Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Loss of productivity by her employer. Just think about the impact of people who cannot go to work when they are sick. Think about the skyrocketing costs of health care and this administration. Ask yourself, Madam Speaker, ask yourself the last time you heard President Bush say anything about health care. I have not heard him say a word about health care. I have not heard him speak out against Medicaid cuts. I have not heard him speak in favor of helping poor children and their families afford health care. Where is the outrage?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If that were not bad enough, if making poor children's families pull more money out of their pocket to pay for their health care were not bad enough, the Republican Study Committee, in fact, more than that, this budget cut proposal that we are going to consider this week would allow increases in premiums for the first time and it would also let health care providers, physicians and other health care providers that are Medicaid providers, refuse care if a beneficiary cannot afford the copayment. Right now they are not able to refuse that care. There is a change in this proposal that would allow people who provide health care to Medicaid recipients to refuse care if they do not have the money to pull out of their pocket. Often we hear the argument made about the skyrocketing costs of Medicaid, the greater percentage that Medicaid has taken of the Federal budget and of State budgets. While that may be true, what the gentleman from Ohio has just outlined is absolutely accurate. These cuts, which are supposed to be representative of savings, there is not going to be savings. It is just going to be more cost shifting of health care costs. Because these people who are on Medicaid now, they have to get their health care from somewhere. Most good parents, any good parent is not going to let their child suffer. What they do is instead of being able to take their children to the doctor for well baby visits and well child visits and make sure that the health care is preventive as opposed to reactionary and sickness and disease based, they have to wait till their child is sick enough to take to the emergency room. I was walking door to door when I first ran for the State legislature and knocked on the door of a younger woman, it turned out. Usually when I was knocking door to door, it was senior citizens who took a long time to get to the door. But this woman, I was surprised when she answered the door, was young. Her foot was swollen to a grotesque proportion. I could not help but ask her what happened. She said I actually had caught her just as she was about to go out the door to the emergency room because she did not have health insurance and she was not able to go to the doctor when the problem on her foot was small, she had to wait till it was so infected that she had to go to the emergency room. Of course she had no health insurance and she did not qualify for Medicaid in this instance. So now what we should do is talk about the gap between people who qualify for Medicaid and people who have health insurance. There are a vast amount of people in the middle who fall through the crack.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) was referring to the guts that they lack. It has been clear to me, and increasingly clear as the months go by, that they do not have the guts or the ability in their constitutional makeup, like the gentleman said, continuing with the C-word theme, it is their culture of cronyism that does not allow them. Their culture that propels them to take care of the people at the top and only those at the top. So they do not have the ability to comprehend at least not the way I perceive it, that they are doing the wrong thing. The culture of corruption and cronyism just continues, and although it is somewhat off topic, I think it is important because the last few times we have been here we have been talking about just their general lack of ethics and their commitment to taking care of their cronies as opposed to the American people. We have been calling on the floor of this House for the President to fire Karl Rove, to at least ask him to step down, to eliminate the weight that is standing on his chest and the chests of the American people and our ability to actually move forward. Do you know what his response was to calls across the country to get rid of Karl Rove? He ordered his staff in the White House to take an ethics course this week. That is what he has asked them to do. Right there in black and white, the Associated Press reported it. His response to this entire mess is that his White House staff should take an ethics class.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They have no respect for the American people. They have no respect for the American people. When you are willing to do anything and say anything to have your way, regardless of the consequences, that demonstrates that you have no respect for the people that you represent, for the people that sent you to Washington to do right by them. As elected officials, the three of us and all our colleagues here who serve in this Chamber, who have stood for office, most of us many times, what we are doing when we go and put our name on that ballot and ask people to support us, we are asking them to put their faith and their trust in us. We are telling them that we respect their opinion, that we will honor their opinion. People in America do not expect to always agree with what we do here. I know there are people in my district who sometimes agree with me and sometimes they do not agree with me. But what they have told me, and I know each of my colleagues have heard this same thing, they have told me, Debbie, I do not always agree with you, but at least I know you are up there fighting for what you believe in. I know that you have the utmost integrity. I know I can put my faith and trust in you and that you are always going to look me in the eye and tell me exactly how things are and tell me the truth. There is no one in America that the President can look in the eye and say he has told them the truth. Because, although he specifically has not been accused of anything illegal, he specifically has not been accused of anything illegal, you are a reflection of the people you surround yourself with. And, essentially, by allowing Karl Rove to remain in the White House and by hanging on to his staff that have been accused of unethical behavior-- Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the gentleman from California, you are the chairman of the Rules Committee. You spend as much time restricting the Democrats' ability to offer amendments and act in a bipartisan fashion and provide input to the policies that are forced through this Congress than anyone else in this Chamber. There is absolutely no bipartisan effort made here.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Black and white.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You mean to tell me they did not keep track? They do not have a file?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Wait. They do not keep records of previous Congresses?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Forgive me, Mr. Speaker, but there are times when this is so outrageous and the conduct that is going on in this administration is so outrageous that it is difficult to contain myself and it is difficult to keep that outrage bottled up inside. Because that is what we have been asking for weeks now. Where is the outrage? Where is the outrage from the Republican leadership in this Chamber? They certainly had plenty of outrage during the previous administration.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Right. I guess they believe they can say anything they want to. They do not have to follow it, and there would be no consequences. But, see, unfortunately for them, fortunately for the American people, the American people get it now. They are on to them. Let us talk about the Washington Post poll, and I know we will have an opportunity to put this up in poster form probably next week, but one of the questions that the Washington Post/ABC News poll asked was, Please tell me whether the following statement applies to Bush or not: He is honest and trustworthy. In May of 2004, 53 percent of the American people answered that question yes and 45 percent said no. Now 40 percent think he is honest and trustworthy, and 58 percent say he is not. I think that is in part because you can tell a lot about a person by the people they surround themselves with. Right now, let us look at who is surrounding the President of the United States or who previously was surrounding him. You have Mr. Libby, who was indicted on Friday; and, of course, it is not confirmed unless and until he is convicted. He is not guilty of a crime yet. But he was indicted. The first official in the White House in 130 years. The President said if somebody committed a crime they will no longer work in his administration. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) I know will probably talk a few minutes about the difference in the shifting sands of the President's statements. But you have Mr. Rove who increasingly it has become clear, as clear as a bell, that he absolutely was directly involved in outing a covert CIA agent, directly involved, yet he is still in the White House with the highest security clearance, access to the most top secret information. It is easy to see why 58 percent of the American people do not think the President is honest and trustworthy. Because if you take it a step further, the same Washington Post/ABC News poll says it has been reported that another subject of the investigation has been Karl Rove, who has been a close advisor to Bush. The question was, Given what you have heard or read, do you think Rove did anything wrong in connection with this case or not? If yes, do you think he did something unethical but not illegal or did you think that he did something illegal? Forty-nine percent of the American people answered that question that he did something wrong for sure. Of the 49 percent, 26 percent believe he did something illegal and 23 percent think he did something unethical. Forty-nine percent of people asked believe that Karl Rove did something either illegal or unethical, and 59 percent of the people believe that he should resign from the White House. Now, is President Bush so incompetent that he is not able to cope without Mr. Rove by his side? I do not know. Generally, I expect that, I know I surround myself with a number of competent people. You make sure you put together a team of people that does not rise and fall on one person and their knowledge and ability to assist you.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, what it boils done to is that here in the House the rules hem us in, and we have to talk around a lot of what we might like to say more directly, but the American people elected us to speak truth to power. I mean, that is the bottom line. We could not have more power in the White House than there is right now, and they exercise every bit of it. They exercise every bit of it, regardless of the consequences, regardless of the plight of the people whose decisions they affect. There are so many examples of how what we are doing on this floor allows us to reveal that truth. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) has a chart right there that will help us ferret out a little bit of that truth.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Asian.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Well, you bet your sweet bippy they are worried. They are worried you are asking for those documents. Because there are those on the other side of the aisle that would try to lead people to believe that we are just a bunch of malcontent Democrats who are standing on the floor complaining about something inconsequential. It is just the same old, same old. Not true. Look at the reasoning and the motivation that was behind the outing of a covert CIA agent and of the planning and machinations that were going on in the White House to conceal and deceive the American people about what their plans were. It was all about making sure that they could have their way in going to war in Iraq. That is what it all boiled down to. And the consequences of that motivation are that now we have more than 2,000 American soldiers, men and women, who are dead, who lost their lives because this administration was hell-bent on being right, facts be damned. It made no difference to them that all the evidence mounting showed that they were wrong, that there were no weapons of mass destruction. It was obvious there was no other reason to go into Iraq other than the President and his people decided we should, long before September 11. With all the documentation that has come out now pointing to the fact that, soon after the President was elected in 2000, it had been decided that they were going to go to war in Iraq, and what they have been doing for the last few years leading up to our entering Iraq and since then is assembling the facts around their decision. Then subsequent to our entry into Iraq and it being discovered there were no weapons of mass destruction, in part because Joe Wilson went there to Niger and demonstrated factually that that was not the case, subsequently they have had to prevaricate. They have had to lie, because, oops, it was shown that not only were they wrong but they were deceitful. Can you think of any more heinous an act than deceiving the American people and the world on the ultimate sacrifice that Americans are asked to make for their country?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. The gentleman is absolutely right. The gentleman talked about, he started his last couple of minutes talking about the precedent-setting activity in this administration. To take that a step further, let us talk about just how precedent setting this administration is. They are certainly precedent setting in terms of ethical lapses, in terms of corruption and cronyism and the lack of confidence. You have literally, with the indictment of Mr. Libby on Friday, the first White House official to be indicted in 130 years. Now, throughout our lifetime, throughout our lifetime and the lifetime of our generation here in the 30-Something Working Group, you go through probably our earliest memory of our administration would be Nixon. We were young kids during the Nixon administration, but obviously that was a pretty significant scandal. Then you move forward. Nothing too terrible in the Ford administration. People obviously had some deep concerns or over Mr. Carter administration but nothing ethical to speak of. Obviously, with Iran Contra and the Reagan administration and the number of officials who were investigated and subpoenaed there were deep concerns, but no one indicted from the White House. The same thing with President Clinton. No indictments of people in the White House. Definitely some questions, but now we reach the Bush administration. Does the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) have the chart with him from the other day where we can put it up and show people and the Speaker what the President said during his campaign? Is that with us? As we are getting it, if you recall, the President when he was a candidate for President talked about how he was going to transform the standards of ethics of the White House and that anyone working in his administration was going to be held to the highest of standards. That it was not just going to be whether they have actually broke the law, but the standard, and here it is. President Bush's promise that he made as a candidate that, ``In my administration we will ask not only what is legal but what is right. Not just what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves.'' Well, I do not know, I guess prevarication is just a common practice. It is just part of their culture, part of their culture of corruption and cronyism and incompetence.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. One of our third-party validators.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, this afternoon all across south Florida, there are thousands of people whose homes have been condemned. They have been condemned following a category 3 hurricane called Hurricane Wilma. Subsequently in the last few days, it has been pouring rain. I went door to door in my district over the weekend and met hundreds of men and women in their 80s and 90s stuck in their apartments with no power. At one point, I came upon a 93-year-old women in her kitchen with her 90-year-old next-door neighbor who were looking with despair at an MRE, trying to figure out how to get it open, put it together, and get it heating so that they could have the first hot food, something resembling hot food, that they had had in 5 days. I literally had to help them with the print on the instructions that was this big, try to figure out how to put that meal together without burning themselves, because as soon as you put the water in the meal, it starts to immediately heat up. This was not an isolated incident. In the 2 days after that, those women and the other senior citizens that I represent in the Sunrise Lakes Condominium were told that they needed to leave their apartments because after the rain, the leaking through their condominium roof was so bad that their apartments were uninhabitable. They are now in an elementary school with no shower, with a makeshift shower that was put together with two porta-potties shoved next to each other and plastic sheeting taped up with a hose stuck over the top so that they could bathe. We are talking about men and women in their upper 80s and 90s. Hurricane Wilma has caused tremendous suffering in south Florida, and there has not been enough national attention on the plight of my constituents and the constituents of my south Florida colleagues. We need to make sure that we are able to provide the help and assistance that they so desperately need. There is need across this country, and next week we are going to add insult to injury and apply a manmade disaster in the form of the budget reconciliation, which is Washington-speak for budget cuts. There are going to be proposed housing cuts, Medicare cuts, food stamps, school lunches. Between Katrina and Wilma, and all of the suffering going on across this country, now is not the time to add more harm and do more damage to people who are badly in need. Mr. Speaker, we need to do right by Americans, not pull the rug out from under them. I urge my colleagues to make sure that we provide the badly needed assistance, both to victims of Hurricane Katrina on the gulf coast and to victims of Katrina from south Florida.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Where is their moral outrage? Where are their morals? That is what I want to know. I am a mom. I have three little kids. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) has two young children. Can you imagine a circumstance where you would allow your children to go hungry if you could do something about it? Our role here as Members of Congress, we are supposed to look out for the people who cannot look out for themselves. That is what government is for. Children are our most vulnerable citizens. Laws are written and government exists so that we can take care of kids because they cannot make their parents earn enough money to be able to pay for their breakfast and their lunch. That is where we come in. That is where government fills in for the individuals, society. It is not fathomable to me. When I gave birth to my children, my life transformed overnight. Overnight. In a matter of hours. And my whole life became not about me any more, or my day-to-day needs; but about their day-to-day needs. That is why we are here, because we are supposed to be taking care of the needs of people who cannot do it for themselves

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is combined.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson). He is incredibly eloquent, and I tremor following that eloquence. I want to just follow up with some specifics, because our good friend from California (Mr. Dreier) was here earlier challenging our description of our inability to make an impact and offer our ideas here. He described this mythological bipartisan process. Well, let us counter some of the facts he threw out there. There have been 85 pieces of legislation that have had rules applied to them. For those who are listening that do not know what that means, we have restrictions placed on our ability as Members to offer amendments and offer our own ideas and help shape legislation every time, almost every time a bill is introduced on the floor. There have been 85 such bills that have been introduced. Of those, 38 of them have had restrictive rules, meaning the Committee on Rules decides which, if any, amendments we are going to be allowed to offer. Fifteen of those rules, 15 individual pieces of legislation, have been entirely closed, meaning no Member is allow to offer any amendments whatsoever. Three additional closed rules were added into an entirely separate bill. Of the 85 pieces of legislation that have come on this floor that have had rules apply to them, there has only been one substantive bill that had an open rule, meaning any Member can offer, meaning any Member elected in our own right, each by the same 633,000 people that we all represent, only one substantive bill has had an open rule where we can offer any amendment and any idea that we would like to offer.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If the gentleman will yield before we branch off to Iraq just for a second.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You know, I have been seriously considering coming to the Chamber next Friday in my pajamas, given the track record of controversial votes, where they make their Members, the Republican leadership makes their Members puke blood in not allowing them to decide what to do, to stand on the courage of their convictions. They keep the board open, and we watch it light up like a Christmas tree up there, red to green, green to red. It is just unbelievable. Sometimes I think the board is malfunctioning. Maybe it is not functioning. Maybe we should get an electrician in here. Maybe we should have the electrician check the wiring behind the Republican Members' names and their lights, because they do not seem to be able to pick one and have it stay there. Every time they have to cast a controversial vote, it goes from no to yes, then yes to no; or they do not appear to be able to turn their own light on for a very long time, because they cannot decide. Is it that they cannot decide? I just want to make sure, because it is deeply concerning to me that they would not know when they came to the floor how to vote on a bill that is going to cut food stamps, that is going to cut financial aid, that cuts access to affordable energy, that allows drilling around the entire coastline of the United States of America where it is not currently allowed. So there has to be something wrong with the wiring. Next week, I am going to be here in my pajamas and a teddy bear with a nice cup of coffee because we are really going to have to settle in for a long night. It is not going to be a normal 15-minute or a normal 5-minute vote, because I think the wiring under that board is going to go haywire next week. They are clearly not going to get their way right away because this is going to be a gut-wrenching angst-ridden vote. Woe to the Member on their side that does not vote how the leadership wants them to. Sometimes when we talk in trillions and billions and millions it is a hard concept for people to understand. I know it is hard for me. A trillion is such a huge number. An $8 trillion deficit is what we are in the middle of right now. That is a huge number. I sometimes cannot understand how big that number is. It is also hard to understand what an $844 million cut from the food stamp program is, or the kind of cuts they are going to be passing down in this budget reconciliation document that is going to affect affordable housing. I want to show this picture. This picture is of me standing in the apartment of one of my constituents whose roof caved in on her during Hurricane Wilma. These are the people that, on top of what they have already gone through, on top of what they have already gone through, now we are going to cut the budget that funds the very programs that exist to help them. There are people in dire straits in south Florida after Hurricane Wilma and in the gulf coast region after Katrina. There are people who before the hurricanes hit were in dire straits. This is what the problem really looks like for people. These people cannot live in homes like this because this home was condemned. Obviously, nobody can live in the apartment in this picture, and I wish that there was only one that looked like this in south Florida. This is the plight that we are putting people through. Before we give out the Web site, I want to close by saying that we are in the middle of adding ``C'' after ``C'': with the culture of corruption, cronyism, and the lack of confidence that the American people have in their government, and now we have the coverup Congress. That is what came to light here this week. We have repeatedly asked for investigations, that this leadership stand up and do what is right. And Leader Pelosi has tried to get them to do that, and they have unanimously rejected that. We are going to continue to come back to this floor and stand up for the American people, and I look forward to continuing this dialogue with my colleague.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. What we are here going to say is that the emperor truly does have not clothes. If you remember that story, everyone in the kingdom in that story refused to acknowledge that the emperor was buck naked because they were worried about the consequences. They wanted to make sure that nothing happened to them. Well, we are not afraid. We are not afraid. It needs to be highlighted and underscored. What they are doing to the American people needs to be brought out, and we are saying do not believe us. This is not what Kendrick Meek and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are saying or Tim Ryan or any of the other Members that have come to this floor to share angst and concern. We are saying look at the third party validators that we have saying the exact same thing. We are saying look at the religious leaders who are urging and who just yesterday came to the Congress to urge the congressional leadership not to put forth these drastic cuts that are going to hurt people. This is from today's Washington Post. This is not a quotation from someone else. This is in the story on the budget cuts. It says, With so many controversial provisions, the House measure is forcing Republican leaders to scramble for support in what could be the most difficult vote of the year. Well, I would agree. This should be the most difficult vote of the year. When you are cutting people's food stamps, when you are cutting their children's ability to get free and reduced lunch, when you are cutting $4.9 billion from child support programs that help people collect money from deadbeat dads, yeah, I would guess that is a tough vote. Lord, I would hope so. It goes on to say, Some Republican moderates are balking at cuts to anti-poverty programs, especially in light of the $70 billion tax cut that could come to a vote soon after the budget bill, more than wiping out that bill's deficit reduction. Well, here it is. It is not what Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Kendrick Meek are saying. The article describing the budget cuts, the reconciliation bill, specifically says that there is no deficit reduction in what they are doing. What they are doing is to try to preserve the tax cuts for the wealthy, make sure that their right wing, that their right flank does not go absolutely ballistic, because that wing of the party does not care about taking care of people. They are trying to make sure they preserve what they have and what the upper echelon has. Let us talk about because if you do not believe the Washington Post, you think it is paper that is off the mark, let us just go through what some of our religious leaders are saying. We are not talking about liberal religious leaders or progressive religious leaders. We are talking about mainstream religious leadership that came here yesterday and joined in prayer at the Capitol. They included Reverend Dr. Bob Edgar, who is the general secretary of the National Council of Churches of the United States; Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine; Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center; and Eleanor Giddings Ivory of the Presbyterian Church. Let me go through a couple of things that they said in urging the Republican leadership not to do this, not to harm and cause harm to the people that this budget will affect. Reverend Jim Wallis: ``As this moral battle for the budget unfolds, I am calling on Members of Congress, some of whom make much out of their faith, to start some Bible studies before they cast votes to cut food stamps, Medicaid, child care and more that hurt the weakest in our Nation.'' Rabbi David Saperstein: The budget reconciliation package with its $50 billion in program cuts and $70 billion tax cuts giveaway is morally unjustifiable. Reverend Eleanor Giddings Ivory of the Presbyterian Church: 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? Clearly the answer is, no, it is not. Let me just tell you, I was so moved by Rabbi Saperstein's comments in their effort yesterday. He, as is the practice of many of our religious colleagues on both sides of the aisle but particularly because the Republican leadership and its Members like to use their faith so often to underscore how they have injected values into government, Rabbi Saperstein urged our colleagues and said that they ought to remember that the Bible urges us to ``deal thy bread to the hungry,'' not ``steal thy bread from the hungry.'' He asked us to remember Proverbs' stern warning: ``Do not steal from the weak because he is weak and do not oppress the poor in the gate.'' I could go on, but there have been many more than just the religious leaders that were here yesterday who have urged this Congress not to take these actions. It not only will harm people, cause grave harm for people who have already been on the brink, it will not improve anything. It does not reduce our deficit. It does not improve our economy. It only brings harm, and I think if we are going to subscribe to anything it is the physician's oath. That should be something we live by, which is first do no harm. When we get here, we should commit to doing no harm, and it appears unfortunately as though the Republican leadership came here to do the opposite.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Our good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), was defending the Republican leadership's position here that they are committed to cutting the deficit, and that that is, you know, a major reason why next week they are going to rain down these horrendous terrible cuts in the budget on the people who are the most in need. I was not very good at math when I was younger. But you know, the most simplistic mathematical calculation would tell you that if they are going to cut $50 billion out of the budget next week, yet still provide $70 billion worth of tax cuts, than I guess I just wonder how they are going to reduce the deficit when you are still adding $20 billion to it. I mean, and then that is to say nothing of the fact that when you cut the budget, you are doing nothing to reduce the deficit. That is just what is so mind-boggling. I think if we can, I would like to translate, because words like deficit and reconciliation and big Washington-speak words like that are sometimes hard for regular folks in our districts to understand, so let us talk about what this reconciliation budget-cut document that we are going to take up next week, what it really means for people. In the Agriculture Committee, they voted to cut $844 million from the food stamp program, which would kick 300,000 families out of the program and leave 40,000 children ineligible for free school lunches. Now, that is not whining. That means a little boy or little girl is going to have a grumbly tummy day after day. Do you know what it feels like? I know what it feels like to not have anything in my tummy. I do not have anything in my tummy right now. But I have the ability to go out and buy a sandwich. People who get free and reduced school lunches do not have that luxury.