Date: 2005-11-04
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

You know. I have been seriously considering coming to the Chamber next Friday in my pajamas. given the track record of. controversial votes. where they make their Members. the Republican leadership makes their Members puke blood in not allowing them to decide what to do. to stand on the courage of their convictions. They keep the board open. and we .watch it light up like a Christmas tree up there. red to green. green to red. It is just unbelievable. Sometimes I think the board is malfunctioning. Maybe it is not functioning. Maybe we should get an electrician in here. Maybe we should have the electrician check the wiring behind the Republican Members names and their lights. because they do not seem to be able to pick one and have it stay there. Every time they have to cast a controversial vote. it goes from no to yes. then yes to no. or they do not appear to be able to turn their own- light on for a very long time. because they cannot decide. Is it that they cannot decide? I just want to make sure. because it is deeply concerning to me that they would not know when they came to the floor how to vote on a bill that is going to cut food stamps. that is going to cut financial aid. that cuts access to affordable energy. that allows drilling around the entire coastline of the United States of America where it is not currently allowed. So there has to be something wrong with the wiring. Next week. I am going to be here in my pajamas and a teddy bear with a nice cup of coffee because we are really going to have to settle in for a long night. It is not going to be a normal 15minute or a normal 5minute vote. because I think the wiring under that board is going to go haywire next week. They are clearly not going to get their way right away because this is going to be a gutwrenching angstridden vote. Woe to the Member on their side that does not vote how the leadership wants them to. Sometimes when we talk in trillions and billions and millions it is a hard concept for people to understand. I know it is hard for me. A trillion is such a huge number. An $8 trillion deficit is what we are in the middle of H9690 right now. That is a huge number. I -sometimes cannot understand how big that number is. It is also hard to understand what an $844 million cut froh the food stamp program is. or the kind of cuts they are going to be passing down in this budget reconciliation document that is going to affect affordable housing. I want to show this picture. This picture is of me standing in the apartment of one of my constituents whose roof caved in on her during Hurricane Wilma. These are the people that. on � top of what they have already gone through. on top of what they have already gone through. now we are going to cut the budget that funds the very programs that exist to help them. There are people in dire straits in south Florida after Hurricane Wilma and in the gulf coast regiofi after Katrina. There are people Who before the hurricanes hit were in dire straits. This is what the problem really looks like for people. These people cannot live in homes like this because this home was condemned. Obviously. nobody can live in the apartment in this picture. and I wish that there was only one that looked like this in south Florida. This is the plight that we are putting people through. Before we give out the Web site. I want to close by saying that we are in the middle of adding "C" after "C": with the culture of corruption. cronyism. and the lack of confidence that the American people have in their government. and now we have the coverup Congress. That is what came tO. light here this week. We have repeatedly. asked for investigations. that this leadership stand up and do what is right. And Leader PELOSI has tried to get them to do that. and they have unanimously rejected that. We are going to continue to come back to this floor and stand up for the American people. and I look forward to continuing this dialogue with my colleague.