Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, let me first of all compliment my good friend, the gentleman from the other half of Birmingham, Alabama (Mr. Bachus), for his leadership on this issue.

I take up where the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley) left off. This is a very well-conceived piece of legislation. I speak from the perspective of someone who spent 5 years as a Federal prosecutor.

When I started out as a Federal prosecutor, we did not hear a whole lot of about gambling, frankly, from a lot of the people who crossed my desk. By the time I left, gambling had become the means of choice for disguising large sums of money being moved back and forth by drug dealers.

It goes without saying that in this age of Internet access, a lot of children are finding their way to a lot of things that parents do not know that they are finding, and one of them is Internet gambling.

This is a positive bill. I will note that some people have raised concerns about how financial institutions would go about enforcing it, how they would go about policing and enforcing the various mechanisms contained within it. And I will note for those who raised those concerns that this legislation only requires financial institutions to develop adequate policies and procedures for identifying and blocking gambling payments.

Most of the credit card industry and most of the financial services industry have said they can easily take on this burden. It is a burden that they regularly assume in policing all kinds of transactions.

I do want to address one line of amendments that I do expect will come before the House today, and it deals with the amendment offered by my colleague from Wisconsin that refers to one very specific section of the bill. Right now this bill would exclude from its coverage ``any lawful transaction with a business licensed or authorized from a State.''

That is an important provision, for a very simple reason. As many of my colleagues well know, a number of States in this country permit various forms of pari-mutuel betting. We may not like that, we may not engage in it, but there is not one of us in this institution who questions that it is the right of a State to determine what is gambling and what is not gambling. It is the right of the State of Alabama to decide and the right of our legislature to decide if we are going to recognize pari-mutuel betting or not.

If this amendment, which I believe is well-guided, were to be enacted, it would fundamentally change the purpose of this bill, because what it would do, very simply, is it would prevent a State from accepting pari-mutuel betting or any other forms of gambling that have been recognized, frankly, and declared as permissible by State law.

We talk a lot about States rights in this institution, and both parties now have picked up that mantra. It is in the interests of States rights if we decide that States can decide what is legal and what is not illegal. So I would urge my colleagues to reject the stream of amendments that would take away the States' ability to decide what is valid inside their own house.

So I close, Mr. Chairman, by saying this is well constructed, bipartisan legislation of the kind, frankly, that our committee regularly and routinely produces.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

This is somewhat of a departure from the debate of the morning and from the debate that we may have this afternoon on some issues, but it is something of a welcome departure I suspect for some of us.

The way this institution works when it is at its best is we find a way to work with the best interests of the business community and we find a way to work with the best interests of the consumer community; and if we get some efficiency out of the process, well, all the better.

This legislation is a good bill. It is outstanding legislation, and I want to compliment the leadership of this committee. I want to compliment our very able colleague, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart), as well as my good friend, my very able colleague, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ford), as well as a number of members of this committee who have contributed to taking what was a good bill and getting it to the point that it is an excellent piece of legislation.

A number of people have extolled the virtues of this bill as far as efficiencies are concerned. A number of people have extolled its virtues as far as making a system that has been something of a maze a much more comprehensible process.

I want to dwell for a minute on an act of simplification that this bill creates with respect to consumers. Right now, a good many of the people who are watching this or who are part of our districts have had the experience of looking at their bank ledgers and finding out that they have been credited for something that they did not think they wrote. A lot of people regularly run into these kinds of very small issues with the banking community, and those of us who went to law school can recall the portions of our bar books that summarize the UCC and the various protections, and they have been something of an imponderable maze.

This bill improves that. The expedited recredit provision has a number of very simple but very important features.

The first one is that if it is determined that a bank has falsely credited someone's account, within 1 day of that determination the bank must recredit the account. And there is a very specific window of time that is set to resolve a dispute. If a bank has not determined that a claim is valid within 10 business days, the bank has two options: either recrediting the lesser of the amount charged or $25 with interest being recredited and any remaining amount within 45 calendar days. That is an important act of simplification.

Another important act is that if there is an invalid claim or notice of recredit, the consumer must receive it no later than the day after the bank makes the determination. Why is that maze of words important? Because a lot of banks, Mr. Chairman, have not necessarily had the clearest or best guidance from the UCC on what to do in the very simple instance someone comes into a bank and wants to straighten out their account. This bill helps.

Another instance, we had a question during the committee process about the substitute check and a number of valid questions were raised about the meaning of the substitute check. In working with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we managed to clear up a lot of these ambiguities. It is now very clear that someone who may not have a substitute check in hand, that individual can still take advantage of the expedited recredit provisions. That is important in a world where paper sometimes gets lost in the mail.

So I will conclude, Mr. Chairman, by saying that this bill reflects what we can do when we are able to step outside of our partisan boxes and what we can do when we bring a little bit of common sense to the process. Again, I want to thank the leadership of the committee for bringing this to place.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of heated debate about this issue all morning, but I think there is a basic undisputed fact that frankly should rise above the fray: there was no effort to limit this tax break until the end game of the conference report process, when the administration and those who were shaping the tax cut needed to find $3 billion.

When they needed to do that, they did not search the high end of the bracket; they did not search the offshore loopholes. They went into the pockets of people who need tax relief more than anyone else. That was a choice of priorities. It was a statement that the people who do the hardest work in this country are, frankly, the ones who would be asked to sacrifice first.

I wonder what the people of this country will think, what our constituents will think, when they hear that

under the rules of this House they do not even deserve a vote. I wonder what the people who work every single day will think when they hear that a child tax break for them will be welfare. I wonder what these individuals who bear the brunt of payroll taxes will think when they hear that they do not need a tax credit because they really are not taxpayers. I wonder what the parents in my district, who begin paying taxes in the State of Alabama at $4,000, will think when they hear that they do not need tax relief.

This plan, as we knew from the beginning, strikes the wrong priorities. It leaves out people who are most in need of help, Mr. Speaker. I think that it is incumbent on us as a matter of conscience that we correct this imbalance.

This is the work that we ought to do for the people, that of correcting imbalances where they exist and that of correcting inequities where they exist, and not looking into the pockets of our weakest people to balance our budget.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 669.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the amendment from my very able colleague from North Carolina. At the outset, Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about what it is that is really the strength of our system, and I would define it this way: The strength of our system is nothing less than its capacity to absorb the worst impulses in our character.

Now, my very able colleague from Wisconsin mentioned Brown v. Board of Education. The day the Supreme Court issued the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, there were crosses burned in this country. There were crosses that were burned on the day that Martin Luther King was assassinated. There are bigots who paint swastikas on synagogues in our country. There were thugs who called our soldiers war criminals and who waived the Vietcong flag in their face when they came back from Vietnam.

There is no constitutional amendment to regulate the cross burners or the bigots who paint swastikas on synagogues. There is no constitutional amendment to regulate or prescribe the enemies of our democracy who would call our soldiers war criminals. The reason is because we have frankly concluded that we do not need one. We count on our values and we count on the best angels in our nature to overwhelm the worst of us. We do not count on amendments, we count on the best angels in our nature.

If we pass this amendment without the Watts substitute, let us make it clear what we are doing. We would be singling out one class of speech, one uniquely obnoxious viewpoint, and we would be saying that this idea is somehow so corrosive, so dangerous, that we cannot count on our values to trump it.

Mr. Speaker, I am frankly not prepared to give the idiocy and the stupidity of flag burning this kind of power. We do not need an amendment to underscore our commitment to the flag and the values behind it any more than we need an amendment to suppress the other enemies of our political character. I trust the system that we have, and I think it is that, frankly, for which our veterans have fought.

We have heard a lot of talk today about whether our veterans have fought for a symbol or whether they fought for a flag. I would submit to you, as one Member's opinion, I think they fought for a system, and I trust that system. Whether it yields a 5-4 Supreme Court decision or a 9-0 Supreme Court decision, I trust that system to address that issue.

I will say in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, that this first amendment of ours has always been unique because it is this amendment that has somehow stood as a barrier to our temporary impulses, it has stood as a barrier to the temporary ways that we would react to things, and it has served us well. If we are going to change the way we look at flag burning, it ought to be done through our courts, our highest courts. If we are going to tinker with the edges of the first amendment, it ought to be done by our Court, our highest Court.

I ask my colleagues to vote for the Watts substitute.

Mr. Chairman, let me thank my colleague from Alabama for yielding me this time and for his leadership and his work on this bill.

Mr. Chairman, let me say in 30 seconds, just this: This is an important bill from the perspective of small banks. We will not get sustained community development in America until we find ways to put more small community-based banks in rural America.

I happen to think, and those of who support this bill happen to think, that increasing these limits will provide an incentive for small banks to do more of the business that they need to do that will help the people who are living in rural America. A lot of people, if they know the limits have been increased, will feel much more comfortable putting their assets and putting their resources in small community banks.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding time to me.

I am acutely aware, Mr. Chairman, that we are debating a budget at a time when the attention of this country is diverted thousands of miles abroad. It is a reality that much of what we say here today will be drowned out by the drumbeat of attention around the war.

However, it is my opinion that what we do and say today will not permanently go unnoticed. There will be a time when the attention of our constituents comes back home to the shores of the United States of America. When that time comes, I would submit to my friends on the other side of the aisle, they will not understand what it is that this budget seeks to do.

They will not understand that this budget asks us to cut a quarter billion dollars from Medicare at a time when the health of our seniors requires that Medicare be strengthened and not weakened. They will not understand cutting $100 billion from Medicaid at a time when our States are crying out for relief. They will not understand a budget that breaks a promissory note to our children by cutting funding for No Child Left Behind. They will not understand a budget that breaks faith with our veterans in a time of war by cutting $15 billion for veterans programs. They will not understand a budget that cuts the thread of the safety net at a time when millions of Americans are struggling through economic anxiety.

In short, Mr. Chairman, in a climate when so many of our people would have us do more to relieve their struggle, this budget would have us do less. There are undoubtedly some who think a wartime budget is incapable of being generous to the American people, but I would say in response that the forcefulness of our international will must be matched by the force of our commitment to the needs of our own people.

Our constituents will not reward this body if the reconstruction of another country is allowed to crowd out the pressing need to reconstruct this country and to make it whole.

There are reasoned arguments, Mr. Chairman, on behalf of all the Democratic alternatives today, but I would submit in conclusion that there is no argument that reflects this country's values that can fully be made on behalf of the Republican majority budget today. It is wrong, stunningly wrong, in its lack of ambition for the American people. It is wrong in its lack of compassion for those who are struggling in our society. It is wrong at wartime, just as it is in peacetime.

This budget leaves far too many Americans behind. It leaves far too many Americans, it leaves far too many States, who are struggling to fend for themselves. I would say this, Mr. Chairman: no country can be truly strong when too many of its people are weak. That is the obligation of this Congress today.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight on behalf of the 635,000 citizens in my congressional district, which is one of the three poorest congressional districts in the United States of America. As we focus on this budget and all the pressing economic needs in our country, we ought to remember that there is a class of Americans whose needs often go unaddressed in this body and elsewhere. It is the millions of Americans who live in the Black Belt of the South, or the Delta Region of the South.

Just yesterday, I introduced legislation that I hope will crystallize attention on this problem that has gone for too long without a voice. We have a Delta Regional Authority in this country that is very ably led by Pete Johnson of the State of Mississippi. I seek to expand that authority to create a Delta Black Belt Regional Authority, and I seek that this body make a commitment that would be unprecedented in terms of its investment of resources in the southern and central parts of this country.

This legislation, if enacted, would ask that $100 million be appropriated in the first fiscal year to 552 counties and 14 States in this country of ours. I recognize that I come before this Congress asking that this commitment be made at a time when the priorities of the President are very different. Across the South we see economic development programs being cut. We see the enterprise communities and the empowerment zones that have been so critical in my State and so critical in the States of so many of my colleagues zeroed out, eliminated from funding. We see funding for rural hospitals cut back. Our priorities, I would submit, are firmly and fundamentally wrong on all these issues.

Too many people are losing their jobs. Too many companies are closing in the South. And I would submit that at this point we have two Souths. We have one that is prosperous, we have one that is growing, one that is in touch with the modern economy that we have. We have another one that is languishing; we have another one that has lagged behind. It is the second South that I represent in the seventh district of Alabama.

We need to make a commitment that when 40 percent of the people in various counties live in poverty, we need to make a commitment that when too many children in the South live in school districts that are underfunded, that we put their concerns at the top of our agenda. We can talk all we want about economic development, but until we find ways to grow the physical infrastructure of the South and, more importantly, capitalize and build the human infrastructure of the South, we will see two Souths. We will see the South that I represent lag behind.

When the President talks about compassionate conservatism, he does it with great eloquence. But his budget-makers need to meet his speech- makers. We need to make a commitment that we will put resources and that we will give these resources a chance to work in a part of our country that has gone ignored.

This legislation, and I have circulated ``Dear Colleague'' letters to many of the Members of the House, has a chance of passage if we remember two priorities: First of all, that this entire country is anchored and weighted down if the rural South continues to lag; and second of all, that no country can be strong when too many of the people who live in its borders are weak. No country can be strong when too many of the people who live in its borders are weak. There is too much weakness in the South tonight. There is too much poverty in the South tonight. And it is time that we make an unprecedented national commitment in this area.

This legislation would do one final thing. It would give local communities, through a constituent representation board that I would put in this legislation, it would give them an opportunity to control 20 percent of the funding that would be allocated to this new authority. It is important that the people who live on the ground, who do the work in our community and faith-based organizations have a chance to control and direct resources. It is important that they have an opportunity to control the way Federal funds are spent. Too many people are locked out of this process. Too many people are in situations where their voices go unheard as we think about how we spend economic development dollars.

So I speak tonight on behalf of the rural South. I speak on behalf of the millions of children who live in poverty in that region, and I call for a national commitment beyond any that we have made.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) for yielding to me.

I have the distinction of representing the Seventh District of Alabama which, as so many people should know if they do not, is the home of the civil rights movement in this country. It is the battlefield where so many of the battles were fought in the 1960s: The City of Birmingham where 40 years ago this April, children were marshaled in defense of equality in this country, and they were met with literally the teeth of dogs and the bite of fire hoses; Selma, Alabama, where 38 years ago individuals had to march across a bridge under a threat and rumor of sniper fire in order to petition for their right to vote.

Montgomery, Alabama, is no longer in my district, but it is my hometown, and of course it is the city where Dr. King picked up the torch of the civil rights movement in part of the 20th century and gave it so much of its vibrancy and so much of its currency.

What is striking about my district in 2003 is that if Martin Luther King could somehow come back and visit west Alabama and visit the battlegrounds on which he fought, he would see cities and counties that look very much the same as they did four decades ago.

The rate of poverty in four counties in my district hovers around 40 percent, 40 percent in times of economic growth and 40 percent in times of economic decline. It is a constant condition of despair.

We have talked about health care tonight. Eight hospitals in my district have closed their doors in the last 2 years, and suffice it to say that the disproportionate number of people who have been disenfranchised on the health care front in my district have been people of color.

If Dr. King could somehow travel through the streets of Birmingham today, he would find parts of that inner-city that look exactly as they did 40 years ago. He would see young black men, able-bodied, casting about looking for some anchor in their life, looking for some economic anchor in their life.

Too much of my district, which has its urban and rural components, too much of my district looks like America looked in 1963; and that does not say as much as it should say about where this dream stands. Forty years after the fact, 40 years after the battles of 1963, America stands frozen in so many ways.

I had an opportunity to give a speech to a high school class in Selma, Alabama, on Martin Luther King Day. Selma is a racially divided city. It is a city that is 60 percent black, 40 percent white. As I stood in the gymnasium, Mr. Speaker, I looked around the gymnasium as I got to the part in the speech where I talked about Dr. King's legacy of integration, and it struck me all of a sudden that every single student sitting in that gymnasium was black. In a public school, 49 years after Brown v. Board of Education, 38 years after the Selma to Montgomery march, the legacy is a segregated public school system. And with inequality comes disparity in resources; with separateness comes a separateness in resources.

The dream is in an interesting state today, because too much of America is financially unchanged, unchanged in every measure that we could possibly draw on the floor of this House.

People sometimes wonder why we have a Congressional Black Caucus. People sometimes wonder why we have Black History Month. They wonder why there is a need to continue to talk

about these things. And my answer to them is this: as long as we have a country where the conditions of one's life are determined in large measure by the conditions of one's birth, the American Dream is not what it ought to be. As long as we have a country where the lifespan of a black child born today differs dramatically from that of a child of any other race born today in this country, there is a story that still needs to be told.

Some say, including Justice Scalia, that we can get past the problem of race if we stop talking about it. That sounds good, but that is not the world that we live in. The world that we live in is one in which we have to keep talking about these struggles, because so many people have never lived them; but they have also never lived the lessons of that time.

We are the country that we are today; we are the envy of the world because of a very simple promise. The promise of America is that wherever you begin, you have an opportunity to rise. That is the rhetorical reality of our country. Until it becomes the political reality and the economic reality and the social reality, we fall short of the American Dream, and the state of this union is in some disrepair.

So I call on all people of conscience to recognize that America has work to do. I call on all people of conscience to recognize that there are battles that still need to be fought. Because until we smooth out the gaps in this society, until we tear down the walls that continue to divide us, the legacy that we honor and the dream that we honor is incomplete. There is work that needs to be done, and that is the unfinished task of this caucus.