Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support H.R. 161, to expand the Minidoka Internment National Monument to include the Nidoto Nai Yoni Memorial, which commemorates the Japanese Americans of Bainbridge Island, the Japanese Americans of Bainbridge Island, Washington, who were interned during World War II.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order which forcibly removed approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes, their friends, and their communities. They were incarcerated by this government for their ancestry. Just over 1 month after the executive order was signed, 227 Bainbridge island men, women, and children were sent to internment camps. They were the very first Japanese American families in the United States to be incarcerated.

We in the Pacific Northwest would like to think that we live in a better part of the country, in a part of the country where things are the way they ought to be. But sometimes the way we want things to be is not the way things happen or reality. Because these Japanese Americans were taken from their homes in the heart of the Puget Sound. They were sailed to Seattle. They were loaded onto trains for a 3-day journey to Manzanar, a concentration camp in California's Mojave Desert. These Americans were the very first Americans to be so detained, and the last of the detainees were not released until October of 1946, 4\1/2\ years after the signing of the executive order and over a year after the end of World War II.

But this chapter of our history did not end there. Upon release from the internment camps, Japanese Americans could not return to the lives that they had led before the tragic and misled executive order. I would like to submit further information about General DeWitt's decisions and recommendations, and I will do that at a different time, but during the period of internment, they had lost their homes, their businesses, and their livelihoods.

By commemorating Japanese Americans who were so detained, we ensure that this sad episode in our history will never be forgotten and hopefully not repeated, because we need to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Thirty years passed before the executive order was formally rescinded in 1976. In 1988, a Presidential apology was issued internees.

This is not an abstraction. This is not a theoretical debate. The Military Commissions Act passed by this Congress on September 30, 2006, potentially puts American citizens at risk of military detention. That is a plain reading of the Military Commissions Act. It was hotly debated between the then chairmen of two committees and this Member. It has been commented upon to a limited extent in the national press.

But I think that a fair reading of the Military Commissions Act would show you that if a person is just walking down the street and is detained by military authority for whatever reason, and we are not talking about aliens in Afghanistan, we are talking about someone walking down the streets of Portland, Oregon, or in Bainbridge Island. What could potentially happen to that person?

The better course under the Military Commissions Act is that they are subject to military justice, a very limited review by a military tribunal, and the end of that appeal road is the Secretary of Defense. That is actually the better course.

Now, I have to point out that there are 25 detainees in Guantanamo who, after 5 years of detention, have not had their first review yet; and I say that is the better course because the course that is actually more troubling under the Military Commissions Act is that if there is not a review, there is no appeal. There is no appeal to a civilian court. There is no habeas corpus, a doctrine which has served Anglo American societies well for almost a thousand years.

This memorial, which H.R. 161 helps us remember, is not an abstraction. It was real suffering for the Japanese Americans, for the Americans who were incarcerated. But it is also a reminder that, as was said of the executive order much later, when actions are taken by this government in an atmosphere of hysteria, great injustices can be perpetrated; and we need to be careful in our era lest we be put in a position to issue an apology decades from now.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii passed under

martial law, the writ of habeas corpus was suspended, and the

military police took several hundred suspected spies and

saboteurs of Japanese extraction into custody. But the very

size of the Japanese community in Hawaii (nearly half the

territory's population), and its vital importance to the

islands' economy, foreclosed any thought of wholesale

evacuation. The mainland community, however, was

proportionately much smaller (in California, barely 1 percent

of the population), more economically marginal and socially

isolated, and long buffeted by racist pressures. The mainland

Japanese for the most part kept warily to themselves, many of

them toiling with exemplary efficiency on their family fruit

and vegetable farms. Insular and quiescent, they were also

internally riven by age and legal status. Their elders, the

forty thousand first-generation immigrant Japanese, or Issei,

were generally over the age of fifty and debarred from

citizenship by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, a

statutory impediment that perversely exposed them to the

accusation that as non-citizens they were poorly assimilated

into American society. A majority of their children, the

eighty thousand second-generation Nisei, were under the age

of eighteen. Born in the United States, they were also

citizens. Alien and citizen alike, the peculiarly vulnerable

Pacific Coast Japanese community was about to feel the full

wrath of war-fueled hysteria.

Curiously, no clamor for wholesale reprisals against the

mainland Japanese arose in the immediate aftermath of the

Pearl Harbor attack. The Los Angeles Times soberly

editorialized on December 8 that most of the Japanese on the

Coast were ``good Americans, born and educated as such,'' and

serenely foresaw that there would be ``no riots, no mob

law.'' General John L. DeWitt, chief of the army's Western

Defense Command, at first dismissed loose talk of mass

evacuations as ``damned nonsense.'' He condemned any

broadside assaults on the rights of the American-born Nisei.

``An American citizen, after all, is an American citizen,''

he declared. Individual arrests were another matter.

Government surveillance, ongoing since 1935, had identified

some two thousand potentially subversive persons in the

Japanese community. Along with fourteen thousand German and

Italian security risks nationwide, they were quietly rounded

up in the last days of 1941. But those individual detentions

stopped well short of wholesale incarcerations. ``I was

determined,'' Attorney General Francis Biddle wrote, ``to

avoid mass internment, and the persecution of aliens that had

characterized the First World War.''

In fact, the immigrants whose loyalty had been questioned

during World War I had then been freshly arrived and seemed

to many observers unarguably alien. But by 1941 those older

European groups were settled communities, well assimilated,

their patriotism as well as their political loyalty actively

cultivated by Roosevelt's New Deal. Though a surprising six

hundred thousand Italians--more than 10 percent of the entire

Italian-American community--remained Italian citizens and

were automatically labeled ``enemy aliens'' after Mussolini's

declaration of war, Roosevelt instructed Biddle to cancel

that designation in a joyfully received announcement at

Carnegie Hall, shrewdly delivered on Columbus Day 1942, just

weeks before the congressional elections.

The Japanese were not so fortunate. As war rumors took wing

in the weeks following Pearl Harbor, sobriety gave way to

anxiety,

then to a rising cry for draconian action against the

Japanese on the West Coast. Inflammatory and invariably false

reports of Japanese attacks on the American mainland flashed

through coastal communities. Eleanor Roosevelt's airplane, en

route to Los Angeles on the evening of the Pearl Harbor

attack, was grounded in the Midwest while the first lady

telephoned Washington to check a radio message that San

Francisco was under bombardment. Painters at Stanford

University blacked out the skylight of the library's main

reading room so that it could not serve as a beacon to enemy

pilots. Carpenters hammered up dummy aircraft plants in Los

Angeles to decoy Japanese bombers away from the real

factories. Athletic officials moved the traditional New

Year's Day football classic from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena,

California; the game was played instead in North Carolina,

presumably safe from Japanese attack. Japan's astonishing

string of victories in the Pacific further unsettled American

public opinion. Hong Kong fell on December 2, Manila on

January 2, Singapore on January 25.

The release at the end of January of a government

investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack proved the decisive

blow. The report, prepared by Supreme Court Justice Owen J.

Roberts, alleged without documentation that Hawaii-based

espionage agents, including Japanese-American citizens, had

abetted Nagumo's strike force. Two days later, DeWitt

reported ``a tremendous volume of public opinion now

developing against the Japanese of all classes, that is

aliens and non-aliens.'' DeWitt himself, described by Biddle

as having a ``tendency to reflect the views of the last man

to whom he talked,'' soon succumbed to Rumor's siren. He

wildly declared to an incredulous Justice Department official

that every ship sailing out of the Columbia had been attacked

by submarines guided by clandestine radio operators near the

river's mouth. When evidence of actual attacks failed to

materialize, DeWitt invoked the tortured logic that the very

absence of any sabotage activity on the West Coast proved the

existence of an organized, disciplined conspiracy in the

Japanese community, cunningly withholding its blow until it

could be struck with lethal effect. In February the respected

columnist Walter Lippmann alleged that military authorities

had evidence of radio communications between ``the enemy at

sea and enemy agents on land''--a charge that FBI director J.

Edgar Hoover had already advised Biddle was utterly without

foundation. A radio technician from the Federal

Communications Commission reviewed DeWitt's ``evidence'' of

electronic signals and declared it hogwash. All 760 of

DeWitt's suspicious radio transmissions could be accounted

for, and not one involved espionage. ``Frankly,'' the

technician concluded, ``I have never seen an organization

[the U.S. Army's Western Defense Command] that was so

hopeless to cope with radio intelligence requirements. The

personnel is unskilled and untrained. Most are privates who

can read only ten words a minute. . . . It's pathetic to say

the least.''

But by this time facts were no protection against the

building gale of fear and prejudice. ``Nobody's

constitutional rights,'' Lippmann magisterially intoned,

``include the right to reside and do business on a

battlefield.'' Lippmann's colleague Westbrook Pegler echoed

him less elegantly a few days later: ``The Japanese in

California should be under armed guard to the last man and

woman right now,'' Pegler wrote in his widely read column,

``and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.''

Unapologetically racist voices also joined the chorus.

``We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for

selfish reasons,'' a leader of California's Grower-Shipper

Vegetable Association declared. ``We might as well be honest.

We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the

Pacific Coast or the brown man.'' Prodded by such sentiments,

in early February 1942 DeWitt officially requested

authority to remove all Japanese from the West Coast. It

was impossible he claimed, to distinguish the loyal from

the disloyal in the peculiarly alien and inscrutable

Japanese community. The only remedy was wholesale

evacuation. The same man who had said a month earlier,

``An American citizen, after all, is an American

citizen,'' now announced, ``A Jap's a Jap. . . . It makes

no difference whether he is an American citizen or not. .

. . I don't want any of them.''

At the Justice Department several officials, including

conspicuously Edward J. Ennis, director of the Alien Enemy

Control Unit, as well as Biddle's assistant James H. Rowe,

struggled to quell this irrationally mounting fury. Rowe

denounced Lippmann and Pegler as ``Armchair Strategists and

Junior G-Men'' whose reckless charges came ``close to

shouting FIRE! in the theater; and if race riots occur, these

writers will bear a heavy responsibility.'' Attorney General

Biddle informed Secretary of War Stimson ``that the

Department of Justice would not under any circumstances

evacuate American citizens.'' But at a fateful meeting in the

living room of the attorney general's Washington home on the

evening of February 17, the gentle and scholarly Biddle

buckled. Facing off against Assistant Secretary of War John

J. McCloy and two army officers, Ennis and Rowe argued

heatedly that DeWitt's request for evacuation orders should

be denied. Unknown to his two subordinates, however, Biddle,

new to the cabinet, unsure of his standing with Roosevelt,

and overawed by the Olympian figure of Stimson, had told the

secretary of war by telephone earlier in the day that he

would not oppose DeWitt's recommendation. When this became

clear, Rowe remembered, ``I was so mad that I could not

speak. . . . Ennis almost wept.'' Even Stimson had grave

misgivings. ``The second generation Japanese can only be

evacuated,'' he wrote in his diary, ``either as part of a

total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits,

or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their

racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or

even trust the citizen Japanese. This latter is the fact but

I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our

constitutional system to apply it.'' Despite his own

reservations and the sputtering opposition of the Justice

Department officials, Stimson advised the president that

DeWitt should be authorized to proceed. The cabinet devoted

only a desultory discussion to the matter. On February 19

Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It directed the War

Department to ``prescribe military areas . . . from which any

and all persons may be excluded.'' No explicit reference to

the Japanese was necessary. When Biddle feebly objected that

the order was ``ill-advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily

cruel,'' Roosevelt silenced him with the rejoinder: ``[T]his

must be a military decision.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5, the legislation to lower student loan interest rates.

According to the Department of Education, two-thirds of undergraduate students will take out a Federal student loan this year to help finance their college education.

As tuition costs swell and grant-aid fails to keep pace, students and their families are increasingly turning to loans as the primary mechanism to finance a higher education. While student loans make the college dream a reality for millions, they all too often turn into a nightmare of debt.

Over the past eight years the typical student loan debt has more than doubled to approximately $19,000. In addition, 39 percent of all student borrowers now graduate with unmanageable debt levels. Too many student borrowers struggle to make their monthly loan payments, and many must forgo savings, public service careers, and home ownership.

Borrowing for higher education should be a sound investment for the future, both for the student, and our society. Yet, today we are asking far too many students to mortgage their future at too high a cost.

I am proud to support this legislation which will help ease the burden of student loans. H.R. 5 will cut the interest rate for subsidized student loans in half to 3.4 percent. For a student with $13,800 in student loans, this will save them $4,400 in interest over the life of their loan and will help make the college dream a viable reality for countless students.

I have been working in Congress to do just that. I have been pushing for legislation that will not only make student financial aid more flexible for students but also ease the financial burden of student loans.

For instance, I have been pushing for passage of the Student Loan Interest Full Deductibility Act, which would allow eligible taxpayers to deduct the full amount of their student loan interest and would remove the current income cap limiting the deduction. Current law only allows for $2,500 to be deducted, even though many students pay thousands more each year in student loan interest, and phases out this deduction if a taxpayer's income is greater $50,000 a year.

I have also been advocating for the Community College Partnership Act, which would create partnerships between community colleges and four-year institutions to encourage students to continue their education at a college or university. This is based on an Oregon idea where colleges noticed their students were taking classes in non- traditional ways. Students would take classes at a community college in the morning, go to work, and then take another class at a different campus at night, or vice versa. However, in order to create such a class schedule, the students had to deal with two sets of administrations, two sets of paperwork, and two sets of financial aid. In order to encourage more of these students to continue and complete their studies at the 4-year institution, Portland State University partnered with neighboring community colleges to make this transition seamless through dual enrollment programs in which enrollees' class credits, financial aid, and administrative paperwork seamlessly transfer between the schools. The Community College Partnership Act expands on this idea by establishing a competitive grant program to encourage or expand similar partnerships throughout the United States.

Finally, I am proud to be investigating the high price of college textbooks. Recent news reports have exposed what has long been experienced by students and college bookstores: often the exact same college textbooks that American college students are required to buy for class are sold overseas for less than half the price. This situation does not meet the test

of fairness and common sense, and it is especially troubling when one considers the skyrocketing cost of higher education in general and of college textbooks in particular. It is increasingly common for students to pay in excess of $1,000 per school year for textbooks and supplies alone. Last Congress, I was successful in getting the Government Accountability Office to investigate the high price of college textbooks and the disparity of prices between textbooks sold in the United States and overseas. The GAG report unmasked the problem of rising prices of college textbooks. Given this, Congressman Buck McKeon and I commissioned the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance to further study the problem and to develop solutions.

Again, I am pleased to support H.R. 5 today because it will help address the rising cost of college. We are at the dawn of a new economy--one that is based on knowledge. A higher education is more important than ever in this economy. We must work on policies that not only improve access to a higher education but also makes this education more affordable. That is what H.R. 5 is about, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, 4 years ago, this administration took America to war in Iraq without adequate evidence. Since that time, the administration has not listened to the American people, it hasn't listened to our professional military, and it certainly hasn't listened to this Congress.

It was said of a prominent businessman in downtown Portland that he never listened to anybody and that if he was ever drawn in a cartoon he would be drawn without ears.

Now, this President has listened to some people, the so-called Vulcans in the White House, the ideologues. But unlike the Vulcans of Star Trek, who made the decisions based on logic and fact, these guys make it on ideology. These aren't Vulcans. There are Klingons in the White House. But unlike the real Klingons of Star Trek, these Klingons have never fought a battle of their own.

Don't led faux Klingons send real Americans to war. It is wrong.

Mr. Speaker, I have a statement which I will submit for the Record, but I want to speak for a moment from my personal experience.

I have owned a business. I have met a payroll. But I have also worked for relatively low wages. I have worked in decommissioned ships that were both extremely hot in the hold and also filled with asbestos. I have worked in a dog food factory. But my real minimum wage job was as an assistant dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant owned by friends of my parents. I saw how hard those full-time workers worked.

I was an assistant dishwasher, and I saw how the full-time dishwasher got his fingers burned, how the cooks got their hands cut. And they worked for minimum wage just like me, but I was a teenager. And I came home to my parents' home. I said to my parents, Those people work awfully hard, and they deserve more. We ought to have a union. I never got to go back to work at my parents' friends' restaurant.

There are times when there is unequal bargaining power, when there are market failures, and there is a very legitimate role for the public sector and for joint action.

I ask my friends on the other side of the aisle whether they would roll back the 40-hour work week. I ask my friends if they would roll back worker safety provisions and roll back child labor laws. Your time has passed a century ago. It is long due to pass an increase in the minimum wage.

I rise in strong support of raising the minimum wage.

We tend to assume that employment is the solution to poverty. And in the past we have enacted legislation that reflects our commitment to training and placing individuals into jobs. While I strongly support efforts to increase employment, a job is not the complete answer to poverty. Far too many families who work full time still live below the poverty line. In fact, since the late 1970s, the number of full-time workers who live in poverty has doubled.

The reason for this is our low minimum wage. In 1996, after a 5-year freeze, Congress enacted legislation to raise the minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $5.15 an hour--still well below the value of the minimum wage at its in peak in 1968 at $8.49 in 2005 dollars. Now, 10 years have passed without an increase in the minimum wage. Meanwhile, the number of Americans who live in poverty has increased by 5.4 million during the Bush administration.

Today, a minimum wage worker working full time earns only half the poverty level for a family of four. A single parent working full time at the current minimum wage cannot support one child above the poverty threshold.

More than one-quarter, 26 percent, of the 13 million workers who would benefit from a minimum wage increase are parents. Sixty percent of these workers are women.

History has shown that a minimum wage increase does not decrease employment or increase inflation. In fact, in the four years after the last minimum wage increase passed, the economy experienced its strongest growth in over three decades. Yet a minimum wage increase does raise the wages of low-income workers in general, even those who earn more than the minimum wage, the ``lifting all boats'' effect of an increase in the minimum wage. It moves working families out of poverty.

Unfortunately, the Republicans leadership has resisted all efforts to increase the minimum wage.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act, of which I am proud to be an original cosponsor, will raise the minimum wage to $7.25 over a 2-year period.

It is time to raise the minimum wage. No one should work full time jobs, or even work multiple jobs, and still live in poverty.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the rule and the underlying legislation. When I was a child, this country sold F-15s to Iran so that Iran could be our offset to Soviet power in South Asia. And because we sold F-15s and other arms to Iran, we wound up selling chemical weapon precursor materials to Iraq to offset Iranian power in the Middle East, and today we have 135,000 troops in Iraq, in part, because of those unwise decisions.

Now, we are told that we should sell nuclear materials to India, which would free up Indian nuclear reactors to produce many more nuclear weapons for the Indian nuclear weapons program as an offset to Chinese power in Asia.

If we approved this deal with India, it would encourage China to increase its nuclear arsenal, and I submit to you that we, that we are one of the potential targets of that enhanced Chinese nuclear arsenal.

Even more worrisome is that an Indian nuclear build-up would further accelerate the Pakistani nuclear build-up. While I have strong confidence in the stability of the Indian Government and in the stability of Indian democracy, I have much, much less faith in the stability of the Pakistani Government and of Pakistani democracy, and of the Pakistani Government's ability to keep under control those nuclear weapons which it already has and the additional weapons it would build because of an Indian nuclear build-up.

If there is a military coup in Pakistan, we should be very, very concerned about the stability of not only South Asia, but of the world. There have been three military coups in Pakistan since its independence in 1947. Rather than approving nonsignatory states like India in violation of nonproliferation treaties, the better course of action is to respect international agreements and immediately bring to the Senate a total ban on nuclear testing and a comprehensive set of treaties to curtail nuclear proliferation.

Back in July, just this summer, there were only 68 of us in this Chamber who voted against approving the legislation to permit sales of nuclear materials to India. I ask more of my colleagues to join me today at this historic moment to prevent adding fuel to the fire of nuclear proliferation in South Asia. This legislation and the following sale of nuclear materials to India blows out of the water any hope we have of treaty constraints on the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

I want to make it clear for this record and for history that the actions of this administration in containing nuclear proliferation have been patently irresponsible. This administration has underfunded the Nunn-Lugar legislation which takes nuclear materials out of the open market which would otherwise be available for sale to terrorists. This administration has failed to support internal treaties limiting nuclear weapon proliferation, and now, and now it has proposed a treaty with India that would sell India nuclear materials, which would result in a nuclear arms race between India and China and between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan is not a stable country. It is already leaking nuclear weapons technology to other countries and groups. Let the Record show that if or when a mushroom cloud ever erupts over an American city, that event will be traced back to this unwise vote in the United States Senate and to the bone-headed policy of this administration toward treaty obligations, Nunn-Lugar, and the sale of nuclear materials to India.

Ladies and gentlemen, compared to this legislation, the authorization to go to war in Iraq was a piker. This is the moment to pull back from the brink of a new nuclear arms race.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this legislation.

Let the record show that if or when a mushroom cloud ever erupts over an American city, it will be traced back to this unwise vote in the United States Congress and to the bone-headed policy of this administration towards treaty obligations for Nunn-Lugar safeguards and the sale of nuclear materials to India.

When I was a boy, this country sold F-15s to Iran so that Iran could offset Soviet power in South Asia. Because we sold F-15s and other arms to Iran, we wound up selling chemical weapon precursor materials to Iraq to offset Iranian power in the Middle East. Today, we have 135,000 troops in Iraq, in part because of that string of bad decisions.

Now we are told that to offset Chinese power in Asia, we should sell nuclear materials to India which would free up Indian nuclear reactors to produce many more nuclear weapons for the Indian nuclear weapons program.

If we approve this deal with India, it would encourage China to increase its nuclear arsenal. I submit to you that we Americans are one of the potential targets of that enhanced Chinese nuclear arsenal.

Even more worrisome is that an Indian nuclear buildup would further accelerate the Pakistani nuclear buildup.

While I have strong confidence in the stability of the Indian Government and in the stability of Indian democracy, I have much less faith in the stability of the Pakistani Government and of Pakistani democracy, especially of the Pakistani Government's ability to keep under control those nuclear weapons which it already has and the additional weapons it would build because of this Indian nuclear buildup.

If there is a military coup in Pakistan, we should be very, very concerned, not only about the stability of South Asia, but of the whole world. There have been three military coups in Pakistan since its independence in 1947.

Rather than approving nonsignatory states in violation of the nonproliferation treaties, the better course of action is to respect international agreements and to immediately bring to the Senate a total ban on nuclear testing and comprehensive treaties to curtail nuclear proliferation.

On the last night before our July recess, there were only 68 of us in this House who voted against approving the legislation to permit sales of nuclear materials to India. Tonight, on the last night of the 109th Congress, we are voting on the House-Senate conference report.

I ask, I implore more of my colleagues to join me to prevent adding fuel to the fire of nuclear proliferation in South Asia. This legislation, and the following sale of nuclear materials to India, blows out of the water any hope we have of treaty constraints on the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

I want to make it clear in this record and for history that the actions of this administration in containing nuclear proliferation have been patently irresponsible. This administration has underfunded the Nunn-Lugar legislation, which takes nuclear materials out of the open market which would otherwise have been available for sale to terrorists.

This administration has failed to support international treaties limiting nuclear weapons proliferation, and now it has proposed treaties with India that would sell India nuclear materials that would result in a nuclear arms race between India and China and India and Pakistan.

Compared to this, the resolution to go to war in Iraq was a piker. Let us

pull back from the brink of this nuclear precipice.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Like the gentleman from Arizona who has objected to this humanitarian measure during the holiday season, I am a relatively junior Member of this body, but I do recognize when there is a difference between decisions from the heart and decisions of the mind. It is past 11 o'clock, but believe me, I know something about late-night voting, and this is early for late-night voting. I know that we have 12 more bills to consider.

And I also know that from our office budgets, we could have allocated amounts of money for our personal staff if we chose to, and if the gentleman from Arizona chose to, he could pay severance for his employees out of his own pocket if he really wanted to.

The fact that this act of generosity, of humanitarianism during the holidays was taken should not be held up for political points.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan.

I was one of the Members of the House of Representatives who was originally troubled by the House version of the bill and by the balance it struck between respect for the fallen heroes of this Nation and the Federal Constitution for which they died. I am pleased to support a much improved version of this bill returned from the other Chamber. And I thank Mr. Durbin directly for his good work on this bill to remove the unfettered discretion of Federal officials and to limit some of the proscribed activities to include intent and intent to disturb. I am pleased to support this bill in its final form.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

In the original House version of the bill, the person in control of Federal property was given virtually unfettered discretion in determining what activities were acceptable and what activities were not.

I had hoped in the closing hours of this session that we would come together in comity to respect both the fallen dead and the Constitution, which is certainly my intent.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight in strong support of the legislation, not on behalf of the flounder but because of the salmon. This year the Federal Government imposed a radical reduction in sport salmon fishing and an effective closing of the salmon fishing season on most of the west coast. The purported reason was to restore the fall Chinook run in the Klamath River system. However, NOAA scientists have admitted that water mismanagement and environmental degradation of the Klamath River system, not ocean fishing, are the causes of Klamath fall Chinook salmon decline. Radically reducing sport salmon fishing and effectively closing commercial salmon fishing is bad public policy, extorts a high price from coastal communities, and did not solve the problem. In our coastal communities, every job lost on the water results in the loss of three jobs on dry land.

Estimates of the economic impact are in the millions. All of this sacrifice with no benefit to the fall Chinook is an ineffective Band- Aid for bad public policy in the Klamath River system.

Most importantly, this administration is attacking the cultural roots of the Pacific Northwest. By effectively closing the salmon fishery, the administration is not just terminating an economy, it is ending a way of life. Fishing for salmon is an integral part of who we are. Under previously imposed fishing restrictions, folks who fish for salmon have made innumerable changes and sacrifices to restore the salmon runs. This administration owes it to these fishermen and their families to provide the disaster assistance that they have promised.

When Klamath Basin farmers needed assistance in 2001, this administration correctly declared a disaster and assistance was appropriated within weeks. Oregon salmon fishermen and their families deserve the same. Finally, tonight, months after west coast families were hit so hard by the salmon closure, we take another important step toward appropriate relief in this bill.

This bill provides that affected offshore fishermen and onshore workers are eligible to receive direct assistance under section 312(a) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and directs the Secretary of Commerce to provide the assistance. On behalf of west coast fishing families affected by bad Federal policy, I ask you all to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize that on December 8, 2006, the Democratic Pacific Union will be hosting an international symposium in Taipei, Taiwan on democracy and commerce. Participants from more than 20 countries will discuss issues related to democracy and the workings of national legislatures, parliaments and congresses.

The Democratic Pacific Union was founded in Taiwan and is committed to the promotion of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in the Pacific Rim. It emphasizes representative government and peaceful resolution of disputes.

I am pleased that the Democratic Pacific Union will foster a discussion about the importance of democracy and the rule of law and also pleased that the open dialogue will foster the possibility of enduring peace.

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

First, Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment for an appreciation of Mr. Boehlert, the retiring chairman of the Science Committee. He is a consummate legislator; he has talked the talk and walked the walk of promoting the public good over partisanship. He has run the Science Committee in a gentlemanly, bipartisan fashion. And to me, as an aging junior Member of this body, when I think of who I would like to be when I grow up, one of those people is Sherry Boehlert.

I rise in support of H.R. 1674, the U.S. Tsunami Warning and Education Act. I am an original cosponsor of this legislation, and I am proud to have worked with Chairman Boehlert and Chairman Ehlers on this important bill.

We cannot prevent earthquakes and tsunamis, but we can prepare for them. We can ensure that citizens of our coastal communities take appropriate safety steps when the inevitable occurs.

Detection and forecasting are not sufficient. State and local communities must be prepared to disseminate the warning and direct the public to safety areas. Individual citizens must know where to go when they receive a warning. All this must be done well in advance of a tsunami.

I am fortunate to represent a beautiful expanse of the Oregon coast. However, we are also well aware of the potential danger presented by the Cascadia fault located just offshore of Oregon, Washington and California.

In Oregon, we face the threat of a 9.0 Richter Scale coastal earthquake and resulting tsunami. Scientists warn it is not whether this natural disaster will occur, but when. Unlike hurricanes Katrina and Rita, there will be absolutely no warning of the earthquake. When the 9.0 Cascadia earthquake hits, it will rock the ground for 4 to 5 minutes, perhaps raising and dropping the ground level 4 to 8 feet at each rumble. After the quake, Oregonians will have only 10 to 30 minutes to reach high ground before the tsunami rolls ashore.

Oregon has already done a great deal to keep our coastline beautiful and our citizens safe. Cannon Beach, Oregon, was one of the first coastal communities to be designated tsunami-ready by NOAA. H.R. 1674 builds upon the successful partnership that exists between the Federal, State and local governments on the west coast to ensure that all U.S. coastal communities will be prepared to deal with tsunamis.

This bill authorizes the type of comprehensive system we must have if we are to avoid the catastrophic loss of life caused by the December 2004 Indonesian earthquake.

Previously, funding for tsunamis focused more heavily on detection and forecasting systems hardware. While this hardware will help protect the Chinese and Japanese across the ocean in the event of a Cascadia earthquake, it is only mitigation programs focusing on educating the public that are key to protecting Oregonians, Washingtonians and Californians from a Cascadia fault quake.

I am particularly pleased that this legislation includes a specific percentage of funding for tsunami hazard education and mitigation. While I would like to see a more aggressive increase in funding over the lifetime of the bill, I believe these funding levels represent a good start. This program supports vital activities such as inundation mapping, public education and encouraging local communication networks.

Again, I would like to thank Chairman Boehlert and Chairman Ehlers for working with me in a bipartisan and collegial manner on this legislation. H.R. 1674 is a good bill, and I urge all Members to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to my friend and colleague from Oregon (Ms. Hooley).

(Ms. HOOLEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Washington (Mr. Inslee).

(Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

I thank the ranking member, and I thank the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of section 201 of S. 1785 and, in particular, its well-deserved commendation of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. This act, and its 1984 amendments, were cited by The Economist in December 14, 2002, as possibly the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in the past half century.

The reasons are apparent if one looks at the revolutionary changes that began with Bayh-Dole. In 1980, perhaps half a dozen universities were strongly committed to commercialization of university research results. Today, it is hard to find a university that does not have a tech transfer licensing program to take advantage of this legislation.

In the 1970s, we were struggling to keep up with international competition. Bayh-Dole made research universities a major tool in our tool box as an antidote to that decline.

Initially, by keeping the intellectual property rights to the ideas they generated, universities were able to bring in revenues, share with professor inventors, as industry began to commercialize the fruits of university research. Some of the inventions in biotechnology and computer software and hardware by institutions such as the Oregon Health and Science University, the University of Oregon and Stanford University, were listed by AUTM, the Association of University Technology Managers, in the top 100 inventions that changed American life.

As success has mounted and more and more university professors thought about the commercial implications of their work, new opportunities opened

up for professors. This led to university research centers, research parks and technology transfer offices, adding many more services as professors began startup companies. Bayh-Dole is a major reason why both research universities and small high-tech companies with university roots are such major drivers of today's American economy.

None of this would have been possible without the cooperation of the Committee on the Judiciary and its Courts Subcommittee and the Committee on Science and its Technology Subcommittee, where I am proud to serve as subcommittee ranking Democratic member.

It is fitting that Chairman Sensenbrenner, who was on both committees at the time of the 1984 amendments, and who went on to serve as chairman of both full committees, has chosen to bring this commemoration forward in a bipartisan manner that involves both committees.

I thank both gentlemen. I thank him for his continued leadership, and I look forward to working with him, not only to commend Bayh-Dole today, but perhaps also to update and improve in the coming years after a successful quarter century run.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support for H.R. 4377, the Hydroelectric Project at Arrowrock Dam License Extension. This bill will bring more public power to Pacific Northwest energy customers by extending the time required for construction of the Arrowrock hydroelectric project.

The extension is necessary because of consultations with the Fish & Wildlife Service to evaluate and protect threatened species in the vicinity of the project--bull trout. Because of delays in these consultations the commencement of construction was delayed past the expiration date of March 2005. An extension of license P 4656 is needed in order to begin construction during winter of 2006 or 2007 to take advantage of the lower water conditions.

This project was unable to meet the March 20, 2005 start of construction deadline because the Fish & Wildlife Service would not begin consultation on the project until after it completed consultation on all of the Reclamation projects in the Upper Snake River Basin. That Upper Snake consultation was a direct outgrowth of the requirements of the Snake River Water Rights Act of 2004, H.R. 4818, Title X, and the Nez Perce Agreement of 2004. I believe that the inaction of one federal agency should not be the basis for depriving the citizens of Oregon, Idaho and the United States of important rights, including their rights under permits issued by other federal agencies.

I support H.R. 4377 and ask my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, this is a sad day in the long history of this Chamber and of this Congress because today we break faith with the basic tenets of Anglo-American law that have come down from the Magna Carta, through the attempts of Charles I to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, to the challenges that American Presidents have faced in every stressful conflict situation in this Nation's history.

Although we should care about the rights of aliens seized in other countries, we should care, what we are debating today are the rights of American citizens here in the United States.

If my wife, a sixth generation Oregonian, were seized up and detained under the law we are considering today, she would disappear into a black hole of detention with no access to article 3 courts. At best, she would get a military tribunal, and that is not what American citizens deserve. The Koramatsu case from World War II is still the law of the land. It has not been overturned. And what it stands for is the proposition that civilians can be held by the military in this country. The Koramatsu case has been called a gun pointed at the heart of our civil liberties, and today this Congress loads that weapon.

This law is unwise as it is unconstitutional, and we should not be enacting this in haste. The great writ is one of our great protections. It applies to all Americans, and Americans should not be tried by a military tribunal.

Mr. Speaker, we do a grave injustice today because this statute applies to American citizens as well as everybody else.

Fred Korematsu was a U.S. citizen. He was picked up on a U.S. street. And we issued an apology years later.

If we pass this bill today, some future Congress, long after we are out of office, long after we are dead, some future Congress will be issuing an apology.

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would like to inquire of the chairman what his reasoning is in moving this bill when he was so supportive of selling fissile materials to India, which, like North Korea, is not a signatory to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and, unlike North Korea, has a demonstrated nuclear capability.

Now, I was only a kid then, but I remember when we sold F-15s to Iran so that Iran could offset Soviet power in South Asia. And because we sold F-15s and other things to Iran, we wound up selling chemical weapon precursor materials to Iraq to offset Iran in the Middle East. Now we are told that we should sell fissile materials to India, which would free up Indian nuclear reactors to produce many more nuclear weapons for the Indian nuclear weapons program as an offset to Chinese power in Asia.

Mr. Chairman, if we do this with India, what it would do is encourage the Chinese to increase their nuclear arsenal, and I submit to you that we are one of the potential targets of that enhanced Chinese nuclear arsenal.

Even more worrisome is that this Indian nuclear build-up would accelerate further the Pakistani nuclear build-up, which my friend from Ohio referred to a moment ago.

And while I have strong confidence in the stability of the Indian government, and in the stability of Indian democracy, I have much less faith in the stability of the Pakistani government, and of Pakistani democracy, and of the Pakistani government's ability to keep under control those nuclear weapons which it already has, and more of which it would be encouraged to build because of the sale of fissile material to India.

And in a military coup, if there is a military coup in Pakistan, which there has been multiple times in the last 20 years, we should be very, very concerned about the stability of not only south Asia, but of the world.

I think the chairman, as one of the subcommittee chairs of the International Relations Committee would surely agree with me that rather than sanctioning nonsignatory States, approving of nonsignatory States to those nonproliferation treaties, the better course of action is to respect these international agreements and to immediately bring to the Senate a total ban on nuclear testing, and comprehensive treaties concerning nuclear proliferation.

I would be happy to yield to the chairman for his response.

Reclaiming my time. Is not ultimately the big picture effect of permitting India to go forward with this basically blowing out of the water the entire treaty system with which we have tried to restrain nuclear nonproliferation in this world? I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time. Is the gentleman citing something from the United Nations? I yield to the the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time. Is this the Congress of the United States or are we abdicating responsibility to the United Nations?

Reclaiming my time. It is a very short question, amenable to a ``yes'' or ``no'' answer. Is this not the United States Congress? Are we not abdicating responsibility under your comment to the United Nations rather than taking responsibility ourselves?

I mean taking responsibility for Indian nuclear weapons, which will be produced as a result of our sale of fissile materials to India.

I thank the gentleman and yield to the question from Ohio.

Reclaiming my time. I thank the gentleman. I want to make clear that I am certainly not defending the North Korea regime. But, I am calling into question the actions of this Congress and the strong advocacy of the chairman in favor of a proposed treaty with India which would have the result of starting a nuclear arms race or accelerating a nuclear arms race in south Asia and, just as importantly, which in the big picture blows out the whole treaty system for restraining the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

I share with the gentleman the concerns about the export of nuclear weapons from North Korea. The point of my earlier comments is not about export from India, but because of our actions with respect to India, that we would be encouraging and accelerating the Pakistani nuclear program from which there is a real risk of exportation. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Reclaiming my time. I would be happy to yield to the chairman.

Reclaiming my time. Unlike the gentleman from Ohio, the dialectic of proliferation is way beyond me.

I do recognize a bad idea when I see one, and encouraging India by selling it nuclear fissile materials, which would ultimately result in the increase of Chinese nuclear weapons and Pakistani nuclear weapons, is surely that bad idea.

There are times when we are all in the minority at one time or another. There was 68 of us who voted against approving the treaty to sell nuclear fissile materials to India. On that vote, I would have been happy to have been a minority of one because I do believe that it would add fuel to the fire of nuclear proliferation in south Asia in that it basically does blow out of the water any hope we have of treaty constraints on the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

I want to make it clear in this Record and for history that the actions of this administration in nuclear proliferation or trying to contain nuclear proliferation have been patently

irresponsible. This administration has underfunded the Nunn-Lugar legislation which seeks to purchase fissile materials, which would be otherwise available to terrorists on the open market.

This administration has proposed a treaty with India that would sell India nuclear fissile materials that would result in a nuclear arms race between India and China and India and Pakistan, and Pakistan is not a stable country. There is great danger of the leakage of nuclear weapons from Pakistan. You heard earlier from another speaker about Pakistani aid to nuclear proliferation elsewhere in the world.

Let the record show that if or when a mushroom cloud ever erupts over an American city, it will be traced back to this unwise vote in the United States Congress and to a bone-headed policy of this administration with respect to treaty rights, to Nunn-Lugar and this sale of nuclear materials to India.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, I simply wanted to yield to the chairman for any further comments he might have.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chairman's forbearance and the Speaker's forbearance.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.