macleginn/stanford_congress_record_longer_speeches huggingface dataset:
Date: 2005-12-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

There is no question. and I can tell you that if you even examine further the details of those numbers. what is even sadder is how few women and young women are graduating with those kinds of degrees. We need to make sure that we grow our scientists of the future and that we encourage our kids who are going through the universities. actually really we have to start in elementary school. to encourage them to pursue science and math pathways so that ultimately they get involved in the science fairs and enter their projects in the science fairs and work their way through so that they know they want to go to a university and get an engineering degree. We have a plan that will take us in that direction. We have a plan that will add 100.000 new scientists. mathematicians and engineers to Americas workforce in the next 4 years. and we can do that using our ability to provide scholarships and other financial assistance and work with the private sector to create opportunities for students who go to college to achieve that goal. but that is something that government has to initiate. That is not something that can completelybe incubated in the private sector and occur on its own. Those things do not occur in a vacuum.
Date: 2005-12-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. the things that make kids grow up into whole people. What happens now is because we are inadequately funding education. our classrooms in most of the major urban population centers and now even in some places that would not be considered so urban. the classrooms are so crowded they are bursting at the seams. They are having to use the art rooms and the band room and the music rooms for classroom space. So as a result. electives are so reduced or the funding is cut for them. So you are graduating kids who know how to take tests. They are test takers. and those are not the kind of skills that small businesses are looking for when they are sitting across the desk after a kid has graduated from high school or even college. I can tell you. because I taught at the college level for several years both at the university and community college level. you would not believe the writing skills or lack of writing skills that someone whose whole educational career has been structured towards taking tests. what those writing skills look like. We are not graduating whole. wellbalanced kids who have critical thinking skills and the creativity that those kinds of classes and elective courses help to shape them into adults that will be able to work in groups and dream big dreams and make us the innovators and that have been the tradition of innovation that Americans have always led the way on. It is just not that way anymore. and we have got to get back in that direction.
Date: 2005-12-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

That is it right there. and you cannot do those things when you are hampered every day by having to answer questions from reporters and from your constituents on your ethical lapses and on the corruption accusations and on cronyism. We all know that those things are distracting. When you have to concentrate all of your energy and effort and attention on corruption and cronyism and your incompetence. how are you going to be able to focus on innovation? How are you going to be able to focus on the future?
Date: 2005-12-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Absolutely. We are not addressing the high cost of gasoline. We have a plan that would make us energy independent within 10 years. We have got to make sure we start innovating in that direction. We have got to make sure we stop relying solely on foreign oil. We have investments that we can make in research and development so that we can expand our ability to generate alternative energy sources. We have to help small businesses. We have to make sure that small business can thrive. They cannot thrive with upwards of 15 percent increases in their health insurance costs every year. We have got to make sure we have access to health care in this country. That is the direction the Democrats would take this country and break the gridlo6k that we seem to be mired in. in which every single day there is another accusation of corruption. Every single day there is another example of a person who was selected or nominated or chosen for a job in the administration who is wholly unqualified for the breadth and scope of experience that that person would need to do that job effectively. What happens? They make horrible mistakes. and that is the next days headlines. not the headlines that we had in 1969 that America was first to land a man on the Moon. EJ 1745
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank our ranking member and good friend. JOHN CONYERS. for allowing us to speak tonight and putting together this hourlong Special Order for JOHN DINGELL. JOHN DINGELL has taught as much as any Member of this House about what it means to represent your district. and. more importantly. what it means to represent the Nation as a whole and to protect the integrity of this House. JOHN DINGELL has devoted his life to the House of Representatives. the peoples House. where his patriotism. intelligence. and trust have been put to the test every 2 years for 50 years. and every other November JOHN has passed that test with flying colors. While the newspapers have recently featured stories of elected officials at all levels who abandon the publics trust and instead look out for themselves or other powerful interests. JoHN has created an unbelievable and unbeatable record of accomplishment fighting for the American consumers for half a century. He accomplished much of this during his terms as subcommittee and committee Chair of the. House Energy and Commerce Committee. which I am honored to serve with him on. but he also continued his strong record of accomplishment as the ranking member. That is the toughest test of effectiveness. being able to get things done when you do not have all the cards. I am glad that JOHN is still filled with vigor and vitality. and I encourage all Members to seek his advice and wisdom. He is a great resource for all Members. Republican and Democrat. The mark that JoHN has made on Congress and this House in particular will be enduring. For example. there is no Member that has been more effective at pritecting the jurisdiction of this Congress under the U.S. Constitution. JOHN practically invented the modern practice of congressional oversight of the executive branch. which. I may add. we have not been doing for the last few sessions. In addition. he exposed more waste. fraud and abuse in the Federal Government probably than any person in history. JOHNS partner in his work is his wife. Debbie. or as he refers to her. as his beautiful wife Debbie. and they are a great team. My wife and I enjoy their friendship. and I have enjoyed serving with JOHN4 on the Energy and Commerce Committee. But even more fun is when we had the chance to go hunting the few times we could. whether it be quail in Texas or duck on the Eastern Shore or pheasant in northern Maryland. He is a true sportsman in every sense of the word. not only in the field. but as a Member of Congress and his leadership. again. carrying on the tradition that his father did in beingan outdoorsman and sportsman. America owes him a debt of gratitude for his many years. and even more years of service to this Congress and to this country. I thank. again. mVf colleague from Michigan for allowing me to speak tonight.
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. it is a pleasure to join my good friend from Ohio and Massachusetts and Florida here each week. . Just to pick up what the gentleman was talking about. it is. sadly. not only on" the gulf coast that we have had the issue of housing difficulties following Wilma. They had the same issue in Katrina on the gulf coast. We have got the same issue going on in Wilma. which was much smaller in scope but affected a significant number of people. We had more people affected by Wilma in terms of electric utility outages than all of Katrina. and we still to this day have Wilma victims in South Florida who have not been given temporary housing assistance. still people who are struggling to find that. Yet we are passing budget reconciliation. budget cut bills. We are passing tax cut bills in the name of offsetting the cost of the relief that we need to provide for Katrina victims and victims of natural disasters when the reality is that what we are doing with budget cuts is a direct result of needing to pay for the tax cuts that were passed just a week later. And I want to echo what our good friend from Pennsylvania said when he introduced his Iraq War resolution. and he has repeated this a number of times. that just because you say it does not make it true. And our good friends on the other side of the aisle can continue to repeat over and over if they want to that they are offsetting the cost of Katrina relief with budget cuts. but we all know that the reality is. and I mean. we have only to do the math. that when they pass $50 billion in budget cuts one week and then the very next week they pass $70 billion in tax cuts. that is not a Deficit Reduction Act. as they called it and titled that bill. when we are adding $20 billion to the deficit. I do not know. I go back to my kin: dergarten and first grade mathematics and can pretty easily sit down with my 6yearolds. and they can figure out that the math does not work. But. unfortunately. what we have going on here. I guess. the politics of what is going on here is about message. And the Republican leaderships politics is repetition. repetition. repetition. They figure if they repeat the same message over and over again. whether it is true or not. that they figure if it has a kernel of truth. that people will believe it. EJ 2230 But Mr. MURTHA is absolutely right on taxcut policy. on budgetcut policy. whether it is how we got into the Iraq war and even down to the description of his own resolution. If you say it. just because you say it does not make it true. That is really what we need to get across to the American people. I would like to yield to my good friend. the gentleman from Ohio.
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

when we talk about future generations. we have to talk about now in the present. We are not talking about Republican families will not suffer under this. They will suffer just as bad as independents and Democratic families. I So I think it is important that we should be alarmed. that Americans should be alarmed. These are the very same individuals. I am sorry. I have to pull my chart out. Mr. DELAHUNT. you cant say this enough. these are the folks that are saying. Trust us. we know how to operate the government. Then you have a President that could not do it by himself with a Republican majority who made this country more dependent on foreign countries like China. Saudi Arabia. Japan. borrowing $1.05 trillion. I cannot say that enough. In 4 years. that has trumped 42 presidents before him. $1.01 trillion. In 224 years of presidencies. of all the crises we have had. this President seems to have done it in 4 years. You would think that cities would be a shining example of the Federal commitment after all of this money has been borrowed from foreign nations. No. cities are putting levies and millage and going out. to the taxpayers asking for more money. a penny here. a penny there. Meanwhile. back at the ranch. people are getting tax cuts. millionaires are getting tax cuts on the backs of the very people that we are trying to provide a government for. So. Mr. DELAHUNT and Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ and Mr. RYAN. if we couldtalk about the present. because we talk about future. generations and some folks will say we will have time. we will recover. But this is unprecedented. The deficit has never been this high.
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. if the gentleman will yield further. we talk about the culture of corruption and cronyism and the total lack of competence on a regular basis in our 30Something Working Group. and we are really zeroing in on the incompetence tonight the incompetence and the indifference. because really the two are handinglove.
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

If that is not evidence of incompetence. how do you have that big a swing from one year to the next. with the only difference being the person in the White House?
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

It keeps going: $157.8 billion. a $377.6 billion deficit the nextyear. $412.1 billion deficit the year after that. We are getting a little better. we go back to $319 billion. Now we are at $323 billion. So the track record here is that there was one dip in the whole time that this President has been in office. and now we are climbing back again. Yet. supposedly. we just passed the Deficit Reduction Act. If you are going to zero in on the incompetence. talk about the fact that the 9/11 Commission just came out with a report grading this administration and this Congress an F on the necessary followup to their recommendations. There is still no unified list of terror suspects for use by air travel screeners. There has been a misallocation of funds in terms of Homeland Security money. You have big city police and firefighters who still lack the ability to talk to each other. They lack the communications systems that were one of the key recommendations. Remember. after 9/11. if you know nothing about what happened after 9/ 11. the thing that sticks in everyones mind was it was so shocking that these police and firefighters. between agencies. city to county and station to station. could not tslk to each other because their -communications syseems do not line up. They could not talk to the FBI. That has not been fixed. It is just unbelievable. They are still cutting. They are still cutting. They are still cutting the budget. and they are cutting t~xes. They are giving more money .to wealthy people. not just your runofthemill average wealthy person. but the top twotenths of 1 percent of the wealthiest people in America. people who make more than $1 million annually. So. Mr. DELAHUNT. you talk about an economic tsunami. The policies that have been going on in this administration and in this Congress. it is not just an economic tsunami. What the American people have been hit with is Hurricane Republican. You really cannot describe it any other way. because they have been hit by Katrina. they have been hit by Rita. they have been hit by Wilma. And instead of fixing it. instead of addressing the problems that the American people need addressed. they have now been hit by Hurricane Republican. E 2245 Or they are about to. We can stave it off. We could stave if off because there is a conference report. A bill is passed out of the House. A bill is passed outof the Senate. The cuts Mr. DELAHUNT de9cribed .do not have to happen. There is still time to rethink this and come together and trulywork together. which in my 11 months here just has not happened enough. There are isolated pockets of instances when we do work together. and I know compromise is possible. I am praying that that happens because the aftermath of the Hurricane Republican could be worse than Katrina. but it does not have to be that way. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Sometimes incompetence is benign. We all interact with people who make mistakes. who maybe are not up to the par that we would like them to be. But not when the stakes are" this high. not when you are talking about the people who are running the Government of the United States of America. I mean. not when incompetence results in debts. The thousands of people that are harmed or died as a result of Katrina. incompetence hurt them or killed them. Governor Blanco today. thank God for technology. we talked about that last week a little bit. Email technology allows us to know now as opposed to what goes in a paper shredder. that the White House. Homeland Security. and FEMA all knew what was going on down in. New Orleans immediately following Katrina and as she was approaching. and they either did nothing or did not know what to do. That kind of incompetence is dangerous. When it is benign you can look the other way and you can sort of throw up your hands and say. well. those are just things you have to deal with when you encounter incompetence. We cannot allow incompetence to reach the heights that we have in this country.
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. let me just insert one more thing because the Newsweek cover just says it all. In Bushs world. in the Presidents world. you do not have to have accountability. You do not have to put numbers on anything you do. You do not have to say what percentage prepared the troops have to be. and you are never wrong. I have had to teach my kids. and they love to insist that they do not make mistakes. That Is the orientation. of a juvenile. My young children do not understand that sometimes -they are wrong and this is okay and that you should learnhow to change course. But in Bushs world. in the Presidents world. that does not happen. Because he is the President. he apparently has surrounded himself with people who either cannot convince him that he is wrong or he has surrounded himself with people that insist on agreeing with him all the time.
Date: 2005-12-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Just before we close down in our last couple of minutes. we have been talking about the culture of corruption and cronyism and incompetence. zeroing in on incompetence today. and we are about third party validators. It is not just that we say it. We got an email on our 30Something Web site that responded to some of the things. we have been talking about. It was actually a Mr. Miller from Connecticut who said. "You folks are a great breath of fresh air. I like the theme of a culture of corruption. cronyism. and incompetence. Well put. but incomplete. The massive rampant incompetence of this administration." he said. "is a huge problem. no doubt. But for me. a bigger problem is their fundamental disbelief in democratic processes of checks and balances combined with overwhelming ideological arrogance that allows belief to trump evidence." I could not have said it better myself.
Date: 2005-12-14
Speaker: AL GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. it has been more than 100 days since Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast region. destroying more than 300.000 homes. taking more than 1.300 lives. FEMA promised help. yet. more than 100 days later. thousands of survivors are still livink in tents and shelters. More than 100 days later. promised trailers have not arrived. More than 100 days later. a Federal judge has had to force FEMA to extend its deadline. FEMA is now opting out of 12month leases. What FEMAwont do. Congress can do. It is time.for this Republican Congress to work with Democrats and enact legislation granting 1 year of housing assistance. It is imperative that this be done before we adjourn. Human suffering continues. I am willing to work with those to end *this suffering. Ui 101.5
Date: 2005-12-14
Speaker: EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Madam Speaker. I rise today to address the many troubling issues associated with the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. this Congress was faced with the difficult task of revamping our intelligence system. However. the PATRIbT Act is flawed with overreaching provisions that lack the- safeguards to prevent abuse. Americans deserve a bill that successfully prevents attacks against our country. while Hi1533 H11534 CO protecting our Constitutional rights. We must - address"the authority this bill gives. and how it may negatively impact Americans. . " Most of the prbvisidisithinth6 PATRIOT Act are positive i~asures that successfully protect American citizens. H6wever. We cannot ignore the provisions that create serious privacy and civil liberty abuses. These include: Permitting largescale investigation of Americans for "intelligence purposes." Having minimal judicial supervision on wiretaps. Allowing the indefinite detention of nondeportable aliens. even if they are not terrorist suspects. The power to conduct secret searches without having to notify the targetof the search. And the abili.ty to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations. America was built on the notion of strong protetion for our privacy and civil liberties. Now is the time to protect our citizens from terrorism while putting forth meaningful reforms.
Date: 2005-12-14
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to this FY 2006 LaborHHS Conference Report. Almost a month ago. this House rejected an earlierversion of this legislation by a vote of 209224 because it shortchanged the nations critical education. health care and job training priorities. Today we are being asked to pass judgment again on a virtually identical piece of legislationas if shuffling $180 million between accounts in a $602 billion donference report can begin to compensate for the deficiencies in the underlying bill. Mr. Speaker. the LaborHHS Appropriations bill used to be called "the peoples bill." Sb what are the people getting today? Heres a sample from this legislations hall of shame: There are�$779 million in cuts for No Child Left Behind. meaning 3.1 million kids wont get the reading and math help they were promised. A freeze in the LowIncome Home Energy Assistance Program. LIHEAP--despite the 44 percent increase in natural gas prices and 24 percent increase in home heating oil prices expected this winter. This House has refused to provide sufficient help to families in need despite the fact that it voted a few months ago to give the oil and. gas industry a $14 billion tax subsidy. A cut in real terms from the National Institutes of Health that will result in NIH funding 505 fewer research grants than it did just two years ago. A 5 percent cut in critical services for the 7.4 million unemployed and displaced workers left behind by our increasingly globalized economy. Mr. Speaker. the list goes on and on. While this conference report is not completely without meritranging from its increased funding for rural health to the reinstatement of the Bureau of Labor Statistics women worker surveyits overarching trajectory falls far short of what our nation and its people deserve. I do not believe that it reflects the values and priorities of the American people.