Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, as Veterans Day approaches, I rise today to pay tribute to the millions of brave troops who have worn our nation's uniform and particularly to the 700,000 who now live in Georgia.

Today's American veterans are part of a proud legacy that dates back to the founding of our nation, independence won with the blood and sacrifice of underfed, undertrained, underequipped colonists hungry for the taste of freedom. That bank of Patriots gave birth to the greatest nation in history.

Our 19th century veterans pushed our nation's boundaries across the continent, from sea to shining sea, and they patched our nation back together after it was ripped apart by a civil war that left more than 500,000 dead.

At the dawn of the 20th century, our veterans again led the way as the United States met its destiny as the greatest of world powers. We did not deploy our mighty forces to pillage the world's riches. Instead we put American lives and treasure on the line in the service of mankind, fighting the scourges of military dictatorships, fascism, communism and terrorism. Never before has the world's greatest power acted so selflessly and so compassionately on behalf of those in need from all points on the globe.

Our soldiers fought, bled and died from Pearl Harbor to Paris, from the Balkans to Baghdad, from Seoul to Saigon. They fought in defense of freedom; they fought on behalf of human dignity; they fought against genocide; they fought to right wrongs. Most important, they fought to protect the American people and their way of life.

On Veterans Day, we salute those who fought for this nation, from our senior veterans who delivered victory in WWII to our brave men and women coming home today from Iraq and Afghanistan. When the call of duty sounded, they answered. They put liberty over life, and they put their countrymen above themselves.

We know our veterans bear the scars of war, the pains of wounds physical, mental and emotional. We know they faced down horror, loss and sacrifice beyond compare.

And we know they did it for us. The American people cannot repay the debt we owe to those who served. We honor them on this Veterans Day 2009, and may we reflect on their greatness every time we raise the Stars and Stripes, every time we sing the National Anthem, every time we place our hands on our hearts to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and every time we thank God for the birthright of liberty we inherited as Americans.

Mr. Speaker, this majority has just run a $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009, even as we are told a new health care entitlement will reduce red ink by $871 billion over 10 years. But let's look at history and what has happened since the government has got involved in health care.

Prior to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health care inflation ran slightly faster than overall inflation. In the years since, medical inflation has climbed 2.5 percent faster than the cost increases elsewhere in the economy.

Let's start with Medicaid. House Ways and Means in 1965 estimated that the first 5 years' cost would be $238 million. Instead, it hit more than $1 billion, and costs have kept climbing since.

Let's look at this. In 1965, Medicare, another government program, was projected to cost $12 billion by 1990. It cost $110 billion. Medicare hospital, 1965 projected 1990 costs, $9 billion; actual cost, $67 billion.

Let's look at history and see what happens when the government gets involved.

Madam Speaker, as the leader of coalition forces in a faltering Afghanistan, the United States appears indecisive at this critical juncture in the long war.

Madam Speaker, we owe it to the Afghan people, the Pakistani people, our allies and our own national security interests and our courageous U.S. troops to stiffen our spines and heed the recommendations put forth by General McChrystal. As a leading expert on counterinsurgency efforts, General McChrystal has rightly put the focus on winning over the Afghan civilians to our side by providing the security they so desperately want for their families and villages.

As an American and as a Member of this House, I hate to put U.S. soldiers in harm's way, whether it is on our own shores or halfway around the world. We all wish that we could remove our troops from the day-to-day, face-to-face conflicts with the insurgent forces in Afghanistan. We all wish that we could finish this job by dropping bombs on the bad guys from the safety of unmanned drones or conducting surgical strikes with Special Forces. These counterterrorism efforts hold much appeal and those tactics can win in many battles.

But there is a problem. Our own very recent experiences teach us that counterterrorism alone can't win this wider war.

We faced a similar crossroads in Iraq 3 years ago. American forces had suffered heavy casualties. The Iraqi Government was inept and corrupt. The Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda in Iraq ravaged the country. Our Nation then took a new course. We took a risk, a highly controversial one at the time, Madam Speaker, but that risk turned out to be an investment in Iraq's future, and it is an investment that has paid off for the United States today. Today we have a measure of stability that no one could have predicted 3 years ago. As a result, we are positioned to draw down our troop levels there.

In fact, when President Obama was a candidate, he saw the success in Iraq as a chance to redirect our attention to Afghanistan. Then-Senator Obama said in August 2008: ``Ending the war will allow us to invest in America, to strengthen our military and to finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and the border region of Pakistan. This is the central front in the war on terrorism. This is where the Taliban is gaining strength and launching new attacks. This is where Osama bin Laden and the same terrorists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on our own soil are hiding and plotting 7 years after 9/11. This is a war that we have to win. And as Commander in Chief, I will have no greater priority than taking out these terrorists who threaten America and finishing the job against the Taliban.''

As President, Obama issued an important policy statement on Afghanistan in March. He said his goals were to ``disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their return to either country in the future.'' In that statement, President Obama said explicitly that we cannot allow the Afghan Government to fall again to the Taliban because ``that country will again be a

base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.''

These are clear words, Madam Speaker. Those words, if they were U.S. policy, would give solace to our allies, to the Afghans, to the Pakistanis and to our own troops taking the fight to the Taliban. But our actual intentions in Afghanistan are not clear, even though General McChrystal's report states explicitly that without more troops in the next year, the United States faces mission failure where defeating the insurgents is no longer possible. That's the view of a respected general, the commander handpicked by President Obama, who works in Kabul and travels around Afghanistan every day.

So why is it that the Obama administration is sending mixed signals to the American public and to the rest of the world? Why is his national security adviser on Sunday morning talk shows saying that Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling to the Taliban? After many years of fighting in Afghanistan, after many years of two steps forward and one step back, we cannot flinch. We must let our allies, our military and the Afghans and Pakistanis know right now that we will do what it takes to provide stability and security.

Governing is about tough decisions. We must make the tough decisions to give General McChrystal the troops he needs to finish this mission. We must protect the population and assure them that we're not going anywhere. That's our only hope of winning over the Afghan people who fear that if they work with us, they'll be slaughtered by the Taliban when the Americans leave. As President Obama said just 2 months ago: ``This will not be quick nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.''

Let's hope that he has not forgotten.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Bill Harrison, the recently retired president of the Coweta County Development Authority, who died September 29 after a battle with cancer.

I had the great privilege of knowing Bill personally. He was a professional, a dedicated husband and father, an avid outdoorsman, and an all-around great guy.

He put his heart and soul into bringing new businesses and opportunities to Coweta County, and that's how he and I became acquainted. He would take business recruits under his wing like a mother hen. He would often bring them into my district office personally, assuring they had a friendly, familiar face in the room and that they got all of their needs met and all of their questions answered. He also saw to it that nothing got lost in translation between us Georgians and our international business partners.

As the Newnan Times-Herald reported upon his death, ``Harrison assisted with locations or expansions of numerous companies, including PetSmart, SYGMA Networking, Kingwasong, Winpak Films, D&H Distribution, and MC Precast. He considered the planned location of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America to Coweta County the highlight of his professional career.''

It's fitting that his crowning achievement will be a center to fight the ravages of cancer, the disease that took him from us much too soon. The cancer treatment center will bring at least 500 new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact for Coweta County.

When Bill retired this summer, the Times-Herald editorialized: ``Bill Harrison is a good guy. If he were in an old western movie, he would be wearing a white hat. . . . When Harrison took the economic development job in Coweta, our community's industry-recruiting effort was a mess. It was fragmented. There was no single go-to person or organization. It had gotten so bad that prospects would simply look elsewhere. That changed after Harrison was hired to preside over the Development Authority and that group became the go-to agency here.''

Bill was more than a fierce advocate for the community; he was also a beloved figure. On a web site set up for his family, more than 2,000 people expressed their condolences.

All of Coweta County mourns the loss of our dear friend Bill Harrison. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife of 43 years, Virginia Heitzman Harrison, and their family.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to stand with my colleagues about this language that was put in the conference committee report, and I am looking at the press release now: ``Conference Committee Adopts Shelby Water Wars Amendment.'' I just want to give a little warning to some other Members of this because, not only would the judges' ruling about the Tallapoosa Basin and the Chattahoochee Basin--it also mentioned that because this drinking water was nonauthorized, and who would ever have thought we would have to authorize the ability for humans to have drinking water out of their water source, it also is going to affect 17 other States with approximately 42 Corps impoundments in their States.

If they do not believe that this will be used as a test case and a model for others to file suit with the Endangered Species Act or whatever for people taking unauthorized drinking water out of those water sources, they are very much confused. This bill needs to be defeated. This conference report needs to be defeated. We need to go back to conference. We need to get this language out. I hope that other Members in this body who have these impoundments located in their States understand the consequences this language could have for them if this conference committee report is passed in this body and goes to the President's desk for signing. Because if you don't believe this isn't going to be brought up in some of these court cases, you're just fooling yourself. So I would like to ask the other Members of this body to join me and my colleagues in voting against the conference report.

Madam Speaker, times of crisis make or break reputations. My home State of Georgia experienced such a crisis in the past 2 weeks, with rainfall and floods believed to set the benchmark for a 500-year period.

Last week President Obama declared parts of Georgia a disaster area, opening up Federal aid, and the House of Representatives paid tribute to both the victims of the flood and the courageous emergency workers who put their own lives on the line to protect lives and property.

Tragically, despite our best efforts, at least 10 Georgians died in those floods. Seven of those deaths were in Douglas County, part of which I represent. The State of Georgia estimates that 20,000 homes suffered extensive damage, thousands were at least temporarily homeless, and damages have reached $500 million and could rise from there.

The worst destruction occurred in the upper Chattahoochee River basin. Because the rising water flowing down the river could have easily snowballed and ravaged areas south of West Point Dam, we're fortunate that areas of west Georgia didn't experience devastation on the scale seen in north Georgia and metro Atlanta.

While areas southwest of Atlanta did see some inevitable flooding during the heaviest rainfalls on record, counties south of West Point Lake benefited from the excellent management of the lake by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In recent years the Corps of Engineers has battled both extremes from divvying up sacred water resources during a painful drought in 2007 to taming raging floodwaters in recent weeks.

The Corps has performed important water management tasks that most Americans take for granted. The Corps takes abuse when it has to issue tough decisions, but its many good works go unnoticed.

I want to correct that oversight today. The Corps management of the basin and specifically West Point Lake during the floods unquestionably saved lives and property. The Corps has acted with foresight and skill, and my constituents in west Georgia benefited from the actions immensely.

When heavy rains began to fall in north Georgia and metro Atlanta, the Corps prepared early for the deluge of water heading downstream and strategically released water from the lake to create more storage capacity. A leading expert on West Point Lake, Joe Maltese of LaGrange, called the Corps' early maneuvering ``brilliant.''

``Throughout the week of the floods, the Corps used the water storage capacity it had been given to its fullest and held nature's fury back to protect as much and as many as they could downstream below West Point Dam,'' Maltese said.

The Corps walked a tightrope trying to assure the dam held back all it could against a mighty surge, and they succeeded.

Even though this year's flood set the 500-year benchmark, the Corps managed to keep the dam below record levels set in 2003 while at the same time regulating releases to prevent massive flooding below the dam.

Residents of Troup County, the county where West Point Lake is, have stood united in their praise of the Corps of Engineers. The LaGrange- Troup County Chamber of Commerce West Point Lake Committee gave the Corps a sincere thank you. And the city of West Point, which did suffer some flooding, is grateful that the Corps of Engineers prevented the worst from happening. ``The Corps did an excellent job controlling the river,'' said West Point police chief David Kerr.

To that, I would like to add my gratitude and congratulations to the fine men and women of the Corps of Engineers for their efforts during a trying time for Georgia. When crisis hit, these public servants stood ready and able. When reputations could be made or broken, they made theirs. We will never know how many lives were saved by their actions, and for that we're all grateful. And the people of west Georgia want to commend the Army Corps of Engineers.

Thank you for yielding.

I did want to bring the substance. We were talking about the rule of law.

Speaker Pelosi, after the 2006 election, made a comment. She said, This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.

To my friend from Texas, we know we've been here many times talking about the Rangel rule where Chairman Rangel was found to not have paid his taxes and then had his accountant figure out what he felt like he did owe and sent it in without penalties and interest and other things.

Then we had Secretary Geithner who did not pay his self-employment taxes and some other taxes on more than one occasion. And this is something that the American people are wanting to know where this most honest, most ethical Congress, most open Congress is at.

I just wanted to kind of bring that up to remind the people that we are not special in this body right here. We need to be operating under the rule of law and be under the same consequences that every American is under.

Let's talk about ACORN and what the bill is that Leader Boehner and Ranking Member Issa have introduced.

We might want to remember that last week the House voted about 345-79 for an amendment to bar the Federal funding of ACORN, but we need to go

further than that. We need to pass a stand-alone bill. And that's what this H.R. 3571 does, the Defund ACORN Act.

No Federal contract, grant, cooperative, or agreement or any other form of agreement may be awarded to or entered into with ACORN. No Federal funds may be given to ACORN. No Federal employee may promote ACORN, including some ACORN State chapters, organizations with financial stakes in ACORN, and organizations that shared directors or employees with ACORN.

And Judge, my friend from Texas, I am glad to announce the great Governor of the great State of Georgia has canceled the contract that the State had with ACORN.

So people are starting to understand that when you have an organization that not only these videos exposed, but even the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found ACORN had committed a list of offenses: voter fraud, tax evasion, obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting embezzlement, investment fraud, use of taxpayer funding for partisan political activity, Department of Labor violations.

You know, ACORN should not be allowed to get off with just an internal audit. They need to be looked at much deeper than that. An internal audit for ACORN is the same as asking Secretary Geithner to investigate Chairman Rangel. So we need to go further with that.

ACORN has received hundreds of millions of dollars. We should be more responsible to the people of this country, the hardworking people of this country that pay their taxes that we would want to give it away to organizations such as this.

Right now, I'll be glad to yield to our friend from--I'll yield back the time to you, Judge, and then you can yield. But thank you for giving me this time.

Well, thank you for yielding the time, and I don't know if we're going to get back to ACORN.

Then I will save this for later. Let me just say that the Federal Reserve, think about this for a minute. Under the TARP program, the Federal Reserve got $700 billion. We gave them $787 billion in the

Obama stimulus package. As you mentioned, that's over $1 trillion. Judge, a lot of people don't realize how much $1 trillion is. If you took $1 trillion and converted it into seconds, 1 million seconds is 11 days, 1 billion seconds is 32 years, 1 trillion seconds is 32,000 years, 32,000 years is 1 trillion seconds. And so we've given them over $1 trillion, and they don't want to be audited. I think that this is something that I hope that Chairman Frank, I'm assuming this is going through Financial Services on a hearing that they're going to have Friday, 290 cosponsors, that is enough to pass a piece of legislation here under suspension.

So I certainly hope that the Speaker and the Democratic leadership will once again kind of honor her statement here: ``We will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history'' by letting us have a vote on auditing the Federal Reserve.

The American public deserves the same independent audit accountability from the Fed that they expect from their local bank. The Feds are going out and auditing our local banks every day, Judge, putting a lot of them out of business, putting them on notice that they need to change the way that they're doing business. If they're going to go out and audit our local banks, we certainly need to audit them to make sure that they're doing things by the rule of law and in a commonsense way and in the way that the American people expect them to do with their hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

With that, I yield back to the gentleman.

So if the gentleman would yield for just a second.

Are we going to introduce a new legislation called the Geithner rule?

We've got the Rangel rule, and I wonder how many people have, when they returned their money to the IRS and said, I'm claiming the Rangel rule, the Geithner rule is one that definitely people should be concerned about.

Today in my office I had two of my dear friends, I had Coach Mike Pickett who came in and coached me in high school and another guy that I went to school with, Mike Sorrow that Coach Pickett coached, and they came in to talk to me just about some of the issues that we were facing up here.

One of the things that Coach Pickett said was he said, I'm mad as heck. He said, they're cutting my Social Security, and they've got a plan to cut $500 billion out of the Medicare, he said, and we've got people in Congress that is not even paying their taxes. And of course he was talking about Chairman Rangel. We didn't bring up Secretary Geithner, but I'm sure that would have made him double mad. That would have made his blood pressure even worse to think that the Secretary of the Treasury has got this kind of tax concerns.

I go back to this, what Speaker Pelosi said, you got to remember that the U.S. Senate approved this gentleman, confirmed him to be a member of the Cabinet.

This is the thing, Judge, that the American people are tired of. And I had one lady tell me the other day at a town hall meeting, she said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I think the American people as a whole are sick and tired of being sick and tired of seeing how people in politics, in elected office feel that they're better than the average hardworking American person out there that is paying his taxes.

Now, I've had penalties assessed on me before. I think that probably most Americans have had penalties and interest assessed to them for some reason or another. This is unbelievable. In fact, we should be above even the least bit of doubt of what we're doing. He should have paid the penalties anyway. If he had been late, he should have paid the penalties and the interest.

Many people may not know this, that when they hear this name on TV, they don't understand that he is the Secretary of the Treasury. He is somebody that is over IRS. And with these findings and the fact that he has not been able to have to pay some of the penalties and the interests that most Americans would have to pay if they were delinquent on their taxes, and especially using your child's time at an overnight camp in three different years, surely he was made aware of that in 2001, but he did it again in 2004 and again in 2005. Surely somebody from the IRS must have told him in that 4-year period that that was not a legal deduction or either he didn't file his taxes.

So, Judge, I appreciate you bringing this back up, and I look forward to being a cosponsor, as I was with the Rangel rule, on the Geithner rule.

Well, I thank you and my congratulations go to Mr. Baird and to the Chair, Mr. Minnick, for pushing this, along with Greg Walden, the gentleman from Oregon, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson).

In full disclosure, my friend from Texas and Iowa, in full disclosure, when the Republicans were in charge, we did the same thing. We rushed things through, and Mr. Baird, the gentleman from Washington, I think has had this 72-hour resolution in before when we were in charge, and so my hat's off to him for continuing to do this. I think he now has about 178 signatures. Mr. Walden who has a discharge petition has got signatures. We need 218.

So if anyone were watching this, if anyone were watching this and if we could speak to them from this floor, I would say make sure your Congressperson has signed this, because I think this is very important that not only the people voting on this have 72 hours to look at it but the people that it's going to affect.

I think sometimes we lose sight in this body that when we pass a law, it doesn't just affect the Members in this Chamber. It affects all 300 million people in this country, and so we need to make sure that the people that are going to be affected by the legislation that we're passing has an opportunity to read it.

Is everybody going to read it? I doubt it very seriously. Are all the Members of this body going to read it? I doubt it very seriously, but at least they can be held accountable and we can be held accountable for our votes, and people saying, Well, you had 3 days to read it, don't tell me it was something you would rush through. They've got 3 days to read it, and so I commend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson).

I commend Mr. Walden for trying to do the discharge petition, and I think we have about five people from the minority party that has signed that discharge petition, and I want to commend them because that's a courageous act on their part because, as we know from being in the majority at one time, leadership does not like you signing those

discharge petitions.

But this is something that needs to be brought to the floor. This is something that I think the American people are entitled to have some accountability for from their Members of Congress, and so this goes back to that I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

And so we need to do this, and again, I hope that this is something that we can get the discharge petition through or, if not, that Speaker Pelosi would just bring this bill to the floor and let us vote on it.

A.m., a.m.

No, you said p.m.

I thank my friend from Texas for yielding.

A czar is something that I've been getting a lot of questions about lately. Everywhere I've been in Georgia's Third Congressional District, I'm starting to get questions about the czars. People are wondering who these 34 or 35 czars are. We have already had one exposed to the extent that he eventually resigned.

People are starting to understand more and more that these czars are being appointed by the President with no confirmation by the Senate. And they're beginning to say, hey, how is this happening? What's going on here? How long are they going to serve? Do they work directly for the President? Who are they accountable to? What if they have some type of job that's under Mrs. Napolitano or under Geithner, or whatever? Who do they report to? What's the deal? They would report directly to the President.

And so we need, really, sunshine on all the appointments, but especially, as the gentleman from Louisiana, H.R. 3569, at least a sunset on all these czars. This is something that the American people are very inquisitive about.

I think that because of the number of these czars and because of some of the really Communist views and really ultra left-wing views that some of these czars have that are being exposed is just bringing more and more attention to it. And I think the American people want some accountability. I'll go back to the statement, they're sick and tired of being sick and tired of more government being stacked on.

We've got 10 percent unemployment nationwide. We've got some areas with 15, 16, 17, 20 percent unemployment. The only jobs that are growing right now are in the Federal Government. That's the only thing that's growing.

With that, Judge, I hope that anybody who could be watching might encourage their Representative to look at H.R. 3569.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a fallen American patriot.

Thousands of my constituents lined the streets of Peachtree City, Georgia, this week, waving American flags to honor the late Sergeant First Class Shawn Patrick McCloskey. The sergeant, returning home to his final resting place, died while serving in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.

Before joining the service, Sergeant McCloskey worked for a construction company in Fayette County. Like many of his fellow soldiers, he was a regular American, going to work every day and providing for his family, when he decided to join the military in 2002. At a great time of anguish for our Nation, he heard the call to duty and answered it.

Sergeant McCloskey became a Green Beret in 2004, and his valor won him many medals and awards, including the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and the National Defense Service Medal.

Our Nation mourns the loss of each soldier sacrificed on the battlefield. Today, we remember and grieve this great American hero, Sergeant First Class Shawn McCloskey. He died so that we and his fellow Americans could continue to live in freedom.

We thank the McCloskey family for their gift to us. May God bless them during this hour of grief.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a fallen American patriot.

Thousands of my constituents in Georgia's 3rd Congressional District lined the streets of Peachtree City, GA, this week, waving American flags, to honor the late SFC Shawn Patrick McCloskey. The sergeant, returning home to his final resting place, died while serving in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.

Sergeant McCloskey, 33, suffered fatal injuries after he was hit by a roadside bomb Sept. 15 while on patrol in Ghur Ghuri. SFC Bradley Bohle of Maryland and SSG Joshua Mills of Texas also died in the attack.

Before joining the service, Sergeant McCloskey worked for a construction company in Fayette County. Like many of his fellow soldiers, he was a regular American, going to work every day and providing for his family when he decided to join the military in 2002. At a time of great anguish for our Nation, he heard the call to duty and he answered it.

After Special Forces training, Sergeant McCloskey became a Green Beret and performed intelligence work in Colombia. When he died, he was serving his third tour in the Global War on Terror. His meritorious service won him many medals and awards, including the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and the National Defense Service Medal.

Our Nation mourns the loss of each soldier sacrificed on the battlefield. But there is no tribute we can give that eases the pain of the Gold Star families. Sergeant McCloskey is survived by his wife Jessica and two children, Katie and Collin, and also his parents Patrick and Kathryn McCloskey of Fayetteville.

Today, we remember and grieve this great American hero, SFC Shawn McCloskey. He died so that we, his fellow Americans, could continue to live in freedom.

We thank the McCloskey family for their gift to us. May God bless them during their hour of greatest need.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be removed as a cosponsor of H. Res. 648.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to our guest chaplain for the day here in the House, the Reverend Dr. Benny Tate. Dr. Tate has served the members of Rock Springs Congregational Methodist Church in Milner, Georgia, for 20 years, and I'm honored to count him as a friend.

Dr. Tate is a leader among God's followers. He's well known in Georgia for delivering powerful, informative, and even life-changing messages from the pulpit of his church and from behind the microphone of his radio show, Apples of Gold, which is broadcast statewide on 15 stations.

Rock Springs Congregational Methodist Church has thrived during Dr. Tate's tenure. The church has grown from 35 members when he took the helm 20 years ago to more than 4,600 worshippers today.

The church has put those resources into the service of God's people and the church's community. Every day, Rock Springs teaches the next generation to live by biblical principles at Rock Springs Christian Academy. Dr. Tate's church also conducts a prison ministry and a nursing home ministry, and it sponsors a medical clinic for the uninsured. Georgia's Third District is privileged to have wise and selfless religious leaders such as Dr. Tate. It's a great honor to have him with us here today.

I want to thank my friend from Texas in the spirit that you are doing this. And I think you are doing this in the right spirit, that it is nothing personal against anybody. All we are saying is

that we feel like what the President said back in February of this year should be lived up to by the Members of his party that are in control of this House.

It is interesting that you brought up the Caribbean trip and the fact that the chairman of the investigation of this Caribbean trip to my friend from Texas was a participant in one of these Caribbean trips. That seems to be a little bit of a conflict of interest in itself.

And then, as you mentioned, some of these are in the hands of the House Ethics Committee; they are being investigated. But Mr. Rangel has given political contributions to three of the five Democrats that are on this panel that are investigating him.

And so there seems to be some conflict of interest. And as the gentleman stated and my friend from North Carolina stated, I think the American people want to be free from any sort of insinuation that there could be some corruption, not only from his filings or his reporting of his assets and liabilities as we are required by the House rules, but in this investigation.

And I think it's very interesting that, and I am sure the gentleman from Texas will get into it later, but I would like to bring up that under H.R. 3200, when this bill, the health care bill, went through Mr. Rangel's committee, the Ways and Means Committee, who was looking for revenue to pay for this, that it was interesting that they came up with some new tax laws that would actually punish those who failed to alert the IRS to potentially questionable tax exemptions, those people who are willing to come clean and kind of tell them yourself if they find out that something has been in error, bar the IRS from waiving penalties against taxpayers who clearly erred in good faith.

And I think this goes back to what my friend from Texas was talking about and the fact that Mr. Rangel has acknowledged that this was a mistake, and that he paid his taxes, but there was no penalty and interest. Yet, it seems unbelievable that in this legislation that came out of his committee that he wants to almost double the fines in those instances.

In fact, one provision of the measure would double the fine against the taxpayer from 20 percent of the underpayment to 40 percent. And this goes back to what the President's statement said, you know, we don't need to have one set of standards for those people who are powerful. And nobody can deny the power of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in this House versus that of the ordinary person, the guy that works every day and is paying his taxes and that may have made some type of mistake. We all make mistakes.

That brings us back to the House rules. And we are talking about being a country of laws. And this body certainly should live by the laws that it sets for itself in the reporting.

And I am sure that many of us in here have had to amend these things or think of something and will amend it. But when you amend it for twice of what it was of things that you forgot, and there is a whole list of the things that Chairman Rangel said that he had just forgot to list, but some of those were pretty eye-opening things that he had forgotten.

And it not only goes to him, but his staff that help him write legislation. And certainly one of them, I think, is his legal staff, one is his chief, that have gone back and actually filed amendments back since 2002. And so I think that just under the cloud of this suspicion, that the right thing for Chairman Rangel to do would be to step down until this investigation is complete. And I don't think that's too much to ask.

And there is a lady that writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that I have not agreed with a lot. But in this case, I do agree with her. Her name is Cynthia Tucker.

I would like to read for the Record the comment that she made on September 4 of this year.

``Rangel ought to do the honorable thing and step down. Just last week, he amended financial disclosure forms to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income he earned between 2002 and 2006. He forgot a Merrill Lynch account valued between $250,000 and $500,000.''

I don't know about my friend from Texas, but if I had that much money, I don't know that I would forget about it.

``He neglected to mention tens of thousands in rent from a New York brownstone he once owned, and his ownership of tens of thousands of dollars in municipal bonds also slipped his mind.''

This comes from a very liberal writer for the AJC, and there are many more from the Buffalo News, the Washington Post and so on and so on, of people that see this for what it is and the fact that under this cloud of suspicion, the right thing for the chairman to do would be to step aside until the air can be cleared and this investigation can be completed.

Again, I want to thank my friend from Texas for bringing this up and the spirit in which he is bringing it up. I have had a lot of constituents ask me if they could claim the ``Rangel rule'' on their tax.

So my friend from Texas has certainly got that message out. We don't know what the outcome of this will be, but I think the eyes of this country are on this one particular interest, to see how we handle it and how we handle ourselves.

With that, I yield back.

Mr. Speaker, Democrats have a 70-vote majority in this House. They have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. They have a President with high personal popularity ratings. They don't need Republicans to pass their agenda. They remind us of this often, changing the House rules whenever we manage to score a tactical victory. Yet, Democrat leaders would have Americans believe that Republicans are obstructing passage of their health care legislation for political purposes.

If we had the power to stop the health care legislation, why didn't we Republicans stop the stimulus bill that has run up debt without creating jobs? Why didn't we stop the cap-and-trade bill that killed hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs and tax every American that owns a light switch? Why not? Because Democrats have the votes to pass whatever they like.

The health care agenda has hit the rocks not because of Republican politics, but because of Democratic policy. Americans know a government takeover of health care won't bring down costs; it will simply raise taxes, kill jobs, and lower quality of care. The killer of this bill is not politics but policy.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Eddie Ball, who retired as the director of the Emergency Management Agency of Coweta County, GA, in September 2008 after nearly 20 years of service.

Mr. Ball shepherded the county's emergency response agency through an important time of growth and progress. He oversaw implementation of the county's 911 operating system, and he managed the day-to-day emergency response network. During his tenure, 911 calls in the county increased from less than 33,000 per year to more than 100,000 per year.

As leader of the agency, Mr. Ball served on the front lines of saving lives and treasure. His agency provided the most basic and most important government service: keeping people safe.

On occasion, the call to service would border on the bizarre. According to a 2006 article in the Newnan Times-Herald, Mr. Ball sometimes had to respond to Bigfoot sightings. He's even credited with coining the name ``Belt Road Booger'' after residents deluged county officials with reports of a large, hairy, two-legged critter roaming the Belt Road area on the west side of Newnan. (Mr. Ball theorized the ``Booger'' was actually a local, eccentric, now-deceased man who roamed the roadside.)

For his dedication to solving problems that ranged from the normal to the paranormal, Mr. Ball was recognized this year by the Georgia General Assembly, which noted his ``significant organizational and leadership talents, his remarkable patience and diplomacy, his keen sense of vision, and his sensitivity to the needs of the citizens.''

I ask my colleagues in the House to join me in saluting Eddie Ball, the longest serving Emergency Management Agency director in the history of Coweta County. On behalf of the people of Georgia's Third Congressional District, I thank him for his service and I wish him health and happiness in his retirement.