Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Oh, my God, puking blood. It is just unbelievable. They have this timer that they set with 5-minute votes that turn into 40-minute votes, like the energy bill. I was not here, but the Medicare bill, a 15-minute vote, over 3 hours. And all the while our vote board with our names up here in lights, arm-twisting, blood-puking, the green turning to red, yes to no, and literally the angst that I have watched on some of my colleagues' faces knowing they want to cast their vote with how they truly believe, but they care more about the money continuing to flow, about the chairmanships continuing to come their way, and about the appropriations continuing to remain in the budget. It is all about them. And when I ran for office, I thought it was supposed to be about the people I represented. That is why I came here. I am not sure why they came here. They have made it pretty clear, but I know that it is obvious that we came here for different reasons than they did.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Where is their backbone?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And the culture that the gentleman is describing, he is absolutely right. It is not isolated. It is not like you can cordon off this instance and say it was just an anomaly, it was unusual. When you have something that is essentially your culture, like their culture of corruption, it is what defines you. It is what drives you every day. The culture that you are raised in is your belief system. It is your traditions. It defines almost everything about you. It is clear that up and down this administration, up and down this leadership, I wish it stopped just at the administration, but it flows all the way down through this institution on their side and beyond. And we are in deep trouble because this government is being run by people who live by a culture of corruption. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) talked earlier about the 14-year covert CIA operative who talked about how treacherous it was and how they were being undermined by officials in their own government. Well, I want to go back to what Mr. Melman said in that Chris Matthews interview. Not just what he said previously, but in that same interview we talked about earlier. Chris Matthews asked him if he thought that heads should roll, essentially, for that conduct. And what he said was: ``I do not believe it would be hard for President Bush to ask that person to walk the plank.'' I do not see the plank. I have not seen Rove walk off of it. He is there still. He is still the Deputy White House Chief of Staff with the highest security clearance, with the ability to assist the President in making the most important decisions that this country faces. The New York Times on October 5, 2003, talked about the instance of treachery. Within the CIA, they said the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery, as the gentleman from Ohio outlined. Miss Plame, a specialist in nonconventional weapons who worked overseas, had nonofficial cover and what was what in CIA parlance was called a nok, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create. So we are not just talking about your run-of-the-mill covert agent. I know as I have been following this, and we are obviously not intimately familiar with the CIA's operations, I initially thought that Ms. Plame was a nominal covert agent. I know there are varying degrees. But apparently she had the most difficult cover to develop. It makes matters that much worse. We have got to make sure that the American people can trust the information and the people who are running this country. We have to be able to trust the information that comes out of the White House. I have spoken, I know all my colleagues have too, to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have said that they no longer trust the information that comes from the White House; yet they continue to walk the plank for the administration and for their leadership. They do whatever they are told. They never stray.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is the pattern. Because there is no accountability in Iraq, and just giving away the store, contracts without any accountability. In Florida, we have been hit by eight hurricanes in 15 months. A year ago, FEMA gave out $31 million in reimbursement and assistance to people who were not even hit by a hurricane in Miami Dade County, one of the counties that I represent. So my answer to my daughter this morning was, honey, even though this is an agency, a department in the government that is supposed to take care of people after a hurricane comes by, many people think they are doing such a poor job that it feels like they got hit by hurricane FEMA after they have come through. That is what is going on in Florida tonight as we speak. You still have them make mistake after mistake, no communication, and yet this leadership and this Congress still refuses to appoint an independent Katrina commission to ensure that we can review the aftermath of that storm, the aftermath of Rita and Wilma and find out why they were not ready, what happened. We still have 4 weeks left of hurricane season. We are in a 15- to 20-year run of expected really tough storms, and I mean we have an administration that we have to count on now until 2008. Do we want to leave these people in peril in charge of every branch of our government? Do the American people have that kind of confidence? Culture of corruption, cronyism, and incompetence. It is time to make some changes so we can take this country in a new direction and reinstate Americans' confidence in their government's ability to do right by them. Up and down the line, they have proven that they do not deserve that confidence. They have not earned it.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I just keep asking myself where is their outrage, where is their shame? Why are we the only ones that appear upset about this? Why by their deafening silence does it seem as though they are sanctioning the activity that is going on in the White House? Sanctioning the corruption, sanctioning the cronyism and the culture that has been established here? And it would be one thing, you could say, all right, we are going to compartmentalize, many people compartmentalize things. There are many Americans that may say, you know, foreign policy is not my concern. Of course, everybody in America cares about the loss of life, and I am sure that there is not one American that does not feel sadness over how many troops we have lost, but let us say you have Americans that can compartmentalize the foreign policy and comfort themselves by saying, I know, I think what has gone on is awful, but they are making up for it. The administration makes up for it with their fabulous domestic policy with the way they are taking care of things at home. Are we satisfied with the direction we are going? Tonight in south Florida, today all day and tomorrow it is expected again to be pouring down rain. I have 90-year-olds, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I have 90-year-olds and older sitting in squalid apartments tonight with molding wet carpeting, with holes in their roofs who are not getting the assistance they need because FEMA is a disaster of an organization. It is supposed to be a disaster relief organization. They are a disaster all by themselves. I want to tell you what my 6-year-old daughter said this morning. We were watching TV. I was getting ready and I was watching the news and she was in there with me. And she said, Mom, is Hurricane Rita coming? Because 6-years-old do not know the difference. Rita. Wilma. They just hear the names on TV, and there is not a lot of clear understanding. I said, No, Hurricane Rita is long gone. You can imagine a 6-year-old living in Florida. There is a lot of fear of the concepts of hurricanes and one after the other after the other keeps coming down the pike. So my telling her that Rita was long gone and there was no need to worry anymore, that satisfied her. The report on the news about hurricanes in general went on for a few minutes, and I was not near the TV so I could not hear exactly what they were saying, but all of a sudden she said, Mom, I know what it is; hurricane FEMA is coming. I laughed, and I explained to her what FEMA was and tried to help her understand, that FEMA is supposed to be an agency that gets us ready when a hurricane is coming and takes care of us after a hurricane passes and makes sure that people are okay again.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. The gentleman is absolutely right. It would be one thing if they could look us right in the eye and look the American people in the eye and their own constituents and say, I have consistently been voting exactly the way I feel. The votes I have cast go to the core of my principles, and I have always voted how I believe. Only we know that not to be true. They could not possibly do that. They cannot have town hall meetings in their districts and look their folks in the eye and say, I have always voted my own convictions, because we have watched the read lights change to green lights, and the green rights change back to red lights. We watched this board over here.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It has been such a pleasure to serve with the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) on the Judiciary Committee, and his eloquence and knowledge and commitment to making sure that truth is told is absolutely laudable. You know, to follow up on what you are saying, there are consequences to the actions that they are taking. It is not just about that it is outrageous that they have to be right and that they are dictatorial and that they insist on having their way and that, during one of the debates in the last Presidential election, President Bush actually could not think of something, of an instance in which he had been wrong. I mean, this is how arrogant this administration has become. This is how deep seated the culture of corruption and cronyism and incompetence has become. But it is the results of that arrogance and that attitude that is what is truly troubling. And troubling is too easy a word. The other day we went beyond 2,000 men and women who are dead. Dead. Whose families are in tears. Whose mothers will never be the same again because they had to be right. Because it did not matter whether the information they had was true. They were just going to disseminate it. Because they had decided, clearly in advance of September 11, that they were going to take us into war in Iraq. There are documents, like the Downing Street Memos that have come out, that show that they were fitting the facts around their previously arrived at decision. Sure, it is not President Bush's daughters. It is not Karl Rove's kids. What is Karl Rove still doing there? Let us go back to the first slide that you had up there. Does it appear as though the President has stuck to his commitment as a candidate, which was, 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. This is a man who has compromised our national security. This is a man who has compromised not just a covert CIA's operative life but the lives of countless operatives who worked with her, who has helped send more than 2,000 Americans to their deaths. For what? For what? You know, last year, during the campaign, you had thousands and thousands of security moms who went to the polls, and but for just about everything else that they cared about, they cared most about making sure that their children were safe. They went and cast their ballot for this President, because they trusted him the most to protect them in a time of national security, against terrorism and disaster. Now we have seen just how well he measures up in terms of his ability to protect people after a natural disaster. And clearly there have been troubling aspects of what they knew in advance of September 11 and whether they could have even prevented September 11 from happening, given the information that they had. Now they led us into war with misleading information, prevarication, I will use every other word except the word I am not allowed to use as a result of our rules. But how can they not care about that?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, if we had that transparency here, if the leadership here were willing to engage in transparency and get to the bottom of whether or not prior to the declaration of war and taking us into the Iraq war and misrepresenting facts to Members of this body, if they were willing to do that, then we would not be in the position that we are in today, so much so that today in the United States Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid had the courage to use a rule that has not been used in 20 years, at least 20 years, rule XXI that has not been invoked in 20 years, to bring the Senate into a closed session because of the foot-dragging and hemming and hawing and hand- wringing over exposing the information on how it is that we ended up in the Iraq war, and making sure that they get to the bottom of how much information, following September 11 and prior to September 11, the administration actually had and whether it was available. None of that information has been forthcoming. There has been opaqueness, not clarity, not transparency, so much so that Minority Leader Reid had to force the Senate into closed session today in order to try to push them to get that part of the investigation rolling. It is just absolutely inexcusable.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And subsequently made a liar out of Mr. McClellan. He is the spokesperson standing in front of the American people and the White House press corps. In fact, I heard an exchange yesterday between him and the White House press corps where he was pressed by them to acknowledge that he basically was trotted up there to the podium and forced to lie to them, unknowingly perhaps. But in addition to being lied to, he lied to the press and to the American people.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I thought that was important.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, Cooper is going to say at trial, if asked, that Karl Rove was the first person to tell him Valerie Plame's identity.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me because in between these two charts or slides, I want to tell my colleagues what I saw when I was watching ``Good Morning America'' yesterday morning, Mr. Speaker. Matt Cooper, the Time Magazine reporter who was one of the reporters involved in all of this and testified in front of the grand jury and initially resisted in terms of his willingness to testify, had an exchange with Charles Gibson on Good Morning America yesterday. Matt Cooper acknowledged, in questioning from Mr. Gibson, that he initially heard from Karl Rove about the identity of Joe Wilson's wife and what she did for a living. Charles Gibson in this exchange said, ``So, you, I am sure, will likely be called to testify at Mr. Libby's trial, and will you be testifying to those facts?'' In other words, he asked will you be testifying that you initially heard about Joe Wilson's wife's profession and what she did and her identity from Karl Rove? And he said, ``Well, that is the truth, and I plan on testifying about what I know.'' Then Charles Gibson asked Matt Cooper, ``Is there any possibility that you are not correct?'' Because, you know, Mr. Cooper, the other side will say, opposing counsel will try to say that perhaps you are mistaken or you misunderstood or there was some matter of clarity, lack of clarity on your part. He said, ``Well, I was taking notes during this conversation, and I am pretty clear. I am going to go in and testify to what I was told.''

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

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. It is a pleasure to join him once again, and we appreciate Leader Pelosi's giving us this opportunity to talk about the issues that are important not just to our generation but to the citizens of this country who really need to hear both sides of the story, which they are most definitely not hearing from now. And the gentleman mentioned the extension of Brownie's contract. I was struck by the fact when we learned that, and I think we just learned that last week, that his contract was extended ostensibly to glean more advice from him on what the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA should be doing in the aftermath of hurricanes. And we are still, unfortunately, in the middle of hurricane season. Our respective districts were just struck by Hurricane Wilma, and one of the things that we have learned in the aftermath of Wilma now is that it has really become clear that the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA have learned nothing from the aftermath of Katrina, the blown aftermath of Katrina, and then Rita and then from Rita to Wilma. Communication failures, an inability of our cities to get generators to run their lift stations, sewage backing up in the streets, gaping holes in condominiums and mobile homes. It is pouring rain today in south Florida, which is pouring more misery on top of people who have already been through so much. And how does Secretary Chertoff respond? He extends Michael Brown's contract by 30 days. This is a person who President Bush ultimately was forced to admit was not able to handle a job the size of Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath, so much so that essentially he was forced out. But now, because they are so married to the cronyism, the culture of corruption and cronyism and the lack of competence runs so deep and they are so unwilling to give it up and to admit that they are incorrect that they give him an extension and continue to pay him $148,000 a year. This is what they are rewarding. They reward incompetence. They thrive on cronyism and corruption and unethical behavior. It is just unbelievable. I think this is a good time to turn to our first chart here, if the gentleman is ready to do that.

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

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is so right. As we close out, I just want to reiterate that this is about competence. It is about who do you trust. It is going to be next year asking the American people to give us the opportunity to take this country in a new direction, to end the culture of corruption, to end the cronyism, to invest the kind of resources that we need to make sure that the middle class can be thriving and vibrant, and to make sure that we have a disaster response system in place that is responsive, that meets the needs of people, and that does not leave them twisting in the wind as my constituents are right now, who are without gas and without water, where a hospital in my own district is not able to continue to take care of people because their employees do not have enough gas to get to work. Those are basic needs. We want to thank the Democratic leader for giving us an opportunity to come on this floor tonight and for creating the 30-something Working Group. I know Mr. Ryan wants to give people the Web site where they can contact us.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I want to let my constituents know that I am coming home tonight and looking forward to having the opportunity of helping them to get through the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If the gentleman will yield further, I wish my constituents could go to the gas station, but right now they cannot because none of the gas stations have any power. There are people in my district sitting in the dark 5 days after the storm hit them, supposedly the model State for disaster preparedness and aftermath response. We have a Governor of my State who is refusing, after being asked several times this week, refusing to use the state of emergency to have the tankers with gas, instead of filling their contracts, which they can get premium top dollar for the gas in those tankers, he is refusing to order those tankers to deliver gas to meet the essential services that we need, to meet the needs of the generators in my cities and in the cities across south Florida of my colleagues, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart), and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen). He is refusing to reorder the priorities of these gas tankers owned by the gas companies, the oil companies, and make sure that they can provide gas to the generators so that the lift stations can be turned on so the sewage is not backing up. We have to boil water or put chlorine in it or buy it from the few supermarkets that actually have powered themselves with a generator. So we do not have any gas stations that are up and running on their own without any generators. Unfortunately, the oil companies have not in most cases purchased generators to be there and ready for the gas stations to use in the event of an actual disaster. So, what we are talking about here is how deep this culture of corruption and cronyism and incompetence runs. If you could say it is an isolated instance and you have a rogue staff person who just became so focused on taking care of his boss that he decided he was going to say anything to accomplish his boss's goal, then you could say, you know what, you get rid of that cancer, and, okay, the cancer is cut out, and then the body is whole and well again. But, unfortunately, this is an administration that is so infested with cancer, this is a party up and down the halls and walls of government that is so infested with cancer that it is impossible to cut it out completely. It runs that deep. Next year what the American people are going to have to ask themselves is if they want this to continue. Do they want to continue to go in this direction? Do they want to continue traveling down this path, being dragged down this path, having another 1,000 soldiers die in a war that was not only ill-advised, but we were led into through deception, and then not only through deception, but through deliberate acts of deception to ensure that they would be able to drag us into war? Then, on top of that, let us talk about some of the other things that they are willing to do and be hell-bent on in accomplishing their goals. Talk about what happens right here just in the last few months since I have been a Member of Congress. Basically the Republicans here have created a democracy-free zone. We talk about the pride that we have in our democracy, and how participatory this institution is, and how we are all elected in our own right, and we all have the same rights and privileges, we have the same number of about 633,000 people that sent us here. Yet it is pretty clear that we do not all have the same ability to cast our vote and have it stand and mean something and cast it freely and willingly, because the Members on the other side of the aisle have not been allowed to cast their votes by their leadership and leave that as their opinion standing all by itself because they get their arms twisted off. We have votes like the energy vote that we had a couple of weeks ago that was called as a 5-minute vote and was held open for 40 minutes, 40 minutes, because we were killing that bill, because it was a terrible bill that was not going to do anything to reduce gas prices, that was not going to improve our energy situation that we are in such dire straits in in this country. It was going to put more money in the pockets of the oil company executives and the oil companies' profit margin. So what they did was hold that vote open so they could twist enough of their Members' arms and work the aisles so that they could get their Members to switch. And we watched it. The board is right up above us here, our names are in lights, there is a red and green button, and you saw a whole bunch of red buttons on their side of the aisle that over the 40 minutes were switched to green. Now, I came here with some conviction, and I came here with some backbone, and I am certainly not going to let anybody chisel my backbone away just in the name of my party. I just wonder where the backbone is? Why are they willing to just cave? Do they not have convictions? Do they not understand that you have to represent your constituents? Do not they understand that they have to represent their constituents, not the oil companies? Do they not understand they have to represent their seniors so they can get low-cost prescription drugs and not put more money in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies? That Medicare prescription drug bill passed before I got here. How long was the vote held open; 3 hours on a 15-minute vote to do the exact same thing? That bill prohibited the government from negotiating prices, just like the Veterans Administration has that ability, negotiating prices with the pharmaceutical industry to make sure that our constituents, our seniors, could have low-cost prescription drugs, who are right now having to choose between medicine and meals. This is what we are talking about when we talk about an institutionalized culture of corruption, because you do not see the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) working the aisles, twisting our arms off to change our votes from red to green or green to red. We get permission to stand and vote our conviction. I can tell you all the way back to March, when I had a very strong opinion about the Terri Schiavo case, some Members on the floor disagreed with me, but nobody was coming here, nobody was pounding on me asking me not to do that, ``Do not stand up, Debbie. Do not stand up for what you believe in.'' I was allowed, even though I am a freshman and had only been here 10 weeks, I was encouraged by our leadership to stand up for what I believe in. It is just the saddest thing that that does not exist on their side of the aisle.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is a culture of corruption. A culture is one that is deep-seated, one that is the product of an accumulation within groups of people. The administration, various members of the leadership here in our institution, from top to bottom, the people running this country are under suspicion. And we have what I have referred to as the three Cs: the culture of corruption, the cronyism, and the question of competence. Because now, as of today, there is no question that these are people that are not competent to run our government. They are not competent to respond to natural disasters. Look at Katrina and her aftermath. Look at Wilma and her aftermath, which is still ongoing. If they are not competent to respond to natural disasters, what are we going to do when we are hit with a man-made disaster, with a terrorist act? I have talked to Members on both sides of the aisle this week who have privately worried out loud that they are not sure what would happen in their own community if they were hit with either a natural or a man-made disaster because there is deep-seated worry and concern about this administration's ability to take care of the American people. And never mind their ability. They are clearly focused only on themselves and their ability to accomplish their own goals and to heck with what anyone else thinks. Clearly, they were willing to take the biggest step that any leader can take of a nation, and that is to send his or her citizens to war. Let us just go over what some other people think, and like the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) has said, this is not Mr. Ryan's opinion; this is not Ms. Wasserman Schultz's opinion. What I am about to tell my colleagues is Ed Gillespie's opinion, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. It is not only the President's father, whom we can talk about what he said his opinion was when somebody reveals the identity of a covert agent. We are talking about on September 30, 2003, Ed Gillespie, who is the chairman of the Republican National Committee, during an appearance on MSNBC's ``Hardball.'' So we are talking Chris Matthews, who said, ``I think if the allegation is true to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative, it's abhorrent and it should be a crime and it is a crime.'' Hardball's host, Chris Matthews, went on to ask Chairman Gillespie, ``It would be worse than Watergate, wouldn't it?'' Gillespie's response: ``It's--yeah. I suppose in terms of the real- world implications of it, it's not just politics.'' That is absolutely right; it is not just politics. It is not just accusations that were of a personal nature like the previous President of the United States. We are talking about someone who plunged us into war and now we have had the 2,000th casualty of that war, because he is so focused on being right that he will clearly do anything and authorize his cronies to do anything and say anything to accomplish their objectives, even cause the deaths of our citizens. I had an opportunity to go visit our troops that have come back from the Iraq war at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital right here in Washington, D.C. and I spoke to a young man whose legs were blown off, who will never be able to walk on his own legs again, whose life has been forever impacted because we have an administration that was hell bent on being right and was willing to do anything to make sure that their agenda was met. Never mind basic human decency. We all raise our children, and I raise my children, to understand what right from wrong is, to know that we have to tell the truth, to know that we need to do right by people. And in my faith's tradition, we have an important stress on taking care of one another in our community and giving back. We have the spirit of what is called ``tikkun olam.'' And there is absolutely no hint of any of that in this administration or, quite frankly, among the leadership in this institution. Because to a person, the accusations, and I will respectfully say again that these are accusations and that no one has been found guilty of anything or has been accused of anything as of yet, but whether it is the accusations against our former leader from this institution, or all the way up to the Vice President's Chief of Staff and the accusations made against him today in the indictment handed down, we are talking about decisions they made so they could accomplish their own political goals. That is just heinous, and I want to know when the hearings are going to be called. I want to know where the outrage is. I want to know why the press conference was not held to schedule the special committee, the bipartisan committee that should be brought together to do an investigation. I want to know where the outrage is. I want to know why we are not having impeachment hearings. I am waiting to hear that, because it is a little bit more important, when you send people to war just to accomplish your own goals, than when you lie about personal circumstances, totally and completely different. It is just disgusting.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, what has become clear as of today is that the culture of corruption in the party and this administration and the leadership in this institution has become institutionalized. It runs deep.

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

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I am glad the gentleman brought up FEMA, because obviously that is a pretty hot issue down my way right now. Let us let people know what we were talking about the other night, because Brownie, the former Mr. Michael Brown, the former Under Secretary for FEMA, most people think that he is gone. Most people think he is no longer involved in FEMA's decision-making activities. He is still being paid $148,000 a year as an adviser, because the Secretary of Homeland Security Mr. Chertoff just extended his contract for another 30 days. They kept him on supposedly to continue to advise them on how to deal with the aftermath of Katrina.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I just wonder where the outrage is. I did not hear in the last several hours since the indictment came out calls for an impeachment trial or calls for hearings in the United States Congress. And just a few years ago, prior to my coming to the United States Congress, there were questions surrounding the previous administration and far less serious than lying to get us into war. I mean, these accusations, and let us remember that they are accusations, but they are very serious accusations, that once the accusations came out in the previous administration which were for personal circumstances, immediately we went into a situation on this House floor where we had impeachment managers, we had a trial, we had a process by which the President of the United States prior to this President was actually impeached on the floor of the House of Representatives for the accusations that were made against him that were far less dire. Where is that outrage? Where is anyone on the other side who were calling for his head? Why are they not calling for the head of this administration?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It has cooled down. There was a cold front that pushed Wilma and made her go faster, reached us right after that. It has not been, mercifully, hot. It has been in the upper 60s. But the way our climate is, when that cold front leaves, they could be hot again. The earliest anticipation that my constituents are expected to have power restored completely is November 22. This is from the model State. That is how we started out. We are talking about FEMA that is still woefully unprepared to respond to natural disasters. Let me move to the very next day, where we now unfortunately have had our 2,000th casualty in the Iraq war. And today, sadly, we have had the Vice President of the United States' Chief of Staff indicted on five counts, one of which was leaking the name of a covert CIA agent with the express, clearly the intent of advancing the administration's agenda that they were hell-bent on to get us into the Iraq war, because that CIA agent's husband had just come back from Niger and said there was no evidence that weapons of mass destruction were being acquired by Saddam Hussein and his allies in Iraq. So the most sinister of intentions that the Vice President's Chief of Staff clearly had was to continue to advance the administration's agenda to get us into a war that was ill-advised, that was entered into under false pretenses with misinformation, and now the 2,000th American has died as a result of that. When is the partisan politics and the people in the administration who are hell-bent on being right, hell-bent on having it their way, when is it going to stop? When are we going to have some bipartisan outreach? I have been here for 11 months, and it has been incredibly shocking to me that we have folks like the gentlewoman from Tennessee who was willingly lambasting a group of her colleagues on our side of the aisle who have no ability to do the things like she is accusing. When are people like her going to sit down around the negotiating table and agree that we can and should agree on more things than we disagree? It is so sad the Republican leadership in this country is only concerned about being right, is only concerned about having it their way. Clearly, as the results of this week show, they will do anything, will do anything including lie to the government, lie to the press and expose an undercover CIA agent's identity in order to have their way and get us into an ill-advised and unfortunate war, which now we have no idea how long we will be in the midst of. I am raising young children, as are many, many people across this country. I was fortunate and used to be able to say at every Veterans' Day ceremony and Memorial Day ceremony that my generation was the first generation in decades that were able to say thanks to the efforts of our predecessors, of the generations before us, that we did not have to get called to war, that our generation was not thrust in the midst of an ill-advised confrontation. The Vietnam War was the last serious conflict we entered into. Obviously the Gulf War in 1991 was not as widespread and serious and ended quickly. But we cannot say that anymore because the administration has submerged us into chaos.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here with you again and have an opportunity to have our 30-something Working Group talk about the issues that are important to the average American today in the 21st century. We also want to thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democrat leader, for an opportunity to put together this group and have this time on the floor to talk about these important issues. This is a sad week in the United States of America. This is a week in which we started on Monday with my home State of Florida, my district in south Florida, being hit by a Category 3 hurricane, Hurricane Wilma. Today, 5 days later, we still have 80 percent of the people in my county without power. We have considerable difficulties in getting them ice and water. We have a Governor of my home State who has held up our State as the model for response to and preparation for natural disasters, yet if you went street by street and saw the devastation and asked my constituents and the constituents of Mr. Meek, if you asked our constituents if they think that this is the response that the model State should have provided, they would be ready to pull out our hair one by one. I am going back down there tonight, and I am planning to spend the weekend going to distribution sites and talking to my constituents. We have trucks and generators and lift stations, and lift stations still that have no power. We have the biggest city in my district, the city of Ft. Lauderdale, which literally is faced with a backup in their sewage system because we did not get generators to them. They are stuck in West Palm Beach. The Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA have not been responsive. I have people older than 85 stuck in high-rise towers with glass blown out of their windows and no elevators working because there is no power. These are people who cannot get themselves down 12 to 25 floors.