Timothy Walz

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the chairman.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and ranking member. I thank you for your pragmatism. I thank you for your vision and your willingness to get this done, understanding that the situation in our economy is one, as I heard Speaker Pelosi say, where most Americans knew far before we did that this was trouble. Madam Speaker, I keep hearing people say that the economy was fine. Saying it doesn't make it so. We know that in the last 7 years, the policies we have seen have created the lowest job growth since the Great Depression. We have seen real wages drop by $2,500. The American people needed something, and this is a good bipartisan piece of legislation, bringing them together to try to address those facts that they understood long before we did. And I think it sets the stage and shows the American public we can get along, we can move things, and we can make a positive difference. And this is a great first step. With that, I urge my colleagues to support this good, timely piece of legislation.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to be at home and watch some of our colleagues speaking on this earlier. I think last night I saw in my State of Minnesota where we had caucuses, and we had four times the record number of people turning out. The American people are starting to listen. They start to understand the consequences of what we have been living under, and I think all of what has been highlighted has been spectacular. I will also say that each of us who have read this budget have no problem being up here late at night because it is hard to sleep after you see it. Each of you have highlighted critical issues and the things that we are getting done and prioritizing. The idea of government is the collective will that we can do together, and our job is to prioritize the things that this country needs to do. I think Mr. Yarmuth's chart that he just showed shows that this Nation under this President has not prioritized. This President has set out an agenda that told us we could have something for nothing. He told us we can give tax cuts, and I appreciate you clearly illustrating the President's creative use of facts and statistics which he quite often does to theatrical effect but to huge detriment to this Nation. I want to talk about this for a couple of minutes. We have done a wonderful job of highlighting the overall principles. I want to talk about how this impacts individuals. I want to talk about the idea of fiscal discipline and the incredibly shortsightedness of this administration, even in cases where they may be able to cut something to save a little bit, the incredible cost not just in the suffering and what it is doing to the Nation, that aside, what it is doing in terms of just plain poor financial decisions. In my southern Minnesota district, which stretches from the plains of South Dakota over to the Mississippi River, and Minnesota as the Land of 10,000 Lakes is very diverse. The southwest corner of my State that borders Iowa and South Dakota was the place where the glaciers never reached, and it is one of the few places where you don't find a lot of the prairie potholes and lakes, and the shortage of water is important and on people's minds. This is the area of Laura Ingalls Wilder's ``Little House on the Prairie.'' This is the land where people want to raise their children. We have prosperous communities that are incredibly diverse that are leading the Nation in things like biofuel production. We are the fifth leading district in wind production. These are innovative people, but the one thing that they are missing and what makes life so difficult is the lack of drinking water. We have places where people are living in 2008 where they have cisterns to collect water in order to drink good water. Well, these communities got together in Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota and they came together with a creative solution. They were going to use, where the abundance of water was along the Missouri River in South Dakota, they were going to use the engineering skill of this Nation to provide drinking water and the lifeblood of communities for 300,000 people in a bipartisan manner. They got together and they started doing this. It is incredibly important. In fact, it was so important that in 2001, on White House stationery that I might have, President Bush himself went to South Dakota and said, a priority is to work with States on important development projects, and the Lewis and Clark rural water project is a project that will be in my budget, and something that we can work on together. Well, it sounded good, especially in South Dakota. The reality has been we have fought tooth and nail every step of the way. The good news on this is, whether it be Republican or Democrat, the bipartisan commitment to this has been absolutely unbreakable. The local communities have even done something that I think our constituents are asking us. We always hear when we're spending money, oh, you tax and spenders and all that. I think something that's important for people to know, Mr. Speaker, is that those of us who are here have paid taxes before, too. I'm a school teacher, and 2005 was the first year in my life that I filed taxes right at the $50,000 a year range. I'm the person who takes pencils when they're available to make sure I can use them in my classroom. I use both sides of every sheet of paper. I want to see us get our money's worth, too. This project did that. Seventeen of these communities and municipalities and States decided what they would do is they would pay ahead to cut down on the inflationary value of this project. The project was scheduled to last approximately 15 years. It's a major reconstruction project, a major thing that's happening. Well, the project got off and going, started running. People are very excited about it. Everything is going great, until we started running into the last 7 years of the Bush presidency. Last year in President Bush's budget he cut the funding for this project down to $15 million a year. To give you an idea of what that would do, instead of the completion date of 2016 that was scheduled, and remember, States, municipalities have paid ahead. They have asked their taxpayers to pay taxes ahead to save money in the long run, and overwhelmingly they said that. And President Bush promised them that he would be there every step of the way. By the way, this is when he was sending off South Dakota's soldiers to go fight the war in Afghanistan. He promised them that he would be there for their families. By his budgeting cutting back to $15 million last year, it meant that the project would not be finished until 2051, and the cost would go from about $527 million to nearly $900 million. Now, this was the President that came to us with an M.B.A. He was the CEO president. And what he's saying is that he is not going to be able to make the same fiscally responsible decisions to keep these communities alive. Well, what we did, as a joint delegation, between Iowa, South Dakota and Minnesota, Republican and Democrat, said that is wrong. And we went and asked, guess what, one of those awful earmarks appropriations to put the Federal Government's responsibility back to where it was supposed to be or near where it was supposed to be at $27 million. So now we're approximately 5 years from completion of this, and this wonderful document that the President sent out this week set his budget for the Lewis and Clark rural water project, zero dollars. He shut the project down. So I guess what he's telling us is, the $300 million we've spent, the 300,000 people, communities, where, in my district, they cannot issue another building permit in their cities because they don't have enough water. He is telling them, leave the pipes half finished. Let the people move elsewhere. And you know what I said in 2001, I didn't really mean it because I've got other priorities. Now, remember, this is the same President that told us that our fiscal crisis now is simply being caused by our inability to make permanent the tax cuts on 1 percent of Americans that actually aren't expiring until 2011. Now I stand here in front of the people, Mr. Speaker, and with my colleagues to ask in a totally bipartisan manner, what sense does this make? What sense is this about prioritizing? What do these mayors tell their people when they made this decision based on what good government is? And if this President is going to think you're going to do this alone, who's going to dig the 400-mile long trench from the Missouri River to feed these areas of Iowa and Minnesota and South Dakota? I guess the President's message has been what it's been all along, whether it's been SCHIP, whether it's been our veterans, whether it's been anything. I'll be there until it comes time to make some prioritizing decisions. At that point you're on your own. He's given us his ownership society which truly does mean you're on your own, and now we have a situation where we're going to go as a delegation and have to fight for every dollar of something as basic as infrastructure to deliver water. So I will have to tell you on the sacredness of this House floor, it's been an overwhelming challenge to keep my tongue on some of this, and I applaud my colleagues in the same way. But I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, and tell my colleagues, I will not rest for 1 minute until this budget starts to reflect the priorities of this Nation. There is nothing in this budget that reflects the priorities of this Nation. There is nothing in the people of my district, and I don't care what political party they belong to, that reflects their values. And there is absolutely no vision in this. I don't know if maybe this is just a cruel joke on the way out, leaving the White House; we'll see what can happen if we do this. But I can tell you this: The people of Iowa and South Dakota and Minnesota aren't laughing about it. And I can darn sure guarantee you that each of us is going to fight to make it right. I thank you for indulging me on this, Mr. Yarmuth. You've done a fantastic job. You always lead a very important discussion. And I thank you and my colleagues for their open-mindedness. I agree with you. I'll have this discussion. I will debate with any member of this administration or this House of Representatives on why, after the investments that we've made, the importance of this project and the agreement of constituents and the promise that was made by the President, why I'm just supposed to accept this, and why people say, can't you all just get along and get something done? If there was some sanity coming from the administration, I would say yes. But right now at this point I think the answer is no because this is going to be fought tooth and nail until this wrong is corrected.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I so enjoy listening to the eloquence and thoughtfulness of this. The gentleman did sum it up about the priorities, and both gentlemen from Kentucky, Florida, and New York focusing on education and seeing it as an investment. Of course, being a high school teacher, every chance I get to get into a classroom, I jump at it. And Monday I had the chance to teach a government class in a small town actually in the area served by the Lewis and Clark Rural Water Project. And I will just leave you this, and you can decide, again, what sense does this make. The teacher was very excited about their first-year teaching job. They started out making $28,500 a year. Because of the decisions that have been made here and the decisions that have been made in St. Paul, the insurance for that family for him to provide for his wife and children was $14,100. So before taxes, our schoolteachers are making $14,400. If you take taxes out of this, we probably have a violation of minimum wage that's happening. That's the decisions that have been made. But I go back to, once again, the President is not talking about that. The President is asking for how can we make tax cuts permanent for millionaires, and this Nation needs to decide what is our next generation going to do if we're not willing to invest.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Absolutely. And the point that the gentleman from Iowa has brought up is exactly this: When you dig into this and you start peeling back the onion of what's happening here, you start to see a pattern. And the issue here is this administration, as much as they want to talk about the rule of law, as much as they want to talk about giving people recourse on this, they have slammed the door into 17 brave warriors, slammed the door in their face, of saying they should have the ability to recoup some of what they gave up for this Nation. And it wasn't our Nation paying for it. It was the Iraqis who were responsible for that torture, for that mistreatment. And I think many of us ask the question, what message does this send to the people who are fighting around the world? What message does this send to them? You can torture the Americans and if you cut a good enough deal, there will be no recourse. There will be no recourse against the people who carried it out. There will be no recourse to allow for those people to receive compensation. I think it sets an incredibly poor precedent. It disrespects the service of these brave warriors, and it sets us up for failure in the future of these things starting to happen. So when we see this and when the American people ask us, why didn't anything get done? I'll have to tell you today's a pretty sad day. The President did sign the DOD authorization when this provision was taken out. And I think many of us who voted on this in the first place put together a good compromise bill. We find out that when any legislation goes up the street to Pennsylvania Avenue, the people's will in this House matters nothing, the people's will to make sure that this was righted. The 17 families that have asked for recourse on the damages that were done in the name of this Nation were wiped away with a single signature by the President, and this House is left at the horrible choice of do we continue to hold up the research funding for warriors' injuries? Do we continue to hold up the funding for weapons systems to protect them? Do we continue to hold up the pay raise to these soldiers and to their families who are fighting, or do we make the compromise to move that forward and fight another day? And I quite honestly have to commend my colleague from Iowa. He will fight every day for what's right. This is a question of justice. This goes at the heart and soul of our rule of law and our justice system and a citizen's right to recourse, to petition, to be able to go to a court of law to hear their discussion in a public court of law, to have their peers make a decision. But as we know, this administration, given the opportunity, would shut those same doors to justice to many of us here. We hear about clever arguments on tort reform, and I know my colleague from Iowa is very familiar with this, but it's pretty much the same thing; that if you are injured in a reckless manner, if you're injured or something is done to you, your ability to go and tell your story in front of a jury of your peers and to trust in your peers to make the right decision, they want to limit that, and they say it's all in the name of frivolous lawsuits, as if we could trust the corporate entities over our neighbors, over our fellow citizens. And in this case we told our fellow citizens, 17 of them that are warriors, well, Iraq needs to rebuild and needs to keep that money, which, by the way, as I think the gentleman noted, upwards of several billion dollars that have gone missing. I will note that payment to Iraqi legislators has come on time every single month. The lifestyle of Iraqi legislators as they took off a month in the heat of August during some of the most fierce fighting that our soldiers were fighting and dying for as they left to their villas is something that I think Americans should take great notice of. So, once again, I think that this was a huge mistake. I think the President put a very narrow special interest ahead of the needs of our fighting soldiers and has set a precedent that I'm afraid we're going to have to deal with in a much bigger manner down the road.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding. And, Madam Speaker, I think it's critical to point out that the gentleman from Iowa has been a passionate voice for civil liberties, has been a passionate voice of making sure this country adheres to that great tradition that so embodies each and every one of us. And I think it's important to understand that Mr. Braley from Iowa comes from a family that has served this Nation proudly. He's got a grandfather that fought on the sands of Iwo Jima. And in bringing this fight and understanding what needs to be done to protect our soldiers in this conflict and future conflicts, he's brought a very, very important point out about the President's disregard in vetoing the Department of Defense authorization bill. And I would have to say his voice has been somewhat lone in the wilderness on this. I don't hear the outrage that should be there. So I thank the gentleman for giving me the opportunity to stand with him tonight to bring this important issue forward. I spent the last 9 days prior to this week traveling throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, talking to our soldiers, talking to our airmen, talking to our Marines, talking to our sailors, and getting a feel for how things were going as far as how their medical care was going and those types of things. And without fail every single one of these individuals with high morale and a pride in what they are doing for their Nation did bring up the question and asked me, Why is our raise being held up? Why can't Congress get the simplest thing done to move forward a raise? And I ask this and in talking to them and talking to other Americans, Madam Speaker, the question comes, and we hear it time and time again, why can't Congress get along? Why can't Congress get things done? And I think Mr. Braley from Iowa has highlighted exactly what it is and exactly what we are up against. This President chose to hold our warriors hostage their pay raise. And the President may not think 3\1/2\ percent is much. I'm sure it's nothing to him. What I can tell you is that it's a lot to a family back home. It's a lot when the mother and father are deployed down range or in a war zone. It's a lot to have that 3\1/2\ percent given. But the President didn't concern himself with that, all the good things that Mr. Braley talked about that was in the Department of Defense Authorization Act, a very important one was the ability of our POWs, those that fought so bravely to make claims and make amends according to law, according to international law, to amend what had been done to them. Now, the President tells us we'll get frivolous lawsuits out of this. We will hamper Iraq's fledgling government's ability to rebuild itself. Now, there are several big fallacies in that statement. The first is the assumption that the fledgling government is doing anything to get itself back and rebuilding. And I offer the fact that Iraq said last year they would put in $10 billion of their own money to put into reconstruction. An audit at the end of last year indicated they spent 4.4 percent of that. Spent it. It doesn't necessarily mean that it went to reconstruction, which basically says 95.6 percent never made it out of the bureaucracy, never made it to the Iraqi people, never did any of that.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Well, anyone who listens tonight, Madam Speaker, to the gentleman's accounts is horrified. And I think to put it into context, make no mistake about it, what happened today in the signing of the Department of Defense authorization bill with these provisions taken out to allow recourse on this is, it is pretty difficult for me to see any way that a decision was made to side with the monsters who carried out this torture and not with those brave Americans who went at this country's call, did our bidding, and then came home to the so-called open arms. And as the gentleman said, having spent 24 years in the National Guard, having trained countless soldiers, many, as you said, served in my unit. I taught them in school. I coached them on the football field. One of the things that was very clear in part of our training, because, of course, it held to those core values of being an American, was the respect for the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention did several very important things. As I said, it upheld those principles of, even in a conflict situation, that the humanity and the humane treatment of other individuals was absolutely paramount to keeping with the ideals of this Nation. There was also something else very, very important with the Geneva Convention that many of us as soldiers always came to rely upon is knowing that if you adhere to these things, that if other combatants, the enemy you were fighting understood that, one of the things you could do was you could convince people that it might be better to give up the fight. It might be better because you know you will be treated humanely. And there was always great comfort, because it is not the fear of injury, it is not the fear of battle which is there amongst all these soldiers, it is the fear of capture and torture and saying something that may hurt your fellow soldiers that has everyone terrified. So the idea is that the Geneva Convention was held in the highest esteem. The principles that it was set by were there to make sure that even at the base emotions of war amongst human beings that there was a respect for basic human life. There was a respect when someone was unarmed and unable to fight, that when someone was captured, they would be treated as humanely as possible. And with that being pulled back, I have to tell you, it terrifies me. And these forgotten warriors are forgotten because they happen to be an inconvenience now. They happen to be an inconvenience to a political ideology. They happen to be an inconvenience because this administration doesn't want to follow the Geneva Convention. This administration, I believe, and members of this administration have called it a quaint, outdated notion that is no longer there. I would argue that soldiers don't see it that way. Soldiers see it as a necessity. And for many of us, as my colleague has pointed out, it is hard to fathom that an administration that has talked so much about our soldiers would so callously brush aside 17, in this society, 17 warriors held in the highest esteem as a prisoner of war for their Nation and to cast them aside and cut their rights off to any type of recourse. And I can't help but see a pattern here of where the administration's loyalties lie. As Americans are struggling, and we hear about it every day, the economic crisis, they are struggling to make ends meet, and they see $102 a barrel oil. But I don't know where that is able to be rectified in their mind when they see the President walking hand in hand with the Saudi Prince and knowing that every bit of that $102 is going into the pockets of the Saudi Princes, going into nations and going into, in this case, a regime that committed the grievous atrocities against our soldiers and was totally absolved down on Pennsylvania Avenue against the wishes of the 100 elected Senators, against the wishes of the 435 elected Members of this body. And yet tonight, several of us stand here. And I think the outrage and the passion that my colleague from Iowa has shown should be reassuring to the American public that there is a voice there. There is a voice in the wilderness. There is a voice that says this is wrong. This is a wrong that should not be allowed to stand. This is a wrong that I think they want to see, my colleague from Iowa, myself and our colleagues here, stand and speak for what is right. So again, I can only come to the conclusion, and I ask my colleague if he can find another way of seeing this, what was the benefit of the administration's decision to side with the Hussein regime over U.S. POWs who were tortured? I am still trying to find where there is justification. It doesn't go back to ``we can't hamper the Iraqi from rebuilding,'' because they are not doing that as it is. It can't go back to any precedence. It is in violation of the Geneva Convention, and it flies in the face, as my colleague said, of our basic principles of our Constitution. So I am trying to figure how we would be able to sell this to the American public.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. It's interesting on the day that reports are coming out about the 900-plus misstatements leading into the war that were made by this administration that the idea that this had been known for 5 years, that it had been very clear. And I would quote former Republican Senator Allen and current Republican Senator Collins when he said, Protection of American POWs is a vital national security interest, and the goal of rebuilding Iraq should not be viewed as inconsistent with that goal. Now, what the gentleman from Iowa has so clearly pointed out and the gentlewoman from New Hampshire alluded to is in this idea of this global war on terror, the winning the hearts and minds of the rest of the world, one of the things is what those core beliefs and core values of the United States stand for. And the gentleman mentioned and talked about on the floor of this sacred ground of democracy, Members of this body have clearly articulated in the exact words that waterboarding is a useful tool; turning someone upside down, stuffing a rag in their mouth and pouring water in their mouth under a circumstance where they believe they are going to drown is acceptable. Now the idea of me being a history teacher coming to this body out of the classroom that I would ever stand here and speak of things seemed incredible. But to think that I would stand here and have to define what torture is to other Members of this body is incomprehensible to me. And I tell a story about why this is so important and why we understood Geneva Convention, why we understood that by adhering to these things, it pushed our values forward. I was teaching a ninth grade history class, and one of the assignments was to go back and interview a family member who had had some type of context in the Second World War, if they could find a grandparent or great uncle or someone. And the ninth graders came back and reported. And I remember a young man named Bill Wilbrand came forward, and he was telling an incredible story of battle, of heroism, of incredible terror and talking to his grandfather, telling him the story where he was captured by the enemy and he was taken away and he was shipped a long distance and put into a POW camp. And the other ninth graders are like, Wow. That was your grampa? What happened? Well, it was kind of cold and the food was not great but not too bad and, you know, things were okay. And they said, Well, what happened afterwards? Well, he stayed here. He was a German and he was a prisoner of the Americans, and they brought him to Western Nebraska to a prisoner-of-war camp. And he was treated so well, he said, I will stay here and bring my family here, and his family, of course, is American. The idea was he saw the values. He saw the dignity. He understood what those American soldiers were. They disagreed with the tyranny of the Nazi regime. They disagreed with what was happening, and they would fight and give their lives to stop that. But when an individual came under their care, they were treated with dignity. And there was a sense of, that word swept through. That's why you had entire units say this is what is happening. The rest of the world saw America as righteous in fighting for the right causes. Now we are in a situation where we have absolved a stated terrorist state, the regime of Saddam Hussein, and those people who took and tortured American soldiers and said, You know what? It's okay. We will just brush it under the carpet and hope it goes away. And those 17 families, well, you know, we can't repay up. We will say thank you a lot. We'll stand in front of flags, and we'll pat them on the back. But we won't let them go through the recourse of the courts. We won't let them adhere to the basic values that the gentleman from Iowa said that predated this country, the idea of being heard by a jury of your peers, by getting recourse no matter where you stand in the hierarchy, no matter where you are economically. But not these 17. They volunteered. They fought to defend this Nation. They served honorably. And they endured some of the most excruciating things that have been described here. And in one easy stroke today, they have been let down. I don't know what to say when I hear the story of Colonel Berryman. And I think of his family, Madam Speaker. I don't know what words can come off this House floor to tell them the wrong that has been done to them. And it's all going to be done in the name of supporting the troops. It's all going to be done in the typical fashion that it is just us not able to get anything done. When we made that horrible decision to fund veterans health care, to fund the vehicles that will protect them in combat and to give them a pay raise, to maybe hope that that mother sitting at home can take kids out to the movie on Saturday while Dad is in Iraq fighting for the Nation, we weren't going to hold that up so that was the choice we were given. So I can tell the Berrymans and others like him, Madam Speaker, that I'm sure not proud of that decision, but that's what we are dealing with coming down from Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Absolutely. And as I said, it's very encouraging, and I think it should be, Mr. Speaker, to the American people to see the dedication and the commitment. I know my colleague from Minneapolis has taken a lead role on this issue of foreclosures. And as my colleague from down in Iowa has said, this is an area that no one is escaping being touched by this. Mr. Ellison may represent a very urban area in Minneapolis, but Mr. Braley and I and the rest of us here have areas that are somewhat rural, and we are feeling that pinch. We're feeling it. One thing I would say is it reminds me, in thinking of the story that you just recalled about President Roosevelt's knowing us, I'd like to give you a quote from our current President when he was out meeting constituents. And this was out in Omaha, Nebraska, a little while back, and it was with a woman named Mary Mornin. And Mary was explaining, she was a woman in her fifties, a divorced mother of three, including a special needs child. And she was explaining to the President at that time, just several years ago already, of the growing anxiety she had about what was happening. And she mentioned to the President that to make ends meet, she was working three jobs. And the President said, ``You work three jobs?'' Ms. Mornin said, ``Yes, sir, three jobs.'' And the President said, ``Wow, that's uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that's fantastic that you're doing that.'' And then he laughed and said, ``laughter'' in parentheses here, ``Do you get any sleep?'' And Ms. Mornin said, ``No, not much.'' This President has been so out of touch with the reality that affects most Americans that he can stand in front of them and tell us this is the greatest economy ever. He can stand there and watch as the housing market imploded and the indicators were there and people were asking him to do things about that. He can stand there and talk about this being the greatest economy under his watch full well knowing that the facts indicate he took office with a $126 billion surplus and he has continuously driven us into debt. We are at a point in this great Nation now that last year alone we spent $406 billion servicing the interest on the debt, not the principle.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Gus is 14 months. His is $30,000, not counting the interest. I would just make this point that the President, in the theatrics of the appropriation bills to run this country, held up funding across the spectrum from veterans to health care research to our soldiers' pay increase that he pocket vetoed, all of these things, over $22 billion. And I want you to put this into perspective. What this President has done in his fiscal irresponsibility, which should not surprise a single person in this country given his track record on the private sector and given that he was practicing, as my colleagues have said, a very tenuous principle of trickle down, that took the complexity of the entire economy and shook it down into one mantra. Today as this economy and this Democratic Congress is looking for real solutions for working Americans, the President is concerned about making tax cuts permanent in the year 2011 when they expire. All of the money that we spent last year on higher education, on our veterans, on conservation, and on medical research does not equal the amount we spent servicing the debt. Think what this great Nation can do. And with that, I yield to the doctor from Wisconsin.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. It's $30,000 for each and every one of us.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I yield.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman. I thank all of my colleagues. I cannot tell you how proud I am to have each and every one of you here, and while all of us believe in the free market, the one thing I know for sure is I believe a lot more in my fellow citizens, and I thank the citizens of Colorado and of Wisconsin and of Kentucky and of Iowa for sending people here who care about those values, who want to get that right. So with that, I leave in an optimistic state of mind. I leave with the American people, Mr. Speaker, knowing that these gentlemen here are going to direct us in the right direction and truly bring back that sense of equity.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I think it's interesting, and the changes that this Congress has meant to bring, this stimulus package has meant, as all my colleagues have talked about, is of being that short-term, targeted, temporary reform that will put money right into the economy. That is in exact opposition to, I guess, the plan this President has espoused for the past 6 years that has drained money from not only the Federal coffers, but has drained jobs and siphoned them overseas. I think it's really critical. A couple of points. I think my colleague from Louisville was exactly right when he was talking about the pendulum has swung. The only thing I wished on that is, and I think people need to be very clear about is, there is no natural order to things where that pendulum will come back on its own. The change to make that pendulum come back was the votes that were cast last year for Members, just like this, standing here. Sometimes you have got to reach up and grab that pendulum and get your hands a little bit bloody, pulling it back to where it needs to be. That is exactly what we are trying to do. But as we are doing this today, some of the leadership on the Republican side of the aisle held a news conference and put forward a piece of legislation that they would do, that they would target to help this situation, to take away the anxiety of working class Americans, to make them feel like they can feed their family, heat their homes, and keep their good job. And their solution? Corporate tax breaks. The only thing in their package, reducing the corporate tax rate. We all understand the theory that that will allow for corporate America to reinvest in infrastructure, to reinvest in jobs. In theory, it sounds brilliant. In practice, it's going to mean higher CEO salaries and more imports coming from China where they put the factories to save the money on the labor, to save the money on the environmental standards. So those are the type of things that I think need to be clear, and I hear my colleague from Colorado saying very clear that we were not sent here to bicker, we were not sent here to espouse ideology, but we were sent here with a very clear mandate: Force change. The status quo would say, Continue on with President Bush's tax cuts, give corporate tax breaks. But everyone in this room knows that your constituents, the vast majority of Americans know that is not going to work. So I am quite intrigued that our colleagues on the other side are going to stick with that. And I don't know if they need to poke their heads outside a little bit more, but that wind of change is blowing very hard and it will sweep this place clean. It will sweep this place clean and put people here who understand those needs, who don't need to go and find talking points to understand how hard it is to send your kids to college, to understand paying a gas bill becomes a major family issue. And it needs to understand that what President Bush failed to realize with Ms. Mornin is, this wasn't a sense of she wanted to be away from her child, working three jobs. She had to be. And the idea that you should be proud, and we are going to hear more about this, this idea of productivity is a great thing, but in many cases, Americans will work as hard as they possibly can. But the problem with this economy is the return is not coming. Before I yield to my colleagues, I think this is one thing that we were sent here to reinspire, to get Americans to change their view on this, because I think this is one of the most disturbing statistics that I have ever heard. Now, for the first time since they have been asking this question, since President Bush's Presidency, and during this time period, when asked if their children will be better off than they were, the majority of Americans respond no. They do not believe that the leadership out of this administration or the previous years of Republican-led Congresses have done anything to set a vision for America. So I don't know if we should be surprised that the solution would be more of the same coming from the other side. The solution that the American people want is not more of the same. It's a change that reflects their values. So with that, I would yield to my friend from Wisconsin for a few closing words from him.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, in coming today on the first day back in this new session, the second session of the 110th Congress, I wanted to take a little bit of time to reflect on some of the changes that happened in this Congress but also more importantly to look towards the future and look at the priorities that this new Congress is bringing. It's very apparent that myself and my 43 Democratic colleagues were brought to this House, the reason we were sent here was to change the way business has been done. It wasn't about maintaining a status quo. It wasn't about talking about issues that weren't relevant to their lives. It was very apparent that at least in my district of southern Minnesota that they chose to send a schoolteacher without political experience to Congress to speak about those issues that were most on their minds, to talk about the issues of economic equality, to talk about the issues of true national security, to talk about the issues that were going to impact their children for generations to come. And in doing so, they sent several loud and clear messages to us. And I think first and foremost, as I'm joined with some of my other freshman Democratic colleagues, it was very apparent to many of us that we were sent here to talk about those issues in a manner that was about effectiveness. It was not about ideology. It was not about espousing to have a firm belief or the firm understanding that we had all the answers. The belief was to work together, to work with the experts, to work with local elected officials and come up with some of the most pressing solutions. And I think many of us understood during our campaigns and the time that we've been here in Congress, it's not surprising to anyone, and my colleagues tonight will talk about these things, they didn't need to see a poll to understand that Americans were becoming very nervous with the state of the economy. They were told over and over and over again by this administration that they were living in the best economy America had ever seen, and they would quote facts and figures like the gross domestic product and things like that. And when I would talk to my constituents in southern Minnesota, they would come up with something that was very insightful. They would say, I don't know. It's very possible that the GDP is growing, but that's not filling my gas tank; and, I don't know about you, but college is becoming more expensive; and, I'm concerned about heating oil prices this fall; and, I'm concerned that what's happening with the economy is not moving any closer to addressing those issues that I care most about. They were concerned about the loss of their jobs. They were continuously told that this global economy and these trade agreements that we were working on would grow these wonderful jobs, wonderful prosperity, and what they continued to hear in the news was global corporations making record profits as we saw real wages for working Americans sink. They were told that this great awakening of the global economy would be so helpful to them, and then they would open up their gas bills for heating and find out that they were having trouble making ends meet. They were told that this great global economy would bring a lasting prosperity to them, and they were receiving lay-off notices or many of the other ills that had come with it. I think many of us understood, and not denying that there is a global economy, there is a need for an interconnectedness, but it needs to be based on some solid principles that benefit those vast majority of Americans. So I think as we get ready to talk about some of those priorities we get ready to talk about what this Congress can do and what this Nation should do to make sure that our economic prosperity is not limited to a small slice of the population, and in fact, it's limited to the slice of the population that quite honestly isn't producing that well. Americans over the last 5 years have got a record that I think they can be very proud of. Their productivity levels are as high as any Nation in the world. The thing that becomes a disconnect on that is, as that productivity levels went up, their real wages went down. At the same time, they watched CEO salaries and corporate profits reach an all-time high. And that disconnect is breeding that sense of anxiety amongst the public, and I think there's some things that this Congress can do and will do to address those needs and to put policies forward. I have a couple of interesting statistics that I think Americans should know. First and foremost, on December 21, President Bush, giving a speech on the economy, was clear to stress how strong this economy is. And in fact, his outgoing economic policy adviser said, We just don't see the reason the economy won't continue to expand. Had I been a reporter in that room or a Congressman there, I might have asked, For who will it expand? And the issue or the answer to that is not for the working middle class. We see 47 million Americans without health care. I think a more telling statistic is this. I came to this Congress as a high school teacher. I was lucky to have years of experience and advanced degrees that put me a little further on the pay scale. Had I been a first year teacher teaching high school in southern Minnesota, I would have started at just around $32,000 a year. My share of the premium for family health care coverage would have been $7,200 a year right off the top of that. And this is an issue that would expand that 47 million into another possibly 50 million that are on the verge of being unable to pay for it. So we have issues of health care costs. We have issues of energy costs. We have issues of tuition and those types of things. And as this Congress came to session, those are the issues we were talking about, making college more affordable, addressing the issue of moving into renewable energies and passing CAFE standards to make our automobiles reach that level of efficiency that will help working class families. So, as I'm joined here tonight by my colleagues from across this great Nation, and I might add, a very optimistic group at that and a very visionary group that understand, and the last statistic I will give before letting some of my colleagues join in on this, we had a piece of research that was done by the independent, nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. And they did a study asking what had added to our national deficit, and their conclusion was that 98 percent of that was added by legislative choices, the biggest being tax cuts for a very small percentage that, quite honestly, we were told on theory would generate wealth back into the economy. The fact of the matter is the tax cuts were not targeted at our great entrepreneurial class. They were not targeted at those people who were going to create jobs and reinvest. They were targeted to people that would continue to build trust funds to pass on to future generations of that very, very thin privileged class. And because of that, this Congress has got work to do. This Congress and these Members that were sent to this Congress that will speak tonight were sent by their constituents not to talk ideology, not to argue with the other side, but to look at the issues and not come with facts and figures, but to say, Hey, I'm a schoolteacher sitting in southern Minnesota and I'm having trouble making ends meet and I actually could qualify for food stamps. What's wrong with an economy that does that and what can be done to bring back a sense of fairness to it? I think the good news in this is, if 98 percent of the Federal deficit was caused directly as a consequence of legislation, we've got the opportunity to reverse that. And I'm proud to be standing with three Members that I know have that as a priority, and I'd like to first of all yield to my colleague south of the border in Iowa, Mr. Braley.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, it's hard for this Congress to get President Bush to prioritize the needs of the middle-class families when he refuses to face reality and chooses to govern by veto rather than vision. Yesterday, the President surprised a lot of us when he said the economy is perfectly strong. That's news to them. You don't need the polls to tell you that the American people are deeply concerned about this economy. Who can blame them? With home values and wages dropping, and health care costs, home heating costs, gasoline costs, college tuition costs and food costs all rising, the hardworking American middle class is trying to make ends meet. This Congress is not satisfied with the economic status quo that serves a very few at the very top. We've made progress over the last year easing the economic crunch. We passed legislation to address the subprime mortgage crisis, increased the minimum wage, passed legislation that cut taxes on middle-class families and made college more affordable by investing in our children. We're proud of these accomplishments, but we know the American middle class is still struggling. And we look forward to working on creative solutions that actually address the problem instead of simply vetoing with no leadership.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Skelton and Ranking Member Hunter for bringing this good piece of legislation to the floor. This bill, H.R. 1585, fulfills our basic duty in this Congress to provide for the national defense. There are several important pieces of this legislation that are particularly meaningful to me as a 24-year veteran of our Army National Guard. There is an amendment in here to address the issue of the Federal tuition assistance program that too many of our returning servicemembers are unable to use. It also includes an important provision that we worked on in the VA Committee on making sure the electronic medical records between DOD and VA truly do become seamless. Finally, there is a very important repeal of changes that were made to a 200-year-old piece of legislation, the Insurrection Act, that Mr. Davis from Virginia and I worked on with our Nation's Governors that will restore individual State control over their National Guard units. These provisions are only a small part of this bill. There's a needed pay raise and expanded care and research into TBI for our returning warriors. This legislation is packed with provisions to make good on this Congress' promise that we will keep every single promise to our veterans and make them a priority. Our most precious resource in our national defense are those service- members who are willing to risk everything to defend this Nation. I urge my colleagues to support this.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Madam Speaker, today the House will consider one of the most important pieces of legislation that we have worked on this year: the Defense authorization conference report. It includes provisions to restore our Nation's military readiness as well as protecting our troops. This critical bill restores our military readiness by authorizing $1 billion for the Strategic Readiness Fund that will require an in-depth status of our forces, especially our National Guard, and requires a plan to reconstitute that force. This legislation offers assistance to our most precious and important resource: our warriors and their families who sacrifice so much. It provides a 3.5 percent pay increase for servicemembers and prohibits increased health care fees while improving the health care system. The bill addresses the growing needs of our troops that require care in traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, other mental health conditions, tuition assistance programs, and also authorizes a unique program that was started in my State of Minnesota called Beyond the Yellow Ribbon to reintegrate our forces back to civilian life. Madam Speaker, I am proud that this Congress will pass legislation this week to provide our troops with the resources and health care benefits they deserve and protect our Nation's readiness.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I too am here to give a heartfelt thank you to Dean. You're going to hear several colleagues talk about him. When I came to this institution, I came directly from the public school classroom. And the learning curve was very steep. And every step of that way, Dean was right there to help us. He is someone who understood this institution. He is someone who was willing to give his knowledge. And he was here, Mr. Speaker, for one purpose in mind: to make this country a better place. And for that I am eternally grateful. Dean has not only been a great mentor and a great resource for me here; he's turn into a great friend. And we have talked a little bit of everything from policy to procedures, but also a lot of football too. And, Dean, I thank you for all you do. You exemplify what makes this Nation great. People are willing to give up careers in private service to serve their Nation in public service, and you have done that incredibly well. I commend you for that and thank you as a friend.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Madam Speaker, as this Nation prepares to honor our veterans on Veterans Day, this new Democratic Congress has shown an unwavering commitment to those who have served this Nation so bravely. We have passed a Wounded Warrior Assistance Act that takes the first steps to address the problems brought to light in the Walter Reed scandal by improving outpatient medical care and restoring efficiency by cutting bureaucratic red tape. We have passed legislation that focuses on posttraumatic stress disorder by requiring a program to reduce suicide among veterans with suicide prevention counselors at all medical facilities. And we have passed a veterans appropriation bill that provides the largest investment in veterans health care in the 77-year history of the VA. We plan on sending that funding bill to the President's desk this week after a vote on this floor today. Madam Speaker, a budget is far more than a fiscal document. It is a reflection of this Nation's values. America's veterans bravely served this Nation and were promised health care to meet the needs to take care of them once they returned home. This new Democratic Congress is committed to fulfilling that pledge.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here tonight with these great legislators to do several things. One is to reiterate the responsibilities of the first branch, article I of the Constitution, the House of Representatives and the Senate as coequal branches of our government, and also to highlight by the use of finally reinstating after 6 years of capitulation to the administration, finally illustrating to the American people what can be done when there is a coequal branch of government. As my colleague from Florida was speaking about Halloween, our children are home celebrating Halloween. And the President was very clever today when he talked about a bill that he saw disguised as a trick. This bill he talked about is the SCHIP legislation which has 43 of our Nation's Governors supporting it, 273 Members of the House of Representatives, 68 Senators, and 81 percent of the American public. What the President does not realize any more is there is a coequal branch of government functioning here. The President also said we have been wasting time. This perception of Congress failing is not something that is done by chance. It is done on message. Many Members know that a former Speaker of this House, Newt Gingrich, when he talked about how to take control of this House, talked about the only way to do so was to destroy the credibility of this institution and to pull Congress down. Make no mistake, there is very much an idea here of obstructionism, but I want to be very clear: What the President talks about wasting time is things like ensuring the richest, most prosperous nation on Earth provides health care for its most vulnerable citizens, its children. The measure of this society, if it cannot be by what we are willing to do for our children, I am not sure there is another measure. And as we consider ourselves a great Nation, of which we are, the idea that this President would use the idea of fiscal conservativeness, after spending trillions and trillions into debt, and wasting, as you heard one of our previous colleagues speak about, money that disappeared, the money that has disappeared in Iraq and the waste on the contractors alone would pay for this bill. And this President asked us not to ask those questions. Well, if he thinks that looking for fraud, waste and abuse is wasting time, I guess his definition is correct. I would say it is our constitutional authority. Making college more affordable for middle-class Americans, making homeownership a reality based on fair lending practices, not predatory lending practices. And making sure we care for our veterans and for our soldiers. Those are the things that this Democratic Congress came here to do. We face massive opposition from a President who never even uttered the word ``veto'' in his first 6 years, but now utters it every single day on legislation that will improve this country. So I am proud to be part of this new class and I am proud to be part of this movement to once again reassert our authority on this. The President's definition of wasting time is this country's business that we are doing. He simply dislikes it because, as we all here agree, the President has a very different reality of what makes a great Nation. We would argue a great Nation is one that is founded on those principles that were so critically important to the founding of article I of our Constitution which my colleague is shortly going to discuss. I yield back, and I look forward to a lively conversation here about the real progress that is being made.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I appreciate it, and I appreciate the passion from my friend from Colorado. And he's exactly right. When we came to this Congress with a debt that was skyrocketed, no accountability, a President who said he was the decider and a Congress here that thought that their job was to just be an echo chamber for this President, much has changed. Unfortunately, the President doesn't realize that yet, and that's why we get a lot of gridlock that's happened. But the gentleman brought up some very interesting points considering SCHIP and this idea of funding. I think that one of the issues that many of us agree on here is fiscal responsibility is an absolute priority because, unlike the previous Congresses, we understand that there will be a day of reckoning, and it will come for our children and our grandchildren. And it's putting this country in a position where I read an article here out of the Hong Kong Standard talking about where places around the world, when you would travel, and many of us have, where taxi drivers and store owners would take the U.S. dollars, they're no longer taking that. They're saying no because our currency is now seen as something that's not as stable, a nation that's in debt, a nation that's seen as a rogue nation to people. Those are the types of things that this administration did mainly because of what Mr. Yarmuth and the other members of this class have said, we did not exercise our right. And as far as SCHIP goes, when we create a budget, and we want to balance this budget and we will, we understand it's far more than a fiscal document. It's also a reflection of this Nation's values and morals. And this issue of trying to cover our children, and I've heard my Republican colleagues say this is an attempt to expand coverage, to make it socialized or nationalized medicine. Well, my colleagues have no real plan how to deal with this. They continue to pull this up. The bottom line here is the richest, most prosperous, greatest Nation this Earth has ever seen is leaving children uncovered. But it gets worse than that. A Harvard study that recently came out shows one in eight of our veterans are not covered by health care insurance, those who have served this Nation most honorably. This President has decided when he had fiscally irresponsible budgets, we couldn't balance the VA budget, the President simply made a great decision here. He cut off 400,000 veterans, sliced them off the bottom by saying they don't qualify. These could be combat veterans in my district making $27,801. They are not injured in combat and they make too much money. Well, all of us know that's not going to buy you health insurance. So this issue of SCHIP, this idea of trying to cover our veterans, what this President fails to realize is the values of the vast majority of people in this Nation that sent this class to Congress are not the ones he shares. And the talk of, we can't afford this, while telling our Judiciary Committee and our Oversight Committee that we can't ask questions about no-bid contracts and billions of dollars lost is unacceptable. And it is unacceptable because it stops in this Chamber. We are here to represent the districts of the people that sent us here, and we have an obligation by article I to fulfill those. So this issue of SCHIP is not the smoke and mirrors you're hearing. It's, bottom line, covering our children. The issue of VA funding is simply, bottom line, X number of veterans, X number of costs this Nation should provide it. If you choose not to do that, then have the courage to tell the American people you are more interested in a tax cut to the top 1 percent than caring for children and veterans. But we won't hear that because this is about elections. This is about a vision of America that extends to next November. This group gathered here tonight is about a vision of America that extends to the next generation, one that once again puts us in our rightful place. So I couldn't be more proud. The gentleman from Florida has been a long-time advocate of caring for those in our society, the least fortunate, as well as making a fair society and growing opportunities. It's what we're all about. The old used-up cliches don't resonate with the public anymore. The old used-up cliches are nothing more than a way to try and hold on to a political ideology that is dead in this country, and it's time has passed. And we are once again here to reassert that. So with that, I yield back to my esteemed colleague from Florida and look forward to the rest of our conversation.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act. This bill will ensure that 10 million of America's children will finally get the health care they deserve, preventive health care, not expensive emergency room health care or poor choices. Recently, my son, Gus, celebrated his first birthday. My whole family joined in celebrating this occasion. Shortly after I returned to Washington, my wife noticed that Gus wasn't feeling well; he was fussing and not sleeping. She was able to take him to the family doctor, who diagnosed a double ear infection, prescribed antibiotics, and Gus is a healthy 1-year-old back on the mend. The thought that any child would suffer through something so preventable in this richest Nation the world has ever seen and a parent would have to make that decision is unacceptable. Budgets are far more than fiscal documents. They are a moral document that reflects the values of this Nation. Every Member of this House of Representatives speaking against this bill receives taxpayer-funded health care, and their children don't have to make these choices that 10 million do. I ask that my colleagues join me in doing the right thing, reauthorize with an overwhelming bipartisan majority.

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota

Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here with my colleagues, the members of the class of 2006, and I'm going to defer to my colleague from Kentucky who brought an initiative forward and one that we are excited about talking about. It's something that the American people should be excited about talking about. It's a refresher course and, I guess, to bring to the forefront again the most important document in this country, the Constitution. With that, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth).