Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

At 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. The eruption lasted 9 hours, killed 57 people, and devastated 234 square miles of land. The landscape and community of southeast Washington were forever altered.

The eruption was triggered by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale that shook the northern face of the mountain, causing a massive avalanche of rock debris. This landslide opened a crater that engulfed the mountain's summit and produced a massive lateral blast eruption. Mudflows carrying millions of cubic yards of debris washed down the river valleys and into the Columbia River. Tons of ash were strewn across eastern Washington and into the Earth's stratosphere.

After 18 years of relative quiescence, Mount St. Helens' volcano recaptured the world's attention in September of 2004 when it showed signs of reawakening. On September 23 a swarm of small, shallow earthquakes began in and beneath the 1980-1986 lava dome. Activity has continued on and off since then, with the lava dome growing and letting off periodic steam eruptions.

To protect the safety of communities located near Mount Saint Helens, I worked with Congressman Norm Dicks and Senator Patty Murray to secure an additional $1.5 million for the United States Geological Survey in the Emergency Supplemental to conduct the necessary monitoring of Mt. St. Helens. This funding will increase the safety of citizens living near the area and help protect commercial aircraft.

Today, to commemorate Mt. St. Helens' 25 years of recovery and renewal, people are gathering at Weyerhaeuser's Forest Learning Center at Mount St. Helens to reflect on the 1980 devastation and celebrate 25 years of nature's recovery, including the return of forests, plants, and wildlife. Additionally, Weyerhaeuser is pledging $1 million in wood products, funding, and volunteer labor to help build Habitat for Humanity homes at the 2005 Jimmy Carter Work Project and in other communities across the United States and Canada.

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

What our friends on the majority side are doing would be downright funny if it were not so downright tragic. The motion that we are here taking a $2.6 trillion budget with less than 3 hours to look at it is not laughable. It is disgusting.

We tried at the beginning of this year to enforce the 3-day rule except for cases where a supermajority could be obtained. You denied that. I challenge you to go home to your rotary clubs, your town halls, your citizens groups and say, friends, the United States Congress led by the Republican majority passed a $2.6 trillion budget and the Members had 3 hours to look at it. Be honest with your constituents. Say, I read that entire budget in those 3 hours we had. Be honest with your constituents and tell them how much of that Social Security trust fund you are borrowing to disguise your spending and to disguise the cost of your deficit.

You folks ran on a platform back in 1993 where you said if legislation cannot pass 3 days of scrutiny, it should not be enacted into law. That is the case today with this budget.

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

I do not know what to do tonight. I honestly do not. If Terri Schiavo were here, she could tell us what she would like her fate to be under this circumstance. Those who say that we are condemning her to death by starvation, that may be so if action is not taken tonight. But it may also be so that you may be condemning her to a life that she might not choose were she here to choose that.

Some of us have spoken on both sides of the aisle of holding our loved one in our hands as they died, having made the decision not to have heroic measures. For 23 years before working in this body, I served as a clinical neuropsychologist. I have been with many patients in persistent vegetative state.

I wish life were different. I really wish it were. I will tell Members the stories like the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks) and others about sudden recoveries, where people almost miraculously or magically are better and return to their former state are apocryphal for the most part.

After years of coma, people do not return to who they were before. What happens is we have a brain stem that is miraculously robust at protecting breathing and heart rate, but it is our

cortex that makes us who we are and that cortex dies when it is deprived of oxygen and we effectively die with it.

And I am sorry about that. It is so tragic.

I honestly do not know what to do. But for anybody to try to imply that people on one side or the other do not care about this woman is not right or fair, on either side. This is an American tragedy but, more importantly, it is a personal tragedy. And people on both sides are pro life in the richness and complexity and difficulty of it.

Some are trying to do their best to honor what they believe are this woman's wishes to not live condemned to a bed where she cannot speak or enjoy the higher virtues of life she might choose. And if she did indeed say I would not choose the fate of being condemned to this bed, then we are denying her that right to make the choice. That is the challenge here tonight, my friends.

But let no one who leaves this body somehow imply that whichever the vote is taken, one side or the other does not respect life in its richness. We are all pro life. We all feel for this family. And also let no one believe that we are somehow saving this woman from a horrific fate whichever route we choose.

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

My good colleague from California raised the exact and critical point. The question is, what happens during those 45 days? We will need to support elections. There is not a single Member of this House who has not supported some form of general election, a special election, to replace the Members at some point. But during that 45 days, what happens?

The Chair of the Constitution Subcommittee says this is what happens: martial law. We do not know who would fill the vacancy of the Presidency, but we do know that the Succession Act most likely suggests it would be an unelected person.

The sponsors of the bill before us today insist, and I think rightfully so, on the importance of elections. But to then say that during a 45-day period we would have none of the checks and balances so fundamental to our Constitution, none of the separation of powers, and that the Presidency would be filled by an unelected member of the Cabinet who not a single member of this country, not a single citizen, voted to fill that position, and that that person would have no checks and balances from Congress for a period of 45 days I find extraordinary. I find it inconsistent. I find it illogical, and, frankly, I find it dangerous.

The gentleman from Wisconsin refused earlier to yield time, but I was going to ask him, if Virginia has those elections in a shorter time period, they should be commended for that. So now we have a situation in the Congress where the Virginia delegation has sent their Members here, but many other States do not have Members here. Do they at that point elect a Speaker of the House in the absence of other Members? And then three more States elect their representatives, temporary replacements, or full replacements at that point. They come in. Do they elect a new Speaker? And if that happens, who becomes the President under the Succession Act?

This bill does not address that question. This bill responds to real threats with fantasies. It responds with the fantasy, first of all, that a lot of people will still survive; but we have no guarantee of that. It responds with the fantasy that those who do survive will do the right thing. We are here having this debate, we have debates every day, because people differ on what the right thing is to do.

I have been in very traumatic situations with people in severe car wrecks and mountain climbing accidents. My experience has not been that crisis imbues universal sagacity and fairness. It has not been that. People respond in extraordinary ways, and we must preserve an institution that has the deliberative body and the checks and balances to meet those challenges.

Many of our States are going increasingly to mail-in ballots. We in this body were effectively disabled by an anthrax attack not long after September 11. I would ask my dear friends, will you conduct this election in 45 days if there is anthrax in the mail and still preserve the franchise of the American people? How will you do that? You have no answer to that question.

I find it extraordinary, frankly, that while saying you do not want to amend the Constitution, we began this very Congress by amending the Constitution through the rule, by undermining the principle that a quorum is 50 percent of the body and instead saying it is however many people survive. And if that rule applies, who will designate it, who will implement it? The Speaker, or the Speaker's designee? Again, not an elected person, as you say is so critical and I believe is critical, but a temporary appointee, frankly, who not a single other Member of this body knows who they are. So we not only have an unelected person, we have an unknown person who will convene this body, and who, by the way, could conceivably convene it for their own election to then become the President of the United States under the Succession Act.

You have refused steadfastly to debate this real issue broadly. You had a mock debate in the Committee on the Judiciary in which the distinguished chairman presented my bill without allowing me the courtesy or dignity to defend it myself. And on that, you proudly say you defend democracy. Sir, I think you dissemble in that regard.

Here is the fundamental question for us, my friends, and it is this: The American people are watching television and an announcement comes on and says the Congress has been destroyed in a nuclear attack, the President and Vice President are killed and the Supreme Court is dead and thousands of our citizens in this town are.

What happens next? Under your bill, 45 days of chaos. Apparently, according to the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution chairman, 45 days of marshal law, rule of this country by an unelected President with no checks and balances. Or an alternative, an alternative which says quite simply that the people have entrusted the Representatives they send here to make profound decisions, war, taxation, a host of other things, and those Representatives would have the power under the bill of the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) bill or mine to designate temporary successors, temporary, only until we can have a real election.

The American people, in one scenario, are told we do not know who is going to run the country, we have no Representatives; where in another you will have temporary Representatives carrying your interests to this great body while we deliberate and have real elections. That is the choice.

You are making the wrong choice today if you think you have solved this problem.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my good friend from California (Mr. Rohrabacher). I will always remember that day, as we all will. His point is well taken.

I understand there is good intent behind the bill before us today and the amendment, but it is not enough. It simply is not. It leaves our country vulnerable for 45 days and that is too long.

The distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary made some comments recently that suggested that somehow terrorists would oppose this bill and by some implication would favor the bill the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) and I have put forward because it seems to support their autocratic views of government. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, what our bill would do is tell the terrorists, you could come on a single day and set off a nuclear weapon in this town and kill every single Member of us; and though we would be missed, the very next day the Congress would be up and functioning with every single State, every single district having full representation by statesmen and stateswomen at a time of national crisis.

That is what the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) and I are trying to do. We are trying to tell the terrorists, you can kill all of us as individuals, but you will not defeat this institution. You will not defeat the principle of representation. You will not

defeat the principles of checks and balances. You will not impose martial law.

Here is the irony. If terrorists hit us today when we finally vote on this, let us suppose a few Democrats do not make it over here. You are leaving this country vulnerable to change in power. If the terrorists were to strike your conference retreat where the President speaks to the Republican House and Senate Members and kill hundreds of House and Senate Members on the Republican side, the Democrats at that point claim the majority. The Democrats at that point elect a Speaker of the House. I am a Democrat, for goodness sakes; but that is not the way to leave our country vulnerable.

You are leaving your own party, you are leaving the will of the people through their elections vulnerable. If we have temporary replacements, you immediately reconstitute the House; you immediately ensure representation; you assure that you maintain the balance of political power; and you do it in an orderly, structured way with no chaos, in a way that is constitutionally valid by definition.

What you have proposed is not necessarily constitutionally valid. It leaves the terrorists able to change our system of government. It depends on a fantasy immediate or quick election. It does not allow really qualified people necessarily to get here and act in time. There are so many things you have left undone.

You are going to try to say that at the start of this year we have solved this problem; let us go home.

You have not solved the problem, and it is a doggone disgrace, and it is a danger to this country.

The other day a gentleman testified before the Committee on the Budget and said this: ``The lack of preparation for continuity, for true continuity invites attack.''

You are inviting attack. Not preventing attack.

Mr. Chairman, I offer a preferential motion.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to make two fundamental points before we proceed to vote on this. The two points are these: This resolution does not solve the real problem and it may create more problems than it purports to solve, and we have to understand that.

It does not solve the problem for this reason: By leaving us without a Congress for 45 days, we essentially impose the opportunity for the executive branch to exert marshal law, and that is not what the Framers of this country had in mind.

This bill, if we do not provide some mechanism for prompt replacement other than this bill, will leave this country governed by an unelected executive, a cabinet member most likely who not a single American elected to that office.

Furthermore, it has a host of problems. It does not address the possibility that one delegation will elect its Representatives more promptly than another. They will come to this body, choose one of its members as Speaker. That person could move on to become the President. Then another delegation comes in, et cetera.

You are essentially leaving this country without a House of Representatives, without checks and balances, without separation of powers, for at least 45 days, assuming an election can be held in 45 days and assuming that the terrorists through an anthrax attack, like they subjected this very Capitol to, will not somehow undermine that ability.

This is reality. We have seen the reality here. We saw those airplanes hit the buildings, we saw the anthrax, and yet we are not truly acting to solve this.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to my distinguished friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me make two final points: One, the majority party must understand this: If you are at a Republican Conference retreat and terrorists should strike you and kill the President and Vice President and significant numbers of your side of the aisle, the Democrats under your proposed law will obtain the majority, will elect a Speaker of the House, and that person will then become the President of the United States of America. You are leaving this country vulnerable to that. You must not do it. You must not.

This matter must be taken seriously. It deserves full debate. Whether it is the proposal of the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) and mine or others, we should commit to having this full House seriously consider this. If we do not and we are not fortunate, history will not look kindly upon the jeopardy in which we have left this great Nation.

Vote no on this bill and insist on true debate on true continuity of Congress in a responsible way that protects the balance of power, assures real succession to the presidency, and, most importantly, assures that your constituents will have representation at a time when our Nation may well go to nuclear war, institute a draft, appropriate trillions of dollars, suspend habeas corpus and impose marshal law. You do not want that. But if you stop at this bill, you leave this Nation vulnerable.

Mr. Chairman, if there is no one to speak in opposition, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my preferential motion.

Mr. Speaker, I move to appeal the ruling of the Chair.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday President Bush submitted his $82 billion budget for the Iraq supplemental proposal, yet he did not request in that proposal a single dollar to pay for veterans services.

Tens of thousands of our troops will be returning home this year, and yet the VA system is already greatly unfunded, with long waiting lists for services for soldiers and their families. President Bush's supplemental proposal and his budget have failed our Nation's veterans.

Now, it is the responsibility of this body, of this Congress, to make sure that our returning soldiers and their families get the health care services they deserve.

Today, I have been joined by over 50 colleagues in sending a letter to the President and to members of the Committee on Appropriations requesting that the $82 billion supplemental bill include an additional $1.3 billion to provide for our returning soldiers and their families.

This proposal has been endorsed by the Military Officers Association of America, the National Military Families Association, and the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the right thing. If we can find $80 billion to send to Iraq,

then for goodness sake we can find $1.3 billion to take care of our soldiers and their families.

If we do not do this, what kind of message are we sending to the brave men and women who have served this country? I hope Members on both sides of the aisle will join me in this effort and that the President himself will see fit to support it as well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise for a constitutional point of order.

Mr. Speaker, the resolution we are preparing to consider, the proposed rules for the 109th Congress, in my judgment violates the United States Constitution which we were just sworn to uphold and defend. It does so by allowing a very limited number of Members, potentially only a handful, to constitute the House of Representatives.

Article 1, section 5 of the Constitution states that ``each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its Members, and a majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a small Number adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent Members.''

Unfortunately, H. Res. 5 seeks to allow a small number not just to adjourn or compel attendance, as the Constitution stipulates, but to enact laws, declare war, impeach the President, and fulfill all other article I responsibilities.

The very first act of the very first Congress of the United States was to recess day after day after day because they lacked a quorum. Just moments ago everyone in this body took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and now our first official vote is by rule to undermine a fundamental principle of that Constitution, i.e., what is a quorum. It is my understanding that the Speaker is reluctant to judge on matters of constitutionality. I respect that. But I would reserve and inform the Speaker it is my intent to ask the question of consideration to be put.

Mr. Speaker, consistent with the oath of office that I just took, I would request that the question of consideration be put to the body.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking the distinguished gentleman from Texas and his entire staff for their tireless and diligent efforts on behalf of this body and this Nation. They have done an outstanding job.

Mr. Speaker, here is the bill. I hesitate to lift it. I think it is an OSHA violation. This is it. It became available to us at 12:15 last night. It is less than 12 hours later, and we are going to be voting on this in a very short time. Something is wrong with our democracy.

In 1993, the Republican House minority made these statements: A bill that

cannot survive a 3-day scrutiny of its provisions is a bill that should not be enacted. Proper consideration must be given to important legislation even in the closing days of a session. The world's most powerful legislature cannot in good conscience deprive its memberships of a brief study of a committee report prior to final action.

You have done that. You said it must not be done, and you do it repeatedly.

I have about 30 seconds left. Let me yield that time to any Member on this floor who can in good conscience honestly answer two questions: Have they read this document well enough to have confidence they know what is in it, and can they tell the American people why we must act today instead of waiting 3 days?

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from New York for yielding me this time, and I want to express my profound gratitude on behalf of our citizens because it was the gentleman from New York who first put sales tax deductibility in the Democratic package, and for that our citizens will be eternally grateful. I personally am honored and appreciate his support.

I want to acknowledge the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady) for his leadership and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp) and also the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin). This has truly been a bipartisan effort. On our side of the aisle, Bob Clement, a former Member of Congress, also the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper), have been leaders on this. And in the other body, Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell who coauthored the bill along with Kay Bailey Hutchison.

In essence, the issue here is about tax fairness. If people in States with income taxes can deduct their State taxes from their Federal return, why not allow people in States with sales taxes? I thank the chairman for including this, and I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay). This will save Washington State taxpayers $500 million a year; for an average family that itemizes, $300 to $500 every single year.

It is all about fairness. It will bring valuable dollars to help pay for education, food, health care and other basics. And most importantly of all, I think it will go to the people who most need it. I want to thank again all those who participated in this and look forward to working in the future to make this a permanent extension and permanent restoration of sales tax deductibility.

Mr. Chairman, on Wednesday, September 22, 2004, I was unable to participate in legislative business because I was attending the funeral of a close friend. Had I been present for legislative business on September 22, 2004, I would have voted ``yea'' on final passage of H.R. 5025, the Fiscal Year 2005 Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about a matter that should be important to us all, regardless of political persuasion, and that is, the matter of scientific integrity, which I believe is under profound and dangerous attack under this administration and unfortunately under this Congress.

The great Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once observed that as scientists we have ``a lot of experience with ignorance, doubt and uncertainty. We have found it of paramount importance'' he wrote ``that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty, some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.''

Feynman saw this familiarity with uncertainty, with doubt as an important strength, indeed a responsibility that scientists can offer to the society as a whole. He went on to say, ``If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming `This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!' we will'' in the process ``doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination.'' Feynman asserted, ``It has been done so many times before.''

Feynman was right. It has been done so many times before; and I believe if he were with us today, he would say it is being done yet again. In countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways, this administration and the majorities in the House and the Senate are deliberately and systematically suppressing discussion and criticism and distorting the scientific process. The modalities of

these discussions, or distortions, are manifold; and collectively, they constitute nothing less than a coordinated attack on virtually every stage and every aspect of the science/policy interaction.

Evidence of this attack comes from many sources, including a GAO study which I am holding up here, which I requested along with my ranking member on the Committee on Science, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson). Interestingly and perhaps tellingly, we had asked that a full committee hearing be conducted to study this matter; but we were denied that privilege, leaving us to hold a somewhat symbolic hearing of our own.

Nevertheless, based on testimony from that hearing and numerous other sources, it is apparent to me and others that the assaults on scientific independence and integrity includes all of the following: limitations of the questions that are allowed to be asked; constraints on the methods that are used to seek answers to questions; limits or elimination of funding and resources to pursue certain questions that are not politically correct; biased selections of people who will be allowed to ask questions or serve on scientific panels; active and intentional suppression of findings that are not to official liking; unjustified claims and inflation of studies or results that are approved of by the administration; punishment or ridicule of scientists who disagree with official administration dogma; retribution for political involvement on the part of scientists; disregard of discomfiting scientific evidence; placement of nongovernmental ideologues in charge of international missions to supervise U.S. positions, vis-a-vis, scientific discussion; and creation of a climate in which scientists and policy-makers have begun actually to self- censor or self-select and actually leave government service.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to his nephew: ``Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, He must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.'' Clearly, at least in his private letters, Jefferson was not one to believe in limiting questions, and indeed, if one visits Monticello and sees his love for science, one realizes how important that was to him.

When one considers that Benjamin Franklin was considered one of the greatest scientists of his age and that Madison, Jefferson, and Washington and many of the Founders had a profound interest in science, we realize the importance of that principle to the founding principles of this Nation.

But we must contrast that attitude of the Framers with an administration that removes from a National Cancer Institute Web site fact sheets showing there is no empirical evidence linking abortion to breast cancer. Contrast that attitude of scientific inquiry with suppressing analyses of clean air legislation that will save lives and cut pollution at negligible cost. Contrast the Framers' attitude with initiatives in Congress to cut funding for research relating to sexually transmitted disease prevention. Contrast that attitude with limits to stem cell research. Contrast that attitude of the Framers with the selective appointment or withdrawal of experts on scientific advisory panels. Contrast that attitude with the willful stacking of advisory committees and removal of any voices deemed unfriendly to a predetermined outcome.

Within the scientific community, the effect of the administration's and congressional actions have been chilling and demoralizing. Researchers are practicing self-censorship or leaving government careers entirely.

Let me conclude, if I may, with one final comment of Richard Feynman. He said, ``It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great process which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, knowing of the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.''

We must do that not only as scientists but as Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, we have a lot to do today in the House of Representatives, as we do every day; and we will undoubtedly talk about a number of matters of great importance. But as we do, we should not forget that thousands of miles from here, thousands of families are mourning the loss of their children, their husbands and wives in Russia to a brutal and horrible terrorist attack.

I would ask this House to think about that as we go about our business, to extend our heartfelt sympathies and condolences, and our steadfast determination to assist our friends in stamping out this horrific kind of attack. Whatever the political grievance, whatever the disagreement there can be, there must be no excuse for this sort of barbarity.

Our hearts go out to our friends, and we share in their profound sadness in Russia.

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

My friends, surrounding us here are profiles of the great law givers. There are two Americans up there, Jefferson and Mason. Mason did not sign the Constitution at the Convention. He did not, because it did not have a Bill of Rights in it. Jefferson, on his epitaph, looked at as one of his proudest accomplishments, was the establishment of the clause providing for religious freedom in the State of Virginia.

We have 900 dead Americans in Iraq, thousands more wounded, we have a $600 billion deficit, we have 3 million Americans without jobs, 37 million kids are born in poverty in this country, and we are here today proposing to try to take away one of the three pillars of a three- legged stool that has made our country so strong for so many years.

Do not do this. A three-legged stool cannot stand. A society that does not have a judiciary to protect the rights of the minority will ultimately degenerate, and we must not let that happen.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to extend my gratitude to Congressman Mark

Souder and former Superintendent of Ft. Clatsop Memorial, Don Striker.