30-Something Working Group

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - December 07, 2005)

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I can tell you I just strutted in from helping my first graders with their homework. Just so you know, I have my priorities straight.

I spent a couple of minutes listening to your exchange and cannot help but chime in here and express my deep concern which I know my good friend from Florida (Mr. Meek) shares as well. We had our Governor and FEMA represent our delegation in advance of Wilma. You have got Katrina and we all are very familiar with the lack of preparation clearly and the aftermath of Katrina and the disaster literally of the aftermath of Katrina but then you fast-forward a couple of months to Wilma when we had 2 months that FEMA could have learned from some of those mistakes and dealt with the preparedness issues that they were really poor on and the aftermath response issues that they received incredibly poor marks on. You would think that they would have fixed it. But in our case, our Governor and FEMA represented to us that we were the model State. I say this not to be too specific about any one State's preparation, but FEMA and the Florida government represented that our State was the most prepared.

We can tell you that if our State and their response to Wilma is the pride and joy, is the model for preparation in disaster response, then we should all be deeply concerned about the other 49 States and their preparedness and potential response for a natural or a man-made disaster like a terrorist attack.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think this goes right to the point that our friends on the other side, as much as we like some of them, are unable to govern. They just don't know how to do it. There is just total incompetence, from the economy, from the poverty levels, the macroeconomic situation, balancing the budget, lack of fiscal restraint, fiscal recklessness in borrowing $1

trillion from foreign interests over the past 4 years. They just are unable to govern the country. They have had their chance. They have controlled the House and the Senate and the White House, one party, they have had a chance to implement their agenda, and nothing seems to be going right.

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

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Can the gentlewoman please elaborate on the C words?

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

Mr. MEEK of Florida. He had the opportunity to resign and then the next day he was indicted. Go ahead.

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

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Iraq.

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

Mr. MEEK of Florida. It is a culture.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is a culture.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is not a one-time event.

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

We could keep going about the corruption, the lack of information, the lack of competence, and in fact, when we come back at our next opportunity in our next hour, we will continue to go on about that.

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