Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has quietly ushered in a new form of government in America called Repocracy.

For those who believe that democracy is government of the people, by the people and for the people, Repocracy is absolutely the opposite of that. Repocracy is a government where open debate is replaced by lockstep discipline and where the rewards of the few become the burdens carried on the backs of the many.

Repocracy puts a price on American values and deals only in hard cash. You only have to watch C-SPAN to know what the real threat Repocracy poses.

For the last 6 years, the Republican Party has been a disciplined, monotone political machine. Republicans live by one rule; whatever the President wants, the President gets. War in Iraq, rubber stamp approval. Tax holidays for America's rich, rubber stamp approval. Slashing student loans, rubber stamp approval. Cutting programs for America's vulnerable children and disadvantaged families, rubber stamp approval. Legislation written by financial institutions and big drug companies, rubber stamp approval.

It was all so neat and tidy. Republican Members of the House voted the way they were told and leaders would not end voting in the House until their predetermined outcome was achieved.

But that was last year. What has changed? The American people noticed. The American people put a lot of faith and trust in their leaders. For better or for worse, most Americans take the big picture approach: Trust elected officials until they betray that trust. Believe that elected officials will put America's interests ahead of political interests. Have faith that your leaders will change course when something is truly not working. In other words, trust, but verify.

It is precisely because the American people focus on the big picture that Republicans are doing everything possible to replace the image the American people see with a test pattern on television.

The President's ratings are below sea level. Republicans are counting the number of seats in the lifeboats. It is simple arithmetic, and the addition has Republicans subtracting.

Mathematics requires proof, and there is plenty. The President bequeaths to the future President any decision about Iraq. His plan takes form: Stay in Iraq until it is somebody else's problem. Invite the embattled President of Italy to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, speaking in Italian, to use Congress as a political campaign for a backdrop in an Italian election. Charge the Iraq war on credit and mask its real impact on the deficit by leaving it outside the annual budget.

The clearest sign of all is the recent change in the House of Representatives to the 2-minute vote. Call it government by stopwatch. A mere 120 seconds to decide the faith of legislation affecting the lives of every American.

Under Repocracy, legislation comes to the floor of the House only when its passage is guaranteed. That is why we are going home today, because they can't get the budget. It is not guaranteed. The 2-minute drill forces blind allegiance and stiff arms democracy. But that is the intent of Repocracy. Math is math.

Republicans are losing their stranglehold on power. What is a party to do? Well, Republicans have concluded the best offense is a missing offense, so Republicans have substituted the business of the state for the business of reelection.

Suddenly, the House leaders feel an urgent need for recess after recess after recess. We have never had a week off for Saint Patrick's Day. It must be faith-based. The Republican mandated Congressional schedule has nothing to do with the people's business and everything to do with the Republican's reelection business.

The thinking goes like this: If Members are not in Washington, D.C., the national press corps is taken out of the equation. They can't trail 435 House Members, so news coverage goes dark. With Congress out of session, Americans cannot watch C-SPAN to see for themselves what is happening, or not, on the floor of the House. The curtain closes on the big picture. Mission accomplished.

The word ``Congress'' comes from the Latin ``con+egresso,'' which means come together. The idea was for an orderly and reasoned debate. Take out the stopwatch and clock 2 minutes. Then decide if you think America is governed by a functioning Congress today.

Repocracy is not merely a dereliction of duty, it is an outright threat to democracy. That is the big picture, the one Republicans don't want the American people to see.

But there is more than one channel, and the American people are watching. They would like to know why this is the do-nothing Congress that will be in session less than the do-nothing Congress of 1948. This will be the Congress that spent the least time discussing our problems on the floor.

We are at war all over the place, we are in debt worse than we have ever been in history. We have no health care for 46 million people. But where is the Congress? They have left. They have gone home. They have got to campaign. If they were here, the people could see they were doing nothing. But Repocracy says we only do it when we rubber stamp it for the President. Otherwise we are getting out of here.

Now it is getting tough because people don't want to rubber stamp for the President anymore. There is an election coming. It is coming soon.

Mr. Speaker, it is budget week. Over the past 5 years, the number of Americans falling on hard times has soared. A new analysis of major Federal Government programs by USA Today confirms the gut-wrenching truth.

Republicans in the White House and the Congress have wielded their political power like a club on America's low income and America's middle class. The single largest increase came in Medicaid, which added 15 million Americans on the President's watch from 2000-2005. Medicaid is the health care program for the poor. It speaks volumes about how the Republican Party has treated low and middle income Americans during this administration.

All but the wealthiest Americans have been left behind by the Republican Party and the Republican budget. This is a party of the 1 percent. The Republican Party deals with what is good for the 1 percent at the top, not what is good for everybody else.

This is not conjecture, it is a grim statistic. Despite this administration's watch, the poverty rate has grown dramatically, as has the budget deficit. Over the last 5 years, the very rich got very much richer. At the same time, the Republicans were giving millionaires new $100,000 tax breaks, the poverty rate in the United States was climbing to 12.7 percent.

This is a time to think about what the budget says, about your priorities. Remember, they are the party of the 1 percent.

Republicans love the top one percent. They cater to them. They coddle them. They kowtow to them. Republicans are the One Percent Party.

The other 99 percent of America does not matter to the Party of One Percent.

You need proof? Look at health care. Over the last five years, another 15 million Americans have been forced onto Medicaid.

And the Republican health care proposal is the One Percent illusion.

Republicans want everyone to have a Health Savings Account, so you can save all the money that Middle America does not have, to pay for all those health care expenses Middle America cannot possibly afford.

That is the Republican Solution to America's health care crisis.

Last year, they wanted to privatize Social Security to destroy the safety net under our most distinguished citizens.

This year, the President and Republican Party want to anesthetize the Middle Class, so they don't know Republicans want to amputate their financial security with a plan meant to benefit only the rich.

The One Percent Party created Health Savings Accounts because these are new tickets to an all expense-paid tax holiday for the wealthy. They get to save tens of thousands of dollars tax free. The Middle Class gets to watch.

It's like standing outside the window looking in, except we are standing in the middle of a country that is losing its Middle Class.

The nation's number one reason for personal bankruptcy is unpaid medical expenses, but the Republican Party of One Percent can't be bothered with providing every American access to affordable health care coverage.

Republicans have middle class Americans on their knees, and they are praying for change this November.

The Republican Party of One Percent can't respond to the other 99 percent of America.

When hurricanes destroy lives and property in the Gulf Coast, Republicans send condolences instead of competent leaders.

While more vulnerable American children and families fall into poverty, Republicans call for more tax holidays for the wealthy.

When distinguished Americans need help paying for prescription drugs, Republicans have drug companies write the legislation, and forbid the federal government from negotiating cheaper prices for distinguished Americans, every American 65 and older, like my Mom.

The Republican Party of one percent has done more to undermine America's financial security than any administration in history. The Republican Party of one percent uses the word security every chance it gets.

But our Ports are not secure, our environment is not secure, our financial future is not secure, our most vulnerable children are not secure, and America's Middle Class is anything but secure.

The Republican One Percent Party has spent the last five years concerned with only one thing--the top one percent of America.

Poverty is up.

Middle Class wages are down in real dollars.

Health care costs are up.

The number of Americans with health care coverage is down.

Every day, America's Middle Class hurts a little more, and every day the top one percent earn a lot more.

That's Republican math. Divide a nation into the very wealthy and nobody else.

That's the Republican Party of One Percent.

Not all of my Republican colleagues think this way, but they have to vote the way they're told by the White House.

Independence is another one percent illusion.

And that is precisely why the Republican One Percent Party has to receive a one-way ticket out of power this November. They're out of touch with 99 percent of America.

Mr. Speaker, we used to do the people's business in the people's House when the Democrats were in charge.

Now the majority party rubber-stamps every bad policy that the administration serves up. House Republican leaders go even further with a little help from their friends. Indentured servitude to financial institutions is called bankruptcy reform. Rubber stamp.

Increasing drug company profits is sold as a medical benefit. Rubber stamp.

Increasing tax holidays for the super-rich, with poverty increasing among children in this country. Rubber stamp.

We used to have real debate in the people's House when the Democrats were in charge, but now the Republicans schedule 2-minute votes because the outcome is preordained. Rubber stamp.

When I brought this stamp out here, people laughed. Now nobody laughs because it is the order of the day.

Mr. Speaker, as Congress recognizes National Kidney Month, I join my colleagues in their efforts to increase awareness about the devastating effects of kidney disease. More than 400,000 Americans must receive life-saving dialysis three to four times each week because their kidneys have failed. In addition, more than 20 million citizens have chronic kidney disease, which is the precursor to kidney failure. Patients with kidney disease experience a gradual deterioration of kidney function that eventually progresses to kidney failure. Patients may live with the disease 10 or more years without outward symptoms before their kidneys fail. Once a patient develops kidney failure, his or her kidney function is so low that without dialysis or kidney transplantation death will occur from accumulation of fluids and waste products in the body.

Recognizing the need to educate my colleagues on kidney disease, I founded and co-chair the Congressional Kidney Caucus with my colleague Representative Mark Steven Kirk. Members of the Kidney Caucus are especially concerned about the growing prevalence of this disease.

Mr. Speaker, the leading causes of this disease is diabetes and high blood pressure, which as you are no doubt aware also disproportionately affect African Americans and Latino Americans. Given that early kidney disease has no symptoms, most people do not realize that their kidneys are about to fail. Therefore, it is critically important to increase awareness of the dangers of kidney disease, especially among the African American and Latino American communities. Individuals with high blood pressure and diabetes should ask their doctors to run simple blood and urine tests that can detect kidney disease.

If treated early, individuals with kidney disease will experience an improved quality of life and be able to maintain more daily life activities, including keeping their jobs. In addition, preventing kidney failure and improving care will result in substantial savings for the taxpayer.

I applaud the efforts of my colleagues to raise awareness about this important issue and to show support for Americans living with kidney disease. We must act now to help Americans learn more about this deadly disease and how to prevent its development and progression to kidney failure.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter into the Record a letter that I delivered to your office today regarding an event that took place on the House floor yesterday.

March 2, 2006.

Hon. J. Dennis Hastert,

Speaker of the House, Office of the Speaker,

Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Hastert, I am writing to express my dismay about

yesterday's appearance of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of

the Republic of Italy on the floor of the House of

Representatives. I believe that Mr. Berlusconi's mode of

address was unprecedented.

I came to the House floor expecting to hear significant

words from the head of state of a major ally of our country.

Instead, I had the feeling that perhaps I and the other

Members in attendance were being used as extras in a campaign

appearance for Mr. Berlusconi's difficult upcoming election.

I can draw no other conclusion considering he addressed

Congress in Italian without an interpreter, a language that I

and most other Members do not speak. Though we were given the

text to read, who in the Chamber was able to correlate the

words delivered and lead the applause that burst forth from

the audience? The address was not even broadcast by C-SPAN,

presumably because it took place in a language in which most

C-SPAN viewers are not fluent. My discomfort increased this

morning when I read in the Financial Times that the

appearance was broadcasted by stations owned by Mr.

Berlusconi in Italy. This has raised concerns that the Prime

Minister was improperly bending Italian equal-airtime

regulations during election campaigns.

I would appreciate to hear your thoughts on this unusual

use of the House Chamber, and whether it is expected to

recur.

Sincerely,

Jim McDermott,

Member of Congress.

Thank God that the Speaker is taking a trip down to New Orleans, because we have waited for a long time for this bill. Six months ago I introduced legislation to extend unemployment benefits. But the majority party has ignored the problem until today, a few days before it is going to run out.

Now as a doctor and psychiatrist, I can tell you a couple of things: When people suffer a catastrophic loss, they need comfort and certainty, a helping hand. Instead, you have waited with unemployment benefits until they were beginning to run out before you acted. You have made matters worse for people who already have much damage to their lives.

For 6 months this body functioned like that empty FEMA trailer when it came to meeting the needs of the people devastated by the hurricanes. The White House was in the driver's seat. No more need be said.

But thankfully, at the urging of Ms. Pelosi from California, Republicans are going to do what I said 6 months ago. We are going to extend unemployment benefits to the people in the gulf coast. Later today, we will go and visit the region and tell the people all the good we are doing for them.

Now, the Republicans will take credit for acting. But there is no credit for acting 6 months late. Six months ago I said we should be protecting the children of the gulf coast. I ask today, are we doing all we can to ensure vulnerable children are protected? Have we done anything to ensure that parents receive counseling and children receive the necessary social services to cope with the trauma in their lives? The answer is ``no.''

We may have sent some money to the States, but we have done nothing to ensure that Federal child welfare programs receive additional resources to cope. Kids are not as important as workers. In fact, Republicans refused to even hold a hearing, despite my repeated pleas to the chairman.

We know child abuse spikes after natural disasters. We know that foster families are living in FEMA trailers. They are living with four, six and eight kids in a trailer, and the State is asking them to take more because they do not have enough places for neglected and abused kids. These trailers do not come close to passing the safety standards that we would demand of an ordinary foster home.

We cannot keep pretending that the Federal Government is responding to the gulf coast. FEMA and the White House knew the storms were coming; we found that out yesterday. We knew they were going to devastate the area, and they failed to prepare and respond. For the last 6 months there has been nothing going on here.

We have got a chance today to follow the Golden Rule: Treat others as we would be treated. I speak as someone representing Seattle. We know that one day we will have another shaker, another earthquake. And anybody who gets out on this floor and says, oh, well, we're throwing money at Louisiana, don't you dare come near this floor asking for money when it happens to you in California or anywhere else.

This is not a local problem, this is a national problem that the Republicans refuse to respond to until it is at the last second. A day late, a dollar short.

Mr. Speaker, I did not have a chance to look at the calendar to find out what organization from K Street is having a big convention. But that is the only explanation for why this bill is here. This bill has not had a single hearing, not a single hearing on food safety in this country. All the relevant State agencies oppose the bill, the State Departments of Agriculture across the country, the Association of State Food and Drug Officials, the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Why are we moving a bill through here without a single hearing to give the people of California and Washington a chance to say we want to have higher standards than you guys who run FEMA, who run FEMA? Remember, this is FEMA.

One of the things that we did in Washington State when we had an earthquake was that the Washington State Department of Agriculture embargoed the movement of fish products contaminated by ammonia. That would be outside their ability, unless they went and got a waiver.

Now, why should the people of the State of Washington have to go and get a waiver from the Federal Government to provide protection for the people in an emergency? You make it more bureaucratic.

I really find it very hard that anybody in the health care industry could come out here and want to take away from the Washington State Department of Agriculture the ability to stop the movement of contaminated eggs, which were implicated in salmonella. That happened in Washington. Why would you want to stop the movement of contaminated foods and improperly labeled products? Why would you want to take that away from the States?

Oh, because we are going to make it easier for the manufacturers to slide through whatever they want to slide through. Done. However they want it done. No one trusts the States suddenly. All these States righters come out here, and those legislators who sit and listen and have hearings are ignored.

This is a travesty of the political process that you would bring out a health safety bill. Listen, we had an epidemic of problems with food from a company that was making hamburgers. We had a bunch of kids die in Seattle because they were getting undercooked hamburgers. Now, this Congress never did anything about it. But they did in the State of Washington. And if you cannot get this Congress to act on the safety of hamburgers in the country of McDonalds, you have got a serious problem. Somebody has got their foot on something someplace. And the people in the State of Washington ought to have the right to defend themselves against bad food products.

Now, I listen to Mr. Gingrey, and I understand the debating technique. If you are going to lose the argument, change the subject.

Why don't we talk about health care out here today? Let us talk about access to health care and the insurance industry and all the wonderful things they have done for us instead of talking about food safety. Talk about food safety. Why shouldn't the State of Washington, that deals with seafood products, what the heck does anybody in here know from Kansas or Nebraska or anything else, about what is going on in the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California? And even if you did know something about it, you do not allow a hearing process.

That is an insult to the American people, and it has got to be about some kind of fundraiser or something related to that. I do not know what it is. Maybe the press will follow it up and see why we have a bill rifled through here. One hour or 30 minutes before we are going to get out and go down to Katrina and look at the Katrina catastrophe, we rifle this bill through here. There is something bad about this bill. It stinks. It is a bad bill. We ought to vote against the rule and vote against the bill.

Madam Speaker, for 5 years there was a silence at the White House about the issue of health care and how it is deteriorating in this country. The access has gotten worse and worse and worse under this administration.

The other night, in the State of the Union, the President, apparently the polling told him there is a problem out there. So he came out here with another one of his Band-Aids: Let's give everybody a health savings account. A more ridiculous proposal could not have been made on the floor to deal with the problems of average Americans.

To expect average Americans to be able to put aside enough money to pay a $10,000 deductible and then buy a catastrophic plan is simply not from the real world. The average American in this country is fighting day to day, paycheck to paycheck, and our President comes up with another one of his tax giveaways to the rich.

The only people who benefit from this are wealthy people who can take 10,000 bucks out of their pocket and pay it when it comes due. We ought to stop that and start a debate in this House between the Democrats and Republicans. That is the only way we will get sensible health care coverage for all Americans. They deserve it.

Mr. Speaker, it is doubtful that we can even accurately count the number of Iraqis who have died today in their country. The President vows he will stay the course. We have heard this before over and over again, as if saying it repeatedly would alter the reality.

For months the American people have spoken with an ever louder voice urging the President to redeploy U.S. soldiers to get them out of harm's way. For months, many Members of Congress, especially Mr. Murtha of Pennsylvania, have urged the President to redeploy the U.S. soldiers to get them out of harm's way.

Now even U.S. soldiers overwhelming say that the U.S. should be out of Iraq this year. In military terms, that is enough time to quickly plan and safely reallocate U.S. soldiers. In other words, the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, those in the battlefield, are saying what this administration refuses to act on.

The ground the President is standing on has shrunk to the size of a postage stamp. His approval ratings have fallen so low they are below sea level. Today, not only is Iraq in the throes of relentless civil violence, even members of the administration are telling Congress that there is danger the violence in Iraq could spill outside the borders and inflame the entire Middle East.

Yet despite the warnings, despite the reality, despite the Iraqi leaders urging

the U.S. to stop interfering with efforts to form a new government, the President is going to stay the course.

The same rhetoric spoken after every wave of violence has really worn threadbare. It is time to set a course, and we have done that. It is time to lead the U.S. out of harm's way because that is what leaders do.

Another U.S. soldier died today in Iraq. The total number of U.S. men and women serving this country in Iraq who have died has climbed to 2,292. They have paid the ultimate sacrifice for Bush's folly. In my judgment, the price they paid was too high. These soldiers are heroes. That much we know. And that is of comfort to their families and this proud and grateful Nation.

But we owe these heroes more than comfort for their families. Many of these soldiers died saving other soldiers. We have to ask ourselves whether we are failing as a Nation because we know Iraq is not working, and yet we leave the soldiers in harm's way.

We have to ask ourselves whether we are failing as a Nation because we allow our government to act contrary to the wishes of the people. This is supposed to be a democracy. This is not about a war time when only the Commander in Chief can know everything there is to know, and we must place our trust in him or her. This is not the Invasion of Normandy.

The war in Iraq is nothing like that. We know what the President knows about the situation. There are no secret intelligence reports laying out the real Iraq story. We know it. We see it on television. We read about it in the newspapers, and we discuss it online. We are truly all in this war. Everyone, except the man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania. There is not a shred of evidence or paperwork that he has that says repeating the line, ``stay the course,'' is going to benefit the U.S. or the Iraqi people.

Why then are we doing it? It is time for the American people to demand that the President account for his actions and the lack of actions on the Iraq war. Iraq is reeling from its worst fear, the launch of a civil war.

U.S. soldiers are bunkered in their defensive positions. But why are they there at all? Many Iraqi leaders are beginning to blame the U.S. occupation for unleashing the evil, as they call it.

Every day that goes by, the reputation and credibility of our Nation bleeds a little more. That is nothing in comparison to the lost lives and shattered lives of thousands of U.S. soldiers and their loved ones. William Butler Yeats, the Noble Prize laureate who was a Senator in Ireland, said in a poem called ``The Center Cannot Hold,'' it is the Second Coming. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate neat intensity.

When will we learn? When will this government listen to the people? The soldiers in battle and the people at home, they know what Iraq is and is not. But two people, or maybe only one, in the White House have yet to learn it. But until they do, Iraq will be a price for which we witness relentless chaos that can be turned loose upon the whole world. We cannot stay the course when there is no course. The best thing is to come home.

Mr. President, give us a plan.

Mr. Speaker, we are engaged in a great civil war. However, not our civil war but the Iraqis' civil war. We are caught in the middle of it. And there are some people who say that we do not have a plan, the Democrats have no plan.

Well, today Jack Murtha sent around again to us a Dear Colleague. That is a method by which we in the House talk to one another; we let our colleagues know what we think or what is going on. Jack sent one around with his plan to pull the troops out of Iraq. Nobody is paying any attention to Jack Murtha. They make fun of him as not being a patriot or something but they are missing the point. We are deeper and deeper and deeper in this war and there is no end.

Now, the American people have no excuse, nor does the Congress have any excuse for not knowing what we are into, because they put out from the Pentagon every year something called the ``Quadrennial Defense Review.'' That is to tell us what we are going to do for the next 4 years. They have changed the language. They are not going to call it the war on terror anymore. It is now called ``The Long War.'' And the one just put out and presented to the Congress outlines plans for 20 years into the future.

This administration has no intention whatsoever to pull out of Iraq or to pull the bases out of Iraq, or to do anything as sensible as what Jack Murtha

has laid in front of the President. Worse than that, they are going to increase this. They are looking beyond Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is in the editorial today in The Guardian, which is a newspaper from England: ``Looking beyond Iraq and Iran battlefields, U.S. commanders envisage a war unlimited in time and space against global Islamic extremism. `The struggle may well be fought in dozens of other countries simultaneously and for many years to come.' ''

How are they going to do that? Very simply. They are going to continue to spend us into debt. There will not be a dime to fix what is going on in New Orleans or the health care system or the educational system or anything else.

Listen to what is in that report. They want 15 percent more special forces, an extra 3,700 people in black operations, in PsyOps and civil affairs units. That is an increase of 33 percent. They will have people to run in and go and run these countries. They want nearly double the number of unmanned aerial drones.

Now, consider what an aerial drone is. That is something you take off in this country or take off somewhere, you fly over a country and somebody thousands of miles away says, drop the bomb over there at Seventh and Vine.

Now, consider what we are planning. We are planning to invade countries from the air without even being there. It will be like war games, like kids sitting in the front room with their little board games. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about taking our Trident nuclear submarines and refitting them, not to shoot up nuclear missiles, but to send up regular missiles. So they will pull alongside a country and fire a bunch of rockets into the country and they will fix them. This is what is going on. And America is sitting quietly by and watching this happen.

We are allowing the President and a very small number of people, Mr. Speaker, to make decisions. We have a Vice President who says he can now leak secret material anytime he figures he can use it. Use it to get us into another war. There are an awful lot of people on this floor, Mr. Speaker, who are very worried about the next 6 months in Iran because there is an election coming. And the only way you can get the people to vote the Republicans back in is by making them afraid. This is a vote of confidence on George Bush. And the people will have to vote ``no'' to get rid of them.

Mr. Speaker, some time yesterday, a Member introduced House Concurrent Resolution 341. Earlier today, without benefit of hearings or markup by any committee or subcommittee of the House, it was brought to the floor and the vast majority of members voted for it.

They voted, I believe, for it for the best of reasons: to strengthen efforts by the international community to convince Iran to meet its obligations as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The resolution makes a number of important and factual points about Iran's lack of cooperation with IAEA and then sets out six statements of Congressional policy. The first two condemn Iran's breaches of its obligations and commend the efforts of several nations to find a diplomatic means to return Iran to compliance. The final clause urges the President to keep Congress informed on this issue. All well and good.

But, for some reason, the fourth declaration goes beyond what international treaties require and beyond anything that Congress has carefully studied. It reads as follows:

[Congress] declares that Iran, through its many breaches

for almost 20 years of its obligations under the Safeguards

Agreement, has forfeited the right to develop any aspect of a

nuclear fuel cycle, especially with uranium conversion and

enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technology, equipment

and facilities.

Now, let's be clear on what ``nuclear fuel cycle'' means. It means any use of nuclear technology, including the use of nuclear energy for the provision of civilian electrical power.

I think there is some level of agreement that our problem with Iran is not about nuclear power plants. And it is abundantly clear that Iran intends to insist on its right to nuclear energy. If Iran's leaders want to insist that they only seek to produce electricity, we should work with the IAEA to make sure there are so many inspectors assigned to Iran that they can't produce anything except electricity. A Congressional declaration that a country cannot use nuclear power for peaceful, minutely inspected, civilian purposes is neither practical nor helpful.

Had there been hearings, I believe that the difficulties with this approach would have been identified. But once again, the Republican House leadership hasn't bothered with regular process, hasn't bothered with hearings and witnesses or even markups and amendments. The Republican leadership doesn't want to hear dissent, doesn't want to hear concerns, doesn't want to hear anything but ``yes, sir!''

In addition, the convoluted language of the third declaration seems to call upon the Russian Federation to cease its unilateral efforts to bring Iran into compliance with its treaty obligations. Whether an arrangement can be designed that allows Iran access to nuclear power without creating its own enrichment facilities remains to be seen, but the attempt should not be scorned.

So now the House is on record that the Iranian people should never be allowed to use nuclear power and that Russia should stop talking to Iran about solving this problem. If the resolution had not been brought to the floor today, just one day following its introduction, these problems might have been avoided.

Mr. Speaker, I have been occupied with the Ways and Means Committee all day and have not been able to participate in floor debate. I wish I had been able to participate in the discussion of S. Con. Res. 79 which was on the floor this morning because I have a question about the resolution.

My question is: How does this resolution further the cause of peace in the Middle East or make Israel more secure?

The resolution states that it is the sense of Congress that the U.S. should not directly aid the Palestinian Authority ``if any representative political party holding a majority of parliamentary seats within the Palestinian Authority maintains a position calling for the destruction of Israel.''

Of course there is a party with that sentiment, Hamas, and--as we all know--that U.S. law prohibits aid to Hamas. As far as I know, neither President Bush nor Secretary Rice nor anyone else in our Government has proposed trying to find a loophole through which the U.S. can bankroll Hamas.

So we have a resolution opposing an action which is already prohibited in existing law. We are bravely opposing doing something illegal that no one at all in the administration or Congress has proposed to do.

Why? Why did we come to the floor and vote on this? Who does it help?

I am submitting two articles for the Record along with this statement. The first, ``The Right Way to Pressure Hamas,'' is an editorial from this morning's New York Times.

It discusses the rumors that the U.S. and Israel are trying to create conditions that would lead to new elections to oust Hamas, presumably in favor of Fatah.

The editorial notes that ``in the long, sorry history of the Israeli- Palestinian dispute, there is not a shred of evidence to support the notion that pushing the Palestinian population into more economic desperation would somehow cause them to moderate their political views. In fact, experience teaches the exact opposite.''

The Times goes on to say that a wise course ``would be to step back and desist from deliberately provoking the Palestinians, and give Hamas a chance to reconsider its own options.''

The second article, ``Talking with the Guys from Hamas,'' appeared last Saturday in the Daily Star, a well-respected, moderate Beirut daily. I urge every member to take time to read it.

Its author, Rami Khouri, notes that a ``Hamas-Ied Palestinian government and the new Israeli government to be elected next month face a historic opportunity.''

He predicts that Hamas ``will surely continue its 3-year slow shift toward more pragmatism and realism because it is now politically accountable to the entire Palestinian population, and to world public opinion.''

However, Khouri warns: ``It is not very helpful--as so may pro-Israel American apologists do--to focus mainly on Hamas' theology or its 1987 founding charter, any more than one should deal with Israeli parties that base their claim to all of Palestine--Eretz Israel on the book of Genesis account of God's land patrimony to the Jewish people.''

So, what was the point of today's vote? To spell out for Hamas that Congress is going to stand in the way if Secretary Rice suddenly decides to try to send them a big aid package? To tell the President that he'd better not be trying to exploit some loophole to subsidize Hamas?

To clarify for Israel that the position that Harry Truman took isn't being abandoned after 58 years?

Mr. Speaker, time and time again, my Republican colleagues have come to the floor with resolutions opining on various issues.

Regrettably, they often serve to worsen the problems under consideration and to boil complex issues down to radio talk show-sized sound bites. This is a sensitive, dynamic time in Arab-Israeli relations, and I hope members can restrain themselves from show- boating.

As Rami Khouri suggests: ``Political theologians and collectors of historical ideologies, please go home for a while.''

[From the Daily Star, Feb. 11, 2006]

Talking With the Guys From Hamas

(By Rami G. Khouri)

I had the opportunity Thursday to explore first-hand the

implications of the victory of Hamas in last month's

Palestinian parliamentary elections. I went to talk to Hamas

leaders at the Palestinian refugee camp of Burj al-Barajneh

in Beirut, where poor, disenfranchised Palestinian refugees

live in rather atrocious material conditions.

After two-and-a-half hours of discussions among Hamas,

other Palestinian parties and an Anglo-American visiting

delegation, I now know better why Hamas swept the Palestinian

elections. The human contact also reveals what the news does

not convey: this exiled, marginalized, downtrodden and

vulnerable refugee community walks today with its head held

higher than any other group of people in the entire Middle

East, because of its unique combination of self-confidence,

perseverance, success and legitimacy. Hamas is the only Arab

party that enjoys an authentic mandate from its people,

genuinely manifested through victory in two free elections at

the municipal and national levels.

What does one learn from such encounters? The two most

significant themes that emerge from discussions with Hamas

officials--and from their many statements--are a commitment

to national principles and a clear dose of political

pragmatism. Both dimensions are important, and cannot be

separated.

It is not very helpful--as so many pro-Israeli American

apologists do--to focus mainly on Hamas' theology or its 1987

founding charter, any more than one should deal with Israeli

parties that base their claim to all of Palestine-Eretz

Yisrael on the Book of Genesis account of God's land

patrimony to the Jewish people. Political theologians and

collectors' of historical ideologies, please go home for a

while.

Now that Hamas will share or hold power, they are likely to

persist in both their principled and pragmatic ways. They

will assert rather than drop their existing principles

related to domestic governance, resisting Israel and

liberating the Israeli-occupied territories, and potentially

coexisting with an Israeli state under certain conditions. It

is foolhardy to expect Hamas to reverse its principles at the

moment when it has achieved a historic victory precisely

because it has adhered to them. At the same time, it will

surely continue its three-year-old slow shift toward more

pragmatism and realism, because it is now politically

accountable to the entire Palestinian population, and to

world public opinion. Incumbency means responsibility and

accountability, which inevitably nurture practicality and

reasonable compromises.

Here is where Hamas' experience is instructive, and why it

is so important to speak with them to understand how they are

likely to behave. My sense from such discussions, along with

35 years of watching Islamists at work, is that they do make

compromises and practical concessions. But they only do so on

four conditions: they talk and compromise in a political

context of negotiations between two equal parties; they give

only when they get something of equal value in return; they

respond emphatically to the consensus position of their

national constituency; and they do not compromise on what

they identify as core national rights of equality, dignity,

liberty and sovereignty.

One more vital point to remember: Hamas and Hizbullah are

the only two Arab groups that have ever forced Israel's

fabled military to withdraw involuntarily from occupied Arab

land (South Lebanon and Gaza). American presidents and other

purveyors of fantasy are free to call this sort of

unilateralism a ``courageous initiative for peace,'' as

George W. Bush said of Ariel Sharon. The rest of the rational

world calls this what it is: a retreat, and a tacit admission

of defeat. Hamas will build on the policies that achieved

this, not repudiate them.

Hamas lives in the real world, not in fantasyland. It and

its supporters are not so impressed with having tea in the

White House. They are much more focused on bringing back a

degree of personal dignity, communal self-respect, and

national integrity to Palestinian life. They also know that

the majority of Palestinians, other Arabs and world nations

wish to coexist in negotiated peace with the state of Israel,

if Israel in turn reciprocates the sentiment to the

Palestinians and other Arabs whose lands it has occupied.

How to reconcile these realities is a priority issue for

them in the coming months.

I expect that Hamas will combine its legacy of both

principles and pragmatism in slowly making important

decisions on key issues in coming months. These will include

sharing power in Palestine, reforming corrupt and mediocre

national institutions, galvanizing an effective national

Palestinian leadership representing all Palestinians in the

world, negotiating peace with Israel while resisting its

occupation, and fostering the development of a society that

is not necessarily ruled by Islamic law.

A Hamas-led Palestinian government and the new Israeli

government to be elected next month face a historic

opportunity, if they are prepared to see each other as

representing peoples and nations with equal rights. Hamas has

reached this triumphant

moment precisely because it has insisted on such equality,

rather than pandering to Israeli-American promises as other

Palestinian leaders did without success.

Hamas can be pragmatic only because its resistance and

consistent principles have brought it success. Understanding

the dynamic relationship between these factors is the key to

movement forward to a win-win situation for all, including

Palestinians, Israelis and the slightly dazed denizens of

fantasylands far away.

Mr. Speaker, as we stand out here and argue this sort of arcane piece of tax policy here today, the chairman tells us we are better off than we ever were before. Anybody who has looked at where the national debt is knows that is not true. Whatever this tax policy they are pushing is about, it is driving us deeper and deeper into debt.

In addition, today the President presents a budget to us that says nothing about the war and what it is costing. It is probably going to cost us a trillion dollars by the time it is all done, if we ever get out of it, stagnant wages in this country, and 500,000 more people in poverty.

Now the chairman says we want to have everybody have a shot at the American dream. Well, let me tell you something, this is a shot like a shot at the moon for most of them with a shotgun. It is not going to come anywhere near it. We do not want any more tax holidays for the rich.

The fact that you are trying to get rid of the AMT by letting it drift down further and further and further into the tax-paying people in this country is very obvious. You want there to be an uprising that says let us get rid of the AMT. You know why it was put there. You said yourself. They put the AMT because there were rich people in this country paying nothing. We could have kept it at that level, but in 2001 you decided we have got to balance the budget. Let us not do anything about the AMT. We told you over and over and over again in the Ways and Means Committee that is what you were doing. And yet you now say, oh, well, it is somebody else's problem.

You are driving this country over the edge. You think you are sending a market message. You are sending a message to the market with the kind of debt this country is in. If you take the credit card debt and the amount people have borrowed against their homes to keep up their level of income, you have a country seriously in debt. Now you say we do not care who has to figure their taxes twice, we will let it go down to $50,000, $60,000, whatever the number is going to be. That is of no consequence to you at all because you are dedicated to only one group in this society, and that is the people on the top.

This whole construction that you put together over the last 4 years, and I welcome you back to the well, I think you might have a couple of things to say to me, but bringing this tax bill to where we are today was a deliberate attack on the middle class. That reconciliation bill that the President signed took away the money that people would use to educate their children. You gave the banks big breaks so they could take more out of the hides of the kids. This is a good motion, and it ought to be adopted.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Speaker, last night we heard the President deliver his State of the Union message from this Hall. By the light of day, today, we know that the glow was artificial and the highlights were inaccurate at best.

I will enter into the Record at this point a story from today's Los Angeles Times.

[From the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1, 2006]

Bush Stretches to Defend Surveillance

(By Peter Wallsten and Maura Reynolds)

Washington.--President Bush received a roaring ovation

Tuesday for his prime-time defense of wiretapping phone calls

without warrants. But Bush's explanation relied on

assumptions that have been widely questioned by experts who

say the president offers a debatable interpretation of

history.

Defending the surveillance program as crucial in a time of

war, Bush said that ``previous presidents have used the same

constitutional authority'' that he did. ``And,'' he added,

``federal courts have approved the use of that authority.''

Bush did not name names, but was apparently reiterating the

argument offered earlier this month by Atty. Gen. Alberto R.

Gonzales, who invoked Presidents Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin

D. Roosevelt for their use of executive authority.

However, warrantless surveillance within the United States

for national security purposes was struck down by the U.S.

Supreme Court in 1972--long after Lincoln, Wilson, and

Roosevelt stopped issuing orders. That led to the 1978

passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that

Bush essentially bypassed in authorizing the program after

the Sept. 11 attacks.

Since the surveillance law was enacted, establishing secret

courts to approve surveillance, ``the Supreme Court has not

touched this issue in the area of national security,'' said

William Banks, a national security expert at Syracuse Law

School.

``He might be speaking in the broadest possible sense about

the president exercising his authority as commander-in-chief

to conduct a war, which of course federal courts have upheld

since the beginning of the nation,'' Banks said. ``If he was

talking more particularly about the use of warrantless

surveillance, then he is wrong.''

Bush's historical reference on domestic spying marked one

of several points in his speech in which he backed up

assertions with selective uses of fact, or seemed to place

a positive spin on his own interpretation.

On his headline-grabbing pledge to decrease U.S. reliance

on Middle East oil by 75% over the next 20 years, Bush's

words seemed to suggest a dramatic new program to reduce

dependence on foreign oil.

But experts point out that the U.S. gets only a fraction--

about 10%--of its oil imports from the Middle East. In fact,

the majority now comes from Canada and Mexico--and Bush said

nothing on Tuesday about them.

Speaking about Iraq, Bush argued that ``our coalition has

been relentless in shutting off terrorist infiltration.'' But

he may have left the wrong impression about how far U.S.-led

forces have gotten in closing off the huge border areas,

especially the 375-mile-long one between Syria and Iraq.

Administration officials have often complained that the

Syrian government does little to police the border and have

said it may not be possible to close it, given its size.

Two weeks ago, Rep. H. James Saxton (R-NJ), chairman of a

House Armed Services subcommittee, complained in a column in

the Washington Times that the border is ``extremely porous''

and called for new steps to cut off the flow of enemy

fighters.

Bush made a number of claims for his economic stewardship

that were technically accurate but told only a part of the

story.

``In the last 2\1/2\ years, America has created 4.6 million

new jobs,'' Bush said. Although the claim is essentially

true, he did not say that the United States lost 2.6 million

jobs in the first 2\1/2\ years of his presidency.

``In the last five years,'' Bush continued, ``the tax

relief you passed has left $880 billion in the hands of

American workers, investors, small businesses and families,

and they have used it to help produce more than four years of

uninterrupted economic growth.''

But to many economists, the cause-and-effect relationship

is not so stark; they credit tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 with

helping to turn around a stagnant economy, but now they worry

that the resulting deficits may retard it.

``Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth

of non-security discretionary spending,'' Bush said. True

again, but this represents less than 20% of all spending.

Including defense and the giant benefit programs such as

Social Security and Medicare, spending has risen by about 30%

in the five Bush years.

The president also seemed to ignore Supreme Court precedent

when he called for Congress to give him the ``line item

veto.'' But Congress did that once, in 1996, and it was used

once, by former President Clinton. But in 1998, a federal

judge ruled that it was unconstitutional. That was affirmed

by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court.

Bush praised his administration's efforts to help the Gulf

Coast recover from Hurricane Katrina. ``A hopeful society

comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and

emergency, and stays at it until they are back on their

feet,'' he said.

But Bush omitted any mention of tensions between Gulf State

officials and the administration over responsibility for the

botched response to the storm. ``There was nothing in terms

of new money,'' said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). Perhaps

Bush's most controversial language came as he defended the

surveillance program.

The president echoed earlier administration assertions that

the domestic surveillance program would have been useful

before the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush said two Sept. 11 hijackers

living in San Diego made telephone calls to Al Qaeda

associates overseas, but that ``we did not know about their

plans until it was too late.''

However, The Times has previously reported that some U.S.

counterterrorism officials knowledgeable about the case blame

an interagency communications breakdown, not a surveillance

failure or shortcomings of the Foreign Intelligence

Surveillance Act.

Point by point, the Times compared the President's rhetoric to America's reality. They are not even close. Here is what the Times said about the President's domestic spying program. Defending the surveillance program is crucial in a time of war. Bush said that Presidents have used the same constitutional authority that he did, and he said Federal courts have approved the use of that authority.

Bush did not name names, but was apparently reiterating the argument offered earlier by the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who invoked Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for their use of executive authority.

However, warrantless surveillance within the United States for national security purposes was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, long after Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt stopped issuing orders.

This led to the passage of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Bush essentially bypassed in authorizing the program after September 11. The analysis comes from one of America's bedrock institutions of journalism, facts, not spin.

Here is the analysis of the President's remarks about the war. Speaking about Iraq, Bush argued that ``our coalition has been relentless in shutting off terrorism infiltration.'' But he may have left the wrong impression about how U.S.-led forces have gotten in closing off the huge border areas, especially the 375-mile border between Syria and Iraq.

Administration officials have often complained the Syrian Government does little to police the border, and many have said it may not be possible to close it given its size.

Let me mention one other example. The President finally got religion on America's energy crisis. But he needs an atlas and a vision. Here is what the Times said. On his headline-grabbing pledge to decrease U.S. reliance on Middle Eastern oil by 75 percent over the next 20 years, Bush's words seem to suggest a dramatic new program to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

But experts point out that the U.S. gets only a fraction, about 10 percent, of its oil imports from the Middle East. In fact, the majority comes from Canada and Mexico, and Bush said nothing Tuesday night about them.

I was proud the President used my words in his speech: ``America is addicted to oil.'' But he did not give a

proper prescription. But beyond co-opting Democratic philosophy and Democratic programs, the President is an oil man through and through. Today's New York Times said this: ``President Bush devoted 2 minutes and 15 seconds of the State of the Union message to speak about energy independence.''

It was hardly the bold signal we have been waiting for years for about global warming and deadly struggles in the Middle East where everything takes place in the context of what Mr. Bush rightly called our addiction to imported oil.

Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient. The country's future economic and national security depend on whether the Americans can control their enormous appetite for fossil fuels. This is not a matter to be lumped in a laundry list of other initiatives, including in a once-a-year speech to Congress. It is a key to everything else that happens.

I will enter at this point in the Record the New York Times editorial.

[From the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2006]

The State of Energy

President Bush devoted two minutes and 15 seconds of his

State of the Union speech to energy independence. It was

hardly the bold signal we've been waiting for through years

of global warming and deadly struggles in the Middle East,

where everything takes place in the context of what Mr. Bush

rightly called our ``addiction'' to imported oil.

Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient. The

country's future economic and national security will depend

on whether Americans can control their enormous appetite for

fossil fuels. This is not a matter to be lumped in a laundry

list of other initiatives during a once-a-year speech to

Congress. It is the key to everything else.

If Mr. Bush wants his final years in office to mean more

than a struggle to re-spin failed policies and cement bad

initiatives into permanent law, this is the place where he

needs to take his stand. And he must do it with far more

force and passion than he did last night.

American overdependence on oil has been a disaster for our

foreign policy. It weakens the nation's international

leverage and empowers exactly the wrong countries. Last night

Mr. Bush told the people that ``the nations of the world must

not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons,'' but

he did not explain how that will happen when those same

nations are so dependent on Tehran's oil. Iran ranks second

in oil reserves only to Saudi Arabia, where members of the

elite help finance Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and where the

United States finds it has little power to stop them.

Oil is a seller's market, in part because of America's

voracious consumption. India and China, with their growing

energy needs, have both signed deals with Iran. Rogue states

like Sudan are given political cover by their oil customers.

The United Nations may wish to do something about genocide in

Darfur or nuclear proliferation, but its most powerful

members are hamstrung by their oil alliances with some of the

worst leaders on the planet.

Even if the war on terror had never begun, Mr. Bush would

have an obligation to be serious about the energy issue,

given the enormous danger to the nation's economy if we fail

to act. His own Energy Department predicts that with the

rapid development of India and China, annual global

consumption will rise from about 80 million barrels of oil a

day to 119 million barrels by 2025. Absent efforts to reduce

American consumption, these new demands will lead to soaring

oil prices, inflation and a loss of America's trade

advantage. It should be a humbling shock to American leaders

that Brazil has managed to become energy self-sufficient

during a period when the United States was focused on

building bigger S.U.V.'s.

Part of the answer, as Mr. Bush indicated last night, is

the continued development of alternative fuels, especially

for cars. The Energy Department has addressed this modestly,

and last night the president said his budget would add more

money for research. That's fine, but hardly the kind of

full-bore national initiative that will pump large amounts

of money into the commercial production of alternatives to

gasoline.

When it comes to cars, much of the research has already

been done--Brazil got to energy independence by figuring out

how to get its citizens home from work in cars run without

much gasoline. The answer is producing the new fuels that

have already been developed and getting cars that use them on

the lots. There are several ways to make that happen. The

president could call for higher fuel economy standards for

car manufacturers. He could bring up the subject of a gas

tax--the most effective way of getting Americans to buy fuel-

efficient cars, and a market-based tax on consumption that

conservative lawmakers ought to embrace if they are honest

with themselves and their constituents. But Mr. Bush took the

safe, easy and relatively meaningless route instead.

There is still an enormous amount to be done to find new

sources of clean, cheap power to heat homes and create

electricity. But regrettably, the president made it clear

last night that he would rather spend the country's resources

on tax cuts for the wealthy. The oil companies are currently

flush with profits from the same high prices that have

plagued consumers, and the president might have asked the

assembled legislators whether their current tax breaks might

be redirected into a real energy initiative.

Simply calling for more innovation is painless. The hard

part is calling for anything that smacks of sacrifice--on the

part of consumers or special interests, and politicians who

depend on their support. After 9/11, the president had the

perfect moment to put the nation on the road toward energy

independence, when people were prepared to give up their own

comforts in the name of a greater good. He passed it by, and

he missed another opportunity last night.

Of all the defects in Mr. Bush's energy presentation, the

greatest was his unwillingness to address global warming--an

energy-related emergency every bit as critical as our

reliance on foreign oil. Except for a few academics on

retainer at the more backward energy companies, virtually no

educated scientist disputes that the earth has grown warmer

over the last few decades--largely as a result of increasing

atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide produced by the

burning of fossil fuels.

The carbon lodged in the atmosphere by the Industrial

Revolution over the last 150 years has already taken a toll:

disappearing glaciers, a thinning Arctic icecap, dead or

dying coral reefs, increasingly violent hurricanes. Even so,

given robust political leadership and technological

ingenuity, the worst consequences--widespread drought and

devastating rises in sea levels--can be averted if society

moves quickly to slow and ultimately reverse its output of

greenhouse gases. This will require a fair, cost-effective

program of carbon controls at home and a good deal of

persuasion and technological assistance in countries like

China, which is building old-fashioned, carbon-producing

coal-fired power plants at a frightening clip.

Mr. Bush said he would look for cleaner ways to power our

homes and offices, and provide more money for the Energy

Department's search for a ``zero emission'' coal-fired plant

whose carbon dioxide emissions can be injected harmlessly

into the ground without adding to the greenhouse gases

already in the atmosphere. But once again he chose to

substitute long-range research--and a single, government-

sponsored research program at that--for the immediate

investments that have to be made across the entire industrial

sector.

That Mr. Bush has taken a pass on this issue is a

negligence from which the globe may never recover. While he

seems finally to have signed on to the idea that the earth

is warming, and that humans are heavily responsible, he

has rejected serious proposals to do anything about it and

allowed his advisers on the issue to engage in a

calculated program of disinformation. At the recent global

summit on warming, his chief spokesmen insisted that the

president's program of voluntary reductions by individual

companies had resulted in a reduction in emissions, when

in fact the reverse was true.

The State of the Union speech is usually a feel-good event,

and no one could fault Mr. Bush's call for research, or fail

to applaud his call for replacing more than 75 percent of the

nation's oil imports from the Middle East within the next two

decades. But while the goal was grand, the means were

minuscule. The president has never been serious about energy

independence. Like so many of our leaders, he is content to

acknowledge the problem and then offer up answers that do

little to disturb the status quo. If the war on terror must

include a war on oil dependence, Mr. Bush is in retreat.

Let me just read one other excerpt, because it is very important. Of all of the defects in Mr. Bush's energy presentation, the greatest was his unwillingness to address global warming, an energy-related emergency every bit as critical as our reliance on foreign oil.

Except for a few academics on retainer at the most backward energy companies, virtually no educated scientist disputes that the Earth has grown warmer over the last decades. This is the New York Times talking. Largely as a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, gas. I read this and wonder how many alarms have to be sounded before the leaders follow.

With new eyes in space like the great Hubble telescope, we understand the danger of great meteorites striking the Earth. Some are large enough to be called planet killers. We fear what might come from above, but we ignore what is coming from right here on the Earth.

Mr. Speaker, the President could have done better. But he did not have it in him.

The extinction of the dinosaurs provided for the extraction of fossil fuel.

The addiction to oil could provide for the extraction of mankind from a planet too hot to inhabit.

Is it science fiction or a looking glass? Too many scientists know we are looking into the future, and ignoring it.

I urge the American people to read today's LA Times and New York Times.

Compare the common sense expressed in bedrock journalism against Republican's unlimited access to uncommon hype. You decide.

Mr. Speaker, like oil, even Republican hype is a finite resource, and that's the best energy news for America in a decade.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is the fox adjusting the lock on the hen house door. I intend to submit for the record before the end of the day an article from 1995 when the then Speaker of the House set up the K Street Project. K stands for kleptomania or kleptocracy. I'm not sure exactly what the K stands for, but this project was set up in 1995; and what is going on today is an absolutely predictable result of what was done in 1995 when the

lobbyists were told, Don't hire any Democrats. You only hire Republicans. You only give to Republicans. You don't give to Democrats.

For us to come out here today and put a bill up here as though it were going to do anything, when it is proposed by the people who put the K Street Project together in the first place, is absolutely unbelievable. This House is in a delusional state that anything is changing on behalf of the people.

The fact is that this is what you get when you have a K Street Project in place. And they are not fixing it this way, and they want to wrap us all around it and say, well, you'll help us fix it this way by keeping some old Member out of the gym from playing basketball with me. Come on, they have all got my phone number. They have got everybody's phone number in this whole building. And for you to think that this silly little piece of legislation is going to do one thing about cleaning up this town is simply nonsense.

We ought to be talking about public funding of elections. Then we would be talking about reform. But you are not going to reform it by keeping a couple of guys off the floor or a couple of guys out of the gym or whatever. That is simply not going to work, and it is foolish. Everyone should vote ``no'' on this rule.

[From the Washington Post, Nov. 27, 1995]

Speaker and His Directors Make the Cash Flow Right

(By David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf)

In the annals of the House Republican revolution, a pivotal

moment came last April when an unsuspecting corporate

lobbyist entered the inner chamber of Majority Whip Tom

DeLay, whose aggressive style has earned him the nickname

``the Hammer.'' The Texas congressman was standing at his

desk that afternoon, examining a document that listed the

amounts and percentages of money that the 400 largest

political action committees had contributed to Republicans

and Democrats over the last two years. Those who gave heavily

to the GOP were labeled ``Friendly,'' the others

``Unfriendly.''

``See, you're in the book,'' DeLay said to his visitor,

leafing through the list. At first the lobbyist was not sure

where his group stood, but DeLay helped clear up his

confusion. By the time the lobbyist left the congressman's

office, he knew that to be a friend of the Republican

leadership his group would have to give the party a lot more

money.

It didn't take long for the word to spread around town

about the Hammer and his book. By some accounts--apocryphal

as it turns out--DeLay even made lobbyists turn to their

contribution totals and initial them, like a report card.

Such stories actually make DeLay's job easier. When an aide

once asked whether efforts should be made to quell the

legend, DeLay leaned back in his chair and said, ``No, let it

get bigger.''

Inside the House Republican leadership, the former pest

exterminator from Houston is the enforcer. His mission is to

ensure that money flows along the same stream as policy, that

the probusiness deregulatory agenda of the House Republicans

receives the undivided financial support of the corporate

interests that benefit from it. His motto is an unabashedly

blunt interpretation of the dictums of Speaker Newt Gingrich:

``If you want to play in our revolution, you have to live by

our rules.''

The role of money in the revolution has been obscured by

the titanic clash with President Clinton and the Democrats

over balanced budgets and the reshaping of the federal

government, but it is part of that larger struggle. Money is

at the center of Gingrich's transformation of the House. With

the new alignment of ideological allies in the business and

political worlds, there are unparalleled opportunities for

both the people who give the money and the people who receive

it.

It is such an obvious quid pro quo that it goes almost

unnoticed. From House Republicans come measures that gratify

industry: weakening environmental standards, loosening

workplace safety rules, limiting the legal liability of

corporations, defunding nonprofit groups that present an

opposing view. From the beneficiaries of that legislation

come millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

``The Republicans have a wonderful situation,'' said one

trade association president, a longtime Democrat. ``They

don't have to prostitute themselves. They are ideologically

in sync'' with the corporate PACs. ``Every politician dreams

of being able to meet your conscience and raise money at the

same time.''

Yet money is also the source of increasing tension among

House Republicans that could ultimately weaken them, if not

tear them apart. The conflict, in essence, is between

ideology and populist reform. One wing wants to collect as

much corporate money as possible to sustain and expand the

revolution. Another wing fears that this will disillusion

voters who brought the Republicans to power to change the

traditional ways of doing business in Washington. Gingrich

stands in the middle aware, people around him say, that his

tenure could depend in part on his ability to resolve the

conflict.

Gingrich, DeLay and their comrades have set in motion a

historic shift in campaign giving. As recently as 1993 the

National Republican Congressional Committee, the main vehicle

for fundraising for House GOP candidates, was millions of

dollars in debt. But by soliciting contributions from the

corporate world through a combination of tenacity,

cheerleading and intimidation--``playing offense'' all the

time, as DeLay describes it--the revolution has established a

formidable money machine. The turnaround has been dramatic.

House Republicans received 58 percent of the money from the

top 400 PACs during the first six months this year and their

numbers are rising every month. Last year two of every three

PAC dollars went to the ruling Democrats. The trend is

evident in all industries, including those with traditional

Democratic ties.

The Transportation Political Education League, for example,

gave only 3 percent to the Republicans last year but 42

percent this year. The No. 1 corporate contributor to the GOP

in 1995, United Parcel Service, which worked closely with

DeLay and the leadership in fighting federal workplace safety

regulations, also made a decisive partisan transformation,

its contributions going from 53 percent Democratic to 71

percent Republican in one year.

The once-threadbare NRCC raised a record $18.7 million from

January through June, four times as much as its Democratic

counterpart. Its two elite organizations, which offer private

sessions with House leaders at the Capitol Hill Club, are

suddenly fat and happy: 225 corporations and political action

committees have joined the House Council at $5,000 apiece,

and 150 are enrolled in the Congressional Forum for $15,000

to $20,000 each. Rep. Bill Paxon of New York, the NRCC's

chairman, estimates that he has met privately with ``200 to

300'' chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies to

make his pitch.

``If you believe in the revolution and what's happening,

then it's time to follow common sense,'' Paxon tells them.

``Why do you support the enemy? Why do you give money to

people who are out there consciously every day trying to

undermine what's good for you?'' He often leaves, Paxon says,

with a financial pledge.

Another $20 million, double the Democratic number, has come

to the party in unrestricted contributions known as soft

money, used for party rebuilding efforts, voter drives and

policy initiatives. Leading the way in the soft money realm

this year have been tobacco companies that, concerned about

regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, gave a record

$1.5 million to the Republicans during the first six months,

tenfold what they gave two years ago.

Gingrich, DeLay, Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and

Republican Conference Chairman John Boehner of Ohio all have

established separate PACs this year with goals of raising

millions of dollars more. Gingrich's new PAC, dubbed ``Monday

Morning'' in honor of a refrain from his swearing-in speech,

has already raised more than $330,000, with pledges of an

additional $60,000 since its inception a few months ago.

Advised by kitchen cabinets of industry lobbyists, these

leadership fund-raising operations will distribute money to

Republican congressional candidates, strengthening the bond

between the revolution and industry while reinforcing the

loyalty of House colleagues to Gingrich and his lieutenants.

The freshman class, 73 Republican newcomers who consider

themselves the vanguard of the revolution, has proved as

ambitious in the fund-raising realm as elsewhere. They have

bumped up the average price of a fund-raising ticket fourfold

from the previous term to $1,000, hired professional

consultants to run their events and solicit contributions,

and formed steering committees of lobbyists to advise them.

Almost all have liquidated their campaign debts in the first

10 months of their first term, and more than half belong to

the NRCC's $100,000 Club, having at least that much cash

ready for next year. The average Republican freshman raised

$123,000 in the first six months, nearly double the amount of

their Democratic colleagues.

Even reform-minded freshmen who oppose PACs have pursued

them aggressively. Sam Brownback of Kansas solicited

Washington lobbyists to contribute to a fund-raising event

for him soon after he had returned from Ross Perot's United

We Stand convention in August. There he had given a speech

denouncing the Washington lobbying scene as ``a domestication

process where you bring in new, fresh legislators and then

you start to try to tame them and assist them with gifts and

meals and trips almost like you would a horse with a sugar

cube.'' Several lobbyists who received Brownback's fund-

raising invitation angrily turned him down.

A few days after the House Republicans took power last

January, DeLay turned to one of his most trusted allies in

the lobbying community, David Rehr of the National Beer

Wholesalers Association, and said, ``I want you to do

something with the freshmen just to get them on the right

course.'' Rehr was a member of a small group of Washington

lobbyists who had remained loyal to the Republicans

throughout the long period of Democratic control. His

informal duties now included serving as a PAC adviser to both

DeLay and the NRCC.

Rehr set up a seminar at NRCC headquarters entitled ``Seven

Steps in Liquidating Your Debt and Building for the Future,''

and more than a quarter of the freshman class attended. Rehr

instructed them to set up steering committees of PAC

supporters to be their ``eyes and ears'' in the Washington

community. He suggested that they contact the NRCC and House

committee chairmen for a list of PACs relevant to their

committee assignments.

Make contacts personally, Rehr, whose own PAC contributed

$144,492 to the House Republicans in the first six months

this year, advised the freshmen. If a PAC opposed them during

the campaign, they should not take it personally. Those PACs,

he said, should now be considered ``additional prospects.''

Rehr is among a new breed of Capitol Hill operators on the

rise, fortyish, ideological and fervently committed to the

House revolution and its two primary bankers, DeLay and

Paxon. The lobbyists span the corporate world, commanding

networks of business allies along with large PACs of their

own organizations. Dan Mattoon of BellSouth, another lecturer

at the NRCC seminar, is the leadership's main link to local

telephone companies. Bob Rusbuldt, a top insurance lobbyist,

taps the financial resources of the related fields of

mortgage banking and real estate. Jim Boland of Philip Morris

draws from the tobacco industry and its food subsidiaries.

Freelance lobbyists such as former Bush White House aide

Gary Andres bring lists of diverse clients and the ability

to penetrate new fund-raising channels.

The Republican takeover has been a time for ``cashing in,''

as a PAC director close to Gingrich put it, and also a time

for ``getting right.'' Lobbyists whose PACs or clients once

gave heavily to Democrats have been eager to show they found

religion, leading to such scenes as the one late one recent

night at one of the steak and cigar restaurants fashionable

along Pennsylvania Avenue.

``Man,'' said a lobbyist approaching a GOP leadership aide

and pleading to be restored to good graces, ``just want to

tell you, we've given like 70 percent to you guys now.''

DeLay, for his part, has launched what has come to be known

as the ``K Street Strategy,'' named for the downtown

Washington avenue lined with lobbying headquarters, law firms

and trade associations. The strategy is to pressure those

firms to remove Democrats from top jobs and replace them with

Republicans.

Headhunters now call DeLay's office in search of

recommendations. When one corporation lobbyist sought a

meeting with the whip, DeLay telephoned the firm's CEO and

complained that his agent in Washington was ``a hard-core

libera1.'' If the company wanted to get in to see him, DeLay

added, ``you need to hire a Republican.'' The hard-core

liberal lobbyist was soon transferred to London.

One drug company hired a Democrat to head its office, but

after he was unmasked at a DeLay fund-raiser, he called the

whip's office the next day to plead that his firm not be

scorned by the House Republicans. His position was only

temporary, he said, and he would soon be replaced by someone

more aligned with the revolution.

``There are just a lot of people down on K Street who

gained their prominence by being Democrat and supporting the

Democrat cause, and they can't regain their prominence unless

they get us out of here,'' said DeLay. ``We're just following

the old adage of punish your enemies and reward your friends.

We don't like to deal with people who are trying to kill the

revolution. We know who they are. The word is out.''

At times, Republican leaders have had to choose between

friends, and money may have been a factor. When the Commerce

Committee voted on a sweeping telecommunications deregulation

bill in May, for example, its legislation appeared to favor

AT&T and other long-distance firms over the regional Bell

companies. A last-minute amendment by Chairman Thomas Bliley

would have complicated entry of the seven regional Bells into

the long-distance market. AT&T has a plant in Bliley's

Richmond district and a new PAC profile: reversing a past

preference for Democrats, it has given 58 percent to GOP

lawmakers this year.

But the baby Bells, with combined PAC donations double

those of AT&T and with influential lobbyists such as Mattoon,

appealed the decision. Help came from Paxon and deputy whip

Denny Hastert of Illinois, both Commerce Committee members

who had voted for the Bliley provision as part of the May

bill. But after hearing from Bell lobbyists, they argued for

change at a Speaker's Advisory Group meeting in early July,

contending that the Bells would be prevented from competing,

a participant said. Gingrich directed Bliley to ``rescrub''

the bill, and by mid-July the Bliley provision was deleted.

Two weeks before the new bill passed the House, Pacific

Telesis Group's chief executive hosted a fund-raiser for

Gingrich at his San Francisco home, raising $20,000.

Paxon said he was guided by his ``driving passion'' for

deregulation, not fund-raising calculations, in siding with

the Bells. ``I haven't sat down with a legislative

calendar,'' he said, ``and said this is the time to go after

this industry group.''

But some fund-raising efforts have been less than subtle.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer lectured

corporate leaders not to give to Democrats. In an Oct. 23

letter, signed by the Oklahoma GOP delegation, corporate

lobbyists were told that they were expected to support

freshman Tom Coburn in his tough reelection race.

``As you are courted by others to get involved in this

race, we want to make our position clear,'' the letter read.

``We strongly support our good friend and colleague, Tom

Coburn, and we will be unified as we work on his behalf. We

trust you will join us in our effort and certainly not oppose

us.''

That letter was mild compared with a similar dispatch

earlier in the year from DeLay, a no-nonsense missive that

helped establish his reputation as ``the Hammer.'' Days

before freshman Randy Tate of Washington state was to hold a

fund-raiser in Washington, DeLay sent out a letter listing

the exact sum each PAC had given to the losing cause of

Tate's Democratic opponent in 1994, Mike Kreidler.

While he was ``surprised to see you opposed Randy Tate,''

DeLay wrote, ``you now have the opportunity to work toward a

positive future relationship.'' The note got more demanding--

``your immediate support for Randy Tate is personally

important to me and the House Republican leadership team''--

before closing with an offer of redemption: ``I hope I can

count on you being on the winning team. ``

The aftermath of that letter captures DeLay's unapologetic

mode of operation. A reporter received a copy of it and

called DeLay's PAC director, Karl Gallant. Gallant asked

the reporter how he obtained the letter. When he was told

it came from a lobbyist, Gallant responded, ``That tells

me it's effective. They want you to write a negative story

so we'll back off. You just made my day.''

DeLay agreed, distributing the article to his colleagues.

``It had great impact,'' DeLay said later. ``It raised him

(Tate) a bunch of money. We know who we sent the letters to

and who we got checks from.''

One other result: Kreidler recently decided not to

challenge Tate in 1996, citing as one factor his difficulty

in raising PAC money.

For Gingrich, learning the value of fund-raising has been a

gradual process. Staffers at the NRCC in the 1970s and early

1980s would roll their eyes when the small-college history

professor with mutton-chop sideburns strolled through the

door, knowing they were in for a long day of lectures on the

Ming dynasty and a barrage of expensive ideas for promoting

his conservative opportunity society. ``In those early days

Newt was very naive about money,'' said Steve Stockmeyer,

then the executive director of the NRCC. ``He was always

coming up with ideas on how to spend it, not raise it.''

But despite his early naivete about the ways of money,

Gingrich, more than DeLay or any other figure, was most

responsible for turning the revolution into a money machine.

Two years ago the financial situation for the Republicans

seemed bleak. They were ``walking in the valley of the shadow

of death,'' as Paxon, installed by Gingrich as chairman of

the NRCC, put it.

They were the minority party in the House and Senate and

without the White House. Their fund-raising relied largely on

a direct-mail list that had become utterly obsolete. Of the

more than 1 million names on it, only one in 10 had given to

the party in recent years. Many were in nursing homes or

dead. But by April 1994 Gingrich had become convinced that

the Republicans would seize control of the House that year.

He went over to the NRCC and wrote personal appeals for funds

claiming that the Republicans would soon be in the majority.

``Gingrich was for my purposes the whole ballgame when we

wanted to raise money,'' said Grace Wiegers, then director of

fund-raising for the NRCC and now the head of Gingrich's

leadership PAC, Monday Morning.

In August and September he met individually with more than

150 Republican members, assigning fund-raising tasks and

goals to each. Incumbents from safe seats were asked to raise

$50,000 for Republican challengers or vulnerable colleagues.

Ranking minority members of House committees made pledges to

Gingrich to raise even larger amounts traveling for other

candidates on the road.

When the revolution arrived, Gingrich had a system already

in place for maintaining and expanding the money operation.

DeLay would be his hammer. Paxon would serve as cheerleader.

Majority Leader Armey would position himself as ideological

arbiter, attacking corporations for funding nonprofit

agencies that opposed the revolution. Conference Chairman

Boehner would nourish business coalitions, bringing them in

for regular Thursday sessions to plan how the corporate world

could advance conservative policy. Committee chairmen Bliley

of Commerce, Archer of Ways and Means and Bud Shuster of

Transportation would cultivate industries in their turfs.

The lines between elected revolutionaries and their

business cohorts occasionally blurred. Lobbyists helped DeLay

write his regulatory moratorium bill. Shuster raised money

for the revolution with the assistance of his former

political aide, Ann Eppard, a lobbyist whose clients included

Amtrak, Conrail, Federal Express and the Pennsylvania

Turnpike Authority, all of whom had issues pending before

Shuster's committee.

Eppard maintains a close relationship with her old boss. At

the same time that she was soliciting money from industry for

the ``Bud Shuster Portrait Committee'' which commissioned a

painting of the chairman in his committee room, she was also

sending out fundraising letters for Republican candidates.

One to industry colleagues on behalf of a Virginia candidate

ended with the boldfaced assertion: ``This dinner is of

personal importance to Chairman Shuster.''

Given the place Gingrich assigned to fund-raising, his

handshake agreement with President Clinton in June to form a

bipartisan commission on campaign finance reform took his

allies by surprise. More than any other act, it revealed the

tensions within his revolution.

At the next meeting of the House leadership, the tone, said

one participant, was, ``Why the hell did you go and do

that?''

Armey, responsible for scheduling the revolution's

legislative agenda, worried about how he would be able to fit

the issue into an already packed calendar. DeLay, and to a

lesser degree Paxon, questioned whether the timing was right

and whether the Republicans should cede anything to Clinton

and the Democrats now that the revolution's money machine was

operating so effectively. Gingrich's response was that the

handshake ``buys us time.'' He needed to think the issue

through, he said.

Another wing of Gingrich's House, represented by populist

freshmen Brownback and Linda Smith of Washington, along with

veteran moderate Christopher Shays of Connecticut, was

pushing Gingrich from the other side. If the Republicans did

not clean up Washington and prove that they were not

continuing business as usual, they said, the revolution would

collapse from a fatal flaw of political hubris. If reform did

not happen on the Republican watch, said Shays, it would

become ``our Achilles'' heel'' While Shays and Brownback took

Gingrich's handshake with Clinton as a sign that he supported

reform, Smith was skeptical. She said she thought he was just

stalling.

Gingrich found himself in a familiar position: on both

sides of a debate and looking for another way entirely. He

understood the call for reform and had a lingering resentment

toward PACs for funding the Democrats when they controlled

Congress. But he also, he and his aides say, felt equally

strongly that the revolutionaries should not unilaterally

disarm themselves while they were engaged in a more profound

struggle of what he called the ``Information Age.''

The real fight, Gingrich told his aides, was not over money

but information and how it is disseminated. Money was one

weapon in that struggle and important to the movement as a

way to counter the American mass media, which the speaker

considered largely hostile to the revolution.

Gingrich said as little as possible about the issue after

the handshake, promising that at some point he would deliver

a white paper on the subject. As months went by, the

reformers grew increasingly agitated. At Shays's request,

Gingrich met with the reformers in his office late on the

afternoon of Sept. 29 just before the Columbus Day break.

While Shays hoped to discuss another reform issue involving a

gift ban, the meeting devolved into a tense confrontation

over campaign finance reform between Gingrich and Smith, who

had just planted a story with conservative columnist Robert

Novak in which she said that the leadership was not telling

the truth about their intentions on reform.

``He got so mad. He kicked the staff out and yelled at

them, he was so unhappy,'' Smith recalled. The session was

``testy and pointed,'' according to Brownback. Gingrich was

overwhelmed by other concerns that day, including Medicare

and Bosnia. He was late for a meeting at the White House, and

freshman Smith kept jabbing at him.

Noting that Smith was working with Common Cause and United

We Stand in pushing campaign reform, Gingrich told her that

she had to decide whether she wanted to be an outsider or

work with the House leadership. ``Whatever you decide is okay

with me,'' he said. ``We just have to know.''

Smith wanted to know why Gingrich needed a time-consuming

commission, why he could not just support legislation

eliminating PACs, as he had when he was in the minority. She

told the speaker that he tried to carry too much of the

burden himself and that he should let others take the load on

this issue.

Then, according to Smith's recollection of the scene,

corroborated by others in the room, ``Newt looked at me and

said, Nobody can do it but me! I have the most experience.

I'm the only one who can do this. I'll just have to take some

time this week and write a paper on it.' ``

Shortly after that meeting the leadership announced that

the Oversight Committee would hold hearings on campaign

finance reform starting Nov. 2 and that Gingrich would be the

first to testify. One aide took memos from a group of

informal advisers, including Stockmeyer, the former NRCC

director who now ran the National Association of Business

PACs. PACs were invented as a reform in the 1970s, he noted,

and another round of reforms doing away with them would

probably create a system that was worse.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sent a letter over to the

House noting that the Republicans had killed campaign finance

reform before the 1994 elections--``proof positive that this

issue is not a hindrance to us at the polls.'' In a

handwritten P.S., McConnell added: ``We'd be foolish to

throwaway our ability to compete.''

Another Gingrich aide began piecing together his speech. He

plunged into a long assigned reading list and followed up on

the speaker's request to compare the amount of money spent in

political campaigns with what is spent in advertising

products. Companies spent $100 million selling two stomach

acid pills recently, he discovered, one-sixth of the total

amount spent on all congressional campaigns last year. One of

the great myths of American politics, Gingrich concluded, was

that campaigns are too expensive. He believed that most of

the criticism of the campaign system came from ``nonsensical

socialist analysis based on hatred of the free enterprise

system.''

Smith was sitting one row behind Gingrich and off to his

right when he delivered those conclusions at the hearing. She

wanted to watch his eyes and his facial expressions as a

means of gauging his earnestness, she said, but as he

continued to attack the reformers, including some of the

groups she had been working with, she became increasingly

distraught.

``His anger at the media drove what he said,'' she

concluded. She retreated to her office, where she reached a

final decision on Gingrich's earlier ultimatum to her. She

would work from the outside.

Gingrich's lieutenants expressed satisfaction with his

speech. If reform is inevitable, they say, it will not

involve the elimination of PACs and it will not diminish the

role of money in the revolution. DeLay said he would work the

system until PACs gave an appropriate amount to the

Republicans. ``Ninety percent would be about right,'' he

declared. DeLay has a running competition with Gingrich over

who can raise more money. There are scores of revolutionaries

doing the same thing, but he is not worried that they might

trip over each other.

``It's a big country,'' said the Hammer.

Parliamentary Inquiry