30-Something Working Group

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - September 12, 2006)

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You are absolutely right. And we are not done there. I am going to go on and then bring it in for a landing, and yield to either Mr. Ryan or Mr. Meek. But 78 percent fewer completed immigration fraud cases. When you are investigating immigration fraud as to whether or not someone belongs here, whether they have actually legally applied for residency, permanent or otherwise, for a green card, the number of cases that were pursued that were fraud cases in 1995, and, Mr. Ryan, who was President in 1995?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Bill Clinton.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And was Bill Clinton a Republican or a Democrat?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Democrat.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Okay. Well, that is what I thought. How about in 2003? In 2003, after 6,455 immigration fraud cases were pursued under the Clinton Democratic administration, 1,389 in 2003 were pursued.

And, Mr. Ryan, who was President in 2003?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. George Bush, the second.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Is he a Republican or a Democrat?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Republican.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is good to be back. There are several things that I want to touch upon after hearing some of the comments that have been made.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Ryan, you may want to suspend for a minute. You may want to switch. I do not think that you have what you need to have.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think I am taken care of. The crack staff here at the 30-Something Working Group. I thought maybe you missed my being over in the other part of the well, and this made me nervous because I know how you like things the way you like them. Very habitual.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Ryan, we are showing you a level of respect here today.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I think it is important that we focus on what Ms. Wasserman Schultz said and what has been said by several of my colleagues here, Mr. Delahunt and the gentleman from Florida, and after watching the weekend shows and going through the pain and angst of trying to decipher reality from fiction, I think it is important that we do not get to a point in this country where, because there has not been a terrorist attack in the past few years, that somehow that makes everything okay. We are combating an enemy here that their ability to wait and then strike is staggering. They are patient people. The last terrorist strike prior to September 11, 2001, was in 1993, 8 years prior. So to say we are doing everything right, as was stated on one of the weekend shows by a major member of this administration, I think does not show the kind of responsibility and the kind of urgency that I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz pointed out. With border security, we do not know who is coming over the borders. They may be coming through Mexico, but it does not mean they are Mexicans, which has been an ally of ours. You do not know who is coming through. So I think it is foolhardy to say that.

And then I want to almost in our private meetings make a motion to make the former Speaker Newt Gingrich an honorary member of the 30-Something Group because of the kind of analysis that he continues to provide us and what we are in agreement on.

Now, let's look at what the former Speaker has said about staying the course. And this isn't just Iraq; I think this is also dealing with homeland security. The former Speaker says in the Wall Street Journal on September 7.

Mr. DELAHUNT. If the gentleman would yield for just a moment.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I think we have got to underscore that the former Speaker was the leader when he served here of the Republican Party.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. He was the man who set the basic principles of what the Republican revolution was going to look like.

So on September 7, 2006, in the Wall Street Journal, he says: ``Just consider the following: Osama bin Laden is still at large, Afghanistan is still insecure, Iraq is still violent, North Korea and Iran are still building nuclear weapons and missiles, terrorist recruiting is still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and across the planet.''

Is that the kind of leadership we want in the United States of America to secure our country? I don't think so. Given that foreign policy and domestically, given what Ms. Wasserman Schultz has said about our borders and our homeland security and our ports, that is not the kind of leadership we need.

And the final point I would like to make before I yield to my friend from Florida is that we have tended to take the long view. I think we have made some difficult decisions, our party, in the last 10 or 15 years that have been difficult, balancing the budget in 1993, leading the lower interest rates, creating 20 million new jobs, welfare reform. All of those things were very difficult decisions politically, but over the long haul history is judging them to be good decisions on behalf of the country. And to look and see what Secretary Rumsfeld said when he kept getting questioned about what we were going to do in post-war Iraq, Madam Speaker, I think says it all. And this is from a story in The Washington Post on Saturday, Madam Speaker.

It says: ``Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said. Brigadier General Mark Scheid told the Newport News Daily Press in an interview published yesterday that Rumsfeld had said ``he would fire the next person,'' who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

He would fire the next person that brought it up, Madam Speaker. This isn't saying, I don't want to hear the other side. This isn't saying, we aren't talking about that yet. This isn't saying, we are having a meeting about something else right now, maybe we will bring that up later. Or, we are having a meeting about that tomorrow. The Secretary was saying he would fire the next person who even brought up designing a post-war Iraq plan.

Now, that is the kind of leadership we are getting. And I think in September of 2006 as we see where this country is, where former Speaker Gingrich is saying where the country is and all the lack of successes that we have had, to see the kind of leadership coming out of the Pentagon and the Secretary saying we will fire you if you even bring it up one more time about a post-war plan in Iraq, I think speaks volumes about what is going on.

I yield to my friend.

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Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Delahunt, I have got to tell you, over August break I had numerous conversations with business folks, Republicans, card-carrying, who would talk to me about the fact that if they were running the business and Rumsfeld was their assistant or vice whatever, he wouldn't be around. He would have been gone years ago.

Mr. DELAHUNT. And yet on Sunday, on Sunday we have the Vice President of the United States being interviewed by Tim Russert, and this is what he has to say. Talk about an incapacity to embrace reality and to be honest with the American people. Knowing all that he knows, in retrospect, he concludes that the war in Iraq was the right thing to do; and if we had to do it over again, we would do exactly the same. Russert poses the question: Exactly the same thing? ``Yes, sir.''

I mean, we're refereeing a civil war. Reports are coming out of the Pentagon that western Iraq, we are about to lose western Iraq. This is the intelligence that is provided by a highly respected Marine colonel, and yet this crowd, these men have the hubris to stand before the American people and say that they would do the same thing again despite what we have learned, despite reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee that unequivocally say that they were wrong when they talked about al Qaeda and links with Saddam Hussein. And even as recently as August 21, the President infers that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi. And the Senate Intelligence Committee in a bipartisan way says that is not the case. Do they think that we are stupid?

But the tragedy is that our colleagues on the other side in the Republican majority refuse to ask those questions, refuse to insist that they come before the congressional committees and answer to these charges made by military personnel, by colonels, by generals, by boots on the ground that have been there and fought there for their country. That is arrogance.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Delahunt, can we yield to Mr. Ryan to give the Web site information.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. 30-Something Working Group www.housedemocrats.gov/30-something, housedemocrats.gov/30-something. And all the charts that you have seen tonight, Madam Speaker, are available on the Web site. I yield back to my good friend from Florida (Mr. Meek).

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http://thomas.loc.gov/