Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise again today to offer this amendment to cut the level of funding in this appropriation bill by approximately 1 percent. This would equal $570 million. As you well know, I have offered this amendment on a number of bills this year and in prior years. And I understand the difficulty that the appropriators have with narrowing down the requests from Members and from the administration; and although this committee has done an excellent job on this, and I understand also that the committee will oppose me and beat me into submission, I will whimper and go away.

But I still think the point needs to be made that we need to begin to really draw the line, and the projected deficit is simply too large. We could do something about the deficit. Now, this will not solve it by any means if we did 1 percent. I mean, we are talking one cent on the dollar, and that will not solve it. But it would tell the American public that at least we are concerned about the deficit and we are willing to do something significant in that direction.

I have no doubt that some of the good programs in this bill would take a cut, and that is unfortunate. But the budget should be no different from the taxpayers' budgets at home. When you have less money, you spend less money. It is really as simple as that, although we all know it is not really simple. It is a difficult thing to do.

I would ask for support of the amendment.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Hefley

Amendment No. 4: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

I will not take a lot of time with this. I rise again today to offer an amendment to cut the level of funding in this appropriations bill by 1 percent. This amount equals $168.32 million, which represents only one penny off every dollar.

As most Members are aware, I have offered a series of amendments on appropriations bills like this. It is no criticism of the committee or the job that they have done. It is just the idea that we need somewhere to begin to draw the line, and the budget we have next year is simply too large, and we can do something about the deficit right now.

By voting for this amendment, you are stating that American taxpayers should not have to pay higher taxes in the future because we could not control our spending today. This fiscal year 2006 agriculture appropriations bill provides nearly $17 billion in total discretionary resources and represents an increase of $93 million over the President's request.

Mr. Chairman, I ask for support of this amendment.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. The gentleman and our ranking member have done a wonderful job in pulling all of these committees together to make this thing work.

The ranking member mentioned that this is a good bill. It is a good bill, and I will probably not belabor that point. But I am pleased to come to the floor today in support of H.R. 1815, the fiscal year 2006 National Defense Authorization Act.

The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ortiz) and the subcommittee and I worked very closely together to examine the Department's funding for military readiness, which includes $108 billion in operation and maintenance funds, as well as another $12 billion for military construction, family housing, and base realignment and closure.

The actions we took this year addressed the needs of our Armed Forces, both on the battlefield and on the home front. We looked at the readiness levels of our military units, the ability of the military services to maintain equipment in theater and to reset and reconstitute equipment that returns from war; and we confirmed what we already knew, war is expensive and funding is needed.

This is why the bill contains a ``bridge fund,'' which is intended to provide the resources necessary up front to allow our military to continue to fight the war against terrorism. I believe this to be the proper approach and eventually one way to move away from the annual supplemental appropriations bills.

On the home front, we examined funding for the upkeep and maintenance of military installations. While the readiness needs of our forward deployed military personnel are our top priority, we cannot forget the families at home, the servicemembers preparing for deployment, and the personnel just returning.

The committee is well aware of the Department's long-standing practice of utilizing infrastructure budgets as billpayers for operational requirements. Unfortunately, the consequences of taking this approach are reductions to basic services such as child care, dining hall operations, or facility management activities. H.R. 1815 will alleviate the Department's need to raid infrastructure budgets for operational needs and includes the tools we need to improve oversight of infrastructure accounts.

On a final note, we are well aware that the Secretary of Defense recently sent over a list of bases that he is recommending to be closed or realigned. For the past several years, I have fought for a delay in the base closure process. I do not think this is the right time to do it. But, unfortunately, we win that battle in the committee, in the subcommittee, on the House floor, and then we lose it over in the conference because the other body and the President did not go along with our thinking on that. Now I think it is not a fun time, BRAC is never a fun time; but I think it is probably a little too late to get that process reversed.

But we are going to get an opportunity to debate it today and get an opportunity to vote on it, and I would encourage all of us to not support that effort and to support the bill. It is a good bill.

Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to take 2 minutes, but I just wanted to say that in committee the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews) introduced this amendment. I thought it was an excellent amendment and that we ought to follow through on it.

We had a problem in committee that it might have a jurisdictional problem. The gentleman was nice enough to agree to withdraw it so we could check that jurisdictional problem. We do not have that problem at this point.

The gentleman is on the right track. It ought to be passed. I am glad it is in the en bloc, and I thank the gentleman for bringing this to our attention.

I do not think most of us who grew up with the thrill of playing with model airplanes ever dreamed that this was the situation, and this will correct the situation. I appreciate the gentleman doing that.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to yield 15 minutes of my time to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder), a very active and thoughtful member of the Subcommittee on Readiness of the Committee on Armed Services, for purposes of control.

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

Over the past several years many Members of this body, including myself, have tried to delay or cancel the 2005 Base Closure Realignment and Closure round. Last year, in fact for a couple of years, the House has actually passed something to do that. And last year in the Defense act we passed a 2-year delay which would have required very much similar types of reports and so forth, which we thought was a very reasonable approach to give us more evidence to base our decision on.

I think the approach the gentleman makes today is a very reasonable approach. And I had hopes that last year we could delay the process because it did not seem to me to be the time for a base closure round, and I used many of the same reasons that the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) does. But I do think that last year was the last chance to delay BRAC.

Unfortunately, we faced a veto threat from the President and opposition from the other body, and in the conference committee what we passed here in the House disappeared. And as I said, I think it is too late now. The Secretary of Defense has made recommendations for the base realignments and closures.

The BRAC Commission has been appointed and has begun review of BRAC data. The Commission has held hearings. I think today they started their visits to bases around the Nation. And as the old cliche says, ``The train has left the station.'' I think it is very difficult to call that train back at this stage.

BRAC is a carefully crafted process. It was designed in time to ensure that base closures are made in a fair and nonpartisan manner. The process allows for Congress to disapprove the final BRAC recommendations. And while I recognize that disapproving the recommendations is a difficult hurdle to clear, that is our best remaining opportunity to terminate the BRAC process.

The Bradley amendment before us today may be tempting to anybody who has a military installation in or near their district. Those who dodged the bullet fired by the DOD's BRAC recommendations are still at risk of being placed on a closure or realignment list by the Commission. Those who were not so fortunate face a very difficult task in trying to convince the BRAC Commission to remove their bases from the closure and reassignment list.

However, those tempted to support this amendment should know that it does have some problems.

First, the amendment would terminate all that has already occurred and would restart the BRAC process at some undetermined time out in the future. For communities not on the DOD's BRAC list, this amendment would reset the process and put them through years, perhaps, of worry that DOD might change its mind. For communities on DOD's BRAC list, the Bradley amendment may spare them temporarily, but they would face the likelihood and perception that DOD is likely to reach the same closure and realignment conclusions when the round recommenced in the future. Such a stigma would leave those communities in a state of limbo.

Can any of us imagine businesses investing money into a community around a base they almost are sure or know will be closed or realigned, but that lacks a redevelopment plan? For such communities, the sooner BRAC is complete, the sooner they will be able to redevelop and attract new businesses and commerce.

Secondly, the Bradley amendment would postpone BRAC until some unknown period in the future. According to the amendment, BRAC would restart 1 year after a number of items are completed, including the quadrennial defense review and the withdrawal of substantially all major combat units and assets from Iraq.

Not only would this rolling delay leave all of our communities without any clarity when the next BRAC round will occur, but it means the next BRAC round could occur during an election year. We tried to get away from that because of the partisanship of it. Those that built the 2005 round of BRAC timed it carefully to ensure that Presidential politics or even congressional politics for that matter do not drive the process. So the timing would be a problem, perhaps.

On a final note, the Bradley amendment is effectively dead on arrival, unfortunately. The administration threatened to veto the bill 2 years ago, and I am sure that threat will come about again. I do not think the Senate is in a mood to change its mind, although that may have changed because of the recommendations that were made.

Mr. Chairman, I have the greatest respect for my colleagues from New Hampshire and Connecticut and those who are very interested in this. They have the best of intentions. But with reluctance, I cannot support the amendment, and I encourage a ``no'' vote on it.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Mrs. Wilson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), a member of the committee.

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

It will not be much time because we are coming to the end of this. I just want to say this. I think we have heard some excellent debate here this afternoon, and the arguments have been very good, mostly in favor of the Bradley amendment and very positive. And if I thought it was possible for us to get from here to there in a reasonable manner, as those who serve on the Committee on Armed Services with me know, I would be very sympathetic with the Bradley amendment.

The gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons) and the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) particularly serve on the Committee on Armed Services. I serve with these gentlemen on the Committee on Armed Services. They are fine, decent, hard-working, thoughtful members of the committee that are valued by, I think, all of their colleagues on that committee.

And I got to thinking about this as we have approached this day, if anyone could have kept those bases of theirs off the list, they would have been able to do it because they have that kind of respect. But the gentleman from Texas made the point that the way the BRAC situation is set up is to take us out of that formula at this stage and to let the Department of Defense and then the Commission do their work. Once the Commission gets started, we can get back into it and do whatever we can do to do that, but it was designed to take politics out of it.

So the people who try to make a political issue out of someone's base closing, I think, are making a very bad mistake and are fooling the American public.

And we see this from both sides going on, rushing to say, oh, my gosh, if someone else had been there. No, that is not the case. This should not be a political issue; this should be a national defense issue. It should be evaluated based upon the need to defend this country. And we will have disagreements about what is needed and what is not needed, but that is what it should be based on. It should not be political.

I commend these gentlemen and all those who have spoken. They did an excellent job.

But I encourage people, reluctantly, not to support the Bradley amendment.

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

Offered By: Mr. Hefley

Amendment No. 2: At the end of the bill, add the following:

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

This amendment cuts $15 million from the account of the National Endowment for the Arts and applies $4.8 million to the payments in lieu of taxes account. What I wanted to do is make that equal; but it was subject to a point of order, so this is what we came up with. It would reduce the NEA account to about the level at which it had been funded for about a decade, while bringing PILT just a little bit closer to its $340 million authorization level.

Now, I want my colleagues to know that this is not an NEA-bashing amendment. The NEA I think has considerably cleaned up its act since the days of Mappelthorpe and Serrano, and the Challenge America grants program has helped return the NEA to educational outreach, the thing that it did with some success at its founding.

No, this amendment is an acknowledgment, and we have been hearing a lot about it this afternoon, but this is an acknowledgment of the need for the PILT program.

People have often said to me, you are so lucky to live in the West with all of the open space and all the public land, and I do consider myself lucky because of that. But people who do not live in the public land States do not realize sometimes that these public lands and all that open space comes at a cost. My colleagues saw the gentleman from Utah's (Mr. Cannon) map up here with the red and so forth showing the public lands. East of the Mississippi, there are a few red spots scattered around. West of the Mississippi, it is almost solid red. The West is essentially owned by the government.

For every acre under public ownership, western counties and municipalities lose part of their tax base. In Colorado, this amounts to almost 30 percent of the State's acreage. Of course, we heard earlier, this pales to the about 85 percent of the States' acreage in Nevada that is under Federal control. We have one county in Colorado, Hinsdale County, that is close to 98 percent public land. You have Lake City, the county seat, you have a mountain, and then you have the rest of Hinsdale County; and almost all of it is owned by the government. So services, as you can imagine, are limited.

Services mean fire and police and schools and health care and all kinds of things.

There are other more direct costs too. Due to Federal underfunding of its own land, local municipalities are often asked to bear the cost of road maintenance and police coverage for those areas. All of this, while operating under the diminished tax base that I mentioned earlier.

So I have always supported full funding of PILT, and I know we cannot get there this year. I do appreciate the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) for what they have done for PILT in this bill. They have moved it forward somewhat. But since we have all this land, I think we should give us the funds we need to help take care of it.

Mr. Chairman, I urge passage of this amendment.

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

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

I think it is interesting that the gentlewoman is from Connecticut. If my colleagues remember that map, public lands are insignificant in Connecticut by comparison with States in the west where we have up to 85 or 90 percent of the land owned by the government.

I said at the outset that this is not an NEA-bashing amendment. The NEA does many good things; but we only have so much money, and the committee knows that is the case. They are the ones that had to struggle with the allocation they got and they had to make tough, tough choices. When you have to make choices, I think you need to ask yourself the question, NEA, as good as it is in some areas, is it better than having the funds to educate your children in many of those western States? Is it better than having the funds to provide fire protection, to provide police protection, to take care of those public lands that are out there? Which is better? We have to weigh it and balance it.

The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) said a while ago that he thought they had a pretty good balance. I think that if you are making these choices, the balance needs to lean a little bit more to the PILT.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would just encourage an ``aye'' vote on this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, the amendment is identical to those I have offered to appropriations bills for the past couple of

years. The amendment trims outlays for H.R. 2361 by 1 percent under the Holman Rule, which means if the amendment passes, it will be up to the administration to determine where the cuts will fall.

I want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), the ranking member. As always, they have done a solid job of this. I understand the dynamics of bringing a bill out of committee. They have done a good job. They are below what would have been expected, but we are still not at a balanced budget; and so I offer this amendment.

In fact, just the other day a Democratic colleague mentioned this bill and said the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor) is ``as tight as a snare drum,'' and I take that as an extreme compliment. That said, I do not think the funding levels of this bill are reflective of a country with a $340 billion deficit.

The amendment would trim a penny on the dollar across the agencies funded by this bill. Despite the stripped-down character of the bill, I think there are still some areas worthy of examination.

For example, the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Some years ago as a member of the House Interior Committee, I heard testimony on de- accessioning the Kennedy Center from the National Park Service. James Wolfensohn, its director and later head of the World Bank, pleaded with the subcommittee to cut the center loose. He said the center needed millions of dollars in structural repairs, yet he could not move forward on them because of the Park Service contracting requirements and inflated costs. ``Let us raise our own funds and we will be able to do this much more efficiently,'' he said. And so we did.

We got rid of the Kennedy Center, except that we did not really. The only National Park Service cut loose in the past 20 years, supposedly, and yet in this bill it includes $17.8 million for operation and maintenance at the Kennedy Center and $10 million for construction.

Now, I know the Kennedy Center has serious structural problems, but given the legislative history of this issue, I would like to know how long we are going to continue to have this center that we have to fund. That is just one example.

I question whether the various agencies really need all of the new vehicles authorized in this bill. I estimate at least $5 million for those. I question some of the administrative accounts.

The chairman has done a fine job in reining in costs, particularly in the area of land acquisition; but at a time of a $300-plus million deficit, we need to do more. This amendment would do that. Even in a small way, I encourage support of this amendment.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Hefley

Amendment No. 10: Page 45, line 16, after the first dollar

amount, insert the following: ``(increased by $15,000,000)''.

Page 106, line 9, after the dollar amount, insert the

following: ``(reduced by $15,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Hefley

Amendment No. 11: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for the time.

Let me say that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct was not broken. There was no deadlock ever. There were no partisan votes ever. Almost every vote was unanimous. Every staff member was hired or fired in a bipartisan way; but at the same time, neither the process nor the rules are perfect, and they should be looked at. They just should not be looked at in the way we have done it. My colleagues have heard me say it over and over, and they are getting tired of it and I apologize, and maybe we will not have to talk about it anymore; but we cannot have a Committee on Standards of Official Conduct unless it is completely bipartisan in every way.

I want to praise the Speaker of the House for taking the leadership in this and getting us out of this mess. I want to praise the gentleman from Washington (Chairman Hastings) and the other members of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct for trying to resolve this dispute.

I want to praise the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) for trying to resolve the dispute and making sure that we continue with an absolute nonpartisan or bipartisan committee. There are ethics charges flying around this place that are being used in a political way, there is no question about it. I do not think the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) is a part of that, however. I think he sincerely is concerned about the institution, and I think all of us are.

We should be open to reforming the ethics process when necessary; and I encourage the committee, and in a bipartisan way, to look at these rules and to look at other rules.

The gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) and I talked often about a package of rules that we would like to present to the House for consideration of changing, and I would encourage the committee to do that.

Some of the due process provisions of the rules that were made in the January decision are good, and the committee should give consideration to adopting them even if not directed by the House. I am encouraged by this effort to return to a bipartisan ethics process that existed during the last Congress.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this and to continue the effort to return the process to a bipartisan type of process that it absolutely must be. Then we can go from here and make sure that when we have a Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, it is an ethics committee we can all be proud of.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 6) expressing the sense of the Congress that the Department of Defense should continue to exercise its statutory authority to support the activities of the Boy Scouts of America, in particular the periodic national and world Boy Scout Jamborees.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the concurrent resolution under consideration.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, once again we find the Boy Scouts of America under attack from the American Civil Liberties Union. This time the ACLU has set its sights on the Department of Defense, challenging its longstanding support of the Boy Scouts.

In 1999 the ACLU of Illinois sued the DOD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Chicago Board of Education for sponsoring Boy Scout programs because participation in Boy Scouts includes an oath to God. Ultimately, the Chicago Board of Education suspended its sponsorship of scouting activities, and on Tuesday, November 16, 2004, the Department of Defense agreed to issue a worldwide directive to all its military facilities that the Department and its personnel may not sponsor Boy Scout units in an official manner.

Madam Speaker, it is already the policy of the Department of Defense not to sponsor any private non-Federal organization including the Boy Scouts of America. The Department does, however, provide support to the Boy Scouts with use of bases and facilities and donations and the use of surplus equipment.

Currently, the DOD spends $2 million every 4 years to prepare Fort A.P. Hill, a Virginia military base, for the Boy Scouts' national jamboree. The Department also makes an annual allocation of $100,000 to support Boy Scout units on military bases overseas and another $100,000 to improve Boy Scout properties such as summer camps. This support, and not the Department's sponsorship, asserts the ACLU, is in violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment to the Constitution, and is the basis for the lawsuit.

However, since March 10, 1972, the Department of Defense has been specifically authorized to make military installations available to, and to provide equipment, transportation, and other services to the Boy Scouts of America in support of national and world gathering, including events like their jamborees. The Department has also been given authority under title 10 of the U.S. Code to sell and in certain cases donate obsolete or excess material to the Boy Scouts.

While the Pentagon's directive will not impair their continued support for the Boy Scouts, the ACLU lawsuit quite frankly threatens it. Since its inception, millions of Americans of every race, creed, and religion have participated in the Boy Scouts of America. As of October 1, 2004, the Boy Scouts utilize more than 1.2 million adult volunteers to serve 2.863 million youth members organized in 121,051 units. With the help of agencies like the Department of Defense, many of these fine young men have gone on to become notable world figures. Let me give some examples: Neil Armstrong, Hank Aaron, Sam Walton, President Gerald Ford. And this is just a few.

Madam Speaker, the traditions of the Boy Scouts have been under attack for years by liberal groups. The DOD has been authorized to support the Boy Scouts for over 30 years, and any move to threaten this relationship is simply unconscionable. My resolution encourages the DOD to continue to exercise its statutory authority in its longstanding and successful relationship with the Boy Scouts of America.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) knows firsthand the impact of the Boy Scouts in the lives of a young boy, and I appreciate very much his statement.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler).

(Mr. HOSTETTLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and encourage everyone to support this resolution.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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

I am going to support this rules package. I was not. I came here today fully expecting not to support it; but because of the action taken last evening where we reconsidered some of the suggestions that had been made, I think we have a package now that we can live with. I think some of the recommendations that are in here are ill conceived, and I would hope to work with the chairman again in a bipartisan way with him and his committee and with the leadership to make some additional changes as we go through the process.

But I want to thank him and thank the Speaker and the leadership for accommodating my concerns about some of the amendments that I thought were the most difficult and the ones that created the biggest problem in trying to implement the Code of Official Conduct.

Each of us, in fact all of us, individually and collectively, have a responsibility to maintain the highest standard of conduct for this House. And changes in the rules, as was said by the previous speaker, should strengthen, not weaken, those standards. As it stands now, I think the previous speaker said we are gutting the ethics committee standards now. We are not as it stands now. I would not be standing up here encouraging people to support the rules package if in any way I thought we were gutting it. We are tweaking it, and as I said earlier, we are tweaking some of it in a way that I wish we were not tweaking it, but it does not gut it. It is something that the rules work pretty well the way they are now, and this does not change that that much.

I have had the privilege of serving on the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct since 1997 and have had an additional responsibility as serving as chairman since 2001. And during that time, I have learned one paramount lesson: ethics must be bipartisan. The ethics process must be bipartisan. Ethics reform must be bipartisan, and the ethics committee must be bipartisan. And I can tell the Members the ethics committee is bipartisan.

I see our ranking member over here. I could not have a better partner in this ethics process than the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan). The ethics committee is a bipartisan committee that follows the evidence wherever the evidence leads. Meaningful ethics reform must be genuinely bipartisan. To have a bipartisan process, any significant change in the ethics rules must be made only after careful, thorough bipartisan consideration, as was done in 1989 and 1997.

In 1989 and 1997, ethics reform came only after a broad consensus developed for change. I have always strongly supported reevaluating the ethics rules and procedures and making changes wherever a need is shown. I think a number of the criticisms of the ethics process that have been made over the past year are well taken and should be looked at. On the other hand, since I joined the committee, almost every significant decision, I believe every significant decision, has been made on a unanimous vote.

Despite the deletion of the amendment that I found the most objectionable to the Code of Conduct, the rules package includes a number of provisions that would make major changes in the ethics- related rules, but as to which neither the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct nor Members outside the rules process were consulted. While I will not vote against the rules package because of these provisions, I urge the leadership to reconsider all the amendments added to the committee's procedural rules without a bipartisan process.

In 1997 the House, through a bipartisan task force, carefully studied the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct's enforcement procedures, made a series of changes. The rules package includes provisions that would significantly alter those procedures. It would be a mistake to reverse these bipartisan determinations without a bipartisan process of our own.

The 45-day thing that has been mentioned, I do not like that. I think that creates a problem in trying to implement a fair and even-handed ethics process. I would like to see that removed.

When in 1997 the Bipartisan Task Force Report was before the House, the House significantly rejected, on a bipartisan vote of 181 to 236, an amendment that would have required automatic dismissal of any complaint after 180 days, not 45 days. The reason for rejection of that amendment, as set out in the floor debate, is that such an artificial time limit on the life of a complaint would serve to encourage deadlock within the committee and partisanship among committee members.

I could go on and on, Mr. Speaker. I think that is something we need to look at. The ranking member and I and

the members of the ethics committee have been considering a group of suggestions that we would like to bring to the full House. We would like to do that, Mr. Speaker, shortly after the new session of Congress convenes, when we are ready for that process. I think that is the way it ought to be done. These are the people that struggle with these issues every day. I think they ought to be concerned about what we think would make the process better. They do not have to follow it, but at least be concerned about it. The process in the House is not perfect. Let us strive to make it perfect. On this one issue, let us act together on a bipartisan basis.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4837, the Fiscal Year 2005 Military Construction Appropriations Act.

As is the usual practice, each project appropriated in this bill was authorized by the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act. In order to achieve this level of coordination, the appropriations and authorizations committees spent the past several weeks working hand-in- hand together to reach matching conference agreements on our respective bills. Working with Chairman Knollenberg and Mr. Edwards during this process was a pleasure, and their efforts were essential to our success.

I thank the gentlemen from Michigan and Texas--as well as the tremendous staff at the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee--for their extraordinary efforts in producing the conference report before us, and look forward to joining my colleagues in voting ``yes'' on passage of this conference report.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and remember the life of former Republican Congressman Donald Brotzman of Colorado, who recently passed away at the age of 82. Congressman Brotzman honorably represented Colorado's second Congressional District from 1962 through 1975, during some of this great nation's most tumultuous and trying times.

He was born June 28, 1922 on a farm in Logan County, on Colorado's eastern plains. Both a musician and three-sport athlete at Sterling High School, Don Brotzman won a football scholarship in 1939 to the University of Colorado in Boulder where he was an all-conference center and varsity letter-winner in shot put and discus.

As war continued to rage on the other side of the world, Don Brotzman delayed his education and served as an Army officer in Yokohama, Japan, and the Philippines through World War II. Following the end of the war, he returned to Boulder to complete degrees in business and law in 1949.

Mr. Brotzman began working as a lawyer in Boulder in 1950, and was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1952 and later the State Senate. Local media named him the outstanding freshman member in both chambers.

By 1959, he was appointed United States Attorney for Colorado by President Eisenhower and served as such until he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, where he was voted president of his freshman class.

Congressman Brotzman served five terms and helped to shape laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Public Broadcasting Act. He reached across the aisle to champion causes such as the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area west of Boulder, a national program to help runaway youth and a tax credit for higher-education expenses. Despite serving on the minority side of the aisle, he successfully found the funds to complete the Chatfield Dam and Reservoir, and sponsored the bill authorizing the building of Bear Creek Dam and Reservoir in Colorado.

Furthermore, he persuaded the Johnson Administration to sponsor a study that eventually changed the Army's environmental practices at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Adams County, Colorado, and he was one of the first members of Congress to call for an all-volunteer military.

Colorado lost a great friend and a tremendous leader when it lost Donald Brotzman. His strong western values and commitment to always do what was right, despite partisan interests and outside persuasion, has continued to serve as a great example.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 10, the 9/ 11 Recommendations Implementation Act. This legislation is vitally important to overhaul the nation's intelligence system, which has been in place since World War II.

There are five majors areas of reform in this legislation that will dramatically alter the way our country approaches national security.

First, this bill establishes a National Director of Intelligence who will have full budget authority over the nation's intelligence agencies. For the first time in our Nation's history, we will have one person whose sole job is to coordinate the activities and information from all of our Nation's intelligence services.

Second, this bill restructures terrorism prevention and prosecution. It gives law enforcement agencies and the Department of Justice new tools to prevent and prosecute potential terrorists and acts of terrorism. Whether it is strengthening our money laundering laws to combat terrorists' financial networks or adding additional security measures to our printed currency, this legislation will make it more difficult for terrorists to have access to financing and make it more difficult for those who want to finance terrorist activities.

Third, this legislation dramatically strengthens the security of our Nation's borders and restricts the ability of terrorists to travel. I think we can all agree the best way to keep our country safe is keep the terrorists out of our country. If terrorists do manage to get into the country, this legislation gives law enforcement officers the tools they need to make it easier to deport them. also, this legislation makes sure that our federal air marshals have anonymity on all flights, both domestic and foreign. We will add more federal air marshals to foreign flights coming into this country on both U.S. and foreign carriers. We will add a second layer of protection in cockpits, and require the use of biometrically-protected crew badges for airline employees.

Fourth, this bill reaches out to other nations to join us in combating terrorism. We will require machine-readable passports for tourists entering our country and also require that all names on passports be translated and printed in Roman alphabet for international travel documents and placed into watchlist systems. Also, this bill makes it a federal crime to give a false claim of citizenship or nationality.

Finally, this legislation restructures the government in many important ways. It provides the authorization for the intelligence community reorganization plans, it restructures the Department of Homeland Security for faster and smarter funding for first responders, and it modifies the homeland security advisory system.

Mr. Chairman, this legislation contains many important and necessary changes to our Nation's laws. I would like to thank all the members who have worked so hard on a bi-partisan basis to produce such a comprehensive piece of legislation. This is a positive step in improving the nation's intelligence system and our national security.