Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, in the famous play, ``A Man for All Seasons,'' there is a tremendous scene there where Sir Thomas More looks out and sees Richard Rich, who used to be a supporter of his, who was giving testimony against him. And he notices that he has a medallion on

him designating that he happens to be the new attorney general for Wales.

And, in response, Mr. Thomas More says, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?

Mr. Speaker, for those of us who have worked so hard in the pro-life movement for years and years and years, and who understand the importance of the historic effort made by our former colleague, Mr. Hyde, I beg those who have joined us over these years to understand what they are doing if they sign off on an executive order. An executive order is not law.

The reason we have had to have the Hyde amendment over the years is that the courts have said that there is a statutory mandate to provide abortion unless we say it does not exist. Therefore, an executive order does not take precedence over the law. People should know where they are. Don't be like Richard Rich of Wales.

Mr. Speaker, because of confusion over its legal effect, I ask unanimous consent that the text of President Obama's Executive order referring to abortion funding, that it be considered as a freestanding amendment to the text of H.R. 3590 and we be allowed to vote on it separately.

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, is such unanimous consent request, is it, in fact, in order under the rules of the House?

Mr. Speaker, with respect, may I make a further inquiry, Mr. Speaker?

Would that request, if it were cleared, be considered germane to the bill under consideration?

Mr. Speaker, additional parliamentary inquiry.

When I am informed that it must be cleared, do I understand that to mean it must be cleared by the Speaker or the majority leader?

I thank the Speaker.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the gentleman for the courtesy on this floor. I admire courtesy and civility here. I just wish we had more of it on both sides from time to time, particularly as we are in these contentious days dealing with one of the most important issues of our time--the health care bill.

I would stand in support of all the things that the gentleman from Florida said about this rule making in order these two bills. It is not unusual for us to make in order two bills under a rule, but what I would suggest is that that is somewhat different than what we evidently are going to be asked to do later this weekend. As I understand it from the ranking member on the

Rules Committee, it is contemplated that we will have a rule that will be ``self-executing'' dealing with a substantial portion of the American economy, that is the entire arena of health care. I don't think enough attention has been given to the difference between the appropriate procedure that we are enacting here versus that which is to go forward later this weekend.

I served in this body in the 1980s and then left and came back about 6 years ago. In the intervening time there was an effort, on a bipartisan basis, made by this House and the Senate, with the signature of the President, on a piece of legislation that was called the line- item veto. The line-item veto was a process that was contemplated which would allow the President of the United States to receive an appropriation bill from the Congress and then to look at that appropriation bill and find out and decide whether there were certain items that he thought were not appropriate, there's too much spending in an overall appropriations bill. It would have given the President the right to sign the overall bill, but on the one hand, to take out, X out, line out certain items. And so this provided a constitutional question before the Supreme Court in the case of Clinton v. City of New York, because they had to wait until the President actually exercised the right presumably given to him by the legislation passed by this Congress.

And so the question was: Was that manner in which laws were passed consistent with the requirements of the Constitution? And the Constitution sets out the terms under which we're able to pass laws. Essentially, it says three things must happen: It must pass the House of Representatives; it must pass the United States Senate; and it must be presented--it's called presentment--presented to the President and signed by the President.

Interestingly enough, in the majority opinion written by Justice Stevens--I believe the longest-serving member of the U.S. Supreme Court at the present time--when he investigated it, he said this. He said, The Constitution requires that it be the exact text in all three circumstances. Those are his words. The exact text. He went on to say that if in fact a paragraph were absent from the law that the President signed, meaning the President exercised his line item veto and had taken it out, it would invalidate the constitutional requirement for passage of a law because it would not be the exact text.

So, as I understand it, contrary to the rule that we are debating here today, the contemplated rule to cover the health care bill will say something along the lines of: We incorporate a bill which will be deemed to have passed if we pass the rule; or other language to say: thereby passing. So then you will have the interesting question of whether or not we are acting on--that is, I as an individual Member of Congress representing my constituency--I am voting on the ``exact text'' as was voted on in the Senate, which then goes to the President for signature. And I would argue that if you cannot remove a paragraph from the ``exact text,'' as the Supreme Court told us, in any of the three aspects of the bill, that you cannot add text. And that is, if you have a rule which incorporates the bill, you naturally have other language that goes along with it, particularly if it makes reference to other subject matter.

And so in contrast to the rule we have here, which should be supportable under the circumstances that it does not violate the Constitution in any way, shape, or form, even though it is a little different than when we adopt a rule that permits two bills to come to the floor, in the instance of having a self-executing rule we will then be presenting to the Supreme Court a constitutional issue upon which they have not directly ruled. It is, however, my interpretation of their ruling in Clinton v. City of New York that it is the mirror image of what the court found to be unconstitutional. That is, if the exact text requirement cannot be fulfilled by removing a single paragraph from the text; similarly, if you add language to the text in the vote that is presented to the membership, it would be not the same thing, so that we would be prohibiting the Members of this institution, the House of Representatives, from their constitutional obligation to vote on the exact question presented in the other body so that that same exact question can be presented to the President of the United States for his signature.

Now I understand that some say, Aha, there's another section of the Constitution which says that the House of Representatives and the Senate in their respective bodies shall be the sole arbiter of the rules of their Chambers. And that is true. But it is also true that we cannot, by our rules, do what is otherwise unconstitutional. And so Members should understand that while, unfortunately, when we debate rules often times there's the absence of many of our Members here, because the rules process is considered to be technical, in some ways taken for granted, in other ways nonobjectionable, not rising above the ordinary, with all due respect to the members of the Rules Committee. In the instance of a self-executing rule, so-called, on one of the most controversial issues presented to this Congress, certainly in my years of service here, we cannot blithely dismiss legitimate questions about what our obligation is here. I have said on this floor before, and I continue to say, the Constitution is an inconvenient truth.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be in a meeting with Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia made an interesting point. He said, The essence of a democracy or a democratic republic such as ours is, majority rules. If majority rules, you don't have a democracy. But he said one of the unique things about America is that we have some limitations on majority rule. Those limitations are found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They limit what the majority can do and protect minority rights. But he said, The interesting thing is, those limitations were imposed on the majority by the majority. In other words, it is through the adoption of the Constitution that the majority has limited itself. And he suggested that that should give caution to members of the court to not supersede their legitimate authority by finding new limitations on the majority that were not contemplated by those who adopted the Constitution, and if you need further limitations or protections of minority interests, the way to do that is to amend the Constitution, which is again done by the majority.

Similarly, I would suggest, that those of us who take an oath to uphold the Constitution as representatives of our constituents in this body must follow the dictates of the Constitution and the limitations of the Constitution. In some language in that case that I cited earlier, the 12-year-old case of Clinton v. City of New York, the court talked about how it may or may not be a good public policy that the law that was otherwise found to be unconstitutional, that the fact that it may or may not be good public policy is irrelevant to the question of whether it's constitutional.

So the argument that we have presented to us here most recently in a nationally televised interview by the President of the United States, that whatever vote takes place is going to be on health care and therefore it's okay, and he'll sign it, forgets the inconvenient truth that the Constitution does not permit us to do that, and it does not permit the President to do that. So while a lot of people are talking about the fact we're going to be here over the weekend--and that's extraordinary--I would wish that we would concentrate on the more extraordinary question of whether we are following the Constitution. Because if in fact we circumvent the Constitution by ``allowing'' a bill to become law in which each Member of the House and the Senate did not have the opportunity to vote on the exact language, we are not punishing the Members of Congress; we are punishing our constituents, who have a constitutional right to have laws passed in the way that is articulated in the Constitution, which provides specificity as to how that is done so that the power of the Federal Government will be exercised in the limited sense that was given to it by the people through the Constitution.

And so while I support all of the comments made by the gentleman from Florida with respect to this rule and find this rule to be relatively noncontroversial and to be more of the same, the rule that we are being told of

that we will consider this weekend is not more of the same, is not ordinary, is in fact extraordinary, and I would suggest such an extraordinary stretch that it will be rendered unconstitutional. Why would we follow a procedure that will call into question the very constitutional foundations of the contents of the bill if in fact it is such an important issue? If it in fact is something that needs to be dealt with with such urgency, ought we not to follow the Constitution in each and every aspect and ought we not be guided by the most recent decision of the Supreme Court on a law which we thought was a good law on a bipartisan basis, but which, unfortunately, the Constitution does not allow us to enact.

And I would hope that my colleagues who may not be here on the floor but may have an opportunity to review these remarks will take seriously my concerns. We may very well be preparing to embark on an unconstitutional journey which not only will take the healthy skepticism that our Constitution provides for government--not rejecting government, but we have a healthy skepticism of the power of government that is a part of our constitutional process--but we will turn it from a healthy skepticism to an unfortunately destructive cynicism. And if there is anybody who believes that is good for this country, I would suggest they are wrong.

This is a tough issue that we're going to have to deal with later this weekend. Let us at least do it in a constitutional way, and let us not pass something for the American people that will be called into question in court challenge after court challenge after court challenge and delay the impact or implementation of whatever we believe on a bipartisan basis ought to be the governing law with respect to the health care system.

So with that, I thank the gentleman for his time, and I thank the gentleman for his courtesy.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, once again, we have a bill which has a wonderful name with a wonderful purpose; but it appears that we are forgetting the fact that we're broke. As I understand this bill, this will be a 10 percent increase per year for 5 years for this education program.

I don't know any school district in my district that is going to be able to increase their funding by 10 percent per year for the next 5 years. My State of California, we are broke. I don't know where we're going to get funding. At some point in time, the American people are going to ask us, do you ever connect your responsibilities with fiscal responsibility? And because this is a good idea that we want people to be educated on environmental matters, particularly dealing with the ocean, with the coastline and with watershed, do we just throw out the idea, throw off the table the idea that maybe we ought to be fiscally responsible, or do we ignore it? Similarly, we are probably going to deal with a bill this weekend that throws out the idea that we need to do something to fix some of the problems in our health care system, but apparently we just say, forget the costs.

We also appear to be saying, forget the rules. And we are also apparently saying with respect to that, forget the Constitution. Oh, by the way, the bill that I understand we are going to be presented with later this weekend is entitled this: An act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time home buyers credit in the case of Members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes.

Now, that doesn't sound like the health care bill, does it? And there is a reason for it. Once again, we have forgotten about transparency and, I would say, responsibility, because the Constitution of the United States says that all revenue-raising measures must start with the House of Representatives.

Now, why would the Founding Fathers say that? It is because they realized the tremendous power of reaching into the pocket of an individual citizen

and taking their money by way of taxes for, presumably, good programs. But because that power is so immense, the Founding Fathers believed that that power should reside initially in the House of Representatives because we are to be more responsive to our constituency, by way of going before them once every 2 years for election or reelection, as opposed to the Senate, which only does one-third of their membership and Members have 6 years before they have to go back to their constituency.

So what does that have to do with the bill that I just mentioned? Well, there was this bill dealing with the first-time homebuyers credit, in the case of the Armed Forces, that started in the Ways and Means Committee, passed out of the House, went over to the Senate. And what they did was they took the title of the bill, and--at least I can find nothing left of the bill that came from here over there--they gutted the bill and replaced it with this 2,000-plus-page health care bill.

Technically, they are complying with the Constitution, but they are violating the spirit of the Constitution, which said that revenue- raising bills--and this is a super-revenue-raising bill--should start here.

Now, to compound that, we used to talk about something in the criminal law called compounding a felony. I will call it compounding a political felony. We now are told that that bill that didn't originate in the House as the constitutional Founders thought it should will now come to the House. But we won't really vote on it. We will vote on some other animal called a rule and thereby deem it to be passed.

So think what we are doing to the spirit of the Constitution. We are not starting this humongous bill in the House of Representatives. We have allowed it to be captured in a shell bill that went over to the Senate, and then, the additional indignity to our constituents is they will not have the opportunity for those of us duly elected to vote on the precise question that the Senate voted on.

Now, I heard a lot of talk about transparency. I heard a lot of talk about regaining the trust of the American people and regaining the confidence of the American people in their institutions, a lot of talk about us reestablishing the confidence of the American people in their institutions of government.

I would have to ask, if you were to make this a question for a fifth grade government class or a fifth grade U.S. history class as to whether or not that is the way in which you restore the confidence of the American people in their institutions of government. I suspect I know what the answer would be.

But of course we are not fifth graders. We are presumably adults around here. We have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. And while we might technically get around that requirement by following the letter of the Constitution, wouldn't it be better if we followed the spirit of the Constitution?

And so once again, Madam Speaker, we are presented in this case with a bill that sounds very good for a worthy cause but gives no consideration whatsoever to the ultimate cost to the American taxpayer because, in many cases, they are 2,000 and 3,000 miles away; they are not here. So out of sight, out of mind.

Oh, yes. And let's forget August. It didn't exist. And the people who were here have been described by some on this floor as un-American and not representative of the American people. I would suggest they are representative of the American people, and I would say that we, at some point in time, have to get away from our business as usual and get back to the people's business.

This would be a good place to start. I hope we will have a strong finish on that this weekend when we come to our senses and recognize that the bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, otherwise known as the takeover of medical care in this country, that we should come to our senses and say enough is enough.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, hosanna and hallelujah. We have just heard the solution to all of our problems. It's spelled g-o-v-e-r-n-m-e-n-t, government. What I just heard from the gentleman from Florida is all of our problems will be solved by government. If you have a program, make it larger. If you have three, let's have six. If you have Medicare going broke, let's make it go broke faster. If you have Medicaid going broke, let's make it go broke faster. If you have Social Security, which just this last week now is having to cash in the IOUs because it's in a deficit position on an annual basis, then just make it larger.

The American people are smarter than that. The gentleman talks about the fact that he doesn't know where these American people are that are against this bill. I guess he has amnesia. I guess he wants to join the Speaker in pretending that August didn't exist. Those town halls were made up of cut-out figures. They weren't real people. The folks that are calling our offices are not real people. The 1,000 emails I got in 2 days this week in which 59 of them were in favor of the bill and everybody else against, I guess they don't count.

This is funny since we happen to be representing the people in the people's House, supposedly, although it's hard to tell if we're going to do the Slaughter rule which suggests that we won't even have an opportunity to truly vote on it.

And by the way, the Constitution says that we are supposed to initiate revenue-raising bills, not the Senate. So they took a bill in the House, kept the label on it, took everything out, every single word of content, and put a whole new bill in, and sent it back to us. That is called bait and switch if you're someone in the private sector.

The American people are asking for more. So it is interesting to hear much of the histrionics on the floor. But the fact of the matter is every single national poll shows the American people don't want this bill.

Now, the canard that we are hearing is therefore you don't want to cover 32

million people. Untrue. We have a better plan. We have a plan that doesn't go to Big Government. It goes to Big Competition. It goes to the individual rather than the government. I am not one who hates government; but I do believe this, when government gets inordinately larger, the individual gets smaller. That is not the essence of America established in our Constitution.

Now, some people want to just throw that out and say, government is the answer, government is always better, so we can combine the worst parts of our health care system with the worst parts of the post office, with the worst parts of the Internal Revenue Service, and we will get what? The bill that we are going to not have a chance to vote on except sort of vote on it. But we all know what it means.

I thank the gentlelady for the time.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the resolution establishing Women's History Month. I do this on behalf of my 92-year-old mother, my four sisters, my two daughters, my three granddaughters, and in memory of my grandmother, who graduated from a small Nebraska college in 1898. And I also do this in honor of some great women in my life, the Catholic nuns who taught me, who taught my brothers and sisters, who taught my children, and who this day are doing an unlimited number of acts of mercy around this country.

On their behalf, I would like to clarify the record because the Speaker has said today that the religious communities of nuns across the country support the health care bill as a life-affirming bill, and therefore, do not agree with the Catholic Bishops Conference that, in fact, it fails the test of protecting life in the consensus that has been established on this floor for the last 30-plus years.

A statement from Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: ``A recent letter from Network, a social justice lobby of sisters, grossly overstated whom they represent in a letter to Congress that was also released to media. Network's letter, about health care reform, was signed by a few dozen people, and despite what Network said, they do not come anywhere near representing 59,000 American sisters. This letter had 55 signatories, some individuals, some groups of three to five persons. One endorser signed twice. There are 793 religious communities in the United States. The math is clear. Network is far off the mark,'' says sister Mary Ann Walsh.

On behalf those great nuns that I've had the privilege of being influenced by during my lifetime and those that have done considerable amounts of mercy in communities that I represent, the record ought to be straight. My wife and I had the privilege of knowing the Carmelite nuns in Georgetown, California, and we have had the privilege on an almost annual basis to visit with them. They are more than just a handful of individuals, and they and others like them stand for life unequivocally. They understand the protection of life. They understand that for the last 30-some years, we have had a consensus on this floor in the Senate and in legislation passed by a number of Presidents and, that is, Federal funding of abortion is to be limited. The language in the Senate bill changes the law. Let the record be correct.

Mr. Speaker, it occurs to me that one of the strangest things that happens on this floor is when you bring the gavel down and say, The time has expired, and then people keep on talking and then turn to you and they say, I yield back the balance of my time. That is sort of a metaphor for the problem here in Congress. When we announce a tax cut, we say we are giving something back to you as if we had the call on your money in the first instance.

It's just one of the fictions we deal with, such as the fiction that this bill isn't going to cost us any money, or the fiction that the American people don't know what's in the bill, or the fiction that the American people will love it once we pass it.

Let's remember August. It did occur. It's something that is a manifestation of the American people and how they feel. Let's not ignore the American people. Let's be the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, when you practice law, there is an old expression that goes something like this: If you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have the law, argue the law; if you have neither, attack your opponent. That appears to be what's happening.

There are those of us who have argued that the process that we are engaged in--that is that we will not vote on the Senate bill but we will kind of vote on the Senate bill; we will deem it passed--is unconstitutional. And in response to that, the Speaker of the House has said this: I think it's ridiculous and the people who are telling you it's unconstitutional know better, and you should be very outraged that people who know better would say things like that. They know when they talk they're not telling the truth.

I resent being called a liar by the Speaker of the House. I resent the fact because there are constitutional scholars who have said this is unconstitutional.

Now, I have only argued one case before the Supreme Court--which I won on behalf of the People of the State of California--so I am not considered one of the great practitioners before the Supreme Court, but we have spoken to one of them who will work with us in bringing this case to the Supreme Court if we try this outrage against the American people.

Let's stick to the facts, stick to the law, and stop attacking people personally.

Madam Speaker, oftentimes on this floor this document becomes the inconvenient truth. It's called the Constitution of the United States. It tells us what we can and what we cannot do.

Not too many years ago, the House of Representatives and the United States Senate decided they would pass something called the line item veto. Sounded like a great idea. The only problem? It's unconstitutional.

The court at that time said the Constitution makes it very clear. The House has to pass a certain text, the Senate has to pass the exact same text, the President has to review it and then sign the same text.

You can't deem a law to be a law. The dictionary is over here. Deem doesn't mean it is. It means that it's not. It may be close. We'll pretend it is. That's not what the Constitution says.

The court has told us it has to be the exact text. If you change one paragraph, it is unconstitutional. They want us to adopt a rule that includes the bill but a lot of other language. It's not the same text. It's unconstitutional.

The inconvenient truth is we have to follow the law, and this is the supreme law of the land.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I actually came down because I was listening to the debate and I wondered whether there would be room for someone who spoke with the absence of an accent on this floor.

I appreciate that. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I would just say that there is a fundamental proposition that is before the House that is often forgotten in the discussion of the procedure, as strange as the procedure might be for consideration of this bill, and that is, if this bill were to be brought to the floor, the Senate version, or the House version that already passed, and it were ultimately to be signed by the President, it is my understanding that for the first time in the history of the United States we will condition your legal status in the United States, that is, your ability to remain a legal citizen in good standing in the United States, on the mandated purchase of a product provided by a private entity, but as determined by parameters established by the Federal Government.

Is that the gentleman's understanding as well?

It is sometimes easily called an individual mandate, but no one really talks too much about that, where we have the authority to mandate your continued legal presence in the United States. There has been a lot of debate, some even engendered by comments during the President's speech before a joint session, on whether or not people who are here illegally will be covered by all of the government health programs that will be established by law. In fact, that has been at least a matter of contention, whether or not the language contained in the versions would have any meaningful limitation on the provision of health care to people who are in this country illegally. The gentleman is aware of that debate.

But here we have a situation where those who are born in the United States would be rendered an illegal status if, in fact, they did not purchase a product mandated by the Federal Government. Of course, in the House provision, that mandate is enforced by way of criminal sanction, first by way of a fine, and then failure to pay the fine could bring one a criminal sanction.

In fact, in one way, they are attempting to get around this question of whether or not the Federal Government has the authority to mandate this. They have introduced it by way of a section of the Internal Revenue Code. We know that if one commits fraud in terms of not paying a tax, and they are trying to qualify the definition of the fine as a tax, that you can go to prison for committing fraud on the government in your failure to pay the tax. So it is not a reach, as some have suggested, that the penalty would be, in fact, a criminal penalty, which includes incarceration for failure to follow this mandate.

Is that the gentleman's understanding as well? I know the gentleman is a former judge of the State of Texas.

In other words, an expedited consideration of the legal matters up to the Supreme Court, which we have done on other legislation in the past.

Here is my concern. There are those who say these bills are justified under the expansive reading of the commerce clause, and it is true in the past the Supreme Court has found a rather expansive view of the commerce clause. But if one suggests that one's own health and the decision on how one provides for one's own health is, in fact, a part of interstate commerce, which then grants the authority to the Federal Government to act, then the question I would ask is: What is left that is not covered by Federal authority? What part of your life is not covered by the Federal authority?

In other words, if we can do this for the purpose, admittedly a good purpose, of ensuring that people have health care in this country, but if we can extend the reach of the Federal Government in this way, would it be out of the realm of possibility that one could argue it would be constitutional for the Federal Government to say, in light of the impact of obesity on certain health conditions, and in light of the fact that when one develops those health conditions one has a call on medical care in this country, and that impacts all of us, because that is the argument that is being made, would it not then be logical that we, on the Federal level, could mandate that you must belong to a federally approved fitness program? Is that so much of a reach?

Wouldn't that be less of an interference in one's life than to mandate precisely how one has to prepare for one's own health and pay for one's own health, and then dictate exactly what coverage one might have, even though you might not want to have that particular coverage?

So I think it goes beyond just the health care question. It goes to the question--and I have had this discussion in my town hall meetings as recently as this last Monday, where I had 250 people in Rancho Cordova. It goes to the question of what is the proper relationship between the individual and their Federal Government, and the greatness of our Founding Fathers was to say that would be a limited relationship; that is, the Federal Government's call on us, because we recognize that government did not extend rights to us. Those rights were God-given rights. And we the people--those are the words that are found in the Constitution. We the people formed a United States of America, but we decided what authority we would give that government, and they should not go beyond that.

I think the gentleman from Georgia made a point about a summary of a summary being larger than the original summary, and we're talking about a 2,000-page bill at least in both the House and the Senate, which will then spawn thousands, tens of thousands, of pages of regulations which will then be interpreted by thousands of people employed by the Federal Government, which will then finally get to

you and your doctor. And I think that is one of the problems that we have.

I would just cite the Speaker of the House who recently said in a press conference: We must pass the bill so we can find out what is in it. Now, I don't make that stuff up. It almost sounds like a comedy routine from ``Saturday Night Live.'' But that was essentially the statement: We must pass the bill to find out what was in it.

I used to think that good legislation was you knew what was in it before you voted on it, and if you had problems with it, you didn't vote on it until you fixed the problems, and you didn't say, well, we know we have problems in the bill, but we are going to reconcile those problems later on. And particularly when ``reconcile'' is a special term of art in the United States Senate, and it allows you to fix some things but not others, and those that you cannot fix in the arcane notion of the reconciliation process in the Senate, you will then have to take to the floor of the House, and that will be then subject to the possibility of filibuster, which means essentially you will have to get 60 votes to pass it.

So I would ask the gentleman on an issue that is of immense importance to the American people, as they have expressed at town hall meetings, in polling and everything else, there has been a 30-plus-year consensus in this Congress and in this country about the limits of Federal funding for the procedure called abortion. That law, that line of laws, has been encapsulated in what was known as the Stupak amendment in the House of Representatives.

We know that the Stupak amendment is not in the Senate bill. There is another provision which Mr. Stupak and others have said is insufficient to maintain the current law, therefore meaning that it will establish a new law allowing Federal funding of abortions for procedures that have not been allowed that is paid for by the taxpayers for over 30 years.

Is the gentleman aware of whether the history of the voting pattern in the Senate would lead one to conclude that there are 60 votes for the Stupak amendment in the Senate?

If you have an animal control officer come to your house and say that your dog or cat hasn't been neutered or spayed, and you say, well, wait a second, I'm going to let my dog or cat out for the next month, but I will get him fixed, do you think the animal control officer would trust you?

Is the gentleman aware of whether or not the language that articulates the Stupak amendment or the language that would articulate something close to the Stupak amendment would be allowed under the tight controls of reconciliation?

In other words, if one were to preserve the Stupak amendment, it would be to take the House bill over to the Senate, have the Senate accept the House bill, and then perhaps try and reconcile it later on if you were going to preserve the intent of the Stupak amendment and thereby preserve 30 years or 35 years of the consensus of this Congress and the consensus of the courts and the consensus of the American people.

If I might ask the gentleman to yield again, the point we're making is this has nothing to do with Roe v. Wade. This has nothing to do with a woman's right to choose. It has to do with the question of whether Federal taxpayers are required to pay for the procedures, and there has been a consensus in this country with a limitation on federally funded abortions except for the life of the mother, rape and incest. There have been those kinds of limitations on that. And this changes that, changes the consensus that has existed for 30-some years.

Again, if you wanted to protect that consensus that was repeated on this floor in the nature of the Stupak amendment, you would take that up in the Senate and you would pass that. Now, why are they not doing it? We hear they are not doing it because they couldn't pass it in the Senate.

So we are supposed to believe that if they can't pass the Stupak amendment in the Senate, we should pass the Senate bill here because then there is a promise that they will pass a virtual Stupak amendment with a requirement of 60 votes.

So people should understand the conundrum we are in, not of our own making, but precisely because of the bill that was brought to this floor and the bill that was brought to the Senate. And those are basically the two options that are out there. And the question is, How can you get a majority vote in either body while finessing that issue?

I would suggest you cannot do that if, in fact, that issue is as important to people as they stated it was during the consideration of the bill both in the House and the Senate.

And of course that goes far beyond the question we had before, which is, What about the constitutionality of the underlying principle that we will now mandate that you must purchase a product, in this case, a health care policy, or if you do not, you will find yourself in illegal status in the United States? We are not talking about you having entered the United States illegally. We are not talking about you having overstayed your visa. We are not talking about you committing some fraud on the United States to come here.

We are talking about you already being an American citizen, someone with legal status in the United States, and now you are going to be rendered illegal because you will not purchase a product imposed by the Federal Government for the first time in our Nation's history.

I think a very, very basic question is this. There is a notion of healthy skepticism within our government and our view of government. We grow up with that. That is part and parcel of the Constitution. But if you move from healthy skepticism to destructive, not skepticism, but cynicism, then you have really ruptured the relationship between the American people and their government.

And if we were to ignore the voices of the American people as they have been articulated in town hall after town hall after town hall throughout this country, not just in August--I had my last town hall meeting this Monday; 250 people in one of my communities, overwhelming opposition not to some changes in health care--they are not arguing for the status quo--they are arguing against these two visions of health care reform. And they ask me, they beg me to bring a message here from them directly: scrap what you're doing, start over, give us the right medicine, not the wrong medicine.

I thank the gentlewoman.

Madam Speaker, I join the chairman and ranking member of the committee in opposing this resolution.

Sometimes in public debate, we ask the wrong question or we place ourselves in the wrong context. I am reminded of a headline that I saw not too long ago on a domestic issue. The headline read simply: ``Prison Population Increases Despite Drop in Crime.'' For those of us involved in the criminal justice system, we thought maybe it never dawned on the writer that the crime rate was dropping precisely because we were putting the bad guys in prison.

Similarly today, this resolution sets an arbitrary deadline for troops to leave Afghanistan, and it is a terribly misguided reading of the facts we face today. Our troops are succeeding. No one questions that. Our allies are helping us. Why then would we handicap them today with such a terrible message from our Congress? The message is, despite what you are doing on the ground, despite your successes, we are going to pull you out with an arbitrary date. What could be more demoralizing? What could be more wrong?

Madam Speaker, this resolution, unfortunately, is the wrong question. It sends the wrong message. It is being sent at precisely the wrong time.

I hope that we have a strong vote against this resolution so that our troops will have an unquestioned message of support from us that we recognize what they are doing, that we follow what they are doing, that we support what they are doing, and that we rejoice in their victorious work today and in the days ahead.

I am sorry, I had to come over here and just respond to what was said by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

You said, in the previous administration, anything goes. Read the memo that just came out of the Justice Department. Look at the actions of the Justice Department. They suggest that anything did not go. To say that now is to besmirch the reputations of good men and women who have worked both career and political to save us from the threat of terrorists since 9/11. To come here and to say ``anything goes'' is a continuation of besmirching the reputations of good men and women. Frankly, it ought not to stand. Look at the facts. Look at the recent memo that reviewed those analyses. You will see that is not the case.

If the gentleman would look at the memo that just came out which reviews the legal analysis provided by the Justice Department in terms of waterboarding, you would see that there is not only a historic but a legal and substantial difference between the waterboarding referenced in the complaints versus that which we did.

I would be happy to respond if the gentleman would allow me to.

There is no difference in the application--the numbers, yes.

The fact of the matter is, after that individual was waterboarded multiple times, we received actionable information from the intelligence community, which allowed us to stop plots that were aimed at killing Americans. That has been said under oath by the highest levels of the intelligence community in the United States.

The facts are difficult.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman asked: Why?

Well, you know, it's not just in my backyard. I don't want them in any American's backyard. Guess what? The American people agree with me.

That's why Mr. King and I went before your committee, to ask permission if we could possibly debate this issue on the floor. Everything you just said is part of a debate that could take place, and we could resolve it, but the Rules Committee decided, in their infinite wisdom, not to allow us to debate that on the floor.

Mr. King's and my amendment did one simple thing. It said that those who are currently in or in the future

will be in Guantanamo Bay will not be transferred to U.S. sovereign territory for any trials. That is, they will stay at Guantanamo with the specially created courtroom that we have there--absolutely secure-- under the Military Tribunal Act, which we, the Congress, passed in 2005.

I mean that's the answer to your question, but it must seem strange to the American people that the majority would be afraid, seemingly, to allow us to debate that with real consequence. You can allow us to debate that in the rule, knowing it has no consequence. The real consequence would be if we had an opportunity for the American people to actually be heard by way of legislation.

It is interesting that you did make in order the manager's amendment, which will give newly established rights, by way of penalty, to our members of the intelligence community if they would dare deprive one of these individuals of sleep or if they would isolate them for too long a period of time--neither one of them defined in the statute.

So what we have done is we have said we will continue to ignore the American people who have said loudly and clearly, We do not want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates to come to New York. We do not want those in Guantanamo to come to the United States.

I find it strange that the gentleman from Florida would compare H. Rap Brown to a terrorist involved in a terrorist network. He doesn't understand--I know he does understand. I'm sure it was a rhetorical device the gentleman was using--the difference between someone who is an American citizen and the rights that he has versus someone who happens to be a noncitizen--in fact, an unlawful enemy combatant. There is a distinction that has always been known in our courts, and the idea that we are going to extend the full parity of constitutional rights to someone whose only connection with the United States is that that person was captured on the battlefield, attempting to kill Americans, is inconsistent with the history of this Nation and is inconsistent with all of the decisions of the Supreme Court.

So we have right now, taking place across the street from the White House, a summit on health care. We should be having a summit today on the intelligence community, in our effort against those who would wish to destroy us by terrorism. The way we act suggests to the American people this is not on the top of our priority list but on the bottom.

Later, we are going to have the rule on the PATRIOT Act. Why? Because, within a couple of days, three provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire.

Monday, we rushed in here. We had an extra day of voting. What did we do? We worked to rid the country of the scourge of unnamed post offices. We were here to make sure that--man, we've got to find some more post offices to name.

Why couldn't we give additional time to allow amendments that are serious in nature and that the American people want us to deal with on this floor? But no. Once again, the Rules Committee has said we are not going to allow it, but we are going to incorporate in the manager's amendment an amendment which actually provides greater rights to those who are being held and put at jeopardy our intelligence community.

I thank the gentleman for the generous provision of time.

Mr. Speaker, when we were reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act in 2005, or extending it, I authored in committee the sunset provisions that subjected these three provisions of the PATRIOT Act to further consideration by the House. That sunset was up last year. And so, rather than seriously consider it and thoughtfully proceed as to whether it ought to be permanent or not, we kicked the can down the road by extending it a year. And then we came just before Christmas up against it, once again, and we extended it for 2 months. And now, here we are, 3 days before the expiration of these provisions, and we are going to have a temporary extension, a year, not 2 months, but just a year.

I would hope that we would consider an issue such as this as an important primary issue. It's almost as an afterthought. Just before we leave for Christmas, we extend it for 2 months. Now, we're within 3 days of it expiring, we extend it for a year. Forgive me, but it almost sounds like we're treating it like a burp after a big meal, something we're kind of embarrassed about, something that happened, sort of involuntarily, as if we don't have control of this.

I've said on this floor before that we're certainly making sure that no post office in America goes unnamed or un-renamed. But at the same time, we deal with this issue, which is crucially important.

Our Judiciary Committee considered the reauthorization of these provisions; and we reauthorized, by our bill, the business records section. We reauthorized the roving wiretap provision, although we made some changes in that from current law, which I did not support, but nonetheless, that was it. But we failed to extend the lone wolf provision. And let me tell you the thinking on that.

The argument was, we didn't need the lone wolf provision because it had never been used. What's the lone wolf provision? It allows us to apply the intelligence-gathering authorities that we have in the overall law to individuals that we cannot, at that point in time, determine are actually involved with a foreign country, that is, associated with a foreign country, or with a known terrorist organization. And so they said it had never come up before. So we failed to vote it out of Judiciary Committee. That was in the morning, about 12:30, just after noon.

What happened later that day? The massacre at Fort Hood. A lone wolf. Now, admittedly not someone who would be under the PATRIOT Act because he's an American citizen, but my point is, we have to be concerned about lone wolves.

And what about Mr. Abdulmutallab?

If we had had information and been able to connect some of the dots early on, we would have not been able to prove initially that he was necessarily associated with any other group, maybe inspired by another group. He would actually come under the definition of a lone wolf.

And yet the Judiciary Committee said, well, we're going to deprive our intelligence community of the powers under the law for those who are lone wolves.

That's why I say this needs full and vigorous debate. We need to consider the essence of these provisions, and we need to determine whether we believe it needs more than an extension of a single year. Does anybody on this floor truly believe that al Qaeda will give up in a year? Does anybody believe that those who are out there with the idea that they want to do harm to the United States, utilizing terror inspired by al Qaeda or others, are going to quit after this year? I would hope they would. I would hope we would defeat

each and every one of them before the year's out. But that's unrealistic. Let's understand.

So, why we're bringing this to the floor with only a single-year provision is beyond me. If we take seriously our obligation to provide for the common defense, in this environment of a nonconventional war, asymmetric, as they like to say, undefined, compared to previous conflicts, where the enemy does not seek territorial advancement, but seeks the destruction of who we are and what we are, our institutions, and how we, in fact, act.

This is a different world. I've said on this floor before and I'll say it again, al Qaeda doesn't hate us and attack us because of Guantanamo. Al Qaeda hates us and attacks us because of the Statue of Liberty and everything it represents.

And so I would hope that at some point in time we would come to this floor and have a serious, full-throated debate on these three provisions of the PATRIOT Act as to whether they ought to be extended as a matter of permanent law or at least as a reasonable period of time--5 years, 10 years, not single year--and not treated as an accident of legislative action.

So I rise in support of the bill and the rule that allows the bill but in great disappointment that we are not doing all we could do to advance the cause of freedom and protection of the American people. This is better than nothing, but it's not good enough.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, it is probably the highest honor of my life is to serve in this House, and as a part of that to serve on the Judiciary Committee. I have great respect for the members of that committee and the work that we do. But in some ways, I would echo the comments of the gentleman from New York, although I would not agree with his conclusions, of the disappointment that this primary obligation of the Judiciary Committee, that is to deal with legislation that goes to the common defense of this Nation, would be viewed in the legislative agenda as an afterthought.

I am the author of the sunset provisions from the 2005 extension of the PATRIOT Act. I put those sunset provisions in, or I offered them and got the support of Members on both sides of the aisle precisely because I understood there was some controversy about those three, and that there was a need for us to take a serious look at it.

Unfortunately, while we have established other priorities in this Congress, in this House, it does not appear that the PATRIOT Act has been one of them. Because if it were otherwise, we would be spending hours, if not days, on this floor talking about the implications of the PATRIOT Act. And in the context of that debate, I am absolutely assured that the vast majority of this House would support the continuation of these provisions, as is the conclusion of this administration.

These three provisions provide tools for our intelligence community to not only connect the dots, but gather the dots. There seems to be a misunderstanding at times that if we were to take some of these provisions and establish a higher degree of proof, or a higher degree of suspicion that somehow that would make these tools more available. That I believe is a misunderstanding of some of these tools. These tools allow to us start the search. You don't know if someone is involved with a terrorist group under some circumstances.

Someone like Abdulmutallab, having his father come to the embassy and just report his suspicions about his son would not be sufficient for us to believe that he was necessarily allied with some terrorist group. In fact, you would believe that by the terms of the lone wolf provision, he would be right squarely in the middle of that provision. And yet what did our committee do? Our committee decided that because it had not been used before, we should reject it. Well, you know, we were never hit by airplanes with unbelievable amounts of fuel and human beings into towers in New York until it happened. Now, the argument that, well, it never happened before so we shouldn't have been prepared for it doesn't ring true.

And so while I believe that we did take a look at these three provisions in our committee, I was extremely disappointed by the resolution of that review. And we could, it seems to me, if we had this as a priority, bring this bill to the floor, look at it and say if it is important enough for us to have these tools against al Qaeda and similarly situated terrorist groups and individuals, then maybe we ought to extend it for more than a year. Does anybody on this floor, does anybody within the reach of my voice believe that al Qaeda is going to stop 1 year from the 28th of this month?

Maybe we have a new 72-hour rule. We have been talking about a 72- hour rule meaning we should have bills on the floor for 72 hours. Here we have the fact that we wait until we are within 72 hours of the expiration of key parts of the law which allow us to protect ourselves against terrorists before we act. The American people must be scratching their heads and saying, This is the leadership we look for? These are the people who take an oath to the Constitution and to give us the ability to defend ourselves against enemies?

Mr. Speaker, I guess I would say as proud as I am of my service on the Judiciary Committee, I am profoundly disappointed that this bill is being brought forward with just a single year, within a 72-hour space, and we still have not had an examination on this floor of the seriousness of the profound protections of civil liberties contained in these provisions of the law. This is in fact a good law. These are good provisions of that law being utilized by our intelligence community.

I thank the gentleman for the additional time.

So these are individual parts of a law that has served us well. Ironic it is that on the very day that our committee considered the lone wolf provision and decided because it had not been used before we should withdraw it, we had the terrible I won't call it a tragedy, I will call it a terrible terrorist attack at Fort Hood. Within hours of us rejecting the notion that we needed a lone wolf provision, we had a domestic lone wolf. Now, of course the PATRIOT Act does not apply to someone who is an American citizen. But my point is had we had such an attack before that attack took place, doesn't it seem a little nonsensical to say because it hadn't happened before we ought not to have some tools at our disposal which would help us fight it?

Let me just underscore again, these provisions in the law allow our intelligence community to collect the dots. The 9/11 Commission criticized our government for a failure to connect the dots. You need to first have the dots. You need to first have the information. And that is what these tools allow us to provide to our intelligence community so that they can analyze those things.

So Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly support this legislation because it is a mere 1-year extension. It deprives us of the debate that should be front and center of this representative body. If we truly believe our first obligation is to protect the people we represent, we must provide for the common defense. The PATRIOT Act does this. These provisions do this. We should act on this with full knowledge, full debate, and full confidence in our intelligence communities that we can move forward and protect the American people.