Jerry Nadler: “the President, as you can see from the poster, said at his press conference last week that he was not aware of any…”

“the President, as you can see from the poster, said at his press conference last week that he was not aware of any mistakes that he had made. Let me tell my colleagues and him a few mistakes he has made, three major mistakes: First, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration chose deliberately to mislead the people of New York about the safety of the air and the environment in the aftermath of that disaster. We now know from the Inspector General of EPA's report that the White House instructed the EPA to mislead the people of New York. The former administrator of EPA, Mrs. Whitman, said 2 days after the disaster the air is safe to breathe, when they had no test data to show that. Because of that misleading, Federal, State, and city government followed policies that have resulted in catastrophe. We now know from recent medical reports that an absolute majority, most of the first responders, the heroes, the fire officers, the police officers, the construction workers who descended on Lower Manhattan to help with the rescue operations, most of them now, 2 years later, have serious respiratory disorders which will probably plague them for the rest of their lives. We know that women who live within a mile, 1.6 kilometers, of the World Trade Center, today are giving birth to low birth weight babies at twice the natural rate because the White House chose to mislead the American people.”