Dennis Kucinich: “as I listen to the debate here, one of the things that I keep hearing in this House is a question of what the role of…”

“as I listen to the debate here, one of the things that I keep hearing in this House is a question of what the role of government is. One of the gentlemen who spoke earlier would insist that all this is about is throwing money, good money, after bad. I think there are people in this Congress who actually believe that government does not have a benign role in the lives of the people, except as an engine to redistribute the wealth of the Nation upwards. This legislation proves otherwise. It proves that government does have a responsibility to step up when people have a problem. It also confirms the role of the Congress of the United States. We see in today's news that the administration was warned on Katrina. It didn't respond quickly enough. Well, the Congress of the United States has an obligation to respond here. That is what we are doing with this legislation today. That is why I support it. We know that so much of the Federal response to the economic security of the Katrina victims has been lacking. According to the Economic Policy Institute, unemployment is a serious problem for hurricane victims. But the evacuees who are still not back in their homes, and they number 500,000 people, to them unemployment is epidemic, one-quarter of Whites, one-half of African American evacuees are still out of work. The cause, Mr. Speaker, is not a lack of jobs. At the current time there is a labor shortage in New Orleans. The cause is a lack of housing near the job sites.…”