Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I would like the Record to reflect on rollcall 501 on the motion to recommit on H.R. 5825, I was unavoidably detained and had I been present I would have voted ``aye'' on that motion.

Mr. Speaker, we ought to hold this truth to be self- evident, that no President should be given the ability to hold people in detention indefinitely without review by the judicial branch.

We should never yield to al Qaeda, not one inch, not one right, not one American principle; but, today, in this bill, we yield a fundamental American principle, the principle that no executive, no President, should have the untrammeled ability to be free of checks and balances that have kept our country so free in the last 230 years. That principle of writ of habeas corpus has been fundamental, and it is destroyed in this bill.

When we learn that George Bush's policy has kept a man in detention for years who was totally innocent without trial, it was not just he who suffered. It was we who had a wound as well.

We do not care about the terrorists' displeasure here, but we do care about the principled integrity of our country, about the light of liberty that so attracts the world. It is that light that will help us win the war on terrorism, not just the light of our bombs. This is the principal weapon in our arsenal. It is the light of liberty, may it ever shine.

Reject this bill. Go back to the drawing board.

Mr. Speaker, I came here this morning to chastise the Republican majority for their failure to act on the minimum wage, but one of my colleagues said something so outrageous and indecent that it demands an answer.

One of my colleagues lauded President Bush's action on security and foreign policy, asserting that we hadn't had any losses since September 11, that we hadn't been attacked.

We have been attacked in Baghdad. We have been attacked in Mosul. We have been attacked in Tikrit. We are being attacked every single day, because this President and this do-nothing Congress has sent our troops and our finest men and women, our sons and daughters, our husbands and wives, into harm's way, where they never should have been in Iraq. We have lost 2,600-plus. We have had 15,000 of them limping around America because of the absurdly incompetent, ineffective, boneheaded decisions by this President and this Congress which has allowed them to go into harm's way.

Those who sit there and pat themselves on the back and say that we have had unalloyed success have done a disrespect to the fallen in Iraq. They shouldn't stand here and pat themselves on the back. They should be covered in shame for their failure to hold this President accountable for the competence we need in Iraq.

Well, you pointed out something that I just realized. President Bush, when he ran for office back in 2000, said he would be the great uniter. Many of us have been disappointed, in fact, that he has divided the country like no President in modern history. When we were united after September 11 with us and the whole world, he has now divided the country.

But I think finally he has united two ununitable, intractable foes, one, an axis of evil, Iran, who we are trying to defeat, in some way to prevent them from having nuclear weapons. He has united Iraq and made Iran a more fundamentalist Islamic government, a more powerful entity on the world stage, more powerful, as he describes them, axis of evil, and the President finally fulfilled his destiny of being the great uniter.

After this conference of Tehran between the axis of evil and the new government the President has created in Iraq, one of the leaders described the other leader as their, quote, good friend. I don't know if it was the President of Iran, the axis of evil describing the new government created by George Bush in Iraq or vice versa. Do you know which one it was?

I want to point out something, why this is such a diabolical development that the President has given to the world and the United States, and that is it is very simple. We have folks in harm's way today, we have lost 2,600 of our finest men and women in Iraq, and it is very clear that we are not going to get those people out unless the leadership of Iraq and the Shiite factions finally reach an agreement regarding oil revenues with the Sunnis and the Kurds in Iraq. This picture is a picture of the friendship of the Shiite-led fundamentalist Iranian government essentially signing up with the Shiite-led faction of the government in Iraq, and this President has refused to drop the hammer on the government of Iraq to tell them that they have to make a deal about oil revenues right now and refusing to continue to keep our troops there in harm's way unless they do.

Because it is clear that unless this President makes very clear to the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Kurds that if they don't reach an agreement about oil revenue, which they are arguing about today, and have been arguing about for 3 years, we could be there for 500 years and not solve the problem. This President has simply allowed them to shake hands and not put pressure on them, not drop the hammer on them. That is what he has got to do, and he hasn't done it.

I think when we talk about the wrong country, it has been the wrong country in two different ways. First, the President has united Iran, part of the ``axis of evil,'' with Iraq, rather than uniting America. He got the countries wrong in that regard.

But, more importantly, he got the countries wrong about which country is a nuclear threat to the United States of America. He invaded Iraq, when the nuclear threat to the United States of America is Iran. As a result of Mr. Bush's war, he has made the nuclear threat to the United States of America, Iran, more powerful by uniting it with Iraq, making Iran a more powerful figure in the Mideast by taking our eye off the ball, reducing our ability to build an international consensus to impose sanctions against Iran, because he invaded the wrong country.

Do you know what? I was so astounded that the Vice President of the United States made a statement last weekend that made me think there is some hallucinogen in the water that people are drinking in this administration when he said, and this is a paraphrase, it is not an exact quote, even if we knew that the weapons were in Iran, not in Iraq, that there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein and the attack on 9/11, that we were going to lose 2,600 troops dead and 15,000 injured, the destruction of our international coalition, even if I knew that all the things we told Americans were misstatements, were falsehoods, even with all of those falsehoods, I would have done just the same thing again.

That attitude, as long as that attitude prevails in this country, as long as we don't have a Congress to ride herd on those people in the White House, including the Vice President, our people are going to be in a dark, dark hole in Iraq. That is why we need a new Congress and a new government, to get a policy in Iraq, to get our people home.

It is not us asking where Congress has been challenging these failures by the administration, it is our constituents. I went for a walk last weekend, and I ran across an old friend whose son is serving in Iraq today, and he has just been moved to Baghdad because we have stripped our forces from Al Anbar Province where they are needed to put them in Baghdad, because we have never had enough troops there to get the job done, the President has never been willing to do it. The mother of their child is also serving in Iraq, so they are essentially raising this 1-year-old.

He asked me this question: Why isn't anyone in Congress insisting that the President get serious about telling the Iraqi Shiites to strike a deal about oil with the Sunnis so they can finally form a real government and our troops can come home? Why isn't there anybody in Congress asking that question?

I said, Hal, I am happy to ask that question. He said, go do it. Be vocal about this. Make sure the administration gets their feet held to the fire, for my son and everybody else serving in Iraq.

So we are doing this tonight. But, frankly, we need a new majority in this House to do it with hearings. That is what we really need.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill. I think it is important to note that before we do violence to the existing situation here that there has been substantial success. In the existing relationships, we have had only three essential tribes, all of which have been done with largely local jurisdictions' approval. To do significant changes to upset that balance would erode, and I do believe this bill

as currently written does erode, to a degree, tribal sovereignty in this regard. For that reason, I don't believe it is necessary at this time, and there can be and should be improvements.

It is disappointing again that democracy isn't functioning here in this body in that we are not allowed to offer amendments on the floor to a very critical issue involving tribal sovereignty. We have seen tribes abused historically in this country. I think that is happening again today where this bill is not allowed to be subject to the amendment process on the floor that it should.

But I also want to note that I believe that somehow the gaming process has not assisted folks in these tribes. I just want to attest, having seen boys and girls clubs established, in fact, first boys and girls club on a reservation in the Toledo reservation in the State of Washington, as a result of this economic activity, there are a lot of good economic activities happening in these communities. I think this bill will not foster them and we should oppose it.

Mr. Speaker, you have to ask why Members of the U.S. Congress would hold working families ransom for a very modest increase in the minimum wage after so much time has passed. Why would Members of Congress do that? How could they possibly deny people who work in our nursing homes and care for our families, people who work cleaning up our schools, people who work laboring under the hot sun on various sites, how could Members of the U.S. Congress hold them hostage? To get what their special interests, the wealthiest among us, what they want: these million dollar tax breaks.

How could they possibly do that? Well, the best explanation I can come up with is that those same Members who are holding these working families hostage tonight have had over $30,000 pay raises in the last several years themselves. Eight times they have received pay raises. Eight times their families have been well clothed and well fed. Eight times they have gone on trips on airplanes. Eight times they have had their health care needs met without worrying how they are going to pay for their kids' appendectomy. They are conditioned to be able to allow their families, the working families of this country, to tell them to go fish.

It is a moral outrage to tell the working families of this country tonight, in the darkness of night, where evil is traditionally done in human affairs, that you can tell these families that they can just go fish and not get a tiny little raise in the minimum wage unless these, the well-heeled, the special interests, those who have influence in here get their piece of the action.

Well, let me tell you, there is something in the Good Book that says by their acts ye shall know them. And by your votes you shall know them. There is a group here in Congress that thinks there is only a special group that counts in this country, and that our genius is only the wealthy.

We are the group who believes that working people are just as entitled to the respect of this Congress as those who are well off. Reject this rule and pass the minimum wage as we should.

The only people in the State of Washington whose wages will be affected by this bill, should it pass, will have their minimum wage decreased. Every single worker who receives tips in the State of Washington will have their minimum wage decreased $1.78 an hour as a result of this ridiculous bill. Seven States are in the same position: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. In seven States in this country, the only people who will be affected by this bill are those who will get their minimum wage slashed.

Where is the Republican desire to slash the minimum wage and call it an increase in the minimum wage? That is what you have written into this bill.

Now, we realize this bill isn't going to pass, and you think you are going to get relief from the voters because you voted for this when it isn't going to pass. Well, if it did pass, you would be cutting the minimum wage in the State of Washington by $1.78 an hour. The people who feed you, when you take your $30,000 pay increases we all have had over the last several years, you take your $30,000 pay increases, and you tell the people that serve your tostadas and your spaghetti that you can cut their minimum wage by $1.78 an hour. If you doubt me, ask Molly on your staff. She will tell you I am right. I don't know who the brilliant guy was who thought that that is good policy in this country. We Democrats think it is a very bad idea.

The situation is, you're not going to deliver a minimum wage of any dimension because of the way you packaged this, because you don't want to see a minimum-wage increase. That is why you packaged this with a poison pill. And this is not going to work for you, because mailmen who don't deliver the mail get punished. And you will be punished for this this November.

I will just say one thing: when you cut the minimum wage for restaurant tip workers in this country, I will say this, it is bad enough when you don't do a minimum-wage bill; it is worse when you do. The point I want to make is this bill is not going to pass because they put a poison pill in it. But I want to make sure people understand in the States of Washington, Montana, Nevada, California, those States, that if it did pass, they would be cutting restaurant workers.

Do you want to challenge that, Mr. Hayworth? I will yield to you. If you think that is wrong, you can walk up to your staff member and she will tell you that you are cutting restaurant workers $1.78 in the State of Washington. If you disagree with that, I will show you page 181 of your bill.

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

I am.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, what we want to point out and we want to make sure, because I think I have confirmed this with the Republican staff, the way this works, if this bill passes, in the State of Washington the minimum wage goes down the next day $1.78 an hour.

The gentleman is correct. If the State legislature got together and essentially overrode the Republicans in Congress, they might be able to get it back up where it was. But you know what? You Republicans in the State legislature, I say ``you,'' Republican-controlled legislators, I will give you a clue: it is not going to happen. That is why we object to cutting the minimum wage in any State by any Congress of any party.

Unfortunately, that is what you are doing. You can confirm it with counsel. That is why we think it is an abomination.

Mr. Speaker, I hate to spoil this garden party, but this is not, in truth, suburban legislation, it is substandard legislation. And the reason for that is that it is, in effect, a good press release, but it is not effective legislation addressing a huge problem threatening our children.

The reason I say that is, after sitting through many hearings in the Commerce Committee about this enormous problem, I reached one conclusion. After listening to those thousands of children who are being abused on these horrendous occasions across this country, I concluded that this legislation would not save one single child one single time.

What we learned is that the problem is not in our schools. These kids are not hanging in the library with these sexual predators. They are hanging around in their dens, in their basements, in their living rooms, and in their upstairs bedrooms. That is where we have to get to the problem.

If you look at the problem here on this chart, only 10 percent of the abused kids are online and hardly any of them from schools. A tiny, tiny, infinitesimal portion. This will not solve the problem.

Now, there are things we can do, but, unfortunately, this legislation doesn't do a single one of them. I used to prosecute cases, so I know a little bit about law enforcement. I raised three kids, so I know a little bit about the terror of worrying about your children. But what this legislation does not do is the three things we need to do.

Number one, we have to give resources to law enforcement to prosecute these horrendous monsters. We had detective after detective come to our hearings and say, give us some money; we can prosecute these people. This doesn't give them a penny.

Number two, we need to protect the data. What the detectives told us is that this data, once it disappears, they can't find the culprits. Now we could require the data to be maintained for a year or two, like we are trying to do. This bill doesn't do that.

Third, what this bill could do is provide some real meaningful tools for our schools to educate our children on how to avoid these monsters on the Internet. This doesn't do that.

The three effective things that we could do to really save our kids is not done in this legislation.

Now, why is this such a pathetic wave at trying to do something? Why has Congress failed so miserably here? There is a reason for that. The reason is we want press releases, without having to do the hard work to do legislation. That is why we didn't go through the Commerce Committee to have a markup on this bill so they could rush

this thing to the floor and have their suburban agenda.

Well, speaking as a parent who represents 650,000 people, and probably 200,000 parents in suburbia, I think suburban parents, urban parents, rural parents, big-city parents and little-city parents deserve real legislation to stomp out the monstrosity that is going on on the Internet and not these little press releases. We can't go home and just say that we are heroes without having really done something.

When I go home, I am going to tell my constituents that, yes, maybe there are some headlines, but there wasn't real relief. And I look forward to the day when this Congress gets down to the nitty-gritty and really does something about this terrible problem.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address a very important part of this bill that increases Americans' access to reverse mortgages.

Reverse mortgages are a tremendous vehicle by which Americans can get access to the equity in their home to make it available for health care, for assistance, for travel, for education; and now this bill will take three big steps forward to make reverse mortgages more available.

First, it will do so by having a uniform national cap so that it will remove this cap in a lot of areas in the country that have prevented Americans from having reverse mortgages.

Secondly, it will make it available for, essentially, homeownership, which might be in the best interests of senior citizens.

Third, it will remove the cap on the number of reverse mortgages that essentially can go through the FHA home equity conversion program, which now issues 90 percent of the reverse mortgages in the country.

So this is a fantastic opportunity, particularly for our seniors to be able to have access to the equity in their homes. It is a big stride forward. I know a lot of seniors are going to take advantage of it to make sure they can stay in their homes, to use their equity to finance having health care and assistance in their homes to give them their liberty.

I want to thank the bipartisan effort to put this together. I also want to thank noted author Tom Kelly who has been a great advocate for getting these reverse mortgages used by more Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I was absent from the House floor during yesterday's votes on H.R. 2389, which amends the Federal judicial code to deny jurisdiction to any Federal court, and appellate jurisdiction to the Supreme Court, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of the Pledge of Allegiance or its validity under the Constitution. At that time, the House also considered H. Res. 911 pertaining to deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai and H.R. 5683 regarding the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial.

Had I been present, I would have voted against H.R. 2389, and I would have voted in favor of both H. Res. 911 and H.R. 5683.

Mr. Speaker, when I voted to override President Bush's veto of stem cell research, I was thinking of ex-Governor Booth Gardner of Washington State. I saw Governor Gardner in the Sea-Tac Airport Monday as I was flying back here. He was flying to San Francisco for advanced treatment for Parkinson's, a disease he has been battling for some time with great courage and grace.

And yet this promising research, we have a President who decided he is not going to let Americans have because he, from his exalted realm on Pennsylvania Avenue, has taken it upon himself to dictate to Americans what our morals should be.

Let me suggest that the President who started the war in Iraq based on false information, the President that mishandled Hurricane Katrina relief, the President who has created the largest deficit in the history of the solar system, is not entitled by any law, religion, morality, ethics or common sense to dictate to the American people one sense of morality, much less any others.

It was wrong for him to deny Booth Gardner treatment, it is wrong for him to take it away from millions of Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I commend Microsoft's announcement today that it will adopt a set of ``Open Platform Principles'' that will govern the development of Windows desktop operating systems.

Four years ago, the Justice Department rejected calls to force Microsoft to remove code out of Windows and to reorganize its business. Instead, the department adopted a consent decree setting out basic rules to preserve competitive opportunities for other companies, while ensuring that Microsoft could continue to improve its products. As a result, the U.S. software industry is thriving with competition and innovation.

The ``Open Platform Principles'' that Microsoft announced today give me tremendous confidence that innovation and competition will continue. The principles broaden the Department's consent decree and makes them a standard part of how Microsoft does business. They give every company, large and small, confidence that they will be treated fairly and can compete equally.

In 2004, the European Commission ordered Microsoft to delete code out of Windows. To the commission's shock, absolutely no one bought this substandard version of Windows. The commission now appears intent on actively managing how Microsoft designs Vista, its new platform. Microsoft's new guiding principles ensure that Windows will continue to be a great platform for innovation and competition. The fact that Microsoft adopted these principles voluntarily shows that it recognizes the important responsibilities that come with being an industry leader. I congratulate Microsoft for taking this important and forward-looking step.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to state for the record my objection to the Republicans' refusal to be indignant about the outing of a spy by the administration.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

This is a very simple amendment that will increase the amount of authorization for clean, renewable ocean energy projects from the current $6 million to $20 million.

We have enormous potential off of our shores not only for oil and gas but for clean, renewable sources, including wave power-generated electricity and current-generated electricity, and there are several places in the United States where we are doing that today. In fact, in Hawaii, we have a wave power system that is generating electricity for the United States Navy, a very ingenious product that is essentially an ocean bell that bobs up and down just underneath the surface of the ocean, drives a hydraulic system, and generates electricity.

Just to give you an order of magnitude of the capacity that we may have to develop off our shores, a 10 megawatt power station would only use 30 acres of ocean space. That is enough for 10,000 homes. A 10 by 10 area off our oceans has enough capacity, and this is pretty amazing when you think about it, to generate all of the electricity used in the State of California. Now, these are prototypes in the water today, but we think they have great, great potential. So we would like a modest increase to allow this technology to go forward.

It is a very modest increase, of course, and here is something we can do with our oceans that is clean and renewable. And we have heard the science coming out on global warming, the importance of not just relying on fossil fuel in our energy plan.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

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

I appreciate the Chair's acceptance of the amendment. I just wanted to point out I have looked at this, as the Chair believes. I just want to point out in dealing with these new energy technologies, we are going to find some that are dry holes and do not work, but I think it is incumbent on us to look for any technology that has a reasonable chance for success. I think this one does. This is a good investment for taxpayers. I appreciate the Chair accepting the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, we know two things about domestic violence and violence against women. Number one, it is still at epidemic levels across our Nation. And, number two, it is almost an inherited trait where children who are exposed to domestic violence themselves become perpetrators frequently. Ten million children a year are exposed to domestic violence in our country, and we know that men who have experienced it and viewed it as children are twice as likely to become perpetrators themselves.

So one aspect of this bill is to fund a portion of the Violence Against Women Act to break that chain, nip this in the bud, stop that chain from continuing across multiple generations. The other part of our amendment will make sure that we treat children. Teenagers are a special group that are increasingly submitted to sexual harassment, sexual abuse and domestic violence themselves. These are bills that we need to get funded. Third, this will deal with the tribal problem. We need to have a tribal registry for sexual abuse.

And just in conclusion, there will come a day, I hope, where we fathers are successful in teaching our sons that it is unmanly to abuse women. That is an obligation upon all of us as fathers. But as part of that, I am happy today and I hope this amendment will pass. It will fulfill our obligation in Congress to help break this chain of domestic violence.