Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment to attach to this bill, the Sail Only If Scanned Act, the SOS Act. This act was developed by me and Mr. Oberstar, with the support of Minority Leader Pelosi, to address the issue of shipping container security.

This amendment would require that every shipping container be scanned with the most modern technology and sealed with a tamper-proof seal before it is placed on a ship bound for the United States so that we can have absolute assurances that no nuclear weapons or radiological bombs are being brought into our ports.

Only 1 percent of the more than 11 million shipping containers destined for the United States are scanned before they are loaded on a ship overseas. This is unacceptable.

The United States cannot own or control the entire global trade network, but we can and should ensure the security of every single container destined for this country. The controversy over the proposed Dubai Ports World deal has woken up the American people and made them think about how critical our ports are for national security. But who owns the ports and who operates the ports, while important, is far less important than what comes into the ports.

Ninety-five percent of all of the 11 million, 40-foot boxes that come into our ports are uninspected, not scanned. Not scanned by x-rays, not examined for radioactivity before they get here. Any one of them could have an atomic bomb or radiological bomb. That is unacceptable.

If there is a bomb inside a container, it is too late to discover that in Newark or Miami or Los Angeles. Reading the manifest is not enough. Having shipments only from low-risk shippers is not enough, because any one container could have a catastrophic bomb inside it.

My amendment is quite simple. It would require that all containers must be scanned using the best available technology, including scanning for radiation and density before they are loaded on a ship bound for the United States.

The scans must be submitted to U.S. Government officials for review before the container is loaded, and the containers must be sealed with a device that indicates if the container is tampered with in transit, and automatically notifies U.S. officials of any breach before the containers come within a few hundred miles of the United States.

Steve Flynn of the Council of Foreign Relations and a port security expert wrote in the New York Times a few days ago: ``This is not a pie- in-the-sky idea. Since January 2005, every single container entering the truck gates of two of the world's busiest container terminals in Hong Kong has passed through scanning and radiation detection devices. Images of the containers' contents are then stored on computers so they can be scrutinized by American or other customs authorities almost in real-time. Customs inspectors can then issue orders not to load a container that worries them. The Department of Homeland Security has greeted this private sector initiative with only tepid interest.''

Mr. Chairman, we cannot simply stand by while the Bush administration twiddles its thumbs and fails to secure the movement of containers before they reach the United States. The terminal operations in Hong Kong prove we can scan 100 percent of the containers without disrupting the economy or the flow of goods. The cost to scan a container is $6.50.

The entire cost to amortize all of the equipment is $20 a container. Given that it costs $4,000 to ship a container across the Pacific if there is between 50 and $500,000 worth of merchandise in each container, a $20 cost is trivial.

Congress needs to make 100 percent scanning the policy of the United States. This amendment would do that. I realize, Mr. Chairman, this amendment may not be allowed under the rules of the House.

I fully expect the Republicans to raise a point of order against it. I would note, however, that the underlying bill includes a provision blocking the proposed takeover of U.S. terminals by Dubai Ports World. I support that provision.

But if we can include language on the Dubai deal in this bill, then certainly the Republican majority should allow us to include language that secures shipping containers and prevents atomic bombs from going off in port cities.

At the very least, they could easily waive the rule and allow a vote on this amendment. If they care more about these rules that they waive every day than they do about protecting the American public from nuclear bombs and shipping containers, I truly fear for our safety.

Mr. Chairman, I urge all my colleagues to support this amendment to attach the Sail Only if Scanned Act, the SOS Act, to this bill. The only way we will adequately protect our citizens is if the Republicans in Congress join with us to force the Bush administration to take seriously the issue of container security and make sure that every single container is scanned and sealed with a tamper-proof seal before being placed on a ship bound for the United States.

Point of Order

Mr. Chairman, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations raises a point of order that this legislates on an appropriations bill. And it might.

But I would challenge the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and the Republican majority, if you are going to insist on a technical interpretation of the rule on this amendment, I would challenge the Republicans to allow this bill to the floor for a vote or allow this bill as an amendment on some other bill. Because to fail to do that, to insist on a technical reading of this rule, and not allow this or something like it on the floor, is to jeopardize the lives of every single American for a trivial cost. And I urge that the Republicans allow, we have been trying some version of this for 3 years now. We have never been able to get a vote. But the safety of the American people is at risk if we allow 11 million shipping containers, 40-foot boxes into the ports of our country without scanning them, and knowing only what someone says is in them, not what is really in them.

Offered By: Mr. Nadler

Amendment No. 10: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, this bill manipulates the legislative process by repackaging legislation that for the most part has already passed the House, and by taking out of that legislation two amendments that were passed on the floor of the House and giving us no opportunity, giving the House majority no opportunity to correct this.

The bill includes three previous bills. On one of them I offered an amendment to prohibit gun possession by convicted misdemeanor sex offenders against minors. The amendment was agreed to unanimously and incorporated in the underlying bill. This is one of the poison pills. One of the poison pills, in other words, is that apparently the sponsors of this bill think it is essential to allow people convicted of misdemeanor sex offenses against minors to possess firearms, so they can use firearms against minors the next time.

The other amendment, the ranking member offered an amendment to combat crimes based on race, religion, national origin, disability, gender and sexual orientation by allowing the Federal Government to provide resources to local law enforcement to act as a Federal backup if local authorities do not prosecute these crimes. The amendment passed 223-199.

Now we are faced with this legislation on a suspension calendar. We are told that it is on a suspension calendar and it is unamendable because we have already debated. Yes, but we passed it in different forms, and they are just taking out the two poison pills.

Who has the right to decide that what the majority of the House voted is a poison pill and not give this House the right to vote on whether it agrees with them or not?

If the gentleman brought forth this bill under the regular calendar and said should we remove these two provisions because we cannot pass them in the Senate, let the House debate that. Maybe we would decide it is more important to let the Senate pass this bill and permit misdemeanor sexual offenders to have firearms than not to pass the bill. Maybe we would decide that, but that should be decided in a debate, not because someone behind the scenes decides that the will of the House can be overturned.

I urge Members to oppose this bill because it does not include these two provisions, to ban gun possession by those convicted of misdemeanor sex offenders against minors. We should not go on record today, as a vote for this legislation would be in favor of gun possession by people convicted of misdemeanor sex offenses. And it also does

not include the hate crimes amendment that was sponsored by Mr. Conyers and included by the House by majority vote.

It is wrong to prostitute the procedures of this House to undo the majority votes on the floor by behind-the-scenes manipulation and then say this is democratic procedure.

Madam Speaker, we are engaged in a serious war with terrorism. But we are going after the wrong targets. We are not protecting ourselves, but we are attacking our liberties. We are not doing anything adequate to secure the loose nuclear materials all over the former Soviet Union before they are smuggled to al Qaeda to make atomic bombs.

We search only 5 percent of the 9 million shipping containers that come into our country every year, any one of which could contain a weapon of mass destruction.

But what are we doing? Well, the President has orchestrated a secret conspiracy to violate the criminal law by ordering clearly illegal domestic surveillance.

And now we renew the PATRIOT Act with some of the worst provisions only cosmetically changed and continuing to threaten civil liberties. Section 215 allows the government to obtain business reports about people, including library, medical and various other types of business records, as long as they are ``sought for a terrorism investigation.''

The government simply has to come up with a statement of facts showing there are reasonable grounds to believe that tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation. Relevant? Almost anything can be relevant.

To make matters worse, the recipients of a section 215 order are subject to an almost unreviewable automatic gag order. Now we are told, under this bill, that judicial review can take place after a year. At best. A year? And in order to prevail in challenging a gag order, a certification by the government that disclosure would harm national security or impair diplomatic relations would be conclusive, unless shown it would be in bad faith.

Conclusive? No evidentiary showing, no evidentiary test. That is absurd. That means there is no test at all. Section 505 authorizes FBI field office directors to collect in secret almost limitless sensitive personal information from entities simply by issuing national security letters.

The FBI can simply say they want your private and sensitive information and they can get it. This is very much like the writ of assistance the British used to grant in 1761 that helped start the American Revolution. Under the conference report, recipients would theoretically have the ability to challenge these gag orders, but again that will be virtually impossible.

As with section 215, the government's assertion that the gag order is necessary to protect the national security would be a conclusive presumption that the government is telling the truth that the gag order could stand.

You can only challenge the government's bad faith. This automatic permanent gag rule very likely violates the first amendment, as two courts have already found. We ought to have real protections. We ought to have some procedural safeguards in the PATRIOT Act such as our entire American tradition demands.

The conference report does not replace the section 215 showing of relevance standard with the three-part test that was the basis of the Senate compromise which provided some meaningful due process protections. It should.

The conference report does not restore the section 505 previous standard of specific and articulable facts connecting the records sought to a suspected terrorist. It should.

The conference report does not allow recipients of section 215 orders and national security letters a meaningful court challenge to the gag order. It should.

And, finally, the conference report does not sunset section 505, national security letters, in 4 years. It should.

I very much urge defeat of this PATRIOT Act reauthorization so that we can mend the bill so it doesn't destroy our constitutional liberties. Mend it, not end it. But this doesn't help.

Mr. Speaker, due to other business, I missed three votes on February 28, 2006. I ask that the Record reflect that had I been able to, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall vote No. 14, commemorating the lifetime innovations of Thomas Edison; ``aye'' on rollcall vote No. 15, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Texas Western's 1966 NCAA basketball championship; and ``aye'' on rollcall vote No. 16, to authorize the President to award a gold medal, on behalf of Congress, collectively, to the Tuskegee Airmen.

Madam Speaker, in the President's budget he asks for a few hundred million dollars over the next few years for the cost of privatizing Social Security. When he was here at the State of the Union address, he commented that Congress rejected his proposals to privatize Social Security. All the Democrats to his surprise got up and cheered, because we think it is a terrible idea to privatize Social Security

To do to Social Security what they are doing to the pension system, eliminating private pensions and making people depend only on 401(k)s, we think is a terrible idea. What the President telegraphed, by putting in his budget the money to pay for the cost of privatizing Social Security, is that if the Republicans retain control of Congress in this election, they are going to try it again.

They will privatize Social Security if the Republicans control Congress again next year. If anybody thinks that privatizing Social Security is a bad idea, that we should not destroy Social Security, you better vote Democratic this year.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support S. Con. Res. 79, a resolution expressing the sense of Congress that no United States assistance should be provided directly to the Palestinian Authority so long as the Hamas-led government maintains a position calling for the destruction of Israel.

In fact, I will go further and say that the United States should freeze all aid to the Palestinian Government until Hamas denounces violence, renounces terrorism, and recognizes the State of Israel's right to exist within secure borders. Hamas's mission is the destruction of the State of Israel, and its methods include wholesale violence against civilians. To fund that regime is to legitimize terrorism against innocent people.

Hamas has been responsible for more than 425 terrorist attacks since the start of the second Intifada in the fall of 2000. These attacks have resulted in the deaths of 377 people, including approximately 27 Americans since 1993.

With Hamas in the majority--an organization designated as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union--the Palestinian Authority is now led by a regime whose actions and covenant directly reject a diplomatic and peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas must publicly acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a free, Jewish state, denounce terrorism and dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, halt anti-Israel incitement, and commit itself to the peace process. The logical consequence of Hamas's failure to follow these civilized principles must be a freeze on foreign aid from the international community.

Today, the Palestinian Authority receives approximately $1.1 billion a year in foreign aid. According to a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service, the Palestinian Authority receives about $320 million a year in direct foreign aid, and about double that amount in indirect aid.

I am concerned that the international community may not be united in its opposition to Hamas. There is already disagreement within the Quartet, with President Putin declaring that Russia will not stop foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. I have already written President Putin to urge him not to fund Hamas, and I hope he will reconsider his decision. But the problem goes beyond Russia.

Arab nations, many of them purported friends of the United States, have openly declared that they will step in and fund the Hamas-led government. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already pledged $33 million. Several countries in Latin America, including Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and Bolivia, have invited Hamas officials to visit with their governments. The international community must neither fund, nor legitimize Hamas.

Therefore, I am circulating a letter to President Bush urging him to build an international consensus to withhold foreign aid as a way to isolate the Hamas-led government until Hamas denounces violence, renounces terrorism, and recognizes the State of Israel's right to exist within secure borders. Many Members of Congress have joined me in this effort, and I hope with this action by Congress today, more Members will join our efforts.

Mr. Speaker, none of us here deny that some of the provisions of the PATRIOT Act are very useful in fighting the war on terrorism. No one wants the PATRIOT Act to be eliminated, but the PATRIOT Act should be amended to safeguard civil liberties.

Section 215 should be amended to provide meaningful protection from abuse by an overzealous government seeking sensitive and personal documentation. We should replace the mere showing of relevance standard with a three-part test that was the basis of the Senate compromise. Recipients of section 215 orders and of section 505 national security letters must be allowed a meaningful court challenge to the gag order, and the national security letter authority should sunset in order to guarantee Congressional oversight.

We also must be mindful, while debating this, of the President's claim of extraordinary power to wiretap Americans in conversation he says with people who are terrorists abroad. We do not know that is the only wiretapping that is going on. It may be thousands, may be hundreds of thousands of Americans are being wiretapped. We do not know. This is all secret. It only got out because it leaked.

The President claims the power to do this against the apparently plain language of the law. Many of us think it is illegal. Many people think this is illegal the President claims inherent power or that we authorized this when we authorized the use of force in Afghanistan. Well, maybe, but we ought to be holding hearings. It is an abdication of responsibility for the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees of this House not to be holding hearings on this.

Why should the hearings only occur in the Senate? Is this House not an

equal branch of the government? So I urge this bill. This extension ought to pass so that we can work out the problem of modification of the PATRIOT Act, and we ought not to abdicate our responsibility. I urge the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to hold hearings so that we can examine these issues.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the Graham-Levin amendment language contained in this bill. This provision restricts the jurisdiction of the Federal courts to consider habeas corpus petitions from detainees at Guantanamo or complaints about their treatment. It also would require military tribunals to ``weigh the value of the intelligence gained from an interrogation against a judgment on whether the statement was coerced.''

In other words, even if the bill says they cannot torture, it also says they can use the information they obtain by torturing people if the military tribunal concludes the statement itself was not coerced.

These two provisions taken together, Mr. Speaker, make the anti- torture provision of this bill unenforceable. They cannot complain about it through habeas corpus. They cannot get into the Federal courts to complain about it, and the military tribunal can use the coerced evidence.

That is not right. This is un-American, and this language ought to have been stricken from the bill.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution: in honor and support of our troops in Iraq, in opposition to our policy on the war in Iraq, and in urging the Republican leadership of the House to grant this an open and adequate debate on the entire question of our policy on Iraq on the floor of this House.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, my amendment strikes section 407. Section 407 expands the controversial policy of expedited removal, which grants extraordinary power to low-level immigration officers to order deported without any judicial review and without any fair hearing people who arrive at ports of entry without proper documentation.

This section would authorize such unreviewable deportation decisions, again without any real judicial review, for anyone picked up within 100 miles of any U.S. border, not just at ports of entry or near the Mexican border. My amendment would prevent this expansion of expedited removal and limit its use to the present locations.

If the amendment passes, we would still, of course, deport illegal aliens; but people arrested within the U.S. would continue to have the right to some judicial review, some due process before being deported. They would have the right, as they do now, to challenge the decision of the Border Patrol agent.

By imposing expedited removal proceedings on all aliens apprehended within 100 miles of any border, this bill would deny thousands of people all due process rights.

The expedited removal process poses the gravest risks to refugees fleeing human rights abuses. Those fleeing torture, imprisonment or other forms of persecution are often forced to travel without valid documents because there is not enough time to obtain them or because it is too dangerous to apply for them.

Those fleeing persecution or the Gestapo or the KGB or the Savak are least likely to have properly notarized and stamped documents, countersigned by the Gestapo, the KGB or the Savak.

The expansion of the expedited removal process puts refugee women and children fleeing rape, honor killings, female mutilation, forced marriages and sexual slavery particularly at risk because these victims have the most difficulty sharing and explaining their painful stories to border agents who may not be experts in foreign cultures.

Furthermore, when individuals are placed in expedited removal, they do not have access to relief from deportation under the Violence Against Women Act, the temporary protected status or as trafficking victims.

My amendment seeks to prevent the inevitable consequences of deporting more asylum seekers, battered immigrants, trafficking victims and others who may be legally entitled to remain but who have no real opportunity for any appeal from the hasty judgment of the border agent, no due process.

Even as currently applied, expedited removal has resulted in terrible mistakes, including its wrongful application to genuine refugees and even to U.S. citizens. The Senate heard the case of Sharon McKnight, an American citizen from New York of Jamaican descent who suffers a mental disability and was wrongly put into expedited removal and sent to Jamaica because an inspector mistakenly thought her passport was fake.

Expanding this policy to include persons already within the United States

poses grave constitutional problems. Immigration laws long made a distinction between those aliens seeking admission to the U.S. and those who are already within the U.S., regardless of the legality of their entry. In Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court held ``once an alien enters the country, the legal status changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all `persons' within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary or permanent.''

Because there is no check or review of expedited removal decisions, there is no due process. This policy should not be expanded. It should be left where it is as my amendment would do.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, the real question here is due process. We all want to deport illegal aliens. We all want to deport people who are not here legally. But the question is because the Border Control agent thinks that someone may not be here legally, because he thinks that the passport is fake, should there be no appeal? Should there be no ability to show facts? Should there be no due process?

This country is built on due process. This country is built on a foundation of liberty and proper process.

The Department of Homeland Security states that expedited procedures currently cannot be applied to the nearly 1 million aliens who are apprehended annually on the southwest border, where it can legally be applied, as it is not possible to initiate formal removal proceedings against all the aliens.

So you cannot use it in too many of the cases where it is legal now, so let us expand it so we cannot use it in millions of more cases.

Mr. Chairman, I realize that we have to talk about the principle of due process. I also realize that not passing this amendment is going to result in a fiction, the fiction of having this policy where we cannot use it for millions of people. So I am not sure what the practical impact of that will be.

I recognize there is no point to spending more time on this. I wanted to make the point about due process, and I hope the Senate will listen.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, what an underhanded, sneaky rule and bill this is. The Social Security Act has a provision that prohibits, that prohibits the use of Social Security trust funds for changing the Social Security cards. This bill repeals that provision. CBO estimates the cost that could be incurred there by between 5 and $10 billion to be looted out of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds by that provision of this bill.

Now, I offered an amendment to restore this provision, to repeal the repeal. Mr. Thomas ran into the Rules Committee at midnight last night with his own amendment, because they saw the damage this could do. And his own amendment ostensibly repeals this, but it does not. The Thomas amendment only applies to the Social Security trust fund, but allows the looting of the Medicare trust fund. It allows monies from all trust funds, including Social Security, to carry out section 707 of the bill, a smaller expenditure, but a major expenditure.

The Thomas amendment limits the prohibition against raiding the trust funds to title VII of the current bill. My amendment prohibits the use of these monies for any costs incurred in developing and implementing any change in Social Security cards. The Thomas amendment leaves open the possibility of future legislation looting all the trust funds.

Why will we not simply restore the provision, as my amendment would, that this bill would take out? Why are we opening up the Social Security and Medicare and disability and unemployment insurance trust funds to be looted for these purposes? Mr. Thomas's amendment undoes a little of the damage, but it leaves wide loopholes. Wide.

Does anybody know that in the immigration bill we are debating is permission to take $5 billion to $10 billion out of Social Security and Medicare and unemployment and disability? Is that what we want to do?

I urge the Rules Committee, if it wants to make sure this is honestly done, make my amendment in order, not just Mr. Thomas's amendment, which is self-executed in this rule, although only brought to the Rules Committee at midnight last night. Make my amendment in order so we can stop the looting of the Social Security, disability unemployment, and Medicare trust funds.

Madam Speaker, we are engaged in a serious war with terrorism. Unfortunately, we are going after the wrong targets. We are not protecting ourselves, but we are endangering our liberties.

We are not doing anything or anything adequate about collecting the loose nuclear materials all over the former Soviet Union before they are smuggled to al Qaeda to make atomic bombs to attack us with. That costs money.

We are searching 2 percent of the 6 million shipping containers that come into our country's ports every year, any one of which may contain a weapon of mass destruction; but to search them would cost money.

We are not doing much about what the 9/11 Commission said was one of the most important things we should do, providing for intercommunicability between the first responders so police can talk to the fire and military. We are not doing that.

What are we doing? We are violating the civil liberties of our people and making them think that we are protecting ourselves.

Madam Speaker, this country has a great heritage of liberty. It also has an unfortunate history of violating that liberty whenever we get into a war, from the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 to the Espionage Act of 1971, the Palmer Raids of 1919, the Japanese American Internment Act of World War II, the FBI's egregious COINTELPRO program against opponents of the Vietnam War. And now in this war, this administration has resorted to torture, to indefinite detention without trial, to evasions of the great writ of habeas corpus, to going back in some respects to before Magna Carta.

What does this bill do? This bill continues in that tradition. It does some okay things. It continues breaking down the so-called wall between intelligence and police work. That makes sense. But it also invades our liberties in ways that are very unnecessary. Let me focus on two of them.

Section 215, the so-called libraries provision, allows the government to get orders from a FISA court to search any records of any business of a library regarding a third party who never knows about the search. It does not require a showing of a particularized suspicion of the target as the fourth amendment would seem to require. It simply says that the government has to come up with a statement of fact showing there are reasonable grounds to believe the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation. Well, that is hardly restrictive at all. Relevant, almost anything can be relevant.

Moreover, it says that the government's statements that the information sought is necessary to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities are presumptively relevant if the person they pertain to may be an individual in contact with a subject or agent of a foreign power. Presumptively relevant, that means they do not have to prove it. They do not have to show probable cause. This destroys the fourth amendment requirement for search and seizures.

Then you have the gag order. They cannot tell anybody about it. The Internet service provider or the library that is giving up all the information about what you read or who you talk to cannot tell you. You cannot move in court to quash it.

Section 505, national security letters which have been held unconstitutional by two courts so far do not even require a FISA court. It is an administrative proceeding. It is not even a proceeding; the FBI simply says they want it, and they can get it. This is like the writ of assistance the British granted in 1761 which this is very similar to. That started the American Revolution. But after the FBI gets the information, you can protest the gag order. You can say I want to be able to tell somebody about it, but you can only say that if you can show that revealing that information is not harmful to the national security or diplomatic relations, but the government's statement that it is conclusive, so the court is a cipher. The court cannot make any judgments. There is no evidence. The government's statement is conclusive.

This does not protect liberty; this destroys liberty. We ought to have real protections for our liberty. We ought to have put some procedural safeguards on these powers such as our entire tradition demands. To pass this bill with no sunset of section 505, with no procedural safeguards on these very intrusive provisions is to disregard our entire history of ordered liberty. I very much urge defeat of this bill so we can do it properly after further consideration.

Madam Speaker, I want to make two points: One, the bad parts about section 215 and section 505 are not that, under certain circumstances, the FBI or other investigative agencies can get information from libraries. No one is proposing, as Mr. Sensenbrenner said, to say that libraries are totally sacrosanct.

The bad part is that the FBI can get all this private personal information without any proper or adequate judicial review and then can tell them, shut up, do not tell the victim about it, and that gag order also operates without any real judicial review. That is the real issue.

Secondly, the gentleman from Wisconsin is attempting to do something, I think, improper, and that is, he tells us you cannot change the PATRIOT Act. There are good things in this bill, things we need, which is true, but you have got to take it or leave it, because your 3-month extension I will not allow to go through. We will blackmail this House. If you do not pass the bill as is today, if it expires, there will be blood on your hands, because he and his side of the aisle will not allow a 3-month extension. Well, if there is fault, if there is real danger by not extending the PATRIOT Act, it is on that side of the aisle by refusing a 3-month extension so that we can get it right.

This country should not be subjected to that kind of blackmail. The Senate has real questions. Many liberals, many conservatives, have real questions about this bill. It should be worked out, and if it takes an additional 3 months, let it be. But we, this House, should not be told, take it or leave it, because if you do not take it the way it is, we will not permit a 3-month extension; there will be dangers to the Republic. Without a 3-month extension, there will be blood on your hands.

That is not the way to legislate. That is not proper procedure. That is not respectful of the Constitution. It is not respectful of the people of this country. It is not respectful of the Members of this House.

Mr. Speaker, due to official business, I missed four votes on December 7, 2005. I ask that the Record reflect that had I been able to, I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall vote No. 615, tabling appeal of the ruling of the chair; ``no'' on rollcall vote No. 616, the United States-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act; ``aye'' on rollcall vote No. 617, the Tax Revision Act; and ``aye'' on rollcall vote No. 618, the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005.

Mr. Speaker, due to official business, I missed a vote on November 17, 2005. I ask that the Record reflect that had I been able to, I would have voted ``yea'' on H. Res. 500 (rollcall vote No. 597) recognizing the 60th anniversary of the disappearance of the five naval Avenger torpedo bombers of Flight 19 and the naval Mariner rescue sent to search for Flight 19.