Floor Statements

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

Mr. Chairman, I am always reluctant to rise in opposition to my colleague from North Carolina, because he is my close colleague from North Carolina. He is right next door to my congressional district, well, one county removed, I guess. So it's burdensome when I have to rise in opposition to his amendments.

But this one I feel strongly about. First of all, I have heard this argument several times today that this imposes some kind of tax on middle-class and low-income homeowners. I think, if you look into this, you will find that this money is either going into a trust fund, which we all support to increase homeownership and affordable housing in this country, or, as has been the case throughout Fannie and Freddie's existence, it is going to the shareholders of Fannie and Freddie.

There is no passing along of savings, no enhancement of credit to additional home buyers. This is a choice between whether the shareholders get it or if we were going to finance affordable housing by the government, whether the taxpayers would be paying for it, which this trust fund really shields the taxpayers from having put up this money. That's my first argument.

The second concern I have is that this trust fund would sunset in 5 years, and we have, as a Congress, if we pass this bill and it survives through the whole process, we will have legislated this into existence.

The effect of this amendment would be to allow the director of this new agency with all these enhanced powers that we have given to him, to unlegislate what we have legislated, which I think is an inappropriate delegation of our authority.

Now, it may be that we make a bad decision to legislate it, but we recognize that by putting a 5-year sunset in the provision and allowing ourselves to come back and correct our own decision if we find that the decision was erroneous.

It is not good from my vantage point, to say to a director of any Federal agency, we passed this as a policy matter, and we are going to give you the authority to reverse it.

Now, if some independent body were making this determination, it were a study, as the gentleman indicated, we agreed to a study by the GAO and put it in the bill. That would be an appropriate mechanism for us to get feedback where we could undo this at the end of 5 years or renew it at the end of 5 years, but that's different than saying to the director, you can go if you determine that A, B or C exists, and you can unwind what the Congress of the United States told you is the law of the land.

So if the gentleman were inclined to offer this as part of this study, which we approve, I think it might be an appropriate way to proceed, because it would help to inform us. The GAO would do the study, they would tell us what their results were, and if we agreed with them that it was a big enough mistake, then we could, even before the 5 years, we could go back and correct it. But I don't want any director of some agency to be passing legislation either directly or indirectly.

For that reason, I think this is not a good amendment. I encourage my colleagues to defeat it.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I want to suggest the second step of the dance, from my perspective, is the money goes into the trust fund; housing is built; that generates economic activity and reduces the deficit. So the second step to this dance is a deficit reduction using the trust fund, not under the gentleman's amendment though.

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

I won't take 5 minutes. I just want to remind Members that we've just spent an awful lot of time arguing about something that has nothing to do with this bill, and that there are a number of other amendments. And I fear that at some point tonight, we will regret this detour on which we have engaged.

It illustrates, and the gentleman who is in his first term here will appreciate why the rules of the House are constructed as they are. You don't have a provision to transfer this to the debt because if there were a provision in your amendment to transfer it to the debt or to Social Security, this amendment would be non germane to this bill. And without germaneness rules, you can go off and talk about, for as long as you want, as they do in the Senate sometimes, about anything that they want to talk about.

But the amendment that you have offered is marginally germane because you didn't do what you say you wanted to do. And you've made the point that, Mr. Chairman, he's made the point that he wanted to make, I'm sure, to his constituents.

So I would hope that we could get back to the amendments that are germane and relevant to this bill, and maybe finish this bill tonight. It would be wonderful.

Would the gentleman yield just long enough to let me clarify that I'm not arguing about whether this is important. I'm arguing about whether it is germane, and there is a difference. I acknowledge that it is important.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I have been reading the amendment. And the first part of the amendment really does exactly what the bill does, it tells the director to set up some guidelines, and that is what the director is authorized to do under this bill. So that's not troublesome.

But then you get to page 2 of the amendment, and then you have the requirement that there be a settlement procedure which is duplicative of the settlement procedure that already exists under law. You have the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act already in place. There is going to be a separate set of disclosures now related to this. And then the gentleman has the nerve to say that we are creating a bureaucracy and adding costs to the closing process.

I, for the life of me, can't understand why this would be a good idea.

The first part of the amendment is fine, because that is what the bill is all about. But it is already in the bill. Why would you have two disclosures, two sets of disclosures? We have had hearing after hearing after hearing about how to simplify the disclosure process at closings. Mr. McHenry from my own State offered an amendment to the bill in committee that tried to put forth a one-page disclosure statement, and here we are now with you all telling us we ought to have a second set of disclosures at a closing under this trust fund. It is inconsistent, and it is obvious what this is about, is to throw every stumbling block in the way that you can to discourage the trust fund.

We had an amendment earlier that was defeated in the last series of votes. Mr. Bachus offered the amendment, the ranking member of the full committee, that would have stripped the trust fund out of the bill. You lost that amendment. You lost that amendment. To go every other conceivable way to try to do identically what the overwhelming majority of this House has already said it is not willing to do seems to me to be counterproductive.

Let me just address one other issue. Mr. Price from Georgia raised this earlier. We have to at some point say, look, we have had more open rules out of committee under Chairman Frank's chairmanship this year than all of the last 8 years in this House, and at some point the notion that we can continue to bring bills to the floor under open rules when we have 15 different amendments that essentially say the same thing over and over again, and then

have one of your Members get up and say, well, because one of your Members was not allowed to amend his faulty amendment it is not an open rule, it is insulting to the Chair of this committee and it is insulting to this institution.

So this is yet another example to do what was failed to be done in the ranking member's amendment, and I ask my colleagues to defeat it once again.

announcement by the acting chairman

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the gentleman a question. Did the gentleman vote for the Bachus amendment that would have not provided any assistance to any of these people? Didn't the gentleman vote for that amendment?

Will the gentleman yield once again?

Is the gentleman saying that his community is just Texas? He's not worried about Mississippi or Louisiana, in the general context--

I object.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time. I join with my colleagues in expressing sympathy and paying tribute to our friend and colleague, Juanita Millender-McDonald.

When you serve in a body of 435 people, you get to know some of the Members by face, some by name, and then you get to know some close up and personal. When you serve as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, as I did for the last 2 years, you get to know your members on a close personal basis, and you get to know who will stand with you and fight, who will support you, who will cover your back for you. And that is how I got to know Juanita Millender-McDonald, because I knew she would stand and fight for what she believed in and she would be a friend.

So I remember her first and foremost as a friend and colleague, and pay tribute to her family and express my sincere condolences.

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

I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

The gentleman has indicated that this is about transparency. I really don't think it is about transparency. The underlying bill is about transparency and giving shareholders the information they need to at least express themselves about salary increases and golden parachutes, both of which I think all of my colleagues have acknowledged are problems that need to be addressed.

What this amendment is about is more about two things. One is the ability to express ourselves to each other as shareholders without impediments. That at some level is a free speech issue. The second thing this amendment is about is balance. What the gentleman would say to shareholders is, if you communicate with other shareholders about executive compensation or a golden parachute, then your vote gets disqualified. But if the corporate executive communicates with other shareholders about this issue, they can do it in an unimpeded way and without any consequence.

So if the gentleman were interested in making this a balanced amendment, what he would do is to add a provision that said, if the executives communicated with the shareholders about the vote, then they would be disqualified from getting any salary increase if they didn't disclose if they had spent anything other than a de minimis amount of money communicating with the shareholders. That would give it some balance. But right now, it is, as the gentleman from California has pointed out, a completely unbalanced equation. And it is not unlike what is already existing in this executive compensation arena because the scales are

totally unbalanced against shareholders, and the underlying bill attempts to at least in some measure restore a sense of balance and give shareholders more rights. It doesn't do it in an intrusive way. In fact, there are a number of proposals, including one on the Senate side, that would be a lot more intrusive than this bill.

I think this is the least intrusive way to do it, and I support the underlying bill and oppose the gentleman's amendment to the bill.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I am just trying to be clear, under your amendment, who would make this determination of whether it is outside the norm? Where would the information come from? Has anybody done a cost analysis of what it would cost to obtain this information?

Is that spelled out in your amendment?

Okay.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the chairman of the committee.

Reclaiming my time, that was exactly the point I was going to make.

So a broader amendment, were it germane to this bill, would probably be received favorably by all of us because we believe that fiduciaries in general should be reporting to the people that they are representing. But when you limit it only to pension plans, you eliminate foundations, you eliminate family trusts, and you eliminate a whole range of other fiduciaries that should have the same obligation. And singling out pension plans in this context I think is the wrong thing to do.

I am happy to yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Reclaiming my time, I am not sure that the SEC would have the authority to go outside without some legislation anyway. So a letter to the SEC saying, do this, would take two conditions: Number one, it would take the passage of this bill, and I presume the gentleman is not planning to vote for it. So you would be asking us to accomplish something for you without a quid pro quo.

Number two, it would take some legislation.

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

I am delighted that my chairman has reaffirmed that because my colleague from North Carolina would never take that piece of advice from me. I'm joking.

I oppose the gentleman's amendment because it is not broad enough to cover all fiduciaries. We ought to work on it in a different context, and I hope we will have that opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and was not able to get here to cast my vote on H.R. 1591. Had I been here, I would have voted for the bill.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia for the way he has framed this issue as a fiscal responsibility issue; although I think he frames it incorrectly in this case.

There really is no precedent in disaster situations if you go back throughout all the disaster situations for even requiring a local 10 percent match, and I think in another bill there will be language that would actually waive the 10 percent local match.

This component of it disallows the use of Federal money that has been granted to the local communities to provide that 10 percent match. I think the issue is going to go away in another context anyway, but it is counterintuitive to say to local communities whose complete tax base has been destroyed that they should somehow provide a 10 percent match for Federal funds that are given, and historically in disaster situations, there really has never been a 10 percent match at all because we have recognized that the distress situation that is created by a disaster makes it highly unlikely, improbable, impossible in many circumstances, that the 10 percent match would be able to be met by the local community.

You take that and multiply it times five, because this is five times the worst natural disaster that our country has ever had. So we should reject this five times, not just once.

Mr. Chairman, I have been listening with some interest to the comments on this amendment, and I think there would be substantially more credibility for the people who are advancing it if there had actually been some units constructed or even started in the 17 or 18 months since Hurricane Katrina occurred.

It is somewhat amazing to me how we have fought for so many years to do community development, and all of a sudden HUD and our colleagues here want to do community development, but they want to do it in this distress atmosphere where there is no housing, even for people to move back into who would participate and do work on the units.

Here is what has happened. The hospitals that had damage to the first floors went back in and put patients on the second, third and fourth floors. The housing, the public housing that had damage to the first floors, the Public Housing Agency, which, by the way, is in receivership under HUD, not an independent local housing authority, but in receivership, being operated by HUD, took the position that it would be unsafe to put public housing tenants back in those units by restoring second, third, fourth floors of the housing units.

Now, I can't figure out how it is safe to put medical patients on the second, third and fourth floors of hospitals where you have gone in and basically done some remedial stuff on the first floors of the hospitals, and yet it is unsafe to put people who have no housing to return to on the second, third, fourth floors, and restore the first floors of the public housing.

This is not an argument against doing longer-term community revitalization. That needs to happen, and we are supportive of that. But in this distress situation, there needs to be, first, restoration of the housing that was there so that people can move back in and get back into their communities and stop being scattered all over the country. And that should be the highest priority that we are pursuing, and that is what the bill does.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I am struck because I was here about 15 or 20 minutes ago debating the last amendment. We operate in a structure that requires us to deal with one amendment at a time, and when you deal with one amendment at a time, you kind of get segmented into these little places that you are. But the thing that is astonishing here in this opposition to this amendment is that if you look at it in the context of the last amendment and this amendment, I don't know what it is you all would have these people do for housing.

In the last amendment, you said we don't want to build or renovate or restore any public housing in New Orleans because we want to do community development in New Orleans, and that is going to take a long time, and it is counterproductive to restore public housing in New Orleans while we are doing this community development.

Then in the next amendment you say, well, we don't want to give people vouchers so they can in the meantime stay in Houston, Texas, or Charlotte, North Carolina, or California or anywhere else.

Then my colleague gets up and starts his comments by saying, well, we are all working toward the same objective.

I keep wondering what that objective is. Our objective is to house these people temporarily and long term. Then in the last amendment you cut off the notion that you would house them long term because you don't want to renovate public housing. In this amendment you are cutting off the notion that you will house them short term because you don't want to give them vouchers to have housing immediately.

So when and where are you planning to house these people? Now, there is, my colleague reminded me, a NASA facility in Houston. Maybe you would like for us to put them on a spaceship and send them out.

My friends, these are not welfare recipients. Even if you have these stereotypes about these people feasting at the trough, these are people who were displaced by a hurricane. Regardless of these images that you may have about welfare recipients, these are people, these are our United States citizens who were displaced by a natural disaster, and all we are trying to do is provide housing for them, both on an immediate basis and on a long-term basis.

They have had three or four cutoffs now where one day they are sitting in a hotel and they are told, your assistance is being cut off. Imagine what that does for family values and for the notion of stability.

Have a heart and let's pass this amendment so that we can provide some housing to these people.

Madam Speaker, in October of 2002 I worked meticulously with Members of the Congressional Black Caucus to craft a statement of principles that has proven to be so absolutely prophetic. Listen to what our 2002 principle said, and it will put in context why I feel so strongly that this war has taken us in the wrong direction and why this resolution is so necessary and worthy of our support.

First principle: ``We oppose a unilateral first strike action by the United States without a clearly demonstrated and imminent threat of attack on the United States.''

My colleagues, history will record that the President took first strike action, and that there was neither a clearly demonstrated nor an imminent threat of attack on the United States.

Second principle: ``Only Congress has the authority to declare war.''

History will record that Congress delegated that authority to the President, but I say unapologetically that history will also record that I voted against that delegation of authority. I never believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; and, even if it did, I never believed that they posed any imminent threat to the United States.

Third principle: ``Every conceivable diplomatic option must be exhausted.''

History will record that our President instead thumbed his nose at the United Nations and at almost all diplomatic options in his rush to lead us into this foolhardy war.

Fourth principle: ``A unilateral first strike would undermine the moral authority of the United States, destabilize the Middle East region, and undermine the ability of our Nation to address unmet domestic priorities.''

The passage of time has demonstrated and history will record that every single one of these concerns was legitimate and warranted.

Fifth principle: ``Any post-strike plan for maintaining stability in the region would be costly and require a long-term commitment.''

We haven't yet gotten to a level of stability that we are trying to maintain, but the cost of this war today exceeds $500 billion. That is costly and with no end in sight. If we continue to follow the President, the duration of our commitment has no end in sight and no plan to bring home or redeploy our troops.

Increasing the number of troops in Iraq does not make ending the war more foreseeable. Past troop increases in Iraq have paraded under different names than surge, but make no mistake about it, this is not the first time the United States will have increased troop levels, and each time they have been met with greater levels of violence.

From December of 2003 to April 2004, the troop increase paraded under the name ``troop rotation'' and resulted in an increase from 122,000 to 137,000 troops; yet April of 2004 was the second deadliest month for U.S. forces.

From November 2004 to March 2005, the increase paraded under the name ``improving counterinsurgency operations after the Fallujah offensive,'' or ``increasing security after January 2005.'' We increased our troop level to 150,000 troops; the result, no impact on violence increase. And again, September to December of 2005, we went to 160,000 troops, still no decrease in violence.

In most respects, what the President has proposed is business as usual, simply under a different name. It did not work before, and there is no prospect that it will work this time. Madam Speaker, this resolution is one that we should support and bring our troops home.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Resolution. Simply stated, as the Resolution says, I support the troops and I oppose the increase in the number of troops. Simply stated, I support a redeployment of the rest of our troops from Iraq as soon as possible.

But I can't go forward before I review how we got here in the first place. Looking back helps me to put a time perspective on this because this War is now approaching 5 years in duration, a period longer than the Second World War. And looking back also helps me to put a substantive perspective on this that I think is absolutely critical to an understanding of my vote.

It's gut wrenching for me to recall that as early as October 2002-- several months before the President proceeded to war in Iraq and long before I was later elected to serve the 2-year term that I have now completed as Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus--I worked meticulously with every single member of the Congressional Black Caucus to craft a Statement of Principles that have proven to be so absolutely prophetic. Listen to what our 2002 Principles said and it will put in context why I feel so strongly that this War has taken us in the wrong direction and why this Resolution is so necessary and worthy of support:

First 2002 Congressional Black Caucus Principle: ``We oppose a unilateral, first-strike action by the United States without a clearly demonstrated and imminent threat of attack on the United States.'' My colleagues, history will record that the President took first strike action and that there was neither a clearly demonstrated nor an imminent threat of attack on the United States.

Second Principle: ``Only Congress has the authority to declare war.'' History will record that Congress delegated that authority to the President, but I say unapologetically that history will also record that I voted against that delegation of authority. I never believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and--perhaps more importantly--even if they did, I never believed that they posed any imminent threat to the United States. Saddam Hussein was a dastardly tyrant and bully toward his own people, but was a coward and no threat to the United States.

Third Principle: ``Every conceivable diplomatic option must be exhausted.'' History will record that our President, instead, thumbed his nose at the United Nations and at almost all diplomatic options in his rush to lead us into this foolhardy war.

Fourth Principle: ``A unilateral first strike would undermine the moral authority of the United States, destabilize the Middle East region and undermine the ability of our Nation to address unmet domestic priorities.'' The passage of time has demonstrated and history will record that every single one of those concerns was legitimate and warranted.

Fifth Principle: ``Any post-strike plan for maintaining stability in the region would be costly and require a long-term commitment.'' We haven't yet gotten to a level of stability that we're trying to maintain, but the cost of this War to date exceeds $500 billion. That's ``costly'' and with no end in sight. If we continue to follow the President, the duration of our commitment has no end in sight and no plan to bring home or redeploy our troops.

Increasing the number of troops in Iraq does not make ending the War more foreseeable. It will only escalate the number of troops and the prospects of casualties and will likely only increase the resolve of the enemy, the same thing that increases in troop levels have done in the past. Past troop increases in Iraq have paraded under different names than ``surge''. But, make no mistake about it, this is not the first time the United States will have increased troop levels. And each time they have been met with greater violence.

From December of 2003 to April of 2004, the troop increase paraded under the name ``troop rotation'' and resulted in an increase from 122,000 to 137,000 troops. Yet April of 2004 was the second deadliest month for U.S. forces.

From November 2004 to March 2005, the increase paraded under the name ``improving counterinsurgency operations after the Fallujah offensive'' or ``increasing security before the January 2005 constitutional elections'' and increased troops to 150,000. Result: short term positive impact, but longer term increase in violence and resistance.

Between September and December 2005, troop levels were increased again, taking the

number up to 160,000, around the constitutional referendum and parliamentary elections. The referendum and elections proceeded without major violence, but the increase had little long term impact on sectarian violence.

In most respects, what the President has proposed is business as usual, simply under a different name. It did not work before and there is little prospect that it will work this time.

Madam Speaker, this Resolution is our attempt to make it clear that we do not support a troop increase or an escalation of this War. I intend to vote for the Resolution. I just hope the President is listening.

Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I am just sick and tired of people telling us that we are unpatriotic and not supporting of the troops.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor MGM Brakes, headquartered in Charlotte, NC, on its 50th anniversary.

MGM Brakes is a division of Indian Head Industries, Inc., also headquartered in Charlotte, NC, and maintains manufacturing facilities in Cloverdale, CA and Murphy, NC.

MGM Brakes was founded in 1956 and is a leading U.S. manufacturer of spring parking brakes and actuators for vehicles with air brakes. Fifty years ago the company's founders (Miller, Gummer and Meyers) invented the spring brake actuator to prevent air braking failures in heavy, over-the-road vehicles that usually resulted in runaway vehicles. MGM Brakes is now a leading world-wide supplier to the commercial vehicle industry and its actuator products have become standard equipment on more than 125 makes of commercial vehicles currently manufactured in over 40 countries.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to pay tribute to MGM Brakes and its employees for 50 years of pioneering technology and innovative products that have helped increase the safety of commercial vehicles, transit buses and school buses across the states and around the country.

Mr. Speaker, if I was present to vote on rollcall No. 431, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus have throughout a long period of time led the fight against HIV and AIDS by insisting on the creation of a global fund to attack it internationally, insisting that we address the issue here in the United States, and that we take it as a serious proposition. Unfortunately, as we have been addressing it, it has grown to epidemic proportions in the African-American community here right in our own backyard.

And so we will have today a series of speakers coming to address that issue from the Congressional Black Caucus because we think it is time for the United States to declare a state of emergency and we are intent on taking the lead ourselves on this issue to dramatize it in our own communities, to talk about it, to be tested ourselves, to insist on mandatory testing, and support some new initiatives that will address this problem and get it in control in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for yielding time.

I rise in support of H.R. 5347. It is necessary to extend this program, and we are extending it for 1 year, the reauthorization, and that is the best we can do. You may sense frustration in that statement, because there is a sense of frustration. I have been at this HOPE VI for a long time now, and I think we need to go back and trace a little bit of the history of how we got here.

HOPE VI is not a Democratic program. It was introduced under a Republican administration. It was the brainchild of Jack Kemp when he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. And the idea was that we were not going to make any progress on dealing with community issues as long as we had these tremendous numbers, thousands of people in dense public housing communities in various places throughout the country, and that the only way we could approach the problem effectively was to disperse poverty and create communities with mixed incomes, low-income people, middle-income people, and high- income people. And so HOPE VI was about community revitalization.

All of the complaints I have heard about it over the years make it sound like people don't understand how difficult it is to do community revitalization. Because every time somebody says, well, they didn't finish a project in a year, I say to them, you can do construction in a year, you cannot do community revitalization in a year. It takes time to revitalize a community.

Now, why am I so passionate about this? We have seen five communities in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, completely transformed as a result of HOPE VI. We have seen one community in Greensboro, North Carolina, in my congressional district, completely transformed as a result of HOPE VI. We have seen two communities completely transformed in the Winston Salem part of my congressional district as a result of HOPE VI. We bring a little bit of Federal money, private people come to the table, and you end up with a mixed community in terms of income, racially and otherwise.

And I can tell you, if you come into downtown Charlotte now, you will see a completely different story than you saw 10, 12, 15 years ago. You will see a beautiful community where a concentration of low-income public housing used to be. Now if anybody tells me that is not success, I say I do not know what success is. That was exactly what the program was designed to do.

And I don't understand how this President, on so many issues, including this one, will take a successful program and all of a sudden say this program doesn't work.

Now, coincidentally, most of the money is going into Democratic districts. That is really what the debate, the subtext of a lot of this debate, has been about. We knew where the public housing projects were. They were in most of our congressional districts. We set out to try to do something about those, and we have done something about those using HOPE VI. It has been the single most successful community revitalization and housing program probably that our Nation has ever seen, contrasted with the whole idea of warehousing poor people in concentrations of low-income communities.

So I am passionate about this. I am delighted we are extending this program for a year. But, at the same time, we need to recognize there is not but $99 million even in the appropriations bill that hasn't been passed and finalized. And every time we have had to fight this battle to reauthorize the program we have lost funding for the program, so it gets less and less and less effective at accomplishing its mission.

So I congratulate my friends for extending the program, and I ask for their support, all of our support, for extending a program that is a no-brainer. We ought to all be supporting this program.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, I want to start by thanking my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, Representative Danny Davis, who has already spoken, and the other members of the Congressional Black Caucus who are here this evening to shed more light on what is going on in the Sudan and to challenge our other Members of Congress and our administration to take action in this dire situation.

Many people, when they saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, believed that it was a fictional movie. Unfortunately, the actions, the things that were depicted in that movie, were not fictional at all. It is true that actors and actresses played the roles, but it depicted something that had actually transpired in our world, which has been described by Representative Danny Davis as over 850,000 people killed through acts of genocide.

Unfortunately, that occurred with our United States Government and people around the world knowing that genocide was taking place in Rwanda and not taking any action to do anything about it.

Well, we are now facing a similar situation in the Sudan. We are up now to what is estimated to be 450,000 people having been killed by official governmental actions, genocide. We have declared it to be genocide. Our government has declared it to be genocide. And in addition to the 450,000 people who have been killed, over 2 million people have been displaced from their home communities, their villages, because they are fearful of staying in their communities lest they be killed by genocide also. And the beat goes on daily.

Mr. Speaker, this is something that must stop. It is inhumane and it is something that our country and people around the world should not continue to tolerate.

We visited, a number of us, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others, visited the Sudan and actually went into the displaced persons camps where we found conditions were horrible, where we found disproportionately women and children, because the men had stayed behind to fight, and most of them had been the victims of the killings and genocide. So we are going to have a situation where more and more and more children are going to be without parents if we do not act, and that is unacceptable.

The African Union troops have gone in to try to stabilize the situation, but we met with the African Union troops and their resources are depleted and they are not mobile enough. Even when they know another act of genocide is about to occur, they cannot move fast enough to the location where they know it is going to happen to prevent it from happening.

And so we have made it clear that the only way this can be resolved is for United Nations troops to be put into that area to stop the genocide that is going on.

Now, let me tell you what happened. The U.N. met and a resolution was passed, and still the United Nations troops are not in Sudan. The U.N. met and a resolution was passed authorizing troops to go into Lebanon, and the U.N. troops are already in Lebanon.

So there is something going on here, Mr. Speaker, that we need to expose to the world. We cannot distinguish between folks just because they are in Africa as opposed to the Middle East. We have got to take action. We call on our Congress and our administration and people around the world to do so this evening.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, in many ways my amendment is quite simple. It simply preserves the authority of the United States Supreme Court to do its job. My amendment, however, is fundamental in its simplicity because it reflects the cornerstone of our constitutional framework, a framework that recognizes three coequal branches of government, each with its own area of responsibility, each serving as a check and balance on the others.

For over 200 years, the separation of powers doctrine has worked well, vesting the legislative power with the Congress, the executive power with the President, and the judicial power with the Supreme Court and other inferior Federal courts. At the pinnacle of the judiciary is and has been the one Court mandated by the Constitution, the United States Supreme Court.

I have offered this amendment before, and I offer it today because the very idea of Congress unilaterally cutting off all Federal court review of a constitutional issue is both unprecedented and likely unconstitutional, but it is also impractical and imprudent.

Despite the substantial body of scholarship that suggests that Congress does not have the authority to strip the Supreme Court of this appellate jurisdiction in the manner proposed by this bill, let's for the sake of argument concede that it does have that authority, and let me address the imprudence of this bill.

As legislators exercising the legislative power committed to us by the Constitution, the compelling question is: Why would we want to do what this bill would have us do? What could possibly motivate this Congress to adopt this bill as sound public policy? How does this bill do anything to protect the Pledge of Allegiance? What respect does it show for our venerable institutions? How does it unify us as a Nation?

I suggest to you that this bill makes the Pledge far more vulnerable to assorted, distasteful interpretations than the current law that exists at present.

I appeal to our common sense. Under the bill as drafted, the likelihood that different opinions on the Pledge will issue from State, territorial and the District of Columbia courts is either ignored or deliberately sheltered from challenge. Rather than protect the Pledge of Allegiance, this bill invites a patchwork of interpretations from all over the country.

What if your State is the State that determines that your child can no longer recite the words ``under God'' in the Pledge? Will you move to a neighboring State? Move across the country? Wherever you find a friendly State interpretation? But what if there is no Federal constitutional determination, and State legislatures are left to change the law upon acquiring the appropriate majority. Would you become a nomad? Would you move from State to State in search of the right position for your child?

The bill eliminates every single recourse that you have. It establishes a mechanism under which an individual's Federal rights would depend entirely on the happenstance of location. Ultimately coercing children to recite the Pledge without the language ``under God'' may be prohibited in one place but not another. Constitutional protections could be strong in one State and weak or nonexistent in another.

My amendment would restore the obligation of the Supreme Court to exercise its role as the final arbiter of the Constitution. Even if the proponents of this measure believe the Federal, district, and circuit courts of appeal should be removed from the process, the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in establishing uniform standards to apply to all Americans wherever they reside should certainly be protected.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Chairman, there are a number of people who deserve special thanks and accolades today, but I want to point out three of them who are in our midst.

First, I want to commend the efforts of Representative John Lewis, now a Member of Congress, who shed his blood on Bloody Sunday so that the original 1965 Voting Rights Act would be passed.

I want to pay special recognition to my good friend and ranking member, John Conyers, who in 1965 was here, in 1970 during the first renewal, in 1975, 1982, and 1992 he was here. And we suspect 25 years from now he will be here for the next renewal of the Voting Rights Act, if in fact it is required.

I want to pay an extra special thanks to the chairman of our committee, Representative James Sensenbrenner, who I believe will go down in history as a warrior who supported, defended, extended, and made real our democracy in this country, and he deserves our supreme thanks.

I rise today in unwavering support of H.R. 9. The bill is the product of a long-term, thoughtful, and thorough bipartisan deliberation that carefully weighed the competing concerns and considerations that have engulfed debate on the Voting Rights Act since its inception. The act has been extended on four occasions, making it arguably the most carefully reviewed civil rights measure in our Nation's history.

H.R. 9 continues that practice of careful review, accompanied by extensive record evidence in support of its provisions. I am proud to have been a part of the bipartisan coalition that crafted this legislation and believe that it strengthens the very foundation of our democracy.

H.R. 9 restores the Voting Rights Act to its original intent to secure and protect the rights of minority citizens to participate equally in voting. The bill bars voting changes that have the purpose of discriminating against minority citizens, and it restores the ability of minority communities to elect candidates who share their values and represent their interests as originally intended by Congress.

Now, there are those who argue that the Voting Rights Act has outlived its usefulness, that it is outdated, and that it unfairly punishes covered jurisdictions for past sins. Yet I stand here today as living proof of both the effectiveness of and the continuing need for the Voting Rights Act.

I stand here on the shoulders, in the aftermath and in the history of George H. White, who rose on the floor of Congress in 1901, January 29, as the last African American in the Congress of the United States after Reconstruction when he said, ``This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes' temporary farewell to American Congress; but let me say, Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again.'' And he was right. But it took a long time.

You need to understand that that was not delivered in a vacuum. Listen to what happened leading up to that election. In Halifax, the registered Republican vote was 345, and the total registered vote of the township was 539. But when the count was announced, it stood 990 Democrats to 41 Republicans, 492 more Democratic votes counted than were registered in that city.

There was discrimination taking place, and I am the witness to it.

The Voting Rights Act had been in effect just shy of 30 years in 1992 when I and former colleague Eva Clayton became the first African Americans elected to Congress from the State of North Carolina since George H. White delivered that speech in 1901. Put plainly, nearly three decades elapsed after the passage of the Voting Rights Act before the impact of the Voting Rights Act became real in North Carolina.

We should be clear: although the successes of the Voting Rights Act have been substantial, they have not been fast and they have not been furious. Rather, the successes have been gradual and of very recent origin.

Now is not the time to jettison the expiring provisions that have been instrumental to the success we applaud today. In a Nation such as ours, we should want and encourage more Americans to vote, not fewer.

The Voting Rights Act and the renewal and restoration contained in H.R. 9 facilitate those very goals. By breaking down entrenched barriers to voter equity, this bill invites, inspires, and protects racial and language minority citizens' full and equal participation in the governance of our Nation. We must not fear that participation; we must embrace and celebrate it instead.

Upon the introduction of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson noted that the Voting Rights Act is like no other piece of civil rights legislation because ``every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.'' ``About this,'' he said, ``there can and should be no argument.''

Make no mistake, voting is democracy's most fundamental right. Undermining the right to vote is a fundamental wrong, one that must be eliminated.

Mr. Chairman, a Congress with far fewer African Americans, Latinos, and Asians Americans passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because the right to vote had been denied for too long. Congress made a moral decision that it was the right thing to do for our democracy. It is time for us to reaffirm that decision by passing H.R. 9 without amendment today in this House. I ask my colleagues to stand up and make a moral statement that democracy lives in the United States of America.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to control the time temporarily while my colleague has stepped away.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Napolitano), the chair of the Hispanic Caucus.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez), who is a member of the Hispanic Caucus and a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds.

I say to the gentleman that when we rise in the House, it is my intention to introduce for the Record a copy of the decision that was entered yesterday in the State of Georgia that declared recent actions unconstitutional. Perhaps he will be convinced that this is not the history of the past but today.

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Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), a member of the Judiciary.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. It is certainly my understanding, as you have indicated, in 1976 in Beer v. United States, the Supreme Court held that, when a voting change is made in which a minority group's ability to elect candidates of choice to office is diminished, section 5 requires the denial of preclearance.

That was the retrogression analysis on which the court, the Department of Justice, and minority voters relied for 30 years. Is it the gentleman from Wisconsin's understanding that it is this standard that H.R. 9 seeks to restore to section 5?

Mr. Chairman, I join Chairman Sensenbrenner in opposition to the Norwood amendment. The amendment represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the Voting Rights Act and its structural design by arbitrarily selecting the last three election cycles as the starting point for confronting and combating voting discrimination. The amendment unhinges section 5 from its historical connections, disrupts the delicate balance embodied by the act, and makes it likely that the act would be declared unconstitutional.

The Voting Rights Act, as amended and extended on four separate occasions, struck a delicate balance that remains relevant today. The act imposes special requirements on specific jurisdictions that have a history and ongoing record of unequal policies.

The Norwood amendment misguidedly seeks to establish a remedy where one already exists. Voters may seek redress for recent voting rights infractions under existing provisions of the Voting Rights Act. And where a court finds sufficient justification based on actual evidence, it may impose the identical preclearance requirements that covered jurisdictions must satisfy currently. If the Norwood amendment only duplicated the existing protections of the Voting Rights Act, perhaps the only complaint would be that it is redundant and unnecessary.

In 1975, Senator Strom Thurmond offered a similar amendment to change the trigger to the next election, making virtually the same arguments that are being made by Mr. Norwood today. He stated: ``One of the main problems with the Voting Rights Act is that it is, as presently constituted, an ex post facto law which punishes several Southern States for events which occurred in 1964.''

In a remarkable colloquy that ensued between Senator Thurmond and Senator Jesse Helms from my home State, Senator Helms proposed yet another

amendment which would have a presumption of discrimination if registration and participation of voting-age citizens exceeds 50 percent in the last election.

Like the amendment offered by Mr. Norwood, this amendment should be defeated as we defeated the ones by Mr. Helms and Mr. Thurmond back at that time.

Mr. Chairman, I join Chairman Sensenbrenner in opposing the Gohmert amendment to extend the vital protections afforded by the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act for merely 9 years.

The gains made under the Voting Rights Act mark impressive racial progress for our Nation and should be celebrated.

But to acknowledge progress is not to disavow the continued obstacles faced by minority voters for which the Voting Rights Act provides protections. These obstacles are not easily removed. My own election to Congress close to 3 decades after the Voting Rights Act was passed illustrates that 10 years is simply not enough.

If we are serious about continuing the progress all seem to praise, we must be equally serious about keeping in place the mechanisms that made that progress possible. Just 3 years ago, ruling on the propriety of race-conscious admissions standards, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor concluded in the affirmative action case, ``It has been 25 years since Justice Powell in Bakke first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education.''

Justice O'Connor went on to recognize that in the area of public education 25 years of protections were, sadly, not enough. Despite the measurable progress in that arena, the Court understood the need for continuing protection, but expressed hope that an additional 25 years would be enough to overcome our Nation's unfortunate history of racial hostility and division.

Voting protections are just as necessary today as educational help is in the college arena. I ask opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the opposition of my chairman to this amendment.

I am really amazed sometimes how much of an effort we put forth to support democracy around the world and yet won't do the same thing right here at home.

One of the things I have on my wall at home is the first ballot after apartheid that was used in South Africa. Our government, the United States Government, encouraged the folks of South Africa to put photographs of the candidates on the ballot so that they would know who they were voting for because they couldn't read.

Can you imagine us doing that here in the United States, even though it would facilitate people's ability to vote? Yet here we are trying to confuse this issue with the issue of immigration, illegal immigration, when it has nothing to do with that.

The majority of voters protected by section 203 are not even immigrants. Section 203 provides language assistance to cover United States voting-age citizens who are not fluent in English. According to the 2000 census, three-quarters of all voters covered by section 203 are native-born voting-age citizens in the United States. So this notion that this is somehow a part of the anti-immigrant movement is just a fallacy.

We need to be doing whatever we can to enable our citizens to vote, and this amendment goes in the face of that. I think we should oppose it and move on with the passage of this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to Mr. Westmoreland's amendment.

This amendment imposes far more federalism costs on states than does the current structure of the Voting Rights Act that its opponents criticize. In short, the amendment would permit the Department of Justice on an annual basis to snoop through every governance document maintained by a jurisdiction to determine whether it meets the eligibility requirements for bailout. This process will be far more onerous than that presently imposed on jurisdictions. Now jurisdictions are in control of what they provide to the Department, both for preclearance and bail-out purposes.

The mechanism established under this amendment also requires DOJ to expend tremendous amounts of time and resources exposing nondiscrimination while leaving discrimination unabated. This amendment turns the Voting Rights Act on its head and makes a complete farce out of our principles of democracy. It should be soundly defeated.