Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, the so-called global war on terrorism cannot be won by military might alone. It is a war of ideas and philosophies. Terrorism is the tactic used by people who seem to hate what the U.S. stands for more than they love life itself. But it is hard to hate the concepts of justice, individual freedoms and human rights.

The problem is that as long as our enemies can claim that we deny justice and abuse human rights and individual freedoms, we lose ground in this war of ideas. In fact, as long as we maintain the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, we undermine our standing, our credibility, throughout the world.

This is not what America stands for. America stands for the concept of habeas corpus and human rights. Guantanamo Bay is unAmerican, and that's why it needs to be closed.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Chairman Dicks, I am very appreciative of your willingness to address in the conference report for the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill a concern that you share with me for the humane treatment and preventive management of wild horses and the condition of western range lands.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, there have been significant advancements in the development of technologies that allow safe and effective application of contraceptive medicines to wild horses to allow wild horse populations to be maintained at sustainable levels. I believe these medicines have been used in pilot programs running for years as a result of the partnering of private organizations like the Humane Society of the United States with the Bureau of Land Management.

I believe that contraceptives could potentially be effective and also would be a more humane approach to managing wild horses than the current strategy that relies primarily on rounding up wild horses and placing them in pastures where they must be fed for years until they die of old age at a cost of over $20 million a year.

It is also my understanding that the BLM signed a memorandum of understanding in October of 2006 outlining a large scale pilot program that will expand the pilot wild horse management effort.

I would like to thank you for working with me to see that the Wild Horse and Burro Management Program does not get such a large budget cut as was proposed by the administration. It is my understanding that BLM will be able to move forward with that pilot program under this act; is that correct, Mr. Chairman?

I wish to thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for your help in clarifying these points and for your willingness to address this in conference to ensure more humane and effective management of our treasured wild horse herds, while maintaining our public range lands in a sustainable manner which protects watersheds and native plants and wildlife.

The enjoyment is mutual, and I learned so much when you were chief of staff to the chair of the full committee of the Senate, and I could not be more pleased that you are chairing this bill.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

The gentleman's wit is deeply appreciated by the Member from Virginia. I don't think we have a current problem with being overtaken by wild horses in Northern Virginia; but I appreciate your support as well for this humane approach in dealing with the wild horse and burro population.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I have no doubt that the gentleman who has offered it is well intentioned, and he is clearly becoming a leader on moving our country to greater energy independence. But we will not get there by lifting the moratorium on drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. We will, however, invite great harm to established fishing and tourism industries, as well as the environment.

Off the coast of Virginia, we will interfere with the U.S. Navy's Virginia Cape Operations area in a way that the Department of Defense has warned us in unequivocal terms would be totally unacceptable and utterly incompatible with the operations that they are currently conducting. They could not conduct very sensitive essential operations off the coast of Virginia that are ongoing if we were to pass this amendment.

While it's technically feasible to drill for natural gas, there are also some fundamental, legal and economic questions about whether any drilling offshore could be limited to just natural gas.

But I want to focus particularly on the fact that this amendment can't possibly solve our energy problem.

The natural gas and oil estimated to be recoverable from the outer continental shelf will not result in lower natural gas prices. It simply takes too long to develop a natural gas field to affect prices in the short term. We are talking 1 to 3 years at least to develop a field. Natural gas from areas currently off limits to drilling won't reduce prices in the long term either, since there is not enough gas there compared to either annual U.S. production or consumption.

A Department of Energy study compared the price of natural gas with the OCS moratorium areas that are kept out of production, versus the price of natural gas, if all of the moratorium areas were opened for drilling in the 2007-2012 5-year plan.

With all of its supply and demand information, the Department of Energy's model modeling system predicted that the price of natural gas would be $3.26 per thousand cubic feet in the year 2020, without the gas under moratoria, and $3.22 per thousand if we eliminate the moratorium. In other words, we could only save 4 cents if this amendment were implemented.

Moreover, the vast majority, over 80 percent of the Nation's undiscovered but technically recoverable Outer Continental Shelf gas is already located in areas that are open to drilling. And that's according to the Interior Department's 2006 report to Congress.

According to the same report, there is an estimated 86 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources in all the Outer Continental Shelf areas that have been withdrawn from leasing, compared to 479 trillion cubic feet of reserve appreciation undiscovered technically recoverable resources within the total Outer Continental Shelf belonging the United States.

These are technical words and statistics. What it says is that, at best, you can open up 20 percent, and the fact is, it wouldn't make but a pittance of difference in the cost of natural gas. Eighty percent of the Nation's undiscovered natural gas is already open to drilling.

The other thing that we're very much concerned about is what the drilling operations do to our environment. They discharge hundreds of thousands of gallons of what's called ``produced water'' that contain a variety of toxic pollutants, including benzene, arsenic, lead, naphthalene, zinc and toluene, and can contain varying amounts of radioactive material. And tons of air pollutants are emitted. It will also trigger the uncontrolled release of methane hydrates, a greenhouse gas that's 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

And then if you look at what drilling has done to the Gulf Coast, you will recognize that it's destroyed hundreds of miles of wetlands and sensitive coastal habitats. When they bring the channel transporting the oil or gas into the shore, it brings the saltwater into the fresh water and destroys the plant life which reduces erosion. Thus we lose several football fields of shoreline every day along the Gulf Coast.

Mr. Chairman, there are a host of reasons this amendment is a bad amendment. It should be defeated. We should follow the lead of the chairman of the subcommittee.

I thank the Chair, and I particularly want to congratulate Chairman Wasserman Schultz, because she took on a very difficult responsibility and she has performed in a conscientious, extraordinarily fiscally responsible manner.

This is a bill that all of the Members have an interest in, and all of the Members have issues within this bill that they would particularly like to see increased, and some decreased. But it is a difficult one.

She has told me how much she appreciates the ranking member, Mr. Wamp, and I hope Mr. Wamp is listening, how much she appreciates Mr. Wamp's cooperation in coming up with a bill that was acceptable to the overwhelming number of the full Appropriations Committee members when they reported it out to the floor.

Now, this bill is $276 million below the President's request. That is extraordinary, and it is the first time that the Legislative Branch appropriations bill has reflected that deep a cut versus the President's request. So if you are looking for fiscal responsibility, you will find it in this bill, more than any other appropriations bill. We congratulate Mr. Wamp, as well as the chairwoman, for coming up with a bill that accomplishes that kind of fiscal responsibility.

But if anybody else wants to cut another $100 million, which this amendment would do, below that, then it is concomitant upon the proponent of that amendment to say exactly where you would make those cuts. Because this is the result of a lot of give and take, a lot of compromise, a lot of very conscientious investigation.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairwoman of the subcommittee, and I want to express my support for the bill and express my appreciation specifically for the significant increases in funding for global health issues, peacekeeping, and trade capacity building, especially in Colombia. And I know that the chairlady shares the frustration that was articulated by the preceding speaker, Mr. Olver, on Darfur. We wish we could do far more than we are able to on the horrific situation in Darfur.

But I also want to express my support for the work of an international nongovernmental organization, the International Commission on Missing Persons, otherwise known as the ICMP. The ICMP is an organization whose work in Bosnia, Iraq, Vietnam and the tsunami- affected areas has brought relief to thousands of families with missing relatives resulting from armed conflict and natural disaster. This commission, which was established in 1996 from the Dayton Peace Accords, has received U.S. Government support in the past and is widely acclaimed throughout the international community. But is in desperate need of funds in Iraq today.

I would strongly urge the committee to consider this organization for possible congressional support in this year's conference or in future appropriations.

I thank the gentlelady for her support.

Mr. Chairman, what we should be doing here is eliminating the gag rule. But that is not what we are doing. All that this amendment does is to allow family-planning organizations to receive free donations of contraceptives and condoms.

Now, instead, the opposition wants to prohibit even this, even though you suggest that you are for family planning. You would never do this to the women of America because they have control over their lives. But the women of the Third World don't have control over their lives, and you know that.

What is going to happen without access to contraceptives is that 52 million unwanted pregnancies will occur, and there will be almost 30 million abortions as a result. Where is the sense in that?

We have got to find a way for women to control their lives in the Third World. The fact is a vast majority of women in the Third World don't have any control over when the sex act is performed. That is not their choice. Most of them are married and most of them are in faithful relationships irregardless of their husband's conduct. They are overwhelmed by the number of children they have to provide for. But you want to deny them the ability to control the number of children in their family?

Not to pass this amendment is punitive. This is punishing of those women. It is wrong. It is immoral, in fact. This moderate amendment certainly should be passed by this Congress in the 21st century.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Fiscal 2008 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act and to express my appreciation for the significant increase in funding for trade capacity building.

This bill raises the Federal appropriation to $214 million, $87 million more than the administration requested.

Regardless of one's position on trade, helping our trading partners, particularly those in developing countries, with the financial assistance to improve enforcement of their labor and environmental laws is a good thing.

I would encourage the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee to consider holding a hearing to assess how these funds have been effective at building capacity in these developing countries.

I think there is a good story that should be told.

Looking forward, however, we have several free trade agreements that we will be asked to consider in the next few months, Peru, Panama, Colombia, and Korea.

Three, Peru, Panama and Colombia, are with developing countries that are eligible to receive trade capacity assistance.

And while none of these agreements is a done deal, Colombia appears to be the one with the greatest level of concern.

A number of our colleagues are rightly concerned about Colombia's record on human rights and the alarmingly high number of labor leaders that have been killed in recent years.

Given this concern, I would like to see this appropriation clarify that some portion of the $214 million should go specifically to the Colombian Government, the attorney general's office, which is charged with investigating these killings and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

The attorney general has is no easy task.

President Uribe's effort to disband the paramilitary groups and bring about a peace agreement with the insurgents has made progress, but it has also overwhelmed the attorney general's office and the courts with a backlog of petitions to adjudicate.

Thousands of cases of former paramilitary soldiers and insurgents must be investigated before any seeking amnesty can be pardoned.

Only those proven innocent of any human rights abuses are granted amnesty.

I understand that the killing of labor leaders is being investigated, but the progress is slow and complicated by competing demands to clear the backlog of requests for pardons and amnesties.

I think Colombia would welcome our financial assistance to expedite the investigations into human rights abuses and killings of labor leaders.

I also think an offer of assistance would be a tangible demonstration of our willingness to help them address our concerns.

I encourage you to consider this request when you begin your discussions with the Senate on a final conference agreement.

Mr. Speaker, in a recent international survey, we find that nations around the world think China could be better trusted to lead this world than the United States. It's a devastating conclusion. It would not have been the case even 6 years ago.

It's not that people around the world don't acknowledge our military power, but it is our arrogance and the fact that we don't live up to our principles and ideals that this survey reflects.

If we are going to win this so-called global war on terrorism, it is not going to be through a military victory. It is going to be because we stand by the values and ideals and principles that define us as a nation and as a people.

One of the things that every day undermines those defining principles is keeping the Guantanamo detention facility open, keeping hundreds of people detained without charging them, without enabling them to know what they are charged with and thus being able to defend themselves. It's the antithesis of what this country stands for. That detention facility needs to be shut down. And we need to regain our rightful position as the leader of the free world.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the accomplishments of Bill Dearman of Alexandria, Virginia. Bill Dearman's retirement will mark the conclusion of 10 years of extraordinary and dedicated leadership and service to the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Mr. Dearman's skilled leadership and devotion to Alexandria have led to a number of great accomplishments. Among these as the challenge of redeveloping the Samuel Madden Housing Project into what is now the nationally recognized award-winning Chatham Square. In addition he oversaw the development of various site replacements at Braddock Road, and the rehabilitation and refinancing of Jefferson Village, Quaker Hill and Cameron Valley projects.

Through his dedication to the Citizens of Alexandria, he helped ensure housing needed to Alexandria's neediest. His creativity led to effective reorganization of the authority and expansion of services to residents. Through is tireless efforts, Mr. Dearman has improved the general appearance and maintenance of all Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority properties.

In closing I wish to commend Mr. Dearman for his years of service to the City of Alexandria. I wish all the best to him on his retirement with his family in Atlanta.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the achievements of Ms. Susan Tieger, of Arlington, Virginia. After thirty- five years of teaching in Arlington County Public Schools, Ms. Tieger will be retiring, leaving behind a legacy of dedication, care and hard work.

Ms. Tieger graduated with honors from Queens College in 1971. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education with the distinction of Cum Laude, she was awarded a fellowship in Special Education by the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and was awarded her Master of Education degree in June, 1972.

Ms. Tieger has taught in the Arlington County Public School system from September 1972 until the present. From 1972-1994, she taught multi-categorical self-contained classes consisting of students with learning disabilities, emotional disturbances and mental retardation at Francis Scott Key Elementary School. She has been the Special Education lead teacher at Barcroft Elementary School since 1994.

In June 2006, she earned the Educational Testing Service Recognition of Excellence for

her outstanding performance in the Praxis II test in which she achieved one of the highest possible scores.

During her thirty-five years with Arlington schools, Ms. Tieger has touched and improved the lives of hundreds of children and their parents. She was able to assist and teach children with a variety of learning disabilities, including those with mental retardation and emotional problems. In addition, Ms. Tieger was able to help countless children to read, write, socialize, and most important, to achieve their highest potential.

Susan Tieger is the epitome of a dedicated, caring and hard-working public school teacher. The fact that Arlington County has one of the best school systems in the country is directly attributable to the talents, hard work and dedication of teachers like Ms. Tieger.

I commend Ms. Tieger on her dedicated career in education, and wish her and her family health and happiness in her well-earned, much deserved retirement.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the accomplishment of Myroslava Gongadze of Arlington, Virginia and a proud member of our civil service. Ms. Gongadze serves as the leading spokesperson for American values in Ukraine, helping to move the nation in a more pro-western direction.

A native Ukrainian who was granted political asylum in the United States in 2001 and began working for Voice of America in 2004, Myroslava Gongadze is one of the most recognized journalists and human rights advocates in Europe. This episode during the 2004 elections is just one chapter in her long-running fight for justice in her homeland and across the globe.

For 17 days in November 2004, with temperatures below freezing in the central square in Kiev, Ukraine, a million people stood in a sea of orange color, protesting fraudulent presidential elections. Two huge screens flanked the makeshift stage hooked into Ukraine's only independent source of information, Channel5 TV. The broadcast they received was from the Voice of America's Washington studio, and the face they saw was Myroslava Gongadze. When Ms. Gongadze reported U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement that the United States refused to recognize the falsified election results, it was one of the watershed moments of Ukraine's ``Orange Revolution,'' which resulted in the election and peaceful installation of Viktor Yuschenko as Ukraine's new President.

While her story is inspirational, the circumstances that drove Ms. Gongadze to become a political activist are tragic. Her husband Georgy Gongadze was a renowned investigative journalist who exposed corruption and cronyism in the administration of the former Ukrainian President. In 2000, he was murdered by government police. Since his death, she has made it her mission to promote freedom of speech, the rights of journalists and the need to bring corrupt officials to justice.

She has pursued her agenda by working with many different organizations, including the European Court for Human Rights, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Committee to Protect Journalists. She even created the Gongadze Foundation, a nongovernmental organization working to protect journalists' rights and political freedom. However, the organization that has given her the platform to make her biggest impact has been the Voice of America.

Madam Speaker, I commend Ms. Gongadze for her leadership, and I am proud to have her live in Virginia's 8th Congressional District as she contributes to the greatest civil service in the world. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the accomplishment of Edward Messmer of Alexandria, Virginia for his service to the U.S. Department of State as Special Assistant to the Ambassador of Lebanon. In his official duties he was directly responsible for his efforts in providing fuel reserves into Lebanon during the 2006 conflict, which kept major power plants open, averting a health catastrophe.

In July and August of 2006, the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut found itself at the center of a major conflict when war broke out between Hizbollah fighters and Israeli forces. The embassy received a great deal of attention for its work to mitigate the damage inflicted by the war. None was more important than the work done by Mr. Messmer to help move vital fuel past blockades and into Lebanon, maintaining power across the country.

Once the war began, a naval blockade was established around Lebanon to prevent the import of weapons, fuel and other support for the citizens of Lebanon. As a result, fuel stocks quickly plummeted at the country's three primary power plants. The plants were soon left with only a few days' worth of reserves. A continued interruption would have meant no water for essential services, hospitals and schools. Serving as the acting chief of the political section at the embassy, Mr. Messmer made it his personal mission to avert the developing crisis.

Mr. Messmer had to address multiple logistical and political challenges to get fuel past the blockade. The ship owners who carried the fuel didn't want to risk running the naval blockade, the Israeli forces wanted assurances that the fuel stocks would not be diverted to Hizbollah. Additionally, funding for the fuel needed to be secured from the weakening government of Lebanon. For three straight weeks, Mr. Messmer coordinated, persuaded and guided all of these disparate parties to a solution. He was in constant contact with the Lebanese government, U.S. embassies in Cyprus and Israel, ship owners, insurers and various offices in the Pentagon and the State Department.

Mr. Messmer's efforts paid off with the initial shipment of 56,000 tons of fuel to the about-to-close power facility just north of Beirut. His hard work enabled the country's entire electrical grid to remain operational until additional deliveries were sent over the next several weeks. Not only did Mr. Messmer's work help avert a humanitarian crisis; it also took away a potential propaganda tool from Hizbollah, which could have blamed the fuel crisis on the United States and its allies. For his contribution, Mr. Messmer was nominated for the Partnership for Public Service's International Affairs Medal.

Madam Speaker, I commend Mr. Messmer for his leadership, and I am proud to have him live in Virginia's 8th Congressional District and contributing to the greatest civil service in the world. I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the accomplishment of Ms. Carol Dumaine, of Reston, Virginia, and a proud member of our civil service. Ms. Dumaine, an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, has contributed to our Nation's future security through the establishment of the Global Futures Forum (GFF), a highly innovative think tank which coordinates international expertise to enhance intelligence analysis.

As the 9/11 Commission confirmed, intelligence and law enforcement officials had uncovered a number of warning signs that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil was imminent, but the failure to recognize the links between the intelligence precluded authorities from stopping the attacks. Ms. Dumaine has created a forum which allows for more thorough intelligence analysis from a cadre of outside experts. Global Futures Forum (GFF) unites intelligence experts from different nations with professionals from diverse fields so that emerging issues can be recognized quickly and collectively addressed. The GFF reviews intelligence in the public domain and promotes open, interactive linkages to knowledge and insight that exists outside of traditional security organizations.

GFF delegates represent the wide spectrum of intelligence and security organizations, multilateral institutions, academia and non- government personnel from more than 30 nations. A series of forums in 2005 and 2006 brought these experts together to work face-to-face, providing them with an opportunity to strengthen international partnerships and to share knowledge about global security challenges. To ensure that partners would have opportunities to collaborate outside of the conferences, Ms. Dumaine created the GFF website to provide a constant means of collaboration, allowing GFF partners to share their latest thoughts, research and analysis through their

own interactive blogs or chats with other participants. Her work ensures that the dialogue fostered by the GFF never really ends.

Ms. Dumaine created a global community that increases exposure to diverse perspectives and catalyzes discussion on adapting intelligence organizations to address nontraditional challenges. These partnerships created through Ms. Dumaine's effort will help ensure that potential security threats will be handled properly, allowing for the best response possible. For her great contribution to the intelligence community, she has been selected as a finalist for the Partnership for Public Service's ``National Security Medal''.

Madam Speaker, I commend Ms. Dumaine for her leadership, and I am proud to have her live in Virginia's 8th Congressional District as she contributes to the greatest civil service in the world. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the accomplishment of Mr. David Williams of Arlington, Virginia and a proud member of our civil service. Mr. Williams revamped outreach efforts for the Earned Income Tax Credit, helping hundreds of thousands of additional Americans receive vital benefits, and oversaw the Telephone Excise Tax Refund--the largest one-time tax refund in history.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is widely recognized as our Federal government's most effective anti-poverty program. Despite the program's overall success, studies revealed an erroneous payment rate of roughly 25 percent, and millions of eligible workers were not claiming the credit. David Williams, who heads the EITC office at the Internal Revenue Service, led the effort to revamp the program. Thanks to his leadership, as many as 500,000 more people each year are receiving vital benefits.

Today, under Mr. Williams' leadership, the IRS works with more than 150 nonprofit and community-based organizations to host EITC awareness events in more than 50 cities, creating volunteer tax assistance sites at banks, businesses and community centers. He also used news conferences and local media to help drive people to seek out this assistance.

In just 1 year, more than 2 million tax returns were prepared at these volunteer tax assistance sites. The tax credits low-income working Americans receive help them cover the essential costs they face every day--from child care to fixing the car. One person who attended a workshop reported that the tax credit helped her go from being an apartment renter to a homeowner. Since David Williams launched these new outreach efforts, the number of eligible taxpayers receiving the credit has increased by 500,000 people a year, and last year, more than 22 million people received $41 billion in EITC payments.

As a senior official at the IRS, it would be easy to think of David Williams as a numbers guy. But his people skills, strategic approach and ability to lead diverse groups to achieve shared public policy goals have distinguished him as one of our government's most outstanding employees and have helped him positively affect the lives of millions of Americans.

Madam Speaker, I commend Mr. Williams for his leadership, and I am proud to have him live in Virginia's 8th Congressional District as he contributes to the greatest civil service in the world. I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, this week the House should approve four appropriations bills that set the right priorities for our Nation and do it in a fiscally responsible manner.

Yesterday, we debated the homeland security bill, and we'll continue today, but we should make the public aware that beyond the issues that we seem to be distracted by, the main point about the homeland security bill is that it strengthens our borders by providing funds for 3,000 additional border patrol agents. It also prioritizes the need of our first responders while doubling the amount of cargo that will be screened at our airports.

Democrats are going to bring a veterans and a military construction bill to the floor that includes the largest increase in veterans health care funding in the 77-year history of the Veterans Administration.

We will also be bringing to the floor the Energy and Water and Interior appropriations bills. Now the Democrats will address the important issue of global warming in those bills. These bills also show that, as Democrats, we recognize what a serious problem that is.

Mr. Speaker, I want to emphasize, these bills were approved in committee with strong bipartisan support. They should receive that same kind of support here on the House floor.

I thank the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee for yielding.

I will vote for this. I was a cosponsor of this. And certainly Mrs. McCarthy deserves credit for bringing it to the floor.

But I do have concerns, as the chairman does, that this needs to be very tightly regulated because it is quite liable to allow thousands of people who should not have access to guns to be able to do so by dropping their mental health treatment. There are 190,000 veterans who, because of their experience in combat, have had serious mental illness problems, but it appears that if they drop the treatment that they have been in, they can become eligible to purchase guns. Again, much of this is going to be in the regulation and the good judgment of States to make it work properly.

It is not a gun control measure, as Mrs. McCarthy, stated. It does nothing about the fact that we have hundreds of millions of guns in circulation and tens of thousands of people die from those guns, the vast majority are innocent victims, every year, more so than any civilized nation. It doesn't address issues with regard to the second amendment where the Supreme Court has made it clear there is really not a right for individuals to own guns but rather for States to have well- regulated militias. These are issues that need to be addressed at some point by our country.

But this bill, hopefully, will address a very egregious situation where the person that the court had determined to be mentally deranged was allowed access to firearms that he never should have gotten. There are other problems in other States that could have allowed such a thing to happen. Hopefully, this bill will clean up this record-keeping system that sufficient resources will be made available.

But, again, Mr. Speaker, this country ought not be allowing people to be buying assault weapons, 50 caliber sniper rifles and weapons that clearly are used for military purposes, not for purposes of recreational hunting.

Mr. Speaker, this bill will pass unanimously and at this point, it should.