Floor Statements

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

I rise in support of the Boustany amendment. There has been a lot of talk about how it would appear these faith-based organizations are bigoted and maybe even arrogant for wanting to express their views. I think it is the opposite. The government here, absent the Boustany amendment, is being arrogant and bigoted.

It could be, if the government wants to take advantage of the location, let us say, of a Hebrew school in downtown New York, that it is the best possible route of caring for people in need in that area. Why would the government think that it is our position, our prerogative, to insist that the Hebrew school hire somebody outside their faith tradition? It is the ultimate of arrogance on the part of the Federal Government.

And to those who are concerned about the constitutional issues, may I remind my colleagues the Supreme Court actually ruled on this matter. In a 1987 case, Corporation of the Presiding Bishop v. Amos, the Court supported this kind of approach.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment and would point out that growth is good, but not lopsided growth. Growth in the NSF budget is generally a very good idea, and the committee feels that way and has voted that way.

But this is lopsided growth, such that one program gets a 70 percent increases as a result of this amendment when others equally deserving like the math and science partnership would not get that level of increase.

Imagine what that does over at NSF. Yet one program that has some congressional supporters proposes a 70 percent increase, while the other programs are down in a middling kind of increase, that really does create some instability and some inequities, I believe, over at

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the bill, but hopeful that we can make it even a little bit better. The thrust of the bill is clearly a good idea. We need a national registration for sex offenders. We need to make it with teeth, and that is why I support the underlying bill.

There is, however, this issue of mandatory minimums in the bill. I am a member of the Committee on the Judiciary, and I have said there that I am more uncomfortable than ever with our use of mandatory minimums. We have a coherent system of sentencing called the sentencing guidelines. We have people who thought very carefully about how it would be that rape, for example, would compare with bank robbery and how that would compare with cashing bad checks, and so they came up with a system.

Into that system have come some reactions from Congress to particularly heinous crimes. The result is sort of a patchwork of mandatory minimums that disrupt the coherent system established by the sentencing guidelines. So here today we have a bill before us that has a particularly dangerous mandatory minimum when it comes to the situation of someone failing to register.

Now, I think it is pretty confusing when you move from State to State. In fact, it is quite often the case that you send your possessions on ahead in a moving van; and the question is when did you move from California to Ohio, was it when the moving van got there, or was it when you took the first flight from California to Ohio, but then you returned to California to get the rest of your possessions and drove back. When did you move to Ohio?

Under this bill as it is right now, if you fail to register, you have a mandatory minimum. I think the mandatory minimum in this case is particularly inappropriate. In fact, Mr. Chairman, it is a 5-year mandatory minimum. So the hypothetical I just posed of somebody moving from California to Ohio, the moving truck is there, they fly out twice to Ohio, and finally they are moved, if they do not register in a timely fashion, and it is a very brief time they have to register, then what happens is they must go off to jail for 5 years. This is somebody who has not committed another offense. If they commit another offense, there are mandatory minimums that handle that.

This is a failing to register, which is an important thing. It is very important that we register, but it seems to me that this is a classic case of where we should give judges discretion within the sentencing guidelines to deal with exactly the hypothetical I have just described. Let the judge decide, well, the person actually did move to Ohio on that second trip and when they moved, they failed to register. But maybe they had an appendectomy. If they did, give them some time, give them some grace because they were clearly attempting to comply with the law.

On the other hand, the judge could hear this person was not attempting to comply with the law. They were flouting the layout; and if they were, he gives them some time.

The amendment here would simply strike the 5-year minimum and make it so that it could be up to a maximum of 20 years. So a judge could still send the flagrant violator, the person who has failed to register, off to jail for a good long time because registration is crucial to the underlying nature of this bill.

So I support the bill, and I hope that we can improve it by eliminating what could be manifest injustice with a mandatory minimum that is unchangeable by a judge, a judge who can see the circumstances. Of course that requires some trust in the judges, but I am thinking we can do that. At least in South Carolina, we have good judges, judges who make decisions that seem to be consistent with the spirit of this law.

If jurisdictions have judges who do not do that, perhaps there should be some pressure brought to bear on these judges and, in fact, impeachments if those judges consistently violate the sentencing guidelines. But let us let the system work; let us let the Constitution work and respect the judiciary and respect the competence of the people that the U.S. Senate confirms. We have a confirmation hearing going on right now where we are confirming, I hope, somebody who is clearly a capable jurist. When he is on that Court, we

should defer to him because he is a coequal branch of the Federal Government.

So my amendment is very simple. It strikes the mandatory minimum in the case of failing to register. I hope my colleagues will support it.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I agree exactly with what the gentleman just said, and that is why I am voting for the underlying bill.

But the gentleman said earlier that this is some kind of voluntary registration. There is nothing voluntary about this. We, in strong action here, are requiring exactly the person he just described to register, and we say to them they must register within the prescribed period. There is no voluntary nature to that. That is a strong and good law. That is what we are doing here.

The question is whether we can trust the sentencing guidelines and the Sentencing Commission and Federal judges to come up with a system to figure out whether that person that the gentleman is describing, flagrantly violating it, should go off for 20 years as opposed to the hypothetical that I posed as somebody in confusion about when exactly they moved, let us say, from California to Florida, as to whether that case deserves a mandatory minimum of 5 years.

Because what we are doing here, if this amendment fails, is tying the hands of that judge in Ohio such that he must or she must send the person off for 5 years if there was confusion about when and how they moved to the State of Ohio. It may be somebody who did not flagrantly violate. It was just confusion as to when they moved. And if we have sentencing guidelines and judges that follow those guidelines, if they do not, put pressure on them and then impeach them.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Inglis of South Carolina

Amendment No. 9: Page 27, line 7, strike ``not less than 5

years nor''.

Page 27, lines 17 through 18, strike ``not less than 5

years nor''.

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

Mr. Speaker, I had real doubts about CAFTA as it started. In particular, representing a textile district, there were three specific concerns. And the very exciting thing is that this House really went to work to fix those. I am looking at the gentleman from California

(Chairman Thomas), who has worked very hard with us, along with Rob Portman, USTR, to address those concerns.

Three of them: one was pockets and linings. That is important only if one comes from a district that makes pockets and linings, I suppose. Another was Mexican cumulation. And then a third was the Nicaraguan

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to welcome to the House Dr. Jerry White, the president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention and our guest chaplain this morning. Jerry has been preaching since the age of 13, pastoring for 33 years, 24 of those years in South Carolina, the last 7 at Riverside Baptist Church in Greer, South Carolina. His wife Janet and his father are here with us today. They have two sons, and, maybe most significantly, a brand new baby granddaughter.

Jerry's favorite hymn is Amazing Grace. His life verse is Philippians 4:13, ``I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.'' Truly the two work together because one of the stanzas of Amazing Grace is, ``Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.''

That is what enables people like Jerry to pastor as they do, realizing that it is grace that causes them to be able to do all things through Christ who strengthens them. We thank him for offering the prayer this morning, and we welcome him to the House.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

I rise reluctantly because rarely do I oppose a majority bill. In this case, however, as I expressed in the Committee on the Judiciary, I think there are three problems with the bill: First, it federalizes State crimes. Second, it spends too much money. Third, it has mandatory minimums.

I voted for mandatory minimums a number of times in my previous time in Congress, and then I had 6 years out, six years out to talk with people in the community, to talk with judges. And during that time, I became very uncomfortable with our approach about mandatory minimums.

We have sentencing guidelines. The idea of those guidelines is to have a coherent system of sentencing, some method of figuring out how heinous one crime is compared to another. And then Congress comes along and slaps on mandatory minimums on top of that framework, doing violence to the framework of a sentencing guideline system. I think it is a mistake.

Like I say, I voted for them in the past. I will not do it again. I am inclined to say, let us have a sentencing guideline system that works. Let us not, because of some political considerations, rise and go after say crack cocaine as opposed to powdered cocaine and end up with perverse results, which is somebody rotting in jail because they smoked the wrong kind of cocaine. It is an unjust result. It is something we should resolve in this body to avoid.

I think we have an opportunity to improve this bill. I will be supporting some of the amendments the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) will be offering. It is another opportunity to try to improve it.

I appreciate the gentleman yielding me time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am excited about the work that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers) is doing on the Science Committee and for the innovations that I think that we can together bring about and can encourage from here in the Congress. I am happy to be part of this Special Order to talk about what could be part of our future.

In particular, the aspect that I want to focus on is cars and to have us think about what cars could be in the future. We are bound now by burning petroleum in our cars. We are bound to lethal accidents where people traveling at a high rate of speed end up being killed because cars crash together, blowouts on tires or whatever cause them to have crashes.

What I am excited about is imagining a completely different future, one that has smart cars, has fuels of the future; smart cars that know their position relative to other cars on the road by sensors and by automatic braking systems that take over for the driver, that make it so that a computer is actually driving the car. That for many people sounds like science fiction, but it really is not that far away.

I think it is very interesting that Bill Gates was here recently and spoke with members of the Intellectual Property Caucus and opined that it is not a question of if; it is a question of when we get smart cars. He said in the future, there will be no accidents. Of course, it might not be wise to bet against Bill Gates when it comes to technology issues. While we were waiting, a colleague of ours pointed out that if you had invested $10,000 in a company called Microsoft in 1980, it would be worth $25 million today. So it is not a good idea to bet against Bill Gates when it comes to technology.

What we have, I think, is the opportunity to dream that big, to think of a car totally differently, that it could run itself, that you get in it and it is not so much a steering wheel as it is a computer screen. Unless we think this is far away, think of the blue screen tracker system that is right now deployed in Iraq on the vehicles that we have got over there and so that our men and women know where they are, where their unit is, relative to other units. That is updated every few seconds. The technology, in other words, is not far away. It is on the ground right now in the blue screen tracker system, and it is not far away, in my opinion, for the car.

If you think about what that means, it means compression on the highways. It means that you do not have to have the spacing that we have now, where cars in order to be safe should be driving a fair distance from each other at 60 or 70 miles an hour. As it is, we have got to have a lot of asphalt on the ground to accommodate that many cars traveling at that rate of speed. But if they are smart cars, they can be within relatively few feet of each other, traveling at significant speeds but knowing where one is relative to the other.

That seems like science fiction, but consider this: a number of auto manufacturers, including BMW which makes X5s and Z4s in Spartanburg, South Carolina, are working on braking systems that actually take over the braking decision for the driver. BMW will release a car very soon that does just that. It has a braking system that decides for you when it should apply the brake and keeps you from hitting something.

So if you think about that, the breakthroughs that we are going to get in cars, the compression on the highways, braking systems that make those decisions for you, the ability to get in a car, program it to go somewhere, say from here to Baltimore, take your hands off the wheel, read the newspaper, the productivity gains in the economy are very exciting. There are some very exciting things there now. The key to that is a new energy system, too, one that hopefully will emit only water as you travel, say, from here to Baltimore. That is what the hydrogen economy could promise for us. That is why I am very excited about producing that hydrogen and figuring out how to store it and distribute it. Those are, of course, as I understand it, the three big challenges, producing it, storing it, and distributing it.

Producing it, as one of our colleagues just mentioned, could be in various ways.

Perhaps by concentrating enough energy from the sun, sunlight into a spot to reach temperatures to crack water. And I heard the gentleman from Michigan's (Mr. Ehlers) Special Order a week or so ago about nuclear, and we seem to be of the same opinion that nuclear seems to be one of the more promising ways at this point to crack water. A reactor built for that purpose cannot only generate electricity but can also generate the heat necessary to crack the water. And the beauty, of course, of that is, rather than cracking natural gas, which produces C02, cracking water would create no C02, and we would have this wonderful operation that creates electricity plus heat, cracks water, creates hydrogen, and we have got a stable source of fuel.

So production is crucial in envisioning this future that I am talking about here. Second is the ability to store it, to store this hydrogen. A lot of issues there about whether to try to store it in a gaseous state or whether to cool it and try to get it to a liquid state or whether to have some breakthroughs with metal hydrides and determine a way to store it in a solid state. Those are some areas that we need work on, and the gentleman from Michigan can add to that, I think.

And then the third area where we need breakthroughs is how to distribute it, how to set up either pipelines or some other system of distributing this fuel. If we can crack those things, get at producing, storing, and distributing hydrogen, I believe that we are going to be there, not forever away. One of our colleagues who is not so inclined to believe that this is all going to happen once told me, ``Yes, that will work maybe for your grandchildren.'' Well, I think this is going to be here before my grandchildren, and it had better be because, as we have been hearing tonight, we are running out of this stuff called petroleum, and we have got a lot better things to do than burn it. We can make pharmaceuticals. We can make plastics. We can do a lot better things.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for giving me the opportunity to share these dreams of the future that may seem like some watching dreamers, but that is how we got to the moon. That is how we get breakthroughs. We have got to be about it and here in the Congress fund it, fund good research on these things, spend good money to create these breakthroughs.

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

Mr. Speaker, be advised that this resolution is to express appreciation to the Greenville SAFE KIDS Coalition for ten years of distinguished service to the state of South Carolina and our Nation in its work to protect children from unintentional childhood injuries.

Whereas, only a decade ago, Greenville was much less safe for children. Eighty percent of kids rode their bicycles without helmets. About 40 percent of older children traveled in motor vehicles without using a safety belt and countless younger kids did not ride in approved car seats. One in five families went to sleep each night without the benefit of a smoke alarm. In fact, unintentional childhood injury was the leading killer of children 14 and under in Greenville in 1994. To address what was a little-recognized problem Greenville SAFE KIDS Coalition was created.

Whereas, I am pleased to report that since the inception of the Greenville SAFE KIDS Coalition, there has been a dramatic 24 percent decline in the unintentional injury death rate among children 14 and under. The combined efforts of Greenville SAFE KIDS Coalition, under the leadership of Greenville Hospital System's Children's Hospital, have led to remarkable achievements in preventing childhood death and injury. The Coalition's multifaceted effort includes public awareness, education, distribution of safety devices, enactment and enforcement of laws, and a grassroots partnership program that embodies the countywide strategy that accounts for the progress.

Whereas, in 10 years, there has been a 50 percent decline in the child pedestrian injury death rate, a 10 percent decline in the child motor vehicle related death rate, a 34 percent decline in the death rate from childhood drowning, a 53 percent decline in the death rate from bicycle injuries and a 56 percent decline in the residential fire- related injury death rate. Unfortunately, even with these impressive advances, unintentional injury is still the number one killer of Greenville's children. Each year, more than 10 children die and more than 8,000 are injured seriously enough to require medical attention. That is a staggering one of four children. The program works with Emergency Rooms, physicians, schools, and Greenville County's Child Fatality Review Task Force to track trends on how and why injuries occur. Programs are then developed in specific injury areas to increase awareness and ultimately prevent injuries. Examples of their activities include assisting high risk families in obtaining smoke detectors, hosting monthly car seat inspections, distributing thousands of bike helmets, and teaching children about home safety through the nationally recognized Buddy's Home Improvement House.

Whereas, Greenville SAFE KIDS first-ever ``Progress Report on Preventing Unintentional Injuries'' tracks a decade of work in prevention. It presents a detailed picture of the particular risks that kill and disable more children than disease, homicide or suicide. This report also maps out a strategy for the next 10 years and issues specific calls to action across injury areas.

Whereas, in their 10th anniversary year, Greenville SAFE KIDS Coalition looks forward to continued growth through strategic partnerships with sponsors, health professionals, schools, legislators, industry and sister communities. Through these partnerships, Greenville SAFE KIDS will lead important advocacy initiatives that will result in safer environments for children at home, at school, at play and on the way. Greenville SAFE KIDS Coalition remains committed to reducing unintentional childhood injuries and keeping children out of GHS Children's Hospital.

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring:

That all members encourage parents, caregivers, schools, business leaders, legislators and health professionals to make preventing unintentional childhood injuries a priority and to continue supporting the efforts of Greenville SAFE KIDS Coalition to save and protect the lives of our children.

Be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to Greenville SAFE KIDS, South Carolina SAFE KIDS and National SAFE KIDS.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, I agree with the chairman of the Committee on Science. We have an opportunity to do better.

I hope that we do better as we improve the hydrogen title of this bill. Perhaps the other body will have a title that will work a little bit better in the hydrogen area, and I hope that we will catch the vision of a different way of getting around.

Imagine that one takes delivery today in Spartanburg, South Carolina of a brand new BMW. It runs on hydrogen. It is powered and controlled by a computer, maybe made by IBM, maybe software by Microsoft. These are companies committed to making hydrogen and to making smart cars work. They get in the car, they program it to go somewhere, they take their hands off the wheel. It seems like science fiction, but the good news is that we on the Committee on Science are in the business of making science fiction into reality, and it is not that far away.

If we can make a commitment like we made when we decided to go to the Moon, we can get there. We as a Nation can decide that now is the time to really commit to forging ahead to create a hydrogen economy. Now is the time to be spending good money on that. It is time to stop simple spending and start thoughtful investing. There is a big difference. In this bill we have the opportunity to do just that, to invest serious money in the technology that can lead us to a hydrogen economy. If we do that, we will do good work for the American people and we will lessen our dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

And, by the way, it is also about jobs. If we can retool the automobile and make it so that we not just develop the technology but also produce it here, we can tremendously expand the economy of the United States, providing jobs and, while doing that, cleaning up the environment and reducing the oil pressure on the Middle East. That is a trifecta. Let us get about it with a better title.

Mr. Speaker, please join me in congratulating the National Beta Club as it completes its celebration of its 75th anniversary. The organization was formed by the late Dr. John West Harris in 1934 in Spartanburg County, SC and is still headquartered there in the Fourth District of South Carolina.

Over the years, the National Beta Club has provided the catalyst for teenagers of good character to develop leadership skills and channel their energy into productive service to others. By maintaining its high standards and worthy goals and acting through its outstanding local chapters across the country, the organization has had a positive impact on the success and accomplishments of our great nation for the past seven decades.

The National Beta Club's celebration of its seventy-first anniversary is an occasion highly deserving of recognition. Therefore, please join me in honoring this organization and its efforts to lay the foundation for learning and leading early in the lives of the young people whose lives it impacts.

Mr. Speaker, I am moved to commend to this House a thoughtful eulogy commemorating the life of one of America's finest: 1LT Andrew C. Shields.

The eulogy was written and delivered by Brandon Steelman at First Lieutenant Shield's funeral at New Prospect Baptist Church, Campobello, South Carolina, on December 18, 2004.

Eulogy For a Fallen Soldier: First Lt. Andrew C. Shields

This past week has been filled with things that quite

simply can't be understood. While there are many larger and

more profound mysteries, one of the smaller mysteries I've

faced this week is why Andrew would have me give these

remarks today. Certainly, he had many friends who knew him

just as well, if not better, than I did. And certainly he

loved his family above all others. Each of those family

members would be better suited to make these remarks today;

after all, I didn't spend my childhood dressing like him as

Philip did! But I think I'm here because Andrew would be too

uncomfortable watching a beloved family member stand and

undoubtedly cry in remembrance of him. But he was always OK

when I stood up to embarrass myself. In fact, he encouraged

it. So I can't think of a better way to embarrass myself on

Andrew's behalf than to start with me, crying like a baby,

when I first heard the horrible news we've all been trying to

accept this past week.

One of my first thoughts was to turn to the Episcopalian

Book of Common Prayer. In it I quickly found a prayer I'd

like to share. Entitled For those in the Armed Forces of our

Country, it reads: . . .

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping

all the men and women of our Armed Forces, at home and

abroad.

Defend them, day by day, with your heavenly grace;

Strengthen them, in their trials and temptations;

Give them courage, to face the perils which beset them;

And grant them a sense of your abiding presence, wherever

they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

I read that prayer three times: the first time, I was too

overcome with emotion to finish; the second, I was overcome

with guilt for not having said that prayer every day Andrew

had been away. But when I read it a third time, I realized

Andrew didn't need my prayerful requests on his behalf. This

prayer asks for a few important things, but Andrew had each

of those, and it didn't take a friend reciting an old prayer

to make them real for him.

The prayer asked for strength in his trials, but, Andrew

was already strong. He had a physical strength, sure: he

ultimately got bored wrestling me so he turned it into a game

of seeing how many time he could spin me in the air before

pinning me to the ground. But it wasn't just physical

strength that impressed so many people about Andrew. He had a

strength of character. Without that, how does one put on hold

a rewarding career, a promising salary, and the potential of

finding his dream girl, all to leave the comfort of his newly

constructed house for a far away land and a mission? Yes,

Andrew had strength.

The prayer asks for the benefits of heavenly grace. But

Andrew's faith was already based on grace. In a generation

where it's not cool to embrace religion, and not cool to hold

yourself to unwavering moral principles, Andrew was a rare

example of someone who not only incorporated religion into

their weekly schedule, but who let it guide every aspect

of his life. Andrew's soul was defended by grace long

before I read that prayer.

The prayer concludes by asking God to grant a sense of His

abiding presence. But those of us here are already comforted

by Andrew's faith, courage, and strength. We find comfort

knowing that as we say the words, ``wherever he may be,''

Andrew maintains a sense of God's abiding presence, for he is

graciously embraced by the spirit of our Heavenly Father.

This prayer helps me, even though initially too difficult

to read, because it reassures me to know Andrew's faith

guided his life and protects him beyond his death.

With a loss as great as Andrew, no single prayer will bring

us the comfort we seek. In search of that reassurance, I

visited a war memorial near my house. Inscribed there, in

black marble, is a quote by George Washington. In words too

long to recite today, he calls us to honor our nation's

veterans, for it's our appreciation now that will determine

the willingness of future generations to serve in wars to

come. That quote reminded me of how inspired Andrew had been

by his father's military service, and how proud he was to

serve as an aviator for the country that brought aviation to

the world. He considered the military an extended family and

would have been honored to know that, as George Washington

alluded, in honoring Andrew today, we prepare future

generations to join his extended family and defend our nation

as he so bravely did.

Shortly, uniformed pallbearers will place Andrew's body on

a horse-drawn carriage and, with full honors, give him a

farewell worthy of his immeasurable sacrifice. But it's

important to remember that Andrew never embraced recognition.

Before he left for Iraq, he visited a class of second

graders, who embraced him and adopted him as their pen-pal.

He was flattered when some of them asked for his autograph,

but told us later that he hadn't done anything heroic. As we

all know, Andrew is a hero. Those second graders recognized

that, as many of us did. But he didn't embrace our

recognition. In the wake of Sept 11, when he was learning to

fly his Apache, I spoke to him of his heroism, but he humbly

dismissed me, quickly joking that I must have been drinking.

Similarly, he would have blushed to see this much support

today, and while graciously accepting the honor bestowed upon

him by a grateful nation, he would want us to remember him

for those great moments he shared with us in life.

My sister, for example, said she will remember him as a

giant snowball tumbling down the ski slopes as were tried to

snowboard for the first time. I think memories like that

would make him happy. In his humility and simple faith, we

would bring him the most joy if today we honor him for the

hero he is, and tomorrow we remember him for the great person

he was.