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Ms. McKINNEY . Madam Speaker, I have got a lot of papers and a lot of posters. One hour will in no way accommodate all that needs to be said tonight about the tremendous challenges that face our country today, including how we conduct ourselves in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina . While my remarks tonight in no way should be construed as encompassing all of my thoughts on the very important issues that I discuss tonight, just mark this down as a start. First, let me say that I am especially proud of the way the people of my district and of this country have wrapped their arms around the victims of Hurricane Katrina . At this time, we have a healthy contingent of expert Georgians in the traumatized gulf States, and we have received thousands of Katrina's victims into our cities, churches, and homes. I have come to this floor on many occasions. People around the world have commented on how shocked they are to see such poverty in America. While cities and localities pass anti-panhandling measures that criminalize begging tourists and visitors in downtown areas asking for help, Hurricane Katrina washed away America's veneer of populist opportunity, a country that has overcome its racist, slave-holding past, a country ready for world dominion because it has learned how to uplift the human spirit at home. Katrina , in images as stark and undeniable as could be, has laid bare the Republican lie that its policies promote growth and prosperity for all Americans and leave no child behind, while Katrina put into our living rooms and the world's living rooms the cruel hoax that has been played on America and those who love America by the ruthless sybaritic power player elites who are as responsible for the conditions endured by too many Americans as they are for the embarrassing and breathtaking incompetencies we all witnessed just before Labor Day. Almost 30,000 New Orleans households live on less than $10,000 per year. More babies and young kids are going hungry in our country. Eleven percent of our families experienced hunger in 2003. One million more Americans are living in poverty today than there were 1 year ago. Income distribution has become obscenely skewed toward the rich during the Bush years. In Manhattan, the poor make two cents for each dollar that the rich make. This places Manhattan on par with Namibia for income disparity. Interestingly, in the financial capital of the world, New York City, the Bronx is the poorest urban county in the country, and New York State is being depleted of its middle class. America is being depleted of its middle class. Over 50 percent of America's income goes to the top 20 percent of households. With even more tax cuts for the wealthy on the horizon, coupled with real budget cuts for the programs that are forced to take care of more and more Americans, the situation can only be expected to get worse, sadly. Incomes for 95 percent of American households are flat or falling. Only the top 5 percent are experiencing the growth that we hear the Republicans talk about. Now, I have got tons of documentation to offer for all of the statistics that we cite, but let me take a moment and reiterate where we are for all the people who are listening tonight.
Let me recall for just a moment the America they might not know but that more of us are coming all too well to know.
I will start with this poster, which depicts a black man hanging from a tree. The caption says ``The body of Robert McNair is seen here as residents and schoolchildren in the Georgetown community saw it between about 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. last Thursday.'' This was on the front page of the Jackson, Mississippi, Advocate the week of October 23 to 29 when I was in Mississippi for a speaking engagement. This was what I saw.
Sadly, it is what the children in the neighborhood saw, a black man hanging from a tree. A lynching. That is 2003. I am not talking about 1903. This is 2003. Sadly, in 2005, we have two lynchings being investigated in the State of Georgia, my home State, and both of them are supposed to have been suicides. In this story it was reported that this poor Mr. Robert McNair committed suicide, hanging from a tree.
When I come to the floor and do these monthly talks, some way or other we get around to the state of black America because it is important for us to understand that there are many Americans, and some of those Americans we do not see and we do not know. But we need to know how all Americans live so that we can make sure that no American is left behind.
On some indices, even today, it is true that the racial disparities are worse today than they were at the time of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. People would say it is not true, but, alas, it is true. And, of course, the statistics document that sad truth. United for a Fair Economy gives us these statistics in its State of the Dream report on imprisonment. To close the racial gap, it will take 190 years just so that black people are imprisoned for the same crime at the same rate as white people are imprisoned.
What about poverty? We saw a lot of that. Overall poverty, the racial disparity, 150 years to close the gap. Why does that have to be? At the slow rate that the black-white poverty gap has been narrowing since 1968, it would take 150 years to close the gap.
What about child poverty? Two hundred ten years to close the gap. Almost one-third of black children live in poverty. The child poverty gap would take 210 years to disappear, not reaching parity until 2212.
I would like to thank the National Council for La Raza that provided us with these statistics, the proportion of children without health insurance in the United States, home ownership rates. Look and you can see the proportion of children without health insurance in the United States. Look at the Hispanic figures. Look at that. Twenty-five percent of young Latino children do not have health insurance in this country.
What about home ownership rates, because we hear a lot of talk about the growth economy, and the Republicans and the President talk about promoting home ownership, home ownership, the first tier toward building wealth, okay? Well, if you are lucky enough to be able to own a home, sadly black and Hispanic home ownership rates are low. How low? To close the home ownership gap, the disparity between white home ownership and black home ownership, the first tier toward
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wealth building, it will take 1,664 years to close the home ownership gap.
This is something that so many Americans take for granted. Yet so many Americans still have a dream for home ownership.
Now, what about income? It will take 581 years for us to close the per capita income gap. Since 1968, we have only been able to close the gap 2 cents. Black people make 55 cents for every dollar. That was in 1968. In 2001, it was 57 cents. Two cents, so 581 years to close the gap.
When some people start talking about how we want to build, rebuild, and provide for folks, that is what this Congress is supposed to do. We should build lives, we should build communities, build neighborhoods, and protect our people.
When it comes to the economic conditions that are prevailing for so many Americans, it is almost a joke. Here is a cartoon from the Washington Post. This is the sybaritic power player who is pulling the strings behind the scene, calling the shots, dictating politics and policy; and he is saying, ``It is not trickle down economics. We got the plumbing fixed.'' Here is the poor little fella down here, little panhandler trying to wait to get some of the stuff that is trickling down, and it is not trickling down any more.
Poverty is up. Median income down. That is the result of the policies of the Bush administration since 2001.
What about all these tax cuts? New Orleans has got a lot of attention now because of what has happened, and we hear and we will hear some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle suggesting that we need to do more tax cuts. Well, the faces of the people that came into our living rooms from Hurricane Katrina got this much from George Bush's tax cuts. But if you happened to make over $200,000 a year, you got this much from George Bush's tax cuts.
It is so clear that the administration wants to serve some of the people all of the time and fool the rest of us all of the time. The tax cuts, we should not hear another word uttered about the need for more of the kind of tax cuts that the Bush administration has given us thus far. This insensitive policymaking that ends up hurting real people leads to a kind of callousness within our society that we do not recognize sometimes, that we do not notice sometimes.
It is easy to pass an anti-panhandling ordinance in the city of Atlanta because we do not feel the pain of the people who do not eat at night. So it is also easy to demonize people. It is easy to demonize people that you do not know.
This made it around the Internet until Agence France-Presse pulled their photo off. But how is it that we can have a media in this country displaying one young man wading through that putrid water and the American press, the Associated Press, says that he is ``looting.'' Then you have two people who are obviously not black and they are ``finding.'' This young man, according to the Associated Press, walks through chest-deep floodwater after ``looting'' a grocery store. Two residents wade through chest-deep water after ``finding'' bread and soda.
This is the America of those statistics. This is the America that all Americans need to know and see. This is the America that too many of us have borne the brunt of generation after generation after generation after generation.
And then, they called them ``refugees.'' Some bright light in the media came up with that one to further dehumanize poor black people in New Orleans. I had some New Orleans residents in my congressional office in Georgia who said that they had never, ever thought that they would be called refugees in their own country. Other insensitive language just shows how totally out of touch the leadership of this country is with the American people.
While the city was still flooding, Speaker Hastert suggested that New Orleans should not be rebuilt.
As the mostly black people were herded into what looked like concentration camps, Barbara Bush suggested that they were really better off now than they were before. Well, maybe she has got something there, because it took losing an entire city for the ``compassionate conservatives'' in Washington, D.C., to finally get some compassion in the laws they pass, in the policies they enact, in what they do around here.
And you can imagine my surprise to hear the very people who chose not to adequately fund education, health care, affordable housing, now saying we have got to have Pell grants, Section 8 vouchers, schooling for children. It is what some of us have been saying all along.
Now, you can just about bet your bottom dollar that the Karl Rove spin machine is working overtime to whitewash the Bush administration preparations for the response to Katrina . Let us remember as we go through this that the State and local responders were victims too. That is why it is critical that the feds act. But they did not act, notwithstanding anything that comes out of the spin machine.
Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana said, ``We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water. They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart.'' This is from the New York Times. ``Far from deferring to State or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse,'' according to Mr. Broussard, and I will talk about him a little bit later, who complained on Meet the Press.
Mayor Nagin said, ``The root of the breakdown was the failure of the Federal Government to deliver relief supplies and personnel quickly. They kept promising and saying things would happen. I was getting excited and telling people that. They kept making promises and promises.''
MSNBC informs us that FEMA Director Michael Brown waited 5 hours after the storm's landfall to get agency assistance, to get agency aid from the Department of Homeland Security.
Now, another thing that we need to know about, there are so many things that our government does in our name with our tax dollars, on our behalf supposedly, that we do not know about. The Bush administration has opened up these biodefense labs all over the country. In about 20, 25 universities around the country we have got biodefense labs studying I do not know what.
I can remember the Tuskegee Study. I remember MK-Ultra as an African American. I remember Paul Robeson. But Tulane University is under water, and Tulane University houses one of these biodefense labs. We need to know what the heck was in that lab, what was going on in that biodefense lab.
Some of the headlines. Notwithstanding what you may hear from the other side of the aisle or coming out of the White House about how everyone has to share the blame, these are some of the headlines.
``FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations.''
``FEMA turns away experienced firefighters.''
``FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks.''
``FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel.''
``Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food.''
``FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans.''
``FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid.''
``FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board.''
``FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck.''
``FEMA turns away generators.''
``FEMA first responders urged not to respond.''
Those are just a few of the headlines. I have got all of the documentation, of course.
There is also a story about three U.S. Customs Blackhawk helicopter crews that are absolutely livid because they had been directed not to provide full-time support for the hurricane relief effort in the Gulf.
``Navy ship nearby underused.'' This is from the Chicago Tribune. A craft with food, water, doctors. All it needed was the orders. It never got the orders.
``Federal agency slow to accept business help.'' This is from the Financial Times, ``Federal agency slow to accept business help. From Wal-Mart's satellite-based communications system to FedEx's aircraft, U.S. business has in some cases managed to provide a swifter response to the initial impacts of Hurricane Katrina than the Federal and State authorities.''
This is from the Salt Lake City Tribune: ``Frustrated fire crews to hand out
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fliers for FEMA. Many of the firefighters assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by FEMA thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they have learned they are going to be community relations officers for FEMA, shuffling throughout the gulf coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number, 1-800-621-FEMA,'' which does not work most of the time.
Now, I know that American children can do better in geography, but you would think that at least our emergency management people would get their geography right. CNN.com says, Well, they were supposed to go to Charleston. My colleague from Charleston, we were in a meeting on Tuesday night, and he said they had the shelter all set up with supplies, cots, blankets and everything, and nobody came. Now we find out that this is why they did not come. They were supposed to be in Charleston, South Carolina. Guess where FEMA took them? Charleston, West Virginia. What incompetence. Right city, wrong State. CNN.com.
I cannot even imagine. No one should imagine. It is ridiculous. But they are going to tell you everything is all right.
The New York Times tells us, ``Navy pilots who rescued victims are reprimanded.'' What? ``Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on August 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 victims to safety. Instead, they were reprimanded.''
Well, we are working on this, since I serve on the Committee on Armed Services. But the sad thing about it is, when we had our briefing on Tuesday evening, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of HUD were all there at the briefing, except that Defense kept going in and out, Homeland Security kept going in and out, could not stay long enough to brief the Members of Congress or to hear from the Members of Congress who are directly impacted by their failure, their incompetence.
Malik Rahin is a former Black Panther Party member. In a very compelling radio interview he said, ``You want more morality from the poor than from the rich.'' But he rejected the idea that New Orleans was a city divided by race. He said, ``Whites took their boats and went into black neighborhoods. But it was the feds who forced people to leave their possessions. Once they got rescued, they had to leave their possessions. They could only take one bag.''
He says, ``Over 70 percent of the people who were rescued were rescued by individuals.'' Then he went on to say something very interesting. He said, ``$90 million of HOPE VI construction, but the people who needed it the most in New Orleans got no training, no community service.''
Louisiana has the highest dropout rate in the country. He said, ``Juvenile justice is a disgrace.'' He said, ``The only equal opportunity employer here is drugs.''
We heard a lot about shooting. He says, ``White vigilante groups with shotguns and rifles rode around saying they were going to shoot the looters.'' They were unchecked. There could have been a riot. He says, ``There was about to be a race riot.''
He said, ``Many whites took their own personal boats into the black community. Too many acts of heroism, sharing ice, sharing water.''
Then he mentions Jefferson Parish had to secede from the United States of America. So I want to mention the Jefferson Parish president.
But before that I am going to mention what Mayor Nagin in a wonderfully compelling interview with WWL said when he had the opportunity to speak directly with President Bush. He said, ``I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice, and that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we are outmanned in just about every respect.''
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