Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 905, which recognizes the 70th anniversary of the retirement of Justice Louis Brandeis from the U.S. Supreme Court. There is no doubt he was a brilliant man, and he believed the law was best served as a vehicle to correct injustices, rather than a gateway to make money.

Justice Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1856, the son of Jewish immigrants from Prague, now in the Czech Republic. He excelled in the public schools of his hometown and later studied in Germany. He grew up in a refined and engaged household in which history, politics, and culture were discussed regularly at the dinner table. I might add that one of his early influences was his uncle, Lewis Dembitz, who I'm proud to note attended the Republican Party Convention in 1860 that nominated Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.

He enrolled in Harvard Law School at age 19, studied so hard that his eyesight failed. Rather than quit school, he paid fellow students to read his textbooks out loud so he could memorize their content. He graduated with the highest grade point average in the history of Harvard Law School at that time. He was best known for his work as a lawyer and justice, and while he eventually earned good money practicing law, he devoted most of his professional life to public causes.

He argued cases and wrote treatises on privacy, labor relations and antitrust matters, and he assisted the Wilson administration in crafting the Federal Reserve Act and the Federal Trade Commission. He served on the Supreme Court for 23 years and issued seminal opinions on many of the subjects that consumed him as a lawyer.

And yes, he did believe in States being the laboratories of democracy. I enjoyed the gentleman's comments of reference to my home State of California and, I might say, rather than choose the subject he chose as an example of California being one of those laboratories, I would suggest Proposition 13, or perhaps three strikes and you're out, as guiding lights to the rest of the Nation as to how we ought to organize ourselves. Unfortunately, my home State has forgotten some of those messages in the recent past.

Mr. Speaker, Justice Brandeis was not without his critics, but this is not the time nor the place to air old grievances. Rather, we're here to honor a man, and so I would use somebody else as a reference point, William O. Douglas, who described Justice Brandeis as being ``dangerous because he was incorruptible.''

I urge the Members to support H. Res. 905.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

It is interesting that we have heard of Justice Brandeis' commitment to the First Amendment. One can only wonder what he would think of the current state of interpretation of the First Amendment where, unfortunately, it appears that we give greater protection to nude dancing than we do to political speech.

One would hope that the Supreme Court, as we anticipate its decision in the most recent challenge to aspects of McCain-Feingold, might listen to some of the interpretations and wisdom of Louis Brandeis with respect to the essence of the First Amendment.

One would hope that we would, once again, regain the notion that protection of political speech is at the forefront of the First Amendment, not an afterthought to the First Amendment, and that when we have gone so far as to have someone representing the Solicitor General of the United States, responding to a question in the Supreme Court, saying in response to the question, So, the law would give you the right to ban books if they said what is contained in the script of the movie that the FEC believes it has the right to stop during the period of time before an election, the response from the representative of the executive branch was, yes. If we have come so far that banning books is seen as something allowed under the First Amendment because of the pursuit of purity in political campaigns, then we have lost sight of the First Amendment as understood and expressed by Louis Brandeis.

And so I would hope that as we look forward to the end of this year that we could look forward to a Supreme Court that comes to its senses and understands the essence of the First Amendment.

Once again, I would urge my colleagues to unanimously support this recognition on the 70th anniversary of the retirement from the Supreme Court of Louis Brandeis.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

H.R. 4194, the Law Student Clinic Participation Act of 2009, makes a simple yet important change to Federal law so as to increase law students' access to clinics and other law school programs.

Nearly 44,000 law students nationwide will graduate this year from more than 200 law schools across this country. During their time in school, each of these students will study property, criminal, constitutional, and contract law, just to name a few. And these classes not only instruct the students on the relevant case law or statutes but also attempt to teach them how to think like a lawyer; that is, to analyze cases from a lawyer's perspective.

As important as that is, equally important are the clinical programs offered by virtually every law school in the country that teach students how to practice law. Clinical programs include prosecution and defense, appellate advocacy, including death penalty appeals projects, juvenile justice, and even tax assistance clinics. Yet, a little-known provision in Federal criminal law--Federal criminal law; that is, it makes is a crime--prevents certain law students from participating in these clinics. In other words, they would be subject to criminal penalties if they participated in these clinics. That is because section 205 of title 18 prescribes criminal penalties for government employees who provide outside legal assistance in a case against the United States or adverse to a substantial U.S. interest. Therefore, law school students, or even staff, who are also employed by the Federal Government, full time or part time, may be barred from participating in these valuable clinical programs.

The impact of this provision is perhaps no greater than right here in our Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, which is the home to over half a dozen law schools. It comes as no surprise that many of these schools' students are also Federal Government employees. Some of the schools have night programs, so the students work full time during the day and take classes at night. Many times they do work for the Federal Government or the D.C. Government, but because of their employment, they are, therefore, disqualified from participating in these extremely beneficial programs. This was most certainly not Congress' intent when it enacted section 205.

H.R. 4194, remedies this problem by extending an existing exemption within the statute to include Federal employee law students. The bill, therefore, appropriately allows students and staff to participate in clinics, including those that are adverse to the Federal or D.C. Governments; however--and this is important--the bill continues to prohibit any actual conflict of interest involving specific parties. Therefore, if the student or staff member is involved in a matter which would be a direct conflict of interest, they are not covered by this waiver. It would seem that this is a commonsense solution to provide those students employed by the government the same opportunities as other students.

I might say, Mr. Speaker, when this came to my attention, I thought that perhaps we could have a relatively simple, straightforward waiver or exemption to take care of this problem, which was unanticipated by the Congress when it passed the relevant law, and, therefore, I would urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill.

And if the gentleman from Tennessee has no other speakers, I would yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to announce that Marc Wirtz, an intern in my office, proposed to his girlfriend of 4 years, Amanda Haslam, at the top of our Nation's Capitol at sunset. I am pleased to congratulate the new couple and wish them the very best in their future together.

Madam Chair, this is a prime example of good intentions resulting in bad policy.

My area is one of the areas hit as badly as any with respect to foreclosures. We have not cleared the market yet. We are in deep, deep shape. The last thing we need is to increase the level of uncertainty within the mortgage market, and that's what it does. It may be limited by its terms, but if we do it now, we can do it again.

Some people ask, Why would we not allow cramdown for residential housing?

Looking at this with a case in previous years, Supreme Court Justice Stevens said, The favorable treatment of residential mortgages was intended to encourage the flow of capital into the home lending market.

That is why this exists in the bankruptcy code today, precisely because it allows more people access to purchasing homes, and premiums are not as high as they otherwise would be precisely because you cannot allow cramdown in bankruptcy proceedings now. That's the sole substance of the reason we have this.

We are going to reverse this as a matter of public policy. It is going to create greater uncertainty and thereby increase the premiums in the future for everybody else, and it will deny access to the housing market for those we seek to help.

Mr. Speaker, earlier the majority leader, in his dialogue with the Republican whip, stated that perhaps the reason that Republicans were relieved of their responsibility of being the majority in the House of Representatives was because of the substance of legislation considered at that time, rather than procedure.

Well, I am not going to quarrel with the majority leader, but I would like to change our debate from the past to the present and the future. I would like to examine some common themes that are running through the substance of the legislation that has been presented on this floor during this year.

I might say that my desire to have this hour today was prompted by a discussion I had with a member of my constituency, a woman living in my district, who came up to me at my last town hall meeting. As we were wrapping up the meeting and after I had spoken with a number of individual constituents, I was starting to leave the room when this woman, somewhat older than I, came up to me, and she had tears in her eyes and she literally began to tremble as she began to speak to me. What was noticeable immediately was that she spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent.

She explained to me that decades ago she had had the opportunity to escape from a communist country and come to this country for the freedom that it allowed her. She said, with tears in her eyes, Mr. Congressman, please help us stop what's happened. She said, I fear that we are losing our freedom here in the United States and that my children and my grandchildren will not have the same freedoms that I came to this country for. She also said that she had recently visited friends in Europe, and she said, Mr. Congressman, they are laughing at us. They are seeing us give away our freedoms in this country. Please don't allow that to happen.

I thought that it might be important for us to, on this occasion, pause for a moment and think about what that means. What do we mean when we talk about freedom in this country? What was this concept of freedom or liberty? How was it understood by our Founding Fathers? Well, the best way to try and figure that out, I would suggest, is to go to what we call our founding documents, the primary of which is the Declaration of Independence.

In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence it says these words, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.

Words that many of us have read as we have studied them in school, perhaps not studied them enough. These words are not that difficult to understand. Their meanings are not that difficult to ascertain. ``We hold these truths to be self-evident'': It means that they are easily understood. By applying reason, we can see that these truths exist, not just for us but for all people who have the capacity to reason. The first thing they say is that ``all men are created equal.'' Of course, they meant that in the universal term, that all individuals are created equal.

``That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.'' Now, the revolutionary aspect of that simple statement was this: Prior to that time, organized governments appeared to suggest that the rights that people had were not given to them by their creator; that is, they did not find themselves within individuals. Rather, all rights were those invested in the government, usually the majestic monarch, who, if they had a religious belief, it was that the monarch had a direct relationship with God far more direct than the individual, and that therefore the monarch decided what rights were given to the people. In other words, individuals only had rights at the sufferance of the government. The revolutionary aspect of this Declaration of Independence was not only that we were declaring our independence from the mother country but we were basing that declaration on self-evident truths that we as individuals had rights given to us directly by our God. This was a transformation of the then traditional thought that the individual was subservient necessarily to the state.

And we went further in this statement, our forefathers did. That is to declare some of those unalienable rights to be life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And then interestingly in this Declaration, our Founders thought it important to say this: ``That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.'' Not to obtain these rights because the rights already exist. To secure these rights. Government is to be put in a place of protecting those rights that already exist, not to give us those rights. Now, this is revolutionary because it established a relationship in which the people essentially rule. And that's why it said further that governments are instituted among men--meaning men, women, and children--among all, deriving, that is, the governments, their just powers from the consent of the governed. In other words, once again it is the notion of limited government, a government limited in its power only by that which is given to them by the people and the people only give up those rights which they voluntarily decide to give up. And then, of course, when we get to our Constitution, the actual legal document which underlies all of the laws of the United States, it begins with these words:

``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,

establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.''

In other words, if you look at the operative parts of that opening sentence, it is ``we the people of the United States'' do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America. ``We the people,'' not the government. We're forming the government and we're establishing the contract which then exists between ourselves and our government. And it very clearly states, as informed by the Declaration of Independence, that our independence comes as a right essentially of natural law. They didn't have any trouble saying ``Creator'' with a capital ``C.'' Now, this doesn't mean that rights in this country are not acknowledged among people who don't believe in God, but what it means is our foundational documents presume that we have rights given to us directly by God.

One would think, therefore, that under those circumstances when we the people decide to establish a governmental structure that that is a blueprint for majority rule, and in most cases that is true. But one of the other intriguing and important aspects of our Constitution, as amended by the Bill of Rights and the other amendments, is that the majority voluntarily restricted its majority rule in specific instances. We in some ways specifically said the majority rule will be limited so that minority rights in certain specific instances may exist. So in some ways you can say that the Constitution and the amendments put a restriction on democracy. It limits democratic practices. It limits our ability as free individuals to collectively make a decision as to our governance. But we accepted that. We volunteered that on our own.

Why do I bring that up? I bring that up because essentially if we're going to follow the Constitution, it means all branches of government must follow the Constitution and it means that we ought to be concerned if we have a court that presumes to trespass on the appropriate areas of responsibility that we the people did not give away or restrict but retained to ourselves and therefore allowed for decisions in the future to be made by majority rule. That's why it's important for us to understand that while the Congress has a role, the President has a role, and the courts have a role, none is truly superior to the other.

There are certain areas in which we are given primacy of responsibility. Here in the Congress we're responsible for legislating, the executive branch for executing, and the judicial branch for deciding in some ways proper interpretation of what the legislative branch has said or rules and regulations that the executive branch has promulgated. But just as importantly, if our courts are going to not unnecessarily interfere with our freedom, the courts should apply what I call ``legal humility'' and understand the limitations of their ambit of authority. And if they trespass into those other areas, they by that act take away from our individual freedom. Why? Because they then arrogate to themselves decisions that were to be left to the people. And if, in fact, they say they are doing it on a constitutional basis, they are saying, from our decision, there is no appeal; we are the ultimate decider.

Now, to put it in simpler terms, one time, and I believe I was watching television when I saw this, I heard Justice Scalia attempt to explain this problem in this way: He said when he was a kid and you saw a problem, you saw something you didn't like, you saw something that ought to be changed, he said you would say ``There ought to be a law.'' He said, unfortunately, now today all too often when people see something they don't like, see something that ought to be changed as far as they're concerned they say, ``Oh, it's unconstitutional.''

Now, those two different statements convey a tremendous difference in substance. On the one case if you say, I don't like what I'm seeing, there ought to be a law, you say the legislative process, the democratic process, people by way of persuasion and ultimately by vote either directly by the people, and in my home State of California we have some direct votes by way of initiative, or by our representatives, which is normally the case, either in our State legislatures or here in the Congress, you make an appeal to attempt to persuade a majority in those bodies to your position, and that's how you change law. Too often people give up on that process and attempt to try to say that their particular problem is uniquely a constitutional problem and that that problem, therefore, is so important it can only be decided by way of reference to the Constitution and the final arbiter of the Constitution is the Supreme Court.

In one case in California in the Ninth Circuit, and I'll paraphrase this because I don't have the words exactly in front of me, a judge on the Ninth Circuit in dissent said that because something is important does not mean it is constitutional. And he went on to say it would seem in our scheme of government it should be just the opposite way, that most important questions would be decided by the people because we're a democracy and that under only exceptional and limited circumstances would they be decided by the courts as something constitutional.

But what have we done here in this House this year with respect to the freedoms? What, in fact, was my constituent saying to me, what was that lady saying to me, about her fear that we're losing our freedoms? Well, I could engage in a conversation with her about my concerns over where the courts have overreached. I believe she was directing me to those subjects that we have been discussing here and voting here on this floor and in the Senate, in the other body, on matters of substance, the debate of which rarely includes a discussion of freedom.

Let me just take one to start with: The health care bill that was on this floor and the provisions of a health care bill or bills that are being considered in the Senate. One of the rarely remarked-upon elements of that bill here, or the bills over in the Senate, is the mandate on the individual whereby it states that as a condition of remaining in the United States as a legal person in the United States, you must purchase health insurance as determined by the Federal Government on a yearly basis.

Now, the argument has been made that, well, we have a problem with health care in this country. Some call it a crisis. I would say that I know of no one who wants us to maintain the status quo. The question is, what is the proper response to the challenges we have? But some have said if you're going to look at this from afar or systemically, what you ought to do is to require everybody to have health care insurance.

Well, that might be an interesting idea. But we have a sense of limited government established in the Constitution of which I spoke before, and the idea that government is limited is essential to that understanding of freedom. And I look in vain in the words of the Constitution to find anywhere that I am charged with the authority as a Member of this body and working with other Members collectively in this body to say that an American may not remain an American unless or until he or she purchases the insurance that I deem they must have and that I could change from year to year to year.

Not only that, I see nowhere where it says that I can enforce that obligation by way of threat of fine or jail sentence, and that is what happens in the bills that we have had before us.

And my question is, as much as I want us to solve the problems inherent in the current health care system, I run up against, with all due respect to the former Vice President of the United States, what I consider to be the real inconvenient truth. It is called the Constitution. It doesn't allow us to do everything that we would like to do. It doesn't allow government to take all of the money or to take your freedoms away or my freedoms away when it is convenient. We have to do it within the context, within the four corners of the Constitution of the United States.

Now the President of the United States in his address to the Congress said, well, this is similar to having auto insurance. It is not, Mr. President. And to those who have argued that on this floor, I would say it is not. If you have ever been involved in cases

involving cars, automobile accidents, and insurance coverage, et cetera, you know that we do not have a right to drive on the public roads; it is called a privilege. You can condition a privilege. The other thing is no one has an obligation to have a car. If you choose not to have a car, you don't have to have car insurance. If you keep your car in the garage, you don't have to have car insurance. If you keep it on display in your house, you don't have to have car insurance. If you have a farm or ranch and you never put it on a public road, you don't have to have car insurance. Why, because you are not on the public roads upon which it is a privilege to drive, not a right.

My right and your right and the right of anybody in this Chamber or any of our constituents to exist in the United States as a legal person should not be conditioned on some obligation that we in the Congress decide. Oh, we think it is a good thing for the overall system that everybody must have health care; therefore, we are going to require each person to have it, and if you don't have it in exactly the form we say, you are going to be fined, and if you don't pay the fine, you can be sent to prison. If we say that on this particular part of our life, where does it end?

There has been very little talk about freedom when we talked about the cap-and-trade bill, and yet we know it is going to impose tremendous taxes and a regulatory regime on virtually everything we do. When you turn on your light switch at home, when you turn on your computer, when you pick up your telephone, when you walk out the door, when you get in your car, when you drive your car, when you go anywhere, the costs are going to be enormous. One of the dirty little secrets around here is that they hope we won't notice because they will be hidden costs. You are not going to be presented with the cost every time you turn on your light switch, but it will be embedded in the cost that you pay on a monthly basis. It is not going to affect you each time you turn on the car because they are not going to put a bill in front of you every time you drive your car, but every time you get gasoline, you will. Any time you use anything that is energy related, you are going to pay a penalty, essentially, for using that, and that determination will be made by the Federal Government.

But that was not enough for some. No, last week, or was it earlier this week--I forget now--the EPA administrator made an endangerment finding on CO2 and other greenhouse gases as being pollutants. Now, you and I could sit down or others could sit down and argue about how we would define pollutants, but there is no one who can rationally argue, in my judgment, that the Clean Air Act, there was any anticipation by those who voted on it in the House or the Senate that this would include such a determination by the EPA administrator, and that as a result, the EPA administrator would be in the position of regulating our lives to the extent that he or she will have in the future.

When you realize what this regulatory regime is going to be, they are telling us that if your Congress--that is, your legislators, and I am talking about generally if constituents would be told this--that your elected officials as legislators make the decision not to eventually pass cap-and-trade and give that authority to the Federal Government, it will not matter because the EPA has, by administrative decision, taken that out of the hands of the Congress and now will decide it themselves.

So, therefore, and I believe that many Federal employees are wonderful people attempting to do the job as they see fit, but nonetheless, in many ways they are faceless bureaucrats who are not responsive to people at town hall meetings, who do not have to go before the people for reconsideration or vote every 2 years as those in the House do, or every 6 years as those in the Senate do. In other words, they are part of the executive branch, and in administering, they are at least another arm's length away from the people that are supposed to be free in our Nation. And so we are being told by some, that unless we in the Congress follow what they want us to do in the executive branch, they will take a command and control authority themselves and do even worse than we would do, so, therefore, we better act.

Now, I don't know what you call that. There are a lot of words that come to mind, but ``freedom'' is not one of them.

We also hear that Members of this body, including the Speaker, are desirous of attending the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. It used to be called ``global warming.'' It is now called ``climate change.'' Many people have questions about global warming. You can't say there is not climate change, because that is one thing we can all agree on. Climate does change. That certainly doesn't help us understand what the nature of the climate change is and the cyclical nature of the climate change and the natural part of the climate change versus the man-made part. In fact, we have been told by some, including the former Vice President, that we have no right to question it.

I don't know, Mr. Speaker, what you were taught when you were in school, but I was taught that science is the continuing activity of questioning, that science is attempting to pursue certain truths in the natural world, and the only way you can determine those is by constantly putting up your proposition to peer review, if you will, and questioning and that skepticism is a good thing; not cynicism, but skepticism. And yet we have been told that we are not allowed to question it, that all of the questions have been answered and that, therefore, we should genuflect to this current notion of the scientific determination and, in essence, take the normal sense of politics in the best sense, that is, I mean, individuals through their power at the ballot box, to be able to make determinations as to how they wish to be ruled in this, a self-governing Nation.

But we have been told, no, if we do that, we are selfish. In fact, the newly elected leader of the European Parliament announced that number one on his hit parade was to make sure that they had some sort of schematic achievement at this Copenhagen Conference, and in explaining it he used the term ``global governance'' at least three times; global governance. Interestingly, because I believe the former Vice President of the United States, in speaking to a group in London on the day that this House passed cap-and-trade, announced to that august group that this was a great triumph for what they were working on because it was the first real step toward global governance.

I do know one thing about our Founding Fathers, the Founders of this country: they were not about global governance. They were not about the idea of a powerful, deciding force across an ocean ruling their lives. As a matter of fact, the essence of the revolution was casting off the authority of the mother country and allowing us here, in what became the United States, to be involved in a process, an experiment in self- governance that continues to this day.

So when I hear the term ``global governance,'' I get worried. I get worried because I think the Founding Fathers of this country would have been worried. Global governance suggests an authority somewhere up there with a global perspective that is somehow considered superior to our ability to govern in our country, in our State, and at the local level.

And if we accept that argument, it seems to me that we reject the notion of federalism that is at the base of the protection of individual rights in this country. Some people have said or made the observation on more than one occasion that Congress appears to be an inefficient institution involved in an in inefficient process. Well, you know, that is right. And in some ways that is a direct result of the Founding Fathers who believed that in order to avoid the fads of the time, that they needed to have a system of checks and balances which sacrificed efficiency for the protection of freedom. That is, they thought that a government further away from you and more powerful than you and individual institutions closer to you could do more harm overall than a decision made by an individual or by a family or by a group where that wrong might be confined to just that individual, that family, or that group. So they believed that in order to protect against the overreach, the mistakes of a government that could have overwhelming power, they would try and defuse that power and

promote the idea of numerous different entities recognizing what some call--and it is called, actually, as a matter of Catholic social policy--the principle of subsidiarity. That essentially means that decisions ought to be made by the individual when he or she can make them; then an individual within the family; and then an individual or family within or surrounding what are known as mediating institutions, voluntary institutions, churches, voluntary associations, clubs, neighborhood groups, and then government, but government at the closest level, meaning local government, then county government, then regional government, then State government, and then Federal Government.

The interesting thought there is not only does it protect the freedom of the individual, but in most cases it creates a more vibrant society, because all parts of that society, beginning with the individual, contribute to the vitality of the society because they, in fact, themselves, are vital to that community. It is a notion that local government is important.

I mean, if you look at Tocqueville's tremendous work about this country in the 1800s, he talked about us being a country of joiners, a country of voluntary associations, a country of churches. And he likened this new America to the old Europe, or he contrasted this new America to the old Europe, and suggested that America was different, and America had a future that was different than what Europe had precisely because of the recognition of the worth of the individual and all of these institutions that protected the individual from the overwhelming power of the government but also created a more vibrant society as a result of this activity.

And yet, if you're looking at cap-and-trade, if you're looking at the EPA endangerment finding and the consequences of that, if you're looking at the hopes of the people at Copenhagen who wish they had global governance, it moves us in the other direction.

What other decisions have we been making that may impinge upon the freedom of the American people? Well, you know, when you talk about taxes, you're not just talking about taking money out of somebody's pocket; you're talking about when you take money out of your pocket, they may have less money to do something that they, in their own individual lives, believe is best for them or best for their family or best for their church or best for their association or best for their local government, as opposed to the Federal Government.

And too often, we have been told that it's un-American to pay low taxes. In fact, I believe in the last election in an interview, the current Vice President of the United States said something to the effect that it is American to pay more taxes. The Supreme Court has said you're not obligated to pay any more taxes than you're legally required to. If you want to voluntarily give money to the government, that's fine.

Why would the court say that, and why would that be right? Because taxes are an involuntary taking from an individual to the government. Don't get me wrong--I don't think taxes are unnecessary. They are necessary. But I think we have a legal and moral obligation as protectors of the freedom of the people to not exact from them anything more than is absolutely necessary to do the proper functioning of government. Because if we do more than that, we are taking some of the freedom of the American people away.

Similarly, in the area of spending--as well as in the area of debt, and perhaps even more in the area of debt because that not only impacts us today as individual members of this society, but that impacts our children and our grandchildren and children still unborn in terms of their ability to be able to live their lives and to have the free expression of their talents in such a way that they may make contributions to this world and that they may be free men and women.

And so the--I will use a legal term--the gravamen of my argument tonight or this afternoon is that my constituent who fled from communism in Eastern Europe to this country decades ago for the freedom that this country allowed her and the fear that she's expressed that we're losing some of these freedoms is not a wild notion on her part but is in fact a significant concern that has a reasonable basis. And that we in Congress have an obligation to listen to people such as my constituent who said, Please don't take our freedom away.

We rarely hear freedom spoken of on this floor, and we rarely hear it spoken of in the context of the legislation that we have before us. But we should understand. If we genuflect to an overweaningly powerful government, we are essentially changing the relationship that exists between those of us as individuals and our government as understood by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution.

And I would stand with Abraham Lincoln when he said that the Constitution can only be properly understood as informed by the words of the Declaration of Independence. And the words of the Declaration of Independence, once again, tell us that we hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.

Not that government gives us these rights; government is supposed to protect those rights, secure those rights, those rights that we, through rational perception, can determine--our God-given natural rights.

I would hope that we wouldn't believe that those are just old- fashioned words, but those are in fact guiding lights by which we make our decisions here on the floor of the House, or that we ought to throw away or cast aside comments made by our constituents indicating to us that they fear we may be losing our freedoms. That is not a panic attack by someone. That's not an act of delirium. Rather, it is a deep- seated concern that I think we should follow advisedly.

And Mr. Speaker, I would just hope that as we go forward with the remaining days of this year, and as we approach next year, that as we look at something as important as health care, we try and say, how do we deal with the challenges that exist in health care without subverting the sense of freedom and liberty that is contained in the Constitution? We can do it; we just have to think again. We can do it because we know generations that have gone before us have reached their challenges without in any way violating our Constitution but rather working towards securing those liberties that are recognized in our Constitution.

And my friend from Texas, would you like me to yield to you?

If the gentleman will yield.

In other words, the bill anticipated a loss of jobs and creates a specific fund to reimburse people or to subsidize people or to in some way help those people who lose their job as a result of the effects of the bill.

If the gentleman will yield on that.

One of the concerns we ought to have is making people more dependent on government. When you make people dependent on government, you necessarily take away some of their freedom. And that's one of the things that we ought to be concerned about here.

We know through every economic analysis that's available that the progenitor of jobs, the creator of jobs, the source of jobs in this country is the private sector. We know that more and more abides in the small-and medium-sized businesses.

And if in fact we were dedicated to creating jobs at this time, it would make far more sense to do what the gentleman suggested well over a year ago, that we suspend the payroll tax, that we suspend the payroll tax both from the employer and the employee, which would have the effect of having immediate income in the pockets of both employer and employee, and we would then trust the individuals.

Because employers and employees are individuals. We would trust them to make rational decisions in their lives which may just be better collectively than the decisions imposed on them by the Federal Government, where we choose winners and losers, and necessarily have to make political decisions with respect to winners and losers. And wouldn't that more quickly cause an impact on the economy on a positive side than waiting for whatever Congress and whatever administration decides finally in terms of distributing funds as they see it?

Is the gentleman talking about the medical equipment tax?

I believe it's not only on wheelchairs. As someone who recently, well, 2 years ago, had a new hip replacement, I understand that I was lucky I had it then because under this bill, a hip replacement, like a wheelchair, would be considered a piece of medical equipment and there would be a tax placed on that. So for the privilege of being injured in some way and then receiving medical attention requiring a piece of medical equipment, you get the indignity of having a tax placed on you. Now I don't know what kind of a tax you call that. It's not a comfort tax. It's not a sin tax.

Do you remember when we used to call these taxes on cigarettes and alcohol ``sin tax'' because they were supposedly aimed at vices that people had? But it makes very little sense.

And here is the other thing. I had the tele-town hall the other night, and one of the people on the line said, well, why don't you just have a government program and why not just do it through the Medicaid system; expand it for other people to have it in the Medicaid system. And I said to her, well, how would we pay for it? Well, we just pay for it through taxes. And so I was reminded of that great quote by the French economist, Frederic Bastiat, who said many years ago that the state is that great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. Now what he was saying is when we create in our argumentation the idea of ``state'' without understanding what we're talking about, it is easy to say, well, the state can take care of it, or we'll just tax for it; where the suggestion is that somehow that comes from somewhere else. And if you got it down to the real individual level and say, at what point do I have a right to say to you that I can reach into your pocket and take money from your pocket to pay for something I want done?

Now I think we would all agree that there are those who can't help themselves, that we want to create some sort of safety net. But if the idea that we are going to have larger and larger percentages of the population have their needs or wants taken care of by the government because it doesn't cost them anything, at some point in time, we are going to reach that point of which Margaret Thatcher spoke, when she said, the problem with socialism is pretty soon you run out of other people's money. And it's even more than that, because if you corrupt our system such that people forget to, well, people no longer understand how you generate wealth, rather than just redistribute wealth, you essentially create less wealth, you essentially put limitations that otherwise would not exist on creating new wealth that then can be utilized for individuals and their lives and, yes, to support government.

I think that is what we have to continue to remind ourselves, not necessarily remind our constituents, but remind ourselves because we are here making these decisions, that just as Ronald Reagan said, freedom is never free, meaning that we always have to have a commitment towards freedom on a military sense and people that would sacrifice, freedom is not automatically free in our own country. We have to fight for it all the time, and we have to remind ourselves sometimes that maybe we have to ask more of ourselves individually, in our own families, in our churches and in our voluntary associations to do more. And we ask more of ourselves and less of government, and then determine exactly those areas where we help people who truly can't help themselves and make sure that we have a true undergirding of our society to help those people. But don't basically damage the capacity of the American people to use their genius, use their creativity and use their dedication to try and utilize the talents God gave them.

How well did that work?

It sounds as if they were talking about freedom or liberty with responsibility.

And I think we need to talk about both ends of it. If we are going to be a free people, we have to be a responsible people. If we are going to be a people who cherish freedom, we have to be a people who cherish responsibility. And we must ask of ourselves, each and every one of us, to be responsible in our actions, to understand there is something of the common good that requires something of all of us, but that if we, in fact, mistake that notion or misinterpret that notion such that we think that no longer are individuals free, and that only important questions can be decided by the Federal Government, and in the Federal context only by the Supreme Court, what we are doing is not only becoming dependent on others, in this case government, but we are undercutting the tremendous, as I say, vitality that this country has always had. And so we're not only cheating ourselves, but we're cheating everybody else, as well.

I think that every once in a while it is good for us to have a conversation on this floor about, some would say, huge concepts of freedom. I would say essential concepts of freedom, foundational concepts such as freedom, freedom which is spelled out in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

And so, I would just hope that as we continue in the last days of this congressional year, and as we look forward to the next congressional year, that we not forget about freedom and that, in fact, as we try and meet the challenges of the present and the future, that freedom be our lodestar.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, yesterday was a historic day. It will be a day which lives in economic infamy. The EPA administrator yesterday unsheathed the dagger at the heart of our economy when she announced an endangerment finding. Yes, CO2 is now a pollutant. That means everyone in this Chamber, anyone who out there might be hearing us, you are now polluters. With every breath you take you emit CO2.

This was never, ever, conceived by Congress when it passed the Clean Air Act. We now have a situation in which administrators are going to effectively control the entire economy and the way in which we live and the way in which we breathe. This is not the idea of freedom. This is, in fact, not an endangerment finding about clean air. This is an endangerment finding about our freedom.

Our freedom took a vicious blow yesterday, and we, as representatives of our people, must act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentlelady for her gracious comments and her support of this bill. I rise in support of H.R. 3963, the Federal Air Marshals Criminal Investigative Training Restoration Act, a bill that I have authored.

Prior to 9/11, the criminal investigative training program at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center was an essential part of the training that we have for our Federal air marshals, commonly referred to as FAMs. The events of 9/11, however, necessitated an emergency situation in which we were required to rapidly hire, train, and deploy thousands of new FAMs.

In order to meet these ambitious deployment mandates, the newly hired members of this corps, without prior Federal law enforcement experience, were not required to take the criminal investigative training program. It was not because we did not wish them to have it, but that would have delayed their deployment, and we were under an emergency situation. We realized that additional Federal air marshals were essential to the overall response to the threat we then knew to be real.

It has always been the intent of the Federal Air Marshal Service, however, to resume using the criminal investigative training program as part of the basic training for FAMs. This bill will restore the criminal investigative training program as part of the basic training for the members of this organization.

Crucial to the mission of the Federal air marshals is the ability to detect, deter, and prevent terrorists or other criminal hostile acts targeting our U.S. air carriers, airports, passengers, crew, or other transportation modes. Currently, the FAMs are required to take a mixed basic police training program and a FAMS-specific course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, known as FLETC. Restoring the criminal investigative training will provide FAMs with the additional knowledge and skills required to resolve situations on the ground as well as respond to situations in-flight.

The additional training--it is 12 weeks long--includes law enforcement interview, interrogation, and behavioral assessment skills and techniques. It will, undoubtedly, provide our Federal air marshals with improved law enforcement skills not only to fly missions, but to perform the enhanced roles with our visual intermodal protection and response teams--that is our VIPR teams--and other ground-based law enforcement. It therefore enhances the FAMs' layer of security.

Detection is the principle tool utilized by the VIPR teams to disrupt terrorist operations, and these investigative techniques are not currently taught to our Federal air marshals. It also provides the Department of Homeland Security Secretary and the TSA administrator a highly trained, agile, and motivated workforce capable of meeting the security challenges facing not only our transportation sector, but also the homeland itself.

Now, Mr. Speaker, our Federal air marshals have expressed a strong desire for advancement opportunities within the Service and the opportunity to gain greater investigative experience. This legislation affords these opportunities and is an important step in improving operations at the Federal Air Marshal Service. Restoring the criminal investigative training to the Federal Air Marshal Service would also improve morale tremendously. These are trained individuals who seek to be recognized as essential members of our overall law enforcement communities. This will give them the kind of training that will assist them not only in their job, but should they pursue other lines of employment in the world of law enforcement. This will provide them with the background which will assist in that.

The Federal Air Marshal Service supports the restoration of criminal investigative training to their membership. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association also supports it. However, I want to emphasize this bill does not in any way reclassify the Federal air marshals as criminal investigators, known as series 1811 employees. The bill therefore before us states expressly that nothing in the bill would be construed as reclassifying FAMs as criminal investigators. That should clear up any question of a budgetary nature with respect to this bill.

I would ask for House bipartisan support of this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I am prepared to close, as I have no further speakers. I thank the gentlelady for her support on this. I thank both sides of the aisle, both staff and members of the committee. This is a commonsense approach. It's the kind of thing that we ought to be working on together--we have worked on together here-- and I hope it will pass unanimously.

With that, I would yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, can anything top this last week's lesson in absurdity and perversity? I'm talking about the administration's decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three other terrorist suspects from Guantanamo to New York. Absurd, because they have been charged before military tribunals, where they ought to be. Absurd, because it serves no purpose to bring them to the site of their worst action, just a stone's throw from Ground Zero. Perverse, because now, if you kill Americans on the battlefield, you will see justice done when you are captured by a military tribunal. But if instead of being a soldier on the battlefield, you attack Americans in their own home, you attack innocent Americans, you will now be privileged to get constitutional rights. The worse the terrorist, the greater the constitutional rights given to them. What a perverse action by this administration.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Coast Guard and Marine Corps pilots and crewmembers lost off the coast of California on October 29, 2009.

On the evening of October 29, 2009, a Coast Guard C-130 based out of Sacramento in California's Third Congressional District was suspected to have collided with a Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra.

The following crew members of the Coast Guard C-130 are missing and presumed to have lost their lives in the line of duty: Lt. Cmdr. Che J. Barnes of Capay, California; Lt. Adam W. Bryant, of Crewe, Virginia; Chief Petty Officer John F. Seidman of Stockton,

California; Petty Officer 2nd Class Carl P. Grigonis of Mayfield Heights, Ohio; Petty Officer 2nd Class Monica L. Beacham of Decaturville, Tennessee; Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason S. Moletzsky of Norristown, Pennsylvania; and Petty Officer 3rd Class Danny R. Kreder II, of Elm Mott, Texas.

The following crew members of the Marine Corps helicopter are missing and presumed to have lost their lives in the line of duty: Maj. Samuel Leigh of Kennebec, Maine, and 1st Lt. Thomas Claiborne of Douglas, Colorado.

Today we consider House Resolution 891, which expresses the gratitude of the House of Representatives for the service to our Nation that these pilots and crewmembers provided, and extends its condolences to their family, friends, and loved ones.

I also thank the men and women of the Coast Guard and Marine Corps on behalf of my fellow Californians for the untold impact that they have had on the security of our home.

Madam Speaker, I rise to protest the misguided decision by President Obama and his Attorney General to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four terrorist suspects from Guantanamo Bay to New York City.

What an insult to the memory of those who lost their lives. The very man who masterminded that attack now will get his fondest wish. When he was captured on the battlefield, he said, Let me go to New York, and let me have my attorney. He will have his attorney. He will be in New York, just a stone's throw from the site of death by he and his compatriots.

What reason could we possibly have to bring them to the United States? Why, Mr. President, why, when we have Guantanamo, when we have military tribunals that are not only capable but

specifically provided to take care of those who would kill Americans on the battlefield? For what reason are we doing this?

Why, Mr. President? Why, Mr. President? Why?

Mr. Speaker, if you want to know the ultimate option, open up this bill and look. You are required as an American citizen to buy a health insurance policy that has been okayed and only okayed by the Federal Government. If you don't, you could pay a fine, and if you don't pay that fine, you could go to prison for up to 5 years. Where is the public option? Well, if you are in prison, you are going to get free medical care. I presume that is the ultimate tragedy in this bill.

We are changing the relationship of individuals to their government. Now, for the first time in history, as a condition of remaining in the United States, you must purchase something the Federal Government requires you to under the pain of a fine, up to $250,000, and 5 years in prison. What kind of freedom is that? What kind of public option could that possibly be?

Madam Speaker, nearly 70 years ago a group of extraordinary young women answered the call of duty and accepted a mission that no generation had before them. Just over 1,100 women eagerly left the grounded existence of home and family, climbed into the cockpits of military aircraft and set about to do their part in the good fight of World War II. By 1943 they had come to be known as WASPs: Women Airforce Service Pilots. They had the verve of Amelia Earhart, the poise of their upbringing and a dutiful patriotic spirit to get them through. Some 38 perished during their 2-year tenure while fulfilling a variety of missions: testing aircraft and ferrying planes from coast to coast among them. Today we honor the service of four of these WASPs who reside in the Third Congressional District of California: Dorothy C. Goot and Captola Johnson, both of Fair Oaks; Barbara H. Kennedy and Doris K. Ohm, both of Sacramento. We thank you for your service. On Veterans Day, as we pay special tribute to men and women in the military, we especially thank you for your example and sacrifice. Women sustain the Armed Forces of these United States more today than at any other time in history. We thank you. We salute you all.

Madam Speaker, a number of years ago, a prominent Democratic political consultant coined the phrase, ``It's the economy, stupid.'' What that meant was, after the issues of national security and personal security, the state of the economy is number one in the minds and hearts of the American people.

We have just heard disturbing news: The unemployment rate is now 10.2 percent, the highest rate in decades. At this point in time when our constituents are worried about jobs, worried about the economy, worried about how they are going to pay their bills, does it make sense for us to rush to judgment on a bill that has been analyzed to show that it is a job killer bill? I refer to the Pelosi health care plan that we are going to be kept in this place this weekend to vote on. Let us hear what the American people are saying. Make sure we protect our jobs, not destroy our jobs.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this resolution, which includes the United States Capitol Police Technical Corrections Act. I am pleased to rise in support of the bill which will enable the Chief of the Capitol Police to exercise the necessary authority to improve operations of the Capitol Police. The bill is an effort to resolve conflicting provisions in existing law and eliminate unnecessary regulations.

This bill is the result of the cooperative effort between the chairman of the full committee as well as the Subcommittee on Capitol Security to facilitate the most efficient framework in which the Capitol Police may operate. I am confident this collaborative approach will continue, resulting in a safer and more effectively managed Capitol complex, and I urge the support of my colleagues.

As was mentioned, this is combined with a bill on travel. And some might say, What do these two separate bills have to do with one another? Absolutely nothing.

Yet what is allowed on this floor, because we adopted yesterday a rule, is martial law. What's martial law? It means that the majority at any time may bring up any subject whatever, and we suspend all rules. ``Suspending all rules'' means that you can change every word in a bill and can present that on the floor, and we vote on that.

The only reason I bring this to the attention of my colleagues is that some colleagues may not be aware that, sometimes when we bring a bill to the floor which has the same name of a bill they passed in subcommittee and committee, it may be an entirely different bill. We normally have around here a rule of germaneness, but we have a suspension of the rules so we can put completely separate, nongermane bills together, and that's what we have. It's an interesting comment on how we do things here.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts, said that this is a propitious time for the Travel Promotion bill to be considered on the floor because of the discouraging news we received today about unemployment--10.2 percent. That is the highest unemployment rate experienced in this country in 26 years--10.2 percent.

In my home State of California, we haven't received the most up-to- date figures, but the figures as of last month were 12.2 percent--over 10 percent for the Nation, over 12 percent for my State. My district is even higher than that, I believe. A propitious time to consider this bill since we have lost, by some estimates, as much as 200,000 jobs in the travel industry.

But is this a propitious time for us to be considering a health care bill which, by objective analysis by a number of different observers, will cause us to lose millions of jobs?

I've been home to my district. I realize that, by the Gregorian calendar, we have 12 months out of the year, but by the Pelosian calendar, we only have 11 months out of the year because we have been told to ignore August--it didn't exist--just as we are to ignore those thousands of everyday Americans who showed up yesterday, just as, presumably, the leaders in the AMA are ignoring their rank-and-file doctors who are today bringing forward a vote of ``no confidence'' against their board of directors for supporting the health care bill that is going to be presented to us sometime this week.

That's the bill that we were going to vote on in June, July, August, September, October, November, yesterday, today, tomorrow, maybe the next day. The President of the United States was going to come up here and, we understand, speak to our colleagues on the majority side yesterday, then today. We understand now it's going to be tomorrow.

The reason I bring this up is that, when I speak to my folks back home--and I was on a tele-town hall meeting last night and spoke with thousands of them--the first thing on their minds are jobs. The first thing on their minds is the economy. The first thing on their minds is whether or not they can take care of their families. At this time, at this propitious time, at this time when we have received with a thud the report that the unemployment rate is 10.2 percent, we have decided that we must consider a bill with very few, if any, amendments allowed, creating a new government takeover of health care that's going to cost trillions of dollars.

Someone on my tele-town hall last night said, Congressman, can you explain to me why in the bill that you're going to vote on this week the so-called benefits in it are not going to take place for several years?

I had to explain it's because you want to bring the costs down when you explain it to the public, so you're going to start the taxes in year one, but you're not going to start the benefits from the program until year four or five, so at the end of 10 years, the net costs will be less than they would be if it were fully implemented.

Now, maybe I take this a little personally because part of what they have in here is a 2.5 percent tax on medical instruments, on medical equipment, including, by the way, new hips. So now, in this country, if you have a new hip, as I did a year ago, you will be taxed for the privilege of having that operation done in the United States, 2.5 percent. I thought we were concerned about bringing costs down. For a wheelchair, you're going to have an extra tax on that. I don't understand why we are doing this. Oh, yes. We're going to have taxes of huge amounts on business. Small businesses and medium-sized businesses are going to have taxes imposed on them in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, as the gentleman from Massachusetts said, this is a propitious moment. We are being confronted with the magnitude of the economic downturn that affects each and every one of our constituents. So what are we giving them in return?

We have a bill that is going to create 111 new programs, boards, bureaucracies, and commissions. I have had town hall after town hall, tele-town hall after tele-town hall. Not a single member of my constituency, not a single, average, everyday American has said, Please create 111 new programs. Please create 111 new boards, bureaucracies, and commissions. Please put another $1 trillion or $2 trillion on our backs. Please add new taxes. By the way, that doesn't include the $200 billion doc fix that's going to be put in another bill so that we pretend it is not there.

A 2.5 percent tax on individuals who fail to purchase health insurance. A 2.5 percent excise tax on medical devices. A 5.4 percent surtax on ``high-income'' filers, over 50 percent of which are small businesses and which file as individuals. An 8 percent tax on employers who cannot afford to purchase government-approved health care benefits.

A propitious time, yes.

Now, I happen to represent a district in which we have 42,000 seniors--people over 65--who have made the voluntary decision to sign up for Medicare Advantage. There are 42,000 seniors in my district alone, and there are millions around the country. This bill cuts over $150 billion from that program; $150 billion from that program. When I speak to people in my district, they tell me it will gut that program.

So, as we consider a bill here dealing with travel at the propitious time of confronting the unemployment rate, one has to ask oneself: Why would we be forced to vote on a bill that will have an immediate short- term and long-term impact of killing jobs in this country? It does not make sense.

I also wonder whether any bill has had more uses of the word ``shall'' than the bill we are going to consider this week. By my count, there are 3,425 uses of the word ``shall'' in the bill that we are to be presented. Now, for those who don't fully appreciate statutory construction, the word ``shall'' means ``mandate.'' It means ``you must.'' There is no discretion.

Then 3,425 times, this bill, if it becomes law, will command people, including average everyday American citizens to do something. They will have no discretion about it. They will be required to do that; 3,425 instances of that.

And so, Mr. Speaker, as we all, I hope, support the bill that is before us at this time, providing direction for the Capitol Police in a more efficient operation of their force, and as we have combined it with the travel promotion authority, which many people believe will help us deal with the loss of jobs in the travel industry, I still have to ask, Why would we be running pell-mell towards voting for a bill that will take over one-sixth of the economy of the United States and, by outside objective analysis, will result in the loss of millions of jobs in this country, primarily in the small business community? It defies logic. And while the majority is allowed to bring up anything on the floor under the prevailing rule for these several days called martial law, it doesn't have to be germane with anything else, you would hope that there would at least be the concept of consistency if we are truly concerned about the unemployed in America; if we know that 10.2 percent is much more than a number, that it reflects real live human beings who have lost their jobs. Remember, this doesn't count the hundreds of thousands of discouraged workers, those who are so discouraged by the current economic situation they are no longer looking for jobs and, therefore, they are not counted in this number. We know we have lost hundreds of thousands of those people as well. They are people with children, people with wives, people with husbands, people with grandparents and parents, people who have bills to pay, these are the people who are hurting. And for us to do something in this House which is going to even cause them more difficulty is beyond me.

So I would just ask this: If this is a propitious time for us to consider a travel promotion bill because of the unemployment that's faced by that particular segment of our society, is it not a propitious time for us to acknowledge that maybe we ought to withdraw, go back to the drawing board and come up with a bill that deals with the concerns, the legitimate concerns about the shortcomings of our health care system but that does not at the same time destroy jobs? That may be a rhetorical question, but the answer to that question is very real to the people back home.

Once again, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues on the majority side for having worked so closely with us on this bill that's before us now.

I would urge support for this bill.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I seek time in opposition, although I do not oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I would support this amendment as it does give, after the fact, support for the position of agriculture in this debate over the imposition of ISTs, which I would remind my colleagues, from every single expert who testified before our committee, is a concept, not a completed process or product. Yet we are requiring that which is a concept, for which

there are no true methodologies, to be imposed by the Secretary.

This is better than nothing, I suppose, because what this amendment does is it requires a report to be submitted to Congress after the mandates on agriculture go into effect, so at least we'll know how bad it is.

I support this amendment because, as I say, it's better than nothing, but I would remind my colleagues that, in the letter of November 3, 2009, signed by representatives of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Chemical Producers and Distributors Association, the National Agriculture Association, the National Association of Wheat Growers, the National Cotton Council, The Fertilizer Institute, and the USA Rice Federation, they oppose this bill precisely because of the mandate of inherently safer technologies on their industries.

It is not a question of the great men and women in agriculture being opposed to securing this Nation against a terrorist attack. It is the position of the great men and women in agriculture that this is an imposition of a technology or a process or a concept, whatever you want to call it, that those who came up with it testified before our committee does not fit neatly into a legislative mandate. Nonetheless, we here on this floor are saying we know better than those who came up with the concept those who actually will suffer from this concept being imposed on them.

I support this amendment. I only wish that this amendment were stronger because, unfortunately, it is going to mandate a report that will come too late, a report to tell us what the effects of the mandate of IST will be or will have been on agriculture.

So, Mr. Chairman, I hope we will support this amendment. I only wish we could have had a stronger amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.