a little truth and acknowledge that it is they who have engaged in the vicious rhetoric that has gone back and forth for the last dozen or so years that they have controlled this chamber, and that the direction that they have moved this country in has given us neither faith nor reason to believe that this country will be able to be put on the right track unless we making some significant changes, not the least of which is in our economy. Security, Democrats believe that security is incredibly important, not just our national security and our homeland security, but economic security, and no matter what this district is I travel to, no matter what district you represent, the people in this country are yearning for a commitment from this Congress to move this country in the right direction on economic security. That does not appear to be the commitment of the leadership of this institution. One has only to look at the commentary across the country to know that it is not just my opinion, but this is the opinion of many, many people both who have expertise in economics as well as the rank-and-file individuals who are struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis. I want to just walk through some of the commentary that we have seen recently and compare the rosy picture that has been painted by this administration and by this Republican leadership, compared to what the reality on the ground every day for working families is. Let us look at the economy according to essentially do-nothing Washington Republicans, and the way we are characterizing them is simply because we have spent the least amount of time at work during this 109th Congress than in history. We have worked the least number of days, produced the smallest amounts of legislation, and yet the administration and the Republican leadership continues to toot a horn that does not deserve to be tooted. Let us look at what President Bush said just the other day. Just 2- days ago he said, I would say look at what the recent economy has done. It is strong. We have created a lot of jobs. You also have majority leader John Boehner say on September 1 that the American economy is strong; it continues to provide more economic opportunity and higher wage jobs to working families across the country. What I would say to the President and to my colleague Mr. Boehner is that I am not sure what country they are living in or who they are speaking to, but they seem to believe that if you say something enough times and repeat it often enough that eventually it will sink in and someone will believe it. But if you ask about the economy according to America's working families, let's see what one young woman talked about from her point of view. Denine Gordon, who is 32 years old and is a waitress who makes the minimum wage, news about her latest trouble. Her van has been in the shop for a week because she and her husband can't afford to fix it. ``This is the least I have ever made in my entire life,'' the Republican and mother of three said. ``The gas prices went up, and the tips went down.'' She said that in the newspaper as reported by AP just 2 days ago. Debbie Brewer, a 50-year-old woman and a deli owner, rattled off her biggest complaints about the economy as she counted change while closing her register for the night. ``We will never see 99 cents again,'' the Republican said, of gas prices. ``Everything is jumping, your gas, your food, and everything, but your wages don't go up.'' And what both of these young women are speaking about is the fact that in 9 years we have not had an increase in the minimum wage. We still have not provided just a minimal increase to those who make the least amount of money in the country, who certainly can't afford to uphold the costs that their families have on a minimum-wage salary. We have a Republican Congress here that has repeatedly refused to raise the minimum wage, and no opportunity in the next 1\1/2\ weeks, it appears, that we are going to be able to do that. We have legislation that is been amended, we have the Labor and Health and Human Services appropriations bill that has an amendment sitting on it that the Republican leadership refuses to bring to the floor because it was successfully adopted in the appropriations subcommittee. As a result, that bill was stalled, never to see the light of day because, God forbid, it would give the Members an opportunity to have a straight up- or-down vote on the minimum wage. Their fear is that it actually would pass. And that is just incredibly, incredibly sad. Let's take a look at some more reality about the economy. This is the real economic change under this President. While the minimum wage has not increased since 1997, let's look at what has increased. You look at this chart over here, all the way on the left you see zero percent increase in the minimum wage. But let's take a look at the price of whole milk. That has increased 24 percent. Let's take a look at the price of a loaf of bread. That has increased 25 percent. How about the price of a 4-year public college education? That has increased 77 percent. Let's peruse how much health insurance has gone up. And, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that health insurance in particular is an item that people in my district and districts all across the country, I am sure yours as well, people are totally frustrated, don't know what to do, are tearing their hair out because of the ever-increasing upwards of 15 percent increases in health care costs. It doesn't matter whether I sit next to a mom with young kids or a small business owner or a CEO of a large corporation. I just talked to a CEO of a large corporation today. The cost of health care is their number one concern. We have 46 million people in this country that don't have access to health insurance, and that number is constantly going up, not down. And the reason it is going up is because more and more employers have less and less of an ability to provide access to health insurance for their employees, so they are just dropping the coverage and leaving their employees on their own to figure out how they are going to get that coverage. What it means when someone doesn't have health insurance coverage, Mr. Speaker, is that when their child is sick, when they are sick, they can't afford to go to the doctor. And I can tell you a little story about how, when I first ran for the State legislature in Florida, which was back in 1992, I was walking door to door. And I knocked on a door, I knocked on 25,000 doors in my first election. And as I was walking door to door, it took a young woman who was home at the time a particularly long time to get to the door before she could answer it. And she called to me from inside of the apartment and said, ``Just a minute, just a minute. I will be right there.'' So I waited patiently. And when she finally got to the door and opened it, you couldn't help but notice that her foot was incredibly, incredibly swollen. And of course, I couldn't help but ask her what happened, what was wrong, because she was obviously in agonizing pain. And she literally said to me, and this has been an issue all the way this number of years. That was 14 years ago. She literally said to me that she now had an infection on her foot, but that she didn't have health insurance, so she now was about to actually, as I have knocked on her door, she was about to go down to the emergency room at the local hospital because she was no longer able to wait. And she didn't have health insurance, so she couldn't take care of it and go to the doctor for just a chance for him to look at her foot when there was only something minor wrong with it; she had to wait until it was bad enough for her to take herself to the emergency room so that she could get it taken care of. And that is the story for millions of people across the country, Mr. Speaker. And the problem with 14 years has not gotten better, it has gotten worse, a 97 percent increase in the cost of health insurance. How about gas prices? Amazingly, people have been rejoicing or at least breathing some sighs of relief that there has been a drop in the cost of gas lately. What is sad is that there has been a drop from upwards of $3 to somewhere between $2.75 and $2.95. You know, when we are at the point in this country where people are excited about gas prices that are lower than $3, but are still higher than $2.50, there is something seriously wrong. Our expectations are out of whack, because America can certainly do better. We can certainly move this country in a new direction. And I guess that the whole issue of gas prices boils down to, the way I summarized it, what happens, I think, in this country is that it must be on the other side of the aisle that the Republican leadership here isn't filling their own gas tank, or maybe they haven't filled their own gas tank in so long that they don't remember what the cost of a gallon of gas is. They are not standing there at the pump watching it tick dime after dime. It used to be pennies. When I was a child, when you would pump gas and when my parents were pumping gas, you would watch the pennies tick off. Now you watch the dimes tick off. And pretty soon, if we don't get a handle on making sure that we don't totally rely on foreign oil or oil in general as a resource, we are going to probably see quarters rattle off on that end column on the gas tank as opposed to dimes or as opposed to pennies like it used to when I was a child. That is the only explanation I can find to the callous disregard on the part of the leadership here for getting a real handle on how to address gas prices so that we don't have joy and so that we are not forced to delight in a 20-cent drop that brings us to about $2.70 or $2.50. It is just our priorities seem to be backwards. What we need to do and what Democrats will do in our new direction for America if we are given an opportunity after November 7 is we would make a real investment in exploring alternative energy. We would make an investment in the Midwest instead of the Middle East. We would make an investment in ensuring that we can expand the use of ethanol; that we can truly, like Brazil did. Brazil, Mr. Speaker, is now a country that has broken their addiction to foreign oil. They actually are self-sufficient. They grew their way out of the problem. They have crops that give them the ability to produce enough ethanol, and now they have American automobile manufacturers building cars for them that are sold and marketed in Brazil so that they can again be energy self-sufficient and not reliant upon OPEC and the Middle East. And what we have is our Energizing America Plan. We have a plan to have farmers fuel America's energy independence, and we have an action plan to do that so that we can be truly energy-independent within 10 years. It is not rhetoric, it is a plan. It is not rhetoric like what we heard here with the President's State of the Union where he talked about wanting to end America's addiction to foreign oil. Well, where is the beef, Mr. Speaker? Where is the backup behind the words? Because I haven't seen it, and I have only been here 2 years now and completing my freshman term in Congress, but I have only seen energy legislation that is written for the oil companies, that gives them the ability to not pay subsidies, that gives away the store, that gives them the ability to drill all they want without paying royalties to the government. And, the last time I checked, the oil industry is the most profitable industry on the planet. Literally, in the fourth quarter of last year, I believe it was ExxonMobil that made more money, more profit than any company in history. And let's just take a look at the oil companies' record profits. Yet we are passing legislation that gives them even more money. In 2002, you have the oil industry making $34 billion. In 2003, they made $59 billion. In 2004, they made $84 billion; in 2005, $113 billion. Yet, we pass legislation here in this House that actually gave them more. Didn't make them pay the royalties and the subsidies that they would normally owe to the Federal Government. Why? Because there is no commitment on the part of this Republican Congress to actually end our addiction to foreign oil, because that would end the direction that this profit margin is going. It would make sure that there was some balance. It would make sure that we invest, like our plan would, in America, in the Midwest, and in my home State where we have sugar farmers who could benefit from producing sugar that could be made into ethanol. I have a company in my district that has the ability to do that, and if we will only give them the opportunity to help move this country in the right direction. Let's take a look at what is happening with the individuals who work for the oil industry. This is Lee Raymond. Why is he smiling in this picture? Because he got a $398 million retirement package and a $2 million tax break. Really. When we are talking about who gets tax cuts that have been passed out of this Chamber again and again and again since you and I have been here, Mr. Speaker, this is the person and the type of person that those tax cuts are designed to help. We passed tax breaks and subsidy giveaways for the oil industry, and we refuse to raise the minimum wage for people like waitresses and our workers who are only trying to make ends meet. It is just abominable. What we would do as Democrats is we would move this country in a new direction. We would make a real commitment to economic security. We would focus on the domestic needs of this Nation. We would make sure that we cut the student loan rate in half. It is at its highest rate ever. We would make sure that we make a real commitment to expanding access to health care, to the 46 million Americans that don't have it. We would pass a real prescription drug benefit for senior citizens, and not a prescription drug benefit that was written to benefit the pharmaceutical industry. Right now, Mr. Speaker, the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, and we are getting close to September 22, which is the date in which many, many senior citizens, and they are already dropping through it as we speak, that many, many senior citizens are going to fall into what is called the doughnut hole, the point at which the Medicare prescription drug benefit that was passed in 2003, before you and I came to this Chamber, the senior citizens that we represent will fall into this doughnut hole. And this is how it is going to happen. There is a gap in coverage in the prescription drug benefit designed in this bill that makes it so that when a senior citizen participating in a drug plan reaches $2,250 in prescription drug expenses, and now I am not talking about out-of-pocket expenses, the way you get into the doughnut hole is they take the actual cost of the drug, not what the insurance plan pays for it, but the actual cost of the drug, plus the copay, and they add that up together. When it gets to $2,250, you fall into the doughnut hole. But it is a bait and switch. You don't get out of the doughnut hole when you reach $5,100 in those kinds of costs. You can't climb out of the doughnut hole until you reach $5,100 in out-of-pocket expenses. So what that means is that many, many senior citizens will never climb out of the doughnut hole. How is that going to help senior citizens reduce their drug costs and not to have to choose between medicine and meals? The reason it was designed that way was so the pharmaceutical industry wouldn't have to be on the hook for losing a ton of money. The Republicans could essentially say they passed a prescription drug benefit that really does not help a lot of people. Another problem with the prescription drug benefit is that it actually is prohibited in the law from allowing the government to negotiate for lower prices with the pharmaceutical industry. There is a specific prohibition against that. That is outrageous. It seems like common sense that we should be able to negotiate the best possible deal for our seniors. But we can't do it, it is not allowed, even though the Veterans Administration is able to do it and is able to get better prices than the Federal Government can for our senior citizens. That is why people are importing their drugs from Canada. It is shocking but true that they actually have American-manufactured drugs in Canada available for less money than they are available for here, even though they are developed and manufactured in America. I was in New York over the weekend, and while I was there I heard a radio ad that shocked me. It was a bald-faced radio ad that marketed directly to seniors, that encouraged them to contact this Canadian company and buy their drugs directly from Canada. That is what we have come to. We have to have our own citizens get their prescription drugs from outside this country because we are not taking proper care of them. Democrats would do better. We would move this country in a new direction. We would close the doughnut hole by changing the law and allowing for the negotiation of lower prices. That savings would fill the doughnut hole so there would not be a gap in coverage. Those are the kinds of things we would do. We would make sure that we put Americans and their economic security first and not the wealthiest few, not the CEOs of oil companies, not the oil industry itself. And we put action behind our words. The gentleman from Georgia concluded his hour by saying we need to tone down the rhetoric. Well, if we could tone down the agenda and focus the agenda on the needs of the American people, then the rhetoric would not need to be so sharp. Forgive me, but I happen to consider myself a direct and straightforward person. I am going to call it like I see it. The way I see it and have seen it since I have been here, Mr. Meek, is that we are for working families; we are for making sure that we move this country in a new direction; that we expand access to health care; that we increase the minimum wage; that we cut the student loan rate in half so we can expand access to higher education; that we reduce the deficit; restore pay-as-you-go spending so we don't spend more than we take in; so we reduce the foreign debt, as you so eloquently talk about night after night; so we make sure that we reorder America's priorities so that we focus on homeland security. Only 5 percent of the containers that come into our Nation's ports are checked, and virtually no packages or cargo that is put in the belly of passenger planes are checked. These are the things that we would do in our new direction for America. It is time. We have 48 days. Americans have 48 days to send a signal that they want us to move in a new direction. I am looking forward to November 8 when we can wake up and implement all of the things that we talk about night after night after night.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, we have all of the charts and particularly the quotes about Social Security, and what the administration has said about their desire to privatize Social Security and the direction they would take Social Security on our website, our 30-Something website, www.housedemocrats.gov/30something. We also have our New Direction for America pamphlet on that as well. We encourage the Members and anyone else who would like to learn a little bit more about the direction we would take the country to go on to that website. Mr. Speaker, we thank Leader Pelosi for the opportunity to talk to the Members tonight. Mr. Meek, thank you for joining me once again and for your leadership in the 30 Something Working Group.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much, Mr. Meek. And I have to tell you that I know I am less senior than you are. I came here a term behind you, and I am just completing my second year in the Congress. And what I have been shocked by is the lack of oversight. I sit on the Judiciary Committee and Financial Services. And in the Judiciary Committee in particular, which is supposed to be the place where we are protecting our civil liberties and protecting the Constitution of the United States of America, even in the Judiciary Committee in this House, we have ceded our authority, our authority for oversight, and holding the administration's feet to the fire to the executive branch. The Republican leadership here has thrown up their hands and said, you do whatever you want. It is okay. Honestly, sometimes I ask myself, other than our taking the floor each night and individually trying to do what we can and as a caucus collectively trying to do what we can to hold the administration's feet to the fire, I wonder why these people who are running this institution bother showing up to work, because what are they doing? We have worked less. We have been in session fewer days than even the ``Do-Nothing Congress'' of the 1940s. We aren't passing significant legislation. Two weeks ago we literally, the only piece of, quote, unquote, major legislation we passed out was a bill that would prohibit the slaughter of horses. And yet we still have Americans who are twisting in the wind, who are struggling to make ends meet, who are toiling at a minimum wage rate where they can't possibly pay all the bills, and the Republicans just continue to paint a rosy picture. And what you always say, and I quoted you earlier, is maybe if they just think if they say it enough times that people will believe it, or it will magically come true. Let us just look at what they said and what the reality is. Essentially we know that Americans are not fooled by this rosy picture that is being painted. Let us look at the recent polling. A respected poll, NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, 52 percent of those polled disapproved of the President's handling of the economy. That was not a long time ago. That was on September 15, a few days ago. A Bloomberg-L.A. Times poll showed 60 percent of self-described Independents said the economy was doing badly, 60 percent. That was on September 5. And really what we are dealing with here is Americans are facing a different reality than the Republicans' statistical spin. Let us look at the situation with the minimum wage. It is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation. Real household has declined nearly $1,300 under this present administration. The cost of family health insurance has skyrocketed 71 percent since the President took office. And the cost of tuition and fees at 4-year public institutions, 4-year universities, has exploded by 57 percent. We are talking people who are caving in under money pressures. We have an economic squeeze that really in 48 days I believe, we believe, is going to affect how people make their voting decisions. Look at hourly wages. They are down 2 percent since 2003. Up 20 percent from just a year earlier are gas prices. Consumer confidence is down by 7 percent in just the past month. When the economy is rosy, Mr. Meek, and I am no economist, but usually the consumer confidence index is not in this direction when the economy is doing well. What is up 97 percent since this President took office, mortgage debt. You and I know we live in now what is one of the most expensive communities in the country. Who knew that South Florida would end up being as costly as it is? But our school districts actually just realized that they lost and had an unexpected drop in the number of schoolchildren in each of our school districts, and they are baffled as to how that happened, except the only thing they can attribute it to is that the cost of housing has exploded to such a degree that people have just moved because they can't afford to live in our community anymore. And that is the case with communities all across America. Only where are they going to go? Every place is expensive. The average cost of a house in our communities now is over $300,000. Yet we continue to pass tax cuts for the wealthiest few off this floor and out of this Congress and send those things to the President. At least we have the Senate as a backstop. One of the other things I wanted to touch on, we have been talking about our 2006 agenda, our new direction for America; and we have covered our commitment to real security at home; our commitment to better jobs, specifically not sending jobs overseas; increasing the minimum wage; cutting the student loan rate; really making a commitment to energy independence and affordable access to health care. One of the things that we talked about in the 30-Something Working Group a lot last year was the privatization scheme that President Bush proposed for Social Security. And what Leader Pelosi has emphasized so often with us is don't let the American people forget that this is not off the agenda or off the table for this Republican leadership or this President. They are absolutely still committed to privatizing Social Security, and if we take control of this Congress, we will ensure that that will not happen. President Bush literally has said he hopes to revise his plan to overhaul the U.S. Social Security retirement program if his party keeps control of the Congress in the November midterm elections. And you talked about third-party validators. That is whom we rely upon for our information that we disseminate on this floor each night. That was the Wall Street Journal just on September 9, just 10 days ago. The bottom line is that the threat of privatizing Social Security is not over, and we need to make sure that we have a party and a caucus and Members who are committed to preserving Social Security. Just look at the quote of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson. He said, ``Social Security was created in 1935. Today people are living longer than that they did in 1935. Yet Social Security's basic structure has barely changed. Just 3.3 workers are paying into the system to support each beneficiary while 16 workers did so in 1950. The President put forward a plan last year to strengthen and modernize Social Security. The longer we wait to fix this problem, the more limited will be the options available to us, the greater cost, and the more severe the economic impact on our Nation.'' And all of the people in the administration, there is quote after quote after quote that describes their underlying intent to privatize Social Security, pull the rug out from under our senior citizens from the most successful program in American history that is the floor through which we will not allow our senior citizens to fall. And we have just got to make sure that 48 days from now we are able to make sure that our senior citizens can be protected not just in their retirement security, but in terms of their health care security, in terms of making sure that they have a prescription drug benefit that truly protects them, that truly gives them affordable access to prescription drugs, that is consistent, that does not have a doughnut hole that they fall through, and that allows the Federal Government to negotiate for lower prices. Those are the things that are reflected in our agenda. And you can see by the Republicans' agenda here that they have been committed to nothing remotely close to that. They have been committed, since I have been here, to increasing tax breaks for the wealthiest few. They have been committed to giving subsidies to the oil industry. I mean, sometimes I feel like they are committed to reducing access to health care because they have done absolutely nothing to move that ball down the field. It has just been a real shock to me. And the fact that they have allowed the aftermath of Katrina to continue by contracts going out the door unchecked, millions and millions of dollars not accounted for, no-bid contracts awarded to companies that are essentially the friends of Republicans. We have got former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, certainly no friend of the Democratic agenda, who has commented that ``they are seen by the country,'' they being the Republicans, his party members, ``they are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.'' And that is because they are giving away the store. They are letting things happen completely unchecked, ceded the oversight authority of the Congress to the executive branch and, on top of that, in the war in Iraq, also allowed for contracts to be let without a bid with absolutely no oversight of how those funds are spent; one contract where $9 million went out the door, and no one knew what it was spent on. It is just shocking. These are facts. These are not things that we are making up, and it is not hyperbole or exaggeration. I just don't understand how they look at themselves in the mirror every morning when they wake up. My parents raised me that you have got to make decisions that are going to make you comfortable and that are going to allow you to look yourself in the mirror when you wake up in the morning and put your head down on the pillow and rest comfortably at night. And I honestly don't understand how any of the Members on that side of the aisle can do that when they take out that rubber stamp that you bring to the floor each night that we are and they just stamp it. They just repeatedly pound it over and over for the agenda of this President, which is clearly out of step with the average American.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. There is no money?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If the gentleman would yield, this is obviously not a playing field I can participate in terms of the debate or the discussion, given the difference in my stature, and I mean physical stature, versus yours. But Mr. Ryan, I will point out as your athletic prowess absolutely precedes you, given the baseball performance and now the football performance, perhaps you should become a charitable donor henceforth as opposed to participant on the field.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. But we digress. It is a pleasure to be here with you. I am happy to yield my usual spot so you can utilize the benefit of the chair. I want to pick up on some of what Mr. Meek has been talking about this evening, because for the last 2 weeks or so we have been subjected as Americans to the onslaught of dialogue on the Republican side of the aisle in terms of their view of national security and how it is only through their continued leadership and their continued driving of the agenda and continuing in the direction that they have taken America that we will be able to remain safe. Yet I find it really interesting, and I have an illustrative chart here that I would like to walk through quickly, that there are people, very prominent people, people who have the expertise, that know that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, last Monday, which was the anniversary of September 11, former Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey and former Member of Congress Lee Hamilton, Republican and Democrat, the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, issued a blistering analysis that was published in papers across the country, but particularly in the Boston Globe, which is your home paper, Mr. Delahunt, that they reiterated that the report card that the 9/11 Commission had given the Congress in December included 10 Cs, 12 Ds and 4 Fs. That was a clarion call last December to the Congress and this Republican leadership. They were saying look, you are not moving in the right direction. You have an opportunity to change course. You have an opportunity to make a commitment to homeland security and to shoring up our national security; do it. We are the ones that reviewed the gaps, and we recommended to you how we could close those gaps and you have not done it. Here is what they said last Monday. They said, ``What we argued then is still true now. Americans are safer, but we are not yet safe.'' Then they walked through what still needed to be done. This chart is illustrative of what they talked about in this editorial. First, they said homeland security dollars must be allocated wisely. They indicated that right now we are not allocating funding on the basis of risks and vulnerabilities. The Republican leadership is actually doing it on an earmark basis. They are giving out little pots of money around the country to make individual Members happy so they can say I brought home some security dollars for my district instead of concentrating on the areas where the real risks and vulnerabilities are. They went on further and said States and localities need to have emergency response plans and practice them regularly. The problem is, there isn't a creation of State and local response plans going on, and from the moment disaster strikes, all first responders need to know what to do and who is in charge, and that is not happening. Third, they called on Congress to give first responders a slice of the broadcast spectrum that is ideal for emergency communications. Right now, as you can see, that is not going to happen until 2009. Do you remember the intraoperability and communication that was talked about as the problem that occurred on 9/11 when the firefighters and the police officers and all of the first responders and then the Intelligence Community, FBI and all of the law enforcement agencies, couldn't talk to each other because their systems don't communicate with each other. That still hasn't been fixed, and one of the problems is that the broadcast spectrum is not going to be turned over until 2009. Number four, there has not been enough progress on information sharing among government agencies. There are still turf fights and gaps in information sharing, especially with State and local authorities. We have to shut off the turf battles, increase information sharing among government agencies, and make sure that these entities can talk to each other. This can't be about turf anymore. This has to be about making sure that there is a seamless system, that there is a system through which information can flow so that when there is danger that is either imminent or is occurring, there can be the communication that was so absent on 9/11. Fifth, FBI reform is moving in the right direction, but far too slowly. They said you need to speed up FBI reform, improve FBI technology and analytical capabilities, and lower the workforce turnover. Those things still have not occurred 5 years later. Six, we have taken a special interest in the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board which we recommended and the Congress and created, but we have to protect privacy and civil liberties and make sure that they function with oversight with the executive branch. Clearly, Mr. Delahunt and I know better than anybody after our Judiciary meeting today, there isn't any interest in oversight in terms of the Republican leadership in this Congress. They have essentially been willing to cede our legislative authority to the executive branch. It is shocking. I don't know whether they just didn't take the same civics classes as we did or whether they are just so trusting of this Presidency.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Mr. Meek. I am glad you touched on that. I lost both my grandmothers to lung cancer, and, unfortunately, in America we all know someone who has been touched by cancer, and it is so incredibly important that Congress redouble its effort and commitment to funding the research so that in our lifetimes as 30- somethings, we can see a cure for not just lung cancer, but cancer of all types in our lifetime and during our congressional careers. So I know we all are committed to that. Mr. Delahunt, I think we are wrapping up. Do you have any additional items to add?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You are right. I stand corrected. You are probably a little bit more accurate on your football knowledge than I am. But I do remember the Doug Flutie ``Hail Mary'' pass. That is what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are engaged in at this point, they are out of options. They are trying the tired path of scare tactics to try to convince the American people that they are actually the ones who are strongest on national security and homeland security. There is just too much evidence mounted against them that is transparent and apparent to the American people, that they see it every single day. All anyone has to do is turn on the news, any channel, any hour that the news is on, to see that things aren't going so well and ``stay the course.'' All ``stay the course'' amounts to is a slogan, not a strategy. If ``stay the course'' is their strategy, then I feel incredibly confident about what will happen 54 days from now. Everywhere I go, and I have been all over the country, so have you in recent weeks and months, people, even the most conservative individuals who I have had an opportunity to talk to, are dumbfounded that the Republicans have led us down this path, and are trying to lead people in America to believe that they are moving us in the right direction on protecting our Homeland. Monday was the 5-year anniversary, as you mentioned, of September 11. I was home, and I mentioned the last couple of nights that I was home with our first responders commemorating that tragic set of events. One of the most disturbing things, what we did was we actually did a roundtable with our first responders and sat down and asked them, where are we 5 years later? Are all the things that we said and identified that were problems in the aftermath of 9/11, have they been addressed, are we working on them, what do you still need? We really have to listen, that is our job, because we need to listen to our first responders and find out from them what is really going on the ground. I remember, I am sure you do too, that one of the most significant problems that was identified that has been talked about across this country is the interoperability, which is a word that is difficult to understand. That means the inability for the first responders on 9/11 to communicate with each other while the event was unfolding. That was one of the major, major recommendations of the bipartisan 9/ 11 Commission that we had to fund and improve the interoperability so that across all of the jurisdiction, all of the intelligence and law enforcement jurisdictions, that there could be communication. The FBI couldn't talk to the firefighters, couldn't talk to the police officers. And today, 5 years later, that is still not in place. Even though it was a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. And it boils down to funding. You have to fund it. There is no way around it, there is no other way to accomplish it. But what are we doing instead? What are we spending our money on? Let's look at what the war in Iraq currently costs. Currently we are spending $8.4 billion with a B a month. We are spending $1.9 billion per week in Iraq on this war, $275 million per day, $11.5 million per hour.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you very much to my good friend, Mr. Meek from Florida, friend and neighbor. It is funny, before we started this hour for our 30-Something Working Group, we had an opportunity to listen to our good friends on the other side of the aisle, and their rhetoric. I was reminded of the Doug Flutie ``Hail Mary'' pass. I think Mr. Flutie played for the New England Patriots in that game, and it was that ``Hail Mary'' pass that was pretty darn memorable.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Mr. Meek. And I didn't ask the gentleman to yield because you were on such a roll, and you did such an incredible job of laying out the difference between what their priorities are and continuing to run in place, or where we would take us, which is a new direction for America. The bottom line is that on every measure, on homeland security, on the economy and jobs and the energy crisis, because there is no other way to describe when you have to spend more than $50 to fill up the average tank of gas, there is no other way to describe it except as a crisis. When you have that situation facing you, when you have 46 million Americans who lack health insurance, which means when they are sick they can't go to the doctor; when you have a President who is hell bent on privatizing Social Security and yanking the rug out from under seniors who have worked their entire lives so that they have a floor of dignity holding them, so that they don't have to worry about choosing between medicine and meals, then we have got to make sure that we come to this floor every night and that we talk about the direction that we would take them and that we would take this country. Because we would invest in new alternative energy, we would invest our resources in new alternative energy research. We would make sure that the rhetoric that the President issued to us during the State of the Union, where he said we have to end America's addiction on foreign oil, that was just words with no action, that we will actually make that investment and invest in the Midwest, in ethanol and corn production and in our State and other States across the country that produce sugar so that we can really make a commitment to disconnecting ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil; so that we can actually make sure that we pass a prescription drug plan and change the one that the Republicans wrote for the pharmaceutical industry as opposed to the senior citizens that desperately needed the assistance, that we rewrite that plan so that seniors have the ability to pay for their drugs, so that there is no doughnut hole that on September 22 our constituents are going to be falling through and having an unbelievably difficult time climbing out of. Those are the things that we would do. After November 7, the new direction for America that we will take this country in will restore that dignity to senior citizens, will make sure that we create a prescription drug program that provides them with the prescription drug assistance that they need, that will invest in the Midwest, that will expand access to health care, that will make sure that we can pass stem cell research into law, and restore the accountability that this Congress should have been exercising and the oversight that we should have been exercising. I mean, really, why have a Congress? The way it has been operating since I have been here, Mr. Meek, and I have been here almost 2 full years now, why have a legislative branch? The rubber stamp, the rubber stamp that is used here by the Republicans and their leadership, you know, it makes having a Congress essentially unnecessary because they just do whatever the administration wants anyway. Listen, I could go home and spend a lot more time with my family than come here and waste our time on naming post offices and banning horse slaughtering. And not that those things aren't important; they are important to some people, but they are not the priorities of this country. They are not the priorities of the people when we go walking down the street in our communities and when I go and take my kids to their soccer game and to dance class, when I get in my car and drive my minivan around town. The people that I talk to, they don't get it. They are scratching their heads, and they don't understand the rhetoric that is coming out of here without any action, and they are yearning and begging us to give them a new direction. We have got to provide them with that new direction. Mr. Meek, we come to this floor every night as the 30-something Working Group, and I know we are about to wrap up here as we approach the end of our 60 minutes. We really appreciate the opportunity that Leader Pelosi gives us every night. And I want to direct our colleagues to our Web site, our 30-something Web site, www.housedemocrats.gov/ 30something. All of the charts that we have had out here are available on that Web site, and we encourage folks to e-mail us with comments and our colleagues to e-mail us with comments. Mr. Meek, I yield to you.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Doug Flutie.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Let's remember this picture. We have funded this relationship. We have made this relationship between the Prime Minister of Iraq and the President of Iran, we have made that happen. These were sworn enemies. During our formative years Mr. Meek, Iraq and Iran were at war, bitter locked-horns war. If you recall, it was the Sunnis led by Saddam Hussein in Iraq versus the Shiites in Iran. What has occurred is that we have done by our actions in Iraq what thousands of years could not accomplish. We have basically upended the stability that existed there and brought the Shiites into control, and basically created a hotbed of chaos and terrorism that didn't exist before. Now, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and President Bush would like very much to lead the American people and the international community to believe that the war on terror actually exists in Iraq. But every international expert that has weighed in on this insists that that is not the case; that the chaos that exists there now was created and that the war on terror doesn't need to be fought in Iraq. The way we fight the war on terror is making sure that the homeland is secure. But we can't do that, because our priorities are in the wrong place and we are spending this kind of money in Iraq. I could stand here and make these claims all day long, but nobody would identify me as an expert on terrorism or on the conflict, the war in Iraq. I am a Member of Congress, elected to represent my constituents. So let's turn to the people that we did ask to identify the problems in the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror and the things we needed to do to protect our homeland, The bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which was chaired by former Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey, a very well respected Republican, and former Member of Congress Lee Hamilton, a very well respected former Member of Congress. All the commissioners on there were chosen for their expertise. Let me just go through what they said on Monday. They wrote a public opinion piece, an op-ed that was published in the Boston Globe and I know many other papers, and what they said this: ``As we mark the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Americans ask, are we safer? Two years ago the 9/11 Commission found that our government failed in its duty to protect us. The commission, which the two of us led, made 41 recommendations to ensure that this Nation does everything possible to protect its people. Many of our recommendations, including those to reorganize the intelligence community, were written into law, yet no law is self-executing. Implementation is often the harder step.'' And, boy do we know that, because it is the Congress' job to implement. All the recommendations in the world can come down from experts, but if Congress doesn't pass a law, like you said, the schoolhouse rock explanation of it has to go through the legislative process, it has to pass the committees, it has to pass both houses in the same form and go up to the President and he has to sign it, that hasn't happened. What they said is, ``We issued a report card on our recommendations in December. It included 10 C's, 12 D's and 4 F's. What we argued then is still true now, Americans are safer, but we are not yet safe.'' That was the one question that I got the most often on Monday, Mr. Meek, was, ``Debbie, are we safer?'' I got asked that question by the press, I got asked that question by constituents, and the answer from the people that would know, the chairs of the 9/11 Commission, was we are safer, but we are not yet safe. Now, that is not a ringing endorsement over our efforts in the last 5 years. So they asked, what do we need to do, because that is what people want to know. ``First, homeland security dollars must be allocated wisely. Right now those funds are spread around like revenue sharing projects.'' We had our friends on the other side of the aisle claim that they passed this remarkable earmark reform legislation today, which essentially only identifies a few individuals and ties them to the projects that they proposed. But basically what the 9/11 Commission is saying is that there are a bunch of little projects that Members have been able to insert into the process, but no regional or comprehensive approach to appropriating homeland security dollars so that you can get the really big, significant projects accomplished, like interoperability. ``Until Congress passes a law to allocate funding on the basis of risks and vulnerabilities, scarce dollars will continue to be squandered.'' This is Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton's words, not ours. ``Second, States and localities need to have emergency response plans and practice them regularly. Hurricane Katrina taught us a lesson that we should have learned from September 11: From the moment disaster strikes, all first responders need to know what to do and who is in charge.'' And if the directions were coming down from the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Chertoff and there was a plan in place and we had our priorities right, then they would know that. But there isn't ``Third, we called on Congress to give first responders a slice of the broadcast spectrum ideal for emergency communications.'' Again, the interpretability so they could communicate with each other. ``Those frequencies, which easily carry messages through concrete and steel, are now held by TV broadcasters and will not be turned over to first responders until 2009.'' What are we waiting for? They ask, ``Why should public safety wait another 3 years?'' ``Fourth, progress on information sharing among government agencies is still lagging. Because of failures in this area, we missed many chances to disrupt the September 11 plot. The Federal Government is doing a better job, but there are still turf fights and gaps in information sharing, especially with State and local authorities.'' Mr. Meek, that was one of the things that was the most striking to me on Monday when I sat with our first responders in South Florida. What they said was that only 15 percent of their funding for homeland security comes from us, from the Federal Government. Eight-five percent of what they were able to accomplish in the last 5 years was only due to the fact that our sheriff's office and our county have been very cooperative and stepped up to the plate and gotten what they needed to do done. But there is a long way for them to go, and there is no excuse for only 15 percent of the funding coming from the Federal Government to secure our homeland, except that we have billions of dollars going over to Iraq. ``Fifth, FBI reform is moving in the right direction, but far too slowly. Problems continue to plague the Bureau. Inadequate information technology, deficiencies in analytical capabilities and too much turnover in the workforce and Bureau leadership. The bureau still struggles. ``Sixth, we have taken a special interest in the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which we recommended and the Congress created. The importance of a second opinion before the executive branch goes ahead with controversial information gathering measures is essential.'' That just has not occurred. In fact, the majority is moving in the opposite direction. ``Seventh, we still do not screen passengers against a comprehensive terrorism watch list before they get on airplanes. The sensible answer is for the government to do the name checking. Right now, airlines screen passengers against an incomplete list.'' How is that possible? What I have noticed and what Americans really, if they were asked, if we went out of this Chamber and walked down the street and we asked most Americans what they can identify as the most tangible thing we have done to improve our homeland security, they would probably answer that they have to remove their shoes before they walk through a metal detector and they have to check their Coke at the door. We cannot rest our homeland security, the sum total of it, on taking off your shoes and not taking your Coke on the plane. We have to go much further than that. We don't check the cargo that goes in the belly of the airplane, we check less than 5 percent of the containers that go through our ports, and we have some graphical depictions of that as well. Look at this. Less than 6 percent of U.S. cargo is physically inspected; 95 percent is not inspected. Let's take a look at some other statistics. This Republican Congress has shortchanged port security by more than $6 billion. The Coast Guard indicated after 9/11 when they talked about how much they needed for the Maritime Transportation Security Act that they needed more than $7 billion. We have appropriated $900 million, Mr. Meek. The facts are all there. The words are spoken on the other side, but the facts just don't back it up. I am going to go through the last couple of items, because this is so damning. And this isn't coming from Democrats, this is coming from the bipartisan chairs of the 9/11 Commission, and they wrote this Monday. ``Eighth, security is not just a question of airplane procedures,'' like I was just saying. ``The fundamental problem is radicalization in the Muslim world. The enduring threat is not Osama bin Laden, but young Muslims without jobs or hope who are angry with their governments, who don't like the war in Iraq or U.S. foreign policy. We need to do a better job reaching out to the Muslim world so that America is seen as a source of hope and opportunity, not despair.'' Now, one of the worst things that has happened since our invasion of Iraq is the decline in the perception of America's standing in the world. We have so degraded our relationships with foreign nations and world leaders and the perception of America has so badly deteriorated that you have young Muslims and young individuals across the globe who have a view of America that is the opposite of what kids worldwide and individuals worldwide looked at America when President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Reagan were in office. What this administration and this President have done to the perception of America internationally is abominable. ``Ninth, Congress needs to reform itself.'' Now, this is very interesting. This is one of the most particularly damming recommendations and criticisms coming from the 9/11 Commission chairs. ``Congress has provided powerful powers to the executive branch in order to protect the Nation. To protect our freedoms, it now needs to be an effective check on the executive. Because so much information is classified, Congress is the only source of independent oversight on intelligence and homeland security issues. The oversight committees need stronger powers over budgets and jurisdiction.'' That says it all right there, Mr. Meek. The leadership of this Congress, the Republican leadership of this Congress, has ceded the Congress's oversight authority to the executive branch. They have thrown up their hands and given up and said, you do whatever you want, because what are they, Mr. Meek? They are a rubber stamp Republican Congress and they do whatever the administration wants. They lay down and do whatever they ask. And it even shocks the conscience of the chairs of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they wrote it so that there would be a system of checks and balances, so that we are a coequal branch of government. Only this administration and this leadership in this Congress don't seem to want to adhere to that. ``Finally,'' they say in this piece, ``preventing terrorists from gaining access to nuclear weapons must be elevated against all other problems of national security.'' Just like you were referring to a few minutes ago. They ignore North Korea, they ignore Iran. They are doing a lot of hand-wringing over Iran because we are spread so thin militarily, and, Mr. Meek, you are on the Homeland Security Committee, you would know better than anybody else, that we are spread so thin militarily that we don't even have all the tools in our arsenal available to us, because we are all over the place worldwide militarily. ``Nuclear terrorism would have a devastating impact. The commission called for a maximum effort against this threat, including stepped up efforts to secure loose nuclear materials abroad, and our current efforts fall far short.'' They close by saying, ``We will surely face more terrorist attacks, yet our sense of national urgency is lacking. Our elected leaders need to act now to provide for the common defense, because the terrorists will not wait.'' If that isn't a damning indictment of our efforts in homeland security and the Republicans' inaction, then I don't know what is.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you. I want to pick up on the litany of issues you were going through because we need to zero in on how we make ourselves safer because the other side is going to spend a lot of time and they are spending a lot of time claiming they are the party of national security and they are the ones that need to be entrusted to keep us safe. The last time I checked, that is who was in charge of keeping us safe, and they are not doing such a hot job. Mr. Ryan talked about how we like to use third party validators here. We absolutely do. I am going to use a third-party validator of Governor Kean, former Governor Kean of New Jersey who co-chaired the bipartisan 9/11 Commission and Lee Hamilton, a former well-respected Democratic Congressman who was the other co-chair of the 9/11 Commission. Here is what they said on Monday, September 11, 2006. ``As we mark the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Americans ask: Are we safer? Two years ago, the 9/11 Commission found that our government failed in its duty to protect us. The commission, which the two of us led, made 41 recommendations to ensure that this Nation does everything possible to protect its people. ``Many of our recommendations, including those to reorganize the intelligence community, were written into law. Yet no law is self- executing. Implementation is often the harder step.'' We know that implementation is the job of the Congress. The 9/11 Commission couldn't recommend things into thin air and suddenly they would happen. They have to be adopted into law and funded. They continued, ``We issued a report card on our recommendations in December. It included 10 Cs, 12 Ds, and 4 Fs. What we argued then,'' and this was September 11, 2006, 2 days ago, ``is still true now: Americans are safer, but we are not yet safe. ``So what do we need to do?'' This is their words, not ours. ``First, homeland security dollars must be allocated wisely. Right now, those funds are spread around like revenue-sharing projects.'' We are basically using the opportunity to spend money on homeland security for turkeys, we used to call them in Florida. We call them earmarks here. That means little itty-bitty projects, and every Member knows that there are potential security targets in their own district, but we don't nitpick homeland security. You don't spread the money around so thinly so you never make truly one area or region or community truly safe. They said that until Congress passes a law to allocate funding on the basis of risk and vulnerabilities, scarce dollars will continue to be squandered. ``Second, States and localities need to have emergency response plans and practice them regularly. Hurricane Katrina taught us a lesson that we should have learned from September 11: From the moment disaster strikes, all first responders need to know what to do and who is in charge.'' Do they know that? No. ``Third, we called on Congress to give first responders a slice of the broadcast spectrum ideal for emergency communications.'' That won't happen until 2009. What in God's name are we waiting for? 2009? What happened to the interoperability in communications that was so essential that was the major problem on 9/11? I don't have time to go through all of the recommendations, Mr. Meek, because homeland security is so woefully lacking and the congressional leadership here has done, I can't even use that word, congressional leadership has done such a poor job of implementing their recommendations and making us safer that it is laughable. It is ridiculous. It is outrageous for them to suggest that they are the party of national security and safety. I could go on and on.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I will just jump in on one thing. As you watch what they are doing unfold, because, again, we always remind people we don't have any control over this process right now. Hopefully, after November 7, we will be given that opportunity, because the American people, we know, want a new direction. But, Mr. Meek, I don't know if you had a chance to read one of our papers in south Florida, the Sun Sentinel, the other day, but one of the Members in our delegation on the Republican side actually said the war in Iraq is over. He was actually quoted as saying the war in Iraq is over and that we won the war, and that now we are fighting a faceless enemy. Which is absolutely true, we are fighting a faceless enemy. But I was flying here and reading the newspaper, reading that article, and wondering what planet this person was on and whether there an alternate universe he was observing. Because anyone that we know, no matter what their party affiliation, clearly recognizes that we are at war. This is called the war in Iraq. This is major, major conflict, where more than 2,600 troops have been killed. Ask the families of those troops whether they think the war is over. How about the wounded, the more than 20,000 wounded, whether they think the war is over and we won. If that is the reality that our Republican colleagues are operating under, no wonder they are taking us in the direction that we are going in.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Well, thank you, Mr. Ryan. It is wonderful to be here again with both of you, as we take the floor each night to talk to our colleagues and any Americans that might be within the sound of our voices. Last night, we had the opportunity to talk about and reflect upon September 11 and its commemoration, and we had a commemoration of sorts on the floor this evening, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek. I thought it was really interesting that the majority, Republican majority, felt it necessary to politicize what should have been a solemn and commemorative event, and a solemn and commemorative resolution with their ra-ra stuff on some of the most controversial legislation that has come off this floor related to so-called national security. And on Monday, when we were in our home communities, I was in south Florida with our first responders in my community. And I told you both last night that again and again all day on Monday people asked me, well, Debbie, are we safer than we were 5 years ago? And, you know, that was such an incredibly difficult question to field because you want to tell them, yes, we are safer. We are elected officials, and the public puts their trust in us, and it is our job to be able to unequivocally say, yes, we are safer. But here is the rhetorical questions I will ask you. Have we captured Osama bin Laden? Have we smoked out the terrorists, as the President promised? Three years after ``mission accomplished,'' do we even know what the mission is? A year after the last throes of the insurgency in Iraq, are we closer to the date that our troops can come home? Does the President still want the insurgents to ``bring it on?'' If you look at the point shortly after we toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have made one misstep after another after another. I mean, repeatedly. I would be hard-pressed to think of a way in which the aftermath of September 11 and the last 5 years could have been handled worse than it has been. I mean, are we truly resting the sum total of our national security on whether we take our shoes off when we go through the magnetometer at the airport, or whether we check our Coke at the door? I mean, if you asked Americans, as we walked down a city block, what they could put their arms around and tangibly identify as the national security steps we have taken, that is what most people would name. Basically, the war on terror is a junkyard of missed opportunities. That is exactly what we have been doing since 9/11, squandering opportunity. And last night, Mr. Meek, we talked about how unified and patriotic the country felt and our citizens felt after 9/11. You never had a less partisan environment or a more unified American environment than the hours and days after 9/11, and weeks and months. In that whole year following 9/11, people drove around and you had American flags on either side of every car, and this President and this Republican majority squandered those opportunities to really bring the country together by adopting the bipartisan recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which is why that commission was created, in spite of the President's objections, who didn't want the 9/11 Commission to even exist in the first place. But then, finally, he really had to grudgingly agree he would be supportive of it. And to this day, in 2006, September 13, 2006, we have not fully implemented it. We have not even come close to implementing their recommendations. Squandered and missed opportunities. It is just disgusting. So no, sadly, the answer I had to give my constituents was, well, we are somewhat safer. We are safer in spots, but there are major, major gaps. And it doesn't have to be that way, Mr. Meek. It really doesn't.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Delahunt, let me ask you a question. This is the 30-Something Working Group, and I can tell you that when our generation was going through high school, and, really, even college, was that a picture that you would ever have seen? My recollection is that Iran and Iraq were bitter enemies and were locked in a lengthy, deadly war for many, many years. So are you saying that what the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and towards Iran, that that handshake is the result of those policies that the Bush administration's actions in the Middle East have done more to bring Iran and Iraq together than any of the actors in the Middle East could ever have done?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If the gentleman will yield, because you talk about the obsession that the Bush administration has engaged in with this war in Iraq, and Iraq generally has been this President's obsession, and what that has resulted in is a total absence of attention and focus on homeland security here. If our good friends on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Meek, want to make this election a referendum, a local referendum on the individual Members of Congress standing for reelection on their side of the aisle, we will give them a referendum, because on every measure in terms of who is committed to securing our borders and making sure that our homeland is secure, it is us as Democrats that have proposed solutions and the Republicans that have rejected them. Let's just walk through this. I have some graphics that will walk through where we are with the Republicans' leadership on homeland security and where we would take us, and Mr. Meek I know has some interesting things to highlight as well as far as the opinion leaders in this country on both sides of the aisle. Yesterday, let me just share with you, yesterday we were home in our districts and had an opportunity and a privilege to commemorate the tragedy that was 9/11 from the 5-year anniversary, and learned some very disturbing things. The question that was perpetually asked, Mr. Meek and Mr. Delahunt, I am sure you were asked the same question, all that anyone wanted to know all day yesterday was, Debbie, are we really safer? After all, that has been talked about and funded, supposedly. Are we safer? The answer, really, was depending on who you asked. According to the sheriff of Broward County, Ken Jenne, our sheriff in our community, we are safer in some ways. But the only reason we are safer in my community in south Florida and Mr. Meeks's community is because our local government, not our Federal funding, our local government has stepped up and cooperated. Mr. Meek, do you know that Sheriff Jenne told us at the HAZMAT demonstration that we had at the fire station in Weston that only 15 percent of their homeland security funding comes from the Federal Government, comes from us? 15 percent. And the equipment that they have, the gaps that they have exist because we don't give them what they need. They actually have to take out equipment and personnel to train for on this hazardous material equipment. When they do that, they have to take an entire battalion out of commission and they don't have the personnel that are there to do the regular, everyday emergency response. And what has the Bush administration done and our Republican rubber-stamping friends done? Eliminate the SAFER Program, which funds career firefighter slots and volunteer firefighter slots, so that we can make sure that we have those personnel online and so that we can have the homeland security training that is necessary. Because you can't just take a firefighter without their ladder, without their equipment. They have to actually use the equipment to train on. So today our borders remain porous. Not everything has been done to prevent another attack. America is not prepared to respond to another attack, particularly if it comes at our ports, at our train stations, at so many of the places that we just essentially have thrown up our hands, at least on the Republican side of the aisle, and said, you know, we are fighting the war in Iraq, and we have to take the war to the terrorists. Every expert agrees that the war on terrorism is not in Iraq. But let's look at where we are right now and where we would take us. Right now, less than 6 percent of U.S. cargo is physically inspected; 95 percent is not inspected. That is when we are talking about the cargo that comes through our seaports and the cargo that goes in the belly of airplanes. So that is problem number one. Let's look at how this Republican Congress has shortchanged port security by more than $6 billion. If you look at what the Coast Guard estimate was to implement the Maritime Transportation Security Act, which we adopted after 9/ 11, they said they needed over $7 billion. Our actual congressional appropriations has been $900 million. That is a huge, huge disparity. There is no way that those gaps have been filled. That means that we are still extremely vulnerable.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is disgraceful.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They have the nerve to stand on this floor and say that they would be better on national security and they would keep Americans safer and that is why they would deserve to be returned to office? Give me a break.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They claim they would be better, the Republican majority, than we would be on national security.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, it is a privilege and an honor to join my 30-Something colleagues for this next hour to talk about the new direction for America that Democrats want to take this country in, and what we would implement were we to have the opportunity to take the majority after November 7 of this year. We have been talking about the Republican leadership's security failures and the fact that while they talk real nice about how they are committed to homeland security and improving our security measures nationally, that is all it appears to be amounting to, is talk. Let us walk through, my colleagues, what the reality is in terms of where Republicans have taken us on security. Let us look at the Iraq war. Right now, under the Bush administration's policy of ``stay the course,'' our Republican colleagues have essentially been continuing to be a rubber stamp for a ``stay the course'' policy, even though that has strained our military, cost nearly 2,700 United States lives, and diverted attention and resources away from the real war on terror. There has been article after article, Madam Speaker, that has come out that has clearly indicated, and the American people know this, that the war on terror is not going on in Iraq. It is going on in pockets throughout the world where, if we actually devoted our resources and our intelligence capabilities to the true war on terror and shored up our borders and made sure they were not as porous as they are, then we would be able to feel more secure and I wouldn't get questions like I got yesterday all day when I participated in 9/11 commemoration events: Are we really safer? People are really concerned. They are concerned in their hearts, Mr. Delahunt. They want to feel safer. They want the answer to that question to be yes, but they know that the answer is not yes. Our friends on the other side of the aisle are rolling out the same tired baloney, Mr. Ryan, about how they are going to be the ones that can be counted on for homeland security and protecting Americans in this hour of strife. Well, that is not the reality when we look at the facts. Look at the Iraq war. We could not be in worse shape. Look at the war on terrorism and there isn't anyone that could examine the war on terrorism and say that we are winning right now; that we have been successful in our fight. We have not captured or killed Osama bin Laden. Terror groups and the number of global terror attacks are on the rise. Five years after 9/11 we have still failed to capture or kill bin Laden. And in a survey of America's top national security experts, 84 percent of them said that America is not winning the war on terror. What we are calling for, Mr. Delahunt, is to finish the job in Afghanistan, which we should never have abandoned in the first place. The Taliban insurgency is on the rise. It is getting worse and worse there. Mr. Delahunt reviewed that in the last hour. Democrats would double the size of our special forces, increase our human intelligence capabilities, secure all loose nuclear materials by 2010, and implement our real security agenda, which those are all components of. When it comes to homeland security, we would implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, unlike the Bush administration and this Republican Congress who have gotten D and F grades by the 9/11 Commission. We would implement their recommendations and fund them. This is a really interesting fact, Mr. Meek. If Democratic amendments, like that which we detailed in the last hour had been adopted, there would actually be 6,600 more Border Patrol agents, 14,000 more detention beds, and 2,700 more immigration enforcement agents along our borders than now exists. We only check 6 percent of the containers that come through our ports. Most air cargo that goes in the belly of our passenger airplanes is still not being screened, and there is still not a unified terror watch list for screening airline passengers. What we are doing is having people remove their shoes before they go through a metal detector and now we make them throw away their Coke. If we are resting the sum total of our national security on those two things, then no wonder people ask the question like I got all day yesterday: Are we really safer? I wasn't able to answer that question yesterday the way I really wanted to be able to, Mr. Delahunt and Mr. Meek.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Delahunt, I would like to talk about what we haven't done, and a little bit about what we have done. I can tell you last week, this is truly unbelievable. I mean, I think that there would be unanimous agreement in this room, no matter what party you represent, that we have a couple of issues that are pressing in this country. I can't imagine anybody would disagree with that, whether it is the 46 million people that don't have access to health care, whether it is the fact that gas prices are hovering at or near or over $3 a gallon, whether it is the fact that we haven't raised the minimum wage in 9 years. You know, there is a laundry list of problems. Yet, last week, we spent our time, we spent 2 days here, Wednesday and Thursday. During that time, if you remember what did we do. We named some post offices, but we always name post offices, that is a ceremonial thing that we do as parts of our regular routines and rituals here at the high school we adopted some resolutions, expressed the House sentiment. But that is what we usually do Tuesday, the first day we are here and sometimes extending into Wednesday. Wednesday and Thursday is when we get into the meat and substance of why we are here, we are addressing the Nation's problems. Last week, we addressed the critical problem that I know I am stopped in the supermarket every day, the prevention of horse slaughtering. That is the only bill that we passed of any substance last week. We passed the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. I can tell you that I voted for it, because I believe that we should prevent the slaughter of horses. But, when it comes to what should be at the top of the national agenda, I don't know. Somehow that doesn't come up in my town hall meetings. I can tell you that our priorities for last week included implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations, raising the minimum wage, lowering prescription drug costs for seniors, increasing Pell grants for people who want to pursue higher education for students, rolling back the subsidies for big oil, which have been implemented by the Republican leadership in Congress, and their rubber stamped colleagues; restoring the PAYGO rules so that we aren't continuing with out-of-control spiraling deficits, so that we can make sure that we only spend what we take in, and comprehensive immigration reform. That was on our agenda last week, and the Republican agenda was making sure that we prevent the slaughter of horses. I don't know, I think after November 7, I think most Americans are hopeful that we will move in a new direction. That when they get out of bed in the morning, they will not have to worry about whether there is a plan to make sure that it doesn't cost them more than $50 to fill up their gas tank, that the agenda that is addressed by the Congress of the United States doesn't include whether or not children will be reciting ``under God'' in the pledge. I mean, most moms, with a young man or woman fighting in the war in Iraq, they are not worrying about whether their little ones are saying ``under God'' in the pledge. They are worrying about whether their baby is going to come back to them. The father of four, before he leaves the house in the morning, do you think he is worried about whether or not we burn the flag that day somewhere in America, as objectionable as flag burning is, or do you think he is more likely to worry about whether he is going to be able to afford to fill up his gas tank with than $50 coming out of his wallet. I mean, where are their priorities? How is that? How are those things the top of their agenda?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. A picture speaks a thousand words.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Moving right along.