Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. No outrage, no floor speeches, no 1-minutes, no 5-minutes.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Without a vote?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. These are new people. The vast majority of people in this line were applying for the first time.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Does the gentleman remember when we were growing up, it seemed like any time you turned on C-SPAN or there was a shot of the Congress doing something, when we were kids, it was a shot of the Congress in a hearing, the Iran Contra hearings or some kind of investigatory hearing that would immediately be called. The ink on the accusation would not be dry before congressional hearings were called to investigate. Am I missing something? Maybe I am not in the loop.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If my colleague wishes to go over the details he was beginning to talk about on the bottom of the chart.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We actually have a chart that outlines some of the things my colleague is about to go over so we can make sure that people have it very clearly in front of them

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it is again a pleasure to be here with you to talk about the issues that are important to the American people. I think the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) would both agree that this week really everything is going to come to a head. The choices that Members in this Chamber are going to be asked to make, more than any other week that I have been here, I think, are going to be emblematic of where our priorities are. The choices that we are going to have to make on this budget reconciliation bill, which is Washington-speak for budget cuts, is going to show who is for the American people in making sure that they can sustain a decent quality of life and who is against that concept and is more supportive of making sure that the wealthy can stay wealthy. That is really what it boils down to. Just to give you, Mr. Speaker, an idea, as well as anyone who can hear our conversation, of exactly what we are going to be asked to choose between this week, the Republican leadership and the Republican Members have been making a lot of hay about the spending cuts that they are going to ask us to vote for, that they are needed reductions because we have to do something about this deficit. And we agree. We agree that there needs to be something done about the deficit. But the difference between our approach and the Republican approach is that our approach would actually reduce the deficit, and their approach actually adds to it. If you have a little less than $55 billion in budget cuts, yet still have 70-some-odd-billion dollars in tax cuts, the difference between that is $20 billion more added on to the deficit. Now, I can tell you honestly that I was not very good at math when I was younger and struggled with it a little bit, but that is pretty simple math. That is not complex. It is not calculus. It does not require an advanced degree. Seventy minus 50 is 20. And it is not a negative number. It is a positive number added on to the deficit. Let us demonstrate that while we are still providing $70 billion to tax cuts for the wealthy we are cutting the following things: for the sake of more tax cuts in this budget reconciliation bill, students can expect to pay as much as $5,800 more for college. For the sake of more tax cuts, 300,000 of America's neediest will be left without food stamps. For the sake of more tax cuts, we will fail in our obligation to bring hurricane victims lasting relief. For the sake of more tax cuts, $10 billion, $10 billion with a B, will be slashed from Medicaid. One in four children in America get their health care from Medicaid. For the sake of more tax cuts, we will ensure that the deficit remains high and the burden of creating more debt and paying that debt by our selfishness in choosing to help the wealthy at the expense of the people who are the most in need and the people who are just working every day to make ends meet, that is the debt we are passing on to our children and our children's children. And it is just mind-boggling to me. I know I am a freshman. The two gentlemen have been here longer than me. Maybe I am naive. Maybe the gentleman can provide some clarity because to me it is simple math. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. What we try to do in this 30-something time, we do a lot of talking, but we also want to show people with third- party validators and with the specifics blown up in poster-size form so that they have it both in graphical depiction as well as in description from us individually. So that was just showing my colleague that while he goes through just exactly what these cuts in student aid do, we have that up for the folks at home.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. The bottom line is we can do better. Together we can lock arms. Our generation can say to the generation in front of us that has been leading this country, give us the baton. It is our turn. We are not going there any more. We want to turn this country around. We want to make sure our children have health care, that mothers and fathers when their kids get sick do not have to wait until their kid is so sick they have to take them to the emergency room for their health care. We do not want to cut the budget for abused and neglected children. We are going to continue to pursue deadbeat dads. State legislators have fought tooth and nail to ensure that we can continue to go after deadbeat dads; yet in this budget we will consider this week, that opportunity would be lost. We would be preventing that opportunity. The list goes on and on. It adds insult to injury. It cuts the school lunch program, which is a program that makes it so that some kids, the only place they can get a meal, a decent meal, is from that free and reduced lunch, and the Republican leadership would cut that program. Our generation can take the country in a new direction, and we are ready to.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, all of what we are saying here tonight has caused me to look at the view of our generation and how we feel about the future and the direction that this leadership, this Republican leadership, is taking this country. We did a little research in my office. President John F. Kennedy once implored Americans to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. Another important question that all of these issues raises is how all of this budget cutting and pulling the rug out from under college students' future leaves them feeling in terms of public service and what their government can do for people and whether they would want to be a part of that. So we found some research that showed just exactly how our generation feels about this. A 2004 Hart Research Study for the Council of Excellence in Government found that 34 percent of young Americans said the idea of a government service career did not appeal to them. What does that say about the confidence that this leadership is inspiring in our generation? Mr. Speaker, that is 34 percent. That is a huge number. It means they have no confidence in government's ability to improve people's lives. After 9/11, we were starting to change those statistics. You saw after 9/11 the incredible response of first responders and of volunteers. All of our hearts in America swelled after the response from 9/11. The polling that was done then showed that young people felt that the response to 9/11 made them more likely to pursue careers in government and the public sector. But recent events, the culture of corruption, cronyism, the lack of competence that has been evident since the inception of this administration has absolutely, in 3 years from 9/11, 2001, to 2004, totally turned that belief in government's ability to improve our lives on its head. Just by way of example, some things that most likely did cause that, let us go under the category of corruption. When young people see politicians, leaders of our Nation, deliberately deceiving the American people, an example would be the recent indictment of Mr. Libby and the deceptive actions of Mr. Rove. You have people who spend their lives serving their country; and what happens, people in the administration, a person for the first time indicted in 130 years that served in the White House, people in the administration repay them that service by revealing a CIA's agent covert status, jeopardizing the lives of countless numbers of government employees who are trying to do good work on behalf of the United States of America. Example number two of corruption: We went to Iraq under questionable circumstances, under false pretenses, no question about it. We send American men and women into the battlefield, and more than 2,000 have given their lives. If you ask the average person, particularly in our generation, if they know for what those lives were given, I do not think that they feel confident that they would give an answer that anyone would be happy about. Let us look at the cronyism that might have caused this shift in confidence in our generation. This generation of young people is extremely independent. They have a spirit of self-determination. They are less likely to identify with a political party. Most young people today are identifying themselves as Independents. They see political appointments based on friendships. The appointment of Michael Brown, ``Brownie,'' because he was a college roommate with someone in the administration, with a friend of the President, being put in charge of one of the most important agencies in the country in terms of making sure that people's lives are protected as a disaster approaches and we can help them afterwards, we put someone in charge of that agency whose sum total of his experience was he was president of the Arabian Horse Association.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If the gentleman will yield, there is a way we can make changes which take us in a new direction: it is election day. We do not have to continue down this road. We do not have to continue to prop up and add to the bottom line of the wealthy. We can send the Republican leadership home, and we can start today. What I think we would all like to see happen in the next couple of hours in Virginia, in Ohio, in New Jersey, in New York, in California, and anywhere else there is an election of significance, of course, all elections are significant, but where the more significant offices and contests are being held, we would like to urge all voters to go out to the polls tonight in those communities. And just to help people know, there is still time left in Virginia. The polls close at 7 p.m. So there is about 45 minutes left. In Ohio, and these are all local times, in Ohio, the polls close at 7:30. In New Jersey, the polls close at 8:00 p.m. In New York, the polls close at 9 p.m. And in California, the polls close at 8 p.m. So we would urge all people who have an opportunity to make change in their State to cast their ballots today on election day. Make sure you get to your polling place and cast your vote to move this country in a new direction so we can continue to fight to make these changes. Now, Mr. Speaker, just to transition our conversation from the tax cuts to the whole issue of where we are going in terms of the budget cuts, in addition to cuts that affect children, in addition to child support payments, in addition to Medicaid cuts, this budget will do more damage than we have ever done to people who are trying to expand their horizons and get access to higher education. What is unbelievable about these budget cuts is that in terms of higher education, this is the most significant cut in history being made in this budget document to financial aid than we have ever seen before. Mr. Speaker, we are joined tonight by my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from the great State of Missouri (Mr. Carnahan), and he has been a champion on this issue in trying to raise people's awareness of just exactly what this Republican budget document would do to people who are struggling to get access to higher education. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. The gentleman's bringing up faith as it relates to this budget document is incredibly important, because our friends on the other side of the aisle throw around family values as a term and as part of their make-up and try to contrast us, as if that is not part of ours. Let us just look at what the faith community is saying about this budget, and what they have been saying about this budget. This week, this past week, we had a number of members of the organized religious community come to Washington and urge the Republican leadership not to pursue this budget reconciliation document. You had Reverend Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners and Convener of Call to Renewal. You had Rabbi David Saperstein, who is the director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism. You had Reverend Elenora Giddings Ivory, who is the Director of the Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church. What Reverend Ivory said when she was here, she said, ``I am here today to express concern for the Federal budget reconciliation packages under consideration in the House and the Senate. Our Nation is about to balance its budget on the backs of the poor. Is that a moral thing to do? The Federal budget is a reflection of what we see as important and primary. Does the spending package under consideration reflect a caring and a compassionate society? Does it reflect you as a citizen of faith?'' I think that each of us, if we ask and look inside our own hearts, Republicans and Democrats alike, would have to answer each of those questions, absolutely not.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about a crisis in South Florida. The third most destructive hurricane ever to hit this country struck my congressional district just over 2 weeks ago. Thousands of people are still without power, thousands still have holes in their roofs that threaten to condemn their houses with every new rain. Thousands have mobility issues and are without housing because they cannot get up and down the stairs to their apartment. The list goes on and on, and it is truly heart wrenching. Just last week I was delivering meals to seniors in my district who could not get out of their third floor condominiums. Even though it was 5 days after the hurricane struck South Florida, the residents there said that no one had heard from FEMA, no one had seen FEMA and, worse yet, no one knew how to get in touch with FEMA to make sure things did not get any worse. And why do I fear that things could get worse? Because of problems like this. This is a third floor apartment, that is the ceiling of the apartment, and as we can see, you can look right through the ceiling at the sky. This is the woman's master bedroom and literally during the storm, 1 minute after she walked out of that master bedroom the ceiling came down on her bed. The roof caved in. A minute earlier and it would have caved in on her. Obviously, this apartment is uninhabitable. However, this is a three- story building. If we delay the disaster response, if we do not get FEMA tarp distribution centers set up right away, if we wait weeks before we deliver individual assistance, then not only are we saying to the woman that lived in this unit, tough it out, you are on our your own for now, but we are also making the problem worse because there are two floors below this apartment unit. If it rains through this massive hole in the ceiling in this woman's apartment, then it will leak down onto the apartments on the second floor and possibly weaken the structure, leading to the evacuation of everyone in that part of building. And that is beginning to happen; this is what is happening. Our ineffective response is not only irresponsible, but it also costs the taxpayers more money than necessary. Now, I have been talking about a natural disaster, which is Hurricane Wilma. But I also want to talk a minute about a man-made disaster that is coming, something that will victimize once again the victims of Hurricane Wilma, Katrina and Rita. I am talking about the Draconian budget cuts proposed by the Republican leadership in their so-called budget reconciliation package. Last week, the papers in South Florida blared the news that over 5,000 people's homes had been condemned, much of it affordable housing. In Broward County the median price of a home is $348,000, making many homes and even rental apartments out of reach for thousands of south Floridians. While the loss of 5,000 homes damaged by Hurricane Wilma is terrible, I would like to point out that the budget reconciliation package endorsed by the Republican leadership eliminates affordable housing vouchers for 3,500 people in Florida alone. In other words, Mr. Speaker, while Hurricane Wilma made 5,000 Florida families homeless last week, the Republican leadership is proposing cuts that would make 3,500 more Florida families homeless. So first we get hit by Katrina, then we get hit by Wilma and either this week or next the American people will get hit by Hurricane Republican. Hurricanes are natural disasters, Mr. Speaker. What we will be debating in the House this week or next is a man-made disaster, a man- made disaster that not only would leave 3,500 Florida families homeless through cuts to Section 8 housing vouchers, but also, incredibly, would cut $58.9 million in elementary and secondary education funds for Florida students, $4.9 million in cuts for supplemental nutrition programs for women infants and children, $25.1 million in cuts for children and families. These are funds that provide for the Head Start program and help abused and neglected children. Cutting funds for abused and neglected children, what are we coming to here? I urge my colleagues to vote against a man-made disaster that will originate from this body this week and sweep across the country, displacing thousands of people nationwide. I urge them to vote against the Republican budget reconciliation package.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Yes, I would be happy to.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I think that would be Veterans Day, and that is Friday.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you. And you know it is totally understandable why you are emotional about it and why we are all emotional about it. We are all bristling with indignation here because to add insult to injury, the nightmare scenario you are describing for veterans if this budget reconciliation bill actually becomes a reality is just the tip of iceberg. Just a few months ago, I mean, I am a freshman. I just got here. And there are a lot of things that have shocked me, not the least of which is what you referred to a little while ago which is that we almost never meet in a bipartisan fashion. The idea of actually seeing Members from the other side of the aisle sit down at a meeting like you just described, at the beginning of this year, you know, to me would have been a usual matter, like we did in the legislature, coming together on most things and arguing about only the most basic of Republican and Democratic differences. Here it is like they think we do not take showers or something. I am not really certain why it is that they will not actually sit down with us and try to work things out. But what was more startling just a couple of months later was that, you know, we have talked about the number of Cs that apply to their ability to govern. There is corruption, there is the cronyism, and then there is the lack of competence. I mean, I could not believe that in June we had to actually appropriate $1.5 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs because there was a shortfall in their budget that they were denying for months. Months. We kept insisting there was a shortfall. Veterans were having to wait months and months for health care. The 6-month wait for access to health care at the VA was a true reality. And we were saying there is something wrong here. The American Legion was saying something was wrong here. And finally they owned up and realized oh, yeah, we do have a shortfall and we are going to need, we had to go and pass an emergency appropriations bill to get them the rest of the money they need. You know, we talk about the third-party validators here. Now there is a proposal to cut $600 million out of this budget in veterans health care, which would be enough funds to care for nearly 100,000 veterans. The American Legion, this is this evening's third-party validator for me on veterans, expressed concern that that cut would mean rationing of care, hiring freezes of medical personnel, delaying repairs on facilities, growing backlogs of medical equipment, and many other fiscal-based constraints. And that was a letter that they wrote on October 17.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Gall is a soft word, the softest word you could use. I really want to go ahead and transition to Mr. Delahunt, who is going to go through some more of this.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman recalls a few months ago when we were talking about Social Security privatization and the impact that that would have on our seniors, imagine if that proposal had gone through and, hopefully, we are going to continue to be able to keep that off the table. But when we were on the floor during the 30-Something Working Group, my colleagues will recall that one of the things that we talked about so often was that we have so many of our senior citizens who are on fixed incomes, whose Social Security is their only source of survival. Now, if what the Republican Study Committee would like to see happen happens, where they increase Medicare Part B premiums, which is out-of- pocket money that these seniors have to pay, and one day soon we privatize Social Security, how are these people going to be able to afford to live?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Can I just tell you, it gets worse. It is not just the fact that they are responding to this entire fiasco, ethical conflict, with ethics classes for the White House staff. Do you know who is giving the classes? The White House counsel's office, Harriet Miers' office. That is part of their pattern. It is not like they decided they should go somewhere outside the White House, because clearly the White House has not been emblematic of an ethical place where you could actually learn ethics from someone inside the White House. You would think they would have gone outside the White House, but they do not believe in independence. We asked them to establish an independent Katrina commission. No. Their answer was to do it internally and create a special committee here that is lopsided, 11 Republicans and right now no Democrats because we refuse to serve on a committee that is not going to be fair and objective and really get to the bottom of it. The bottom line, the reason I brought this up is because your point is from the top to the bottom, the culture of corruption and cronyism and incompetence just runs right through. There is not any light at the end of the tunnel, and it gets worse with every page you turn in this administration.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Just one quick statement. We want to remind everyone that tomorrow is election day in many places, Virginia, California, New York, New Jersey. We want to urge our generation to come out in the record numbers that they came out during the 2004 elections.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That might be a little bit of Washington- speak. I think people might get the letters confused. What is Medicare Part B?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If the gentleman will yield, I think we should expand this conversation beyond just what this budget reconciliation, budget cut proposal that we will consider this week means. Because what was initially rolled out by the Republican Study Committee after Katrina was this chart that you have right here. I think it would be helpful for us to go through just exactly what the true intentions are of the Republican Caucus. How many Republican members are there in the caucus?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. So 228 members of their caucus and more than 100 of those members, it is my understanding, are members of the Republican Study Committee. So the vast majority of the Republican Caucus subscribes to this proposal that the Republican Study Committee put forward which is really what they would do if they could get their moderate Republicans who are not members of the study committee to swallow it. And because they know that they are in a precarious situation in their own elections in many instances, they are the ones that have been waffling on the fence here. Let us go through what the Republicans would do if they had their way. They would delay the Medicare prescription drug bill for 1 year which the gentleman from Ohio already mentioned. They would reduce Medicaid administrative spending. But they would go further than that. They would increase the allowable copays in Medicaid. Let us describe what that means. Fully one in four children in the United States of America today get their health care from Medicaid. Often I know when people think of Medicaid, they think of it as really just purely a health care system that provides health care access to the poor. But if one in four children are getting their health care from Medicaid, that means you have that many children living in poverty in the United States of America. What this proposal would do by increasing the copays is requiring poor children's families to come more out of pocket to pay for their health care.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise to reflect on the life and contributions of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was tragically assassinated 10 years ago. Yitzhak Rabin dedicated his entire life to the cause of peace and security for Israel. He fought tirelessly for the right of all Israelis to live normal lives without fear of attack, to dine with friends, to shop, and to send their children to school on buses. Yitzhak Rabin was many things, a soldier, an Ambassador, a Knesset Member, a Prime Minsiter, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He is remembered best as a peacemaker who changed the course of history. I In addition to valiantly serving Israel's armed forces for 27 years, including during the War of Independence, the Suez War, and the Six-Day War as Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin is responsible for leading Israel through many historic times. In 1975 he signed the interim agreement with Egypt which laid the groundwork for peace between Israel and Egypt. In 1976, Yitzhak Rabin ordered the successful liberation of the hijacked Air France flight, known as Operation Entebbe. And in 1994 Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan signed a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. Most notably, Yitzhak Rabin's legacy includes the signing of the Declaration of Principles framework agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and the famous handshake with the late PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat on the White House lawn. Upon the signing of the Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993, Yitzhak Rabin said to the Palestinians, ``We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough. We harbor no hatred toward you. We have no desire for revenge. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, plant a tree, love, live side by side with you--in dignity, empathy, as human beings, as free men . . .'' Clearly, this was a man who envisioned a free, secure, and democratic Jewish state at peace with all its neighbors. Yitzhak Rabin's message resounded across Israel, and it is no wonder that on November 4, 1995, he attended and spoke at a peace rally in Tel Aviv amidst tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters with banners proclaiming ``Yes to peace--no to violence.'' In his final address at the peace rally Yitzhak Rabin stated, ``I have always believed that the majority of the people want peace, are prepared to take risks for peace,'' and ``Peace is what the Jewish People aspire to, a true aspiration.'' Yitzhak Rabin was fatally shot by a Jewish student as he left the rally. On the 10th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's death, I wish to express the deepest condolences of the American people to the family of Yitzhak Rabin and to all the people of Israel for the loss of this great leader. Additionally, we must honor his life and his work by continuing the pursuit of peace in the Middle East. The United States and Israel share a special bond, one that Yitzhak Rabin helped to establish during his time as Ambassador to the U.S. This bond is steadfast and represents the abundance of shared values and common goals of our two societies. I am proud to be part of the U.S. Congress, a body which stands by Israel when Israel needs us. Just last week, the House of Representatives voted to pass the Conference Report of the Fiscal Year 2006 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act which includes $2.3 billion in military assistance and $240 million in economic assistance to Israel. Without a doubt, Yitzhak Rabin's legacy of bringing the U.S. and Israel closer together lives on. Ten years after Yitzhak Rabin's tragic death, let us renew our commitment to fostering peace in the Middle East. We must encourage efforts that support the peacemakers of this world and penalize those who would murder innocents. Yitzhak Rabin has left a wonderful legacy over his long and distinguished career of service, and it is with the utmost respect and admiration that I support the people of Israel in their quest for peace.