night after night my Democratic colleagues come to this floor to characterize the Republican Party as being the party controlled by monied special interests. Well, this evening, my fellow Democrats, is a moment of truth for the Democratic…

One of things that we fought for is to protect the rights of the public, and this bill opens the door to further privatization and deregulation of vital human services, including health and water; and what that means is higher profits for…

Steven Hadley, the Deputy National Security Advisor, tried to take the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Advisor off the biggest hook in town by accepting the blame for the President falsely…

I ask, can we truly be so lacking in compassion? This is not about legalizing marijuana. That is just a smoke screen. It is an amendment to end Federal raids on medical marijuana patients and providers in States where medical marijuana is…

today CIA Director George Tenet will testify behind closed doors. Yesterday I held a public briefing with two veteran intelligence officers about the misuse of intelligence which took us into war. Ray McGovern, briefed Vice Presidents…

today at 11 a.m. in Rayburn 2203 I will be hosting a briefing featuring two veteran intelligence officers to discuss the Bush administration's misuse of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. The first speaker, Ray McGovern, is a 27-year…

in opposing the amendment we recognize that reproductive rights embrace certain human rights. We respect the rights of women to make personal decisions on the number, spacing, and timing of children they wish to bear, what type of birth…

Seniors must have a guaranteed drug coverage plan. Has the private market through Medicare+Choice plans been able to do this? On the contrary. The privatization experiment with Medicare+Choice has shown that privatization is a failure…

it's been a very tough year for the American worker. Astonishingly, it appears the Administration is attempting to make things even tougher. Already, the Administration is presiding over the highest unemployment rate since April, 1994…

Why did the U.S. go to war against Iraq? The day after 9/11, according to this book, Secretary Rumsfeld raised the possibility that the administration could take advantage of the opportunity offered by the terrorist attacks to go after…

Much media attention has been directed toward the President's State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003, wherein he alleged an Iraqi nuclear threat which the Vice President's office knew was false almost a year earlier. More attention…

H.R. 2211 is a good bill. As its name suggests, the Ready to Teach Act works to ensure that our children, our future, are taught by well-prepared and qualified teachers. It also supports our schools so that they are able to recruit and…

everyone in America knows the price of drugs is too high. Seniors know it best. Proponents of H.R. 1 are not representing the seniors of America. They represent the biggest campaign contributors in America, the private health insurance…

yesterday in debate over H.R. 2417, the intelligence bill, the chairman of the committee refused to commit to an Intelligence Committee audit of all telephone and electronic communications between the Central Intelligence Agency and the…

I think it would be useful as we begin these debates for us to reflect on the essential constitutional role of the Congress and on the importance of separation of powers and on the cause which took a Nation into war because we are not…

I would say in order for the test to be made to make the request first then imposes our responsibility as Members of Congress, and as a coequal branch of government, we are entitled to do that and the executive branch is entitled to assert…

Well, Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for continuing to yield, and I would say that, first of all, the idea that it is the committee's jurisdiction and, therefore, should be left to the committee, I do not believe the gentleman is…

we now know that there were not vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when the U.S. invaded and that, therefore, Iraq did not pose an imminent threat to the United States, as the administration claimed before the war. The…

I want to point out for clarification purposes, and I thank the gentleman for yielding, that the result of this amendment would be both a count of the number of communications and an inventory of the substance of the communications. The…

I would maintain that this would not be a subject of whistleblowing, and only the Office of Inspector General or in this case the investigative agency would have an opportunity to be able to get this in an evenhanded way, and it takes it…

it would be more than instructive. It would be classified information if the Vice President manipulated CIA analysts to disseminate false, raw unreliable information to justify a war in Iraq. I am hopeful no one is saying that and I am not…

I thank the gentleman. Under the gentleman's logic, there would be no reason at all for any amendments to be offered from this floor. We might as well dispense with the amendment process and move to a system in which the committees of…

protection of the truth and the constitutional role of Congress as a coequal branch should not be a partisan matter. Yet yesterday Republicans on the House Committee on International Relations participated in the cover-up of the Bush…

the Committee on International Relations is at this very moment reviewing a resolution of inquiry submitted by me and cosponsored by 36 Members of the House of Representatives asking for the administration to provide whatever evidence to…

the Bush administration made specific, unequivocal statements about the imminent threat posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, repeatedly claiming they had intelligence showing Iraq had 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters…