Date: 2005-10-26
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. we absolutely need accountability. There are peoples lives .at stake here. We are not here to be partisan. I remember a few weeks ago when Katrina hit and after Katrina hit. and you and I and the gentleman. from Ohio had been on this floor day after day. week after week. and talking about what the governments response needed to be and should have been and what our process should have done. which is .establish an independent Katrina commission so that we could get some of these things resolved. Because it is very nice that the President is going to come down and land his helicopter or fly Air Force One or whatever he is going to do because the airports have not been open so. hopefully. he is going to have a place to land. That is very nice. I remember the movie "The Candidate." and Robert Redfords character is running against another guy for the U.S. Senate. and there is a big fire. and his opponent flies the helicopter down into the disaster area to survey the damage. And you know. the whole thing is a fiery mess and the guy flies in. surveys the damage. and flies out. lobk8 important andirmpressive. and that is great.But what help did -he providd tb the people:who were thdre? Didhe grab a hose and start spraying? I am glad that -the President is coming bcause he is :the- symbol of the United( States of Amefica. and there Is one person in this country who everyone looks to. but it is only helpful if. when he sits down at the hurricane center and goes through that -briefing. it is only helpful if he learns something. if the Federal Government and .the administration learn something and change it for the next time. Because we were on this floor weeks ago offering our advice and our suggestions and our opinion about the aftermath of Katrina and how disturbed we were. because we said. and I remember using these words: there but for the grace of God go I. and now we have. Now it has happened to us. So it is our responsibility. Mr. Speaker. there are those on the Majority side .of the aisle that will accuse us of doing this on a nightly basis to be political and to be partisan. No. It is the fact that particularly with natural disasters. natural or manmade disasters. you just know that at some point. especially where we live and in other parts of the country that are more prone to natural disasters. you just know it is going to happen to you at some point. I have talked to constituents. I have read constituents comments in the paper. that it is all well and good that they come in and they do this review and this assessment. but it is only good if they learn something. One of the things. when I was at the Broward Emergency Operations Center yesterday. Tony Carper. the director. was talking about how they are trying to find generators. both the big generators that can help run the power grid while they are trying to get the power� lines up and running again. and the small ones that people are going to need to run their facilities. and I asked him. I said. why. if we knew this storm was coming for so many days in advance. why did we not get those in position ahead of time? He said. because we do not have enough flexibility in our homeland security funding. because we get a lot of money for terrorism. but they are not able to use that money to respond to natural disasters. Well. we are much more certain on a regular basis that we are going to get hit with natural disasters than we are. God forbid. going to get hit by a manmade disaster. That is the kind of responsiveness that could have been fixed. several storms ago. I mean. we have our eighth storm in 15 months. How is it that that was not fixed already? How is it that we still have people sitting in the dark? How is it that we were denied individual assistance after Katrina in Florida. when your had people looking through the roof- at sky. both in Florida and in Louisiana. and then the very next time that we get hit by a storm. we have to fight to get individual assistance granted when. all you have do do is Walk out your front dooror turn on the television. and -you cansee. 100 or 800 homes damaged. severely damaged. Doi they not care? I mean. have they no shame? Have they no heart? It feels like that. It feels like they are up on high in the White House and Capitol Hill and it is not me. it is" them. They are 1.100 miles from here and: my roof is not caving in. so I am okay. And I have money. I have water. I have ice. my kids are not going to get pink eye when I give them a bath and run water over their heads. I just. I do not understand. I do not understand why we had to spend the last 72 hours pounding on people. pounding on this government to get our folks some help. It is just inexcusable. It is incompetence. It is corruption. it is a crisis. We are going to have a whole collection. a whole necklace full of seeds by the time we are done with this year. God forbid. I hope that somebody decides to read the book. "Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" and start remembering that we need to care about each other and that we need to be responsive and put partisan politics aside. It is not about the next election. it is about taking care of each other.