macleginn/stanford_congress_record_longer_speeches huggingface dataset:
Date: 2005-11-04
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman from Connecticut . He is incredibly eloquent. and I tremor following that eloquence. I want to just follow up with some specifics. because our good friend from California was here earlier challenging our description of our inability to make an impact and offer our ideas here. He described this mythological bipartisan process. Well. let us counter some of the facts he threw out there. There have been 85 pieces of legislation that have had rules applied to them. For those who are listening that donot know what that means. we have restrictions placed on our ability as Members to offer amendments and offer our own ideas and help shape legislation every time. almost every time a bill is introduced on the floor. There have been 85 such bills that have been introduced. Of those. 38 of them have had restrictive rules. meaning the Committee on Rules decides which. if any. amendments we are going to be allowed to offer. Fifteen of those rules. 15 individual pieces of legislation. have been entirely closed. meaning no Member is allow to offer any amendments whatsoever. Three additional closed rules were added into an entirely separate bill. Of the 85 pieces of legislation that have come on this floor that have had rules apply to them. there has only been one substantive bill that had an open rule. meaning any Member can offer. meaning any Member elected in our own right. each by the same 633.000 people that we all represent. only one substantive bill has had an open rule where we can offer any amendment and any idea that we would like to offer.
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: EDDIE BERNICE-JOHNSON (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I rise today to express my support for H.R. 1973. I want to commend the gentleman from Oregon for introducing this noteworthy piece of legislation. as it addresses one of the earths most precious resourceswater. Water is essential for life. It is crucial for sustainable development. the preservation of our natural environment. and the alleviation of poverty and hunger. Water is indispensable for human health and well being. . Arguably one of the most underappreciated challenges facing humanity today is: the availability of clean. fresh water and adequate sanitation infrastructure. It is practical to intertwine sanitation with water supply. In many instances. clean drinking water supplies cannot be secured without adequate attention to sanitation. as waste disposal remains one of the most serious sources of drinking water contamination. A lack of fresh water and sanitation infrastructure create ideal conditions under which various waterborne diseases thrive. Water and sanitationrelated diseases remain among the biggest killers. particularly among children. Across the globe. many millions of children die every year from waterborne diseases. The poor are more vulnerable to illhealth than are the welloff. They lack adequate supplies of safe water and safe methods of waste disposal. Study after study has shown that when a community improves its water supply. hygiene and/or sanitation then health improves. Yet unfortunately. statistics reflect a terrible story.. According to the World Health Organization. forty percent of the worlds 6 billion people have no acceptable means of sanitation. and more than 1 billion people draw their water from unsafe sources. As an industrialized nation. the United States must be a leader in addressing this challenge. H.R. 1973 makes the provision of safe water and sanitation a stated goal of U.S. foreign assistance policy. It lends a practical hand to human development.and dignity. This is a noble effort. and I proudly support it.
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I rise today in support of H. Res. 444. Grace Warren is pur colleague and longtime legislative director to the gentleman from Texas
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

If the gentleman will yield. I think we should expand this conversation beyond just what this budget reconciliation. budget cut proposal that we will consider this week means. Because what was initially rolled out by the Republican Study Committee after Katrina was this chart that you have right here. I think it would be helpful for us to gp through just exactly what the true intentions are of the Republican Caucus. How many Republican members are there in the caucus?
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

So 228 members of their caucus and more than 100 of those members. it is my understanding. are - members of the Republican Study Committee. So the vast majority of the Republican Caucus subscribes to this proposal that the Republican Study Committee put forward which is really what they would do if they could get their moderate Republicans who are not members of the study committee to swallow it. And because they know that they are in a pre- carious situation in their own elections in many instances. they are the ones that have been waffling on the fence here. Let us go through what the Republicans would do if they had their way. They would delay the Medicare prescription drug bill for 1 year which the gentleman from Ohio already mentioned. They would reduce Medicaid administrative spending. But they would go further than that. They would increase the allowable copays in Medicaid. Let us describe what that means. Fully one in four children in the United States of America today get their health care from Medicaid. Often I know when people think of Medicaid. they think of it as really just purely a health. care system that provides health care access to th6 poor. But if one in four children are getting their health care from Medicaid. that means you have that many children living in poverty in the United States of America. What this proposal would do by increasing the copays is requiring poor childrens families to come more out of. pocket to pay for their health care.
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

If that were not bad enough. if making poor childrens families pull more money out of their pocket to pay -for their health care were not bad enough. the Republican Study Committee. in fact. more than that. this budget cut proposal that we are going to consider this week would allow increases in premiums for the first time and it would also let health care providers. physicians and other health care providers that are Medicaid providers. refuse care if a beneficiary cannot afford the copayment. Right now they are not able to refuse that care. There is a change in this proposal that would allow people who provide health care to Medicaid recipients to refuse care if they do not have the money to pull out of their pocket. Often we hear the argument made about the skyrocketing costs of Medicaid. the greater percentage that Medicaid has taken of the
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Loss of productivity by her employer. Just think about the impact of people who cannot go to work when they are sick. [I 2300 Think about the -kyrocketing costs of health care and this administration. Ask yourself. Madam Speaker. ask yourself the last time you heard President Bush say anything about health care. I have not heard him.say a word about health care. I have not heard him speak out against Medicaid cuts. I have not heard him speak in favor of helping poor children and their families afford health care. Where is the outrage?
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

That might be a little bit of Washingtonspeak. I think people might get the leVters confused. What is Medicare Part B? . Mr.: RYAN of .hio. Medicare -Part B is the~senior citizen program. the Medi�care program that insures our parents and our grandparents. This is where the Republican Study Committee is going to go to pay for the tax cuts. to pay for the $16 billion in subsidies that they are giving to the oil companies. to pay for the subsidies that they are basically giving to the prescription drugs. They are going to go to our senior citizens and ask them to give up $4.6 billion in 2006 and $84 billion over the course of the next 10 years. These are senior citizens that. as I am sure they are in your district. whose pension is not going up. if they can even keep their pension. Health care costs obviously are going up here. the cost of natural gas and gasoline. heating oil. all of this is affecting how our seniors can actually survive daytoday. and our friends on the other side are making another wrong decision by going after them and asking them to foot the bill.
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Madam Speaker. if the gentleman recalls a few months ago when we were talking about Social Security privatization and the impact that that would have on our seniors. imagine if that proposal had gone through and. hopefully. we are going to continue to be able to keep that off the table. But when we were on the floor during the 30.-Something Working Group. my colleagues will recall that one of the things that we talked about so often was that we have so many of our senior citizens who are on fixed incomes. .whose Social Security is their only source of survival. Now. if what the Republican Study Committee would like to see happen happens. where they increase Medicare Part B premiums. which is outofpocket money that these seniors have to .pay. and one day soon we privatize Social Security. how are these people going to be able to afford to live?
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Thank ybu. And you know it is totally understandable why you are emotional about it and why we are all emotional about it. We are all bristling with indignation here because to add insult to injury. the nightmare scenario you are describing for veterans if this budget reconciliation bill actually becomes a reality is just the tip of iceberg. Just a few months ago. I mean. I am a freshman. I just got here. And there are a lot of things that have shocked me. not the least of which is what you referred to a little while ago which is that we almost never meet in a bipartisan fashion. The idea of actually seeing Members from the other side of the aisle sit down at a meeting like you just described. at the beginning of this year. you know. to me would have been a usual matter. like we did in the legislature. coming together on most things and arguing about only the most basic of Republican and Democratic differences. Here it is like they think we do not take showers or something. I am not really certain why it is that they will not actually sit down with us and trv to work things out. But what was more startling just a couple of -months later was that. you know. we have talked about the number of Cs that apply to their ability to govern. There is corruption. there is the cronyism. and then there is the lack of competence. I mean. I could not believe that in June we had to actually appropriate $1.5 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs because there was a shortfall in their budget that they were denying for months. Months. We kept insisting there was a shortfall. Veterans were having to wait months and months for health care. The 6month wait for access to health care at the VA was a true reality. And we were saying there is something. wrong here. The American Legion was saying something was wrong here. And finally they owned up and realized oh. yeah. we do have a shortfall and we are goinge to need. we had to go and pass an emergency appropriations bill to get them the rest of the money they need. You know. we talk about the thirdparty validators here. Now there is a proposal to cut $600 million out of this budget .in veterans health care. which would be enough funds to care for nearly 100.000 veterans. The American Legion. this is this evenings thirdparty validator for me on veterans. expressed concern that that cut would mean rationing of care. hiring freezes of medical personnel. delaying repairs on facilities. growing backlogs of medical equipment. and many other fiscalbased constraints. And that was a letter that they wrote on October 17.
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Gall is a soft word. the softest word you could use. I really want to go ahead and transition to Mr. DELAHUNT. who is going to go through some more of this.
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

The gentleman from Ohio was referring to the guts that they lack. It has been clear to me. and increasingly clear as the months go by. that they do not have the guts or the ability in their constitutional makeup. like the gentleman said. continuing with the Cword theme. it is their culture of cronyism that does not allow them. Their culture that propels them to take care of the people at the top and only those at the top. So they do not have the ability to comprehend at least not the way I perceive it. that they are doing the wrong thing. The culture of corruption and cronyism just continues. and although it is somewhat off topic. I think it is important because the last few times we have been here we have been talking about just their general lack of ethics and their commitment to taking care. of their cronies as opposed to the American people. We have been calling on the floor of this House for the President to fire Karl Rove. to at least ask him to step down. to eliminate the weight that is standing on his chest and the chests of the American people and our ability to actually move forward. Do you know what his response was to calls across the country to get rid of Karl Rove? He ordered his staff in the White House to take an ethics course this week. That is what he has asked them to do. Right there in black and white. the Associated Press reported it. His response to this entire mess is that his White House staff should take an ethics class.
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Can I just tell you. it gets worse. It is not just the fact that they are responding to this entire fiasco. ethical conflict. with ethics classes for the White House staff. Do you know who is giving the classes? The White House counsels office. Harriet Miers office. That is part of their pattern. It is not like they decided they should go somewhere outside the White House. because clearly the White House has not been emblematic of an ethical place where you could actually learn ethics from someone inside the White House. You would think they would have gone outside the White House. but they do not believe in independence. We asked them to establish an independent Katrina commission. No. Their" answer was to do it internally and create a special committee here that is lopsided. 11 Republicans and right now no Democrats because we refuse to serve on a committee that is not going to be fair and objective and really get to the bottom of it. The bottom line. the reason I brought this up is because your point is from the top to the bottom. the culture of corruption and cronyism and incompetence just runs right through. There is not any light at the end of the tunnel. and it gets worse with every page you turn in this administration.
Date: 2005-11-07
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Just one quick statement. We want to remind everyone that tomorrow is election day in many places. Virginia. California. New York. New Jersey. We want to urge our generation to come out in the record numbers that they came out during the 2004 elections.
Date: 2005-11-08
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

The fact of the matter is. as pointed out in these articles. people no longer having pensions or people being in for a nasty surprise. the fact of the matter is. for 5 years the Bush administration. the Republican Congress. have simply stood back as the American middle class standard of living for retirees is dismantled. it is -threatened. is devastated. however Members want to describe it. That is what they have done. They have suggested this is okay because you can ask Secretary Chao until the cows come home anything about it. she cannot answer a single question. expresses no concern. could provide no information about the pension bill. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation refused to provide us. the information before we voted. After we voted. they said. You made the prol~lem worse. And from the Congressional Budget Office. You made the problem vorse. So I guess that the policy of the Republican Congress and the Bush administration is that millions of Americans will lose their hold onthe a clicass the moment they retiie..The rioment they retire. they will lose their hold. We have tried to encourage a younger generation to save. to provide for their retirement. We cannot get a hearing on things that would dramatically change. if not these retirees livelihoods. it would certainly change the livelihood for younger workers in this country. It is a sad day that we do not do this. Tragically. there are going to be millions more cover stories like this as millions of Americans lose access to the retirement they were planning for for the care of themselves. their families. and their children.
Date: 2005-11-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

The gentlemans bringing up faith as it relates to this budget document is incredibly important. because our friends on the other side of. the aislehotrow around family values as a iermlnd as part of their makeup and try to contrast us. as if that is not part of ours. Let us just look at what the faith community is saying about this budget. and what they have been saying about this budget. This week. this past week. we had a number of members of the organized religious community come to Washington and urge the Republican leadership not to pursue this budget reconciliation document. You had Reverend Jim Wallis. the founder of Sojourners and Convener of Call to Renewal. You had Rabbi David Saperstein. who is the director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism. You had Reverend Elenora Giddings Ivory. who is the Director of the Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church. What Reverend Ivory said when she was here. she said. "I am here today to express concern for the Federal budget reconciliation packages under consideration in the House and the Senate. Our Nation is about to balance its budget on the backs of the poor. Is that a moral thing to do? The Federal budget is a reflection of what we see as important and primary. Does the spending package under consideration reflect a caring and a compassionate society? Does it reflect you as a citizen of faith?" I think that each of us. if we ask and look inside our own hearts. Republicans and Democrats alike. would have to answer each of those questions. absolutely not.
Date: 2005-11-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

If thegentleman will yield. there is a way we can make changes which take us in a new direction: it is election day. We do not have to continue down this road. We do not have to continue to. prop up and add to the bottom line of the
Date: 2005-11-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

We actually have a chart that outlines some of the things my colleague is about. to go over so we can make sure that people have it very clearly in front of them
Date: 2005-11-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

If my colleague wishes to go over the details he was beginning to talk about on the bottom of the chart.
Date: 2005-11-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

What we try to do in this 30something time. we do a lot of talking. ut we also want to show people with thirdparty validators and with the specifics blown up in postersize form so that they have it both in graphical depiction as well as in description from us individually. So that was just showing my colleague that while he goes through just exactly what these cuts in student aid do. we have that up for the folks at home.
Date: 2005-11-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

The bottom line is we can do better. Together we can lock arms. Our generation can say to the generation in front of us that has been leading this country. give us the baton. It is our turn. We are not going there any more. We want to turn this country around. We want to make sure our children have health care. that mothers and fathers when their kids get sick do not have to wait until their kid is so sick they have to take them to the emergency room for theirhealth care. We do not want to cut the budget for abused and neglected children. We are going to continue to pursue deadbeat dads. State legislators have fought tooth and nail to ensure that we can continue. to go after deadbeat dads. yet in this budget we will consider this week. that opportunity would be lost. We would be preventing that opportunity. The list goes on and on. It adds insult -to injury. It cuts the school lunch program. which is a program that makes it so that some kids. the only plate they can get a meal. a decent meal. is from that free and reduced lunch. and the Republican leadership would cut that program. Our generation can take the country in a new direction. and we are ready to.
Date: 2005-11-09
Speaker: LINDA T. SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Madam Speaker. when I was elected to Congress. I never thought I would be asked to participate in crushing the dreams of American children. But that is exactly what the House majority is asking me to do. The House budget reconciliation bill includes $14.3 billion in overall cuts to Federal student aid programs over -the next 5 years. This cut will be the single largest cut in the entire history of the student aid program. I thought the majority did not want to leave any child behind. But obviously what this cut means is they do not want to leave you behind. until you want to go to college. I know firsthand the importance of student aid. I would not be standing on the floor of this House if it were not for student aid programs. These loans made my education dreams a reality. I am the only member of the California congressional delegation still paying off her student loans. Each month I proudly write that check because I know* the best investment I and my seven brothers and sisters could have made was our investment in our own .education. Can you imagine where we will be in 20 years when we lack the professionals that we need in this country? Make no mistake. these proposed cuts to student aid programs will negatively impact the future of our workforce and our economy.