Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Even in the case of rape or incest.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Oh, most definitely, just to take off from where you have launched. Really, the facts are laid bare. It is evident who is for security and who is just kidding. And if you look at this chart here, this pie chart, the source is Fox News, that is our third-party validator, so we are not talking about a liberal bastion, who is for security and who is just kidding? Less than 6 percent of our U.S. cargo at our Nation's ports is physically inspected. That is 95 percent not inspected. We will say 94 percent not inspected and 6 percent inspected, but I think actually the number is just a little lower than that. The difference between the increase in security at airports and the increase in security at ports since the 2001 9/11 attack is $18 billion, Mr. Ryan, increased airport security, compared to a $700 million increase in port security. Now, I heard one of our colleagues bragging about the $700 million increase and trying to detail how much of an increase the six ports received that the port deal, the DPW port deal, was involved in, as if that was some fantastic accomplishment. There is a $6 billion difference between what the Coast Guard has said they need, a $6 billion difference. The Republican Congress has shortchanged port security by $6 billion, according to the Coast Guard. They have requested $7.2 billion.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Six White House offices were part of the committee that reviewed this port deal. I asked in Financial Services. I am on the committee. I am on the subcommittee where we had a hearing last week, and the President still didn't know.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Right. Not the least of it was that he did not even know about it.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. But your point is, and the point we have to make here is, there is a radicalism in this Republican leadership; that they have reached new heights. Schiavo, South Dakota, the Alito confirmation. There is just a growing list. And now this port deal, where the President literally saw nothing wrong with allowing a foreign government-owned corporation to take over the port terminal operations at six major ports. No alarm bells were set off to trigger a national security review, a 45-day national security review that can be triggered under the law. It defies logic.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And, Mr. Ryan, if you would yield, this is also the party that tries to represent themselves as the party of less government and more personal freedom. And in my time here, just in the year that I have been here, we don't even talk about the Terry Schiavo case last year anymore because so much else has happened that is disturbing in terms of their leadership that that seems like a distant memory, but that was not even a year ago. We are coming up on the year anniversary of that. The beginning of my first year in Congress you have the bookends of Terry Schiavo's tragic case, where this Congress, this Republican leadership inserted itself into one family's private angst-ridden tragedy. Then you have Katrina, you have the debt limit increase, you have the largest deficit in history, you have the refusal to go back to the PAYGO rules, and you have the port deal. This is the party of less government and more personal freedom? No, it is not. The evidence does not lie. The funny thing, and I have heard Mr. Meek say this at home in Florida a lot. Just because you say it over and over again does not make it so. Things do not come true just because you say them a lot. The facts do not lie.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. What we advocate is going back to the PAYGO rule, and again, to translate that into terms that most people understand and deal with every day, you do not spend more than you have. You make sure you have the revenue coming in for the money that you are going to put out. Listen, there are people in everyday life in America that struggle with that every single day, but most people think it is totally irresponsible. Even if they are engaging in it in their own house, they think it is the wrong thing to do, to spend what they do not have. I do not know in America that anyone has the ability on their own to raise their debt limit in their household. Can you imagine, you reach a point in your day-to-day life and you are going along and you have a certain amount of money that you earn. You have a certain amount of credit. Let us say you have a couple of credit cards. When you reach the debt limit on your credit card, the maximum that the credit card company will allow you to put on that card, unless you ask permission from the credit card company, you cannot do that usually, depending on your track record. If you compare the track record of the United States of America recently, you know, we are not doing so good because we are not getting a handle on this. Most credit card companies would say, no, we are going to stop you at a certain point and not let you raise your debt limit.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I know the gentleman from Florida wants to go back to PAYGO, but what I heard today in a meeting earlier in the afternoon, I heard the feeling and the sentiment that you described this way: Whether you are talking about the aftermath of Katrina, and quite honestly in my community the aftermath of Wilma, or you are talking about this port deal, the bottom line is that the homeland is not secure. The homeland is not secure. We have port security that has been essentially undermined by the Republican leadership here, and I know we will talk about that in a little bit, but the American people's confidence in their government has been shaken. We continually have to increase the debt limit and we have a solution, Mr. Meek, that we have been pushing over and over and over again repeatedly. Yet, it falls on deaf ears.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You have picture after picture and week after week of new revelations about the shocking aftermath of the response of this administration to Katrina. Last week it was the videotape evidence that when Max Mayfield, who is based in Miami at the National Hurricane Center, clearly warned the President and the Secretary and those assembled from the administration's team, that it was quite possible that the levees in New Orleans would breach, and then on Tuesday, 2 days later, you have the President declaring that there was no way that anyone could have anticipated a breach of the levees. I mean, how do they look at themselves in the mirror? How does he look at himself in the mirror and go on each day?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is factually accurate information by an outside source. This is not by people who have D and R's next to their name in this Chamber. There is a better way. Mr. Ryan, we had a better way that Democrats were responsible for with their votes, some who lost their offices in casting their votes for the PAYGO rules that we used to have here. You have another third-party validator chart up there right now that talks about the education investments that we make here.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Because the third-party validators that we use on this floor is for the purpose of showing that others who have fact- checked, experts who have fact-checked what is going on internally in this institution report on what they see. And so if we are going to talk about accuracy and clarity, it is the third-party validators who the American people are going to listen to. You know, quite honestly, although I really feel privileged to be able to come and join you on this floor every night, a lot of people would just chalk up what they say and what we say on the floor as noise, you know, as partisan noise. And so third-party validators are important. And so let us talk about what USA Today said about who is in charge and what they are responsible for and what they could have done about it. This is just last week, February 21, about 10 days ago. USA Today editorial. The title of the editorial was Who is Spending Big Now: The Party of Small Government. Tax cuts, they say, force hard decisions and restrain reckless spending. The last time we looked, according to USA Today, the last time we looked, though, Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House. They are the spenders. In fact, since they took control in 2001 they have increased spending by an average of nearly 7\1/2\ percent, 7\1/2\ percent a year, more than double the rate in the last 5 years of Clinton-era budgets. I mean, the truth hurts.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And trillion with a T. When I am home and you all are home, we talk to our constituents, and they ask me, sometimes they ask me questions that makes it clear that it is hard for anyone to get their mind around what a billion is. So we spent some time, we did some research to try to help put what a billion is in terms that people can understand better. So let us just translate it into some things that maybe people can think about, you know, more in the way they deal with things on a day- to-day basis. A billion. How much is a billion dollars? Well, a billion hours ago, humans were making their first tools in the stone age. That was if we were talking about what happened a billion hours ago. If you are going on to a billion seconds ago, let us start with seconds, a billion seconds ago, it was 1975, and we had just pulled the last troops from America out of Vietnam. That was a billion seconds ago. Let us try to break it down a little bit more. A billion minutes ago, it was A.D. 104, and the Chinese first invented paper. Well, so now let us talk about what a billion dollars ago was. Under this administration, a billion dollars ago was only 3 hours and 32 minutes at the rate that our government spends money. A.D. 104, 1975, the stone age, and 3 hours and 32 minutes ago.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I just want to share with you, because that is billion with a B.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You are so right. You are choking off women's opportunities at every level. Whether we are talking about the freezing of Pell Grants, this President has proposed freezing funding for Head Start. Head Start, the place where disadvantaged kids, kids who it has been proven in study after study get their opportunity to succeed in school in a Head Start program, 19,000 kids would lose their opportunity to participate in Head Start.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, as Ms. Herseth was talking, I was struck by our diversity. Our commonality is we are all under 40, but literally we represent the East, Midwest and west coast of our country, California, South Dakota, and Florida. We also represent a very different ethnic and cultural diversity. We have a Midwesterner, a nice Jewish girl from the suburbs, and we have a Latina from the West Coast. You could not have more diversity than what is standing in this Chamber this evening. What is wonderful about that is that is what the Democratic Party is all about. We are the embodiment of the Democratic Party. We are the embodiment of what Democrats represent and stand for. It is not just amazing that we had the opportunity at the age we were when we each got involved, but it is, I think, particularly notable that we had that opportunity because of the opportunities that Democrats try to provide in terms of diversity. I think if we were attempting to get involved at the point we did in our lives and we were Republicans, it would have been a very different experience and perhaps some very shiny glass ceilings, as you referred to. I was 25 when I started running for the Florida House of Representatives. I would imagine that in South Dakota it is probably that you have to be fifth-generation South Dakotan before you would think about running for public office, certainly running for Congress. I had only lived in my community for 3 years when I decided to run for the State House of Representatives. For me, that was no different than anyone else who lives in my community. If you are from south Florida now, you certainly are not from south Florida since birth. The reason I was able to contemplate the possibility of running was because we have had so many of the women we serve with here really provide us their shoulders to stand on because they fought in the 1970s and even some in the 1960s to make it possible for women to bust through that glass ceiling; that I was able to even think about running for office when I was 25, just married a year, my husband and I had just bought our first house. We knew we wanted to have kids. I was raised to believe my parents at dinner table conversation, I would not have to choose. A woman could be a good mom, have a solid marriage and be a hardworking professional, and do all of those things well. So the generation before us of women, because they made that possible, because they strove to accomplish that, it made it almost if not a no-brainer. It made it so much more reasonable for someone, for people like us to step up when we were presented with the opportunity. I was able to seize that opportunity when the seat opened up in the State legislature for me because so many women had paved the way before. The experience I had in my race for Congress was so disheartening. I was successful obviously because I am standing here, but I actually had to deal with an opponent who spent the whole election, and this is Women's History Month, we are in 2006, and she spent the whole election saying that I was a bad mother. She spent the entire election saying she was 20 years older than me and had waited until her children were grown before she thought about running, and basically I had some nerve running with young children. I have twin 6-year-olds, a boy and a girl, and a 2\1/2\-year-old baby girl. I ran for them. I ran so I could show my little girls that there are so many things that are important that we do here, and that it is imperative that our perspective, our generation's perspective and the perspective of young moms and young women are here in this Chamber. We deal with issues that I know we would not deal with if not for young women's presence here; women, period. But the statistic that strikes me is that in history, and I am a freshman, I am the least senior of the three of us, what I learned when I came here, and I know they probably told you this, too, when you came for your orientation, but we have had just under 12,000 people in American history serve in the United States Congress, and of those we literally have had just over 200 women out of 12,000 people.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Leader, the way we close our time usually with the 30-Something Working Group is by plugging our Web site, www.housedemocrats.gov/30somethings. We encourage our colleagues and anyone who cares to sign on to that. We have a lot of charts and interesting facts and figures that are important to the next generation. I want to thank my colleagues from California and South Dakota for joining me tonight and welcome you back any time because we are here every night. Mr. Speaker, with that we yield back.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much for joining us. Normally when we do our 30-Something hour, Madam Leader, we thank you in absentia for the opportunity to spend the time during this hour talking about the things that are a priority to our generation. So it is a privilege to be able to personally thank you for this opportunity that you give us each night. It is an honor to serve under your leadership.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I couldn't agree with you more. We have been joined by a special member of the Women's Caucus, especially the Democratic Women's Caucus, for us someone who needs no introduction. But the gentlewoman from California has made history by becoming the first woman to lead either party's caucus in the United States House of Representatives. When she was elected as Democratic Leader, she broke glass ceilings that no woman thought was possible. We are so proud to have you join us for our special women's 30-something hour.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Our colleague Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut has introduced legislation in the area of breast cancer that we still cannot get brought to this floor that would deal with drive-through mastectomies. You have women in this country now who, after having their breasts removed as a result of breast cancer surgery, are forced out of the hospital by their insurance company in 24 hours and less after a radical mastectomy, regardless of what their doctor thinks. What Congresswoman DeLauro's legislation would do is it would ensure that it is the doctor, in consultation with the patient, that would decide what the appropriate length of stay is. That is legislation I worked on in Florida, and it is one that we should apply nationally. Yet we cannot get a hearing, even a hearing, on that bill under the Republican leadership in this Congress. That is why it is so important. Listen, I will say this straight out. It is not just important that we have women serving in Congress; it is important that we have women who share the priorities of most women in America, who are willing to come here to the Congress and stand up for the things that we care about. There is no point in having a woman here if she is just going to vote just like men have for generations, really, because why elect a woman then? We have got to make sure that we make progress, that we go forward. This leadership is not taking us forward. They are not taking us forward by any measure.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is so sad how we literally now have reached the point in history where every person that you talk to can name a woman that they know that has touched their lives in some way that has fallen victim to breast cancer. One of my close friends, 42 years old, a mom of twin 5-year-olds, just passed away in December, also killed by breast cancer. You know what is the most frustrating thing, is that we have only just in recent years been able to get NIH funding for women-specific disease study, and yet the President has now proposed a cut in funding for every institute in the NIH. How are we going to reverse the trend in breast cancer? Breast cancer is not even the leading cause of death in women in this country. It is heart disease. Heart disease is the leading cause of death. We only just accomplished having women-specific studies in that area. Again, the priorities are just startling.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We come from three totally different kinds of communities. Like you in your community, I get stopped in the supermarket, I get stopped at my son's soccer games, at dance class, you name it. And the community I live in happens to be one that is sort of middle to upper middle-class, and it doesn't matter whether I am in the poorer section of my district or the wealthiest section of my district, people are scratching their heads. Their confidence in their government under this Republican leadership has been so badly shaken because of the corruption and the cronyism and the tax cuts and the priorities being totally wrong.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absolutely. The thing that I learned that shocked me given that I am from Florida and we have the third highest Jewish population in my community in the country, I am the first Jewish woman to ever represent the State of Florida in the Congress. Our first U.S. Senator to ever represent Florida ever was actually a Jewish man, and that was back in the 1800s when Florida joined the Union. And it took until 2004 for Congress to send a Jewish woman to Congress. The expression we have come a long way but we have a long way to go is an accurate one. We have so much that we can talk about. I think that the thing that I want to highlight is that we have issues that are important to women and families that would not get addressed if we were not here in the numbers we are here. Child care, subsidized child care in particular. I was shocked last year when I learned in the President's budget that he put forward last year that he actually proposed a drastic cut in the number of subsidized child care slots that we would fund. We are talking about how it is possible for us to stand on the shoulders of other women and even think about running. We are talking about service in the House of Representatives. It simply is not possible for women to work who are moms, especially single moms, if they do not have the ability to have their children cared for and well cared for. So for each successive budget that I have seen, yet again the President has opposed a cut in subsidized child care cuts. It is just astonishing to me the priorities that this administration has where it seems to be more important to preserve tax cuts for the wealthiest few at all costs, and never mind the women who need health care, who only get it when they are on Medicaid; never mind young children who receive Medicaid, and that is the only source of health care; never mind moms who need to make sure that they can work and have a place to send their children for quality child care. I just do not understand where their priorities are.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, first I want to take this opportunity to thank House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi for the opportunity for the 30-Something Working Group to talk for an hour about the things that we know are important to our generation, and also to explain and discuss our views on our generation's perspective on a lot of the issues that are important and facing Americans today. Tonight I am really pleased to be joined during Women's History Month by two of my distinguished colleagues who are also members of Leader Pelosi's 30-Something Working Group, Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth from the great State of South Dakota and Congresswoman Linda Sanchez of California. The three of us make up a very unique body in this group. We are three of only four women younger than 40 years old in the United States House of Representatives. We are here this evening to celebrate Women's History Month, to remember those who have contributed to our progress, to recognize the women of our generation who are changing communities today, and to highlight the challenges that many women under 40 face as a result of the flawed and failed policies of the Bush administration. This year's theme, Mr. Speaker, for Women's History Month is Women: Builders of Communities and Dreams. This theme speaks to the legacy that women leaders have built over the generations. Mr. Speaker, as advanced and progressive as America has been on issues improving the lives of women, our country continues to lag far behind in terms of policies to assist women in their struggle to lead or achieve. Today women represent more than half the population and are among the most knowledgeable and important thinkers in every field of policy, from science to education, to health care and national security. As the mother of two young daughters, it is so important to me to see that strong women walk in all walks of life, and I want them to see strong women in all walks of life, particularly so that we can see that those women join our ranks here as policymakers. I want them to understand that from Title IX to the Equal Pay Act, that they are standing on the shoulders, as we do here, of the courageous women who went before them. None of the three of us would have had the opportunity that we did at our stage in life without our colleagues who came before us in this body, without their shoulders to stand on, and I want them and other young women and girls to have the same opportunities that we have been given. Unfortunately, the President apparently does not share those same views because in his 2007 budget proposal he slashes programs established to give young working mothers a leg up, like Medicare, Medicaid, housing, food stamps and child care. He cuts programs aimed at preventing domestic violence and programs that provide domestic violence victims with housing and legal assistance. I am saddened to say that domestic violence affects far too many women, and an even growing number of young women. Forty percent, Mr. Speaker, of teenage girls ages 14 to 17 report knowing someone their age that has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend, and 26 percent of girls in grades 9 through 12 have been the victim of abuse. So tonight we are here because training, education, and employment statistics clearly indicate that women still face barriers in pursuing traditionally male-dominated fields. For instance, while the number of women pursuing degrees in higher education has increased dramatically, the rates of women pursuing engineering degrees lags far behind. Recent data shows that women account for only small percentages of students earning engineering degrees, including only 20 percent of bachelor's degrees, 21 percent of master's degrees, and only 17 percent of Ph.Ds. We are here, Mr. Speaker, because the Republicans' prescription drug plan is a particularly bad deal for America's women. Women are frustrated and confused, Mr. Speaker. And if you think government health and prescription drug care is only for the aged, you should know that 63 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries were between the ages of 18 and 44 in 2001, and 37 percent of women ages 18 to 44 report that they use at least one prescription drug on a regular basis. Those are not senior citizen statistics. We are here tonight because 36 percent of the 9.4 million women in executive, administrative, and managerial occupations are under 44 years old, and, on average, women are still making about 76 cents for every dollar that a man makes. We are here because opponents of the Family and Medical Leave Act are working to hamstring that program, even though it is in its 12th successful year, and more than 50 million Americans have displayed their enthusiastic support by taking job protective leave to care for a new baby, a seriously ill family member, or to recuperate from their own serious illness. And the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez) is going to be covering how the administration's policies have impacted working women and working families in particular. And we are here because there are not too many of us to speak up, and we must make our voices heard. There are 26 men under 40 serving in the United States Congress, Mr. Speaker. They have several voices. More than several. We are here because if we do not stay late on this floor, if we do not stand up and try to make a difference on behalf of young women and young families and bring these issues that are important to them to the table, the three of us together, 3 versus 26, then who will? That is the question that we would like to answer tonight. I am happy to yield now to my good friend, the gentlewoman from California.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. There is a very simple solution: we return to PAYGO rules. We return to the days when we spent what we had, like people in American households try to do every single day and struggle to do. But we have the ability to establish a rule. We have the ability to follow a rule that says we will only spend what we have. We have advocated, as Democrats, restoring the PAYGO rule, and we have been repeatedly rejected by the Republican leadership because they just want to continue to borrow and spend, borrow and spend.