Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the citizens of Taiwan and to welcome their democratically elected President, Chen Shui-bian, to the United States of America.

As you know, Taiwan has been a friend and stalwart ally of the United States for over 50 years. Together we have opposed communism and supported the principles of freedom and democracy. Our nations have worked together to fight terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, poverty in Africa and adversity worldwide.

Through this relationship, our countries have seen strengthened political and economic ties leading to mutual prosperity. Today, Taiwan is our nation's eighth largest trading partner and a valuable advocate for free trade and democracy in the Asian Pacific region and beyond. Strengthening the relationship and expanding cooperation between the United States and the Republic of China in Taiwan should remain a national priority.

Mr. Speaker, because of President Chen Shui-bian's continued dedication to the American-Taiwanese alliance, I ask all Members of the House of Representatives to join me in recognizing his visit to the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained because of medical reasons and was unable to vote on rollcall 453. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 202) permitting the use of the Rotunda of the Capitol for a ceremony to honor Constantino Brumidi on the 200th anniversary of his birth.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House this morning in support of House Concurrent Resolution 202. This is a bill authorizing the use of the Rotunda of the United States Capitol for a ceremony on July 26 honoring Constantino Brumidi on the 200th anniversary of his birthday.

On June 22, 2005, President Bush issued a proclamation which honored and celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Constantino Brumidi. That is the action that brings us here today, to permit a ceremony in Constantino Brumidi's honor to be held in the Capitol Rotunda.

Constantino Brumidi has been called the Michelangelo of the United States Capitol Building. House Concurrent Resolution 202 was introduced both to honor the life and also the work of Constantino Brumidi, who was an Italian immigrant also with strong family Hellenic roots who spent some 25 years, from 1855 to 1880, painting, decorating, and enhancing the beauty of our United States Capitol building. Brumidi was born in Italy in 1805 and he worked as an artist in Rome and the Vatican where he had many commissions, including a portrait of Pope Pius IX. In 1852, Brumidi immigrated to the United States and he dedicated the balance of his life to making our Capitol building one of the most impressive structures in this great Nation and really in the world.

In 1865, Brumidi spent some 11 months walking dangerously high atop the Capitol Rotunda laboring on his masterpiece which if you go to the center of the Rotunda and look up, you see his famous work entitled ``The Apotheosis of Washington,'' in the eye of the Capitol dome. Six years later, he created the first tribute to an African American in the Capitol when he placed the figure of Crispus Attucks at the center of the painting which memorializes and pays tribute to those patriots who were lost in the Boston Massacre.

In 1878 at the age of 72 and in poor health, Brumidi began his final work and that was on the Rotunda frieze around the edge of the center of the Capitol dome. That frieze chronicles the history of the United States.

Constantino Brumidi's life and work exemplifies the life of really millions of immigrants who came to the United States to seek opportunity and to seek freedom in America. Brumidi and many others who immigrated to the United States provided their skills and their hard work, and they bettered their lives and they bettered the lives of their children, their grandchildren, and their great grandchildren, many who serve in this Congress, many who serve across this land and whose daily lives enrich every day the United States of America.

NAIF, the National Italian-American Foundation, is an organization which promotes American and Italian relations, cultural and business relations and numerous other U.S. Italian groups that support this effort to recognize the outstanding work of Constantino Brumidi.

Constantino Brumidi is now part of the ages. He is deceased. However, his great artistic contributions all around us in this United States Capitol live on and give both beauty and also life, continuing life, to our Nation's Capitol building.

Mr. Speaker, 2005 is the bicentennial of Brumidi's birth, and I can think of no better way to honor this patriotic Italian-American's contribution to our great Nation than by passing this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), who will relate some of the great Hellenic roots of Constantino Brumidi.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

In closing, I do thank both sides of the aisle for participating in this, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald) for their leadership, and others.

Rarely do we get to use the very center of the Capitol building, the Rotunda, in any ceremony. The Congress requires a joint resolution and that that resolution be considered by the other body for the purpose of honoring one of our citizens. So it is very rare. We paid tribute to Ronald Reagan. We have paid tribute to great Americans, Rosa Parks, in awarding the Congressional Gold Medal, leaders, political and social leaders.

How fitting it is that we take time as a Congress to recognize one of the artistic and cultural contributors to this great Capitol building on the 200th anniversary of Brumidi's birth. So we not only honor next week in this special ceremony Constantino Brumidi, but also all the sons and daughters of this great Nation, immigrants, who made not only this Capitol an incredible symbol of democracy and a beautiful place to work and visit and to have as our United States Capitol, but also to honor all those who have made this a great country.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the adoption of the resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Con. Res. 202.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and pay tribute to Chief Warrant Officer Four Chris J. Scherkenbach, who died on June 28 from injuries sustained during combat operations in Afghanistan and in service to our country.

Chris was proud to serve in the United States Army for 18 years, and as a Night Stalker was a member of our Special Operations forces for the past 8 years. He had been assigned to B Company, 3rd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia.

Chief Warrant Officer Chris J. Scherkenbach's awards and decorations include the Air Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terror Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terror Service Medal, Humanitarian Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon and Senior Army Aviator Badge. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star Medal and an Air Medal with Valor device, the Master Army Aviator Badge, the Meritorious Service Medal and the Combat Action Badge.

Chris's family describes him as a strong man who had a firm sense of justice, who believed in his mission and stood up for what he knew was right, and who perished doing what he loved.

We should all remember Chris's courage and his ultimate sacrifice for our nation--``Greater love hath no man than to give up his

life for others.'' The freedom we enjoy and the liberty in the world for which he fought are part of the great legacy Chief Warrant Officer Four Chris J. Scherkenbach leaves behind.

A native of Jacksonville, Chris was born in Illinois on November 3, 1964. A devoted husband to his wife Michelle, Chris was also a loving son, brother and uncle and will be dearly missed. To all of Chris's family, we extend our deepest sympathy.

Mr. Speaker, because of Chief Warrant Officer Four Chris J. Scherkenach's sacrifice for our country, I ask all Members of the U.S. House of Representatives to join me in recognizing his service in our nation's Armed Forces and remembering both his life and his dedication to the United States of America.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time, and I rise in very strong opposition to the Sanders amendment.

I chair the Subcommittee on Aviation, and I can say that we have been involved for a number of years. We have had a comprehensive 3-year study by the Federal Aviation Administration, and in February of 2005, we awarded a contract to provide automated flight services for the next 10 years by a competent contractor.

This competitive sourcing process was supported by the aircraft owners and pilots association. They are the primary organization that represents many of the 600,000 pilots that we heard the sponsor of the amendment refer to. They are the main users of flight service stations, private pilots.

Flight service stations do not control air traffic. Flight service stations receive and file flight plans and provide pilot weather briefings, en route communications, and search and rescue services to the general aviation pilots.

According to their pilots, again AOPA, and this is Phil Boyer, he said this is the way the current system works for the safety of our pilots and so-called security in the air: ``Any pilot who has been stuck on hold for 20 minutes trying to get a weather briefing can tell you, the system is overloaded and frequently non-responsive. The system had to change, and this is a change for the better.'' He also said, ``Pilots are going to be much better served and much safer.''

Now, private pilots do recognize that the current system that we have in place is antiquated and it is costing us more than $600 million a year. So the worst part about this is we are paying more and getting bad service, or no service, as the head of the Aircraft Pilots Association has said.

So this contract is estimated to save the taxpayers about $2 billion over the next 10 years and provide dramatically improved service. If this amendment passes, in fact, there will be no transition money; and on top of that, there will be a $350 million penalty for termination of the contract.

Under the FAA reform plan, $2.2 billion in taxpayers' dollars will be saved, and again we will have new technology to make the airspace for our general aviation pilots safer, with the best, most efficient, cost effective technology and, at the same time, we protect the employees that are in place.

Mr. Chairman, I urge Members to consider this amendment and defeat it.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for the time.

Mr. Chairman, I have been on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the House for some 13 years, most of that time on the Subcommittee on Railroads, and I always hear that Amtrak reform is right around the corner.

For the benefit of the gentleman who just spoke, in 1997, we put an Amtrak Reform Council, ARC, in place for some 4 years to 1991. They came up with a recommendation, and Congress ignored the recommendation. Yes, the problem is Congress. No, the problem is not just putting more money into Amtrak, as this amendment would do.

My colleagues heard the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), the Committee on Appropriations subcommittee chair, talk about the waste in Amtrak. The GAO just testified before our subcommittee again, for every dollar that we get in food and beverage service, every dollar, it costs us $2. We lose $2.

The service, if we had service, my colleagues heard the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) talk about subsidizing routes, the sunset limited, $466 per passenger. Now, it would not be bad if we paid that and, for example, the train got there on time. Do my colleagues know what its on-time performance was? 4.3 percent of the time it got there on time, an absolute disaster.

We had a hearing on the money that they lost in trying to put in high-speed service. We have neither high speed and we do not have service, an absolute farce, billions of dollars wasted, and no Acela high-speed service in the quarter.

Here is the GAO report. The President has called for this reform. The Amtrak Reform Council has called for this reform.

I am a critic of Amtrak, but I am a strong supporter. We need a nationwide system to supply an alternate transit system across the country, and we are behind countries. We are even behind Romania, which recently decided to privatize their railroad.

So I get letters. Here is a letter from an Amtrak employee. My colleagues heard some of the waste here. ``There are so many other ways Amtrak squanders its money,'' he wrote me, and this is just one. He said, $20,000 for a 7-week course of which most of the people never even completed. ``I still witnessed my share of a finely tuned money pit.'' Amtrak West headquarters, the fifth floor of the Port of Oakland's luxury high-rise, the place is full of employees but what they all do is a mystery. Then he says, We have another office 20 miles away. He said, I started to wonder if Amtrak owns stock in FedEx. They ship everything FedEx. He goes on and says they fly around the country on airline tickets, costing thousands of dollars each.

Here is the report of how we save money with Amtrak, not how we squander it.

Then we had the question of not just losing money but stealing money. Food service, over 135 employees were dismissed, resigned or disqualified for improper cash handling and 250 conductors stealing money. There is the report.

Give them more money. Go ahead, because we will be back here next year doing the same thing.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against the paragraph.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against the phrase ``to be derived from the airport and airway trust fund'' beginning on page 5, line 25, and ending on line 26.

This provision violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriation bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the paragraph.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against page 11, line 22, beginning with ``; for grants'' through page 12, line 1, ending with the word ``code.''

This provision violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriation bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a further point of order against the paragraph.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against page 12, line 12, beginning with ``provided further'' through line 17 ending with the word ``program.''

This provision also violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriation bill in violation of the House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the paragraph.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the phrase ``notwithstanding any other provision of law'' on page 16, line 8.

This phrase violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against section 110. This provision violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law, and therefore, it constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against section 112. This provision violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law, and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against section 130.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against page 28, line 15, beginning with ``provided further'' through page 29, line 2.

These provisos violate clause 2 of rule XXI. They change existing law which constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, could I inquire as to what page that would apply to, through what page?

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

Mr. Chairman, this is an important amendment because it does do away with the reforms that this appropriation subcommittee has imposed on Amtrak. As I said earlier, I have been on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for some 13 years. I watched for more than 4 years when they had an Amtrak reform council look at the operations of Amtrak and come up with recommendations that were made to Congress; and, sure enough, they ignored those recommendations.

This is a tough business to reform Amtrak and eliminate some of these politically popular routes. But the cost of those routes, as we have heard, range from $242 subsidizing per ticket on the Sunset Limited, some $466 to run the route that we saw here. Some of those go into my State, Florida. But it is time to reevaluate those routes, and we must eliminate them if we have to, only by legislation, because the reform which we have tried to do through an advisory council and commission to look at this in an independent study, all that has failed.

I do support the President in really drawing a line in the sand and saying we must impose reforms on Amtrak.

Now, we have heard this analogy, and I chair the Subcommittee on Aviation, on how much we subsidize aviation. But every ticket that is sold by Amtrak is subsidized by $49, every single ticket. In aviation that is not the case, I say to my colleagues. We heard how much money goes in, but that money is raised by a 7.5 percent ticket tax. The next time you get your airline ticket, look at 7.5 percent, look at the other fees. There is a passenger facilitation fee, and that could be anywhere from a few dollars on up. There is an aviation security fee of $5. You hear the airlines complaining about how taxed their passengers are. The passengers are paying their full fare, including a fuel tax.

Amtrak pays no fuel tax, there is no passenger tax, there is no security fee. There is no contribution. Besides that, they are losing, on every ticket they sell, an average of $49.

Now, I am a strong supporter of mass transit, high-speed rail, rail as an alternative; and I do know that some of that has to be subsidized. I will vote to subsidize this. But a loss of nearly $500 a ticket, and that is what this amendment would do, will restore all those losing routes.

Now, why has Amtrak not changed out some of these routes? Let us be a little candid among friends here. Labor cut sweetheart deals so most of the Amtrak employees are going to get 7 years' salary and benefits assistance; some will get 5 years. There is a cost. We cannot eliminate one single route without paying those benefits that have already been negotiated. But at some time, we have to pay the piper, and sometimes we have to cut the losses.

Now, out in America right now, probably not watching the proceedings of this House, are millions of Americans who are working hard. It is hard for me to tell them to go out there and work even harder, maybe get another part-time job so you can send that money here to Washington, so we can have them waste it.

When they provide food service and take in a dollar, it costs them $2. They lost a third of a billion dollars in the past 3\1/2\ years on food service. When they try to put high-speed rail in, and I am a strong advocate of high-speed rail, we have neither high-speed and we do not have service. It is down the tubes. It was going 83 miles an hour. That is not high-speed service, even by our own standards which are, under Federal law, 120 miles an hour.

So let us make the reform that is necessary. The chairman and the subcommittee have done an excellent job in forcing some of these reforms that are long overdue. Let us defeat this ill-conceived amendment. Let us reform Amtrak. Let us provide good service, not a Soviet-style train endurance test for passengers, but modern, high- speed rail and long-distance service across the United States, and give service to passengers that do not have that service available, at the lowest cost to the taxpayers. We can do that.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

I also had the privilege of chairing the Criminal Justice Drug Policy Subcommittee before the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) and inherited those responsibilities, actually, from the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the Speaker of the House. All during that era, the Clinton era, we saw really the beginning of this incredible problem in Colombia.

During the 8 years of the Clinton administration, the other side of the aisle, even some of the folks that have spoken today, did everything they could to keep resources from going to Colombia; and when you do not have the resources to combat narcoterrorism, what happens?

I have a little map here, and it shows where the drugs come from. This is not a guessing game. We know from chemical analysis even the fields the cocaine and heroin came from.

So they blocked helicopters, they blocked assistance, they blocked eradication, interdiction, anything they could, because they did not want to harm the hair on a single leftist terrorist in that region.

But we are now trying to get a handle on that with the efforts of Speaker Hastert, with this President.

They said Plan Colombia has not worked, when kidnappings are down a third in Colombia; they say it has not worked when murder is down a third; it has not worked when pipeline attacks from 2000, which were at 177 that year, to 20 last year. It has not worked?

Human rights? My colleague is concerned about human rights? Tens of thousands of people died, judges, legislators, thousands of police were slaughtered, and their human rights were not considered while you blocked aid and assistance.

We have a President of the United States who has a firm policy, we have a Speaker who has developed Plan Colombia and we are initiating that. We have success in that land because we have a President who is also getting the resources to another president, in Colombia, who has a tough stance against narco-terrorism.

The drugs in the United States are still killing our young people. We had over 26,000 people die, the silent deaths on our street. Our biggest social problem. This is where our few dollars and resources need to go, and that is where the drugs are, at their source, and we can eradicate them.

Talk to one mother or father who has had a child die of a drug overdose and you will see the worth of what we are doing here today. We know where these drugs are. We can eradicate them. And we can do that continuing Plan Colombia in an effective manner and not having the legs cut out from under us when we have made such great progress.

I urge defeat of the McGovern amendment. I urge defeat of attempts to again thwart the effort to stop drugs coming in across our borders.

Mr. Speaker, Saturday, June 25th, marked 9 years since the terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers, the U.S. military housing facility in Saudi Arabia where 19 American servicemen were killed and hundreds wounded.

Four years ago, on June 21st, 2001, the United States indicted some of those who were responsible for those murders. While a few of these individuals have been identified, not one has been brought to trial yet. However long it takes, our country must continue to pursue and bring to justice all of those indicted and all those responsible for this murderous, terrorist act against our servicemen and our country. We must not rest until this has been accomplished.

Florida and our Nation lost too many innocent victims for this matter to be brushed aside.

Master Sergeant Michael G. Heiser, of Palm Coast, and Airman First Class Brian W. McVeigh, of DeBary, are 2 of the 19 heroes who left behind loved ones and families in my Congressional District. Their young lives were cut short when they made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. The United States must never rest until those responsible for these deaths are brought to justice.

We know that these surviving relatives and all the others who lost their loved ones continue to feel the pain of great loss. We know that they cannot rest--until justice prevails.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support both of the legislation and appropriation bill before us and also in strong support of the Capitol Visitors Center project. Having been very intimately involved in this project, I had the only two bills that were introduced and actually had congressional hearings on authorizing the visitors center, and then being the Speaker's designee to the Capitol Preservation Commission, which oversees this also on public

works. I followed this project from day one.

Let me just for the record set the record straight. First, about private money, we did start out raising private money. Mr. Chairman, the last fundraiser that was held to raise private money I participated in downstairs in the Speaker's dining room on the evening of Monday, September 10, 2001. As the Members know, our world changed and the project changed, and after that we put substantial money into the project. Correct, it then went to $265 million. There was money put in the project prior to that time because we had two police officers killed at the front door of the Capitol. Go back and read the testimony of the Sergeant at Arms where he described the scenario that we should have prevented if we had built the structure in advance. So that is why there was additional money put in.

If we look at the record, in October of 2001, we put in $38.5 million; and then in April of 2002, $33 million. Add that up, and it is about $70 million. It was all for security after September 11 to protect this, the people's House.

The additional $70 million for expansion of space, when we built the project it was supposed to be smaller. I insisted, as a developer and former real estate person, that it be larger; that we create as much shell space as possible, because we are not going to dig up the front yard of the United States Capitol every year. So we built all of that shell space.

In November of 2001, we decided to build out the additional space for the House of Representatives. It was a wise decision because we will save a tremendous amount of money. As a developer, I could tell my colleagues if we go back afterwards, it will cost us twice as much. So we actually saved money.

Other improvements are for utilities. Some utilities fell apart as we dug them up, and we could see some of the results; so we will actually save money in utilities.

This is a wise investment. It gives the people of the United States a place to visit, to see the history, the artifacts, and also deal with the capacity issue, because we could never fit them all in this wonderful historic building that is overcrowded, without even the basic accommodations for visitors like restrooms.

So I strongly urge the adoption of this bill and also every Member's strong support of the largest addition in the history of the Capitol for the people of the United States.

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

I rise in opposition to any further investigation of either what is taking place at Guantanamo Bay with our detainees or further investigation of Abu Ghraib.

I want to speak about Guantanamo first, because I heard some of the reports when we first brought detainees there, and I went down and visited. I walked among the prisoners, I saw the housing, I saw how they were treated. I was asked what I thought when I saw the whole thing, and I want to use my quote here on the floor. I said, ``I thought it was too good for the bastards.''

I stand here today appalled at my colleagues who, in fact, are concerned about the rights of mass murderers. And that is exactly what we have here. We have international mass murderers, enemy combatants. They had no consideration, in support of a regime, the al Qaeda regime and Osama bin Laden, who slaughtered thousands of people on our soil, and many of whom were both Americans and internationals.

What right did they respect of Barbara Olson, who worked for our Committee on Government Reform, whose plane crashed into the Pentagon that morning? And I remember Barbara. What right did they respect of Neal Levin, who I met with at the World Trade Centers, who was trapped, along with everyone who helped me and our Subcommittee on Aviation, who were all murdered on the morning of September 11 when they were in the Windows on the World restaurant? What right did they defend of those people?

How quickly we forget September 11. I am reading the book ``102 Minutes.'' I wish everyone would read it, about the thousands of people who were left trapped in the World Trade Center. What rights did these people who supported that activity exercise?

Abu Ghraib, if I hear one more thing about that and the actions of our military folks; someone described ``horrific torture.'' I saw worse things at fraternity houses in college than what our troops were involved in. And to continue the harassment.

The gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) brought into the Committee on International Relations two prisoners; one, I recall, was from Abu Ghraib. I did not see anyone from the other side there, I did not see anyone from the press there when they described their treatment under Saddam Hussein. Do my colleagues know how he dealt with overcrowding? He took them out and slaughtered them. I did not see anyone from the other side concerned about the rights of those prisoners.

One gentleman told us how he was taken from Abu Ghraib Prison; well, he described not only the beheadings, but the limb amputations, the pulling out of tongues, the electrical shocks. How dare anyone from the House or the other body compare the treatment our troops afforded this scum of the earth?

What about an investigation of the 300,000 mass graves that our troops have uncovered and the treatment that those people received.

Finally, again, that one prisoner, and no one here bothered on the other side to even attend the meeting with the prisoners to hear how Saddam Hussein treated them. He described how he was taken out, he and others, and they were all shot, and the bulldozer pushed over dirt on them; he was shot five times, and only managed to crawl away and somehow survive to tell how the other side truly tortures.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

I offer this amendment which transfers all of the funding for economic service officer positions in the Department of State, transfers their funds, $131 million for those positions, to the Foreign Commercial Service operation, which is under the Department of Commerce. I do so because this 5 or 10 minutes that we have here to discuss on this amendment is probably the only discussion we will have on this entire bill relating to our trade deficit and the inability of the United States to compete in international markets.

I would venture to say very few Members of Congress have a clue as to what the Foreign Commercial Service does or where it is positioned. The Foreign Commercial Service, which has been around for some time and has bounced around from the Department of Commerce to the Department of State, is our number one means of assistance to particularly medium and small businesses overseas to assist in promoting U.S. exports and businesses in those localities.

Our trade deficit last month, I believe, was $57 billion. We will exceed a trade deficit in the United States of over $600 billion this year. We only have 76 countries in which we have

Foreign Commercial Service operations. We only have officers in 76 countries. In 96 countries, the Department of State has that responsibility. I would not mind if the Department of State had that responsibility, but from my personal experience of dealing in international trade, our system of promoting, assisting, financing and negotiating in international trade is dysfunctional at best.

We have these 98 countries, and I will include this list as part of the Record, that have no Foreign Commercial Service operations. It is handled by the State Department. If I thought the State Department considered this a priority in promoting trade in U.S. business, or we had the best personnel to assist in doing business, I would not be here. Here is the response I got from the Department of State on the number of positions they have:

There are currently 1,319 Foreign Service officers with economics specialization. List of overseas economic positions and posts where the State Department performs the commercial functions are enclosed. As you can see, the number of economic positions overseas, only 497, is considerably less than the number of Foreign Service officers with an economic specialty, 1,319. The difference is accounted for by the fact that many economic officers are entry-level officers who in their first one or two tours in the Foreign Service fill rotational or consular positions. Other economics officers are stationed in Washington; others are participating in long-term training or performing other noneconomic jobs overseas, and so forth.

That is not a priority. We have the emerging markets around the world in which we have not a priority nor no Foreign Commercial Service officer operating. This is a simple amendment. It transfers those, sometimes they call them bean counters, and in some countries the economic officers do do a very good job, but I am saying in most countries we do not even have and in emerging markets we do not even have a Foreign Commercial Service officer.

Finally, I have a chart that shows the level of funding for international trade promotion and assistance positions and the deficit. As we keep the level of personnel dealing with assisting business and particularly medium and small business at the lowest possible level, you can see that our trade deficit explodes.

Mr. Chairman, 19 of 20 consumers in the future are outside our borders. I cannot fault the appropriators alone because this is also authorization responsibility, but it is multijurisdictional. But no one is taking it within their turf to do anything about this, so I propose today that we take the economic officers who do not have this as a priority in the Department of State and transfer them to the Department of Commerce under the Foreign Commercial Service Office.

Embassies at Which State Department Performs Commercial Function

africa

1 Abidjan

2 Addis Ababa

3 Antananarivo

4 Asmara

5 Bamako

6 Bangui

7 Banjul

8 Bissau

9 Brazzaville

10 Bujumbura

11 Conakry

12 Cotonou

13 Dar Es Salaam

14 Djibouti

15 Freetown

16 Gaborone

17 Harare

18 Kampala

19 Khartoum

20 Kigali

21 Kinshasa

22 Libreville

23 Lilongwe

24 Lome

25 Luanda

26 Lusaka

27 Maputo

28 Maseru

29 Mbabane

30 N'djamena

31 Niamey

32 Monrovia

33 Nouakchott

34 Ouagadougou

35 Port Louis

36 Praia

37 Windhoek

38 Yaounde

east asia & pacific

39 Apia

40 Bandar Seri Begawan

41 Dili

42 Kolonia

43 Koror

44 Majuro

45 Phnom Penh

46 Port Moresby

47 Rangoon

48 Suva

49 Ulaambaatar

50 Vientianne

europe

51 Ashgabat

52 Baku

53 Bishkek

54 Chisinau

55 Dushanbe

56 Ljubljana

57 Luxembourg

58 Minsk

59 Nicosia

60 Reykjavik

61 Riga

62 Sasrajevo

63 Skopje

64 Tallinn

65 Tashkent

66 Tbilisi

67 Tirana

68 Valletta

69 Vilnius

70 Yerevan

near east

71 Algiers

72 Beirut

73 Damascus

74 Doha

75 Manama

76 Muscat

77 Sanaa

78 Tripoli

79 Tunis

south asia

80 Colombo

81 Dhaka

82 Islamabad

83 Kabul

84 Kathmandu

western hemisphere

85 Asuncion

86 Belize

87 Bridgetown

88 Georgetown

89 Kingston

90 La Paz

91 Managua

92 Montevideo

93 Nassau

94 Paramaribo

95 Port au Prince

96 Port of Spain

97 St. Georges

98 Tegucigalpa

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Again, I stayed out here yesterday and today to make this point, because this is critical to the future economic development, the growth of jobs in this country. With that spirit in mind, I appreciate the gentleman's offer to look further at this proposal.

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 849 would transfer certain land, currently within the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area, to Clark County, Nevada. The land is to be used as a heliport for commercial helicopter air tours.

The transfer would only take place if certain conditions on the use of the heliport are met by Clark County.

The first condition is that the County must impose and collect a per passenger ``conservation fee'' of $3.00 for each passenger of a helicopter tour that passes over any portion of the Conservation Area.

The second condition requires the County to ensure that any helicopter tour originating or concluding at the heliport traveling over the Conservation Area fly on a certain flight path and at a specified altitude except for safety reasons.

For purposes of clarity, the conditions set forth in H.R. 849 are on the transfer of the land and should the County fail to fulfill the conditions; the land would either not be transferred or if already transferred would revert back to the United States.

Let us look at each of the conditions on the transfer of the land to Clark County.

The first condition, that the County impose and collect a per passenger fee, is problematic. Elsewhere in law, States or political subdivisions of States are prohibited from levying or collecting a ``tax, fee, or charge . . . exclusively upon any business located a commercial service airport [which includes heliports] . . . other than a tax, fee, or charge wholly utilized for airport or aeronautical purposes.''

Therefore, it seems that the County would be unable to fulfill the first condition of the land transfer as the fee would be imposed upon and collected from helicopter tour passengers for the management of cultural, wildlife and wilderness resources on public land in Nevada.

The second condition is also problematic. Again, this condition would require the County to ensure that certain flight paths and minimum flight altitudes are utilized by the helicopter tours.

It should be emphasized that this bill does not direct Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) action with regard to airspace management and control.

In fact, should the FAA determine that the flight path and minimum altitude requirements set forth in the bill are unsafe or otherwise operationally unwise, the County would have failed to meet a condition of the land transfer and the land would revert back to the United States.

To make this perfectly clear, only the FAA has the authority to manage and control the National Airspace. State, regional, county and other local government entities, not to mention other Federal departments and agencies, have no authority in this regard.

Thus, the second condition on the transfer of land to Clark County is clearly outside of the County's authority and control.

Therefore, given that Clark County may very well be unable to fulfill either of the conditions of the land transfer; it appears that H.R. 849 is legislating a nullity.

I thank my colleagues for the opportunity to be heard on H.R. 849 and to clarify the legislative record with regard to this bill and how it should be interpreted relating to the FAA and airspace management and control.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter into a colloquy with the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs of the Committee on Appropriations.

First of all, I want to take a moment to commend the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) and the committee for bringing this important pending bill to the floor and providing resources to our military and those who serve in our military. I thank him for his leadership in the United States House of Representatives and for his service to our Nation.

I had intended to offer an amendment to add $1.3 million to the Army National Guard construction account in order to complete the design of a joint National Guard Reserve Center in Daytona Beach, Florida. Last year, through the good work of this appropriations subcommittee, the Subcommittee on Military Construction appropriated $789,000 in fiscal year 2005 funding to begin the design, and that funding is now being depleted.

Mr. Chairman, this project is the Florida National Guard's number one priority in the 2012 to 2013, 5-year plan and will be included in the President's budget for the 2007 budget.

I am concerned that possibly cutting the funding or not providing the funding for this project now may negatively impact on the Florida National Guard's ability to move forward with this important project that is now some nearly 8 years behind schedule.

I would ask the gentleman from New York whether he can commit to working with me during the conference on this bill to ensure that funding or adequate attention and language is in the final bill.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. I must say that I enjoy serving with the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar). He certainly is one of the most knowledgeable people on transportation issues. He was working on it long before I came to Congress. We agree on many transportation issues. However, I think we may disagree on this particular action he is asking for the House to take.

To paraphrase him, he said we need to address the problem of people taking the Lord's name more in traffic than they do in church on Sunday. I am right with him. And I am trying to correct that situation.

Again, we agree that we need to move this process forward. This is the seventh extension. There are people waiting. There are jobs waiting. In some areas, unlike Florida, you only have a certain building season. But we have come to an agreement on a 30-day extension. We are about to appoint conferees and move forward with the process that will finish the job. But we do not want to finish the job and start on a shaky foundation. We would send the wrong message now if we put our position forward, the 283.9 or 284 billion, it is the House position.

Agreeing on 92 and sending a message to conference at this point, I submit, is premature. Why would you show your cards at this particular juncture in the conference process? We may be able to do better. We may not have the money to do the 92. We may be putting ourselves in a very difficult position to start out the conference in already dealing with an administration that we know is temperamental on this issue. So we need to move forward on a good solid foundation.

We do not need to pass this.

The other thing, too, I heard our majority leader address some folks from Florida, and he said in Congress the legislative process is something that is very important. He said they have a term for this in Texas. He said they called it ``strategey,'' just joking of course, for strategy. And I submit this is strategery, not good strategy, because we are not moving forward in a timely fashion.

Members have not been alerted to this action. Some Members, I think, have already departed the Chamber and are on their way to Memorial Day events back in their districts. So from a strategic standpoint, I think we make a mistake by even offering this at this time. I think at the right time with the right strategy that we could do better to move this process and also the dollars forward to build our Nation's infrastructure.