Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, for those of my colleagues who follow the debates on the House floor, they know in the past month they have heard a lot of talk about morals, about patriotism, and sound economic policy. I do not see how adding $146 billion to our Nation's debt makes any of them better. As a matter of fact, I would like the gentleman from New York (Mr. Reynolds) to look me in the eye because I am going to tell him that I think it is immoral that the Republican-led Congress has added $1,712,281,371,000 worth of debt to our Nation, to our children; and I would like the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) to please look at me, because to our Nation's unborn children he has stuck them with that bill.

I will tell my colleagues that it is immoral that this Republican-led Congress since May 9, 2001, has stolen, and please listen to my words, stolen $521 billion from the Social Security trust fund. When my colleagues take money that people paid into Social Security and use it to the pay for someone else's tax break, they have stolen it. It is not there and they have no plan to pay it back.

I will say it is unpatriotic that in the 10 years that my colleagues have controlled this House that they have increased the national debt by $2,557,432,000,000; and by the way, one-third of all of the debt accumulated in this country in over 225 years, one-third of it has been accumulated in less than 10 years by a Republican House of Representatives.

Lastly, I want to hear someone tell me how it is sound economic policy for a Nation to borrow $3 for every $1 given back in tax breaks, and please check the Treasury figures. My colleagues have added $1,857,747,000,000 to the debt in order to give people $620 billion back.

So I will question my colleagues' morality for sticking my kids with their bills. I will question their patriotism because I think they are bankrupting this country; and lastly, I will question their so-called sound economic policy that has gone out and borrowed three bucks for every buck they gave back in tax breaks. This is not what is good for our country. It is not what is good for our kids, and it is not what is good for America.

I urge my colleagues to defeat this rule. I urge my colleagues, for once, let us draw the line and start thinking of the future of this country instead of seeing how many cute things they can do in the 40 days before the election that will get them a few more campaign contributions at the expense of trillions of dollars in debt.

The folks who said we are borrowing this money from the Chinese, every word of that is true. We now owe the Communist Chinese $300 billion. Tell me how that is good for our country.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, on September 13, 2004, I was unavoidably detained in my congressional district while making preparations for the probable landfall of Hurricane Ivan. Unfortunately, I missed rollcall votes no. 441, 442 and 443. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on each of the rollcall votes.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to request unanimous consent to enter my statement into the record at the appropriate location.

Mr. Chairman, I hope that the fact that the gentleman from Arizona is so silent on this means he is going to jump up and support this amendment, because it makes such abundant sense.

I hear my colleagues saying why do we allow corporations to leave America, avoid paying taxes, and yet still receive all the benefits of being an American. It is because Congress lets them. It is time for Congress to close this door.

Right now there are 140,000 young Americans getting shot at every day in Iraq, paying their dues to be an American; and another 15,000 in Afghanistan paying their dues. As I have said a dozen times on this floor, those of us who are lucky enough not to have to fight this war, ought to be at least willing to pay for it. And those of us who are lucky enough to be Americans and enjoy all the privileges of being an American, such as this program, ought to be willing to pay the dues of being an American. And that is called paying taxes.

These folks cannot have it both ways, I would say to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe). If they want the Jamaican Coast Guard to come rescue them, let them be Jamaicans. If they want the Grand Cayman Navy SEALS to rescue their drilling rigs if they get boarded by terrorists, I say let the Grand Cayman Navy SEALS go rescue them, but not the U.S. Navy. And if they want a loan, a subsidized loan from a government, if they choose to be Jamaican or Bermudan, let them do so. But there is absolutely no reason for the taxpayers of this Nation, who pay their dues, whose kids serve in our military to subsidize these folks who want to play it both ways.

They do not want to pay their dues, but they want all the privileges of being an American. And I commend the gentleman for bringing this to the public's attention.

Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor to raise my objections to taking the bill that is supposed to be funding the most honorable and the bravest Americans, buying the weapons they need, paying their salaries, taking care of their families, and being used by the sneakiest and the most cowardly Americans to sneak through a $700 billion increase in our Nation's national debt. At some point, even my most hard core Republican friends have to ask themselves: Is there any shame left? Is there anything that you won't foul, by taking a bill that is meant to see to it that fewer American lives are lost in combat and seeing to it that those people, if they make it home, are straddled with the bill?

Now, I notice the gentleman from Kansas made a point of saying, no, the problem is Social Security. Sir, I beg to differ. In the past few years, this administration, this Congress, of which you are in the majority party, has taken $1.580 trillion out of the Social Security Trust Fund, and what folks back home know already is that Social Security more than pays itself. In fact, some of the tax breaks you have been giving to the wealthiest of Americans have been paid for by excess social security taxes, monies that should have been set aside for future needs but instead have been borrowed and spent.

You have done the same thing with the Federal Employees Retirement System, with $612 billion taken out of the system. If a private sector employer had done that, they would go to jail. The Medicare trust funds, $287 billion of money that was collected should have been set- aside for Medicare, but spent so that you can give your wealthy contributors a tax break.

So I would ask any of the people of the 228 who are probably going to vote for this, tell me it is not cowardly. Tell me it is not sleazy to take what is probably the most important, what is undoubtedly the most important function of this Nation, which is providing for its defense, and using that in a cynical attempt to hide an increase in the national debt.

See, I happen to have watched the speech where the President said he could cut taxes, increase spending and pay down the national debt. I would remind my colleagues that since he made that speech, and since May 9, 2001, when your side passed that budget with those tax decreases, with those spending increases you have added $1,567,995,916,652.32 to the debt.

But that is not enough, because your intention is, obviously, to bankrupt this Nation. There can not be any other purpose for running up this much debt. And someone is going to say, well, we have a war to pay for. That is right, but I would remind you if you took the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the first World War, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, the Nation borrowed $1 trillion for all of those wars and everything else that happened in the first 200 years of our Nation. In the past 3 years, you have borrowed $1.5 trillion.

So, again, I ask the question: Have you no shame? Is there nothing that you will stoop to in an effort to hide your sneaky agenda?

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the sponsor of this bill would mention that all politics is local. I would remind the gentleman that in my State of Mississippi local elected officials are held personally liable for debts they incur while in office. If they spend more money than they can collect in taxes, they are personally liable. I wonder if the sponsor of this bill would be willing to pay his share of the $1,553,114,795,203.56 that his policies have added to the American debt in just the past 3 years?

I wonder how many of the Members who feel so strongly about this bill would be willing to pay their share of the $34 billion it is going to add to our Nation's debt. Do Members really feel that strongly about it? Do Members really think they are doing enough good to stick my kids with their $34 billion bill?

We are at war, and shame on us if we are the first generation of Americans to cut taxes as young Americans are dying on a daily basis. We are at war and we ought to be willing to pay for it and we ought to quit sticking our kids with our bills.

Mr. Chairman, the Constitution of the United States gives the elected Members of Congress the responsibility to provide for an Army and a Navy. Every person in this body was elected to fulfill those requirements.

I did not come here to delegate my responsibility to some bureaucrat to decide where or when bases should be closed. If Members want to give away their responsibilities, they should not seek this job.

For that reason, I encourage my colleagues to vote against the Kennedy amendment, to keep that responsibility here in Congress and to do our jobs.

Mr. Chairman, the young men and women who serve in our Nation's Armed Forces are not Democrats, they are not Republicans; they are Americans. And I am happy to say that I feel like the package that was put together was not put together by Democrats or Republicans, but by Americans who care about our Nation's defense. And I think it does some very good things.

First and foremost, I would like to commend my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) for his efforts in working with us to delay the next round of base closures. As we have pointed out, we are growing the Army. Almost everyone in the Army is spoken for. They are either in Iraq, just got home from Iraq or getting ready to go to Iraq.

This is a time of great uncertainty, and we do not need to further complicate that uncertainty by closing bases with a number that was artificially picked prior to September 11.

It is my understanding that there will be efforts to put the next round of base closures back into the bill. I would encourage my colleagues to vote against that. We have come to a very fair compromise when people like me, who would just as soon do away with BRAC entirely, and a level head like the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) said, we should delay it. And I support that delay.

We should continue to work and we continue to work on programs that protect our troops. With things like up-armored Humvees, with things like jammers to prevent improvised explosive devices from unnecessarily taking the lives of young Americans. We have worked to provide hazardous duty pay for those people whose primary military mission is fire-fighting.

As my great colleague from Maryland has said, we have taken several significant steps to help our Nation's Navy and shipbuilding programs with three destroyers, a submarine, an amphibious cargo ship, an amphibious assault ship for the Marine Corps, and the LHD, which is also an amphibious assault ship for the Marine Corps.

We have taken steps to limit the amount of foreign flag vessels that can be leased by our Nation's Navy. Again, my chairman, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) is doing a great job of trying to revitalize American shipbuilding. We do not help that one bit when we go out and lease foreign-flag vessels. They should be made here in our country, instead of being built and leased from overseas.

We have worked, and again, I want to compliment all of my colleagues, I think this passed unanimously, to fix the problem with the survivor benefits program where the widows of the people who served in our Nation's military were not given what they were promised. Their retirement benefit was reduced by their Social Security. That should not be the case and I commend everyone who worked on that, in particular, my friend from Pensacola, Florida (Mr. Miller), who is a sponsor of that amendment.

The last thing I would like to mention to my colleagues is, we are indeed at war. Over 700 young Americans have lost their lives in Iraq. More, including a great football player, have lost their lives in Afghanistan; and we are truly blessed by every single person who chooses to serve our Nation in its Armed Forces.

I would point out that in just a little while we will be having a vote on the conference report to our Nation's budget. And I would like to ask my colleagues, in addition to supporting this bill, to keep in mind that those who are fortunate enough not to have to fight in this war ought to, at the very least, be willing to pay for it now, not with borrowed money and not with sticking future generations of Americans with a bill that we are not willing to pay.

So I would encourage Members to vote for the defense authorization bill. I would encourage Members to vote against bringing BRAC back into this bill; and I would encourage Members to vote against the budget that does not pay for this bill with today's dollars, but pays for this bill with borrowed money that our children will have to pay.

Mr. Speaker, in January I introduced H.J. Res. 88, a bill proposing a Constitutional amendment to make the Social Security trust funds, the Medicare trust funds, the military retirement trust fund, and the civil service retirement trust fund off-budget so that the annual budget deficit will reflect the true costs of the obligations that accrue each year.

My bill has been endorsed by the TREA Senior Citizens League, an affiliate of The Retired Enlisted Association. I would like to insert the letter of support from George A. Smith, Chairman of TREA Senior Citizens League into the Record:

January 15, 2004.

Hon. Gene Taylor

Rayburn House Office Building,

Washington, DC.

Dear Congressman Taylor: TSCL, a nonpartisan advocacy

organization consisting of some 1.2 million members and

supporters nationwide, understands that you intend to

reintroduce a constitutional amendment resolution that would

lock Social Security, Medicare and military retirement trust

funds off budget. On behalf of our members and supporters, I

want to convey our strong support for your resolution.

Contrary to popular belief, Social Security and other trust

fund monies are not kept separate from other government

funds. The government uses those monies when it needs to, and

simply writes an IOU to the trust fund. I believe the

American people would be outraged if they truly understood

this was happening.

Also, because of the way the government counts the

surpluses that we have in the various trust funds, the

deficit appears to be less than it really is. Once again, I

believe if the American people would see the true size of the

deficit, there would be an end to business as usual in

Washington. As Comptroller General David Walker said in a

September 2003 speech, ```while we are starting off in a

financial hole, we don't really have a very good picture of

how deep it is'' because the Congressional Budget Office and

the Office of Management and Budget's current measurement and

scorekeeping approaches relay an incomplete and misleading

picture of the government's financial condition.'' [Roll

Call, September 18, 2003]

TSCL also applauds the approach you are taking by

introducing a constitutional amendment resolution. If

legislation only were to be enacted, we believe that Congress

and the White House would ignore or work around the law. This

is why it is imperative that a constitutional amendment be

ratified.

TSCL's parent organization is The Retired Enlisted

Association. As such, we are especially grateful for the

protections you seek not only for Social Security and

Medicare trust funds, but also for the military retirement

and disability trust fund.

Please be assured, Rep. Taylor, that we will be doing

whatever we can do to move this resolution forward. Again,

thank you for your efforts. We look forward to working with

you on this critical matter.

Warm Regards,

George A. Smith,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, on March 29, 2004, I was unavoidably detained because my departure flight from my congressional district was delayed as a result of mechanical problems. This situation resulted in my having missed rollcall votes 94 and 95. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall vote No. 94 and ``yea'' on rollcall vote No. 95.

Mr. Speaker, if you were to look back 400 or 500 years, to the nations that our forefathers left, many of them in Europe, a common practice then was that children would inherit the debts of their parents. If they did not have the money to repay those debts, then they became indentured servants for some lord or king.

Amongst the many decisions our founding fathers made when they wrote America's constitution was they had to wrestle with whether or not one generation should be able to burden the next generation with its debts. They decided they would not; that the debt dies with the estate, and that once an estate's taxes are paid, the children are not responsible for the debts of their parents.

I say this because we have seen a dramatic change in our Nation in the past 25 years, in particular, in the past 3 years. I have a 25- year-old daughter. On the day she was born, our Nation was less than $1 trillion in debt. We had gone all the way from the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish- American War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, escaped the Great Depression, built the intercoastal waterways, and the Golden Gate Bridge and borrowed less than $1 trillion.

It first started with the Reagan administration, a Democratic House and a Republican Senate. In the span of 8 years, they doubled that debt to $2 trillion. Ah, but they were just pikers when it came to the Bush administration. In less than 3 years, since May 9, 2001, when George Bush passed his tax cut saying he could cut taxes, increase spending, balance the budget, and pay off those debts that we had, our Nation's debt has grown by $1,448,675,099,676.

If I were to have one page out here on the House floor, which I have since been prohibited from doing by Speaker Hastert, each holding up one sign for one digit, it would take 13 young Americans to show just the increase in our Nation's debt.

But it is worse than that. Because if we listen to my Republican colleagues, they say, but we have tax cuts, and we have done a lot of good with that. I would remind my colleagues that through December of this year, they have returned to the American public $431 billion in tax cuts since May 9, 2001. But in order to do that, they borrowed $1.358 trillion.

Now, 7th grade math tells me that for every $1 they have returned to the citizens, they borrowed $3. It is an intergenerational transfer of debt. For the sake of their political coffers going up and their contributions going up, they have now stuck my kids, everyone's kids and every unborn child in America with an additional $1.448 trillion worth of debt.

But it is worse than that. They did not just steal it from future generations, they stole it from today's generation.

Speaker Hastert, why don't you tell us how much we owe to the Social Security Trust Fund today? Oh, I am sorry, you are out raising money.

Well, the Social Security Trust Fund owes $1.555 trillion. And when my colleagues tell you about the lock box, ask them the name of the bank and the account number. Because there is not one penny in the Social Security Trust Fund.

How about the Medicare Trust Fund? Mr. Speaker, how much is owed to the Medicare Trust Fund? I am sorry, he is out talking about what a great job he has done as Speaker.

We owe $284 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund. That is money taken out of people's taxes that were promised to be set aside for no other purpose than to pay Medicare bills. There is not a penny in that account. Again, if any of my colleagues tell you that there is, ask them for the name of the bank and the account number.

How about the military retirement fund? Those brave people serving us right now in dangerous places like Iraq and Afghanistan, in Colombia and Korea.

Mr. Speaker, how much money do we owe the military retirees trust fund? Gee, could not make it.

It is $185 billion that you have taken from their trust fund and used to spend on your programs.

And lastly, those people who serve us, all the way from the FBI agents to the CIA, border patrol agents, homeland security agents, all those folks who work for our Nation and have a retirement system they have paid into that has been matched by the taxpayers. How much is owed to it, Mr. Speaker? $621 billion.

Mr. Speaker, you have been Speaker now since January 1, 1999, and you have not allowed a vote on a balanced budget amendment. What is it that you are hiding from me? What is it that you are hiding from them?

Mr. Speaker, a little over a year ago, the President of the United States, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz all told me, me, that not only did the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction, but that they had their finger on the trigger and were getting ready to use them. Now, 7 months after we have occupied Iraq, the only thing harder to find than a Republican who will tell me where those weapons of mass destruction are is a Republican who will tell me how they are going to pay for this bill.

In the 29 months since the passage of their budget, their spending, their tax cuts, they have increased our Nation's debt by $1,229,407,000.

This bill alone will add another $400 billion to our staggering $6.8 trillion debt.

But if you have noticed, not one of my Republican colleagues will say how they are going to pay for it, because they do not want you to know that a few seniors will benefit from this, but all of us will end up paying interest on it. And we are already squandering $1 billion of your money a day on that interest.

This is nothing but an auction to the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies of this Nation, for campaign contributions to the Republican party. And I want one Republican to hold up one prescription and just tell me how much less it is going to be 1 year from today, 2 years from today, because that is what seniors really want. They do not want another bureaucracy. They do not want $400 billion worth of debt.

The people who are seniors now are the Greatest Generation, and the last thing the Greatest Generation wanted is the country they fought for in World War II and Korea to be bankrupted by some political prank now.

So I ask the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Pryce) how are you going to pay for it, and please name one drug that will be cheaper 1 year from today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to myself.

Mr. Speaker, last night, yesterday in Iraq 7 brave young Americans died. This is the committee that makes the decisions to arm those people, to pay those people, take care of their families, and to take care of their injuries when they get home. And, so, as earlier this year I voted to send those young people to Iraq, I share in the responsibility and for those things that go wrong I share in the blame.

Having said that, although I have grave reservations about parts of this bill, I will be supporting it because they deserve to be paid, they deserve a pay increase, they deserve the better weapons, the better ships that are in this bill. But there are a couple of things that trouble me greatly.

Number one is the Bush administration's insistence on another round of base closures. Anyone in this body knows, who has taken the time to look at it, knows the United States Army is too small, that the entire United States Army is spoken for. If they are not deployed, they are getting ready to be deployed. So how on earth can we close one base out of four as the Bush administration wants to do?

The fleet is too small, 295 ships. Again, how can we close one Navy port out of four if the fleet is too small?

If the Bush administration truly thinks the base closures is a good idea, then they ought to have the courage to announce which bases they want to close prior to the Presidential election and not after in 2005. I think it just stands to reason. You do not hear Congressmen saying let us close bases. I cannot find one Service Secretary who is saying let us close bases. I cannot find one Admiral or General who will name one base that should be closed.

So if the Bush administration wants to close bases, let them do it prior to the Presidential election.

Second thing is, Mr. President, for the sake of those people fighting, let us pay for this war. This supplemental, and I am going to vote for it, is going to spend $400 billion for our Nation's defense.

A couple weeks ago we had a supplemental for $87 billion, earlier in the year another supplemental for $79 billion. That adds up to about $565 billion. Every penny of that is borrowed. It is borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund. It is borrowed from the Medicare Trust Fund. It is borrowed from the military retirees trust fund. It is borrowed from the civil servicemen's retirement trust fund. It is borrowed from the communist Chinese, and it is borrowed from average Americans.

See, those of us who were lucky enough not to have to fight this war ought to at least be willing to pay for it and not stick the brave young men and women who will be coming home from this deployment with the bill. Every other generation of Americans tried to pay their own bills during wartime. This generation of Americans passes the buck to somebody else, and it is wrong.

So for the sake of the great young men and women who are serving our country in the Army and the Navy, the Air Force, Marines, those great Guardsmen and Reservists who are being pulled away from their families to serve as we speak, and a young person from Mississippi who was a Guardsman died just yesterday, I am going to vote for this bill. But I would ask my colleagues to let us do this in the future in a more sensible way.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I find it a bit inconsistent. This is the same body that voted for NAFTA, that sent tens of thousands of American jobs to Mexico, the same body that voted for permanent normal trade relations with the Communist Chinese.

In the case of NAFTA, we have gone from a trade surplus to a trade deficit. We have sent jobs that used to be in Mississippi to Mexico. In the case of normal trade relations with China, we have taken it a step worse. We have taken jobs that used to be done in Waynesboro, Mississippi, that are now done by political prisoners in China.

To make matters worse, you can trace Chinese defense spending, and their weapons modernization has increased on a dollar-for-dollar basis with their trade surplus with the United States. So we have not only sent them our jobs; we are sending them the money they will eventually use to shoot at Americans.

My colleagues, in the response to the loss of these jobs, say it is the prisoners' fault. No, guys, it is NAFTA's fault. It is permanent trade relations with China's fault.

I can tell you one thing that my constituents want, is they want prisoners to work. They do not want them sitting on their duffs watching television. They want them to work. They want them to do something for society, to pay their debt to society. If you are going to tell them they cannot make this or that, what can they do? Because there is not enough trash on the highways to be picked up. And, by the way, no one is hiring people to pick up trash on the highways when they get out of prison.

If you are really serious about the loss of American manufacturing jobs, repeal NAFTA. If you really care about the future of this country, repeal permanent normal trade relations with the last communist superpower that is using that money to buy weapons that will eventually be used against our country. But, for gosh sakes, do not take two mistakes and compound it with a third mistake of saying prisoners cannot work and continue to do something to pay their debt to society.

I urge Members to vote against this bill.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to present H.R. 2438, a bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 115 West Pine Street in Hattiesburg, Mississippi as the ``Major Henry A. Commiskey, Sr. Post Office Building''. The Hattiesburg City Council and the Forrest County Board of Supervisors requested through official resolutions that the downtown Hattiesburg Post Office be named for the late Major Commiskey, who received the Medal of Honor during his lifetime.

Henry Alfred Commiskey, Sr. was born in Hattiesburg on January 10, 1927. He attended the Sacred Heart School there and worked as a brakeman on the Illinois Central Railroad before joining the Marine Corps on January 12, 1944, two days after his 17th birthday. Commiskey participated in the February 1945 invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II, where he earned the Purple Heart for being wounded in action. He also received the Letter of Commendation for ``exhibiting high qualities of leadership and courage in the face of a stubborn and fanatical enemy.''

Commiskey remained in the Corps after the war and rose to the rank of staff sergeant to become a drill instructor at the Parris Island boot camp in South Carolina. He later graduated from Officer Candidate School and was commissioned a second lieutenant on September 10, 1949. He volunteered for combat service at the outbreak of the Korean War and was sent to Korea with the 1st Marine Regiment in August of 1950, where he participated in the Inchon landing. A few days later, on September 20, 1950, Commiskey earned the Medal of Honor for his heroism atop Hill 85 near Yongdungp'o, Korea, on the outskirts of Seoul.

Serving as a platoon leader in Company C, First Battalion, First Marines, First Marine Division (reinforced), Second Lieutenant Commiskey spearheaded the assault that was ordered on forces that were well dug in on Hill 85. Charging up the steep slopes on the run into heavy enemy machine-gun and small arms fire, he ran ahead of his men and was the first to reach the crest of their objective. Armed only with a pistol, he jumped into a hostile machine-gun emplacement occupied by five enemy soldiers, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and killed them all. He then moved to the next emplacement, where he killed two more enemy soldiers before leading his men on further to route their adversaries and take the hill.

Although Commiskey miraculously escaped harm during the assault on Hill 85, he was wounded a week later and then again on December 8, 1950. He was then returned to the United States for hospitalization and later promoted to first lieutenant in June of 1951. Commiskey was presented the Medal of Honor by President Truman at a White House ceremony on August 1, 1951, becoming the first Marine to be so awarded for extraordinary heroism in the Korean conflict. Commiskey then became a student naval aviator in September of 1951 at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. He received his wings at Corpus Christi, Texas in June of 1953 and later completed jet training at El Toro, California. He was promoted to captain in July of 1953. In April of 1954, Commiskey returned to Korea as a pilot with Marine Attack Squadron 21, Marine Aircraft Group 12, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing.

Commiskey returned to the United States in September of 1954 and continued his service as a recruitment officer and as an instructor for the Marine Corps School at Quantico, Virginia. He was promoted to the rank of major in July of 1959 and retired from active duty in August of 1966. Major Henry A. Commiskey, Sr. died in Meridian, Mississippi on August 15, 1971.

Last year, I originally introduced House Resolution 5495, a bill that was identical to the measure currently before us. The previous bill passed the House at the very end of the 107th Congress, but did not make it through the Senate before time ran out and the session ended. Due to that fact, I then reintroduced the bill for the 108th Congress, and it was designated with a new number. The entire Mississippi House delegation signed on as original cosponsors of both bills, for which I am very grateful. I also thank both the majority and minority leadership of the House of Representatives and the Government Reform Committee for shepherding the bill through the House once more.

On behalf of our Nation, the State of Mississippi, the citizens of the Hattiesburg area, the local officials there, and the Commiskey family, it is my privilege to present this legislation to the United States Congress in honor of Major Henry A. Commiskey, Sr., his sacrifice, and his awe-inspiring service to his country.

Madam Chairman, if I could, I would like to engage in a colloquy with either the subcommittee or full committee chairman.

I yield to the gentleman from Alaska.

Mr. Speaker, for the sake of the folks who do not know it, I am pleased to mention that the full committee chairman owns his own commercial license as a tugboat captain, so I think he will appreciate this question.

In reading the synopsis, it says the measure requires foreign flagged vessels that depart and return to the same U.S. port without stopping at any other port in between to comply with the safety requirements of the International Safety Management Code whenever any part of the voyage occurs in international waters.

For the folks around here, that would be called a cruise to nowhere. As the chairman knows better than most, there really is not a law that allows cruises to nowhere. It is a Customs ruling going back to about the 1950s, and it has been used by foreign-owned, foreign-manned and foreign-built ships to operate in the U.S. trade. They merely go 12 miles out to sea, turn around and come back.

One of the few things that I thought we had protecting Americans from this glaring loophole in the law was that the Coast Guard at least had to inspect these vessels. If I understand this properly, and this is a colloquy, and I am asking for an answer and, hopefully, something that will stick up in law, I hope by doing this we are not taking a bad Customs ruling and making it the law of the land. A bad Customs ruling we can fix with good administration. I have not had one to do so in the three that I have dealt with, but we could still fix with a good administration.

If this becomes the law of the land, and that is why I am asking for my colleague's opinion, then we have, in effect, taken a bad practice and made it the law of the land.

I am going to get to that one next.

Madam Chairman, if I may ask this question, is it the intent of this legislation to legalize cruises to nowhere?

Second question, again coming from the synopsis, and I know it is not perfect, but it says the bill would authorize two U.S.-built, -owned and -flagged vessels to enter into the U.S. coastwise trades.

My question is, it has been highly publicized in the New York Times and other publications that through the unintended consequences, and I do mean unintended consequences, of the foreign lease provisions in the 1996 Coast Guard authorization bill that some of these U.S.-owned corporations are actually chartering out of the Bahamas and, therefore, totally avoiding their U.S. tax obligations for vessels that are protected by the Coast Guard, for vessels that use channels that are dredged by the Army Corps of Engineers and God forbid if the vessel is seized by terrorists. That owner would never hesitate to call upon the U.S. Navy Seals to go rescue his vessel.

My question is, do these two vessels fall into that category of being owned by a corporation that has already inverted overseas in order to avoid U.S. taxes?

Again, the synopsis says two, does not have the names, just says two U.S.-built, -owned and -flagged vessels.

Again, my fear is this is an interpretation that we might actually be putting into law, and I hate to be doing that, and I do not think that is my colleague's intention as well.