Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, because I was attending a conference at the White House on immigration reform, I was unavoidably detained and would like to state for the Record that, had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' on the McGovern-Jones amendment, would have voted ``yes'' on the McGovern-Sestak amendment, would have voted ``no'' on the Franks amendment, would have voted ``no'' on the Akin amendment, would have voted ``yes'' on the Holt amendment, would have voted ``yes'' on the Connolly amendment, and would have voted ``no'' on the Republican motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1676) to prevent tobacco smuggling, to ensure the collection of all tobacco taxes, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, as States and localities face increasing pressure on their budgets around the country, there is one source of revenue that not only raises money for those localities but also performs an important health function, and that is to provide taxation on packs of cigarettes. The taxation varies dramatically from State to State, and, frankly, in New York State we have the highest State tax in the Nation, $2.75 a pack, and the highest local tax as well. We have a $4.25 per pack. In some places it's much lower.

But every State in the union has some taxation that they put on their tobacco products, and it is collected, by and large, by wholesalers that put a tax stamp on. Most citizens, when they go out and purchase their cigarettes, do so legally, pay the tax, and there is no problem.

However, as the taxes have gone up, we have unwittingly created a large and growing black market for smuggled tobacco products. And this legislation, which has bipartisan support in the Judiciary Committee and in this House, seeks to solve that problem. It does so in a number of ways.

One, it makes it much more difficult for someone to sell tobacco over the Internet. Right now, UPS, DHL, the common carriers all are under agreement that they, themselves, are saying, We are not going to ship tobacco across the Internet because too often it's used as a way to avoid paying the taxes. There is one common carrier, the Postal Service, which still permits it. That is the carrier of choice for the overwhelming number of illegally smuggled cigarettes. And, frankly, the Postal Service has said, Congress, if you want us not to ship those cigarettes, you've got to tell us in a law that you want us not to. That's what we are doing today.

Also, it increases the penalties under the Jenkins Act. If someone is going to seek to avoid paying tobacco taxes, violating the Jenkins Act is going to be a felony under this act. It is going to make it a requirement that sellers of Internet tobacco verify the purchaser's age and identify them through easily accessible databases, which is, in many cases, going to put some of these Internet tobacco carriers out of business.

This is not only a matter of revenue, though, Mr. Speaker. This is also the source for a black market that has emerged that, according to the GAO, has allowed organizations as nefarious as Hezbollah to make the money on the float: buying tobacco, say, in South Carolina, driving it to Michigan, taking money that they saved by not charging people the tax, and taking that money and exporting it to fund terrorist activities. That is not a hypothetical. That's something that the GAO actually found to have happened.

So I urge my colleagues to support this. This has broad support. We have worked very hard, that even organizations as disparate as the wholesale marketers, Phillip Morris, the National Association of Attorneys General, Lorillard, and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, all are supporters of the PACT Act.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this and so many issues on the Judiciary Committee.

It is indeed the fact that a lot of these Web sites continue to exist because they provide delivery by the United States Postal Service. The irony here is that UPS, FedEx, DHL, the big carriers have entered into an agreement with the State of New York that they are now following in all 50 States that they won't transport those tobacco products because there is a reasonable expectation that these Web sites are operating, and often brag about the idea that, if you go shopping for tobacco on the Internet, you're not going to have to pay the taxes.

Well, we need to stop that activity. You can be against the high taxes in some States, or in favor of them. I think that the States, in their sovereign responsibility, have the right to come up with their own levels of taxation. But I think that we should all be able to agree that right now there is a

giant truck-sized loophole that exists in the law that allows many people to avoid paying the taxes and allows the funds to go to nefarious hands.

According to the GAO, Hezbollah raised $1.5 million from the sale of illegal tobacco in the 5 years 1996 through 2000. The largest case that they found was that millions of dollars of cigarettes were smuggled to Michigan from North Carolina in 1996--seized cigarettes and property and currency worth $2 million and proceeds that had been transferred to Beirut.

But it's more obviously often smaller bore problems that have been created as well; that if you have people who are increasingly seeking, because of the large amount of taxation that there is on many of these products, a lot of the programs in our States that are funded theoretically from the tax revenues from tobacco are seeing shortfalls. In fact, we're reaching a point now where the rising tobacco tax rights are producing less revenue in some States.

Some people thump their chest and say, Isn't that great. We have less smoking. But if you look at the back end, you see that the wholesalers and the manufacturers are still sending the same number of cigarettes out; we're just not collecting the revenues for it.

I want to offer my gratitude to Mr. Scott for his chairmanship on the Crime Subcommittee, through which the bill passed. I also want to express gratitude to many members of the staff who have worked to make not only the bill work, but also the compromises and changes that we made.

Mr. Coble, for example, was concerned that we wanted to allow some of the smaller test brands to be able to be sent out so market research could be done. We accommodated those concerns. And I think his staff was very, very helpful.

If the Speaker will indulge me, I want to mention some of them by name: Perry Apelbaum of the Judiciary Committee; and Ameer Gopalani, Jesselyn McCurdy, Kimani Little and Caroline Lynch of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security; John Mautz of Congressman Coble's staff; and Joseph Dunn of my staff.

Also, some of the folks in the private sector who helped us craft this bill in a way that doesn't impact legitimate operators: Artie Katz, Lenny Schwartz, and Steve Rosenthal with the New York Association of Wholesale Marketers, who helped enlighten the committee on how the process actually worked; John Hoel and Sarah Knakmuhs with Altria; Eric Lindblom with the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids; Anne Holloway with the American Wholesale Marketers Association; Lynn Beckwith with the National Association of Convenience Stores; and Laurie McKay with Dickstein Shapiro.

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

I thank Mr. Poe again, and I just want to make one other point: that there are colleagues on other committees who have had an interest in this, and they have been working hand-in-hand with the Judiciary Committee.

I will insert an exchange of letters with one of those committees, the Oversight and Reform Committee, at this point in the Record.

House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and

Government Reform,

Washington, DC, May 19, 2009.

Hon. John Conyers, Jr.,

Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, Rayburn House Office

Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Conyers: I am writing about H.R. 1676, the

``Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act of 2009.'' The

Judiciary Committee ordered this measure reported, as

amended, on April 28, 2009.

I appreciate your efforts to consult with the Committee on

Oversight and Government Reform regarding those provisions of

H.R. 1676 that fall within the Oversight Committee's

jurisdiction. These provisions relate to the treatment of

cigarettes and smokeless tobacco as nonmailable matter and

new requirements which will be placed on the U.S. Postal

Service as a result.

In the interest of expediting consideration of H.R. 1676,

the Oversight Committee will not separately consider relevant

provisions of this bill. I would, however, request your

support for the appointment of conferees from the Oversight

Committee should H.R. 1676 or a similar Senate bill be

considered in conference with the Senate. Moreover, this

letter should not be construed as a waiver of the Oversight

Committee's legislative jurisdiction over subjects addressed

in H.R. 1676 that fall within the jurisdiction of the

Oversight Committee.

Please include our exchange of letters on this matter in

the Congressional Record during consideration of this

legislation on the House floor.

Again, I appreciate your willingness to consult the

Committee on these matters.

Sincerely,

Edolphus Towns,

Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I offer the said amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to modify the amendment with the version that is at the desk.

First, I want to begin by offering my gratitude to the chairman of the committee and the minority, including their staff: Scott Olson, majority staff; and Dave Oxner on the minority staff.

I don't intend to take the full time. You know, we have a phenomenon going on that we are trying, at the same time, to get people the credit that they want in order to be able to make purchases.

We also want Fannie and Freddie not to take unnecessary risks. We are trying to strike that balance. This legislation does it, I believe.

One of the challenges we have in some parts of the country, though, we have a large number of co-ops and condos that are in the stock that are now starting to find buyers. People are saying, you know what, the prices have come down, we want to make these purchases.

At the same time, the standards have been raised by Fannie and Freddie such that, according to the regulation, that you need to have 70 percent of the units in any co-op or condo purchased before the first one will be financed and guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie.

The problem is that you create this dynamic that people say I am interested, I am interested, I am interested. In order to reach that 70 percent threshold it's very, very difficult and you wind up chasing away people who simply don't want to wait that long. They leave with their deposits in hand, and, frankly we get into this cycle where these units remain on the markets.

We need to clear out the stock. We also want to give credit where it's due.

So what my amendment does is, it says listen, taking a look at the guidelines, taking a look at our desires not to have unnecessary risk taken, if you want to change, based on regional consideration, say, the gentleman from Florida, me from New York, Las Vegas, places that have a disproportionate number of these condos and co-ops on the market, we encourage Fannie and Freddie with this amendment to make those regional changes and requirements.

Let me stress we are not saying we want them to make bad loans. That doesn't do that in this amendment, and I don't think we want to do that in this Congress. But we do want them to be flexible to say, you know what, if you have communities like New York, where people are saying I want to get involved in that market, I want to buy co-ops and condos, to make the limit, the threshold so high you wind up putting a damper on the investment that we want to see happen.

I encourage a ``yes'' vote.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I will do that the best I can, although it was a fairly obscure thing. I was commenting to the chairman earlier, we have outsourced so much of our authority to bureaucrats at the CBO, but they apparently were concerned that language in my bill would have required them to make loans or make certain changes in regulations.

So what we did is we dialed down some of the language, and we said take actions that are appropriate to establish and revise schedules. I think we made some changes to make it clear we weren't requiring any specific action that might trigger a budget implication.

I think the Parliamentarian has told us that this new language doesn't trigger PAYGO. And I didn't want--even at the thought that it might happen, I didn't want it to drag down the whole bill, so we made the changes they recommended.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1139) to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to enhance the COPS ON THE BEAT grant program, and for other purposes, as amended.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous matter on the bill under consideration.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we have some examples of transition moments where we acknowledge here in Washington that there are some problems that cross the line between not a purely local problem becoming a national problem.

When the COPS program and the crime bill was passed in the mid-1990s, we made an acknowledgment here in Washington that was widely cheered around the country when we said we were going to get off the sidelines in fighting crime, and we were going to go into the business of directly helping States and localities hire police officers. We said the crime was a national challenge as well as a local one.

Well, September 11 proved that point again. It reminded us that while there are needs to make sure that our localities are safe, we don't want to substitute control for local police departments.

There is a Federal role, and it's hard to dispute, in helping localities defend themselves against terrorism, deal with the challenges of immigration, and, basically, help fight crime.

The COPS program that was passed was an unqualified success. It provided police to localities large and small all throughout the country. I like to say that it was a classically democratic, with a small ``d,'' success in that small police departments, 80 percent of all the funds went to the smallest of police departments, and it also went to the big cities. Everyone benefited. Now 110,000 police officers have been hired, and it's time to reauthorize this program, and that's what we are proposing to do here.

A similar bill was passed with broad bipartisan support in the last Congress, but, unfortunately, it was too late to pass the other body, and now we are trying to do it again.

This is fully funded in President Obama's budget. It's $1.8 billion a year for the total authorization for the COPS program. It will provide 10,000 cops per year for 5 years. It makes improvements over the last program by allowing technology grants for local police departments and also hiring funds for prosecutors so we're not just arresting people but we are making sure that the prosecutions are done expeditiously. We also take some steps to recognize the reality that we have today by allowing funds to be used for police officers expressly on terrorism duty. Also we take something and create the Troops-to-Cops program, which makes sure that troops that come back from the front get priority in hiring. And we also use some innovative programs to make sure that illegal drug manufacturing and distribution, particularly of the methamphetamine problem, are addressed.

I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Puerto Rico (Mr. Pierluisi).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First let's get some clarity on the GAO report. The gentleman artfully pulls a line out of it. Let me tell you the conclusion. This is from page 11 of the GAO report. You can follow along with me, I say to the gentleman from Iowa.

``For the years 1998 to 2000, we estimated that the COPS grant expenditures that were associated with the reduction in indexed crimes from their 1993 levels ranged from 200,000 to 225,000 indexed crimes, while one-third of these were violent crimes, two-thirds property crimes.''

That is the GAO. If you want another authority that says that this has worked, you can ask the 381 Members of Congress that voted for it last year. If you want only partisan Republicans, how about John Ashcroft, not someone I am fond of quoting, who said the COPS program is a success. Attorney General Gonzales, every attorney general has said, you know what? The COPS program has been a remarkable success.

I say to the gentleman from Iowa, put your money where your mouth is. In the stimulus bill, which I believe you voted against, there was $1 billion for COPS. They are taking the grants now, and contrary to your opening statement, not only will it not take two or three years, they are going to be on the street this year.

In Iowa, there have been 110 police departments, large, small, intermediate, that have applied for this stimulus money to hire police under the COPS program.

I haven't raised the challenge yet, and then you will get an opportunity to give a one-word answer.

The challenge is this: Are you willing to write to the COPS office at the Justice Department and say please deny these police officers, who you acquaint with the criminals at AIG, and that is a shame and I think goes too far, will you say, don't grant any of these applications to Iowa? We don't need the cops. Our crime is not like crime elsewhere. Or despite the fact that I campaigned about the crimes being committed by illegal and undocumented immigrants, we don't need any further help.

Are you prepared to write a letter to the COPS program saying we don't want any money from the COPS stimulus money?

I would be glad to yield.

Reclaiming my time, ``reclaiming my time'' is not something I am asking permission for.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

It is noteworthy that you point out my chiefs of police. Well, maybe you should ask the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Association of Police Organizations, the National Sheriffs Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Association of District Attorneys, National Narcotics Officers Association, U.S. Conference of Mayors, National League of Cities. These are all people that support the Weiner position, not the King position.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I hope the gentleman did not dislocate his arm patting himself on the back for bringing down crime. Perhaps he should offer a little bit of credit to the 171 officers hired in his district.

Do you know why crime went down, I say to the gentleman? Crime went down because there were police officers doing their job, putting their lives on the line every day. And while some people might have been sitting behind a bench feeling very proud of themselves, those police officers deserve our credit and honor.

I have now heard two speakers in a row, one who has equated police officers to the AIG criminals and another

who said it is not the cops, it is one judge who happened to get elected to Congress. Both of them are wrong. It was a successful piece of legislation. And if the gentleman doesn't think so, maybe he wants to give his 171 police officers to the next speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 45 seconds.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I'm not really sure where to begin. First let's start where the statistics came from that 171 police officers and sheriff deputies in the First district were hired. That's the COPS office. Those grants came from your constituents.

And I would say to the gentleman, all of those things and all of the moving parts in the criminal justice system, of course, they're very valuable. But why do you dismiss the 171 police officers? Why aren't they valuable? Why aren't they something that's of value?

And the gentleman said he wants the taxes reduced here in Washington. He had a chance for that. He voted against the stimulus bill which offered a tax cut to 90 percent of all of his constituents.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First, in answer to the distinguished gentleman's question, how many is enough, I think 214 for the State of Iowa, going to 110 police departments and agencies. Do you know why I believe that? I believe that because that's the number of applications and that's the number of police officers that small sheriff's departments, you see, it's an average of only two police officers per jurisdiction, has requested of the recovery money that you voted against. I mean, that's how much.

Now, you can say that there's no Federal role in policing, and you'd be

in a minority. You'd be in a tiny minority. You wouldn't even be in a majority in your own caucus, let alone in your State.

But I give credit to my colleagues who stand up on the floor who say there's too many cops. I give credit to my colleagues who have the audacity to stand up on the floor and say, you know what? Everyone wants police officers. They're not so important. Why don't we not hire police officers? I give them credit for that.

If you believe there is no Federal role in local law enforcement, you should vote ``no'' on the COPS program. But then, do not be inconsistent. You should make every effort to ensure that Iowa and Texas and the other States don't get this money, don't apply for this, because they obviously disagree with you.

The fact of the matter is there is a Federal responsibility for crime. We do have a Federal--there is a Federal role for this. And it's been successful.

Now, you can say that it is not the primary or the major. The fact of the matter is the GAO was asked to study a very basic question: Did the COPS program succeed in its objectives in reducing crime? And the answer is, you can read the conclusion. You don't have to pick a line here and a line there. You can read the conclusion. It says that it did. And now we want to make sure that this program lives for five more years.

And the gentleman's made a lot--This is a dramatic increase over what we've had in the past. Yes. It was zeroed out in the Bush years. Zero, nada, zippo.

Now, despite the fact that John Ashcroft and Gonzalez and police officials and Tom Ridge all said this program was a success, I mean, there is a time, and I have to say to my good friend from Iowa that I enjoy the ideological debates that sometimes go on on our Judiciary Committee and here on the floor. But these are human beings. These are officers of the law who every day put their lives on the line. And what we are saying is we want to help localities ease that burden.

And you know, not long ago the National Sheriffs Association weighed in and said that they support this expansion. And not long ago, an organization of police agencies called the Police Executive Research Forum did a survey of its police department membership. 62 percent said they're cutting overtime spending because of the fiscal downturn. A quarter of them said that they're reducing employment through attrition in order to deal with the fiscal downturn. 47 percent of them said that they were discontinuing officer training because of the fiscal downturn.

Now, you can say hey, it's not our problem; things go up, things go down. Or you can say we want to help. We want to do something about it. We want to help localities.

And I would say to the gentleman that if he is going to go home and do what the gentleman from New Jersey suggests, and pose with police officers and say we honor your service, do more than honor their service. Help them not get laid off. Help keep them on the job. Help expand police departments.

I would be glad to yield.

Well, actually you mean imply. The answer to the question is, yes. You clearly did suggest that you know what--how many is too many, you said. I mean, I don't want to get the--I don't know how you get someone to say exactly what you said. But you said how many is too many? And the answer is very clear. The police departments in Iowa disagree with the Member from Iowa, and so do I. I believe--if I can just conclude, I believe that this is a program that works. You know, we don't have a lot of them in the Federal Government. We have some that work. This one, on a broad bipartisan way Members have said that, you know, this has been a success.

You can go to any police department in your district, and forgive me for not having the number at my fingertips, and say hey, has the COPS program helped you reduce crime? See what they say. See what these 110 police agencies in Iowa say. Ask them. Say, has this program been successful? And they'll say yes. And they'll say something else. They'll say please, help us keep this local agency a success story moving forward.

And if the gentleman doesn't believe that we should have a Federal role, by all means, he should vote ``no,'' but I do believe that overwhelmingly we do, and what we're trying to do here is to keep up with the times and say, you know what? If you've got to cut things on the local level now, you won't have the need to cut law enforcement. Ask people in any townhall meeting in Iowa or anywhere else if they think it's a good idea if we protect law enforcement funding with all the challenges that we have today. Let me conclude with this final thought.

Let me just finish this because this is now more than one time that this has been quoted incorrectly.

There is a GAO report from June 3, 2005. Make sure we put this up on our Web site. You can go to house.gov/weiner, anyone who wants to. It's the Government Accountability Office. They'll tell you that it worked.

I'll be glad to yield.

Reclaiming my time, generally speaking, I think the lady doth protest too much. When someone says, ``How many is too many?'' they don't mean that they want more. They mean that they want less. If you want to withdraw that comment, I would if I were you because I'm concerned.

I think most of the citizens of Iowa--and I represent Brooklyn and Queens, so maybe I don't speak for the people of Iowa, but I do know 110 police departments, sheriff's departments and agencies in Iowa have applied for the first billion dollar grant. By the way, there's $8 billion worth of applications for that billion dollars. It's clearly a demand. So it's not your colleagues who are saying it. It's not Congress who is saying it. It's not the cops' office. Those police officers and those sheriff's offices are voting with their pens. They're saying, ``Please, help us. Don't listen to our Congressman. Listen to the Congressman from Brooklyn and Queens. Please expand this program.''

I yield back my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1626) to make technical amendments to laws containing time periods affecting judicial proceedings.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the Statutory Time-Periods Technical Amendments Act changes the court filing deadlines in a number of statutes so that they correspond with new Federal court rules that are scheduled to go into effect on December 1, 2009.

Cosponsors of this bill include the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers; as well as the full committee ranking member, Lamar Smith; the Courts Subcommittee chairman, Hank Johnson; and the Courts Subcommittee ranking member, Howard Coble.

As anyone who has practiced law knows, calculating court deadlines can be extremely confusing. Even experienced lawyers have to expend considerable time and effort determining deadlines for filing. This can be especially problematic when there is a holiday or a deadline falls on the weekend. Calculating deadlines is also complicated by the fact that the Federal court rules for banking, civil and criminal proceedings currently do not use one standard method for determining time periods.

Unfortunately, because of the confusion and discrepancies involved with calculating deadlines under the current system, parties can too easily lose their right to their day in court because of procedural mistakes, regardless of the merits of the case.

The Judicial Conference has sent Congress amended rules for calculating these deadlines. The new rules are easier to understand and apply, and are also the same across the board.

Under the new rules, deadlines will not fall on weekends, and every calendar day will be counted when calculating deadlines--a commonsense ``days are days'' approach. The new rules will also standardize deadline calculation for very short time periods, taking weekends into account. This bill complements the Judicial Conference's rules package by changing the deadlines in several important statutes so that the statutes match up with the Judicial Conference's rule changes.

The bill is widely supported by judges and by the lawyers who practice before them in court. It will help ensure that courts are able to reach the merits of the cases before them rather than having to dismiss them due to an inadvertently missed deadline filing.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I inquire of my colleague:

Do you have any more speakers?

In that case, I just want to offer my thanks to all of the Members and the staff who worked on this bill, including Talia Wenzel, who did a great job working on this and who wrote my opening remarks.

I urge a ``yes'' vote, and I yield back my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert in the Record at this point an exchange of letters between Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman on the bill that we just debated.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to join the many residents of my district in recognizing the works and accomplishments of Bernard Catcher who will be honored for his service on March 20th as a ``Good Friend and Temple Benefactor'' at Temple Shalom's Shabbat Across America Dinner. Bernard Catcher is a man known to me for his hard work and dedication to Brooklyn residents and his sound advice and counsel to those seeking political or community insight. Bernard Catcher's service and reach is legendary. He is the Democratic District Leader of the 59th Assembly District, the head of the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club, advisor to the Thomas Jefferson Young Democrats and has served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. His concern for our communities knows no bounds and stretches over many years. He has served as District Manager of Planning Board 18, serves as the Government Liaison to Coney Island Hospital, and is an accountant by trade. He is active in, and has been recognized by, many local civic organizations from Marine Park to Canarsie and has been honored as ``Man of the Year'' by the Mill Island Civic Association, among others, for his service. Even with all his other activities Bernard Catcher always finds time and energy to dedicate to Jewish causes and take pride in his Jewish roots. He has served as an officer in the local Bnai Brith and serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of Temple Shalom of Flatbush. Always one to shy away from recognition preferring to do his work behind the scenes, I am honored and privileged to have this opportunity to publicly acknowledge the force of nature that is Bernard Catcher and offer my best wishes on his being named ``Good Friend and Benefactor'' at the Shabbat Across America Dinner at Temple Shalom on March 20th, 2009.

Will the gentleman yield so I may defend myself?

First of all, let me join with my colleagues in expressing the gratitude that we all have to the organizers that helped raise so much money for these kids that play in the inner city. They scarcely have rinks, unlike in Buffalo and some of our communities. It was really a terrific program. I'm glad we were able to do it.

``Lobbyists'' is a dirty word in this town now--and sometimes they played a little dirty on the ice, but we will put that aside because the result was the same.

I just want to say, being a great hockey player in Congress is kind of like being the one-eyed man in the land of the blind; I'm not sure it says all that much. But I want to thank Congressman Higgins--who I believe scored two goals; I learned that by watching the news reports and hearing him say it again and again throughout his quotes--and also you, Mr. Murphy. I have never seen a hockey player skate that slowly, but somehow you managed to get to every puck.

This is a great cause. Let's hope that we do it every 10 or 12 years or so because that's how long it takes us all to recover. I thank you very much for what you have done, and I thank you for persuading me to play in the game. It is true, I am cat-like in the crease. I curl up in a ball and just sleep through the game while you guys did the hard work.

In case we haven't noticed and the American people haven't noticed, what we're going to be spending the next year or so doing is digging out of the mess created by our Republican friends. We're trying to deal with the economy. We're trying to deal with digital TV. The fact remains, and it's obvious based on any matrix you can imagine, that this program is horribly administered and poorly thought through. Don't ask me that. Ask the 2 million people that are on a waiting list waiting for a coupon. Ask the 7 million people that Nielsen estimates are still unwired for digital TV.

The fact remains that we on this side didn't write this bill. In fact, if you look at people like Congressman Markey who have been saying for months that the way this program is being administered was poorly conceived. Let me give you an example. Right now, you sign up for a coupon and they send it to you third-class mail. And then if you don't redeem it within a certain amount of time, then they have to wait for several months before they can reissue it. This program was destined to be a failure because that's the way you wrote it.

Now you may think, what difference does it make that there are 2 million people waiting or 7 million people waiting? Let me ask you something. To the hundreds of thousands of people that are in your State that are not wired, what if there was an emergency tomorrow? What if there was a tornado? What if there was, God forbid, some kind of a fire and they needed to notify people quickly? People rely upon their television sets. Whom do you think you're punishing by standing in the way of this extension? You're punishing--let me just pose a couple more, and then you can answer them all at once on your own time. You're punishing senior citizens who, by and large, have those rabbit ears, who despite the previous speakers, might not be reading about digital TV or reading ``Digital TV Today'' or reading the sets. They think their television is fine because the outreach that was necessary for this program was never done.

What difference does it make if 2 million people are now on a waiting list to get the voucher? What difference does it make to those citizens? What difference does it make when you hear the Nielsen Survey, not Democrat, not Republican, say that there are 7 million Americans not hooked up. You are going to say, ``oh, it serves them right. We're going to stick to the guidelines. It serves them right.'' Well, the fact of the matter is we're trying to do good policy.

Let me make one final point because the distinguished gentleman from Missouri alluded to this. It is interesting that nobody except people speaking on your side today seem to be opposed to this. The people that bought the spectrum say that they're fine and that they're in no urgent hurry to get it. The people that are in the business of emergency response say, ``we need people wired for television. That is even more important than getting access to spectrum.'' So all you're doing is what you did last week, saying, ``no, no, no,'' as we try to fix your mess.

I thank the gentleman.

I think that, in fact, it is very important that we do make this transition. But do have two competing safety imperatives. One is the imperative of when this bandwidth is then used for emergency responders, which is not going to happen immediately. It's going to take a little time. The other is our obligation to the citizens of Illinois and New York immediately. They are going to lose the most important connection to the outside world and to emergency response, the television. And unlike when your channel, your knob is a little crooked, when we go to digital television, it's going to go completely black. And a lot of people rely on the television to get that kind of information.

Certainly.

There is no doubt that the premise of your remarks and mine is the same. The past administration screwed up the administration of this program. There is no doubt about it. We should not be where we are today. That is why we need to pass this bill.

I just think this debate has been instructive. I would say that on one side you have people who are advocating for the 2 million people who are waiting without coupons and for the 7 million or so people that Nielsen says is in this universe of people who don't have coverage. On the other side it is people that are advocating for who bought the spectrum at literally billions of dollars and for the TV broadcasters because they have to run to their transponders. No doubt about it. There are equities on both sides. But I think someone should stand for the 2 million people that are waiting for coupons. That is us. Someone should stand for the 7 million Americans who don't have the service. That is us. Who are you standing for?

Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, we are now into our 19th day of the war of defense on the part of the Israelis in the territory called the Gaza Strip, and there has been enormous amount of coverage in this 24-hour news environment that we are in. And yet there has been a great many questions that have been raised about the origin of this conflict, how it might end, and whether or not it is indeed necessary at all.

And the simple information that--to allow the public to understand this is that for the course of years, we have had a circumstance where residents in one small corner abutting the Nation of Israel--not part of Israel, not occupied by Israel, but the Gaza Strip--has been lobbying missiles, rockets, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, into their neighbors' territory killing people, injuring people, and terrorizing people. And it's gone on for a very long time.

Despite the notion that sometimes we pay attention to these circumstances, only every so often for the residents of small communities who have been the recipients of these rockets, this has been a terrorizing period of years. In fact, there have been thousands of rockets that have gone from the Gaza Strip and fallen in Israel over the course of the last several years.

Now, just so it's completely clear, the Gaza Strip is not occupied territory by any definition any more. The Israeli Government unilaterally decided after efforts had broken down to negotiate some type of a two-state solution, the Israeli Government and Israeli citizens said, ``You know what? We don't want to be in Gaza at all any more. We're leaving. We don't want to be in West Bank at all any more. We're leaving,'' and let the Palestinians in the territories essentially with what they wanted.

It wasn't the perfect outcome. It wasn't the outcome that the Israelis really wanted going in, and it was, frankly, probably an imperfect solution. But since that time in 2005, the territories have been under the control of the Palestinian people.

Now, the Palestinian people have made some decisions under a democracy that was remarkably well set up, and despite all of the concerns, the Palestinians have indeed made their choice about what they want. And what they did is they chose to have Hamas represent them in the Gaza Strip, and they chose to have Fatah represent them in the West Bank.

Well, in some ways, we now have the outcome that was almost preordained by that choice. Hamas, you see, is an organization that is not dedicated to improving the lives of Palestinians, is not dedicated to a two-state solution. They are dedicated to the destruction of Israel. And to many degrees, when they were elected as representatives of the people via a relatively free election in Gaza, they campaigned on a platform of saying, ``You know what we're going to do? We're going to be a constant, violent thorn in the side of our neighbors in Israel.''

And to some degree, what they did is exactly what they said they would do. Almost as soon as they got into office, they began using Gaza to launch weapons into their neighbors' backyard.

Now, throughout this entire time, you might believe that, well, if the Israelis or if any country--heck, let's make it the United States. If we had even one rocket fall from Canada, or if we had one rocket fall from Mexico, or if the residents of New Jersey had one rocket fall from New York--even one--it would be reasonable to expect that the recipients of that violence would react. Actually that hasn't happened.

Now, I shouldn't say there has been no reaction. There has been some outcry on the part of the Israeli people. The Israelis have gone to the United Nations and asked for help and asked for relief. The Israelis have pleaded to the Arab world--and this map shows some of the neighbors here. Says, ``See what you can do to help us with this problem?''

And this is not a fabrication. In fact, this is the pile of shrapnel of the rockets that had landed, the Katyusha rockets just in one town of Sderot. This is not something that's the subject of overblown rhetoric. You can actually see these landing and see, unfortunately, the havoc that they have brought with them.

So the question then becomes what does a country do?

Well, first thing that Israel did was they made their best efforts to get Hamas to stop in nonviolent ways. But that didn't bear much fruit. Then they tried appealing to the international community to rally around Fatah, who is the--who occupies and controls the West Bank. That didn't seem to work. And finally, over the course of time, it got worse and worse and worse.

For all of the discussion about whether or not Israel has overreacted to the attacks--this is a graphic visualization of attacks by Hamas before the war. This number here in 2008, this is before the war began. Look at this. Starting in 2005--I guess it was October of 2005--and Congressman Berkley, and she knows these facts better than I, October of 2005, elections happened, internationally supervised elections, and the Palestinians in Gaza choose Hamas to be their representatives.

For anyone to say after that moment that much is a surprise would be wrong. Hamas campaigned on a reign of violence against Israel, and to their credit, if that's the word for it, they carried it out.

You can see from this 946 rockets fell on Israel; 783 rockets fell on Israel in 2007. And this is the number--and I want to point this out. This has nothing to do with what might have happened recently. This is what happened in 2008. Even considering the fact that for a good portion of this 2008 there was a cease-fire that Israel agreed to engage in and Hamas agreed to engage in, and of course that was broken by Hamas when they started dropping rockets again.

So I guess the question then becomes--and I ask any critics of Israel how they would answer this question--What do you do when it's your job to protect your citizens? It's the ultimate authority of any government is to protect its citizens from violence. What do you do when this type of violence takes place?

But the question goes beyond whether or not Israel is within its right to defend itself. I think that's almost beyond dispute. But it does go to the responsibility of the other nations in that area.

Now, many people have asked how could it be that this tiny piece of land in Gaza, how could it be that they could even have thousands upon thousands of rockets to launch anywhere? Well, the answer lies in its neighbor, Egypt.

Egypt, through this very tiny passageway through the Sinai Desert, has permitted tunnels to be dug for thousands upon thousands of rockets to be brought in to the Gaza Strip.

Egypt, the second largest recipient of our tax dollars in foreign aid. Only Israel gets more; it's about the same amount. Since the Camp David Accords, we, the taxpayers of the United States, have about $3 billion a year in aid going to Egypt. Egypt is the place that many of these weapons are coming from into Gaza. Largely speaking, the area along the western border is Egypt's control and Egypt's supervision.

Then you've got to ask, well, what is Jordan doing? Many people have said, ``Well, why is it that the West Bank exists? Why isn't it part of Jordan's control? Who are the refugees refugees from?'' Well, you go back historically, where they came from is Jordan. And Jordan has said, ``We don't want them.''

For all of this talk about the new Arab World and all of the protests about who it is that should help out with the Palestinian problem, right now the only reason that they're the Israeli's responsibility is because Jordan has said, ``We don't want any part of these people.''

And where is it that Hamas is headquartered? Why is it that we read reports today that the citizens of Gaza are saying, ``We're okay. We would like to try to figure out a way to resolve this peacefully''? Well, the problem is

Hamas leaders are in Damascus. They are nowhere near the action. Because Syria, just as they did in the War of the Rockets in 2006, provide harbor for the Lebanese attackers--for the Hezbollah attackers in Israel, Hamas has its leadership in Damascus; and they're saying, ``Go ahead. Blow up more Palestinian homes. Blow up more of the Palestinian territories.''

So then you've got Saudi Arabia. Well, Saudi Arabia is even worse than perhaps the other ones because what they're doing is pumping out more and more and more money for the terrorists at both sides of Israel. They want to continue the conflict as long as they can. Why? Well, if you were Saudi Arabia and you were the royal family and you had denied your citizens rights and you were like a monarchy constantly teetering on your point, you'd want any distraction possible. So they continued to fund the homicide bombers; they continued to fund the terrorists.

So when you hear the protests from the Arab League, when you hear the protests from our feckless friends at the United Nations, the question should be, ``Why aren't you helping in some constructive way?''

Israel has, over the course of time and time and again going back all the way to 1947 where Israel agreed to the United Nations' original partition plan, said, ``We'll take half this amount of land so long as we can live in peace.'' The Arabs said, ``No.''

The Wye River Accord. The Palestinians said no, the Israelis said yes.

All throughout the history of Israel, it has been Israel saying, ``We will do anything necessary to allow us to live in peace.''

And the very reason that rockets are falling now on their citizens is because they said, ``We're going to give the West Bank, give the Gaza to the Palestinians. You govern it as you see fit.'' How have they seen fit? They've given aid and comfort to an organization that every day is making war against Israel.

Now there's one other thing that's come up--and it is indeed a horrible tragedy--that there are innocent victims in this. If you are a child going to school, whether it be in Ramallah, whether it be in Gaza, whether it be in Sderot, whether it be in Tel Aviv, whether it be in Minneapolis, or Brooklyn, if you're a child, you've done nothing wrong; you don't deserve to be a victim of anything. You hold no political views. You are a victim.

But in this case the question has to be asked, Who are you a victim of? If you are living in Gaza and Hamas is launching weapons from the back of a school, if they're launching weapons from someone's apartment building, if they're launching weapons from a public park and Israel responds, and unfortunately innocents get harmed, who was it that injured them?

And I would argue, ladies and gentlemen, that what you've seen here is a systematic effort by those that are launching these rockets to take harbor in people's homes, in schools, and in places like that. They've essentially created a whole country of human shields.

So then we return to the question, What is a country to do? What is Israel to do in this circumstance? And I think most of us would say, who think about the idea of our neighbors launching weapons upon us, that you've got to stop them at some point. You've got to say enough is enough.

Now, looking at it historically--and this may sound almost ironic-- the solution to the conflict in the Middle East is remarkably easy. At the end of the day, there are some thorny historical issues, but Israel has said, ``If it's about land, we will give you the land that you desire.'' And at Camp David II that led to the second Intifada, it began because Israel said ``yes'' to 98 percent of what the Palestinians had asked for at the negotiating table.

If it's about who controls Jerusalem, if it's about the borders and where in Gaza to provide checkpoints, none of these things have the Israelis said they're not prepared to discuss, even though some of us from afar feel very strongly that the eternal, undivided, historic capital is Jerusalem. And I think that an argument can be made that only Israel has shown that they really do care about protecting that capital. And it does have a historic place in Jewish life that simply does not hold in Muslim life.

But all of that being said, every one of these issues can be discussed and compromised on, provided Israel's neighbors say we're going to stop trying to blow you up. Even the Government of Israel has said even things like the Golan Heights along the border of Syria--and Syria, by the way, is our single greatest problem remaining in Iraq. These are not friends of the United States. Saudi Arabia is the country that funded Osama bin Laden. Syria is the one who has created a refugee crisis in Iraq and has allowed fighters to come in and kill our citizens. In Lebanon, a country that if it were left to its own devices could have a very bright future ahead just as it had a bright past so long as it's not occupied by Hezbollah. Egypt, which entered into peace with Israel, and despite all of its shortcomings there is a peace treaty that exists today. So why is it this doesn't happen? And that needs to be the question that American citizens ask as they watch the reports, why is it that you have a situation where you have people bombing day after day?

Now, I think that the plight of the Palestinians is a tragedy, but they have become international pawns of these Arab states that seek the destruction of Israel. If the sentence becomes, ``Hamas agrees Israel has a right to exist side by side and in peace with the West Bank and with Gaza as neighbors as part of a Palestinian state,'' if that becomes the predicate for a discussion, there can be peace by the end of this year. There are deals to be done; I know it because Israel has offered them. But when you have a situation that the moment you have any kind of a democracy, the result of the democracy--which, again, began in--the Israelis left the territories here in 2005. This is what a democratic country has decided to do with their democratic freedoms. If you have this, you leave Israel with no choice except to defend herself.

And let me just make one point because a couple of my colleagues are here and I want to yield to them because they've been leaders on this issue as well. You know, who do you get to help with this? Who are you going to call? Well, theoretically you should call the United Nations. The United Nations should be the place that says, you know what? This is just unfair, it's just not right. There is no reason that you should have a pile of missiles at the end of the day piled up at your town hall as it is in Sderot in Israel.

But let's look at the United Nations. The United Nations has passed 15 resolutions against Israel this session. They've done 22 of them that were just one-sided resolutions. The General Assembly has passed 15 resolutions. And since 2006, there have been 22 of them. Just recently, in fact, they passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza conflict. That's fine. That's fine. But it said that Israel should stop its attacks to try to knock out the rockets, but it said nothing about Hamas stopping its attacks. So essentially it said go back to that chart that I just showed you where more and more rockets land.

Now, I have to tell you, it was a bad day for the United Nations, but I'll be very frank, it was a bad day for the United States as well, because rather than voting no on that resolution, the United States abstained. And I'm a Democrat through and through. President Bush has largely been a very good President for Israel. He's had some weak spots. He provided unseemly amounts of funding for the Saudi Arabians, but by and large has stopped these bad resolutions from passing unanimously like this one does. So it was a bad day for the United States as well.

But it's important to note that while all of this is going on, the United Nations--in my hometown and Congresswoman Maloney's hometown of New York--has not used its power to try to implore the Arab states in the region to be helpful. Instead, what they've done is resolution after resolution condemning Israel for defending itself.

Now, I welcome a conversation about some other option that Israel has. Maybe it's another few more years of this. Maybe Israel should wait until this gets to 10,000 or 20,000. There has to be a point on this chart where any person would say, okay, that's enough,

you can now respond. Well, I believe after 3,000 rockets landing upon its neighbors, that that point has been reached.

Now, I see a couple of my colleagues here, neither one of them is on their feet. Let me yield to someone who has shown remarkable understanding not only of world events in the Middle East, but all around, someone who has shown true leadership here on a number of issues, including this one, the gentlewoman from New York, Congresswoman Maloney.

Well, I thank the gentlelady for her leadership. It is a voice that has been loud and clear in support of Israel over the years. And it is one that, who knows, might be loud and clear in the other body at some point in the future.

I would like to yield now to my colleague from Nevada, Shelley Berkley, who has, from the moment when we were elected together and began service in 1999, has been a spokesperson for justice, not just in the Middle East, but again, throughout the world. And there is a notion that sometimes you come to Washington and kind of the waters of the town wash over you and take off your edge a little bit. You, Congresswoman Berkley, have been someone who has kept your edge when it came to fighting for what you believed was right, and it is my honor to yield to you such time as you might consume.

Certainly.

I couldn't agree more, and I yield to the gentlelady.

I thank you as well, and it's all well put.

One of the things, Congresswoman Berkley, that people have said is, well, maybe if Israel takes a deep breath and they pull back and maybe stop the assault against these terrorists, maybe that would be the correct approach. Well, you know that from June until I guess it was the 19th of December, the Israelis did just that. They observed essentially a cease-fire with Hamas. And what happened? Well, they noticed something unusual. They knew that weapons like this, Qassams and Katyusha rockets, which have a range of about 12 to 13 to 15 miles, during the course of that cease-fire, Hamas was getting a new type of weapon. They were getting it from Iran, the Grad missile, which is more like 20 miles. Now, it's a little hard for us to get into context here in a tiny country the size of Israel. You're talking about your enemy having a reach of about a quarter to about a third of your whole country, maybe even more than that. And it's worth noting that you concluded on an appropriate point to talk about what is it that we can do to truly be helpful to the Palestinians here?

No one, I think, can reasonably argue that Gaza's being under control of Hamas has been a good thing for the Palestinians. It has gone from a community that had about 750 trucks of import and export coming through the borders every single day. They were trying to make a go of it under difficult circumstances. Now none of that goes on because Hamas, instead of trying to build up international commerce, instead of trying to make a country of it, they've chosen to import guerrillas from places like Iran to help train their military. They chose to devote much of their effort to producing things like this, which are just articles of death, rather than trying to figure out a way to make an economy work. So, frankly, it is not as if Hamas can say, well, we've achieved a better quality of life for our citizens, that we've fought with a sword against Israel but at least we have been trying to build up a government.

You know the tragedy is that the Palestinians have had a choice between corrupt and violent. That's really the only two choices they have had. They have got a government in the West Bank, the government in the West Bank here that's controlled by Fatah,

which suddenly seems great except for the fact that they're completely corrupt and incompetent; and then you have a government of Hamas, which is governed by terrorists.

But as we think about what the solutions might be, and I think ultimately it will have to be that the Israelis have to stop. When they're going to have to stop, though, is when they've gotten every rocket, when they've blown up every tunnel to Egypt, and ultimately they can go back to their side of the border and hope and pray that the Palestinian people come to their senses and say we don't want this anymore. We saw that start to happen in Iraq after a while. They said, why are we making our country just the battleground for terrorists? But they're going to need help. We're helping a great deal. As you know, much to my chagrin, hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid has come into the territories hoping that maybe if we put enough money on the barrel head, then the Palestinian people would live in peace with their neighbors. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked. They need help from other places.

Well, we need help from Egypt starting immediately to say we're not going to allow these tunnels to exist anymore. Now, I don't believe we should sit back and hope for help. I believe we should leverage our substantial foreign aid to say, look, you're an ally of the United States in the broad sense. We provide you billions of dollars in aid. We're going to suspend that for a little while until you show that you get these under control.

I will gladly yield.

I agree. And looking at it another way, Mubarak, his thorn in his side is the Muslim Brotherhood. They're kissing cousins with Hamas. It's in Egypt's interest as well.

Now, obviously we know what we can do with Saudi Arabia. We treat Saudi Arabia as if they're an ally. We provide them with foreign aid as well. Even more, we are about to send them the most sophisticated weapons around. Now, I don't know who it is they think they are defending themselves from. Maybe it's the giant army of Jordan perhaps. But that's a mistake we're making. And our own State Department has confirmed over and over again money going to the terrorists. They're a virtual Jerry Lewis telethon, sometimes literally, for funding of terrorists. So we in the United States should say to Saudi Arabia, you know, when the Crown Prince comes to Crawford, Texas, and takes our President by the hand and then does nothing to help with this matter, I said President Bush has been a good President for Israel.

He has had a blind spot when it comes to the Saudis. Syria, look, let's face the facts here. Syria has become a matrix of problems, second only to Iran, which is just off of the corner of this map. You know, if you consider how troublesome they have been in Iraq, how troublesome they have been in Lebanon, how troublesome they have been, if it weren't for Israel taking back the Golan Heights they would still be lobbing missiles in from there as well.

Well, so the question has to be what does Syria want for itself? I remember when the younger Assad, when Bashir Assad came in, everybody said he would be much better.

He went to the Sorbonne; he is a pediatrician or ophthalmologist.

Whatever it is, his mother must be very proud.

But as it turned out, they have essentially outsourced to any terrorist function that wants to go. Secretary of State designee Clinton, President-elect Obama, you know, if you want to look for your trouble spots, Saudi Arabia and Syria are turning out to be your next big problem spots, but Jordan bears a responsibility as well.

But Jordan has been as close as there is to a moderate in that part of the world. They have been it. But if you look at the West Bank, and you look at the allegations about refugees, this used to be Jordan. If Jordan really cared about solving this problem, they will be doing some things that are more constructive.

But I have got to tell you if they were all as good as Jordan, I think we would probably take it. The problem is that we are surrounded by people who seem to think that it is in their interest to keep the violence going on in the territories, and I think that that has to change.

I am not sure if my colleague from New Jersey is here for this Special Order, because he has been a remarkable leader on the issues. This is truly a bipartisan issue.

We recently had a resolution on the floor condemning Gaza and standing up in support of Israel. As it always is, we disagree on many things in this body, but I think that we have all agreed, and I have said previously, I think some Presidents of my party, like Jimmy Carter, have been a disaster for Israel. I think some Republican Presidents, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, have been very good.

This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue of right and wrong.

I thank the gentlelady.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Well, I thank the gentleman. Very well put. I appreciate your leadership on this. I should point out whenever I come to the floor, whether it be to make sense of our foreign policy as it relates to Saudi Arabia, you have been always been there trying to problem solve, trying to figure out the way we can use a lever.

Before I yield to my friend from Iowa, you know, very often when we look at these stories on television, my neighbors say, well, why is it our problem? Why is it a United States problem? Why do we really care? It's far away.

If you think about what's going on here, and I haven't pointed this out yet today, and, frankly, we all take it as an article of faith, we don't even think about it very much, there is really only one democracy on this map here. There is one democracy really fighting totalitarian regimes and terrorist exports, really, on behalf of all of us.

I ask you to imagine this scenario. Imagine if this wasn't Hamas, but it was al Qaeda. If we knew this little piece of land here was controlled by al Qaeda we would say, of course, you have got to be in a well--well, Hamas is an adjunct of the same type of influence.

Frankly, Israel is the only country, not only in this part of the world, but you can make a pretty good argument anywhere that is truly every day dealing with the ravages of terrorism.

We were struck on that fateful day when my city was struck on September 11, 2001. But if you think about it, if every single day, if Iowa or New Jersey or if New York were getting hit with rockets, do you think, really, anyone would say, oh, that was a close call, let's go back to work now, or anyone would say, oh, it was just a child that was harmed or, oh, it was just a school that was hit, big deal, let's just go back to work. It would never happen.

My colleague, the gentleman from Iowa, understands these issues very well. Once again, this is a bipartisan effort, and I would be glad to yield to him.

I thank the gentleman very much for his continued leadership.

Let me conclude with just a couple of brief thoughts. You know, some of us have turned on the television in recent days and seen that there has been a change in tactics on the part of the Israelis. They are no longer going over with planes or sending rockets themselves to try to hit these targets. But they have actually gone in with troops and are going almost literally home by home trying to find the last of these rockets.

Well, when people say the Israelis should use restraint, I ask you, how many militaries would do that, because that is the ultimate sign of restraint.

They are sending in their troops to do as surgical a job as possible to try to exact from the population whatever rockets are still there. They are in people's basements, they are in the back of schools, they are in supermarkets, and Israel more so than I think any nation maybe in the history of the planet, has always essentially taken one, two, three, 10 body blows before they react.

They do something that I don't think that anyone would expect the United States would do, and I don't think they do anything that any country has ever done. Every single time that they are attacked, they wait, they calibrate. They very often consult with the United States and they try to figure out how do we prevent this from escalating.

Whenever there is an opportunity to negotiate, it is the Israelis that say yes. And it is the Palestinians, with the support of these neighbors in the region, that say no.

It has to end. It has to end. If you really want to end this cycle, there are some things that we can do. Believe me, I understand there are things that the Israelis have to do. And, to their credit, they have said time and time again they are prepared to do it.

One final historical note, you know, the defense minister, Ehud Barak, has been quarterbacking this defensive effort. By the way, for anyone who follows this, he was very, very reluctant to strike back militarily.

Ehud Barak was, in a past lifetime, he was the prime minister. He was the prime minister, the very same defense minister now who is leading this military effort was the prime minister who essentially said yes to everything that Yasser Arafat asked for at the time, the amount of land and the crossings and the control.

He said yes. He said yes. And what happened? Once he said yes, the intifada began. Ehud said the thank you was not okay. We accept the deal as done. It was violence began again.

So there is no one there that probably wants this to come to a peaceful ending more than the Israelis. They are

tired, they are exhausted. They recognize that they can't be a sustainable country with this kind of circle, this kind of ring, this kind of enemy surrounding them. So the idea that somehow the Israelis are trigger happy and looking for a fight could not be any more wrong.

So there are some things for all of us to do. One of the things to do, as we look at this through the lens, the western lens of why can't we just solve this problem, well, you know what? These are difficult problems, but they are solvable. They are solvable when the weapons are put down, when the rockets are put down. They are solvable when a child in Sderot doesn't have to have a blue room where they run to where they have 15 seconds, as Congresswoman Maloney said, to get to safety.

We can't have a city like the one that has been referred to a few times here. Let me put this up one final time.

Sderot is this little town here, right by Gaza, that has had hundreds of missiles fall upon them day after day. We can't expect anyone to live like that.

What we can do as United States citizens is say, listen; one, we are going to start talking with our wallets. We are not going to allow any aid to go to Gaza until they change their government there. We can't support a military terrorist organization.

We have to say that we want better accountability here too. We want better accountability from Fattah.

We have to demand that Egypt, in exchange for getting billions of dollars in aid from us, the very least they can do is make sure the tunnels are stopped so if and when there is a cease-fire, and, God willing, it is soon, weapons don't come.

And we have to finally face the reality about places like Saudi Arabia and Syria. They are not our allies. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although we all know it about Syria, we need to recognize it about Saudi Arabia.

Finally, let me just say this. One of the ways we say God bless America is joining with the Israelis when they say Am Yisrael Chai--the people of Israel live.

Mr. Speaker, we have had a great deal of discussion about New York institutions, great institutions that have been around for a very long time, frankly, succumbing to economic pressures, bad regulation, misfortune. But we are in a perilously close position in New York to losing another great New York institution, and that is the newspaper The New York Sun, which has been operating for the better part of 7 years now.

It isn't often that someone in our line of work rises to pay tribute to a periodical, particularly one that is frequently quite critical of those of us in public life, but The Sun is a unique New York institution. It is arguably the only newspaper, frankly the only outlet in New York City right now, that is truly covering civic affairs in New York, and doing a very good job of covering civic affairs here in Washington and around the world.

For the purpose of making these remarks, I just grabbed at random a copy of The Sun recently and pulled out this copy from September 8th. And I defy any of my colleagues to find a publication in their part of the world, and even the ones that are best known--The New York Times, The Boston Globe, any of them--that has coverage comparable to The New York Sun.

Right here is coverage of how Russian war games have begun in the Caribbean, with a long description of how the Monroe Doctrine is entangled; coverage by E.B. Solomont on health care, talking about the challenges facing children's health care in New York and around the country; conversation about arts and fashion. The Arts Section of The Sun provides arts coverage second to no one. They even found some time to put on the front page coverage of sports, Brett Favre's beginning of his career with the New York Jets.

Now, you might be thinking this must be a newspaper that has been particularly kind to my point of view, maybe the editorial page has been particularly kind to the values that I share. Very often, if not most of the time, I disagree with their editorial page. But it is always erudite and thorough and gives us a great deal to think about.

Not long ago, many readers were shocked to find out what, frankly, we are learning about in a lot of newspapers around the country, it has fallen onto hard times financially. Well, there are many ways that we are going to be called upon to participate in our civic life in this election year. Obviously first and foremost among them is we are going to be asked to vote. But one of the things that all citizens in New York can do--and for those of you who have access to the Internet, you can go to nysun.com and take a look at the newspaper online--one of the things we all can do is engage in our civic debate well-armed with some facts about the issues of the day.

There is no better place to get it than The New York Sun. You know, perhaps it is ``old media,'' but it is good, old-fashioned, substantive civic engagement with a balanced coverage and smart coverage. You are going to find things in The Sun that, frankly, the other newspapers gloss over, the other papers pay no attention to.

I recently got a lot of attention, and perhaps snickering, by referring to how ``tabloidy'' a lot of the broadsheet newspapers have become in New York City, and I singled out The New York Times for that treatment. Well, frankly, if all newspapers had the level of thoroughness and the level of sophistication and the level of respect that it shows to readers that The Sun does, I think that, frankly, the debate in New York City and around the country would be a lot better off.

This is volume 124, number 101. I don't know exactly what those numbers mean. But hopefully for years to come, New Yorkers, American citizens of all stripes, will be able to pick up this newspaper, and I think they will be better for it.

Now, while I have the microphone, I should say to any of their editorial page who are listening, you are wrong about 90 percent of the time, and hopefully you will get better over the course of the next 7 years. But, by all means, I am not going to stop reading, and I would encourage all of my neighbors to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the other side have finally found the forum perfectly equipped for their ideas: one 60-second burst at a time filled with rhetoric and no new ideas. This is the perfect forum for the Republicans in Congress now.

We know that because when they controlled Congress, they passed their own energy bill, signed into law by the President, we got into this mess. This is the President whose idea of an energy policy is holding hands with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, embracing him with a big smooch.

If my colleagues want to do something interesting, go to opensecrets.org. Look at the donations of ExxonMobil, look at Texaco, look at all of those, and look at the ``Rs'' next to all of the people who got it.

I gotta tell you something. The status quo is perfect. We govern over here, and on that side, 60 seconds of bluster at a time, 60 seconds of rhetoric at a time, 60 seconds of ``drill, baby, drill'' at a time.

If you want to govern the country, you had your chance and you blew it. Look at the energy bill you passed.

I thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member of the full committee for not only his sponsorship of the legislation, but the great work of him and his staff to try to bring this to the floor. It's kind of a complicated issue.

You know, we accept it as an article of faith that cigarette smoking is down in this country. We believe that because, as you look at the taxes paid in the 50 States and the various cities, there has been a decline. But a lot of information really leads us to believe that that might not be true at all, that all we're really seeing a reduction of is a reduction of the amount of taxes that are getting paid to the various States. And that is because, as both Mr. Smith and Mr. Scott have pointed out, more and more States are levying more and more State taxes on cigarettes. It's almost an easy thing to do. You know, some have commented that State governments are addicted to tobacco taxes. It has gotten to be so much that in New York City, for example, if you are a smoker--which I'm not--you pay an additional $4.25 per pack compared to South Carolina, where you pay an additional 7 cents a pack in State taxes.

Well, what I just described is, in a nutshell, the incentive for smugglers. They can buy cigarettes at a very low tax rate, sell them in a higher tax rate locality and be able to make money on the vig. Well, you might say to yourself, isn't that against the law? It is. It is against the law for anyone to buy cigarettes and not pay the tax of their locality. But there is no way for authorities to know that for sure. But we have some signs and some statistics that show that it's happening in record numbers.

I will give you an example. In just my State of New York, 280 million packs of cigarettes were sold on Native American reservations. In 2006, it's 360 million. If you take the number of residents on Native American reservations and do the math and assume that those cigarettes are being smoked just on the reservation, that would mean 44 cigarettes an hour for every Native American in the country over the age of 18, or basically a cigarette a minute. So that's not happening.

What is really happening is that more and more people are buying cigarettes on the Internet, they're not reporting that they're buying them on these Web sites, which are by and large on Native American lands, and they're not paying taxes on it. And that's what's happened. Now, not only is this a great source of great revenue loss to States-- my home State of New York estimates anywhere from hundreds of millions to as much as a billion dollars of lost revenue--but according to the Government Accountability Office, it might be used, as so many other smuggling operations are, for things more than just illicit activity, but terrorism.

It was found in a GAO investigation that there was a group that was buying cigarettes in North Carolina, smuggling them to Michigan, taking the money that they were making by selling them on the streets of Michigan, and then using the money to fund Hezbollah operations. That was just one investigation, one prosecution.

Now, as I've said earlier, it's already against the law to do many of these things, so why aren't there more prosecutions? Well, right now violations of the Jenkins Act, which is the prosecution that this would be under that say this type of activity is illegal, are misdemeanors. So even if you are a U.S. attorney and you say I really want to crack down on this and you wait outside and you try to do a sting, really the most you can hope for is a misdemeanor prosecution. One of the things this legislation does is makes it a felony.

A second thing that it does is it closes perhaps the largest truck- size loophole in the law, it allows people to buy cigarettes on the Internet. Now, because of the actions of New York, DHL, FedEx, UPS, they all say we no longer are going to allow anyone to transport cigarettes.

The only entity that still transports cigarettes is the United States Postal Service. They have come to Congress and said, if you want to ban us transporting tobacco, you've got to tell us by law. We can't do it. Effectively, that's what this legislation does.

Now, just to make it very clear, if you want to purchase cigarettes online, what is supposed to happen is the Internet carrier is supposed to then take a document, mail it to your home State and say that Anthony Weiner purchased X number of cases, then you're supposed to pay taxes on it. That never happens. States that have done stings know it has never happened and the ATF says it doesn't happen. Now that is going to be required, otherwise, you're not going to be able to do any transporting of tobacco at all. And finally, it requires the same type of age verification that we have for other things on the Internet.

This is a commonsense thing that I think is going to mean that we can really make sure States get the revenues, we can make sure that the black market in tobacco is eliminated, and frankly, we can make sure that the ATF has the tools they need to crack down on this.

This legislation is a long time in coming. It would not have been possible, as I said earlier, if it were not for the help of the ranking minority member of the full committee, the Chair of the subcommittee, the members and the staff who have done a remarkable job; on the full committee side, Perry Apelbaum and Ted Kalo, on the minority side, Sean McLaughlin, the chief of staff and general counsel on the minority side; Ameer Gopalani, who is the counsel on the subcommittee, Jesselyn McCurdy, who is another counsel. And on the minority side, Kimani Little and Caroline Lynch. Also, towards the end, to help us deal with many of the jurisdictional matters that we had, Congressman Waxman and the ranking member of the Government Oversight and Reform Committee, his staff director, Phil Barnett, Naomi Seiler, the counsel, Robin Appleberry, folks who worked very late into the night last night to help to make this happen. Congressman McHugh's staff, who has been very active on this, Rob Taub, his Chief of staff; Joe Dunn, Jonathan Schleifer and Dori Friedberg of my staff. These are all people who helped make this happen.

Now, I would say, before I yield back, as with so many things, this is a relatively easy fix that we were able to work in a bipartisan fashion to make happen. None of this is worth anything unless the folks on the other side of this building finally start to legislate, finally start to take some of these things that passed by overwhelming margins, things like the COPS bill we passed in our committee, and others, that we've managed to cross the partisan divide and do good government. And I would hope that my colleagues in the Senate at some point awaken and decide to start passing some of this legislation. If they do that, it would be greatly appreciated.

I also want to point out that, to all of the groups that have been so active in trying to make this a reality, and it's a disparate bunch, Altria--I guess previously Phillip Morris--Sara and John--I can't read their last name--the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, National Association of Attorneys General, the American Wholesale Marketers, New York State Association of Wholesale Marketers--Artie Katz with them, these are disparate groups who don't agree on very much. And we have worked out a bill that I think passes not only bipartisan muster, but has enlightened elements of the industry involved.

And I should make one final point. There is a good deal of byplay going on in the 50 States about the rights of Native Americans dealing with their State governments. We say very clearly in this legislation, we are not seeking to litigate that at this time. There are two contradictory Supreme Court decisions that are out there, there are many different interpretations. We make it very clear here that what we're seeking to do is to empower the Federal authorities to operate where they're allowed to, the State authorities only to operate where they are. But I think that because of the support of the National Association of Attorneys General, folks like my State and the active advocacy of organizations and journalists like those at the New York Post, who have been beating the drum on this, we are going to finally get this done.

I rise today in support of the recently introduced Medical Device Safety Act of 2008. This much-needed legislation would restore an injured consumer's ability to hold negligent medical device manufacturers accountable for product-related deaths and injuries.

The Medical Device Safety Act addresses the problems created by the Supreme Court's February 20, 2008, decision in Riegel v. Medtronic. This decision stripped away essential consumer rights by supplying device manufacturers with total immunity from liability.

It's difficult to see the reasoning behind this special treatment for device manufacturers when you consider what happened to Bridget Robb. In May 2005, Ms. Robb was diagnosed with nonischemic, viral cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure. To prevent her from dying from a fatal arrhythmia, she had a Medtronic cardiac defibrillator and pacemaker implanted in her chest. On December 31, 2007, a wire in Ms. Robb's defibrillator broke, causing the device to send a strong electric current to her heart. Ms. Robb suffered 31 electric shocks in 13 minutes in front of her 6-year-old daughter. Medtronic knew about this defect, but issued only a voluntary recall. Since this frightening experience, Ms. Robb has undergone two surgeries to replace her defibrillator and goes to doctor's appointments almost weekly for follow-up appointments and testing.

Prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Riegel, the FDA and State courts protected consumers, like Ms. Robb, together. Since Riegel, consumers only have the FDA to protect them; and the FDA has insufficient resources to do so effectively. The Medical Device Safety Act ensures that consumers like Bridget Robb will be able to seek legal recourse for their injuries and reiterates Congressional intent that State laws must work hand in hand with Federal regulations to protect consumers.

For these reasons, I urge support for Congressman Pallone and Congressman Waxman's bill, H.R. 6381. I look forward to working towards passage of this legislation and restoring these, critical, basic consumer protections.