Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Do you need any ethics training? You and I served in the Florida house of representatives together, in the Florida senate together, now we serve in the United States Congress. You know, the ethics training I got began in kindergarten when my mom and dad taught me right from wrong. I have had ethics training my entire life. It is not understandable to me why we would need and why there are some Members in this body that appear to need it.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I was just asking a question.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I want to ask you another question. Do you need ethics training to tell you that you should not take bribes? Do you need ethics training that tells you that you should not circumvent State law and provide fund-raising assistance and direct contributions to candidates for State office?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We should put it on our Web site.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is it right there, and you cannot do those things when you are hampered every day by having to answer questions from reporters and from your constituents on your ethical lapses and on the corruption accusations and on cronyism. We all know that those things are distracting. When you have to concentrate all of your energy and effort and attention on corruption and cronyism and your incompetence, how are you going to be able to focus on innovation? How are you going to be able to focus on the future?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, the things that make kids grow up into whole people. What happens now is because we are inadequately funding education, our classrooms in most of the major urban population centers and now even in some places that would not be considered so urban, the classrooms are so crowded they are bursting at the seams. They are having to use the art rooms and the band room and the music rooms for classroom space. So as a result, electives are so reduced or the funding is cut for them. So you are graduating kids who know how to take tests. They are test takers, and those are not the kind of skills that small businesses are looking for when they are sitting across the desk after a kid has graduated from high school or even college. I can tell you, because I taught at the college level for several years both at the university and community college level, you would not believe the writing skills or lack of writing skills that someone whose whole educational career has been structured towards taking tests, what those writing skills look like. We are not graduating whole, well-balanced kids who have critical thinking skills and the creativity that those kinds of classes and elective courses help to shape them into adults that will be able to work in groups and dream big dreams and make us the innovators and that have been the tradition of innovation that Americans have always led the way on. It is just not that way anymore, and we have got to get back in that direction.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. There is no question, and I can tell you that if you even examine further the details of those numbers, what is even sadder is how few women and young women are graduating with those kinds of degrees. We need to make sure that we grow our scientists of the future and that we encourage our kids who are going through the universities, actually really we have to start in elementary school, to encourage them to pursue science and math pathways so that ultimately they get involved in the science fairs and enter their projects in the science fairs and work their way through so that they know they want to go to a university and get an engineering degree. We have a plan that will take us in that direction. We have a plan that will add 100,000 new scientists, mathematicians and engineers to America's workforce in the next 4 years, and we can do that using our ability to provide scholarships and other financial assistance and work with the private sector to create opportunities for students who go to college to achieve that goal; but that is something that government has to initiate. That is not something that can completely be incubated in the private sector and occur on its own. Those things do not occur in a vacuum.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, just to piggyback on what the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) was saying, when we are talking about the costs and the impact of the decisions that the Republican leadership is making in this country, let me just highlight for a few minutes exactly what this tax cut package that passed off this floor today is really going to mean for Americans. We have given yet another round of tax breaks to our wealthiest Americans. Now, when you hear the term ``wealthiest Americans,'' there is a lot of different ways that people might think of that. What we are talking about when we are referring to the wealthiest Americans is the top two-tenths of 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans in this country, people who are making more than a million dollars a year. The Republican bill that we have passed off this floor today will raise taxes on more than 17 million middle class families by as much as $3,640, while millionaires would get tax cuts of as much as $32,000. These tax breaks for the wealthy few will be paid for directly through the spending cuts that we passed a couple of weeks ago in the Budget Reconciliation Act that we just adopted. We are talking about budget cuts that impact people who need child support enforcement. We are talking about food stamps that provide school lunch funding for thousands and thousands of children across this country, both school lunch and school breakfast funding. We are talking about cuts in financial aid. We are talking about cuts to programs for senior citizens, for children, for rural families. The Republican leadership here, Mr. Speaker, has pushed a tax bill and adopted a tax bill on this floor that will increase the deficit by $81 billion, $81 billion because when I do the math, and I spend quite a bit of time doing first grade math with my first graders at home, I see this as pretty simple math. If you have $50 billion in budget cuts and you try to call the Budget Reconciliation Act, the Budget Deficit Reduction Act, which is an obvious misnomer when you hear what I am going to describe next; and then 2 weeks later you pass a tax cut package that adds $70 billion in tax cuts, well, the difference is another $20 billion on the deficit. I mean, that is just unbelievable that the Republican leadership here would have the nerve to call this bill from 2 weeks ago a Budget Deficit Reduction Act. And to add insult to injury, the kind of money that we are talking about, the kind of fiscal impact that we are talking about, really boils down to a direct impact on individual Americans. Every newborn that is born as I am speaking owes $27,000 that adds up to the $8 trillion deficit that we have in this country. We have difference in terms of our views on what is considered fiscal responsibility. Obviously, there are differences of opinion when it comes to the approach that Democrats and Republicans take. But layered on top of those differences is the culture of corruption and cronyism that exists in this country and in this Congress and in this administration. Just over the last several months we have had details of that. I mean, we have layer upon layer of cronyism, of corruption and of incompetence. To me it smacks of incompetence when you continue to pass tax cuts and budget cuts and balloon the deficit bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, we are not going in the right direction here. There should not be any delusions that we have reduced the deficit in any action we have taken in the last several weeks. Then you add that to the fact that we had a nightmarish, disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was clearly the result of indifference. There was an opportunity in the previous fiscal year before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region to put the money and keep the money in the budget, to fund the levees in New Orleans and the administration took it out. They took that funding out. So where it was possible to stave off the disaster that struck New Orleans, instead the administration put tax breaks for the wealthy as a higher priority. Let us move on to, we have covered incompetence briefly, now we can talk about cronyism. The cronyism that exists in this administration is just absolutely rampant. It runs deep. It is not occasional. It is not an anomaly. You have example after example. Let us take Michael Brown, for example, who was formerly the director of FEMA. Not only was he absolutely unqualified for the job and had little to no emergency preparedness or disaster response training or professional experience before taking the job at FEMA and being offered the job at FEMA, what his specific qualifications were prior to becoming FEMA director was to be head of the Arabian, excuse me. Let us give credit where credit is due. He was head of a national organization. The National Arabian Horse Association. I am not sure what type of emergencies or disasters occur with Arabian horses, but there does not seem to be much of a nexus between that type of experience and the type of experience that you need to run the largest disaster response and preparedness organization in the country. An organization where the director is expected after a disaster to have the command of every agency at his fingertips, to be able to direct each of those agencies in a particular direction to respond as quickly as possible. Yet, not even that was possible after Katrina because, unfortunately, FEMA has been brought under the Department of Homeland Security and is no longer an independent agency directly responsible to the President with an independent secretary. Now we have so many layers of bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security that by the time the FEMA director's request gets all the way up the food chain, many lives have been harmed, a lot more damage has occurred. And if there is any organization that needs to be lean and clean and responsive in this government, it is FEMA. And we have, unfortunately, hamstrung FEMA and FEMA's director to such a degree that we have seen the results after Katrina to that disaster and the disaster response. We saw the nightmare traffic jams when the folks in Texas and the western part of the gulf coast tried to get out of their homes and community on the roads to get away from Rita potentially. And then in my home State, when Wilma hit 2 months after Katrina, one would think that after Katrina hit that maybe a couple of lessons would have been learned and we would not be repeating the same mistakes. Yet, even today we still have victims of Wilma in South Florida who are without housing, who are not even in temporary housing, who are still in shelters. That is the type of person we put in charge of an agency that has that much responsibility. Let us look at Julie Myers as we continue on with the subject of cronyism. Julie Myers was nominated to be Assistant Secretary of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The responsibilities in that job were that she would have been in charge of the second largest investigative agency in the Federal Government with over 20,000 employees, including 6,000 investigators and an annual budget of more than $4 billion. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, is comprised of five divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency. It is an agency that my office at home contacts every day to help people with their immigration problems. Her resume includes that she is currently a special assistant handling personnel issues for President Bush. She was, of course, recently married to the chief of staff to Michael Chertoff, Secretary Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security. She is the niece of General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I am not sure what qualifications she has for a job of that size and scope. Her only previous experience was that of being a special assistant handling personnel issues. I do not really see the nexus or the connection from that job to the job that she was nominated for as the head of an immigration division. Right now, basically, even Republican Senator Voinovich told Ms. Myers at her nomination hearing that he would really like to have Secretary Chertoff spend some time with the committee, telling them personally why he felt Ms. Myers was qualified for the job because he said, based on your resume, I do not think you are. Let us move on to David Safavian, if we are going to continue the examples of the culture of corruption and cronyism here. Let us continue in the cronyism theme. David Safavian was the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in OMB. His responsibilities included being in charge of a $300 billion budget and ensuring fair competition for Federal contracts. His job also included setting the procurement policies for the Office of Management and Budget, including funding for Hurricane Katrina efforts. Let us detail some of his experience. He is currently out on bail after being arrested and charged with obstructing the criminal investigation into indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He is also married to Jennifer Safavian, who is also a person who has numerous ties and connections to Republican leadership. That also includes lobbying partnerships with the likes of Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff. I could go on, Mr. Speaker, but that is just a smattering of examples of people who were appointed or recruited or nominated for major positions within the administration with not so major qualifications. Now, let us talk about the culture of corruption that has existed. I can tell you that as a freshman Member of this body, and as someone who served in the Florida legislature for 12 years, I can tell you that I am not naive. We are obviously a representative body and there are going to be instances of ethical lapses. We are all human and that does occur, especially in a representative body the size of this one. But when you get to the size and scope and proportion of ethical lapses and of corrupt activity or at least people who have been accused of that corrupt activity, it becomes deeply, deeply troubling. We have a former Member, only recently former as of last week, who admitted guilt to bribery. I mean, this is a person who was a ranking member on an appropriations subcommittee in this body, and someone who absolutely violated the trust of his constituents and the trust of the American people. I know we have other Members in this Chamber, in this body, who have been accused of ethical wrongdoing, and there have been quite a few of those who have been accused of ethical wrongdoing in the administration as well. The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, is that America deserves better. We can work together and give America a better government, a government that stands up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. A government who understands that we are not all of the problem and we can be part of the solution to the problems in America and to the problems in people's individual lives. That is unfortunately not what it appears are the priorities that are shared by the Republican leadership in this institution or in the administration. We have got to move this country in a new direction, Mr. Speaker. We have an agenda on the Democratic side that would do just that. I want to spend a few minutes talking about that agenda. This is the 30-something Working Group, and in the 30-something Working Group, one of the things that we try to do is help our generation understand. What happens with our generation is that often they feel less in touch with the inner workings of government. They do not really see, for example, how Social Security reform could potentially alter their future. The 30-something Working Group comes to this floor each night and tries to help demystify a lot of the government programs that maybe our generation does not feel the impact of directly. I want to talk about Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's innovation agenda, which is the innovation agenda of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Caucus. She rolled that out just last week, and it is an agenda that appeals and speaks directly to our generation. We have a challenge today in this country that in years past countries around the world would follow the United States in terms of our innovation and our future technological advances. One has only to look back to when I was 3 years old in 1969 and we put the first man on the Moon. That was something at the time that no one thought possible. I heard my parents and I heard Leader Pelosi talk about it just the other morning where it was so foreign a concept, something completely unfathomable to my parents' generation, not something that they ever thought possible; and yet when President Kennedy talked about it, I think it was accomplished in 9 years. America was previously a country that the rest of the world looked to as innovators; and now because of the direction that this Republican leadership and the Republican administration have taken us in, the anvil of Washington has stagnated our ability to be innovators. What we have done is we took a process and went outside of Washington. We went to the technological centers across the country and sat with CEOs and the leaders of technological companies across the country and asked them what they think. Let me just give you a few examples of the type of leadership and the differences and the changes that have occurred. America now ranks 16th in the world in broadband penetration. That is the difference between when I was a child in 1969 and where we are today. America ranks 16th in broadband penetration, broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants on January 1, 2005. You look at the countries, we are not at the top. Korea is at the top. Hong Kong and China are at the top. Iceland is doing better than we are in terms of broadband penetration. What happened to America leading the way on innovation? We are 16th in penetration. We have an agenda that would change that. We have an agenda that would put broadband access in every household in 5 years. That is a goal that we absolutely should strive for. We have got to make sure that our generation raises their kids, that we raise our kids to be first, to have the attitude that it is America first. That is how it was when we were kids when President Kennedy was in office, and that is how it should be again.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, the other place that we are lagging behind is global education standards. I was shocked to learn that the difference in the number of students who graduate with an engineering degree from nation to nation is staggering. Here is another place, sadly, where we are no longer first. China is first. They are first by miles. They graduated 600,000 students with an engineering degree this year; 350,000 with engineering degree in India; and 70,000 in the United States.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absolutely. We are not addressing the high cost of gasoline. We have a plan that would make us energy independent within 10 years. We have got to make sure we start innovating in that direction. We have got to make sure we stop relying solely on foreign oil. We have investments that we can make in research and development so that we can expand our ability to generate alternative energy sources. We have to help small businesses. We have to make sure that small business can thrive. They cannot thrive with upwards of 15 percent increases in their health insurance costs every year. We have got to make sure we have access to health care in this country. That is the direction the Democrats would take this country and break the gridlock that we seem to be mired in, in which every single day there is another accusation of corruption. Every single day there is another example of a person who was selected or nominated or chosen for a job in the administration who is wholly unqualified for the breadth and scope of experience that that person would need to do that job effectively. What happens? They make horrible mistakes, and that is the next day's headlines, not the headlines that we had in 1969 that America was first to land a man on the Moon.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Just a few examples of what you are talking about, we are talking about the role of the White House in promoting misleading intelligence when it came to how we got into the war and the Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or lack thereof. We are talking about the responsibility of senior administration officials for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. We are talking about the role of the Vice President's office and the award of Halliburton contracts, no information on that, no accountability. The role of the White House in withholding the Medicare cost estimates from Congress. The identity of the energy industry campaign contributors that met with the Vice President's energy task force. We could keep going about the corruption, the lack of information, the lack of competence, and in fact, when we come back at our next opportunity in our next hour, we will continue to go on about that.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Iraq. You have an $8 trillion deficit now. We have got corruption, cronyism, competence.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is a culture.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I can tell you I just strutted in from helping my first graders with their homework. Just so you know, I have my priorities straight. I spent a couple of minutes listening to your exchange and cannot help but chime in here and express my deep concern which I know my good friend from Florida (Mr. Meek) shares as well. We had our Governor and FEMA represent our delegation in advance of Wilma. You have got Katrina and we all are very familiar with the lack of preparation clearly and the aftermath of Katrina and the disaster literally of the aftermath of Katrina but then you fast-forward a couple of months to Wilma when we had 2 months that FEMA could have learned from some of those mistakes and dealt with the preparedness issues that they were really poor on and the aftermath response issues that they received incredibly poor marks on. You would think that they would have fixed it. But in our case, our Governor and FEMA represented to us that we were the model State. I say this not to be too specific about any one State's preparation, but FEMA and the Florida government represented that our State was the most prepared. We can tell you that if our State and their response to Wilma is the pride and joy, is the model for preparation in disaster response, then we should all be deeply concerned about the other 49 States and their preparedness and potential response for a natural or a man-made disaster like a terrorist attack.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We have got the first C word which is corruption. It seems like every day we have yet another example, a tragic example, it wrenched my heart to hear that we had a colleague of ours, the former gentleman from California, who pled guilty to bribery, so we have got corruption. We have ethics charges, some which are just accusations, some which have been validated, up and down the ranks of many of our Republican colleagues. That is one C word. Then you shift from corruption to cronyism. There is rampant cronyism throughout this administration. You have only Michael Brown, Brownie, to use as an example. When the President would put in place someone whose claim to fame in terms of his qualifications for being the lead expert on disaster preparedness and response was being the president of the Arabian Horse Association as opposed to having a deeply long resume in emergency preparedness, that just smacks of cronyism. What was his real quality in terms of being hired for that job? He was James Allbaugh's roommate. That was the real qualification when he got that job. You have Mr. Savavian, who was the procurement director in the White House who now has been fired because he was accused of wrongdoing.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you just for the filling in of the facts. The list goes on in terms of the cronyism that is rampant through this administration. So you have corruption. You have cronyism. Then you have, as the gentleman from Ohio just described, the total lack of competence. Example after example. The proposal on Social Security. The way they handled Katrina. The way they handled Wilma. The deficit. We have an $8 trillion deficit.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You are absolutely right. On top of that, because we are about third-party validators and it is not all about just what we say, you have Governor Kean and Mr. Hamilton who the other day gave them a list of Fs on almost every major aspect of preparedness and what we should be doing in terms of response to a potential terrorist act. It is just one more example of their lack of caring, of their lack of competence, of the cronyism, of the corruption. Find a C word and this Republican leadership and the administration absolutely fit the bill.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, you know, there has been a whole lot of twisted-up debate on time tables and whether we are insisting on a time table and withdrawal, and whether the withdrawal is immediate or 6 months. When we talk about the drawn-down of troops, and the fact that we need to make sure that it is the Iraqi people that are ultimately responsible for running their own country, we are referring to the President's objectives that he said that he wants to see. And the other day I heard the President talking about that we will withdraw and begin to withdraw troops from Iraq when we have objectives that are reached. Well, what the heck does that mean? Does it mean that when 50 percent of the Iraqi battalions are fully independent? Does it mean 75 percent? Where are the benchmarks? I mean, it is fine to say that we need to have objectives about this. We should not leave or withdraw troops until we meet objectives. But what are those objectives? I need something concrete to be able to go home and tell my constituents. I mean, we have got 2,013 American lives that have been lost, and 50 percent of those kids have been kids under the age of 22. There is some serious accountability that needs to be brought to bear here. And, you know, vague references to objectives that should be met by the President is not what I call accountability, not when you have $223 billion being spent on this war.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. The wife of the nephew of Haley Barbour, Mississippi Republican Governor, former RNC chairman, she has received $6.4 million in contracts for things like laundry service and showers and delivering tents. Not emergency needs 3 months after Katrina hit that would seem to require no-bid contracts, but 10 separate contracts from FEMA and the General Services Administration, no-bid contracts, of $100,000 or more. Now, if that is not cronyism.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Your reference to what their philosophy is with pursuing this tax reconciliation, this tax cut package tomorrow as not being a conservative philosophy. I will commend to you our colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardozo's) comments, who is one of the leaders of the Blue Dogs. In his special order last night, with the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross), it is the politics of Scroogeonomics, because as we approach the holiday season, what they are doing and what they are engaging in, the Republican leadership is engaging in, Scroogeonomics. We can only hope that tonight, as many of our Republican colleagues' heads hit their pillow, we can only hope that they are visited tonight by the ghost of Christmas past, because that is how we are going to ensure, it is probably the only way that we will ensure it, through a visit of the ghost of Christmas past, that they are shown what the essential ramifications are if they actually move forward and pass this proposal, the cuts to child support, enforcement, the cuts to food stamps, the horrendous cuts in financial aid that they just handed down a couple of weeks ago in the budget reconciliation, Budget Cut Act. Now tomorrow they want to give tax cuts to people who are in the top two-tenths of 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans. We are not making this up. This is factual. That is who the vast majority of these tax cuts will go to. What is unbelievable in this Scrooge-onomics proposal of theirs is that they actually have the audacity to call the budget reconciliation act the Budget Deficit Reduction Act when you have got $50 billion in budget cuts in that and then tomorrow they are going to adopt, hopefully they won't, hopefully we will have enough of our colleagues visited by the ghost of Christmas past and they will have their consciences tweaked and they will vote ``no'' tomorrow, but then tomorrow we could potentially adopt $70 billion in tax cuts. I just helped my first graders with their math homework, but even they could figure out that that adds $20 billion to the deficit, $20 billion in which we already have $27,000 for every man, woman, child and newborn baby in this country. That is how much each of us owes.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I was referring to the holidays.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They do not have the connections. That is why they are not getting the work.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We can do better.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. No, we are saying there is a continuation of the culture of cronyism and corruption, and it is time to give government back to the people. And that is what we want to do next year, give government back to the people; make sure government can be responsive to the people's needs and provide for the needs of the people who need the most help.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to serve on the Financial Services Committee under the leadership of Chairman Oxley and Ranking Member Frank, because this bill is yet another example of what we can accomplish when both sides of the aisle work together. And this is not the first time that that has occurred, and I am sure it will not be the last when it comes to the results that come out of this committee. As outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once said, ``Free markets presume peaceful societies.'' The infinite risks associated with terrorism have demonstrated their potential to destabilize our markets, so I rise to express my full support for the version of TRIA before the House today. I want to thank Chairman Oxley, Ranking Member Frank, Representative Baker, and Representative Kanjorski for their stalwart leadership on this issue. I also want to thank all members and staff from the Financial Services Committee who have worked so hard to bring this to the floor. The House version of the bill includes critical reforms that will help protect the American economy in the event of another terrorist attack. It includes important group life provisions, streamlines insurance filings, and gives consumers more options and protections. I am proud that this legislation has gleaned broad-based bipartisan support, and I encourage all my colleagues to support the House version of the bill today and in conference. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with the chairman and the ranking member and any other interested parties on the language related to the life insurance fairness-for-travelers issue.