Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the overall bill before us today. Chairman Wolf and Ranking Member Serrano have joined together in a bipartisan fashion to present a bill that adequately reflects the funding priorities for our Nation in the area of Commerce, Justice, State, Judiciary and related agencies.

I am especially pleased that money was added to the bill to confront the growing problem with gang activity that jurisdictions throughout the country are facing. In my congressional district and in the northern Virginia region, we are dealing with a growing gang problem that if left unchecked, will expand significantly in a very short time. The additional resources in this bill will help enable our law enforcement officials to acquire the necessary tools to tackle this problem before it grows out of hand. Efforts to increase law enforcement capabilities and strengthen community prevention programs are required to meet the rising gang threat head on.

While I am generally supportive of the funding levels provided in the bill, there are also a number of issues that should be addressed in this bill and others that should be deleted.

An area in which this bill needs amending concerns the USA PATRIOT Act. Communities throughout the country including Arlington County and the city of Alexandria in my district, have recently expressed serious objections with a number of provisions included in the USA PATRIOT Act passed in October 2001.

I share the concerns of my constituency and feel that these issues did not receive the appropriate public debate needed on such sensitive subjects as the protection of our civil liberties. In my opinion, the Attorney General's interpretation of definitions in the PATRIOT Act have eroded our basic civil rights and threaten to further damage the public's image of the Justice Department and Federal law enforcement in general. For these reasons and others, I am supporting amendments to the bill which would stop funding for certain Justice Department activities related to section 213 and section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

Section 213, also known as the ``sneak and peek'' provision, authorizes the issuance of delayed notification search warrants for physical evidence through a court order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Act (FISA). These delayed notification warrants allow federal law enforcement to conduct a secret search and seizure of physical evidence without alerting the target until an unspecified time after the search is completed. The amendment introduced by Representative Otter seeks to impose reasonable limits on the government's ability to obtain sneak and peek warrants. It would continue to allow the authorization of a court issued delayed warrant if the life or physical safety of an individual were endangered, if it would result in a flight from prosecution or if it would result in the destruction or tampering of the evidence sought under the warrant. This amendment would also require notification of a covert search within seven days, rather than an undetermined ``reasonable period'' currently in law. Unlimited, additional seven day delays at the court's discretion will be available under the Otter amendment and the same provisions subjected to the original warrant apply for each extension.

A second amendment that would curtail one of the more troubling provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act concerns section 215. Section 215 has the effect of requiring public libraries and booksellers to submit themselves to secret searches of purchase and checkout records with minimal justification from the FISA Court. Librarians and booksellers across the country fear that this is causing a ``chilling effect'' and making users self-censor their reading choices.

While the Attorney General has released figures on how the PATRIOT Act has been used in the past 2 years which state that this provision has yet to be employed, the fact remains that the law raises questions of future federal mis-use of this provision. The Sanders-Paul-Conyers- Nadler Freedom to Read amendment would restore and protect the privacy and first amendment rights of library and bookstore patrons which were in place before the USA PATRIOT Act. The amendment would not stop law enforcement from accessing these records, it would simply require them to do it with regular court-ordered search warrants or grand jury subpoenas.

While the PATRIOT Act remains an area the underlying bill does not reform, another subject which was confronted in full committee and that passed is equally troubling. I opposed in full committee, an amendment offered by Representative Tiahrt which would prevent the city of New York from having access to federal gun tracing data in a lawsuit against gun manufacturers. Not only did this appropriations rider set a troubling precedent in that it was directed specifically to affect an ongoing court case, it also hampers future lawsuits that could be aided by this data. I am strongly opposed to the inclusion of this language in the bill. We need to be at a minimum maintaining our current common sense gun control measures, not weakening existing laws.

Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, while not everything I would have liked to have seen is in this bill, it is a good balance of the priorities our law enforcement, small businesses and other related agencies require. I am supportive of this measure and look forward to a continued debate of the issues not addressed in the bill.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak on H.R. 4754, the Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and related agencies Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005.

H.R. 4754 provides $39.8 billion in budget authority and $40.4 billion in outlays--an increase of $878 million in BA and $1.7 billion in outlays from fiscal year 2004. Budget authority in the bill is $240 million above the President's fiscal year 2005 budget request.

H.R. 4754 contains $983 million in BA savings, including $902 million in BA and $341 million in outlays from mandatory spending changes; and $81 million in rescissions of previously enacted BA.

As chairman of the House Budget Committee, I am pleased to report that the bill is consistent with the conference report on the concurrent resolution on the Budget for fiscal year 2005 (H. Con. Res. 95) which passed the full House but has yet to pass the Senate. The bill comes in at its 302(b) allocation of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and related agencies and therefore complies with section 302(f) of the budget resolution, which limits appropriations measures to the allocation of the reporting subcommittee. H.R. 4754 also complies in fiscal year 2005 with section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act. Section 302(f) prohibits consideration of bills in excess of a subcommittee's 302(b) allocation.

This bill is a clear exercise in setting priorities and responsible spending practices. I was encouraged to see that the Appropriations Committee was able to work within the budget framework that we outlined earlier in the year to find the available resources to increase funding for the Department of Justice by $275 million over the 2004 level and $624 million for the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI]. It is certainly appropriate to shift resources from some lower-priority programs at the Department of Commerce toward more important and higher-priority public safety and crime prevention programs at the Department of Justice.

Making those tough priority decisions isn't always easy but it can be done and needs to be done until we get our financial house back in order.

Today, I applaud the members of the Appropriations Committee for demonstrating that they can set priorities which fit within the overall framework established by the budget resolution.

Mr. Chairman, I am obviously opposed to this irresponsible bill. We had some debate on May 12 when we first took up the budget resolution; and as hard as we listened, we never really got an adequate explanation for why in 1997 the Chair of the Committee on the Budget, and virtually all House Republicans voted for what is now the Democratic alternative. That was a responsible approach.

But now they are suggesting that the budget can be balanced with only a one-sided approach, which we continually explain is impossible to do. Even if you eliminate all nonmilitary domestic discretionary spending, we would not come close to balancing the budget.

So are we really talking about balancing the budget, or are we talking about another agenda? I am afraid the agenda is being driven by the right wing of the Republican Party, who would just as soon eliminate all domestic discretionary spending, Head Start, school lunch programs, health research, you name it; it should be on the cutting block as far as they are concerned. That is not what this country wants. It is not what this country deserves.

Thanks to the Republicans' tax cuts, revenues have plunged now to the lowest level of GDP since 1950. And over the last 3 years, revenue has declined 12 percent. And yet we are suggesting that we leave the revenue side of the budget alone? That is nonsense. You cannot do it when you combine the administration's out-of-control spending with this decline in revenue. The result is a budget deficit that is expected to reach half a trillion dollars this year and will reach $4.5 trillion of deficit over the next decade. That is a realistic number. That is the direction in which you are driving us. It is wrong.

The first President Bush understood that we have got to have balanced PAYGO rules. He was in favor of the Democratic approach. The Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, said we have got to approach both sides of the budget, the revenue side and the spending side. But yet we are going to ignore the experts, we are going to go ahead with this right wing ideological agenda, and our children are the ones who are going to pay the price for it.

I call on my colleagues to defeat this resolution, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I do not know what is happening to this institution. We work a couple of days a week. We cannot even get a budget resolution passed. It is overdue by months, and then we get these amendments that are really designed to eliminate the appropriations process, as though we have no capacity to apply judgment to the decisions that we have to make.

Would it not be nice if the world was as simple as this? Let us just impose entitlement caps. Let us give it all over to the President, for example. We cite waste, fraud and abuse as though that is the problem. The Republican party controls the White House. They control the Senate. They control the House. Eliminate waste, fraud and abuse if that is the problem.

The real problem is that we are not willing to make the tough decisions that have to be made, and now they are suggesting an entitlement cap.

We have done an analysis of this entitlement cap. Over the next decade it would take $674 billion out of Medicare, $332 billion out of Medicaid, $100 billion out of Federal civilian retirement, $60 billion out of unemployment comp, $56 billion out of military retirement. I could go on and on, $45 billion out of veterans benefits, $11 billion out of TRICARE For Life, and on and on.

This is not the way to run a government. These are important programs. Make the tough decisions. To put in an amendment like this that supposedly limits entitlement programs so that we are going to all of the sudden solve the budget crisis, we have a budget crisis because we are not willing to balance our responsibilities to limit tax cuts and to limit spending at the same time. We know that is what has to be done, but now we are in a budget crisis. We are going to have $4.5 trillion of debt, and the answer is not to make it worse by putting in an entitlement cap.

This is one of the worst amendments that we have had presented all night in a long string of simplistic, irresponsible amendments that consumes our time. We will have another opportunity to take another shot at this.

Mr. Chairman, how nice it would be if we could come up with a magic bullet to all of a sudden fix our fiscal crisis, but it is not that easy. It certainly is not going to be fixed by radical proposals like this. I say radical because this would cut spending in domestic discretionary programs, including defense. In fact, defense would be cut by $1.1 trillion, it is estimated, over the next decade. We could go down a long list of programs that would be deeply cut, but really what is at stake here is a fundamental philosophy. The proposal as most of the other proposals, in fact, I think all of the amendments and substitutes tonight, would exempt tax cuts. We exempt tax cuts because we do not want to hurt the most affluent people in this country.

The richer you are, the more benefit you get from tax cuts. But the poorer you are, the more dependent you are upon entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, child nutrition, foster care, disability payments, veterans' benefits. Those go to people who need help, to enable us to have a civil society in this country, not a survival of the fittest.

Some people are not born into wealth. Some people have disabilities. Some people suffer all their lives through the accident of birth. Yet what we would do with these proposals to try to balance the budget is to afford the tax cuts by taking the money away from the people who need it the most. We will take it from Medicaid, we will take it from student loans, we will take it from child nutrition, from food stamps. To heck with them. Veterans. They are out there risking their lives for us and most of them are not the children of affluent and middle-class families.

This is a perverse budget amendment as have been the other substitutes. It is a simplistic proposal that ought to be soundly defeated. I urge defeat of this substitute amendment.

Mr. Speaker, the principles that were articulated by President Bush in his April letter to Mr. Sharon can be seen as a first step

in finding a resolution to the Israeli Palestinian dispute.

This resolution demonstrates that Congress's position is consistent with the majority of Israelis who endorse the evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip, and at least parts of the West Bank. This disengagement plan is a reflection of Israel's basic interests and a major recognition that settlements hurt Israel's security, economic prosperity, and demographic future. Disengagement will also help moderate Palestinian leaders to make concrete moves to finally establish a true democratic state.

By implementing this initiative, tensions between Israels and Palestinians should diminish, thus paving the way for more renewed and more constructive peace negotiations.

But disengagement should not be seen as a substitute for negotiation. Good faith negotiations are essential to any long-term reconciliation. The evacuation of Gaza must be seen as a first step but not the last in a comprehensive peace process. Simply on its own, withdrawal of Gaza will not result in peace or security for Israel. The end goal must be mutually agreed-upon, negotiated solutions by all parties involved that must address a host of other key and sensitive issues. Only then will long-term peace and stability be achievable.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, let us not forget our diplomatic and our moral obligation as well as our vital interest in halting the cycle of violence and in resolving this protracted conflict. Our failure to actively engage in the Middle East peace process has damaged our international credibility and it has hurt our ability to promote democracy in the region.

As we consider this resolution today we must urge the administration to bring both Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, encourage both sides to live up to previous commitments, and to have all parties rededicate themselves to the principles laid out in the so- called road map and the quest for security and peace in the Middle East. I believe that this resolution can represent a good starting point for long-term stability and peace in the region.

Mr. Chairman, on rollcall No. 293, I was unavoidably detained off the Hill. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Amendment No. 7 Offered by Mr. Shays

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise today to recognize and honor the service and career of Mr. Francis A. Peterlin as he prepares to retire after forty-four years of distinguished service in support of our Nation. Throughout his career, Mr. Peterlin has epitomized the Navy's core values of honor, courage and commitment and has displayed exceptional leadership in the advancement of the Navy's military construction requirements within the Department of Defense and the Congress.

In July 1960, Mr. Peterlin began serving his nation at the Department of Interior. In 1962, he chose a different path and entered the military in the Navy Reserves as a Civil Engineer Corps officer. While serving in June 1965 as Officer-in-Charge of SEABEE Technical Assistance Team 1104 in Dong Xoai, Vietnam, his unit was overrun by Republic of Vietnam Army forces. For his bravery and leadership during this encounter, Mr. Peterlin was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart medals along with the Navy Unit Commendation Medal for SEABEE Team 1104.

Upon discharge from the hospital and military service in 1966, Mr. Peterlin began his 38-year association with the Naval Facilities Engineering Command as a Civil Engineer for the Resident Officer of Construction, Pacific in San Bruno, California. During this tour ROICCPAC was awarded a Meritorious Unit Commendation for its support of construction efforts in Southeast Asia.

In 1969, he adopted the Commonwealth of Virginia as his home when he transferred to the Headquarters of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command located at the time in Alexandria, Virginia. In a succession of positions of increased responsibility Mr. Peterlin brought to this Command keen insight, attention to detail and a calm demeanor that fostered thoughtful and effective solutions. From 1969-1979, he was a civil engineer in the Interagency Construction Division providing project management for projects from various defense and federal agencies. In 1979, he became a Supervisory General Engineer in the Officer in Charge of Construction, Trident, Program supporting the construction of new homeports for Trident class submarines in Bangor, Washington, and Kings Bay, Georgia. From 1981-1991, he served as the Command's Congressional Advisor, providing professional advice to senior Navy officials testifying at Congressional hearings and dedicated and trusted support to the staffs of the Armed Service and the Military Construction Appropriation committees of both the House and Senate. He then served as a Division Head from 1991-1997, Deputy Director 1997-2002, and Director 2002 to the present of the Military Construction Directorate.

His steadfast leadership and superb performance have won him numerous awards, including the Department of the Navy's Superior Civilian Service Award in 1988 and the Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1991. Mr. Peterlin completes his distinguished and honorable career in public service as Director of Military Construction, Naval Facilities Engineering Command responsible for the programming, budgeting, and construction of all Navy ashore facilities worldwide. He leaves behind a cadre of proteges that he has mentored into positions of leadership to carry on his legacy.

I am pleased to recognize and thank Frank Peterlin for his long and dedicated service to this country and join with his friends and colleagues in wishing him ``Fair Winds and Following Seas'' as he and his wife Elena begin a well-earned retirement.

Mr. Speaker. I rise today to recognize the Hemophilia Association of the Capital Area on their 40th anniversary. The Hemophilia Association of the Capital Area or HACA is a nonprofit organization that provides many needed services to persons with bleeding disorders such as Hemophilia and Von Willebrands Disease and their families. HACA serves Northern Virginia, Washington, DC, and the Maryland counties of Montgomery and Prince Georges. HACA is a chapter of the Hemophilia Federation of America and the National Hemophilia Foundation, the two leading hemophilia patient organizations. HACA's mission is to improve the quality of life for persons with Hemophilia and Von Willebrand's disease and their families, to act as an advocate; to educate, to improve services to its members; to promote research and to raise necessary resources in financial and volunteer terms to fulfill this purpose.

Hemophilia is a blood clotting disorder where certain proteins are missing in the blood plasma, which prevents the body's blood from clotting properly. This can lead to prolonged bleeding episodes, which can result in severe joint damage and in some cases death. However, it is a myth that those with hemophilia can bleed to death from minor injuries or from bleeding out.

Recently, HACA has been under the stewardship of Executive Director Sandi Qualley. Sandi has worked tirelessly to improve services for those with bleeding disorders both nationally and in Virginia. HACA has an integral part of the successful grass roots movement to pass the Ricky Ray Hemophilia Relief Fund Act during the 1990s. Recently HACA has worked with other community members to launch a campaign to educate Congress on women and bleeding disorders.

HACA currently serves over 250 families through the metropolitan Washington, DC area. The organization provides an array of educational programs and services for its members. HACA provides financial assistance to deserving families. HACA also assists other nonprofit organizations that work with the hemophilia community with resources.

The HACA Blood Buddies Program works to match up young boys with hemophilia with older hemophiliacs who serve as mentors. Blood Buddies was established in 1998 to help facilitate an environment where individuals and families affected by bleeding disorders can gather to discuss issues, learn procedures, and build a community of support. The program's focus is to learn about current trends, community events, discuss social issues while building friendships, and mentoring young individuals through support.

I would like to take this opportunity to salute the Hemophilia Association of the Capital Area on their 40 years of service to the hemophilia community throughout the Nation and in the metropolitan Washington, DC area. I wish them many more years of superior work.

Mr. Chairman, I agree in principle with my good friends on the other side of this issue. I agree with my good friend, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), that it was wrong what Stanley Works did to leave Connecticut, to save some tax money, and to relocate their corporate headquarters in Bermuda, and move much of its production operations overseas. I agree that we ought to amend the Tax Code to punish firms that deliberately relocate to take advantage of foreign tax shelters.

But while I agree in principle with what is driving this discussion, I think we all understand that while we are entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own set of facts. And I would say to my friends on the other side, it is the facts that get in the way of this debate.

The facts are that Accenture is not a corporate inversion. The General Accounting Office said that. In fact, Accenture is a U.S. business. It is a partnership in Illinois; it employs more than 25,000 people, virtually all of them are Americans. The fact is that this is an American team of companies that we are talking about. It is a good team of major American firms, firms like Raytheon, Dell, AT&T, Sprint. Mr. Chairman, 330,000 U.S. jobs are involved in this team, 35,000 in Texas, 30,000 in California, 16,000 in Virginia, 14,000 in Florida, 13,000 in Massachusetts, I would tell my very good friend from Massachusetts. These are American jobs, and all of the work is going to be done in the United States. All of the profit is going to be subject to Federal income taxes. Thirty-eight percent is going to go to small businesses. The same kind of small businesses that we have been trying to help.

Mr. Chairman, all we are talking about is the executive branch trying to do what we required them to do. We required them by law to go ahead and to find a way to secure the 50 largest border entries by the end of this year, and to secure the ports by the end of next year. And they found that there were three of the very best teams who could accomplish this objective by being willing to hire the best American employees and invest millions of dollars to do it right.

Lockheed and CSC are terrific teams. They are not complaining about this, because they know it was completely legitimate, this competitive bidding process. They are not complaining because they know they lost fair and square. The reason why this team won is because they had the ability to best match what the Congress required them to do. They spent millions, they pulled together the best technical people, and they came up with the most innovative concept, the best price, the best quality, the best likelihood of performance in meeting the Congress' requirements. That is why they got the contract. Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post described how they legitimately won this contract.

Now, imagine the precedent. DHS awarded this contract completely legitimately, the Congress comes in and says, oh, wait a minute, we are going to pull it back. We are not going to let them get this contract. Obviously we are going to get sued. Obviously it is going to take months in the courts. Obviously, we cannot have a fair bidding process now because the other two competitors now know exactly what the Federal Government was looking for, they know exactly what the cost structure needs to be, they know exactly all the innovative concepts that the company put together.

The fact is, this is good for the United States and its workforce. These are American firms. Now, sure, we live in a global environment, but this is an American business. They are doing good work. If we set this precedent, it will come back to haunt us for generations.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the gentleman, he was a counsel to a contractor at one point in his life. Can he imagine how we would ever rebid this to either of the other two bidders now that they know all of the specifications that the government was looking for?

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

If, for example, this amendment passed, can the gentleman see any legal way that you can turn around and award the bid to either of the other two competitor companies?

Not after it was competitively bid when all of the factors were legitimately considered.

There is no question that it was not legitimate. This was a legal bid.

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

Madam Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) and the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bass) for this very responsible, appropriate amendment. It is not just a matter of a waste of taxpayers' money. This is a shameful, disgraceful policy. Here are the facts: there has not been one confirmed incidence of brucellosis transmission in the wild from buffalo to cattle. Not a one. In fact, the risk is so low as to be immeasurable according to the National Academy of Sciences.

Buffalo with brucellosis and cattle have grazed together for over 50 years in the Jackson Hole area south of Yellowstone without any incident of disease transmission. The irony here is that we do know that elk can transmit this disease to cattle. In fact, it did happen in Wyoming. But we do not kill or harass the approximately 13,000 elk that are in Yellowstone. They are allowed unfettered access, as I think they should be; although you could develop a wildlife management plan. But there is no excuse for what we are doing to the buffalo.

Four thousand buffalo have been killed over the last 20 years. In the last year, 480 were caught and most of them were killed. It does not make sense. It is wrong. This, as we understand, is the

only pure-bred herd that is allowed to roam where they have always traditionally roamed. Is that not of some value in our Nation? Back at the turn of the 20th century, in the very early 1900s, we sent soldiers and settlers out to create grazing lands, and they slaughtered the buffalo. Thousands you could see dead on the plains allowed to rot because they just wanted to kill them off, whereas the Native Americans had a belief that you do not kill unless you have purpose, unless you need to eat or for clothing.

For thousands of years under the stewardship of our Native Americans the buffalo herd prospered. We came out, almost exterminated the buffalo, and finally they are coming back on the land that has a natural ecosystem. We are told that in fact there is no risk to the ecosystem, that in fact the greater Yellowstone ecosystem is not threatened whatsoever with regard to the ecological carrying capacity for bison in Yellowstone. If you look at all the facts, even the fact that there is one rancher from Idaho that trucks a herd of 150 cows to fenced private pasture in Horse Butte in the summer, the buffalo are already back in the park far away from the cows. So why would you kill 4,000 buffalo to protect a few hundred cows when they are not even nearby? There is something gratuitously destructive about this policy.

Even the people that live near Yellowstone, including the Chamber of Commerce, do not want this policy. People come to see the buffalo, and here we were told just recently by somebody that was there, there are helicopters shooting at them, harassing them. That is not why you go to a national park.

This policy is absolutely wrong. We can find no justification for it. It is shameful. Our stewards that work for the Park Service do not want to be doing this kind of thing. This is unnatural to what they are all about. I do not know what is driving this policy, but it has got to change. I suggest it is because there are some people who want an opportunity to hunt the buffalo--but they are basically cows--where is the sport in that? The buffalo are part of our heritage. We had them on the back of the nickel. It means something to protect a species that is native to this land that was integral to the survival of the Native American peoples.

And so I would very strongly urge this body to pass this amendment. It is a responsible amendment. It is justified. The policy that it overturns is not justified. Madam Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment. Let us rectify this situation. Let us restore the buffalo to their natural habitat and enable Park Service rangers to conduct the kind of professional responsibilities that they want to be doing and not carrying out a policy that they know is ill-advised and destructive of a species that desrves to be protected and preserved.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take this opportunity to commend an amazing woman from my congressional district, Sharon Kelso. Sharon has been one of the most positive forces in Fairfax County throughout the years and I am proud of all that she has accomplished to help those less fortunate throughout the county. She is a friend and someone that I admire greatly. Sharon will be retiring after faithful and selfless service to United Community Ministries and the people of Fairfax County.

The main legacy Sharon will leave behind is her work as Executive Director of United Community Ministries. When she first began working for UCM, the agency had not existed for long, and its focus was smaller than what Sharon thought it could accomplish. With her vision and dedication, UCM has grown into one of the most important organizations in northern Virginia. One of her most lasting contributions was to establish the first walk-in clinic for the uninsured using volunteer doctors, nurses and technicians. Since that time, the citizens of Fairfax County have seen additional clinics open up for those without health insurance.

While her work for UCM would be enough to fill anyone's time, Sharon wanted to give even more assistance to her community. She has served on numerous boards and committees to help better Fairfax County for all who chose to make it their home. As Co-Chair of the Homeless Oversight Committee, Sharon has helped to implement strategies to prevent homelessness throughout the county. Knowing that affordable housing is one of the most important issues in this area, she has worked on the Affordable Dwelling Unit Task Force which ensures that the affordable dwelling ordinances are effective, and through her service on the Fairfax Committee of 100 Board of Directors she has helped evaluate the lack of affordable housing for those who need it.

Sharon Kelso has also taken on an advocacy role and was often lobbying for issues relating to human services needs, childcare, child abuse and neglect, health and mental health care and homelessness. She also worked with her local Chamber of Commerce to lobby the Fairfax Board of Supervisors to maintain affordable housing. It is through her efforts that these issues have been brought to the forefront for the leaders and community activists of Fairfax County.

While Sharon is retiring from UCM and moving out of the area, I am certain she will continue to work on behalf of those who need help the most. Her work has vastly improved the lives of thousands of families throughout the community and Virginia. Sharon's vision and dedication has touched many people and will ensure a bright future for generations to come. I congratulate Sharon on her retirement. More importantly, I say thank you for making such a difference in the Northern Virginia area.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and ranking member of the Committee on the Budget from South Carolina for the time.

Mr. Chairman, every minute, the Bush administration spends $991,000 more than it takes in, basically $1 million in deficit every single minute. We have lost control of the budget; and this is not going to give us control, even though this purportedly is what it is supposed to do.

One of the things that it does, and the American people need to know this, is that it increases the debt limit by $690 billion to over $8 trillion. We were told that the last time we increased the debt limit to $6.9 trillion that we would not have to do it again until 2008 because of the President's tax cuts, and here we are right back again increasing the debt limit to the $8.1 trillion. This is a bad budget resolution.

It used to be that we had a 10-year window. We could look out to see what this budget was going to do over 10 years; and then to hide the real deficit creative aspect of this budget, we reduced that to 5 years. Now none of us could have imagined that we would actually bring a budget resolution to the floor limited to one single year.

This is a bad budget resolution. There is no provision for the future. It digs the deficit even deeper, and then we do not even have PAYGO rules that apply. This budget is out of control and deserves to be defeated, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Assistance Amendments of 2004, H.R. 3722, because it will place a new burden on already struggling emergency health care systems nationwide and will deter immigrants and their family members from seeking much needed health services.

It is interesting to note that this month, at medical school graduations nationwide, a new community of physicians were called upon to take the Hippocratic Oath, which remains a sacredly held principle to the medical community today. Unfortunately H.R. 3722 would allow hospitals which receive federal funding to decide whether or not they would like to make emergency medical services available to certain immigrants, even if they are suffering from an emergency medical condition. This is a right that hospitals and other health care organizations do not want, as evidenced by the strong opposition of the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and countless other public health organizations. This seems to be in direct conflict of the Hippocratic Oath and will deny basic medical services to some of the most vulnerable of our society.

In Northern Virginia, which encompasses my congressional district, the INOVA Health System serves nearly 400,000 residents a year and has about 240,000 visitors to its emergency rooms alone. The emergency room personnel at INOVA hospitals are some of the same nurses and doctors who serve as our First Responders and were certainly heroic on September 11th in aiding the victims of the Pentagon attack.

Proponents of H.R. 3722 claim that this measure will help to lower the cost of health care in our country, but in reality, will do little to alleviate the growing cost of health care needs and will force hospitals to expand staff and technological resources to implement the reporting requirements such as obtaining signed statements relating to citizenship, immigration status, address, financial data and current employee status as well as purchase a digital electronic biometric identifier.

I am greatly disappointed that the House Republican Leadership would bring to the floor for a vote, a measure which strives to deny even basic health services to some of the most vulnerable in our society, while our military is working hard to establish health services for citizens in some of the most war-torn and poverty-ridden countries in the world. H.R. 3722 will do little to address the important issue of rising health care costs and its intent seems to have been influenced more by political considerations than sound policy. I urge all my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to vote against the Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Assistance Amendments of 2004.

Mr. Speaker, we are all deeply troubled by the graphic pictures which show U.S. military service members humiliating, torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners. The reports that U.S. military police and intelligence personnel violated the most basic standards of moral conduct in addition to the established tenets of the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war have ignited outrage within this country and throughout the rest of the world. This situation has tarnished America's reputation as a guardian of individual civil liberties and as a protector of human rights. While the vast majority of our soldiers are doing their duty with dignity and with honor, the grotesque abuses of Iraqi prisoners are truly un- American. They go against everything our country stands for and holds dear. The images of these abuses are also a major setback in our war against terrorism. Our standing in the Arab world has been seriously undermined as a result of what happened at Abu Ghraib.

As a member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I have listened to the testimony and heard the explanations of the highest Pentagon leadership as to the abuses of Iraqi prisoners, but I am not convinced that these abuses are an isolated incident involving a few military members. The likelihood is that the lack of supervision that allowed them to occur may in fact be systemic, at least in some parts of the military intelligence and military police commands.

This crisis must be immediately dealt with through a full-fledged investigation into the breakdown of military regulations and the possibility of widespread prison abuse. Furthermore, the individuals responsible for perpetrating the abuses as well as their commanding officers must be held accountable for criminal wrongdoing. I do believe that accountability, however, should extend considerably beyond the prosecution of a handful of aberrant military personnel, private contractors and their supervisors. Responsibility starts at the top.

With the existence of additional photos and videos of Iraqi detainees still unreleased, it is likely that this crisis will not soon go away. The transfer of Iraqi sovereignty is set to occur on June 30. The Bush administration must drastically repair our standing in Iraq as well as with the rest of the world before we can responsibly extricate ourselves from this foreign policy blunder.

I emphasize foreign policy as opposed to military policy. Our military accomplished their objective nearly flawlessly by liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein's tyranny. But they were not prepared to be long-term occupiers. That should never be their role nor our national mission. The lack of a realistic exit strategy is one of the reasons that I so strongly opposed this preemptive and unilateral invasion.

Mr. Speaker, our mission in Iraq is at a crossroads. Our soldiers are struggling to complete their missions without the proper training or resources or support. The barbaric murder of Nicholas Berg clearly demonstrates the depth of the resistance we face. The murder of Nicholas Berg was a monstrous act for which there is no justification. Our thoughts and our prayers are with his family. America's soldiers, in fact, are serving with honor. We stand behind our courageous men and women in uniform who are bearing the burden for this military action in Iraq, and we are deeply grateful for their patriotism, their courage and their sacrifice. But the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated rather than improved. Last month, we lost more soldiers in one month than at any time since the war began.

Mr. Speaker, our military was sent into battle without the right equipment or the necessary support. Helicopter pilots have flown battlefield missions without the best available antimissile systems. According to a DOD commission report, roughly one-fourth of coalition deaths have occurred as a result of attacks on unarmored vehicles, because we do not have enough armored vehicles to go around. And our failure to forge a true coalition has forced thousands in the National Guard and Reserves to be away from their families and from their jobs for more than a year with no end in sight.

Mr. Speaker, a failure to condemn what is wrong is a failure to recognize what is right. Recently, a former leader of the 372nd Military Police Company stated that minimizing the conduct of these MPs that were responsible for the prison abuse by comparing it to the reckless and violent acts of the Iraqi insurgents is wholly beside the point. We must compare our actions to those of the men and women who have honorably served this country. We have to stand up for our standard of decency that we have set for the rest of the world and stand up to the enemies of freedom.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) for yielding me this time.

I do feel motivated to respond to my friend from Iowa's comments. I am sure it was not he that suggested there is hypocrisy on our side, but I want to make the record clear, because 2 weeks ago, Mr. Speaker, the Democrats voted 187 to 10 in favor of a fully paid-for marriage penalty tax bill. Last week Democrats voted 196 to 5 in favor of a fully paid-for alternative minimum tax relief bill.

The only way you got us to vote for those tax cuts was after you rejected our very aggressive efforts to pay for those. You recall we got that vote, we took it to a vote, and overwhelmingly the Democrats voted to pay for those tax cuts, and we only voted otherwise after you rejected our ability to pay for them.

But I need to remind my good friend whom I have served with now for several years on the Committee on the Budget that in 1997, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) voted for pay-go as applied to tax cuts. In fact, in 1997, the gentleman voted twice along with virtually all of the House Republicans for pay-go to apply to tax cuts. So when he suggests that we are acting inconsistently, and we would not use the word ``hypocritically,'' but I do think ``inconsistently'' is a proper term when it is applied to the facts of the matter, and again in 1999, the gentleman will recall the Nussle-Cardin budget process bill which required that we have on-budget balancing for tax cuts.

Now, today what we are trying to do is to behave responsibly, fiscally responsibly, because we are looking at the facts, not at any far-flown projections. We are looking at the facts. And the facts tell us that after President Clinton's balanced budget amendment, which passed without any Republican votes, we actually turned our backs on deficit spending, got all the way up to the point where we had a surplus, the green, of course, which the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), I guess it appears, perhaps was intimidated by some of these colors because they are in stark contrast to some of the rhetoric we have been hearing. This is the fact: During the Clinton administration, there had been a trajectory, right up to surplus, change of administrations, and look what this policy has done all the way down. I mean one would not want a ski slope that steep.

The point is that our policy worked, and it is because we had pay-go applied to spending and to tax cuts. What we have here, clearly, if you want to stop spending, stop the spending. We are saying stop both. If you are not willing to stop the spending, and you obviously have not been, because once the Bush administration came in, there goes the spending on an upward trajectory and there goes the revenue on a downward trajectory. The problem is this is not sustainable.

You say that this is going to balance out, but the fact is it has not. And we have to look at the reality, the real experience. These policies are not working. If you want to cut spending, cut spending and then we can work with you. But right now the reality is unless we apply pay-go to tax cuts as well as spending, this line of deficit is going to continue to decline because we will not have the revenues to pay for the spending that you insist on, and that spending clearly has been going up in an unrestrained fashion.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I think I did. Does the gentleman have the names?

Mr. Speaker, I think he needs to do a little research on that.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Tom Davis of Virginia and I rise today to commemorate the 40 anniversary of Reston, Virginia and the 90th birthday of its legendary founder, Robert E. Simon, Jr.

Bob Simon grew up in New York immersed in his family's thriving real estate business, Hercer Corp. He attended Harvard University, and upon the passing of his father in 1935, took over the family business. While running Hercer Corp., Simon escaped the city by residing in Syosset, a suburb of Long Island. There he grew to value a lifestyle in which one could live, work, and play in the same desirable community.

In 1961, an offer for 6,750 lush acres 18 miles west of Washington, DC, caught Simon's attention. He inspected the land, instantly fell in love, and invested in the rolling green hills of Fairfax County. Simon sought to create a community to embody his ideals; he envisioned a well-rounded, self-sufficient community that respected the dignity of the individual and preserved the land's natural beauty.

He launched his development project at a time when the Commonwealth of Virginia still was segregated; nonetheless, Simon bravely fought for a community in which people of all backgrounds could live peacefully together. He put Dr. Martin Luther King's principles to practice and always will be remembered for his commitment to integration. Many investors turned away from Simon's concept, yet Gulf Oil accepted, providing critical resources and support for the project.

After securing funding, Simon worked closely with noted planners, architects, and environmentalists to transform his vision into a reality. Perhaps most notable was his innovative notion of clustered housing, leaving open land and improving the appearance and quality of the area. Simon's development team and those that succeeded them were able to realize his dream community, aptly naming it Reston, using the founder's initials and the English suffix for town. As Reston developed, numerous organizations such as the United States Geological Survey relocated to the area, bringing much needed employment and residents. In 1990, development began on the Reston Town Center, which produced a lasting, positive impact on the community.

Today, over 58,000 call 11.5 square mile Reston home. Reston has attracted national and worldwide recognition as one of the ``best places to live,'' truly surpassing all expectations. Forty years ago Simon had a dream, and it appears as though this dream has come true. As Simon intended, Reston has become a thriving residential, commercial, industrial, cultural, and civic center where urban seamlessly meets rural.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, we would like to congratulate Reston on 40 years of success and wish its residents the best of luck in the many years to come. We ask that our colleagues join us in applauding this notable accomplishment and in wishing Bob Simon a happy celebration of Reston's success and his 90th birthday.