Date: 2005-09-20
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. it is. once again. This is a regular weekly event for us. and it is an important thing we do. And I really enjoy spending the time with you on the floor and with our colleague from Ohio just trying to talk to folks in our generation. So often when I talk to friends of mine and neighbors and colleagues in the 30something range. they sort of tell me. they scratch their heads and wonder. you know. most of the stuff you all talk about in Congress has no impact on my life. They really think. because what they are doing is they wake up in the morning. They get their kids ready for school. They get themselves ready for work. They get in their car in their garage. They drive out of their garage. They go to work. They pick up their kids. they come home and park the car in the garage again and start it all over the next day. And when you are living that kind of life. trying to balance work and family. trying to in many cases live paycheck to paycheck. it is very difficult to listen to the debate on this floor and understand how the things we do affect their lives. But if there is anything that we could do to show our generation how government impacts their lives and can significantly alter their lives or through inaction how it can alter their lives. it is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Because we have so many glaring examples of what went wrong. of what should have happened and did not. and how hundreds of thousands of peoples lives have now been turned upside down. And normally. I think people that are in our generation look at. and quite honestly. older and younger than our generation look at the victims of Hurricane Katrina or of any tragedy which is a natural human thing to do and say to themselves. you know. that is not me. That is them. That would never happen to me. I do not live in a community where that could happen. But the gross underpreparation and disregard for the potential for a Katrina to happen. I mean. substitute any potential disaster in my region of the country and there but for the grace of God. We have got to take the next step and help not just our generation but all Americans understand what should happen for these Katrina victims now. They need housing. They do not need a lot of talk. Of course. they need sympathy and empathy. They need emotional assistance. but. they need housing. They need roofs over their head. They need economic security. They need to know how it is they are going to get a job again. where are they going to get a job again. How are they going to get their home loans resolved? I was reading an extensive -article today how you have banks that were in those gulf coast States that the bank was blown out. the properties that they lent money on are gone. the people are gone. So what happens to the transaction? How do they get the money back? What is Congress going to do to try to help put all that back together and sew it all back together? Then there is health care. We have to make sure that these people can go to the doctor and get well. Some of them were not well to start with. Some of them were the picture of health and no longer are. Finally. we have got to make sure that these kids. these thousands and thousands of displaced kids. get back to school somewhere and that the communities that they are going to end up going to school in. we are from south Florida. An influx of children the size of which came out of the. gulf coast States is not a depth that our community could absorb. We are already in an overcrowded situation in our public schools. and so are many communities. So we need to -make sure that the leadership in this Congress understands that those are the kinds of tangible things that we need to talk about and stop moving forward with an investigation that is basically turning inward on itself. We need the independent commission. Objective observers. experts. people who can be trusted because it is trust that we need to restore so that when this. God forbid. happens again. and. unfortunately. we know nature will cause yet another problem like this to occur. that we have the accountability in place to know it will not happen. And a partisan committee set up by the Congress with a majority of one party serving on it. whether it is our party or the Republican Party. is not the appropriate way to handle this.