Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald) for yielding.

We all are under the disadvantage of never having enough time. We could speak the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the month, the rest of the year, next year, and we still could not say enough things to give praise to Rosa Parks, who meant so much to us.

I want to be very brief and I would simply ask, if I may, to take a part of the Record that was done in Special Orders the night before last and graft it into this section of our Record so that it will appear here. The Congressional Black Caucus, headed by the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) of Michigan, the two States to which Rosa Parks had the most concrete and physical connection, led that Special Order, and a number of members of the Congressional Black Caucus came and spoke, including myself.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask unanimous consent that we make that a part of the Record of today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) for yielding.

I was trying to decide how to approach this issue and decided that probably there were two things I need to do: number one, I want to thank the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis), my good friend and colleague, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), my good friend and colleague, the two States with whom Rosa Parks probably had the strongest physical connections, for convening this Special Order for us to pay tribute to Rosa Parks.

I have listened to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) and my other colleagues talk about some of their personal connections to Rosa Parks. One would think that maybe the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus would have some personal stories, too; but when I reflect, I can only say that I never met Rosa Parks, nor for that matter but for the fact that Martin Luther King spoke at my high school graduation in 1963 did I ever meet Martin Luther King.

So why would we be here talking about somebody that we have never met? Because they have had an impact on our lives. What would compel a person to go visit a bus stop in Alabama? Simply because you knew that there was a particular significance to that bus stop, that that was the stop at which Rosa Parks got on the bus.

I cannot talk about the personal things about Rosa Parks that some of my colleagues have talked about. I can only talk about the impact that she had on my life and the lives of other people who viewed her from a distance and respected and admired her gentle but defiant stand, the stand that she took actually by sitting down and refusing to stand up, and by knowing that it had a tremendous impact on everybody around us as we were growing up, because by her sitting down and refusing to stand up, it allowed other people to stand up and straighten their backs and raise their shoulders and look up and start to move in a direction that we had not been moving before, starting with a bus boycott, and then sit-ins and other public accommodations and the entry of Martin Luther King as a leader of a whole series of things that started to take place.

What does that say for us who never met this wonderful woman, except from a distance? It says that there are probably many, many, many people who are watching us and would it not be a wonderful tribute to have somebody someday pay tribute to us who never, ever met us in person, by saying this person had an impact on my life.

I cannot think of a higher way to pay tribute to her. She had an impact on my life, and I cannot think of a greater challenge to issue to my colleagues in this body, to people who may be watching around the Nation, than to say what a wonderful tribute to have somebody think that you could impact their lives by simply sitting down or taking a stand for what you know is right.

We have that opportunity every single day, and I am delighted to pay tribute to Rosa Parks for exercising that opportunity and for allowing me to stand taller on her shoulders, on that giant commitment that she made.

Mr. Speaker, I do want to spend one moment, if I may, talking about the underlying resolution. We have not heard much of a whimper of opposition to it, and I do not anticipate any opposition to it. But when we are doing something for the first time, there is always going to be somebody who would raise the question, raise a question, and the one question that several people have raised is are we creating a precedent here. I want to address that because I think we need some benchmarks for this for future Congresses and others to take into account.

This is the way I view this. Our Capitol and its Rotunda stand as a monument to our democracy. There are some principles upon which our democracy is founded that were articulated by the Founding Fathers. As most people know, the Founding Fathers articulated the very highest principles for

our country, and they were just exquisite principles.

Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers did not necessarily at that time intend for all of those principles to apply to everybody. They did not apply to women, for example. They certainly were not intended to apply to African Americans.

The standard that I want to articulate here, I think, that undergirds this resolution and the authority to have the body of Rosa Parks lie in honor in the Rotunda is that more than perhaps anybody that we can think of, she extended those principles of the Founding Fathers in a way that they apply universally to all of us.

I am not going to dwell anymore on that because I do not want to start trying as an individual to start articulating a standard for having somebody lie in honor in the Rotunda, but for those people who may be worried about it setting a precedent or worried about how future Congresses are going to decide whether to do or not to do the same thing, let me advance the proposition that the role that Rosa Parks played in our democracy for some people, for all people, is as profound, as important as the role that the Founding Fathers played when they articulated a set of principles, because the principles do not mean anything unless they apply to all citizens of this country.

That is what Rosa Parks was fighting for. That is what we ought to continue to fight for, and the highest tribute that we could pay to Rosa Parks going forward is to continue her fight, the fight that she sat down on a bus; that made it possible for us to stand up and lift our shoulders and lift our visions and really, really aspire to believing that the principles that were articulated by our Founding Fathers apply to each and every one of us.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time, and I hope I have not abused it by talking primarily about the resolution and its place in history, but I just thought we needed to put that marker down at this place so that somebody will understand why this powerful lady has this honor and how she honors us and the principles that our government stands on by lying in honor in our Rotunda.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) for yielding.

I was trying to decide how to approach this issue and decided that probably there were two things I need to do: number one, I want to thank the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis), my good friend and colleague, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), my good friend and colleague, the two States with whom Rosa Parks probably had the strongest physical connections, for convening this Special Order for us to pay tribute to Rosa Parks.

I have listened to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) and my other colleagues talk about some of their personal connections to Rosa Parks. One would think that maybe the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus would have some personal stories, too; but when I reflect, I can only say that I never met Rosa Parks, nor for that matter but for the fact that Martin Luther King spoke at my high school graduation in 1963 did I ever meet Martin Luther King.

So why would we be here talking about somebody that we have never met? Because they have had an impact on our lives. What would compel a person to go visit a bus stop in Alabama? Simply because you knew that there was a particular significance to that bus stop, that that was the stop at which Rosa Parks got on the bus.

I cannot talk about the personal things about Rosa Parks that some of my colleagues have talked about. I can only talk about the impact that she had on my life and the lives of other people who viewed her from a distance and respected and admired her gentle but defiant stand, the stand that she took actually by sitting down and refusing to stand up, and by knowing that it had a tremendous impact on everybody around us as we were growing up, because by her sitting down and refusing to stand up, it allowed other people to stand up and straighten their backs and raise their shoulders and look up and start to move in a direction that we had not been moving before, starting with a bus boycott, and then sit-ins and other public accommodations and the entry of Martin Luther King as a leader of a whole series of things that started to take place.

What does that say for us who never met this wonderful woman, except from a distance? It says that there are probably many, many, many people who are watching us and would it not be a wonderful tribute to have somebody someday pay tribute to us who never, ever met us in person, by saying this person had an impact on my life.

I cannot think of a higher way to pay tribute to her. She had an impact on my life, and I cannot think of a greater challenge to issue to my colleagues in this body, to people who may be watching around the Nation, than to say what a wonderful tribute to have somebody think that you could impact their lives by simply sitting down or taking a stand for what you know is right.

We have that opportunity every single day, and I am delighted to pay tribute to Rosa Parks for exercising that opportunity and for allowing me to stand taller on her shoulders, on that giant commitment that she made.

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

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to this legislation. And as I said the last time we debated it, I do not rise because I am a supporter of frivolous lawsuits or lawsuits even that some of the people have used the legal system to pursue. I rise in opposition to the bill because I think it is an overreaction; and, indeed, I think it is perhaps an ultimate attestation to the fact that many of my colleagues have lost confidence and faith in the legal system on the one hand or that, regardless of what the legal system does, if it does not yield for them the result that they are seeking, they are willing to compromise any principle that they have professed to stand for to achieve the result that they wish to achieve.

H.R. 554 goes much further than its stated purpose of banning the small handful of private suits brought against the food industry. It also bans suits for harm caused by dietary supplements and mislabeling, which have nothing to do with excess food consumption; and it would prevent State law enforcement officials from bringing legal claims to enforce their own consumer protection laws.

Simply look at the provisions of the bill. Section 4(5) would prevent any legal action related to any ``health condition that is associated with a person's weight gain or obesity.''

As a result, the bill would prevent persons who develop heart disease and diabetes from dietary supplements such as Ephedra and Phen-fen from being able to obtain redress if they gained weight. Even worse, the bill bans these lawsuits in a retroactive way. So it would throw out dozens of Ephedra and Phen-fen cases currently pending before courts. This is a far cry from the concerns that led to this legislation originally, some of which I have the same concerns about.

H.R. 554 would also prevent State law enforcement officials from enforcing their own laws. Under section 4(3), the bill applies to legal actions brought by any ``person,'' and the term ``person'' is defined to include any ``governmental entity.'' That means States attorneys general will be prevented from pursuing actions for deceptive practices and false advertising and other practices that are illegal against the food industry.

Again, this is a vast departure from most of the so-called tort reform bills considered by the Congress, which are drafted to apply to private lawsuits, and is a vast departure from the original purpose of this bill and the problems it was designed to deal with.

Since the predecessor to H.R. 554 was first introduced last term, 18 State legislatures have enacted so-called cheeseburger laws to prohibit certain claims from their courts. While most of those enacted apply retroactively, others, that is, Kansas, Arizona, Colorado, do not. Some provide for a stay of discovery; others do not. Some establish affirmative defenses; others do not. That is our State law taking effect.

In short, in the considered judgment of each of these 18 State legislatures, laws have been enacted that best serve their States. The bill completely preempts those laws and brings to a screeching halt the work of 26 other States that have been working on pending legislation. It also disrupts the process in some States that have combined obesity bills with menu labeling requirements as part of their overall health enhancing legislative scheme.

What is the price that we are willing to pay to get the result that we are seeking? Have we lost confidence in our State and Federal court systems that have systematically thrown out most of the lawsuits that have been filed against the food industry using this ``fat theory,'' as it is commonly referred to? Have we lost confidence in our whole federalist form of government in which tort law has been particularly the province of the States? Have we lost confidence in our State legislatures that are in the middle of responding in their particular States to any problems that may be on the horizon in this area?

We have instead cast ourselves as the imperial Congress because the same people who came to this Congress, saying that they believe in States rights, have now shown they do not care about States rights. What they want is a result that they can control and they can dictate.

That is really what this bill is about, and it is unfortunately not only this bill. There is another bill right behind this one that will be up today or tomorrow that does the same thing in the gun context.

So I do not think we are going to hear a lot of people out here talking about this bill today. I do not see many people on the floor. It will be like a tree falling in the forest. We do not know whether it is having any impact out there or not. We will pass it out of here. It will become a political vehicle to cozy up to the food industry, but at what price? At what price?

I would just say the people who maintain that H.R. 554 is necessary to make people responsible for their own choices and to thwart the unwarranted imposition of legal costs and fees on the food industry are just not being upfront with us about this one.

This bill insulates an entire industry from liability; and more importantly,

it undermines our State judicial and legislative systems that should be and are in the process of dealing with this to the extent that they have identified it as a problem.

In that sense, the bill represents yet another arrogant attempt by this Congress to impose its will on the States, and I urge my colleagues to get a grip and understand what we are about to do here. There are some things that are more important, and our judicial system is working its way through these cases, is dismissing them where they need to be dismissed; and where that is not happening, our State legislatures are taking care of this problem. This is not a Federal issue, nor should it be.

I urge opposition to the bill.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder).

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

This is where I think we are. Some of us are frustrated by some of the litigation that has taken place in this area. I said it when we debated this bill the last time on the floor. I am not a fan of fat litigation either, but sometimes we have to be patient enough in a legislative body to let the institutions that are supposed to work, work. They are working. Most of the lawsuits that have been filed in this area have been dismissed. Most of them have been dismissed. That is what the courts are for. We do not always get the result we want, but the courts are there to make a determination of what results are appropriate and not under the laws that exist.

The State legislatures are responding. Mr. Chairman, there are 26 pending laws out there in the States. A number of them have different components, different nuances. Some of them are retroactive, some of them are not. Whatever happened to our belief that the State legislatures, the States are a laboratory of good legislation? I thought that is what my colleagues who are supporting this bill believed in more heartily than anything else they came to Congress to talk about. When it is convenient for them, when it is convenient for them, there is no more important mantra to them than the mantra of States rights. What are we doing to States rights here, in an area that throughout history has been the province of the States?

I do not understand. We cannot be so intent on getting a particular result, so results-oriented that we disregard everything that we have set up in place to deal with problems of this kind: Our judiciary, our State legislatures, our common sense.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, normally when we see a manager's amendment come to the floor, it is an improving amendment. Unfortunately this one makes a bad bill actually worse than it was originally drawn, and it does so in this way. There are already pleading requirements in every State, and basically what this amendment does is make those pleading requirements higher for the food industry than for anybody else in America. And, in essence, where you end up is that lawyers who represent people who are claiming to have a cause of action are not only now, under this language, called upon to represent their clients and make a reasonable effort to determine whether there is a basis for their claim, they have to be the jury also. They have to go out and decide, are there enough facts here on each and every cause of action against each and every defendant to win this case and win it profoundly. They have to allege specific facts.

I mean, that is the kind of stuff that normally gets done at a trial if a case even gets that far. Most of these cases are being dismissed really. So most of them are not going to get that far anyway.

But I am not sure what role discovery or any other aspect of our legal process is playing anymore if we pass this manager's amendment. This is much, much more than a technical amendment. This is a very substantive amendment. And, unfortunately, I think it makes a bill that is already a very, very bad bill, it makes it a very, very, very bad bill. I oppose this amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to thank my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus who are taking the time and consistently putting forward this message that poverty and race and the convergence of them in this country must be an issue that we deal with.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Jefferson), and the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson) for providing an opportunity for us to speak this evening. I am speaking as Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and we are here to show our support for our three Members whose districts have been severely and adversely affected by Hurricane Katrina, the gentleman from New Orleans, Louisiana (Mr. Jefferson), the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), who represents part of that district, and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis), who represents part of that State. We are here to support their efforts on behalf of their constituents.

Mr. Speaker, it is coincidental that those constituents are disproportionately African American. I say it is coincidental because I believe this catastrophe, this hurricane, was certainly not directed at African American people. But the reality is that poor people, disproportionately African American people who were poor, were not able to get away from the disaster. When they were told to leave New Orleans, in particular, they did not have the financial means to escape the disaster.

This is an issue that the Congressional Black Caucus has been talking about not only in the context of a hurricane, but in the context of an agenda which describes disparities in every area of our lives. It is an agenda that we have been talking about the entire year. We did not just start talking about it in the context of a hurricane.

Disproportionately, African Americans are poor. And if this same catastrophe had happened in any American community in which black people and white people were living, disproportionately African Americans would have been left behind, subject to the whims of nature and the catastrophe.

So we are here to express our support for our Members and their constituents, and we heartily endorse the proposals that have been outlined in general terms by our friend, the gentleman from New Orleans (Mr. Jefferson). We endorse them and we encourage our colleagues to embrace them.

Our Nation is at a crossroads, and we must respond. We must respond to these constituents in the same way that we would respond to other Americans, rich, middle class and otherwise, who were subjected to this kind of disaster. I encourage my colleagues to pay attention to what is going on in this area and to devote our resources and our energy, both private-sector and governmental, to addressing this problem.

Mr. Speaker, I will yield back to my colleague, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), and again applaud him for providing this opportunity for Members of the Congressional Black Caucus to address this issue.

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

Mr. Chairman, I suspect that the American people do not realize just how much the process of legislating is about reacting to events that take place around us. When something like Enron happens, we react to that. When accounting scandals happen, we react to it. When the events of 9/11 occurred, we obviously reacted to those events. And quite often when we react, we are looking for an appropriate new balance that takes into account some outrageous activity that took place.

And so when we passed the PATRIOT Act originally, our effort was to try to find a new security balance for people here in our country, and we thought we had done a tremendous job of doing that in the Judiciary Committee, only to find that the Rules Committee, which did not even have any jurisdiction over the matter or had any hearings about the matter, took the bill, rewrote it, brought it to the floor and struck a completely different balance between the rights of government on one hand and law enforcement and the rights of individuals on the other hand.

I voted against the original PATRIOT Act, and I still believe that the balance that was struck in that bill was inappropriate. I think the balance that we have struck in this bill is not the appropriate balance. And a number of my colleagues have said that, well, there have not been any abuses by law enforcement of the powers that we gave them. But the truth of the matter is that depends on how you define an abuse. And I do not like to define an abuse as something outrageous.

If we wait on something outrageous to happen, then we will react back in the opposite direction of against government and law enforcement in unreasonable ways, just as we are reacting in favor of law enforcement now.

So here are a couple of statistics that you need to know about: the American Library Association found that libraries have received over 200 formal and informal requests for materials including 49 requests from Federal officers. Well, maybe they did not find anything. Maybe that was not an abuse that people are going to get outraged about, but I think that is outrageous.

In section 213 it talks about sneak-and-peek searches. In a letter to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), the Department of Justice said on July 5, 2005 that that section had been used 153 times as of January 2005. Only 18 of those times were the uses for terrorism investigations.

Well, what is happening with the other 80 percent is in my estimation an abuse of this provision because we passed the law so that we could make it easier for law enforcement to get to terrorists. The law is being used in ways that, but for the events of 9/11 and the terrorism that occurred, we would not have accepted as residents of this country.

I just think we have struck the wrong balance. We need to sunset this bill again for a shorter period of time, and I hope my colleagues will take that into account and vote against it.

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

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the time be extended by 10 additional minutes, for a total of 15 minutes in time, and that I be allowed to yield that time to other Members.

Mr. Chairman, I am here as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and to talk about the bill before us.

When I became Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus earlier this year, I encouraged my colleagues in the caucus to refocus their energies, and they agreed to do so, on the basic historical purpose of the Congressional Black Caucus: closing disparities that exist between African Americans and other Americans in this country.

That enabled us to develop, in a daylong retreat, an agenda around closing disparities in this country. It enabled us to give that agenda to the President of the United States on January 17 of this year, and to say to the President of the United States, we will not evaluate you on whether you are a Republican or a Democrat; we will evaluate you solely on whether you are proposing an agenda, an appropriation, a proposal that will close or widen the disparities that exist between African Americans and other Americans in this country. It enabled us to come, when we engaged in this debate on the budget and offer a Congressional Black Caucus budget that focused on the agenda of closing disparities between African Americans and other Americans. It enabled us to develop a legislative and an appropriations agenda that focused on that same objective.

So why are we here today? Because this bill literally blows up our whole domestic agenda that the Congressional Black Caucus has adopted. In health care, in education, in justice, and in all of the things that we believe are important, we believe this bill moves us in the wrong direction.

In our CBC budget, we proposed to roll back the tax cuts on people who make the highest amount of money in our country, people over $200,000 a year, and to get $20 billion, approximately, out of that rollback from which we could do our agenda. That was not allowed.

We cannot do what we want to do in the context of this bill because the only thing we could do in this bill, if we offered an amendment, would be to rob Peter to pay Paul. We would be taking from one worthy purpose to give to another.

But we cannot sit by and allow this bill, which rolls back adult training grants, U.S. employment services, youth training grants, Job Corps, community service block grants, LIHEAP, No Child Left Behind, and zeroes out a total of 48 programs that would have the effect of closing disparities between us and other Americans.

We must stand, and that is why we have asked for the time today.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) to talk about the health disparities that this bill will not help close.

(Mrs. CHRISTENSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens).

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

Mr. Chairman, solely for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee.)

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

Mr. Chairman, solely for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green.)

(Mr. AL GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, solely for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green.)

(Mr. AL GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, solely for the purpose of seeking a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis.)

(Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Chairman, I yield for a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney).

(Ms. McKINNEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield solely for purposes of a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

(Mr. SCOTT of Georgia asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield solely for a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

(Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I rise to say to my colleagues, 15 minutes, an

hour and 15 minutes, 15 days would not be enough time for us to tell you how bad this bill is and how devastating it will be in opening disparities that already exist wider and wider and wider.

When we rise into the full House, we intend to offer a copy of the Congressional Black Caucus agenda, the legislative agenda, and a listing of 48 programs that are zeroed out by this bill. I do not know how we think there is going to be any kind of movement toward a closing of the disparities that exist between rich and poor, black and white in this country if we continue to go down the road we are going.

We have drained all of our resources off to war, to tax cuts, and left nothing to address the needs of our own country and our own people.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Bradley of New Hampshire

Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

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

Mr. Speaker, this marks the sixth consecutive term of Congress in which I have engaged in this debate. I actually, when I first came to Congress and the first time I had the opportunity to participate in this, I resented having to go through this. But over the years I have come to believe that this is a healthy debate; and if we conduct it in a dignified way, the debate actually can be good for the entire country, and people can come away with a greater understanding and appreciation of how delicate our Constitution framework is.

This is about how individuals in our country perceive patriotism, the rights of free speech, the rights of protecting the views of people who quite often they may disagree with in content, but that is what our country has been about.

So I want to start by complimenting the chairman and the ranking member for the dignified way the debate has proceeded up to this point. And I hope that this amendment in the nature of a substitute does not get us off onto a different track, because this is the second or third time I have offered the amendment in the nature of a substitute, and I did it originally for the purpose of trying to get to a higher quality of debate and forcing my colleagues and whoever may be listening to the debate to think about some of these things.

What does the first amendment mean? What rights do we owe to people in our country whose views we may disagree with? What rights do we owe to the people in our country who may express those views in ways that we disagree with?

And I am confident that everybody in this body would think that desecration of the flag, burning of the flag would not be something that we would be supporting, so that is not what this amendment is about.

My amendment simply says if we are going to do a constitutional amendment, it should not just say that Congress has the authority to pass a law that prohibits the physical desecration of the flag. Whatever we do should be subject to the first amendment to the Constitution. And the amendment under my version would read, not inconsistent with the first article of amendment to the Constitution: ``The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.''

My amendment, I believe, recognizes the long-standing legacy of the Bill of Rights. In over 200 years of history, our Constitution has been amended only 27 times and the Bill of Rights has never been amended, not once has the Bill of Rights been amended; and this proposed resolution would be the first time to do that.

I understand that the proposed resolution seeks to uphold the integrity of our flag; but my amendment seeks to ensure that the principles for which the flag stands, particularly freedom of expression and freedom of speech, are also reserved.

The first amendment to the United States Constitution stands for the proposition that all voices of dissent should be heard without governmental suppression. Disrespect for the flag is offensive to every Member of this body, but this is not a debate about patriotism. It is not a debate about whether flag desecration is good or bad. It is a debate about the values that underlie our Constitution. And I think former Secretary of State Colin Powell said it best when he said these words:

``The first amendment exists to ensure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy, the Constitution, to humor a few miscreants,'' he said. ``The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.'' And that is the end of his quote for my purposes today.

It is the underlying values represented by the flag, not the cloth on which the stars and bars are sewn that our Constitution protects. Those are the values my amendment would preserve.

Mr. Speaker, following the horrific acts of terrorism against our country, our citizens were repeatedly cautioned not to cower in the face of terrorism. Do not curtail our freedoms, we were told, for to do so would be to surrender our way of life, to give up and give in to the terrorists. The terrorists would win.

I think if we pass the amendment as it has been proposed, we give in to those miscreants, as Colin Powell has characterized them, those people who we disagree with. We should be protecting their rights also to free speech.

I want to put this in context. I started by saying that I used to resent this debate and I would tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I came to Congress thinking that, I guess, I thought I had a monopoly on what the meaning of the Constitution was. And there is a history to that, because I had graduated from Yale Law School, took my constitutional law from Professor Robert Bork, who became so controversial when he was nominated to the United States Supreme Court. And in that class with me was a student by the name of Duncan Kennedy who is now a professor at Harvard Law School and for whom a whole theory of law has been patterned.

In that class with me, in that constitutional law class, was a guy named Paul Gewirtz, who is now a professor of constitutional law at Yale University Law School. So it was one of those law school classes that people would die for. And we analyzed the first amendment back and forth, right and left, Bork against Duncan, Bork against Gewirtz. I mean, there were good students in the class and then there were people like me who were sitting in the back of the room hoping that nobody would ever realize that we were there and I could avoid getting involved in that high level of debate.

But I was listening and understanding that the Constitution, the first amendment had different meanings to different people. And I thought I got a good balanced view. Actually, I thought I got a good balanced view until I went back to North Carolina and went into a law firm that was generally known as a civil rights law firm.

And one day my senior law partner, a gentleman by the name of Julius Chambers, called me in and said, I want you to go to eastern North Carolina to one of the counties in which Native Americans represent a high portion of the population, because a number of the Native Americans in that county have been charged with parading, using tomahawks, parading around; and they have been charged with resisting arrest and various other criminal offenses. And he did not tell me what they were down there demonstrating about. He just told me to go down there and represent them.

I went and I started my interviews with the Native Americans, and during the course of my interviews with them, it became apparent that the reason that they had these tomahawks out there and they were demonstrating and parading was that they had a desire not to have to go to school with black people. They thought that the schools that they were going to be sent to with African Americans were inferior, and they did not want to do it.

Well, I being an African American myself, swallowed very hard and said, What has my law partner gotten me into? I could not wait until the end of the day to get in my car and race back to Charlotte, North Carolina, and confront my senior law partner.

I walked in and I said, Chambers, why would you send me to this county to represent these Indians who were demonstrating against going to school with African Americans? His response taught me more about the first amendment than either Robert Bork or Duncan Kennedy or Paul Gerwitz or any of the discussions that I had participated in in law school. He simply asked me one question. He said, Do you not believe in the first amendment?

This is a difficult issue, and this is not about patriotism, and I have come to understand over the years of debate that we have had this amendment under consideration, I started out saying to people on the opposite side, people like the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) and people who served their country, You are unpatriotic because you do not agree with me about my interpretation of the first amendment; the first amendment was passed to protect the right of people to demonstrate and burn flags and you are unpatriotic because you do not agree with me.

But then I started to listen to what the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) was saying and what my colleagues were saying and studied this issue more. Could it be that Justice Scalia and Justice Rehnquist, two conservative jurists, could be on opposite sides of this issue and it not be a difficult issue from a constitutional perspective? That is, can you imagine the debate that was taking place in the Supreme Court? I cannot imagine that Justice Rehnquist looked at Justice Scalia and said, You are unpatriotic because you do not agree with me. I cannot imagine that Justice Scalia looked at Justice Rehnquist and said, oh, no, you are unpatriotic because you disagree with me. They came down on opposite sides of the landmark case.

This is a difficult issue and it is all about what you think ought to be protected under the first amendment. It is not about whether you are patriotic or not.

Well, there is one thing I want for sure my colleagues to acknowledge, that this amendment, when it was first offered, started out just saying there shall be no physical desecration of the flag. For a couple of years it said that, but then the more recent versions of what we are considering today say that Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag. That means that Congress must pass a statute, which must then go to the Supreme Court ultimately to be evaluated. So, at some point, the Supreme Court is going to evaluate whether that statute complies with the first amendment or not.

In that sense, the language that I am proposing, I am going to first and foremost acknowledge, is redundant. It just specifically says that whatever we do as a Congress has got to be subject to the first amendment. That is redundant. As my colleagues know, whatever we do as a Congress is supposed to be subject to everything in the Constitution anyway, but I want to remind us that, at the same time, we protect the flag.

A principle of our Nation is also to protect speech, whatever that is; is it burning the flag, is it hollering ``fire'' in a crowded theater? Whatever it is, there needs to be some kind of balance. And this Congress, whether it adopts my amendment or does not adopt my amendment, is going to be subject to that anyway.

The proponents of this amendment who say that this is going to do something earth shattering or that my amendment is going to undercut their proposal, it is just not the case.

I just want to be sure that we acknowledge that whatever we do, we acknowledge it, that the first amendment is just as important as the flag. Just as important. Some people might argue that it is more important than the piece of cloth. My colleagues might argue that it is, that it is equal in value, but we at least need to come to grips with that, and that is what the Constitution, that is what the Supreme Court has been trying to do for a number of years. It is not an easy thing to do.

We have heard a lot of discussion about activist judges. This proposal encourages judges to be activists because it says you are giving Congress the right to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag. Do my colleagues think the Supreme Court is not going to exercise its constitutional responsibilities just because we said Congress can prohibit the physical desecration of the flag? It is going to have to. It is going to have to decide what that

means. It is going to have to decide how we balance this provision, this statute, statutory authority that Congress gives against the first amendment. We are not going to be able to get around the Supreme Court here.

We like to punt these things and pretend that we are doing something earth shattering here, but the Supreme Court, I hope, is still going to be there, and I believe the Supreme Court is going to wrestle with this as they have in the past.

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

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute just for the purpose of responding to this.

I do not agree at all with my chair, as much as I respect him, that this codifies anything. What it does is that it codifies and reaffirms and acknowledges the state of affairs that exists right now, that in the final analysis the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution and laws of our country. After we pass my amendment or the underlying amendment, the Supreme Court is still going to be the ultimate arbiter of that, and so my amendment neither does that or does not do it.

His amendment does not do it. If the Supreme Court changes its mind, the composition of the Supreme Court changes, and they decide that burning a flag is prohibited, is not protected under the first amendment, then that is going to be the last word on it. We do not have any way to go on that.

So I do not think I can agree with him that I am doing anything different than preserving the state of affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), my good friend.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am going to filibuster because I am waiting for some Members who would like to speak on this.

Let me respond to the comments of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) that the Supreme Court has amended the Bill of Rights on a number of occasions. It did not amend the language of the Bill of Rights. It amended the interpretation of the Bill of Rights.

On a number of those occasions I have been really unhappy about the way the Supreme Court ruled and took away a right that I thought I had. I suspect if there were ever anybody in this institution who would be, should be railing against the Supreme Court, either the current Supreme Court or Supreme Courts throughout history, it might be the members of the Congressional Black Caucus who would have the highest standing and right to do that because in a number of cases the Supreme Court has ruled in ways that were absolutely counter to our interest.

I just want my colleagues to understand that this document that our drafters crafted for us has survived so much the test of time, the comings and goings of members of the Supreme Court differing in interpretations, as the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) said. If you want to look at it, they rewrote the Bill of Rights, but never changed the words.

I do not think that every time you get a Supreme Court decision that you disagree with in this country the way to resolve or to express your disagreement is to come to the Congress of the United States and propose that we amend the entire constitutional framework that we are operating under. I do not think that is the way to do it. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. Sometimes you have a progressive Supreme Court; sometimes you have a conservative Supreme Court. That does not mean that you do not go back and try to statutorily do what you think that you need to do to amend statutes, but amending our Constitution is an entirely different thing.

So one side of me says this is not a good idea to be amending the Constitution in this way. The other side of me really says this amendment has been made out to be a lot more than it really is because by saying that Congress can pass a statute that prohibits the physical desecration of the flag does not give us any more authority than we now have. We can pass a statute right now that prohibits the physical desecration of the flag.

The question is what would the United States Supreme Court say about that statute once it worked its way through the process and up to the United States Supreme Court. And if we pass this amendment, having amended for the first time in 200 years our Bill of Rights, gone through the whole process, the Supreme Court is still going to have the same right to do that.

This is a great, great discussion vehicle. As I said, I used to resent coming here and engaging in this debate every year or every 2 years. It always comes right before July 4. Somebody is always trying to make a political point. Democrats used to be saying Republicans were unpatriotic. Republicans used to be saying Democrats are unpatriotic. Now people are going whichever way they want to go. This is not a Republican or a Democratic amendment; this is a constitutional amendment. Democrats and Republicans have to exist in our constitutional framework. We have got to operate within our system. That is what I think this is about.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

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

In the Congressional Black Caucus' agenda that we rolled out on January

27 of this year, one of the things that we said was we cannot take a step back in the employment area, and that one of the important things that we have to have is aggressive enforcement of the employment discrimination laws of the Nation.

It was shocking to us when on May 13 of this year, we received notice that on May 16, the EEOC was planning to vote on a restructuring proposal. We immediately sent out a letter to the EEOC saying, please do not reduce the number of district offices from 23 to 15 or downgrade the field offices and reduce the number of attorneys' positions, because that could have a substantial negative effect on the enforcement of our employment discrimination laws. The last thing we need is to take a step back from enforcement. We need to be taking more aggressive steps to provide more employment opportunities, not taking steps backwards.

We think this amendment is absolutely critical. On behalf of the 42 House Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and absolutely guarantee that no action can be taken on this restructuring proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I am really saddened today, and I am not sure whether I am more disappointed because of the mischaracterization of the amendments in the committee report or whether I am more saddened by the fact that the members of a committee on which I have served now for 13 years would be here on the floor defending the characterization that was put in the committee's report.

I would just hope that we can get the committee to file an amended report that clears this up and we can put this behind us and go on. This is saddening, and if we cannot get that, I think it would be a really, really sad commentary on this institution and what our committee has sunk to in this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, there are some things in this resolution I agree with, and there are some things that I do not agree with; but the real problem that I have with the resolution is it does nothing. It is just a bunch of rhetoric. Where I come from, we say it is a lot of words with sound and fury signifying nothing. Nothing will be done for small businesses at the end of the day under this bill.

Why we need a blueprint or a road map to address something in Congress escapes me. This bill does nothing.

The 20 businesses the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller) says he talks to obviously did not include any minority businesses, and the number one issue that minority people are indicating to us as members of the Congressional Black Caucus is they cannot even get into business.

Mr. Speaker, that is 21 percent of the population, 7 percent of the small businesses, 7 percent of the businesses in this country; and yet when we tried to offer amendments to this bill to address the access to capital needs, 8(a), 7(a) and the things that are important to incentivizing minority businesses, the committee objected to including those things in this bill, and the Committee on Rules said, no, you cannot offer those amendments.

We want access to capital. We want the ability to just be able to get into business. We want access to contracts; and while the bill talks about unbundling Federal contracts, nobody on the other side of the aisle has done anything about unbundling contracts.

We have met with administration officials time after time after time, and they have done nothing. This resolution does nothing, and I encourage my colleagues to vote against it.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding to me.

I just want to be clear on whether this committee considered any amendments dealing with 8(a) or any of the incentivizing provisions and what disposition this committee made and what disposition the Committee on Rules made of efforts to amend this resolution to include some incentives for minority business participation that would close the gap that exists between minority individuals in business and other individuals in business. Did they consider anything?

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and in opposition to the bill; the rule because the rule shuts out all amendments to this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, those of us who started this process 6 years or so ago in the good faith belief that there were problems with the bankruptcy system, in the sense that people were gaming the system, and felt that there needed to be genuine reform cannot help but be disappointed today because, in the process, we have lost sight of the objective of reforming to do away with the sinister influences and the advantageous corruption that is going on in the system.

I have never seen a bill that has violated more principles throughout this process. The first one was that the consumers and the lenders got together and decided that, because the lenders were not sure that they could do bankruptcy reform without reaching a compromise and the consumer groups realized that they might not be able to stop bankruptcy reform, they set up this system called the means test, which effectively exempted from the whole bankruptcy reform system those who fall below the means test threshold. The result is that individuals who fall below the means test threshold can continue with impunity to game the system without any kind of responsibility, and those who fall above the threshold get subjected to a set of arbitrary rules that, even if they are not gaming the system, they are taken advantage of. So we have lost sight of that.

The second thing is we have built in a set of perverse incentives for easy credit now. For people who fall below the means test, there is really no disincentive for them to go out and get as much credit as they can. And for people above the means test there is no incentive for lenders to be responsible in their lending practices, because they know now they have this system that is going to protect them from people that they have made irresponsible loans to.

The third problem is that, as we have gone through this process, the more we have bought into this means test philosophy and debated this, we now get to a point at the end of the process where it has corrupted even our democratic process. Because we are here on the floor with 30 minutes of debate on our side to tell the public the problems with this bill.

This is irresponsible legislating at its worst, and I encourage my colleagues to reject this bill and vote no.

Mr. Speaker, I just came in on the plane from North Carolina, and I found myself thinking a lot about what we are doing here this evening. Wondering, first of all, what this vote is going to cost the American people, making a mental calculation that probably 4, $5 million we are spending on this one vote this evening, and wondering how many children are going to go to bed hungry tonight and how many we could feed with that amount of money; how many feeding tubes we have withdrawn by our own indifference in this body, by the decisions that we have made in this body that pit one group against another.

I found myself wondering where the compassion was last week when we tried to rally the Members of this body behind the Congressional Black Caucus' agenda and budget and pointed out to them that 886,000 more people died over the last 10 years, African Americans, because they did not get the same kind of quality of medical care that white Americans got, just the difference in the qualities.

Where was your compassion when we tried to get you to address that issue?

The compassion comes out in this one case, but where is the compassion when we point out to you every single day that people are starving and dying and seeking justice and you will not hear it?

How do we define compassion here? We have got to look at a bigger global picture, I think. You cannot just react to one person's situation. Where is your compassion when we need you?

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

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

I am honored to stand here as the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus for the 109th Congress and to offer as this substitute amendment the Congressional Black Caucus' budget for this year.

We believe that a budget is a statement of priorities and in that respect Members should know where the money is coming from that is being budgeted and how the money is being spent.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 6\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), who has led the task force for the Congressional Black Caucus to put together the budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlemen for their kind words. If you listened to them, it would make it sound like we have the same budget, but I want to assure you and our colleagues that that is not the case. And I want to assure you that by the end of this debate, you are going to know what the differences are.

We set out at the beginning of this Congress to set an agenda for the Congressional Black Caucus. Our agenda is about closing disparities that exist between African American citizens and other citizens in this country and have persisted over time. They involve closing the achievement and opportunity gaps in education, closing the gaps in health care for every American, closing the gaps in employment and economic security in wealth and business opportunity in our country, closing the gaps that continue to exist in our justice system, closing the gaps that continue to exist in retirement security for our citizens, and closing the inequities that have persisted throughout our history in foreign policy.

Is it true that we have a different set of priorities? You bet we do. To close these disparities, we have set a different course, and we decided that it was more important to devote resources to closing these gaps and closing these disparities than it was to give a tax cut to people who make above $200,000 a year. We decided that these priorities were more important than continuing to fund a ballistic missile defense program that has already failed every single test that it has undergone. We believe that the education of our children is more important than tax cuts for people over $200,000.

I am not here to make any excuses about that. I want every Member of this Congress to understand that that is a choice that we have made and that is a choice that we are calling on this Congress to make. The people in my district who make over $200,000 a year have told me that they would rather educate our children and fully fund No Child Left Behind than they would have a tax cut. So this is a question of what your priorities are, no ifs, ands, buts about it. That is what you will be voting on today.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

(Ms. WATERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), the Dean of the CBC.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney), and I would like to wish her a happy birthday today. She thought I did not know that.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I was hoping that the gentleman would give us a little bit more time.

I have two speakers left.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) who prepared this budget, has his imprint on it and knows more about it than anybody.

Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman have time left that he might be able to yield to me instead of yielding back?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself my remaining time, and I thank the gentleman for his time. I want to thank all of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and I especially want to thank their staffs who have really gone to a lot of trouble to help us put this budget together. This is the budget, Members, that gives you the choice. And a budget is about making choices. That is really what a budget is.

In our own households, we have to make choices. The choices we have made favor closing disparities that exist in our society that have been here for years and years. The choice we make is to fund No Child Left Behind fully, and not to fund a ballistic missile system that has been a failure, even though we allow research to continue on that front.

So I would ask our friends to face up to these choices and resolve them in a way that helps us close these disparities that have existed throughout the history in this country.