February 10, 2005
(Oakland, CA) – Representative Barbara Lee delivered her first annual State of the District address Friday night at the Ron Dellums Federal Building in Oakland. In her speech, Rep. Lee discussed the disparity between the values President Bush expressed in his State of the Union address and those demonstrated in the budget he submitted to Congress. She highlighted her accomplishments, both in the district and legislatively, and outlined her legislative agenda and vision for the year to come and the values that inform them.
The following are excerpts from the speech:
9th Congressional District
“Constituent services are central to the District Office. Last year we helped thousands of constituents on a range of federal issues. We helped families work through the sometimes Byzantine immigration process so that they could be united with their loved ones. We helped ensure Veterans and Social Security recipients receive the benefits they earned. We supported hundreds of grant applications and we enhanced our constituent services by holding weekly office hours in Castro Valley and the Fruitvale.”
“We also brought home significant federal resources for the people of the 9th Congressional District. In 2004 alone, I helped secure tens of millions of federal dollars to fund a range of important projects across the district, including: funding for the Port of Oakland, the Ed Roberts Campus, the Oakland Unified School district, Mills College, Cal Berkeley, Holy Names University, the City of Oakland and brought over $1 million to build new sidewalks in Cherryland in Castro Valley.”
Bush administration
“In considering the state of our district and the nation, it is impossible to overlook the glaring hypocrisy of the Bush administration. With so much talk of values, I don’t think there has ever been an administration whose words strayed so far from their deeds.
“I can think of no better example of the enormous gap between the moral values the Bush administration professes and the immoral policies they implement than the comparison between the pious platitudes of the President’s state of the union speech, and the poisonous policies contained in the budget he submitted to Congress one week later.”
Healthcare
“Forty-five million Americans today lack access to quality and affordable health care, an increase of five million over the past three years. The President’s budget exacerbates the problem by making draconian cuts (60 billion over 10 years) in Medicaid, cuts that will fall upon the neediest in our midst: the poor, children, senior citizens, and the disabled. If our federal budget is to reflect the value of compassion, it must stop this assault on the neediest among us.”
HIV/AIDS
“AIDS is the humanitarian crisis of our time. We have a moral imperative to stop the devastation that this disease is causing. Each year 3 million people die of AIDS and another 5 million are infected.
“Two years ago I co-authored bipartisan legislation that the President signed into law that authorized $15 billion to combat global HIV/AIDS. To date, the President has underfunded this vital initiative by $600 million, and for the second year in a row has proposed deep cuts in the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund. In July of last year I was the only member of Congress to attend the fifteenth World AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand and I can tell you that the President’s failure to live up to these promises is well know throughout the world.”
“AIDS is devastating the African American community. Even though we represent only about 13% of the population, we account for 42% of all people living with AIDS. We also need more money for the minority Aids initiative. Since Bush took office, he has consistently flat funded this critical program. If the President were committed to his professed value of compassion, he would increase the funding of this program to at least $610 million this year.”
Housing
“In his State of the Union speech, President Bush told us that ‘a society is measured by how it treats the weak and vulnerable.’
“If that is the measure, then President Bush can only be described as an utter failure. His ruthless cuts to the housing budget represent an appalling assault on our poor and urban areas. The Bush budget cuts $5 billion in housing. It eliminates the HOPE VI program, which helps revitalize decrepit public housing. And the cuts keep coming. Bush’s budget cuts Native American housing, housing assistance for people living with HIV and AIDS, it cuts the lead paint abatement program, eliminates the empowerment zone and brownfields. The list goes on and on.”
Freedom from Fear
“In his speech, the President said that our “responsibility to future generations is to leave them an America that is safe from danger, and protected by peace. We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy -- and chief among them is freedom from fear.”
“It is a bitter irony indeed to hear the President speak of the freedom from fear. Leaving aside the nerve he showed invoking FDR, who created Social Security, on the same night the President proposed ending it, this is an administration that has thrived on sowing fear at home, and whose foreign policy is a source of fear around the world.”
Iraq war
“The Bush administration lied to the American people, and fanned the flames of fear to justify an illegal and immoral war in Iraq. Now the President does not have the courage to acknowledge the costs of this war by including those costs in his budget. Instead, he will send a supplemental request for $80 billion to fund the next installment on this unjust, unnecessary war. If he is going to ask Congress and the American people for another $80 billion, he needs to spell out a clear plan to clean up the mess his administration has made and get our troops home.
“The President needs to recognize that our troops have become the focal point of the insurgency and he should work to remove the targets from their backs. That is why I joined my fellow Progressive Caucus Co-Chair, Lynn Woolsey in introducing a resolution calling on the President to bring our troops home and end this occupation once and for all.”
Preemption
“This administration’s foreign policy has spread fear around the world, and at the heart of that fear is the doctrine of preemptive war. The war in Iraq is just one part of a larger doctrine whose long term costs are truly frightening. It is not just the human and financial costs, although those are very high. This doctrine has alienated out long term allies and isolated our country, violated international law, and undermined the security framework that Republicans and Democrats alike have relied on for 50 years. This doctrine has undermined US ability to speak with authority or morality on human rights issues and it has established a destabilizing and dangerous precedent that one nation can attack another just by claiming that its security interests are threatened.
“This dangerous and unwise doctrine of preemption must go and I’m pleased to inform you that this past week I reintroduced legislation to repeal it.”
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Rep. Barbara Lee Gives State of the District Address
Criticizes Bush Hypocrisy, Cites Accomplishments, Outlines Vision
(Oakland, CA) – Representative Barbara Lee delivered her first annual State of the District address Friday night at the Ron Dellums Federal Building in Oakland. In her speech, Rep. Lee discussed the disparity between the values President Bush expressed in his State of the Union address and those demonstrated in the budget he submitted to Congress. She highlighted her accomplishments, both in the district and legislatively, and outlined her legislative agenda and vision for the year to come and the values that inform them.
The following are excerpts from the speech:
9th Congressional District
“Constituent services are central to the District Office. Last year we helped thousands of constituents on a range of federal issues. We helped families work through the sometimes Byzantine immigration process so that they could be united with their loved ones. We helped ensure Veterans and Social Security recipients receive the benefits they earned. We supported hundreds of grant applications and we enhanced our constituent services by holding weekly office hours in Castro Valley and the Fruitvale.”
“We also brought home significant federal resources for the people of the 9th Congressional District. In 2004 alone, I helped secure tens of millions of federal dollars to fund a range of important projects across the district, including: funding for the Port of Oakland, the Ed Roberts Campus, the Oakland Unified School district, Mills College, Cal Berkeley, Holy Names University, the City of Oakland and brought over $1 million to build new sidewalks in Cherryland in Castro Valley.”
Bush administration
“In considering the state of our district and the nation, it is impossible to overlook the glaring hypocrisy of the Bush administration. With so much talk of values, I don’t think there has ever been an administration whose words strayed so far from their deeds.
“I can think of no better example of the enormous gap between the moral values the Bush administration professes and the immoral policies they implement than the comparison between the pious platitudes of the President’s state of the union speech, and the poisonous policies contained in the budget he submitted to Congress one week later.”
Healthcare
“Forty-five million Americans today lack access to quality and affordable health care, an increase of five million over the past three years. The President’s budget exacerbates the problem by making draconian cuts (60 billion over 10 years) in Medicaid, cuts that will fall upon the neediest in our midst: the poor, children, senior citizens, and the disabled. If our federal budget is to reflect the value of compassion, it must stop this assault on the neediest among us.”
HIV/AIDS
“AIDS is the humanitarian crisis of our time. We have a moral imperative to stop the devastation that this disease is causing. Each year 3 million people die of AIDS and another 5 million are infected.
“Two years ago I co-authored bipartisan legislation that the President signed into law that authorized $15 billion to combat global HIV/AIDS. To date, the President has underfunded this vital initiative by $600 million, and for the second year in a row has proposed deep cuts in the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund. In July of last year I was the only member of Congress to attend the fifteenth World AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand and I can tell you that the President’s failure to live up to these promises is well know throughout the world.”
“AIDS is devastating the African American community. Even though we represent only about 13% of the population, we account for 42% of all people living with AIDS. We also need more money for the minority Aids initiative. Since Bush took office, he has consistently flat funded this critical program. If the President were committed to his professed value of compassion, he would increase the funding of this program to at least $610 million this year.”
Housing
“In his State of the Union speech, President Bush told us that ‘a society is measured by how it treats the weak and vulnerable.’
“If that is the measure, then President Bush can only be described as an utter failure. His ruthless cuts to the housing budget represent an appalling assault on our poor and urban areas. The Bush budget cuts $5 billion in housing. It eliminates the HOPE VI program, which helps revitalize decrepit public housing. And the cuts keep coming. Bush’s budget cuts Native American housing, housing assistance for people living with HIV and AIDS, it cuts the lead paint abatement program, eliminates the empowerment zone and brownfields. The list goes on and on.”
Freedom from Fear
“In his speech, the President said that our “responsibility to future generations is to leave them an America that is safe from danger, and protected by peace. We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy -- and chief among them is freedom from fear.”
“It is a bitter irony indeed to hear the President speak of the freedom from fear. Leaving aside the nerve he showed invoking FDR, who created Social Security, on the same night the President proposed ending it, this is an administration that has thrived on sowing fear at home, and whose foreign policy is a source of fear around the world.”
Iraq war
“The Bush administration lied to the American people, and fanned the flames of fear to justify an illegal and immoral war in Iraq. Now the President does not have the courage to acknowledge the costs of this war by including those costs in his budget. Instead, he will send a supplemental request for $80 billion to fund the next installment on this unjust, unnecessary war. If he is going to ask Congress and the American people for another $80 billion, he needs to spell out a clear plan to clean up the mess his administration has made and get our troops home.
“The President needs to recognize that our troops have become the focal point of the insurgency and he should work to remove the targets from their backs. That is why I joined my fellow Progressive Caucus Co-Chair, Lynn Woolsey in introducing a resolution calling on the President to bring our troops home and end this occupation once and for all.”
Preemption
“This administration’s foreign policy has spread fear around the world, and at the heart of that fear is the doctrine of preemptive war. The war in Iraq is just one part of a larger doctrine whose long term costs are truly frightening. It is not just the human and financial costs, although those are very high. This doctrine has alienated out long term allies and isolated our country, violated international law, and undermined the security framework that Republicans and Democrats alike have relied on for 50 years. This doctrine has undermined US ability to speak with authority or morality on human rights issues and it has established a destabilizing and dangerous precedent that one nation can attack another just by claiming that its security interests are threatened.
“This dangerous and unwise doctrine of preemption must go and I’m pleased to inform you that this past week I reintroduced legislation to repeal it.”
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