mr. speaker , the washington post reported , just to support the gentleman 's argument , five of the eight top federal management agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since 9/11 . 
five of the top eight fema people had no emergency management experience at all . 
what did we think would happen if we had this kind of tragedy ? 
i still say it had a lot to do with the number of electoral votes in louisiana and mississippi than anything else . 
because if it was florida , with all due respect , they would have been there with billions of dollars prior to . 
if it was an election year , everybody would be down there , and the president 's brother would be running around campaigning . 
i think it is terrible that we have this kind of cronyism going on . 
we understand . 
we are not simpletons . 
we know that a president appoints his friends who make a lot of donations to posts in the executive branch . 
we know that . 
that is how it goes . 
but to appoint these people to fema ? 
during a rise in hurricanes ? 
come on . 
it is irresponsible . 
as far as the committee goes , as far as having a committee , cnn gallup poll taken a few days ago , 70 percent of the american people supported an independent panel to investigate our response to hurricane katrina . 
that is 70 percent of the american people , 70 percent of those responding . 
i think it is important for this body to recognize that this toothless tiger , this paper tiger that we passed today , h. res. 437 , is not what the american people want . 
they want an independent investigation , bipartisan , equal power among both parties to investigate it so there is no coverups , no whitewashing going on . 
that is what the american people want . 
mr. speaker , i would like to start talking about something that i think is very important . 
we are going to do this . 
this country is going to make sure that we rebuild . 
the problem that we were talking about with the administration is a big hurdle for us . 
the money is another hurdle . 
i can not believe that with all of the challenges that we have right now in this country that this president can not go to the wealthiest americans , his top campaign contributors , and ask them to give back just a wee little bit of their tax cut that they got over the past 4 or 5 years , just a wee little bit to help us fund hurricane katrina , to help us fund the war . 
we are giving millionaires hundreds of thousands of dollars back , and our deficit is ballooning . 
now , today , it is reporting we are going to need another $ 50 billion to keep the war fund going . 
we are already hundreds of billions of dollars into the war , and now we have hurricane katrina . 
hindsight is 20-20 , but you do not get into elective wars that bog you down because you just never know what is going to happen . 
we do not overextend ourselves , because we do not know when a katrina is going to happen , when a national tragedy is going to happen . 
that is prudent leadership . 
and now we are running budget deficits as far as the eye can see . 
we are borrowing the money from the chinese and the japanese . 
we are giving our country away , and we have got to pay interest on it . 
and one would think , and i hope , as the president is talking right now , that somewhere in his speech he has the guts to ask the wealthiest people in the country to help us here because we need help . 
i ask the president to take the leadership role that the american people have given him and have the guts to ask the wealthiest people in the nation to help us rebuild the gulf coast , to help us fund this elective war that he got us into . 
we pay them back . 
they have got their tax cuts . 
we do not even have to take all of them back . 
we just need a few hundred billion dollars to pay for the war and to pay for katrina . 
have the guts to ask them for it . 
if they are in the health care industry , i am sure they are doing okay . 
if they are in the oil industry , i am sure they are doing just fine . 
record profits as far as the eye can see in the oil industry . 
the greatest quarterly profits , billions and billions and billions of dollars for bp and a lot of these so i think as much as we are talking about restructuring and trying to figure out what we are going to do and how we are going to make the government run more efficiently and how we are going to take care of fema and fix the problems that we have been talking about here the past few weeks , a component of that is what are we going to do with our budget deficit . 
because , again , this was something we have been talking about with the 30-somethings for months and months and years even now . 
so i ask the president to please ask these people to contribute . 
they are the only ones doing really well in the country right now . 
ask them to help out . 
i am sure in the gentleman from florida 's ( mr. meek ) xz4002700 district , as in my mine , people who do not have a lot of disposable income are the ones bringing the canned goods . 
and i am not saying that the wealthy people are not doing it . 
of course they are . 
but right now our government needs funds , and we need the wealthiest in the country to contribute . 
and we have got to have a president that is willing to ask them to help out . 
and to see the disparity between those who have and those who do not highlighted through this whole tragedy , i think , really is a call for all of us in public office , especially those in high-ranking leadership positions , like the president , to make the proper request ; and we need to ask those who have been doing very well to contribute to this fund . 
