Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to require that legislation and conference reports be available on the Internet for 72 hours before consideration by the House, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 799 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H. Res. 799.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 799 provides for consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2997, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010. The rule waives all points of order against the conference report on H.R. 2997 and against its consideration, and the rule provides that the previous question shall be considered as ordered without intervention of any motion except one hour of debate and one motion to recommit, if applicable.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference report for the fiscal year 2010 Agriculture Appropriations conference report. This is a good bill, one that went through the regular order. It is, in fact, the third appropriations conference report that this body will consider this year. I want to especially commend Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro and Ranking Member Jack Kingston, as well as the other subcommittee members, for their efforts in completing this bill.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is one that normally doesn't get a lot of attention but, in reality, is one of the most important bills that we can pass. I wish the allocation, Mr. Speaker, for this bill, quite frankly, was higher than it is because there is a great need for the programs that make up this bill. This conference report funds the following areas at the Department of Agriculture: public health programs, rural communities, agriculture research, animal health and marketing programs, and conservation. Most importantly, this bill funds domestic and international antihunger and nutrition programs, programs that literally put food in the mouths of hundreds of millions of hungry people here at home and around the world.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is $2.7 billion more than last year and $325 million more than the President's request, a 13 percent increase over last year's bill. Following my opening statement, we will hear from my friends on the other side, and I expect that they will talk about how this bill spends too much money and that this increase is simply unnecessary, especially during these difficult economic times.

Well, Mr. Speaker, this increase is needed now more than ever. Just look at where the increases in this bill are targeted: to the areas of nutrition, international food assistance, and food

and drug safety. Simply, these increases go to protect our food supply and to provide food for those who either cannot afford it or do not have access to it. It is unconscionable to me that anyone can complain about helping people in need during these tough economic times.

Today, there are over 36 million low-income individuals who rely on the SNAP program, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. The sad fact is that this is a record number of people who are currently relying on this safety net program. This bill provides over $58 billion for the SNAP program, an increase of more than $4 billion from 2009.

WIC is funded at $7.2 billion, an increase of almost $400 million. This increase will provide up to 9.6 million women, infants, and children help with a healthy pregnancy and a healthy start in life.

The Commodity Supplemental Food Program, a program that provides nutritious food to low-income women, infants, children, and elderly citizens who all struggle with rising food costs, is funded at $171 million. That is $11 million more than 2009 and $9 million more than the President's request.

Finally, the Child Nutrition Programs, school meals and snacks, receive almost $17 billion, $1.9 billion above the 2009 levels.

Hunger is a real problem in America, and this bill provides funding that keeps the safety net intact. Look at one of the more affluent areas in this country, Fairfax County in Virginia. According to a recent Washington Post article, Fairfax churches and nonprofit organizations report a 39 percent increase in food assistance in the fourth quarter of 2008 when compared with the fourth quarter of 2007. Let me repeat that, a 39 percent increase. ``Almost half of the respondents reported helping families that had never asked for aid before, many of them former middle class residents now unemployment or facing foreclosure.'' I will insert this article into the Record at the end of my statement.

Mr. Speaker, this is just one example of how hunger is creeping into areas of the country that are not used to seeing hunger. Food banks, WIC clinics, and SNAP processors are the ones providing food for people who simply cannot make ends meet. Yet some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we cannot afford to properly fund these programs, insinuating that we should turn our backs on these people who are in desperate need.

I, for one, make no apologies for these increases in food and nutrition programs. We have a moral obligation to step up to the plate to help the most vulnerable people during these difficult times.

Internationally, the need is just as great. This bill provides critical funding for the Food for Peace program and McGovern-Dole Food for Education program. Overall, there is $1.89 billion provided for international food aid programs. That is an increase of $564 million over 2009.

The P.L. 480 Food for Peace Title II grants program receives $1.69 billion, which is $464 million above 2009. And a program close to my heart, the McGovern-Dole program, is more than doubled from the previous year. In 2010, this important program will receive $209.5 million, $10 million more than President Obama's request and $109.5 million more than 2009 levels.

Mr. Speaker, for too long this country has underfunded international food and nutrition programs. This bill is changing that course. We are putting more money up front for development, providing assistance before it becomes an emergency that we and the rest of the world have to respond to. This is appropriate and necessary, and I applaud Chairwoman DeLauro for working to right the misguided policies of the previous administration. I would add that investing in food and nutrition programs overseas and investing in smart development is in our national security interests. Taking a global leadership role in combating hunger and fighting global poverty I think is something that wins us the hearts and minds of people all over the world, and I want to again commend Chairwoman DeLauro for her leadership.

I am also pleased that there is more than $33 million for eradication of the Asian longhorn beetle, an increase of more than $13 million over last year. This funding will help USDA in their efforts to help in identifying and eradicating the infestation of this pest. While more funding is needed, and I will be asking the USDA for additional emergency funding for this effort, the funding included in this bill is welcome and I appreciate its inclusion.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to address the tragic bombing of the United Nations World Food Program offices in Islamabad, Pakistan. The World Food Program benefits from the international food aid programs that are funded in this bill. WFP is an excellent partner and is on the front lines of many of the efforts to combat hunger and starvation around the world. Josette Sheeran and everyone at WFP do an excellent job, and I am pleased to be able to work with them as they work to end hunger around the world.

I want to convey my deepest condolences and sympathies to the family and friends and colleagues of the WFP staff who were killed in Pakistan. My thoughts and prayers are also with those who were wounded and injured in the bombing attack, and we hope for their full recovery. The bombing underscores the often dangerous situations in which the World Food Program and so many other humanitarian relief workers find themselves. And I, for one, can only thank them for their important and too often unrecognized service to humanity.

[From the Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2009]

Whole Foods to Food Banks

(By Annie Gowen)

The Germantown woman was loading boxes of food from the

Manna food bank into a shiny sport-utility vehicle one recent

afternoon when she was approached by a donor dropping off

food.

``What group are you with?'' the donor asked the woman, who

promptly burst into tears. With her Toyota Sequoia and

quilted Vera Bradley bag, she had been mistaken for a

volunteer--rather than a client waiting to take home a bag of

potatoes.

``I'm a mother of four just trying to feed my kids,'' the

woman sobbed to the donor, who was taken aback, then

sympathetic.

Such awkward scenes are playing out frequently at food

pantries and other charities across the region as they

struggle to help the still upward-spiraling number of

formerly middle-class people knocking on their doors.

For the charities, the surge in demand has tested their

resourcefulness--and sometimes their patience. Not only must

they stock millions of pounds of additional food in bigger

warehouses, but they also must adopt fresh tactics to help

the newly needy, who can be more bewildered, more emotional

and more selective than their traditional clients.

One intake volunteer at Food for Others in Fairfax County,

for example, has learned that the formerly affluent won't

wait outside in line for food at evening neighborhood

giveaways, lest they be spotted.

``We have more people than ever coming here thinking they'd

never ever be here,'' said Amy Ginsburg, executive director

of Manna Food Center in Montgomery County. Manna, along with

most food area pantries, requires people to prove by income

that they need assistance.

The group is moving into a 12,000-square-foot warehouse in

Gaithersburg on Oct. 5 to meet the growing need. Manna gave

away 3.1 million pounds of food to 102,519 Montgomery County

residents last fiscal year, up from 2.1 million pounds the

year before. They've increased food drives, and cash

donations have kept pace.

Manna's workers and volunteers try to make the experience

as dignified as possible for everyone, helping clients load

their cars and handing out juice boxes and pretzels to

families waiting in increasingly longer lines. On a recent

morning, residents dressed in pressed khakis waited for boxes

of fresh produce, meat and canned goods alongside those in

dirty T-shirts.

``Not having enough money for food is a bizarre, foreign

experience'' for the new needy, Ginsburg explained. ``They're

still getting over the shock.''

Ginsburg and others running local charities expect the

number of residents seeking help to continue to rise even as

the economy improves. Jobless numbers are increasing, they

point out, while severance checks and unemployment benefits

are running out.

Fairfax found in a recent survey of 89 churches and

nonprofit organizations that 32,044 households received food

assistance in the last quarter of 2008, a 39 percent increase

from the previous year's fourth quarter. Almost half of the

respondents reported helping families that had never asked

for aid before--many of them former middle-class residents

now unemployed or facing foreclosure.

Wanda Moloney, client relations manager at Loudoun

Interfaith Relief, which served 56,000 residents last year,

said her group gives food to 100 new families a week.

Increasingly, Interfaith volunteers from some of Loudoun's

most affluent neighborhoods find themselves packing boxes for

their friends and neighbors.

Nobody knows what to say.

``You can see it in the eye contact,'' Moloney said. ``The

tears say it all.''

Barbara Curtis, 61, said that the experience of getting

groceries from the food pantry was ``startling at first.''

She and her husband, Tripp, lost their sprawling Loudoun home

this year after he became ill and was unable to work. With

five children at home, their descent from a comfortable

middle-class life seemed to happen overnight. ``It really let

me see how vulnerable we all are,'' Curtis said.

Terry Wilson, 43, a floral designer, also sought help in

Loudoun after he was bumped from full time to part time at

work and lost his benefits. But it wasn't easy. The first

time he pulled open the door and took in the crowd in the

waiting room, he turned around and walked out.

``It was like, `Whoa . . . I can't do this,' '' he recalled

Wednesday as he picked up food for the second time. But then

he realized having the groceries could help him shift money

to his utility bill and his car payment. ``Everyone else is

doing it, and times are tough. Let's suck it up and see what

happens.''

Out in the Manna parking lot, the Germantown woman--who was

visiting the food bank for the second time and did not want

her name used to spare her children embarrassment--was

inspecting her food allotment with the zeal of a soccer mom

at Whole Foods. She turned to Manna for help after her

husband refinanced their home into a costly subprime mortgage

and then moved out. She has been able to get the mortgage

modified, but her finances remain precarious.

She checked the expiration date on a carton of soy milk,

unscrewed the lid of a jar of organic peanut butter to make

sure it was sealed and read the label on a tube of ground

turkey. The turkey did not pass muster, and she politely

returned it to a Manna staffer. ``I don't know what's in

it,'' she explained.

``It's a double-edged sword,'' she said. ``You can't go

without food, but certain foods at Manna, no way I'm going to

feed my kids. It's kind of snotty.'' She rejoiced in a big

bag of day-old bagels, sport drinks and doughnuts, treats she

could no longer afford to buy her sons.

At times, this changing face of need has sparked moments of

confusion and discomfort for those who are trying to help.

Christine Lucas, executive director of the Arlington Food

Assistance Center, said she is often asked by volunteers and

donors about the number of clients driving fancy cars. (A

well-dressed couple who declined to be interviewed was there

recently, putting their sacks into a Cadillac.) Lucas

responds that it could be an employer's car or a family

hanging onto its last asset.

Or it could be the formerly middle-class mom with Calvin

Klein sunglasses perched atop her head who said she was going

to have to search Epicurious.com for recipes that use black

beans because the pantry had given her so many cans.

Appearances can be deceiving, as Debbie Lane and her two

children discovered when they drove out to an affluent

neighborhood in Chantilly to deliver $200 worth of school

supplies to a needy family. Lane, of Fairfax, said her kids

had offered to reuse some of their school supplies from last

year so that they could contribute to the back-to-school

drive, organized by the food pantry Our Daily Bread.

``My son, who is 8, said, `Mom, if this is the neighborhood

we're dropping these things off in, I think we should turn

our car around,' '' Lane recalled. ``It was a great segue for

me to talk about what poverty does and does not look like.''

But even she was surprised at the size and scope of ``this

palatial home with two brand-new expensive cars in the

driveway. I was really grappling with this. I was thinking,

`This is crazy.' '' She later learned that what she had tried

to explain to her kids was true: The family that needed the

supplies was renting rooms in the home's basement and had

recently seen its income drop when the mother died of cancer.

The Germantown mother of four said she knew why she'd been

mistaken for a volunteer by the donor dropping off food--it

was her car.

``Because I have the [Sequoia], she thought I was doing the

same thing she was, I guess,'' the woman speculated. She

watched the donor drive away with a mix of envy and sadness,

remembering what it was like ``to be normal.''

``What a glorious feeling . . . to be able to give to other

people,'' she said. ``It is a better feeling to give than to

receive. But sometimes you have to receive.''

I reserve the balance of my time.

I will reserve my time at this point in time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The gentleman from California is correct when he says that his side was guilty of air-dropping provisions into conference reports. I remember one time being up in the Rules Committee when a Department of Defense bill came before the committee. And after the conferees had finished all their work, all of a sudden this kind of mysterious language appeared providing immunity to drug companies that produced drugs that were not safe. And the reality was, Mr. Speaker, that they did that after the conference had finished up.

In this case here it's very, very different. In this case here, the child nutrition reauthorization, a bill we had hoped to have already done by now, is not completed. And if, in fact, this language was not put in here to extend expiring child nutrition authorization programs-- and let me just kind of tell people what that is. It's things like school breakfasts and school lunches and after-school meals for kids who otherwise wouldn't get access to meals or nutrition.

So that language, which was agreed to by the authorizers, was put into this bill. Now, if we want to have an argument about process, fine. But the reality is here: if you did not do this right now, these programs would expire. And I don't know of anybody, maybe on your side they do, but I know for the majority on this side, people do not want those programs to expire because people depend on them.

I yield the gentleman 30 seconds.

I thank the gentleman for his comments. And I do think we have bested you in the area of responding to a need that, quite frankly, when your party was in control here, these areas were underfunded. And the deal, this is about school breakfasts and school lunches and after-school snacks for kids who otherwise wouldn't get it. That's what this is about. That's what we are debating here.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York, a member of the Rules Committee, Mr. Arcuri.

Mr. Speaker, let me just clarify for the record, because I think maybe there is a difference here between what some of us are saying on this side of the aisle compared to what some of my friends are saying on the other side of the aisle.

I don't believe a hungry child can wait. I don't believe we can put that problem off till next year or 5 years or 10 years down the road. And in fact, I would argue that investing and making sure that that child gets the proper nutrition and the proper food early on in their lifetime will probably save us a whole bunch of money in terms of health care costs and lost learning opportunities and so many other things that come as a result of people being hungry and not getting enough to eat.

So we don't have time to wait. And one of the reasons we are trying to tackle health care, Mr. Speaker, is to try to get this deficit and this debt under control, something, by the way, that when Bill Clinton left office, he left historic surpluses. After a few years of my friends on the other side of the aisle, we have historic deficits, and now we're trying to dig ourselves out of this ditch.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut, the Chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Ms. DeLauro.

I yield the gentlelady an additional 2 minutes.

I yield myself 30 seconds. I find it interesting the gentleman's not talking about the bill before us, which, as he failed to mention, was actually filed last Wednesday. It's been over a week that people have had access to this bill.

He's right about one thing: we are changing the way we do business in this House compared to when the Republicans were in charge. We are changing our priorities. When they were in charge, they were talking about immunity for big drug companies, talking about corporate tax breaks. What we're talking about in this bill is making sure that our kids have breakfasts and lunches and good nutritional programs; making sure that our farmers get the food they deserve.

I'd like to yield 5 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter).

I yield the gentlelady 2 additional minutes.

I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from California, the Chair of the Education and Labor Committee, Mr. Miller.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert into the Record an article from the Star-News entitled, ``Hungry Eyes--More N.C. children go without food.''

[From the Wilmington (NC) Star News, Aug. 15, 2009]

Hungry Eyes--More N.C. Children Go Without Food

(By Amanda Greene)

The three children hadn't eaten a full meal in two days.

In desperation, their grandparents knocked on the door of a

downtown Wilmington church.

The children waited in the car as their grandparents asked

the minister at the door for help.

He gave them a box of pop-top cans of Vienna sausages and

pork and beans.

``They got the food, drove out of the parking lot and

stopped beside the road to feed the kids right away,'' said

Jennifer Caslin, development manager at the Wilmington branch

of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.

Such scenes are increasingly common here and throughout the

state as joblessness and the weak economy put ever greater

strains on an already thin safety net. You don't have to look

hard to see hungry children in North Carolina. Whether it's

families skipping breakfast so the food will stretch through

dinner, or eating packaged foods, because fruits and

vegetables are too expensive, many of the state's children

aren't eating balanced, nutritious meals.

In May, Feeding America, the largest food bank network in

the country, released the results of its first analysis of

food insecurity in early childhood, ``Child Food Insecurity

in the United States: 2005-2007.'' North Carolina ranked

second worst in the nation with 24.1 percent of its children

under 5 judged to be food insecure and lacking regular access

to nutritional food. The state was 10th worst in the same

Feeding America study of food insecurity in children 0-18

years old, using figures from the U.S. Department of

Agriculture. Nationally, the food insecurity average is 17

percent for children under 5.

Demand for food at the nation's food banks has increased 30

percent in the past year, said Ross Fraser, media relations

manager for Feeding America. ``So many people have been

plunged into poverty,'' he said, ``and it's terrible for

children because it stunts their growth in all ways.''

Indicators of food insecurity in North Carolina include

high child poverty rates, the 11 percent unemployment rate,

broken families, the high price of fresh food and a 21

percent increase in households with food stamps since 2007,

said Alexandra Sirota, director of policy and research,

Action for Children North Carolina in Raleigh.

North Carolina ranked 37th in child well-being in the

recently released 2009 Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E.

Casey Foundation using factors such as the percent of low-

birth-weight babies, infant mortality rate, child death rate,

teen death rate, teen birth rate, percent of teenaged high

school dropouts, percent of teens not attending school and

not working, percent of children in families without a parent

with full-time and year-round employment, percent of children

in poverty and percent of children in single-parent families.

The state did improve one level from its 38th ranking in

2008.

Often the youngest children fall through the cracks,

subject to their parents' ability--or inability-- to provide

nutritious foods.

``There are a lot of programs that are available once

(kids) get into the school system, but those aren't always

available for young children until school age,'' Sirota

added. ``The fact that families are both losing their jobs

and earning such low wages that they're living in extreme

poverty is an indicator of that added stress when you're

trying to feed the family.''

bridging the gap

When parents can't feed their children regularly, often the

schools, local social service networks and churches try to

fill the need.

And in the summers, when school's out, the need for meals

for children increases. The New Hanover County school

district hosts a federally-funded Summer Food Service for

Children Program at 15 schools and community centers in the

county for any child, 18 years old or younger, to eat a

lunch-time meal. For six weeks this summer, the program

served about 700 kids each day. That number is slightly lower

than previous years because funding for the program came in

after the end of school this year and didn't get advertised,

said Anne Ohlson, schools child nutrition supervisor.

``We do see a lot of hungry children who are waiting for us

when we show up with the

food,'' said Imer Smith, director of Child Nutrition for New

Hanover County Schools. Historically, most of those children

would show up at inner-city sites, but the number of children

coming to the program's sites outside the city is increasing.

An 8-year-old girl and her 4-year-old brother were among a

crowd of about 10 children who were waiting for the Food

Service lunch to start at the doors of the Jervay Communities

meeting center one day a few weeks ago. The girl and her

brother walked from their Jervay home across the square to

the center each day that week for lunch. Lunch was a turkey

and cheese sandwich, cucumber slices with ranch dressing,

a peach cup and skim chocolate milk.

``I love ranch on my sandwich,'' the little boy said,

smiling and slathering his bun.

During the school year, Caroline Hines is seeing more and

more parents who can't pay their child's food accounts as

food service director at Rachel Freeman Elementary School.

Parents who don't qualify for free or reduced meals have sent

her notes asking her not to allow their children to eat if

they don't bring money with them because the parents can't

afford the charge: $1.25 for breakfast or $2 for lunch.

Defaulted lunch accounts at all New Hanover schools have

risen from $18,223 in 2008 to $29,203 at the end of last

school year. New Hanover County Schools saw an increase in

children in free and reduced lunch programs from 9,792 in

2007-08 to 10,375 in 2008-09.

``I had a child who came in at breakfast and waited until

the end to get the leftover food that no one had opened,''

Hines said, adding that teachers and school social workers

sometimes buy students meals. Some parents won't fill out the

free lunch forms because ``they think people will know their

child needed it.''

Mr. Speaker, let me be clear to my colleagues, the bill before us was filed over a week ago, so this debate we're having is not about process. This really is about substance. And I am sad that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have a problem with child nutrition programs. They have no problem when it comes to corporate tax breaks. They have no problems when it comes to immunity for big drug companies. But here they are on the floor today, they have a problem with child nutrition programs.

I should say to my colleague from North Carolina, poor kids don't want a handout. They don't want the government to provide them with a free meal. They wish that they weren't in that position. Unfortunately, the tough times that they find themselves in require us to help out. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.

I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, it's the first day of a new work week here, and we're going to talk about restoring the rule of law.

You know, we've talked about this now for about 14 weeks. It's so important that we talk about the rule of law because, quite frankly, it's what keeps our society together. It's what makes us different from anybody else and what makes America different from everybody else. And, you know, it's so simple that we take it for granted.

Every American that--I'll bet you can stop anybody on the street and ask them about their rights and they all know what their rights are because they're Americans and they know they have rights. But what does it mean to have rights? Well, what it means is you have a place, you have a set of rules that establishes your rights.

Now, our Constitution says certain rights are inalienable and given by your Creator. That means that all men are born with those rights. These are rights of liberty and freedom. When we had the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, that's what we were talking about. You're born with these rights. These are the rights of free men everywhere. They are inalienable. They are given by the great Creator of the universe.

But everybody also knows I've got a right to free speech, I've got a right to assembly, I've got a right to a lawyer. And at all ages you can say, That's my right. That's my right. It is your right, but it becomes your right because it is enforceable, and that means that we have established a set of rules that our society operates under. And under those rules, there's a set of rules that's usually in the courts that enforce your rights, protect your rights.

You know, for 20 years I tried criminal cases and other cases, and we spend most of our time, at least the judges that sit in these court cases, we spend our time making sure people's rights are protected. And we have a whole series of cases that establish rights of criminal cases. Enough of you have watched television to know a lot about--we're some of the most educated, nonlawyers in the country, the folks who watch television in the United States, because we know about Miranda rights. So we know about other rights. In other countries maybe they don't know about them. Now, why wouldn't they know about them? Because they don't have them, okay. That's it. They don't have them.

And there are places on this Earth, and most of them are in Third World countries, where the rule of law does not prevail, where the average citizen doesn't have a place to go get recourse, recourse for injury that's happened to them in some form or fashion, a way to enforce a contract.

There are countries full of good people, but they haven't established the rule of law to the extent that the average citizen can protect their little plot of land or protect their little business or make a deal with somebody, a contract, and then when the other side doesn't do it, enforce that contract against them because the rule of law does not prevail. For whatever reason, whether it be history or culture, whatever it is, it doesn't prevail.

And so if a rich person or a wealthy group of people who wanted to go invest in that place or maybe they have a dictatorial system or they have a socialist, communist system that hasn't established a rule of law, so you can't go enforce it.

You know, when Russia first opened up and started working on capitalism, I had a friend who went over there and opened a clothing store. And if he's listening, he knows who I am talking about. And he said the problem was the clothing store was as popular as it could be and everybody wanted to buy American-cut suits, they wanted to look like Americans, prosperous Americans, and he had a booming business; but unfortunately he had to pay cash for everything.

He couldn't make a contract with somebody based on a bill of lading or anything like that at the time because he wasn't sure he'd be able to enforce it if he had to take it to court. He was afraid he would be out on a limb. And, quite honestly, he pointed out the Russians were doing the very best to correct that, and maybe they have. I haven't kept up with it. But it was putting a real strain on his national clothing chain that he tried to take to Russia.

I hope he fixed it. I don't know. I haven't talked to him in years

But the point is at the beginning of the establishment of capitalism in the former Soviet Union, in Russia, the rule of law had not come down to where you could feel comfortable with making contracts with people and believe they could be enforced. And hopefully that's been fixed. I would assume

it has because I had the good pleasure to go to Russia with the Homeland Security Department and, quite frankly, they're doing pretty well over there. Looked like to me, anyway. Lots of stores and lots of prosperous-looking people.

But the glue that holds society together that allows you to trade both inside and outside your country is the rule of law; there are rules and regulations that everybody is a part of, everybody is protected by and required to abide by. That's a basic premise in American society.

Now, we went through a time when there was sort of a 60s rebellion against the establishment, and people would say things like, It's okay to rob from ``the man,'' but you can't rob from the little guy. And ``the man'' was the big guy. Now, nobody really defined who the big guy was. Of course, everybody knew that Coca-Cola was the big guy and Exxon was the big guy and U.S. Steel was the big guy. But was it the neighborhood grocery? Was he the big guy? Well, yeah, maybe if he was big enough, if he had more than two grocery stores.

In other words, somebody was saying it was okay to break the law if somebody was really a lot better off than you were. That was insanity. That was when I was in law school. And we debated all of this in law school. And it was insanity. Because if you've got rules, you've got to abide by the rules; and if you're going to decide you don't like a rule, you're not going to abide by the rule, then you don't get the rule of law. You get anarchy.

Well, the United States Congress has rules. We write those rules down. The first set of rules was written by Thomas Jefferson; and to a great extent, we still follow those rules of decorum and procedure in this House of Representatives by using Thomas Jefferson's manual on this place. Now some of it's been changed and altered. I think most of them are basic fairness, basic honesty, fair treatment for all concerned; and you're supposed to abide by those rules.

We have rules that we run our government by, and those rules, they bind all of us. We have certain forms that we have to file; we have to tell people what our income is. You know, it's a funny world we live in because the American people are generally private about what they make, and it's kind of ``none of your business'' in most families to ask somebody what's your daddy--what kind of salary does your daddy make? What's your husband make? It's kind of a none-of-your-business question.

Unless you're in the public eye. If you're in public life, it's everybody's business what you make. And you're required to report what you make. And if you don't report it, there are penalties for that.

All of these things are some of the stuff we've been talking about.

But I would argue that we have some certain subjects that are really of concern to the American people today, and we've been talking about one pretty consistently, talking about Chairman Rangel's issues. I am going to move past those for today. They may get mentioned a bit. We're going to talk about some things we talked about in the past, but I think there's a passion for these issues among the American people.

Part of that passion is the man we elected President because he told us, ``I am campaigning on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. I don't want to send the message to the American people that there are two sets of standards: one for the powerful people and one for the ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.''

So the President set the standard back in February, on February 3 on CNN, 2009. That standard is going to be out there right now. And that's just right. I don't think there's any American that's going to argue with that. That's right, nobody is above the law. Nobody gets to not abide by the rule of law, because the rule of law governs our society; and that's basically what the President is saying. Nobody because of who they are, what office they hold, how much money they've got in the bank should get any other privileges above and beyond what ordinary people get.

Now, we've got some issues tonight. Let me say we're going to talk about a lot of stuff. But several people last week thought we were going to talk about some of that stuff, and one of the things that they wanted to talk about was the czars. Let me be real clear up front. We're going to get to the czars in just a minute. So if anybody's listening that wanted to talk about the czars but thought we weren't talking about it, come on down. We're looking for you.

Just briefly, I'm going to tell you in my opinion one of the things that most people are most upset about is this outfit called ACORN. This outfit was supposed to be a do-good public service, the group that was out there organizing communities and organizing groups so that we could have a better country.

So they got really involved in working on elections last time, and here's some of the results: in Colorado they were charged with voter fraud, multiple counts, with convictions; in Florida, vote fraud, cases are pending; in Michigan, voter fraud, multiple counts with convictions; Minnesota vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions; Missouri, vote and mail fraud, identity theft, multiple counts with convictions; Nevada, vote fraud, multiple counts pending; Ohio, vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions; Pennsylvania, vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions; and the same thing in Washington State.

So this good group has not been doing good things, nor have they been abiding by the rule of law.

Now, we have a bill that's been introduced by Minority Leader John Boehner to defund ACORN. And what he's basically saying in this is the American people have looked at this, they've listened to this stuff that's going on, they've watched these videos of these people advising folks about child prostitution and prostitution and so forth, and they've said we've had enough of these people and we darn sure don't want to pay for them. We don't want to pay them to go out and break the law.

And so the fact that they received millions of dollars in Federal funding offends people because they're not following the law.

So John Boehner has proposed that no Federal contract, grant, cooperative agreement or any other form of agreement will be awarded or entered into with the organization known as ACORN. No Federal funds will be given to ACORN; no Federal employees may promote ACORN; and that ACORN includes State chapters, organizations with financial stakes in ACORN, and organizations that share directors and employees with

Reclaiming some of my time, I'm glad you brought up the smelt in the San Joaquin Valley, because it's kind of interesting. Until this came up, most people in America probably didn't even know that the San Joaquin Valley is considered the breadbasket of this country. Now here is something interesting. It rained cats and dogs in Texas this week. We were real happy for that rain. But it meant my wife and I stayed indoors one Sunday afternoon because there wasn't anything else to do. And the movie ``Treasure of the Sierra Madre'' with Humphrey Bogart was on television. That movie was made in 1948.

One of the characters in the movie was reminiscing about what they were going to do with their share of the gold. And he said, and it struck me because I have been talking to Devin Nunes so much about this tragedy that is going on in the San Joaquin Valley and that whole valley region of California, and this character says, ``I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural region in California, growing fruit. And the happiest days I ever had was right after the harvest, when all the workers got together and celebrated the harvest. And if I get out of here, what I want to do is get me an orchard with my money.''

It struck me, because he was talking about the fact that in 1948 that was a major production region. Now the only way that region could produce anything is with water. It is the desert. I live in the desert. If you look at an 1845 map of the United States, starting just west of Kansas, you will see a sign that says ``Great American Desert.'' It goes all the way across the Rocky Mountains to California. And Texas is within the Great American Desert. We used to joke about it when I was in school, let's drive across the Great American Desert to Dallas. But the truth is, those of us who live in a water shortage State, and Wyoming has to have underground water or it wouldn't be able to exist, we know the value of water. That's why a vast majority of our laws have something to do as far as our land with water.

Taking away the water in the San Joaquin Valley is taking away a growing region, which I have evidence from the movie, that was prospering in 1948. Now how long ago was that? Sixty years ago. Now it's a shame that like you say, some laws that ought to have some exceptions don't. And we have unemployed people in literally entire counties.

It's a great thing to talk about when you talk about the rule of law. That's the responsibility of legislators. That's the responsibility of Congress people. When you have a rule of law that has to be changed, you shouldn't take to the streets with guns unless you have got a tyrannical society, which is what we had when we had our revolution. You should take it to the legislature with votes and change the laws that need to be changed. Make the exceptions to make things work. And this body would decide what is best for everyone involved. That's what ought to be happening.

Certainly.

That's right. Reclaiming a portion of my time, Greg Walden, Culberson and Brian Baird have H. Res. 554, the 3-day reading rule, which just basically they want to put in writing and have this body adopt as a--agreed by both sides voting on, legislation must be available to Members and the public for 72 business hours before taking action, requires the full text of the legislation and each committee report to be posted continuously on the Internet. And by the way, this is what one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, thought was a good idea, and we're just basically redefining his rules and modernizing it a little bit with the Internet.

But an interesting thing you said--we keep talking about this health care plan and I want to get on to other things, but it's an important thing, but there will be another health care debate later--and that is, it's important, but you need to look at history. I just saw on television the oldest health care plan in the world was created by Otto Von Bismarck in Germany when he united Germany, so it's the oldest one they've got. They tried all ways of funding it, but it comes down to coming out of your paycheck. And today, in Germany, 42 cents out of every dollar is taken out by the government to pay for the health care program, and they're having real problems with it in the modern world.

So, there's lots to be talked about, and what you said is right; let's talk. And by the way, something else. The Senate supposedly passed something today, but they haven't got it in writing. In fact, they passed something which is a concept. I think this is a new thing. I have never quite heard anything like this. They passed a concept, which none of it has been reduced to writing the way I understand it. So it's just we've got a bunch of ideas and here's what they are, and we're not going to write them down because somebody might hold us to them. So we're just going to say we've got some great ideas and we pass it. What is that?

Yes, I will yield.

I see my friend Louis Gohmert from Texas is here, and I'm going to yield to him in just a moment. But that kind of reminds me of ``Animal Farm,'' you know. They would say the rule is this, and the next day they would say, Oh, that's not what the rule is. The rule is this. Finally, they said, We're going to write them on the wall of the barn. So every night they wrote the rules on the wall, and then when they woke up the next morning, somebody had gone and erased the rules and added new rules. See, there is a reason why this body has the rules that it has, so that we and the American people can be educated about what we're doing. And concepts, that just doesn't get it done.

I yield whatever time Mr. Gohmert would like to have.

I thank my friend for yielding.

My good friend from Iowa is here, which brings up another rule of law issue that we've been discussing. I know he wants to talk about it, so I'm going to shift gears here.

I am first going to talk about Marsha Blackburn's H. Con. Res. 185, reining in the czars. And she is proposing that the President will report on the responsibilities, qualifications, and authorities of his special assistants, known as czars. She is saying the President will certify that czars will not assert powers beyond those granted by law to a commissioned officer on the President's staff, and that Congress will hold hearings on the President's report and certification within 30 days, I assume, after the receipt of those reports. All of this is a part of multiple pieces of legislation that are out there now talking about czars.

I'm going to yield to my friend, Congressman King from Iowa, as much time as he needs to consume. And I've got some kind of interesting stuff he might want to use here.

I yield to the gentlelady from Wyoming again.

I, too, and I think Brother King also supports the auditing of the Federal Reserve. It's our money. We want to know what's going on. We want to make sure we know that things are right. We are not questioning anybody's honesty; we just want to know what's going on. We are at a point in our society right now where it's pretty desperately needed to know.

I want to say one more thing: Mr. King's comment on the safe schools czar, what he is proposing is against the law, this man boy sex thing. Aggravated sexual assault of a child is the number one sexual offense in America today, at least by my experience. In 20, almost 21, years on bench, I tried--that used to be called rape. I tried lots of aggravated sexual assault cases. One out of probably a thousand was two adults and all the rest were children.

Now that will tell you, at least in my experience, in an active trial court, where I was--in fact, the one adult I was sitting as a visiting judge in Travis County, it wasn't even my county. As far as I know, over all my side, where I was trying my cases, we had three courts. I only saw aggravated sexual assault of the child cases and that means it's just rampant because the victim is unable to be a very good witness sometimes because they are so young.

It is a very tragic situation. It just shocks me that somebody that would be advocating those things would be put by a responsible administration in charge of safety in our schools. It is shocking.

I yield to Mr. King from Iowa.

That is right.

I thank my friend for coming down here and talking about a new subject, but a subject that is important. These czars, when we have got individual issues on the rule of law, we ought to talk about them. And I encourage all my colleagues, if they have issues about laws that they don't think are being enforced right or that they are concerned about the enforcement of, that is what this hour is about. It is about the rule of law.

I thank you for bringing up that issue. I hope everyone will be very concerned about the issues that you raised today.

Mr. Speaker, we thank you for the hour, and we will yield back the balance of our time.

I thank the gentleman from Texas and the general from Georgia for their leadership on these issues. And once a week, at least, we see the judge from Texas down here laying out the conscience of the Congress. And this ACORN issue is something that has burned within me for several years.

I looked back through some of the Records, and I introduced an amendment to unfund ACORN in 2007. Back then, we couldn't get any traction. And as much as has been filled out on the case of ACORN, as much as we learned about ACORN during the last Presidential election-- and I think it was very useful because that was a time that America started to pay attention, Mr. Speaker. And we remember that ACORN announced that they had filed 1.3 million new voter registrations during the Presidential election cycle in 2008. And now they're advertising that people should send them a check and help fund their operation to go down there and demonstrate against Sheriff Judge Arpaio, the tent city, pink underwear Sheriff Arpaio. I think that that is a persecution that's going on. But they're trying to raise money to do that.

And the mailing that they have--and it's an Internet document. They still claim that they registered 1.3 million new voters. Well, the numbers are closer to 450,000 legitimate voter registrations. And ACORN has admitted to over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations. Now, one is too many for me. And we've seen the hue and cry of somebody who was in 2000 driving to vote in Florida, and perhaps they were going to vote for Al Gore, and a mile and a half away they went through a checkpoint to see if they were sober and had a driver's license, and they claimed that to be voter intimidation.

If one person lost their nerve and didn't want to go through the police checkpoint because they were drunk or didn't have a license, that was a voter intimidation on the part of the folks that were on Al Gore's side back in the year 2000.

ACORN can produce over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations, and America can't get up in arms until we see child prostitution promoted in five ACORN offices across this city, in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., in Brooklyn, in San Bernardino, and in San Diego, California, and more to come.

And now they're under a lawsuit. ACORN decides they're going to go out and punish people that have brought out the truth if they can and use the court to intimidate.

Now, when ACORN makes a statement that, well, we only produced over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registration forms, never fear, it was all in the exercise of trying to get somebody's good vote in there, but no bad votes came out of that, no fraud came from that. Oh, really.

They're being investigated. You say 12 States, then 14 States. Today it came out 20 States.

Today the trial of ACORN started in the State of Nevada. ACORN, as an entity, has been indicted by the prosecution in Nevada, and they have their chief organizer in Nevada is testifying against ACORN saying, Here's our pamphlet, our policy. We were paying commissions and paying a bounty for voter registrations. And, additionally, it came out in the news that in Troy, New York, they have dozens of fraudulent votes that were cast on absentee ballot that were promoted by ACORN.

Now, if there's anything that chisels away and cuts off the underpinnings of our Constitution it is fraudulent election process. And when the American people lose their faith that we have a legitimate process, the result of that will be, then, nothing holds together. You can't expect the President, the United States Senate, the United States House, or any system of government to be consented to by the people if the people don't believe they've consented in a national, legitimate ballot. That is the Banana Republic measure. And there is no entity in America that has been more active or aggressive in the history of this country and undermining the underpinnings of our Constitution than ACORN, a criminal enterprise and an entity in and of itself in many other enterprises than the fraudulent votes.

But I think at that component of this, I would yield back to the gentleman from Texas. I have a little bit more to say about ACORN hopefully a little bit later.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

I was thinking about the description of what is big money and what is $1 trillion and how do you put that into a concept now. Some of us from the part of the country I come from, we think in terms of corn. So to put that into perspective, the State of Iowa, the lead State in corn production, is going to have a good crop this year. It's going to have the best average yields that we have ever had, probably a few less bushels than we have produced though in the past, and we are going to raise about $10 billion worth of corn, maybe a little less than that, but about $10 billion.

Now all the corn that Iowa raises, just the value of that $10 billion, if we do that for 10 years, that's $100 billion. We do that for an entire century, that's $1,000 billion, $1 trillion. So 100 years of all the corn we can raise in Iowa is $1 trillion. A full century of all the corn that we can raise in what it's worth today, or what it was worth when I figured this, the markets have gone down a little bit, that is $1 trillion.

Now to take care of Obama's deficit created by his budget this year, that is $9.7 trillion. You can just think, 970 years of all the corn that Iowa could raise committed just to taking care of the deficit created by his budget would be just about right. And if you want to look at the deficit that exists today, and you add that to Obama's budget, that's over $20 trillion between the existing national debt and the debt created by President Obama's budget. So that would be all the corn that Iowa could raise at today's production in market values from the birth of Christ until today, and you would fall a little bit short. That's how much money the United States Government owes as a result of this profligate spending that is going on.

And the Federal Reserve component of this, I am very happy to see there are 290 cosponsors of Ron Paul's bill, H.R. 1207. I am among them, and I'm confident that my colleagues on the floor are as well. There is a hearing coming up on Friday to dig into this. That is a step along the way. From my standpoint, I would be very happy to sign a discharge petition. I don't think that things move very quickly through this Congress. When you have the most ethical Congress in history, I don't know how that could be defined that way, but there's a lot that doesn't happen around here. There's a lot of deliberation that doesn't take place around here, a lot of debate that doesn't take place.

The rules are written in the Rules Committee up there in that tiny little old room that doesn't leave room even for our staff to come in. We have to go up there and genuflect before the Chair of the Rules Committee and ask if we can bring an amendment down here to debate it on the floor of the House. They will say ``yes'' if they think it embarrasses Republicans. That's the only way they will say ``yes.''

The deliberate destruction of the greatest debating body in the history of the world here in the United States Congress has taken place because of the rules that have been ripped asunder by the Speaker of the House after 221 years. And the gentleman from Georgia has a sign: ``This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history, Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.'' I don't know how you say that in Georgia, say what? This is the least deliberative body it has ever been.

An open rules process that we had for 221 years that allowed every Members of Congress to force a debate and a vote on a subject matter of their choice within the appropriations process has been utterly suspended since 2007.

The American people deserve better. We deserve, yes, a hearing on H.R. 1207, on the Federal Reserve. But we deserve also to have open debate and force votes so Members have to go on record, because the wisdom of America is processed through 435 congressional districts. And we all have our networks out there. If that debate is stifled here, if amendments are shut off by order of the Speaker, then the wisdom of America is shut off by order of the Speaker.

This country cannot reach the next level of its destiny if it denies the wisdom of its people, and that is the wisdom of its people as processed through this Congress is how it was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. I yield back to gentleman from Texas.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

I would submit this idea, I would rather call it the Geithner corollary than the Rangel rule because it gets deeper, and when you think about how much deeper it gets, it doesn't quite show on this poster. And I'm reaching back and dusting off my memory

But it strikes me that the employment that Tim Geithner was involved in reimbursed him for the taxes that he was going to have to pay from income tax liability, for the payroll tax, the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, for the several years that are listed there. The reports that I have read--I believe it will also include The Wall Street Journal report--that Tim Geithner was written a check by his employer to be reimbursed in advance for the tax liability he would incur and signed an agreement multiple years in a row that he understood that he had this tax liability.

So not only did he not pay the taxes until the pressure was on--and they waived the penalty which, apparently, they pre-applied the Rangel rule with Tim Geithner, but he had actually profited by not paying his taxes because he had been reimbursed by his employer in advance for the liabilities that you see on the poster that Judge Carter has put up.

So this is a bridge too far from my standpoint. If you have a tax liability and your employer's writing you a check to pay those taxes, you cash the check, put it in your kids' retirement fund--I'm going to presume that's what happened. That's any equity that we don't spend when we die goes into our kids' retirement fund. And so you profit from this and avoid the taxes; that's a double operation there.

So I will label that Geithner corollary to the Rangel rule, and that would be if you're nominated for a high position of, let me say, confirmation position before the United States Senate, and you find yourself, you have a tax problem, if you are able to settle this issue out of court and do so without interest or penalty--he owed $17,230 in taxes but they waived the penalty, so apparently he paid the interest, not the penalty, from that language. I want to make sure that is clear.

If you get that all done, and if America's patience and appetite will believe the idea that Tim Geithner is so smart that we can't get along without him regardless of whether he could remember to pay his taxes and regardless of whether it was an ethical decision or not, if we remember America's appetite for that was completely satiated by the time Tom Daschle was appointed and his tax problem emerged, then America said, Enough, I can't tolerate anymore of these appointments by the President that will be confirmed by the Senate that have people that have been avoiding taxes.

So now we have the lead tax writer in the United States Congress, Chairman Rangel, that has stimulated a bill that's been introduced by Congressman Carter, the Rangel rule, precedent that if any taxpayer admits their mistake and pays their back taxes, no penalty or interest should be assessed, especially if you're up for an appointed position to be confirmed by the United States Senate, especially if America can be convinced that your skills are so valuable that out of 306 million people there isn't a single soul that can match up to the job that you might do, regardless of the problem you might have of being paid in advance to pay your taxes, cashing the check, putting into the equity account for your kids' inheritance, and then along comes the old ``uh- oh'' from Georgia, that is, the ``I guess I better pay my taxes'' Geithner corollary.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

If this is going to be the most open and ethical Congress in history, this Congress has got to have an opportunity to read the bills. This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history: Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.

I will say this: Yes, there were bills that were hustled through this Chamber when Republicans were in the majority, but I have never seen anything quite as egregious as the cap-and-trade bill that came through this House of Representatives. That bill was presented to the floor of the House, scheduled for debate the following day, and at 3:09 a.m., a 316-page amendment--

Did I say a.m.?

I'm sorry, I meant to say 3:09 a.m. I appreciate that correction. I must have had some kind of chronological dyslexia in order to come up with such a thing.

However, 3:09 a.m., 316-page amendment, and I can say with great confidence that no one read the bill. I don't have to ask anybody in this Chamber if they read the bill. I know no one read the bill. I was here on the floor engaging in the debate when Congressman Gohmert from Texas asked a parliamentary inquiry and he said, Madam Speaker, is there a copy of the enrolled bill in the Well? The answer was kind of, maybe, sort of. And we looked at the kind of, maybe, sort of stack of paper that was there, and there was a basic bill of around 1,100 pages, but the kind of, maybe, sort of didn't include the 316-page amendment.

And so after a few more inquiries, they pointed to another stack of paperwork, and Congressman Gohmert went down to look at that paperwork, and he came back and said, Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry, that is not even the amendment. It was a different stack of paper.

And so after 35 minutes of turning this thing around, the most significant question was again asked by Louie Gohmert of Texas, and there was a lot of dialogue going on. Joe Barton of Texas was engaged in this thing; I give him that. And anyway Louie Gohmert asked the question, after about 35 minutes of suspension of the debate on the cap-and-trade bill, he said, Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry: If the House of Representatives passes a bill that doesn't exist, is it possible to message a bill that doesn't exist to the United States Senate?

Well, today we know it must be possible because we passed cap-and- trade, a bill that didn't exist, and it got messaged to the Senate, and I think it probably began to exist sometime after it was messaged to the Senate. It was an appalling thing that the American people would have to watch, and Thomas Jefferson has to be rolling over two or three times. He spoke about a lot of things, 72 hours, 3 days to read the bill.

I also put out a great big pat on the back for Congressman Brian Baird for leading on this, as well as Greg Walden and John Culberson, and I have signed the discharge petition and the bill, and I'm looking for the rest of the signatures on the discharge petition so it can come to this floor. That is a piece of bipartisanship that this Congress can pass that will leave a legacy for a long time to come.

And if we're so afraid of the legislation that might get passed that we can't give anybody an opportunity to read it and we wonder why people go to TEA parties in America, that's why. They're really uneasy about what they've seen: $700 billion in TARP; eight large private- sector corporations nationalized; along with then a $787 billion stimulus package rushed through Congress--it had to happen right now-- and sat on the President's desk for 5 days before he signed it, and still most of it is not spent.

And with that, they watched cap-and-trade move through here in a hurry-up, rush job, when not one soul in this Congress or across this country read the bill before it passed. And then they see a hurry-up rush for a national health care act that takes away our freedom.

No wonder we have TEA parties. No wonder the American people come out. It's just a wonder that they could be so peaceful, and we've ended up with almost no, let me say, almost no violence of any kind in all the TEA parties that we had. Respectful people that exercised their right to freedom of speech and assembly and a right for redress of their grievances, and they did so in the traditional fashion envisioned by Thomas Jefferson himself.

So many generations have taken place since Thomas Jefferson, but his wisdom remains, and I certainly support H. Res. 554. Encourage everyone, including the Speaker, to sign that discharge petition. Let's get that thing out here on the floor, do the right thing for Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 808 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials into the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the rule provides for consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2647, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. The rule waives all points of order against the conference report and against its consideration. The rule provides that the previous question shall be considered as ordered without any intervening motion except 1 hour of debate and, if applicable, one motion to recommit.

The bill was introduced on June 2, 2009, by Chairman Ike Skelton and referred to the Committee on Armed Services. The committee marked up the bill on June 16, 2009, and ordered it favorably reported, as amended, by voice vote June 16, 2009.

The Committee on Rules reported a structured rule making in order 69 amendments, which then passed the floor 222-202. And today we have the conference report that we have now concurred with the Senate.

Despite any differences about our ongoing missions in Afghanistan or Iraq, we all agree that funds that have already been approved as part of the annual spending plans should not be held up for any reason, not with our troops in harm's way.

The bill authorizes $550.2 billion in budget authority for the Department of Defense and the national security programs of the Department of Energy and also authorizes $130 billion for overseas contingency operations for fiscal year 2010.

For our service men and women, it authorizes a pay raise of 3.4 percent for the military, expands TRICARE health coverage for Reserve members, bars fee increases on TRICARE inpatient care

for 1 year, and provides $2.2 billion for housing programs to improve the quality of life for our servicepersons' families.

On Afghanistan, the bill responds to concerns raised by Members of both parties and requires an assessment of progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan toward security and stability. It also bans permanent bases in Afghanistan and provides funds to train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces, the ANSF.

There is also language in the bill that requires a reporting system to register and track all the U.S. defense items that are provided to Afghanistan and Pakistan, to help combat waste and fraud. This is especially important in light of recent news stories showing that millions of dollars destined for Pakistan to battle militants in al Qaeda have been diverted to either the domestic economy or ``for other purposes.'' In fact, between 2002 and 2008, while al Qaeda regrouped, only $500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid actually made it to the Pakistani military, according to two Army generals quoted in an Associated Press story from earlier this week. I will insert that story into the Record.

Billions in U.S. Aid Never Reached Pakistan Army

(By Kathy Gannon)

Islamabad, Pakistan.--The United States has long suspected

that much of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to

battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy

and other causes, such as fighting India.

Now the scope and longevity of the misuse is becoming

clear: Between 2002 and 2008, while al-Qaida regrouped, only

$500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid actually

made it to the Pakistani military, two army generals tell The

Associated Press.

The account of the generals, who asked to remain anonymous

because military rules forbid them from speaking publicly,

was backed up by other retired and active generals, former

bureaucrats and government ministers.

At the time of the siphoning, Pervez Musharraf, a

Washington ally, served as both chief of staff and president,

making it easier to divert money intended for the military to

bolster his sagging image at home through economic subsidies.

``The army itself got very little,'' said retired Gen.

Mahmud Durrani, who was Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S.

under Musharraf. ``It went to things like subsidies, which is

why everything looked hunky-dory. The military was financing

the war on terror out of its own budget.''

Generals and ministers say the diversion of the money hurt

the military in very real ways:

Helicopters critical to the battle in rugged border regions

were not available. At one point in 2007, more than 200

soldiers were trapped by insurgents in the tribal regions

without a helicopter lift to rescue them.

The limited night vision equipment given to the army was

taken away every three months for inventory and returned

three weeks later.

Equipment was broken, and training was lacking. It was not

until 2007 that money was given to the Frontier Corps, the

front-line force, for training.

The details on misuse of American aid come as Washington

again promises Pakistan money. Legislation to triple general

aid to Pakistan cleared Congress last week. The legislation

also authorizes ``such sums as are necessary'' for military

assistance to Pakistan, upon several conditions. The

conditions include certification that Pakistan is cooperating

in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, that

Pakistan is making a sustained commitment to combating

terrorist groups and that Pakistan security forces are not

subverting the country's political or judicial processes.

The U.S. is also insisting on more accountability for

reimbursing money spent. For example, Pakistan is still

waiting for $1.7 billion for which it has billed the United

States under a Coalition Support Fund to reimburse allies for

money spent on the war on terror.

But the U.S. still can't follow what happens to the money

it doles out.

``We don't have a mechanism for tracking the money after we

have given it to them,'' Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mark

Wright said in a telephone interview.

Musharraf's spokesman, retired Gen. Rashid Quereshi, flatly

denied that his former boss had shortchanged the army. He did

not address the specific charges. ``He has answered these

questions. He has answered all the questions,'' the spokesman

said. Musharraf took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and

resigned in August 2008.

The misuse of funding helps to explain how al-Qaida,

dismantled in Afghanistan in 2001, was able to regroup, grow

and take on the weak Pakistani army. Even today, the army

complains of inadequate equipment to battle Taliban

entrenched in tribal regions.

For its part, Washington did not ask many questions of a

leader, Musharraf, whom it considered an ally, according to a

U.S. Government Accountability Office report released last

year.

Pakistan has received more money from the fund than any

other nation. It is also the least expensive war front. The

amount the U.S. spends per soldier per month is just $928,

compared with $76,870 in Afghanistan and $85,640 in Iraq.

Yet by 2008, the United States had provided Pakistan with

$8.6 billion in military money, and more than $12 billion in

all.

``The army was sending in the bills,'' said one general who

asked not to be identified because it is against military

rules to speak publicly. ``The army was taking from its

coffers to pay for the war effort--the access roads

construction, the fuel, everything. . . . This is the

reality--the army got peanuts.''

Some of the money from the U.S. even went to buying weapons

from the United States better suited to fighting India than

in the border regions of Afghanistan--armor-piercing tow

missiles, sophisticated surveillance equipment, air-to-air

missiles, maritime patrol aircraft, anti-ship missiles and F-

16 fighter aircraft.

``Pakistan insisted and America agreed. Pakistan said we

also have a threat from other sources,'' Durrani said,

referring to India, ``and we have to strengthen our overall

capacity. ``The money was used to buy and support capability

against India.''

The army also suffered from mismanagement, Durrani said. As

an example, he cited Pakistani attempts to buy badly needed

attack helicopters.

Pakistan asked for Cobra helicopters because it knows how

to maintain them, he said. But the helicopters were old, and

to make them battle-ready, the Pentagon sent them to a

company that had no experience with Cobras and took two

years, he said.

As a result, in 2007, Pakistan had only one working

helicopter--a debilitating handicap in the battle against

insurgents who hide, train and attack from the hulking

mountains that run like a seam along the Afghan-Pakistani

border.

The army was also frustrated about not getting more money.

Military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas said the U.S. gave

nothing to offset the cost of Pakistan's dead and wounded in

the war on terror. He estimated 1,800 Pakistani soldiers had

been killed since 2003 and 4,800 more wounded, most of them

seriously.

The hospital and rehabilitation costs for the wounded have

come to more than $25 million, Abbas said. Pakistan's

military also gives land to the widows of the dead, educates

their children and provides health care.

``These costs do not appear anywhere,'' he said. ``There is

no U.S. compensation for the casualties, assistance with aid

to the grieving families.''

Even while money was being siphoned off for other purposes

on Pakistan's end, the U.S. imposed little control over or

even had specific knowledge of what went where, according to

reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The

reports covered 2002 through 2008.

The reports found that the Pentagon often ignored its own

oversight rules, didn't get adequate documents and doled out

money without asking for an explanation.

For more than a year, the Pentagon paid Pakistan's navy

$19,000 a month per vehicle just for repair costs on a fleet

of fewer than 20 vehicles. Monthly food bills doubled for no

apparent reason, and for a year the Pentagon paid the bills

without checking, according to the report.

Daniyal Aziz, a minister in Musharraf's government, said he

warned U.S. officials that the money they were giving his

government was being misused, but to no avail.

``They both deserved each other, Musharraf and the

Americans,'' he said.

Within this bill is authorization for 30 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft and the continued development and procurement of the F136 Joint Strike Fighter competitive engine but does not authorize the advance procurement of F-22 aircraft.

It authorizes $6.7 billion for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected, MRAP, vehicles and fully funds the new MRAP all-terrain variant requirement for Afghanistan. We've seen far too many reports of our troops dying because their vehicles are ripped apart by roadside bombs. We can and will do better to protect them from these risks.

Under the provisions of this bill, the military will increase by 30,000 Army troops, 8,100 marines, 14,650 Air Force personnel, and 2,477 Navy sailors in 2010. It also authorizes an additional 30,000 Army troops in fiscal years 2011 and 2012.

The bill provides support for the plan to increase the size of our civilian workforce so that we can reduce DOD's reliance on contractors for core acquisition functions. This is also a most important point to cut down on fraud and waste. The bill also provides DOD with the needed flexibility to reform the DOD hiring process to reduce the fraud and abuse through enhanced contractor oversight, which is long overdue.

The bill speaks to vessels carrying DOD cargo in high piracy risk areas by requiring that they be equipped with appropriate nonlethal defense measures. And it strengthens the DOD's

ability to face threats and vulnerabilities by improving research and promoting military and civilian cyber workforce development.

It improves accountability and oversight in awarding defense contracts by providing the Defense Department the authority to require return of award and incentive fees. The bill prohibits a company from being awarded future contracts if its action leads to a servicemember's death or severe injury. This, of course, is in response to the number of soldiers who were electrocuted by bad plumbing work.

To address concerns about the treatment of detainees, the bill bans interrogation of detainees by contractors and requires the Department of Defense to give the International Committee of the Red Cross prompt access to detainees held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan.

In addition, the bill reforms the Military Commissions Act to clarify rules and improve trial procedures to make military commissions fair and effective, and puts new revisions into place that would forbid the use of statements alleged to have been secured through cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Finally, the bill provides the accused with the enhanced ability to select his own counsel and to make hearsay evidence harder to use in court. It improves procedures for the handling of classified information while also permitting military commissions to continue existing cases for 90 days or until revisions have been made to supporting court manuals and handbooks.

The bill matches the administration's request for $9.3 billion for missile defense programs and provides the resources necessary to meet threats facing the United States, our deployed forces, and our friends and allies, and provides $2.2 billion to support the Department of Energy's nonproliferation programs. It strengthens the Stockpile Stewardship Program to ensure that the nuclear weapons stockpile is safe, secure, and reliable without the use of underground testing.

Further, the bill provides technical and financial support to local law enforcement and prosecutors that they can more aggressively try violent crimes which are motivated by the victim's race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability; expands the ability of Federal prosecutors to try similar types of cases in Federal court if State or local officials are unable or unwilling to prosecute these cases; and criminalizes attacks against U.S. servicemembers because of their service to their country.

I want to address one last point. The bill includes new hate crimes legislation that will prohibit offenses based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person. This kind of far-reaching protection is important for America, and I am proud to support it.

There are still far too many incidences of violence in and around our schools and churches. During the last 10 years, 69 persons have been killed or injured at church and another 122 children have died in or around their school. The numbers are devastating. One has only to look at the beating death of Chicago teenager Derrion Albert outside his high school, an honor student, to see how devastating it is to see violence in our schools. I hope this bill can help bring an end to that sorrow.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado, a member of the Rules Committee, Mr. Polis.

I yield the gentleman 20 additional seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Mr. Speaker, I will yield 1 minute to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Richardson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Klein).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms. Shea-Porter).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley).

Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment to the rule at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the amendment and the resolution and ask for a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, to my hall mate, Mr. Kennedy, that was a moving tribute and well deserved. I am glad we could yield the time.

The subject of this hour that we have been talking about now for, I believe, about 14 or 15 weeks is we are talking about the rule of law and how the rule of law must prevail. It is the glue that holds our society together. And when we start to ignore rules or ignore others' laws, then we are ignoring what our Founding Fathers intended to rule us.

When we established this Nation, the people who established it came from a monarchy. Yet they felt that a much greater society would be a society which would pledge itself to the rules, not to the authority. So they didn't want a king. They didn't want some powerful dictator. They wanted the rules to prevail in the Nation. And that's one of the secret parts of the society that was created that nobody can see, that over time has developed the most important and most powerful Nation on the face of the Earth that has ever existed.

We cannot ignore that rule of law today. We cannot let personalities or concepts or attitudes change the fact that there are rules that you follow, and you must follow those rules. And there are laws, both civil and criminal laws, that have to be upheld. We as a society have created those laws. They have governed us in some instances since the beginning of the Republic. And to waive or to ignore those laws, we do it at our peril.

So tonight we're going to talk about some legislation that addresses the issue of ignoring or not following certain laws or bending laws.

We are going to start off with my good friend Roscoe Bartlett. I'm going to yield to him, and he's going to talk to us about a bill that he has, H.R. 2743, the Car Dealer Equity Act, in which he talks about the fact that he feels some laws, some contract laws, were either bent or ignored.

I yield to my colleague.

Reclaiming my time, I thank you, Roscoe. You have hit on something that when that all happened to me, I just wondered what happened to the law of contract. Where did it go? When did our executive branch think it had the authority to just negate contracts in order for people to, through some threats that were made to settle a bankruptcy, to lose dealerships that--I talked to people in my district. It was not only did you lose your dealership, but your work product got handed to the people you'd been competing with. Just kind of free gratis. You get the win, and I get nothing. And of course, hopefully this will be resolved in the courts or something. I don't know what's going to happen.

But Roscoe is on the right road. We can do something about it here because if you can't contract, you don't have freedom, and especially freedom of commerce. If you can't make an honest contract with somebody and depend upon that and have it be enforceable in the courts of our country--because the rule of contract is sacred. If you don't have that, which we'd had for the history of our Nation, then the rules of commerce come tumbling down.

And we keep hearing people say, Do we want to be a Banana Republic? And nothing against our poor Banana Republic neighbors, but that's what happens when you don't have the rule of law. You can't make a deal that can be enforced and people become--go more and more to the dark side in their trading habits. And this is one of the issues that when we've got the world economy we've got to deal with.

We've got multiple subject matters, and we are going to start with one that's all over the front page. Roscoe is going to fix the auto dealers, and I am on that bill and proud to be there.

We've got a bill by Leader Boehner and Darrell Issa, Defunding ACORN Act, and my friend, Lynn Westmoreland from Georgia, is here to join me, and my friend Mr. King from Iowa is here to join me. And we've got a bunch of things to talk about here today.

Let's talk about ACORN.

I think those videos that the American public have now seen were a shocking wake-up when they had already heard about all of the ACORN violations. We'd already heard about this, and it didn't seem to be bothering anybody that there were all kinds of election law frauds, convictions, and so forth across the country. But then we saw advice being given to two people pretending to be into criminal activity, and you saw people that seemed to be encouraging child prostitution calling it a business, how to do your taxes, just like they weren't talking about criminal activity. And I think that shocked America into realizing that all of this was real, and that cheating on elections and cheating on voter registration and so forth was just as criminal and just led to further, more criminal activities. And now, all of a sudden, the folks at ACORN are all over the front page.

So I will yield to my friend, Mr. Westmoreland from Georgia, to let him make a few comments on this. And you've got a sign there. What have you got, Lynn?

I'll yield time to my friend from Iowa (Mr. King). And I guess we'll talk about ACORN and then we'll shift gears to something else.

We've got a lot of things to talk about, but ACORN is now all over the front page. The trial started in Nevada, and quite frankly, I see a very aggressive prosecutor that was talking on television today, and it's going to be an interesting case. We should all watch it very closely because wrongdoing is being put before the American public, and it's going to be interesting to see how that comes out.

I want to shift gears now because our friend Dr. Ron Paul has introduced a bill which has been talked about now for years, and I think now the American public is starting to say we'd kind of like to know something about this.

We have had, as we talked about before, more money spent since last summer supposedly saving the economy than just about has been spent in the history of the Republic, certainly before 1930. It clearly surpasses what we spent then. It is in the trillions of dollars now.

The Federal Reserve, this mysterious thing that I would bet there is not one American in a hundred who can tell you even close to what the Federal Reserve system even does, where they come from, who sets them up. There is just very limited knowledge. Unless you get to graduate school, you don't even get taught it in universities as to what the Federal Reserve does. And yet the Federal Reserve, as Congressman Paul points out, is in charge of administering and keeping track of these billions and now trillions of dollars of money that we are going to have to pay back and our children, our grandchildren have to pay back.

What Congressman Paul, Ron Paul, wants basically is that he would like to see an audit of the Federal Reserve so that we can know just what these guys do. And so I want to throw that out for discussion here, and I recognize my friend from Georgia.

We will.

I will yield now to my friend from Iowa (Mr. King.)

To finish up this particular subject, let me just point out that I think most people know that the Fed has, as one of its things it does, it uses interest rates to micromanage our economy. It prints money. And the more money that it puts out there, the less value our dollar has. It has an affect on every part of our lives.

Now if you have never contracted with the Federal Government, back in the 1970s, I did a lot of work for people who built section 8 housing projects. And let me tell you, because you're dealing with large numbers, this is what you would hear, you had to be looked at and relooked at and relooked at, which is the right thing, to make sure nobody is doing something wrong. When you're dealing with $8 million or $10 million, the government wants to look closely at how that money is being spent, are the subcontractors being paid, and so forth. Now, why do they do that? Because they know the nature of certain people is such that there can be wrongdoing.

We are talking about trillions of dollars. And we ought to at least know a little bit that an audit would tell us about what's going on at the Fed. So that's Ron Paul's bill.

I'm going to go to another bill. It's not really a bill, but just a comment. We've been talking about the Rangel rule. I've got a new one today. We are going to talk about Mr. Geithner again because he is back in the news because he says he has got this bank, UBS, over in Switzerland, to open their secret vaults and let him know what's over there. And he is being very magnanimous to the people he thinks have been hiding funds overseas. He is telling them that, I know you. I've made a successful raid. I know who you are. Now if you step up and pay your taxes, we're only going to give a maximum of a 20 percent penalty for your failing to pay taxes.

Wait a minute. What about the Geithner gesture here? When he talks to these people, he owed $17,230, no penalty. He owed another $25,960, no penalty. He used bad child credits. He filed additional taxes with interested infrastructure, he had a faulty retirement plan, an improper small business deduction, and he was expensing utility costs that went for personal use. All these things he was doing to no penalty. We call this the fox watching the hen house; he says they've cheated the government. And maybe they have.

Where I come from, if they cheated the government and there's penalties to be assessed, fine. Everybody ought to get the penalty. When I've been late on paying my taxes, and I have, I filed not on April 15 before, I filed on August 15 before, I filed on October 15 before. I paid my penalties, and I paid my interest because that's what you're supposed to do. I think it is curious that

this is the subject of Mr. Geithner's conversation when he has not. He, the boss of the IRS, has not been assessed any penalties.

So I throw that out for quick discussion. I think it's interesting. The Geithner rule ought to be zero penalties on taxes paid back on unreported income until Mr. Geithner pays his.

I do.

We're working on it.

Do you wish to be heard on this, Mr. King?

Reclaiming my time, it's kind of interesting that, back to our other subject, talking about holding the Federal Reserve accountable, one of the suggestions was that the Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner be able to review the books of the Fed. Probably the smartest thing the Fed said was, No, I don't think that's a good idea, and maybe there's something to that. That may be the smartest thing the Fed has done in a long time.

We have got another issue that's been an issue for many of us, and Greg Walden and John Culberson and Brian Baird have introduced a bill, House Res. 554, and they're asking that each bill have 72 hours before you take action. And this is not hard for us. We know what they're talking about because we have seen in this Congress bill after bill after bill spending billions and billions and billions of dollars that we get in the middle of the night to vote on the next day. And all they're saying is, let's do what, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules of this body, still follows. He said they need 3 days before voting. That's in Thomas Jefferson's rules, which he wrote for this House, and they're basically the same rules we follow now, with some changes that have been made.

All they're asking to do is let's do what Jefferson said we ought to do in

this House, and what they did in this House for a century, well, let's do it.

I yield to Mr. Westmoreland.

I yield to my friend from Iowa.

Reclaiming my time, the previous discussion that took a little over an hour before we came to the floor commending Senator Kennedy and his legacy, it seems to me that when we're talking about civility, which is one of the things they talk about, if we can get back to civility, I think the 72-hour rule would have something to do with that.

Very quickly, I want to go to one more thing and then I want to come back and talk about ACORN.

We're the czar champions of the world. We have got more czars than the Romanovs had in the entire history of their dynasty, and our friend Steve Scalise, who was going to be here tonight but he got tied up and couldn't come, he's got a bill to sunset these czars.

A czar is someone who heads a task force, a council, is appointed by the President without the consent of the Senate, is excepted from the competitive service and does not have an existing removal date. Appropriated funds

can't be used to pay for salaries and expenses of task forces or councils established by the President and headed by a czar.

This is what he's trying to do. He's trying to put a sunset on the czar policy, because it seems to an awful lot of people in this country, the term ``czar'' means absolute power, and they've created these positions of absolute power without any oversight.

I will start with my friend from Georgia.

We're just about to run out of time. We had a surprise guest come from the back of the room. Would you like to tell us about the czars? Did we stimulate you?

Reclaiming my time, thank you. We feel real good when we can call a colleague out of the dark. We're glad you're here. We are just about to wrap up our time.

Before we stop, I'm doing something different today. We've been talking about an awful lot. This is probably the most we've talked about in a single hour. As soon as this is over with, as soon as I walk across the street to my office, if you go to www.house.gov/carter, we're going to have a live Webcast for the next hour-and-a-half where you can ask questions and make comments about what we've talked about here, or anything else that's bothering you or that you're concerned about, I want to have it, so that you can tell Congress what you think. I've already started doing this. I enjoy it. I've already got 300 questions waiting right now. I'm going to advertise a little bit and welcome people to come to this Webcast.

Mr. Speaker, how much time have I got left?

Thank you, everybody, for participating. It's most important you remember the subject of this conversation, and that is the rule of law that holds this society together. Never forget. We're all talking about rules and laws and how they seem to be stretched and violated. We've got to get back to the rule of law governing this Nation.

I yield back the balance of my time.